. .. . ' 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 Balzac, vol. one Frontis
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES 
 {Etje Jftrst Complete translation into (Bnglisfy 
 
 At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 
 
 The Sceaux Ball 
 
 The Purse 
 
 The Vendetta 
 
 Madame Firmiani 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 Volume 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS ON THE WOOD 
 BY FAMOUS FRENCH ARTISTS 
 
 PETER FENELON COLLIER & SON 
 
 MCM
 
 StacK 
 Annex 
 
 V, 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface 7 
 
 Balzac's Introduction II 
 
 At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 27 
 
 The Sceaux Ball 87 
 
 The Purse 149 
 
 The Vendetta '. _ 183 
 
 Madame Firmiani 256 
 
 Preface 281 
 
 A Daughter of Eve - 285 
 
 Letters of Two Brides ~ 417
 
 A T THE SIGN OF THE 
 CAT AND RACKET
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IN THE very interesting preface, dated July, 1842, which 
 Balzac prefixed to the first collection of the "Comedie Hu- 
 maine," he endeavors, naturally enough, to represent the di- 
 vision into "Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, " etc., as a rational 
 and reasoned one. Although not quite arbitrary, it was of 
 coarse to a great extent determined by considerations which 
 were not those of design; and we did not require the positive 
 testimony which we find in the Letters to tell us that in the 
 author's view, as well as in our own, not a few of the stories 
 might have been shifted over from one division to another, 
 and have filled their place just as well in the other as in 
 the one. 
 
 "La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote," however, which origi- 
 nally bore the much less happy title of "Gloire et Malheur, " 
 was a "Scene de la Vie Privee" from the first, and it bears 
 out better than some of its companions its author's expressed 
 intention of making these "scenes" represent youth, whether 
 Parisian or Provincial. Few of Balzac's stories have united 
 the general suffrage for touching grace more than this; and 
 there are few better examples of his minute Dutch-painting 
 than the opening passages, or of his unconquerable delight 
 in the details of business than his sketch of Monsieur Guil- 
 laume's establishment and its ways. The French equivalent 
 of the "Complete Tradesman" of Defoe lasted much longer 
 than his English counterpart; but, except in the smaller 
 
 (7)
 
 8 PREFACE 
 
 provincial towns, he is said to be uncommon now. As for 
 the plot, if such a stately name can be given to so delicate a 
 sketch, it is of course open to downright British judgment 
 to pronounce the self-sacrifice of Lebas more ignoble than 
 touching, the conduct of Theodore too childish to deserve 
 the excuses sometimes possible for passionate inconstancy, 
 and the character of Augustine angelically idiotic. This 
 last outrage, if it were committed, would indeed only be 
 an instance of the irreconcilable difference which almost to 
 the present day divides English and French ideas of ideally 
 perfect girlhood, and of that state of womanhood which cor- 
 responds thereto. The candeur adorable which the French- 
 man adores and exhibits in the girl; the uncompromising, 
 though mortal, passion of the woman ; are too different from 
 any ideal that we have entertained, except for a very short 
 period in the eighteenth century. But there are few more 
 pathetic and charming impersonations of this other ideal 
 than Augustine de Sommervieux. 
 
 All the stories associated with "La Maison du Chat-qui- 
 Pelote," according to French standards all, perhaps, ac- 
 cording to all but the very strictest and oldest-fashioned of 
 English are perfectly free from the slightest objection on 
 the score of that propriety against which Balzac has an amus- 
 ing if not quite exact tirade in one of his books. And this 
 is evidently not accidental, for the preface above referred to 
 is an elaborate attempt to rebut the charge of impropriety, 
 and to show that the author could draw virtuous as well as 
 unvirtuous characters. But they are not, taking them as a 
 whole, and omitting the "Cat and Eacket" itself, quite ex- 
 amples of putting the best foot foremost. "Le Bal de 
 Sceaux, " with its satire on contempt for trade, is in some 
 ways more like Balzac's young friend and pupil Charles de
 
 PREFACE 9 
 
 Bernard than like himself; and I believe it attracted English 
 notice pretty early. At least I seem, when quite a boy, and 
 long before I read the "Comedie Humaine," to have seen an 
 English version or paraphrase of it. "La Bourse," though 
 agreeable, is a little slight; and "La Vendetta" might have 
 been written on so well known a donnee by many persons 
 besides Balzac. It happens, moreover, to contrast most un- 
 fortunately with the terrible and exquisite perfection of Me*- 
 rimee's "Mateo Falcone." I should rank "Madame Firmiani" 
 a good deal higher than any of these three, though it too is 
 a little slight, and though it is not in Balzac's most character- 
 istic or important manner. Rather, perhaps, does it remind 
 us of the "Physiologies" and the other social "skits" and 
 sketches which he was writing for the "Caricature" and 
 other papers at the time. Still, the various descriptions of 
 the heroine have a point and sparkle which are almost pe- 
 culiar to the not quite mature work of men of genius; and 
 the actual story has a lightness which, perhaps, would have 
 disappeared if Balzac had handled it at greater length. 
 
 As for bibliography, the "Avant-Propos" (of which 
 Momus may perhaps say that it is both a little too discur- 
 sive and a little too apologetic) dates itself. I do not know 
 whether there may be any interest for some readers in the fact 
 that it originally appeared not in the first, but in the last, 
 "livraison" of the first volume of the complete edition of 
 the "Comedie." "La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote," under 
 the title above referred to, saw the light first with other 
 "Scenes de la Vie Privee" in 1830: but it was not dated as 
 of the previous year till five years later, in its third edition; 
 while the title was not changed till the great collection itself. 
 Of its companions, "Le Bal de Sceaux" was an original one, 
 and seems to have been written as well as published more or
 
 10 PREFACE 
 
 less at the same time. It at first had an alternative title, 
 "Ou le Pair de France," which was afterward dropped. 
 
 "La Bourse" was early, but not quite so early as these. 
 It appeared in, and was apparently written for, the second 
 edition of the "Scenes de la Vie Privee," published in May, 
 1832. In 1835 it was moved over to the "Scenes de la Vie 
 Parisienne," between which and the "Vie PriveV' there is 
 in fact a good deal of cross and arbitrary division. But 
 when the full "Comedie" took shape it moved back again. 
 
 "La Vendetta" ranked from the first edition of these 
 "Scenes" with them; but, unlike those previously men- 
 tioned, it had had an earlier separate publication in part. 
 For it is one of those stories which Balzac originally divided 
 into chapters and afterward printed without them. The first 
 of these, which appeared in the "Silhouette" of April, 1830, 
 was entitled "L' Atelier," and the others were "La Desobeis- 
 sance," "Le Mariage," and "Le Chatiment." 
 
 "Madame Firmiani" was first published in the "Eevue 
 de Paris" for February, 1832; then became a "Conte Philoso- 
 phique," and still in the same year a "Sc&ne de la Vie Pari- 
 sienne. ' ' It was in the 1842 collection that it took up its 
 abode in the "Scenes de la Vie Privee."
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IN GIVING the general title of "The Human Comedy" 
 to a work begun nearly thirteen years since, it is necessary 
 to explain its motive, to relate its origin, and briefly sketch 
 its plan, while endeavoring to speak of these matters as 
 though I had no personal interest in them. This is not so 
 difficult as the public might imagine. Few works conduce 
 to much vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. 
 This observation accounts for the study of their own works 
 made by Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers ; if it is 
 impossible to equal them in their fine conceptions, we may 
 try to imitate them in this feeling. 
 
 The idea of "The Human Comedy" was at first as a dream 
 to me, one of those impossible projects which we caress and 
 then let fly; a chimera that gives us a glimpse of its smiling 
 woman's face, and forthwith spreads its wings and returns 
 to a heavenly realm of fantasy. But this chimera, like 
 many another, has become a reality; has its behests, its 
 tyranny, which must be obeyed. 
 
 The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity 
 and Anirnality. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which 
 has lately made a stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint- 
 Hilaire, arose from a scientific innovation. Unity of struct- 
 ure, under other names, had occupied the greatest minds 
 during the two previous centuries. As we read the ex- 
 traordinary writings of the mystics who studied the sciences 
 in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg, Saint-Mar- 
 tin, and others, and the works of the greatest authors on 
 
 (11)
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Natural History Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc. 
 we detect in the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules 
 of Buffon, in the vegetative force of Needham, in the correla- 
 tion of similar organs of Charles Bonnet who in 1760 was 
 so bold as to write, "Animals vegetate as plants do" we 
 detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of Self for Self, 
 which lies at the root of "Unity of Plan." There is but one 
 Animal. The Creator works on a single model for every 
 organized being. "The Animal" is elementary, and takes 
 its external form, or, to be accurate, the differences in its 
 form, from the environment in which it is obliged to de- 
 velop. Zoological species are the result of these differences. 
 The announcement and defence of this system, which is in- 
 deed in harmony with our preconceived ideas of Divine 
 Power, will be the eternal glory of Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, 
 Cuvier's victorious opponent on this point of higher science, 
 whose triumph was hailed by Goethe in the. last article he 
 wrote. 
 
 I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long 
 before the discussion to which it has given rise, perceived 
 that in this respect society resembled nature. For does not 
 society modify Man, according to the conditions in which he 
 lives and acts, into men as manifold as the species in Zoology ? 
 The differences between a soldier, an artisan, a man of busi- 
 ness, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a merchant, 
 a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though not 
 so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the 
 ass, the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus 
 social species have always existed, and will always exist, 
 just as there are zoological species. Jf Buffon could pro- 
 duce a magnificent work by attempting to represent in a 
 book the whole realm of zoology, was there not room for 
 a work of the same kind on society? But the limits set by 
 nature to the variations of animals have no existence in 
 society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the 
 lioness with a few phrases; but in society a wife is not al- 
 ways the female of the male. There may be two perfectly
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 dissimilar beings in one household. The wife of a shop- 
 keeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and the wife of a 
 prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an ar- 
 tisan. The social state has freaks which Nature does not 
 allow herself; it is nature plus society. The description 
 of social species would thus be at least double that of ani- 
 mal species, merely in view of the two sexes. Then, among 
 animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any confu- 
 sion: they turn and rend each other that is all. Men, too, 
 rend each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes 
 the struggle far more complicated. Though some savants do 
 not yet admit that the animal nature flows into human nature 
 through an immense tide of life, the grocer certainly becomes 
 a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to the lowest social 
 grade. Again, Buff on found that life was extremely simple 
 among animals. Animals have little property, and neither 
 arts nor sciences ; while man, by a law that has yet to be 
 sought, has a tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, 
 and his life in everything he appropriates to his use. Though 
 Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles 
 Bonnet, Muller, Haller, and other patient investigators have 
 shown us how interesting are the habits of Animals, those of 
 each kind are, at least to our eyes, always and in every age 
 alike; whereas the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwell- 
 ing of a prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a 
 pauper are absolutely unlike, and change with every phase 
 of civilization. 
 
 Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form 
 men, women, and things; that is to say, persons and the 
 material expression of their minds; man, in short, and life. 
 
 As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called 
 History, who can have failed to note that the writers of all 
 periods, in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Eome, have forgotten 
 to give us the history of manners ? The fragment of Petro- 
 nius on the private life of the Eomans excites rather than 
 satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing this great 
 void in the field of history that the Abbe Barthe'lemy de-
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 voted his life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in "Le 
 Jeune Anacharsis." 
 
 But how could such a drama, with the four or five thou- 
 sand persons which a society offers, be made interesting ? 
 How, at the same time, please the poet, the philosopher, and 
 the masses who want both poetry and philosophy under strik- 
 ing imagery? Though I could conceive of the importance 
 and of the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I saw 
 no way of writing it; for hitherto the most famous story- 
 tellers had spent their talent in creating two or three typical 
 actors, in depicting one aspect of life. It was with this idea 
 that I read the works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the 
 modern troubadour, or finder (trouv&re=trouveur}, had just 
 then given an aspect of grandeur to a class of composition 
 unjustly regarded as of the second rank. Is it not really 
 more difficult to compete with personal and parochial inter- 
 ests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Koland, Amadis, 
 Panurge, Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, 
 Robinson Crusoe, Gil Bias, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My 
 Uncle Toby, Werther, Corinne, Adolphe, Paul and Vir- 
 ginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe, Mignon, Man- 
 fred, than to set forth in order facts more or less similar 
 in every country, to investigate the spirit of laws that have 
 fallen into desuetude, to review the theories which mislead 
 nations, or, like some metaphysicians, to explain what Is? 
 In the first place, these actors, whose existence becomes 
 more prolonged and more authentic than that of the genera- 
 tions which saw their birth, almost always live solely on 
 condition of their being a vast reflection of the present. 
 Conceived in the womb of their own period, the whole heart 
 of humanity stirs within their frame, which often covers a 
 complete system of philosophy. Thus Walter Scott raised 
 to the dignity of the philosophy of History the literature 
 which, from age to age, sets perennial gems in the poetic 
 crown of every nation where letters are cultivated. He vivi- 
 fied it with the spirit of the past; he combined drama, dia- 
 logue, portrait, scenery, and description; he fused the mar-
 
 INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 vellous with truth the two elements of the times; and he 
 brought poetry into close contact with the familiarity of the 
 humblest speech. But as he had not so much devised a 
 system as hit upon a manner in the ardor of his work, or as 
 its logical outcome, he never thought of connecting his com- 
 positions in such a way as to form a complete history of 
 which each chapter was a novel, and each novel the picture 
 of a period. 
 
 It was by discerning this lack of unity, which in no way 
 detracts from the Scottish writer's greatness, that I perceived 
 at once the scheme which would favor the execution of my 
 purpose, and the possibility of executing it. Though daz- 
 zled, so to speak, by Walter Scott's amazing fertility, always 
 himself and always original, I did not despair, for I found 
 the source of his genius in the infinite variety of human 
 nature. Chance is the greatest romancer in the world ; we 
 have only to study it. French society would be the real 
 author; I should only be the secretary. By drawing up 
 an inventory of vices and virtues, by collecting the chief 
 facts of the passions, by depicting characters, by choosing 
 the principal incidents of social life, by composing types out 
 of a combination of homogeneous characteristics, I might 
 perhaps succeed in writing the history which so many his- 
 torians have neglected: that of Manners. By patience and 
 perseverance 1 might produce for France in the nineteenth 
 century the book which we must all regret that Rome, Ath- 
 ens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, and India have not bequeathed 
 to us; that history of their social life which, prompted by the 
 Abbe" Barthelerny, Monteil patiently and steadily tried to 
 write for the Middle Ages, but in an unattractive form. 
 
 The work, so far, was nothing. By adhering to the strict 
 lines of a reproduction a writer might be a more or less faith- 
 ful, and more or less successful, painter of types of humanity, 
 a narrator of the dramas of private life, an archa3ologist of 
 social furniture, a cataloguer of professions, a registrar 
 of good and evil; but to deserve the praise of which every 
 artist must be ambitious, must I not also investigate the
 
 16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 reasons or the cause of these social effects, detect the hidden 
 sense of this vast assembly of figures, passions, and inci- 
 dents? And finally, having sought I will not say having 
 found this reason, this motive power, must I not reflect 
 on first principles, and discover in what particulars societies 
 approach or deviate from the eternal law of truth and beauty ? 
 In spite of the wide scope of the preliminaries, which might 
 of themselves constitute a book, the work, to be complete, 
 would need a conclusion. Thus depicted, society ought to 
 bear in itself the reason of its working. 
 
 The law of the writer, in virtue of which he is a writer, 
 and which I do not hesitate to say makes him the equal, or 
 perhaps the superior, of the statesman, is his judgment, what- 
 ever it may be, on human affairs, and his absolute devotion 
 to certain principles. Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bossuet, Leib- 
 nitz, Kant, Montesquieu are the science which statesmen 
 apply. "A writer ought to have settled opinions on morals 
 and politics; he should regard himself as a tutor of men; for 
 men need no masters to teach them to doubt, ' ' says Bonald. 
 I took these noble words as my guide long ago ; they are the 
 written law of the monarchical writer. And those who would 
 confute me by my own words will find that they have mis- 
 interpreted some ironical phrase, or that they have turned 
 against me a speech given to one of my actors a trick pecu- 
 liar to calumniators. 
 
 As to the intimate purpose, the soul of this work, these 
 are the principles on which it is based. 
 
 Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts 
 and capabilities; society, far from depraving him, as Eous- 
 seau asserts, improves him, makes him better; but self- 
 interest also develops his evil tendencies. Christianity, 
 above all, Catholicism, being as I have pointed out in the 
 "Country Doctor" ("le Medecin de Campagne") a complete 
 system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, 
 is the most powerful element of social order. 
 
 In reading attentively the presentment of society cast, as 
 it were, from the life, with, all that is good and all that is bad
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 in it, we learn this lesson if thought, or if passion, which 
 combines thought and feeling, is the vital social element, 
 it is also its destructive element. In this respect social life 
 is like the life of man. Nations live long only by moderat- 
 ing their vital energy. Teaching, or rather education, by 
 religious bodies is the grand principle of life for nations, the 
 only means for diminishing the sum of evil and increasing 
 the sum of good in all society. Thought, the living prin- 
 ciple of good and ill, can only be trained, quelled, and 
 guided by religion. The only possible religion is Chris- 
 tianity (see the letter from Paris in "Louis Lambert," in 
 which the young mystic explains, d propos to Swedenborg's 
 doctrines, how there has never been but one religion since 
 the world began). Christianity created modern nationalities, 
 and it will preserve them. Hence, no doubt, the necessity 
 for the monarchical principle. Catholicism and Royalty are 
 twin principles. 
 
 As to the limits within which these two principles should 
 be confined by various institutions, so that they may not 
 become absolute, every one will feel that a brief preface 
 ought not to be a political treatise. I cannot, therefore, 
 enter on religious discussions, nor on the political discus- 
 sions of the day. I write under the light of two eternal 
 truths Religion and Monarchy; two necessities, as they are 
 shown to be by contemporary events, toward which every 
 writer of sound sense ought to try to guide the country back. 
 Without being an enemy to election, which is an excellent 
 principle as a basis of legislation, I reject election regarded 
 as the only social instrument, especially so badly organized as 
 it now is (1842); for it fails to represent imposing minorities, 
 whose ideas and interests would occupy the attention of a 
 monarchical government. Elective power extended to all 
 gives us government by the masses, the only irresponsible 
 form of government, under which tyranny is unlimited, for 
 it calls itself law. Besides, I regard the family and not the 
 individual as the true social unit. In this respect, at the risk 
 of being thought retrograde, I side with Bossuet and Bonald
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 instead of going with modern innovators. Since election has 
 become the only social instrument, if I myself were to exer- 
 cise it no contradiction between my acts and my words should 
 be inferred. An engineer points out that a bridge is about 
 to fall, that it is dangerous for any one to cross it; but he 
 crosses it himself when it is the only road to the town. 
 Napoleon adapted election to the spirit of the French nation 
 with wonderful skill. The least important members of his 
 Legislative Body became the most famous orators of the 
 Chamber after the Restoration. No Chamber has ever been 
 the equal of the Corps Legislatif, comparing them man for 
 man. The elective system of the Empire was, then, indis- 
 putably the best. 
 
 Some persons may, perhaps, think that this declaration 
 is somewhat autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel 
 with the novelist for wanting to be a historian, and will call 
 him to account for writing politics. I am simply fulfilling 
 an obligation that is my reply. The work I have under- 
 taken will be as long as a history ; I was compelled to explain 
 the logic of it, hitherto unrevealed, and its principles and 
 moral purpose. 
 
 Having been obliged to withdraw the prefaces formerly 
 published, in response to essentially ephemeral criticisms, 
 I will retain only one remark. 
 
 Writers who have a purpose in view, were it only a rever- 
 sion to principles familiar in the past because they are eternal, 
 should always clear the ground. Now every one who, in the 
 domain of ideas, brings his stone by pointing out an abuse, 
 or setting a mark on some evil that it may be removed every 
 such man is stigmatized as immoral. The accusation of im- 
 morality, which has never failed to be cast at the courageous 
 writer, is, after all, the last that can be brought when noth- 
 ing else remains to be said to a romancer. If you are truth- 
 ful in your pictures; if by dint of daily and nightly toil you 
 succeed in writing the most difficult language in the world, 
 the word immoral is flung in your teeth. Socrates was im- 
 moral; Jesus Christ was immoral; they both were persecuted
 
 INTRODUCTION . 19 
 
 in the name of the society they overset or reformed. When 
 a man is to be killed he is taxed with immorality. These 
 tactics, familiar in party warfare, are a disgrace to those who 
 use them. Luther and Calvin knew well what they were 
 about when they shielded themselves behind damaged worldly 
 interests! And they lived all the days of their life. 
 
 When depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity 
 of its turmoil, it happened it could not but happen that 
 the picture displayed more of evil than of good; that some 
 part of the fresco represented a guilty couple; and the critics 
 at once raised the cry of immorality, without pointing out 
 the morality of another portion intended to be a perfect con- 
 trast. As the critic knew nothing of the general plan, I could 
 forgive him, all the more because one can no more hinder 
 criticism than the use of eyes, tongues, and judgment. Also 
 the time for an impartial verdict is not yet come for me. 
 And, after all, the author who cannot make up his mind to 
 face the fire of criticism should no more think of writing than 
 a traveller should start on his journey counting on a perpet- 
 ually clear sky. On this point it remains to be said that the 
 most conscientious moralists doubt greatly whether society 
 can show as many good actions as bad ones; and in the pic- 
 ture I have painted of it there are more virtuous figures than 
 reprehensible ones. Blameworthy actions, faults and crimes, 
 from the lightest to the most atrocious, always meet with 
 punishment, human or divine, signal or secret. I have done 
 better than the historian, for I am free. Cromwell here on 
 earth escaped all punishment but that inflicted by thoughtful 
 men. And on this point there have been divided schools. 
 Bossuet even showed some consideration for the great regi- 
 cide. William of Orange, the usurper, Hugues Capet, an- 
 other usurper, lived to old age with no more qualms or fears 
 than Henri IV. or Charles I. The lives of Catherine II. and 
 of Frederick of Prussia would be conclusive against any kind 
 of moral law, if they were judged by the twofold aspect of 
 the morality which guides ordinary mortals, and that which 
 is in use by crowned heads ; for, as Napoleon said, for kings
 
 20 . INTRODUCTION 
 
 and statesmen there are the lesser and the higher morality. 
 My scenes of political life are founded on this profound 
 observation. It is not a law to history, as it is to romance, 
 to make for a beautiful ideal. History is, or ought to be, 
 what it was; while romance ought to be "the better world," 
 as was said by Mme. Necker, one of the most distinguished 
 thinkers of the last century. 
 
 Still, with this noble falsity, romance would be nothing 
 if it were not true in detail. Walter Scott, obliged as he was 
 to conform to the ideas of an essentially hypocritical nation, 
 was false to humanity in his picture of woman, because his 
 models were schismatics. The Protestant woman has no 
 ideal. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous; but her unexpan- 
 sive love will always be as calm and methodical as the fulfil- 
 ment of a duty. It might seem as though the Virgin Mary 
 had chilled the hearts of those sophists who have banished 
 her from heaven with her treasures of loving-kindness. In 
 Protestantism there is no possible future for the woman who 
 has sinned; while, in the Catholic Church, the hope of for- 
 giveness makes her sublime. Hence, for the Protestant 
 writer there is but one Woman, while the Catholic writer 
 finds a new woman in each new situation. If Walter Scott 
 had been a Catholic, if he had set himself the task of describ- 
 ing truly the various phases of society which have succes- 
 sively existed in Scotland, perhaps the painter of Efne and 
 Alice the two figures for which he blamed himself in his 
 later years might have admitted passion with its sins and 
 punishments, and the virtues revealed by repentance. Pas- 
 sion is the sum-total of humanity. Without passion, religion, 
 history, romance, art, would all be useless. 
 
 Some persons, seeing me collect such a mass of facts and 
 paint them as they are, with passion for their motive power, 
 have supposed, but wrongly, that I must belong to the school 
 of Sensualism and Materialism two aspects of the same thing 
 Pantheism. But their misapprehension was perhaps justi- 
 fied or inevitable. I do not share the belief in indefinite 
 progress for society as a whole; I believe in man's improve-
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 ment in himself. Those who insist on reading in me the 
 intention to consider man as a finished creation are strangely 
 mistaken. Seraphita, the doctrine in action of the Christian 
 Buddha, seems to me an ample answer to this rather heedless 
 accusation. 
 
 In certain fragments of this long work I have tried to 
 popularize the amazing facts, I may say the marvels, of 
 electricity, which in man is metamorphosed into an incal- 
 culable force; but in what way do the phenomena of brain 
 and nerves, which prove the existence of an undiscovered 
 world of psychology, modify the necessary and undoubted 
 relations of the worlds to God ? In what way can they 
 shake the Catholic dogma ? Though irrefutable facts 
 should some day place thought in the class of fluids 
 which are discerned only by their effects while their sub- 
 stance evades our senses, even when aided by so many 
 mechanical means, the result will be the same as when 
 Christopher Columbus detected that the earth is a sphere, 
 and Galileo demonstrated its rotation. Our future will be 
 unchanged. The wonders of animal magnetism, with which 
 I have been familiar since 1820; the beautiful experiments 
 of Gall, Lavater's successor; all the men who have studied 
 mind as opticians have studied light two not dissimilar 
 things point to a conclusion in favor of the mystics, the 
 disciples of St. John, and of those great thinkers who have 
 established the spiritual world the sphere in which are re- 
 vealed the relations of God and man. 
 
 A sure grasp of the purport of this work will make it 
 clear that I attach to common, daily facts, hidden or patent 
 to the eye, to the acts of individual lives, and to their causes 
 and principles, the importance which historians have hith- 
 erto ascribed to the events of public national life. The 
 unknown struggle which goes on in a valley of the Indre 
 between Mme. de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as 
 great as the most famous of battles ("Le Lys dans la 
 Vallee"). In one the glory of the victor is at stake; in 
 the other it is heaven. The misfortunes of the two Birot-
 
 22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 teaus, the priest and the perfumer, to me are those of man- 
 kind. La Fosseuse ("Me'decin de Campagne") and Mme. 
 Graslin ("Cure* de Village") are almost the sum-total of 
 woman. We all suffer thus every day. I have had to do 
 a hundred times what Kichardson did but once. Lovelace 
 has a thousand forms, for social corruption takes the hues 
 of the medium in which it lives. Clarissa, ou the contrary, 
 the lovely image of impassioned virtue, is drawn in lines of 
 distracting purity. To create a variety of Virgins it needs 
 a Rafael. In this respect, perhaps literature must yield to 
 painting. 
 
 Still, I may be allowed to point out how many irre- 
 proachable figures as regards their virtue are to be found 
 in the portions of this work already published: Pierrette 
 Lorrain, Ursule Mirouet, Constance Birotteau, La Fos- 
 seuse, Euge'nie Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Pauline de Vil- 
 lenoix, Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve 
 Chardon, Mademoiselle d'Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani, 
 Agathe Eouget, Rene"e de Maucombe; besides several 
 figures in the middle-distance, who, though less conspic- 
 uous than these, nevertheless, offer the reader an example 
 of domestic virtue; Joseph Lebas, Genestas, Benassis, Bon- 
 net the cure, Minoret the doctor, Pillerault, David Se*chard, 
 the two Birotteaus, Chaperon the priest, Judge Popinot, 
 Bourgeat, the Sauviats, the Tascherons, and many more. 
 Do not all these solve the difficult literary problem which 
 consists in making a virtuous person interesting? 
 
 It was no small task to depict the two or three thousand 
 conspicuous types of a period; for this is, in fact, the num- 
 ber presented to us by each generation, and which the Hu- 
 man Comedy will require. This crowd of actors, of char- 
 acters, this multitude of lives, needed a setting if I may 
 be pardoned the expression, a gallery. Hence the very 
 natural division, as already known, into Scenes of Private 
 Life, of Provincial Life, of Parisian, Political, Military, and 
 Country Life. Under these six heads are classified all the 
 studies of manners which form the history of society at
 
 INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 large, of all its faits et gestes, as oar ancestors would have 
 said. These six classes correspond, indeed, to familiar 
 conceptions. Each has its own sense and meaning, and 
 answers to an epoch in the life of man. I may repeat 
 here, but very briefly, what was written by Felix Davin 
 a young genius snatched from literature by an early 
 death. After being informed of my plan, he said that 
 the Scenes of Private Life represented childhood and 
 youth and their errors, as the Scenes of Provincial Life 
 represented the age of passion, scheming, self-interest, and 
 ambition. Then the Scenes of Parisian Life give a picture 
 of the tastes and vice and unbridled powers which conduce 
 to the habits peculiar to great cities, where the extremes of 
 good and evil meet. Each of these divisions has its local 
 color Paris and the Provinces a great social antithesis 
 which held for me immense resources. 
 
 And not man alone, but the principal events of life, fall 
 into classes by types. There are situations which occur in 
 every life, typical phases, and this is one of the details I 
 most sought after. I have tried to give an idea of the 
 different districts of our fine country. My work has its 
 geography, as it has its genealogy and its families, its places 
 and things, its persons and their deeds ; as it has its heraldry, 
 its nobles and commonalty, its artisans and peasants, its 
 politicians and dandies, its army in short, a whole world 
 of its own. 
 
 After describing social life in these three portions, I had 
 to delineate certain exceptional lives, which comprehend the 
 interests of many people, or of everybody, and are in a degree 
 outside the general law. Hence we have Scenes of Political 
 Life. This vast picture of society being finished and com- 
 plete, was it not needful to display it in its most violent 
 phase, beside itself, as it were, either in self-defence or for 
 the sake of conquest? Hence the Scenes of Military Life, 
 as yet the most incomplete portion of my work, but for 
 which room will be allowed in this edition, that it may 
 form part of it when done. Finally, the Scenes of Country
 
 24: INTRODUCTION 
 
 Life are, in a way, the evening of this long day, if I may 
 so call the social drama. In that part are to be found the 
 purest natures, and the application of the great principles 
 of order, politics, and morality. 
 
 Such is the foundation, full of actors, full of comedies 
 and tragedies, on which are raised the Philosophical Studies 
 the second part of my work, in which the social instrument 
 of all these effects is displayed, and the ravages of the mind 
 are painted, feeling after feeling; the first of this series, 
 "Wild Ass's Skin," to some extent forms a link between 
 the Philosophical Studies and Studies of Manners, by a 
 work of almost Oriental fancy, in which life itself is shown 
 in a mortal struggle with the very element of all passion. 
 
 Besides these, there will be a series of Analytical Studies, 
 of which I will say nothing, for one only is published as yet 
 The Physiology of Marriage. 
 
 In the course of time I propose writing two more works 
 of this class. First, the Pathology of Social Life, then an 
 Anatomy of Educational Bodies, and a Monograph on Virtue. 
 
 In looking forward to what remains to be done, my read- 
 ers will perhaps echo what my publishers say, "Please God 
 to spare you!" I only ask to be less tormented by men and 
 things than I have hitherto been since I began this terrific 
 labor. I have had this in my favor, and I thank God for 
 it, that the talents of the time, the finest characters and the 
 truest friends, as noble in their private lives as the former 
 are in public life, have wrung my hand and said, Courage! 
 
 And why should I not confess that this friendship, and 
 the testimony here and there of persons unknown to me, 
 have upheld me in my career, both against myself and 
 against unjust attacks; against the calumny which has 
 often persecuted me, against discouragement, and against 
 the too eager hopefulness whose utterances are misinter- 
 preted as those of overweening conceit? I had resolved 
 to display stolid stoicism in the face of abuse and insults; 
 but on two occasions base slanders have necessitated a 
 reply. Though the advocates of forgiveness of injuries
 
 INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 may regret that I should have displayed my skill in liter- 
 ary fence, there are many Christians who are of opinion 
 that we live in times when it is as well to show sometimes 
 that silence springs from generosity. 
 
 The vastness of a plan which includes both a history 
 and a criticism of society, an analysis of its evils, and a 
 discussion of its principles, authorizes me, I think, in giv- 
 ing to my work the title under which it now appears 
 "THE HUMAN COMEDY." Is this too ambitious? Is it 
 not exact? That, when it is complete, the public must 
 pronounce. 
 
 PARIS, July, 1842. 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 2
 
 Dedicated to Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau 
 
 Y Y ALF ' WA Y D0 WN the Eue Saint-Denis, almost at 
 / i the corner of the Eue du Petit-Lion, there stood for. 
 merly one of those delightful houses which enable 
 historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threat- 
 ening walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been 
 decorated with hieroglyphics. For what other name could 
 the passer-by give to the X's and Y's which the horizontal 
 or diagonal timbers traced on the front, outlined by little par- 
 allel cracks in the plaster ? It was evident that every beam 
 quivered in its mortises at the passing of the lightest vehicle. 
 This venerable structure was crowned by a triangular roof of 
 which no example will, ere long, be seen in Paris. This cov- 
 ering, warped by the extremes of the Paris climate, projected 
 three feet over the roadway, as much to protect the threshold 
 from the rainfall as to shelter the wall of a loft and its sill- 
 less dormer window. This upper story was built of planks, 
 overlapping each other like slates, in order, no doubt, not to 
 overweight the frail house. 
 
 One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man 
 carefully wrapped in his cloak, stood under the awning of a 
 shop opposite this old house, which he was studying with 
 the enthusiasm of an antiquary. In point of fact, this relic 
 of the civic life of the sixteenth century offered more than 
 one problem to the consideration of an observer. Each 
 story presented some singularity; on the first floor four 
 tall, narrow windows, close together, were filled as to the
 
 28 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 lower panes with boards, so as to produce the doubtful 
 light by which a clever salesman can ascribe to his goods 
 the color his customers inquire for. The young man 
 seemed very scornful of this essential part of the house; 
 his eyes had not yet rested on it. The windows of the 
 second floor, where the Venetian blinds were drawn up, 
 revealing little dingy muslin curtains behind the large Bo- 
 hemian glass panes, did not interest him either. His at- 
 tention was attracted to the third floor, to the modest 
 sash-frames of wood, so clumsily wrought that they might 
 have found a place in the Museum of Arts and Crafts to 
 illustrate the early efforts of French carpentry. These 
 windows were glazed with small squares of glass so green 
 that, but for his good eyes, the young man could not have 
 seen the blue-checked cotton curtains which screened the 
 mysteries of the room from profane eyes. Now and then 
 the watcher, weary of his fruitless contemplation, or of the 
 silence in which the house was buried, like the whole 
 neighborhood, dropped his eyes toward the lower regions. 
 An involuntary smile parted his lips each time he looked 
 at the shop, where, in fact, there were some laughable 
 details. 
 
 A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, 
 which appeared to have bent under the weight of the de- 
 crepit house, had been incrusted with as many coats of dif- 
 ferent paint as there are of rouge on an old duchess's cheek. 
 In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist 
 there was an old painting representing a cat playing rack- 
 ets. This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. 
 But it must be said that the wittiest of modern painters 
 could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held 
 in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on 
 its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned 
 by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and 
 accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that 
 the artist had meant to make game of the shop-owner and 
 of the passing observer. Time, while impairing this artless
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 29 
 
 painting, had made it yet more grotesque by introducing 
 some uncertain features which must have puzzled the con- 
 scientious idler. For instance, the cat's tail had been eaten 
 into in such a way that it might now have been taken for 
 the figure of a spectator so long, and thick, and furry 
 were the tails of our forefathers' cats. To the right of the 
 picture, on an azure field which ill disguised the decay of 
 the wood, might be read the name "Guillaume, " and to 
 the left, "Successor to Master Chevrel." Sun and rain 
 had worn away most of the gilding parsimoniously applied 
 to the letters of this superscription, in which the U's and 
 V's had changed places in obedience to the laws of old- 
 world orthography. 
 
 To quench the pride of those who believe that the world 
 is growing cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug 
 surpasses everything, it may be observed that these signs, 
 of which the origin seems so whimsical to many Paris mer- 
 chants, are the dead pictures of once living pictures by which, 
 our roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their 
 houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and 
 others, were animals in cages whose skill astonished the 
 passer-by, and whose accomplishments prove the patience 
 of the fifteenth-century artisan. Such curiosities did more 
 to enrich their fortunate owners than the signs of "Provi- 
 dence," "Good-faith," "Grace of God," and "Decapitation 
 of John the Baptist," which may still be seen in the Rue 
 Saint-Denis. 
 
 However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to 
 admire the cat, which a minute's attention sufficed to stamp 
 on his memory. The yonng man himself had his peculiari- 
 ties. His cloak, folded after the manner of an antique drap- 
 ery, showed a smart pair of shoes, all the more remarkable 
 in the midst of the Paris rnud, because he wore white silk 
 stockings, on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. 
 He had just come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball; for 
 at this early hour he had in his hand a pair of white gloves, 
 and his black hair, now out of curl, and flowing over his
 
 30 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 shoulders, showed that it had been dressed a la Caracalla, a 
 fashion introduced as much by David's school of painting as 
 by the mania for Greek and Roman styles which character- 
 ized the early years of this century. 
 
 In spite of the noise made by a few market gardeners, 
 who, being late, rattled past toward the great market-place 
 at a gallop, the busy street lay in a stillness of which the 
 magic charm is known only to those who have wandered 
 through deserted Paris at the hours when its roar, hushed 
 for a moment, rises and spreads in the distance like the great 
 voice of the sea. This strange young man must have seemed 
 as curious to the shopkeeping folk of the "Cat and Racket" 
 as the "Cat and Eacket" was to him. A dazzlingly white 
 cravat made his anxious face look even paler than it really 
 was. The fire that flashed in his black eyes, gloomy and 
 sparkling by turns, was in harmony with the singular out- 
 line of his features, with his wide, flexible mouth, hardened 
 into a smile. His forehead, knit with violent annoyance, 
 had a stamp of doom. Is not the forehead the most pro- 
 phetic feature of a man? When the stranger's brow ex- 
 pressed passion the furrows formed in it were terrible in 
 their strength and energy; but when he recovered his calm- 
 ness, so easily upset, it beamed with a luminous grace which 
 gave great attractiveness to a countenance in which joy, grief, 
 love, anger, or scorn blazed out so contagiously that the cold- 
 est man could not fail to be impressed. 
 
 He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer 
 window of the loft was suddenly flung open that he did not 
 observe the apparition of three laughing faces, pink and 
 white and chubby, but as vulgar as the face of Commerce 
 as it is seen in sculpture on certain monuments. These three 
 faces, framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs float- 
 ing among the clouds that surround God the Father. The 
 apprentices snuffed up the exhalations of the street with an 
 eagerness that showed how hot and poisonous the atmosphere 
 of their garret must be. After pointing to the singular sen- 
 tinel, the most jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices retired
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 31 
 
 and came back holding an instrument whose hard metal pipe 
 is now superseded by a leather tube ; and they all grinned 
 with mischief as they looked down on the loiterer, and 
 sprinkled him with a fine white shower of ,which the scent 
 proved that three chins had just been shaved. Standing 
 on tiptoe, in the furthest corner o their loft, to enjoy their 
 victim's rage, the lads ceased laughing on seeing the haughty 
 indifference with which the young man shook his cloak, and 
 the intense contempt expressed by his face as he glanced up 
 at the empty window-frame. 
 
 At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower 
 half of one of the clumsy windows on the third floor by the 
 aid of the sash runners, of which the pulley so often sud- 
 denly gives way and releases the heavy panes it ought to 
 hold up. The watcher was then rewarded for his long wait- 
 ing. The face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one 
 of the white cups that bloom on the bosom of the waters, 
 crowned by a frill of tumbled muslin, which gave her head 
 a look of exquisite innocence. Though wrapped in brown 
 stuff, her neck and shoulders gleamed here and there through 
 little openings left by her movements in sleep. No expres- 
 sion of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, 
 or the calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sub- 
 lime works of Rafael; here were the same grace, the same 
 repose as in these Virgins, and now proverbial. There was 
 a delightful contrast between the cheeks of that face on 
 which sleep had, as it were, given high relief to a super- 
 abundance of life, and the antiquity of the heavy window 
 with its clumsy shape and black sill. Like those day-blow- 
 ing flowers, which in the early morning have not yet unfurled 
 their cups, twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet 
 hardly awake, let her blue eyes wander beyond the neigh- 
 boring roofs to look at the sky ; then, from habit, she cast 
 them down on the gloomy depths of the street, where they 
 immediately met those of her adorer. Vanity, no doubt, 
 distressed her at being seen in undress; she started back, 
 the worn pulley gave way, and the sash fell with the rapid
 
 32 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 run, which in our day has earned for this artless invention 
 of our forefathers an odious name. 1 The vision had disap- 
 peared. To the young man the most radiant star of morning 
 seemed to be hidden by a cloud. 
 
 During these little incidents the heavy inside shutters that 
 protected the slight windows of the shop of the "Cat and 
 Eacket" had been removed as if by magic. The old door 
 with its knocker was opened back against the wall of the en- 
 try by a manservant, apparently coeval with the sign, who, 
 with a shaking hand, hung upon it a square of cloth, on which 
 were embroidered in yellow silk the words: "Guillaume, suc- 
 cessor to Chevrel. " Many a passer-by would have found it 
 difficult to guess the class of trade carried on by Monsieur 
 Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars which protected 
 his shop windows on the outside, certain packages, wrapped 
 in brown linen, were hardly visible, though as numerous as 
 herrings swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the primi- 
 tive aspect of the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all the 
 merchant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores were 
 always the best provided, whose connections were the most 
 extensive, and whose commercial honesty never lay under 
 the slightest suspicion. If some of his brethren in business 
 made a contract with the Government, and had not the re- 
 quired quantity of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it, 
 however large the number of pieces tendered for. The wily 
 dealer knew a thousand ways of extracting the largest profits 
 without being obliged, like them, to court patrons, cringing 
 to them, or making them costly presents. When his fellow- 
 tradesmen could only pay in good bills of long date, he would 
 mention his notary as an accommodating man, and managed 
 to get a second profit out of the bargain, thanks to this ar- 
 rangement, which had made it a proverb among the traders 
 of the Rue Saint-Denis: "Heaven preserve you from Mon- 
 sieur Guillaume's notary!" to signify a heavy discount. 
 
 The old merchant was to be seen standing on the thresh- 
 hold of his shop, as if by a miracle, the instant the servant 
 
 1 Fenetre a la Guillotine.
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 33 
 
 withdrew. Monsieur Ghiillaume looked at the Rue Saint- 
 Denis, at the neighboring shops, and at the weather, like a 
 man disembarking at Havre, and seeing France once more 
 after a long voyage. Having convinced himself that noth- 
 ing had changed while he was asleep, he presently perceived 
 the stranger on guard, and he, on his part, gazed at the patri- 
 archal draper as Hurnboldt may have scrutinized the first 
 electric eel he saw in America. Monsieur Gruillaume wore 
 loose black velvet breeches, pepper-and-salt stockings, and 
 square-toed shoes with silver buckles. His coat, with square- 
 cut fronts, square-cut tails, and square-cut collar, clothed his 
 slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with white 
 metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so ac- 
 curately combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it 
 'made it look like a furrowed field. His little green eyes, 
 that might have been pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath 
 arches faintly tinged with red in the place of eyebrows. Anx- 
 ieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many horizontal lines 
 as there were creases in his coat. This colorless face ex- 
 pressed patience, commercial shrewdness, and the sort of 
 wily cupidity which is needful in business. At that time 
 these old families were less rare than they are now, in which 
 the characteristic habits and costume of their calling, surviv- 
 ing in the midst of more recent civilization, were preserved 
 as cherished traditions, like the antediluvian remains found 
 by Cuvier in the quarries. 
 
 The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder 
 of ancient practices; he might be heard to regret the Provost 
 of Merchants, and never did he mention a decision of the 
 Tribunal of Commerce without calling it the "Sentence of 
 the Consuls." Up and dressed the first of the household, in 
 obedience, no doubt, to these old customs, he stood sternly 
 awaiting the appearance of his three assistants, ready to-scold 
 them in case they were late. These young disciples of Mer- 
 cury knew nothing more terrible than the wordless assiduity 
 with which the master scrutinized their faces and their move- 
 ments on Monday in search of evidence or traces of their
 
 34 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 pranks. But at this moment the old clothier paid no heed 
 to his apprentices; he was absorbed in trying to divine the 
 motive of the anxious looks which the young man in silk 
 stockings and a cloak cast alternately at his signboard and 
 into the depths of his shop. The daylight was now brighter, 
 and enabled the stranger to discern the cashier's corner, in- 
 closed by a railing and screened by old green silk curtains, 
 where were kept the immense ledgers, the silent oracles of 
 the house. The too inquisitive gazer seemed to covet this 
 little nook, and to be taking the plan of a dining-room at 
 one side, lighted by a skylight, whence the family at meals 
 could easily see the smallest incident that might occur at the 
 shop- door. So much affection for his dwelling seemed sus- 
 picious to a trader who had lived long enough to remember 
 the law of maximum prices; Monsieur Guillaume naturally 
 thought that this sinister personage had an eye to the till of 
 the Cat and Kacket. After quietly observing the mute duel 
 which was going on between his master and the stranger, the 
 eldest of the apprentices, having seen that the young man 
 was stealthily watching the windows of the third floor, vent- 
 ured to place himself on the stone flag where Monsieur Guil- 
 laume was standing. He took two steps out into the street, 
 raised his head and fancied that he caught sight of Madem- 
 oiselle Augustine Guillaume in hasty retreat. The draper, 
 annoyed by his assistant's perspicacity, shot a side glance at 
 him; but the draper and his amorous apprentice were sud- 
 denly relieved from the fears which the young man's presence 
 had excited in their minds. He hailed a hackney cab on its 
 way to a neighboring stand, and jumped into it with an air 
 of affected indifference. This departure was a balm to the 
 hearts of the other two lads, who had been somewhat uneasy 
 as to meeting the victim of their practical joke. 
 
 "Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing 
 there with your arms folded?" said Monsieur Guillaume to 
 his three neophytes. "In former days, bless you, when I 
 was in Master Chevrel's service, I should have overhauled 
 more than two pieces of cloth by this time."
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 35 
 
 "Then it was daylight earlier," said the second assistant, 
 whose duty this was. 
 
 The old shopkeeper could not help smiling. Though two 
 of these young fellows, who were confided to his care by their 
 fathers, rich manufacturers at Louviers and at Sedan, had 
 only to ask and to have a hundred thousand francs the day 
 when they were old enough to settle in life, Guillaume re- 
 garded it as his duty to keep them under the rod of an old- 
 world despotism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern 
 shops, where the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. 
 He made them work like negroes. These three assistants 
 were equal to a business which would harry ten such clerks 
 as those whose sybaritical tastes now swell the columns of 
 the budget. Not a sound disturbed the peace of this solemn 
 house, where the hinges were always oiled, and where the 
 meanest article of furniture showed the respectable cleanli- 
 ness which reveals strict order and economy. The most 
 waggish of the three youths often amused himself by writ- 
 ing the date of its first appearance on the Gruyere cheese 
 which was left to their tender mercies at breakfast, and 
 which it was their pleasure to leave untouched. This bit 
 of mischief, and few others of the same stamp, would some- 
 times bring a smile on the face of the younger of Guillaume's 
 two daughters, the pretty maiden who has just now appeared 
 to the bewitched man in the street. 
 
 Though each of the apprentices, even the eldest, paid a 
 round suni for his board, not one of them would have been 
 bold enough to remain at the master's table when dessert was 
 served. When Madame Guillaume talked of dressing the 
 salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the 
 thrift with which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They 
 could never think of spending a night away from the house 
 without having given, long before, a plausible reason for 
 such an irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn, two 
 of them accompanied the Guillaume family to mass at Saint- 
 Leu, and to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augus- 
 tine, simply attired in cotton print, each took the arm of an
 
 86 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 apprentice and walked in front, under the piercing eye of 
 their mother, who closed the little family procession with her 
 husband, accustomed by her to carry two large prayer-books, 
 bound in black morocco. The second apprentice received 
 no salary. As for the eldest, whose twelve years of perse- 
 verance and discretion had initiated him into the secrets of 
 the house, he was paid eight hundred francs a year as the 
 reward of his labors. On certain family festivals he received 
 as a gratuity some little gift, to which Madame Guillaume's 
 gray and wrinkled hand alone gave value netted purses, 
 which she took care to stuff with cotton wool, to show off 
 the fancy stitches, braces of the strongest make, or heavy 
 silk stockings. Sometimes, but rarely, this prime minister 
 was admitted to share the pleasures of the family when they 
 went into the country, or when, after waiting for months, 
 they made up their mind to exert the right acquired by tak- 
 ing a box at the theatre to command a piece which Paris had 
 already forgotten. 
 
 As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which 
 formerly divided a master draper from his apprentices was 
 so firmly established between them and the old shopkeeper, 
 that they would have been more likely to steal a piece of 
 cloth than to infringe this time-honored etiquette. Such 
 reserve may now appear ridiculous; but these old houses 
 were a school of honesty and sound morals. The masters 
 adopted their apprentices. The young man's linen was cared 
 for, mended, and often replaced by the mistress of the house. 
 If an apprentice fell ill, he was the object of truly maternal 
 attention. In a case of danger the master lavished his money 
 in calling in the most celebrated physicians, for he was not 
 answerable to their parents merely for the good conduct and 
 training of the lads. If one of them, whose character was 
 unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old tradesmen 
 knew how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and 
 they did not hesitate to intrust the happiness of their daugh- 
 ters to men whom they had long trusted with their fortunes. 
 Guillaume was one of these men of the old school, and if
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 37 
 
 he had their ridiculous side, he had all their good qualities; 
 and Joseph Lebas, the chief assistant, an orphan without any 
 fortune, was in his mind destined to be the husband of Vir- 
 ginie, his elder daughter. But Joseph did not share the 
 symmetrical ideas of his master, who would not for an em- 
 pire have given his second daughter in marriage before the 
 elder. The unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly 
 given to Mademoiselle Augustine, the younger. In order 
 to justify this passion, which had grown up in secret, it is 
 necessary to inquire a little further into the springs of the 
 absolute government which ruled the old cloth -merchant's 
 household. 
 
 Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle 
 Virginie, was the very image of her mother. Madame Guil- 
 laume, daughter of the Sieur Chevrel, sat so upright in the 
 stool behind her desk that more than once she had heard 
 some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her long, thin 
 face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or 
 of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated 
 her head that of a woman near on sixty with a cap of a 
 particular and unvarying shape, with long lappets, like that 
 of a widow. In all the neighborhood she was known as the 
 "portress nun." Her speech was curt, and her movements 
 had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye, with a 
 gleam in it like a cat's, seemed to spite the world because 
 she was so ugly. Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up, like 
 her younger sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, 
 had reached the age of eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated 
 the graceless effect which her likeness to her mother some- 
 times gave to her features, but maternal austerity had en- 
 dowed her with two great qualities which made up for 
 everything. She was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle 
 Augustine, who was but just eighteen, was not like either 
 her father or her mother. She was one of those daughters 
 whose total absence of any physical affinity with their parents 
 makes one believe in the adage: God gives children. Au- 
 gustine was little, or, to describe her more truly, delicately
 
 38 BALZAC 'S WORKS 
 
 made. Full of gracious candor, a man of the world could 
 have found no fault in the charming girl beyond a certain 
 meanness of gesture or vulgarity of attitude, and sometimes 
 a want of ease. Her silent and placid face was full of the 
 transient melancholy which comes over all young girls who 
 are too weak to dare to resist their mother's will. 
 
 The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify 
 the innate vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanli- 
 ness which became them wonderfully, and made them har- 
 monize with the polished counters and the shining shelves, 
 on which the old manservant never left a speck of dust, and 
 with the old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. 
 As their style of living compelled them to find the elements 
 of happiness in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had 
 hitherto always satisfied their mother, who secretly prided 
 herself on the perfect characters of her two daughters. It is 
 easy to imagine the results of the training they had received. 
 Brought up to a commercial life, accustomed to hear nothing 
 but dreary arguments and calculations about trade, having 
 studied nothing but grammar, book-keeping, a little Bible- 
 history, and the history of France in Le Kagois, and never 
 reading any book but those their mother would sanction, 
 their ideas had not acquired much scope. They knew per- 
 fectly how to keep house; they were familiar with the prices 
 of things; they understood the difficulty of amassing money; 
 they were economical, and had a great respect for the quali- 
 ties that make a man of business. Although their father 
 was rich, they were as skilled in darning as in embroidery; 
 their mother often talked of having them taught to cook, 
 so that they might know how to order a dinner and scold a 
 cook with due knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleas- 
 ures of the world; and, seeing how their parents spent their 
 exemplary lives, they very rarely suffered their eyes to wan- 
 der beyond the walls of their hereditary home, which to their 
 mother was the whole universe. The meetings to which 
 family anniversaries gave rise filled in the future of earthly 
 joy to them.
 
 39 
 
 When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to 
 be prepared to receive company Madame Roquin, a Demoi- 
 selle Chevrel, fifteen months younger than her cousin, and 
 bedecked with diamonds; young Rabourdin, employed in the 
 Finance Office; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich perfumer, 
 and his wife, known as Madame Ce'sar; Monsieur Camusot, 
 the richest silk-mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his 
 father-in-law, Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, 
 and some immaculate ladies the arrangements, made neces- 
 sary by the way in which everything was packed away the 
 plate, the Dresden china, the candlesticks, and the glass : 
 made a variety in the monotonous lives of the three women, 
 who came and went and exerted themselves as nuns would 
 to receive their bishop. Then, in the evening, when all 
 three were tired out with having wiped, rubbed, unpacked, 
 and arranged all the gauds of the festival, as the girls helped 
 their mother to undress, Madame Guillaume would say to 
 them, "Children, we have done nothing to-day." 
 
 When, on very great occasions, "the portress nun" al- 
 lowed dancing, restricting the games of boston, whist, and 
 backgammon within the limits of her bedroom, such a con- 
 cession was accounted as the most unhoped felicity, and 
 made them happier than going to the great balls, to two or 
 three of which Gruillaume would take the girls at the time 
 of the Carnival. 
 
 And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertain- 
 ment, when he spared no expense. However rich and fash- 
 ionable the persons invited might be, they were careful not 
 to be absent; for the most important houses on the Exchange 
 had recourse to the immense credit, the fortune, or the time- 
 honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still, the ex- 
 cellent merchant's two daughters did not benefit as much 
 as might be supposed by the lessons the world has to offer 
 to young spirits. At these parties, which were indeed set 
 down in the ledger to the credit of the house, they wore 
 dresses the shabbiness of which made them blush. Their 
 style of dancing was not in any way remarkable, and their
 
 40 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 mother's surveillance did not allow of their holding any con- 
 versation with their partners beyond Yes and No. Also, the 
 law of the old sign of the Cat and Racket commanded that 
 they should be home by eleven o'clock, the hour when balls 
 and fetes begin to be lively. Thus their pleasures, which 
 seemed to conform very fairly to their father's position, were 
 often made insipid by circumstances which were part of the 
 family habits and principles. 
 
 As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint 
 it. Madame Gruillaume required her daughters to be dressed 
 very early in the morning, to come down every day at the 
 same hour, and she ordered their employments with monastic 
 regularity. Augustine, however, had been gifted by chance 
 with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness of such a 
 life. Her blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to pierce 
 the depths of that gloomy staircase and those damp store- 
 rooms. After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she 
 seemed to be listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of 
 the life of passion, which accounts feelings as of higher value 
 than things. And at such moments her cheek would flush, 
 her idle hands would lay the muslin sewing on the polished 
 oak counter, and presently her mother would say, in a voice 
 of which even the softest tones were sour, "Augustine, my 
 treasure, what are you thinking about?" It is possible that 
 two romances discovered by Augustine in the cupboard of a 
 cook Madame Gruillaume had lately discharged "Hippolyte 
 Comte de Douglas" and "Le Comte de Comminges" may 
 have contributed to develop the ideas of the young girl, who 
 had devoured them in secret, during the long nights of the 
 past winter. 
 
 And so Augustine's expression of vague longing, her 
 gentle voice, her jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted 
 in poor Lebas' soul a flame as ardent as it was reverent. 
 From an easily understood caprice, Augustine felt no affec- 
 tion for the orphan ; perhaps because she did not know that 
 he loved her. On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with 
 his long legs, his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 41 
 
 frame, had found a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, 
 who, in spite of her dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as 
 yet no suitor. Nothing could be more natural than these 
 two passions at cross-purposes, born in the silence of the 
 dingy shop, as violets bloom in the depths of a wood. The 
 mute and constant looks which made the young people's eyes 
 meet by sheer need of change in the midst of persistent work 
 and cloistered peace, was sure, sooner or later, to give rise 
 to feelings of love. The habit of seeing always the same 
 face leads insensibly to our reading there the qualities of the 
 soul, and at last effaces all its defects. 
 
 "At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon 
 have to go on their knees to a suitor!" said Monsieur Guil- 
 laume to himself, as he read the first decree by which Napo- 
 leon drew in advance on the conscript classes. 
 
 From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his 
 elder daughter fade, remembered how he had married Ma- 
 demoiselle Chevrel under much the same circumstances as 
 those of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit of busi- 
 ness, to marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt 
 by repaying to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received 
 from his predecessor under similar conditions ! Joseph Lebas, 
 who was now three-and-thirty, was aware of the obstacle 
 which a difference of fifteen years placed between Augustine 
 and himself. Being also too clearsighted not to understand 
 Monsieur Guillaume's purpose, he knew his inexorable prin- 
 ciples well enough to feel sure that the second would never 
 marry before the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose 
 heart was as warm as his legs were long and his chest deep, 
 suffered in silence. 
 
 This was the state of affairs in the tiny republic which, 
 in the heart of the Eue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a de- 
 pendency of La Trappe. But to give a full account of events 
 as well as of feelings, it is needful to go back to some months 
 before the scene with which this story opens. At dusk one 
 evening, a young man passing the darkened shop of the Cat 
 and Racket, had paused for a moment to gaze at a picture
 
 42 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 which might have arrested every painter in the world. The 
 shop was not yet lighted, and was as a dark cave beyond 
 which the dining-room was visible. A hanging lamp shed 
 the yellow light which lends such charm to pictures of the 
 Dutch school. The white linen, the silver, the cut-glass, 
 were brilliant accessories, and made more picturesque by 
 strong contrasts of light and shade. The figures of the head 
 of the family and his wife, the faces of the apprentices, and 
 the pure form of Augustine, near whom a fat chubby- 
 cheeked maid was standing, composed so strange a group; 
 the heads were so singular, and every face had so candid an 
 expression; it was so easy to read the peace, the silence, the 
 modest way of life in this family, that to an artist accustomed 
 to render nature there was something hopeless in any attempt 
 to depict this scene, come upon by chance. The stranger was 
 a young painter, who, seven years before, had gained the first 
 prize for painting. He had now just come back from Eome. 
 His soul, full-fed with poetry ; his eyes, satiated with Rafael 
 and Michelangelo, thirsted for real nature after long dwell- 
 ing in the pompous land where art has everywhere left some- 
 thing grandiose. Bight or wrong, this was his personal feel- 
 ing. His heart, which had long been a prey to the fire of 
 Italian passion, craved one of those modest and meditative 
 maidens whom in Rome he had unfortunately seen only in 
 painting. From the enthusiasm produced in his excited 
 fancy by the living picture before him, he naturally passed 
 to a profound admiration for the principal figure; Augustine 
 seemed to be pensive, and did not eat; by the arrangement 
 of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and her bust seemed 
 to move in a circle of fire, which threw up the shape of her 
 head and illuminated it with almost supernatural effect. The 
 artist involuntarily compared her to an exiled angel dreaming 
 of heaven. An almost unknown emotion, a limpid, seething 
 love flooded his heart. After remaining a minute, over- 
 whelmed by the weight of his ideas, he tore himself from his 
 bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could not sleep. 
 
 The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 43 
 
 of it till he had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of 
 which the memory had, in a sense, made him a devotee; his 
 happiness was incomplete till he should possess a faithful 
 portrait of his idol. He went many times past the house of 
 the Cat and Racket; he even ventured in once or twice, 
 under a disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching crea- 
 ture that Madame Guillaume covered with her wing. For 
 eight whole months, devoted to his love and to his brush, 
 he was lost to the sight of his most intimate friends, forget- 
 ting the world, the theatre, poetry, music, and all his dearest 
 habits. One morning Girodet broke through all the barriers 
 with which artists are familiar, and which they know how to 
 evade, went into his room, and woke him by asking, "What 
 are you going to send to the Salon?" The artist grasped his 
 friend's hand, dragged him off to the studio, uncovered a 
 small easel picture and a portrait. After a long and eager 
 study of the two masterpieces, Girodet threw himself on his 
 comrade's neck and hugged him, without speaking a word. 
 His feelings could only be expressed as he felt them soul 
 to soul. 
 
 1 ' You are in love ? ' ' said Girodet. 
 
 They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Rafael, 
 and Lionardo da Vinci, were the outcome of the enthusiastic 
 sentiments by which, indeed, under various conditions, every 
 masterpiece is engendered. The artist only bent his head in 
 reply. 
 
 ' ' How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after 
 coming back from Italy! But I do not advise you to send 
 such works as these to the Salon," the great painter went 
 on. "You see, these two works will not be appreciated. 
 Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be 
 understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. 
 The pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. 
 We should do better to turn rhymes, and translate the an- 
 tique poets! There is more glory to be looked for there 
 than from our luckless canvases!" 
 
 Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures
 
 44 BALZAC'S \VORKS 
 
 were exhibited. The 4 ' Interior' ' made a revolution in painting. 
 It gave birth to the pictures of genre which pour into all our 
 exhibitions in such prodigious quantity that they might be 
 supposed to be produced by machinery. As to the portrait, 
 few artists have forgotten that lifelike work; and the public, 
 which as a body is sometimes discerning, awarded it the 
 crown which Girodet himself had hung over it. The two 
 pictures were surrounded by a vast throng. They fought 
 for places, as women say. Speculators and moneyed men 
 would have covered the canvas with double Napoleons, but 
 the artist obstinately refused to sell or to make replicas. An 
 enormous sum was offered him for the right of engraving 
 them, and the print-sellers were not more favored than the 
 amateurs. 
 
 Though these incidents occupied the world, they were 
 not of a nature to penetrate the recesses of the monastic soli- 
 tude in the Rue Saint-Denis. However, when paying a visit 
 to Madame Guillaume, the notary's wife spoke of the exhi- 
 bition before Augustine, of whom she was very fond, and 
 explained its purpose. Madame Roquin's gossip naturally 
 inspired Augustine with a wish to see the pictures, and with 
 courage enough to ask her cousin secretly to take her to the 
 Louvre. Her cousin succeeded in the negotiations she opened 
 with Madame Guillaume for permission to release the young 
 girl for two hours from her dull labors. Augustine was thus 
 able to make her way through the crowd to see the crowned 
 work. A fit of trembling shook her like an aspen leaf as she 
 recognized herself. She was terrified, and looked about her 
 to find Madame Roquin, from whom she had been separated 
 by a tide of people. At that moment her frightened eyes 
 fell on the impassioned face of the young painter. She at 
 once recalled the figure of a loiterer whom, being curious, 
 she had frequently observed, believing him to be a new 
 neighbor. 
 
 "You see how love has inspired me," said the artist in 
 the timid creature's ear. and she stood in dismay at the words 
 
 She found supernatural courage to enable her to push
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 45 
 
 through the crowd and join her cousin, who was still strug- 
 gling with the mass of people that hindered her from getting 
 to the picture. 
 
 "You will be stifled!" cried Augustine. "Let us go." 
 But there are moments, at the Salon, when two women 
 are not always free to direct their steps through the galleries. 
 By the irregular course to which they were compelled by the 
 press, Mademoiselle Guillaume and her cousin were pushed 
 to within a few steps of the second picture. Chance thus 
 brought them, both together, to where they could easily see 
 the canvas made famous by fashion, for once in agreement 
 with talent. Madame Koquin's exclamation of surprise was 
 lost in the hubbub and buzz of the crowd; Augustine invol- 
 untarily shed tears at the sight of this wonderful study. 
 Then, by an almost unaccountable impulse, she laid her 
 finger on her lips, as she perceived quite near her the ecstatic 
 face of the young painter. The stranger replied by a nod, 
 and pointed to Madame Roquin, as a spoil-sport, to show 
 Augustine that he had understood. This pantomime struck 
 the young girl like hot coals on her flesh; she felt quite 
 guilty as she perceived that there was a compact between 
 herself and the artist. The suffocating heat, the dazzling 
 sight of beautiful dresses, the bewilderment produced in 
 Augustine's brain by the truth of coloring, the multitude 
 of living or painted figures, the profusion of gilt frames, 
 gave her a sense of intoxication which doubled her alarms. 
 She would perhaps have fainted if an unknown rapture had 
 not surged up in her heart to vivify her whole being, in spite 
 of this chaos of sensations. She nevertheless believed her- 
 self to be under the power of the Devil, of whose awful snares 
 she had been warned by the thundering words of preachers. 
 This moment was to her like a moment of madness. She 
 found herself accompanied to her cousin's carriage by the 
 young man, radiant with joy and love. Augustine, a prey 
 to an agitation new to her experience, an intoxication which 
 seemed to abandon her to nature, listened to the eloquent 
 voice of her heart, and looked again and again at the young
 
 46 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 painter, betraying the emotion that came over her. Never 
 had the bright rose of her cheeks shown in stronger contrast 
 with the whiteness of her skin. The artist saw her beauty 
 in all its bloom, her maiden modesty in all its glory. She 
 herself felt a sort of rapture mingled with terror at thinking 
 that her presence had brought happiness to him whose name 
 was on every lip, and whose talent lent immortality to tran- 
 sient scenes. She was loved! It was impossible to doubt it. 
 When she no longer saw the artist, these simple words still 
 echoed in her ear, "You see how love has inspired me!" 
 And the throbs of her heart, as they grew deeper, seemed 
 a pain, her heated blood revealed so many unknown forces 
 in her being. She affected a severe headache to avoid reply- 
 ing to her cousin's questions concerning the pictures; but on 
 their return Madame Roquin could not forbear from speak- 
 ing to Madame Guillaume of the fame that had fallen on the 
 house of the Cat and Racket, and Augustine quaked in every 
 limb as she heard her mother say that she should go to the 
 Salon to see her house there. The young girl again declared 
 herself suffering, and obtained leave to go to bed. 
 
 "That is what comes of sight-seeing," exclaimed Mon- 
 sieur Guillaume "a headache. And is it so very amusing 
 to see in a picture what you can see any day in your own 
 street? Don't talk to me of your artists! Like writers, they 
 are a starveling crew. Why the devil need they choose my 
 house to flout it in their pictures ? ' ' 
 
 "It may help to sell a few ells more of cloth," said Joseph 
 Lebas. 
 
 This remark did not protect art and thought from being 
 condemned once again before the judgment-seat of trade. 
 As may be supposed, these speeches did not infuse much 
 hope into Augustine, who, during the night, gave herself 
 up to the first meditations of love. The events of the day 
 were like a dream, which it was joy to recall to her mind. 
 She was initiated into the fears, the hopes, the remorse, all 
 the ebb and flow of feeling which could not fail to toss a 
 heart so simple and so timid as hers. What a void she per-
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 47 
 
 ceived in this gloomy house! What a treasure she found 
 in her soul! To be the wife of a genius, to share his glory! 
 What ravages must such a vision make in the heart of a girl 
 brought up among such a family! What hopes must it raise 
 in a young creature who, in the midst of sordid elements, 
 had pined for a life of elegance! A sunbeam had fallen into 
 the prison. Augustine was suddenly in love. So many of 
 her feelings were soothed that she succumbed without reflec- 
 tion. At eighteen does not love hold a prism between the 
 world and the eyes of a young girl? She was incapable of 
 suspecting the hard facts which result from the union of a 
 loving woman with a man of imagination, and she believed 
 herself called to make him happy, not seeing any disparity 
 between herself and him. To her the futur would be as the 
 present. When, next day, her father and mother returned 
 from the Salon, their dejected faces proclaimed some dis- 
 appointment. In the first place, the painter had removed 
 the two pictures; and then Madame Gruillaume had lost her 
 cashmere shawl. But the news that the pictures had disap- 
 peared from the walls since her visit revealed to Augustine 
 a delicacy of sentiment which a woman can always appreciate, 
 even by instinct. 
 
 On the morning when, on his way home from a ball, 
 Theodore de Sommervieux for this was the name which 
 fame had stamped on Augustine's heart had been squirted 
 on by the apprentices while awaiting the appearance of his 
 artless little friend, who certainly did not know that he was 
 there, the lovers had seen each other for the fourth time 
 only since their meeting at the Salon. The difficulties 
 which the rule of the house placed in the way of the 
 painter's ardent nature gave added violence to his passion 
 for Augustine. 
 
 How could he get near to a young girl seated in a count- 
 ing-house between two such women as Mademoiselle Virginie 
 and Madame Guillaume? How could he correspond with 
 her when her mother never left her side? Ingenious, as 
 lovers are, to imagine woes, Theodore saw a rival in one
 
 48 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 of the assistants, to whose interests he supposed the others 
 to be devoted. If he should evade these sons of Argus, he 
 would yet be wrecked under the stern eyes of the old draper 
 or of Madame Guillaume. The very vehemence of his pas- 
 sion hindered the young painter from hitting on the ingenious 
 expedients which, in prisoners and in lovers, seem to be the 
 last effort of intelligence spurred by a wild craving for lib- 
 erty, or by the fire of love. Theodore wandered about the 
 neighborhood with the restlessness of a madman, as though 
 movement might inspire him with some device. After rack- 
 ing his imagination, it occurred to him to bribe the blow7v 
 waiting-maid with gold. Thus a few notes were exchanged 
 at long intervals during the fortnight following the ill-starred 
 morning when Monsieur Guillaume and Theodore had so 
 scrutinized one another. At the present moment the young 
 couple had agreed to see each other at a certain hour of the 
 day, and on Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during mass and vespers. 
 Augustine had sent her dear Theodore a list of the relations 
 and friends of the family, to whom the young painter tried 
 to get access, in the hope of interesting, if it were possible, 
 in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed in money and 
 trade, to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite mon- 
 strous speculation, a thing unheard-of. Nothing, meanwhile, 
 was altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket. If Augustine 
 was absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the domestic 
 code, she stole up to her room to make signals by means of 
 a jar of flowers, if she sighed, if she were lost in thought, no 
 one observed it, not even her mother. This will cause some 
 surprise to those who have entered into the spirit of the 
 household, where an idea tainted with poetry would be in 
 startling contrast to persons and things, where no one could 
 venture on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and 
 analyzed. Nothing, however, could be more natural: the 
 quiet bark that navigated the stormy waters of the Paris 
 Exchange, under the flag of the Cat and Backet, was just 
 now in the toils of one of these tempests which, returning 
 periodically, might be termed equinoctial. For the last fort-
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 49 
 
 night the five men forming the crew, with Madame Guil- 
 laume and Mademoiselle Virginie, had been devoting them- 
 selves to the hard labor known as stock-taking. 
 
 Every bale was turned over, and the length verified to 
 ascertain the exact value of the remnant. The ticket at- 
 tached to each parcel was carefully examined to see at what 
 time the piece had been bought. The retail price was fixed. 
 Monsieur Guillaume, always on his feet, his pen behind his 
 ear, was like a captain commanding the working of the ship. 
 His sharp tones, spoken through a trap-door, to inquire into 
 tjie depths of the hold in the cellar-store, gave utterance to 
 the barbarous formulas of trade-jargon, which find expres- 
 sion only in cipher. "How much H.N.Z.?" "All sold." 
 "What is left of Q.X.?"" Two. ells. ""At what price?" 
 "Fifty-five three." "Set down A. at three, with all of 
 J.J., all of M.P., and what is left of V.D.O." A hundred 
 other injunctions equally intelligible were spouted over the 
 counters like verses of modern poetry, quoted by romantic 
 spirits, to excite each other's enthusiasm for one of their 
 poets. In the evening Guillaume, shut up with his assist- 
 ant and his wife, balanced his accounts, carried on the bal- 
 ance, wrote to debtors in arrears, and made out bills. All 
 three were busy over this enormous labor of which the re- 
 sult could be stated on a sheet of foolscap, proving to the 
 head of the house that there was so much to the good in 
 hard cash, so much in goods, so much in bills and notes; 
 that he did not owe a sou; that a hundred or two hundred 
 thousand francs were owing to him; that the capital had 
 been increased; that the farmlands, the houses, or the in- 
 vestments were extended, or repaired, or doubled. Whence 
 it became necessary to begin again with increased ardor, to 
 accumulate more crown-pieces, without its ever entering the 
 brain of these laborious ants to ask "To what end?" 
 
 Favored by this annual turmoil, the happy Augustine 
 escaped the investigations of her Argus-eyed relations. 
 At last, one Saturday evening, the stock-taking was fin- 
 ished. The figures of the sum-total showed a row of O'a 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 3.
 
 60 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 long enough to allow Guillaume for once to relax the stern 
 rule as to dessert which reigned throughout the year. The 
 shrewd old draper rubbed his hands, and allowed his as- 
 sistants to remain at table. The members of the crew had 
 hardly swallowed their thimbleful of some home-made 
 liqueur, when the rumble of a carriage was heard. The 
 family party were going to see "Cendrillon" at the Varietes, 
 while the two younger apprentices each received a crown of 
 six francs, with permission to go wherever they chose, pro- 
 vided they were in by midnight. 
 
 Notwithstanding this debauch, the old cloth-merchant 
 was shaving himself at six next morning, put on his maroon- 
 colored coat, of which the glowing lights afforded him per- 
 ennial enjoyment, fastened a pair of gold buckles on the 
 knee-straps of his ample satin breeches; and then, at 
 about seven o'clock, while all were still sleeping in the 
 house, he made his way to the little office adjoining 
 the shop on the first floor. Daylight came in through a 
 window, fortified by iron bars, and looking out on a small 
 yard surrounded by such black walls that it was very like 
 a well. The old merchant opened the iron-lined shutters, 
 which were so familiar to him, and threw up the lower half 
 of the sash window. The icy air of the courtyard came in 
 to cool the hot atmosphere of the little room, full of the 
 odor peculiar to offices. 
 
 The merchant remained standing, his hand resting on 
 the greasy arm of a large cane chair lined with morocco, of 
 which the original hue had disappeared ; he seemed to hesi- 
 tate as to seating himself. He looked with affection at the 
 double desk, where his wife's seat, opposite his own, was 
 fitted into a little niche in the wall. He contemplated the 
 numbered boxes, the files, the implements, the cash-box 
 objects all of immemorial origin, and fancied himself in the 
 room with the shade of Master Chevrel. He even pulled 
 out the high stool on which he had once sat in the presence 
 of his departed master. This stool, covered with black 
 leather, the horse-hair showing at every corner as it had
 
 M. GUILLAUME 
 Kalzac, vol. one At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 51 
 
 long done, without, however, coming out he placed with a 
 shaking hand on the very spot where his predecessor had 
 put it, and then, with an emotion difficult to describe, he 
 pulled a bell, which rang at the head of Joseph Lebas' bed. 
 When this decisive blow had been struck, the old man, for 
 whom, no doubt, these reminiscences were too much, took 
 up three or four bills of exchange, and looked at them with- 
 out seeing them. 
 
 Suddenly Joseph Lebas stood before him. 
 
 "Sit down there," said Guillaume, pointing to the stool. 
 
 As the old master draper had never yet bid his assistant 
 be seated in his presence, Joseph Lebas was startled. 
 
 "What do you think of these notes?" asked Guillaume. 
 
 "They will never be paid." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well, I heard that the day before yesterday Btienne and 
 Co. had made their payments in gold." 
 
 "Oh, oh!" said the draper. "Well, one must be very ill 
 to show one's bile. Let us speak of something else. Joseph, 
 the stock-taking is done." 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur, and the dividend is one of the best you 
 have ever made." 
 
 "Do not use new-fangled words. Say the profits, Joseph. 
 Do you know, my boy, that this result is partly owing to, 
 you ? And I do not intend to pay you a salary any longer. 
 Madame Guillaume has suggested to me to take you into 
 partnership. 'Guillaume and Lebas'; will not that make a 
 good business name? We might add, 'and Co.' to round 
 oil' the firm's signature." 
 
 Tears rose to the eyes of Joseph Lebas, who tried to hide 
 them. 
 
 "Oh, Monsieur Guillaume, how have I deserved such 
 kindness? I only do my duty. It was so much already 
 that you should take an interest in a poor orph " 
 
 He was brushing the cuff of his left sleeve with his right 
 hand, and dared not look at the old man, who smiled as he 
 tii ought that this modest young fellow no doubt needed, as
 
 52 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 he had needed once on a time, some encouragement to com- 
 plete his explanation. 
 
 "To be sure," said Virginie's father, "you do not alto- 
 gether deserve this favor, Joseph. You have not so much 
 confidence in me as I have in you. (The young man looked 
 up quickly.) You know all the secrets of the cash- box. 
 For the last two years I have told you of almost all my 
 concerns. I have sent you to travel in our goods. In 
 short, I have nothing on my conscience as regards you. 
 But you you have a soft place, and you have never 
 breathed a word of it." Joseph Lebas blushed. "Ah, 
 ha!" cried Guillaume, "so you thought you could deceive 
 an old fox like me ? When you knew that I had scented 
 the Lecocq bankruptcy?" 
 
 "What, Monsieur?" replied Joseph Lebas, looking at 
 his master as keenly as his master looked at him, "you 
 knew that I was in love ? ' ' 
 
 "I know everything, you rascal," said the worthy and 
 cunning old merchant, pulling the assistant's ear. "And 
 I forgive you I did the same myself." 
 
 "And you will give her to me?" 
 
 "Yes with fifty thousand crowns; and I will leave you 
 as much by will, and we will start on our new career under 
 the name of a new firm. We will do good business yet, 
 my boy!" added the old man, getting up and flourishing 
 his arms. "I tell you, son-in-law, there is nothing like 
 trade. Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it 
 are simpletons. To be on the scent of a good bargain, to 
 hold your own on 'Change, to watch as anxiously as at the 
 gaming table whether Etienne and Co. will fail or no, to 
 see a regiment of Guards march past all dressed in your 
 cloth, to trip your neighbor up honestly of course! to 
 make the goods cheaper than others can; then to carry out 
 an undertaking which you 'have planned, which begins, 
 grows, totters, and succeeds! to know the workings of 
 every house of business as well as a minister of police, so 
 as never to make a mistake; to hold up your head in the
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 53 
 
 midst of wrecks, to have friends by correspondence in every 
 manufacturing town; is not that a perpetual game, Joseph? 
 That is life, that is! I shall die in that harness, like old 
 Chevrel, but taking it easy now, all the same." 
 
 In the heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had 
 scarcely looked at his assistant, who was weeping copi- 
 ously. "Why, Joseph, my poor boy, what is the matter?" 
 
 "Oh, I love her so! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart 
 fails me; I believe " 
 
 ""Well, well, boy," said the old man, touched, "you are 
 happier than you know, by Gad! For she loves you. I 
 know it." 
 
 And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at 
 the young man. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Augustine! Mademoiselle Augustine!" 
 exclaimed Joseph Lebas in his rapture. 
 
 He was about to rush out of the room when he felt him- 
 self clutched by a hand of iron, and his astonished master 
 spun him round in front of him once more. 
 
 "What has Augustine to do with this matter ?" he asked, 
 in a voice which instantly froze the luckless Joseph. 
 
 "Is it not she that that I love?" stammered the as- 
 sistant. 
 
 Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Guil- 
 laume sat down again, and rested his long head in his 
 hands to consider the perplexing situation in which he 
 found himself. Joseph Lebas, shamefaced and in de- 
 spair, remained standing. 
 
 "Joseph," the draper said with frigid dignity, "I was 
 speaking of Virginie. Love cannot be made to order, I 
 know. I know, too, that you can be trusted. We will 
 forget all this. I will not let Augustine marry before 
 Virginie. Your interest will be ten per cent." 
 
 The young man, to whom love gave I know not what 
 power of courage and eloquence, clasped his hand, and 
 spoke in his turn spoke for a quarter of an hour, with so 
 much warmth and feeling that he altered the situation. If
 
 54 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the question had been a matter of business, the old trades- 
 man would have had fixed principles to guide his decision; 
 but, tossed a thousand miles from commerce, on the ocean 
 of sentiment, without a compass, he floated, as he told him- 
 self, undecided in the face of such an unexpected event. 
 Carried away by his fatherly kindness, he began to beat 
 about the bush. 
 
 "Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are 
 ten years between my two children. Mademoiselle Chevrel 
 was no beauty, still she has had nothing to complain of in 
 me. Do as I did. Come, come, don't cry. Can you be so 
 silly ? What is to be done ? It can be managed perhaps. 
 There is always some way out of a scrape. And we men are 
 not always devoted Celadons to our wives you understand? 
 Madame Guillaume is very pious. . . . Come. By Gad. 
 boy, give your 'arm to Augustine this morning as we go to 
 mass. ' ' 
 
 These were the phrases spoken at random by the old 
 draper, and their conclusion made the lover happy. He 
 was already thinking of a friend of his as a match for 
 Mademoiselle Yirginie, as he went out of the smoky office, 
 pressing his future father-in-law's hand, after saying with a 
 knowing look that all would turn out for the best. 
 
 "What will Madame Guillaume say to it?" was the idea 
 that greatly troubled the worthy merchant when he found 
 hiuiself alone. 
 
 At breakfast Madame Guillaume and Virginie, to whom 
 the draper had not as yet confided his disappointment, cast 
 meaning glances at Joseph Lebas, who was extremely em- 
 barrassed. The young assistant's bashfulness commended 
 him to his mother-in-law's good graces. The matron be- 
 came so cheerful that she smiled as she looked at her hus- 
 band, and allowed herself some little pleasantries of time- 
 honored acceptance in such simple families. She wondered 
 whether Joseph or Virginie were the taller, to ask them to 
 compare their height. This preliminary fooling brought a 
 cloud to the master's brow, and he even made such a point
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 55 
 
 of decorum that he desired Augustine to take the assistant's 
 arm on their way to Saint-Leu. Madame Guillaume, sur- 
 prised at this manly delicacy, honored her husband with a 
 nod of approval. So the procession left the house in such 
 order as to suggest no suspicious meaning to the neighbors. 
 
 "Does it not seem to you, Mademoiselle Augustine," 
 said the assistant, and he trembled, "that the wife of a 
 merchant whose credit is as good as Monsieur Guillaume's, 
 for instance, might enjoy herself a little more than Madame 
 your mother does? Might wear diamonds or keep a car- 
 riage ? For my part, if I were to marry, I should be glad 
 to take all the work, and see my wife happy. I would not 
 put her into the counting-house. In the drapery business, 
 you see, a woman is not so necessary now as formerly. 
 Monsieur Guillaume was quite right to act as he did and 
 besides, his wife liked it. But so long as a woman knows 
 how to turn her hand to the book-keeping, the correspond- 
 ence, the retail business, the orders, and her housekeeping, 
 so as not to sit idle, that is enough. At seven o'clock, 
 when the shop is shut, I shall take my pleasures, go to 
 the play, and into company. But you are not listening 
 to me." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, Monsieur Joseph. What do you think of 
 painting? That is a fine calling." 
 
 "Yes. I know a master house-painter, Monsieur Lour- 
 dois. He is well-to-do. " 
 
 Thus conversing, the family reached the Church of Saint- 
 Leu. There Madame Guillaume reasserted her rights, and, 
 for the first time, placed Augustine next to herself, Virginie 
 taking her place on the fourth chair, next to Lebas. During 
 the sermon all went well between Augustine and Theodore, 
 who, standing behind a pillar, worshipped his Madonna with 
 fervent devotion ; but at the elevation of the Host, Madame 
 Guillaume discovered, rather late, that her daughter Augus- 
 tine was holding her prayer-book upside down. She was 
 about to speak to her strongly, when, lowering her veil, she 
 interrupted her own devotions to look in the direction where
 
 56 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 her daughter's eyes found attraction. By the help of her 
 spectacles she saw the young artist, whose fashionable ele- 
 gance seemed to proclaim him a cavalry officer on leave rather 
 than a tradesman of the neighborhood. It is difficult to con- 
 ceive of the state of violent agitation in which Madame Guil- 
 laume found herself she, who flattered herself on having 
 brought up her daughters to perfection on discovering in 
 Augustine a clandestine passion of which her prudery and 
 ignorance exaggerated the perils. She believed her daugh- 
 ter to be cankered to the core. 
 
 "Hold your book right way up, Miss," she muttered in 
 a low voice, tremulous with wrath. She snatched away the 
 tell-tale prayer-book and returned it with the letter-press 
 right way up. "Do not allow your eyes to look anywhere 
 bat at your prayers," she added, "or I shall have some- 
 thing to say to you. Your father and I will talk to you 
 after church." 
 
 These words came like a thunderbolt on poor Augustine. 
 She felt faint; but, torn between the distress she felt and the 
 dread of causing a commotion in church, she bravely con- 
 cealed her anguish. It was, however, easy to discern the 
 stormy state of her soul from the trembling of her prayer- 
 book, and the tears which dropped on every page she turned. 
 From the furious glare shot at him by Madame Guillaume 
 the artist saw the peril into which his love affair had fallen; 
 he went out, with a raging soul, determined to venture all. 
 
 "Go to your room, Miss!" said Madame Guillaume, on 
 their return home; "we will send for you, but take care not 
 to quit it. ' ' 
 
 The conference between the husband and wife was con- 
 ducted so secretly that at first nothing was heard of it. Vir- 
 ginie, however, who had tried to give her sister courage by 
 a variety of gentle remonstrances, carried her good nature 
 so far as to listen at the door of her mother's bedroom where 
 the discussion was held, to catch a word or two. The first 
 time she went down to the lower floor she heard her father ex- 
 claim, "Then, madam'e, do you wish to kill your daughter?"
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 57 
 
 "My poor dear!" said Virginie, in tears, "papa takes 
 your part." 
 
 "And what do they want to do to Theodore ?" asked the 
 innocent girl. 
 
 Virginie, inquisitive, went down again; but this time she 
 stayed longer; she learned that Joseph Lebas loved Augus- 
 tine. It was written that on this memorable day, this house, 
 generally so peaceful, should be a hell. Monsieur Guillaume 
 brought Joseph Lebas to despair by telling him of Augustine's 
 love for a stranger. Lebas, who had advised his friend to 
 become a suitor for Mademoiselle Yirginie, saw all his hopes 
 wrecked. Mademoiselle Yirginie, overcome by hearing that 
 Joseph had, in a way, refused her, had a sick headache. The 
 dispute that had arisen from the discussion between Monsieur 
 and Madame Guillaume, when, for the third time in their 
 lives, they had been of antagonistic opinions, had shown 
 itself in a terrible form. Finally, at half -past four in the 
 afternoon, Augustine, pale, trembling, and with red eyes, 
 was haled before her 'father and mother. The poor child 
 artlessly related the too brief tale of her love. Reassured 
 by a speech from her father, who promised to listen to her 
 in silence, she gathered courage as she pronounced to her 
 parents the name of Theodore de Sommervieux, with a mis- 
 chievous little emphasis on the aristocratic de. And yielding 
 to the unknown charm of talking of her feelings, she was 
 brave enough to declare with innocent decision that she loved 
 Monsieur de Sommervieux, that she had written to him, and 
 she added, with tears in her eyes: "To sacrifice me to another 
 man would make me wretched." 
 
 "But, Augustine, you cannot surely know what a painter 
 is?" cried her mother with horror. 
 
 "Madame Guillaume !" said the old man, compelling her 
 to silence. "Augustine," he went on, "artists are generally 
 little better than beggars. They are too extravagant not to 
 be always a bad sort. I served the late Monsieur Joseph 
 Vernet, the late Monsieur Lekain, and the late Monsieur 
 Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks played
 
 58 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 on poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the 
 Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur 
 Philidor. They are a set of rascals; I know them well! 
 They all have a gab and nice manners. Ah, your Monsieur 
 Sumer , Somm " 
 
 "De Sommervieux, papa." 
 
 "Well, well, de Sommervieux, well and good. He can 
 never have been half so sweet to you as Monsieur le Cheva- 
 lier de Saint-Georges was to me the day I got a verdict of 
 the consuls against him. And in those days they were gen- 
 tlemen of quality." 
 
 "But, father, Monsieur Theodore is of good family, and 
 he wrote me that he is rich; his father was called Chevalier 
 de Sommervieux before the Revolution." 
 
 At these words Monsieur Guillaiime looked at his terri- 
 ble better half, who, like an angry woman, sat tapping the 
 floor with her foot while keeping sullen silence; she avoided 
 even casting wrathful looks at Augustine, appearing to leave 
 to Monsieur Guillaume the whole responsibility in so grave 
 a matter, since her opinion was not listened to. Neverthe- 
 less, in spite of her apparent self-control, when she saw her 
 husband giving way so mildly under a catastrophe which 
 had no concern with business, she exclaimed: "Really, 
 Monsieur, you are so weak with your daughters! How- 
 ever " 
 
 The sound of a carriage, which stopped at the door, in- 
 terrupted the rating which the old draper already quaked 
 at. In a minute' Madame Roquin was standing in the 
 middle of the room, and looking at the actors in this do- 
 mestic scene: "I know all, my dear cousin." said she, 
 with a patronizing air. 
 
 Madame Roquin made the great mistake of supposing 
 that a Paris notary's wife could play the part of a favorite 
 of fashion. 
 
 "1 know all," she repeated, "and I have come into 
 Noah's Ark, like the dove, with the olive-branch. I read 
 that allegory in the 'Genie du Christianisme, ' " she added,
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 59 
 
 turning to Madame Guillaume; "the allusion ought to 
 please you, cousin. Do you know," she went on, smil- 
 ing at Augustine, "that Monsieur de Sommervieux is a 
 charming man? He gave me my portrait this morning, 
 painted by a master's hand. It is worth at least six 
 thousand francs." And at these words she patted Mon- 
 sieur Guillaume on the arm. The old draper could not 
 help making a grimace with his lips, which was peculiar 
 to him. 
 
 il l know Monsieur de Sommervieux very well," the 
 Dove ran on. "He has come to my evenings this fort- 
 night past, and made them delightful. He has told me 
 all his woes, and commissioned me to plead for him. I 
 know since this morning that he adores Augustine, and 
 he shall have her. Ah, cousin, do not shake your head 
 in refusal. He will be created Baron, I can tell you, and 
 has just been made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, by 
 the Emperor himself, at the Salon. Eoquin is now his 
 lawyer, and knows all his affairs. Well! Monsieur de 
 Sommervieux has twelve thousand francs a year in good 
 landed estate. Do you know that the father-in-law of such 
 a man may get a rise in life be mayor of his arrondisse- 
 ment, for instance. Have we not seen Monsieur Dupont 
 become a Count of the Empire, and a senator, all because 
 he went as mayor to congratulate the Emperor on his entry 
 into Vienna? Oh, this marriage must take place! For my 
 part, 1 adore the dear young man. His behavior to Augus- 
 tine is only met with in romances. Be easy, little one, you 
 shall be happy, and every girl will wish she were in your 
 place. Madame la Duchesse de Carigliano, who comes to 
 my 'At Homes,' raves about Monsieur de Sommervieux. 
 Some spiteful people say she only conies to me to meet him; 
 as if a duchess of yesterday was doing too much honor to a 
 Chevrel, whose family have been respected citizens these 
 hundred years! 
 
 "Augustine," Madame Boquin went on, after a short 
 pause, <; I have seen the portrait. Heavens! How lovely
 
 60 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 it is! Do you know that the Emperor wanted to have it? 
 He laughed, and said to the Deputy High Constable that if 
 there were many women like that at his court while all the 
 kings visited it, he should have no difficulty about preserv- 
 ing the peace of Europe. Is not that a compliment?" 
 
 The tempests with which the day had begun were to 
 resemble those of nature, by ending in clear and serene 
 weather. Madame Roquin displayed so much address in 
 her harangue, she was able to touch so many strings in the 
 dry hearts of Monsieur and Madame Guillaume, that at last 
 she hit on one which she could work upon. At this strange 
 period commerce and finance were more than ever possessed 
 by the crazy mania for seeking alliance with rank; and the 
 generals of the Empire took full advantage of this desire. 
 Monsieur Guillaume, as a singular exception, opposed this 
 deplorable craving. His favorite axioms were that, to se- 
 cure happiness, a woman must marry a man of her own 
 class; that every one was punished sooner or later for hav- 
 ing climbed too high; that love could so little endure un- 
 der the worries of a household, that both husband and wife 
 needed sound good qualities to be happy ; that it would not 
 do for one to be far in advance of the other, because, above 
 everything, they must understand each other; if a man 
 spoke Greek and his wife Latin, they might come to die 
 of hunger. He had himself invented this sort of adage. 
 And he compared such marriages to old-fashioned ma- 
 terials of mixed silk and wool, in which the silk always at 
 last wore through the wool. Still, there is so much vanity 
 at the bottom of man's heart that the prudence of the pilot 
 who steered the Cat and Racket so wisely gave way before 
 Madame Roquin's aggressive volubility. Austere Madame 
 Guillaume was the first to see in her daughter's affection a 
 reason for abdicating her principJes and for consenting to 
 receive Monsieur de Sommervieux, whom she promised 
 herself she would put under severe inquisition. 
 
 The old draper went to look for Joseph Lebas, and in- 
 form him of the state of affairs. At half-past six, the din-
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 61 
 
 ing- room immortalized by the artist saw, united under the 
 skylight, Monsieur and Madame Eoquin, the young painter 
 and his charming Augustine, Joseph Lebas, who found his 
 happiness in patience, and Mademoiselle Virginie, convales- 
 cent from her headache. Monsieur and Madame Guillaume 
 saw in perspective both their children married, and the for- 
 tunes of the Cat and Racket once more in skilful hands. 
 Their satisfaction was at its height when, at dessert, TheV 
 dore made them a present of the wonderful picture which 
 they had failed to see, representing the interior of the old 
 shop, and to which they all owed so much happiness. 
 
 "Isn't it pretty!" cried Guillaume. "And to think that 
 any one would pay thirty thousand francs for that!" 
 
 "Because you can see my lappets in it," said Madame 
 Guillaume. 
 
 "And the cloth unrolled!" added Lebas; "you might 
 take it up in your hand." 
 
 "Drapery always comes out well," replied the painter. 
 "We should be only too happy, we modern artists, if we 
 could touch the perfection of antique drapery." 
 
 "So you like drapery!" cried old Guillaume. "Well, 
 then, by Gad! shake hands on that, my young friend. 
 Since you can respect trade, we shall understand each other. 
 And why should it be despised ? The world began with 
 trade, since Adam sold Paradise for an apple. He did not 
 strike a good bargain though!" And the old man roared 
 with honest laughter, encouraged by the champagne, which 
 he sent round with a liberal hand. The band that covered 
 the young artist's eyes was so thick that he thought his 
 future parents amiable. He was not above enlivening 
 them by a few jests in the best taste. So he too pleased 
 every one. In the evening, when the drawing-room, fur- 
 nished with what Madame Guillaume called "everything 
 handsome," was deserted, and while she flitted from the 
 table to the chimney-piece, from the candelabra to the tall 
 candlesticks, hastily blowing out the wax-lights, the worthy 
 draper, who was always clearsighted when money was in
 
 62 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 question, called Augustine to him, and seating her on his 
 knee, spoke as follows: 
 
 "My dear child, you shall marry your Sommervieux 
 since you insist; you may, if you like, risk your capital 
 in happiness. But I am not going to be hoodwinked by 
 the thirty thousand francs to be made by spoiling good 
 canvas. Money that is lightly earned is lightly spent. 
 Did I not hear that hare-brained youngster declare this 
 evening that money was made round that it might roll. 
 If it is round for spendthrifts, it is flat for saving folk 
 who pile it up. Now, my child, that fine gentleman talks 
 of giving you carriages and diamonds! He has money, 
 let him spend it on you; so be it. It is no concern of 
 mine. But as to what I can give you, I will not have the 
 crown-pieces I have picked up with so much toil wasted in 
 carriages and frippery. Those who spend too fast never 
 grow rich. A hundred thousand crowns, which is your 
 fortune, will not buy up Paris. It is all very well to look 
 forward to a few hundred thousand francs to be yours some 
 day : I shall keep you waiting for them as long as possible, 
 by Gad ! So I took your lover aside, and a man who man- 
 aged the Lecocq bankruptcy had not much difficulty in per- 
 suading the artist to marry under a settlement of his wife's 
 money on herself. I will keep an eye on the marriage con- 
 tract to see that what he is to settle on you is safely tied up. 
 So now, my child, I hope to be a grandfather, by Gad! I 
 will begin at once to lay up for my grandchildren; but 
 swear to me, here and now, never to sign any papers re- 
 lating to money without my advice; and if I go soon to 
 join old father Chevrel, promise to consult young Lebas, 
 your brother-in-law. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, father, I swear it." 
 
 At these words, spoken in a gentle voice, the old man 
 kissed his daughter on both cheeks. That night the lovers 
 slept as soundly as Monsieur and Madame Guillaume. 
 
 Some few months after this memorable Sunday the high
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND BACKET 63 
 
 altar of Saint-Leu was the scene of two very different wed- 
 dings. Augustine and Theodore appeared in all the radiance 
 of happiness, their eyes beaming with love, dressed with ele- 
 gance, while a fine carriage waited for them. Virginie, who 
 had come in a good hired fly with the rest of the family, 
 humbly followed her younger sister, dressed in the simplest 
 fashion, like a shadow necessary to the harmony of the pic- 
 ture. Monsieur Guillaume had exerted himself to the ut- 
 most in the church to get Virginie married before Angus- 
 tine, but the priests, high and low, persisted in addressing 
 the more elegant of the two brides. He heard some of his 
 neighbors highly approving the good sense of Mademoiselle 
 Virginie, who was making, as they said, the more substan- 
 tial match, and remaining faithful to the neighborhood; 
 while they fired a few taunts, prompted by envy of Augus- 
 tine, who was marrying an artist and a man of rank; add- 
 ing, with a sort of dismay, that if the Guillaumes were 
 ambitious, there was an end to the business. An old fan- 
 maker having remarked that such a prodigal would soon 
 bring his wife to beggary, father Guillaume prided himself 
 in petto for his prudence in the matter of marriage settle- 
 ments. In the evening, after a splendid ball, followed by 
 one of those substantial suppers of which the memory is 
 dying out in the present generation, Monsieur and Madame 
 Guillaume remained in a fine house belonging to them in 
 the Rue du Colombier, where the wedding had been held; 
 Monsieur and Madame Lebas returned in their fly to the 
 old home in the Rue Saint-Denis, to steer the good ship 
 Cat and Racket. The artist, intoxicated with happiness, 
 carried off his beloved Augustine, and eagerly lifting her 
 out of their carriage when it reached the Rue des Trois- 
 Freres, led her to an apartment embellished by all the arts. 
 The fever of passion which possessed Theodore made a 
 year fly over the young couple without a single cloud to 
 dim the blue sky under which they lived. Life did not 
 hang heavy on the lovers' hands. Theodore lavished on 
 every day inexhaustible fioriture of enjoyment, and he de-
 
 64 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 lighted to vary the transports of passion by the soft lan- 
 guor of those hours of repose when souls soar so high that 
 they seem to have forgotten all bodily union. Augustine 
 was too happy for reflection ; she floated on an undulating 
 tide of rapture; she thought she could not do enough by 
 abandoning herself to sanctioned and sacred married love; 
 simple and artless, she had no coquetry, no reserves, none 
 of the dominion which a worldly-minded girl acquires over 
 her husband by ingenious caprice; she loved too well to 
 calculate for the future, and never imagined that so ex- 
 quisite a life could come to an end. Happy in being her 
 husband's sole delight, she believed that her inextinguish- 
 able love would always be her greatest grace in his eyes, 
 as her devotion and obedience would be a perennial charm. 
 And, indeed, the ecstasy of love had made her so brilliantly 
 lovely that her beauty filled her with pride, and gave her 
 confidence that she could always reign over a man so easy 
 to kindle as Monsieur de Sommervieux. Thus her posi- 
 tion as a wife brought her no knowledge but the lessons 
 of love. 
 
 In the midst of her happiness, she was still the simple 
 child who had lived in obscurity in the Rue Saint-Denis, 
 and she never thought of acquiring the manners, the in- 
 formation, the tone of the world she had to live in. Her 
 words being the words of love, she revealed in them, no 
 doubt, a certain pliancy of mind and a certain refinement 
 of speech ; but she used the language common to all women 
 when they find themselves plunged in passion, which seems 
 to be their element. When, by chance, Augustine expressed 
 an idea that did not harmonize with Theodore's, the young ar- 
 tist laughed, as we laugh at the first mistakes of a foreigner, 
 though they end by annoying us if they are not corrected. 
 
 In spite of all this lovemaking, by the end of this year, 
 as delightful as it was swift, Sommervieux felt one morn- 
 ing the need for resuming his work and his old habits. 
 His wife was expecting their first child. He saw some 
 friends again. During the tedious discomforts of the year
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 65 
 
 when a young wife is nursing an infant for the first time, 
 he worked, no doubt, with zeal, but he occasionally sought 
 diversion in the fashionable world. The house which he 
 was best pleased to frequent was that of the Duchesse de 
 Carigliano, who had at last attracted the celebrated artist 
 to her parties. When Augustine was quite well again, 
 and her boy no longer required the assiduous care which 
 debars a mother from social pleasures, Theodore had come 
 to the stage of wishing to know the joys of satisfied vanity 
 to be found in society by a man who shows himself with a 
 handsome woman, the object of envy and admiration. 
 
 To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of 
 her husband's fame, and to find other women envious of her, 
 was to Augustine a new harvest of pleasures ; but it was the 
 last gleam of conjugal happiness. She first wounded her 
 husband's vanity when, in spite of vain efforts, she betrayed 
 her ignorance, the inelegance of her language, and the nar- 
 rowness of her ideas. Sommervieux' nature, subjugated for 
 nearly two years and a half by the first transports of love, 
 now, in the calm of less new possession, recovered its bent 
 and habits, for a while diverted from their channel. Poetry, 
 painting, and the subtle joys of imagination have inalienable 
 rights over a lofty spirit. These cravings of a powerful soul 
 had not been starved in Theodore during these two years; 
 they had only found fresh pasture. As soon as the meadows 
 of love had been ransacked, and the artist had gathered roses 
 and cornflowers as the children do, so greedily that he did 
 not see that his hands could hold no more, the scene changed. 
 When the painter showed his wife the sketches for his finest 
 compositions he heard her exclaim, as her father had done, 
 "How pretty!" This tepid admiration was not the outcome 
 of conscientious feeling, but of her faith on the strength of 
 love. 
 
 Augustine cared more for a look than for the finest pic- 
 ture. The only sublime she knew was that of the heart. At 
 last Theodore could not resist the evidence of the cruel fact 
 his wife was insensible to poetry, she did not dwell in his
 
 66 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 sphere, she could not follow him in all his vagaries, his in- 
 ventions, his joys and his sorrows; she walked grovelling in 
 the world of reality, while his head was in the skies. Com- 
 mon minds cannot appreciate the perennial sufferings of a 
 being who, while bound to another by the most intimate affec- 
 tions, is obliged constantly to suppress the dearest flights of 
 his soul, and to thrust down into the void those images which 
 a magic power compels him to create. To him the torture 
 is all the more intolerable because his feeling toward his com- 
 panion enjoins, as its first law, that they should have no 
 concealments, but mingle the aspirations of their thought 
 as perfectly as the effusions of their soul. The demands of 
 nature are not to be cheated. She is as inexorable as neces- 
 sity, which is, indeed, a sort of social nature. Sommervieux 
 took refuge in the peace and silence of his studio, hoping 
 that the habit of living with artists might mold his wife and 
 develop in her the dormant germs of lofty intelligence which 
 some superior minds suppose must exist in every being. But 
 Augustine was too sincerely religious not to take fright at 
 the tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore gave, she 
 heard a young painter say, with the childlike lightness which 
 to her was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the 
 taint of profanity, "But, Madame, your Paradise cannot be 
 more beautiful than Eafael's 'Transfiguration'! Well, and 
 I got tired of looking at that." 
 
 Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit 
 of distrust which no one could fail to see. She was a re- 
 straint on their freedom. Now an artist who feels restraint 
 is pitiless; he stays away, or laughs it to scorn. Madame 
 Guillaume, among other absurdities, had an excessive notion 
 of the dignity she considered the prerogative of a married 
 woman; and Augustine, though she had often made fun of 
 it, could not help a slight imitation of her mother's primness. 
 This extreme propriety, which virtuous wives do not always 
 avoid, suggested a few epigrams in the form of sketches, in 
 which the harmless jest was in such good taste that Sommer- 
 vieux could not take offence; and even if they had been
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 67 
 
 more severe, these pleasantries were after all only reprisals 
 from his friends. Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a spirit 
 so open as Theodore's to impressions from without. A cold- 
 ness insensibly crept over him, and inevitably spread. To 
 attain conjugal happiness we must climb a hill whose summit 
 is a narrow ridge, close to a steep and slippery descent: the 
 painter's love was falling down it. He regarded his wife as 
 incapable of appreciating the moral considerations which 
 justified him in his own eyes for his singular behavior to 
 her, and believed himself .quite innocent in hiding from her 
 thoughts she could not enter into, and peccadilloes outside 
 the jurisdiction of a bourgeois conscience. Augustine wrapped 
 herself in sullen and silent grief. These unconfessed feelings 
 placed a shroud between the husband and wife which could 
 not fail to grow thicker day by day. Though her husband 
 never failed in consideration for her, Augustine could not 
 help trembling as she saw that he kept for the outer world 
 those treasures of wit and grace that he formerly would lay 
 at her feet. She soon began to find a sinister meaning in the 
 jocular speeches that are current in the world as to the incon- 
 stancy of men. She made no complaints, but her demeanor 
 conveyed reproach. 
 
 Three years after her marriage this pretty young woman, 
 who dashed past in her handsome carriage, and lived in a 
 sphere of glory and riches to the envy of heedless folk in- 
 capable of taking a just view of the situations of life, was 
 a prey to intense grief. She lost her color; she reflected; 
 she made comparisons; then sorrow unfolded to her the first 
 lessons of experience. She determined to restrict herself 
 bravely within the round of duty, hoping that by this gen- 
 erous conduct she might sooner or later win back her hus- 
 band's love. But it was not so. When Sommervieux, tired 
 with work, came in from his studio, Augustine did not put 
 away her work so quickly but that the painter might find his 
 wife mending the household linen, and his own, with all the 
 care of a good housewife. She supplied generously and 
 without a murmur the money needed for his lavishness; but
 
 fi8 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 in her anxiety to husband her dear Theodore's fortune, she 
 was strictly economical for herself and in certain details of 
 domestic management. Such conduct is incompatible with 
 the easy-going habits of artists, who, at the end of their life, 
 have enjoyed it so keenly that they never inquire into the 
 causes of their ruin. 
 
 It is useless to note every tint of shadow by which the 
 brilliant hues of their honeymoon were overcast till they 
 were lost in utter blackness. One evening poor Augustine, 
 who had for some time heard her husband speak with en- 
 thusiasm of the Duchesse de Carigliano, received from a 
 friend certain malignantly charitable warnings as to the 
 nature of the attachment which Sommervieux had formed 
 for this celebrated flirt of the Imperial Court. At one-and- 
 twenty, in all the splendor of youth and beauty, Augustine 
 saw herself deserted for a woman of six-and-thirty. Feeling 
 herself so wretched in the midst of a world of festivity which 
 to her was a blank, the poor little thing could no longer 
 understand the admiration she excited, or the envy of which 
 she was the object. Her face assumed a different expres- 
 sion. Melancholy tinged her features with the sweetness of 
 resignation and the pallor of scorned love. Ere long she too 
 was courted by the most fascinating men; but she remained 
 lonely and virtuous. Some contemptuous words which 
 escaped her husband filled her with incredible despair. A 
 sinister flash showed her the breaches which, as a result of her 
 sordid education, hindered the perfect union of her soul with 
 Theodore's; she loved him well enough to absolve him and 
 condemn herself. She shed tears of blood, and perceived, 
 too late, that there are mesalliances of the spirit as well as of 
 rank and habits. As she recalled the early raptures of their 
 union, she understood the full extent of that lost happiness, 
 and accepted the conclusion that so rich a harvest of love 
 was in itself a whole life, which only sorrow could pay for. 
 At the same time, she loved too truly to lose all hope. At 
 one-and-twenty she dared undertake to educate herself, and 
 make her imagination, at least, worthy of that she admired.
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 69 
 
 "If I am not a poet," thought she, "at any rate, I will 
 understand poetry. ' ' 
 
 Then, with all the strength of will, all the energy which 
 every woman can display when she loves, Madame de Som- 
 mervieux tried to alter her character, her manners, and her 
 habits; but by dint of devouring books and learning un- 
 dauntedly, she only succeeded in becoming less ignorant. 
 Lightness of wit and the graces of conversation are a gift of 
 nature, or the fruit of education begun in the cradle. She 
 could appreciate music and enjoy it, but she could not sing 
 with taste. She understood literature and the beauties of 
 poetry, but it was too late to cultivate her refractory mem- 
 ory. She listened with pleasure to social conversation, but 
 she could contribute nothing brilliant. Her religious notions 
 and home-grown prejudices were antagonistic to the complete 
 emancipation of her intelligence. Finally, a foregone con- 
 clusion against her had stolen into Theodore's mind, and 
 this she could not conquer. The artist would laugh at those 
 who flattered him about his wife, and his irony had some 
 foundation ; he so overawed the pathetic young -creature that, 
 in his presence, or alone with him, she trembled. Hampered 
 by her too eager desire to please, her wits and her knowledge 
 vanished in one absorbing feeling. Even her fidelity vexed 
 the unfaithful husband, who seemed to bid her do wrong by 
 stigmatizing her virtue as insensibility. Augustine tried 
 in vain to abdicate her reason, to yield to her husband's 
 caprices and whims, to devote herself to the selfishness of his 
 vanity. Her sacrifices bore no fruit. Perhaps they had both 
 let the moment slip when souls may meet in comprehension. 
 One day the young wife's too sensitive heart received one 
 of those blows which so strain the bonds of feeling that they 
 seem to be broken. She withdrew into solitude. But before 
 long a fatal idea suggested to her to seek counsel and comfort 
 in the bosom of her family. 
 
 So one morning she made her way toward the grotesque 
 faQade of the humble, silent home where she had spent her 
 childhood. She sighed as she looked up at the sash-window,
 
 70 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 whence one day she had sent her first kiss to him who now 
 shed as much sorrow as glory on her life. Nothing was 
 changed in the cavern, where the drapery business had, how- 
 ever, started on a new life. Augustine's sister filled her 
 mother's old place at the desk. The unhappy young woman 
 met her brother-in-law with his pen behind his ear; he -hardly 
 listened to her, he was so full of business. The formidable 
 symptoms of stock-taking were visible all round him; he 
 begged her to excuse him. She was received coldly enough 
 by her sister, who owed her a grudge. In fact, Augustine, 
 in her finery, and stepping out of a handsome carriage, had 
 never been to see her but when passing by. The wife of the 
 prudent Lebas, imagining that want of money was the prime 
 cause of this early call, tried to keep up a tone of reserve 
 which more than once made Augustine smile. The painter's 
 wife perceived that, apart from the cap and lappets, her 
 mother had found in Yirginie a successor who could uphold 
 the ancient honor of the Cat and Racket. At breakfast she 
 observed certain changes in the management of the house 
 which did honor to Lebas' good sense ; the assistants did not 
 rise before dessert; they were allowed to talk, and the abun- 
 dant meal spoke of ease without luxury. The fashionable 
 woman found some tickets for a box at the Franais, where 
 she remembered having seen her sister from time to time. 
 Madame Lebas had a cashmere shawl over her shoulders, of 
 which the value bore witness to her husband's generosity 
 to her. In short, the couple were keeping pace with the 
 times. During the two-thirds of the day she spent there, 
 Augustine was touched to the heart by the equable happi- 
 ness, devoid, to be sure, of all emotion, but equally free from 
 storms, enjoyed by this well-matched couple. They had 
 accepted life as a commercial enterprise, in which, above 
 all, they must do credit to the business. Not finding any 
 great love in her husband, Virginie had set to work to create 
 it. Having by degrees learned to esteem and care for his 
 wife, the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was 
 to Joseph Lebas a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 71 
 
 Augustine plaintively set forth her painful position, she had 
 to face the deluge of commonplace morality which the tradi- 
 tions of the Rue Saint-Denis furnished to her sister. 
 
 "The mischief is done, wife," said Joseph Lebas; "we 
 must try to give our sister good advice. ' ' Then the clever 
 tradesman ponderously analyzed the resources which law and 
 custom might offer Augustine as a means of escape at this 
 crisis; he ticketed every argument, so to speak, and arranged 
 them in their degrees of weight under various categories, 
 as though they were articles of merchandise of different quali- 
 ties; then he put them in the scale, weighed them, and ended 
 by showing the necessity for his sister-in-law's taking violent 
 steps which could not satisfy the love she still had for her 
 husband; and, indeed, the feeling had revived in all its 
 strength when she heard Joseph Lebas speak of legal pro- 
 ceedings. Augustine thanked them, and returned home even 
 more undecided than she had been before consulting them. 
 She now ventured to go to the house in the Rue du Colom- 
 bier, intending to confide her troubles to her father and 
 mother; for she was like a sick man who, in his desperate 
 plight, tries every prescription, and even puts faith in old 
 wives' remedies. 
 
 The old people received their daughter with an effusive- 
 ness that touched her deeply. Her visit brought them some 
 little change, and that to them was worth a fortune. For the 
 last four years they had gone their way in life like navigators 
 without a goal or a compass. Sitting by the chimney-corner, 
 they would talk over their disasters under the old law of 
 maximum, of their great investments in cloth, of the way 
 they had weathered bankruptcies, and, above all, the famous 
 failure of Lecocq, Monsieur Guillaume's battle of Marengo. 
 Then, when they had exhausted the tale of lawsuits, they 
 recapitulated the sums total of their most profitable stock- 
 takings, and told each other old stories of the Saint-Denis 
 quarter. At two o'clock old Guillaume went to cast an eye 
 on the business at the Cat and Racket; on his way back he 
 called at all the shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where
 
 72 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into 
 some risky discount, which, as was his wont, he never re- 
 fused pointblank. Two good Normandy horses were dying 
 of their own fat in the stables of the big house; Madame 
 Guillaume never used them but to drag her on Sundays to 
 high mass at the parish church. Three times a week the 
 worthy couple kept open house. By the influence of his 
 son-in-law Sommervieux, Monsieur Guillaume had been 
 named a member of the Consulting Board for the Clothing 
 of the Army. Since her husband had stood so high in office, 
 Madame Guillaume had decided that she must receive; her 
 rooms were so crammed with gold and silver ornaments, and 
 furniture, tasteless but of undoubted value, that the simplest 
 room in the house looked like a chapel. Economy and ex- 
 pense seemed to be struggling for the upper hand in every 
 accessory. It was as though Monsieur Guillaume had looked 
 to a good investment, even in the purchase of a candlestick. 
 In the midst of this bazaar, where splendor revealed the own- 
 ers' want of occupation, Soinmervieux's famous picture filled 
 the place of honor, and in it Monsieur and Madame Guil- 
 laume found their chief consolation, turning their eyes, har- 
 nessed with eye-glasses, twenty times a day on this present- 
 ment of their past life, to them so active and amusing. The 
 appearance of this mansion and these rooms, where every- 
 thing had an aroma of staleness and mediocrity, the spectacle 
 offered by these two beings, cast away, as it were, on a rock 
 far from the world and the ideas which are life, startled Au- 
 gustine; she cbuld here contemplate the sequel of the scene 
 of which the first part had struck her at the house of Lebas 
 a life of stir without movement, a mechanical and instinc- 
 tive existence like that of the beaver; and then she felt an 
 indefinable pride in her troubles, as she reflected that they 
 had their source in eighteen months of such happiness as, 
 in her eyes, was worth a thousand lives like this; its vacuity 
 seemed to her horrible. However, she concealed this not very 
 charitable feeling, and displayed for her parents her newly- 
 acquired accomplishments of mind, and the ingratiating
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 73 
 
 tenderness that love had revealed to her, disposing them 
 to listen to her matrimonial grievances. Old people have a 
 weakness for this kind of confidences. Madame Guillaume 
 wanted to know the most trivial details of that alien life, 
 which to her seemed almost fabulous. The travels of Baron 
 de la Houtan, which she began again and again and never 
 finished, told her nothing more unheard-of concerning the 
 Canadian savages. 
 
 "What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room 
 with naked women! And you are so simple as to believe 
 that he draws them?" 
 
 As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid 
 her spectacles on a little work-table, shook her skirts, and 
 clasped her hands on her knees, raised by a foot-warmer, 
 her favorite pedestal. 
 
 "But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models/ 1 
 
 "He took good care not to tell us that when he asked leave 
 to marry you. If I had known it, I would never have given 
 my daughter to a man who followed such a trade. Eeligion 
 forbids such horrors; they are immoral. And at what time 
 of night do you say he comes home ?" 
 
 "At one o'clock two " 
 
 The old folk looked at each other in utter amazement. 
 
 "Then he gambles?" said Monsieur Guillaume. "In my 
 day only gamblers stayed out so late. ' ' 
 
 Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation. 
 
 "He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting 
 for him," said Madame Guillaume. "But you go to bed, 
 don't you? And when he has lost, the wretch wakes you." 
 
 "No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very 
 good spirits. Not infrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he 
 suggests that I should get up and go into the woods." 
 
 "The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a 
 small set of rooms that his bedroom and his sitting-rooms 
 are not enough, and that he must run about? But it is just 
 to give you cold that the wretch proposes such expeditions. 
 He wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man 
 
 Vol. A BALZAC 4
 
 74 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 settled in life, a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about 
 like a warlock?" 
 
 "But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he 
 must have excitement to tire his genius. He is fond of 
 scenes which " 
 
 "I would make scenes for him, fine scenes!" cried Ma- 
 dame Guillaume, interrupting her daughter. "How can you 
 show any consideration to such a man ? In the first place, 
 I don't like his drinking water only; it is not wholesome. 
 Why does he object to see a woman eating ? What queer 
 notion is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him 
 is impossible. A man cannot leave his home without a word, 
 and never come back for ten days. And then he tells you he 
 has been to Dieppe to paint the sea. As if any one painted the 
 sea! He crams you with a pack of tales that are too absurd." 
 
 Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but 
 Madame Guillaume enjoined silence with a wave of her 
 hand, which she obeyed by a survival of habit, and her 
 mother went on in harsh tones: "Don't talk to me about 
 the man ! He never set foot in a church excepting to see 
 you and to be married. People without religion are capable 
 of anything. Did Guillaume ever dream of hiding anything 
 from me, of spending three days without saying a word to 
 me, and of chattering afterward like a blind magpie?" 
 
 "My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. 
 If their ideas were the same as other folk's, they would not 
 be men of genius." 
 
 "Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not 
 get married. What! A man of genius is to make his wife 
 miserable? And because he is a genius it is all right! 
 Genius, genius ! It is not so very clever to say black one 
 minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other 
 people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know 
 which foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to 
 be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to be dull 
 when he is dull." 
 
 "But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations "
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 75 
 
 "What are such 'imaginations' ?" Madame Guillaume 
 went on, interrupting her daughter again. "Fine ones his 
 are, my word! What possesses a man that all on a sudden, 
 without consulting a doctor, he takes it into his head to eat 
 nothing but vegetables ? If indeed it were from religious 
 motives, it might do him some good but he has no more 
 religion than a Huguenot. Was there ever a man known 
 who, like him, loved horses better than his fellow-creatures, 
 had his hair curled like a heathen, laid statues under muslin 
 coverlets, shut his shutters in broad day to work by lamp- 
 light? There, get along; if he were not so grossly immoral, 
 he would be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult 
 Monsieur Loraux, the priest at Saint Sulpice, ask his opin- 
 ion about it all, and he will tell you that your husband does 
 not behave like a Christian." 
 
 "Oh, mother, can you believe ?" 
 
 "Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see 
 none of these things. But'I can remember in the early days 
 after your marriage. I met him in the Champs-Elysees. He 
 was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as 
 hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to 
 myself at that moment, 'There is a man devoid of judgment.' " 
 
 "Ah, ha!" cried Monsieur Guillaume, "how wise I was 
 to have your money settled on yourself with such a queer 
 fellow for a husband!" 
 
 When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her 
 serious grievances against her husband, the two old people 
 were speechless with indignation. But the word "divorce" 
 was ere long spoken by Madame Guillaume. At the sound 
 of the word divorce the apathetic old draper seemed to wake 
 up. Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by the 
 excitement which the proceedings would bring into. his un- 
 eventful life, father Guillaume took up the matter. He 
 made himself the leader of the application for a divorce, 
 laid down the lines of it, almost argued the case; he offered 
 to be at all the charges, to see the lawyers, the pleaders, the
 
 76 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 judges, to move heaven and earth. Madame de Sommer- 
 vieux was frightened, she refused her father's services, said 
 she would not be separated from her husband even if she 
 were ten times as unhappy, and talked no more about her 
 sorrows. After being overwhelmed by her parents with all 
 the little wordless and consoling kindnesses by which the 
 old couple tried in vain to make up to her for her distress 
 of heart, Augustine went away, feeling the impossibility of 
 making a superior mind intelligible to weak intellects. She 
 had learned that a wife must hide from every one, even from 
 her parents, woes for which it is so difficult to find sympathy. 
 The storms and sufferings of the upper spheres are appreci- 
 ated only by the lofty spirits who inhabit there. In every 
 circumstance we can only be judged by our equals. 
 
 Thus poor Augustine found herself thrown back on the 
 horror of her meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her 
 home. Study was indifferent to her, since study had not 
 brought her back her husband's heart. Initiated into the 
 secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their resources, 
 she was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing 
 their pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which 
 to her seemed mean and small as compared with the inci- 
 dents of passion. In short, her life was a failure. 
 
 One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up 
 her dark grief like a beam from heaven. Such an idea 
 co aid never have smiled on a heart less pure, less virtuous 
 than hers. She determined to go to the Duchesse de Cari- 
 gliano,^not to ask her to give her back her husband's heart, 
 but to learn the arts by which it had been captured ; to en- 
 gage the interest of this haughty fine lady for the mother of 
 her lover's children; to appeal to her and make her the in- 
 strument of her future happiness, since she was the cause 
 of her present wretchedness. 
 
 So one day Augustine, timid as she was, but armed with 
 supernatural courage, got into her carriage at two in the 
 afternoon to try for admittance to the boudoir of the famous
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 77 
 
 coquette, who was never visible till that hour. Madame de 
 Sommervieux had not yet seen any of the ancient and mag- 
 nificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As she 
 made her way through the stately corridors, the handsome 
 staircases, the vast drawing-rooms full of flowers, though 
 it was in the depth of winter, and decorated with the taste 
 peculiar to women born to opulence or to the elegant habits 
 of the aristocracy, Augustine felt a terrible clutch at her 
 heart; she coveted the secrets of an elegance of which she 
 had never had an idea; she breathed an air of grandeur 
 which explained the attraction of the house for her husband. 
 When she reached the private rooms of the Duchesse she 
 was filled with jealousy and a sort of despair, as she admired 
 the luxurious arrangement of the furniture, the draperies and 
 the hangings. Here disorder was a grace, here luxury affected 
 a certain contempt of splendor. The fragrance that floated 
 in the warm air nattered the sense of smell without offending 
 it. The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a 
 view, through plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden 
 planted with evergreen trees. It was all bewitching, and the 
 art of it was not perceptible. The whole spirit of the mis- 
 tress of these rooms pervaded the drawing-room where Au- 
 gustine awaited her. She tried to divine her rival's char- 
 acter from the aspect of the scattered objects; but there 
 was here something as impenetrable in the disorder as in 
 the symmetry, and to the simple-minded young wife all was 
 a sealed letter. All that she could discern was that, as a 
 woman, the Duchesse was a superior person. Then a pain- 
 ful thought came over her. 
 
 "Alas! And is it true," she wondered, "that a simple 
 and loving heart is not all-sufficient to an artist; that 
 to balance the weight of these powerful souls they need 
 a union with feminine souls of a strength equal to their 
 own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our 
 weapons at least might have been equal in the hour of 
 struggle." 
 
 "But I am not at home!" The sharp, harsh words,
 
 78 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 though spoken in an undertone in the adjoining boudoir, 
 were heard by Augustine, and her heart beat violently. 
 
 "The lady is in there," replied the maid. 
 
 "You are an idiot! Show her in," replied the Duchesse, 
 whose voice was sweeter, and had assumed the dulcet tones 
 of politeness. She evidently now meant to be heard. 
 
 Augustine shyly entered the room. At the end of the 
 dainty boudoir she saw the Duchesse lounging luxuriously 
 on an ottoman covered with brown velvet and placed in the 
 centre of a sort of apse outlined by soft folds of white muslin 
 over a yellow lining. Ornaments of gilt bronze, arranged 
 with exquisite taste, enhanced this sort of dais, under which 
 the Duchesse reclined like a Greek statue. The dark hue of 
 the velvet gave relief to every fascinating charm. A sub- 
 dued light, friendly to her beauty, fell like a reflection rather 
 than a direct illumination. A few rare flowers raised their 
 perfumed heads from costly Sevres vases. At the moment 
 when this picture was presented to Augustine's astonished 
 eyes, she was approaching so noiselessly that she caught a 
 glance from those of the enchantress. This look seemed to 
 say to some one whom Augustine did not at first perceive, 
 "Stay; you will see a pretty woman, and make her visit less 
 of a bore. ' ' 
 
 On seeing Augustine, the Duchesse rose and made her sit 
 down by her. "And to what do I owe the pleasure of this 
 visit, madame?" she said with a most gracious smile. 
 
 "Why all this falseness?" thought Augustine, replying 
 only with a bow. 
 
 Her silence was compulsory. The young woman saw 
 before her a superfluous witness of the scene. This per- 
 sonage was, of all the Colonels in the army, the youngest, 
 the most fashionable, and the finest man. His face, full of 
 life and youth, but already expressive, was further enhanced 
 by a small mustache twirled up into points, and as black as 
 jet, by a full imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and 
 a forest of black hair in some disorder. He was whisking a 
 riding whip with an air of ease and freedom which suited his
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE OAT AND RACKET 79 
 
 self-satisfied expression and the elegance of his dress; the 
 ribbons attached to his buttonhole were carelessly tied, and 
 he seemed to pride himself much more on his smart appear- 
 ance than on his courage. Augustine looked at the Duchesse 
 de Carigliano, and indicated the Colonel by a sidelong glance. 
 All its mute appeal was understood. 
 
 "Good-by, then, Monsieur d'Aiglemont, we shall meet 
 in the Bois de Boulogne." 
 
 These words were spoken by the siren as though they 
 were the result of an agreement made before Augustine's ar- 
 rival, and she winged them with a threatening look that the 
 officer deserved perhaps for the admiration he showed in gaz- 
 ing at the modest flower, which contrasted so well with the 
 haughty Duchesse. The young fop bowed in silence, turned 
 on the heels of his boots, and gracefully quitted the boudoir. 
 At this instant, Augustine, watching her rival, whose eyes 
 seemed to follow the brilliant officer, detected in that glance 
 a sentiment of which the transient expression is known to 
 every woman. She perceived with the deepest anguish that 
 her visit would be useless ; this lady, full of artifice, was too 
 greedy of homage not to have a ruthless heart. 
 
 "Madame," said Augustine in a broken voice, "the step 
 I am about to take will seem to you very strange ; but there 
 is a madness of despair which ought to excuse anything. I 
 understand only too well why Theodore prefers your house 
 to any other, and why your mind has so much power over 
 his. Alas! I have only to look into myself to find more 
 than ample reasons. But I am devoted to my husband, 
 madanie. Two years of tears have not effaced his image 
 from my heart, though I have lost his. In my folly I dared 
 to dream of a contest with you; and I have come to you to 
 ask you by what means I may triumph over yourself. Oh, 
 madame," cried the young wife, ardently seizing the hand 
 which her rival allowed her to hold, "I will never pray to 
 God for my own happiness with so much fervor as I will 
 beseech Him.for yours, if you will help me to win back Som- 
 mervieux's regard I will not say his love. I have no hope
 
 80 BALZAC 1 8 WORKS 
 
 but in yon. Ah ! tell me bow you could please him, and 
 make him forget the first days At these words Augus- 
 tine broke down, suffocated with sobs she could not suppress. 
 Ashamed of her weakness, she hid her face in her handker- 
 chief, which she bathed with tears. 
 
 "What a child you are, my dear little beauty!" said the 
 Duchesse, carried away by the novelty of such a scene, and 
 touched, in spite of herself, at receiving such homage from 
 the most perfect virtue perhaps in Paris. She took the young 
 wife's handkerchief, and herself wiped the tears from her 
 eyes, soothing her by a few monosyllables murmured with 
 gracious compassion. After a moment's silence the Duch- 
 esse, grasping poor Augustine's hands in both her own 
 hands that had a rare character of dignity and powerful 
 beauty said in a gentle and friendly voice: "My first warn- 
 ing is to advise you not to weep so bitterly; tears are disfig- 
 uring. We must learn to deal firmly with the sorrows that 
 make us ill, for love does not linger long by a sick-bed. Mel- 
 ancholy, at first, no doubt, lends a certain attractive grace, 
 but it ends by dragging the features and blighting the love- 
 liest face. And besides, our tyrants are so vain as to insist 
 that their slaves should be always cheerful." 
 
 "But, madame, it is not in my power not to feel. How 
 is it possible, without suffering a thousand deaths, to see the 
 face which once beamed with love and gladness turn chill, 
 colorless, and indifferent? I cannot control my heart!" 
 
 *'So much the worse, sweet child. But I fancy I know 
 all your story. In the first place, if your husband is un- 
 faithful to you, understand clearly that I am not his accom- 
 plice. If I was anxious to have him in my drawing-room, 
 it was, I own, out of vanity; he was famous, and he went 
 nowhere. I like you too much already to tell you all the 
 mad things he has done for my sake. I will only reveal 
 one, because it may perhaps help us to bring him back to 
 you, and to punish him for the audacity of his behavior to 
 me. He will end by compromising me. I know the world 
 too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the discretion of a
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 81 
 
 too superior man. You should know that one may allow 
 them to court one, but marry them that is a mistake ! We 
 women ought to admire men of genius, and delight in them 
 as a spectacle, but as to living with them? Never. No, 
 no. It is like wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the 
 machinery of the Opera instead of sitting in a box to enjoy 
 its brilliant illusions. But this misfortune has fallen on 
 you, my poor child, has it not? Well, then, you must try 
 to arm yourself against tyranny." 
 
 "Ah, madame, before coming in here, only seeing you 
 as I came in, I already detected some arts of which I had 
 no suspicion." 
 
 "Well, come and see me sometimes, and it will not be 
 long before you have mastered the knowledge of these trifles, 
 important, too, in their way. Outward things are, to fools, 
 half of life ; and in that matter more than one clever man is 
 a fool, in spite of all his talent. But I dare wager you never 
 could refuse your Theodore anything!" 
 
 "How refuse anything, madame, if one loves a man ?" 
 
 "Poor innocent, I could adore you for your simplicity. 
 You should know that the more we love the less we should 
 allow a man, above all, a husband, to see the whole extent 
 of our passion. The one who loves most is tyrannized over, 
 and, which is worse, is sooner or later neglected. The one 
 who wishes to rule should " 
 
 "What, madame, must I then dissimulate, calculate, be- 
 come false, form an artificial character, and live in it ? How 
 is it possible to live in such a way? Can you " she hesi- 
 tated; the Duchesse smiled. 
 
 "My dear child, " the great lady went on in a serious tone, 
 "conjugal happiness has in all times been a speculation, a 
 business demanding particular attention. If you persist in 
 talking passion while I am talking marriage, we shall soon 
 cease to understand each other. Listen to me," she went 
 on, assuming a confidential tone. "I have been in the way 
 of seeing some of the superior men of our day. Those who 
 have married have for the most part chosen quite insignifi-
 
 82 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 cant wives. Well, those wives governed them, as the Em- 
 peror governs us ; and if they were not loved, they were at 
 least respected. I like secrets especially those which con- 
 cern women well enough to have amused myself by seeking 
 the clew to the riddle. Well, my sweet child, those worthy 
 women had the gift of analyzing their husband's nature; in- 
 stead of taking fright, like you, at their superiority, they 
 very acutely noted the qualities they lacked, and either by 
 possessing those qualities, or by feigning to possess them, 
 they found means of making such a handsome display of 
 them in their husbands' eyes that in the end they impressed 
 them. Also, I must tell you, all these souls which appear 
 so lofty have just a speck of madness in them, which we 
 ought to know how to take advantage of. By firmly resolv- 
 ing to have the upper hand and never deviating from that 
 aim, by bringing all our actions to bear on it, all our ideas, 
 our cajolery, we subjugate these eminently capricious na- 
 tures, which, by the very mutability of their thoughts, lend 
 us the means of influencing them." 
 
 "Good heavens!" cried the young wife in dismay. "And 
 this is life. It is a warfare " 
 
 "In which we must always threaten," said the Duchesse, 
 laughing. "Our power is wholly factitious. And we must 
 never allow a man to despise us; it is impossible to recover 
 from such a descent but by odious manoeuvring. Come," 
 she added, "I will give you a means of bringing your hus- 
 band to his senses." 
 
 She rose with a smile to guide the young and guileless 
 apprentice to conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her pal- 
 ace. They carne to a back-staircase, which led up to the 
 reception rooms. As Madame de Carigliano pressed the se- 
 cret spring-lock of the door she stopped, looking at Augus- 
 tine with an inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace. ' ' The 
 Due de Carigliano adores me," said she. "Well, he dare not 
 enter by this door without my leave. And he is a man in 
 the habit of commanding thousands of soldiers. He knows 
 how to face a battery, but before me he is afraid!"
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 83 
 
 Augustine sighed. They entered a sumptuous gallery, 
 where the painter's wife was led by the Duchesse up to the 
 portrait painted by Theodore of Mademoiselle Gruillaume. 
 On seeing it, Augustine uttered a cry. 
 
 "I knew it was no longer in my house," she said, "but 
 here! " 
 
 "My dear child, I asked for it merely to see what pitch 
 of idiocy a man of genius may attain to. Sooner or later I 
 should have returned it to you, for I never expected the 
 pleasure of seeing the original here face to face with the 
 copy. While we finish our conversation I will have it car- 
 ried down to your carriage. And if, armed with such a 
 talisman, you are not your husband's mistress for a hundred 
 years, you are not a woman, and you deserve your fate." 
 
 Augustine kissed the Duchesse's hand, and the lady 
 clasped her to her heart, with all the more tenderness be- 
 cause she would forget her by the morrow. This scene 
 might perhaps have destroyed forever the candor and pur- 
 ity of a less virtuous woman than Augustine, for the astute 
 politics of the higher social spheres were no more consonant 
 to Augustine than the narrow reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or 
 Madame Gruillaume's vapid morality. Strange are the re- 
 sults of the false positions into which we may be brought by 
 the slightest mistake in the conduct of life ! Augustine was 
 like an Alpine cowherd surprised by an avalanche; if he 
 hesitates, if he listens to the shouts of his comrades, he is 
 almost certainly lost. In such a crisis the heart steels itself 
 or breaks. 
 
 Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such 
 agitation as it is difficult to describe. Her conversation with 
 the Duchesse de Carigliano had roused in her mind a crowd 
 of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep in the fable, full 
 of courage in the wolf's absence, she preached to herself, 
 and laid down admirable plans of conduct; she devised a 
 thousand coquettish stratagems; she even talked to her hus- 
 band, finding, away from him, all the springs of true elo- 
 quence which never desert a woman ; then, as she pictured
 
 84 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 to herself Theodore's clear and steadfast gaze, she began to 
 quake. When she asked whether Monsieur were at home 
 her voice shook. On learning that he would not be in to 
 dinner, she felt an unaccountable thrill of joy. Like a crim- 
 inal who has appealed against sentence of death, a respite, 
 however short, seemed to her a lifetime. She placed the 
 portrait in her room, and waited for her husband in all the 
 agonies of hope. That this venture must decide her future 
 life, she felt too keenly not to shiver at every sound, even 
 the low ticking of the clock, which seemed to aggravate her 
 terrors by doling them out to her. She tried to cheat time 
 by various devices. The idea struck her of dressing in a 
 way which would make her exactly like the portrait. Then, 
 knowing her husband's restless temper, she had her room 
 lighted up with unusual brightness, feeling sure that when 
 lie came in curiosity would bring him there at once. Mid- 
 night had struck when, at the call of the groom, the street 
 gate was opened, and the artist's carriage rumbled in over 
 the stones of the silent courtyard. 
 
 "What is the meaning of this illumination ?" asked The*o- 
 dore in glad tones, as he came into her room. 
 
 Augustine skilfully seized the auspicious moment; she 
 threw herself into her husband's arms, and pointed to the por- 
 trait. The artist stood rigid as a rock, and his eyes turned 
 alternately on Augustine, on the accusing dress. The fright- 
 ened wife, half-dead, as she watched her husband's change- 
 ful brow that terrible brow saw the expressive furrows 
 gathering like clouds; then she felt her blood curdling in 
 her veins when, with a glaring look, and in a deep hollow 
 voice, he began to question her: 
 
 "Where did you find that picture?" 
 
 "The Duchesse de Carigliano returned it to me." 
 
 "You asked her for it?" 
 
 "I did not know that she had it." 
 
 The gentleness, or rather the exquisite sweetness of this 
 angel's voice, might have touched a cannibal, but not an 
 artist in the clutches of wounded vanity.
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 85 
 
 "It is worthy of her!" exclaimed the painter in a voice 
 of thunder. "I will be revenged!" he cried, striding up 
 and down the room. "She shall die of shame: I will paint 
 her ! Yes, I will paint her as Messalina stealing out at night 
 from the palace of Claudius." 
 
 "Theodore," said a faint voice. 
 
 "I will kill her!" 
 
 "My dear " 
 
 "She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he 
 rides well " 
 
 "Theodore!" 
 
 "Let me be!" said the painter in a tone almost like a 
 roar. 
 
 It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the 
 end the frenzy of passion prompted the artist to acts and 
 words which any woman not so young as Augustine would 
 have ascribed to madness. 
 
 At eight o'clock next morning Madame Gruillaume, sur- 
 prising her daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair 
 in disorder, holding a handkerchief soaked with tears, while 
 she gazed at the floor strewn with the torn fragments of a 
 dress and the broken pieces of a large gilt picture-frame. 
 Augustine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the 
 wreck with a gesture of deep despair. 
 
 "I don't know that the loss is very great!" cried the 
 old mistress of the Cat and Racket. "It was like you, no 
 doubt; but I am told that there is a man on the Boulevard 
 who paints lovely portraits for fifty crowns." 
 
 "Oh, mother!" 
 
 "Poor child, you are quite right," replied Madame Gruil- 
 laume, who misinterpreted the expression of her daughter's 
 glance at her. "True, my child, no one ever can love you 
 as fondly as a mother. My darling, I guess it all; but con- 
 fide your sorrows to me, and I will comfort you. Did I not 
 tell you long ago that the man was mad! Your maid has told 
 me pretty stories. Why, he must be a perfect monster!" 
 
 Augustine laid a finger on her white lips, as if to implore
 
 86 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 a moment's silence. During this dreadful night misery had 
 led her to that patient resignation which in mothers and 
 loving wives transcends in its effects all human energy, 
 and perhaps reveals in the heart of women the existence 
 of certain chords which God has withheld from men. 
 
 An inscription engraved on a broken column in the 
 cemetery at Montmartre states that Madame de Sommer- 
 vieux died at the age of twenty-seven. In the simple 
 words of this epitaph one of the timid creature's friends 
 can read the last scene of a tragedy. Every year, on the 
 second of November, the solemn day of the dead, he never 
 passes this youthful monument without wondering whether 
 it does not need a stronger woman than Augustine to en- 
 dure the violent embrace of genius ? 
 
 "The humble and modest flowers that bloom in the 
 valley," he reflects, "perish perhaps when they are trans- 
 planted too near the skies, to the region where storms 
 gather and the sun is scorching."
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 
 
 (LE BAL DE SCEAUX) 
 
 To Henri de Balzac, his brother Honore 
 
 CT*HE COMTE DE FONTAINE, head of one of the 
 / oldest families in Poitou, liad served the Bourbon 
 cause with intelligence and bravery during the war 
 in La Vendee against the Republic. After having escaped 
 all the dangers which threatened the royalist leaders during 
 this stormy period of modern history, he was wont to say in 
 jest, "I am one of the men who gave themselves to be killed 
 on the steps of the throne." And the pleasantry had some 
 truth in it, as spoken by a man left for dead at the bloody 
 battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though ruined by confisca- 
 tion, the stanch Vendeen steadily refused the lucrative posts 
 offered to him by the Emperor Napoleon. Immovable in 
 his aristocratic faith, he had blindly obeyed its precepts 
 when he thought it fitting to choose a companion for life. 
 In spite of the blandishments of a rich but revolutionary 
 parvenu, who valued the alliance at a high figure, he mar- 
 ried Mademoiselle de Kergarouet, without a fortune, but 
 belonging to one of the oldest families in Brittany. 
 
 When the second revolution burst on Monsieur de Fon- 
 taine he was incumbered with a large family. Though it 
 was no part of the noble gentleman's views to solicit favors, 
 he yielded to his wife's wish, left his country -estate, of which 
 the income barely sufficed to maintain his children, and came 
 to Paris. Saddened by seeing the greediness of his former 
 comrades in the rush for places and dignities under the new 
 Constitution, he was about to return to his property when 
 he received a ministerial despatch, in which a well-known 
 
 (87)
 
 88 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 magnate announced to him his nomination as marechal de 
 camp, or brigadier-general, under a rule which allowed the 
 officers of the Catholic armies to count the twenty sub- 
 merged years of Louis XVIII. 's reign as years of service 1 . 
 Some days later he further received, without any solicita- 
 tion, ex officio, the crosses of the Legion of Honor and of 
 Saint-Louis. 
 
 Shaken in his determination by these successive favors, 
 due, as he supposed, to the monarch's remembrance, he was 
 no longer satisfied with taking his family, as he had piously 
 done every Sunday, to cry "Vive le Roi" in the hall of the 
 Tuileries when the royal family passed through on their way 
 to chapel; he craved the favor of a private audience. The 
 audience, at once granted, was in no sense private. The 
 royal drawing-room was full of old adherents, whose pow- 
 dered heads, seen from above, suggested a carpet of snow. 
 There the Comte met some old friends, who received him 
 somewhat coldly; but the princes he thought adorable, an 
 enthusiastic expression which escaped him when the most 
 gracious of his masters, to whom the Comte had supposed 
 himself to be known only by name, came to shake hands 
 with him, and spoke of him as the most thorough Vende'en 
 of them all. Notwithstanding this ovation, none of these 
 august persons thought of inquiring as to the sum of his 
 losses, or of the money he had poured so generously into 
 the chests of the Catholic regiments. He discovered, a 
 little late, that he had made war at his own cost. Toward 
 the end of the evening he thought he might venture on a 
 witty allusion to the state of his affairs, similar, as it was, 
 to that of many other gentlemen. His Majesty laughed 
 heartily enough; any speech that bore the hall-mark of 
 wit was certain to please him; but he nevertheless replied 
 with one of those royal pleasantries whose sweetness is 
 more formidable than the anger of a rebuke. One of the 
 King's most intimate advisers took an opportunity of going 
 up to the fortune-seeking Vende'en, and made him under- 
 stand by a keen and polite hint that the time had not yet
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 89 
 
 come for settling accounts with the sovereign; that there 
 were bills of much longer standing than his on the books, 
 and there, no doubt, they would remain, as part of the 
 history of the Kevolution. The Count prudently with- 
 drew from the venerable group, which formed a respectful 
 semicircle before the august family; then, having extri- 
 cated his sword, not without some difficulty, from among 
 the lean legs which had got mixed up with it, he crossed 
 the courtyard of the Tuileries and got into the hackney 
 cab he had left on the quay. With the restive spirit, 
 which is peculiar to the nobility of the old school, in 
 whom still survives the memory of the League and the 
 day of the Barricades (in 1588), he bewailed himself in his 
 cab, loudly enough to compromise him, over the change 
 that had come over the Court. "Formerly," he said to 
 himself, "every one could speak freely to the King of his 
 own little affairs; the nobles could ask him a favor, or for 
 money, when it suited them, and nowadays one cannot re- 
 cover the money advanced for his service without raising a 
 scandal ! By Heaven ! the cross of Saint-Louis and the rank 
 of brigadier-general will not make good the three hundred 
 thousand livres I have spent, out and out, on the royal 
 cause. I must speak to the King, face to face, in his own 
 room. ' ' 
 
 This scene cooled Monsieur de Fontaine's ardor all the 
 more effectually because his requests for an interview were 
 never answered. And, indeed, he saw the upstarts of the 
 Empire obtaining some of the offices reserved, under the old 
 monarchy, for the highest families. 
 
 "All is lost!" he exclaimed one morning. "The King 
 has certainly never been other than a revolutionary. But 
 for Monsieur, who never derogates, and is some comfort to 
 his faithful adherents, I do not know what hands the crown 
 of France might not fall into if things are to go on like this. 
 Their cursed constitutional system is the worst possible gov- 
 ernment, and can never suit France. Louis XVIII. and Mon- 
 sieur Beugnot spoiled everything at Saint Ouen. "
 
 90 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 The Count, in despair, was preparing to retire to his es- 
 tate, abandoning, with dignity, all claims to repayment. 
 At this moment the events of the 20th March (1815) gave 
 warning of a fresh storm, threatening to overwhelm the 
 legitimate monarch and his defenders. Monsieur de Fon- 
 taine, like one of those generous souls who do not dismiss 
 a servant in a torrent of rain, borrowed on his lands to fol- 
 low the routed monarchy, without knowing whether this 
 complicity in emigration would prove more propitious to 
 him than his past devotion. But when he perceived thnt 
 the companions of the King's exile were in higher favor 
 than the brave men who had protested, sword in hand, 
 against the establishment of the republic, he may perhaps 
 have hoped to derive greater profit from this journey into 
 a foreign land than from active and dangerous service in 
 the heart of his own country. Nor was his courtier-like 
 calculation one of those rash speculations which promise 
 splendid results on paper, and are ruinous in effect. He 
 was -to quote the wittiest and most successful of our dip- 
 lomats one of the faithful five hundred who shared the 
 exile of the Court at Ghent, and one of the fifty thousand 
 who returned with it. During the short banishment of 
 royalty, Monsieur de Fontaine was so happy as to be em- 
 ployed by Louis XVIII. , and found more than one oppor- 
 tunity of giving him proofs of great political honesty and 
 sincere attachment. One evening, when the King had 
 nothing better to do, he recalled Monsieur de Fontaine's 
 witticism at the Tuileries. The old Vende'en did not let 
 such a happy chance slip; he told his history with so much 
 vivacity that a king, who never forgot anything, might re- 
 member it at a convenient season. The royal amateur of 
 literature also observed the elegant style given to some 
 notes which the discreet gentleman had been invited to 
 recast. This little success stamped Monsieur de Fontaine 
 on the King's memory as one of the loyal servants of the 
 Crown. 
 
 At the second restoration the Count was one of those
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 91 
 
 special envoys who were sent throughout the departments 
 charged with absolute jurisdiction over the leaders of re- 
 volt; but he used his terrible powers with moderation. 
 As soon as this temporary commission was ended, the 
 High Provost found a seat in the Privy Council, became 
 a deputy, spoke little, listened much, and changed his 
 opinions very considerably. Certain circumstances, un- 
 known to historians, brought him into such intimate rela- 
 tions with the Sovereign, that one day, as he came in, the 
 shrewd monarch addressed him thus: "My friend Fon- 
 taine, I shall take care never to appoint you to be direc- 
 tor-general, or minister. Neither you nor I, as employe's, 
 could keep our place on account of our opinions. Eepre- 
 sentative government has this advantage: it saves Us the 
 trouble We used to have, of dismissing Our Secretaries of 
 State. Our Council is a perfect inn-parlor, whither public 
 opinion sometimes sends strange travellers; however, "We 
 can always find a place for Our faithful adherents." 
 
 This ironical speech was introductory to a rescript giv- 
 ing Monsieur de Fontaine an appointment as administrator 
 in the office of Crown lands. As a consequence of the in- 
 telligent attention with which he listened to his royal 
 Friend's sarcasms, his name always rose to his Majesty's 
 lips when a commission was to be appointed of which the 
 members were to receive a handsome salary. He had 
 the good sense to hold his tongue about the favor with 
 which he was honored, and knew how to entertain the 
 monarch in those familiar chats in which Louis XVIII. 
 delighted as much as in a well-written note, by his bril- 
 liant manner of repeating political anecdotes, and the po- 
 litical or parliamentary tittle-tattle if the expression may 
 pass which at that time was rife. It is well known that 
 he was immensely amused by every detail of his Oou- 
 vernementabilite a word adopted by his facetious Majesty. 
 
 Thanks to the Comte de Fontaine's good sense, wit, and 
 tact, every member of his numerous family, however young, 
 ended, as he jestingly told his Sovereign, in attaching him-
 
 92 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 self like a silkworm to the leaves of the Pay-List. Thus, 
 by the King's intervention, his eldest son found a high and 
 fixed position as a lawyer. The second, before the Kestora- 
 tion a mere captain, was appointed to the command of a legion 
 on the return from Ghent; then, thanks to the confusion of 
 1815, when the regulations were evaded, he passed into the 
 bodyguard, returned to a line regiment, and found himself, 
 after the affair of the Trocade*ro, a lieutenant-general with 
 a commission in the Guards. The youngest, appointed sous- 
 prefet, ere long became a legal official and director of a mu- 
 nicipal board of the city of Paris, where he was safe from 
 changes in the Legislature. These bounties, bestowed with- 
 out parade, and as secret as the favor enjoyed by the Count, 
 fell unperceived. Though the father and his three sons each 
 had sinecures enough to enjoy an income in salaries almost 
 equal to that of a chief of department, their political good 
 fortune excited no envy. In those early days of the con- 
 stitutional system, few persons had very precise ideas of the 
 peaceful domain of the civil service, where astute favorites 
 managed to find an equivalent for the demolished abbeys. 
 Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine, who till lately boasted that 
 he had not read the Charter, and displayed such indignation 
 at the greed of courtiers, had, before long, proved to his 
 august master that he understood, as well as the King him- 
 self, the spirit and resources of the representative system. 
 At the same time, notwithstanding the established careers 
 open to his three sons, and the pecuniary advantages derived 
 from four official appointments, Monsieur de Fontaine was 
 the head of too large a family to be able to re-establish his 
 fortune easily and rapidly. 
 
 His three sons were rich, in prospects, in favor, and in 
 talent; but he had three daughters, and was afraid of weary- 
 ing the monarch's benevolence. It occurred to him to men- 
 tion only one by one, these virgins eager to light their 
 torches. The King had too much good taste to leave his 
 work incomplete. The marriage of the eldest with a Eeceiver- 
 General, Planat de Baudry, was arranged by one of those
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 93 
 
 royal speeches which cost nothing and are worth millions. 
 One evening, when the Sovereign was out of spirits, he smiled 
 on hearing of the existence of another Demoiselle de Fon- 
 taine, for whom he found a husband in the person of a young 
 magistrate, of inferior birth, no doubt, but wealthy, and 
 whom he created Baron. When, the year after, the Ven- 
 deen spoke of Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, the King 
 replied in his thin, sharp tones, "Amicus Plato sed magis 
 arnica Natio." Then, a few days later, he treated his "friend 
 Fontaine" to a quatrain, harmless enough, which he styled 
 an epigram, in which he made fun of these three daughters, 
 so skilfully introduced, under the form of a trinity. Nay, 
 if report is to be believed, the monarch had found the point 
 of the jest in the Unity of the three Divine Persons. 
 
 "If your Majesty would only condescend to turn the epi- 
 gram into an epithalamium?" said the Comte, trying to turn 
 the sally to good account. 
 
 "Though I see the rhyme of it, I fail to see the reason," 
 retorted the King, who did not relish any pleasantry, how- 
 ever mild, on the subject of his poetry. 
 
 From that day his intercourse with Monsieur de Fontaine 
 showed less amenity. Kings enjoy contradicting more than 
 people think. Like most youngest children, Emilie de Fon- 
 taine was a Benjamin spoiled by almost everybody. The 
 King's coolness, therefore, caused the Count all the more 
 regret, because no marriage was ever so difficult to arrange 
 as that of this darling daughter. To understand all the 
 obstacles we must make our way into the fine residence 
 where the official was housed at the expense of the nation- 
 Emilie had spent her childhood on the family estate, enjoy- 
 ing the abundance which suffices for the joys of early youth; 
 her lightest wishes had been law to her sisters, her brothers, 
 her mother, and even her father. All her relations doted on 
 her. Having come to years of discretion just when her family 
 was loaded with the favors of fortune, the enchantment of life 
 continued. The luxury of Paris seemed to her just as natural 
 as a wealth of flowers or fruit, or as the rural plenty which
 
 94 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 had been the joy of her first years. Just as in her childhood 
 she had never been thwarted in the satisfaction of her play- 
 ful desires, so now, at fourteen, she was still obeyed when 
 she rushed into the whirl of fashion. 
 
 Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, 
 elegance of dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, 
 became as necessary to her as the compliments of flattery, 
 sincere or false, and the festivities and vanities of court life. 
 Like most spoiled children, she tyrannized over those who 
 loved her, and kept her blandishments for those who were 
 indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and her 
 parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous 
 education. At the age of nineteen Bmilie de Fontaine had 
 not yet been pleased to make a choice from among the many 
 young men whom her father's politics brought to his enter- 
 tainments. Though so young, she asserted in society all the 
 freedom of mind that a married woman can enjoy. Her 
 beauty was so remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room 
 was to be its queen; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, 
 though she was everywhere the object of attentions to which 
 a finer nature than hers might perhaps have succumbed. Not 
 a man, not even an old man, had it in him to contradict the 
 opinions of a young girl whose lightest look could rekindle 
 love in the coldest heart. 
 
 She had been educated with a care which her sisters had 
 not enjoyed; painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, 
 and played the piano brilliantly; her voice, trained by the 
 best masters, had a ring in it which made her singing irre- 
 sistibly charming. Clever, and intimate with every branch 
 of literature, she might have made folk believe that, as Mas- 
 carille says, people of quality come into the world knowing 
 everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish 
 painting, on the Middle Ages or the Renaissance; pronounced 
 at haphazard on books new or old, and could expose the 
 defects of a work with a cruelly graceful wit. The simplest 
 thing she said was accepted by an admiring crowd as a fetfah 
 of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus dazzled shallow per-
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 95 
 
 sons ; as to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled her to 
 discern them, and for them she put forth so much fascina- 
 tion that, under cover of her charms, she escaped their scru- 
 tiny. This enchanting veneer covered a careless heart; the 
 opinion common to many young girls that no one else 
 dwelt in a sphere so lofty as to be able to understand the 
 merits of her soul; and a pride based no less on her birth 
 than on her beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming 
 sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's 
 heart, she spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of 
 distinctions, and expressed the deepest contempt for persons 
 of inferior birth. Supremely impertinent to all newly-created 
 nobility, she made every effort to get her parents recognized 
 as equals by the most illustrious families of the Saint-Ger- 
 main quarter. 
 
 These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of 
 Monsieur de Fontaine, who more than once, when his two 
 elder girls were married, had smarted under Emilie's sarcasm. 
 Logical readers will be surprised to see the old Koyalist be- 
 stowing his eldest daughter on a Receiver- General, possessed, 
 indeed, of some old hereditary estates, but whose name was 
 not preceded by the little word to which the throne owed so 
 many partisans, and his second to a magistrate too lately 
 Baronified to obscure the fact that his father had sold fire- 
 wood. This noteworthy change in the ideas of a noble on 
 the verge of his sixtieth year an age when men rarely re- 
 nounce their convictions was due not merely to his unfor- 
 tunate residence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or 
 later, country folk all get their corners rubbed down; the 
 Cornte de Fontaine's new political conscience was also a 
 result of the King's advice and friendship. The philosoph- 
 ical prince had taken pleasure in converting the Vende'en to 
 the ideas required by the advance of the nineteenth century, 
 and the new aspect of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII. aimed 
 at fusing parties as Napoleon had fused things and men. 
 The legitimate King, who was not less clever perhaps than 
 his rival, acted in a contrary direction. The last head of the
 
 96 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 House of Bourbon was just as eager to satisfy the third estate 
 and the creations of the Empire, by curbing the clergy, as 
 the first of the Napoleons had been to attract the grand old 
 nobility, or to endow the Church. The Privy Councillor, 
 being in the secret of these royal projects, had insensibly 
 become one of the most prudent and influential leaders of 
 that moderate party which most desired a fusion of opinion 
 in the interests of the nation. He preached the expensive 
 doctrines of constitutional government, and lent all his 
 weight to encourage the political see-saw which enabled his 
 master to rule France in the midst of storms. Perhaps Mon- 
 sieur de Fontaine hoped that one of the sudden gusts of legis- 
 lation, whose unexpected efforts then startled the oldest 
 politicians, might carry him up to the rank of peer. One 
 of his most rigid principles was to recognize no nobility in 
 France but that of the peerage the only families that might 
 enjoy any privileges. 
 
 "A nobility bereft of privileges," he would say, "is a 
 tool without a handle. ' ' 
 
 As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bour- 
 donnaye's, he ardently engaged in the task of general recon- 
 ciliation, which was to result in a new era and splendid for- 
 tunes for France. He strove to convince the families who 
 frequented his drawing-room, or those whom he visited, how 
 few favorable openings would henceforth be offered by a 
 civil or military career. He urged mothers to give their 
 boys a start in independent and industrial professions, ex- 
 plaining that military posts and high Government appoint- 
 ments must at last pertain, in a quite constitutional order, 
 to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According 
 to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share 
 in practical government by its elective assembly, its appoint- 
 ments to law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said 
 he, would always, as heretofore, be the natural right of the 
 distinguished men of the third estate. 
 
 These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the 
 prudent matches for his elder girls to which they had Ied 7
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 97 
 
 met with strong resistance in the bosom of his family. The 
 Comtesse de Fontaine remained faithful to the ancient beliefs 
 which no woman could disown, who, through her mother, 
 belonged to the Kohans. Although she had for a while 
 opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two elder 
 girls, she yielded to those private considerations which hus- 
 band and wife confide to each other when their heads are 
 resting on the same pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmly 
 pointed out to his wife, by exact arithmetic, that their resi- 
 dence in Paris, the necessity for entertaining, the magnifi- 
 cence of the house which made up to them now for the priva- 
 tions so bravely shared in La Vendee, and the expenses of 
 their sons, swallowed up the chief part of their income from 
 salaries. They must therefore seize, as a boon from heaven, 
 the opportunities which offered for settling their girls with 
 such wealth. Would they not some day enjoy sixty eighty 
 a hundred thousand francs a year? Such advantageous 
 matches were not to be met with every day for girls without 
 a portion. Again, it was time that they should begin to 
 think of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine, and 
 re-establish the old territorial fortune of the family. The 
 Comtesse yielded to such cogent arguments, as every mother 
 would have done in her place, though perhaps with a better 
 grace; but she declared that Emilie, at any rate, should 
 marry in such a way as to satisfy the pride she had unfor- 
 tunately contributed to foster in the girl's young soul. 
 
 Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the 
 family, had introduced a small leaven of discord. The 
 Receiver-General and the young lawyer were the objects 
 of a ceremonious formality which the Comtesse and Emilie 
 contrived to create. This etiquette soon found even ampler 
 opportunity for the display of domestic tyranny; for Lieu- 
 tenant-General de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, 
 the daughter of a rich banker; the President very sensibly 
 found a wife in a young lady whose father, twice or thrice 
 a millionnaire, had traded in salt; and the third brother, 
 faithful to his plebeian doctrines, married Mademoiselle 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 5.
 
 98 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Grossete'te, the only daughter of the Receiver-General at 
 Bourges. The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in- 
 law found the high sphere of political bigwigs, and the 
 drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, so full of 
 charm and of personal advantages that they united in form- 
 ing a little court round the overbearing Emilie. This treaty 
 between interest and pride was not, however, so firmly 
 cemented but that the young despot was, not infrequently, 
 the cause of revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which the 
 highest circles would not have disowned, kept up a sarcastic 
 temper among all the members of this powerful family; and 
 this, without seriously diminishing the regard they professed 
 in public, degenerated sometimes in private into sentiments 
 far from charitable. Thus the Lieutenant-General's wife, 
 having become a Baronne, thought herself quite as noble 
 as a Kergarouet, and imagined that her good hundred thou- 
 sand francs a year gave her the right to be as impertinent 
 as her sister-in-law Emilie, whom she would sometimes wish 
 to see happily married, as she announced that the daughter 
 of some peer of France had married Monsieur So-and-so with 
 no title to his name. The Vicomtesse de Fontaine amused 
 herself by eclipsing Emilie in the taste and magnificence that 
 were conspicuous in her dress, her furniture, and her car- 
 riages. The satirical spirit in which her brothers and sisters 
 sometimes received the claims avowed by Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine roused her to wrath that a perfect hailstorm of sharp 
 sayings could hardly mitigate. So when the head of the 
 family felt a slight chill in the King's tacit and precarious 
 friendship, he trembled all the more because, as a result of 
 her sisters' defiant mockery, his favorite daughter had never 
 looked so high. 
 
 In the midst of these circumstances, and at a moment 
 when this petty domestic warfare had become serious, the 
 monarch, whose favor Monsieur de Fontaine still hoped to 
 regain, was attacked by the malady of which he was to die. 
 The great political chief, who knew so well how to steer his 
 bark in the midst of tempests, soon succumbed. Certain
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 99 
 
 then of favors to come, the Comte de Fontaine made every 
 effort to collect the elite of marrying men about his youngest 
 daughter. Those who may have tried to solve the difficult 
 problem of settling a haughty and capricious girl will under- 
 stand the trouble taken by the unlucky father. Such an 
 affair, carried out to the liking of his beloved child, would 
 worthily crown the career the Count had followed for these 
 ten years at Paris. From the way in which his family 
 claimed salaries under every department, it might be com- 
 pared with the House of Austria, which, by intermarriage, 
 threatens to pervade Europe. The old Vende"en was not to 
 be discouraged in bringing forward suitors, so much had 
 he his daughter's happiness at heart, but nothing could be 
 more absurd than the way in which the impertinent young 
 thing pronounced her verdicts and judged the merits of her 
 adorers. It might have been supposed that, like a princess 
 in the "Arabian Nights," Emilie was rich enough and beau- 
 tiful enough to choose from among all the princes in the 
 world. Her objections were each more preposterous than 
 the last: one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, an- 
 other was short-sighted, this one's name was Durand, that 
 one limped, and almost all were too fat. Livelier, more at- 
 tractive, and gayer than ever after dismissing two or three 
 suitors, she rushed into the festivities of the winter season, 
 and to balls, where her keen eyes criticised the celebrities 
 of the day, delighting in encouraging proposals which she 
 invariably rejected. 
 
 Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed 
 for playing the part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie 
 de Fontaine could assume a dignified or a frolicsome mien at 
 her will. Her neck was rather long, allowing her to affect 
 beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence. She had cul- 
 tivated a large variety of those turns of the head and feminine 
 gestures which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint or 
 a smile. Fine black hair, thick and strongly-arched eye- 
 brows, lent her countenance an expression of pride, to which 
 her coquettish instincts and her mirror had taught her to add
 
 100 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 terror by a stare, or gentleness by the softness of her gaze, 
 by the set or the gracious curve of her lips, by the coldness 
 or the sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant to con- 
 quer a heart, her pure voice did not lack melody ; but she 
 could also give it a sort of curt clearness when she was 
 minded to paralyze a partner's indiscreet tongue. Her 
 colorless face and alabaster brow were like the limpid sur- 
 face of a lake, which by turns is rippled by the impulse of 
 a breeze and recovers its glad serenity when the air is still. 
 More than one young man, a victim to her scorn, accused 
 her of acting a part; but she justified herself by inspiring 
 her detractors with the desire to please her, and then sub- 
 jecting them to all her most contemptuous caprice. Among 
 the young girls of fashion, not one knew better than she how 
 to assume an air of reserve when a man of talent was intro- 
 duced to her, or how to display the insulting politeness which 
 treats an equal as an inferior, and to pour out her imperti- 
 nence on all who tried to hold their heads on a level with 
 hers. Wherever she went she seemed to be accepting hom- 
 age rather than compliments, and even in a princess her airs 
 and manner would have transformed the chair on which she 
 sat into an imperial throne. 
 
 Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the 
 education of the daughter he loved had been ruined by the 
 tender devotion of the whole family. The admiration which 
 the world is at first ready to bestow on a young girl, but for 
 which, sooner or later, it takes its revenge, had added to 
 Emilie' s pride and increased her self-confidence. Universal 
 subservience had developed in her the selfishness natural to 
 spoiled children, who, like kings, make a plaything of every- 
 thing that comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth and 
 the charms of talent hid these faults from every eye ; faults 
 all the more odious in a woman, since she can only please 
 by self-sacrifice and unselfishness ; but nothing escapes the 
 eye of a good father, and Monsieur de Fontaine often tried 
 to explain to his daughter the more important pages of the 
 mysterious book of life. Vain effort! He had to lament
 
 THE SGEAUX BALL 101 
 
 his daughter's capricious indocility and ironical shrewdness 
 too often to persevere in a task so difficult as that of correct- 
 ing an ill-disposed nature. He contented himself with giv- 
 ing her from time to time some gentle and kind advice ; but 
 he had the sorrow of seeing his tenderest words slide from 
 his daughter's heart as if it were of marble. A father's eyes 
 are slow to be unsealed, and it needed more than one experi- 
 ence before the old Royalist perceived that his daughter's 
 rare caresses were bestowed on him with an air of conde- 
 scension. She was like young children, who seem to say 
 to their mother, "Make haste to kiss me, that I may go to 
 play. ' ' In short, Emilie vouchsafed to be fond of her par- 
 ents. But often, by those sudden whims, which seem in- 
 explicable in young girls, she kept aloof and scarcely ever 
 appeared; she complained of having to share her father's 
 and mother's heart with too many people; she was jealous 
 of every one, even of her brothers and sisters. Then, after 
 creating a desert about her, the strange girl accused all nat- 
 ure of her unreal solitude and her wilful griefs. Strong in 
 the experience of her twenty years, she blamed fate, because, 
 not knowing that the mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, 
 she demanded it of the circumstances of life. She would 
 have fled to the ends of the earth to escape a marriage such 
 as those of her two sisters, and nevertheless her heart was 
 full of horrible jealousy at seeing them married, rich, and 
 happy. In short, she sometimes led her mother who was 
 as much a victim to her vagaries as Monsieur de Fontaine 
 to suspect that she had a touch of madness. 
 
 But such aberrations are quite explicable; nothing is 
 commoner than this unconfessed pride developed in the 
 heart of young girls belonging to families high in the so- 
 cial scale, and gifted by nature with great beauty. They 
 are almost all convinced that their mothers, now forty or 
 fifty years of age, can neither sympathize with their young 
 souls nor conceive of their imaginings. They fancy that 
 most mothers, jealous of their girls, want to dress them in 
 their own way with the premeditated purpose of eclipsing
 
 102 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 them or robbing them of admiration. Hence, often, secret 
 tears and dumb revolt against supposed tyranny. In the 
 midst of these woes, which become very real though built 
 on an imaginary basis, they have also a mania for compos- 
 ing a scheme of life, while casting for themselves a brilliant 
 horoscope; their magic consists in taking their dreams for 
 reality; secretly, in their long meditations, they resolve to 
 give their heart and hand to none but a man possessing this 
 or the other qualification ; and they paint in fancy a model 
 to which, whether or no, the future lover must correspond. 
 After some little experience of life, and the serious reflec- 
 tions that come with years, by dint of seeing the world and 
 its prosaic round, by dint of observing unhappy examples, 
 the brilliant hues of their ideal are extinguished. Then, one 
 fine day, in the course of events, they are quite astonished 
 to find themselves happy without the nuptial poetry of their 
 day-dreams. It was on the strength of that poetry that 
 Mademoiselle Bmilie de Fontaine, in her slender wisdom, 
 had drawn up a programme to which a suitor must conform 
 to be accepted. Hence her disdain and sarcasm. 
 
 "Though young and of an ancient family, he must be a 
 peer of France," said she to herself. "I could not bear not 
 to see my coat-of-arms on the panels of my carriage among 
 the folds of azure mantling, not to drive like the princes 
 down the broad walk of the Champs Elysees on the days of 
 Longchamps in Holy Week. Besides, my father says that 
 it will some day be the highest dignity in France. He must 
 be a soldier but I reserve the right of making him retire; 
 and he must bear an Order, that the sentries may present 
 arms to us." 
 
 And these rare qualifications would count for nothing if 
 this creature of fancy had not a most amiable temper, a fine 
 figure, intelligence, and, above all, if he were not slender. 
 To be lean, a personal grace which is but fugitive, especially 
 under a representative government, was an indispensable con- 
 dition. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had an ideal standard 
 which was to be the model. A young man who at the first
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 103 
 
 glance did not fulfil the requisite conditions did not even 
 get a second look. 
 
 "Grood Heavens! see how fat he is!" was with her the 
 utmost expression of contempt. 
 
 To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were in- 
 capable of sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized 
 society. Though it is esteemed a beauty in the East, to be 
 fat seemed to her a misfortune for a woman; but in a man 
 it was a crime. These paradoxical views were amusing, 
 thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt 
 nevertheless that by and by his daughter's affectations, of 
 which the absurdity would be evident to some women who 
 were not less clear-sighted than merciless, would inevitably 
 become a subject of constant ridicule. He feared lest her 
 eccentric notions should deviate into bad style. He trem- 
 bled to think that the pitiless world might already be laugh- 
 ing at a young woman who remained so long on the stage 
 without arriving at any conclusion of the drama she was 
 playing. More than one actor in it, disgusted by a refusal, 
 seemed to be waiting for the slightest turn of ill-luck to take 
 his revenge. The indifferent, the lookers-on were beginning 
 to weary of it; admiration is always exhausting to human 
 beings. The old Vendeen knew better than any one that if 
 there is an art in choosing the right moment for coming for- 
 ward on the boards of the world, on those of the Court, in 
 a drawing-room or on the stage, it is still more difficult to 
 quit them in the nick of time. So during the first winter 
 after the accession of Charles X., he redoubled his efforts, 
 seconded by his three sons and his sons-in-law, to assemble 
 in the rooms of his official residence the best matches which 
 Paris and the various deputations from departments could 
 offer. The splendor of his entertainments, the luxury of 
 his dining-room, and his dinners, fragrant with truffles, ri- 
 valled the famous banquets by which the ministers of that 
 time secured the vote of their parliamentary recruits. 
 
 The Honorable Deputy was consequently pointed at as 
 a most influential corrupter of the legislative honesty of the
 
 104 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 illustrious Chamber that was dying as it would seem of in- 
 digestion. A whimsical result! his efforts to get his daugh- 
 ter married secured him a splendid popularity. He perhaps 
 found some covert advantage in selling his truffles twice over. 
 This accusation, started by certain mocking Liberals, who 
 made up by their flow of words for their small following in 
 the Chamber, was not a success. The Poitevin gentleman 
 had always been so noble and so honorable that he was not 
 once the object of those epigrams which the malicious jour- 
 nalism of the day hurled at the three hundred votes of the 
 Centre, at the Ministers, the cooks, the Di rectors- General, 
 the princely Amphitryons, and the official supporters of the 
 Villele Ministry. 
 
 At the close of this campaign, during which Monsieur de 
 Fontaine had on several occasions brought out all his forces, 
 he believed that this time the procession of suitors would not 
 be a mere dissolving view in his daughter's eyes; that it was 
 time she should make up her mind. He felt a certain in- 
 ward satisfaction at having well fulfilled his duty as a father. 
 And having left no stone unturned, he hoped that, among 
 so many hearts laid at Emilie's feet, there might be one to 
 which her caprice might give a preference. Incapable of 
 repeating such an effort, and tired, too, of his daughter's 
 conduct, one morning, toward the end of Lent, when the 
 business at the Chamber did not demand his vote, he deter- 
 mined to ask what her views were. While his valet was 
 artistically decorating his bald yellow head with the delta 
 of powder which, with the hanging "ailes de pigeon," com- 
 pleted his venerable style of hairdressing, Emilie's father, 
 not without some secret misgivings, told his old servant to 
 go and desire the haughty damsel to appear in the presence 
 of the head of the family. 
 
 "Joseph," he added, when his hair was dressed, "take 
 away that towel, draw back the curtains, put those chairs 
 square, shake the rug, and lay it quite straight. Dust every- 
 thing. Now, air the room a little by opening the window." 
 
 The Count multiplied his orders, putting Joseph out of
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 105 
 
 breath, and the old servant, understanding his master's in- 
 tentions, aired and tidied the room, of course the least cared 
 for of any in the house, and succeeded in giving a look of 
 harmony to the files of bills, the letter-boxes, the books and 
 furniture of this sanctum, where the interests of the royal 
 demesnes were debated over. When Joseph had reduced 
 this chaos to some sort of order, and brought to the front 
 such things as might be most pleasing to the eye, as if it 
 were a shop front, or such as by their color might give the 
 effect of a kind of official poetry, he stood for a minute in 
 the midst of the labyrinth of papers piled in some places 
 even on the floor, admired his handiwork, jerked his head, 
 and went. 
 
 The anxious sinecure- holder did not share his retainer's 
 favorable opinion. Before seating himself in his deep chair, 
 whose rounded back screened him from draughts, he looked 
 round him doubtfully, examined his dressing-gown with a 
 hostile expression, shook off a few grains of snuff, carefully 
 wiped his nose, arranged the tongs and shovel, made the fire, 
 pulled up the heels of his slippers, pulled out his little queue 
 of hair which had lodged horizontally between the collar of 
 his waistcoat and that of his dressing-gown, restoring it to 
 its perpendicular position; then he swept up the ashes of the 
 hearth, which bore witness to a persistent catarrh. Finally, 
 the old man did not settle himself till he had once more 
 looked all over the room, hoping that nothing could give 
 occasion to the saucy and impertinent remarks with which 
 his daughter was apt to answer his good advice. On this 
 occasion he was anxious not to compromise his dignity as a 
 father. He daintily took a pinch of snuff, cleared his throat 
 two or three times, as if he were about to demand a count 
 out of the House; then he heard his daughter's light step, 
 and she came in humming an air from "II Barbiere. " 
 
 "Good- morning, papa. What do you want with me so 
 early?" Having sung these words, as though they were the 
 refrain of the melody, she kissed the Count, not with the 
 familiar tenderness which makes a daughter's love so sweet
 
 106 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 a thing, but with the light carelessness of a mistress confi- 
 dent of pleasing, whatever she may do. 
 
 "My dear child," said Monsieur de Fontaine, gravely, 
 "I sent for you to talk to you very seriously about your 
 future prospects. You are at this moment under the neces- 
 sity of making such a choice of a husband as may secure you 
 durable happiness " 
 
 "My good father," replied Emilie, assuming her most 
 coaxing tone of voice to interrupt him, "it strikes me that 
 the armistice on which we agreed as to my suitors is not yet 
 expired. ' ! 
 
 "Emilie, we must to-day forbear from jesting on so im- 
 portant a matter. For some time past the efforts of those 
 who most truly love you, my dear child, have been concen- 
 trated on the endeavor to settle you suitably ; and you would 
 be guilty of ingratitude in meeting with levity those proofs 
 of kindness which I am not alone in lavishing on you." 
 
 As she heard these words, after flashing a mischievously 
 inquisitive look at the furniture of her father's study, the 
 young girl brought forward the armchair which looked as if 
 it had been least used by petitioners, set it at the side of the 
 fireplace so as to sit facing her father, and settled herself in 
 so solemn an attitude that it was impossible not to read 
 in it a mocking intention, crossing her arms over the dainty 
 trimmings of a pelerine d la neige, and ruthlessly crushing 
 its endless frills of white tulle. After a laughing side glance 
 at her old father's troubled face, she broke silence. 
 
 "I never heard you say, my dear father, that the Govern- 
 ment issued its instructions in its dressing-gown. However, ' ' 
 and she smiled, "that does not matter; the mob are probably 
 not particular. Now, what are your proposals for legislation, 
 and your official introductions?" 
 
 "I shall not always be able to make them, headstrong 
 girl! Listen, Emilie. It is my intention no longer to com- 
 promise my reputation, which is part of my children's for- 
 tune, by recruiting the regiment of dancers which, spring 
 after spring, you put to rout. You have already been the
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 107 
 
 cause of many dangerous misunderstandings with certain 
 families. I hope to make you perceive more truly the dif- 
 ficulties of your position and of ours. You are two-and- 
 twenty, my dear child, and you ought to have been married 
 nearly three years since. Your brothers and your two sis- 
 ters are richly and happily provided for. But, my dear, the 
 expenses occasioned by these marriages, and the style of 
 housekeeping you require of your mother, have made such 
 inroads on our income that I can hardly promise you a hun- 
 dred thousand francs as a marriage portion. From this day 
 forth I shall think only of providing for your mother, who 
 must not be sacrificed to her children. Emilie, if I were 
 to be taken from my family, Madame de Fontaine could not 
 be left at anybody's mercy, and ought to enjoy the affluence 
 which I have given her too late as the reward of her devotion 
 in my misfortunes. You see, my child, that the amount of 
 your fortune bears no relation to your notions of grandeur. 
 Even that would be such a sacrifice as I have not hitherto 
 made for either of my children; but they have generously 
 agreed not to expect in the future any compensation for the 
 advantage thus given to a too favored child. ' ' 
 
 "In their position!" said Emilie, with an ironical toss of 
 her head. 
 
 "My dear, do not so depreciate those who love you. 
 Only the poor are generous as a rule; the rich have always 
 excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand 
 francs to a relation. Come, my child, do not pout, let us 
 talk rationally. Among the young marrying men have you 
 noticed Monsieur de Manerville?" 
 
 "Oh, he minces his words he says Zules instead of 
 Jules; he is always looking at his feet, because he thinks 
 them small, and he gazes at himself in the glass! Besides, 
 he is fair. I don't like fair men." 
 
 "Well, then, Monsieur de Beaudenord?" 
 
 "He is not noble! he is ill made and stout. He is dark, 
 it is true. If the two gentlemen could agree to combine 
 their fortunes, and the first would give his name and his
 
 108 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 figure to the second, who should keep his dark hair, then 
 perhaps " 
 
 "What can you say against Monsieur de Eastignac?" 
 
 "Madame de Nucingen has made a banker of him," she 
 said with meaning. 
 
 "And our cousin, the Vicomte de Portenduere?" 
 
 "A mere boy, who dances badly; besides, he has no for- 
 tune. And, after all, papa, none of these people have titles. 
 I want, at least, to be a countess like my mother. ' ' 
 
 "Have you seen no one, then, this winter ?" 
 
 "No, papa." 
 
 "What then do you want?" 
 
 "The son of a peer of France." 
 
 "My dear girl, you are mad!" said Monsieur de Fontaine, 
 rising. 
 
 But he suddenly lifted his eyes to heaven, and seemed to 
 find a fresh font of resignation in some religious thought; 
 then, with a look of fatherly pity at his daughter, who her- 
 self was moved, he took her hand, pressed it, and said with 
 deep feeling: "God is my witness, poor mistaken child, I 
 have conscientiously discharged my duty to you as a father 
 conscientiously, do I say? Most lovingly, my Emilie. 
 Yes, God knows! This winter I have brought before you 
 more than one good man, whose character, whose habits, and 
 whose temper were known to me, and all seemed worthy of 
 you. My child, my task is done. From this day forth you 
 are the arbiter of your fate, and I consider myself both happy 
 and unhappy at finding myself relieved of the heaviest of 
 paternal functions. I know not whether you will for any 
 long time, now, hear a voice which, to you, has never been 
 stern; but remember that conjugal happiness does not rest 
 so much on brilliant qualities and ample fortune as on recip- 
 rocal esteem. This happiness is, in its nature, modest, and 
 devoid of show. So now, my dear, my consent is given 
 beforehand, whoever the son-in-law may be whom you intro- 
 duce to me; but if you should be unhappy, remember you 
 will have no right to accuse your father. I shall not refuse
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 109 
 
 to take proper steps and help you, only your choice must be 
 serious and final. I will never twice compromise the respect 
 due to my white hairs." 
 
 The affection thus expressed by her father, the solemn 
 tones of his urgent address, deeply touched Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine; but she concealed her emotion, seated herself on 
 her father's knees for he had dropped all tremulous into his 
 chair again caressed him fondly, and coaxed him so engag- 
 ingly that the old man's brow cleared. As soon as Ernilie 
 thought that her father had got over his painful agitation, 
 she said in a gentle voice: "I have to thank you for your 
 graceful attention, my dear father. You have had your room 
 set in order to receive your beloved daughter. You did not 
 perhaps know that you would find her so foolish and so head- 
 strong. But, papa, is it so difficult to get married to a peer 
 of France ? You declared that they were manufactured by 
 dozens. At least, you will not refuse to advise me." 
 
 "No, my poor child, no and more than once I may have 
 occasion to cry, 'Beware!' Eemember that the making of 
 peers is so recent a force in our government machinery that 
 they have no great fortunes. Those who are rich look to 
 becoming richer. The wealthiest member of our peerage has 
 not half the income of the least rich lord in the English 
 Upper Chamber. Thus all the French peers are on the look- 
 out for great heiresses for their sons, wherever they may 
 meet with them. The necessity in which they find them- 
 selves of marrying for money will certainly exist for at least 
 two centuries. 
 
 4 ' Pending such a fortunate accident as you long for and 
 this fastidiousness may cost you the best years of your life 
 your attractions might work a miracle, for men often marry 
 for love in these days. When experience lurks behind so 
 sweet a face as yours it may achieve wonders. In the first 
 place, have you not the gift of recognizing virtue in the 
 greater or small dimensions of a man's body? This is no 
 small matter ! To so wise a young person as you are, I need 
 not enlarge on all the difficulties of the enterprise. I am
 
 110 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 sure that you would never attribute good sense to a stranger 
 because he had a handsome face, or all the virtues because 
 he had a fine figure. And I am quite of your mind in think- 
 ing that the eons of peers ought to have an air peculiar to 
 themselves, and perfectly distinctive manners. Though 
 nowadays no external sign stamps a man of rank, those 
 young men will have, perhaps, to you the indefinable some- 
 thing that will reveal it. Then, again, you have your heart 
 well in hand, like a good horseman who is sure his steed 
 cannot bolt. Luck be with you, my dear ! ' ' 
 
 "You are making game of me, papa. Well, I assure you 
 that I would rather die in Mademoiselle de Condi's convent 
 than not be the wife of a peer of France." 
 
 She slipped out of her father's arms, and, proud of being 
 her own mistress, went off singing the air of "Cara non 
 dubitare," in the "Matrimonio Segreto." 
 
 As it happened, the family were that day keeping the 
 anniversary of a family fete. At dessert, Madame Planat, 
 the Receiver-General's wife, spoke with some enthusiasm 
 of a young American owning an immense fortune, who had 
 fallen passionately in love with her sister, and made through 
 her the most splendid proposals. 
 
 "A banker, I rather think," observed Emilie carelessly. 
 "I do not like money dealers." 
 
 "But, Emilie," replied the Baron de Villaine, the hus- 
 band of the Count's second daughter, "you do not like law- 
 yers either; so that if you refuse men of wealth who have 
 not titles, I do not quite see in what class you are to choose 
 a husband. ' ' 
 
 "Especially, Emilie, with your standard of slimness," 
 added the Lieutenant-Greneral. 
 
 "I know what I want," replied the young lady. 
 
 "My sister wants a fine name, a fine young man, fine 
 prospects, and a hundred thousand francs a year, ' ' said the 
 Baronne de Fontaine. "Monsieur de Marsay, for instance." 
 
 "I know, my dear," retorted Emilie, "that I do not mean 
 to make such a foolish marriage as some I have seen. More-
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 111 
 
 over, to put an end to these matrimonial discussions, I here- 
 by declare that I shall look on any one who talks to me of 
 marriage as a foe to my peace of mind." 
 
 An uncle of Emilie's, a vice-admiral, whose fortune had 
 just been increased by twenty thousand francs a year in con- 
 sequence of the Act of Indemnity, and a man of seventy, 
 feeling himself privileged to say hard things to his grand- 
 niece, on whom he doted, in order to mollify the bitter tone 
 of the discussion now exclaimed: 
 
 "Do not tease my poor little Emilie; don't you see she 
 is waiting till the Due de Bordeaux comes of age!" 
 
 The old man's pleasantry was received with general 
 laughter. 
 
 "Take care I don't marry you, old fool!" replied the 
 young girl, whose last words were happily drowned in the 
 noise. 
 
 "My dear children," said Madame de Fontaine, to soften 
 this saucy retort, "Emilie, like you, will take no advice but 
 her mother's." 
 
 "Bless me! I shall take no advice but my own in a mat- 
 ter which concerns no one but myself, ' ' said Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine very distinctly. 
 
 At this all eyes were turned to the head of the family. 
 Every one seemed anxious as to what he would do to assert 
 his dignity. The venerable gentleman enjoyed much con- 
 sideration, not only in the world; happier than many fath- 
 ers, he was also appreciated by his family, all its members 
 having a just esteem for the solid qualities by which he had 
 been able to make their fortunes. Hence he was treated 
 with the deep respect which is shown by English families, 
 and some aristocratic houses on the Continent, to the living 
 representative of an ancient pedigree. Deep silence had 
 fallen; and the guests looked alternately from the spoiled 
 girl's proud and sulky pout to the severe faces of Monsieur 
 and Madame de Fontaine. 
 
 "I have made my daughter Emilie mistress of her own 
 fate," was the reply spoken by the Count in a deep voice.
 
 112 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Relations and guests gazed at Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 with mingled curiosity and pity. The words seemed to de- 
 clare that fatherly affection was weary of the contest with a 
 character that the whole family knew to be incorrigible. The 
 sons-in-law muttered, and the brothers glanced at their wives 
 with mocking smiles. From that moment every one ceased 
 to take any interest in the haughty girl's prospects of mar- 
 riage. Her old uncle was the only person who, as an old 
 sailor, ventured to stand on her tack, and take her broad- 
 sides, without ever troubling himself to return her fire. 
 
 When the fine weather was settled, and after the budget 
 was voted, the whole family a perfect example of the par- 
 liamentary families on the northern side of the Channel who 
 have a footing in every government department, and ten 
 votes in the House of Commons flew away like a brood 
 of young birds to the charming neighborhoods of Aulnay, 
 Antony, and Chatenay. The wealthy Receiver-General had 
 lately purchased in this part of the world a country-house 
 for his wife, who remained in Paris only during the session. 
 Though the fair Emilie despised the commonalty, her feel- 
 ing was not carried so far as to scorn the advantages of a 
 fortune acquired in a profession; so she accompanied her 
 sister to the sumptuous villa, less out of affection for the 
 members of her family who were visiting there, than because 
 fashion has ordained that every woman who has any self- 
 respect must leave Paris in the summer. The green seclu- 
 sion of Sceaux answered to perfection the requirements of 
 good style and of the duties* of an official position. 
 
 As it is extremely doubtful that the fame of the k 'Bal de 
 Sceaux" should ever have extended beyond the borders of 
 the Department of the Seine, it will be necessary to give 
 some account of this weekly festivity, which at that time 
 was important enough to threaten to become an institution. 
 The environs of the little town of Sceaux enjoy a reputation 
 due to the scenery, which is considered enchanting. Per- 
 haps it is quite ordinary, and owes its fame only to the 
 stupidity of the Paris townsfolk, who, emerging from the
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 113 
 
 stony abyss in which they are buried, would find something 
 to admire in the flats of La Beauce. However, as the poetic 
 shades of Aulnay, the hillsides of Antony, and the valley 
 of the Bievre are peopled with artists who have travelled 
 far, by foreigners who are very hard to please, and by a 
 great many pretty women not devoid of taste, it is to be 
 supposed that the Parisians are right. But Sceaux pos- 
 sesses another attraction not less powerful to the Parisian. 
 In the midst of a garden whence there are delightful views, 
 stands a large rotunda open on all sides, with a light, spread- 
 ing roof supported on elegant pillars. This rural baldachino 
 shelters a dancing-floor. The most stuck-up landowners of 
 the neighborhood rarely fail to make an excursion thither 
 once or twice during the season, arriving at this rustic pal- 
 ace of Terpsichore either in dashing parties on horseback, 
 or in the light and elegant carriages which powder the philo- 
 sophical pedestrian with dust. The hope of meeting some 
 women of fashion, and of being seen by them and the 
 hope, less often disappointed, of seeing young peasant 
 girls, as wily as judges crowds the ballroom at Sceaux 
 with numerous swarms of lawyers' clerks, of the disciples 
 of ^Esculapius, and other youths whose complexions are 
 kept pale and moist by the damp atmosphere of Paris 
 back-shops. And a good many bourgeois marriages have 
 had their beginning to the sound of the band occupying 
 the centre of this circular ballroom. If that roof could 
 speak, what love-stories could it not tell! 
 
 This interesting medley gave the Sceaux balls at that 
 time a spice of more amusement than those of two or three 
 places of the same kind near Pans; and it had incontestable 
 advantages in its rotunda, and the beauty of its situation and 
 its gardens. Emilie was the first to express a wish to play 
 at being common folk at this gleeful suburban entertainment, 
 and promised herself immense pleasure in mingling with the 
 crowd. Everybody wondered at her desire to wander through 
 such a mob ; but is there not a keen pleasure to grand peo- 
 ple in an incognito? Mademoiselle de Fontaine amused
 
 114 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 herself with imagining all these town-bred figures; she fan- 
 cied herself leaving the memory of a bewitching glance and 
 smile stamped on more than one shopkeeper heart, laughed 
 beforehand at the damsels' airs, and sharpened her pencils 
 for the scenes she proposed to sketch in her satirical album. 
 Sunday could not come soon enough to satisfy her impatience. 
 The party from the Villa Planat set out on foot, so as not 
 to betray the rank of the personages who were about to honpr 
 the ball with their presence. They dined early. And the 
 month of May humored this aristocratic escapade by one of 
 its finest evenings. Mademoiselle de Fontaine was quite sur- 
 prised to find in the rotunda some quadrilles made up of per- 
 sons who seemed to belong to the upper classes. Here and 
 there, indeed, were some young men who looked as though 
 they must have saved for a month to shine for a day; and 
 she perceived several couples whose too hearty glee sug- 
 gested nothing conjugal; still, she could only glean instead 
 of gathering a harvest. She was amazed to see that pleasure 
 in a cotton dress was so very like pleasure robed in satin, 
 and that the girls of the middle class danced quite as well 
 as ladies nay, sometimes better. Most of the women were 
 simply and suitably dressed. Those who in this assembly 
 represented the ruling power, that is to say, the country-folk, 
 kept apart with wonderful politeness. In fact, Mademoiselle 
 Emilie had to study the various elements that composed the 
 mixture before she could find any subject for pleasantry. 
 But she had not time to give herself up to malicious criti- 
 cism, nor opportunity for hearing many of the startling 
 speeches which caricaturists so gladly pick up : the haughty 
 young lady suddenly found a flower in this wide field the 
 metaphor is reasonable whose splendor and coloring worked 
 on her imagination with all the fascination of novelty. It 
 often happens that we look at a dress, a hanging, a blank 
 sheet of paper, with so little heed that we do not at first 
 detect a stain or a bright spot which afterward strikes the 
 eye as though it had come there at the very instant when 
 we see it: and by a sort of moral phenomenon somewhat
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 115 
 
 resembling this, Mademoiselle de Fontaine discovered in 
 a young man the external perfections of which she had so 
 long dreamed. 
 
 Seated on one of the clumsy chairs which marked the 
 boundary line of the circular floor, she had placed herself 
 at the end of the row formed by the family party, so as to 
 be able to stand up or push forward as her fancy moved her, 
 treating the living pictures and groups in the hall as if she 
 were in a picture gallery; impertinently turning her eyeglass 
 on persons not two yards away, and making her remarks as 
 though she were criticising or praising a study of a head, a 
 painting of genre. Her eyes, after wandering over the vast 
 moving picture, were suddenly caught by this figure, which 
 seemed to have been placed on purpose in one corner of the 
 canvas, and in the best light, like a person out of all propor- 
 tion with the rest. 
 
 The stranger, alone and absorbed in thought, leaned 
 lightly against one of the columns that supported the roof; 
 his arms were folded, and he leaned slightly on one side as 
 though he had placed himself there to have his portrait 
 taken by a painter. His attitude, though full of elegance 
 and dignity, was devoid of affectation. Nothing suggested 
 that he had half turned his head, and bent it a little to the 
 right like Alexander, or Lord Byron, and some other great 
 men, for the sole purpose of attracting attention. His fixed 
 gaze followed a girl who was dancing, and betrayed some 
 strong feeling. His slender, easy frame recalled the noble 
 proportions of the Apollo. Fine black hair curled naturally 
 over a high forehead. At a glance Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine observed that his linen was fine, his gloves fresh, and 
 evidently bought of a good maker, and his feet small and 
 well shod in boots of Irish kid. He had none of the vulgar 
 trinkets displayed by the dandies of the National Guard or 
 the Lovelaces of the counting-house. A black ribbon, to 
 which an eyeglass was attached, hung over a waistcoat of 
 the most fashionable cut. Never had the fastidious Emilie 
 seen a man's eyes shaded by such long, curled lashes. Mel-
 
 116 BALZAC 'S WORKS 
 
 ancholy and passion were expressed in this face, and the 
 complexion was of a manly olive hue. His mouth seemed 
 ready to smile, unbending the corners of eloquent lips; but 
 this, far from hinting at gayety, revealed on the contrary a 
 sort of pathetic grace. There was too much promise in that 
 head, too much distinction in his whole person, to allow of 
 one's saying. "What a handsome man!" or "What a fine 
 man!" One wanted to know him. The most clear-sighted 
 observer, on seeing this stranger, could not have helped tak- 
 ing him for a clever man attracted to this rural festivity by 
 some powerful motive. 
 
 All these observations cost Emilie only a minute's atten- 
 tion, during which the privileged gentleman under her severe 
 scrutiny became the object of her secret admiration. She did 
 not say to herself, "He must be a peer of France!" but, "Oh, 
 if only he is noble, and he surely must be Without 
 finishing her thought, she suddenly cose, and, followed by 
 her brother the General, made her way toward the column, 
 affecting to watch the merry quadrilles ; but by a stratagem 
 of the eye, familiar to women, she lost not a gesture of the 
 young man as she went toward him. The stranger politely 
 moved to make way for the new-comers, and went to lean 
 against another pillar. Emilie, as much nettled by his po- 
 liteness as she might have been by an impertinence, began 
 talking to her brother in a louder voice than good taste en- 
 joined; she turned and tossed her head, gesticulated eagerly, 
 and laughed for no particular reason, less to amuse her 
 brother than to attract the attention of the imperturbable 
 stranger. None of her. little arts succeeded. Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine then followed the direction in which his eyes 
 were fixed, and discovered the cause of his indifference. 
 
 In the midst of the quadrille, close in front of them, a 
 pale girl was dancing; her face was like one of the divinities 
 which Grirodet has introduced into his immense composition 
 of French Warriors received by Ossian. Emilie fancied that 
 she recognized her as a distinguished milady who for some 
 months had been living on a neighboring estate. Her part-
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 117 
 
 ner was a lad of about fifteen, with red hands, and dressed 
 in nankeen trousers, a blue coat, and white shoes, which 
 showed that the damsel's love of dancing made her easy to 
 please in the matter of partners. Her movements did not 
 betray her apparent delicacy, but a faint flush already tinged 
 her white cheeks, and her complexion was gaining color. 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine went nearer, to be able to ex- 
 amine the young lady at the moment when she returned to 
 her place, while the side couples in their turn danced the 
 figure. But the stranger went up to the pretty dancer, and, 
 leaning over, said in a gentle but commanding tone: "Clara, 
 my child, do not dance any more." 
 
 Clara made a little pouting face, bent her head, and finally 
 smiled. When the dance was over, the young man wrapped 
 her in a cashmere shawl with a lover's care, and seated her 
 in a place sheltered from the wind. Very soon Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontaine, seeing them rise and walk round the place 
 as if preparing to leave, found means to follow them under 
 pretence of admiring the views from the garden. Her brother 
 lent himself with malicious good-humor to the divagations of 
 her rather eccentric wanderings. Emilie then saw the attrac- 
 tive couple get into an elegant Tilbury, by which stood a 
 mounted groom in livery. At the moment when, from his 
 high seat, the young man was drawing the reins even, she 
 caught a glance from his eye such as a man casts aimlessly 
 at the crowd; and then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction 
 of seeing him twice turn his head to look at her. The young 
 lady did the same. Was it from jealousy ? 
 
 "I imagine you have now seen enough of the garden," 
 said her brother. "We may go back to the dancing." 
 
 "I am ready," said she. "Do you think the girl can be 
 a relation of Lady Dudley's?" 
 
 "Lady Dudley may have some male relation staying 
 with her," said the Baron de Fontaine; "but a young 
 girl! No!" 
 
 Next day Mademoiselle de Fontaine expressed a wish to 
 take a ride. Then she gradually accustomed her old uncle
 
 118 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 and her brothers to escorting her in very early rides, excel- 
 lent, she declared, for her health. She had a particular fancy 
 for the environs of the hamlet where Lady Dudley was liv- 
 ing. Notwithstanding her cavalry manoeuvres, she did not 
 meet the stranger so soon as the eager search she pursued 
 might have allowed her to hope. She went several times 
 to the "Bal de Sceaux' : without seeing the young English- 
 man who had dropped from the skies to pervade and beau- 
 tify her dreams. Though nothing spurs on a young girl's 
 infant passion so effectually as an obstacle, there was a time 
 when Mademoiselle de Fontaine was on the point of giving 
 up her strange and secret search, almost despairing of the 
 success of an enterprise whose singularity may give some 
 idea of the boldness of her temper. In point of fact, she 
 might have wandered long about the village of Ch&tenay 
 without meeting her Unknown. The fair Clara since that 
 was the name Bmilie had overheard was not English, and 
 the stranger who escorted her did not dwell among the 
 flowery and fragrant bowers of Chatenay. 
 
 One evening Emilie, out riding with her uncle, who, 
 during the fine weather, had gained a fairly long truce 
 from the gout, met Lady "Dudley. The distinguished for- 
 eigner had with her in her open carriage Monsieur Van- 
 denesse. Emilie recognized the handsome couple, and her 
 suppositions were at once dissipated like a dream. An- 
 noyed, as any woman must be whose expectations are frus- 
 trated, she touched up her horse so suddenly that her uncle 
 had the greatest difficulty in following her, she had set off 
 at such a pace. 
 
 "I am too old, it would seem, to understand these youth- 
 ful spirits," said the old sailor to himself as he put his horse 
 to a canter; "or perhaps young people are not what they used 
 to be. But what ails my niece ? Now she is walking at a 
 foot-pace like a gendarme on patrol in the Paris streets. 
 One might fancy she wanted to outflank that worthy man, 
 who looks to me like an author dreaming over his poetry, 
 for he has, I think, a notebook in his hand. My word, I
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 119 
 
 am a great simpleton ! Is not that the very young man we 
 are in search of!" 
 
 At this idea the old admiral moderated his horse's pace 
 so as to follow his niece without making any noise. He had 
 played too many pranks in the years 1771 and soon after, a 
 time of our history when gallantry was held in honor, not 
 to guess at once that by the merest chance Emilie had met 
 the Unknown of the Sceaux gardens. In spite of the film 
 which age had drawn over his gray eyes, the Comte de Ker- 
 garouet could recognize the signs of extreme agitation in his 
 niece, under the unmoved expression she tried to give to her 
 features. The girl's piercing eyes were fixed in a sort of dull 
 amazement on the stranger, who quietly walked on in front 
 of her. 
 
 "Ay, that's it," thought the sailor. "She is following 
 him as a pirate follows a merchantman. Then, when she 
 has lost sight of him, she will be in despair at not knowing 
 who it is she is in love with, and whether he is a marquis 
 or a shopkeeper. Really these young heads need an old 
 fogy like me always by their side ..." 
 
 He unexpectedly spurred his horse in such a way as to 
 make his niece's bolt, and rode so hastily between her and 
 the young man on foot that he obliged him to fall back on 
 to the grassy bank which rose from the roadside. Then, 
 abruptly drawing up, the Count exclaimed: "Couldn't you 
 get out of the way?" 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Monsieur. But I did not know that 
 it lay with me to apologize to you because you almost rode 
 me down." 
 
 "There, enough of that, my good fellow!" replied the 
 sailor harshly, in a sneering tone that was nothing less 
 than insulting. At the same time the Count raised his 
 hunting crop as if to strike his horse, and touched the 
 young fellow's shoulder, saying, "A liberal citizen is a 
 reasoner; every reasoner should be prudent." 
 
 The young man went up the bankside as he heard the 
 sarcasm; then he crossed his arms, and said in an excited
 
 120 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 tone of voice, "I cannot suppose, Monsieur, as I look at 
 your white hairs, that you still amuse yourself by provok- 
 ing duels " 
 
 "White hairs!" cried the sailor, interrupting him. 
 "You lie in your throat. They are only gray." 
 
 A quarrel thus begun had in a few seconds become so 
 fierce that the younger man forgot the moderation he had 
 tried to preserve. Just as the Comte de Kergarouet saw 
 his niece coming back to them with every sign of the great- 
 est uneasiness, he told his antagonist his name, bidding 
 him keep silence before the young lady intrusted to his 
 care. The stranger could not help smiling as he gave a 
 visiting card to the old man, desiring him to observe that 
 he was living in a country-house at Chevreuse; and, after 
 pointing this out to him, he hurried away. 
 
 "You very nearly damaged that poor young counter- 
 jumper, my dear," said the Count, advancing hastily to 
 meet Emilie. "Do you not know how to hold your horse 
 in ? And there you leave me to compromise my dignity 
 in order to screen your folly; whereas if you had but 
 stopped, one of your looks, or one of your pretty speeches 
 one of those you can make so prettily when you are not 
 pert would have set everything right, even if you had 
 broken his arm." 
 
 "But, my dear uncle, it was your horse, not mine, that 
 caused the accident. I really think you can no longer 
 ride; you are not so good a horseman as you were last 
 year. But instead of talking nonsense " 
 
 "Nonsense, by Gad! Is it nothing to be so impertinent 
 to your uncle ? ' ' 
 
 "Ought we not to go on and inquire if the young man is 
 hurt? He is limping, uncle, only look!" 
 
 "No, he is running; I rated him soundly." 
 
 "Oh, yes, uncle; I know you there!" 
 
 "Stop," said the Count, pulling Emilie 's horse by the 
 bridle, "I do not see the necessity of making advances to 
 some shopkeeper who is only too lucky to have been
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 121 
 
 thrown down by a charming young lady, or the com- 
 mander of 'La Belle-Poule. ' ' 
 
 14 Why do you think he is anything so common, my dear 
 uncle ? He seems to me to have very fine manners." 
 
 ''Everyone has manners nowadays, my dear. " 
 
 "No, uncle, not every one has the air and style which 
 come of the habit of frequenting drawing-rooms, and I am 
 ready to lay a bet with you that the young man is of noble 
 birth." 
 
 "You had not long to study him." 
 
 "No, but it is not the first time I have seen him." 
 
 "Nor is it the first time you have looked for him," re- 
 plied the admiral with a laugh. 
 
 Emilie colored. Her uncle amused himself for some time 
 with her embarrassment; then he said: "Emilie, you know 
 that I love you as my own child, precisely because you are 
 the only member of the family who has the legitimate pride 
 of high birth. Devil take it, child, who could have believed 
 that sound principles would become so rare ? Well, I will 
 be your confidant. My dear child, I see that this young 
 gentleman is not indifferent to you. Hush I All the family 
 would laugh at us if we sailed under the wrong flag. You 
 know what that means. We two will keep our secret, and I 
 promise to bring him straight into the drawing-room." 
 
 "When, uncle?" 
 
 "To-morrow." 
 
 "But, my dear uncle, I am not committed to any- 
 thing?" 
 
 "Nothing whatever, and you may bombard him, set fire 
 to him, and leave him to founder like an old hulk if you 
 choose. He won't be the first, I fancy?" 
 
 ''You are kind, uncle 1" 
 
 As soon as the Count got home he put on his glasses, 
 quietly took the card out of his pocket, and read, "Maxi- 
 milien Longueville, Rue du Sentier." 
 
 "Make yourself happy, my dear niece," he said to 
 Emilie, "you may hook him with an easy conscience; he 
 Vol. A BALZAC 6
 
 122 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 belongs to one of our historical families, and if he is not a 
 peer of France, he infallibly will be." 
 
 "How do you know so much^" 
 
 "That is iny secret." 
 
 "Then do you know his name?" 
 
 The old man bowed his gray head, which was not unlike 
 a gnarled oak-stump, with a few leaves fluttering about it, 
 withered by autumnal frosts; and his niece immediately 
 began to try the ever-new power of her coquettish arts. 
 Long familiar with the secret of cajoling the old man, she 
 lavished on him the most childlike caresses, the tenderest 
 names; she even went so far as to kiss him to induce him 
 to divulge so important a secret. The old man, who spent 
 his life in playing off these scenes on his niece, often pay- 
 ing lor them with a present of jewelry, or by giving her 
 his box at the opera, this time amused himself with her en- 
 treaties, and, above all, her caresses. But as he spun c ut 
 this pleasure too long, Bmilie grew angry, passed from 
 coaxing to sarcasm and sulks; then, urged by curiosity, 
 she recovered herself. The diplomatic admiral extracted 
 a solemn promise from his niece that she would for the 
 future be gentler, less noisy, and less wilful, that she would 
 spend less, and, above all, tell him everything. The treaty 
 being concluded, and signed by a kiss impressed on Emilie's 
 white brow, he led her into a corner of the room, drew her 
 on to his knee, held the card under his thumbs so as to 
 hide it, and then uncovered the letters one by one, spelling 
 the name of Longueville; but he firmly refused to show her 
 anything more. 
 
 This incident added to the intensity of Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine's secret sentiment, and during chief part of the 
 night she evolved the most brilliant pictures from the 
 dreams with which she had fed her hopes. At last, 
 thanks to chance, to which she had so often appealed, 
 Emilie could now see something very unlike a chimera at 
 the fountain-head of the imaginary wealth with which she 
 gilded her married life. Ignorant, as all young girls are,
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 
 
 of the perils of love and marriage, she was passionately- 
 captivated by the externals of marriage and love. Is not 
 this as much as to say that her feeling had birth like all the 
 feelings of extreme youth sweet but cruel mistakes, which 
 exert a fatal influence on the lives of young girls so inex- 
 perienced as to trust their "own judgment to take care of 
 their future happiness? 
 
 Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had 
 hastened to Ihevreuse. On recognizing, in the courtyard 
 of an elegant little villa, the young man he had so deter- 
 minedly insulted the day before, he went up to him with 
 the pressing politeness of men of the old court. 
 
 "Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I 
 should have a brush, at the age of seventy -three, with the 
 son, or the grandson, of one of my best friends ? I am a 
 vice-admiral, Monsieur; is not that as much as to say that 
 I think no more of fighting a duel than of smoking a cigar? 
 Why, in my time, no two young men could be intimate till 
 they had seen the color of their blood! But 'sdeath, sir, 
 last evening, sailor-like, I had taken a drop too much grog 
 on board, and I ran you down. Shake hands; I would 
 rather take a hundred rebuffs from a Longueville than cause 
 his family the smallest regret." 
 
 However coldly the young man tried to behave to the 
 Comte de Kergarouet, he could not long resist the frank 
 cordiality of his manner, and presently gave him his 
 hand. 
 
 "You were going out riding," said the Count. "Do not 
 let me detain you. But, unless you have other plans, I beg 
 you will come to dinner to-day- at the Villa Planat. My 
 nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man it is essential 
 that you should know. Ah, ha! And I propose to make 
 up to you for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of 
 the prettiest women in Paris. So, so, young man, your 
 brow is clearing! I am fond of young people, and I like 
 to see them happy. Their happiness reminds me of the 
 good times of my youth, when adventures were not lack-
 
 124 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ing, any more than duels. We were gay dogs then! Now- 
 adays you think and worry over everything, as though 
 there had never been a fifteenth and a sixteenth century." 
 
 "But, Monsieur, are we not in the right? The six- 
 teenth century only gave religious liberty to Europe, and 
 the nineteenth will give it political lib " 
 
 "Oh, we will not talk politics. I am a perfect old woman 
 ultra you see. But I do not hinder young men from being 
 revolutionary, so long as they leave the King at liberty to 
 disperse their assemblies." 
 
 When they had gone a little way, and the Count and 
 his companion were in the heart of the woods, the old 
 sailor pointed out a slender young birch sapling, pulled up 
 his horse, took out one of his pistols, and the bullet was 
 lodged in the heart of the tree, fifteen paces away. 
 
 "You see, my dear fellow, that I am not afraid of a 
 duel," he said with comical gravity, as he looked at Mon- 
 sieur Longueville. 
 
 "Nor am I," replied the young man, promptly cocking 
 his pistol; he aimed at the hole made by the Comte's bullet, 
 and sent his own in close to it. 
 
 "That is what I call a well-educated man," cried the 
 admiral with enthusiasm. 
 
 During this ride with the youth, whom he already re- 
 garded as his nephew, he found endless opportunities of 
 catechising him on all the trifles of which a perfect knowl- 
 edge constituted, according to his private code, an accom- 
 plished gentleman. 
 
 "Have you any debts?" he at last asked of his com- 
 panion, after many other inquiries. 
 
 "No, Monsieur." 
 
 "What, you pay for all you have?" 
 
 "Punctually; otherwise we should lose our credit, and 
 every sort of respect. ' ' 
 
 "But at least you have more than one mistress? Ah, 
 you blush, comrade! Well, manners have changed. All 
 these notions of lawful order, Kantism, and liberty have
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 125 
 
 spoiled the young men. You have no Guimard now, no 
 Blithe*, no creditors and you know nothing of heraldry; 
 why, my dear young friend, you are not fully fledged. 
 The man who does not sow his wild oats in the spring 
 sows them in the winter. If I have but eighty thousand 
 francs a year at the age of seventy, it is because I ran 
 through the capital at thirty. Oh! with my wife in de- 
 cency and honor. However, your imperfections will not 
 interfere with my introducing you at the Pavilion Planat. 
 Kemember you have promised to come, and I shall expect 
 you." 
 
 "What an odd little old man!" said Longueville to him- 
 self. "He is so jolly and hale ; but though he wishes to seem 
 a good fellow, I will not trust him too far." 
 
 Next day, at about four o'clock, when the house party 
 were dispersed in the drawing-rooms and billiard-room, a 
 servant announced to the inhabitants of the Villa Planat, 
 "Monsieur de Longueville." On hearing the name of the 
 old admiral's protege, every one, down to the player who 
 was about to miss his stroke, rushed in, as much to study 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine's countenance as to judge of this 
 phoenix of men, who had earned honorable mention to the 
 detriment of so many rivals. A simple but elegant style of 
 dress, an air of perfect ease, polite manners, a pleasant voice 
 with a ring in it which found a response in the hearer's heart- 
 strings, won the goodwill of the family for Monsieur Longue- 
 ville. He did not seem unaccustomed to the luxury of the 
 Receiver-General's ostentatious mansion. Though his con- 
 versation was that of a man of the world, it was easy to dis- 
 cern that he had had a brilliant education, and that his 
 knowledge was as thorough as it was extensive. He knew 
 so well the right thing to say in a discussion on naval archi- 
 tecture, trivial, it is true, started by the old admiral, that one 
 of the ladies remarked that he must have passed through the 
 Ecole Polytechnique. 
 
 "And I think, madame, " he replied, "that I may regard 
 it as an honor to have got in."
 
 126 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 In spite of urgent pressing, he refused politely but firmly 
 to he kept to dinner, and put an end to the persistence of the 
 ladies by saying that he was the Hippocrates of his young 
 sister, whose delicate health required great care. 
 
 "Monsieur is perhaps a medical man?" asked one of 
 Emilie's sisters-in-law with ironical meaning. 
 
 "Monsieur has left the Ecole Polytechnique," Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontaine kindly put in; her face had flushed with 
 richer color, as she learned that the young lady of the ball 
 was Monsieur Longueville's sister. 
 
 "But, my dear, he may be a doctor and yet have been to 
 the Ecole Polytechnique is it not so, Monsieur?" 
 
 "There is nothing to prevent it, Madame," replied the 
 young man. 
 
 Every eye was on Emilie, who was gazing with uneasy 
 curiosity at the fascinating stranger. She breathed more 
 freely when he added, not without a smile, "I have not the 
 honor of belonging to the medical profession; and I even 
 gave up going into the Engineers in order to preserve my 
 independence." 
 
 "And you did well," said the Count. "But how can you 
 regard it as an honor to be a doctor?" added the Breton 
 nobleman. "Ah, my young friend, such a man as you " 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, I respect every profession that has 
 a useful purpose. ' ' 
 
 "Well, in that we agree. You respect those professions, 
 I imagine, as a young man respects a dowager. ' ' 
 
 Monsieur Longueville made his visit neither too long nor 
 too short. He left at the moment when he saw that he had 
 pleased everybody, and that each one's curiosity about him 
 had been roused. 
 
 "He is a cunning rascal!" said the Count, coming into 
 the drawing-room after seeing him to the door. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, who had been in the secret 
 of this call, had dressed with some care to attract the young 
 man's eye; but she had the little disappointment of finding 
 that he did not bestow on her so much attention as she
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 127 
 
 thought she deserved. The family were a good deal sur- 
 prised at the silence into which she had retired. Emilie 
 generally displayed all her arts for the benefit of new-comers, 
 her witty prattle, and the inexhaustible eloquence of her 
 eyes and attitudes. Whether it was that the young man's 
 pleasing voice and attractive manners had charmed her, that 
 she was seriously in love, and that this feeling had worked 
 a change in her, her demeanor had lost all its affectations. 
 Being simple and natural, she must, no doubt, have seemed 
 more beautiful. Some of her sisters, and an old lady, a 
 friend of the family, saw in this behavior a refinement of art. 
 They supposed that Emilie, judging the man worthy of her, 
 intended to delay revealing her merits, so as to dazzle him 
 suddenly when she found that she pleased him. Every mem- 
 ber of the family was curious to know what this capricious 
 creature thought of the stranger; but when, during dinner, 
 every one chose to endow Monsieur Longueville with some 
 fresh quality which no one else had discovered, Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontaine sat for some time in silence. A sarcastic 
 remark of her uncle's suddenly roused her from her apathy; 
 she said, somewhat epigrammatically, that such heavenlj 
 perfection must cover some great defect, and that she would 
 take good care how she judged so gifted a man at first sight. 
 
 "Those who please everybody, please nobody," she 
 added; "and the worst of all faults is to have none." 
 
 Like all girls who are in love, Emilie cherished the hope 
 of being able to hide her feelings at the bottom of her heart, 
 by putting the Argus-eyes that watched on the wrong tack; 
 but by the end of a fortnight there was not a member of the 
 large family party who was not in this little domestic secret. 
 When Monsieur Longueville called for the third time, Emilie 
 believed it was chiefly for her sake. This discovery gave 
 her such intoxicating pleasure that she was startled as she 
 reflected on it. There was something in it very painful to 
 her pride. Accustomed as she was to be the centre of her 
 world, she was obliged to recognize a force that attracted 
 her outside herself; she tried to resist, but she could not
 
 128 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 chase from her heart the fascinating image of the young 
 man. 
 
 Then came some anxiety. Two of Monsieur Longue- 
 yille's qualities, very adverse to general curiosity, and es- 
 pecially to Mademoiselle de Fontaine's, were unexpected 
 modesty and discretion. He never spoke of himself, of his 
 pursuits, or of his family. The hints Emilie threw out in 
 conversation, and the traps she laid to extract from the 
 young fellow some facts concerning himself, he could evade 
 with the adroitness of a diplomatist concealing a secret. If 
 she talked of painting, he responded as a connoisseur; if she 
 sat down to play, he showed without conceit that he was a 
 very good pianist; one evening he delighted all the party 
 by joining his delightful voice to Emilie 's in one of Cima- 
 rosa's charming duets. But when they tried to find out 
 whether he were a professional singer, he baffled them so 
 pleasantly that he did not afford these women, practiced 
 as they were in the art of reading feelings, the least chance 
 of discovering to what social sphere he belonged. However 
 boldly the old uncle cast the boarding-hooks over the vessel, 
 Longueville slipped away cleverly, so as to preserve the 
 charm of mystery; and it was easy to him to remain the 
 "handsome Stranger" at the Villa, because curiosity never 
 overstepped the bounds of good breeding. 
 
 Emilie, distracted by this reserve, hoped to get more out 
 of the sister than the brother, in the form of confidences. 
 Aided by her uncle, who was as skilful in such manoeuvres 
 as in handling a ship, she endeavored to bring upon the 
 scene the hitherto unseen figure of Mademoiselle Clara 
 Longueville. The family party at the Villa Planat soon 
 expressed the greatest desire to make the acquaintance of 
 so amiable a young lady, and to give her some amusement. 
 An informal dance was proposed and accepted. The ladies 
 did not despair of making a young girl of sixteen talk. 
 
 Notwithstanding the little clouds piled up by suspicion 
 and created by curiosity, a light of joy shone in Emilie's 
 soul, for she found life delicious when thus intimately con-
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 
 
 nected with another than herself. She began to understand 
 the relations of life. Whether it is that happiness makes us 
 better, or that she was too fully occupied to torment other 
 people, she became less caustic, more gentle, and indulgent. 
 This change in her temper enchanted and amazed her family. 
 Perhaps, at last, her selfishness was being transformed to 
 love. It was a deep delight to her to look for the arrival 
 of her bashful and unconfessed adorer. Though they had 
 not uttered a word of passion, she knew that she was loved, 
 and with what art did she not lead the stranger to unlock 
 the stores of his information, which proved to be varied! 
 She perceived that she, too, was being studied, and that 
 made her endeavor to remedy the defects her education had 
 encouraged. Was not this her first homage to love, and a 
 bitter reproach to herself ? She desired to please, and she 
 was enchanting; she loved, and she was idolized. Her 
 family, knowing that her pride would sufficiently protect 
 her, gave her enough freedom to enjoy the little childish 
 delights which give to first love its charm and its violence. 
 More than once the young man and Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 taine walked, tete-d-tete, in the avenues of the garden, where 
 nature was dressed like a woman going to a ball. More than 
 once they had those conversations, aimless and meaningless, 
 in which the emptiest phrases are those which cover the deep- 
 est feelings. They often admired together the setting sun 
 and its gorgeous coloring. They gathered daisies to pull 
 the petals off, and sang the most impassioned duets, using 
 the notes set down by Pergolesi or Rossini as faithful inter- 
 preters to express their secrets. 
 
 The day of the dance came. Clara Longueville and her 
 brother, whom the servants persisted in honoring with the 
 noble de, were the principal guests. For the first time in her 
 life Mademoiselle de Fontaine felt pleasure in a young girl's 
 triumph. She lavished on Clara in all sincerity the gracious 
 petting and little attentions which women generally give 
 each other only to excite the jealousy of men. Emilie had, 
 indeed, an object in view; she wanted to discover some
 
 130 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 secrets. But, being a girl, Mademoiselle Longueville showed 
 even more mother-wit than her brother, for she did not even 
 look as if she were hiding a secret, and kept the conversation 
 to subjects unconnected with personal interests, while, at the 
 same time, she gave it so much charm that Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine was almost envious, and called her "the Siren." 
 Though Emilie had intended to make Clara talk, it was 
 Clara, in fact, who questioned Emilie; she had meant to 
 judge her, and she was judged by her; she was constantly 
 provoked to find that she had betrayed her own character 
 in some reply which Clara had extracted from her, while her 
 modest and candid manner prohibited any suspicion of per- 
 fidy. There was a moment when Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 seemed sorry for an ill-judged sally against the commonalty 
 to which Clara had led her. 
 
 "Mademoiselle, " said the sweet child, "I have heard so 
 much of you from Maximilien that I had the keenest desire 
 to know you, out of affection for him; but is not a wish to 
 know you a wish to love you?" 
 
 ' ' My dear Clara, I feared I might have displeased you by 
 speaking thus of people who are not of noble birth." 
 
 "Oh, be quite easy. That sort of discussion is pointless 
 in these days. As for me, it does not affect me. I am beside 
 the question." 
 
 Ambitious as the answer might seem, it filled Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontaine with the deepest joy; for, like all infatuated 
 people, she explained it, as oracles are explained, in the sense 
 that harmonized with her wishes; she began dancing again 
 in higher spirits than ever, as she watched Longueville, 
 whose figure and grace almost surpassed those of her imag- 
 inary ideal. She felt added satisfaction in believing him to 
 be well born, her black eyes sparkled, and she danced with 
 all the pleasure that comes of dancing in the presence of 
 the being we love. The couple had never understood each 
 other so well as at this moment; more than once they felt 
 their finger tips thrill and tremble as they were married in 
 the figures of the dance.
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 131 
 
 The early autumn had come to the handsome pair, in the 
 midst of country festivities and pleasures; they had aban- 
 doned themselves softly to the tide of the sweetest sentiment 
 in life, strengthening it by a thousand little incidents which 
 any one can imagine ; for love is in some respects always the 
 same. They studied each other through it all, as much as 
 lovers can. 
 
 "Well, well; a flirtation never turned so quickly into 
 a love match," said the old uncle, who kept an eye on the 
 two young people as a naturalist watches an insect in the 
 microscope. 
 
 This speech alarmed Monsieur and Madame Fontaine. 
 The old Vende'en had ceased to be so indifferent to his 
 daughter's prospects as he had promised to be. He went 
 to Paris to seek information, and found none. Uneasy at 
 this mystery, and not yet knowing what might be the out- 
 come of the inquiry which he had begged a Paris friend to 
 institute with reference to the family of Longueville, he 
 thought it his duty to warn his daughter to behave pru- 
 dently. The fatherly admonition was received with mock 
 submission spiced with irony. 
 
 "At least, my dear Emilie, if you love him, do not own 
 it to him. ' ' 
 
 "My dear father, I certainly do love him; but I will 
 await your permission before I tell him so." 
 
 "But remember, Emilie, you know nothing of his family 
 or his pursuits. ' ' 
 
 "I may be ignorant, but I am content to be. But, father, 
 you wished to see me married ; you left me at liberty to make 
 my choice; my choice is irrevocably made what more is 
 needful?" 
 
 "It is needful to ascertain, my dear, whether the man of 
 your choice is the son of a peer of France," the venerable 
 gentleman retorted sarcastically. 
 
 Emilie was silent for a moment. She presently raised 
 her head, looked at her father, and said somewhat anxiously, 
 "Are not the Longuevilles ?"
 
 132 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "They became extinct in the person of the old Due de 
 Kostein-Limbour, who perished on the scaffold in 1793. 
 He was the last representative of the last and younger 
 branch." 
 
 "But, papa, there are some very good families descended 
 from bastards. The history of France swarms with princes 
 -bearing the bar sinister on their shields." 
 
 "Your ideas are much changed," said the old man, with 
 a smile. 
 
 The following day was the last that the Fontaine family 
 were to spend at the Pavilion Planat. Emilie, greatly dis- 
 turbed by her father's warning, awaited with extreme im- 
 patience the hour at which young Longueville was in the 
 habit of coming, to wring some explanation from him. She 
 went out after dinner, and walked alone across the shrub- 
 bery toward an arbor fit for lovers, where she knew that the 
 eager youth would seek her; and as she hastened thither she 
 considered of the best way to discover so important a matter 
 without compromising herself a rather difficult thing ! Hith- 
 erto no direct avowal had sanctioned the feelings which bound 
 her to this stranger. Like Maximilien, she had secretly en- 
 joyed the sweetness of first love; but both were equally proud, 
 and each feared to confess that love. 
 
 Maximilien Longueville, to whom Clara had communi- 
 cated her not unfounded suspicions as to Emilie' s character, 
 was by tarns carried away by the violence of a young man's 
 passion, and held back by a wish to know and test the woman 
 to whom he would be intrusting his happiness. His love had 
 not hindered him from perceiving in Emilie the prejudices 
 which marred her young nature; but before attempting to 
 counteract them, he wished to be sure that she loved him, 
 for he would no sooner risk the fate of his love than of his 
 life. He had, therefore, persistently kept a silence to which 
 his looks, his behavior, and his smallest actions gave the lie. 
 
 On her side the self-respect natural to a young girl, aug- 
 mented in Mademoiselle de Fontaine by the monstrous van- 
 ity founded on her birth and beauty, kept her from meeting
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 133 
 
 the declaration half-way, which her growing passion some- 
 times urged her to invite. Thus the lovers had instinctively 
 understood the situation without explaining to each other 
 their secret motives. There are times in life when such 
 vagueness pleases youthful minds. Just" because each had 
 postponed speaking too long, they seemed to be playing a 
 cruel game of suspense. He was trying to discover whether 
 he was beloved, by the effort any confession would cost his 
 haughty mistress; she every minute hoped that he would 
 break a too respectful silence. 
 
 Emilie, seated on a rustic bench, was reflecting on all 
 that had happened in these three months full of enchant- 
 ment. Her father's suspicions were the last that could ap- 
 peal to her; she even disposed of them at once by two or 
 three of those reflections natural to an inexperienced girl, 
 which, to her, seemed conclusive. Above all, she was con- 
 vinced that it was impossible that she should deceive her- 
 self. All the summer through she had not been able to 
 detect in Maximilien a single gesture, or a single word, 
 which could indicate a vulgar origin or vulgar occupations; 
 nay more, his manner of discussing things revealed a man 
 devoted to the highest interests of the nation. "Besides," 
 she reflected, "an office clerk, a banker, or a merchant, 
 would not be at leisure to spend a whole season in paying 
 his addresses to me in the midst of woods and fields; wast- 
 ing his time as freely as a nobleman who has life before him 
 free of all care. ' ' 
 
 She had given herself up to meditations far more interest- 
 ing to her than these preliminary thoughts, when a slight rust- 
 ling in the leaves announced to her that Maximilien had been 
 watching her for a minute, not probably without admiration. 
 
 "Do you know that it is very wrong to take a young girl 
 thus unawares?" she asked him, smiling. 
 
 "Especially when they are busy with their secrets," re- 
 plied Maximilien archly. 
 
 "Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have 
 yours. ' '
 
 134 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Then you really were thinking of your secrets?" he 
 went on, laughing. 
 
 "No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know." 
 
 "But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine, ' ' cried 
 the young man, softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine's 
 hand and drawing it through his arm. 
 
 After walking a few steps they found themselves under 
 a clump of trees which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped 
 in a haze of red and brown. This touch of natural magic 
 lent a certain solemnity to the moment. The young man's 
 free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing of his 
 surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie's arm, 
 stirred her to an emotion that was all the more disturbing 
 because it was produced by the simplest and most innocent 
 circumstances. The restraint under which young girls of 
 the upper class live gives incredible force to any explosion 
 of feeling, and to meet an impassioned lover is one of the 
 greatest dangers they can encounter. Never had Emilie 
 and Maximilien allowed their eyes to say so much that 
 they dared never speak. Carried away by this intoxica- 
 tion, they easily forgot the petty stipulations of pride, and 
 the cold hesitancies of suspicion. At first, indeed, they 
 could only express themselves by a pressure of hands which 
 interpreted their happy thoughts. 
 
 After slowly pacing a few steps in long silence, Madem- 
 oiselle de Fontaine spoke. "Monsieur, I have a question 
 to ask you," she said, trembling, and in an agitated voice. 
 "But, remember, I beg, that it is in a manner compulsory on 
 me, from the rather singular position I am in with regard 
 to my family. ' ' 
 
 A pause, terrible to Emilie, followed these sentences, 
 which she had almost stammered out. During the minute' 
 while it lasted, the girl, haughty as she was, dared not meet 
 the flashing eye of the man she loved, for she was secretly 
 conscious of the meanness of the next words she added: 
 "Are you of noble birth?" As soon as the words were 
 spoken she wished herself at the bottom of a lake.
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 135 
 
 "Mademoiselle," Longueville gravely replied, and his 
 face assumed a sort of stern dignity, "I promise to answer 
 you truly as soon as you shall have answered in all sincerity 
 a question I will put to you!" He released her arm, and 
 the girl suddenly felt alone in the world, as he said: "What 
 is your object in questioning me as to my birth?" 
 
 She stood motionless, cold, and speechless. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," Maximilien went on, "let us go no 
 further if we do not understand each other. I love you," 
 he said, in a voice of deep emotion. "Well, then," he 
 added, as he heard the joyful exclamation she could not 
 suppress, "why ask me if I am of noble birth?" 
 
 "Could he speak so if he were not?" cried a voice within 
 her, which Emilie believed came from the depths of her 
 heart. She gracefully raised her head, seemed to find new 
 life in the young man's gaze, and held out her hand as if to 
 renew the alliance. 
 
 "You thought I cared very much for dignities?" said she 
 with keen archness. 
 
 "1 have no titles to offer my wife," he replied, in a half- 
 sportive, half -serious tone. "But if I choose one of high 
 rank, and among women whom a wealthy home has accus- 
 tomed to the luxury and pleasures of a fine fortune, I know 
 what such a choice requires of me. Love gives everything, " 
 he added lightly, "but only to lovers. Once married, they 
 need something more than the vault of heaven and the carpet 
 of a meadow." 
 
 "He is rich," she reflected. "As to titles, perhaps he 
 only wants to try me. He has been told that I am mad 
 about titles, and bent on marrying none but a peer's son. 
 My priggish sisters have played me that trick. I assure 
 you, Monsieur," she said aloud, "that I have had very ex- 
 travagant ideas about life and the world; but now," she 
 added pointedly, looking at him in a perfectly distracting 
 way, "I know where true riches are to be found for a wife." 
 
 "I must believe that you are speaking from the depths 
 of your heart," he said, with gentle gravity. "But this
 
 136 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 winter, dear my Bmilie, in less than two months perhaps, 
 I may be proud of what I shall have to offer you if you care 
 for the pleasures of wealth. This is the only secret I shall 
 keep locked here," and he laid his hand on his heart, "for 
 on its success my happiness depends. I dare not say ours." 
 
 "Yes, yes, ours!" 
 
 Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their 
 way back to rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine 
 had never found her lover more amiable or wittier; his light 
 figure, his engaging manners, seemed to her more charming 
 than ever, since the conversation which had made her to 
 some extent the possessor of a heart worthy to be the envy 
 of every woman. They sang an Italian duet with so much 
 expression that the audience applauded enthusiastically. 
 Their adieux were in a conventional tone, which concealed 
 their happiness. In short, this day had been to Emilie like 
 a chain binding her more closely than ever to the Stranger's 
 fate. The strength and dignity he had displayed in the scene 
 when they had confessed their feelings had perhaps impressed 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine with the respect without which 
 there is no true love. 
 
 When she was left alone in the drawing-room with her 
 father, the old man went up to her affectionately, held her 
 hands, and asked her whether she had gained any light as 
 to Monsieur Longueville's family and fortune. 
 
 "Yes, my dear father," she replied, "and I am happier 
 than I could have hoped. In short, Monsieur de Longue- 
 ville is the only man I could ever marry." 
 
 "Very well, Emilie," said the Count, "then I know what 
 remains for me to do. ' ' 
 
 "Do you know of any impediment?" she asked, in sin- 
 cere alarm. 
 
 "My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to 
 me; but unless he is not a man of honor, so long as you love 
 him, he is as dear to me as a son. ' ' 
 
 "Not a man of honor 1" exclaimed Emilie. "As to that, 
 I am quite easy. My uncle, who introduced him to us, will
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 137 
 
 answer for him. Say, my dear uncle, has he been a fili- 
 buster, an outlaw, a pirate?" 
 
 "I knew I should find myself in this fix!" cried the old 
 sailor, waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece 
 had vanished "like Saint-Elmo's fires," to use his favorite 
 expression. 
 
 "Well, uncle," Monsieur de Fontaine went on, "how 
 could you hide from us all you knew about this young man ? 
 You must have seen how anxious we have been. Is Mon- 
 sieur de Longueville a man of family ?" 
 
 "I don't know him from Adam or Eve," said the Comte 
 de Kergarouet. "Trusting to that crazy child's tact, I got 
 him here by a method of my own. I know that the boy 
 shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts weJl, plays wonder- 
 fully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles 
 the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint- 
 Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. 
 He is as good an arithmetician as Bare'me, draws, dances, 
 and sings well. The devil's in it! what more do you want? 
 If that is not a perfect gentleman, find me a bourgeois who 
 knows all this, or any man who lives more nobly than he 
 does. Does he do anything, I ask you ? Does he compro- 
 mise his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down 
 before the upstarts you call Directors-General ? He walks 
 upright. He is a man, However, I have just found in my 
 waistcoat pocket the card he gave when he fancied I wanted 
 to cut his throat, poor innocent. Young men are very simple- 
 minded nowadays ! Here it is. ' ' 
 
 "Eue du Sentier, No. 5," said Monsieur de Fontaine, 
 trying to recall among all the information he had received 
 something which might concern the stranger. "What the 
 devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust & Co., whole- 
 sale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods, 
 live there. Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has an 
 interest in their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longue- 
 ville has but one son of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like 
 our man, and to whom he gave fifty thousand francs a year
 
 138 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 that he might marry a minister's daughter; he wants to be 
 made a peer like the rest of 'em. I never heard him men- 
 tion this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this 
 girl Clara ? Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call 
 himself Longueville. But is not the house of Palma, Wer- 
 brust & Co. half ruined by some speculation in Mexico or 
 the Indies? I will clear all this up." 
 
 "You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and 
 seem to account me a cipher," said the old admiral sud- 
 denly. "Don't you know that if he is a gentleman, I have 
 more than one bag in my hold that will stop any leak in his 
 fortune ? ' ' 
 
 "As to that, if he is a son of Longueville's, he will want 
 nothing; but," said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head 
 from side to side, "his father has not even washed off the 
 stains of his origin. Before the Kevolution he was an at- 
 torney, and the de he has since assumed no more belongs to 
 him than half of his fortune. ' ' 
 
 "Pooh! pooh! happy those whose fathers were hanged!" 
 cried the admiral gayly. 
 
 Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of 
 those fine mornings in the month of November which show 
 the Boulevard cleaned by the sharp cold of an early frost, 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a new style of fur 
 cape, of which she wished to set the fashion, went out with 
 two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to dis- 
 charge her most cutting remarks. The three women were 
 tempted to the drive, less by their desire to try a very ele- 
 gant carriage, and wear gowns which were to set the fash- 
 ions for the winter, than by their wish to see a cape which 
 a friend had observed in a handsome lace and linen shop at 
 the corner of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were 
 in the shop the Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the 
 sleeve, and pointed out to her Maximilien Longueville 
 seated behind the desk, and engaged in paying out the 
 change for a gold piece to one of the workwomen with
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 189 
 
 whom he seemed to be in consultation. The "handsome 
 stranger" held in his hand a parcel of patterns, which left 
 no doubt as to his honorable profession. 
 
 Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. 
 Thanks to the good breeding of the best society, she com- 
 pletely concealed the rage in her heart, and answered her 
 sister-in-law with the words, "I knew it," with a fulness of 
 intonation and inimitable decision which the most famous 
 actress of the time might have envied her. She went 
 straight up to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the 
 patterns in his pocket with distracting coolness, bowed to 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and came forward, looking at 
 her keenly. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," he said to the shop girl, who followed 
 him, looking very much disturbed, "I will send to settle 
 that account; my house deals in that way. But here," he 
 whispered into her ear, as he gave her a thousand-franc 
 note, "take this it is between ourselves. You will for- 
 give me, I trust, Mademoiselle," he added, turning to 
 Emilie. "You will kindly excuse the tyranny of business 
 matters." 
 
 "Indeed, Monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern 
 of mine," replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him 
 with a bold expression of sarcastic indifference which might 
 have made any one believe that she now saw him for the first 
 time. 
 
 "Do you really mean it?" asked Maximilien in a broken 
 voice. 
 
 Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. 
 These few words, spoken in an undertone, had escaped the 
 ears of her two sisters-in-law. When, after buying the 
 cape, the three ladies got into the carriage again, Emilie, 
 seated with her back to the horses, could not resist one last 
 comprehensive glance into the depths of the odious shop, 
 where she saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, 
 in the attitude of a man superior to the disaster that had 
 so suddenly fallen on him. Their eyes met and flashed im-
 
 140 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 placable looks. Each hoped to inflict a cruel wound on the 
 heart of a lover. In one instant they were as far apart as if 
 one had been in China and the other in Greenland. 
 
 Does not the breath of vanity wither everything ? Mad- 
 emoiselle de Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle 
 that can torture the heart of a young girl, reaped the rich- 
 est harvest of anguish that prejudice and narrow-mindedness 
 ever sowed in a human soul. Her face, but just now fresh 
 and velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red patches; 
 the paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to 
 turn green. Hoping to hide her despair from her sisters, 
 she would laugh as she pointed out some ridiculous dress 
 or passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She was 
 more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by 
 any satirical comments for which she might have revenged 
 herself. She exhausted her wit in trying to engage them 
 in a conversation, in which she tried to expend her fury in 
 senseless paradoxes, heaping on all men engaged in trade 
 the bitterest insults and witticisms in the worst taste. 
 
 On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at 
 first assumed a somewhat serious character. By the end 
 of a month the care of her parents and of the physician 
 restored her to her family. 
 
 Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough 
 to subdue Emilie's nature; but she insensibly fell into her 
 old habits and threw herself again into the world of fashion. 
 She declared that there was no disgrace in making a mis- 
 take. If she, like her father, had a vote in the Chamber, 
 she would move for an edict, she said, by which all mer- 
 chants, and especially dealers in calico, should be branded 
 on the forehead, like Berri sheep, down to the third genera- 
 tion. She wished that none but nobles should have a right 
 to wear the antique French costume, which was so becom- 
 ing to the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear her, it was a 
 misfortune for France, perhaps, that there was no outward 
 and visible difference between a merchant and a peer of 
 France. And a hundred more such pleasantries, easy to
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 141 
 
 imagine, were rapidly poured out when any accident brought 
 up the subject. 
 
 But those who loved Emilie could see through all her 
 banter a tinge of melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien 
 Longueville still reigned over that inexorable heart. Some- 
 times she would be as gentle as she had been during the brief 
 summer that had seen the birth of her love; sometimes, again, 
 she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her in- 
 equality of temper, which bad its source in suiferings at 
 once secret and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet 
 had some influence over her, thanks to his increased prodi- 
 gality, a kind of consolation which rarely fails of its effect 
 on a Parisian girl. 
 
 The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine ap- 
 peared was at the Neapolitan ambassador's. As she took 
 her place in the first quadrille she saw, a few yards away 
 from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded slightly to 
 her partner. 
 
 "Is that young man a friend of yours?" she asked, with 
 a scornful air. 
 
 "Only my brother," he replied. 
 
 Emilie could not help starting. "Ah!" he continued, 
 "and he is the noblest soul living " 
 
 "Do you know my name?" asked Emilie, eagerly -inter- 
 rupting him. 
 
 "No, Mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to re- 
 member a name which is on every lip I ought to say in 
 every heart. But I have a valid excuse. I have but just 
 arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who is in Paris 
 on leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his 
 amiable wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner. ' ' 
 
 "A perfect tragic mask!" said Emilie, after looking at 
 the ambassadress. 
 
 "And yet that is her ballroom face!" said the young 
 man, laughing. "I shall have to dance with her! So I 
 thought I might have some compensation." Mademoiselle 
 de Fontaine courtesied. "I was very much surprised," the
 
 142 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 voluble young secretary went on, "to find my brother here. 
 On arriving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill 
 in bed, and I counted on seeing him before coming to this 
 ball; but good policy will not always allow us to indulge 
 family affection. The Padrona della casa would not give 
 me time to call on my poor Maximilien." 
 
 "Then, Monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in dip- 
 lomatic employment?" 
 
 "No," said the attache", with a sigh, "the poor fellow 
 sacrificed himself for me. He and my sister Clara have re- 
 nounced their share of my father's fortune to make an eldest 
 son of me. My father dreams of a peerage, like all who vote 
 for the ministry. Indeed, it is promised him, ' ' he added in 
 an undertone. "After saving up a little capital my brother 
 joined a banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a spec- 
 ulation in Brazil which may make him a millionnaire. You 
 see me in the highest spirits at having been able, by my dip- 
 lomatic connections, to contribute to his success. I am im- 
 patiently expecting a despatch from the Brazilian Legation 
 which will help to lift the cloud from his brow. What do 
 you think of him ?" 
 
 "Well, your brother's face does not look to me like that 
 of a man busied with money matters." 
 
 The young attache* shot a scrutinizing glance at the ap- 
 parently calm face of his partner. 
 
 "What!" he exclaimed, with a smile, "can young ladies 
 read the thoughts of love behind a silent brow?" 
 
 "Your brother is in love, then?" she asked, betrayed 
 into a movement of curiosity. 
 
 "Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a 
 mother, wrote to me that he had fallen in love this summer 
 with a very pretty girl; but I have had no further news of 
 the affair. Would you believe that the poor boy used to 
 get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle his 
 business that he might be back by four o'clock in the 
 country where the lady was ? In fact, he ruined a very 
 nice thoroughbred that I had given him. Forgive my
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 143 
 
 chatter, Mademoiselle; I have but just come home from 
 Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I 
 have been weaned from French faces, and satiated with 
 Germans, to such a degree that, I believe, in my patriotic 
 mania, I could talk to the chimeras on a French candle- 
 stick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve unbecoming in 
 a diplomatist, the fault is yours, Mademoiselle. Was it 
 not you who pointed out my brother? When he is the 
 theme I become inexhaustible. I should like to proclaim 
 to all the world how good and generous he is. He gave 
 up no less than a hundred thousand francs a year, the in- 
 come from the Longueville property." 
 
 If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these 
 important revelations, it was partly due to the skill with 
 which she continued to question her confiding partner from 
 the moment when she found that he was the brother of her 
 scorned lover. 
 
 "And could you, without being grieved, see your brother 
 selling muslin and calico?" asked Emilie, at the end of the 
 third figure of the quadrille. 
 
 "How do you know that?" asked the attache. "Thank 
 God, though I pour out a flood of words, I have already ac- 
 quired the art of not telling more than J intend, like all the 
 other diplomatic apprentices I know." 
 
 "You told me, I assure you." 
 
 Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine with a surprise that was full of perspicacity. A 
 suspicion flashed upon him. He glanced inquiringly from 
 his brother to his partner, guessed everything, clasped his 
 hands, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and began to laugh, 
 saying, "I am an idiot! You are the handsomest person 
 here: my brother keeps stealing glances at you; he is 
 dancing in spite of his illness, and you pretend not to see 
 him. Make him happy," he added, as he led her back to 
 her old uncle. "I shall not be jealous, but I shall always 
 shiver a little at calling you my sister " 
 
 The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to
 
 144 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 each other as they were to themselves. At about two in 
 the morning, refreshments were served in an immense cor- 
 ridor, where, to leave persons of the same coterie free to 
 meet each other, the tables were arranged as in a restau- 
 rant. By one of those accidents which always happen to 
 lovers, Mademoiselle de Fontaine found herself at a table 
 next 'to that at which the more important guests were 
 seated. Maximilien was one of the group. Emilie, who 
 lent an attentive ear to her neighbor's conversation, over- 
 heard one of those dialogues into which a young woman so 
 easily falls with a young man who has the grace and style 
 of Maximilien Longueville. The lady talking to the young 
 banker was a Neapolitan Duchess, whose eyes shot light- 
 ning flashes, and whose skin had the sheen of satin. The 
 intimate terms on which Longueville affected to be with 
 her stung Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more because 
 she had just given her lover back twenty times as much 
 tenderness as she had ever felt for him before. 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur, in my country true love can make 
 every kind of sacrifice," the Duchess was saying, with a 
 simper. 
 
 "You have more passion than Frenchwomen," said Max- 
 imilien, whose burning gaze fell on Emilie. "They are all 
 vanity." 
 
 "Monsieur," Emilie eagerly interposed, "is it not very 
 wrong to calumniate your own country ? Devotion is to be 
 found in every nation." 
 
 "Do you imagine, Mademoiselle," retorted the Italian, 
 with a sardonic smile, "that a Parisian would be capable 
 of following her lover all over the world?" 
 
 "Oh, Madame, let us understand each other. She would 
 follow him to a desert and live in a tent, but not to sit in a 
 shop." 
 
 A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, 
 under the influence of her disastrous education, Emilie for 
 the second time killed her budding happiness, and destroyed 
 its prospects of life. Maximilien's apparent indifference, and
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 146 
 
 a woman's smile, had wrung from her one of those sarcasms 
 whose treacherous zest always led her astray. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Longueville, in a low voice, under 
 cover of the noise made by the ladies as they rose from the 
 table, "no one will ever more ardently desire your happiness 
 than I; permit me to assure you of this, as I am taking leave 
 of you. I am starting for Italy in a few days." 
 
 "With a Duchess, no doubt?" 
 
 "No, but perhaps with a mortal blow." 
 
 "Is not that pure fancy?" asked Emilie, with an anxious 
 glance. 
 
 "No," he replied. "There are wounds which never 
 heal." 
 
 "You are not to go," said the girl imperiously, and she 
 smiled. 
 
 "I shall go," replied Maximilien, gravely. 
 
 "You will find me married on your return, I warn you," 
 she said coquettishly. 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Impertinent wretch!" she exclaimed. "How cruel a 
 revenge 1" 
 
 A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara 
 for the warm and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving 
 Mademoiselle de Fontaine a prey to the most vehement 
 regret. The young Secretary to the Embassy took up his 
 brother's quarrel, and contrived to take signal vengeance on 
 Emilie's disdain by making known the occasion of the lov- 
 ers' separation. He repaid his fair partner with interest all 
 the sarcasm with which she had formerly attacked Maximil- 
 ien, and often made more than one Excellency smile by 
 describing the fair foe of the counting-house, the amazon 
 who preached a crusade against bankers, the young girl 
 whose love had evaporated before a bale of muslin. The 
 Comte de Fontaine was obliged to use his influence to pro- 
 cure an appointment to Eussia for Auguste Longueville in 
 order to protect his daughter from the ridicule heaped upon 
 her by this dangerous young persecutor. 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 7.
 
 146 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Not long after, the Ministry, being compelled to raise a 
 levy of peers to support the aristocratic party, trembling in 
 the Upper Chamber under the lash of an illustrious writer, 
 gave Monsieur Gruiraudin de Longueville a peerage, with the 
 title of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine also obtained a 
 peerage, the reward due as much to his fidelity in evil days 
 as to his name, which claimed a place in the hereditary 
 Chamber. 
 
 About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, 
 some serious reflections on life, for her tone and manners 
 changed perceptibly. Instead of amusing herself by saying- 
 spiteful things to her uncle, she lavished on him the most 
 affectionate attentions; she brought him his stick with a 
 persevering devotion that made the cynical smile, she gave 
 him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in 
 all his drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the 
 smell of tobacco, and read him his favorite paper "La Quoti- 
 dienne" in the midst of clouds of smoke, which the malicious 
 old sailor intentionally blew over her; she learned piquet 
 to be a match for the old Count; and this fantastic damsel 
 even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives 
 of the battles of the "Belle-Poule," the manoeuvres of the 
 "Ville de Paris," M. de Suffren's first expedition, or the 
 battle of Aboukir. 
 
 Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his 
 longitude and latitude too well to allow himself to be cap- 
 tured by a young corvette, one fine morning Paris drawing- 
 rooms heard the news of the marriage of Mademoiselle de 
 Fontaine to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young Comtesse 
 gave splendid entertainments to drown thought; but she, no 
 doubt, found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool; luxury 
 was ineffectual to disguise the emptiness and grief of her 
 sorrowing soul; for the most part, in spite of the flashes of 
 assumed gayety, her beautiful face expressed unspoken mel- 
 ancholy. Emilie appeared, however, full of attentions and 
 consideration for her old husband, who, on retiring to his 
 rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively band, would often
 
 THE SCEAUX BALL 147 
 
 say, *'I do not know myself. Was I to wait till the age of 
 seventy-two to embark as pilot on board the 'Belle Emilie' 
 after twenty years of matrimonial galleys?" 
 
 The conduct of the young Comtesse was marked by such 
 strictness that the most clear-sighted criticism had no fault 
 to find with her. Lookers on chose to think that the vice- 
 admiral had reserved the right of disposing of his fortune to 
 keep his wife more tightly in hand ; but this was a notion 
 as insulting to the uncle as to the niece. Their conduct was 
 indeed so delicately judicious that the men who were most 
 interested in guessing the secrets of the couple could never 
 decide whether the old Count regarded her as a wife or as a 
 daughter. He was often heard to say that he had rescued 
 his niece as a castaway after shipwreck; and that, for his 
 part, he had never taken a mean advantage of hospitality 
 when he had saved an enemy from the fury of the storm. 
 Though the Comtesse aspired to reign in Paris and tried to 
 keep pace with Mesdames the Duchesses de Maufrigneuse 
 and de Chaulieu, the Marquises d'Espard and d'Aiglemont, 
 the Comtesses Feraud, de Montcornet, and de Bestaud, 
 Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches, she did 
 not yield to the addresses of the young "Vicomte de Porten- 
 du&re, who made her his idol. 
 
 Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing- 
 rooms in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was ad- 
 mired for her character, worthy of the old school, Emilie 
 heard the Vicomte de Longueville announced. In the corner 
 of the room where she was sitting, playing piquet with the 
 Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed; she 
 turned her head and saw her former lover come in, in all 
 the freshness of youth. His father's death, and then that 
 of his brother, killed by the severe climate of St. Peters- 
 burg, had placed on Maximilien's head the hereditary plumes 
 of the French peer's hat. His fortune matched his learning 
 and his merits; only the day before his youthful and fervid 
 eloquence had dazzled the Assembly. At this moment he 
 stood before the Comtesse, free, and graced with all the ad-
 
 148 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 vantages she had formerly required of her ideal. Every 
 mother with a daughter to marry made amiable advances to 
 a man gifted with the virtues which they attributed to him, 
 as they admired his attractive person; but Emilie knew, bet- 
 ter than any one, that the Vicomte de Longueville had the 
 steadfast nature in which a wise woman sees a guarantee of 
 happiness. She looked at the admiral who, to use his favor- 
 ite expression, seemed likely to hold his course for a long 
 time yet, and cursed the follies of her youth. 
 
 At this moment Monsieur de Persepolis said with Epis- 
 copal grace: "Fair lady, you have thrown away the king 
 of hearts I have won. But do not regret your money. I 
 keep it for my little seminaries." 
 
 PAEIS, December, 1829.
 
 THE PURSE 
 
 TO SOFKA 
 
 lt Save you observed, Mademoiselle, that the painters 
 and sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed two 
 figures in adoration, one on each side of a fair Saint, 
 never failed to give them a family likeness? When you 
 here see your name among those that are dear to me, and 
 under whose auspices I place my works, remember that 
 touching harmony, and you will see in this not so much 
 an act of homage as an expression of the brotherly affec- 
 tion of your devoted servant, DE BALZAC." 
 
 SOULS to whom effusiveness is easy there is a 
 delicious hour that falls when it is not yet night, 
 but is no longer day; the twilight gleam throws 
 softened lights or tricksy reflections on every object, and 
 favors a dreamy mood which vaguely weds itself to the 
 play of light and shade. The silence which generally pre- 
 vails at that time makes it particularly dear to artists, who 
 grow contemplative, stand a few paces back from the pic- 
 tures on which they can no longer work, and pass judgment 
 on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite meaning 
 then flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who has never 
 stood pensive by a friend's side in such an hour of poetic 
 dreaming can hardly understand its inexpressible soothing- 
 ness. Favored by the clare-obscure, the material skill em- 
 ployed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears. If the 
 work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak and 
 walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day; the flesh lives, 
 eyes move, blood flows in their veins, and stuffs have a 
 
 (149)
 
 150 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 changing sheen. Imagination helps the realism of every 
 detail, and only sees the beauties of the work. At that 
 hour illusion reigns despotically; perhaps it wakes at night- 
 fall! Is not illusion a sort of night to the mind, which we 
 people with dreams ? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it 
 bears the soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of 
 voluptuous imaginings, where the artist forgets the real 
 world, yesterday and the morrow, the future everything 
 down to its miseries, the good and the evil alike. 
 
 At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who 
 saw in art nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder 
 which helped him to work at a large high painting, now nearly 
 finished. Criticising himself, honestly admiring himself, float- 
 ing on the current of his thoughts, he then lost himself in one 
 of those meditative moods which ravish and elevate the soul, 
 soothe it, and comfort it. His revery had no doubt lasted 
 a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant to come down 
 from his perch, or whether he made some ill-judged move- 
 ment, believing himself to be on the floor the event did not 
 allow of his remembering exactly the cause of his accident 
 he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost consciousness 
 and lay motionless during a space of time of which he knew 
 not the length. 
 
 A sweet voice roused him from the stunned condition into 
 which he had sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of 
 a bright light made him close them again immediately; but 
 through the mist that veiled his senses he heard the whisper- 
 ing of two women, and felt two young, two timid hands on 
 which his head was resting. He soon recovered conscious- 
 ness, and by the light of an old-fashioned Argand lamp he 
 could make out the most charming girl's face he had ever 
 seen, one of those heads which are often supposed to be a 
 freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly realized the 
 theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates for 
 himself, and whence his art proceeds. The features of the 
 unknown belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate 
 type of Prudhon's school, but had also the poetic sentiment
 
 THE PURSE 151 
 
 which Girodet gave to the inventions of his fantasy. The 
 freshness of the temples, the regular arch of the eyebrows, 
 the purity of outline, the virginal innocence so plainly 
 stamped on every feature of her countenance, made the girl 
 a perfect creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and 
 frail in form. Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed 
 neither wealth nor penury. 
 
 As he recovered his senses, the painter gave expression 
 to his admiration by a look of surprise, and stammered some 
 confused thanks. He found a handkerchief pressed to his 
 forehead, and above the smell peculiar to a studio, he recog- 
 nized the strong odor of ether, applied no doubt to revive 
 him from his fainting fit. Finally he saw an old woman, 
 looking like a marquise of the old school, who held the lamp 
 and was advising the young girl. 
 
 ' ' Monsieur, ' ' said the younger woman in reply to one of 
 the questions put by the painter during the few minutes 
 when he was still under the influence of the vagueness that 
 the shock had produced in his ideas, "my mother and I heard 
 the noise of your fall on the floor, and we fancied we heard 
 a groan. The silence following on the crash alarmed us, and 
 we hurried up. Finding the key in the latch, we happily 
 took the liberty of entering, and we found you lying motion- 
 less on the ground. My mother went to fetch what was 
 needed to bathe your head and revive you. You have cut 
 your forehead there. Do you feel it?" 
 
 "Yes, I do now," he replied. 
 
 "Oh, it will be nothing," said the old mother. "Happily 
 your head rested against this lay-figure." 
 
 "I feel infinitely better," replied the painter. "I need 
 nothing further but a hackney cab to take me home. The 
 porter's wife will go for one." 
 
 He tried to repeat his thanks to the two strangers ; but at 
 each sentence the elder lady interrupted him, saying, "To- 
 morrow, Monsieur, pray be careful to put on leeches, or to 
 be bled, and drink a few cups of something healing. A fall 
 may be dangerous."
 
 152 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 The young girl stole a look at the painter and at the pic- 
 tures in the studio. Her expression and her glances revealed 
 perfect propriety; her curiosity seemed rather absence of mind, 
 and her eyes seemed to speak the interest which women feel, 
 with the most engaging spontaneity, in everything which 
 causes us suffering. The two strangers seemed to forget the 
 painter's works in the painter's mishap. When he had re- 
 assured them as to his condition they left, looking at him 
 with an anxiety that was equally free from insistence and 
 from familiarity, without asking any indiscreet questions, or 
 trying to incite him to any wish to visit them. Their pro- 
 ceedings all bore the hall-mark of natural refinement and 
 good taste. Their noble and simple manners at first made 
 no great impression on the painter, but subsequently, as he 
 recalled all the details of the incident, he was greatly struck 
 by them. 
 
 When they reached the floor beneath that occupied by 
 the painter's studio, the old lady gently observed, "Ade- 
 laide, you left the door open." 
 
 "That was to come to my assistance," said the painter, 
 with a grateful smile. 
 
 "You came down just now, mother," replied the young 
 girl, with a blush. 
 
 "Would you like us to accompany you all the way down- 
 stairs?" asked the mother. "The stairs are dark. " 
 
 "No, thank you, indeed, Madame; I am much better." 
 
 "Hold tightly by the rail." 
 
 The two women remained on the landing to light the 
 young man, listening to the sound of his steps. 
 
 In order to set forth clearly all the exciting and unex- 
 pected interest this scene might have for the young painter, 
 it must be told that he had only a few days since established 
 his studio in the attics of this house, situated in the darkest 
 and, therefore, the most muddy part of the Hue de Suresnes, 
 almost opposite the Church of the Madeleine, and quite close 
 to his rooms in the Rue des Champs-Elysdes. The fame his
 
 THE PURSE 153 
 
 talent had won him having made him one of the artists most 
 dear to his country, he was beginning to feel free from want, 
 and, to use his own expression, was enjoying his last priva- 
 tions. Instead of going to his work in one of the studios 
 near the city gates, where the moderate rents had hitherto 
 been in proportion to his humble earnings, he had gratified 
 a wish that was new every morning, by sparing himself a 
 long walk, and the loss of much time, now more valuable 
 than ever. 
 
 No man in the world would have inspired feelings of 
 greater interest than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever 
 have consented to make acquaintance; but he did not lightly 
 intrust to others the secrets of his life. He was the idol of 
 a necessitous mother, who had brought him up at the cost 
 of the severest privations. Mademoiselle Schinner, the 
 daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had never been married. 
 Her tender soul had been cruelly crushed, long ago, by a 
 rich man, who did not pride himself on any great delicacy 
 in his love affairs. The day when, as a young girl, in all 
 the radiance of her beauty and all the triumph of her life, 
 she suffered, at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions, 
 the disenchantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so 
 quickly for we try to postpone as long as possible our belief 
 in evil, and it seems to come too soon that day was a whole 
 age of reflection, and it was also a day of religious thought 
 and resignation. She refused the alms of the man who had 
 betrayed her, renounced the world, and made a glory of her 
 shame. She gave herself up entirely to her motherly love, 
 seeking in it all her joys in exchange for the social pleasures 
 to which she bid farewell. She lived by work, saving up 
 a treasure in her son. And, in after years, a day, an hour 
 repaid her amply for the long and weary sacrifices of her 
 indigence. 
 
 At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of 
 the Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hail- 
 ing an unknown genius, still rang with sincere praises. Ar- 
 tists themselves acknowledged Schinner as a master, and deal-
 
 154 BALZAC 'S WORKS 
 
 ers covered his canvases with gold pieces. At five-and-twenty 
 Hippolyte Schinner, to whom his mother had transmitted her 
 woman's soul, understood more clearly than ever his position 
 in the world. Anxious to restore to his mother the pleas- 
 ures of which society had so long robbed her, he lived for 
 her, hoping by the aid of fame and fortune to see her one 
 day happy, rich, respected, and surrounded by men of mark. 
 Schinner had therefore chosen his friends among the most 
 honorable and distinguished men. Fastidious in the selec- 
 tion of his intimates, he desired to raise still further a posi- 
 tion which his talent had placed high. The work to which 
 he had devoted himself from boyhood, by compelling him 
 to dwell in solitude the mother of great thoughts had left 
 him the beautiful beliefs which grace the early days of life. 
 His adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand 
 bashful emotions by which a young man is a being apart, 
 whose heart abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, 
 puerile in the eyes of men of the world, but deep because 
 they are single-hearted. 
 
 He was endowed with the gentle and polite manners which 
 speak to the soul, and fascinate even those who do not un- 
 derstand them. He was well made. His voice, coming from 
 his heart, stirred that of others to noble sentiments, and bore 
 witness to his true modesty by a certain ingenuousness of 
 tone. Those who saw him felt drawn to him by that attrac- 
 tion of the moral nature which men of science are happily 
 unable to analyze; they would detect in it some phenomenon 
 of galvanism, or the current of I know not what fluid, and 
 express our sentiments in a formula of ratios of oxygen and 
 electricity. 
 
 These details will perhaps explain to strong-minded per- 
 sons and to men of fashion why, in the absence of the porter 
 whom he had sent to the end of the Eue de la Madeleine to 
 call him a coach, Hippolyte Schinner did not ask the man's 
 wife any questions concerning the two women whose kind- 
 ness of heart had shown itself in his behalf. But though 
 he replied Yes or No to the inquiries, natural under the cir-
 
 THE PURSE 155 
 
 cumstances, which the good woman made as to his accident, 
 and the friendly intervention of the tenants occupying the 
 fourth floor, he could not hinder her from following the in- 
 stinct of her kind; she mentioned the two strangers, speak- 
 ing of them as prompted by the interests of her policy and 
 the subterranean opinions of the porter's lodge. 
 
 "Ah," said she, "they were, no doubt, Mademoiselle 
 Leseigneur and her mother, who have lived here these four 
 years. We do not yet know exactly what these ladies do; 
 in the morning, only till the hour of noon, an old woman 
 who is half deaf, and who never speaks any more than a 
 wall, comes in to help them; in the evening, two or three 
 old gentlemen, with loops of ribbon, like you, Monsieur, 
 come to see them, and often stay very late. One of them 
 comes in a carriage with servants, and is said to have sixty 
 thousand francs a year. However, they are very quiet ten- 
 ants, as you are, Monsieur; and economical! they live on 
 nothing, and as soon as a letter is brought they pay for it. 
 It is a queer thing, Monsieur, the mother's name is not the 
 same as the daughter's. Ah, but when they go for a walk 
 in the Tuileries Mademoiselle is very smart, and she never 
 goes out but she is followed by a lot of young men; but she 
 shuts the door in their face, and she is quite right. The 
 proprietor would never allow " 
 
 The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and 
 went home. His mother, to whom he related his adventure, 
 dressed his wound afresh, and would not allow him to go to 
 the studio next day. After taking advice, various treat- 
 ments were prescribed, and Hippolyte remained at home 
 three days. During this retirement his idle fancy recalled 
 vividly, bit by bit, the details of the scene that had ensued 
 on his fainting fit. The young girl's profile was clearly pro- 
 jected against the darkness of his inward vision; he saw once 
 more the mother's faded features, or he felt the touch of Ade*- 
 laide's hands. He remembered some gesture which at first 
 had not greatly struck him, but whose exquisite grace was 
 thrown into relief by memory; then an attitude, or the tones
 
 156 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 of a melodious voice, enhanced by the distance of remem- 
 brance, suddenly rose before him, as objects plunging to the 
 bottom of deep waters come back to the surface. 
 
 So, on the day when he could resume work, he went early 
 to his studio; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to 
 pay to his neighbors was the true cause of his haste; he had 
 already forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the mo- 
 ment when a passion throws off its swaddling clothes, inex- 
 plicable pleasures are felt, known to those who have loved. 
 So some readers will understand why the painter mounted 
 the stairs to the fourth floor but slowly, and will be in the 
 secret of the throbs that followed each other so rapidly in 
 his heart at the moment when he saw the humble brown door 
 of the rooms inhabited by Mademoiselle Leseigneur. This 
 girl, whose name was not the same as her mother's, had 
 aroused the young painter's deepest sympathies, he chose 
 to fancy some similarity between himself and her as to their 
 position, and attributed to her misfortunes of birth akin to 
 his own. All the time he worked Hippolyte gave himself 
 very willingly to thoughts of love, and made a great deal 
 of noise to compel the two ladies to think of him, as he was 
 thinking of them. He stayed late at the studio and dined 
 there; then, at about seven o'clock, he went down to call on 
 his neighbors. 
 
 No painter of manners has ventured to initiate us 
 perhaps out of modesty into the really curious privacy of 
 certain Parisian existences, into the secret of the dwellings 
 whence emerge such fresh and elegant toilets, such brilliant 
 women, who, rich on the surface, allow the signs of very 
 doubtful comfort to peep out in every part of their home. 
 If, here, the picture is too boldly drawn, if you find it tedi- 
 ous in places, do not blame the description, which is, indeed, 
 part and parcel of my story; for the appearance of the rooms 
 inhabited by his two neighbors had a great influence on the 
 feelings and hopes of Hippolyte Schinner. 
 
 The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom 
 there is a foregone and profound horror of repairs and deco-
 
 THE PURSE 157 
 
 ration, one of the men who regard their position as Paris 
 house-owners as a business. In the vast chain of moral 
 species, these people hold a middle place between the miser 
 and the usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are 
 all faithful to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of mov- 
 ing a cupboard or a door, of opening the most indispensable 
 air-hole, their eyes flash, their bile rises, they rear like a 
 frightened horse. When the wind blows down a few chim- 
 ney-pots they are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an 
 evening at the Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, 
 "on account of repairs." Hippolyte, who had seen the per- 
 formance gratis of a comical scene with Monsieur Molineux 
 as concerning certain decorative repairs in his studio, was 
 not surprised to see the dark greasy paint, the oily stains, 
 spots, and other disagreeable accessories that varied the 
 woodwork. And these stigmata of poverty are not alto- 
 gether devoid of poetry in an artist's eyes. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On 
 recognizing the young artist she bowed, and at the same 
 time, with Parisian adroitness, and with the presence of 
 mind that pride can lend, she turned round to shut a door 
 in a glass partition through which Hippolyte might have 
 caught sight of some linen hung by lines over patent ironing 
 stoves, an old camp-bed, some wood-embers, charcoal, irons, 
 a filter, the household crockery, and all the utensils familiar 
 to a small household. Muslin curtains, fairly white, care- 
 fully screened this lumber-room a capharnaum, as the 
 French call such a domestic laboratory which was lighted 
 by windows looking out on a neighboring yard. 
 
 Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, 
 the furniture, the general effect and condition of this first 
 room, thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which 
 served both as anteroom and dining-room, was hung with 
 an old salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border, the 
 manufacture of Reveillon, no doubt; the holes and spots had 
 been carefully touched over with wafers. Prints represent- 
 ing the battles of Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with
 
 158 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the gilding rubbed off, were symmetrically arranged on the 
 walls. In the middle stood a massive mahogany table, old- 
 fashioned in shape, and worn at the edges. A small stove, 
 whose thin straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in front 
 of the chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a 
 cupboard. By a strange contrast the chairs showed some 
 remains of former splendor; they were of carved mahog- 
 any, but the red morocco seats, the gilt nails and reeded 
 backs, showed as many scars as an old sergeant of the Im- 
 perial Gruard. 
 
 This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such 
 as are never seen but in this kind of amphibious household; 
 nameless objects with the stamp at once of luxury and pen- 
 ury. Among other curiosities, Hippolyte noticed a splen- 
 didly finished telescope, hanging over the small discolored 
 glass that decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this 
 strange collection of furniture there was, between the chim- 
 ney and the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, 
 pretending to be mahogany, of all woods the most impossible 
 to imitate. But the slippery red quarries, the shabby little 
 rugs in front of the chairs, and all the furniture, shone with 
 the hard-rubbing cleanliness which lends a treacherous lus- 
 tre to old things by making their defects, their age, and 
 their long service still more conspicuous. An indescrib- 
 able odor pervaded the room, a mingled smell of the ex- 
 halations from the lumber-room, and the vapors of the din- 
 ing-room, with those from the stairs, though the window 
 was partly open. The air from the street fluttered the dusty 
 curtains, which were carefully drawn so as to hide the win- 
 dow bay, where former tenants had testified to their presence 
 by various ornamental additions a sort of domestic fresco. 
 
 Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, 
 where she announced the painter with evident pleasure. 
 Hippolyte, who, of yore, had seen the same signs of pov- 
 erty in his mother's home, noted them with the singular 
 vividness of impression which characterizes the earliest 
 acquisitions of memory, and entered into the details of
 
 THE PURSE 159 
 
 this existence better than any one else would have done. 
 As he recognized the facts of his life as a child, the kind 
 young fellow felt neither scorn for disguised misfortune nor 
 pride in the luxury he had lately conquered for his mother. 
 
 "Well, Monsieur, I hope you no Conger feel the effects 
 of your fall," said the old lady, rising from an antique 
 armchair that stood by the chimney, and offering him a 
 seat. 
 
 "No, Madame. I have come to thank you for the kind 
 care you gave me, and above all Mademoiselle, who heard 
 me fall." 
 
 As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite 
 stupidity given to the mind by the first disturbing symp- 
 toms of true love, Hippolyte looked at the young girl. 
 Adelaide was lighting the Argand lamp, no doubt, that 
 she might get rid of a tallow candle fixed in a large copper 
 flat-candlestick, and graced with a heavy fluting of grease 
 from its guttering. She answered with a slight bow, car- 
 ried the flat-candlestick into the anteroom, came back, and 
 after placing the lamp on the chimney-shelf, seated herself 
 by her mother, a little behind the painter, so as to be able 
 to look at him at her ease, while apparently much inter- 
 ested in the burning of the lamp; the flame, checked by 
 the damp in a dingy chimney, sputtered as it struggled 
 with a charred and badly trimmed wick. Hippolyte, see- 
 ing the large mirror that decorated the chimney piece, im- 
 mediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. Thus 
 the girl's little stratagem only served to embarrass them 
 both. 
 
 While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte 
 called her so, on the chance of being right, he examined 
 the room, but unobtrusively and by stealth. 
 
 The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely 
 visible, the hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands 
 tried to meet in front of a sham log of fire-brick, as carefully 
 buried as a miser's treasure could ever be. An old Aubus- 
 son carpet, very much faded, very much mended, and as
 
 160 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 worn as a pensioner's coat, did not cover the whole of the 
 tiled floor, and the cold struck to his feet. The walls were 
 hung with a reddish paper, imitating figured silk with a 
 yellow pattern. In the middle of the wall opposite the 
 windows the painter saw a crack, and the outline marked 
 on the paper of double-doors, shutting off a recess where 
 Madame Leseigneur slept no doubt, a fact ill disguised by 
 a sofa in front of the door. Facing the chimney, above a 
 mahogany chest of drawers of handsome and tasteful de- 
 sign, was the portrait of an officer of rank, which the dim 
 light did not allow him to see well; but from what he 
 could make out he thought that the fearful daub must 
 have been painted in China. The window-curtains' of red 
 silk were as much faded as the furniture, in red and yellow 
 worsted work, if this room "contrived a double debt to 
 pay." On the marble top of the chest of drawers was a 
 costly malachite tray, with a dozen coffee cups magnifi- 
 cently painted, and made, no doubt, at Sevres. On the 
 chimney-shelf stood the omnipresent Empire clock: a war- 
 rior driving the four horses of a chariot, whose wheel bore 
 the numbers of the hours on its spokes. The tapers in the 
 tall candlesticks were yellow with smoke, and at each cor- 
 ner of the shelf stood a porcelain vase crowned with artifi- 
 cial flowers full of dust and stuck into moss. 
 
 In the middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card- 
 table ready for play, with new packs of cards. For an ob- 
 server there was something heartrending in the sight of this 
 misery painted up like an old woman who wants to falsify 
 her face. At such a sight every man of sense must at once 
 have stated to himself this obvious dilemma either these 
 two women are honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and 
 gambling. But on looking at Adelaide, a man so pure- 
 minded as Schinner could not but believe in her perfect 
 innocence, and ascribe the incoherence of the furniture to 
 honorable causes. 
 
 "My dear," said the old lady to the young one, "I am 
 cold; make a little fire, and give me my shawl."
 
 THE PURSE 181 
 
 Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where 
 she no doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother a cash- 
 mere shawl, which when new must have been very costly; 
 the pattern was Indian; but it was old, faded, and full of 
 darns, and matched the furniture. Madame Leseigneur 
 wrapped herself in it very artistically, and with the readi- 
 ness of an old woman who wishes to make her words seem 
 truth. The young girl ran lightly off to the lumber-room 
 and reappeared with a bundle of small wood, which she 
 gallantly threw on the fire to revive it. 
 
 It would be rather difficult to reproduce the conversa- 
 tion which followed among these three persons. Hippo- 
 lyte, guided by the tact which is almost always the outcome 
 of misfortune suffered in early youth, dared not allow him- 
 self to make the least remark as to his neighbors' situation, 
 as he saw all about him the signs of ill-disguised poverty. 
 The simplest question would have been an indiscretion, and 
 could only be ventured on by old friendship. The painter 
 was nevertheless absorbed in the thought of this concealed 
 penury, it pained his generous soul; but knowing how of- 
 fensive every kind of pity may be, even the friendliest, the 
 disparity between his thoughts and his words made him feel 
 uncomfortable. 
 
 The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women 
 easily guess the secret embarrassment of a first call; they 
 themselves feel it perhaps, and the nature of their mind 
 supplies them with a thousand devices to put an end to it. 
 By questioning the young man as to the material exercise 
 of his art, and as to his studies, Adelaide and her mother 
 emboldened him to talk. The indefinable nothings of their 
 chat, animated by kind feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to 
 flash forth remarks or reflections which snowed the charac- 
 ter of his habits and of his mind. Trouble had prematurely 
 faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no doubt; 
 nothing was left but the more prominent features, the out- 
 line, in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the 
 whole effect indicated great shrewdness with much grace in
 
 162 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the play of the eyes, in which could be discerned the ex- 
 pression peculiar to women of the old Court; an expression 
 that cannot be defined in words. Those fine and mobile 
 features might quite as well indicate bad feelings, and sug- 
 gest astuteness and womanly artifice carried to a high pitch 
 of wickedness, as reveal the refined delicacy of a beautiful 
 soul. 
 
 Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery 
 to puzzle the ordinary observer, that the difference between 
 fraDkness and duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the 
 genius of the heart, is there inscrutable. A man gifted 
 with a penetrating eye can read the intangible shade of 
 difference produced by a more or less curved line, a more 
 or less deep dimple, a more or less prominent feature. The 
 appreciation of these indications lies entirely in the domain 
 of intuition; this alone can lead to the discovery of what 
 every one is interested in concealing. This old lady's face 
 was like the room she inhabited; it seemed as difficult to 
 detect whether this squalor covered vice or the highest 
 virtue, as to decide whether Adelaide's mother was an old 
 coquette accustomed to weigh, to calculate, to sell every- 
 thing, or a loving woman, full of noble feeling and amiable 
 qualities. But at Schinner's age the first impulse of the 
 heart is to believe in goodness. And indeed, as he studied 
 Adelaide's noble and almost haughty brow, as he looked 
 into her eyes full of soul and thought, he breathed, so to 
 speak, the sweet and modest fragrance of virtue. In the 
 course of the conversation he seized an opportunity of dis- 
 cussing portraits in general, to give himself a pretext for 
 examining the frightful pastel, of which the color had 
 flown, and the chalk in many places fallen away. 
 
 "You are attached to that picture for the sake of the 
 likeness, no doubt, Mesdames, for the drawing is dread- 
 ful?" he said, looking at Adelaide. 
 
 "It was done at Calcutta, in great haste," replied the 
 mother, in an agitated voice. 
 
 She gazed at the formless sketch with the deep absorp-
 
 THE PURSE 163 
 
 tion which memories of happiness produce when they are 
 roused and fall on the heart like a beneficent dew to whose 
 refreshing touch we love to yield ourselves up; but in the 
 expression of the old lady's face there were traces too of 
 perennial regret. At least, it was thus that the painter 
 chose to interpret her attitude and countenance, and he 
 presently sat down again by her side. 
 
 "Madame," he said, "in a very short time the colors of 
 that pastel will have disappeared. The portrait will only 
 survive in your memory. Where you will still see the 
 face that is dear to you, others will see nothing at all. 
 Will you allow me to reproduce the likeness on canvas ? 
 It will be more permanently recorded then than on that 
 sheet of paper. Grant me, I beg, as a neighborly favor 
 the pleasure of doing you this service. There are times 
 when an artist is glad of a respite from his greater under- 
 takings by doing work of less lofty pretensions, so it will 
 be a recreation for me to paint that head." 
 
 The old lady flushed as she heard the painter's words, 
 and Adelaide shot one of those glances of deep feeling 
 which seem to flash from the soul. Hippolyte wanted to 
 feel some tie linking him with his two neighbors, to con- 
 quer a right to mingle in their life. His offer, appealing 
 as it did to the liveliest affections of the heart, was the 
 only one he could possibly make; it gratified his pride as 
 an artist, and could not hurt the feelings of the ladies. 
 Madame Leseigneur accepted, without eagerness or reluc- 
 tance, but with the self-possession of a noble soul, fully 
 aware of the character of bonds formed by such an obliga- 
 tion, while, at the same time, they are its highest glory as 
 a proof of esteem. 
 
 "I fancy," said the painter, "that the uniform is that of 
 a naval officer?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, "that of a captain in command of a 
 vessel. Monsieur de Rouville my husband died at Ba- 
 tavia in consequence of a wound received in a fight with 
 an English ship they fell in with off the Asiatic coast. He
 
 164 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 commanded a frigate of fifty -six guns, and the 'Revenge' 
 carried ninety-six. The struggle was very unequal, but 
 he defended his ship so bravely that he held out till night- 
 fall and got away. When I came back to France, Bonaparte 
 was not yet in power, and I was refused a pension. When 
 I applied again for it, quite lately, I was sternly informed 
 that if the Baron de Rouville had emigrated I should not 
 have lost him; that by this time he would have been rear- 
 admiral; finally, his Excellency quoted I know not what 
 decree of forfeiture. I took this step, to which I was 
 urged "by my friends, only for the sake of my poor Ade*- 
 laide. I have always hated the idea of holding out my 
 hand as a beggar in the name of a grief which deprives a 
 woman of voice and strength. I do not like this money 
 valuation for blood irreparably spilled " 
 
 "Dear mother, this subject always does you harm." 
 
 In response to this remark from Adelaide, the Baronne 
 Leseigneur bowed, and was silent. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the young girl to Hippolyte, "I had 
 supposed that a painter's work was generally fairly quiet?" 
 
 At this question Schinner colored, remembering the 
 noise he had made. Adelaide said no more, and spared 
 him a falsehood by rising at the sound of a carriage stop- 
 ping at the door. She went into her own room, and re- 
 turned carrying a pair of tall gilt candlesticks with partly 
 burned wax candles, which she quickly lighted, and with- 
 out waiting for the bell to ring, she opened the door of the 
 outer room, where she set the lamp down. The sound of a 
 kiss given and received found an echo in Hippolyte's heart. 
 The young man's impatience to see the man who treated 
 Adelaide with so much familiarity was not immediately 
 gratified; the new-comers had a conversation, which he 
 thought very long, in an undertone, with the young girl. 
 
 At last Mademoiselle de Rouville returned, followed by 
 two men, whose costume, countenance, and appearance are 
 a long story. 
 
 The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats
 
 THE PURSE 165 
 
 invented, I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, 
 in which the most difficult problem of the sartorial art had 
 been solved by a tailor who ought to be immortal. That 
 artist certainly understood the art of compromise, which was 
 the moving genius of that period of shifting politics. Is it 
 not a rare merit to be able to take the measure of the time ? 
 This coat, which the young men of the present day may con- 
 ceive to be fabulous, was neither civil nor military, and 
 might pass for civil or military by turns. Fleurs-de-lis were 
 embroidered on the lapels of the back skirts. The gilt but- 
 tons also bore fleurs-de-lis; on the shoulders a pair of straps 
 cried out for useless epaulets ; these military appendages were 
 there like a petition without a recommendation. This old 
 gentleman's coat was of dark blue cloth, and the buttonhole 
 bad blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no doubt, 
 always carried his hat in his hand^-a three-cornered cocked 
 hat, with a gold cord for the snowy wings of his powdered 
 hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He might have been 
 taken for not more than fifty years of age, and seemed to 
 enjoy robust health. While wearing the frank and loyal 
 expression of the old Emigres, his countenance also hinted 
 at the easy habits of a libertine, at the light and reckless pas- 
 sions of the Musketeers formerly so famous in the annals of 
 gallantry. His gestures, his attitude, and his manner pro- 
 claimed that he had no intention of correcting himself of 
 his royalism, of his religion, or of his love affairs. 
 
 A really fantastic figure came in behind this specimen of 
 "Louis XIV. 's light infantry" a nickname given by the 
 Bonapartists to these venerable survivors of the Monarchy. 
 To do it justice it ought to be made the principal object in 
 the picture, and it is but an accessory. Imagine a lean, dry 
 man, dressed like the former but seeming to be only his re- 
 flection, or his shadow, if you will. The coat, new on the 
 first, on the second was old; the powder in his hair looked 
 less white, the gold of the fleurs-de-lis less bright, the shoul- 
 der straps more hopeless and dog's-eared; his intellect seemed 
 more feeble, his life nearer the fatal term than in the former.
 
 166 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 In short, he realized Rivarol's witticism on Champcenetz, 
 "He is the moonlight of me." He was simply his double, 
 a paler and poorer double, for there was between them all 
 the difference that lies between the first and last impressions 
 of a lithograph. 
 
 This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, 
 and always remained a mystery. The Chevalier, for he was 
 a Chevalier, did not speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a 
 friend, a poor relation, a man who followed at the old gal- 
 lant's heels as a lady companion does at an old lady's? Did 
 he fill a place midway between a dog, a parrot, and a friend ? 
 Had he saved his patron's fortune, or only his life? Was 
 he the Trim to another Captain Toby? Elsewhere, as at 
 the Baronne de Rouville's, he always piqued curiosity with- 
 out satisfying it. Who, after the Restoration, could remem- 
 ber the attachment which, before the Revolution, had bound 
 this man to his friend's wife, dead now these twenty years? 
 
 The leader, who appeared the least dilapidated of these 
 wrecks, came gallantly up to Madame de Rouville, kissed 
 her hand, and sat down by her. The other bowed and placed 
 himself not far from his model, at a distance represented by 
 two chairs. Adelaide came behind the old gentleman's arm- 
 chair and leaned her elbows on the back, unconsciously imi- 
 tating the attitude given to Dido's sister by Guerin in his 
 famous picture. 
 
 Though the gentleman's familiarity was that of a father, 
 his freedom seemed at the moment to annoy the young girl. 
 
 "What, are you sulky with me?" he said. 
 
 Then he shot at Schinner one of those side -looks full of 
 shrewdness and cunning, diplomatic looks, whose expression 
 betrays the discreet uneasiness, the polite curiosity of well- 
 bred people, and seems to ask, when they see a stranger, 
 "Is he one of us?" 
 
 "This is our neighbor," said the old lady, pointing to 
 Hippolyte. "Monsieur is a celebrated painter, whose name 
 must be known to you in spite of your indifference to the 
 arts."
 
 THE PURSE 167 
 
 The old man saw his friend's mischievous intent in sup- 
 pressing the name, and bowed to the young man. 
 
 "Certainly," said he. "I heard a great deal about his 
 pictures at the last Salon. Talent has immense privileges," 
 he added, observing the artist's red ribbon. "That distinc- 
 tion, which we must earn at the cost of our blood and long 
 service, you win in your youth ; but all glory is of the same 
 kindred," he said, laying his hand on his Cross of Saint- 
 Louis. 
 
 Hippolyte murmured a few words of acknowledgment, 
 and was silent again, satisfied to admire with growing en- 
 thusiasm the beautiful girl's head that charmed him so much. 
 He was soon lost in contemplation, completely forgetting the 
 extreme misery of the dwelling. To him Adelaide's face 
 stood out against a luminous atmosphere. He replied briefly 
 to the questions addressed to him, which, by good luck, he 
 heard, thanks to a singular faculty of the soul which some- 
 times seems to have a double consciousness. Who has not 
 known what it is to sit lost in sad or delicious meditation, 
 listening to its voice within, while attending to a conversa- 
 tion or to reading ? An admirable duality which often helps 
 us to tolerate a bore! Hope, prolific and smiling, poured 
 out before him a thousand visions of happiness; and he re- 
 fused to consider what was going on around him. As con- 
 fiding as a child, it seemed to him base to analyze a pleasure. 
 
 After a short lapse of time he perceived that the old lady 
 and her daughter were playing cards with the old gentleman. 
 As to the satellite, faithful to his function as a shadow, he 
 stood behind his friend's chair watching his game, and an- 
 swering the player's mute inquiries by little approving nods, 
 repeating the questioning gestures of the other countenance. 
 
 "Du Halga, I always lose," said the gentleman. 
 
 "You discard badly," replied the Baronne de Rouville. 
 
 "For three months now I have never won a single game," 
 said he. 
 
 ' ' Have you the aces ? ' ' asked the old lady. 
 
 "Yes, one more to mark," said he.
 
 168 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Shall I come and advise you?" asked Adelaide. 
 
 "No, no. Stay where I can see you. By Gad, it would 
 be losing too much not to have you to look at!" 
 
 At last the game was over. The gentleman pulled out 
 his purse, and, throwing two Louis d'or on the table, not 
 without temper 
 
 "Forty francs," he exclaimed, "the exact sum. Deuce 
 take it! it is eleven o'clock." 
 
 "It is eleven o'clock," repeated the silent figure, looking 
 at the painter. 
 
 The young man, hearing these words rather more dis- 
 tinctly than all the others, thought it time to retire. Com- 
 ing back to the world of ordinary ideas, he found a few 
 commonplace remarks to make, took leave of the Baroness, 
 her daughter, and the two strangers, and went away, wholly 
 possessed by the first raptures of true love, without attempt- 
 ing to analyze the little incidents of the evening. 
 
 On the morrow the young painter felt the most ardent de- 
 sire to see Adelaide once more. If he had followed the call 
 of his passion, he would have gone to his neighbors' door at 
 six in the morning, when he went to his studio. However, 
 he still was reasonable enough to wait till the afternoon. But 
 as soon as he thought he could present himself to Madame 
 de Eouville, he went downstairs, rang, blushing like a girl, 
 shyly asked Mademoiselle Leseigneur, who came to let him 
 in, to let him have the portrait of the Baron. 
 
 "But come in," said Adelaide, who had no doubt heard 
 him come down from the studio. 
 
 The painter followed, bashful and out of countenance, not 
 knowing what to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To 
 see Adelaide, to hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing 
 for a whole morning to be near her, after starting up a hun- 
 dred times "I will go down now" and not to have gone; 
 this was to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly 
 prolonged, would have worn out his spirit. The heart has 
 the singular power of giving extraordinary value to mere 
 nothings. What joy it is to a traveller to treasure a blade
 
 THE PURSE 169 
 
 of grass, an unfamiliar leaf, if he has risked his life to pluck 
 it! It is the same with the trifles of love. 
 
 The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the 
 young girl found herself there, alone with the painter, she 
 brought a chair to stand on, to take down the picture; but 
 perceiving that she could not unhook it without setting her 
 foot on the chest of drawers, she turned to Hippolyte, and 
 said with a blush: "I am not tall enough. Will you get it 
 down?" 
 
 A feeling of modesty, betrayed in the expression of her 
 face and the tones of her voice, was the real motive of her 
 request; and the young man, understanding this, gave 
 her one of those glances of intelligence which are the 
 sweetest language of love. Seeing that the painter had 
 read her soul, Adelaide cast down her eyes with the in- 
 stinct of reserve which is the secret of a maiden's heart. 
 Hippolyte, finding nothing to say, and feeling almost timid, 
 took down the picture, examined it gravely, carrying it to 
 the light at the window, and then went away, without say- 
 ing a word to Mademoiselle Leseigneur but, "I will return 
 it soon." 
 
 During this brief moment they both went through one of 
 those storms of agitation of which the effects in the soul may 
 be compared to those of a stone flung into a deep lake. The 
 most delightful waves of thought rise and follow each other, 
 indescribable, repeated, and aimless, tossing the heart like 
 the circular ripples, which for a long time fret the- waters, 
 starting from the point where the stone fell. 
 
 Hippolyte returned to the studio bearing the portrait. 
 His easel was ready with a fresh canvas, and his palette set, 
 his brushes cleaned, the spot and the light carefully chosen. 
 And till the dinner hour he worked at the painting with the 
 ardor artists throw into their whims. He went again that 
 evening to the Baronne de Eouville's, and remained from 
 nine till eleven. Excepting the different subjects of con- 
 versation, this evening was exactly like the last. The two 
 old men arrived at the same hour, the same game of piquet 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 8.
 
 170 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 was played, the same speeches made by the players, the sum 
 lost by Adelaide's friend was not less considerable than on 
 the previous evening; only Hippolyte, a little bolder, ven- 
 tured to chat with the young girl. 
 
 A week passed thus, and in the course of it the painter's 
 feelings and Adelaide's underwent the slow and delightful 
 transformations which bring two souls to a perfect under- 
 standing. Every day the look with which the girl welcomed 
 her friend grew more intimate, more confiding, gayer, and 
 more open; her voice and manner became more eager and 
 more familiar. They laughed and talked together, telling 
 each other their thoughts, speaking of themselves with the 
 simplicity of two children who have made friends in a day, 
 as much as if they had met constantly for three years. Schin- 
 ner wished to be taught piquet. Being ignorant and a novice, 
 he, of course, made blunder after blunder, and, like the old 
 man, he lost almost every game. Without having spoken a 
 word of love the lovers knew that they were all in all to one 
 another. Hippolyte enjoyed exerting his power over his gen- 
 tle little friend, and many concessions were made to him by 
 Adelaide, who, timid and devoted to him, was quite deceived 
 by the assumed fits of temper, such as the least skilled lover 
 and the most guileless girl can affect; and which they con- 
 stantly play off, as spoiled children abuse the power they 
 owe to their mother's affection. Thus all familiarity be- 
 tween the girl and the old Count was soon put a stop to. 
 She understood the painter's melancholy, and the thoughts 
 hidden in the furrows on his brow, from the abrupt tone of 
 the few words he spoke when the old man unceremoniously 
 kissed Adelaide's hands or throat. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur, on her part, soon expected her 
 lover to give her a short account of all his actions; she was 
 so unhappy, so restless when Hippolyte did not come, she 
 scolded him so effectually for his absence, that the painter 
 had to give up seeing his other friends, and now went no- 
 where. Adelaide allowed the natural jealousy of women to 
 be perceived when she heard that sometimes at eleven o'clock,
 
 THE PURSE 171 
 
 on quitting the house, the painter still had visits to pay, and 
 was to be seen in the most brilliant drawing-rooms of Paris. 
 This mode of life, she assured him, was bad for his health; 
 then, with the intense conviction to which the accent, the 
 emphasis, and the look of one we love lend so much weight, 
 she asserted that a man who was obliged to expend his time 
 and the charms of his wit on several women at once could 
 not be the object of any very warm affection. Thus the 
 painter was led, as much by the tyranny of his passion as 
 by the exactions of a girl in love, to live exclusively in the 
 little apartment where everything attracted him. 
 
 And never was there a purer or more ardent love. On 
 both sides the same trustfulness, the same delicacy, gave 
 their passion increase without the aid of those sacrifices by 
 which many persons try to prove their affection. Between 
 these two there was such a constant interchange of sweet 
 emotion that they knew not which gave or received the 
 most. 
 
 A spontaneous affinity made the union of their souls a 
 close one. The progress of this true feeling was so rapid 
 that two months after the accident to which the painter owed 
 the happiness of knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. 
 From early morning the young girl, hearing footsteps over- 
 head, could say to herself, "He is there." "When Hippolyte 
 went home to his mother at the dinner hour he never failed 
 to look in on his neighbors, and in the evening he flew there 
 at the accustomed hour with a lover's punctuality. Thus 
 the most tyrannical woman or the most ambitious in the mat- 
 ter of love could not have found the smallest fault with the 
 young painter. And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and un- 
 bounded happiness as she saw the fullest realization of the 
 ideal of which, at her age, it is so natural to dream. 
 
 The old gentleman now came more rarely; Hippolyte, who 
 had been jealous, had taken his place at the green table, and 
 shared his constant ill-luck at cards. And sometimes, in the 
 midst of his happiness, as he considered Madame de Eou- 
 ville's disastrous position for he had had more than one
 
 172 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 proof of her extreme poverty an importunate thought 
 would haunt him. Several times he had said to himself as 
 he went home, "Strange! twenty francs every evening?" 
 and he dared not confess to himself his odious suspicions. 
 
 He spent two months over the portrait, and when it was 
 finished, varnished, and framed, he looked upon it as one of 
 his best works. Madame la Baronne de Rouville had never 
 spoken of it again. Was this from indifference or pride? 
 The painter would not allow himself to account for this si- 
 lence. He joyfully plotted with Adelaide to hang the pic- 
 ture in its place when Madame de Rouville should be out. 
 So one day, during the walk her mother usually took in the 
 Tuileries, Adelaide for the first time went up to Hippolyte's 
 studio, on the pretext of seeing the portrait in the good light 
 in which it had been painted. She stood speechless and mo- 
 tionless, but in ecstatic contemplation, in which all a woman's 
 feelings were merged. For are they not all comprehended 
 in boundless admiration for the man she loves? When the 
 painter, uneasy at her silence, leaned forward to look at her, 
 she held out her hand, unable to speak a word, but two tears 
 fell from her eyes. Hippolyte took her hand, and covered 
 it with kisses; for a minute they looked at each other in si- 
 lence, both longing to confess their love, and not daring. 
 The painter kept her hand in his, and the same glow, the 
 same throb, told them that their hearts were both beating 
 wildly. The young girl, too greatly agitated, gently drew 
 away from Hippolyte, and said, with a look of the utmost 
 simplicity: "You will make my mother very happy." 
 
 "What! only your mother?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, I am too happy." 
 
 The p inter bent his head and remained silent, frightened 
 at the vehemence of the feelings which her tones stirred in 
 his heart, Then, both understanding the perils of the situ- 
 ation, they went downstairs and hung up the picture in its 
 place. Hippolyte dined for the first time with the Baroness, 
 who, greatly overcome, and drowned in tears, must needs 
 embrace him.
 
 THE PURSE 173 
 
 In the evening the old e'migre', the Baron de Rouville's 
 old comrade, paid the ladies a visit to announce that he had 
 just been promoted to the rank of vice-admiral. His voy- 
 ages by land over Germany and Russia had been counted as 
 naval campaigns. On seeing the portrait he cordially shook 
 the painter's hand, and exclaimed, "By Gad! though my old 
 hulk does not deserve to be perpetuated , I would gladly give 
 five hundred pistoles to see myself as like as that is to my 
 dear old Eouville. ' ' 
 
 At this hint the Baroness looked at her young friend and 
 smiled, while her face lighted up with an expression of sud- 
 den gratitude. Hippolyte suspected that 'the old admiral 
 wished to oiler him the price of both portraits while paying 
 for his own. His pride as an artist, no less than his jealousy 
 perhaps, took offence at the thought, and he replied: "Mon- 
 sieur, if I were a portrait-painter I should not have done 
 this one." 
 
 The admiral bit his lip, and sat down to cards. 
 
 The painter remained near Adelaide, who proposed a 
 dozen hands of piquet, to which he agreed. As he played 
 he observed in Madame de Rouville an excitement over her 
 game which surprised him. Never before had the old Baron- 
 ess manifested so ardent a desire to win, or so keen a joy in 
 fingering the old gentleman's gold pieces. During the even- 
 ing evil suspicions troubled Hippolyte's happiness, and filled 
 him with distrust. Could it be that Madame de Rouville 
 lived by gambling? Was she playing at this moment to 
 pay off some debt, or under the pressure of necessity ? Per- 
 haps she had not paid her rent. That old man seemed shrewd 
 enough not to allow his money to be taken with impunity. 
 What interest attracted him to this poverty-stricken house, 
 he who was rich ? Why, when he had formerly been so 
 familiar with Adelaide, had he given up the rights he had 
 acquired, and which were perhaps his due? 
 
 These involuntary reflections prompted him to watch the 
 old man and the Baroness, whose meaning looks and certain 
 sidelong glances cast at Adelaide displeased him. "Am I
 
 174 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 being duped?" was Hippolyte's last idea horrible, scath- 
 ing, for he believed it just enough to be tortured by it. . He 
 determined to stay after the departure of the two old men, 
 to confirm or to dissipate his suspicions. He drew out his 
 purse to pay Adelaide; but, carried away by his poignant 
 thoughts, he laid it on the table, falling into a re very of 
 brief duration; then, ashamed of his silence, he rose, an- 
 swered some commonplace question from Madame de Rou- 
 ville, and went close up to her to examine the withered 
 features while he was talking to her. 
 
 He went away, racked by a thousand doubts. He had 
 gone down but "a few steps when he turned back to fetch 
 the forgotten purse. 
 
 "I left my purse here!" he said to the young girl. 
 
 "No," she said, reddening. 
 
 "I thought it was there," and he pointed to the card-table. 
 Not finding it, in his shame for Adelaide and the Baroness, 
 he looked at them with a blank amazement that made them 
 laugh, turned pale, felt his waistcoat, and said, "I must have 
 made a mistake. I have it somewhere no doubt. ' ' 
 
 In one end of the purse there were fifteen Louis d'or, and 
 in the other some small change. The theft was so flagrant, 
 and denied with such effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer 
 felt a doubt as to his neighbors' morals. He stood still on 
 the stairs, and got down with some difficulty; his knees 
 shook, he felt dizzy, he was in a cold sweat, he shivered, 
 and found himself unable to walk, struggling, as he was, 
 with the agonizing shock caused by the destruction of all 
 his hopes. And at this moment he found lurking in his 
 memory a number of observations, trifling in themselves, 
 but which corroborated his frightful suspicions, and which, 
 by proving the certainty of this last incident, opened his 
 eyes as to the character and life of these two women. 
 
 Had they really waited till the portrait was given them 
 before robbing him of his purse? In such a combination 
 the theft was even more odious. The painter recollected 
 that for the last two or three evenings Adelaide, while seem-
 
 THE PURSE 175 
 
 ing to examine with, a girl's curiosity the particular stitch 
 of the worn silk netting, was probably counting the coins in 
 the purse, while making some light jests, quite innocent 
 in appearance, but no doubt with the object of watching 
 for a moment when the sum was worth stealing. 
 
 "The old admiral has perhaps good reasons for not marry- 
 ing Adelaide, and so the Baroness has tried " 
 
 But at this hypothesis he checked himself, not finishing 
 his thought, which was contradicted by a very just reflec- 
 tion, "If the Baroness hopes to get me to marry her daugh- 
 ter," thought he, "they would not have robbed me." 
 
 Then, clinging to his illusions, to the love that already 
 had taken such deep root, he tried to find a justification in 
 some accident. "The purse must have fallen on the floor," 
 said he to himself, "or I left it lying on my chair. Or per- 
 haps I have it about me I am so absent-minded!" He 
 searched himself with hurried movements, but did not find 
 the ill-starred purse. His memory cruelly retraced the fatal 
 truth, minute by minute. He distinctly saw the purse lying 
 on the green cloth; but then, doubtful no longer, he excused 
 Adelaide, telling himself that persons in misfortune should 
 not be so hastily condemned. There was, of course, some 
 secret behind this apparently degrading action. He would 
 not admit that that proud and noble face was a lie. 
 
 At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, 
 denuded of the poetry of love which beautifies everything; 
 he saw them dirty and faded, regarding them as emblematic 
 of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and vicious. Are not 
 our feelings written, as it were, on the things about us ? 
 
 Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, 
 that terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. 
 To lose the bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole 
 future, is a keener pang than that caused by the loss of 
 known happiness, however complete it may have been; for 
 is not Hope better than Memory? The thoughts into which 
 our spirit is suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea, in 
 which we may swim for a moment, but where our love is
 
 176 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 doomed to drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are 
 not our feelings the most glorious part of our life ? It is this 
 partial death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures, 
 leads to the terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by 
 hopes and passions betrayed. Thus it was with the young 
 painter. He went out at a very early hour to walk under 
 the fresh shade of the Tuileries, absorbed in his thoughts, 
 forgetting everything in the world. 
 
 There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, 
 a schoolfellow and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on 
 better terms than with a brother. 
 
 "Why, Hippolyte, what ails you?" asked Frangois 
 Souchet, the young sculptor who had just won the first 
 prize, and was soon to set out for Italy. 
 
 "I am most unhappy," replied Hippolyte gravely. 
 
 "Nothing but a love affair can cause you grief. Money, 
 glory, respect you lack nothing." 
 
 Insensibly the painter was led into confidences, and con- 
 fessed his love. The moment he mentioned the Eue de 
 Suresnes, and a young girl living on the fourth floor, "Stop, 
 stop," cried Souchet lightly. "A little girl I see every 
 morning at the Church of the Assumption, and with whom 
 I have a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. 
 The mother is a Baroness. Do you really believe in a 
 Baroness living up four flights of stairs? Brrr! Why, 
 you are a relic of 'the golden age! We see the old mother 
 here, in this avenue, every day; why, her face, her appear- 
 ance, tell everything. What, have you not known her for 
 what she is by the way she holds her bag ? ' ' 
 
 The two friends walked up and down for some time, and 
 several young men who knew Souchet or Schinner joined 
 them. The painter's adventure, which the sculptor regarded 
 as unimportant, was repeated by him. 
 
 "So he, too, has seen that young lady!" said Souchet. 
 
 And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mock- 
 ery, full of the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained 
 Hippolyte frightfully. A certain native reticence made him
 
 THE PURSE 177 
 
 uncomfortable as he saw his heart's secret so carelessly han- 
 dled, his passion rent, torn to tatters, a young and unknown 
 girl, whose life seemed to be so modest, the victim of con- 
 demnation, right or wrong, but pronounced with such reck- 
 less indifference. He pretended to be moved by a spirit of 
 contradiction, asking each for proofs of his assertions, and 
 their jests began again. 
 
 "But, my dear boy, have you seen the Baroness's shawl?" 
 asked Souchet. 
 
 "Have you ever followed the girl when she patters off to 
 church in the morning?" said Joseph Bridau, a young dauber 
 in Gros' studio. 
 
 "Oh, the mother has among other virtues a certain gray 
 gown, which I regard as typical," said Bixiou, the carica- 
 turist. 
 
 "Listen, Hippolyte, " the sculptor went on. "Come here 
 at about four o'clock, and just study the walk of both mother 
 and daughter. If after that you still have doubts ! well, no 
 one can ever make anything of you ; you would be capable 
 of marrying your porter's daughter." 
 
 Torn by the most conflicting feelings, the painter parted 
 from his friends. It seemed to him that Adelaide and her 
 mother must be superior to these accusations, and at the 
 bottom of his heart he was filled with remorse for having 
 suspected the purity of this beautiful and simple girl. He 
 went to his studio, passing the door of the rooms where Ade*- 
 laide was, and conscious of a pain at his heart which no man 
 can misapprehend. He loved Mademoiselle de Eouville so 
 passionately that, in spite of the theft of the purse, he still 
 worshipped her. His love was that of the Chevalier des 
 Grieux admiring his mistress, and holding her as pure, even 
 on the cart which carries such lost creatures to prison. "Why 
 should not my love keep her the purest of women ? Why 
 abandon her to evil and to vice without holding out a reg- 
 cuing hand to her?" 
 
 The idea of this mission pleased him. Love makes a 
 gain of everything. Nothing tempts a young man moro
 
 178 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 than to play the part of a good genius to a woman. There 
 is something inexplicably romantic in such an enterprise 
 which appeals to a highly strung soul. Is it not the ut- 
 most stretch of devotion under the loftiest and most en- 
 gaging aspect? Is there not something grand in the 
 thought that we love enough still to love on when the 
 love of others dwindles and dies? 
 
 Hippolyte sat down in his studio, gazed at his picture 
 without doing anything to it, seeing the figures through 
 tears that swelled in his eyes, holding his brush in his 
 hand, going up to the canvas as if to soften down an 
 effect, but not touching it. Night fell, and he was still 
 in this attitude. Eoused from his moodiness by the dark- 
 ness, he went downstairs, met the old admiral on the way, 
 looked darkly at him as he bowed, and fled. 
 
 He had intended going in to see the ladies, but the sight 
 of Adelaide's protector froze his heart and dispelled his pur- 
 pose. For the hundredth time he wondered what interest 
 could bring this old prodigal, with his eighty thousand 
 francs a year, to this fourth story, where he lost about 
 forty francs every evening; and he thought he could guess 
 what it was. 
 
 The next and following days Hippolyte threw himself 
 into his work, to try to conquer his passion by the swift 
 rush of ideas and the ardor of composition. He half suc- 
 ceeded. Study consoled him, though it could not smother 
 the memories of so many tender hours spent with Adelaide. 
 
 One evening, as he left his studio, he saw the door of the 
 ladies' rooms half open. Somebody was standing in the re- 
 cess of the window, and the position of the door and the 
 staircase made it impossible that the painter should pass 
 without seeing Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a glance 
 of supreme indifference ; but judging of the girl's suffering 
 by his own, he felt an inward shudder as he reflected on 
 the bitterness which that look and that coldness must pro- 
 duce in a loving heart. To crown the most delightful feast 
 which ever brought joy to two pure souls, by eight days of
 
 THE PURSE 179 
 
 disdain, of the deepest and most utter contempt! A fright- 
 ful conclusion. And perhaps the purse had been found, 
 perhaps Adelaide had looked for her friend every evening. 
 
 This simple and natural idea filled the lover with fresh 
 remorse; he asked himself whether the proofs of attachment 
 given him by the young girl, the delightful talks, full of the 
 love that had so charmed him, did not deserve at least an in- 
 quiry ; were not worthy of some justification ? Ashamed of 
 having resisted the promptings of his heart for a whole 
 week, and feeling himself almost a criminal in this mental 
 struggle, he called the same evening on Madame de Bouville. 
 
 All his suspicions, all his evil thoughts vanished at the 
 sight of the young girl, who had grown pale and thin. 
 
 "Good heavens! what is the matter?" he asked her, 
 after greeting the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide made no reply, but she gave him a look of 
 deep melancholy, a sad, dejected look, which pained him. 
 
 "You have, no doubt, been working hard," said the 
 old lady. "You are altered. We are the cause of your 
 seclusion. That portrait had delayed some pictures essen- 
 tial to your reputation." 
 
 Hippolyte was glad to find so good an excuse for his 
 rudeness. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "I have been very busy, but I have 
 been suffering " 
 
 At these words Adelaide raised her head, looked at her 
 lover, and her anxious eyes had now no hint of reproach. 
 
 "You must have thought us quite indifferent to any 
 good or ill that may befall you?" said the old lady. 
 
 "I was wrong," he replied. "Still, there are forms of 
 pain which we know not how to confide to any one, even 
 to a friendship of older date than that with which you 
 honor me." 
 
 "The sincerity and strength of friendship are not to be 
 measured by time. I have seen old friends who had not a 
 tear to bestow on misfortune," said the Baroness, nodding 
 sadly.
 
 180 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "But you what ails you?" the youug man asked 
 Adelaide. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," replied the Baroness; "Adelaide has 
 sat up late for some nights to finish some little piece of 
 woman's work, and would not listen to me when I told 
 her that a day more or less did not matter ' ' 
 
 Hippolyte was not listening. As he looked at these 
 two noble, calm faces, he blushed for his suspicions, and 
 ascribed the loss of his purse to some unknown accident. 
 
 This was a delicious evening to him, and perhaps to her 
 too. There are some secrets which young souls understand 
 so well. Adelaide could read Hippolyte 's thoughts. Though 
 he could not confess his misdeeds, the painter knew them, and 
 he had come back to his mistress more in love, and more af- 
 fectionate, trying thus to purchase her tacit forgiveness. 
 Adelaide was enjoying such perfect, such sweet happi- 
 ness, that she did not think she had paid too dear for it 
 with all the grief that had so cruelly crushed her soul. 
 And yet, this true concord of hearts, this understanding 
 so full of magic charm, was disturbed by a little speech of 
 Madame de Kouville's. 
 
 "Let us have our little game," she said, "for my old 
 friend Kergarouet will not let me off." 
 
 These words revived all the young painter's fears; he 
 colored as he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw 
 nothing in her countenance but the expression of the 
 frankest good -nature; no double meaning marred its 
 charm; its keenness was not perfidious, its humor seemed 
 kindly, and no trace of remorse disturbed its equanimity. 
 
 He sat down to the card-table. Adelaide took side 
 with the painter, saying that he did not know piquet, and 
 needed a partner. 
 
 All through the game Madame de Rouville and her 
 daughter exchanged looks of intelligence, which alarmed 
 Hippolyte all the more because he was winning; but at 
 last a final hand left the lovers in the old lady's debt. 
 
 To feel for some money in his pocket the painter took
 
 THE PURSE 181 
 
 his hands off the table, and he then saw before him a purse 
 which Adelaide had slipped in front of him without his 
 noticing it; the poor child had the old one in her hand, 
 and, to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the 
 money to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippo- 
 lyte's heart with such force that he was near fainting. 
 
 The new purse, substituted for his own, and which 
 contained his fifteen gold louis, was worked with gilt 
 beads. The rings and tassels bore witness to Adelaide's 
 good taste, and she had no doubt spent all her little hoard 
 in ornamenting this pretty piece of work. It was impos- 
 sible to say with greater delicacy that the painter's gift 
 could only be repaid by some proof of affection. Hippo- 
 lyte, overcome with happiness, turned to look at Adelaide 
 and her mother, and saw that they were, tremulous with 
 pleasure and delight at their little trick. He felt himself 
 mean, sordid, a fool; he longed to punish himself, to rend 
 his heart. A few tears rose to his eyes, by an irresistible 
 impulse he sprang up, clasped Adelaide in his arms, 
 pressed her to his heart, and stole a kiss; then with the 
 simple heartiness of an artist, "I ask her for my wife!" he 
 exclaimed, looking at the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide looked at him with half-wrathful eyes, and 
 Madame de Rouville, somewhat astonished, was consider' 
 ing her reply, when the scene was interrupted by a ring at 
 the bell. The old vice-admiral came in, followed by his 
 shadow, and Madame Schinner. Having guessed the cause 
 of the grief her son vainly endeavored to conceal, Hippo- 
 lyte's mother had made inquiries among her friends con- 
 cerning Adelaide. Very justly alarmed by the calumnies 
 which weighed on the young girl, unknown to the Comte 
 de Kergarouet, whose name she learned from the porter's 
 wife, she went to report them to the vice-admiral; and he, 
 in his rage, declared "he would crop all the scoundrels' ears 
 for them." 
 
 Then, prompted by his wrath, he went on to explain to 
 Madame Schinner the secret of his losing intentionally at
 
 182 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 cards, because the Baronne's pride left him none but these 
 ingenious means of assisting her. 
 
 When Madame Schinner had paid her respects to Ma- 
 dame de Kouville, the Baroness looked at the Comte de 
 Kergarouet, at the Chevalier du Halga the friend of the 
 departed Comtesse de Kergarouet at Hippolyte and Ade- 
 laide, and said, with the grace that comes from the heart, 
 " So we are a family party this evening. ' ' 
 
 PARIS, May, 1832.
 
 THE VENDETTA 
 
 Dedicated to Puttinati, Sculptor at Milan 
 
 /N THE YEAR 1800, toward the end of October, a 
 stranger, having with him a woman and a little girl, 
 made his appearance in front of the Tuileries Palace, 
 and stood for some little time close to the ruins of a house, 
 then recently pulled down, on the spot where the wing is 
 still unfinished which was intended to join Catherine de 
 Medici's Palace to the Louvre built by the Valois. There 
 he stood, his arms folded, his head bent, raising it now and 
 again to look at the Consul's Palace, or at his wife, who sat 
 on a stone by his side. 
 
 Though the stranger seemed to think only of the little 
 girl of nine or ten, whose black hair was a plaything in his 
 fingers, the woman lost none of the glances shot at her by 
 her companion. A common feeling, other than love, united 
 these two beings, and a common thought animated their 
 thoughts and their actions. Misery is perhaps the strong- 
 est of all bonds. 
 
 The man had one of those broad, solemn-looking heads, 
 with a mass of hair, of which so many examples have been 
 perpetuated by the Carracci. Among the thick black locks 
 were many white hairs. His features, though fine and proud, 
 had a set hardness which spoiled them. In spite of his pow- 
 erful and upright frame, he seemed to be more than sixty 
 years of age. His clothes, which were dilapidated, betrayed 
 his foreign origin. 
 
 The woman's face, formerly handsome, but now faded, 
 bore a stamp of deep melancholy, though, when her hus- 
 
 (183)
 
 184 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 band looked at her, she forced herself to smile, and affected 
 a calm expression. The little girl was standing, in spite of 
 the fatigue that was written on her small sunburned face. 
 She had Italian features, large black eyes under well-arched 
 eyebrows, a native dignity and genuine grace. More than 
 one passer-by was touched by the mere sight of this group, 
 for the persons composing it made no effort to disguise a 
 despair evidently as deep as the expression of it was sim- 
 ple; but the spring of the transient kindliness which dis- 
 tinguishes the Parisian is quickly dried up. As soon as 
 the stranger perceived that he was the object of some idler's 
 attention, he stared at him so fiercely that the most intrepid 
 lounger hastened his step, as though he had trodden on a 
 viper. 
 
 After remaining there a long time undecided, the tall man 
 suddenly passed his hand across his brow, driving away, so 
 to speak, the thoughts that had furrowed it with wrinkles, 
 and made up his mind no doubt to some desperate deter- 
 mination. Casting a piercing look at his wife and daugh- 
 ter, he drew out of his jerkin a long dagger, held it out to 
 the woman, and said in Italian, "I am going to see whether 
 the Bonapartes remember us." 
 
 He walked on, with a slow confident step, toward the 
 entrance to the palace, where, of course, he was checked by 
 a soldier on guard, with whom there could be no long dis- 
 cussion. Seeing that the stranger was obstinate, the sentry 
 pointed his bayonet at him by way of ultimatum. As chance 
 would have it at this moment, a squad came round to relieve 
 guard, and the corporal very civilly informed the stranger 
 where he might find the captain of the guard. 
 
 "Let Bonaparte know that Bartolomeo di Piombo wants 
 to see him," said the Italian to the officer. 
 
 In vain did the Captain explain to Bartolomeo that it 
 was not possible to see the First Consul without having 
 written to him beforehand to request an audience. The 
 stranger insisted that the officer should go to inform Bona- 
 parte. The Captain urged the rules of his duty, and for-
 
 THE VENDETTA 185 
 
 E&ally refused to yield to the demands of this strange peti- 
 tioner. Bartolomeo knit his brows, looked at the Captain 
 with a terrible scowl, and seemed to make him responsible 
 for all the disasters his refusal might occasion ; then he re- 
 mained silent, his arms tightly crossed on his breast, and 
 took his stand under the archway which connects the gar- 
 den and the courtyard of the Tuileries. 
 
 People who are thoroughly bent on anything are almost 
 always well served by chance. At the moment when Bar- 
 tolomeo sat down on one of the curbstones near the en- 
 trance to the palace, a carriage drove up, and out of it 
 stepped Lucien Bonaparte, at that time Minister of the 
 Interior. 
 
 "Ah ! Loucien, good luck for me to have met you!" cried 
 the stranger. 
 
 These words, spoken in the Corsican dialect, made Lucien 
 stop at the instant when he was rushing into the vestibule; 
 he looked at his fellow-countryman, and recognized him. 
 At the first word that Bartolomeo said in his ear, he took 
 him with him. Murat, Lannes, and Kapp were in the First 
 Consul's Cabinet. On seeing Lucien come in with so strange 
 a figure as was Piombo, the conversation ceased. Lucien 
 took his brother's hand and led him into a window recess. 
 After exchanging a few words, the First Consul raised his 
 hand with a gesture, which Murat and Lannes obeyed by 
 retiring. Eapp affected not to have seen it, and remained. 
 Then, Bonaparte having sharply called him to order, the 
 aide-de-camp went out with a sour face. The First Consul, 
 who heard the sound of Rapp's steps in the neighboring 
 room, hastily followed him, and saw him close to the wall 
 between the cabinet and the anteroom. 
 
 "You refuse to understand me?" said the First Consul. 
 "I wish to be alone with my countryman." 
 
 "A Corsican!" retorted the aide-de-camp. "I distrust 
 those creatures too much not to " 
 
 The First Consul could not help smiling, and lightly 
 pushed his faithful officer by the shoulders.
 
 186 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 "Well, and what are you doing here, my poor Bartolo- 
 meo?" said the First Consul to Piombo. 
 
 "I have come to ask for shelter and protection, if you 
 are a true Corsican, ' ' replied Bartolomeo in a rough tone. 
 
 "What misfortune has driven you from your native land? 
 You were the richest, the most " 
 
 "I have killed all the Porta, " replied the Corsican, in a 
 hollow voice, with a frown. 
 
 The First Consul drew back a step or two, like a man 
 astonished. 
 
 ' ' Are you going to betray me ? ' ' cried Bartolomeo, with 
 a gloomy look at Bonaparte. "Do you forget that there are 
 still four of the Piombo in Corsica?" 
 
 Lucien took his fellow-countryman by the arm and shook 
 him. "Do you come here to threaten the savior of France?" 
 he said vehemently. 
 
 Bonaparte made a sign to Lucien, who was silent. Then. 
 he looked at Piombo, and said, "And why did you kill all 
 the Porta?" 
 
 "We had made friends," he replied; "the Barbanti had 
 reconciled us. The day after we had drunk together to 
 drown our quarrel I left, because I had business at Bastia. 
 They stayed at my place, and set fire to my vineyard at 
 Longone. They killed my. son Gregorio; my daughter 
 Ginevra and my wife escaped; they had taken the Com- 
 munion that morning; the Virgin protected them. When 
 I got home I could no longer see my house; I searched for 
 it with my feet in the ashes. Suddenly I came across Gre- 
 gorio's body; I recognized it in the moonlight. 'Oh, the 
 Porta have played this trick!' said I to myself. I went off 
 at once into the scrub ; I got together a few men to whom I 
 had done some service do you hear, Bonaparte? and we 
 marched down on the Porta's vineyard. We arrived at five 
 in the morning, and by seven they were all in the presence 
 of God. Giacomo declares that Elisa Vanni saved a child, 
 little Luigi; but I tied him into bed with my own hands be- 
 fore setting the house on fire. Then I quitted the island
 
 THE VENDETTA 187 
 
 with my wife and daughter without being able to make sure 
 whether Luigi Porta were still alive." 
 
 Bonaparte looked at Bartolomeo with curiosity, but no 
 astonishment. 
 
 "How many were they?" asked Lucien. 
 
 ' ' Seven, ' ' replied Piombo. ' ' They persecuted you in their 
 day," he added. The words aroused no sign of hatred in the 
 two brothers. "Ah! you are no longer Corsicans!" cried 
 Bartolomeo, with a sort of despair. "Good- by. Formerly 
 I protected you," he went on reproachfully. "But for me 
 your mother would never have reached Marseilles," he said, 
 turning to Bonaparte, who stood thoughtful, his elbow rest- 
 ing on the chimney-piece. 
 
 "I cannot in conscience take you under my wing, Piom- 
 bo," replied Napoleon. "I am the head of a great nation; 
 I govern the Republic; I must see that the laws are carried 
 out." 
 
 "Ah ha!" said Bartolomeo. 
 
 "But I can shut my eyes," Bonaparte went on. "The 
 tradition of the Vendetta will hinder the reign of law in 
 Corsica for a long time yet," he added, talking to himself. 
 "But it must be stamped out at any cost." 
 
 He was silent for a minute, and Lucien signed to Piombo 
 to say nothing. The Corsican shook his head from side to 
 side with a disapproving look. 
 
 "Remain here," the First Consul said, addressing Barto- 
 lomeo. "We know nothing. I will see that your estates 
 are purchased so as to give you at once the means of living. 
 Then later, some time hence, we will remember you. But 
 no more Yendetta. There is no Maquis scrub here. If you 
 play tricks with your dagger, there is no hope for you. Here 
 the law protects everybody, and we do not do justice on our 
 own account. ' ' 
 
 "He has put himself at the head of a strange people," 
 replied Bartolomeo, taking Lucien 's hand and pressing it. 
 "But you recognize me in misfortune; it is a bond between 
 us for life and death; and you may command every one
 
 188 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 named Piombo." As he spoke, his brow cleared, and he 
 looked about him approvingly. 
 
 "You are not badly off here," he said, with a smile, as 
 if he would like to lodge there. "And you are dressed all 
 in red like a Cardinal." 
 
 "It rests with you to rise and have a palace in Paris," 
 said Bonaparte, looking at him from head to foot. "It will 
 often happen that I may look about me for a devoted friend 
 to whom I can trust myself. ' ' 
 
 A sigh of gladness broke from Piombo's deep chest; he 
 held out his hand to the First Consul, saying, "There is 
 something of the Corsican in you still!" 
 
 Bonaparte smiled. He gazed in silence at this man, who 
 had brought him as it were a breath of air from his native 
 land, from the island where he had formerly been so miracu- 
 lously saved from the hatred of the "English party," and 
 which he was fated never to see again. He made a sign to 
 his brother, who led away Bartolomeo di Piombo. 
 
 Lucien inquired with interest as to the pecuniary position 
 of the man who had once protected his family. Piombo led 
 the Minister of the Interior to a window and showed him his 
 wife and Ginevra, both seated on a heap of stones. 
 
 "We have come from Fontainebieau on foot," said he, 
 "and we have not a sou." 
 
 Lucien gave his fellow-countryman his purse, and desired 
 him to come again next morning to consult as to the means 
 of providing for his family. The income from all Piombo's 
 possessions in Corsica could hardly suffice to maintain him 
 respectably in Paris. 
 
 Fifteen years elapsed between the arrival of the Piombo 
 family in Paris and the following incidents, which, without 
 the story of this event, would have been less intelligible. 
 
 Servin, one of our most distinguished artists, was the first 
 to conceive the idea of opening a studio for young ladies who 
 may wish to take lessons in painting. He was a man of over 
 forty, of blameless habits, and wholly given up to his art;
 
 THE VENDETTA 189 
 
 and he had married for love the daughter of a General with- 
 out any fortune. At first mothers brought their daughters 
 themselves to the professor's studio; but when they under- 
 stood his high principles and appreciated the care by which 
 he strove to deserve such confidence, they ended by sending 
 the girls alone. It was part of the painter's scheme to take 
 as pupils only young ladies of rich or highly respectable 
 family, that no difficulties might arise as to the society in 
 his studio ; he had even refused to take young girls who in- 
 tended to become artists, and who must necessarily have had 
 certain kinds of training without which no mastery is possi- 
 ble. By degrees his prudence, the superior method by which 
 he initiated his pupils into the secrets of his art, as well as 
 the security their mothers felt in knowing that their daugh- 
 ters were in the company of well-bred girls, and in the ar- 
 tist's character, manners, and marriage, won him a high 
 reputation in the world of fashion. As soon as a young 
 girl showed any desire to learn drawing or painting, and her 
 mother asked advice, ' ' Send her to Servin, ' ' was always the 
 answer. 
 
 Thus Servin had a specialty for teaching ladies art, as 
 Herbault had for bonnets, Leroy for dresses, and Chevet for 
 dainties. It was acknowledged that a young woman who 
 had taken lessons of Servin could pronounce definitively on 
 the pictures in the Louvre, paint a portrait in a superior 
 manner, copy an old picture, and produce her own painting 
 of genre. Thus this artist sufficed for all the requirements 
 of the aristocracy. 
 
 Notwithstanding his connection with all the best houses 
 in Paris, he was independent and patriotic, preserving with 
 all alike the light and witty tone, sometimes ironical, and 
 the freedom of opinion which characterize painters. 
 
 He had carried his scrupulous precautions into the ar- 
 rangement of the place where his scholars worked. The 
 outer entrance to the loft above his dwelling-rooms had been 
 walled up; to get into this retreat, as sacred as a harem, the 
 way was up a staircase -in the centre of the house. This
 
 1W BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 studio, which occupied the whole of the top story, was on 
 the vast scale which always surprises inquisitive visitors 
 when, having climbed to sixty feet above the ground, they 
 expect to find an artist lodged in the gutter. It was a kind 
 of gallery, abundantly lighted by immense skylights screened 
 with the large green blinds which artists use to distribute the 
 light. A quantity of caricatures, heads sketched in outline 
 with a brush or the point of a palette knife, all over the dark 
 gray walls, proved that, allowing for a difference in the ex- 
 pression, fine young ladies have as much whimsicality in 
 their brain as men can have. A small stove, with a huge 
 pipe that made amazing zigzags before reaching the upper 
 region of the roof, was the inevitable decoration of this 
 studio. There was a shelf all round the room, supporting 
 plaster casts which lay there in confusion, most of them 
 tinder a coating of whitish dust. 
 
 Above this shelf here and there a head of Niobe hanging 
 to a nail showed its pathetic bend, a Venus smiled, a hand 
 was unexpectedly thrust out before your eyes, like a beggar's 
 asking alms; then there were anatomical 6corch6s, yellow with 
 smoke, and looking like limbs snatched from coffins; and pic- 
 tures, drawings, lay-figures, frames without canvas, and can- 
 vases without frames, completed the effect, giving the room 
 the characteristic aspect of a studio, a singular mixture of 
 ornamentation and bareness, of poverty and splendor, of care 
 and neglect. 
 
 This huge sort of hold, in which everything, even man, 
 looks small, has a behind-the-scenes flavor; here are to be 
 seen old linen, gilt armor, odds and ends of stuffs, and some 
 machinery. But there is something about it as grand as 
 thought: genius and death are there; Diana and Apollo side 
 by side with a skull or a skeleton ; beauty and disorder, po- 
 etry and reality, gorgeous coloring in shadow, and often a 
 whole drama, but motionless and silent. How symbolical 
 of the artist brain! 
 
 At the moment when my story begins the bright sun of 
 July lighted up the studio, and two beams of sunshine shot
 
 THE VENDETTA 191 
 
 across its depths, broad bands of diaphanous gold in which 
 the dust-motes glistened. A dozen easels raised their pointed 
 spars, looking like the masts of vessels in a harbor. Several 
 young girls gave life to the scene by the variety of their 
 countenances and attitudes, and the difference in their dress. 
 The strong shadows cast by the green baize blinds, arranged 
 to suit the position of each easel, produced a multitude of 
 contrasts and fascinating effects of clare-obscure. 
 
 This group of girls formed the most attractive picture in 
 the gallery. A fair-haired girl, simply dressed, stood at some 
 distance from her companions, working perseveringly and 
 seeming to foresee misfortune; no one looked at her nor 
 spoke to her; she was the prettiest, the most modest, and 
 the least rich. Two principal groups, divided by a little 
 space, represented two classes of society, two spirits, even 
 in this studio, where rank and fortune ought to have been 
 forgotten. 
 
 These young things, sitting or standing, surrounded by 
 their paint-boxes, playing with their brushes or getting them 
 ready, handling their bright-tinted palettes, painting, chat- 
 tering, laughing, singing, given up to their natural impulses 
 and revealing their true characters, made up a drama un- 
 known to men; this one proud, haughty, capricious, with 
 black hair and beautiful hands, flashed the fire of her eyes 
 at random; that one, light-hearted and heedless, a smile on 
 her lips, her hair chestnut, with delicate white hands, vir- 
 ginal and French, a light nature without a thought of evil, 
 living from hour to hour; another, dreamy, melancholy, pale, 
 her head drooping like a falling blossom: her neighbor, on 
 the contrary, tall, indolent, with Oriental manners, and long, 
 black, melting eyes, speaking little, but lost in thought, and 
 stealing a look at the head of Antinous. 
 
 In the midst, like the Jocoso of a Spanish comedy, a 
 girl, full of wit and sparkling sallies, stood watching them 
 all with a single glance, and making them laugh ; raising a 
 face so full of life that it could not but be pretty. She was 
 the leader of the first group oi pupils, consisting of the daugh-
 
 192 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ters of bankers, lawyers, and merchants all rich, but exposed 
 to all the minute but stinging disdains freely poured out upon 
 them by the other young girls who belonged to the aristoc- 
 racy. These were governed by the daughter of a gentleman 
 usher to the King's private chamber, a vain little thing, as 
 silly as she was vain, and proud of her father's having an 
 office at Court. She aimed at seeming to understand the 
 master's remarks at the first word, and appearing to work 
 by inspired grace; she used an eyeglass, came very much 
 dressed, very late, and begged her companions not to talk 
 loud. Among this second group might be observed some 
 exquisite shapes and distinguished-looking faces; but their 
 looks expressed but little simplicity. Though their atti- 
 tudes were elegant and their movements graceful, their 
 faces were lacking in candor, and it was easy to perceive 
 that they belonged to a world where politeness forms the 
 character at an early age, and the abuse of social pleasures 
 kills the feelings and develops selfishness. When the 
 whole party of girl students was complete there were to 
 be seen among them childlike heads, virgin heads of en- 
 chanting purity, faces where the parted lips showed virgin 
 teeth, and where a virgin smile came and went. Then the 
 studio suggested not a seraglio, but a group of angels sit- 
 ting on a cloud in heaven. 
 
 It was near noon; Servin had not yet made his appear- 
 ance. For some days past he had spent most of his time at 
 a studio he had elsewhere, finishing a picture he had there 
 for the exhibition. Suddenly Mademoiselle Ame'lie Thi- 
 rion, the head of the aristocrats in this little assembly, 
 spoke at some length to her neighbor; there was profound 
 silence among .the patrician group; the banker faction were 
 equally silent from astonishment, and tried to guess the 
 subject of such a conference. But the secret of the young 
 ultras was soon known. Amelie rose, took an easel that 
 stood near her, and moved it to some distance from the 
 "nobility," close to a clumsy partition which divided 
 the studio from a dark closet where broken casts were
 
 THE VENDETTA 193 
 
 kept, paintings that the professor had condemned, and, in 
 winter, the firewood. Ame'lie's proceedings gave rise to a 
 murmur of surprise which did not hinder her from com- 
 pleting the removal by wheeling up to the easel a stool 
 and paint-box, in fact, everything, even a picture by Prud- 
 hon, of which a pupil, who had not yet come, was making 
 a copy. After this coup d'etat the party of the right painted 
 on in silence; but the left talked it over at great length. 
 
 "What will Mademoiselle Piombo say?" asked one of 
 the girls of Mademoiselle Mathilde Roguin, the oracle 
 of mischief of her group. 
 
 "She is not a girl to say much," was the reply. "But 
 fifty years hence she will remember this insult as if she had 
 experienced it the day before, and will find some cruel means 
 of revenge. She is a person I should not like to be at war 
 with." 
 
 "The proscription to which those ladies have condemned 
 her is all the more unjust," said another young girl, "be- 
 cause Mademoiselle Ginevra was very sad the day before 
 yesterday; her father, they say, has just given up his ap- 
 pointment. This will add to her troubles, while she was 
 very good to those young ladies during the Hundred Days. 
 Did she ever say a word that could hurt them ? On the 
 contrary, she avoided talking politics. But our ultras seem 
 to be prompted by jealousy rather than by party -spirit. " 
 
 "I have a great mind to fetch Mademoiselle Piombo's 
 easel and place it by mine," said Mathilde Eoguin. She 
 rose, but on second thoughts she sat down again. "With 
 a spirit like Mademoiselle Grinevra's," said she, "it is im- 
 possible to know how she would take our civility. Let us 
 wait and see." 
 
 "Eccola!" said the black-eyed girl languidly. In fact, 
 the sound of footsteps coming upstairs was heard in the 
 studio. The words, "Here she comes!" passed from mouth 
 to mouth, and then perfect silence fell. 
 
 To understand the full importance of the ostracism carried 
 into effect by Amelie Thirion, it must be told that this scene 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 9.
 
 194 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 took place toward the end of the month of July, 1815. The 
 second restoration of -the Bourbons broke up many friend- 
 ships which had weathered the turmoil of the first. At this 
 time families, almost always divided among themselves, re- 
 newed many of the most deplorable scenes which tarnish the 
 history of all countries at periods of civil or religious strug- 
 gles. Children, young girls, old men, had caught the mon- 
 archical fever from which the Government was suffering. 
 Discord flew in under the domestic roof, and suspicion 
 dyed in gloomy hues the most intimate conversations and 
 actions. 
 
 Ginevra di Piombo idolized Napoleon; indeed, how 
 could she have hated him ? The Emperor was her fellow 
 countryman, and her father's benefactor Baron di Piombo 
 was one of Napoleon's followers who had most efficiently 
 worked to bring him back from Elba. Incapable of re- 
 nouncing his political faith, nay, eager to proclaim it, 
 Piombo had remained in Paris in the midst of enemies. 
 Hence Ginevra di Piombo was ranked with the " suspi- 
 cious characters," all the more so because she made no 
 secret of the regret her family felt at the second restora- 
 tion. The only tears she had perhaps ever shed in her 
 life were wrung from her by the twofold tidings of Bona- 
 parte's surrender on board the "Bellerophon" and the ar- 
 rest of Labe*doyere. 
 
 The young ladies forming the aristocratic party in the 
 studio belonged to the most enthusiastically Eoyalist fam- 
 ilies of Paris. It would be difficult to give any idea of the 
 exaggerated feelings of the time, and of the horror felt 
 toward Bonapartists. However mean and trivial Ame'lie 
 Thirion's conduct may seem to-day, it was then a very 
 natural demonstration of hatred. Ginevra di Piombo, one 
 of Servin's earliest pupils, had occupied the place of which 
 they wished to deprive her ever since the first day she had 
 come to the studio. The aristocratic group had gradually 
 settled round her ; and to turn her out of a place, which in 
 a certain sense belonged to her, was not merely to insult
 
 THE VENDETTA 195 
 
 her, but to cause her some pain, for all artists have a pre- 
 dilection for the spot where they work. 
 
 However, political hostility had perhaps not much to 
 do with the conduct of this little studio party of the Right. 
 Ginevra di Piombo, the most accomplished of Servin's 
 pupils, was an object of the deepest jealousy. The master 
 professed an equal admiration for the talents and the char- 
 acter of this favorite pupil, who served as the standard of 
 all his comparisons ; and indeed, while it was impossible to 
 explain the ascendency this young girl exercised over all 
 who were about her, she enjoyed in this small world an in- 
 fluence resembling that of Bonaparte over his soldiers. The 
 aristocratic clique had, some days since, resolved on the over- 
 throw of this queen; but as no one had been bold enough to 
 repulse the Bonapartist, Mademoiselle Thirion had just struck 
 the decisive blow so as to make her companions the accom- 
 plices of her hatred. Though Ginevra was really beloved 
 by some of the Royalist party, who at home were abun- 
 dantly lectured on politics, with the tact peculiar to women 
 they judged it best not to interfere in the quarrel. 
 
 On entering, Ginevra was received in perfect silence. Of 
 all the girls who had yet appeared at Servin's studio, she was 
 the handsomest, the tallest, and the most finely made. Her 
 gait had a stamp of dignity and grace which commanded re- 
 spect. Her face, full of intelligence, seemed radiant, it was 
 so transfused with the animation peculiar to Corsicans, which 
 does not exclude calmness. Her abundant hair, her eyes, 
 and their black lashes told of passion. Though the cor- 
 ners of her mouth were softly drawn and her lips a little 
 too thick, they had the kindly expression which strong 
 people derive from the consciousness of strength. By a 
 singular freak of nature the charm of her features was in 
 some sort belied by a marble forehead stamped with an 
 almost savage pride, and the traditional habits of Corsica. 
 That was the only bond between her and her native land; 
 in every other detail of her person the simplicity and free- 
 dom of Lombard beauties were so bewitching that only in
 
 196 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 her absence could any one bear to cause her the smallest 
 pain. She was, indeed, so attractive, that her old father, 
 out of prudence, never allowed her to walk alone to the 
 studio. 
 
 The only fault of this really poetic creature came of the 
 very power of such fully developed beauty. She had re- 
 fused to marry, out of affection for her father and mother, 
 feeling herself necessary to them in their old age. Her taste 
 for painting had taken the place of the passions which com- 
 monly agitate women. 
 
 "You are all very silent to-day," she said, after coming 
 forward a step or two. "Good-morning, my little Laure," 
 she added in a gentle, caressing tone, as she went up to the 
 young girl who was painting apart from the rest. "That 
 head is very good. The flesh is a little too pink, but it is 
 all capitally drawn." 
 
 Laure raised her head, looked at Ginevra much touched, 
 and their faces brightened with an expression of mutual af- 
 fection. A faint smile gave life to the Italian's lips, but 
 she seemed pensive, and went slowly to her place, care- 
 lessly glancing at the drawings and pictures, and saying 
 good-morning to each of the girls of the first group, with- 
 out observing the unusual curiosity excited by her pres- 
 ence. She might have been a queen amid her Court. She 
 did not observe the deep silence that reigned among the 
 aristocrats, and passed their camp without saying a word. 
 Her absence of mind was so complete that she went to her 
 easel, opened her paint-box, took out her brushes, slipped 
 on her brown linen cuffs, tied her apron, examined her 
 palette, all without thinking, as it seemed, of what she was 
 doing. All the heads of the humbler group were turned to 
 look at her. And if the young ladies of the Thirion faction 
 were less frankly impatient than their companions, their side 
 glances were nevertheless directed to Ginevra. 
 
 "She notices nothing," said Mademoiselle Roguin. 
 
 At this moment Ginevra, roused from the meditative at- 
 titude in which she had gazed at her canvas, turned her
 
 THE VENDETTA 197 
 
 head toward the aristocratic party. With one glance she 
 measured the distance that lay between them, and held her 
 peace. 
 
 "It has not occurred to her that they meant to insult 
 her," said Mathilde. "She has neither colored nor turned 
 pale. How provoked those young ladies will be if she 
 likes her new place better than the old one!" "You are 
 quite apart there, Mademoiselle," she added louder, and 
 addressing Ginevra. 
 
 The Italian girl affected not to hear, or perhaps she did 
 not hear; she hastily rose, walked rather slowly along the 
 partition which divided the dark closet from the studio, 
 seeming to examine the skylight from which the light 
 fell ; and to this she ascribed so much importance that she 
 got upon a chair to fasten the green baize which interfered 
 with the light, a good deal higher. At this elevation she 
 was on a level with a small crack in the boarding, the real 
 object of her efforts, for the look she cast through it can 
 only be compared with that of a miser discovering Alad- 
 din's treasure. She quickly descended, came back to her 
 place, arranged her picture, affected still to be dissatisfied 
 with the light, pushed a table close to the partition, and 
 placed a chair on it; then she nimbly mounted this scaf- 
 folding, and again peeped through the crack. She gave 
 but one look into the closet, which was lighted by a win- 
 dow at the top of the partition, but what she saw impressed 
 her so vividly that she started. 
 
 "You will fall, Mademoiselle OHnevra!" cried Laure. 
 
 All the girls turned to look at their imprudent com- 
 panion, who was tottering. The fear of seeing them gather 
 round her gave her courage ; she recovered her strength and 
 her balance, and dancing on the chair, she turned to Laure, 
 and said with some agitation: 
 
 "Bah! It is at any rate safer than a throne!" 
 
 She quickly arranged the baize, came down, pushed the 
 table and the chair far from the partition, returned to her 
 easel, and made a few more attempts, seeming to try for an
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 effect of light that suited her. Her picture did not really 
 trouble her at all; her aim was to get close to the dark 
 closet by which she placed herself, as she wished, at the 
 end near the door. Then she prepared to set her palette, 
 still in perfect silence. Where she now was she soon heard 
 more distinctly a slight noise which, on the day before, had 
 greatly stirred her curiosity, and sent her young imagination 
 wandering over a wide field of conjecture. She easily rec- 
 ognized it as the deep, regular breathing of the sleeping 
 man whom she had just now seen. Her curiosity was sat- 
 isfied, but she found herself burdened with an immense 
 responsibility. Through the crack she had caught sight 
 of the Imperial eagle, and on a camp bed, in the dim light, 
 had seen the figure of an officer of the guard. She guessed 
 it all. Servin was sheltering a refugee. 
 
 She now trembled lest one of her companions should 
 come to examine her picture, and should hear the unfortu- 
 nate man breathe, or heave too deep a sigh, such as had 
 fallen on her ear during yesterday's lesson. She resolved 
 to remain near the door, and trust to her wits to cheat the 
 tricks of fate. 
 
 "I had better remain here," thought she, "to prevent 
 some disaster, than leave the poor prisoner at the mercy of 
 some giddy prank." 
 
 This was the secret of Ginevra's apparent indifference 
 when she found her easel transplanted; she was secretly de- 
 lighted, since she had been able to satisfy her curiosity in a 
 natural manner; and besides, she was too much absorbed at 
 this moment to inquire into the reason of her exclusion. 
 Nothing is more mortifying to young girls, or indeed to any 
 one, than to see a practical joke, an insult, or a witticism fail 
 of its effect in consequence of the victim's contempt. It 
 would seem that our hatred of an enemy is increased by the 
 height to which he can rise above us. 
 
 Ginevra's conduct remained a riddle to all her compan- 
 ions. Her friends and her foes were alike surprised, for she 
 was allowed to have every good quality excepting forgive-
 
 THE VENDETTA 199 
 
 ness of injuries. Though the opportunities for showing this 
 vice of temper had rarely been offered to Ginevra by the in- 
 cidents of studio life, the instances she had happened to give 
 of her vindictive spirit and determination had none the less 
 made a deep impression on her companions' minds. After 
 many guesses, Mademoiselle Eoguin finally regarded the 
 Italian's silence as evidence of a magnanimity above all 
 praise; and her party, inspired by her, conceived a plan to 
 humiliate the aristocrats of the studio. They achieved their 
 purpose by a fire of sarcasms directed at the pride and airs 
 of the party of the right. 
 
 Madame Servin's arrival put an end to this contest of 
 self-assertiveness. Ame'lie, with the shrewdness which is 
 always coupled with malice, had remarked, watched, and 
 wondered at the excessive absence of mind which hindered 
 Ginevra from hearing the keenly polite dispute of which she 
 was the subject. The revenge which Mademoiselle Roguin 
 and her followers were wreaking on Mademoiselle Thirion 
 and her party had thus the fatal effect of setting the young 
 Ultras to discover the cause of Ginevra's absorbed silence. 
 The beautiful Italian became the centre of observation, and 
 was watched by her friends as much as by her enemies. It 
 is very difficult to hide the slightest excitement, the most 
 trifling feeling, from fifteen idle and inquisitive girls whose 
 mischief and wits crave only for secrets to guess, and in- 
 trigues to plot or to baffle, and who can ascribe to a gesture, 
 to a glance, to a word, so many meanings, that they can 
 hardly fail to discover the true one. Thus Ginevra di 
 Piombo's secret was in great peril of being found out. 
 
 At this moment Madame Servin's presence produced a 
 diversion in the drama that was being obscurely played at 
 the bottom of these young hearts; while its sentiments, its 
 ideas, its development, were expressed by almost allegorical 
 words, by significant looks, by gestures, and even by silence, 
 often more emphatic than speech. 
 
 The moment Madame Servin came into the studio her eyes 
 turned to the door by which Ginevra was standing. Under
 
 200 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the present circumstances this look was not lost. If at first 
 none of the maidens observed it, Mademoiselle Thirion re- 
 membered it afterward, and accounted for the suspiciousness, 
 the alarn, and mystery which gave a hunted expression to 
 Madame Servin's eyes. 
 
 "Mesdemoiselles," she said, "Monsieur Servin cannot 
 come to-day." Then she paid some little compliment to 
 each pupil, all of them welcoming her in the girlish, ca- 
 ressing way which lies as much in the voice and eyes as in 
 actions. She immediately went to Ginevra under an impulse 
 of uneasiness which she vainly tried to conceal. The Ital- 
 ian and the painter's wife exchanged friendly nods, and then 
 stood in silence, one painting, the other watching her paint. 
 The officer's breathing was easily audible, but Madame Servin 
 could take no notice of it; and her dissimulation was so com- 
 plete that Giuevra was tempted to accuse her of wilful deaf- 
 ness. At this moment the stranger turned on the bed. The 
 Italian girl looked Madame Servin steadily in the face, and, 
 without betraying the smallest agitation, the lady said, "Your 
 copy is as fine as the original. If I had to choose, I should 
 really be puzzled. ' ' 
 
 "Monsieur Servin has not let his wife into the secret of 
 this mystery," thought Ginevra, who, after answering the 
 young wife with a gentle smile of incredulity, sang a snatch 
 of some national canzonetta to cover any sounds the prisoner 
 might make. 
 
 It was so unusual to hear the studious Italian sing that 
 all the girls looked at her in surprise. Later this incident 
 served as evidence to the charitable suppositions of hatred. 
 Madame Servin soon went away, and the hours of study 
 ended without further event. Ginevra let all her compan- 
 ions leave, affecting to work on; but she unconsciously be- 
 trayed her wish to be alone, for as the pupils made ready to 
 go she looked at them with ill- disguised impatience. Mad- 
 emoiselle Thirion, who within these few hours had become 
 a cruel foe to the young girl, who was her superior in every- 
 thing, guessed by the instinct of hatred that her rival's
 
 THE VENDETTA 201 
 
 affected industry covered a mystery. She had been struck 
 more than once by the attention with which Ginevra seemed 
 to be listening to a sound no one else could hear. The ex- 
 pression she now read in the Italian's eyes was as a flash of 
 illumination. She was the last to leave, and went in on her 
 way down to see Madame Servin, with whom she stayed a 
 few minutes. Then, pretending that she had forgotten her 
 bag, she very softly went upstairs again to the studio, and 
 discovered Grinevra at the top of a hastily constructed scaf- 
 folding, so lost in contemplation of the unknown soldier that 
 she did not hear the light sound of her companion's footsteps. 
 It is true that Amelie walked on eggs to use a phrase of 
 Walter Scott's; she retired to the door and coughed. Gi- 
 nevra started, turned her head, saw her enemy, and colored; 
 then she quickly untied the blind, to mislead her as to her 
 purpose, and came down. After putting away her paint- 
 box, she left the studio, carrying stamped upon her heart 
 the image of a man's head as charming as the Endymidn, 
 Girodet's masterpiece, which she had copied a few days 
 previously. 
 
 "So young a man, and proscribed I Who can he be? 
 for it is not Marshal Ney. " 
 
 These two sentences are the simplest expression of all 
 the ideas which Ginevra turned over in her mind during two 
 days. The next day but one, notwithstanding her hurry to 
 be first at the painting gallery, she found that Mademoiselle 
 Thirion had already come in a carriage. Ginevra and her 
 enemy watched each other for some time, but each kept her 
 countenance impenetrable by the other. Ame'lie had seen 
 the stranger's handsome face; but happily, and at the same 
 time unhappily, the eagles and the uniform were not within 
 the range of her eye through the crack. She lost herself in con- 
 jecture. Suddenly Servin came in, much earlier than usual. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Ginevra," said he, after casting an eye 
 round the gallery, "why have you placed yourself there? 
 The light is bad. Come nearer to these young ladies, and 
 lower your blind a little."
 
 202 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Then he sat down by Laure, whose work deserved his 
 most lenient criticism. 
 
 "Well done!" he exclaimed, "this head is capitally done. 
 You will be a second Ginevra. " 
 
 The master went from easel to easel, blaming, flattering, 
 and jesting; and making himself, as usual, more feared for 
 his jests than for his reproofs. 
 
 The Italian had not obeyed his wishes; she remained at 
 her post with the firm intention of staying there. She took 
 out a sheet of paper and began to sketch in sepia the head of 
 the unhappy refugee. A work conceived of with passion al- 
 ways bears a particular stamp. The faculty of giving truth 
 to a rendering of nature or of a thought constitutes genius, 
 and passion can often take its place. Thus in the circum- 
 stances in which Ginevra found herself, either the intuition 
 she owed to her memory, which had been deeply struck, or 
 perhaps necessity, the mother of greatness, lent her a super- 
 natural flash of talent. The officer's head was thrown off on 
 the paper with an inward trembling that she ascribed to fear, 
 and which a physiologist would have recognized as the fever 
 of inspiration. From time to time she stole a furtive glance 
 at her companions, so as to be able to hide the sketch in case 
 of any indiscretion on their part. But in spite of her sharp 
 lookout, there was a moment when she failed to perceive 
 that her relentless enemy, under the shelter of a huge port- 
 folio, had turned her eyeglass on the mysterious drawing. 
 Mademoiselle Thirion, recognizing the refugee's features, 
 raised her head suddenly, and Ginevra slipped away the 
 sheet of paper. 
 
 "Why do you stay there, in spite of my opinion, Madem- 
 oiselle?" the professor gravely asked Ginevra. 
 
 The girl hastily turned her easel so that no one could see 
 her sketch, and said, in an agitated voice, as she showed it 
 to her master: "Don't you think with me that this is a better 
 light ? May I not stay where I am ? ' ' 
 
 Servin turned pale. As nothing can escape the keen eyes 
 of hatred, Mademoiselle Thirion threw herself, so to speak,
 
 THE VENDETTA 203 
 
 into the excited feelings that agitated the professor and his 
 pupil. 
 
 "You are right," said Servin. "But you will soon know 
 more than I do," he added, with a forced laugh. There was 
 a silence, during which the master looked at the head of the 
 officer. "This is a masterpiece, worthy of Salvator Eosa!" 
 he exclaimed, with an artist's vehemence. 
 
 At this exclamation all the young people rose, and Mad- 
 emoiselle Thirion came forward with the swiftness of a tiger 
 springing on its prey. At this instant the prisoner, roused 
 by the turmoil, woke up. Ginevra overset her stool, spoke 
 a few incoherent sentences, and began to laugh; but she had 
 folded the portrait in half and thrown it into a portfolio be- 
 fore her terrible enemy could see it. The girls crowded 
 round the easel; Servin enlarged in a loud voice on the 
 beauties of the copy on which his favorite pupil was just 
 now engaged ; and all the party were cheated by this strata- 
 gem, excepting Amelie, who placed herself behind her com- 
 panions and tried to open the portfolio into which she had 
 seen the sketch put. Ginevra seized it and set it in front 
 of her without a word, and the two girls gazed at each other 
 in silence. 
 
 "Come, young ladies, to your places!" said Servin. "If 
 you want to know as much as Mademoiselle di Piombo, you 
 must not be always talking of fashions and balls, and trifling 
 so much. ' ' 
 
 When the girls had all returned to their easels, the master 
 sat down by Ginevra. 
 
 "Was it not better that this mystery should be discovered 
 by me than by any one else ? ' ' said the Italian girl in a low 
 tone. 
 
 "Yes," answered the painter. "You are patriotic; but 
 even if you had not been, you are still the person, to whom 
 I should intrust it. ' ' 
 
 The master and pupil understood each other, and Ginevra 
 was not now afraid to ask, "Who is he?" 
 
 "An intimate friend of Labe*doy&re's; the man who, next
 
 204 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 to the unfortunate Colonel, did most to effect a junction be- 
 tween the 7th and the Grenadiers of Elba. He was a Major 
 in the Guards, and has just come back from Waterloo." 
 
 "Why have you not burned his uniform and shako, and 
 put him into civilian dress?" asked Ginevra vehemently. 
 
 "Some clothes are to be brought for him this evening. :1 
 
 "You should have shut up the studio for a few days." 
 
 "He is going away." 
 
 "Does he wish to die ?" said the girl. "Let him stay with 
 you during these first days of the storm. Paris is the only 
 place in France where a man may be safely hidden. Is he 
 a friend of yours ? ' ' she added. 
 
 "No. He has no claim to my regard but his misfortunes. 
 This is how he fell into my hands; my father-in-law, who 
 had rejoined his regiment during this campaign, met the 
 poor young man, and saved him very cleverly from those 
 who have arrested Labe'doyere. He wanted to defend him, 
 like a madman ! ' ' 
 
 "And do you call him so!" cried Ginevra, with a glance 
 cf surprise at the painter, who did not speak for a moment. 
 
 "My father-in-law is too closely watched to be able to 
 keep any one in his house," he went on. "He brought him 
 here by night last week. I hoped to hide him from every 
 eye by keeping him in this corner, the only place in the house 
 where he can be safe." 
 
 "If I can be of any use, command me," said Ginevra. 
 "I know Marshal Feltre." 
 
 "Well, we shall see," replied the painter. 
 
 This conversation had lasted too long not to be remarked 
 by all the other pupils. Servin left Ginevra, came back to 
 each easel, and gave such long lessons that he was still up- 
 stairs when the clock struck the hour at which his pupils 
 usually left. 
 
 "You have forgotten your bag, Mademoiselle," cried the 
 professor, running after the young lady, who condescended 
 to act the spy to gratify her hatred. 
 
 The inquisitive pupil came back for the bag, expressing
 
 THE VENDETTA 205 
 
 some surprise at her own carelessness; but Servin's atten- 
 tion was to her additional proof of the existence of a mys- 
 tery which was undoubtedly a serious one. She had already 
 planned what should follow, and could say, like the Abbe* 
 Vertot, "I have laid my siege." She ran downstairs 
 noisily, and violently slammed the door leading to Ser- 
 vin's rooms, that it might be supposed she had gone out; 
 but she softly went upstairs again, and hid behind the 
 door of the studio. 
 
 When the painter and Ginevra supposed themselves 
 alone, he tapped in a particular manner at the door of the 
 attic, which at once opened on its rusty creaking hinges. 
 The Italian girl saw a tall and well-built youth, whose Im- 
 perial uniform set her heart beating. The officer carried 
 his arm in a sling, and his pale face told of acute suffering. 
 He started at seeing her, a stranger. Amelie, who could 
 see nothing, was afraid to stay any longer; but she had 
 heard the creaking of the door, and that was enough. 
 She silently stole away. 
 
 "Fear nothing," said the painter. "Mademoiselle is the 
 daughter of the Emperor's most faithful friend, the Baron 
 di Piombo." 
 
 The young officer felt no doubt of Ginevra 's loyalty 
 when once he had looked at her. 
 
 "You are wounded?" she said. 
 
 "Oh, it is nothing, Mademoiselle; the cut is healing." 
 
 At this moment the shrill and piercing tones of men in 
 the street came up to the studio, crying out, "This is the 
 sentence which condemns to death " All three shud- 
 dered. The soldier was the first to hear a name at which 
 he turned pale. 
 
 "LabeMoy&re!" he exclaimed, dropping on to a stool. 
 
 They looked at each other in silence. Drops of sweat 
 gathered on the young man's livid brow; with a gesture 
 of despair he clutched the black curls of his hair, resting 
 his elbow on Ginevra' s easel. 
 
 "After all," said he, starting to his feet, "Labe'doyere
 
 206 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 and I knew what we were doing. We knew the fate that 
 awaited us if we triumphed or if we failed. He is dying 
 for the cause, while I am in hiding " 
 
 He hurried toward the studio door; but Grinevra, more 
 nimble than he, rushed forward and stopped the way. 
 
 "Can you restore the Emperor?" she said. "Do you 
 think you can raise the giant again, when he could not 
 keep his feet?" 
 
 "What then is to become of me?" said the refugee, ad- 
 dressing the two friends whom chance had sent him. "I 
 have not a relation in the world; Labe'doyere was my 
 friend and protector, I am now alone; to-morrow I shall 
 be exiled or condemned; I have never had any fortune 
 but my pay; I spent my last crown-piece to come and 
 snatch Labe'doyere from death and get him away. Death 
 ia an obvious necessity to me. When a man is determined 
 to die, he must know how to sell his head to the execu- 
 tioner. 1 was thinking just now that an honest man's life 
 is well worth that of two traitors, and that a dagger-thrust, 
 'judiciously placed, may give one immortality." 
 
 This passion of despair frightened the painter, and even 
 Ginevra, who fully understood the young man. The Ital- 
 ian admired the beautiful head and the delightful voice, of 
 which the accents of rage scarcely disguised the sweetness; 
 then she suddenly dropped balm on all the hapless man's 
 wounds. 
 
 " Monsieur 1" said she, "as to your pecuniary difficul- 
 ties, allow me to offer you the money I myself have saved. 
 My father is rich; I am his only child; he loves me, and I 
 am quite sure he will not blame me. Have no scruples in 
 accepting it; our wealth comes from the Emperor, we have 
 nothing which is not the bounty of his munificence. Is it 
 not gratitude to help one of his faithful soldiers ? So take 
 this money with as little ceremony as I make about offer- 
 ing it. It is only money," she added in a scornful tone. 
 "Then, as to friends you will find friends!" And she 
 proudly raised her head, while her eyes shone with un-
 
 THE VENDETTA 207 
 
 wonted brilliancy. "The head which must fall to-morrow 
 the mark of a dozen guns saves yours," she went on. 
 "Wait till this storm is over, and you can take service in 
 a foreign land if you are not forgotten, or in the French 
 army if you are." 
 
 In the comfort offered by a woman there is a delicacy 
 of feeling which always has a touch of something motherly, 
 something far-seeing and complete; but when such words 
 of peace and hope are seconded by grace of gesture, and 
 the eloquence which comes from the heart, above all, when 
 the comforter is beautiful, it is hard for a young man to 
 resist. The young Colonel inhaled love by every sense. 
 A faint flush tinged his white cheeks, and his eyes lost a 
 little of the melancholy that dimmed them as he said, in 
 a strange tone of voice, "You are an angel of goodness 1 
 But, LabeMoyere!" he added, "LabeMoyere!" 
 
 At this cry they all three looked at each other, speech- 
 less, and understood each other. They were friends, not 
 of twenty minutes, but of twenty years. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Servin, "can you save him?" 
 
 "I can avenge him." 
 
 Ginevra was thrilled. Though the stranger was hand- 
 some, his appearance had not moved her. The gentle pity 
 that women find in their heart for suffering which is not 
 ignoble had, in Ginevra, stifled every other emotion; but 
 to hear a cry of revenge, to find in this fugitive an Italian 
 soul and Corsican magnanimity! This was too much for 
 her; she gazed at the officer with respectful emotion, which 
 powerfully stirred her heart. It was the first time a man 
 had ever made her feel so strongly. Like all women, it 
 pleased her to imagine that the soul of this stranger must 
 be in harmony with the remarkable beauty of his features 
 and the fine proportions of his figure, which she admired 
 as an artist. Led by chance curiosity to pity, from pity to 
 eager interest, she now from interest had reached sensations 
 so strong and deep that she thought it rash to remain there 
 any longer.
 
 208 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Till to-morrow," she said, leaving her sweetest smile 
 with the officer, to console him. 
 
 As he saw that smile, which threw a new light, as it 
 were, on Ginevra's face, the stranger for a moment forgot 
 all else. 
 
 "To-morrow," he repeated sadly. "To-morrow, Labe'- 
 doy&re ' ' 
 
 Ginevra turned to him and laid a finger on her lips, 
 looking at him as though she would say, "Be calm, be 
 prudent. ' ' 
 
 Then the young man exclaimed: "0 Diof Chi non 
 vorrei vivere dopo averla veduta!" "0 God! who would 
 not live after having seen her!" The peculiar accent with 
 which he spoke the words startled Ginevra. 
 
 "You are a CorsicanI" she exclaimed, coming back to 
 him, her heart beating with gladness. 
 
 "I was born in Corsica," he replied; "but I was taken 
 to Genoa when very young; and, as soon as I was of an 
 age to enter the army, I enlisted." 
 
 The stranger's handsome person, the transcendent charm 
 he derived from his attachment to the Emperor, his wound, 
 his misfortunes, even his danger, all vanished before Gi- 
 nevra's eyes, or rather all were fused in one new and ex- 
 quisite sentiment. This refugee was a son of Corsica, and 
 spoke its beloved tongue. In a minute the girl stood mo- 
 tionless, spellbound by a magical sensation. She saw be- 
 fore her eyes a living picture tc which a combination of 
 human feeling and chance lent dazzling hues. At Ser- 
 vin's invitation the officer had taken his seat on an otto- 
 man, the painter had untied the string which supported 
 his guest's arm, and was now undoing the bandages in 
 order to dress the wound. Ginevra shuddered as she saw 
 the long wide gash, made by a sabre-cut, on the young 
 man's forearm, and gave a little groan. The stranger 
 looked up at her and began to smile. There was some- 
 thing very touching that went to the soul in Servin's at- 
 tentive care as he removed the lint and touched the tender
 
 THE VENDETTA 209 
 
 tiesh, while the wounded man's face, though pale and sickly, 
 expressed pleasure rather than suffering as he looked at the 
 young girl. 
 
 An artist could not help admiring the antithesis of senti- 
 ments, and the contrast of color between the whiteness of 
 the linen and the bare arm and the officer's blue and red 
 coat. Soft dusk had now fallen on the studio, but a last 
 sunbeam shone in on the spot where the refugee was sit- 
 ting, in such a way that his pale, noble face, his black 
 hair, his uniform were all flooded with light. This simple 
 effect the superstitious Italian took for an omen of good 
 luck. The stranger seemed to her a celestial messenger 
 who had spoken to her in the language of her native land, 
 and put her under the spell of childish memories; while in 
 her heart a feeling had birth as fresh and pure as her first 
 age of innocence. In a very short instant she stood pen- 
 sive, lost in infinite thought; then she blushed to have 
 betrayed her absence of mind, exchanged a swift, sweet 
 look with the officer, and made her escape, seeing him still. 
 
 The next day there was no painting lesson; Grinevra 
 could come to the studio, and the prisoner could be with 
 his fellow-countrywoman. Servin, who had a sketch to 
 finish, allowed the officer to sit there while he played 
 guardian to the two young people who frequently spoke 
 in Corsican. The poor soldier told of his sufferings dur- 
 ing the retreat from Moscow; for, at the age of nineteen, 
 he had found himself at the passage of the Beresina, alone 
 of all his regiment, having lost in his comrades the only 
 men who could care for him, an orphan. He described, in 
 words of fire, the great disaster of Waterloo. 
 
 His voice was music to the Italian girl. Brought up in 
 Corsican ways, Ginevra was, to some extent, a child of na- 
 ture; falsehood was unknown to her, and she gave herself 
 up without disguise to her impressions, owning them, or 
 rather letting them be seen without the trickery, the mean 
 and calculating vanity of the Parisian girl. During this 
 day she remained more than once, her palette in one hand,
 
 210 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 a brush in the other, while the brush was undipped in the 
 colors on the palette; her eyes fixed on the officer's face, 
 her lips slightly parted, she sat listening, ready to lay on 
 the touch which was not given. She was not surprised to 
 find such sweetness in the young man's eyes, for she felt 
 her own soften in spite of her determination to keep them 
 severe and cold. Thus, for hours, she painted with reso- 
 lute attention, not raising her head because he was there 
 watching her work. The first time he sat down to gaze at 
 her in silence, she said to him in an agitated voice, after 
 a long pause, "Does it amuse you, then, to look on at 
 painting ? ' ' 
 
 That day she learned that his name was Luigi. Before 
 they parted it was agreed that if any important political 
 events should occur on the days when the studio was open, 
 Ginevra was to inform him by singing in an undertone cer- 
 tain Italian airs. 
 
 On the following day Mademoiselle Thirion informed all 
 her companions, as a great secret, that Grinevra di Piombo 
 had a lover a young man who came during the hours de- 
 voted to lessons to hide in the dark closet of the studio. 
 
 "You, who take her part," said she to Mademoiselle 
 Boguin, "watch her well, and you will see how she spends 
 her time." 
 
 So G-inevra was watched with diabolical vigilance. Her 
 songs were listened to, her glances spied. At moments 
 when she believed that no one saw her, a dozen eyes were 
 incessantly centred on her. And being forewarned, the 
 girls interpreted in their true sense the agitations which 
 passed across the Italian's radiant face, and her snatches 
 of song, and the attention with which she listened to the 
 muffled sounds which she alone could hear through 
 the partition. 
 
 By the end of a week, only Laure, of the fifteen stu- 
 dents, had . resisted the temptation to scrutinize Louis 
 through the crack in the panel, or, by an instinct of 
 weakness, still defended the beautiful Corsican girl. Mad-
 
 THE VENDETTA 211 
 
 emoiselle Roguin wanted to make her wait on the stairs at 
 the hour when they all left, to prove to her the intimacy 
 between Ginevra and the handsome young man, by finding 
 them together; but she refused to condescend to an espio- 
 nage which curiosity could not justify, and thus became an 
 object of general reprobation. 
 
 Ere long the daughter of the Gentleman-usher thought it 
 unbecoming in her to work in the studio of a painter whose 
 opinions were tainted with patriotism or Bonapartism which 
 at that time were regarded as one and the same thing ; so she 
 came no more to Servin's. Though Amelie forgot Ginevra, 
 the evil she had sown bore fruit. Insensibly, by chance, for 
 gossip, or out of prudery, the other damsels informed their 
 mothers of the strange adventure in progress at the studio. 
 One day Mathilde Roguin did not come; the next time 
 another was absent; at last the three or four pupils, who 
 had still remained, came no more. Ginevra and her little 
 friend, Mademoiselle Laure, were for two or three days the 
 sole occupants of the deserted studio. 
 
 The Italian did not observe the isolation in which she 
 was left, and did not even wonder at the cause of her com- 
 panions' absence. Having devised the means of communi- 
 cating with Louis, she lived in the studio as in a delightful 
 retreat, secluded in the midst of the world, thinking only of 
 the officer, and of the dangers which threatened him. This 
 young creature, though sincerely admiring those noble char- 
 acters who would not be false to their political faith, urged 
 Louis to submit at once to royal authority, in order to keep 
 him in France, while Louis refused to submit, that he might 
 not have to leave his hiding-place. 
 
 If, indeed, passions only have their birth and grow up 
 under the influence of romantic causes, never had so many 
 circumstances concurred to link two beings by one feeling. 
 Ginevra's regard for Louis, and his for her, thus made 
 greater progress in a month than a fashionable friendship 
 can make in ten years in a drawing-room. Is not adversity 
 the touchstone of character? Hence Ginevra could really
 
 212 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 appreciate Louis, and know him, and they soon felt a re- 
 ciprocal esteem. Ginevra, who was older than Louis, found 
 it sweet to be courted by a young man already so great, so 
 tried by fortune, who united the experience of a man with 
 the graces of youth. Louis, on his part, felt unspeakable 
 delight in allowing himself to be apparently protected by a 
 girl of five-and-twenty. Was it not a proof of love ? The 
 union in Ginevra of pride and sweetness, of strength and 
 weakness, had an irresistible charm; Louis was indeed com- 
 pletely her slave. In short, they were already so deeply in 
 love that they felt no need either to deny it to themselves 
 nor to tell it. 
 
 One day, toward evening, Ginevra heard the signal agreed 
 on Louis tapped on the woodwork with a pin, so gently as 
 to make no more noise than a spider attaching its thread 
 thus asking if he might come out. She glanced round the 
 studio, did not see little Laure, and answered the summons; 
 but as the door was opened, Louis caught sight of the girl, 
 and hastily retreated. Ginevra, much surprised, looked 
 about her, saw Laure, and going up to her easel, said, 
 "You are staying very late, dear. And that head seems 
 to me finished; there is only a reflected light to put in on 
 that lock of hair." 
 
 "It would be very kind of you," said Laure, in a tremu- 
 lous voice, "if you would correct this copy for me; I should 
 have something of your doing to keep." 
 
 "Of course I will," said Ginevra, sure of thus dismissing 
 her. "I thought," she added, as she put in a few light 
 touches, "that you had a long way to go home from the 
 studio." 
 
 "Oh! Ginevra, I am going away for good," cried the 
 girl, sadly. 
 
 "You are leaving Monsieur Servin?" asked the Italian, 
 not seeming affected by her words, as she would have been 
 a month since. 
 
 "Have you not noticed, Ginevra, that for some time there 
 has been nobody here but you and me?"
 
 THE VENDETTA 213 
 
 "It is true," replied Ginevra, suddenly struck as by a 
 reminiscence. ' ' Are they ill, or going to be married, or are 
 all their fathers employed now at the palace ?" 
 
 "They have all left Monsieur Servin," said Laure. 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 "On your account, Ginevra." 
 
 "Minel" repeated the Corsican, rising, with a threatening 
 brow, and a pro ad sparkle in her eyes. 
 
 "Oh, do not be angry, dear Ginevra," Laure piteously 
 exclaimed. "But my mother wishes that 1 should leave 
 too. All the young ladies said that you had an intrigue; 
 that Monsieur Servin had lent himself to allowing a young 
 man who loves you to stay in the dark closet; but I never 
 believed these calumnies, and did not tell my mother. Last 
 evening Madame Eoguin met my mother at a ball, and asked 
 her whether she still sent me here. When mamma said Yes, 
 she repeated all those girls' tales. Mamma scolded me well; 
 she declared I must have known it all, and that I had failed 
 in the confidence of a daughter in her mother by not telling 
 her. Oh, my dear Ginevra, I, who always took you for my 
 model, how grieved I am not to be allowed to stay on with 
 you-" 
 
 "We shall meet again in the world; young women get 
 married," said Ginevra. 
 
 "When they are rich," replied Laure. 
 
 "Come to see me, my father has wealth " 
 
 "Ginevra," Laure went on, much moved, "Madame Ro- 
 guin and my mother are coming to-morrow to see Monsieur 
 Servin, and complain of his conduct. At least let him be 
 prepared. ' ' 
 
 A thunderbolt falling at her feet would have astonished 
 Ginevra less than this announcement. 
 
 "What could it matter to them?" she innocently asked. 
 
 "Every one thinks it very wrong. Mamma says it is 
 quite improper." 
 
 "And you, Laure, what do you think about it?" 
 
 The girl looked at Ginevra, and their hearts met. Laure
 
 214 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 could no longer restrain her tears; she threw herself on her 
 friend's neck and kissed her. At this moment Servin 
 came in. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Ginevra," he said, enthusiastically, "I 
 have finished my picture, it is being varnished. But what 
 is the matter ? All the young ladies are making holiday, it 
 would seem, or are gone into the country. ' ' 
 
 Laure wiped away her tears, took leave of Servin, and 
 went away. 
 
 "The studio has been deserted for some days," said 
 Ginevra, "and those young ladies will return no more." 
 
 "Pooh!" 
 
 "Nay, do not laugh," said Ginevra, "listen to me. I am 
 the involuntary cause of your loss of repute." 
 
 The artist smiled, and said, interrupting his pupil, "My 
 repute? But in a few days my picture will be exhibited." 
 
 "It is not your talent that is in question," said the Italian 
 girl; "but your morality. The young ladies have spread a 
 report that Louis is shut up here, and that you lent your- 
 self to our love-making. ' ' 
 
 "There is some truth in that, Mademoiselle," replied the 
 professor. "The girls' mothers are airified prudes," he went 
 on. "If they had but come to me, everything would have 
 been explained. But what do I care for such things? Life 
 is too short I" 
 
 And the painter snapped his fingers in the air. 
 
 Louis, who had heard part of the conversation, came out 
 of his cupboard. 
 
 "You are losing all your pupils," he cried, "and I shall 
 have been your ruin!" 
 
 The artist took his hand and Ginevra's, and joined them. 
 "Will you marry each other, my children?" he asked, with 
 touching bluntness. They both looked down, and their 
 silence was their first mutual confession of love. ""Well," 
 said Servin, "and you will be happy, will you not? Can 
 anything purchase such happiness as that of two beings like 
 you?"
 
 THE VENDETTA 215 
 
 "I am rich," said Ginevra, "if you will allow me to 
 
 indemnify you " 
 
 "Indemnify!" Servin broke in. "Why, as soon as it is 
 known that I have been the victim of a few little fools, and 
 that I have sheltered a fugitive, all the Liberals in Paris will 
 send me their daughters! Perhaps I shall be in your debt 
 then." 
 
 Louis grasped his protector's hand, unable to speak a 
 word; but at last he said, in a broken voice, "To you I 
 shall owe all my happiness." 
 
 "Be happy; I unite you," said the painter with comic 
 unction, laying his hands on the heads of the lovers. 
 
 This pleasantry put an end to their emotional mood. 
 They looked at each other, and all three laughed. The 
 Italian girl wrung Louis's hand with a passionate grasp, 
 and with a simple impulse worthy of her Corsican tradi- 
 tions. 
 
 "Ah, but, my dear children," said Servin, "you fancy 
 that now everything will go on swimmingly? Well, you 
 are mistaken." They looked at him in amazement. 
 
 "Do not be alarmed; I am the only person inconvenienced 
 by your giddy behavior. But Madame Servin is the pink 
 of propriety, and I really do not know how we shall settle 
 matters with her." 
 
 "Heavens ! I had forgotten. To-morrow Madame Roguin 
 and Laure's mother are coming to you " 
 
 "I understand!" said the painter, interrupting her. 
 
 "But you can justify yourself," said the girl, with a toss 
 of her head of emphatic pride. "Monsieur Louis," and she 
 turned to him with an arch look, "has surely no longer an 
 antipathy for the King's Government? Well, then," she 
 went on, after seeing him smile, "to-morrow morning I shall 
 address a petition to one of the most influential persons at 
 the Ministry of War, a man who can refuse the Baron di 
 Piombo's daughter nothing. We will obtain a tacit pardon 
 for Captain Louis for they will not recognize your grade as 
 Colonel. And you," she added, speaking to Servin, "may
 
 216 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 annihilate the mammas of my charitable young companions 
 by simply telling them the truth." 
 
 "You are an angel!" said Servin. 
 
 While this scene was going on at the studio, OHnevra's 
 father and mother were impatiently expecting her return. 
 
 "It is six o'clock, and Grinevra is not yet home," said 
 Bartolomeo. 
 
 "She was never so late before," replied his wife. 
 
 The old people looked at each other with all the signs of 
 very unusual anxiety. Bartolomeo, too much excited to sit 
 still, rose and paced the room twice, briskly enough for a 
 man of seventy-seven. Thanks to a strong constitution, he 
 bad changed but little since the day of his arrival at Paris, 
 and tall as he was, he was still upright. His hair, thin and 
 white now, had left his head bald, a broad and bossy skull 
 which gave token of great strength and firmness. His face, 
 deeply furrowed, had grown full and wide, with the pale 
 complexion that inspires veneration. The fire of a passion- 
 ate nature still lurked in the unearthly glow of his eyes, 
 and the brows, which were not quite white, preserved their 
 terrible mobility. The aspect of the man was severe, but it 
 could be seen that Bartolomeo had the right to be so. His 
 kindness and gentleness were known only to his wife and 
 daughter. In his official position, or before strangers, he 
 never set aside the majesty which time had lent to his ap- 
 pearance; and his habit of knitting those thick brows, of 
 setting every line in his face, and assuming a Napoleonic 
 fixity of gaze, made him seem as cold as marble. 
 
 In the course of his political life he had been so generally 
 feared that he was thought unsociable ; but it is not difficult 
 to find the causes of such a reputation. Piombo's life, hab- 
 its, and fidelity were a censure on most of the courtiers. 
 Notwithstanding the secret missions intrusted to his discre- 
 tion, which to any other man would have proved lucrative, 
 he had not more than thirty thousand francs a year in Gov- 
 ernment securities. And when we consider the low price of 
 stock under the Empire, and Napoleon's liberality to those
 
 THE VENDETTA 217 
 
 of his faithful adherents who knew how to ask, it is easy to 
 perceive that the Baron di Piombo was a man of stern hon- 
 esty; he owed his Baron's plumage only to the necessity of 
 bearing a t'tle when sent by Napoleon to a foreign Court. 
 
 Bartolc meo had always professed implacable hatred of the 
 traitors wkom Napoleon had gathered about him, believing he 
 could win them over by his victories. It was he so it was 
 said who took three steps toward the door of the Emperor's 
 room, after advising him to get rid of three men then in 
 France, on the day before he set out on his famous and bril- 
 liant campaign of 1814. Since the second return of the Bour- 
 bons, Bartolomeo had ceased to wear the ribbon of the Legion 
 of Honor. No man ever offered a finer image of the old Re- 
 publicans, the incorruptible supporters of the Empire, who 
 survived as the living derelicts of the two most vigorous 
 Governments the world has perhaps ever seen. If Baron 
 di Piombo had displeased some courtiers, Daru, Drouot, 
 Carnot were his friends. And, indeed, since Waterloo, he 
 cared no more about other political figures than for the 
 pu5s of smoke he blew from his cigar. 
 
 With the moderate sum which Madame, Napoleon's 
 mother, had paid him for his estates in Corsica, Bartolo- 
 meo di Piombo had acquired the old Hotel de Portendu&re, 
 in which he made no alterations. Living almost always in 
 official residences at the cost of the Government, he had re- 
 sided in this mansion only since the catastrophe of Fontaine- 
 bleau. Like all simple folk of lofty character, the Baron and 
 his wife cared nothing for external splendor; they still used 
 the old furniture they had found in the house. The recep- 
 tion rooms of this dwelling, lofty, gloomy, and bare, the 
 huge mirrors set in old gilt frames almost black with age, 
 the furniture from the time of Louis XIV., were in keeping 
 with Bartolomeo and his wife figures worthy of antiquity. 
 Under the Empire, and during the Hundred Days, while 
 holding offices that brought handsome salaries, the old Cor- 
 sican had kept house in grand style, but rather to do honor 
 to his position than with a view to display. 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 10
 
 218 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 His life, and that of his wife and daughter, were so frugal, 
 so quiet, that their modest fortune sufficed for their needs. 
 To them their child Ginevra outweighed all the riches on 
 earth. And when, in May, 1814, Baron di Piombo resigned 
 his place, dismissed his household, and locked his stable- 
 doors, Ginevra, as simple and unpretentious as her parents, 
 had not a regret. Like all great souls, she found luxury 
 in strength of feeling, as she sought happiness in solitude 
 and work. 
 
 And these three loved each other too much for the ex- 
 ternals of life to have any value in their eyes. Often and 
 especially since Napoleon's second and fearful fall Bartolo- 
 meo and his wife spent evenings of pure delight in listening 
 to Ginevra as she played the piano or sang. To them there 
 was an immense mystery of pleasure in their daughter's pres- 
 ence, in her lightest word; they followed her with their eyes 
 with tender solicitude; they heard her step in the courtyard, 
 however lightly she trod. Like lovers, they would all three 
 sit silent for hours, hearing, better than in words, the elo- 
 quence of each other's soul. This deep feeling, the very 
 life of the two old people, filled all their thoughts. Not 
 three lives were here, but one, which, like the flame on a 
 hearth, burned up in three tongues of fire. 
 
 Though now and then memories of Napoleon's bounty 
 and misfortunes, or the politics of the day, took the place 
 of their constant preoccupation, they could talk of them 
 without breaking their community of thought. For did 
 not Ginevra share their political passions? What could 
 be more natural than the eagerness with which they with- 
 drew into the heart of their only child? Until now the 
 business of public life had absorbed Baron di Piombo's 
 energies; but in resigning office the Corsican felt the need 
 of throwing his energy into the last feeling that was left to 
 him; and, besides the tie that bound a father and mother 
 to their daughter, there was perhaps, unknown to these three 
 despotic spirits, a powerful reason in the fanaticism of their 
 reciprocal devotion; their love was undivided; Ginevra's
 
 THE VENDETTA 219 
 
 whole heart was given to her father, as Piombo's was to 
 her; and certainly, if it is true that we are more closely at- 
 tached to one another by our faults than by our good quali- 
 ties, Ginevra responded wonderfully to all her father's pas- 
 sions. Herein lay the single defect of this threefold ex- 
 istence. Ginevra was wholly given over to her vindictive 
 impulses, carried away by them, as Bartolomeo had been 
 in his youth. 
 
 The Corsican delighted in encouraging these savage emo- 
 tions in his daughter's heart, exactly as a lion teaches his 
 whelps to spring on their prey. But as this apprenticeship 
 to revenge could only be carried out under the parental roof, 
 Ginevra never forgave her father anything; he always had 
 to succumb. Piombo regarded these factitious quarrels as 
 mere childishness, but the child thus acquired a habit of 
 domineering over her parents. In the midst of these tem- 
 pests which Bartolomeo loved to raise, a tender word, a 
 look, was enough to soothe their angry spirits, and they 
 were never so near kissing as when threatening wrath. 
 
 However, from the age of about five, Ginevra, growing 
 wiser than her father, constantly avoided these scenes. Her 
 faithful nature, her devotion, the affection which governed 
 all her thoughts, and her admirable good sense, had got the 
 better of her rages; still a great evil had resulted: Ginevra 
 lived with her father and mother on a footing of equality 
 which is always disastrous. 
 
 To complete the picture of all the changes that had hap- 
 pened to these three persons since their arrival in Paris, 
 Piombo and his wife, people of no education, had allowed 
 Ginevra to study as she would. Following her girlish fancy, 
 she had tried and given up everything, returning to each 
 idea, and abandoning each in turn, until painting had be- 
 come her ruling passion; she would have been perfect if her 
 mother had been capable of directing her studies, of enlight- 
 ening and harmonizing her natural gifts. Her faults were 
 the outcome of the pernicious training that the old Corsican 
 had delighted to give her.
 
 220 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 After making the floor creak for some minutes under his 
 feet, the old man rang the bell. A servant appeared. 
 
 "Go to meet Mademoiselle Ginevra, " said the master. 
 
 "I have always been sorry that we have no longer a car- 
 riage for her, ' ' said the Baroness. 
 
 "She would not have one," replied Piombo, looking at 
 his wife ; and she, accustomed for twenty years to obedienc . 
 as her part, cast down her eyes. 
 
 Tall, thin, pale, and wrinkled, and now past seventy, the 
 Baroness was exactly like the old woman whom Schnetz in- 
 troduces into the Italian scenes of his genre-pictures; she 
 commonly sat so silent that she might have been taken foi 
 a second Mrs. Shandy; but a word, a look, a gesture would 
 betray that her feelings had all the vigor and freshness of 
 youth. Her dress, devoid of smartness, was often devoid 
 of taste. She usually remained passive, sunk in an arm- 
 chair, like a Sultana valideh, waiting for, or admiring, 
 Ginevra her pride and life. Her daughter's beauty, dress, 
 and grace seemed to have become her own. All was well 
 with her if Ginevra were content. Her hair had turned 
 white, and a few locks were visible above her furrowed brow, 
 and at the side of her withered cheeks. 
 
 "For about a fortnight now," said she, "Ginevra has been 
 coming in late." 
 
 "Jean will not go fast enough," cried the impatient old 
 man, crossing over the breast of his blue coat; he snatched 
 up his hat, crammed it on to his head, and was off. 
 
 "You will not get far," his wife called after him. 
 
 In fact, the outer gate opened and shut, and the old mother 
 heard Ginevra s steps in the courtyard. Bartolomeo suddenly 
 reappeared, carrying his daughter in triumph, while she strug- 
 gled in his arms. 
 
 "Here she is! La Ginevra, la Ginevrettina, la Ginevrina, 
 la Ginevrola, la Ginevretta, la Ginevra bella!" 
 
 ' ' Father ! you are hurting me ! ' ' 
 
 Ginevra was immediately set down with a sort of respect. 
 She nodded her head with a graceful gesture to reassure her
 
 THE VENDETTA 221 
 
 mother, who was alarmed, and to convey that it had been 
 only an excuse. Then the Baroness's pale, dull face re- 
 gained a little color, and even a kind of cheerfulness. 
 Piombo rubbed his hands together extremely hard the 
 most certain symptom of gladness; he had acquired the 
 habit at Court when seeing Napoleon in a rage with any 
 of his generals or ministers who served him ill, or who had 
 committed some blunder. When once the muscles of his 
 face were relaxed, the smallest line in his forehead expressed 
 benevolence. These two old folk at this moment were ex- 
 actly like drooping plants, which are restored to life by a 
 little water after a long draught. 
 
 "Dinner, dinner!" cried the Baron, holding out his hand 
 to Ginevra, whom he addressed as Signora Piombellina, an- 
 other token of good spirits, to which his daughter replied 
 with a smile. 
 
 "By the way," said Piombo, as they rose from table, "do 
 you know that your mother has remarked that for a month 
 past you have stayed at the studio much later than usual ? 
 Painting before parents, it would seem." 
 
 "Oh, dear father" 
 
 "Ginevra is preparing some surprise for us, no doubt," 
 said the mother. 
 
 "You are going to bring me a picture of your painting?" 
 cried the Corsican, clapping his hands. 
 
 "Yes; I arn very busy at the studio," she replied. 
 
 "What ails you, Ginevra? you are so pale," asked her 
 mother. 
 
 "No !" exclaimed the girl, with a resolute gesture. "No! 
 it shall never be said that Ginevra Piombo ever told a lie in 
 her life." 
 
 On hearing this strange exclamation, Piombo and his wife 
 looked at their daughter with surprise. 
 
 "I love a young man," she added, in a broken voice. 
 Then, not daring to look at her parents, her heavy eyelids 
 drooped as if to veil the fire in her eyes. 
 
 "Is he a prince?" asked her father ironically; but
 
 222 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 his tone of voice made both the mother and daughter 
 tremble. 
 
 "No, father," she modestly replied, " he is a young man 
 of no fortune " 
 
 "Then is he so handsome?" 
 
 "He is unfortunate." 
 
 "What is he?" 
 
 "As a comrade of Labe*doyere's he was outlawed, home- 
 less; Servin hid him, and " 
 
 "Servin is a good fellow, and did well," cried Piombo. 
 "But you, daughter, have done ill to love any man but your 
 father" 
 
 "Love is not within my control," said Ginevra gently. 
 
 "I had flattered myself," said her father, "that my Gi- 
 nevra would be faithful to me till my death; that my care 
 and her mother's would be all she would have known; that 
 our tenderness would never meet with a rival affection in her 
 heart; that " 
 
 "Did I ever reproach you for your fanatical devotion to 
 Napoleon?" said Ginevra. "Have you never loved any 
 one but me ? Have you not been away on Embassies for 
 months at a time ? Have I not borne your absence bravely ? 
 Life has necessities to which we must yield. ' ' 
 
 "Ginevra!" 
 
 "No, you do not love me for my own sake, and your 
 reproaches show intolerable selfishness." 
 
 "And you accuse your father's love!" cried Piombo with 
 flaming looks. 
 
 ' ' Father, I will never accuse you, ' ' replied Ginevra, more 
 gently than her trembling mother expected. "You have 
 right on the side of your egoism, as I have right on the 
 side of my love. Heaven is my witness that no daughter 
 ever better fulfilled her duty to her parents. I have never 
 known anything but love and happiness in what many 
 daughters regard as obligations. Now, for fifteen years, 
 I have never been anywhere but under your protecting 
 wing, and it has been a very sweet delight to me to charm
 
 THE VENDETTA 223 
 
 your lives. But am I then ungrateful in giving myself up 
 to the joy of loving, and in wishing for a husband to protect 
 me after you?" 
 
 "So you balance accounts with your father, Ginevra!" 
 said the old man in ominous tones. 
 
 There was a frightful pause; no one dared to speak. 
 Finally, Bartolomeo broke the silence by exclaiming in a 
 heartrending voice: "Oh, stay with us; stay with your old 
 father! I could not bear to see you love a man. Ginevra, 
 you will not have long to wait for your liberty ' ' 
 
 "But, my dear father, consider; we shall not leave you, 
 we shall be two to love you; you will know the man to 
 whose care you will bequeath me. You will be doubly 
 loved by me and by him by him, being part of me, and 
 by me who am wholly he." 
 
 "Oh, Ginevra, Ginevra!" cried the Corsican, clinching 
 his fists, "why were you not married when Napoleon had 
 accustomed me to the idea, and introduced dukes and counts 
 as your suitors. ' ' 
 
 "They only loved me to order," said the young girl. 
 "Besides, I did not wish to leave you; and they would have 
 taken me away with them." 
 
 "You do not wish to leave us alone," said Piombo, "but 
 if you marry you isolate us. I know you, my child, you 
 will love us no more. Elisa, ' ' he added, turning to his wife, 
 who sat motionless and, as it were, stupefied; "we no longer 
 have a daughter ; she wants to be married. ' ' 
 
 The old man sat down, after raising his hands in the air 
 as though to invoke God; then he remained bent, crushed 
 by his grief. Ginevra saw her father's agitation, and the 
 moderation of his wrath pierced her to the heart; she had 
 expected a scene and furies; she had not steeled her soul 
 against his gentleness. 
 
 "My dear father," she said in an appealing voice, "no, 
 you shall never be abandoned by your Ginevra. But love 
 me too a little for myself. If only you knew how he loves 
 me! Ah, he could never bear to cause me pain!"
 
 224 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "What, comparisons already!" cried Piombo in a terri- 
 ble voice. "No," he went on, "I cannot endure the idea. 
 If he were to love you as you deserve, he would kill me; 
 and if he were not to love you, I should stab him!" 
 
 Piombo's hands were trembling, his lips trembled, his 
 whole frame trembled, and his eyes flashed lightnings; Gi- 
 nevra alone could meet his gaze ; for then her eyes too flashed 
 fire, and the daughter was worthy of the father. 
 
 "To love you! What man is worthy of such a life ?" he 
 went on. "To love you as a father even- is it not to live in 
 Paradise ? Who then could be worthy to be your husband ?" 
 
 "He," said Ginevra. "He of whom I feel myself un- 
 worthy." 
 
 " He, " echoed Piombo mechanically. ' ' Who ? He ? " 
 
 "The man I love." 
 
 "Can he know you well enough already to adore you?" 
 
 "But, father," said Ginevra, feeling a surge of impatience, 
 "even if he did not love me so long as I love him " 
 
 "You do love him then?" cried Piombo. Ginevra 
 gently bowed her head. "You love him more than you 
 love me?" 
 
 "The two feelings cannot be compared," she replied. 
 
 "One is stronger than the other?" said Piombo. 
 
 "Yes, I think so," said Ginevra. 
 
 "You shall not marry him!" cried the Corsican in a voice 
 that made the windows rattle. 
 
 "I will marry him!" replied Ginevra calmly. 
 
 "Good God!" cried the mother, "how will this quarrel 
 end? Santa Virgina, come between them!" 
 
 The Baron, who was striding up and down the room, came 
 and seated himself. An icy sternness darkened his face; he 
 looked steadfastly at his daughter, and said in a gentle and 
 affectionate voice, "Nay, Ginevra you will not marry him. 
 Oh, do not say you will, this evening. Let me believe that 
 you will not. Do you wish to see your father on his knees 
 before you, and his white hairs humbled. I will beseech 
 you"
 
 THE VENDETTA 225 
 
 "Ginevra Piombo is not accustomed to promise and not 
 to keep her word," said she; "I am your child." 
 
 1 ' She is right, ' ' said the Baroness, ' ' we come into the world 
 to marry." 
 
 "And so you encourage her in disobedience," said the 
 Baron to his wife, who, stricken by the reproof, froze into 
 a statue. 
 
 "It is not disobedience to refuse to yield to an unjust 
 command," replied Ginevra. 
 
 "It cannot be unjust when it emanates from your father's 
 lips, my child. Why do you rise in judgment on me ? Is 
 not the repugnance I feel a counsel from on High ? I am 
 perhaps saving you from some misfortune." 
 
 "The misfortune would be that he should not love me." 
 
 "Always he!" 
 
 "Yes, always," she said. "He is my life, my joy, my 
 thought. Even if I obeyed you, he would be always in 
 my heart. If you forbid me to marry him, will it not 
 make me hate you ? ' ' 
 
 "You love us no longer!" cried Piombo. 
 
 "Oh!" said Ginevra, shaking her head. 
 
 "Well, then, forget him. Be faithful to us. After us 
 . . . you understand ..." 
 
 ' ' Father, would you make me wish that you were dead ? ' ' 
 cried Ginevra. 
 
 "I shall outlive you; children who do not honor their 
 parents die early," cried her father at the utmost pitch of 
 exasperation. 
 
 "All the more reason for marrying soon and being 
 happy," said she. 
 
 This coolness, this force of argument, brought Piombo 's 
 agitation to a crisis; the blood rushed violently to his head, 
 his face turned purple. Ginevra shuddered; she flew like 
 a bird on to her father's knees, threw her arms round his 
 neck, stroked his hair, and exclaimed, quite overcome: 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes, let me die first I I could not survive you, my 
 dear, kind father."
 
 226 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Oh. my Ginevra, my foolish Ginevretta!" answered 
 Piombo, whose rage melted ander this caress as an icicle 
 melts in the sunshine. 
 
 "It was time you should put an end to the matter," said 
 the Baroness in a broken voice. 
 
 "Poor mother!" 
 
 "Ah, Ginevretta, mia Ginevra bella!" 
 
 And the father played with his daughter as if she were 
 a child of six; he amused himself with undoing the waving 
 tresses of her hair and dancing her on his knee; there was 
 dotage in his demonstrations of tenderness. Presently his 
 daughter scolded him as she kissed him, and tried, half in 
 jest, to get leave to bring Louis to the house; but, jesting 
 too, her father refused. She sulked, and recovered herself, 
 and sulked again; then, at the end of the evening, she was 
 only too glad to have impressed on her father the ideas of 
 her love for Louis and of a marriage ere long. 
 
 Next day she said no more about it; she went later to 
 the studio and returned early; she was more affectionate 
 to her father than she had ever been, and showed herself 
 grateful, as if to thank him for the consent to her marriage 
 he seemed to give by silence. In the evening she played 
 and sang for a long time, and exclaimed now and then, 
 "This nocturne requires a man's voice!" She was an 
 Italian, and that says everything. 
 
 A week later her mother beckoned her; Ginevra went, 
 and then in her ear she whispered, "I have persuaded your 
 father to receive him." 
 
 "Oh, mother! you make me very happy." 
 
 So that afternoon Ginevra had the joy of coming home 
 to her father's house leaning on Louis's arm. The poor 
 officer came out of his hiding-place for the second time. 
 Ginevra's active intervention addressed to the Due de 
 Feltre, then Minister of War, had been crowned with 
 perfect success. Louis had just been reinstated as an 
 officer on the reserve list. This was a very long step 
 toward a prosperous future.
 
 THE VENDETTA 227 
 
 Informed by Ginevra of all the difficulties he would 
 meet with in the Baron, the young officer dared not con- 
 fess his dread of failing to please him. This man, so 
 brave in adversity, so bold on the field of battle, quaked 
 as he thought of entering the Piombos' drawing-room. 
 Ginevra felt him tremble, and this emotion, of which 
 their happiness was the first cause, was to her a fresh 
 proof of his love. 
 
 "How pale you are!" said she, as they reached the gate 
 of the hotel. 
 
 "Oh, Ginevra! If my life alone were at stake " 
 
 Though Bartolomeo had been informed by his wife of 
 this official introduction of his daughter's lover, he did not 
 rise to meet him, but remained in the armchair he usually 
 occupied, and the severity of his countenance was icy. 
 
 "Father," said Ginevra, "I have brought you a gentle- 
 man whom you will no doubt be pleased to see. Monsieur 
 Louis, a soldier who fought quite close to the Emperor at 
 Mont-Saint-Jean ' ' 
 
 The Baron rose, cast a furtive glance at Louis, and said 
 in a sardonic tone: 
 
 "Monsieur wears no orders ?" 
 
 "I no longer wear the Legion of Honor," replied Louis 
 bashfully, and he humbly remained standing. 
 
 Ginevra, hurt by her father's rudeness, brought forward a 
 chair. The officer's reply satisfied the old Eepublican. Ma- 
 dame Piombo, seeing that her husband's brows were recov- 
 ering their natural shape, said, to revive the conversation, 
 "Monsieur is wonderfully like Nina Porta. Do not you 
 think that he has quite the face of a Porta?" 
 
 "Nothing can be more natural," replied the young man, 
 on whom Piombo 's flaming eyes were fixed. "Nina was my 
 sister. ' ' 
 
 "You are Luigi Porta?" asked the old man. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Bartolomeo di Piombo rose, tottered, was obliged to lean 
 on a chair, and looked at his wife. Blisa Piombo came up
 
 228 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 to him; then the two old folk silently left the room, arm in 
 arm, with a look of horror at their daughter. Luigi Porta, 
 quite bewildered, gazed at Ginevra, who turned as white as 
 a marble statue, and remained with her eyes fixed on the 
 door where her father and mother had disappeared. There 
 was something so solemn in her silence and their retreat, 
 that, for the first time in his life perhaps, a feeling of fear 
 came over him. She clasped her hands tightly together, 
 and said in a voice so choked that it would have been in- 
 audible to any one but a lover, "How much woe in one 
 word!" 
 
 "In the name of our love, what have I said?" asked 
 Luigi Porta. 
 
 "My father has never told me our deplorable history," 
 she replied. "And when we left Corsica I was too young 
 to know anything about it." 
 
 "Is it a Yendetta?" asked Luigi, trembling. 
 
 "Yes. By questioning my mother I learned that the 
 Porta had killed my brothers and burned down our house. 
 My father then massacred all your family. How did you 
 survive, you whom he thought he had tied to the posts of 
 a bed before setting fire to the house?" 
 
 "I do not know," replied Luigi. "When I was six I 
 was taken to Genoa, to an old man named Colonna. No 
 account of my family was ever given to me; I only knew 
 that I was an orphan, and penniless. Colonna was like a 
 father to me; I bore his name till I entered the army; then, 
 as I needed papers to prove my identity, old Colonna told 
 me that, helpless as I was, and hardly more than a child, 
 I had enemies. He made me promise to take the name of 
 Luigi only, to evade them." 
 
 "Fly, fly, Luigi," cried Ginevra. "Yet, stay; I must 
 go with you. So long as you are in my father's house you 
 are safe. As soon as you quit it, take care of yourself. 
 You will go from one danger to another. My father has 
 two Corsicans in his service, and if he does not threaten 
 your life they will."
 
 THE VENDETTA 229 
 
 "Gmevra," he said, "and must this hatred exist be- 
 tween us?" 
 
 She smiled sadly and bowed her head. But she soon 
 raised it again with a sort of pride, and said, "Oh, Luigi, 
 our feelings must be very pure and true that I should have 
 the strength to walk in the path I am entering on. But it 
 is for the sake of happiness which will last as long as life, 
 is it not?" 
 
 Luigi answered only with a smile, and pressed her hand. 
 The girl understood that only a great love could at such a 
 moment scorn mere protestations. This calm and conscien- 
 tious expression of Luigi' s feelings seemed to speak for their 
 strength and permanence. The fate of the couple was thus 
 sealed. Ginevra foresaw many painful contests to be fought 
 out, but the idea of deserting Louis an idea which had per- 
 haps floated before her mind at once vanished. His, hence- 
 forth and forever, she suddenly dragged him away and out of 
 the house with a sort of violence, and did not quit him till 
 they reached the house where Servin had taken a humble 
 lodging for him. 
 
 When she returned to her father's house she had as- 
 sumed the serenity which comes of a strong resolve. No 
 change of manner revealed any uneasiness. She found her 
 parents ready to sit down to dinner, and she looked at 
 them with eyes devoid of defiance, and full of sweetness. 
 She saw that her old mother had been weeping; at the 
 sight of her red eyelids for a moment her heart failed her, 
 but she hid her emotion. Piombo seemed to be a prey to 
 anguish too keen, too concentrated to be shown by ordinary 
 means of expression. The servants waited on a meal which 
 no one ate. A horror of food is one of the symptoms indic- 
 ative of a great crisis of the soul. All three rose without 
 any one of them having spoken a word. When Ginevra 
 was seated in the great, solemn drawing-room between her 
 father and mother, Piombo tried to speak, but he found no 
 voice; he tried to walk about, but found no strength; ho 
 sat down again and rang the bell.
 
 230 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Pietro," said he to the servant at last, "light the fire, I 
 am cold. ' ' 
 
 Ginevra was shocked, and looked anxiously at her father. 
 The struggle he was going through must be frightful; his face 
 looked quite changed. Ginevra knew the extent of the dan- 
 ger that threatened her, but she did not tremble ; while the 
 glances that Bartolomeo cast at his daughter seemed to 
 proclaim that he was at this moment in fear of the charac- 
 ter whose violence was his own work. Between these two 
 everything must be in excess. And the certainty of the 
 possible change of feeling between the father and daughter 
 filled the Baroness's face with an expression of terror. 
 
 "Ginevra, you love the enemy of your family," said 
 Piombo at last, not daring to look at his daughter. 
 
 "That is true," she replied. 
 
 "You must choose between him and us. Our Vendetta 
 is part of ourselves. If you do not espouse my cause, you 
 are not of my family." 
 
 "My choice is made," said Ginevra, in a steady voice. 
 
 His daughter's calmness misled Bartolomeo. 
 
 "Oh, my dear daughter!" cried the old man, whose eye- 
 lids were moist with tears, the first, the only tears he ever 
 shed in his life. 
 
 ' ' I shall be his wife, ' ' she said abruptly. 
 
 Bartolomeo could not see for a moment ; but he recovered 
 himself and replied, "This marriage shall never be so long 
 as I live. I will never consent." Ginevra kept silence. 
 "But, do you understand," the Baron went on, "that 
 Luigi is the son of the man who killed your brothers ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' He was six years old when the crime was committed he 
 must be innocent of it," she answered. 
 
 "A Porta!" cried Bartolomeo. 
 
 "But how could 1 share this hatred," said the girl eager- 
 ly. "Did you bring me up in the belief that a Porta was a 
 monster ? Could I imagine that even one was left of those 
 you had killed ? Is it not in nature that you should make 
 your Vendetta give way to my feelings?"
 
 THE VENDETTA 231 
 
 "A Porta?" repeated Piombo. "If his father had found 
 you then in your bed, you would not be alive now. He would 
 have dealt you a hundred deaths." 
 
 "Possibly," she said. "But his son has given me more 
 than life. To see Luigi is a happiness without which I can- 
 not live. Luigi has revealed to me the world of feeling. I 
 have, perhaps, seen even handsomer faces than his, but none 
 ever charmed me so much. I have, perhaps, heard voices 
 no, no, never one so musical! Luigi loves me. He shall be 
 rny husband." 
 
 "Never!" said Piombo. "Ginevra, I would sooner see 
 you in your coffin!" 
 
 The old man rose, and paced the room with hurried 
 strides, uttering fierce words, with pauses between that be- 
 trayed all his indignation. 
 
 "You think, perhaps, that you can bend my will? 
 Undeceive yourself. 1 will not have a Porta for my son- 
 in-law. That is my decision. Never speak of the matter 
 again. I am Bartolomeo di Piombo, do you hear, Ginevra ?" 
 
 "Do you attach any mysterious meaning to the words?" 
 she coldly asked. 
 
 "They mean that I have a dagger, and that I do not 
 fear the justice of men. We Corsicans settle such mat- 
 ters with God." 
 
 "Well," said the girl, "I am Ginevra di Piombo, and I 
 declare that in six months I will be Luigi Porta 's wife. 
 You are a tyrant, father," she added, after an ominous 
 pause. 
 
 Bartolomeo clinched his fists, and struck the marble 
 chimney-shelf. 
 
 "Ah! we are in Paris!" he muttered. 
 
 He said no more, but folded his arms and bowed his head 
 on his breast; nor did he say another word the whole even- 
 ing. Having asserted her will, the girl affected the most 
 complete indifference; she sat down, to the piano, sang, 
 played the most charming music, with a grace and feeling 
 that proclaimed her perfect freedom of mind, triumphing
 
 232 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 over her father, whose brow showed no relenting. The old 
 man deeply felt this tacit insult, and at that moment gath- 
 ered the bitter fruits of the education he had given his daugh- 
 ter. Eespect is a barrier which protects the parents and the 
 children alike, sparing those much sorrow, and these remorse. 
 
 The next day, as Ginevra was going out at the hour when 
 she usually went to the studio, she found the door of the 
 house closed upon her; but she soon devised means for 
 informing Luigi Porta of her father's severity. A waiting- 
 woman, who could not read, carried to the young officer a 
 letter written by Ginevra. For five days the lovers con- 
 trived to correspond, thanks to the plots that young people 
 of twenty can always contrive. 
 
 The father and daughter rarely spoke to each other. Both 
 had in the bottom of their hearts an element of hatred; they 
 suffered, but in pride and silence. Knowing well how strong 
 were the bonds of love that tied them to each other, they 
 tried to wrench them asunder, but without success. No 
 sweet emotion ever came, as it had been wont, to give light 
 to Bartolomeo's severe features when he gazed at his Gi- 
 nevra, and there was something savage in her expression 
 when she looked at her father. Reproach sat on her inno- 
 cent brow; she gave herself up, indeed, to thoughts of hap- 
 piness, but remorse sometimes dimmed her eyes. It was not, 
 indeed, difficult to divine that she would never enjoy in peace 
 a felicity which made her parents unhappy. In Bartolomeo, 
 as in his daughter, all the irresolution arising from their na- 
 tive goodness of heart was doomed to shipwreck on their 
 fierce pride and the revengeful spirit peculiar to demeans. 
 They encouraged each other in their wrath, and shut their 
 eyes to the future. Perhaps, too, each fancied that the other 
 would yield. 
 
 On Ginevra 's birthday, her mother, heart-broken at this 
 disunion, which was assuming a serious aspect, planned to 
 reconcile the father and daughter by an appeal to the memo- 
 ries of this anniversary. They were all three sitting in Bar- 
 tolomeo's room. Ginevra guessed her mother's purpose from
 
 THE VENDETTA 283 
 
 the hesitation written in her face, and she smiled sadly. At 
 this instant a servant announced two lawyers, accompanied 
 by several witnesses, who all came into the room. Bartolo- 
 meo stared at the men, whose cold, set faces were in them- 
 selves an insult to souls so fevered as those of the three prin- 
 cipal actors in this scene. The old man turned uneasily to 
 his daughter, and saw on her face a smile of triumph which 
 led him to suspect some catastrophe; but he affected, as sav- 
 ages do, to preserve a deceitful rigidity, while he looked at 
 the two lawyers with a sort of apathetic curiosity. At a 
 gesture of invitation from the old man the visitors took seats. 
 
 "Monsieur is no doubt Baron di Piombo?" said the elder 
 of the two lawyers. 
 
 Bartolomeo bowed. The lawyer gave his head a little 
 jerk, looked at Ginevra with the sly expression of a bailiff 
 nabbing a debtor; then he took out his snuff-box, opened it> 
 and, taking a pinch of snuff, absorbed it in little sniffs while 
 considering the opening words of his discourse; and while 
 pronouncing them he made constant pauses, an oratorical 
 effect which a dash in printing represents very imperfectly. 
 
 "Monsieur," said he, "I am Monsieur Eoguin, notary to 
 Mademoiselle, your daughter, and we are here my colleague 
 and I to carry out the requirements of the law, and to put 
 an end to the divisions which as it would seem have arisen 
 between you and Mademoiselle, your daughter on the 
 question of her marriage with Monsieur Luigi Porta. " 
 This speech, made in a pedantic style, seemed, no doubt, 
 to Monsieur Eoguin much too fine to be understood all in 
 a moment, and he stopped, while looking at Bartolomeo with 
 an expression peculiar to men of business, and which is half- 
 way between servility and familiarity. Lawyers are so much 
 used to feign interest in the persons to whom they speak that 
 their features at last assume a grimace which they can put on 
 and off with their official pallium. This caricature of friend- 
 liness, so mechanical as to be easily detected, irritated Barto- 
 lomeo to such a pitch that it took all his self-control not to 
 throw Monsieur Eoguin out of the window; a look of fury
 
 234 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 emphasized his wrinkles, and on seeing this the notary said 
 to himself: "I am making an effect. " 
 
 "But," he went on in a honeyed voice, "Monsieur le 
 Baron, on such occasions as these, our intervention must 
 always, at first, be essentially conciliatory. Have the kind- 
 ness to listen to me. It is in evidence that Mademoiselle 
 Ginevra Piombo has to-day attained the age at which, 
 after a 'respectful summons,' she may proceed to the sol- 
 emnization of her marriage notwithstanding that her par- 
 ents refuse their consent. Now it is customary in families 
 which enjoy a certain consideration which move in so- 
 ciety and preserve their dignity people, in short, to whom 
 it is important not to let the public into the secret of their 
 differences and who also do not wish to do themselves 
 an injury by blighting the future lives of a young husband 
 and wife for that is doing themselves an injury. It is the 
 custom, I was saying in such highly respectable families 
 not to allow the serving of such a summons which must 
 be which always is a record of a dispute which at last 
 ceases to exist. For as soon, Monsieur, as a young lady has 
 recourse to a 'respectful summons' she proclaims a determi- 
 nation so obstinate that her father and her mother ' ' he 
 added, turning to the Baroness, "can have no further hope 
 of seeing her follow their advice. Hence the parental pro- 
 hibition being nullified in the first place by this fact and 
 also by the decision of the law it is always the case that a 
 wise father, after finally remonstrating with his child, allows 
 her the liberty " 
 
 Monsieur Koguin paused, perceiving that he might talk 
 on for two hours without extracting an answer; and he also 
 felt a peculiar agitation as he looked at the man he was try- 
 ing to convince. An extraordinary change had come over 
 Bartolomeo's countenance. All its lines were set, giving 
 him an expression of indescribable cruelty, and he glared 
 at the lawyer like a tiger. The Baroness sat mute and pas- 
 sive. Ginevra, calm and resolute, was waiting; she knew 
 that the notary's voice was stronger than hers, and she
 
 THE VENDETTA 235 
 
 seemed to have made up her mind to keep silence. At the 
 moment when Roguin ceased speaking, the scene was so 
 terrible that the witnesses, as strangers, trembled; never, 
 perhaps, had such a silence weighed on them. The lawyers 
 looked at each other as if in consultation, then they rose and 
 went to the window. 
 
 "Did you ever come across clients made to this pattern?" 
 asked Roguin of his colleague. 
 
 "There is nothing to be got out of him," said the younger 
 man. "In your place I should read the summons and noth- 
 ing more. The old man is no joke; he is choleric, and you 
 will gain nothing by trying to discuss matters with him. ' ' 
 
 Monsieur Roguin therefore read aloud from a sheet of 
 stamped paper a summons ready drawn up, and coldly asked 
 Bartolomeo what his reply was. 
 
 "Are there laws in France then that upset a father's au- 
 thority?" asked the Corsican. 
 
 "Monsieur-" said Roguin, smoothly. 
 
 "That snatch a child from her father?" 
 
 "Monsieur " 
 
 "That rob an old man of his last consolation?" 
 
 "Monsieur, you daughter belongs to you only so long " 
 
 "That kill her?" 
 
 "Monsieur, allow me." 
 
 There is nothing more hideous than the cold-blooded and 
 close reasoning of a lawyer in the midst of such scenes of pas- 
 sion as they are usually mixed up with. The faces which 
 Piombo saw seemed to him to have escaped from Hell; his 
 cold and concentrated rage knew no bounds at the moment 
 when his little opponent's calm and almost piping voice ut- 
 tered that fatal, "Allow me." He sprang at a long dagger 
 which hung from a nail over the chimney-piece, and rushed 
 at his daughter. The younger of the two lawyers and one 
 of the witnesses threw themselves between him and Ginevra; 
 but Bartolomeo brutally knocked them over, showing them 
 a face of fire and glowing eyes which seemed more terrible 
 than the flash of the dagger. When Ginevra found herself
 
 236 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 face to face with her father she looked at him steadily with 
 a glance of triumph, went slowly toward him, and knelt 
 down. 
 
 "No, no! I cannot!" he exclaimed, flinging away the 
 weapon with such force that it stuck fast in the wainscot. 
 
 "Mercy, then, mercy!" said she. "You hesitate to kill 
 me, but you refuse me life. Oh, father, I never loved you 
 so well but give me Luigi. I ask your consent on my 
 knees; a daughter may humble herself to her father. My 
 Luigi, or I must die!" 
 
 The violent excitement that choked her prevented her 
 saying more; she found no voice; her convulsive efforts 
 plainly showed that she was between life and death. Bar- 
 tolomeo roughly pushed her away. 
 
 "Go," he said, "the wife of Luigi Porta cannot be a 
 Piombo. I no longer have a daughter! I cannot bring my- 
 self to curse you, but I give you up. You have now no 
 father. My Ginevra Piombo is buried then!" he exclaimed 
 in a deep tone, as he clutched at his heart. "G-o, I say, 
 wretched girl," he went on after a moment's silence. "Go, 
 and never let me see you again. ' ' 
 
 He took Ginevra by the arm, and in silence led her out 
 of the house. 
 
 "Luigi!" cried Ginevra, as she went into the humble 
 room where the officer was lodged, "my Luigi, we have no 
 fortune but our love." 
 
 "We are richer than all the kings of the earth," he replied. 
 
 "My father and mother have cat me out," said she with 
 deep melancholy. 
 
 "I will love you for them." 
 
 "Shall we be very happy?" she cried, with a gayety that 
 had something terrible in it. 
 
 "And forever!" he answered, clasping her to his heart. 
 
 On the day following that on which Ginevra had quitted 
 her father's house, she went to beg Madame Servin to grant 
 her protection and shelter till the time, fixed by law, when 
 she could be married to Luigi. There began her apprentice-
 
 THE VENDETTA 237 
 
 ship to the troubles which the world strews in the way of 
 those who do not obey its rules. Madame Servin, who was 
 greatly distressed at the injury that Ginevra's adventure had 
 done the painter, received the fugitive coldly, and explained 
 to her with circumspect politeness that she was not to count 
 on her support. Too proud to insist, but amazed at such 
 selfishness, to which she was unaccustomed, the young Cor- 
 sican went to lodge in a furnished house as near as possible 
 to Luigi's. The son of the Portas spent all his days at the 
 feet of his beloved; his youthful love, and the purity of his 
 mind, dispersed the clouds which her father's reprobation 
 had settled on the banished daughter's brow; and he painted 
 the future as so fair that she ended by smiling, though she 
 could not forget her parents' severity. 
 
 One morning the maid of the house brought up to her 
 several trunks containing dress-stuffs, linen, and a quantity 
 of things needful for a young woman settling for the first 
 time. In this she recognized the foreseeing kindness of a 
 mother; for as she examined these gifts, she found a purse 
 into which the Baroness had put some money belonging to 
 Ginevra, adding all her own savings. With the money was 
 a letter, in which she implored her daughter to give up her 
 fatal purpose of marrying, if there were yet time. She had 
 been obliged, she said, to take unheard-of precautions to get 
 this small assistance conveyed to Ginevra; she begged her 
 not to accuse her of hardness if henceforth she left her neg- 
 lected; she feared she could do no more for her; she blessed 
 her, hoped she might find happiness in this fatal marriage 
 if she persisted, and assured her that her one thought was of 
 her beloved daughter. At this point tears had blotted out 
 many words of the letter. 
 
 "Oh, mother!" cried Ginevra, quite overcome. 
 
 She felt a longing to throw herself at her mother's feet, 
 to see her, to breathe the blessed air of home ; she was on 
 the point of rushing off when Luigi came in. She looked at 
 him, and filial affection vanished, her tears were dried, she 
 could not find it in her to leave the unhappy and loving
 
 238 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 youth. To be the sole hope of a noble soul, to love and to 
 desert it such a sacrifice is treason of which no young heart 
 is capable. Ginevra had the generosity to bury her grief at 
 the bottom of her soul. 
 
 At last the day of their wedding came. Ginevra found 
 no one near her. Luigi took advantage of the moment when 
 she was dressing to go in search of the necessary witnesses 
 to their marriage act. These were very good people. One 
 of them, an old quartermaster of hussars, had, when in the 
 army, found himself under such obligations to Luigi as an 
 honest man never forgets; he had become a job-master, and 
 had several hackney carriages. The other, a builder, was 
 the proprietor of the house where the young couple were to 
 lodge. Each of these brought a friend, and all four came 
 with Luigi to fetch the bride. Unaccustomed as they were 
 to social grimacing, seeing nothing extraordinary in the ser- 
 vice they were doing to Luigi, these men were decently but 
 quite plainly dressed, and there was nothing to proclaim the 
 gay escort of a wedding. Ginevra herself was very simply 
 clad, to be in keeping with her fortune; but, nevertheless, 
 there was something so noble and impressive in her beauty 
 that at the sight of her the words died on the lips of the 
 good folk who had been prepared to pay her some compli- 
 ment; they bowed respectfully, and she bowed in return; 
 they looked at her in silence, and could only admire her. 
 Joy can only express itself among equals. So, as fate would 
 have it, all was gloomy and serious around the lovers; there 
 was nothing to reflect their happiness. 
 
 The church and the mairie were not far away. The two 
 Corsicans, followed by the four witnesses required by law, 
 decided to go on foot, with a simplicity which robbed this 
 great event of social life of all parade. In the courtyard of 
 the mairie they found a crowd of carriages, which announced 
 a numerous party within. They went upstairs and entered 
 a large room, where the couples who were to be made happy 
 on this particular day were awaiting the Maire of that quar- 
 ter of Paris with considerable impatience. Ginevra sat down
 
 THE VENDETTA 239 
 
 by Luigi on the end of a long bench, and their witnesses re- 
 mained standing for lack of seats. Two brides, pompously 
 arrayed in white, loaded with ribbons and lace and pearls, 
 and crowned with bunches of orange-blossom of which the 
 sheeny buds quivered under their veils, were surrounded by 
 their families and accompanied by their mothers, to whom 
 they turned with looks at once timid and satisfied; every 
 eye reflected their happiness, and every face seemed to ex- 
 hale benedictions. Fathers, witnesses, brothers, and sisters 
 were coming and going like a swarm of insects playing in 
 a sunbeam which soon must vanish. Every one seemed to 
 understand the preciousness of this brief hour in life when 
 the heart stands poised between two hopes the wishes of 
 the past, the promise of the future. 
 
 At this sight Ginevra felt her heart swell, and she pressed 
 Luigi' s arm. He gave her a look, and a tear rose to the 
 young man's eye; he never saw more clearly than at that 
 moment all that his Ginevra had sacrificed for him. That 
 rare tear made the young girl forget the forlorn position in 
 which she stood. Love poured treasures of light between 
 the lovers, who from that moment saw nothing but each 
 other in the midst of the confusion. 
 
 Their witnesses, indifferent to the ceremonial, were quietly 
 discussing business matters. 
 
 "Oats are very dear, ' ' said the quartermaster to the mason. 
 
 "They have not yet gone up so high as plaster in propor- 
 tion, ' ' said the builder. And they walked round the large 
 room. 
 
 "What a lot of time we are losing here!" exclaimed the 
 mason, putting a huge silver watch back into his pocket. 
 
 Luigi and Ginevra, clinging to each other, seemed to be 
 but one person. A poet would certainly have admired these 
 two heads, full of the same feeling, alike in coloring, melan- 
 choly and silent in the presence of the two buzzing wedding- 
 parties, of four excited families sparkling with diamonds and 
 flowers, and full of gayety which seemed a mere effervescence. 
 All the joys of which these loud and gorgeous groups made
 
 240 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 a display, Luigi and Ginevra kept buried at the bottom of 
 their hearts. On one side was the coarse clamor of pleasure,- 
 on the other the delicate silence of happy souls: earth and 
 heaven. 
 
 But Ginevra trembled, and could not altogether shake off 
 her woman's weakness. Superstitious, as Italians are, she 
 regarded this contrast as an omen, and in the depths of her 
 heart she harbored a feeling of dread, as unconquerable as 
 her love itself. 
 
 Suddenly an official in livery threw open the double doors; 
 silence fell, and his voice sounded like a yelp as he called out 
 the names of Monsieur Luigi Porta and Mademoiselle Ginevra 
 Piombo. This incident caused the pair some embarrassment. 
 The celebrity of the name of Piombo attracted attention ; the 
 spectators looked about them for a wedding-party which 
 must surely be a splendid one. Ginevrarose; her eyes, thun- 
 derous with pride, subdued the crowd, she took Luigi 's arm 
 and went forward with a firm step, followed by the witnesses, 
 A murmur of astonishment which rapidly grew louder, and 
 whispering on all sides, reminded Ginevra that the world 
 was calling her to account for her parents' absence. Her 
 father's curse seemed to be pursuing her. 
 
 "Wait for the families of the bride and bridegroom," 
 said the Maire to the clerk, who at once began to read the 
 contracts. 
 
 "The father and mother enter a protest," said the clerk 
 indifferently. 
 
 "On both sides?" asked the Maire. 
 
 "The man is an orphan." 
 
 "Where are the witnesses?" 
 
 "They are here," said the clerk, pointing to the four 
 motionless and silent men who stood like statues, with their 
 arms crossed. 
 
 "But if the parents protest ?" said the Maire. 
 
 "The 'respectful summons' has been presented in due 
 form," replied the man, rising to place the various docu- 
 ments in the functionary's hands.
 
 THE VENDEITA 241 
 
 This discussion in an office seemed to brand them, and in 
 a few words told a whole history. The hatred of the Porta 
 and the Piombo, all these terrible passions, were thus re- 
 corded on a page of a register, as the annals of a nation may 
 be inscribed on a tombstone in a few lines, nay, even in a 
 single name: Robespierre or Napoleon. Ginevra was trem- 
 bling. Like the dove crossing the waters, which had no 
 rest for her foot but in the ark, her eyes could take refuge 
 only in Luigi's, for all else was cold and sad. The Maire 
 had a stern, disapproving look, and his clerk stared at the 
 couple with ill-natured curiosity. Nothing ever had less 
 the appearance of a festivity. Like all the other events of 
 human life when they are stripped of their accessories, it was 
 a simple thing in itself, immense in its idea. 
 
 After some questions, to which they replied, the Maire 
 muttered a few words, and then, having signed their names 
 in the register, Luigi and Ginevra were man and wife. The 
 young Corsicans, whose union had all the poetry which 
 genius has consecrated in Romeo and Juliet, went away 
 between two lines of jubilant relations to whom they did 
 not belong, and who were out of patience at the delay caused 
 by a marriage apparently so forlorn. When the girl found 
 herself in the courtyard and under the open sky, a deep sigh 
 broke from her very heart. 
 
 "Oh, will a whole life of love and devotion suffice to repay 
 my Ginevra for her courage and tenderness?" said Luigi. 
 
 At these words, spoken with tears of joy, the bride forgot 
 all her suffering, for she had suffered in showing herself to 
 the world claiming a happiness which her parents refused 
 to sanction. 
 
 "Why do men try to come between us?" she said, with 
 a simplicity of feeling that enchanted Luigi. 
 
 Gladness made them more light-hearted. They saw neither 
 the sky, nor the earth, nor the houses, and flew on wings to 
 the church. At last they found themselves in a small, dark 
 chapel, and in front of a humble altar where an old priest 
 married them. There, as at the Mairie, they were pursued 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 11
 
 242 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 by the two weddings that persecuted them with their splen- 
 dor. The church, filled with friends and relations, rang 
 with the noise made by carriages, beadles, porters, and 
 priests. Altars glittered with ecclesiastical magnificence; 
 the crowns of orange-blossom that decked the statues of the 
 Virgin seemed quite new. Nothing was to be seen but flow- 
 ers, with perfumes, gleaming tapers, and velvet cushions em- 
 broidered with gold. God seemed to have a share in this 
 rapture of a day. 
 
 When the symbol of eternal union was to be held above 
 the heads of Luigi and Ginevra the yoke of white satin 
 which for some is so soft, so bright, so light, and for the 
 greater number is made of lead the priest looked round in 
 vain for two young boys to fill the happy office; two of the 
 witnesses took their place. The priest gave the couple a 
 hasty discourse on the dangers of life, and on the duties 
 they must one day inculcate in their children, and he here 
 took occasion to insinuate a reflection on the absence of 
 Ginevra's parents; then having united them in the presence 
 of (rod, as the Mai re had united them in the presence of the 
 Law, he ended the mass, and left them. 
 
 "God bless them," said Yergniaud to the mason at the 
 church door. "Never were two creatures better made for 
 each other. That girl's parents are wretches. I know no 
 braver soldier than Colonel Luigi! If all the world had 
 behaved as he did, L'autre 1 would still be with as." 
 
 The soldier's blessing, the only one breathed for them 
 this day, fell like balm on Ginevra's heart. 
 
 They all parted with shaking of hands, and Luigi cordially 
 thanked his landlord. 
 
 "Good-by, old fellow," said Luigi to the quartermaster. 
 "And thank you." 
 
 "At your service, Colonel, soul and body, horses and 
 chaises all that is mine is yours." 
 
 "How well he loves you!" said Ginevra. 
 
 1 Napoleon.
 
 THE VENDETTA 
 
 Luigi eagerly led his wife home to the house they were 
 to live in : they soon reached the modest apartment, and there, 
 when the door was closed, Luigi took her in his arms, ex- 
 claiming, "Oh. my Ginevra for yon are mine now here is 
 our real festival ! Here," he went on, "all will smile on us." 
 
 Together they went through the three rooms which com- 
 posed their dwelling. The entrance hall served as drawing- 
 room and dining-room. To the right was a bedroom, to the 
 left a sort of large closet which Luigi had arranged for his 
 beloved wife, where she found easels, her paint-box, some 
 casts, models, lay figures, pictures, portfolios, in short, all 
 the apparatus of an artist. 
 
 ' ' Here I shall work, ' ' said she, with childlike glee. 
 
 She looked for a long time at the paper and the furniture, 
 constantly turning to Luigi to thank him, for there was a 
 kind of magnificence in this humble retreat; a bookcase con- 
 tained Ginevra's favorite books, and there was a piano. She 
 sat down on an ottoman, drew Luigi to her side, and clasping 
 his hand, "You have such good taste," said she, in a caress* 
 ing tone. 
 
 "Your words make me very happy," he replied. 
 
 "But. come, let us see everything, ' said Ginevra, from 
 whom Luigi had kept the secret of this little home. 
 
 They went into a bridal chamber that was as fresh and 
 white as a maiden. 
 
 "Oh! come away," said Luigi, laughing. 
 
 "But I must see everything,'' and Ginevra imperiously 
 went on, examining all the furniture with the curiosity of an 
 antiquary studying a medal. She touched the silk stuff and 
 scrutinized everything with the childlike delight of a bride 
 turning over the treasures of the corbeille brought her bv her 
 husband. 
 
 "We have begun by ruining ourselves," she said in a 
 half -glad, half -regretful tone. 
 
 "It is true; all my arrears of pay are there," replied 
 Luigi. "I sold it to a good fellow named Gigonnet." 
 
 "Why?" she asked, in a reproachful voice, which be-
 
 244 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 trayed, "however, a secret satisfaction. "Do you think I 
 should be less happy under a bare roof? Still," she went 
 on, "it is all very pretty, and it is ours!" 
 
 Luigi looked at her with such enthusiasm that she cast 
 down her eyes, and said, "Let us see the rest." 
 
 Above these three rooms, in the attics, were a workroom 
 for Luigi, a kitchen, and a servant's room. Ginevra was 
 content with her little domain, though the view was limited 
 by the high wall of a neighboring house, and the courtyard 
 on which the rooms looked was gloomy. But the lovers were 
 so glad of heart, hope so beautified the future, that they would 
 see nothing but enchantment in their mysterious dwelling. 
 They were buried in this huge house, lost in the immensity 
 of Paris, like two pearls in their shell, in the bosom of the 
 deep sea. For any one else it would have been a prison ; to 
 them it was Paradise. 
 
 The first days of their married life were given to love; it 
 was too difficult for them to devote themselves at once to 
 work, and they could not resist the fascination of their mut- 
 ual passion. Luigi would recline for hours at his wife's feet, 
 admiring the color of her hair, the shape of her forehead, the 
 exquisite setting of her eyes, the purity and whiteness of the 
 arched brow beneath which they slowly rose or fell, express- 
 ing the happiness of satisfied love. Ginevra stroked her 
 Luigi's locks, never tiring of gazing at what she called, in one 
 of her own phrases, the beltd folgorante of the young man, and 
 his delicately cut features; always fascinated by the dignity 
 of his manners, while always charming him by the grace of 
 her own. They played like children with the merest trifles, 
 these trifles always brought them back to their passion, and 
 they ceased playing only to lapse into the day-dreams of far 
 niente. An air sung by Ginevra would reproduce for them 
 the exquisite hues of their love. 
 
 Or, matching their steps as they had matched their souls, 
 they wandered about the country, finding their love in every- 
 thing, in the flowers, in the sky, in the heart of the fiery 
 glow of the setting sun; they read it even in the changing
 
 THE VENDETTA 245 
 
 clouds that were tossed on the winds. No day was ever like 
 the lavSt, their love continued to grow because it was true. 
 In a very few days they had proved each other, and had in- 
 stinctively perceived that their souls were of such a temper 
 that their inexhaustible riches seemed to promise ever new 
 joys for the future. This was love in all its fresh candor, 
 with its endless prattle, its unfinished sentences, its long 
 silences, its Oriental restfulness and ardor. Luigi and Gi- 
 nevra had wholly understood love. Is not love like the sea, 
 which, seen superficially or in haste, is accused of monotony 
 by vulgar minds, while certain privileged beings can spend 
 all their life admiring it and finding in it changeful phe- 
 nomena which delight them? 
 
 One day, however, prudence dragged the young couple 
 from their Garden of Eden; they must work for their liv- 
 ing. Ginevra, who had a remarkable talent for copying 
 pictures, set to work to produce copies, and formed a con- 
 nection among dealers. Luigi, too, eagerly sought some 
 occupation; but it was difficult for a young officer, whose 
 talents were limited to a thorough knowledge of tactics, to 
 find any employment in Paris. At last, one day when, 
 weary of his vain efforts, he felt despair in his soul at see- 
 ing that the whole burden of providing for their existence 
 rested on Ginevra, it occurred to him that he might earn 
 something by his handwriting, which was beautiful. With 
 a perseverance, of which his wife had set the example, he 
 went to ask work of the attorneys, the notaries, and the 
 pleaders of Paris. The frankness of his manners and his 
 painful situation greatly interested people in his favor, and 
 he got enough copying to be obliged to employ youths 
 under him. Presently he took work on a larger scale. 
 The income derived from this office- work and the price of 
 Ginevra's paintings put the young household on a footing 
 of comfort, which they were proud of as the fruit of their 
 own industry. 
 
 This was the sunniest period of their life. The days 
 glided swiftly by between work and the happiness of love.
 
 246 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 In the evening after working hard they found themselves 
 happy in Ginevra's cell. Music then consoled them for 
 their fatigues. No shade of melancholy ever clouded the 
 young wife's features, and she never allowed herself to 
 utter a lament. She could always appear to her Luigi 
 with a smile on her lips, and a light in her eyes. Each 
 cherished a ruling thought which would have made them 
 take pleasure in the hardest toil: Ginevra told herself she 
 was working for Luigi, and Luigi for Ginevra. Sometimes, 
 in her husband's absence, the young wife would think of 
 the perfect joy it would have been if this life of love 
 might have been spent in the sight of her father and 
 mother; then she would sink into deep melancholy, and 
 feel all the pangs of remorse; dark pictures would pass 
 like shadows before her fancy; she would see her old 
 father alone, or her mother weeping in the evenings, and 
 hiding her tears from the inexorable Piombo. Those two 
 grave, white heads would suddenly rise up before her, and 
 she fancied she would never see them again but in the 
 fantastical light of memory. This idea haunted her like 
 a presentiment. 
 
 She kept the anniversary of their wedding by giving her 
 husband a portrait he had often wished for that of his Gi- 
 nevra. The young artist had never executed so remarkable 
 a work. Apart from the likeness, which was perfect, the 
 brilliancy of her beauty, the purity of her feelings, the hap- 
 piness of love, were rendered with a kind of magic. The 
 masterpiece was hung up with due ceremony. 
 
 They spent another year in the midst of comfort. The 
 history of their life can be told in these words: "They were 
 happy." No event occurred deserving to be related. 
 
 At the beginning of the winter of 1819 the picture-dealers 
 advised Ginevra to bring them something else than copies, 
 as, in consequence of the great competition, they could no 
 longer sell them to advantage. Madame Porta acknowl- 
 edged the mistake she had made in not busying herself 
 with genre pictures which would have won her a name;
 
 THE VENDETTA 247 
 
 she undertook to paint portraits; but she had to contend 
 against a crowd of artists even poorer than herself. How- 
 ever, as Luigi and Ginevra had saved some money, they did 
 not despair of the future. At the end of this same winter 
 Luigi was working without ceasing. He, too, had to com- 
 pete with rivals; the price of copying had fallen so low that 
 he could no longer employ assistants, and was compelled to 
 give up more time to his labor to earn the same amount. 
 His wife had painted several pictures which were not de- 
 void of merit, but dealers were scarcely buying even those 
 of artists of repute. OHnevra offered them for almost noth- 
 ing, and could not sell them. 
 
 The situation of the household was something terrible; 
 the souls of the husband and wife floated in happiness, love 
 loaded them with its treasures ; poverty rose up like a skele- 
 ton in the midst of this harvest of joys, and they hid their 
 alarms from each other. When Ginevra felt herself on the 
 verge of tears as she saw Luigi suffering, she heaped caresses 
 on him; Luigi, in the same way, hid the blackest care in 
 his heart, while expressing the fondest devotion to Gi- 
 nevra. They sought some compensation for their woes in 
 the enthusiasm of their feelings, and their words, their 
 joys, their playfulness, were marked by a kind of frenzy. 
 They were alarmed at the future. What sentiment is there 
 to compare in strength with a passion which must end to- 
 morrow killed by death or necessity ? When they spoke 
 of their poverty, they felt the need of deluding each other, 
 and snatched at the smallest hope with equal eagerness. 
 
 One night Ginevra sought in vain for Luigi at her side, 
 and got up quite frightened. A pale gleam reflected from 
 the dingy wall of the little courtyard led her to guess that 
 her husband sat up to work at night. Luigi waited till his 
 wife was asleep to go up to his workroom. The clock 
 struck four. Ginevra went back to bed and feigned sleep; 
 Luigi came back, overwhelmed by fatigue and want of 
 sleep, and Ginevra gazed sadly at the handsome face on 
 which labor and anxiety had already traced some lines.
 
 248 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "And it is for me that lie spends the night in writing," 
 she thought, and she wept. 
 
 An idea came to dry her tears: she would imitate Luigi. 
 That same day she went to a rich print-seller, and by the 
 help of a letter of recommendation to him that she had ob- 
 tained from Elie Magus, a picture-dealer, she got some work 
 in coloring prints. All day she painted and attended to her 
 household cares, then at night she colored prints. These two 
 beings, so tenderly in love, got into bed only to get out of it 
 again. Each pretended to sleep, and out of devotion to the 
 other stole away as soon as one had deceived the other. One 
 night Luigi, knocked over by a sort of fever caused by work, 
 of which the burden was beginning to crush him, threw open 
 the window of his workroom to inhale the fresh morning air, 
 and shake off his pain, when, happening to look down, he saw 
 the light thrown on the wall by Ginevra's lamp; the unhappy 
 man guessed the truth ; he went downstairs, walking softly, 
 and discovered 'his wife in her studio coloring prints. 
 
 "Oh, Ginevra," he exclaimed. 
 
 She started convulsively in her chair, and turned scarlet. 
 
 "Could I sleep while you were wearing yourself out with 
 work?" said she. 
 
 "But I alone have a right to work so hard." 
 
 "And can I sit idle?" replied the young wife, whose 
 eyes filled with tears, "when I know that every morsel of 
 bread almost costs us a drop of your blood ? I should die 
 if I did not add my efforts to yours. Ought we not to have 
 everything in common, pleasures and pains?" 
 
 "She is cold!" cried Luigi, in despair. "Wrap your 
 shawl closer over your chest, my Ginevra, the night is 
 damp and chilly." 
 
 They went to the window, the young wife leaning her 
 head on her beloved husband's shoulder, he with his arm 
 round her, sunk in deep silence, and watching the sky 
 which dawn was slowly lighting up. 
 
 Gray clouds swept across in quick succession, and the 
 east grew brighter by degrees.
 
 THE VENDETTA 2i9 
 
 "See,"' said Ginevra, "it is a promise we shall be 
 happy." 
 
 "Yes, in heaven!" replied Luigi, with a bitter smile. 
 "Oh, Ginevra! you who deserved all the riches of 
 earth . . ." 
 
 "I have your heart!" said she in a glad tone. 
 
 "Ah, and I do not complain," he went on, clasping 
 her closely to him. And he covered the delicate face with 
 kisses; it was already beginning to lose the freshness of 
 youth, but the expression was so tender and sweet that he 
 could never look at it without feeling comforted. 
 
 "How still!" said Ginevra. "I enjoy sitting late, my 
 dearest. The majesty of night is really contagious; it is 
 impressive, inspiring; there is something strangely solemn 
 in the thought: all sleeps, but I am awake." 
 
 "Oh, my Ginevra, I feel, not for the first time, the re- 
 fined grace of your soul but, see, this is daybreak, come 
 and sleep." 
 
 "Yes," said she, "if I am not the only one to sleep. I 
 was miserable indeed the night when I discovered that my 
 Luigi was awake and at work without me." 
 
 The valor with which the young people defied misfortune 
 for some time found a reward. But the event which usually 
 crowns the joys of a household was destined to be fatal to 
 them. Ginevra gave birth to a boy who, to use a common 
 phrase, was as beautiful as the day. The feeling of mother- 
 hood doubled the young creature's strength. Luigi bor- 
 rowed money to defray the expenses of her confinement. 
 Thus, just at first, she did not feel all the painfulness of 
 their situation, and the young parents gave themselves up 
 to the joy of rearing a child. This was their last gleam of 
 happiness. Like two swimmers who unite their forces to 
 stem a current, the Corsicans at first struggled bravely; 
 but sometimes they gave themselves up to an apathy re- 
 sembling the torpor that precedes death, and they soon 
 were obliged to sell their little treasures. 
 
 Poverty suddenly stood before them, not hideous, but
 
 200 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 humbly attired, almost pleasant to endure; there was noth- 
 ing appalling in her voice; she did not bring despair with 
 her, nor spectres, nor squalor, but she made them forget 
 the traditions and the habit of comfort; she broke the 
 mainsprings of pride. Then came misery in all its horror, 
 reckless of Her rags, and trampling every human feeling 
 underfoot. Seven or eight months after the birth of 
 little Bartolomeo it would have been difficult to recognize 
 the original of the beautiful portrait, the sole adornment of 
 their bare room, in the mother who was suckling a sickly 
 baby. Without any fire in bitter winter weather, Ginevra 
 saw the soft outlines of her face gradually disappear, her 
 cheeks became as white as porcelain, her eyes colorless, as 
 though the springs of life were drying up in her. And 
 watching her starved and pallid infant, she suffered only 
 in his young misery, while Luigi had not the heart even 
 to smile at his boy. 
 
 "I have scoured Paris," he said in a hollow voice. "I 
 know no one, and how can I dare beg of strangers ? Ver- 
 gniaud, the horse-breeder, my old comrade in Egypt, is 
 implicated in some conspiracy, and has been sent to 
 prison; besides, he had loaned me all he had to loan. 
 As to the landlord, he has not asked me for any rent for 
 more than a year." 
 
 "But we do not want for anything," Ginevra gently 
 answered, with an affectation of calmness. 
 
 "Each day brings some fresh difficulty," replied Luigi, 
 with horror. 
 
 Luigi took all Ginevra's paintings, the portrait, some 
 furniture which they yet could dispense with, and sold 
 them all for a mere trifle; the money thus obtained pro- 
 longed their sufferings for a little while. During these 
 dreadful days Ginevra showed the sublime heights of her 
 character, and the extent of her resignation. She bore the 
 inroads of suffering with stoical firmness. Her vigorous 
 soul upheld her under all ills; with a weak hand she 
 worked on by her dying child, fulfilled her household
 
 THE VENDETTA 251 
 
 duties with miraculous activity, and was equal to every- 
 thing. She was even happy when she saw on Luigi's lips 
 a smile of surprise at the look of neatness she contrived to 
 give to the one room to which they had been reduced. 
 
 "I have kept you a piece of bread, dear," she said one 
 evening when he came in tired. 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I have dined, dear Luigi; I want nothing." And the 
 sweet expression of her face, even more than her words, 
 urged him to accept the food of which she had deprived 
 herself. Luigi embraced her with one of the despairing 
 kisses which friends gave each other in 1793 as they 
 mounted the scaffold together. In such moments as these 
 two human creatures see each other heart to heart. Thus 
 the unhappy Luigi, understanding at once that his wife 
 was fasting, felt the fever that was undermining her; he 
 shivered, and went out on the pretext of pressing business, 
 for he would rather have taken the most insidious poison 
 than escape death by eating the last morsel of bread in the 
 house. 
 
 He wandered about Paris among the smart carriages, 
 in the midst of the insulting luxury that IB everywhere 
 flaunted; he hurried past the shops of the money-changers 
 where gold glitters in the window; finally, he determined 
 to sell himself, to offer himself as a substitute for the con- 
 scription, hoping by this sacrifice to save Ginevra, and that 
 during his absence she might be taken into favor again by 
 Bartolomeo. So he went in search of one of the men who 
 deal in these white slaves, and felt a gleam of happiness at 
 recognizing in him an old officer of the Imperial Guard. 
 
 "For two days I have eaten nothing," he said, in a slow, 
 weak voice. "My wife is dying of hunger, and never utters 
 a complaint; she will die, I believe, with a smile on her 
 lips. For pity's sake, old comrade," he added, with a 
 forlorn smile, "pay for me in advance; I am strong, I 
 have left the service, and I " 
 
 The officer gave Luigi something on account of the sum
 
 252 BALZAC 'S WORKS 
 
 he promised to get for him. The unhappy man laughed 
 convulsively when he grasped a handful of gold pieces, 
 and ran home as fast as he could go. panting, and ex- 
 claiming as he went, "Oh, my Ginevra Ginevra!" 
 
 It was growing dark by the time he reached home. He 
 went in softly, fearing to over-excite his wife, whom he 
 had left so weak; the last pale rays of sunshine, coming 
 in at the dormer window, fell on Ginevra's face. She was 
 asleep in her chair with her baby at her breast. 
 
 "Wake up, my darling," said he, without noticing the 
 attitude of the child, which seemed at this moment to have 
 a supernatural glory. 
 
 On hearing his voice, the poor mother opened her eyes, 
 met Luigi's look, and smiled; but Luigi gave a cry of ter- 
 ror. He hardly recognized his half-crazed wife, to whom 
 he showed the gold, with a gesture of savage vehemence. 
 
 Ginevra began to laugh mechanically, but suddenly she 
 cried in a terrible voice, "Louis, the child is cold!" 
 
 She looked at the infant and fainted. Little Bartolomeo 
 was dead. 
 
 Luigi took his wife in his arms, without depriving her 
 of the child, which she clutched to her with incomprehen- 
 sible strength, and after laying her on the bed he went out 
 to call for help. 
 
 "Great Heaven!'* he exclaimed to his landlord, whom 
 he met on the stairs, "I have money, and my child is dead 
 of hunger, and my wife is dying. Help us." 
 
 In despair he went back to his wife, leaving the worthy 
 builder and various neighbors to procure whatever might 
 relieve the misery of which till now they had known 
 nothing, so carefully had the Corsicans concealed it out 
 of a feeling of pride. Luigi had tossed the gold pieces 
 on the floor, and was kneeling by the bed where his wife 
 lay. 
 
 "Father, take charge of my son, who bears your name!" 
 cried Ginevra in her delirium. 
 
 "Oh, my angel, be calm," said Luigi, kissing her, "bet-
 
 THE VENDETTA 253 
 
 ter days await us!" His voice and embrace restored her to 
 
 some composure. 
 
 "Oh, my Louis," she went on, looking at him with ex- 
 traordinary fixity, "listen to me. I feel that I am dying. 
 My death is quite natural. I have been suffering too 
 much ; and then happiness so great as mine had to be paid 
 for. Yes, my Luigi, be comforted. I have been so happy 
 that if I had to begin life again, I would again accept our 
 lot. I am a bad mother; I weep for you even more than 
 for my child. My child!" she repeated in a full, deep 
 voice. Two tears dropped from her dying eyes, and she 
 suddenly clasped yet closer the little body she could not 
 warm. "Give my hair to my father in memory of his 
 Grinevra," she added. "Tell him that I never, never, ac- 
 cused him " 
 
 Her head fell back on her husband's arm. 
 
 "No, no, you cannot die!" cried Luigi. "A doctor is 
 coming. We have food. Your father will receive you 
 into favor. Prosperity is dawning on us. Stay with us, 
 angel of beauty!" 
 
 But that faithful and loving heart was growing cold. 
 Ginevra instinctively turned her eyes on the man she 
 adored, though she was no longer conscious of anything; 
 confused images rose before her mind, fast losing all mem- 
 ories of earth. She knew that Luigi was there, for she 
 clung more and more tightly to his ice-cold hand, as if to 
 hold herself up above a gulf into which she feared to 
 fall. 
 
 "You are cold, dear," she said presently; "I will warm 
 you." 
 
 She tried to lay her husband's hand over her heart, but 
 she was dead. Two doctors, a priest, and some neighbors 
 came in at this moment, bringing everything that was need- 
 ful to save the lives of the young couple and to soothe their 
 despair. At first these intruders made a good deal of noise, 
 but when they were all in the room an appalling silence 
 fell.
 
 254: BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 While this scene was taking place Bartolomeo and his 
 wife were sitting in their old armchairs, each at one corner 
 of the immense fireplace that warmed the great drawing- 
 room of their mansion. The clock marked midnight. It 
 was long since the old couple had slept well. At this mo- 
 ment they were silent, like two old folk in their second 
 childhood, who look at everything and see nothing. The 
 deserted room, to them full of memories, was feebly lighted 
 by a single lamp fast dying out. But for the dancing flames 
 on the hearth they would have been in total darkness. One 
 of their friends had just left them, and the chair on which 
 he had sat during his visit stood between the old people. 
 Piombo had already cast more than one glance at this chair, 
 and these glances, fraught with thoughts, followed each 
 other like pangs of remorse, for the empty chair was Gi- 
 nevra's. Elisa Piombo watched the expressions that passed 
 across her husband's pale face. Though she was accus- 
 tomed to guess the Corsican's feelings from the violent 
 changes in his features, they were to-night by turns so 
 threatening and so sad that she failed to read this inscru- 
 table soul. 
 
 Was Bartolomeo yielding to the overwhelming memories 
 aroused by that chair ? Was he pained at perceiving that 
 it had been used by a stranger for the first time since his 
 daughter's departure? Had the hour of mercy, the hour 
 so long and vainly hoped for, struck at last ? 
 
 These reflections agitated the heart of Elisa Piombo. 
 For a moment her husband's face was so terrible that she 
 quaked at having ventured on so innocent a device to give 
 her an opportunity of speaking of Ginevra. At this in- 
 stant the northerly blast flung the snowflakes against the 
 shutters with such violence that the old people could hear 
 their soft pelting. Ginevra's mother bent her head to hide 
 her tears from her husband. Suddenly a sigh broke from 
 the old man's heart; his wife looked at him; he was down- 
 cast. For the second time in three years she ventured to 
 speak to him of his daughter.
 
 THE VENDETTA 255 
 
 "Supposing Ginevra were cold!" she exclaimed in an. 
 undertone. "Or perhaps she is hungry," she went on. 
 The Corsican shed a tear. "She has a child, and can- 
 not suckle it her milk is dried up" the mother added 
 vehemently, with an accent of despair. 
 
 "Let her come, oh, let her come!" cried Piombo. "Oh, 
 my darling child, you have conquered me." 
 
 The mother rose, as if to go to fetch her daughter. At 
 this instant the door was flung open, and a man, whose face 
 had lost all semblance of humanity, suddenly stood before 
 them. 
 
 "Dead! Our families were doomed to exterminate each 
 other; for this is all that remains of her," he said, laying 
 on the table Ginevra's long, black hair. 
 
 The two old people started, as though they had been 
 struck by a thunderbolt; they could not see Luigi. 
 
 "He has spared us a pistol shot, for he is dead," said 
 Bartolomeo deliberately, as he looked on the ground. 
 
 PARIS, January, 1830.
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 
 
 To my dear Alexandre de Berny, from his old friend 
 De Balzac 
 
 Tj yfANY TALES, rich in situations, or made dramatic 
 /I// by the endless sport of chance, carry their plot in 
 themselves, and can be related artistically or sim- 
 ply by any lips without the smallest loss of the beauty of 
 the subject; but there are some incidents of human life to 
 which only the accents of the heart can give life; there are 
 certain anatomical details, so to speak, of which the deli- 
 cacy appears only under the most skilful infusions of mind. 
 Again, there are portraits which demand a soul, and are 
 nothing without the more ethereal features of the respon- 
 sive countenance. Finally, there are certain things which 
 we know not how to say, or to depict, without I know not 
 what unconceived harmonies that are under the influence of 
 a day or an hour, of a happy conjunction of celestial signs, 
 or of some occult moral predisposition. 
 
 Such revelations as these are absolutely required for the 
 telling of this simple story, in which 1 would fain interest 
 some of those naturally melancholy and pensive souls which 
 are fed on bland emotions. If the writer, like a surgeon by 
 the side of a dying friend, has become imbued with a sort of 
 respect for the subject he is handling, why should not the 
 reader share this inexplicable feeling ? Is it so difficult to 
 throw one's self into that vague, nervous melancholy which 
 sheds gray hues on all our surroundings, which is half 
 an illness, though its languid suffering is sometimes 
 a pleasure? 
 (256)
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 257 
 
 If you are thinking by chance of the dear friends you 
 have lost; if you are alone, and it is night, or the day is 
 dying, read this narrative; otherwise, throw the book aside, 
 here. If you have never buried some kind aunt, an invalid 
 or poor, you will not understand these pages. To some, they 
 will be odorous as of musk; to others, they will be as color- 
 less, as strictly virtuous as those of Florian. In short, the 
 reader must have known the luxury of tears; must have 
 felt the wordless grief of a memory that drifts lightly by, 
 bearing a shade that is dear but remote; he must possess 
 some of those remembrances that make us at the same time 
 regret those whom the earth has swallowed, and smile over 
 vanished joys. 
 
 And now the author would have you believe that for all 
 the wealth of England he would not extort from poetry even 
 one of her fictions to add grace to this narrative. This is a 
 true story, on which you may pour out the treasure of your 
 sensibilities, if you have any. 
 
 In these days our language has as many dialects as there 
 are men in the great human family. And it is a really curi- 
 ous and interesting thing to listen to the different views or 
 versions of one and the same thing, or event, as given by 
 the various species which make up the monograph of the 
 Parisian the Parisian being taken as a generic term. Thus 
 you might ask a man of the matter-of-fact type, "Do you 
 know Madame Firmiani?" and this man would interpret 
 Madame Firmiani by such an inventory as this: *'A large 
 house in the Rue du Bac, rooms handsomely furnished, fine 
 pictures, a hundred thousand francs a year in good securi- 
 ties, and a husband who was formerly receiver-general in 
 the department of Montenotte." Having thus spoken, 
 your matter-of-fact man stout and roundabout, almost 
 always dressed in black draws up his lower lip, so as to 
 cover the upper lip, and nods his head, as much as to say, 
 "Very respectable people, there is nothing to be said against 
 them." Ask him no more. Your matter-of-fact people state
 
 258 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 everything in figures, dividends, or real estate -a great word 
 in their dictionary. 
 
 Turn to your right, go and question that young man, who 
 belongs to the lounger species, and repeat your inquiry. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani?" says he. "Yes, yes, I know her 
 very well. I go to her evenings. She receives on Wednes- 
 days; a very good house to know. ' Madame Firmiani is 
 already metamorphosed into a house. The house is not a 
 mere mass of stones architecturally put together; no, this 
 word, in the language of the lounger, has no equivalent. 
 And here your lounger, a dry-looking man,- with a pleasant 
 smile, saying clever nothings, but always with more ac- 
 quired wit than natural wit, bends to jour ear, and says 
 with a knowing air: "I never saw Monsieur Firmiani. His 
 social position consists in managing estates in Italy. But 
 Madame Firmiani is French, and spends her income as a 
 Parisian should. She gives excellent tea! It is one of 
 the few houses where you really can amuse yourself, and 
 where everything they give you is exquisite. It is very 
 difficult to get introduced, and the best society is to be seen 
 in her drawing-rooms." Then the lounger emphasizes his 
 last words by gravely taking a pinch of snuff; he applies it 
 to his nose in little dabs, and seems to be saying: "I go to 
 the house, but do not count on my introducing you." 
 
 To folk of this type Madame Firmiani keeps a sort of inn 
 without a sign. 
 
 "Why on earth can you want to go to Madame Firmi- 
 ani's ? It is as dull there as it is at Court. Of what use are 
 brains if they do not keep you out of such drawing-rooms, 
 where, with poetry such as is now current, you hear the 
 most trivial little ballad just hatched out." 
 
 You have asked one of your friends who comes under 
 the class of petty autocrats men who would like to have 
 the universe under lock and key, and have nothing done 
 without their leave. They are miserable at other people's 
 enjoyment, can forgive nothing but vice, wrong-doing, and 
 nfirmities, and want nothing but prote'ges. Aristocrats by
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 259 
 
 taste, they are republicans out of spite, simply to discover 
 many inferiors among their equals. 
 
 "Oh, Madame Firmiani, my dear fellow, is one of those 
 adorable women whom Nature feels to be a sufficient excuse 
 for all the ugly ones she has created by mistake ; she is be- 
 witching, she is kind ! I should like to be in power, to be 
 king, to have millions of money, solely (and three words are 
 whispered in your ear). Shall I introduce you to her?" 
 
 This young man is a Schoolboy, known for his audacious 
 bearing among men and his extreme shyness in private. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani I" cries another, twirling his cane 
 in the air. "I will tell you what I think of her. She is a 
 woman of between thirty and thirty-five, face a little passfo, 
 fine eyes, a flat figure, a worn contralto voice, dresses a great 
 deal, rouges a little, manners charming; in short, my dear 
 fellow, the remains of a pretty woman which are still worthy 
 of a passion. ' ' 
 
 This verdict is pronounced by a specimen of the genus 
 Coxcomb, who, having just breakfasted, does not weigh his 
 words, and is going out riding. At such moments a coxcomb 
 is pitiless. 
 
 "She has a collection of magnificent pictures in her 
 house. Go and see her," says another; "nothing can be 
 finer." 
 
 Y"ou have come upon the species Amateur. This individ- 
 ual quits you to go to Perignon's, or to Tripet's. To him 
 Madame Firmiani is a number of painted canvases. 
 
 A WIFE. "Madame Firmiani? I will not have you go 
 there." This phrase is the most suggestive view of all. 
 Madame Firmiani! A dangerous woman! A siren! She 
 dresses well, has good taste; she spoils the night's rest of 
 every wife. The speaker is of the species Shrew. 
 
 AN ATTACHE TO AN EMBASSY. "Madame Firmiani? 
 From Antwerp, is not she? I saw that woman, very hand- 
 some, about ten years ago. She was then at Home." 
 
 Men of the order of Attache's have a mania for utterances 
 a la Talleyrand, their wit is often so subtle that their percep-
 
 260 
 
 tion is imperceptible. They are like those Milliard players 
 who miss the balls with infinite skill. These men are not 
 generally great talkers; but when they talk it is of nothing 
 luss than Spain, Vienna, Italy, or St. Petersburg. The names 
 of countries act on them like springs; you press them, and 
 the machinery plays all its tunes. 
 
 "Does not that Madame Firmiani see a great deal of the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain?" This is asked by a person who 
 desires claims to distinction. She adds a de to everybody's 
 name to Monsieur Dupin, senior, to Monsieur Lafayette; 
 she flings it right and left and spatters people ^vith it. She 
 spends her life in anxieties as to what is correct; bat, for her 
 sins, she lives in the unfashionable Marais, and her husband 
 was an attorney but an attorney in the King's Court. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani, Monsieur? I do not know her." 
 This man is of the class of Dukes. He recognizes no 
 woman who has not been presented. Excuse him; he was 
 created Duke by Napoleon. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani ? Was she not a singer at the Italian 
 opera house?" A man of the genus Simpleton. The indi- 
 viduals of this genus must have an answer to everything. 
 They would rather speak calumnies than be silent. 
 
 Two OLD LADIES (the wives of retired lawyers). THE 
 FlEST (she has a cap with bows of ribbon, her face is 
 wrinkled, her nose sharp; she holds a prayer-book, and 
 her voice is harsh). "What was her maiden name? this 
 Madame Firmiani?" 
 
 THE SECOND (she has a little red face like a lady-apple, 
 and a gentle voice). "She was a Cadignan, my dear, niece 
 of the old Prince de Cadignan, and cousin, consequently, to 
 the Due de Maufrigneuse. " 
 
 Madame Firmiani then is a Cadignan. Bereft of virtues, 
 fortune, and youth, she would still be a Cadignan; that, like 
 a prejudice, is always rich and living. 
 
 AN ECCENTRIC. "My dear fellow, I never saw any clogs 
 in her anteroom; you may go to her house without compro- 
 mising yourself, and play there without hesitation; for if
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 261 
 
 there should be any rogues, they will be people of quality, 
 consequently there is no quarrelling. ' ' 
 
 AN OLD MAN OF THE SPECIES OBSERVER. 'Tou go 
 to Madame Firmiani's, my dear fellow, and you find a 
 handsome woman lounging indolently by the fire. She 
 will scarcely move from her chair; she rises only to greet 
 women, or ambassadors, or dukes people of importance. 
 She is very gracious, she charms you, she talks well, and 
 likes to talk of everything. She bears every indication of 
 a passionate soul, but she is credited with too many adorers 
 to have a lover. If suspicion rested on only two or three 
 intimate visitors, we might know which was her cavaliers 
 servente. But she is all mystery; she is married, and we 
 have never seen her husband; Monsieur Firmiani is purely 
 a creature of fancy, like the third horse we are made to pay 
 for when travelling post, and which we never see; Madame, 
 if you believe the professionals, has the finest contralto 
 voice in Europe, and has not sung three times since she 
 came to Paris; she receives numbers of people, and goes 
 nowhere. ' ' 
 
 The Observer speaks as an oracle. His words, his anec- 
 dotes, his quotations must all be accepted as truth, or you 
 risk being taken for a man without knowledge of the world, 
 without capabilities. He will slander you lightly in twenty 
 drawing-rooms, where he is as essential as the first piece in 
 the bill pieces so often played to the benches, but which 
 once upon a time were successful. The Observer is a man 
 of forty, never dines at home, and professes not to be dan- 
 gerous to women; he wears powder and a maroon-colored 
 coat; he can always have a seat in various boxes at the 
 Theatre des Bouffons. He is sometimes mistaken for a para- 
 site, bat he has held too high positions to be suspected of 
 sponging, and, indeed, possesses an estate, in a department 
 of which the name has never leaked out. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani? Why, my dear boy, she was a mis- 
 tress of Murat's. ' ' This gentleman is a Contradictory. They 
 supply the errata to every memory, rectify every fact, bet
 
 262 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 you a hundred to one, are cock-sure of everything. You 
 catch them out in a single evening in flagrant delicts of 
 ubiquity. They assert that they were in Paris at the time 
 of Mallet's conspiracy, forgetting that half an hour before 
 they had crossed the Beresina. The Contradictories are al- 
 most all members of the Legion of Honor; they talk very 
 loud, have receding foreheads, and play high. 
 
 "Madame Firmiani, a hundred thousand francs a year? 
 Are you mad ? Eeally some people scatter thousands a year 
 with the liberality of authors, to whom it costs nothing to 
 give their heroines handsome fortunes. But Madame Firmi- 
 ani is a flirt who ruined a young fellow the other day, and 
 hindered him from making a very good marriage. If she 
 were not handsome, she would be penniless." 
 
 This speaker you recognize: he is one of the Envious, 
 and we will not sketch his least feature. The species is as 
 well known as that of the domestic felis. How is the per- 
 petuity of envy to be explained ? A vice which is wholly 
 unprofitable I 
 
 People of fashion, literary people, very good people, and 
 people of every kind were, in the month of January, 1824, 
 giving out so many different opinions on Madame Firmiani 
 that it would be tiresome to report them all. We have only 
 aimed at showing that a man wishing to know her, without 
 choosing, or being able, to go to her house, would have been 
 equally justified in the belief that she was a widow or a wife 
 silly or witty, virtuous or immoral, rich or poor, gentle or 
 devoid of soul, handsome or ugly; in fact, there were as many 
 Mesdames Firmiani as there are varieties in social life, or 
 sects in the Catholic Church. Frightful thought! We are 
 all like lithographed plates, of which an endless number of 
 copies are taken off by slander. These copies resemble or 
 differ from the original by touches so imperceptibly slight 
 that, but for the calumnies of our friends and the witticisms 
 of newspapers, reputation would depend on the balance 
 struck by each hearer between the limping truth and the 
 lies to which Parisian wit lends wings.
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 263 
 
 Madame Firmiani, like many other women of dignity and 
 noble pride, who close their hearts as a sanctuary and scorn 
 the world, might have been very hardly judged by Monsieur 
 de Bourbonne, an old gentleman of fortune, who had thought 
 a good deal about her during the past winter. As it hap- 
 pened, this gentleman belonged to the Provincial Land- 
 owner class, folk who are accustomed to inquire into every- 
 thing, and to make bargains with peasants. In this business 
 a man grows keen-witted in spite of himself, as a soldier, in 
 the long run, acquires the courage of routine. This inquirer, 
 a native of Touraine, and not easily satisfied by the Paris 
 dialects, was a very honorable gentleman who rejoiced in 
 a nephew, his sole heir, for whom he planted his poplars. 
 Their more than natural affection gave rise to much evil- 
 speaking, which individuals of the various species of Tou- 
 rangeau formulated with much mother wit; but it would be 
 useless to record it; it would pale before that of Parisian 
 tongues. When a man can think of his heir without dis- 
 pleasure, as he sees fine rows of poplars improving every 
 day, his affection increases with each spadeful of earth he 
 turns at the foot of his trees. Though such phenomena of 
 sensibility may be uncommon, they still are to be met with 
 in Touraine. 
 
 This much-loved nephew, whose name was Octave de 
 Camps, was descended from the famous Abbe* de Camps, so 
 well known to the learned, or to the bibliomaniacs, which 
 Is not -the same thing. 
 
 Provincial folk have a disagreeable habit of regarding 
 young men who sell their reversions with a sort of respect- 
 able horror. This Gothic prejudice is bad for speculation, 
 which the Government has hitherto found it necessary to 
 encourage. Now, without consulting his uncle, Octave had 
 on a sudden disposed of an estate in favor of the speculative 
 builders. The chateau of Yillaines would have been demol- 
 ished but for the offers made by his old uncle to the repre- 
 sentatives of the demolishing fraternity. To add to the tes- 
 tator's wrath, a friend of Octave's, a distant relation, one of
 
 264 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 those cousins with small wealth and great cunning, who lead 
 their prudent neighbors to say, "I should not like to go to 
 law with him !" had called, by chance, on Monsieur de Bour- 
 bonne and informed him that his nephew was ruined. Mon- 
 sieur Octave de Camps, after dissipating his fortune for a 
 certain Madame Firmiani, and not daring to confess his sins, 
 had been reduced to giving lessons in mathematics, pending 
 his coming into his uncle's leavings. This distant cousin 
 a sort of Charles Moor had not been ashamed of giving this 
 disastrous news to the old country gentleman at the hour 
 when, sitting before his spacious hearth, he was digesting a 
 copious provincial dinner. But would-be legatees do not get 
 rid of an uncle so easily as they could wish. This uncle, 
 thanks to his obstinacy, refusing to believe the distant cousin, 
 came out victorious over the indigestion brought on by the 
 biography of his nephew. Some blows fall on the heart, oth- 
 ers on the brain; the blow struck by the distant cousin fell 
 on the stomach, and produced little effect, as the good man 
 had a strong one. 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne, as a worthy disciple of Saint 
 Thomas, came to Paris without telling Octave, and tried to 
 get information as to his heir's insolvency. The old gentle- 
 man, who had friends in the Faubourg Saint-Germain the 
 Listomeres, the Lenoncourts, and the Vandenesses heard 
 so much slander, so much that was true, and so much that 
 was false concerning Madame Firmiani, that he determined 
 to call on her, under the name of Monsieur de Rouxellay, 
 the name of his place. The prudent old man took care, in 
 going to study Octave's mistress as she was said to be to 
 choose an evening when he knew that the young man was 
 engaged on work to be well paid for; for Madame Firmiani 
 was always at home to her young friend, a circumstance that 
 no one could account for. As to Octave's ruin, that, unfor- 
 tunately, was no fiction. 
 
 Monsieur de Eouxellay was not at all like a stage uncle. 
 As an old musketeer, a man of the best society, who had his 
 successes in his day, he knew how to introduce himself with
 
 a courtly air, remembered the polished manners of the past, 
 had a pretty wit, and understood almost all the roll of nobil- 
 ity. Though he loved the Bourbons with noble frankness, 
 believed in God as gentlemen believe, and read only the 
 "Quotidienne," he was by no means so ridiculous as the 
 Liberals of his department would have wished. He could 
 hold his own with men about the Court, so long as he was 
 not expected to talk of "MoseV or the play, or romanticism, 
 or local color, or railways. He had not got beyond Monsieur 
 de Voltaire, Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, Peyronnet, and 
 the Chevalier Orluck, the Queen's private musician. 
 
 "Madame," said he to the Marquise de Listoxnere, to 
 whom he had given his arm to go into Madame Firmiani'g 
 room, ''if this woman is my nephew's mistress, I pity her. 
 How can she bear to live in the midst of luxury and know 
 that he is in a garret ? Has she no soul ? Octave is a fool 
 to have invested the price of the estate of Villaines in the 
 heart of a " 
 
 Monsieur de Bourbonne was of a Fossil species, and spoke 
 only the language of a past day. 
 
 "But suppose he had lost it at play?" 
 
 "Well. Madame, he would have had the pleasure of 
 playing." 
 
 "You think he has had no pleasure for his money? 
 Look, here is Madame Firmiani." 
 
 The old uncle's brightest memories paled at the sight of 
 his nephew's supposed mistress. His anger died in a polite 
 speech wrung from him by the presence of Madame Firmiani, 
 By one of these chances which come only to pretty women, 
 it was a moment when all her beauties shone with particular 
 brilliancy, the result, perhaps, of the glitter of waxlighte, of 
 an exquisitely simple dress, of an indefinable reflection from 
 the elegance in which she lived and moved. Only long study 
 of the petty revolutions of an evening party in a Paris salon 
 can enable one to appreciate the imperceptible shades that 
 can tinge and change a woman's face. There are moments 
 when< pleased with her drees, feeling herself brilliant, happy 
 
 VoL A. BAIZAO 12
 
 2G6 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 at being admired and seeing herself the queen of a room full 
 of remarkable men all smiling at her, a Parisian is conscious 
 of her beauty and grace; she grows the lovelier by all the 
 looks she meets; they give her animation, but their mute 
 homage is transmitted by subtle glances to the man she 
 loves. In such a moment a woman is invested, as it were, 
 with supernatural power, and becomes a witch, an uncon- 
 scious coquette; she involuntarily inspires the passion which 
 is a secret intoxication to herself, she has smiles and looks 
 that are fascinating. If this excitement which comes from 
 the soul lends attractiveness even to ugly women, with what 
 splendor does it not clothe a naturally elegant creature, finely 
 made, fair, fresh, bright- eyed, and, above all, dressed with 
 such taste as artists and even her most spiteful rivals must 
 admit. 
 
 Have you ever met, for your happiness, some woman 
 whose harmonious tones give to her speech the charm that 
 is no less conspicuous in her manners, who knows how to 
 talk and to be silent, who cares for you with delicate feel- 
 ing, whose words are happily chosen and her language pure? 
 Her banter natters you, her criticism does not sting; she 
 neither preaches nor disputes, but is interested in leading a 
 discussion, and stops it at the right moment. Her manner 
 is friendly and gay, her politeness is unforced, her eagerness 
 to please is not servile ; she reduces respect to a mere gentle 
 shade; she never tires you, and leaves you satisfied with her 
 and yourself. You will see her gracious presence stamped 
 on the things she collects about her. In her home every- 
 thing charms the eye, and you breathe, as it seems, your 
 native air. This woman is quite natural. You never feel 
 an effort, she flaunts nothing, her feelings are expressed with 
 simplicity because they are genuine. Though candid, she 
 never wounds the most sensitive pride; she accepts men as 
 God made them, pitying the vicious, forgiving defects and 
 absurdities, sympathizing with every age, and vexed with 
 nothing because she has the tact to forfend everything. At 
 once tender and lively, she first constrains and then con-
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 267 
 
 soles you. You love her so truly that if this angel does 
 wrong you are ready to justify her. Then you know Madame 
 Firmiani. 
 
 By the time old Bourbonne had talked with this woman 
 for a quarter of an hour, sitting by her side, his nephew was 
 absolved. He understood that, true or false, Octave's con- 
 nection with Madame Firmiani no doubt covered some mys- 
 tery. Returning to the illusions of his youth, and judging 
 of Madame Firmiani's heart by her beauty, the old gentle- 
 man thought that a woman so sure of her dignity as she 
 seemed was incapable of a base action. Her black eyes 
 spoke of so much peace of mind, the lines of her face were 
 so noble, the forms so pure, and the passion of which she was 
 accused seemed to weigh so little on her heart, that, as he 
 admired all the pledges given to love and to virtue by that 
 adorable countenance, the old man said to himself, "My 
 nephew has committed some folly." 
 
 Madame Firmiani owned to twenty -five. But the Matter- 
 of -facts could prove that, having been married in 1813 at the 
 age of sixteen, she must be at least eight-and-twenty in 1825. 
 Nevertheless the same persons declared that she had never at 
 any period of her life been so desirable, so perfectly a woman. 
 She had no children, and had never had any; the hypothet- 
 ical Firmiani, a respectable man of forty in 1813, had, it was 
 said, only his name and fortune to offer her. So Madame 
 Firmiani had come to the age when a Parisian best under- 
 stands what passion is, and perhaps longs for it innocently 
 in her unemployed hours: she had everything that the world 
 can sell, or loan, or give. The Attaches declared she knew 
 everything, the Contradictories said she had yet many things 
 to learn; the Observers noticed that her hands were very 
 white, her foot very small, her movements a little too undu- 
 lating; but men of every species envied or disputed Octave's 
 good fortune, agreeing that she was the most aristocratic 
 beauty in Paris. 
 
 Still young, rich, a perfect musician, witty, exquisite; 
 welcomed, for the sake of the Cadignans, to whom she was
 
 268 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 related through her mother, by the Princesse de Blamont- 
 Chauvry, the oracle of the aristocratic quarter; beloved by 
 her rivals the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse her cousin, the Mar- 
 quise d'Espard, and Madame de Macumer, she fluttered every 
 vanity which feeds or excites love. And, indeed, she was 
 the object of too many desires not to be the victim of fash- 
 ionable detraction and those delightful calumnies which are 
 wittily hinted behind a fan or in a whispered aside. Hence 
 the remarks with which this story opened were necessary to 
 mark the contrast between the real Firmiani and the Firmiani 
 known to the world. Though some women forgave her for 
 being happy, others could not overlook her respectability; 
 now there is nothing so terrible, especially in Paris, as sus- 
 picion without foundation ; it is impossible to kill it. 
 
 This sketch of a personality so admirable by nature can 
 only give a feeble idea of it; it would need the brush of an 
 Ingres to represent the dignity of the brow, the mass of fine 
 hair, the majesty of the eyes, all the thoughts betrayed by 
 the varying hues of the complexion. There was something 
 of everything in this woman ; poets could see in her both 
 Joan of Arc and Agnes Sorel; but there was also the un- 
 known woman the soul hidden behind this deceptive mask 
 the soul of Eve, the wealth of evil and the treasures of 
 goodness, wrong and resignation, crime and self-sacrifice 
 the Dona Julia and Haidee of Byron's "Don Juan." 
 
 The old soldier very boldly remained till the last in Ma- 
 dame Firmiani's drawing-room; she found him quietly seated 
 in an armchair, and staying with the pertinacity of a fly that 
 must be killed to be got rid of. The clock marked two in 
 the morning. 
 
 "Madame," said the old gentleman, just as Madame 
 Firmiani rose in the hope of making her guest understand 
 that it was her pleasure that he should go. "Madame, I 
 am Monsieur Octave de Camps' uncle." 
 
 Madame Firmiani at once sat down again, and her agita- 
 tion was evident. In spite of his perspicacity, the planter 
 of poplars could not make up his mind whether shame or
 
 MA DAME FIRMIANI 269 
 
 pleasure made her turn pale. There are pleasures which do 
 not exist without a little coy bashfulness delightful emo- 
 tions which the chastest soul would fain keep behind a veil. 
 The more sensitive a woman is, the more she lives to conceal 
 her soul's greatest joys. Many women, incomprehensible in 
 their exquisite caprices, at times long to hear a name spoken 
 by all the world, while they sometimes would sooner bury 
 it in their hearts. Old Bourbonne did not read Madame 
 Firmiani's agitation quite in this light; but forgive him; 
 the country gentleman was suspicious. 
 
 "Indeed, Monsieur? " said Madame Firmiani, with 
 one of those clear and piercing looks in which we men 
 can never see anything, because they question us too 
 keenly. 
 
 "Indeed, Madame; and do you know what I have been 
 told I, in the depths of the country? That my nephew 
 has ruined himself for you ; and the unhappy boy is in a 
 garret, while you live here in gold and silks. You will, I 
 hope, forgive my rustic frankness, for it may be useful to 
 you to be informed of the slander." 
 
 "Stop, Monsieur," said Madame Firmiani, interrupting 
 the gentleman with an imperious gesture, "1 know all that. 
 You are too polite to keep the conversation to this subject 
 when I beg you to change it. You are too gallant, in the 
 old-fashioned sense of the word," she added, with a slightly 
 ironical emphasis, "not to acknowledge that you have no 
 right to cross-question me. However, it is ridiculous in 
 me to justify myself. I hope you have a good enough 
 opinion of my character to believe in the utter contempt I 
 feel for money, though I was married without any fortune 
 whatever to a man who had an immense fortune. I do not 
 know whether your nephew is rich or poor; if I have re- 
 ceived him, if I still receive him, it is because I regard 
 him as worthy to move in the midst of my friends. All 
 my friends, Monsieur, respect each other; they know that 
 I am not so philosophical as to entertain people whom I 
 do not esteem. That, perhaps, shows a lack of charity;
 
 270 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 but my guardian angel has preserved in me, to this day, 
 an intense aversion for gossip and dishonor." 
 
 Though her voice was not quite firm at the beginning of 
 this reply, the last words were spoken by Madame Firmiani 
 with the cool decision of Celimbne rallying the Misanthrope. 
 
 "Madame," the Count resumed in a broken voice, "I am 
 an old man I am almost a father to Octave I therefore 
 must humbly crave your pardon beforehand for the only 
 question I shall be so bold as to ask you; and I give you 
 my word of honor as a gentleman that your reply will die 
 here," and he laid his hand on his heart with a really re- 
 ligious gesture. "Does gossip speak the truth; do you 
 love Octave?" 
 
 "Monsieur," said she, "I should answer any one else 
 with a look. But you, since you are almost a father to 
 Monsieur de Camps, you I will ask what you would think 
 of a woman who, in reply to your question, should say, 
 Yes? To confess one's love to the man we love when he 
 loves us well, well; when we are sure of being loved for- 
 ever, believe me, Monsieur, it is an effort to us and a re- 
 ward to him ; but to any one else ! 
 
 Madame Firmiani did not finish her sentence; she rose, 
 bowed to the good gentleman, and vanished into her private 
 rooms, where the sound of doors opened and shut in succes- 
 sion had language to the ears of the poplar planter. 
 
 "Damn it!" said he to himself, "what a woman! She is 
 either a very cunning hussy or an angel' ' ; and he went down 
 to his hired fly in the courtyard, where the horses were paw- 
 ing the pavement in the silence. The coachman was asleep, 
 after having cursed his customer a hundred times. 
 
 Next morning, by about eight o'clock, the old gentle- 
 man was mounting the stairs of a house in the Rue de 1'Ob- 
 servance, where dwelt Octave de Camps. If there was in 
 this world a man amazed, it was the young professor on 
 seeing his uncle. The key was in the door, Octave's lamp 
 was still burning; he had sat up all night. 
 
 "Now, you rascal," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, seat-
 
 MADAME FIRMIAN1 271 
 
 ing himself in an armchair. "How long has it been the 
 fashion to make fools (speaking mildly) of uncles who 
 have twenty-six thousand francs a year in good land in 
 Touraine? and that, when you are sole heir? Do you 
 know that formerly such relations were treated with re- 
 spect? Pray, have you any fault to find with me? Have 
 I bungled my business as an uncle? Have I demanded 
 your respect ? Have 1 ever refused you money ? Have I 
 shut my door in your face, saying you had only come to 
 see how I was? Have you not the most accommodating, 
 the least exacting uncle in France? I will not say in Eu- 
 rope, it would be claiming too much. You write to me, or 
 you don't write. I live on your professions of affection. I 
 am laying out the prettiest estate in the neighborhood, a 
 place that is the object of envy in all the department; but 
 I do not mean to leave it to you till the latest date possible 
 a weakness that is very pardonable. And my gentle- 
 man sells his property, is lodged like a groom, has no 
 servants, keeps no style " 
 
 "My dear uncle " 
 
 "It is not a case of uncle, but of nephew. I have a right 
 to your confidence ; so have it all out at once ; it is the easi- 
 est way, I know by experience. Have you been gambling ? 
 Have you been speculating on the Bourse? Come, say, 'Un- 
 cle, I am a wretch, ' and we kiss and are friends. But if you 
 tell me any lie bigger than those I told at your age, I will sell 
 my property, buy an annuity, and go back to the bad ways 
 of my youth, if it is not too late. ' ' 
 
 "Uncle" 
 
 "I went last night to see your Madame Pirmiani," said 
 the uncle, kissing the tips of all his fingers together. "She 
 is charming," he went on. "You have the king's warrant 
 and approval, and your uncle's consent, if that is any satis- 
 faction to you. As to the sanction of the Church, that I 
 suppose is unnecessary the sacraments, no doubt, are too 
 costly. Come; speak out. Is it for her that you have 
 ruined yourself?"
 
 272 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Yes, uncle." 
 
 "Ah! the hussy! I would have bet upon it. In my day 
 a woman of fashion could ruin a man more cleverly than any 
 of your courtesans of to-day. I saw in her a resuscitation of 
 the last century." 
 
 "Uncle," said Octave, in a voice that was at once sad 
 and gentle, "you are under a mistake. Madame Firmiani 
 deserves your esteem, and all the adoration of her ad- 
 mirers. ' ' 
 
 "So hapless youth is always the same ! ' ' said Monsieur 
 de Bourbonne. "Well, well! go on in your own way; tell 
 me all the old stories once more. At the same time, you 
 know, I dare say, that I am no chicken in such matters." 
 
 "My dear uncle, here is a letter which will explain every- 
 thing," replied Octave, taking out an elegant letter-case her 
 gift, no doubt. "When you have read it I will tell you the 
 rest, and you will know Madame Firmiani as the world knows 
 her not." 
 
 "I have not got my spectacles," said his uncle. "Head 
 it to me. ' ' 
 
 Octave began: " 'My dear love 
 
 "Then you are very intimate with this woman?" 
 
 "Why, yes, uncle?" 
 
 ' ' And you have not quarrelled ? ' ' 
 
 1 ' Quarrelled ! ' ' echoed Octave in surprise. ' ' We are mar- 
 ried at Gretna Green." 
 
 "Well, then, why do you dine for forty sous?" 
 
 "Let me proceed." 
 
 "Very true. I am listening." 
 
 Octave took up the letter again, and could not read cer- 
 tain passages without strong emotion. 
 
 " 'My beloved husband, you ask me the reason of my 
 melancholy. Has it passed from my soul into my face, or 
 have you only guessed it? And why should you not? 
 Our hearts are so closely united. Besides, I cannot lie, 
 though that perhaps is a misfortune. One of the condi- 
 tions of being loved is, in a woman, to be always caressing
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 278 
 
 and gay. Perhaps I ought to deceive you; but I would 
 not do so, not even if it were to increase or to preserve the 
 happiness you give me you lavish on me under which 
 you overwhelm me. Oh, my dear, my love carries with it 
 so much gratitude! And I must love forever, without 
 measure. Yes, I must always be proud of you. Our 
 glory a woman's glory is all in the man she loves. Es- 
 teem, consideration, honor, are they not all his who has 
 conquered everything? Well, and my angel has fallen. 
 Yes, my dear, your last confession has dimmed my past 
 happiness. From that moment I have felt myself humbled 
 through you you, whom I believed to be the purest of 
 men, as you are the tenderest and most loving. I must 
 have supreme confidence in your still childlike heart to 
 make an avowal which costs me so dear. What, poor dar- 
 ling, your father stole his fortune, and you know it, and 
 you keep it! And you could tell me of this attorney's 
 triumph in a room full of the dumb witnesses of our love, 
 and you are a gentleman, and you think yourself noble, 
 and I am yours, and you are two-and-twenty! How mon- 
 strous all through! 
 
 " 'I have sought excuses for you; I have ascribed your 
 indifference to your giddy youth; I know there is still 
 much of the child in you. Perhaps you have never yet 
 thought seriously of what is meant by wealth, and by hon- 
 esty. Oh, your laughter hurt me so much! Only think, 
 there is a family, ruined, always in grief, girls perhaps, 
 who curse you day by day, an old man who says to him- 
 self every night, "I should not lack bread if Monsieur de 
 Camps' father had only been an honest man!" ' 
 
 "What!" exclaimed Monsieur de Bourbonne, interrupt- 
 ing him, "were you such an idiot as to tell that woman the 
 story of your father's affair with the Bourgneufs? Women 
 better understand spending a fortune than making one " 
 
 "They understand honesty. Let me go on, uncle! 
 
 ' ' ' Octave, no power on earth is authorized to garble the 
 language of honor. Look into your conscience, and ask it
 
 274 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 by what name to call the action to which you owe your 
 riches.'" 
 
 And the nephew looked at his uncle, who beat his head. 
 
 " 'I will not tell you all the thoughts that beset me; they 
 can all be reduced to one, which is this: I cannot esteem a 
 man who knowingly soils himself for a sum of money whether 
 large or small. Five francs stolen at play, or six times a 
 hundred thousand francs obtained by legal trickery, dis- 
 grace a man equally. I must tell you all: I feel myself 
 sullied by a love which till now was all my joy. From the 
 bottom of my soul there comes a voice I cannot stifle. I 
 have wept to find that my conscience is stronger than my 
 love. You might commit a crime, and I would hide you 
 in my bosom from human justice if I could; but my de- 
 votion would go no further. Love, my dearest, is, in a 
 woman, the most unlimited confidence, joined to I know 
 not what craving to reverence and adore the being to whom 
 she belongs. I have never conceived of love but as a fire 
 in which the noblest feelings were yet further purified a 
 fire which develops them to the utmost. 
 
 " 'I have but one thing more to say: Come to me poor, 
 and I shall love you twice as much if possible ; if not, give 
 me up. If I see you no more, I know what is left to me 
 to do. 
 
 " 'But, now, understand me clearly, I will not have you 
 make restitution because I desire it. Consult your con- 
 science. This is an act of justice, and must not be done 
 as a sacrifice to love. I am your wife, and not your mis- 
 tress; the point is not to please me, but to inspire me with 
 the highest esteem. If I have misunderstood, if you have 
 not clearly explained your father's action, in short, if you 
 can regard your fortune as legitimately acquired and how 
 gladly would I persuade myself that you deserve no blame 
 decide as the voice of conscience dictates ; act wholly for 
 yourself. A man who truly loves, as you love me, has too 
 high a respect for all the holy inspiration he may get from 
 his wife to be dishonorable.
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 275 
 
 " 'I blame myself now for all I have written. A word 
 would perhaps have been enough, and my preaching in- 
 stinct has carried me away. So I should like to be scolded 
 not much, but a little. My dear, between you and me 
 are not you the Power! You only should detect your own 
 faults. Well, Master mine, can you say I understand noth- 
 ing about political discussion?' 
 
 "Well, uncle?" said Octave, whose eyes were full of 
 tears. 
 
 "I see more writing, finish it." 
 
 "Oh, there is nothing further but such things as only a 
 lover may read." 
 
 "Very good," said the old man. "Very good, my dear 
 boy. I was popular with the women in my day; but I would 
 have you to believe that I too have loved; et ego in Arcadid. 
 Still, I cannot imagine why you give lessons in mathematics." 
 
 "My dear uncle, I am your nephew. Is not that as much 
 as to say that I have made some inroads on the fortune left 
 to me by my father ? After reading that letter a complete 
 revolution took place in me, in one instant I paid up the 
 arrears of remorse. I could never describe to you the state 
 in which I was. As I drove my cab to the Bois a voice 
 cried to me, 'Is that horse yours?' As I ate my dinner, I 
 said to myself, 'Have you not stolen the food?' I was 
 ashamed of myself. My honesty was ardent in proportion 
 to its youth. First I flew off to Madame Firmiani. Ah, 
 my dear uncle, that day I had such joys of heart, such 
 raptures of soul as were worth millions. With her I cal- 
 culated how much I owed the Bourgneuf family; and I 
 sentenced myself, against Madame Firmiani's advice, to 
 pay them interest at the rate of three per cent. But my 
 whole fortune was not enough to refund the sum. We were 
 both of us lovers enough husband and wife enough for 
 her to offer and for me to accept her savings " 
 
 "What, besides all her virtues, that adorable woman can 
 save money!" cried the uncle. 
 
 "Do not laugh at her. Her position compels her to
 
 276 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 some thrift. Her husband went to Greece in 1820, and 
 died about three years ago; but to this day it has been 
 impossible to get legal proof of his death, or to lay hands 
 on the will he no doubt made in favor of his wife; this im- 
 portant document was stolen, lost, or mislaid in a country 
 where a man's papers are not kept as they are in France, 
 nor is there a Consul. So, not knowing whether she may 
 not some day have to reckon with other and malignant 
 heirs, she is obliged to be extremely careful, for she does 
 not wish to have to give up her wealth as Chateaubriand 
 has just given up the Ministry. Now I mean to earn a 
 fortune that shall be mine, so as to restore my wife to 
 opulence if she should be ruined." 
 
 "And you never told me you never came to me. My 
 dear nephew, believe me I love you well enough to pay 
 your honest debts, your debts as a gentleman. I am the 
 Uncle of the fifth act I will be revenged." 
 
 "I know your revenges, uncle; but let me grow rich by 
 my own toil. If you wish to befriend me, allow me a thou- 
 sand crowns a year until I need capital for some business. I 
 declare at this moment I am so happy that all I care about 
 is to live. I give lessons that I may be no burden on any 
 one. 
 
 "Ah, if you could but know with what delight I made 
 restitution. After making some inquiries I found the 
 Bourgneufs in misery and destitution. They were living 
 at Saint- Germain in a wretched house. The old father 
 was manager in a lottery office; the two girls did the 
 work of the house and kept the accounts. The mother 
 was almost always ill. The two girls are charming, but 
 they have learned by bitter experience how little the 
 world cares for beauty without fortune. What a picture 
 did I find there! If I went to the house as the accom- 
 plice in a crime, I came out of it an honest man, and I 
 have purged my father's memory. I do not judge him, 
 uncle; there is in a lawsuit an eagerness, a passion which 
 may sometimes blind the most honest man alive. Lawyers
 
 MADAME FIRMIANI 277 
 
 know how to legitimize the most preposterous claims; there 
 are syllogisms in law to humor the errors of conscience, and 
 judges have a right to make mistakes. My adventure was 
 a perfect drama. To have played the part of Providence, 
 to have fulfilled one of these hopeless wishes: 'If only 
 twenty thousand francs a year could drop from heaven P 
 a wish we all have uttered in jest; to see a sublime look 
 of gratitude, amazement and admiration take the place of 
 a glance fraught with curses; to bring opulence into the 
 midst of a family sitting round a turf fire in the evening, 
 by the light of a wretched lamp No, words cannot paint 
 such a scene. My excessive justice to them seemed unjust. 
 Well, if there be a Paradise, my father must now be happy. 
 As for myself, I am loved as man was never loved before. 
 Madame Firmiani has given me more than happiness; she 
 has taught me a delicacy of feeling which perhaps I lacked. 
 Indeed, I call her Dear Conscience, one of those loving 
 names that are the outcome of certain secret harmonies of 
 spirit. Honesty is said to pay; I hope ere long to be rich 
 myself; at this moment I am bent on solving a great in- 
 dustrial problem, and if I succeed I shall make millions." 
 
 "My boy, you have your mother's soul," said the old 
 man, hardly able to restrain the tears that rose at the re- 
 membrance of his sister. 
 
 At this instant, in spite of the height above the ground 
 of Octave's room, the young man and his uncle heard the 
 noise of a carriage driving up. 
 
 "It is she! I know her horses by the way they pull up." 
 
 And it was not long before Madame Firmiani made her 
 appearance. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, with an impulse of annoyance on see- 
 ing Monsieur de Bourbonne. "But our uncle is not in the 
 way," she went on with a sudden smile. M I have come to 
 kneel at my husband's feet and humbly beseech him to ac- 
 cept my fortune. I have just received from the Austrian 
 Embassy a document proving Firmiani's death. The paper, 
 drawn up by the kind offices of the Austrian envoy at Con-
 
 278 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 stantinople, is quite formal, and the will which Firmiani's 
 valet had in keeping for me is subjoined. There, you are 
 richer than I am, for you have there," and she tapped her 
 husband's breast, "treasures which only God can add to." 
 Then, unable to disguise her happiness, she hid her face 
 in Octave's bosom. 
 
 "My sweet niece, we made love when I was young," said 
 the uncle, "but how you love. You women are all that is 
 good and lovely in humanity, for you are never guilty of 
 your faults; they always originate with us." 
 
 PAKIS, February, 1831.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE
 
 TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE BOLOGNINI, 
 NEE VIMERCATI 
 
 If you remember, dear lady, the pleasure your conver- 
 sation gave to a certain traveller, 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 evenings spent in your society, nor that he 
 should seek for it the shelter of a name which, in old times, 
 was given to not a, few of the tales by one of your early 
 writers, beloved of the Milanese. You have an Eugenie, 
 with more than the promise of beauty, whose speaking smile 
 proclaims her to have inherited from you the most precious 
 gifts a woman can possess, and whose childhood, it is cer- 
 tain, 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 ivrote the name of Eugenie, have my thoughts carried me 
 lack to the cool stuccoed drawing-room and little garden of 
 the Vicolo del Capuccini, which used to resound to the dear 
 child's merry laughter, to our quarrels, and our stories. 
 You have left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, where I 
 know nothing of your manner of life, and 1 am forced to 
 picture you, no longer among the pretty things, which 
 doubtless still surround you, but like one of the beautiful 
 heads of Carlo Dolci, Rafael, Titian, or Allori, which, in 
 their remoteness, seem to us like abstractions. 
 
 If this book succeed in making its way across the A Ips, 
 it will tell you of the lively gratitude and respectful friend- 
 ship of 
 
 Your humble servant, De Balzac.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 OPINIONS of the larger division of this book will vary in 
 pretty direct ratio with the general taste of the reader for 
 Balzac in his more sentimental mood, and for his delinea- 
 tions of virtuous or "honest" women. As is the case with 
 the number of the "Come'die" which immediately succeeds 
 it in "Scenes de la Vie Privde, " 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 nec- 
 essarily 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 mena- 
 g&re, interest 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 Eenee 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 Eenee's nursery it is fair to Balzac to say 
 that he was one of the earliest, despite his lukewarm affec- 
 
 (281)
 
 282 PREFACE 
 
 tion for things English, to introduce this important apart- 
 ment into a French novel if she had married her husband 
 less as a matter of business, and had regarded him with a 
 somewhat more romantic affection ; and though it is per- 
 haps not fair to look forward to the "Depute* d'Arcis" 
 (which, after all, is not in this part probably Balzac's 
 work), we should not in that case have been so little sur- 
 prised as we are to find the staid matron very nearly fling- 
 ing herself at the head of a young sculptor, and "making 
 it up" to him (one of the nastiest situations in fiction) with 
 her own daughter. So, too, if the addition of a little more 
 romance to Bende had resulted in the subtraction of a cor- 
 responding quantity from Louise, there might not have been 
 much harm done. This very inflammable lady of high de- 
 gree irresistibly reminds one (except in beauty) of the ter- 
 rible 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 conceiving 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-programme, Balzac has provided her with two 
 singularly complaisant and adequate helpmates in the shape 
 of the Spaniard-Sardinian Felipe de Macumer and the 
 French-Englishman and lunatic Marie Graston. Nor do I 
 know that she is more than they themselves desire, being, 
 as they are, walking gentlemen of a most triste description, 
 deplorable to consider as coming from the hand that created 
 not merely Groriot and Grandet, but even Kastignac, Flore 
 Brazier, and Lucien de Rubempre. If this censure seems 
 too hard, I can only say that of all things that deserve the 
 name of failure, "sensibility" that does not reach the ac-
 
 PREFACE 283 
 
 tual boiling-point of passion seems to me to fail most dis- 
 agreeably. 
 
 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 improb- 
 ably be the cause of that abiding notion of Balzac as pre- 
 ferring 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 vigor- 
 ous exercitations in black and crimson. "Une Fille d'Eve" 
 is one of the best of these latter in its own way. It is no 
 doubt conditioned by Balzac's quaint hatred of that news- 
 paper press from which he never could quite succeed in 
 disengaging himself; and we should have been more en- 
 tirely rejoiced at the escape of Count Fe*lix de Vandenesse 
 from the decoration so often alluded to by our Elizabethan 
 poets and dramatists if he had not been the very question- 
 able hero of "Le Lys dans laValle"e." But the whole in- 
 trigue is managed with remarkable ease and skill; the 
 "double arrangement," so to speak, by which Eaoul Na- 
 than proves for a time at least equally attractive to such 
 very different persons as Florine and Madame de Vande- 
 nesse, the perfidious manoeuvres of the respectable ladies 
 who have formerly enjoyed the doubtful honor of Count 
 Felix's attentions all are good. It can hardly be said, 
 considering the nature of the case, that the Count's method 
 of saving his honor, though not quite the most scrupulous 
 in the world, is contrary to "the game," and the whole 
 moves well. 
 
 Perhaps the character of Nathan himself cannot be said 
 to be quite fully worked out. Balzac seems to have pos- 
 tulated, 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 voca- 
 tion whom he allows in some measure to escape the curse. 
 But he has not elaborated and instanced its working quite
 
 284 PREFACE 
 
 so fully in the case of Nathan as in the cases of Lousteau 
 and Lucien de B.ubempre'. I do not know whether any 
 special original has been assigned to Nathan, who, it will 
 be observed, is something more than a mere journalist, 
 being a successful dramatist and romancer. 
 
 "Me'moires de Deux Jeunes Mariees" first appeared in 
 the "Presse" during the winter of 1841-42, and was pub- 
 lished as a book by Souverain in the latter year. The 
 "Come'die" in its complete form was already under way; 
 and the "Me'moires" being suitable for its earliest division, 
 the "Scenes de la Vie PriveV' were entered at once on the 
 books, the same year, 1842, seeing the entrance. 
 
 "Une Fille d'Eve" was a little earlier. After appear- 
 ing (with nine chapter divisions) in the "Siecle" on the 
 last day of December, 1838, and during the first fortnight 
 of January, 1839, it was in the latter year published as a 
 book by Souverain with "Massimilla Doni, " and three years 
 later was comprised in the first volume of the ' ' Come'die. ' '
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TWO MARIES 
 
 /T WAS half -past eleven in the evening, and two "women 
 were seated by the fire of a boudoir in one of the finest 
 houses of the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. The room 
 was hung in blue velvet, of the kind with tender melting 
 lights, which French industry has only lately learned to 
 manufacture. The doors and windows had been draped by 
 a really artistic decorator with rich cashmere curtains, match- 
 ing the walls in color. From a prettily molded rose in the 
 centre of the ceiling, hung, by three finely wrought chains, 
 a silver lamp, studded with turquoises. The plan of decora- 
 tion 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 mod- 
 els, saved from insipidity the general effect which a painter 
 might have called a little "muzzy." On the backs of the 
 chairs 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 
 mantel-piece of African marble bore a platinum timepiece 
 
 (286)
 
 286 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 with arabesques in black enamel, flanked by extravagant 
 specimens of old Saxe the inevitable shepherd with dainty 
 bouquet forever tripping to meet his bride embodying the 
 Teutonic conception of ceramic art. Above sparkled the bev- 
 elled facets of a Venetian mirror in an ebony frame, crowded 
 with figures in relief, relic of some royal residence. Two 
 flower-stands displayed at this season the sickly triumphs of 
 the hothouse, pale, spirit-like blossoms, the pearls of the 
 world of flowers. The room might have been for sale, it 
 was so desperately tidy and prim. It bore no impress of 
 will and character such as marks a happy home, and even 
 the women did not break the general chilly impression, for 
 they were weeping. 
 
 The proprietor of the house, Ferdinand du Tillet, was one 
 of the richest bankers in Paris, and the very mention of his 
 name will account for the lavish style of the house decora- 
 tion, 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 unmar- 
 ried daughter of the Comte de Granville, whose name was 
 one of the most illustrious on the French bench, and who 
 had been made a peer of the realm after the Revolution of 
 July. This ambitious alliance was not got for nothing; in 
 the settlement, du Tillet had to sign a receipt for a dowry 
 of which he never touched a penny. This nominal dowry 
 was the same in amount as the huge sum given to the elder 
 sister on her marriage with Comte Felix de Vandenesse, and 
 which, in fact, was the price paid by the Gran vi lies 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 fore- 
 seen at the close of 1828 the strange upheavals which 1830 
 was to produce in the political, financial, and moral condi- 
 tion of France? Had Count Felix been told that in the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 287 
 
 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 
 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 hav- 
 ing travelled beyond the domestic circle embraced by the 
 maternal eye. Up to that time they had never even been 
 to a play. A Paris church was their nearest approach to a 
 theatre. In short, their upbringing in their mother's house 
 was as strict as it could have been in a convent. From the 
 time that they had ceased to be mere infants they always 
 slept in a room adjoining that of the Countess, the door of 
 which was kept open at night. The time not occupied by
 
 288 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 dressing, religious observances, and the minimum of study 
 requisite for the children of gentlefolk, was spent in making 
 poor-clothes and in taking exercise, modelled on the English 
 Sunday walk, where any quickening of the solemn pace is 
 checked as being suggestive of cheerfulness. Their lessons 
 were kept within the limits imposed by confessors, chosen 
 from among the least liberal and most Jansenist of ecclesias- 
 tics. Never were girls handed over to their husbands more 
 pure and virgin : in this point, doubtless one of great impor- 
 tance, 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 au- 
 thorized books, such as the "Lettres eMinantes" and Noel's 
 "Le9ons de literature," 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. Fenelon's "Telemachus" was held 
 dangerous. The Comtesse de Grranville was not without 
 affection for her daughters, and it showed itself in wishing 
 to make angels of them in the fashion of Marie Alacoque, 
 but the daughters would have preferred a mother less saintly 
 and more human. 
 
 This education bore its inevitable fruit. Religion, 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 imbecil- 
 ity or to long for independence. Independence meant mar- 
 riage, and to this they looked as soon as they began to see 
 something of the world and could exchange a few ideas,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 289 
 
 while yet remaining utterly unconscious of their own touch- 
 ing grace and rare qualities. Ignorant of what innocence 
 meant, without arms against misfortune, without experi- 
 ence 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 sentences they could exchange when their 
 mother left them for a moment, contained sometimes more 
 thoughts than could be put in words. Often would a stolen 
 glance, charged with sympathetic message and response, con- 
 vey a whole poem of bitter melancholy. They found a mar- 
 vellous 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 comple- 
 tion of a piece of embroidery. 
 
 Their mother's friends, far from providing intellectual 
 stimulus or calling forth their sympathies, only deepened 
 the surrounding gloom. They were stiff -backed old ladies, 
 dry and rigid, whose conversation turned on their 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 1 ' or "L'Ami 
 de la Religion." The men again might have served as ex- 
 tinguishers to the torch of love, so cold and mournfully im- 
 passive 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 hearta 
 devoted to task work and intrenched 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 frown- 
 ing faces. 
 
 Against the dull background of this life stood out in bold 
 relief the single figure of a man, that of their music-master. 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 13
 
 290 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 his girls was ten years 
 old, the Comte de Granville pointed out the necessity of 
 finding a master. Mme. de Granville, who could not deny 
 it, gave to her concession all the merit of wifely submissive- 
 ness. 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 old gray 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- 
 emplary 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 Ger- 
 man, who has made himself the poet of all which appears 
 lifeless and yet lives. Such was Schmucke, formerly choir- 
 master to the Margrave of Anspuch, a learned man who un- 
 derwent inspection from a council of piety. They asked him 
 whether he fasted. The master was tempted to reply, "Look
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 291 
 
 at me!" but it is ill work jesting with saints and Jansenist 
 confessors. 
 
 This apocryphal old man held so large a place in the life 
 of the two Maries they became so much attached to the 
 great simple-minded artist whose sole interest was in his art 
 that, after they were married, each bestowed on him an 
 annuity of three hundred francs, a sum which sufficed for 
 his lodging, his beer, his pipe, and his clothes. Six hun- 
 dred francs a year and his lessons were a Paradise for 
 Schmucke. He had not ventured to confide his poverty 
 and his hopes to any one except these two charming chil- 
 dren, whose hearts had blossomed under the snow of ma- 
 ternal 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 afterward 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 Gran- 
 ville 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 bronzed steel buckles and lined with horse- 
 hair soles, and in a more frequent change of shirt. His 
 childlike gayety, long repressed by an honorable and 
 seemly poverty, bubbled forth afresh. He let fall little 
 jokes such as "Young ladies, the cats supped off the 
 dirt of Paris last night," when a frost had dried the muddy 
 streets overnight, only they were spoken in a Germano- 
 Gallic lingo " Younc ladies, de gads subbed off de dirt off 
 Barees." Gratified at having brought his adorable ladies 
 this species of Vergiss mein nicht, culled from the flowers 
 of his fancy, he put on an air of such ineffable roguishness 
 in presenting it that mockery was disarmed. It made him 
 so happy to call a smile to the lips of his pupils, the sad- 
 ness 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 common-
 
 292 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 place so vulgar that the warmth of his heart could not in- 
 fuse 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, fol- 
 lowing 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 
 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 com- 
 position, 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 six- 
 teen, and then only four times a year, to a few selected 
 houses. They only left their mother's side when well for- 
 tified 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 293 
 
 frocks, with an extraordinary 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 compas- 
 sion? The white matter of their brains was imsoiled by a 
 single perilous, morbid, or ever, 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 
 when they left their mother's home to go to the mairie 
 and to the church, with one simple but awful command 
 in their ears to obey in all things the man by whose side 
 they were to spend the night, awake or sleeping. To them 
 it seemed impossible that they should suffer more in the 
 strange house whither they were to be banished than in 
 the maternal convent. 
 
 How came it that the father of these girls did nothing to 
 protect them from so crushing a despotism? The Comte de 
 Granville had a great reputation as a judge, able and incor- 
 ruptible, if sometimes a little carried away by party feeling. 
 Unhappily, by the terms of a remarkable compromise, agreed 
 upon after ten years of married life, husband and wife lived 
 apart, each in their own suite of apartments. The father, 
 who judged the repressive system less dangerous for women 
 than for men, kept the education of his boys in his own 
 hands, while leaving that of the girls to their mother. The 
 two Maries, who could hardly escape the imposition of some 
 tyranny, whether in love or marriage, would suffer less than 
 boys, whose intelligence ought to be unfettered and whose 
 natural spirit would be broken by the harsh constraint of 
 religious dogma pushed to an extreme. Of four victims 
 the Count saved two. The Countess looked on her sons, 
 both destined for the law the one for the magistrature
 
 294 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 assize, the other for the magistrature amovible 1 as far too 
 badly brought up to be allowed any intimacy with their sis- 
 ters. 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 Day, and prize-giving days, did the boys 
 spend day and night under the paternal roof, in extreme 
 discomfort, and not daring to kiss their sisters under the 
 eye of the Countess, who never left them alone together 
 for an instant. Seeing so little of their brothers, how was 
 it possible the poor girls should feel any bond with them ? 
 On these days it was a perpetual, "Where is Ang^lique?" 
 "What is Eugenie about?" "Where can my children be?" 
 When her sons were mentioned, the Countess would raise 
 her cold and sodden eyes to Heaven, as though imploring 
 pardon for having failed to snatch them from ungodliness. 
 Her exclamations and her silence in regard to them were 
 alike eloquent as the most lamentable verses of Jeremiah, 
 and the girls not unnaturally came to look on their brothers 
 as hopeless reprobates. 
 
 The Count gave to each of his sons, at the age of eigh- 
 teen, 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- 
 
 1 The magistrature assize consists of the judges who sit in Court, and are 
 appointed for life. The members of the magistrature amovible conduct the ex- 
 amination and prosecution of accused persona. They address the Court standing, 
 and are not appointed for life.
 
 295 
 
 tained at a distance by important cases: the one having 
 then a post as avocat general 1 at a distant Court, while the 
 other was making his first appearance in the provinces. In 
 many families the reality of that home-life, which we are apt 
 to picture as linked together by the closest and most vital 
 ties, is something very different. The brothers are far 
 away, engrossed in money-making, in pushing their way 
 in the world, or they are chained to the public service; 
 the sisters are absorbed in a vortex of family interests, 
 outside their own circle. Thus the different members 
 spend their lives apart and indifferent to each other, held 
 together only by the feeble bond of memory. If on occa- 
 sion pride or self-interest reunites them, just as often these 
 motives act in the opposite sense and divide them in heart, 
 as they have already been divided in life, so that it becomes 
 a rare exception to find a family living in one home and ani- 
 mated by one spirit. Modern legislation, by splitting up the 
 family into units, has created that most hideous evil the iso- 
 lation of the individual. 
 
 Ange"lic[ue and Eugenie, amid the profound solitude in 
 which their youth glided by, saw their father but rarely, 
 and it was a melancholy face which he showed in his wife's 
 handsome rooms on the ground floor. At home, as on the 
 bench, he maintained the grave and dignified bearing of 
 the judge. When the girls had passed the period of toys 
 and dolls, when they were beginning, at twelve years of 
 age, to think for themselves, and had given up making 
 fun of Schmucke, they found out the secret of the cares 
 which lined the Count's forehead. Under the mask of 
 severity they could read traces of a kindly, lovable na- 
 ture. 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 tender- 
 est spot the love he bore his daughters. Sorrows such 
 as these rouse strange pity in the breasts of girls who 
 
 1 The term is applied to all the substitutes of the procureur- general or At- 
 torney -General.
 
 296 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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, and 
 his whole expression 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 Euge'nie, "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 pas- 
 sionate tenderness in their father's farewell, or in the way 
 he looked at them when by chance he dined with their 
 mother. This father, whom they so rarely saw, became 
 the object of their pity, and whom we pity we love. 
 
 The marriage of both sisters welded together by mis- 
 fortune, as Rita-Christina was by nature was the direct 
 result of this strict conventual training. Many men, when 
 thinking of marriage, prefer a girl taken straight from the 
 convent and impregnated with an atmosphere of devotion 
 to one who has been trained in the school of society; 
 There is no medium. On the one hand is the girl with 
 nothing left to learn, who reads and discusses the papers, 
 who has spun round ball-rooms in the arms of countless 
 young men, who has seen every play and devoured every 
 novel, whose knees have been made supple by a dancing- 
 master, pressing them against his own, who does not 
 trouble her head about religion and has evolved her own 
 morality; on the other is the guileless, simple girl of the 
 type of Marie-Auge'lique and Marie-Eugdnie. 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 297 
 
 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 texture like the jasmine, and like it also, 
 delicate, smooth, and soft to the touch. The blue eyes of 
 Eugdnie, the brown eyes of Angelique, had the same nai've 
 expression of indifference and unaffected astonishment, be- 
 trayed by the indecisive wavering of the iris in the liquid 
 white. Their figures were good; the shoulders, a little 
 angular now, would be rounded by time. The neck and 
 bosom, which had been so long veiled, appeared quite 
 startlingly perfect in form, when, at the request of her 
 husband, each sister for the first time attired herself for a 
 ball in a low-necked dress. What blushes covered the 
 poor innocent things, so charming in their shamefaced- 
 ness, as they first saw themselves in the privacy of their 
 own rooms; nor did the color fade all evening! 
 
 At the moment when this story opens, with the younger 
 Marie consoling her weeping sister, they are no longer raw 
 girls. Each had nursed an infant one a boy, the other a 
 girl and the hands and arms of both were white as milk. 
 Eugenie had always seemed something of a 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 it- 
 self, 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.
 
 296" BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 SISTEKLY CONFIDENCES 
 
 li AT ME. DE VANDENESSE, it was plain, was crushed 
 /yi by the burden 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 scat- 
 tered on the carpet, together with her gloves, her mantle of 
 fur-lined silk, her muff, and her hood. Bright tears min- 
 gled with the pearls on her white bosom and brimming eyes 
 told a tale in grewsome contrast with the luxury around. 
 The Countess had no heart for further words. 
 
 "You poor darling," said Mnie. du Tillet, "what strange 
 delusion as to my married life made you corne 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 299 
 
 banker, a bad man. Your husband, sweetest, is kind, 
 noble, generous " 
 
 "Ah! do not reproach me," cried the Countess. "No 
 woman has the right to do so, who has not suffered the wea- 
 riness of a tame, colorless life and passed from it straight to 
 the paradise of love. She must have known the bliss of liv- 
 ing her whole life in another, of espousing the ever- varying 
 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 meas- 
 ureless 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 sunlight 
 pales; you tremble if he is late, and could strangle the bore 
 who steals from you one of those precious moments when 
 happiness throbs in every vein! To be alive, only to be 
 alive is rapture! Think of it, dear, to live when so many 
 women would give the world to feel as I do and cannot. 
 Eemember, 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 passion
 
 '600 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 en- 
 abled you to realize your own happiness, and I might per- 
 haps have learned from you courage to resist the tyranny 
 which has crushed the sweetness out of my life. Your mis- 
 ery is an accident which chance may remedy, mine is unceas- 
 ing. My husband neither has real affection for me nor does 
 he trust me. 1 am a mere peg for his magnificence, the hall- 
 mark of his ambition, a tit-bit for his vanity. 
 
 "Ferdinand" and she struck her hand upon the mantel- 
 piece "is hard and smooth like this marble. He is suspi- 
 cious of me. If I ask anything for myself I know beforehand 
 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 trap- 
 pings of rny life are of the smartest. He grudges nothing to 
 his vanity. His children's baby-linen must be trimmed with 
 lace, but he would never trouble about their real needs, and 
 would shut his ears to their cries. Can you understand such 
 a state of things ? I go to court loaded with diamonds, and 
 my ornaments are of the most costly whenever I am in so- 
 ciety; 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 iny personal fortune, which 
 has never been in rny 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 notaiy'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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 never miss going to the Bois at a certain hour, accompanied 
 by two footmen in full livery, and returning at a fixed time. 
 In place of giving orders, I receive them. At balls and the 
 theatre, a lackey 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 compan- 
 ion, 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 it is not easy to put off 
 the scent any one so false and full of wiles. He would be 
 sure to lay a trap for me. But enough of my troubles; let 
 us think of you. Your forty thousand francs, darling, would 
 be nothing to Ferdinand. He and the Baron de Nucingen, 
 another of these rich bankers, are accustomed to handle mil- 
 lions. 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 
 further, and I can assure you that highway murder would 
 be an act of mercy compared to some of their financial 
 schemes. Nucingen and he make as little of ruining a man 
 as I do of all their display. Among the people who come 
 to see me, often there are poor dupes whose affairs I have 
 heard settled overnight, and who are plunging into specula- 
 tions which will beggar them. How I long to act Leonardo 
 in the brigands' cave, and cry, 'Beware!' But what would 
 become of me ? I hold my tongue, but this luxurious man- 
 sion is nothing but a den of cutthroats. And du Tillet and
 
 302 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Rue 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 instant. ' ' 
 
 "How can I go out at eleven o'clock at night ?" 
 
 "My carriage is here." 
 
 "Well, what are you two plotting here ?" It was du Tillet 
 who threw open the door of the boudoir. 
 
 A false geniality lighted up the blank countenance which 
 met the sisters' gaze. They had been too much absorbed in 
 talking to notice the wheels of du Tillet's carriage, and the 
 thick carpets had muffled the sound of his steps. The 
 Countess, who had an indulgent husband and was well used 
 to society, had acquired a tact and address such as her sis- 
 ter, 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 pointing of betraying, by a frank reply. 
 
 "I thought my sister wealthier than she is," she said, 
 looking 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 303 
 
 "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. 
 
 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-by, darling." 
 
 "The jade!" cried du Tillet, picking up the flowers which 
 had fallen from the Countess's hair. "You would do well," 
 he said to his wife, "to take a lesson from Mme. de Vande- 
 nesse. 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, Eugdnie raised her eyes to heaven. 
 
 "Well, madame, what have you two been about here?' 1 
 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 between
 
 304 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 two beautiful bunches of flowers. Fixing her eyes with his 
 keen glance, he began with cold deliberation. 
 
 "Your sister came to borrow forty thousand francs to pay 
 the debts of a man in whom she is interested, and who, within 
 three days, will be under lock and key in the Rue de Clichy. 
 He's too precious to be left loose." 
 
 The miserable woman tried to repress the nervous shiver 
 which ran through her. 
 
 "You gave me a fright," she said. "But you know that 
 my sister has too much principle and too much affection for 
 her husband to take that sort of interest in any man." 
 
 "On the contrary," he replied dryly. "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- 
 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 interest 
 that the man go to prison. Let that suffice." 
 
 Mine, 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 arc 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 306 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE STORY OF A HAPPY WOMAN 
 
 rHE CONFESSION which Mme. Felix de Vande- 
 nesse had poured into her sister's ear was so inti- 
 mately connected with her history during the six 
 preceding years that a brief narrative of the chief incidents 
 of her married life is necessary to its understanding. 
 
 Felix de Vandenesse was one of the band of distinguished 
 men who owed their fortune to the Kestoration, till a short- 
 pighted 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 tem- 
 porary, led him to think of marriage. He was the more 
 inclined to it from a sort of nausea of intrigue and gal- 
 lantry not uncommon 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 life become acquainted with passion 
 in its noblest form. The initiated become fastidious. A 
 long experience of life and study of character reconciles 
 them at last to the second best, when they take refuge in 
 a universal tolerance. Having lost all illusions, they are 
 proof against guile; yet they wear their cynicism with a 
 grace, and, being prepared for the worst, are saved -the 
 pangs of disappointment. 
 
 In spite of this, Felix still passed for one of the hand- 
 somest and most agreeable men in Paris. With women his 
 reputation was largely due to one of the noblest of their 
 contemporaries, who was said to have died of a broken
 
 306 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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. Mademoiselle de Ma- 
 nerville 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 bright- 
 ened and dominated his youth, he despaired of finding 
 again. At the age of thirty, Count Felix resolved to cut 
 short by marriage pleasures which had begun to pall. On 
 one point he was determined: he would have none but a 
 girl trained in the strictest dogmas of Catholicism. No 
 sooner did he hear how the Comtesse de Grranville 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 bond- 
 age, to see whether she were sulky, soured, and inclined 
 to revolt, or had remained sweet and loving, responsive to 
 the voice of noble feeling. Tyranny produces two results, 
 exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in 
 those two great types of the slave in classical times Epic- 
 tetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, 
 the other, meekness with its Christian graces. The Comte 
 de Vandenesse read the history of his life again in Marie- 
 Angelique de Granville. 
 
 In thus choosing for wife a young girl in her fresh inno- 
 cence and purity, he had made up his mind beforehand, as 
 befitted a man old in everything but years, to unite pater- 
 nal 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 307 
 
 taken stock of his position, he intrenched himself in his 
 married quarters with an ample store of provisions. In- 
 dulgence 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 
 training in affairs of state, the insight of a life alternately 
 devoted to action, reflection, and literature; all the re- 
 sources, in short, at his command were applied intelli- 
 gently to work out his wife's happiness. 
 
 Marie- Angelique passed at once from the maternal pur- 
 gatory to the wedded paradise prepared for her by Felix in 
 their house in the Eue du Eocher, where every trifle breathed 
 of distinction at the same time that the conventions of fash- 
 ion were not allowed to interfere with that gracious spon- 
 taneity natural to warm young hearts. She began by 
 enjoying to the full the merely material pleasures of life, 
 her husband for two years acting as major-domo. Felix 
 expounded to his wife very gradually and with great tact 
 the facts of life, initiated her by degrees into the mysteries 
 of the best society, taught her the genealogies of all families 
 of rank, instructed her in the ways of the world, directed her 
 in the arts of dress and conversation, took her to all the the- 
 ' atres, and put her through a course of literature and history. 
 He carried out this education with the assiduity of a lover, a 
 father, a master, and a husband combined; but with a wise 
 discretion he allowed neither 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 toward her husband were pre- 
 cisely such as he wished to inspire true friendship, lively
 
 308 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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, at- 
 tached his wife to himself by all possible ties, reckoning 
 on the force of habit to keep his heaven cloudless. Only 
 men practiced in worldly arts and who have run the gamut 
 of disillusion in politics and love have the knowledge nec- 
 essary 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 crea- 
 tion 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, as 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 
 Astraea. 
 
 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 woman's life has four epochs and each epoch 
 creates a new woman. Vandenesse was certainly not igno- 
 rant of the laws which determine this development, induced 
 by our modern habits, but he neglected to apply them in 
 his own case. Thus the soundest grammarian may be 
 caught tripping when he turns author; the greatest gen- 
 eral on the field of battle, under stress of fire, and at the 
 mercy of the accidents of the ground, will cast to the winds 
 a theoretic rule of military science. The man whose action
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 309 
 
 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. 
 Vandenesse, in piling up satisfaction, had quenched de- 
 sire, that lord of the universe, at whose disposal lie vast 
 stores of moral energy. Extreme heat, extreme suffering, 
 unalloyed happiness, like all abstract principles, reign over 
 a barren desert. They demand solitude, and will suffer no 
 existence but their own. Vandenesse was not a woman, 
 and it is women only who know the art of giving variety 
 to a state of bliss. Hence their coquetry, their coldness, 
 their tremors, their tempers, and that ingenious battery of 
 unreason, by which they demolish to-day what yesterday 
 they found entirely satisfactory. Constancy in a man may 
 pall, in a woman never. Vandenesse was too thoroughly 
 good-hearted wantonly to plague the woman he loved; the 
 heaven into which he plunged her could not be too ardent 
 or too cloudless. The problem of perpetual felicity is one 
 the solution of which is reserved for another and higher 
 world. Here below, even the most inspired of poets do 
 not fail to bore their readers when they attempt to sing of 
 Paradise. The rock on which Dante split was to be the 
 ruin also of Vandenesse: all honor to a desperate courage! 
 
 His wife began at last to find so well-regulated an Eden 
 a little monotonous. The perfect happiness of Eve in her
 
 310 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 terrestrial paradise produced in her the nausea which comes 
 from living too much on sweets. A longing seized her, as 
 it seized Eivarol on reading Florian, to come across some 
 wolf in the sheepfold. This, it appears, has been the mean- 
 ing in all ages of that symbolical serpent to whom the first 
 woman made advances, some day no doubt when she was 
 feeling bored. The moral of this may not commend itself 
 to certain Protestants who take Genesis more seriously than 
 the Jews themselves," but the situation of Mme. de Vande- 
 nesse 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 Coun- 
 tess 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 hus- 
 band." This was the most impassioned epithet her inno- 
 cence could devise, for it is given to no one to forge in 
 cold blood that delicious language of hyperbole which love 
 dictates to its victims at the stake. Vandenesse, pleased 
 with this pretty reserve, applied his arts to keep his wife 
 within the temperate zone of wedded fervor. Moreover, 
 this model husband wanted to be loved for himself, 
 and judged unworthy of an honorable man those tricks 
 of the trade which might have imposed upon his wife 
 or awakened her feeling. He would owe nothing to the 
 expedients of wealth. The Comtesse Marie would smile 
 to see a shabby turn-out in the Bois, and turn her eyes 
 complacently to her own elegant equipage and the horses 
 which, harnessed in the English fashion, moved with very
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 311 
 
 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 ac- 
 cepted as a matter of course by his wife, ignorant that 
 to them she owed her perfect immunity from vexations 
 or wounding comparisons. It was the same throughout. 
 Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are 
 apt to put it down to an easy temper, and seldom recog- 
 nize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; while, 
 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 reflec- 
 tions, which were the fruit of talks with her husband, brought 
 her into notice, and this success emboldened her. Vande- 
 nesse, whose wife had always been allowed to be pretty, was 
 charmed when she showed herself clever also. On her re- 
 turn 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, among whom was the Marquise de 
 Listomere, her husband's sister, who hitherto had patronized 
 Marie, looking on her as a good foil for her own charms. 
 Poor innocent victim! A Countess with the sacred name 
 of Marie, beautiful, witty, and good, a musician and not a 
 flirt no wonder society whetted its teeth! Felix de Vande- 
 nesse numbered among his acquaintance several women who 
 although their connection with him was broken off, whether 
 by their own doing or his were by no means indifferent to
 
 312 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 his marriage. When these ladies saw in Marie de Vande- 
 nesse a sheepish little woman with red hands, rather silent, 
 and to all appearance stupid also, they considered themselves 
 sufficiently avenged. 
 
 Then came the disasters of July, 1830, and for the space 
 of two years society was broken up. Rich people spent the 
 troubled interval on their estates or travelling in Europe; 
 and the salons hardly reopened before 1833. The Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain sulked, but it admitted as neutral ground a 
 few houses, among 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 
 possibly 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 highborn 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. Fe*- 
 lix, who perfectly understood their little game, kept his eye 
 upon their intercourse with Marie and warned her to be upon 
 her guard. Divining, every one of them, the anxiety which 
 their assiduity caused the Count, they could not pardon his 
 suspicions. They redoubled their flattering attentions to 
 their rival, and in this way contrived an immense success
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 313 
 
 for her, to the disgust of the Marquise de Listom&re, 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 Yandenesse, endured many mortifi- 
 cations 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 wo- 
 man, the Countess had the advantage of her in being twelve 
 years younger, a point of which her rivals did not fail to make 
 use. They well knew what bitterness the success of the 
 Countess would infuse into her relations with her sisters- 
 in-law, who, indeed, were most chilling and disagreeable to 
 Marie- Angelique in her triumph. 
 
 And so danger lurked in the family, enmity in friendship. 
 It is well known how the literature of that day tried to over- 
 come the indifference of the public, engrossed in the exciting 
 political drama, by the production of more or less Byronio 
 works, exclusively occupied with illicit love affairs. Conju- 
 gal infidelity furnished at this time the sole material of mag- 
 azines, 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 cir- 
 cle, 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 Eestoration. Nevertheless, 
 women talked freely among themselves of a subject in which 
 both lyric and dramatic poetry then revelled. The lover, 
 that being so rare and so bewitching, was a 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 thia 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 14
 
 814 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 perpetual appeal for silence or pardon. On the other 
 hand, when a woman takes pleasure in hearing of such dis- 
 asters and is curious about the temptations which lead to 
 them, you may be sure she is halting at the crossroads un- 
 certain 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 inter- 
 est 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 
 Vandenesse. 
 
 "Marriage, my child, is our purgatory, love is paradise," 
 Baid 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 
 marriage we live, so to speak, our own life; loVe is living 
 in another." 
 
 "In short, a lover is the forbidden fruit, and that's enough 
 
 for me!" laughingly spoke the pretty Moina de Saint-He'ren. 
 
 ~When there were no diplomatic at homes, or balls given 
 
 by wealthy foreigners, such as Lady Dudley or the Princesse
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 315 
 
 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 Lis- 
 tomere, 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 marvellous meanings. She 
 would return home uneasy, pensive, dreamy, and curious. 
 Her life seemed somehow impoverished, but aiie had not yet 
 gone so far as to feel it entirely barren. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A MAN OF NOTE 
 
 MOST LIVELY, but also the most mixed, com- 
 pany 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, com- 
 mercial princes, and celebrated literary men; but the tests 
 to which she submitted them before admission were so rigor- 
 ous that the most exclusive need not fear rubbing up against 
 persons of an inferior grade; the most unapproachable were 
 safe from pollution. During the winter, society (which never 
 loses its rights, and at all costs will be amused) began to rally 
 again, and a few drawing-rooms including those of Mmes. 
 d'Espard and de Listomere, of Mile, des Touches, and of the 
 Duchesse de Grandlieu had picked up recruits from among 
 the latest celebrities in art, science, literature, and politics. 
 At a concert given by the Comtesse de Montcornet, toward 
 the end of the winter, Raoul Nathan, a well-known name in 
 literature and politics, made his entry, introduced by Emile
 
 316 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Blondet, a very brilliant but also very indolent writer. 
 Blondet too was a celebrity, but only among the initiated 
 few ; much made of by the critics, he was unknown to the 
 general public. Blondet was perfectly aware of this, and in 
 general was a man of few illusions. In regard to fame, he 
 said, among other disparaging remarks, that it was a poison 
 best taken in small doses. 
 
 Eaoul Nathan had a long struggle before emerging to the 
 surface. Having reached it, he had at once made capital out 
 of that sudden craze for external form then distinguishing 
 certain exquisites, who swore by the Middle Ages, and were 
 humorously known as "young France." He adopted the 
 eccentricities of genius, and enrolled himself among these 
 worshippers of art, whose intentions at least we cannot but 
 admire, since nothing is more absurd than the dress of a 
 Frenchman of the nineteenth century, and courage was 
 needed to change it. Raoul, to do him justice, has 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 constant struggle 
 between weak human nature and the powers on high. But 
 the deep hollows of his cheeks, the knobs on his craggy and 
 furrowed skull, the cavities round his eyes and temples, point 
 to nothing weak in the constitution. There is remarkable 
 solidity about the tough tissues and prominent bones; and 
 though the skin, tanned by excess, sticks to them as though 
 parched by some fire within, it none the less covers a massive 
 framework. He is tall and thin. His long hair, which al- 
 ways 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 317 
 
 muscles of whip-cord, the grip of a crab's claw, and lean, 
 nervous fingers. 
 
 Eaoul's eyes are Napoleonic, blue and soul -piercing; his 
 nose is sensitive and finely chiselled, his mouth charming 
 and adorned with teeth white enough to excite a woman's 
 envy. There is life and fire in the head, genius on the 
 brow. Eaoul belongs to the small number of men who 
 would not pass unnoticed in the street, and who, in a draw- 
 ing-room, at once form a centre of light, drawing all eyes. 
 He attracts attention by his neglige, if one may borrow from 
 Moliere the word used by Eliante to describe personal sloven- 
 liness. 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 Cha- 
 teaubriand has made famous, but not so much for the sake 
 of copying Chateaubriand (he would disdain to copy any 
 one) as to take the stiffness out of his shirt front. His tie 
 becomes all in a moment a mere wisp, from a trick he has 
 of throwing back his head with a sudden convulsive move- 
 ment, 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 lux- 
 ury 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 Eaoul is a caricature. He 
 moves in a jerky way, as though propelled by some faulty 
 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 caus-
 
 818 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 tic 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 gen- 
 tle ; 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 toward things usually held in respect 
 there, which make him objectionable to plain people, as well 
 as to those who strive to keep up the traditions of old-world 
 courtliness. Yet, after all, he is an oddity, like a Chinese 
 image, and women have a weakness for such things. Be- 
 sides, with women he often puts on an air of elaborate suav- 
 ity, 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 Vande- 
 nesse to him one day. 
 
 "Are not pearls found in oyster shells?" was the pom- 
 pous 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 su- 
 premely ? ' ' 
 
 Raoul 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, inca- 
 pable 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 
 light 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,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 319 
 
 unaided, brought out at the Theatre Fran$ais a great drama, 
 which fell with all the honors of war amid 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 Ode'on 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 se- 
 lect world of judges and connoisseurs, a far higher reputation 
 than the light remunerative pieces at which he worked with 
 others. 
 
 "One more such failure," said Emile Blondet, "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 bril- 
 liant success. Its author rashly put it at once in the front 
 rank of his works as an artistic creation, and lost no oppor- 
 tunity 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 toward having it accepted as the one 
 standard for all kinds of creative work painting, sculpture, 
 literature, architecture. He had begun by perpetrating a 
 book of verse, which won him a place in the pleiad of poets 
 of the day, and which contained one obscure poem that was 
 greatly admired. Compelled by straitened circumstances to
 
 320 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 flicker- 
 ing flame is kept from extinction by the titles of books still 
 in the future, for which a public will be a more pressing 
 necessity than a new edition. 
 
 Nathan came near to being a genius, and, had destiny 
 crowned his ambition by marching him to the scaffold, he 
 would have been justified in striking his forehead after An- 
 dre" de Chdnier. The sudden accession to power of a dozen 
 authors, professors, metaphysicians, and historians fired him 
 with emulation, and he regretted not having devoted his pen 
 to politics rather than to literature. He believed himself su- 
 perior to these upstarts, who had foisted themselves on to 
 the party-machine during the troubles of 1830-33 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 travelling from Saint-Simonism to Republicanism, 
 which might serve, perhaps, as a stage to Ministerialism. 
 His eye swept every corner for some bone to pick, some safe 
 shelter whence he might bark beyond the reach of kicks, and 
 make himself a terror to the passers-by. He had, however, 
 the mortification of finding himself not taken seriously by 
 the great de Marsay, then at the head of affairs, who had a 
 low opinion of authors as lacking in what Eichelieu called 
 the logical spirit, or rather in coherence of ideas. Besides, 
 no minister could have failed to reckon on Raoul's constant 
 pecuniary difficulties which, sooner or later, would drive him 
 into the position of accepting rather than imposing conditions. 
 
 Raoul's real and studiously suppressed character accords 
 with that which he shows to the public. He is carried away 
 by his own acting, declaims with great eloquence, and could
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 321 
 
 not be more self-centred were he, like Louis XIY., the State 
 in person. None knows better how to play at sentiment or 
 to deck himself out in a shoddy greatness. The grace of 
 moral beauty and the language of self-respect are at his com- 
 mand, he is a very A Ices te in pose, while acting like Philinte. 
 His selfishness ambles along under cover of this painted card- 
 board, and not seldom attains the end he has in view. Ex- 
 cessively 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 paroxysm 
 of rage, the result of wounded vanity, or in some crisis pre- 
 cipitated by his creditors, he will leap the Eurotas and per- 
 form miracles of mental forestalment; after which, worn out 
 and amazed at his own fertility, he falls back into the ener- 
 vating 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 tal- 
 ents 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 Eevolution of July), he tries to 
 regain his footing by taking liberties with his friends, which 
 are nothing short of a moral outrage, though they remain 
 buried among the skeletons of private life, without a word 
 of comment or blame. 
 
 His heart devoid of nicety, his shameless hand, hail- 
 fellow-well-met with every vice, every degradation, every 
 treachery, every party, have placed him as much beyond 
 reach of attack as a constitutional king. The peccadillo, 
 which would raise hue and cry after a man of high char- 
 acter, counts for nothing in him; while conduct bordering 
 on grossness is barely noticed. In making his excuses peo- 
 ple find their own. The very man who would fain despise 
 him shakes him by the hand, fearing to need his help. So 
 numerous are his friends that he would prefer enemies. This 
 surface good-nature, which captivates a new acquaintance and 
 is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never 
 at fault for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound
 
 322 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 enlightened portion of the nation becomes the least 
 worthy of respect. 
 
 From the literary point of view, Nathan is deficient in 
 style and information. Like most young aspirants in 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 ex- 
 press 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, exciting only a passing sym- 
 pathy; 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 miss the accent of 
 truth, his words ring false; there is something of the juggler 
 in him, as Count Felix said. One feels that his pen has 
 dipped in the ink of an actress's dressing-room. 
 
 In Nathan we find an image of the literary youth of the 
 day, with their sham greatness and real poverty; he rep- 
 resents their irregular charm and their terrible falls, their
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 323 
 
 life of seething cataracts, sudden reverses, and unlooked-for 
 triumphs. He is a true child of this jealousy-ridden age, in 
 which a thousand personal rivalries, cloaking themselves 
 under the name of schools, make profit out of their failures 
 by feeding fat with them a hydra-headed anarchy; an age 
 which expects fortune without work, glory without talent, 
 and success without effort, but which, after many a revolt 
 and skirmish, is at last brought by its vices to swell the civil 
 list, in 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, 
 Kaoul 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 Eoche-Hugons, who constituted the party in 
 power. His sponsor, Emile Blondet, handicapped by his 
 fatal indecision and dislike of action where his own affairs 
 were concerned, stuck to his trade of scoffer and took Bides 
 with no party, while on good terms with all. He was the 
 friend of Eaoul, of Eastignac, 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." 
 
 Beheld from afar, Eaoul 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 perform prodigies, 
 such as shattering rocks, melting an iron will. Eaoul's moral
 
 324 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Eue du Rocher, the insidious serpent, bright 
 to the eye and flattering to the ear, with magnetic gaze and 
 graceful motion, who ruined the first woman. 
 
 Marie, on seeing Eaoul, 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 man- 
 tle which -fame had for the moment draped on Nathan's 
 shoulders dazzled this simple-minded woman. When tea 
 came, Marie left the group of chattering women, among 
 whom she had stood silent since the appearance of this 
 wonderful being a fact which did not escape her so-called 
 friends. The Countess drew near the ottoman in the centre 
 of the room where Raoul was perorating. She remained 
 standing, her arm linked in that of Mme. Octave de Camps, 
 an excellent woman, who kept the secret of the nervous 
 quivering by which Marie betrayed her strong emotion. 
 Despite the sweet magic distilled from the eye of the 
 woman who loves or is startled into self-betrayal, Raoul 
 was just then entirely occupied with a regular display of 
 fireworks. He way far too busy letting off epigrams like 
 rockets, winding and unwinding indictments like Cather- 
 ine- wheels, and tracing blazing portraits in lines of fire, to 
 notice the naive admiration of a little Eve, lost in the 
 crowd of women surrounding him. The love of novelty 
 which would bring Paris flocking to the Zoological Gar- 
 dens, if a unicorn had been brought there from those 
 famous Mountains of the Moon, virgin yet of European 
 tread, intoxicates minds of a lower stamp, as much as it 
 saddens the truly wise. Raoul was enraptured and far too 
 much engrossed with women in general to pay attention to 
 one woman in particular. 
 
 "Take care, dear, you had better come away," her fair 
 companion, sweetest of women, whispered to Marie. 
 
 The Countess turned to her husband and, with one of
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 325 
 
 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 Eaoul's ear. "You've done execution in 
 more than one quarter to-night, and, best of all, with 
 that charming Countess who has just left us so abruptly." 
 
 "Do you know what the Marquise d'Espard meant?" 
 asked Eaoul 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 
 Vandenesse has fallen wildly in love with you. Lucky 
 dog!" 
 
 ''I did not see her," said Eaoul. 
 
 "Ah! but you will see her, you rascal," said Emile 
 Blondet, laughing. "Lady Dudley has invited you to her 
 great ball with the very purpose of bringing about a 
 meeting." 
 
 Eaoul and Blondet left together, and joining Eastignac, 
 who offered them a place in his carriage, the three made 
 merry over this conjunction of an eclectic Tinder-Secretary 
 of State with a fierce Eepublican and a political sceptic. 
 
 "Suppose we sup at the expense of law and order?" 
 said Blondet, who had a fancy for reviving the old-fash- 
 ioned supper. 
 
 Eastignac took them to Very's, and dismissed his car- 
 riage; the three then sat down to table and set themselves 
 to pull to pieces their contemporaries amid Eabelaisian 
 laughter. During the course of supper Eastignac and 
 Blondet urged their counterfeit opponent not to neglect 
 the magnificent opportunity thrown in his way. The 
 story of Marie de Vandenesse was caricatured by these 
 two profligates, who applied the scalpel of epigram and 
 the keen edge of mockery to that transparent childhood, 
 that happy marriage. Blondet congratulated Eaoul on 
 having found a woman who so far had been guilty only 
 of execrable red-chalk drawings and feeble water-color
 
 326 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 landscapes, of embroidering slippers for her husband, and 
 performing sonatas with a most lady-like absence of pas- 
 sion ; a woman who had been tied for eighteen years to her 
 mother's apron-strings, pickled in devotion, trained by Van- 
 denesse, and cooked to a tarn by marriage for the palate of 
 love. At the third bottle of champagne Kaoul Nathan be- 
 came 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 Coun- 
 tess's love. It has often been a humiliating thought to me 
 that only in poetry could I find a Beatrice, a Laura! A 
 pure and noble woman is like a spotless conscience, she 
 raises us in our own estimation. Elsewhere we may be 
 soiled, with her we keep our 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 under- 
 stand me!" 
 
 Thus, while 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 Vande- 
 nesse and the flattering tongue of the serpent, these three 
 shameless spirits trampled on the tender white blossoms of 
 her opening love. Ah! if women knew how cynical those 
 men can be behind their backs, who show themselves all 
 meekness and cajolery when by their side! if they knew 
 how they mock their idols! Fresh, lovely, and timid 
 creature, whose charms lie at the mercy of some graceless 
 buffoon! And yet she triumphs! The more the veils are 
 rent, the clearer her beauty shines. 
 
 Marie at this moment was comparing Raoul and Felix,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 327 
 
 all-ignorant of the danger to her heart in such a process. 
 No better contrast could be found to the robust and un- 
 conventional 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 contrast like this pleases the fancy of a woman, ever 
 ready to fly from one extreme to another. The Countess 
 was too well-principled and pious not to forbid her thoughts 
 dwelling on Raoul, and next day, in the heart of her para- 
 dise, 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 
 volcanoes which a sprinkling of gold dust will keep tran- 
 quil. The Comtesse de Montcornet ought not to have had 
 him at her house." 
 
 This reply was the more galling to Marie because Felix, 
 who knew the literary world well, supported his verdict 
 with proofs drawn from the life of Raoul a life of shifts, 
 in which Florine, a well-known actress, played a large 
 part. 
 
 "Granting the man has genius," he concluded, "he is 
 without the patience and persistency which make genius a 
 thing apart and sacred. He tries to impress people by as 
 suming a position which he cannot live up to. That is not 
 the behavior 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 marvellous elasticity; it may 
 sink under a blow, to all appearance crushed, but in a 
 given time it is up again, as though nothing had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 "Felix must be right," was the first thought of the 
 Countess. 
 
 Three days later, however, her mind travelled back to 
 the tempter, allured by that sweet yet ruthless emotion
 
 828 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 which it was the mistake of Yandenesse not to have 
 aroused. The Count and Countess went to Lady Dud- 
 ley's great ball, where de Marsay made his last appearance 
 in society. Two months later he died, leaving the reputa- 
 tion of a statesman so profound that, as Blondet said, he 
 was unfathomable. Here Vandenesse and his wife again 
 met Raoul Nathan, amid a concourse of people made re- 
 markable by the number of actors in the political drama 
 whom, to their mutual surprise, it brought together. 
 
 It was one of the chief social functions in the great 
 world. The reception-rooms offered a magic picture to the 
 eye. Flowers, diamonds, shining hair, the plunder of 
 countless jewel-cases, every art of the toilet all con- 
 tributed to the effect. The room might be compared to 
 one of those show hothouses where wealthy amateurs col- 
 lect the most marvellous varieties. There was the same 
 brilliancy, the same delicacy of texture. It seemed as 
 though the art of man would compete also with the animal 
 world. On all sides fluttered gauze, white or painted like 
 the wings of prettiest dragon-fly, cre'pe, lace, blonde, tulle, 
 pucked, puffed, or notched, vying in eccentricity of form 
 with the freaks of nature in the insect tribe. There were 
 spider's threads in gold or silver, clouds of silk, flowers 
 which some fairy might have woven or imprisoned spirit 
 breathed into life; feathers, whose rich tints told of a 
 tropical sun, drooping willow-like over haughty heads, 
 ropes of pearls, drapery in broad folds, ribbed, or slashed, 
 as though the genius of arabesque had presided over French 
 millinery. 
 
 This 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 
 turquoises, with their dark velvet edging or fair fringes;
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 329 
 
 and profiles of every contour, recalling the noblest types of 
 different lands. There were brows lofty with pride; rounded 
 brows, index of thought within; level brows, the seat of an 
 indomitable will. Lastly most bewitching of all in a scene 
 of such studied splendor necks and bosoms in the rich vo- 
 luptuous folds adored by George IV., or with the more deli- 
 cate modelling which found favor in the eighteenth century 
 and at the court of Louis XY. ; but all, whatever the type, 
 frankly exhibited, either without drapery or through the 
 dainty plaited tuckers of Eafael'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 delicate, regular features of the aristocracy, 
 the tawny mustache of the sedate Englishman, the gay, 
 smiling countenance of the French noble. Every Euro- 
 pean 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 gayly 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 fe^te which goes to the 
 head like the fumes of wine. From every brow, as from
 
 330 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 every heart, seemed to emanate sensations and thoughts, 
 which, forming together one potent influence, inflamed the 
 most cold-blooded. 
 
 It was the most exciting moment of this entrancing 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 her- 
 self 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 foreign newspapers for a journal that passed over 
 to the reigning dynasty after 1830; he saw leader-writers 
 members of the Council and professors peers of France. 
 And he perceived, 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 journalistic hack, was made much 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 fol- 
 lowing 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 331 
 
 accomplished facts, which he would wrest to his own ad- 
 vantage; no system should be to him more than an instru- 
 ment; and on no account would he upset the balance of a 
 society so admirably constructed, so decorative, and so con- 
 sonant with nature. 
 
 "My future," he said to himself, "is in the hands of a 
 woman belonging to the great world. ' ' 
 
 Full of this thought, the outcome of a frantic cupidity, 
 Nathan pounced upon the Comtesse de Vandenesse like a 
 hawk upon its prey. She was looking charming in a head- 
 dress of marabout feathers, which produced the delicious 
 melting effect of Lawrence's portraits, well suited to her 
 gentle character. The fervid rhapsodies of the poet, 
 crazed by ambition, carried the sweet creature quite off 
 her feet. Lady Dudley, whose eye was everywhere, se- 
 cured the tete-d-tete by handing over the Comte de Vande- 
 nesse 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 in- 
 tended to stimulate reproach. 
 
 While her husband's former mistress was raking among 
 the ashes of dead joys to find some spark of life, Mme. 
 Felix de Vandenesse experienced those violent heart-throbs 
 which assail a woman with the certainty of going astray and 
 treading forbidden paths. These emotions are not without 
 fascination, and rouse many dormant faculties. Now, as in 
 the days of Blue Beard, all women love to use the blood- 
 stained key, that splendid mythological symbol which is 
 one of Perrault's glories. 
 
 The dramatist, who knew his Shakespeare, unfolded the 
 tale of his hardships, described his struggle with men and 
 things, opened up glimpses of his unstable success, his po- 
 litical genius wasting in obscurity, his life unblessed by any 
 generous affection. Without a word directly to that effect,
 
 332 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 he conveyed to this gracious lady the suggestion that she 
 might play for him the noble part of Eebecca in "Ivan- 
 hoe," might love and shelter him. Not a syllable over- 
 stepped the pure regions of sentiment. The blue of the 
 forget-me-not, the white of the lily, are not more pure than 
 were his flowers of rhetoric and the things signified by 
 them; the radiance of a seraph lighted the brow of this 
 artist, who might yet 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 conversa- 
 tion 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 vic- 
 tory at a critical moment.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FLORINE 
 
 /N A PASSAGE between the Eue Basse-du-Rempart 
 and the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, Raoul had one or 
 two bare, cold rooms on the third floor of a thin, 
 ugly house. This was his abode for the general public, 
 for literary novices, creditors, intruders, and the whole 
 race of bores who were not allowed to cross the threshold 
 of private life. His real home, which was the stage of his 
 wider life and public appearances, he made with Florine, a 
 second-rate actress who, ten years before, had been raised 
 to the rank of a great dramatic artist by the combined ef- 
 forts 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 ac- 
 tors. It seems an easy inference that those who spend 
 their lives in bringing the outside to perfection should 
 have little left with which to furnish the interior. But 
 any one who considers the small number of actors and 
 actresses in a century, compared with the quantity of 
 dramatic authors and attractive women produced by the 
 same population, will see reason to dispute this notion. 
 It rests, in fact, on the common assumption that personal 
 feeling must disappear in the imitative expression of pas- 
 sion, whereas the real fact is that intelligence, memory, 
 and imagination are the only powers employed in such
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 imitation. Great artists are those who, according to Na- 
 poleon's definition, can intercept at will the communica- 
 tion 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 garru- 
 lous literary men, while keeping an eye on certain politi- 
 cians who used her house as a means of profiting by the 
 sallies of her guests. The mixture of angel and demon 
 which she embodied made her a fitting hostess for these 
 profligates, who revelled in her impudence and found un- 
 failing amusement in the perversity of her mind and heart. 
 
 Her house, enriched with offerings from admirers, dis- 
 played in its exnggerated magnificence an entire regard- 
 lessness of cost. Women of this type set a purely arbi- 
 trary 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 din- 
 ing-room, crowded with rare and costly gifts, may serve as 
 a specimen of the regal and insolent profusion of the es- 
 tablishment. 
 
 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 
 chimeras, 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 careless- 
 ness and desire to please, such as can only be found in the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 335 
 
 homes of artists. The exquisitely-carved mantel-piece was 
 bare except for a whimsical Florentine statue in ivory, at- 
 tributed to Michelangelo, 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 Eenaissance 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 cor- 
 ners of the room on pedestals stood gorgeously resplendent 
 lamps the fee paid by some maker to Florine for trumpet- 
 ing his wares among her friends, who were assured that 
 Japanese pots, with rich fittings, made the only possible 
 stand for lamps. On a marvellous whatnot lay a display 
 of silver, well-earned trophy of a combat in which some 
 English lord had been forced to acknowledge the superior- 
 ity of the French nation. Next came porcelain reliefs. The 
 whole room displayed the charming profusion of an artist 
 whose furniture represents his capital. 
 
 The bedroom, in violet, was a young ballet-girl's dream: 
 velvet curtains, lined with silk, were draped over inner folds 
 of tulle; the ceiling was in white cashmere relieved with vio- 
 let 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 impression of 
 magnificence, but a detailed description would make these 
 pages too much of a broker's inventory. To find anything 
 comparable to these treasures, it would be necessary to visit 
 the Rothschilds' house close by. 
 
 Sophie Grignoult, who, following the usual custom of 
 taking a stage name, was known as Florine, had made her 
 debut, beautiful as she was, in a subordinate capacity. Her 
 triumph and her wealth she owed to Raoul Nathan. The 
 association of these two careers, common enough in the dra- 
 matic and literary world, did not injure Raoul, who, in his
 
 336 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 remonstrances, mortgaging her future on such security. 
 
 lt l 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 thir- 
 teen, and made her de*but 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 Eoman empress, 
 graceful and finely molded, round and self-assertive, like 
 that of Poppaea. The features were correct, yet expressive, 
 and the unlined forehead was that of an easy-going woman 
 who takes all trouble lightly, yet can be obstinate as a mule 
 on occasion and deaf to all reason. This forehead, with its 
 pure 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,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 337 
 
 framed the heavy lids, covered with a network of tiny pink 
 
 veins. The pupils, sparkling with fire but spotted with 
 patches of brown, gave to her look the fierce fixity of a wild 
 beast, emblematic of the courtesan's cold heartlessness. The 
 lovely gazelle-like iris was a beautiful 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 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 luxu- 
 rious, lending itself to irony as readily as to love, owed much 
 of its beauty to the finely-cut edges of the little groove join- 
 ing the upper lip to the nose. Her white, rather fleshy, chin 
 portended storms in love. Her hands and arms might have 
 been an empress's. But the feet were short and thick, 
 ineradicable sign of low birth. Never had heritage wrought 
 more woe. In her efforts to change it, Florine had stopped 
 short only at amputation. But her feet were obstinate, like 
 the Bretons from whom she sprang, and refused to yield to 
 any science or manipulation. Florine therefore wore long 
 boots, stuffed with cotton, to give her an arched instep. She 
 was of medium height, and threatened with corpulence, but 
 her figure still kept its curves and precision. 
 
 Morally, she was past mistress in all the airs and graces, 
 tantrums, quips, and caresses of her trade; but she gave them 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 15
 
 338 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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- 
 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 inso- 
 lence is really too high an interest on my debt. I am tired 
 of the sight of you; go and send the bailiffs. Eather them 
 than your imbecile face." 
 
 Florine gave charming dinners, concerts, and crowded 
 receptions, where the play was very high. Her women 
 friends were all beautiful. Never had an old woman been 
 seen at her parties; she was entirely free from jealousy, 
 which seemed to her a confession of weakness. Among her 
 old acquaintances were Coralie and la Torpille ; among those 
 of the day, the Tullias, Euphrasie, the Aquilinas, Mme. du
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 339 
 
 Val-Noble, Mariette; those women who float through Paris 
 like threads of gossamer in the air, no one knowing whence 
 they come or whither they go; queens to-day, to-morrow 
 drudges. Her rivals, too, came, actresses and singers, the 
 whole company, in short, of that unique feminine world, so 
 kindly and gracious in its recklessness, whose Bohemian life 
 carries away with its dash, its spirit, its scorn of to-morrow, 
 the men who join the frenzied dance. Though in Florine's 
 house Bohemianism flourished unchecked to a chorus of gay 
 artists, the mistress had all her wits about her, and could 
 use them as not one of her guests. Secret saturnalia of lit- 
 erature and art were held there side by side with politics and 
 finance. 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, Etienne Lousteau, her seventh lover 
 who believed himself to be the first, Felicien Yernou, the 
 journalist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac formerly, Claude 
 Vignon the critic, Nucingen the banker, du Tillet, Conti 
 the composer; in a word, the whole diabolic legion of fero- 
 cious 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
 
 340 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 strategy and skill of its opponents, to put in plain words 
 thoughts which men keep to themselves, to practice, 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 every taste, every vice, every 
 opinion, finds a welcome, so long as it comes in decent 
 garb. 
 
 It remains to be said that Florine is still a second-rate 
 actress. Further, her life is neither an idle nor an enviable 
 one. Many people, deluded by the splendid vantage-ground 
 which the theatre gives to a woman, imagine her to live in 
 a perpetual carnival. How many a poor girl, buried in some 
 porter's lodge or under an attic roof, dreams on her return 
 from the theatre of pearls and diamonds, of dresses decked 
 with gold and rich sashes, and pictures herself, the glitter 
 of the footlights on her hair, applauded, purchased, wor- 
 shipped, 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 been playing an eighteenth-century 
 part. Barely has she time to dine. When she is playing, 
 an actress can neither lace her stays, nor eat, nor talk. For 
 supper again Florine has no time. On returning from a per- 
 formance, which nowadays is not over till past 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 ex- 
 plain them and try them on ; then lunch, read her love-let- 
 ters, reply to them, transact business with her hired applaud- 
 ers, so that she may be properly greeted on entering and 
 leaving. the stage, and, while paying the bill for her triumphs
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 341 
 
 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 and wore a hair-shirt, the stage, we must 
 suppose, did not demand this relentless activity. Often Flo- 
 rine 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 dis- 
 appointments, 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 
 it involves the interpretation of passion, details of mimicry, 
 and stage effects, with thousands of opera-glasses ready to 
 pounce on the slightest flaw in the most brilliant 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 neces- 
 sity 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, Kaoul's power was a sovereign protection. 
 He saved her many a vexation and worry, in the fashion of 
 a great noble of former days defending his mistress ; or, to 
 take a modern instance, like the old men who go on their
 
 342 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 knees to the editor when their idol has been scarified by 
 some halfpenny print. He was more than a lover to her; 
 he was a staff to lean on. She tended him like a father, and 
 deceived him like a husband; but there was nothing in the 
 world she would not have sacrificed for him. Raoul was 
 indispensable 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 noth- 
 ing for Rao ill, 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, 
 she aspired to be for him what Madame de Pompadour was 
 for Louis XV. ; and there were actresses who envied her 
 her position, just as there were journalists who would have 
 changed places with Raoul. 
 
 Now, those who know the bent of the human mind to 
 opposition and contrast will easily understand that Raoul, 
 after ten years of this rakish Bohemian life, should weary of 
 its ups and downs, its revelry and its writs, its orgies and its 
 fasts, and should feel drawn to a pure and innocent love, as 
 well as to the gentle harmony of a great lady's existence. 
 In the same way, the Comtesse Felix longed to introduce the 
 torments of passion into a life the bliss of which had cloyed 
 through its sameness. This law of life is the law of all art, 
 which exists only through contrast. A work produced in- 
 dependently of such aid is the highest expression of genius, 
 as the cloister is the highest effort of Christianity. 
 
 Raoul, on returning home, found a note from Florine, 
 which her maid had brought, but was too sleepy to read it. 
 He went to bed in the restful satisfaction of a tender love, 
 which had so far been lacking to his life. A few hours later, 
 he found important news in this letter, news of which neither 
 Rastignac nor de Marsay had dropped a hint. Florine had 
 learned from some indiscreet friend that the Chamber was to
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 343 
 
 be dissolved at the close of tlie session. Raoul at once went 
 to Florine's, and sent for Blondet to meet him there. 
 
 In Florine's boudoir, their feet upon the fire-dogs, Emile 
 and Raoul dissected the political situation of France in 1834. 
 On what side lay the best chance for a man who wanted to 
 get on ? Every shade of opinion was passed in review 
 Republicans pure and simple, Republicans with a President, 
 Republicans without a republic, Dynastic Constitutionalists 
 and 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 be- 
 tween the party of obstruction and the party of progress 
 there could be no question; as well might one hesitate be- 
 tween life and death. 
 
 The vast number of newspapers at this time in circulation, 
 representing different shades of party, was significant of the 
 chaotic confusion the slush, as it might vulgarly be called 
 to which politics were reduced. Blondet, the man of his 
 day with most judgment, although, like a barrister unable 
 to plead his own cause, he could use it only .on behalf of 
 others, was magnificent in these friendly discussions. His 
 advice to Nathan was not to desert abruptly. 
 
 "It was Napoleon who said that young republics cannot 
 be made out of old monarchies. Therefore, do you, my 
 friend, become the hero, the pillar, the creator of a left cen- 
 tre 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 maga- 
 zine. The press had been the mainspring of so many for- 
 tunes 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 compet-
 
 344 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ing papers, and because the power of the press seemed to 
 him used up. Eaoul, 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 
 Blondet, who thought he had gone crazy; he cast covet- 
 ous glances on the costly treasures piled up around ; then 
 Blondet understood him. 
 
 "There's more than one hundred thousand francs' worth 
 here," said Emile. 
 
 "Yes," said Eaoul, with a sigh toward Florine's sumptu- 
 ous bed; "but I would sell patent safety-chains on the boule- 
 vards 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 Eaoul good-naturedly, put- 
 ting his arm round her neck and kissing her forehead. " W hy 
 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 Eaoul.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 345 
 
 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, in- 
 tends 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'Btat, and who has some 
 share in a magazine. No fear! I won't let him ruin him- 
 self. We will get a meeting here with Etienne Lousteau, 
 who will do the light stuff, and Claude Vignon for the seri- 
 ous criticism. Felicien Vernou will be the charwoman of 
 the paper, the barrister will sweat for it, du Tillet will look 
 after trade and the Exchange, and we shall see where this 
 union of determined men and their tools will land us. ' ' 
 
 "In the workhouse or on the Government bench, those 
 refuges for the ruined in body or mind," said Kaoul. 
 
 "What about the dinner?" 
 
 "We'll have it here," said Baoul, "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 
 seat for four dealers in furniture, curiosities, pictures, and 
 jewelry. The dealers, who were all men of substance, en- 
 tered the sanctuary and made an inventory of its whole con- 
 tents, just as "though Florine were dead. She threatened 
 them with a public auction in case they hardened their 
 hearts in hope of a better opportunity. She had, she told 
 them, excited the admiration of an English lord in a med- 
 ieval part, and she wished to dispose of all her personal
 
 346 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Kothschild's. With all her 
 arts, she only succeeded in getting an offer of seventy thou- 
 sand francs for the whole of the spoil, which was well worth 
 one hundred and fifty thousand. Florine, who did not care 
 a button for the things, promised they should be handed over 
 in seven days for eighty thousand francs. 
 
 "You can take it or leave it," she said. 
 
 The bargain was concluded. When the dealers had gone, 
 the actress skipped for joy, like the little hills of King David. 
 She could not contain herself for delight; never had she 
 dreamed of such wealth. When Raoul returned, she pre- 
 tended to be offended with him, and declared that she was 
 deserted. She saw through it all now; men don't change 
 their party or leave the stage for the Chamber without some 
 reason. There must be a rival! Her instinct told her so! 
 Vows of eternal love rewarded her little comedy. 
 
 Five days later, Florine gave a magnificent entertainment. 
 The ceremony of christening the paper was then performed 
 amid floods of wine and wit, oaths of fidelity, of good-fellow- 
 ship, and of serious alliance. The name, forgotten now, like 
 the "Liberal," the "Communal," the "Departemental," the 
 ' ' Grarde National, " the " Federal, " th e " Impartial , ' ' was some- 
 thing which ended in "al, " and was bound not to take. De- 
 scriptions 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 347 
 
 Florine carried her personal remembrances to shops where 
 the sight of them did not enlighten passers-by as to how and 
 when these flowers of luxury had been paid for. It was 
 agreed to leave her until the evening a few specially re- 
 served articles, including her bed, her table, and her crock- 
 ery, 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 pov- 
 erty, studded with nail-marks and disfigured by those in- 
 congruous 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 
 house!" cried Bixiou, one of the guests. "Quick! your 
 pockets, gentlemen! A subscription!" 
 
 At these words the whole company was on foot. The 
 net sweepings of the pockets came to thirty-seven francs, 
 which Raoul handed over with mock ceremony to the laugh- 
 ing Florine. The happy courtesan raised her head from the 
 pillow and pointed to a heap of banknotes on the sheet, thick 
 as in the golden days of her trade. Eaoul called Blondet. 
 
 "I see it now," said Blondet. "The little rogue has sold 
 off without a word to us. Well done, Florine 1" 
 
 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 Flo- 
 rine 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 Raoul's flat in the Passage Sandrie. The journalist was 
 to pitch his camp in the building where the newspaper office 
 was opened. 
 
 Such was the rival of the ingenuous Mme. de Vandenesse.
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Raoul's fancy was a link binding the actress to the lady of 
 title. It was a ghastly tie like this which was severed by 
 that Duchess of Louis XIV. 's time who poisoned Lecouvreur ; 
 nor can such an act of vengeance be wondered at, considering 
 the magnitude of the offence. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 LOVE VERSUS SOCIETY 
 
 rMjORINE PROVED no difficulty in the early stages 
 ri of Raoul's passion. Foreseeing financial disappoint- 
 ments in the hazardous scheme into which he had 
 plunged, she begged leave of absence for six months. Raoul 
 took an active part in the negotiation, and by bringing it to 
 a successful issue "still further endeared himself to Florine. 
 With the good sense of the peasant in La Fontaine's fable, 
 who makes sure of his dinner while the patricians are chat- 
 tering 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 infre- 
 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 
 approaching 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 
 toward the end. Raoul, sated with pleasure, was in the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 mood for Platonic affection; while Marie, from whom the 
 idea of an actual fault was still remote, had never contem- 
 plated passing beyond it. Never, therefore, was love more 
 pure and innocent in fact, or more impassioned and rapturous 
 in thought, than this of Kaoul and Marie. The Countess 
 had been fascinated by ideas which, though clothed in mod- 
 ern dress, belonged to the times of chivalry. In her role, as 
 she conceived it, her husband's dislike to Nathan no longer 
 appeared an obstacle to her love. The less Raoul merited 
 esteem, the nobler was her mission. The inflated language 
 of the poet stirred her 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 
 seemed almost a sanction to the tremors, the delights, the tur- 
 bulence of her love. She felt it a fine thing to be the human 
 providence of Eaoul. How sweet to think of supporting 
 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 des- 
 tiny. 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 appearances, which may be mis- 
 taken 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 Raoul. The most 
 trivial things in life had now a charm for her. The boudoir, 
 in which she dreamed of him, became a sanctuary. Even her 
 pretty writing-table recalled to her the countless joys of cor- 
 respondence; there she would have to read, to hide, his let- 
 .ters; there reply to them. Dress, that splendid poem of a 
 woman's life, the significance of which she had either ex-
 
 360 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 meaning very detail in her house, her person, her clothes. 
 Bare indeed are the women who frequent dress shops, mil- 
 liners, and fashionable tailors simply for their own pleasure. 
 As they become old they cease to think of dress. Scrutinize 
 the face which in passing you see for a moment arrested be- 
 fore a shop-front: "Would he like me better in this ?" are 
 the words written plain in the clearing brow, in eyes spark- 
 ling with hope, and in the smile that plays upon the lips. 
 
 Lady Dudley's ball took place on a Saturday evening; 
 on the Monday the Countess went to the opera, allured by 
 the certainty of seeing RaouL Raoul, in fact, was there, 
 planted on one of the staircases which lead down to the 
 amphitheatre stalls. He lowered his eyes as the Countess 
 entered her box. With what ecstasy did Mme. de Yande- 
 nesse observe the unwonted carefulness of her lover's attire! 
 This contemner of the laws of elegance might be seen with 
 well-brushed hair, which shone with scent in the recesses of 
 every curl, a fashionable 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 toward 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,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 351 
 
 as well as the most distinguished, woman must feel her head 
 turned by the first open declaration of her power in such a 
 transformation. Every change is a confession of servitude. 
 
 "They were right, there is a great happiness in being 
 understood," she said to herself, calling to mind her un- 
 worthy instructors. 
 
 When the two lovers had scanned the house in a rapid 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 knew you were there, but am I free?" replied those 
 of the Countess. 
 
 None bat slaves of every variety, including thieves, spies, 
 lovers and diplomatists, know all that a flash of the eye can 
 convey of information or delight. They alone can grasp the 
 intelligence, the sweetness, the humor, the wrath, and the 
 malice with which this changeful lightning of the soul is 
 pregnant. Raoul felt his passion kick against the pricks of 
 necessity and grow more vigorous in presence of obstacles. 
 Between the step on which he was perched and the box of 
 the Comtesse Felix de Vandenesse was a space of barely thirty 
 feet, impassable for him. To a passionate man who, so far 
 in his life, had known but little interval between desire and 
 satisfaction, this abyss of solid ground, which could not be 
 spanned, inspired a wild desire to spring upon the Countess 
 in a tiger-like bound. In a paroxysm of fury he tried to feel 
 his way. He bowed openly to the Countess, who replied with 
 a slight, 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 lib- 
 erty, 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-
 
 852 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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. Baoul, 
 who was standing beneath her, turned. He bowed, and 
 received in return a gracious smile, which so clearly said, 
 "If you are dismissed there, corne 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 Yande- 
 nesse that his fame was equal to a patent of nobility, and that 
 before Nathan blazoned doors flew open. The Marchioness 
 made him sit down in the front of the box opposite to her. 
 She intended to play the inquisitor. 
 
 "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 be- 
 coming 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 admir- 
 ing 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 yesterda}^ 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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 an impertinent stare, "sacrifices which you refused to 
 society. She ought to be enchanted at her success, and, I 
 dare say, 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 for- 
 get Vandenesse. That man is really too fatuous. I could 
 not stand such self-complacency in Jupiter Olympus him- 
 self, who is said to have been the only god in mythology 
 exempt from domestic misfortune." 
 
 "Madame," cried Raoul, "you credit me with a very base 
 soul if you suppose that I would make profit out of my 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 Raoul. 
 
 "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 
 footlights; "it rests with you." 
 
 To hide his confusion, he took the opera-glass and began 
 to examine the house. 
 
 "Are you vexed with me?" said the Marchioness, with 
 a sidelong glance at him. "Wouldn't your secret have been 
 mine in any case? It won't be hard to make peace. Come 
 to my house, I am at home every Wednesday; the dear 
 Countess won't miss an evening when she finds you come,
 
 364 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Kaoul, "how unjust people are! I was 
 told you were spiteful. 
 
 "Oh! so I am," she said, "when I want to be. One has 
 to fight for one's own hand. But as for your Countess, I 
 adore her. You have no idea how charming she is! You 
 will be the first to have your name inscribed on her heart 
 with that infantine joy which causes all lovers, even drill- 
 sergeants, to cut their initials on the bark of a tree. A 
 woman's first love is a luscious fruit. Later, you see, there 
 is always some calculation in our attentions and caresses. 
 I'm an old woman, and can say what I like; nothing fright- 
 ens 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 practiced a champion. En- 
 tangled in the noose of a dialogue, manipulated with all 
 the dangerous adroitness of a woman and a Parisian, he 
 dreaded to let fall admissions which would serve as fuel 
 for the lady's wit, and he beat a prudent retreat when he 
 saw Lady Dudley enter. 
 
 "Well," said the Englishwoman, "how far have they 
 gone ? ' ' 
 
 "They are desperately in love. Nathan has just told 
 me so." 
 
 "1 wish he had been uglier," said Lady Dudley, with a 
 venomous scowl at Felix. "Otherwise, he is exactly what 
 1 would have wished; he is the son of a Jewish broker, who 
 died bankrupt shortly after his marriage; unfortunately,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 355 
 
 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 ad- 
 vance 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 Raoul and Mme. 
 de Vandenesse went the round of society that evening, not 
 without calling forth protests and doubts; but the Countess 
 was defended by her friends, Lady Dudley, Mmes. d'Espard 
 and de Manerville, with a clumsy eagerness 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 
 accompany his wife, Raoul was able to exchange a few words 
 with Marie, the tone of which expressed more than the mat- 
 ter. The Countess, warned against malicious gossips by 
 Mme. Octave de Camps, realized her critical position before 
 society, and contrived to make Kaoul understand it also. 
 
 Amid 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, embed- 
 ding there, as it were, a thought of which they thus risk the 
 interchange. They talk, and longing looks follow the peep- 
 ing 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
 
 356 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 to eyes which, apparently seeing nothing, see all. Throng- 
 ing 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 meas- 
 ure of their power, when love, that is boundless, coils up and 
 hides itself within a thirsty glance, a nervous thrill, behind 
 the screen of formal civility. How often has not a single 
 word, on the last step of a staircase, paid the price of an 
 evening's silent agony and empty talk! 
 
 Eaoul, 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 am- 
 phitheatre, 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 amus- 
 ing; come and see me sometimes at four o'clock." 
 
 Eaoul 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 cor- 
 ner, "you behave in polite society exactly as you might at 
 Florine's. Here nobody flies into a passion, nobody lect- 
 ures; from time to time a smart thing may be said, and you 
 must look most impassive at the very moment when you long
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 357 
 
 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 gen- 
 tleman. 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- macho" Marchioness puts too high a price upon her 
 tea. She thinks rne 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 Rastignac'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 Baoul'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, feel- 
 ing 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-
 
 358 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ing between the Royalists and Republicans. "What do you 
 say ? You ought to know something about it." 
 
 "Supposing it were so, where would be the harm?" said 
 Raoul. "The object of our animosity is the same; we agree 
 in our hatred, and differ only in what we love." 
 
 "The alliance is at least singular," said de Marsay, 
 with a glance which embraced Raoul and the Comtesse 
 Felix. 
 
 "It will not last," said Rastignac, who, like all novices, 
 took his politics a little too seriously. 
 
 "What do you say, darling?" asked Mme. d'Espard of 
 the Countess. 
 
 "I! oh! I know nothing about politics." 
 
 "You will learn, Madame," said de Marsay, "and then 
 you will be doubly oar enemy." 
 
 Neither Nathan nor Marie understood de Marsay's sally 
 till he had gone. Rastignac followed him, and Mme. d'Es- 
 pard went with them both as far as the door of the first 
 drawing-room. Not another thought did the lovers give to 
 the minister's epigram; they saw the priceless wealth of a 
 few minutes before them. Marie swiftly removed her glove, 
 and held out her hand to Raoul, who took it and kissed it 
 with the 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 869 
 
 "So!" she exclaimed as she entered, "you had no retort 
 for de Marsay!" 
 
 "One must respect the dead," replied Eaoul. "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 extremely tax- 
 ing work. When two beings, united by an enduring love, 
 lead a life which each day knits them more closely in the 
 bonds of mutual confidence and by the interchange of coun- 
 sel over difficulties as they arise; when two hearts pour forth 
 their sorrows, night and morning, with mingled sighs; when 
 they share the same suspense and shudder together at a com- 
 mon danger, then everything is taken into account. The 
 woman then can measure the love in an averted gaze, the 
 cost of a hurried visit, she has her part in the business, 
 the hurrying to and fro, the hopes and anxieties of the 
 hard- worked, harassed man. If she complains, it is only 
 of the actual conditions; her doubts are at rest, for she 
 knows and appreciates the details of his life. But in the 
 opening chapters of passion, when all is eagerness, sus- 
 picion, 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
 
 360 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 fortune are, at present, rare exceptions. Only the old have 
 time for love; men in their prime are chained, like Nathan, 
 to the galleys of ambition. 
 
 Women, not yet reconciled to this change of habits, 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 happiness has 
 cost him. Whereas, if they, in an idle hour, have devised 
 some stratagem such as they abound in, they flaunt it in 
 your eyes as something superlative. You have wrenched 
 the iron bars of destiny, while they have played with sub- 
 terfuge 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. 
 
 Kaoul, 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 Raoul ; she came home agitated 
 and despairing. Nathan was determined not to show himself 
 till he could do so in all the glory of a press magnate. He 
 spent the week in looking out for a pair of horses and a suit- 
 able cabriolet and tiger, in persuading his partners of the 
 necessity of sparing time so valuable as his, and in getting 
 the purchase put down to the general expenses of the paper. 
 Massol and du Tillet agreed so readily to this request that 
 he thought them the best fellows in the world. But for this 
 assistance, life would have been impossible for Eaoul. As
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 361 
 
 it was, it became so taxing, in spite of the exquisite delights 
 of ideal love with which it was mingled, that many men, even 
 of excellent constitution, would have broken down under the 
 strain of such distractions. A violent and reciprocal passion 
 is bound to bulk largely even in an ordinary life; but when 
 its object is a woman of conspicuous position, like Mme. de 
 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 he might meet Mme. de Vandenesse again that 
 evening. He never left a reception till close upon mid- 
 night, when he had at last succeeded in snapping up some 
 long-watched -for words, a few crumbs of tenderness, art- 
 fully 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. Nothing could 
 be more natural. Raoul 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, leaving 
 scant time for sleep. Directly he was up, he plunged into 
 consultations with influential supporters as to the policy of 
 the paper. A thousand and one internal difficulties mean- 
 time would await his settlement, for journalism nowadays 
 has an all-embracing grasp. Business, public and private 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAO 16
 
 362 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 interests new ventures, the personal sensitiveness of liter- 
 ary men, as well as their compositions nothing is alien to 
 it. When, harassed and exhausted, Nathan Hew 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 car- 
 riage with the ease of a man who has no cares, and whose 
 only business is pleasure. When, as sole reward for so 
 many unnoticed acts of devotion, he found only the gen- 
 tlest of words or prettiest assurances of undying attach- 
 ment, a warm pressure of the hand, if by chance they 
 escaped observation for a moment, or one or two passion- 
 ate expressions in response to his own, Eaoul began to feel 
 that it was mere Quixotism not to make known the extrav- 
 agant price he paid 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 
 molehills which women have the art of turning into moun- 
 tains. 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-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 
 
 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, hang- 
 ing her head. 
 
 "Marie, my beloved, do you not see that I say this only 
 to wring your secret from you?" 
 
 "My secret will remain a secret, even after I have told 
 you." 
 
 "Well, tell me . . ." 
 
 "I am not loved," she said, with the stealthy side-look, 
 which is a woman's instrument for probing the man she 
 means to torture. 
 
 "Not loved!" exclaimed Nathan. 
 
 "No; you have too many things on your mind. What 
 am I in the midst of this whirl ? You are only too glad 
 to forget me. Yesterday I came to the Bois, I waited for 
 you-" 
 
 "But-" 
 
 "I had put on a new dress for you, and you did not come. 
 W here 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 1 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 re-
 
 364 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 proaches 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 en- 
 gagements 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 beforehand with an accurate judgment 
 on every event that took place, and how incessant was the 
 call for a rapid survey of questions, which chased each 
 other like clouds over the horizon in that period of politi- 
 cal convulsions. 
 
 In a moment the mischief was done. Raoul had been 
 told by the Marquise d'Espard that nothing is so ingenu- 
 ous as a first love, and it soon appeared that the Countess 
 erred in loving too much. A loving woman meets every 
 difficulty with delight and with fresh proof of her passion. 
 On seeing the panorama of this varied life unrolled before 
 her, the Countess was filled with admiration. She had pic- 
 tured Nathan a great man, but now he seemed transcen- 
 dent. She blamed herself for an excessive love, and begged 
 him to come only when he was at liberty; Nathan's ambi- 
 tious struggles sank to nothing before the glance she cast 
 toward Heaven! She would wait! Henceforth her pleas- 
 ure should be sacrificed. She, who had wished to be a 
 stepping-stone, had proved only an obstacle. . . . She 
 wept despairingly. 
 
 "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 worship." 
 
 So much love deserved a recompense. Peeping round, 
 like a nightingale ready to alight from its branch beside a 
 spring of water, she tried to make sure whether they were 
 alone in this solitude, and whether no spectator lurked in 
 the silence. Then raising her head to Raoul, who bent his 
 to meet her, she allowed him a kiss, the first, the only, con-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 365 
 
 traband kiss she was destined to give. At that instant she 
 was happier than she had been for five years, while Raoul 
 felt himself repaid for all that he had gone through. 
 
 They had to return to their carriages, and walked on, 
 hardly knowing whither, along the road from Auteuil to 
 Boulogne, moving with the even rhythmic step familiar 
 to lovers. Confidence came to Raoul in that kiss, ten- 
 dered 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, womanlike, r-oon 
 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 character- 
 istic of a woman's love, hastened with resolute and active 
 tread along the sand-strewn alley. Like Raoul, she spoke 
 but little, but that little came from the heart, and was full 
 of meaning. The sky was clear; buds were forming on the 
 larger trees, where already spots of green enlivened the deli- 
 cate brown tracery; while the shrubs, birches, willows, and 
 poplars showed their first tender and still unsubstantial foli- 
 age. 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 Raoul. "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 in- 
 stinct, repressed only with effort, to admire moral beauty. 
 Lastly, a man has but to make enough sacrifices in order
 
 366 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 to become attached to the person demanding them. "Women 
 of the world know this intuitively, just as courtesans do, 
 and it may even be that they unconsciously act upon the 
 knowledge. 
 
 The Countess, after her first burst of surprised 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. Raoul had not the least idea to 
 what this playing at greatness would commit him. He 
 forgot that no woman will allow her lover to fall below 
 her ideal of him, and that nothing paltry can be suffered 
 in a god. Marie had never heard that solution of the 
 problem which Raoul had disclosed to his friends in 
 the course of the supper at Ve'ry's. His struggles as a 
 man of letters, forcing his way upward from the masses, 
 had filled the first ten years of early manhood; now he 
 was resolved to be loved by one of the queens of the fash- 
 ionable world. Vanity, without which, as Chamfort said, 
 love has no backbone, sustained his passion, and could not 
 fail to augment it day by day. 
 
 "Can you swear to me," said Marie, "that you are noth- 
 ing, and never will be anything, to another woman ?" 
 
 "My life has no space for another, even were my heart 
 free, 1 ' 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 
 waiting, Marie let go the arm of Nathan, who at once as- 
 sumed a respectful attitude, as though this were a chance 
 meeting. He walked with her, hat in hand, as far as the 
 carriage, and then followed it down the avenue Charles 
 X., inhaling the dust it raised, and watching the drooping 
 feathers swaying in the wind. 
 
 In spite of Marie's generous resolutions of sacrifice, 
 Raoul, spurred on by passion, continued to appear where- 
 ever she went; he adored the half -vexed, half -smiling air 
 with which she vainly tried to scold him for wasting the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 367 
 
 time he could so badly spare. Marie began to take Raoul's 
 work in hand, laid down what he was to do every hour in 
 the day, and remained at home herself, so as to leave him 
 no excuse for taking a holiday. She read his paper every 
 morning, and she trumpeted the praises of Etienne Lousteau 
 the feuilletonist, whom she thought charming, of Felicien 
 Vernou, Claude Yignon, 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 Machi- 
 avelianism and hatred of the masses. She was of course 
 present in a stage box at the Gymnase on the first night of 
 the play, to which Raoul was trusting for the funds of his 
 undertaking, and which seemed to her, deceived by the hired 
 applause, an immense success. 
 
 "You did not come to say farewell to the opera?" asked 
 Lady Dudley, to whose house she went after the performance. 
 
 "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'Es- 
 pard, 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 nothing 
 better occurred to her than : ' ' Some day perhaps he will make 
 one."
 
 368 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 All the women exchanged glances of mysterious under- 
 standing. When Mme. de Vandenesse had gone, Moina de 
 Saint-He'ren exclaimed: "Why, she adores Nathan!" 
 
 "She makes no mystery of it," said Mme. d'Espard. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SUICIDE 
 
 THE MONTH of May, Vandenesse took his 
 wife away to their country seat. Here her only 
 comfort was in passionate letters from Raoul, to 
 whom she wrote every day. 
 
 The absence of the Countess might possibly have saved 
 Raoul from the abyss over which he hung had Florine been 
 with him. But he was alone among friends, secretly turned 
 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 holding 
 out a consoling hand in case he failed, or of cringing to 
 him should he succeed. This is the way in the literary 
 world, where people are friendly only to their inferiors, and 
 the rising man has everybody against him. This universal 
 jealousy increases tenfold the chance of mediocrities, who 
 arouse neither envy nor suspicion. Like moles, they work 
 their way underground, and, with all their incompetence, 
 find more than one snug corner in the official lists, while 
 really able men are struggling and blocking each other at 
 the door of promotion. Florine, with the inborn gift of 
 such women for putting their finger on the real thing 
 among a thousand presentments of it, would at once have 
 detected the underhand animosity of these false friends. 
 
 But this was not Raoul's greatest danger. His two part- 
 ners, the barrister Massol and the banker du Tillet, had con- 
 ceived the idea of harnessing his energy to the car in which
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 369 
 
 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, 
 shrivelling up their enthusiasm, yet who is determined at 
 all costs to be a somebody. Massol 's ambition, however, 
 no longer pointed to the ministry of justice. Within four 
 years he had seen five or six men clothed with the robes of 
 office, and this had cured him of the fancy. Meanwhile he 
 was ready to accept, as something in hand, a professorship 
 or a post under the Council, with of course the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor to season the dish. Du Tillet and the 
 Baron 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 Kaoul, these men allowed him 
 to exercise uncontrolled power. Du Tillet only made use 
 of the paper for his stock-jobbing interests, which were out- 
 side Raoul's ken. He had, however, already given Kasti- 
 gnac to understand, through the Baron de Nucingen, that this 
 organ was ready to give a silent adhesion to the Government, 
 on the one condition that the Government should support du 
 Tillet's candidature as successor to M. de Nucingen, who 
 would be a peer some day, and who at present sat for a 
 rotten borough, where the paper was lavishly circulated, 
 gratis. Thus was 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 sub- 
 stantial dues of vanity and the like. Nathan could not praise 
 them enough; again, as when they furnished his stables, they
 
 370 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 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 Mine, 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 re- 
 lations with the actress, which nothing, he declared, could 
 break. How could any man abandon an assured happiness 
 for the coquetry of the Faubourg Saint-Germain ? 
 
 Nathan, beguiled by Nucingen and Rastignac, du Tillet 
 and Blondet, lent an ostentatious support to the doctrinaire 
 party in the formation of one of their ephemeral cabinets. 
 At the same time, wishing to start in public life with clean 
 hands, he refused, with much parade, to accept any share in 
 the profits of certain enterprises which had been launched 
 by the help of this paper. And this was the man who never 
 hesitated to compromise a friend, or was hampered by a 
 scruple in his relations with a certain class of business men 
 at critical moments! Such startling contrasts, born of van- 
 ity 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 clues 
 and in the expenses of starting the paper, which were enor- 
 mous. The future had to be provided for. The banker
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 371 
 
 assisted Mm by accepting bills for fifty thousand francs at 
 four months, and thereby fastened a halter round the au- 
 thor's neck. Thanks to this subvention, the paper was in 
 funds again for six months. In the eyes of many lit- 
 erary 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 circula- 
 tion 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 persecu- 
 tion might give Eaoul a place among those modern Condot- 
 tieri, whose ink has to-day taken the place of gunpowder. 
 
 Unfortunately, these steps were already taken when Flo- 
 rine returned with about fifty thousand francs. Instead of 
 setting this aside as a reserve, Raoul, confident of a success 
 which was his only safety, humiliated at the thought of hav- 
 ing once before accepted money from the actress, feeling that 
 his love had raised him to a higher plane, and dazzled by the 
 specious plaudits of his 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 dash- 
 ing style was, he assured her, essential. The actress, who 
 needed no spurring, got into debt for thirty thousand francs. 
 Instead of a flat, Florine took a charming house in the Rue 
 Pigalle, where her old friends came about her again. The 
 house of a woman in Florine's position supplied a neutral 
 ground, most convenient for pushing politicians, who, follow- 
 ing the example of Louis XIY . 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 Come'die-Franc.aise began to speak of engaging her: critics 
 pointed to her as the direct successor of Mile. Mars. This tri- 
 umph threw the actress so far off her balance as to prevent her
 
 372 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 examining carefully the state of Nathan's affairs; her life was 
 a whirl of banquets and revelry. Queen in a bevy of bustling 
 suitors, each with something to push a book, a play, a ballet- 
 girl, a theatre, a company, or an advertisement she revelled 
 in the delights of this press influence, which she pictured as 
 the dawn of ministerial patronage. In the mouths of those 
 who frequented her house, Nathan was a politician of high 
 standing. His scheme would succeed, he would be elected 
 to the Chamber, and beyond doubt have a turn at office, like 
 so many others. Actresses are rarely slow to believe what 
 flatters their hopes. How could Florine, lauded in the no- 
 tices, mistrust the paper or its contributors ? She was too 
 ignorant of the mechanism of the press to be uneasy about 
 its resources, and women of her stamp look only to results. 
 
 As for Nathan, he no longer doubted that in the course 
 of the next session he would come to the front, along with 
 two former journalists, one of whom, already in office, was 
 anxious to strengthen his position by turning out his 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 popu- 
 lar 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 newspaper 
 columns and on the walls of Paris as to the comparative effi- 
 cacy and unobtrusiveness of their locks. The portfolio lay 
 in Florine's new boudoir, where Eaoul worked. No one is 
 more easily deceived than the woman who is used to frank-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 373 
 
 ness; she has no suspicions, because she believes herself to 
 know and see all that goes on. Moreover, since her return 
 the actress took her part in Nathan's daily life, which ap- 
 peared to go on just as usual. It never would have occurred 
 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, addressed, 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 success, kept him in 
 luxuries and removed all anxiety for the future. Indeed, 
 his debt to his friend du Tillet never gave him a moment's 
 uneasiness. 
 
 "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. 
 
 "But we have no need to fear our enemies," said Florine. 
 
 Nathan stood up for du Tillet. Du Tillet was the best, 
 most good-natured, and most 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 stoi- 
 cism and hard-heartedness of a parvenu. At times a fierce 
 irony broke through the genial cordiality of his manner with 
 Nathan. One day he pressed his hand as he was leaving 
 Florin e's, and watched him get into his cabriolet. 
 
 "There goes our dandy off to the Bois in tiptop style," 
 he said to Lousteau, the very incarnation of envy, "and in 
 six months he may be laid by the heels in Clichy." 
 
 "Not he!" exclaimed Lousteau; "think of Florine." 
 
 "And how do you know, my good fellow, that he'll keep 
 Florine? I tell you, you're worth a thousand of him, and 
 I expect six months will see you in the editorial chair." 
 
 In October the bills fell due, and du Tillet graciously 
 renewed them, but this time for two months only, and the 
 amount was increased by the discount and by a new loan.
 
 374 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Confident of victory, .Raoul drained his till. An overmas- 
 tering 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 flow- 
 ers of rhetoric can express so much without meeting a repulse. 
 She saw in Raoul one of the finest intellects of the day, a 
 delicately-strung and unappreciated heart, which in its 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 trib- 
 une. Marie was now entirely absorbed in that life of inter- 
 secting circles, which resemble the orbits of the planets, and 
 revolve round the sun of society as their centre. Finding 
 no 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 show- 
 ered kisses on letters which had been written in the thick of 
 press combats, or purloined from hours of study. She real- 
 ized now what they had cost and was well assured of being 
 his only love, with no rivals but glory and ambition. Even 
 in the depths of her solitude she found occupation for all her 
 powers and could dwell with satisfaction upon the choice of 
 her heart. There was no one like Nathan. 
 
 Fortunately, her withdrawal into the country and the 
 barriers thus placed between her and Raoul had silenced ill- 
 natured gossip. During the last days of autumn, therefore, 
 Marie and Raoul were able once more to begin their walks 
 in the Bois de Boulogne, their only meeting-place until the 
 season opened. Raoul had now a little more leisure to enjoy 
 the exquisite delights of his ideal life, anal also to practice 
 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 Flo- 
 rine, 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 simultane- 
 ously 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 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, while not aban- 
 doning the pursuit of that fine ideal love, that splendid pas- 
 sion, which delighted at once his poetic instincts, the germ 
 of greatness in him, and his social ambitions. Fully aware 
 how disastrous would be the effect of any indiscretion, he 
 told himself it was impossible that either the Countess or 
 Florine should find out anything. The chasm between them 
 was too great. 
 
 With the beginning of winter Kaoul 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, leaned 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 opin- 
 ion of Eaoul. 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
 
 876 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 inter- 
 ests threatened in the person of Louis-Philippe. The com- 
 paratively 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 of the situation, so clear and 
 accurate in spite of its brevity and the purely abstract point 
 of view from which it was made, and coming from a man 
 well used to calculate the chances of party, frightened Mme. 
 de Vandenesse. 
 
 "Do you take much interest in him then?" asked Felix 
 of his wife. 
 
 "Oh! I like his 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 
 Raoul 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 behind the day, who judged the Revolution of July by 
 the standard of the Restoration, and shut his eyes to the 
 triumph of the middle-class, that new and substantial factor 
 to be reckoned with, for a time at least if not permanently, 
 in every society. The great feudal lords of the past were 
 impossible now, the reign of true merit had begun. Instead 
 of weighing well the indirect and impartial warning he had 
 received from an experienced politician in the expression of 
 his deliberate opinion, Raoul made it an occasion for display,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 377 
 
 mounted his stilts, and draped himself in the purple of suc- 
 cess. 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, 
 Eaoul, 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 sud- 
 den disaster, a renewal of difficulties, an outburst of impa- 
 tience, might at any moment precipitate the Countess into 
 the abyss. 
 
 Eaoul was becoming conscious of this disposition in Marie 
 when, toward 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 OHgonnet a twenty-five per cent 
 Providence for all young men in difficulties. In a few days 
 the paper would make a fresh financial start with the new 
 year, there would be cash 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 Grigonnet handed 
 him the amount required and took bills payable in twenty 
 days. Eaoul, instead of having his suspicions roused by this 
 accommodating reception, was only vexed that he had not 
 asked for more. This is the way with men of the greatest 
 intellectual power; they see only matter for pleasantry in a 
 grave predicament, and reserve their wits for writing books, 
 as though afraid there might not be enough of them to go 
 round if applied to daily life. 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-lis wall-
 
 378 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 paper, his staircase, his asthmatic bell, his stag's-foot knocker; 
 his worn little door mat, his hearth as devoid of fire as his 
 eye; he made them laugh at this new "uncle," and neither 
 du Tillet's professed need of money nor the facility of the 
 usurer caused them the least uneasiness. One can't account 
 for every whim! 
 
 "He has only taken fifteen per cent from you," said 
 Blondet; "he deserves your thanks. At twenty-five they 
 cease to be gentlemen; at fifty, usury begins; at this figure 
 they are only contemptible!" 
 
 "Contemptible!" cried Florine. "I should like to know 
 which of your friends would loan you money at this rate 
 without posing as a benefactor?" 
 
 "She is quite right; I am heartily glad to be quit of du 
 Tillet's debt," said Raoul. 
 
 Most mysterious is this lack of penetration in regard to 
 their private affairs on the part of men generally so keen- 
 sighted! It may be that it is impossible for the mind to be 
 fully equipped on every side; it may be that artists live too 
 entirely in the present to trouble about the future; or it may 
 be that, always on the lookout for the ridiculous, they are 
 blind to traps, and cannot believe in any one daring to fool 
 them. 
 
 The end did not tarry. Twenty days later the bills were 
 protested; but in the court Florine had a respite of twenty- 
 five days applied for and granted. Raoul made an effort to 
 see where he stood; he sent for the books; and from these 
 it appeared that the receipts of the paper covered two-thirds 
 of the cost, and that the circulation was going down. The 
 great man became uneasy and gloomy, but only in the com- 
 pany of Florine, in whom he confided. Florine advised him 
 to borrow on the security of plays not yet written, selling 
 them in a lump, and parting at the same time with the royal- 
 ties on his acted plays. By this means Nathan raised twenty 
 thousand francs, and reduced his debt to forty thousand. 
 
 On the 10th of February the twenty-five days expired. 
 Du Tillet, determined to oust Nathan, as a rival, from the
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 379 
 
 constituency, where he intended to stand himself (leaving 
 to Massol another which was in the pocket of the Grovern- 
 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. Rastignac, Blon- 
 det, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, Massol, carefully refrained 
 from enlightening a man of such dangerous energy. Ras- 
 tignac, who aimed at getting back to power, made common 
 cause with N ucingen and du Tillet. The rest found meas- 
 ureless 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 Raoul 's praises. "Na- 
 than's shoulders were broad enough to bear the world; he 
 would come out all right, no fear!" 
 
 "The circulation went up two yesterday," said Blondet 
 solemnly. "Raoul will be elected yet. As soon as the 
 budget is through the dissolution will be announced." 
 
 Nathan, dogged by the law, could no longer look to 
 money-lenders; Florine, her furniture distrained, had no 
 hope left save in the chance of inspiring a passion in some 
 good-natured fool, who never turns up at the right moment. 
 Nathan's friends were all men without money or credit. His 
 political chances would be ruined by his arrest. To crown 
 all, he saw himself pledged to huge tasks, paid for in ad-
 
 380 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 vance; 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 pas- 
 sion 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 unbear- 
 able. Madness danced and rang her bells before the door 
 of that airy palace in which the poet had made his home. 
 In this extremity, Nathan waited upon chance, and put off 
 killing himself till the last moment. 
 
 During the last days, occupied with the notice of judg- 
 ment, the writs, and publication of order of arrest, Raoul 
 could not succeed in throwing off that coldly sinister look, 
 observed by noticing people to haunt those marked out for 
 suicide, or whose minds are dwelling on it. The dismal 
 ideas which they fondle cast a gray, gloomy shade over the 
 forehead ; their smile is vaguely ominous, and they move 
 with solemnity. The unhappy wretches seem resolved to 
 sack dry the golden fruit of life; they cast appealing 
 glances on every side, the toll of the passing bell is in 
 their ears, and their minds wander. These alarming 
 symptoms were perceived by Marie one night at Lady 
 Dudley's. Raoul had remained alone on a sofa in the 
 bondoir, while the rest of the company were conversing 
 in the drawing-room; when the Countess came to the door, 
 he did not raise his head; he heard neither Marie's breath 
 nor the rustle of her silk dress; his eyes, stupid with pain,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 381 
 
 were fixed on a flower in the carpet. "Sooner die than ab- 
 dicate," 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 ? Eaoul then 
 had just resolved to put an end to himself. Despair must 
 be proportioned to hope, and that of Raoul could find no 
 issue but the grave. 
 
 "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 
 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, 1 know. No woman 
 can conceive how, from out of the filth in which we wallow,
 
 382 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 we raise our eyes to heaven in single-hearted worship of some 
 radiant star some Marie. They mix up this adoration with 
 painful questions; they cannot understand that men of high 
 intellect and poetic vision are able to wean their souls from 
 pleasure and keep them to lay entire upon some cherished 
 altar. And yet, Marie, our devotion to the ideal is more 
 ardent than yours; we embody it in a woman, while she 
 does not even seek for it in us." 
 
 "Why this effusion?" she said, with the irony of a 
 woman who has no misgivings. 
 
 "I am leaving France; you will learn how and why to- 
 morrow from a letter which my servant will bring you. 
 Farewell, Marie." 
 
 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, 
 coming to look for her. "What has M. Nathan been sav- 
 ing ? He left us with quite a melodramatic air. You must 
 have been terribly foolish or terribly prudent. " 
 
 The Countess took Mme. d'Espard's arm to return to 
 the drawing-room, where, however, she only stayed a few 
 instants. 
 
 "Perhaps she is going to her first appointment," said 
 Lady Dudley to the Marchioness. 
 
 "I shall make sure as to that," replied Mme. d'Espard, 
 who left at once to follow the Countess's carriage. 
 
 But the coupe* of Mme. de Vandenesse took the road to 
 the Faubourg St. Honore. When Mme. d'Espard entered 
 her house, she saw the Countess driving along the Faubourg 
 in the direction of the Eue du Eocher. 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 
 Eaoul 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."
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 383 
 
 She read no further, but crushing the paper with a ner- 
 vous 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 Kaoul'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 hurrj 
 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 Eue Fey- 
 deau, were deserted. The only occupant was an attendant, 
 whose astonishment was great when a pretty and distracted 
 young woman rushed up and demanded M. Nathan. 
 
 "I expect he is with Mile. Florine," he replied, taking 
 the Countess for some jealous rival, bent on making a scene. 
 
 ' ' W here 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 
 bedroom, in which the recess for the bed still remained. 
 By opening the bedroom window, the Countess was able to 
 see through that of the closet what was happening within. 
 
 Nathan lay in the editorial chair, the death-rattle in his 
 throat. 
 
 "Break open that door, and tell no one I I will pay you
 
 384 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 attend- 
 ant to fetch a doctor. Raoul in a few hours was out of dan- 
 ger; but the Countess did not leave his bedside till she had 
 obtained a full confession. When the prostrate wrestler with 
 fate had poured into her heart the terrible elegy of his 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. ' ' 
 
 "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 
 advice and aid. Neither of them had an idea then that 
 it was du Tillet whose hand had put the match to that 
 vulgar pan of charcoal, the sight of which had so dis- 
 mayed 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 385 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 A LOVER SAVED AND LOST 
 
 ~W~^\ U TILLET had heard many speculations as to the 
 / i 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 Eaoul 
 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 con- 
 fided 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 Til- 
 let, at a loss how to explain this apparently miraculous 
 insight, had betrayed so much confusion that du Tillet's 
 suspicion became a certainty. The banker was confident 
 that he could now get hold of the clew to Nathan's in- 
 trigues. 
 
 No one knew of the poor wretch who lay ill in a private 
 hotel in the Eue du Mail, under the name of the attendant, 
 Frangois 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 inquiry, they were told that a lady had been there 
 that morning and carried off the editor. Two days elapsed 
 before they had discovered the number of the cab, ques- 
 tioned the driver, and identified and explored the house 
 in which the poor insolvent was coming back to life. 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 17
 
 336 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 char- 
 coal, 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 Koman 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. Eu- 
 genie once more approved the idea, which had occurred to 
 her, of applying to the Baronne Delphine de Nucingen, 
 with whom she had a dining acquaintance, and felt that it 
 promised well. With the generosity natural to those whose 
 hearts have not been ground in the polished mill of society, 
 Mme. du Tillet determined to take 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 
 thieves, brokers, and usurers, those three more or less 
 licensed classes of men who live by their wits. The Coun- 
 tess would sell her diamonds and wear false ones. Then 
 she was for asking Yandenesse 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 Rothschilds, who 
 had so much; from the Archbishop of Paris, whose duty it 
 was to succor the poor. Thus in her extremity she rushed 
 from one religion to another with impartial prayers. She la-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 387 
 
 merited being in opposition ; in old days she could have bor- 
 rowed from persons near to royalty. She thought of apply- 
 ing 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 
 bear 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 praying, between priests and money- 
 bags. Even were there time for Marie to reach Bayeux, 
 would her mother give her so large a sum without knowing 
 what it was wanted for ? Imaginary debts ? Yes, possibly 
 her favorite child might move her to compassion. Well, 
 then, as a last resource, to Normandy the Countess would 
 go. The Comte de Granville would not refuse to give her 
 a pretext by sending false news of his wife's serious illness. 
 The tragedy which had given her such a shock in the 
 morning, the care she had lavished on Nathan, the hours 
 passed by his bedside, the broken tale, the agony of a great 
 mind, the career of genius cut short by a vulgar and ignoble 
 detail, all rushed upon her memory as so many spurs to love. 
 Once more she lived through every heart throb, and felt her 
 love stronger in the hour of Nathan's abasement than in that 
 of his success. Would she have kissed that forehead crowned 
 with triumph? Her heart answered : No. The parting words 
 Nathan had spoken to her in Lady Dudley's boudoir touched 
 her unspeakably by their noble dignity. Was ever farewell 
 more saintly ? What could be more heroic than to abandon 
 happiness because it would have made her misery? The 
 Countess had longed for 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.
 
 388 BALZAC 'S WORKS 
 
 "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 dis- 
 grace which recoils on you." 
 
 Felix smiled, but Marie blushed. When a woman has 
 committed a secret fault, she cloaks herself in an exagger- 
 ated 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. Quil- 
 let, to tell him that all was going well and sent it by a com- 
 missionaire to the Mail Hotel. At the Opera in the evening 
 the Countess reaped the benefit of her falsehoods, her hus- 
 band 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 counte- 
 nance 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 889 
 
 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 ad- 
 dition to these four securities, you write a letter guaranteeing 
 their payment to Mine, de Nucingen, she will hand you the 
 money to-morrow. Do the whole thing yourself; don't trust 
 to anybody. Schmucke, you see, would, I think, make no 
 difficulty if you asked him. To disarm suspicion, I said that 
 you wanted to do a kindness to our old music-master, a Ger- 
 man, 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 Nu- 
 cingen does not talk till after she has given the money!" 
 said the Countess, raising her eyes as though in prayer, re- 
 gardless 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 " 
 
 "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 trivi- 
 alities, 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 feel- 
 ing which suddenly blotted all cheerfulness out of their fair 
 faces. Raoul, 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 balustrade. "Can she be here!" he thought.
 
 390 BALZAC *s WORKS 
 
 "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 
 Kaoul seemed as though struck by a magic wand. Eaising 
 his head, his eyes met those of the sisters. With that charm- 
 ing feminine readiness which is never at fault, Mme. de 
 Yandenesse seized a cross, sparkling on her neck, and di- 
 rected his attention to it by a swift smile, full of meaning. 
 The brilliance of the gem radiated even upon Raoul 's fore- 
 head, 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?" 
 
 "As well as a man is likely to be who has just got the 
 best possible news of the election. I shall be successful," 
 replied Raoul, radiant. 
 
 "Delighted," said du Tillet. "We shall want money for 
 the paper. ' ' 
 
 "The money will be found," said Raoul. 
 
 "The devil is with these women!" exclaimed du Tillet, 
 still unconvinced by the words of Raoul, whom he had nick- 
 named Charnathan. 
 
 "What are you talking about?" said Raoul. 
 
 "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!"
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 391 
 
 "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 Rue du Mail on her way. 
 
 The carriage could not enter the narrow Rue de Nevers; 
 but, as Schmucke's house stood at the corner of the Quai, 
 the Countess was not obliged to walk to it through the mud. 
 She almost leaped from the step of the carriage on to the dirty 
 and dilapidated entrance of the grimy old house, which was 
 held together by iron clamps, like a poor man's crockery, 
 and overhung the street in quite an alarming fashion. 
 
 The old organist lived on the fourth floor, and rejoiced 
 in a beautiful view of the Seine, from the Pont Neuf to the 
 rising ground of Chaillot. The simple fellow was so* taken 
 aback when the footman announced his former pupil that, 
 before he could recover himself, she was in the room. Never 
 could the Countess have imagined or guessed at an existence 
 such as that suddenly laid bare to her, though she had long 
 known Schmucke's scorn for appearances and his indifference 
 to worldly things. Who could have believed in so neglected 
 a life, in carelessness carried to such a pitch? Schmucke 
 was a musical Diogenes; he felt no shame for the hugger- 
 mugger in which he lived; indeed, custom had made him 
 insensible to it. 
 
 The constant use of a fat, friendly, German pipe had 
 spread over the ceiling and the flimsy wall-paper well 
 rubbed by the cat a faint yellow tint, which gave a per- 
 vading impression of the golden harvests of Ceres. The 
 cat, whose long ruffled silky coat made a garment such as 
 a portress might have envied, did the 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
 
 392 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 beauty, might have greeted her. She did not stir, except 
 to wave the two silvery threads of her upright mustache 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 mel- 
 lowed by the deeper tints which fell from the pipe. Little 
 piles of ashes on the ledge proclaimed that the night before 
 Schmucke had bestridden the old instrument to some witches' 
 rendezvous. The brick floor, strewn with dried mud, torn 
 paper, pipe ashes, and odds and ends that defy description, 
 suggested the boards of a lodging-house floor, when they 
 have not been swept for a week, and heaps of litter, a cross 
 between the contents of the ash-pit and the rag-bag, await 
 the servants' brooms. A more practiced 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- 
 nity from a painted stone fireplace, where a lump of coal 
 lorded it over two half -burned logs that seemed to waste 
 away before it. On the mantel- piece 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 break- 
 fast, made up the furniture, unpretending as that of a Mo- 
 hican wigwam. A shaving-glass hanging from the catch of 
 a curtainless window, and surmounted by a rag, striped by 
 razor scrapings, were evidence of the sole sacrifices paid by 
 Schmucke to the graces and to society. 
 
 The cat, petted as a feeble and dependent being, was the 
 best off. It rejoiced in an old armchair cushion, beside
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 393 
 
 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 forever undisturbed on the uncovered 
 parts of the chest of drawers and piano. In a corner lay the 
 army of slippers, to which only a Homeric catalogue could 
 do justice. The tops of the chest of drawers and of the piano 
 were blocked with broken-backed, loose-paged music-books, 
 the boards showing all the pages peeping through, with cor- 
 ners white and dog's-eared. Along the walls the addresses 
 of pupils were glued with little wafers. The wafers without 
 papers showed the number of obsolete addresses. On the 
 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-jug crowned 
 with a towel and a bit of common soap, white marbled with 
 blue, which left its damp-mark here and there on the red 
 wood. Two hats, equally ancient, hung on pegs, from which 
 also was suspended the familiar blue ulster with its three 
 capes, without which the Countess would hardly have known 
 Schmucke. Beneath the window stood three pots of flowers, 
 German flowers presumably, and close by a holly walking- 
 stick. 
 
 Though the Countess was disagreeably affected both in 
 sight and smell, yet Schmucke's eyes and smile 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,
 
 394 BALZAC 1 8 WORKS 
 
 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 
 Grondesse?" 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 1 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 17, 1835." This move- 
 ment, 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 do ? Mosd I to de teufel go ?" 
 
 "I only want you to write, I promise to pay the sum often 
 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 395 
 
 cat, who stared at him frigidly. "Dis is mein gat," he said, 
 pointing it out to the Countess. "Dis is de boor peast vich 
 lifs mit de boor Schmucke. He is peautivul, not zo?" 
 
 The Countess agreed. 
 
 "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 de- 
 prived him forever of liberty. 
 
 "You make me zure dat dese lettl stambed babers " 
 
 "Don't have the least uneasiness," said the Countess. 
 
 "I haf not oneasiness," he replied hastily. "I ask if dese 
 lettl stambed babers vil please de Montame ti Dilet?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," she said; "you will be helping her as a father 
 might. ' ' 
 
 "I am fer habby do pe coot do her for zomting. Com, 
 do mein music!" he said, leaving the papers on the table 
 and springing to the piano. 
 
 In a moment the hands of this unworldly being were fly- 
 ing over the well-worn keys, in a moment his glance pierced 
 the roof to heaven, in a moment the sweetest of songs blos- 
 somed 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 Rafael's St. Cecilia playing to the 
 listening hosts of Heaven. The Countess then slipped the 
 bills into her muff again, and recalled the radiant master 
 from the ethereal spheres in which he soared by a touch on 
 the shoulder.
 
 396 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "My good Schmucke," she cried. 
 
 "Zo zoon," he exclaimed, with a submissiveness painful 
 to see. "Yy den are you kom ?" 
 
 He did not complain, he stood like a faithful dog, wait- 
 ing for a word from the Countess. 
 
 "My good Schmucke," she again began, "this is a ques- 
 tion of life and death, minutes now may be the price of blood 
 and tears. ' ' 
 
 "Efer de zame!" he said. "Go den! try de tears ov 
 oders! Know dat de poor Schmucke counts your fisit for 
 more dan your pounty. 
 
 "We shall meet again," she said. "You must come and 
 play to me and dine with me every Sunday, or else we shall 
 quarrel. I shall expect you next Sunday." 
 
 "Truly?" 
 
 "Indeed, I hope you will come; and my sister, I am 
 sure, will fix a day for you also. ' ' 
 
 "Mein habbiness vill be den gomplete," he said, "vor 
 I tid not zee you put at de Champes-Hailysees, ven you 
 passed in de carrisch, fery rarely." 
 
 The thought of this dried the tears which had gathered 
 in the old man's eyes and he offered his arm to his fair pupil, 
 who could feel the wild beats of his heart. 
 
 "You thought of us then sometimes," she said. 
 
 "Efery time ven I mein pret eat!" he replied. "Yirst 
 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 marvel- 
 lous 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 397 
 
 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 Yandenesse, 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 get- 
 ting a new house built." 
 
 "You will no doubt give this one to your daughter. I 
 hear that she is engaged to M. de Rastignac." 
 
 The cashier appeared as Mme. de Nucingen was on the 
 point of replying She took the notes and handed him the 
 four bills of exchange. 
 
 "That balances," said the Baroness to the cashier. 
 
 "Bgzebd for de disgound," said the cashier. "Dis 
 Schmucke 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. 
 do 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 Coun- 
 tess, 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 Yandenesse.
 
 398 BALZAC'S ~>SORKS 
 
 "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, 1 replied the 
 Baroness, with a smile. "I shall have your carriage sent 
 to the end of the garden ; it will start without you ; then we 
 shall cross the garden together, no one will see you leave 
 this. The whole thing will remain a mystery." 
 
 "You must have known suffering to have learned so 
 much thought for others," said the Countess. 
 
 11 1 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 Machiavelian scheming. She knew, however, 
 that Baoul was in difficulties, and was not deceived therefore 
 by the sisters; she suspected shrewdly into whose hands the 
 money would pass, and it gave her real pleasure to help 
 the Countess. Entanglements of the kind always roused 
 her deepest sympathy. 
 
 Eastignac, 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. Eastignac, 
 unable to imagine how the Baroness had become mixed up 
 in this affair, which in his eyes was merely incidental, one 
 weapon among many, explained to her that she had this morn- 
 ing in all probability demolished the electoral hopes of du 
 Tillet and rendered abortive the foul play and sacrifices of a 
 whole year. He then went on to enlighten her as to the whole 
 position, urging her to keep silence about her own mistake. 
 
 "If only," she said, "the cashier does not speak of it to 
 Nucingen."
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 399 
 
 Du Tillet was at lunch when, a few minutes after twelve, 
 M. Grigonnet was announced. 
 
 "Show him in," said the banker, regardless of his wife's 
 presence. "Well, old Shylock, is our man under lock and 
 key?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "No! Didn't I tell you Eue du Mail, at the hotel?" 
 
 "He has paid," said Gigonnet, drawing from his pocket- 
 book forty banknotes. 
 
 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 Grigonnet, laying hold 
 of the tablecloth, which had caught in the skirts of du Til- 
 let's dressing-gown. 
 
 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 prac- 
 ticing on you. ' ' 
 
 Grigonnet, 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.
 
 400 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "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 grati- 
 tude and love, might persuade her sister to do what to the 
 well-balanced Euge'nie seemed an act of madness. There 
 had been instances lately in the best society of such elope- 
 ments, which pay the price of a doubtful pleasure in re- 
 morse and the social discredit arising out of a false position, 
 and Eugenie recalled to mind their disastrous results. Du 
 Tillet's words had put the last touch to her panic; she 
 dreaded discovery; she saw the signature of the Comtesse 
 de Yandenesse in the archives of the Nucingen firm, and 
 she resolved to implore her sister to confess everything to 
 Felix. 
 
 Mme. du Tillet did not find the Countess next 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 every- 
 thing to the Count. Surely he would be lenient, since his 
 honor was still safe and the Countess was not so much de- 
 praved as misguided. Eugenie hesitated to commit what 
 seemed like an act of cowardice and treachery by divulg- 
 ing secrets which society, at one in this, universally re- 
 spects. But then came the thought of her sister's future,
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 401 
 
 the dread of seeing her some day deserted, ruined by Na- 
 than, poor, ill, unhappy, despairing; she hesitated no 
 longer, and asked to see the Count. Felix, greatly sur- 
 prised 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 Euge'nie trembled at the desperate 
 steps he might be revolving. 
 
 "Don't be troubled," said Yandenesse; "I shall act so 
 that the day will come when your sister will bless you. 
 However great your repugnance to keeping from her the 
 fact that you have spoken to me, I must ask you to give 
 me a few days' grace. I require this in order to see my 
 way through certain mysteries, of which you know noth- 
 ing, and above all to take my measures with prudence. 
 Possibly I may find Wt everything 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." 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 A HUSBAND'S TRIUMPH 
 
 E. DU TILLET left Vandenesse's house some- 
 what comforted. Felix, on his part, went at once 
 to draw forty thousand francs from the Bank of 
 France, and then hastened to Mme. de Nucingen. He 
 found her at home, thanked her for the confidence she 
 had shown in his wife, and returned her the money. He 
 gave, as the reason for this mysterious loan, an excessive 
 almsgiving, on which he had wished to impose some limit. 
 "Do not trouble to explain, since Mme. de 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. Yandenesse, while this was going on, 
 scanned the Baroness with the statesman's piercing eye;
 
 402 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 dis- 
 concerting 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." 
 
 The Baroness repeated her conversation of the morning 
 with Rastignac, and said to the ex-peer of France, as she 
 handed him the four bills which the cashier brought her: 
 
 "Don't forget your promise." 
 
 So far was Vandenesse from forgetting this magical 
 promise that he dangled it before the eyes of the Baron 
 de Rastignac in order to extract from him further infor- 
 mation. 
 
 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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 403 
 
 of Mme. de Yandenesse should have been confided by 
 Schmucke, aroused to a tardy suspicion by the fourfold 
 repetition of the words, "I promise to pay ten thousand 
 francs," and who should have come to request from M. 
 Nathan a bill for forty thousand francs in exchange. It 
 was a risky game. Nathan might already have learned 
 how the thing had been arranged, but something had to 
 be dared for so great a prize. In her agitation, Marie 
 might easily have forgotten to ask her beloved Eaoul 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 for 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 Coun- 
 tess, and was anxious to bring her to renounce the love 
 affair of her own will, so that she might be spared from 
 humiliation before himself. He also hoped to show her 
 before it was too late her letters to Nathan sold by Flo- 
 rine, from whom he reckoned on buying them back. This 
 prudent plan, so swiftly conceived and in part executed, 
 was destined to fail through one of those chances to which 
 the affairs of mortals are subject. After dinner Felix turned 
 the conversation on the masked ball, remarking that Marie 
 had never been to one, and proposed to take her there the 
 following day by way of diversion. 
 
 "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 foeman worthy of her steel, some celebrity or wit, and 
 make mincemeat of him. What do you say to Nathan ? A 
 man who knows Florine could put me up to a few little 
 things that would drive him wild."
 
 404 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Morine," said the Countess, "the actress?" 
 
 Marie had already heard this name from the lips of Quil- 
 let the office attendant; a thought flashed through her like 
 lightning. 
 
 "Well, yes, his 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 candi- 
 dature in Nucingen's constituency. I have learned from a 
 friend of Florine's the amount produced by the sale of her 
 furniture, the whole of which she gave to Nathan for start- 
 ing 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 con- 
 fident 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 Vandenesse. 
 "Armed with such weapons, you will read a sharp les- 
 son to Nathan's vanity, and it will be a kindness to him. 
 You will watch the ebb and flow of his rage, and his writh-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 405 
 
 ings under your stinging epigrams. Your badinage will be 
 quite enough to show a clever man like him the danger in 
 which he stands, and you will have the satisfaction of get- 
 ting a good trouncing for the juste milieu team within their 
 own stables. . . . You are not listening, my child." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, 1 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 
 your mask, I will take you to supper with Florine and 
 Nathan. It will be sport for a great lady like you to take 
 in an actress after having kept a famous man on the stretch, 
 manoeuvring round his most precious secrets; you can har- 
 ness them both to the same mystification. I shall put my- 
 self on the track of Nathan's infidelities. If I can lay hold 
 of the details of any recent affair, you will be able to in- 
 dulge 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 cele- 
 brated actress, whose writing was like a kitchen-maid's, 
 come to demand back her letters from one of my friends. 
 I have never seen anything like it since; that quiet fury, 
 that 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 toward her 
 husband. 
 
 "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?"
 
 406 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "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 ab} T ss, 
 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 
 woman is not to lose her head once in a lifetime. Pray 
 Heaven I may never triumph over you or burden you with 
 a pity such as you repudiated with scorn the other day! 
 Possibly this wretched man was sincere when he wrote to 
 you, sincere in trying to put an end to 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 pas- 
 sion. Whether this is just or not, I cannot say. Enough 
 that the world is cruel. It may be that, taken in the mass, 
 it is harsher than are the individuals separately. A thief, 
 sitting in the pit, will applaud the triumph of innocence, and 
 filch its jewels as he goes out. Society has no balm for the 
 ills it creates; it honors clever roguery, and leaves unre-
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 407 
 
 warded 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 bring- 
 ing 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 at- 
 traction which drew you to a man of note, in the envy you 
 roused in certain women. Lady Dudley, Mine. d'Espard, 
 Mme. de Manerville, and my sister-in-law Emilie count for 
 something in all this. These women, whom I warned you 
 against, have no doubt worked on your curiosity, more with 
 the object of annoying me than in order to precipitate you 
 among storms which, I trust, may have only threatened with- 
 out breaking over you. ' ' 
 
 The Countess, as she listened to these generous words, 
 was tossed about by a host of conflicting feelings, but lively 
 admiration for Felix dominated the tempest. A noble and 
 high-spirited soul quickly responds to gentle handling. This 
 sensitiveness is the counterpart of physical grace. Marie ap- 
 preciated a magnanimity which sought in self -depreciation 
 a screen for the blushes of an erring woman. She made a 
 frantic motion to leave the room, then turned back, fearing 
 lest her husband should misunderstand and take alarm. 
 
 "Wait!" she said, as she vanished. 
 
 Felix had artfully prepared her defence, and he was soon 
 recompensed for his adroitness; for his wife 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.
 
 408 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "Mv child, where are jours?" he said, raising her head. 
 
 At this question, the Countess no longer felt the intoler- 
 able 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." 
 
 Toward midnight next evening Nathan was pacing the 
 promenade at the masked ball, giving his arm to a domino 
 with a very fair imitation of the conjugal manner. After 
 two or three turns two masked women came up to them. 
 
 "Fool! you have done for yourself; Marie is here and 
 sees you," said Vandenesse, in the disguise of a woman, to 
 Nathan, while the Countess, all trembling, addressed Florine: 
 
 "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
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 409 
 
 you can keep me long on the tenter-hooks. Not a creature 
 in the world can get Raoul from me, I can tell you. He is 
 bound to me by habit, which is better than love any day." 
 
 "In the first place, are you Florine?" said Felix, resum- 
 ing 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 mistress 
 of whom I speak, where he spent the night three days ago ! 
 He tried to stifle himself with charcoal, my dear, unknown 
 to you, because he was ruined. That's all you know about 
 the affairs of the man whom you profess to love ; you leave 
 him penniless, and he kills himself, or rather he doesn't, he 
 tries to and fails. Suicide when it doesn't come off is much 
 on a par with a bloodless duel." 
 
 "It is a lie," said Florine. "He dined with me that day, 
 but not till after sunset. The bailiffs were after him, poor 
 boy. He was in hiding, that's all." 
 
 "Well, you can go and ask at the Hotel du Mail, Kue du 
 Mail, whether he was not brought there at the point of death 
 by a beautiful lady, with whom he has had intimate relations 
 for a year; the letters of your rival are hidden in your house, 
 under your very nose. If you care to catch Nathan out, we 
 can go all three to your house ; there I shall give you ocular 
 proof that you can get him clear of his difficulties very shortly 
 if you like to be good-natured." 
 
 "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 
 tremendously in love " 
 
 " With a society woman ? Nathan ? ' ' said Florine. ' 4 Oh 1 
 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 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 18
 
 410 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 its master, returned to the 
 spot where the mysterious warning had been spoken. See- 
 ing evident marks of disturbance on Raoul's brow, Florine 
 planted herself firmly in front of him and said in a command- 
 ing voice: "You must not leave me; I have a reason for 
 wanting you." 
 
 "Marie!" whispered the Countess, by her husband's in- 
 structions, in Kaoul's ear. -Then she added, "Who is that 
 woman ? Leave her immediately, go outside, and wait for 
 me at the foot of the staircase," 
 
 In this terrible strait, Raoul shook off roughly the arm 
 of Florine, who was quite unprepared for such violence, 
 and, though clinging to him forcibly, was obliged to let go. 
 Nathan at once lost himself in the crowd. 
 
 "What did I tell you?" cried Felix in the ear of the 
 stupefied Florine, to whom he offered his arm. 
 
 "Come," she said, "let us go, whoever you are. Have 
 you a carriage ? ' ' 
 
 Vandenesse's only reply was to hurry Florine out and 
 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 Yandenesse 
 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.
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 411 
 
 Vandenesse saw his wife grow pale under her mask. 
 Florine's room told more of Nathan's intimacy with the 
 actress than was altogether pleasant for a romantic lady- 
 love. A woman's eye is quick to seize the truth in such 
 matters, and the Countess read in the promiscuous house- 
 hold 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. 
 
 "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 prov- 
 inces 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 
 
 1 In the French, "powfefe," which means "love-letters" as well as 
 'chickens."
 
 412 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 trample you underfoot! 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 Yandenesse, 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 
 intervention 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. 
 With all his audacity, Nathan made no further attempt dur- 
 ing the winter to approach or 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 
 passage 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 I Ah ! cursed flower, how thou hast thriven on my soul I ' '
 
 A DAUGHTER OF EVE 413 
 
 "You're drivelling, old boy," said Blondet. "I grant 
 you there was a pretty enough flower, only it has nothing 
 to do with the soul ; and instead of crooning like a blind man 
 before an empty shrine, you had better be thinking how to 
 get out of this scrape, so as to put yourself straight with the 
 authorities and settle down. You are too much of the artist 
 to make a politician. You have been played on by men who 
 are your inferiors. (TO and get yourself played on some 
 other stage." 
 
 "Marie can't prevent my loving her," said Nathan. "She 
 shal] be my Beatrice. ' ' 
 
 "My dear fellow, Beatrice was a child of twelve, whom 
 Dante never saw again; otherwise, would she have been 
 Beatrice ? If we are to make a divinity of a woman, we must 
 not see her to-day in a mantle, to-morrow in a low-necked 
 dress, the day after on the Boulevards, cheapening toys for 
 her last baby. While there is Florine handy to play by 
 turns a comedy 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), 1 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. 
 
 When the Comtesse de Vandenesse, after a long and 
 delightful 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-Elyse'es, 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
 
 414 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Vandenesse felt a pang of shame as she remembered her 
 fancy for Kaoul. Had she not been cured before of any un- 
 lawful passion, 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 Kaoul did. 
 
 JARDIES, December, 1838.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
 
 TO GEORGE SAND 
 
 Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radi- 
 ance 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 sur- 
 vived 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 increas- 
 ing 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 I 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 gen- 
 erous hearts, friends bound by pure and holy ties, the illus- 
 trious figures of the century? May I not justly pride 
 myself on this assured possession, rather than on a popu- 
 larity necessarily unstable ? For him who knows you well, 
 it is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I do here, 
 
 Your friend, De Balzac. 
 
 PAEIS, June, 1840.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 FIRST PART 
 
 I 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE 
 
 PARIS, September. 
 
 r^WEETHEART, I too am free! And I am the first 
 ; j too, unless you have written to Blois, at our sweet 
 tryst of letter-writing. 
 
 Eaise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my open- 
 ing 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 deliv- 
 erance 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 
 Re nee, could you have seen me the day I found myself 
 parted from you, well might you have gloried in the deep 
 impression you had made on so youthful a bosom. We 
 had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams and 
 letting our fancy roam together, that I verily believe our 
 
 (417)
 
 418 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 souls had become welded together, like those two Han- 
 garian girls, whose death wo heard about from M. Beauvi- 
 sage poor misnamed being! Never surely was man better 
 cut out by nature for the post of convent physician! 
 
 Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your darling ? 
 
 In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but count 
 over the ties which bind us. But it seemed as though 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 Car- 
 melites, consumed by dread of having to take my vows there, 
 a Mile, de la Valliere, but without her prelude, and without 
 my Renee ! How could I not be sick sick unto death ? 
 
 How different it used to be ! That monotonous existence, 
 where every hour brings its duty, its prayer, its task, with 
 such desperate regularity that you can tell what a Carmelite 
 sister is doing in any place, at any hour of the night or day; 
 that deadly dull routine, which crushes out all interest in 
 one's surroundings, had become for us two a world of life 
 and movement. Imagination had thrown open her fairy 
 realms, and in these our spirits ranged at will, each in 
 turn serving as magic steed to the other, the more alert 
 quickening the drowsy; the world from which our bodies 
 were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which 
 revelled there in frolicsome adventure. The very "Lives of 
 the Saints" helped us to understand what was so carefully 
 left unsaid ! But the day when I was reft of your sweet 
 company, I became a true Carmelite, such as they appeared 
 to us, a modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill a bot- 
 tomless barrel, draws every day, from Heaven knows what 
 deep, an empty pitcher, thinking to find it full. 
 
 My aunt knew nothing of this inner life. How should 
 she, who has made a paradise for herself within the two 
 acres of her convent, understand my revolt against life? 
 A religious life, if embraced by girls of our age, demands 
 either an extreme simplicity of soul, such as we, sweet- 
 heart, do not possess, or else an ardor for self-sacrifice like
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 419 
 
 that which makes my aunt so noble a character. But she 
 sacrificed herself for a brother to whom she was devoted; 
 to do the same for an unknown person or an idea is surely 
 more than can be asked of mortals. 
 
 For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so many 
 reckless words, burying so many reflections in my bosom, and 
 accumulating such a store of things to tell, fit for your ear 
 alone, that I should certainly have been suffocated but for 
 the resource of letter- writing as a sorry substitute for our 
 beloved talks. How hungry one's heart gets! I am be- 
 ginning 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 Gdmenos valley, which 
 I know only through your descriptions, just as you will 
 live that Paris life, revealed to you hitherto only in our 
 dreattis. 
 
 Well, then, sweet child, know that on a certain morn- 
 ing a red-letter day in my life there arrived from Paris a 
 lady companion and Philippe, the last remaining of my 
 grandmother's valets, charged to carry me off. When 
 my aunt summoned me to her room and told me the 
 news, I could not speak for joy, and only gazed at her 
 stupidly. 
 
 "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 
 forehead the sign of the elect. You have the pride which 
 leads to heaven or to hell, but your nature is too noble to 
 choose the downward path. I know you better than you 
 know yourself; with you, passion, I can see, will be very 
 different from what it is with most women." 
 
 She drew me gently to her and kissed my forehead. 
 The kiss made my flesh creep, for it burned with that 
 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.
 
 420 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Before replying, I kissed her hands. 
 
 "Dear aunt," I said, "I shall never forget your kind- 
 ness; and if it has not made your nunnery all that it 
 ought to be for my health of body and soul, you may be 
 sure nothing short of a broken heart will bring me back 
 again and that you would not wish for me. You will not 
 see me here again till my royal lover has deserted me, and 
 I warn you that if I catch him, death alone shall tear him 
 from me. I fear no Montespan." 
 
 She smiled and said: "Go, madcap, and take your idle 
 fancies with you. There is certainly more of the bold 
 Montespan in you than of the gentle la Valliere." 
 
 I threw my arms round her. The poor lady could not 
 refrain from escorting me to the carriage. There her ten- 
 der gaze was divided between me and the armorial bearings. 
 
 At Beaugency night overtook me, still sunk in a stupor 
 of the mind produced by these strange parting words. 
 What can be awaiting me in this world for which I have 
 so hungered ? 
 
 To begin with, I found no one to receive me; my heart 
 had been schooled in vain. My mother was at the Bois de 
 Boulogne, my father at the Council; my brother, the Due 
 de Rhe'tore', never comes in, I am told, till it is time to 
 dress for dinner. Miss Griffith (she is not unlike a griffin) 
 and Philippe took me to my rooms. 
 
 The suite is the one which belonged to my beloved 
 grandmother, the Princesse de Vauremont, to whom I owe 
 some sort of a fortune which no one has ever told me 
 about. As you read this, you will understand the sadness 
 which came over me as I entered a place sacred to so many 
 memones, 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 her sofa, I burst into tears, 
 forgetting I was not alone, and remembering only how often 
 I had stood there by her knees, the better to hear her words. 
 There I had gazed upon her face, buried in its brown laces, 
 and worn as much by age as by the pangs of approaching
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 421 
 
 death. The room seemed to me still warm with the heat 
 which she kept up there. How comes it that Armande- 
 Louise-Marie de Chaulieu must be like some peasant girl, 
 who sleeps in her mother's bed the very morrow of her 
 death ? For to me it was as though the Princess, who 
 died in 1817, had passed away but yesterday. 
 
 I saw many things in the room which ought to have 
 been removed. Their presence showed the carelessness 
 with which people, busy with 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 remain 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 al- 
 lowed all the larger suites to remain dismantled, as the Rev- 
 olution 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 pic- 
 tures, bare of all but empty frames; broken marbles, mir- 
 rors carried off. In old days I was afraid to go up the 
 state staircase and cross these vast, deserted rooms; so I 
 used to get to the Princess's rooms by a small staircase 
 which runs under the arch of the larger one and leads to 
 the secret door of her dressing-room. 
 
 My suite, consisting of a drawing-room, bedroom, and 
 the pretty morning-room in scarlet and gold, of which I 
 have told you, lies in the wing on the side of the Inva- 
 lides. 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
 
 422 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 sur- 
 prise depicted on my countenance. For you must know 
 that in this home of diplomacy the very servants have a 
 reserved and mysterious air. He went on to tell me that 
 it was expected a law would soon be passed restoring to 
 the fugitives of the Revolution the value of their property, 
 and that my father is waiting to do up his house till this 
 restitution is made, the king's architect having estimated 
 the damage at three hundred thousand livres. 
 
 This piece of news flung me back despairing on my 
 drawing-room sofa. Could it be that my father, instead 
 of spending this money in arranging a marriage for me, 
 would have left me to die in the convent? This was the 
 first thought to greet me on the threshold of my home. 
 
 Ah! Ren^e, 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 423 
 
 they were lived in; I explained to him myself how I 
 wanted everything arranged, and where to put each piece 
 of furniture. In this way I entered into possession, and 
 showed how an air of youth might be given to the dear 
 old things. 
 
 The bedroom is white in 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 
 presented to my grandmother by Louis XV. along with 
 his portrait. The timepiece was a gift from the Marechal 
 da Saxe, and the china ornaments on the mantel-piece came 
 from the Mare'chal de Eichelieu. My grandmother's por- 
 trait, 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, 
 un tinged by hypocrisy a characteristic touch which sums 
 up her charming personality. Once when my grandmother 
 was seriously ill, her confessor was urgent that the Prince, 
 who was waiting in the drawing-room, should be admitted. 
 
 "He can come in with the doctor and his drugs," was 
 the reply. 
 
 The bed has a canopy and well-stuffed back, and the 
 curtains are looped up with fine wide bands. The fur- 
 niture is of gilded wood, upholstered in the same yellow 
 damask with white flowers which drapes the windows, and 
 which is lined there with a white silk that looks as though 
 it were watered. The panels over the doors have been 
 painted, by what artist I can't say, but they represent one 
 a sunrise, the other a moonlight scene. 
 
 The fireplace is a very interesting feature in the room. 
 It is easy to see that life in the last century centred largely 
 round the hearth, where great events were enacted,, The 
 copper-gilt grate is a marvel of workmanship, and the man- 
 tel-piece is most delicately finished; the fire-irons are beauti- 
 fully chased; the bellows are a perfect gem. The tapestry 
 of the screen comes from the Gobelins and is exquisitely
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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, 
 reclining in the easy-chair, with her dress half raised in front, 
 toying with the snuff-box, which lay upon the ledge between 
 her box of pastilles and her silk mits. What a coquette she 
 was ! To the day of her death she took as much pains with 
 her appearance as though the beautiful portrait had been 
 painted only yesterday, and she were waiting to receive the 
 throng of exquisites from the Court! How the armchair 
 recalls to me the inimitable sweep of her skirts as she sank 
 back in it! 
 
 These women of a past generation have carried off with 
 them secrets which are very typical of their age. The Prin- 
 cess had a certain turn of the head, a way of dropping her 
 glances and her remarks, a choice of words, which I look 
 for in vain, even in my mother. There was subtlety in it 
 all, and there was good-nature; the points were made with- 
 out any affectation. Her talk was at once lengthy and con- 
 cise; 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 
 washer greeting, "Here you are, little rogue!" when curi- 
 osity had taught me how to glide with stealthy snake-like 
 movements to her room. She felt that I loved her, and this 
 childish affection 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 425 
 
 had many visitors ; and when I came on tiptoe in the morn- 
 ing 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 moldings. Eich 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 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-by 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 Chargeboeuf, to intimate to me, through her, that
 
 426 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Jhe shade 
 of the dear Princess, and have prepared myself for carrying 
 out one of our pledges, which was, as you know, to keep 
 each other informed of the smallest details in our homes and 
 occupations. It makes such a difference to know where and 
 how the life of one we love is passed ! Send me a faithful 
 picture of the veriest trifles around you, omitting nothing, 
 not even the sunset lights among the tall trees. 
 
 October 10th. 
 
 It was three in the afternoon when I arrived. About 
 half -past five, Rose came and told me that my mother had 
 returned, so I went downstairs to pay my respects to her. 
 
 My mother lives in a suite on the ground floor, exactly 
 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 draw- 
 ing-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. Judg- 
 ing it unworthy to simulate an affection I could not possibly 
 feel, 1 put on the air of a pious imbecile, and entered the 
 room with many inward qualms, which, however, soon dis- 
 appeared. My mother's tact was equal to the occasion. She
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 427 
 
 made no pretence of emotion; she neither held me at arm's- 
 length nor hugged me to her bosom like a beloved daughter, 
 but greeted me as though we had parted the evening before. 
 Her manner was that of the kindliest and most sincere friend, 
 as she addressed me like a grown person, first kissing me on 
 the forehead. 
 
 "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, 
 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." 
 
 1 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 fore- 
 head, and a complexion so pink and white that you might 
 think she paints. Her bust and shoulders are marvellous, 
 and her waist is as slender as yours. Her hand is milk-white 
 and extraordinarily beautiful, the nails catch the light in 
 their perfect polish, the thumb is like ivory, the little finger 
 stands just a little apart from the rest. And the foot matches 
 the hand ; it is the Spanish foot of Mile, de Vandenesse. If 
 she is like this at forty, at sixty she will still be a beautiful 
 woman. 
 
 I replied, sweetheart, like a good little girl. I was as nice 
 to her as she to me, nay, nicer. Her beauty 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
 
 428 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 though I had been talking to you. I daresay it was a sur- 
 prise to her to hear words of affection from her daughter's 
 mouth, and the unfeigned homage of my admiration evi- 
 dently touched her deeply. Her manner changed and be- 
 came 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 rny previous tremors. She 
 smiled, put her arm round my neck, and drawing me toward 
 her, kissed me on the forehead most affectionately. 
 
 "Dear child," she said, "we have people coming to din- 
 ner to-day. Perhaps you will agree with me that it is better 
 for you not to make your first appearance in society till you 
 have been in the dressmaker's hands; so, after you have seen 
 your father and brother, you can go upstairs again." 
 
 I assented most heartily. My mother's exquisite dress 
 was the first revelation to me of the world which our dreams 
 had pictured; but I did not feel the slightest desire to rival 
 her. 
 
 My father now entered, and the Duchess presented me 
 to him. 
 
 He became all at once most affectionate, and played the 
 father's part so well that I could not but believe his heart 
 to be in it. Taking my two hands in his, and 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 toward him, with his arm passed ten- 
 derly round my waist, while he kissed me on the cheeks and 
 forehead. 
 
 "The pleasure with which we shall watch your success 
 in society will atone for the disappointment we felt at your
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 429 
 
 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 
 Rhe'tore'. 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 father. 
 
 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 
 come to Blois when he was at Orleans visiting our Marquis 
 brother in his quarters. 
 
 Fearing the arrival of strangers, I now withdrew. I 
 tidied up my rooms, and laid out on the scarlet velvet of 
 my lovely table all the materials necessary for writing to 
 you, meditating all the while on my new situation. 
 
 This, my fair sweetheart, is a true and veracious account 
 of the return of a girl of eighteen, after an absence of nine 
 years, to the bosom of one of the noblest families in the 
 kingdom. I was tired by the journey as well as by all the 
 emotions I had been through, so I went to bed in convent 
 fashion, at eight o'clock, after supper. They have preserved 
 even a little Saxe service which the dear Princess used when 
 she had a fancy for taking her meals alone.
 
 430 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 II 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 November 25fh. 
 
 T\ "T EXT DA Y I found my rooms done out and dusted, 
 
 / \f 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 Eose 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 in- 
 come I propose allowing you for your expenses. You will 
 make arrangements with your mother as to some governess 
 whom you may like, in case Miss Griffith doesn't please you, 
 for Mme. de Chaulieu will not have time to go out with you 
 in the mornings. A carriage and manservant 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 rne. ' ' 
 
 "May I ask how much I have ?" 
 
 4 ' Certainly, my child, ' ' he said. 4 ' 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 431 
 
 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 Chau- 
 lieus 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-by, 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 mantel-piece, at 
 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 spoiled. You see, I have a figure, dear; 
 this becomes serious. Janssen, the Operatic shoemaker, sol-
 
 432 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 emnly assures me that I have my mother's foot. The whole 
 morning has gone in these weighty occupations. Even a 
 glovemaker has come to take the measure of my hand. The 
 underclothing woman has got my orders. 
 
 At the meal which I call dinner, and the others lunch, 
 my mother told me that we were going together to the mil- 
 liner'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 un- 
 derstand 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 the diplomatic face, at 
 once dumb and expressive; his nose is long and slender, and 
 he has brown eyes. 
 
 "What a handsome pair! Strange thoughts assail me as 
 it becomes plain to me that these two, so perfectly matched 
 in birth, wealth, and mental superiority, live entirely apart, 
 and have nothing in common but their name. The show of 
 unity is only for the world. 
 
 The cream of the Court and diplomatic circles were here 
 last night. Very soon I am going to a ball given by the 
 Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and I shall be 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 govern- 
 ess with me. I have decided to keep Miss Griffith, who was 
 recommended by the English ambassador. Miss Griffith is 
 the daughter of a clergyman ; her mother was of good family,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO PRIDES 483 
 
 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 Eose's room. Eose 
 will be under her orders. I saw at a glance that my govern- 
 ess 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 n? '.>ther. 
 
 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 make ; between two and four she is never visible ; at four 
 o'clock she goes out for an hour's drive; when she is not 
 dining out, she receives from six to seven, and the evening 
 is given to entertainments of various kinds theatres, balls, 
 concerts, at homes. In short, her life is so fall 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. 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 19
 
 434 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 cous.'n and have brought my dress 
 and deportment into keeping with the society I am about 
 to enter, the whirl of which amazes me even here, where only 
 distant murmurs reach my ear. So far I have not gone be- 
 yond 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 Ihose of so- 
 ciety. 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 rny mother goos out, if she is not 
 at the theatre. There are twelve theatres in Paris. 
 
 I am grossly ignorant and I read a lot, but quite 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 
 Rende 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 435 
 
 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 Alpbonse 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. 
 
 Een^e, 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 knowl- 
 edge, the knowledge we learned from each other in our ran- 
 dom 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 1 compare it 
 with all the sorrows I can imagine, makes me feel quite 
 creepy. Once more she urged me not to be dazzled by the 
 glitter of society, to be always on my guard, especially against 
 what most attracted me. This is the sum-total of her wis- 
 dom, and I can get nothing more out of her. Her lectures, 
 therefore, become a trifle monotonous, and she might be 
 compared in this respect to the bird which has only one cry. 
 
 m 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 December. 
 
 DARLING Here I am ready to make my bow 
 to the world. By way of preparation I have been 
 trying to commit all the follies I could think of 
 before sobering down for my entry. This morning, I have 
 seen myself, after many rehearsals, well and duly equipped
 
 436 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 stays, shoes, curls, dress, ornaments all in order. Fol- 
 lowing the example of duellists before a meeting, I tried my 
 arms in the privacy of my chamber. 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 acquaintance. Griffith 
 was the sole spectator of this doll's play, in which I was at 
 once doll and child. You think you know me ? You are 
 hugely mistaken! 
 
 Here is a portrait, then, Eenee, of your sister, formerly 
 disguised as a Carmelite, now brought to life again as a friv- 
 olous 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 exquisite 
 curves of your mother's arms, and that mother the Duchesse 
 de Chaulieu, it is impossible, my dear, not to deplore your 
 own angular elbows. Yet there is consolation in observing 
 the fineness of the wrist, and a certain grace of line in those 
 hollows, which will yet fill out and show plump, round, and 
 well modelled, under the satiny skin. The somewhat crude 
 outline of the arms is seen again in the shoulders. Strictly 
 speaking, indeed, I have no shoulders, but only two bony 
 blades, standing out in harsh relief. My figure also lacks 
 pliancy; there is a stiffness about the side lines. 
 
 Poof! There's the worst out. But then the 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 ga- 
 zelle! My joints are finely turned, my features of a Greek 
 correctness. It is true, madame, that the flesh tints do not 
 melt into each other; but, at least, they stand out clear and
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 437 
 
 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 rip- 
 ples into waves of pale gold, growing browner toward 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 that 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 ! 
 
 Then, dear, there is a harmony running through all. 
 What a gait! what a voice! We have not forgotten how 
 our grandmother's skirts fell into place without a touch. In 
 a word, I am lovely and charming. When the mood comes, 
 I can laugh one of our good old laughs, 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, swanlike neck,
 
 438 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 and the painter's 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 
 makes, whereas I can wound and heal together. We are 
 absolutely unlike, and therefore there could not possibly 
 be rivalry between us, unless indeed we quarrelled over the 
 greater or less perfection of our extremities, which are similar. 
 I take after my father, who is shrewd and subtle. I have 
 the manner of my grandmother and her charming voice, 
 which becomes falsetto when forced, but is a sweet-toned 
 chest voice at the ordinary pitch of a quiet talk. 
 
 I feel as if I had left the convent to-day for the first time. 
 For society I do not yet exist; I am unknown to it. What 
 a ravishing moment! I still belong only to myself, like a 
 flower just blown, unseen yet of mortal eye. 
 
 In spite of this, my sweet, as I paced the drawing-room 
 during my self-inspection, and saw the poor cast-off school- 
 clothes, a queer feeling came over me. Regret for the Dast, 
 anxiety about the future, fear of society, a long farewell to 
 the pale daisies which we used to pick and strip of their 
 petals in light-hearted innocence, there was something of all 
 that; but strange, fantastic visions also rose, which I crushed 
 back into the inner depths, whence they had sprung, and 
 whither I dared not follow them. 
 
 My Be nee, I have a regular trousseau! It is all beauti- 
 fully 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-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 439 
 
 ised to give me riding lessons. And I can dance I To-mor- 
 row, yes, to-morrow evening, I come out ! 
 
 My dress is white muslin, and on my head I wear a gar- 
 land 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 business and his own amusements; my mother, too, 
 is never at leisure; no member of the household practices 
 self-examination, they are constantly in company, and have 
 hardly time to live. 
 
 1 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. 
 
 It is possible, it seems, for members of one family to 
 live side by side and know absolutely nothing of each 
 other. A half-fledged nun arrives, and in a couple of 
 weeks has grasped domestic details, of which the master 
 diplomatist at the head of the house is quite igrfbrant. Or 
 perhaps he does see, and shuts his eyes deliberately, as part 
 of the father's rdle. There is a mystery here which I must 
 plumb.
 
 440 KALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 IV 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 December 15th. 
 
 rESTERDA y, at two o'clock, I went to drive in the 
 Champs-Elyse'es and the Bois de Boulogne. It was 
 one of those autumn days which we used to find so 
 beautiful on the banks of the Loire. So I have seen Paris 
 at last! The Place Louis XV. is certainly very fine, but 
 the beauty is that of man's handiwork. 
 
 I was dressed to perfection, pensive, with set face 
 (though inwardly much tempted to laugh), under a lovely 
 hat, my arms crossed. Would you believe it? Not a 
 single smile was thrown at me, not one poor youth was 
 struck motionless as I passed, not a soul turned to look 
 again; and yet the carriage proceeded with a deliberation 
 worthy of my pose. 
 
 No, I was wrong, there was one a duke and a charming 
 man who suddenly reined in as he went by. The individ- 
 ual 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 ex- 
 actly what her eye is resting on. 
 
 I was mad with rage. One man actually inspected my 
 carriage without noticing me. This flattering homage prob- 
 ably 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 defied 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 441 
 
 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 amaz- 
 ingly inelegant compared with those of former genera- 
 tions. 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 headpiece. And yet 
 Frenchmen are said to be fickle! 
 
 The men are hideous any way, whatever they put on 
 their heads. I have seen nothing but worn, hard faces, 
 with no calm nor peace in the expression; the harsh lines 
 and furrows speak of foiled ambition and smarting vanity. 
 A fine forehead is rarely seen. 
 
 "And these are the product of Paris!" I said to Miss 
 Griffith. 
 
 "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 you might suppose I was freezing and blind. 
 Not one failed to enlarge on the strange, unheard-of, ex- 
 traordinary, odd, remarkable fact that he saw me for the 
 first time. 
 
 My dress, which dazzled me as I paraded alone in my 
 white-and-gold drawing-room, was barely noticeable amid
 
 442 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the o-oreous 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 among 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 him- 
 self 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 ^.bout people of whom I knew 
 nothing; but perhaps it is my ignorance on many subjects 
 which prevents me from appreciating it, as I saw that most 
 men and women took a lively pleasure in certain remarks, 
 whether falling from their own lips or those of others. So-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 443 
 
 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 warn- 
 ing 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 sen- 
 sations which ought to be concealed from every one, not 
 excepting perhaps even a mother. fi.t a glance I measured 
 the vast field of feminine duplicity. I can assure you, sweet- 
 heart, that we, in our unabashed simplicity, would pass for 
 two very wide-awake little scandal-mongers. What lessons 
 may be conveyed in a finger on the lips, in a word, a look ! 
 All in a moment I was seized with excessive shyness. 
 What! may I 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 high- 
 way hedges are flecked with my white wool! Farewell, 
 beloved. 
 
 V 
 
 RENEE DE MAUCOMBE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 
 
 October. 
 
 T J~OW DEEPLY your letter moved me; above all, 
 when I compare our widely different destinies! 
 How brilliant is the world you are entering, how 
 peaceful the retreat where I shall end my modest career! 
 
 In the Castle of Maucombe, which is so well known to 
 you by description that I shall say no more of it, I found
 
 444 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 my room almost exactly as I left it; only now I can enjoy 
 the splendid view it gives of the Gremenos valley, which 
 my childish 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 neigh- 
 bors, 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 
 conscription, 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 interviewed in 1814, declared that he had seen him 
 taken by the Eussians. Mine, de 1'Estorade died of grief 
 while a vain search was being made in Russia. The Baron, 
 a very pious old man, practiced that fine theological virtue 
 which we used to cultivate at Blois Hope! Hope made 
 him see his son in dreams. He hoarded his income for 
 him, and guarded carefully the portion of inheritance 
 which fell to him from the family of the late Mme. de 
 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 im- 
 agined, while fancy was leading us a giddy dance, that my 
 destined husband was slowly travelling on foot through Rus- 
 sia, 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 father's savings, provides the poor guard of honor with 
 something like two hundred and fifty thousand livres, not
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 445 
 
 counting house and lands quite a considerable fortune in 
 Provence. His worthy father had bought, on the very eve 
 of the Chevalier's return, a fine but badly-managed estate, 
 where he designs to plant ten thousand mulberry-trees, 
 raised in his nursery with a special view to this acquisi- 
 tion. The Baron, having found his long-lost son, has now 
 but one thought, to marry him, and marry him to a girl of 
 good family. 
 
 My father and mother entered into their neighbor's idea 
 with an eye to my interests so soon as they discovered that 
 Eenee de Maucombe would be acceptable without a dowry, 
 and that the money the said Kene'e 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 de- 
 vice 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 hus- 
 bands for. The French nobility, from the little 1 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 ser- 
 vants 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'Estorade. 
 
 My father-in-law to be has, you see, no castle, only a 
 simple country house, standing beneath one of our hills, at 
 the entrance of that noble valley, the pride of which is 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- 
 kiln. The windows, inserted casually, without any attempt
 
 446 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 at symmetry, have enormous shutters, painted yellow. The 
 garden in which it stands is a Provengal garden, inclosed 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 co- 
 quettish white stone house, with its blue roof, glittering in 
 the sun. The garden and surrounding walks are horribly 
 dusty, and the trees seem burned up. It is easy to see that 
 for years the Baron's life has been a mere rising up and go- 
 ing to bed again, day after day, without a thought beyond 
 that of piling up coppers. He eats the same food as his two 
 servants, a 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 cav- 
 ernous ; he is a little deaf, which suggests the Knight of the 
 Sorrowful Countenance. 
 
 Spite of all this, I have graciously consented to become 
 Mine, de 1'Estorade 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- 
 combe. In a month I shall be Mme. de 1'Estorade; for,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 447 
 
 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. 
 
 While 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 
 comfort this young man, who has never known youth, but 
 passed straight from his mother's arms to the embrace of 
 war, and from the joys of his country home to the frosts and 
 forced 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 kiosk, 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 po- 
 etry 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 
 Bonaparte; 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 among the great ones of the 
 earth, the children of your Renee will not lack a zealous 
 protectress.
 
 448 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 crisis 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 Ge'menos 
 valley there are my pleasures. Perhaps some day the coun- 
 try dame may go and spend a winter in Marseilles; but dan- 
 ger 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 mul- 
 berry-leaves will be sold! We shall know the strange vicis- 
 situdes 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 perse- 
 vere in it. 
 
 You, my dear Louise, will supply the romance of my life. 
 So you must narrate to me in full all your adventures, de- 
 scribe 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-by, dear.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 449 
 
 P.S. I have just opened your third letter. My dear, I 
 have about one thousand livres to dispose of; spend them 
 for me on pretty things, such as we can't find here, nor even 
 at Marseilles. While speeding on your 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 FERNAND 
 
 PARIS, September. 
 
 riLE ADDRESS of this letter, my brother, will show 
 you that the head of your house is out of reach of 
 danger. If the massacre of our ancestors in the 
 Court of Lions made Spaniards and Christians of us against 
 our will, it left us a legacy of Arab cunning; and it may be 
 that I owe my safety to the blood of the Abencerrages still 
 flowing in my veins. 
 
 Fear made Ferdinand's acting so good that Valdez actually 
 believed in his protestations. But for me the poor Admiral 
 would have been done for. Nothing, it seems, will teach the 
 Liberals what a king is. This particular Bourbon has been 
 long known to me; and the more his Majesty assured me 
 of his protection, the stronger grew my suspicions. A true 
 Spaniard has no need to repeat a promise. A flow of words 
 is a sure sign of duplicity. 
 
 Valdez took ship on an English vessel. For myself, no 
 sooner did I see the cause of my beloved Spam 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, amid 
 brigands who defy all law and all avengers. 
 
 The last Hispano-Moorish family of Granada has found
 
 450 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 once more the shelter of an African desert, and even a Sara- 
 cen 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 vendetta the Due de Soria, their master and a He- 
 narez 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 
 re*al; 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 pal- 
 aces, 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 451 
 
 Here, then, is my last will and testament. 
 
 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, I command. You will go to the 
 King and will ask from him the grant of my dignities and 
 property, my office and titles. He will perhaps hesitate, and 
 may treat you to some regal scowls ; but you must tell him 
 that you are loved by Marie HereMia, and that Marie can 
 marry none but a Due de Soria. This will make the King 
 radiant. It is the immense fortune of the Here'dia 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 misfortunes, 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 in- 
 come of the last two years in the hands of your steward.
 
 452 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 This sum is mine; but a Due de Soria cannot marry without 
 a large expenditure of money, therefore we will divide it. 
 You will not refuse this wedding-present from your brigand 
 brother. Besides, I mean to have it so. 
 
 The barony of Macumer, not being Spanish territory, re- 
 mains 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 1 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, among these one to a bookseller, 
 who takes with our fellow countrymen the place which Ga- 
 lignani 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 453 
 
 sunrise until ten o'clock I smoke and take my chocolate, 
 sitting at my window and contemplating two Spanish plants, 
 a broom which rises out of a clump of jessamine gold on a 
 white ground, 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. Afterward 
 I read and smoke till I go to bed. 
 
 I can put up for a long time with a life like this, com- 
 pounded of work and meditation, of solitude and society. 
 Be happy, therefore, Fernand; my abdication has brought 
 no afterthoughts; I have no regrets like Charles V., no 
 longing to try the game again like Napoleon. Five days 
 and nights have passed since I wrote my will ; to my mind 
 they might have been five centuries. 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, 1 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 de- 
 part? Why has that race, pre-eminent in chivalry, breathed 
 all its primitive virtues its tropical Iove 3 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 I 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
 
 454 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 of a fallen race, vain force, love run to waste, an old man In 
 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 be those of Christ, My God, Thou hast forsaken 
 me I 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 mo to 
 live afresh in you and Marie. I shall watch you henceforth 
 with the pride of a creator satisfied in his work. Love each 
 other well and go on loving if you would not give me pain; 
 any discord between you would hurt me more than it would 
 yourselves. 
 
 Our mother had a presentiment that events would one day 
 serve her wishes. It may be that the longing of a mother 
 constitutes a pact between herself and God. Was she not, 
 moreover, one of those mysterious beings who can hold con- 
 verse 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 irre- 
 sistible 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 TJrraca to be sure and call me nothing but M. 
 He*narez. Don't say a word about me to Marie. You must 
 be the one living soul to know the secrets of the last Chris- 
 tianized 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 455 
 
 VII 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE 
 
 To be married so soon! But this is un- 
 heard 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, Een^e, what they want with you? You 
 are needful for carrying on the glorious stock of the 1'Esto- 
 rades, 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 afterward 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 men 
 wild and hold a court like queens. Your husband, sweet- 
 heart, in three years from now may become a member of the 
 Chamber. I know all about members now, and I will explain 
 it to you. You will work that machine very well; you can 
 live in Paris, and become there what my mother calls a 
 woman of fashion. Oh! you needn't suppose I will leave 
 you in your grange ! 
 
 Monday. 
 
 FOR a whole fortnight now, my dear, I have been living 
 the life of society: one evening at the Italiens, another at the 
 Grand Opera, and always a ball afterward. Ah! society is 
 a witching world. The music of the Opera enchants me;
 
 456 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 and while my soul is plunged in divine pleasure, I am the 
 centre of admiration and the focus of all the opera-glasses. 
 But a single glance will make the boldest youth drop his 
 eyes. 
 
 I have seen some charming young men there; all the 
 same, I don't care for any of them; not one has roused in 
 me the emotion which I feel when I listen to Garcia in his 
 splendid duet with Pellegrini in Othello. Heavens! how 
 jealous Rossini must have been to express jealousy so 
 well! What a cry in "II mio cor si divide" ! I'm speaking 
 Greek to you, for you never heard Garcia, but then you 
 know how jealous I am ! 
 
 What a wretched dramatist Shakespeare is! Othello is 
 in love with glory; he wins battles, he gives orders, 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 OJ,T master, 
 for I shall make part of the embassy. My mother wishes to 
 remain here, and my father will take me so as to have some 
 woman with him. 
 
 My dear, this seems to you, no doubt, very simple, but 
 there are horrors behind it, all the same: in a fortnight I have 
 probed the secrets of the house. My mother would accom- 
 pany my father to Madrid if he would take M. de Canalis 
 as a secretary to the embassy. But the King appoints the
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 457 
 
 secretaries; the Duke dare neither annoy the King, who 
 hates to be opposed, nor vex my mother; and the wily diplo- 
 mat 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. 
 Diplomacy must be a fine subject, for he is as regular as a 
 gambler on the Stock Exchange. 
 
 The Due de Rhdtore, 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 iu 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 creat- 
 ure, 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 Maj- 
 esty's ambassador. Perhaps I may get married in Spain, 
 and perhaps my father's idea is a marriage there without 
 dowry, after the pattern of yours with this broken-down 
 guard of 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 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 1 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 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 20
 
 458 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 I really think: mother made me afraid the other day that 1 
 had spoken more frankly than I ought of my impressions. ' ' 
 
 "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-centred 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 can- 
 dor 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 fash- 
 ionable society is its brutality. The little incidents which 
 take place when supper is announced give one some idea 
 to compare small things with great of what a popular rising 
 might be. Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general 
 selfishness. I imagined society very different. Women 
 count for little in it; that may perhaps be a survival of 
 Bonapartist ideas. ' ' 
 
 " Armande is coming on extraordinarily, ' ' said my mother. 
 
 "Mother, did you think I should never get beyond asking 
 to see Mme. de Stae'l?" 
 
 My father smiled, and rose from the table. 
 
 Saturday. 
 
 MY DEAR, I have left one thing out. Here is the titbit I 
 have reserved for you. The love which we pictured must 
 be extremely well hidden; I have seen not a trace of it. 
 True, I have caught in drawing-rooms now and again a quick 
 exchange of glances, but how 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 459 
 
 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? 
 
 I have already seen hundreds of men, young and middle- 
 aged; not one has stirred the least feeling in me. No proof 
 of admiration and devotion on their part, not even a sword 
 drawn in my behalf, would have moved me. Love, dear, is 
 the product of such rare conditions that it is quite possible 
 to live a lifetime without coming across the being on whom 
 nature has bestowed the power of making one's happiness. 
 The thought is enough to make one shudder; for if this 
 being is found too late, what then ? 
 
 For some days I have begun to tremble when I think of 
 the destiny of women, and to understand why so many wear 
 a sad face beneath the flush brought by the unnatural excite- 
 ment 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. Rich, young, 
 and beautiful, I have only to love, and love would become 
 my sole occupation, my life; yet in the three months during 
 which I have come and gone, eager and curious, nothing has
 
 460 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 appealed to me in the bright, covetous, keen eyes around 
 me. No voice has thrilled me, no glance has made the world 
 seem brighter. 
 
 Music alone has filled my soul, music alone has at all 
 taken the place of our friendship. Sometimes, at night, I 
 will linger for an hour by my window, gazing into the gar- 
 den, summoning the future, with all it brings, out of the 
 mystery which shrouds it. There are days too when, hav- 
 ing started for a drive, I get out and walk in the Champs 
 Elysees, and picture to myself that the man who is to waken 
 my slumbering soul is at hand, that he will follow and look 
 at me. Then I meet only mountebanks, venders of ginger- 
 bread, jugglers, passers-by hurrying to their business, or 
 lovers who try to escape notice. These 1 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 incar- 
 nation, and how many conditions are needful before it can 
 take place! We are not certain of never quarrelling with 
 ourselves, how much less so when there are two ? This is 
 a problem which God alone can solve. 
 
 I begin to think that I shall return to the convent. If I 
 remain in society, I shall do things which will look like fol- 
 lies, 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 461 
 
 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. 
 
 The part of Chimene in the "Cid" and that of the Cid 
 delight me. W hat a marvellous play ! Well, good-by. 
 
 VIII 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 January. 
 
 OUR MASTER is a poor refugee, forced to keep in 
 hiding on account of the part he played in the 
 revolution which the Due d'Angouleme has just 
 quelled a triumph to which we owe some splendid fetes. 
 Though a Liberal, and doubtless a man of the people, he 
 has awakened my interest : I fancy that he must have been 
 condemned to death. I make him talk for the purpose of 
 getting at his secret; but he is of a truly Castilian taciturn- 
 ity, proud as though he were Gronsalvo di Cordova, and 
 nevertheless angelic in his patience and gentleness. His 
 pride is not irritable like Miss Griffith's, it belongs to his 
 inner nature; he forces us to civility because his own man- 
 ners 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 He'narez. 
 
 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 imag- 
 inable. I asked him if I had offended him in any way, and- 
 he said to rne in his grand, rolling Spanish: "I am here only 
 to teach you Spanish." 
 
 I blushed, and felt quite snubbed. I was on the point 
 of making some pert answer, when I remembered what <>ur
 
 4G2 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 dear mother in (rod used to say to us, and I replied instead : 
 "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: "Religion 
 must have taught you, better than I can, to respect the un- 
 happy. 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 languages, 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 
 successful 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 carefully got up, and his hands are whiter than his 
 face. He stoops a little, and has an extremely large, oddly- 
 shaped head. His ugliness, which, however, has a dash of 
 piquancy, is aggravated by smallpox marks, which seam his 
 face. His forehead is very prominent, and the shaggy eye- 
 brows 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 Sis- 
 ter Marthe did. As my father observed, his features are a 
 shrunken reproduction of those of Cardinal Ximenes. The
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 463 
 
 natural dignity of our tutor's manners seems to disconcert the 
 dear Duke, who doesn't like him, 'and is never at ease with 
 him: he can't bear to come in contact with superiority of 
 any kind. 
 
 As soon as my father knows enough Spanish, we' start 
 for Madrid. When Henarez returned, two days after the 
 reproof he had given me, I remarked by way of showing my 
 gratitude: "I have no doubt that you left Spain in conse- 
 quence of political events. If my father is sent there, as 
 seems to be expected, we shall be in a position to help you, 
 and might be able to obtain your pardon, in case you are 
 under sentence." 
 
 "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, while 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 question. 
 
 "Do you mean equality in the amount of feeling on either 
 side, or equality in rank?" I persisted, determined to shake 
 him out of his provoking gravity. 
 
 He raised once more those awe-inspiring eyes, and mine 
 fell before them. Dear, this man is a hopeless enigma. He 
 seemed to ask whether my words meant love; and the mixt- 
 ure 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 dim-
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 culties 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." 
 
 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. 
 
 //LL 18 OVER, my dear child, and it is Mme. de 
 Sj 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 household to direct and sweeten and a husband to 
 reconcile to life. In all probability I shall have a family 
 to look after, children to educate. 
 
 What would you have? Every-day life cannot be cast 
 in heroic mold. 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 monot-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 465 
 
 ony of my existence. I can see no opening left for suffer- 
 ing, 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 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 re- 
 serve ? The time during which a woman can look for ad- 
 miration 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 be- 
 tween 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 inclosed list. I am determined to live in an atmos- 
 phere of refinement and luxury, and to take from provin- 
 cial life only what makes its charm. In solitude a woman 
 can never be vulgarized she remains herself. I count 
 greatly on your kindness for keeping me up to the fash- 
 ion. My father-in-law is so delighted that he can refuse 
 me nothing, and turns his house upside down. We are 
 getting workpeople from Pahs and renovating everything.
 
 466 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. I)E L'ESTORADE 
 
 January. 
 
 OH! RE NEE, you have made me miserable for days! 
 So that bewitching body, those beautiful proud fea- 
 tures, that natural grace of manner, that soul full of 
 priceless gifts, those eyes, where the soul can slake its thirst 
 as at a fountain of love, that heart with its exquisite delicacy, 
 that breadth of mind, those rare powers fruit of nature and 
 of our interchange of thought treasures whence should is- 
 sue a unique satisfaction for passion and desire, hours of 
 poetry to outweigh years, joys to make a man serve a life- 
 time 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 glori- 
 ous 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 ^f vegetation, 
 compared with the lightning rapidity of thought, become 
 like a part of yourself; and as your eye rests on the laugh- 
 ing 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 467 
 
 trees, your meadow, the wonder of Provence, with its fresh 
 water dispersed in little runlets, the different effects of the 
 atmosphere, this whole world of infinity which laps you 
 round, and which (rod has made so various, will recall to 
 you the infinite sameness of your soul's life. But at least 
 I shall be there, my Kenee, and in me you will find a 
 heart which no social pettiness shall ever corrupt, a heart 
 all your own. 
 
 Monday. 
 
 MY DEAR, my Spaniard is quite adorably 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 em- 
 bassies, 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, v^ere 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. He'narez 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
 
 4<;S BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 capitally; there would be something ominous in starting 
 an imitation "Nouvelle Heloise." I have just been read- 
 ing Rousseau'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 Kichardson's work is an admirable 
 picture, my father tells me, of English women. Kous- 
 seau's seems to me a sort of philosophical sermon, cast in 
 the form of letters. 
 
 Love, as I conceive it, is a purely subjective poem. In 
 all that books tell us about it, there is nothing which is 
 not at once false and true. And so, my pretty one, as 
 you will henceforth be an authority only on conjugal love, 
 it seems to me my duty in the interest, of course, of our 
 common life to remain unmarried and have a grand pas- 
 sion, 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 hus- 
 band. 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 CHAULIED 
 
 LA CRAMPADE. 
 
 rOUR 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 noth- 
 ing to lose, will take any risk. This man cannot be your 
 husband, and must not be your lover c 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.
 
 469 
 
 XII 
 
 MLLE. DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE. I/ESTORADE 
 
 February. 
 
 sj T NINE O'CLOCK this morning, sweetheart, my 
 ./"/ father was announced in my rooms. I was up and 
 dressed. I found him solemnly seated beside the 
 fire in the drawing-room, looking more thoughtful than 
 usual. He pointed to the armchair opposite to him. Di- 
 vining his meaning, I sank into it with a gravity which 
 so well aped his that he could not refrain from smiling, 
 though the smile was dashed with melancholy. 
 
 "You are quite a match for your grandmother in quick- 
 wittedriess, " 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 pre- 
 served. 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
 
 470 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 your- 
 self 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 rec- 
 ommend them to you, I must show that they are connected 
 with feelings of a very high order, and I shall thus be obliged 
 to enter into political questions of the greatest importance to 
 the kingdom, which might be wearisome to any one less in- 
 telligent than you are. When you have heard me, I hope 
 you will take time for consideration, six months if neces- 
 sary. You are entirely your own mistress; and if you de- 
 cline 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 by a few superior minds. 
 But the King is a head without arms; the great nobles, who 
 are in the secret of the danger, have no authority over the 
 men whose co-operation is needful in order to bring about a 
 happy result. These men, cast up by popular election, re- 
 fuse to lend themselves as instruments. Even the able men 
 among them carry on the work of pulling down society, in- 
 stead 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 im- 
 bedded in the law and written on the soil; it fills people's 
 minds. The danger is all the greater because the greater 
 number of the King's counsellors, seeing it destitute of 
 armed forces and of money, believe it completely van- 
 quished. The King is an able man, and not easily 
 blinded; but from day to day he is won over by his
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 471 
 
 brother's partisans, who want to hurry things on. He 
 has not two years to live, and thinks more of a peaceful 
 deathbed than of anything else. 
 
 "Shall I tell you, my child, which is the most destruc- 
 tive of all the consequences entailed by the Revolution ? 
 You would never guess. In Louis XVI. the Revolution 
 has decapitated every head of a family. The family has 
 ceased to exist; we have only individuals. In their desire 
 to become a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea 
 of empire; in proclaiming the equal rights of all children 
 to their father's inheritance, they have killed family spirit 
 and have created the State treasury. But all this has paved 
 the way for weakened authority, for the blind force of the 
 masses, for the decay of art and the supremacy of individ- 
 ual 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 
 interest in other words, between democracy and aristoc- 
 racy, between free discussion and obedience, between Cathol- 
 icism and religious indifference. I am among the few who 
 are resolved to oppose what is called the people, and that in 
 the people's true interest. It is not now a question of feudal 
 rights, as fools are told, nor of rank; it is a question of the 
 State and of the existence of France. The country which 
 does not rest on the foundation of paternal authority cannot 
 be stable. That is the foot of the ladder of responsibility 
 and subordination, which has for its summit the King. 
 
 "The King stands for us all. To die for the King is to 
 die for one's self, 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 inter- 
 ested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when 
 composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little 
 whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, 
 so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind, in their
 
 472 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming M r hen 
 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 
 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, among 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 "
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 473 
 
 "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 inheri- 
 tance 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?" 
 
 "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 excel- 
 lent judgment?" 
 
 "There is not in all France," he said with bitterness, u a 
 man who would take for wife a daughter of one of our noblest 
 families without a dowry and bestow one on her. If such a 
 husband could be found, it would be among the class of rich 
 parvenus; on this point I belong to the eleventh century." 
 
 "And I also," I said. "But why despair? Are there 
 no aged peers?" 
 
 "You are an apt scholar, Louise!" he exclaimed. 
 
 Then he left me, smiling and kissing my hand. 
 
 I received your letter this very morning, and it led me to 
 contemplate that abyss into which you say that I may fall. 
 A voice within seemed to utter the same warning. So I took 
 my precautions. Henarez, my dear, dares to look at me, and 
 his eyes are disquieting. They inspire me with what I can 
 only call an unreasoning dread. Such a man ought no more 
 to be looked at than a frog; he is ugly and fascinating. 
 
 For two days I have been hesitating whether to tell my 
 father pointblank that I want no more Spanish lessons and 
 have Hdnarez 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."
 
 474 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 His voice, my dear, is sweetly thrilling; his speaking 
 is just like la Fodor's singing. His manners are simple, 
 entirely free from affectation. And what teeth ! 
 
 Just now, as he was leaving, he seemed to divine the 
 interest I take in him, and made a gesture oh ! most 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 
 merest suggestion of all this, but I understood it and smiled, 
 for nothing is more pathetic than to see the frank impulse 
 of an inferior checking itself abashed. The love of a plebeian 
 for a girl of noble birth implies such courage! 
 
 My smile emboldened him. The poor fellow looked 
 blindly about for his hat ; he seemed determined not to find 
 it, and I handed it to him with perfect gravity. His eyes 
 were wet with unshed tears. It was a mere passing moment, 
 yet a world of facts and ideas were contained in it. We 
 understood each other so well that, on a sudden, I held out 
 my hand for him to kiss. 
 
 Possibly this was equivalent to telling him that love 
 might bridge the interval between us. Well, I cannot tell 
 what moved me to do it. Griffith had her back turned as 
 I proudly extended my little white paw. I felt the fire of 
 his lips, tempered by two big tears. Oh ! my love, 1 lay 
 in my armchair, nerveless, dreamy. I was happy, and I 
 cannot explain to you how or why. What I felt only a poet 
 could express. My 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 475 
 
 he replied that he came to France when quite a boy, follow- 
 ing 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 
 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 He*narez. Vande- 
 nesse reported the Prince's reply word for word, as follows: 
 
 "Henarez is the Moorish name of the Soria family, who 
 are, they say, descendants of the Abencerrages, converted 
 to Christianity. The old Duke and his two sons were with 
 the King. The eldest, the present Due de Soria, has just 
 had all his property, titles, and dignities confiscated by King 
 Ferdinand, who in this way avenges a long-standing feud. 
 The Duke made a huge mistake in consenting to form a con- 
 stitutional ministry with Valdez. Happily, he escaped from 
 Cadiz before the arrival of the Due d'AngoulSme, 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 
 cannot describe to you the suspense in which I passed the 
 time till my next lesson, which took place this morning. 
 
 During the first quarter of an hour I examined him closely, 
 debating inwardly whether he were duke or commoner, with- 
 out being able to come to any conclusion. He seemed to 
 read my fancies as they arose and to take pleasure in thwart-
 
 476 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ing 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, 
 "unhappily, I am not the Due de Soria." 
 
 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 }-ears of exile, declares that any one bearing the name 
 of He'narez must be either the late Due de Soria or a lackey. " 
 
 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:
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 477 
 
 "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 the heart without which life would be but a dreary com- 
 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 intelli- 
 gent 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. 
 
 41 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 sunshine 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
 
 478 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 atti- 
 tude, in gait, in his way of performing alike the smallest and 
 the greatest actions, to that race of the truly great who are 
 always simple and natural. He need not be good-looking, 
 but his hands must be beautiful. His upper lip will curl 
 with a careless, ironic smile for the general public, while 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 marvellous dignity, and 
 left me quite upset by such unheard-of delicacy in a man of his 
 class. He went downstairs and asked to speak with my father. 
 
 At dinner my father said to me with a smile: 
 
 "Louise, you have been learning Spanish from an ex- 
 minister 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."
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 479 
 
 "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?" 
 
 " Y"es, " 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 
 underfoot? What? There is a man who has become 
 necessary to me a man without whom I don't know how 
 to live! You married, and I in love! Four little months, 
 and those two doves, whose wings erst bore them so high, 
 have fluttered down upon the flat stretches of real life! 
 
 Sunday. 
 
 YESTERDAY, at the Italian Opera, I could feel some one 
 was looking at me; my eyes were drawn, as by a magnet, to 
 two wells of fire, gleaming like carbuncles in a dim corner 
 of the orchestra. Henarez never moved his eyes from me. 
 The wretch had discovered the one spot from which he could 
 see me and there he was. I don't know what he may be 
 as a politician, but for love he has a genius. 
 
 "Behold, my fair Renee, where our business now stands," 
 
 as the great Corneille has said.
 
 480 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 XIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MLLE. DE CHAULIEU 
 
 LA CRAMPADE, February. 
 
 ~m /rY DEAR LOUISE I was bound to wait some 
 /\/i 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 differ- 
 ence 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, while love aims only at pleasure. On the 
 other hand, marriage will remain when pleasures have van- 
 ished, 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 mar- 
 riage was friendship a friendship which, for the sake of 
 these advantages, would shut its eyes to many of the imper- 
 fections of humanity? Now there was no obstacle to the 
 existence of friendship between myself and Louis de 1'Es- 
 torade. Having 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 481 
 
 life will be no slavery, but rather a perpetual reign. What 
 is there to say against such a situation for a woman who 
 wishes to remain absolute mistress of herself?" 
 
 The important point of separating marriage from marital 
 rights was settled in a conversation between Louis and me, 
 in the course of which he gave proof of an excellent temper 
 and a tender heart. Darling, my desire was to prolong that 
 fair season of hope which, never culminating in satisfaction, 
 leaves to the soul its virginity. To grant nothing to duty 
 or the law, to be guided entirely by one's own will, retain- 
 ing perfect independence what could be more attractive, 
 more honorable? 
 
 A contract of this kind, directly opposed to the legal 
 contract, and even to the sacrament itself, could be con- 
 cluded only between Louis and me. This difficulty, the 
 first which has arisen, is the only one which has delayed 
 the completion of our marriage. Although, at first, I may 
 have made up my mind to accept anything rather than re- 
 turn to the convent, it is only in human nature, having got 
 an inch, to ask for an ell, and you and I, sweet love, are of 
 those who would have all. 
 
 I watched Louis out of the corner of my eye, and put it 
 to myself, "Has suffering had a softening or a hardening 
 effect on him?" By dint of close study, I arrived at the 
 conclusion that his love amounted to a passion. Once 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 1 discreetly sounded his feel- 
 ings. 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 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 21
 
 482 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 mis- 
 fortune, he looked on himself as a sort of wreck, and three 
 fears in especial haunted hirn. 
 
 First, we are aged respectively thirty-seven and seven- 
 teen; and he could not contemplate without quaking the 
 twenty years that divide us. In the next place, he shares 
 our views on the subject of my beauty, and it is cruel for 
 him to see how the hardships of his life have robbed him of 
 youth. Finally, he felt the superiority of my womanhood 
 over his manhood. The consciousness of these three obvi- 
 ous drawbacks made him distrustful of himself; he doubted 
 his power to make me happy, and guessed that he had been 
 chosen as the lesser of two evils. 
 
 One evening he tentatively suggested that I only married 
 him to escape the convent. 
 
 "I cannot deny it," was my grave reply. 
 
 My dear, it touched me to the heart to see the two great 
 tears which stood in his eyes. Never before had I experi- 
 enced the shock of emotion which a man can impart to us. 
 
 "Louis," I went on, as kindly as I could, "it rests en- 
 tirely 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 under- 
 stand it? 
 
 "Life gives us but one friend, and I wish to be yours. 
 Friendship is the bond between a pair of kindred souls, 
 united in their strength, and yet independent. Let us be 
 friends and comrades to bear jointly the burden of life. 
 Leave me absolutely free. I would put no hindrance in 
 the way of your inspiring me with a love similar to your 
 own; but I am determined to be yours only of my own free
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 483 
 
 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 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 be sorry to get 
 that reputation; 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 
 remained indifferent to you (yielding only a passive obedi- 
 ence, such as my mother has just been urging on me) a child 
 were born to us, do you suppose that I could feel toward it 
 as I would toward one born of our common love ? A pas- 
 sionate love may not be necessary in marriage, but, at least, 
 you will admit- that there should be no repugnance. Our 
 position will not be without its dangers; in a country life, 
 such as ours will be, ought we not to bear in mind the 
 evanescent nature of passion? Is it not simple prudence 
 to make provision beforehand against the calamities incident 
 to change of feeling?" 
 
 He was greatly astonished to find me at once so reason- 
 able and so apt at reasoning; but he made me a solemn prom- 
 ise, 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 gayly into the petty de-
 
 484 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 tails 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- 
 peared to me clearly as in a vision, and I was sincerely anx- 
 ious to make the happiness of the man I married. Now, in 
 the solitude of a life like ours, marriage soon becomes intol- 
 erable unless the woman is the presiding spirit. A woman 
 in such a case needs the charm of a mistress, combined with 
 the solid qualities of a wife. To introduce an element of 
 uncertainty into pleasure is to prolong illusion, and render 
 lasting those selfish 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 sov- 
 ereign, and invest her with an exhaustless power, a redun- 
 dancy 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. 
 
 Bat, 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 described, 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 toward 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 485 
 
 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 mar- 
 riage. 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 supposed. In spite 
 of my coldness, Louis grew bolder, and his nature ex- 
 panded. I saw on his face a new expression, a look of 
 youth. The greater refinement which I introduced into the 
 house was reflected in his person. Insensibly I became ac- 
 customed 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 hus- 
 band," to quote your words, disappeared, and one balmy 
 evening I discovered in his stead a lover, whose words 
 thrilled me and on whose arm I leaned with pleasure be- 
 yond words. In short, to be open with you, as I would be 
 with God, before whom concealment is impossible, the per- 
 fect 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 capitu- 
 lation are soon found. 
 
 We celebrated our union in secret, and secret it must 
 remain between us. When you are married you will ap- 
 prove this reserve. Enough that nothing was lacking either 
 of satisfaction for the most fastidious sentiment, or of that 
 unexpectedness which brings, in a sense, its own sanction. 
 Every witchery of imagination, of 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 rea- 
 sons 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
 
 486 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 concealing their feelings about marringe and the way they 
 look at it. 
 
 My one joy, and it is supreme, springs from the cer- 
 tainty of having brought new life to my husband before I 
 have borne him any children. Louis has regained his 
 youth, strength, and spirits. He is not the same man. 
 With magic touch I have effaced the very memory of his 
 sufferings. It is a complete metamorphosis. Louis is 
 really very attractive now. Feeling sure of my affection, 
 he throws off his reserve and displays unsuspected gifts. 
 
 To be the unceasing spring of happiness for a man who 
 knows it and adds gratitude to love, ah ! dear one, this is a 
 conviction which fortifies the soul, even more than the most 
 passionate love can do. The force thus developed at once 
 impetuous and enduring, simple and diversified brings forth 
 ultimately the family, that noble product of womanhood, 
 which I 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 ap- 
 ply all my intellect (I am speaking quite seriously) to man- 
 aging 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 get- 
 ting 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 depart- 
 ment, through the influence of my family and his mother's.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 487 
 
 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 practice economies, because I wished him to de- 
 vote 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. 
 
 To conclude, here is a letter he wrote me yesterday from 
 Marseilles, where he had gone to spend a few hours: 
 
 "MY SWEET BENEE When you gave me permission to 
 love you, I began to believe in happiness ; now, I see it un- 
 folding endlessly before me. The past is merely a dim mem- 
 ory, 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 su- 
 premely beautiful, Kene'e, and your beauty is of the stat- 
 uesque and regal type, on which time leaves but little 
 impression. No doubt the love of husband and wife de- 
 pends less on outward beauty than on grace 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 common 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
 
 488 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 from all pettiness. You do not need to be told all this; 
 but I write it because I would have you know that 1 ap- 
 preciate the treasure I possess. Your favors to me, how- 
 ever 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 re- 
 ward you place on victory. You cannot speak, breathe, act, 
 or think, without adding to the admiration I feel for your 
 charm both of body and mind. There is in you a rare 
 combination of the ideal, the practical, and the bewitching 
 which satisfies alike judgment, a husband's pride, desire, 
 and hope, and which extends the boundaries of love be- 
 yond 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 glori- 
 fied all that surrounds me! 1 long for the day which shall 
 make you a mother, that I may see you content with the 
 fulness of your life, may hear you, in the sweet voice I 
 love and with the words that so marvellously express your 
 subtle and original thoughts, bless the love which has re- 
 freshed 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 mu- 
 tual knowledge, have solved the problem of giving variety
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 489 
 
 to the infinite. This is tlie 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 ex- 
 ternal attraction which gives us strength to put up with a 
 good deal. Yet Louis is lovable; his temper is wonder- 
 fully even, and he performs, as a matter of course, acts on 
 which most men would plume themselves. In short, if I 
 do not love him, I shall find no difficulty in being good 
 to him. 
 
 So here are my black hair and my black eyes whose 
 lashes act, according to you, like Venetian blinds my 
 commanding air, and my whole person, raised to the rank 
 of sovereign power! Ten years hence, dear, why should 
 we not both be laughing and gay in your Paris, whence I 
 shall carry you off now and again to my beautiful oasis in 
 Provence ? 
 
 Oh! Louise, don't spoil the splendid future which awaits 
 us both! Don't do the mad things with which you threaten 
 me. My husband is a young man, prematurely old; why 
 don't you marry some young-hearted graybeard in the 
 Chamber of Peers? There lies your vocation. 
 
 MADRID. 
 
 7i /T Y DEAR BROTHER Yon did not make me Due 
 
 /y/ de Soria in order that my actions should belie the 
 
 name. How could I tolerate my happiness if I 
 
 knew you to be a wanderer, deprived of the comforts 
 
 which wealth everywhere commands ? Neither Marie nor 
 
 I will consent to marry till we hear that you have accepted
 
 490 BALZACTS WORKS 
 
 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 happi- 
 ness. My dear brother, it cannot be that these prayers 
 will remain unanswered. Heaven will send you the love 
 which you seek, to be the consolation of your exile. Marie 
 read your letter with tears, and is full of admiration for you. 
 As for me, I consent, not for my own sake, but for that of 
 the family. The King justified your expectations. Oh! 
 that I might avenge you by letting him see himself, 
 dwarfed before the scorn with which you flung him his 
 toy, as you might toss a tiger its food. 
 
 The only thing I have taken for myself, dear brother, 
 is my happiness. I have taken Marie. For this I shall 
 always be beholden to you, as the creature to the Creator. 
 There will be in my life and in Marie's one day not less 
 glorious than our wedding day it will be the day when 
 we hear that your heart has found its mate, that a woman 
 loves you as you ought to be, and would be, loved. Do 
 not forget that if you live for us, we also live for you. 
 
 You can write to us with perfect confidence under cover 
 to the Nuncio, sending your letters via Rome. The French 
 ambassador at Rome will, no doubt, undertake to forward 
 them to Monsignor Bemboni, at the State Secretary's office, 
 whom our legate will have advised. No other way would 
 be safe. Farewell, dear exile, dear despoiled one. Be 
 proud at least of the happiness which you have brought 
 to us, if you cannot be happy in it. God will doubtless 
 hear our prayers, which are full of your name.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 491 
 
 XV 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 March. 
 
 /jlH 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 sub- 
 terranean labors ? 
 
 Alas! is this then the outcome for you of our too-in- 
 structed 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 an- 
 gelic of created beings, I declare I should say that your cal- 
 culations 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 
 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 de- 
 tect now and again the owl of wisdom squatting in your 
 bower of roses a ghastly phantom sufficient to put to flight 
 the most promising of passions. You make your own fate, 
 instead of waiting, a plaything in its hands. 
 
 We are each developing in strange ways. A large dose 
 of philosophy to a grain of love is your recipe; a large 
 dose of love to a grain of philosophy is mine. Why, 
 Rousseau's Julie, whom I thought so learned, is a mere 
 beginner to you. Woman's virtue, quotha! How you
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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, judg- 
 ing 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 
 virtues, conformed to the divine likeness. Like all other 
 first principles, it is not a matter of arithmetic; it is the 
 Infinite in us. I cannot but think you have been trying 
 to justify in your own eyes the frightful position of a girl, 
 married to a man for whom she feels nothing more than 
 esteem. You prate of duty, and make it your rule and 
 measure; but surely to take necessity as the spring of ac- 
 tion 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 
 train of thought. I see now that the convent can never take 
 the place of mother to a girl. I beg of you, my grand angel 
 with the black eyes, so pure and proud, so serious and so 
 pretty, do not turn away from these cries, which the first 
 reading of your letter has torn from me! I have taken 
 comfort in the thought that, while I was lamenting, 
 love was doubtless busy knocking down the scaffolding of 
 reason. 
 
 It may be that I shall do worse than you without any 
 reasoning or calculations. Passion is an element in life 
 bound to have a logic not less pitiless than yours.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 493 
 
 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 Span- 
 iard, 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 with- 
 draw into the room, my feet and hands quite limp and nerve- 
 less; but, beneath the fear, 1 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, Rene'e! 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- 
 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 one's self 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.
 
 494 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 among the ancient manuscripts 
 at Naples. It felt red-hot to my fingers. "What a horrible 
 power this man has over me!" I said to myself. 
 
 All at once I held out the paper to the candle I would 
 burn it without reading a word. Then a thought stayed me, 
 "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 
 passages. This I learned from the chief secretary of the Span- 
 ish 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 Here'dia, 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 495 
 
 "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 cas- 
 tles ? " I said, trying to carry it oft as a joke. 
 
 "There is everything in Spain, even Spaniards of the old 
 school," my mother replied. 
 
 "The Baron de Macurner 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 burned his 
 letter. In what terms would a man like that express his 
 love? For he does love me. To be loved, adored in secret; 
 to know that in this house, where all the great men of Paris 
 were collected, there was one entirely devoted to me, un- 
 known to everybody! Ah! Renee, now I understand the 
 life of Paris, its balls, and its gayeties. It all flashed on me 
 in the true light. When we love, we must have society, 
 were it only to sacrifice it to our love. I felt a different 
 creature and such a happy one! My vanity, pride, self-love 
 all were flattered. Heaven knows what glances I cast upon 
 the audience ! 
 
 "Little rogue!" the Duchess whispered in my ear with a 
 smile. . 
 
 Yes, Renee, my wily mother had deciphered the hidden
 
 496 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 joy in my bearing, and I could only haul down my flag be- 
 fore 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 pol- 
 troon would turn hero! What I had learned about my Span- 
 iard drove rne 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 burned 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 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 yourself alone, without a thought beyond, a love that 
 far more than fulfils the conditions laid down by you for an 
 ideal passion. 
 
 "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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 deem it an honor to execute them. I have given myself 
 to you absolutely and for the mere joy of giving, for a single 
 glance of your eye, for a touch of the hand which one day 
 you offered to your Spanish master. I am but your servitor, 
 Louise; I claim no more. 
 
 "No, I dare not think that I could ever be loved; but 
 perchance my devotion may win for me toleration. Since 
 that morning when you smiled upon me with generous girlish 
 impulse, divining the misery of my 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 protection in every difficulty, a friend, a brother. The 
 secret of your isolation is no secret to me! If I am bold, it 
 is because I long that you should know how much is yours. 
 
 "Take all, Louise, and in so doing bestow on me the one 
 life possible for me in this world the life of devotion. In 
 placing the yoke on my neck, you run no risk; I ask noth- 
 ing 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
 
 498 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 
 emblem of a man's blood at the service of the purity he 
 
 worships that will be my answer. I ask no more; thence- 
 forth, at any moment, ten years hence or to-morrow, what- 
 ever you demand shall be done, so far as it is possible for 
 man to do it, by your happy servant, 
 
 "FELIPE HEXAREZ. 
 
 P.S. You must admit, dear, that great lords know how 
 to love ! See the spring of the African lion ! What restrained 
 fire! What loyalty! What sincerity! How high a soul in 
 low estate ! I felt quite small and dazed as I said to myself, 
 "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 He"narez 
 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, with- 
 out the ghost of an opening for a middle course. No fencing 
 allowed! This is no longer Paris; we are in the heart of 
 Spain or the far East. It is the voice of Abencerrage, and 
 it is the cimetar, the horse, and the head of Abencerrage 
 which he offers, prostrate before a Catholic Eve! Shall I 
 accept this last descendant of the Moors? Read again and 
 again his Hispano-Saracenic letter, Rene'e dear, and you will 
 see how love makes a clean sweep of all the Judaic bargains 
 of your philosophy. 
 
 Renee, your letter lies heavy on my heart; you have 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 499 
 
 in his lair of the Kue 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 their very essence: two flowers, 
 and the question 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. 
 
 /AM DRESSED in white white camellias in my hair, 
 and another in my hand. My mother has red camel- 
 lias; so it would not be impossible to take one from 
 her if I wished! I have a strange longing to put off the 
 decision to the last moment, and make him pay for his red 
 camellia by a little suspense. 
 
 What a vision of beauty ! Griffith begged me to stop for 
 a little and be admired. The solemn crisis of the evening 
 and the drama of my secret reply have given me a 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.
 
 500 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 The Opera was "Borneo 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 outpour- 
 ing 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 casuis- 
 try of the heroines in "Cyrus" and "Astraea, " by all the 
 subtle arguments of the court of love. 
 
 Has lie 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 toward morning did 1 sleep a little. It is midday 
 now. I have just got Griffith to write the following letter: 
 
 "To the Baron de Macumer 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Chaulieu begs me, Monsieur le Baron, 
 to ask you to return to her the copy of a letter written to her 
 by a friend, which is in her own handwriting, and which you 
 carried away. Believe me, etc., GRIFFITH." 
 
 My dear, Griffith has gone out ; she has gone to the Rue 
 Hillerin-Bertin ; she has handed in this little love-letter for 
 my slave, who returned to me in an envelope my ideal por- 
 trait, stained with tears. He has obeyed. Oh ! my sweet, 
 it must have been dear to him ! Another man would have
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 501 
 
 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 2d. 
 
 rESTERDA Y the weather was splendid. I dressed 
 myself like a girl who wants to look her best in 
 her sweetheart's eyes. My father, yielding to my 
 entreaties, has given me the prettiest turnout in Paris two 
 dapple-gray horses and a barouche which is a masterpiece 
 of elegance. I was making a first trial of this, and peeped 
 out like a flower from under my sunshade lined with white 
 silk. 
 
 As I drove up the avenue of the Champs-Elysees, I saw 
 my Abencerrage approaching on an extraordinarily beauti- 
 ful 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, slack- 
 ened his horse's pace so that I was able to say to him: "You 
 are not vexed with me for asking for iny letter; it was no use 
 to you." Then in a lower voice, "You have already tran- 
 scended the ideal. . . . Your horse makes you an object of 
 general interest," I went on aloud. 
 
 "My steward in Sardinia sent it to me. He is very proud 
 of it; for this horse, which is of Arab bJood, 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' Angoule'me 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
 
 502 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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, Renee, and he 
 wears my livery, and always a red camellia in his button- 
 hole, 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 influ- 
 ence. Oh! my poor friend, forgive me. I forgot our 1'Es- 
 torade. But didn't you tell me you were going to make a 
 genius of him ? 1 know what that means. You will dry 
 nurse him till some day he is able to understand you. 
 
 Good-by. I am a little off my head, and must stop. 
 
 XVIII 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 
 
 April. 
 
 ANGEL or ought I not rather to say my imp 
 f 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 one's self. 
 
 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 503 
 
 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 relent- 
 less formula, which admits of no exceptions, they have ren- 
 dered 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 regu- 
 lating a household in town, where frequent distractions give 
 variety to life. Or conversely, married life in Paris, where 
 existence is one perpetual whirl, must demand different treat- 
 ment from the more peaceful home in the provinces. 
 
 But if place alters the conditions of marriage, much more 
 does character. The wife of a man born to be a leader need 
 only resign herself to his guidance; whereas the wife of a 
 fool, conscious of superior power, is bound to take the reins 
 in her own hand if she would avert calamity. 
 
 You speak of vice; and it is possible that, after all, rea- 
 son 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 will say, "Yes! dissimulation is the necessary armor 
 of a woman, if by dissimulation be meant courage to bear in 
 silence, prudence to foresee the future." 
 
 Every married woman learns to her cost the existence of 
 certain social laws, which, in many respects, conflict with 
 the laws of nature. Marrying at our age, it would be possi- 
 ble to have a dozen children. What is this but another name 
 for a dozen crimes, a dozen misfortunes ? It would be hand- 
 ing 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
 
 604 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 the code are in hostility, and we are the battleground. 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 bear- 
 ings 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 hap- 
 piness alight in the heart of our homes. Far better is the 
 calculation which succeeds in this than the reckless passion 
 which introduces trouble, heart-burnings, and dissension. 
 
 I have reflected painfully on the duties of a wife and 
 mother of a family. Yes, sweet one, it is only by a sublime 
 hypocrisy that we can attain the noblest ideal of a perfect 
 woman. You tax me with insincerity because I dole out to 
 Louis, from day to day, the measure of his intimacy with 
 me; but is it not too close an intimacy which provokes 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 
 affection 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 505 
 
 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 mys- 
 tifying you. You will tell me then that I was quite mistaken, 
 and that M. de TBstorade 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 
 lasting and mysterious happiness! I believed myself to 
 have found out how to adapt the charm of a mistress 
 to the position of a wife, and you ha\*e almost made me 
 blush for my device. Who shall say which of us is right, 
 which wrong ? Perhaps we are both right and both wrong. 
 Perhaps this is the heavy price which society exacts for our 
 furbelows, our titles, and our children. 
 
 I too have my red camellias, but they bloom on my lips 
 in smiles for my double charge the father and the son 
 whose slave and mistress I am. But, my dear, your last 
 letters made me feel what I have lostl You have taught 
 me all a woman sacrifices in marrying. One single glance 
 did I take at those beautiful wild plateaus where you range 
 at your sweet will, and I will not tell you the tears that fell 
 as I read. But regret is not remorse, though it may be first 
 cousin to it. 
 
 You say, "Marriage has made you a philosopher!" 
 Alas! bitterly did I feel how far this was 'from the truth, 
 as I wept to think of you swept away on love's torrent. 
 But my father has made me read one of the profoundest 
 thinkers of these parts, the man on whom the mantle of 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 22
 
 506 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Bossuet lias 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 CHATJLIEU TO MME. DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 ELL, MY REN&E, you are a love of a woman, 
 and I quite agree now that we can only be vir- 
 tuous by cheating. Will that satisfy you ? 
 Moreover, the man who loves us is our property; we can 
 make a fool or a genius of him as we please; only, between 
 ourselves, the former happens more commonly. You will 
 make yours a genius, and you won't tell the secret there 
 are two heroic actions, if you will! 
 
 Ah! if there were no future life, how nicely you would 
 be sold, for this is martyrdom into which you are plunging 
 of your own accord. You want to make him ambitious 
 and to keep him in love! Child that you are, surely the 
 last alone is sufficient. 
 
 Tell me, to what point is calculation a virtue, or virtue 
 calculation? You won't say? Well, we won't quarrel 
 over that, since we have Bonald to refer to. We are, and 
 intend to remain, virtuous; nevertheless at this moment I 
 believe that you, with all your pretty little knavery, are a 
 better woman than I am. 
 
 Yes, I am shockingly deceitful. I love Felipe, and I 
 conceal it from him with an odious hypocrisy. I long to 
 see him leap from his tree to the top of the wall, and from 
 the wall to my balcony and if he did, how I should wither 
 him with my scorn ! You see, I am frank enough with you.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 507 
 
 What restrains rne ? 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 overflowing? 
 
 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 pic- 
 ture, what will it be when you know the real me?" 
 
 Oh! Ren^e, you burn my letters, don't you? I will 
 burn yours. If other eyes than ours were to read these 
 thoughts which pass from heart to heart, I should send 
 Felipe to put them out, and perhaps to kill the owners, 
 by way of additional security. 
 
 Monday. 
 
 OH! Rene*e, how is it possible to fathom the heart of 
 man ? My father ought to introduce me to M. Bonald, 
 since he is so learned; I would ask him. I envy the 
 privilege of God, who can read the under-currents of the 
 heart. 
 
 Does he still worship ? That is the whole question. 
 
 If ever, in gesture, glance, or tone, I were to detect the 
 slightest falling off in the respect he used to show me in
 
 508 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Fe'lipe, your single-hearted devotion is met by a 
 blind confidence. Time will show whether this is not to 
 treat a man as more than human." 
 
 It was a big reward. It looked like a promise and 
 dreadful to say a challenge; but which will seem to you 
 still more dreadful I quite intended that it should suggest 
 both these things, without going so far as actually to com- 
 mit me. If in his reply there is "Dear Louise!" or even 
 "Louise," he is done for! 
 
 Tuesday. 
 
 No, HE is not done for. The constitutional minister is 
 perfect as a lover. Here is his letter: 
 
 "Every moment passed away from your sight has been 
 filled by me with ideal pictures of you, my eyes closed to 
 the outside world and fixed in meditation on your image, 
 which used to obey the summons too slowly in that dim 
 palace of dreams, glorified by your presence. Henceforth 
 my gaze will rest upon this wondrous ivory this talisman, 
 might I not say? since your blue eyes sparkle with life as 
 I look, and paint passes into flesh and blood. If I have 
 delayed writing, it is because I could not tear myself av r ay 
 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 509 
 
 complete, 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 speak- 
 ing of it; for one glance from your eyes, robbed of the 
 tender sweetness which is my life, would be full of torture 
 for me, and I implore your clemency therefore in advance. 
 Queen of my life and of my soul, oh ! that you could grant 
 me but one-thousandth part of the love I bear you! 
 
 "This was the burden of my prayer; doubt worked havoc 
 in my soul as I oscillated between belief and despair, between 
 life and death, darkness and light. A criminal whose verdict 
 hangs in the balance is not more racked with suspense than I, 
 as I own to my temerity. The smile imaged on your lips, to 
 which my eyes turned ever and again, was alone able to calm 
 the storm roused by the dread of displeasing you. From my 
 birth no one, not even my mother, has smiled on me. The 
 beautiful young girl who was designed for me rejected my 
 heart and gave hers to my brother. Again, in politics all 
 my efforts have been defeated. In the eyes of my king I 
 have read only thirst for vengeance; from -childhood he has 
 been my enemy, and the vote of the Cortes which placed me 
 in power was regarded by him as a personal insult. 
 
 "Less than this might breed despondency in the stout- 
 est heart. Besides, I have no illusion; I know the grace- 
 lessness 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 pierce the gloom, like the light of 
 dawn, again to be obscured by rising mists of doubt and 
 fear of your displeasure, if the morning should break to- 
 day. No, it is impossible you should love me yet I feel 
 itj but in time, as you make proof of the strength, the
 
 510 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 constancy, and depth of my affection, you may yield me 
 some foothold in your heart. If my daring offends you, 
 tell me so without anger, and I will return to my former 
 part. But if you consent to try and love me, be merciful 
 and break it gently to one who has placed the happiness 
 of his life in the single thought of serving you." 
 
 My dear, as I read these last words, he seemed to rise 
 before me, pale as the night when the camellias told their 
 story and he knew his offering was accepted. These words, 
 in their humility, were clearly something quite different 
 from the usual flowery rhetoric of lovers, and a wave of 
 feeling broke over me; it was the breath of happiness. 
 
 The weather has been atrocious; impossible to go to 
 the Bois without exciting all sorts of suspicions. Even 
 my mother, who often goes out, regardless of ram, re- 
 mains 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 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 511 
 
 love as Felipe's surely makes him worthy of mine. I am the 
 very breath of his life, my hands hold the thread that guides 
 his thoughts. To be quite frank, I have a mad longing to 
 see him clear every obstacle and stand before me, asking 
 boldly for my hand. Then I should know whether this storm 
 of love would sink to placid cairn at a glance from me. 
 
 Ah ! my dear, I stopped here, and I am still all in a trem- 
 ble. As 1 wrote, I heard a slight noise outside, and rose to 
 see what it was. From my window I could see him coming 
 along the ridge of the wall at the risk of his life. I went to 
 the bedroom window and made him a sign, it was enough; 
 he 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 
 moment when he must have been stunned by his fall, moved 
 me so much that I am still crying; I don't know why. Poor 
 ungainly man ! what was he coming for ? what had he to say 
 to me ? 
 
 I dare not write my thoughts, and shall go to bed joyful, 
 thinking of all that we would say if we were together. Fare- 
 well, fair silent one. I have not time to scold you for not 
 writing, but it is more than a month since I have heard from 
 you! Does this mean that you are at last happy? Have 
 you lost the "complete independence" which you were so 
 proud of, and which to-night has so nearly played me false? 
 
 XX 
 
 RENEE DE I/ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 
 
 May. 
 
 /F LOVE BE the life of the world, why do austere phi- 
 losophers 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
 
 512 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 it that men were armed with new-found powers against us. 
 But for these, we should have been able to bring their whole 
 theory to nothing, whether by the force of love or of a secret, 
 persistent aversion. 
 
 I see in marriage, as it at present exists, two opposing 
 forces which it was the task of the lawgiver to reconcile. 
 "When will they be reconciled?" I said to myself, as I read 
 your letter. Oh! my dear, one such letter alone is enough 
 to overthrow the whole fabric constructed by the sage of 
 Aveyron, under whose shelter I had so cheerfully ensconced 
 myself! The laws were made by old men any woman can 
 see that and they have been prudent enough to decree that 
 conjugal love, apart from passion, is not degrading, and that 
 a woman in yielding herself may dispense with the sanction 
 of love, provided the man can legally call her his. In their 
 exclusive concern for the family they have imitated Nature, 
 whose one care is to propagate the species. 
 
 Formerly I was a person, now I am a chattel. Not a few 
 tears have I gulped down, alone and far from every one. 
 How gladly would I have exchanged them for a consoling 
 smile! Why are our destinies so unequal? Your soul ex- 
 pands 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. 
 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 mettle. 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 513 
 
 Alone of the two friends, you remain in your maiden 
 independence; and I beseech you, dearest, do not risk the 
 irrevocable step of marriage without some guarantee. It hap- 
 pens sometimes, when two are talking together, apart from 
 the world, their souls stripped of social disguise, that a ges- 
 ture, 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 
 believe 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 
 the family as the only possible unit in society, and in placing 
 woman in subjection to the family, as she has been in all 
 ages. The solution of this great for us almost awful 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's temper remains as perfect as ever; his love is of 
 the active, my tenderness of the passive, type. He is happy, 
 plucking the flowers which bloom for him, without troubling 
 about 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.
 
 514 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 The intensity of his joy blinds him, and even throws its 
 reflection upon me. The smile or look of satisfaction which 
 the knowledge of his content brings to my face is enough to 
 satisfy him. And so, "my child" is the pet name which I 
 give him when we are alone. 
 
 And I wait for the fruit of all these sacrifices which 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 RENEE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 June. 
 
 AR WEDDED SWEETHEART Your letter has 
 arrived at the very moment to hearten me for a bold 
 step which I have been meditating night and day. 
 I feel within me a strange craving for the unknown, or, if 
 you will, the forbidden, which makes me uneasy and reveals 
 a conflict in progress in my soul between the laws of society 
 and of nature. I cannot tell whether nature in me is the 
 stronger of the two, but I surprise myself in the act of me- 
 diating 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 com-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 515 
 
 ports 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 reduced 
 by dreaming of this idea, and the time I have given to plan- 
 ning its execution. I wanted you badly. What happy hours 
 we should have chattered away, lost in the mazes of uncer- 
 tainty, enjoying in anticipation all the delights and horrors 
 of a first meeting in the silence of night, under the noble 
 lime-trees of the Chaulieu mansion, with the moonlight 
 dancing through the leaves! As I sat alone, every nerve 
 tingling, I cried, "Oh! Rene*e, where are you?" Then 
 your letter came, like a match to gunpowder, and my last 
 scruples went by the board. 
 
 Through the window I tossed to my bewildered adorer an 
 exact tracing of the key of the little gate at the end of the 
 garden, together with this note: 
 
 "Your madness must really be put a stop to. If you 
 broke your neck, you would ruin the reputation of the woman 
 you profess to love. Are you worthy of a new proof of re- 
 gard, 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 Een^e, what 
 an awful moment when, after a little pause full of delicious
 
 516 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 beside 
 himself by the noise, slight as it was, of our dresses in the 
 silence of the night and of our steps upon the gravel. 
 
 "I want to say to you what I could not write," I replied. 
 
 Griffith withdrew a few steps. It was one of those mild 
 nights when the air is heavy with the scent of flowers. My 
 head swam with the intoxicating delight of finding myself 
 all but alone with him in the friendly shade of the lime-trees, 
 beyond which lay the garden, shining all the more brightly 
 because the white facade of the house reflected the moon- 
 light. The contrast seemed, as it were, an emblem of our 
 clandestine love leading up to the glaring publicity of a wed- 
 ding. Neither of us could do more at first than drink in 
 silently the ecstasy of a moment, as new and marvellous for 
 him as for me. At last I found tongue to say, pointing to 
 the elm-tree: 
 
 "Although I am not afraid of scandal, you shall not climb 
 that tree again. We have long enough played schoolboy and 
 schoolgirl, let us rise now to the height of our destiny. Had 
 the fall killed you, I should have died disgraced ..." 
 
 I looked at him. Every scrap of 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 517 
 
 "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 rne a fool; and, indeed, the delirium 
 of my joy has robbed me of both nerve and wits. Bat 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 1 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 ou my lips. "Don't let your hopes carry you 
 beyond what I say. My heart will belong only to the man 
 who can read it and know its every turn. Our views, 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 
 answered." 
 
 "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
 
 518 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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. "/Sb /a/ 1 ," with 
 a cruel emphasis on the words, "you stand first in my regard. 
 Otherwise you would not be here." 
 
 Then we began again to walk up and down as we talked, 
 and I must say that so soon as my Spaniard had recovered 
 himself he put forth the genuine eloquence of the heart. It 
 was not passion it breathed, but a marvellous tenderness of 
 feeling, which he beautifully compared to the divine love. 
 His thrilling voice, which lent an added charm to thoughts, 
 in themselves so exquisite, reminded me of the nightingale's 
 note. He spoke low, using only the middle tones of a fine 
 instrument, and words flowed upon words with the rush of 
 a torrent. It was the overflow of the heart. 
 
 "No more," I said, "or I shall not be able to tear myself 
 away. ' ' 
 
 And with a gesture I dismissed him. 
 
 "You have committed yourself now, mademoiselle," said 
 Griffith. 
 
 "In England that might be so, but not in France," I 
 replied with nonchalance. "I intend to make a love match, 
 and am feeling my way that is all." 
 
 You see, dear, as love did not come to me, I had to do 
 as Mahomet did with the mountain. 
 
 Friday. 
 
 ONCE more I have seen my slave. He has become very 
 timid, and puts on an air of pious devotion, which I like, 
 for it seems to say that he feels my power and fascination in 
 every fibre. But nothing in his look or 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, master- 
 ing, and carrying away are on my side. . . . 
 
 In short, I am quite capable of reason. Oh I to feel again
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 519 
 
 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 com- 
 mands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, 
 and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the pas- 
 sion 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 in- 
 spire 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 ob- 
 stacles! What a terrible thought! It is all ebb-tide within, 
 and I fear to question my heart. His mistake was in con- 
 cealing 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- 
 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 bef urbelowed Professor, 
 how can one reconcile the two goals of a woman's existence ?
 
 520 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 XXII 
 LOUISE TO FELIPE 
 
 /AM NOT pleased with you. If you did not cry over 
 Eacine's "Berenice," and feel it to be the most ter- 
 rible of tragedies, there is no kinship in our souls; 
 we shall never get on together, and had better break off 
 at once. Let us meet no more. Forget me; 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 Mine. d'Espard's you had a self -satisfied 
 air which disgusted me. No doubt, apparently, about 
 your conquest! In sober earnest, your self-possession 
 alarms me. Not a trace in you of the humble slave of 
 your first letter. Far from betraying the absent-minded- 
 ness of a lover, you polished epigrams! This is not the 
 attitude of a true believer, always prostrate before his 
 divinity. 
 
 If you do not feel me to be the very breath 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. 
 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 burned. Let me repeat 
 to you, then, what my youthful experience taught me. 
 
 In all other matters, duplicity, faithlessness, and broken 
 pledges are brought to book and punished ; but not so with 
 love, which is at once the victim, the accuser, the counsel, 
 judge, and executioner. The cruellest treachery, the most 
 heartless crimes, are those which remain forever concealed,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 with two hearts alone for witness. How indeed should the 
 victim proclaim them without injury to herself? Love, 
 therefore, has its own code, its own penal system, with 
 which the world has no concern. 
 
 Now, for my part, I have resolved never to pardon a 
 serious misdemeanor, and in love, pray, what is not seri- 
 ous ? 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 se- 
 verely. I would have you neither bashful nor self-com- 
 placent; 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, 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.
 
 622 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 clever- 
 ness ? Keep for me the flowers of your wit. Show to others 
 no fine surface to call forth flattery, compliments, or praise. 
 Come to me, laden with hatred or scorn, the butt of calumny, 
 come to me with the news that women flout you and ignore 
 you, and not one loves you; then, ah! then you will know 
 the treasures of Louise's heart and love. 
 
 We are only rich when our wealth is buried so deep that 
 all the world might trample it underfoot, unknowing. If 
 you were handsome, I don't suppose I should have looked 
 at you twice, or discovered one of the thousand reasons out 
 of which my love sprang. True, we know no more of these 
 reasons than we know why it is the sun makes the flowers 
 to bloom, and ripens the fruit. Yet I could tell you of one 
 reason very dear to me. 
 
 The character, expression, and individuality that ennoble 
 your face are a sealed book to all but me. Mine is the power 
 which transforms you into the most 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 523 
 
 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 
 cheerfulness was redolent of your love. Had it not been for 
 a restraining glance from me, you would have proclaimed 
 to the most sharp-sighted, keen-witted, and unsparing of 
 Paris salons that your inspiration was drawn from Armande- 
 Lomse-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. Suite of this first fault, you are still deeply admired by 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 FELIPE TO LOUISE 
 
 ~W ~TT ~f 'HEN 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 explained the cause 
 of your trouble, I find in it fresh motive to adore you. 
 Like the God of Israel, you are a jealous deity, and I re- 
 joice to see it. For what is holier and more precious than 
 jealousy ? My fair guardian angel, jealousy is an ever- 
 wakeful sentinel; it is to love what pain is to the body, 
 the faithful herald of evil. Be jealous of your servant, 
 Louise, I beg of you; the harder you strike, the more 
 contrite will he be and kiss the rod, in all submission, 
 which proves that he is not indifferent to you. 
 
 But, alas! dear, if the pains it cost me to vanquish my 
 timidity and master feelings you thought so feeble were 
 invisible to you, will Heaven, think you, reward them? 
 I assure you, it needed no slight effort to show myself to
 
 524 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 you as I was in the days before I loved. At Madrid I 
 was considered a good talker, and I wanted you to see for 
 yourself the few gifts I may possess. If this were vanity, 
 it has been well punished. 
 
 Your last glance utterly unnerved me. Never had I so 
 quailed, even when the army of France was at the gates 
 of Cadiz and I read peril for my life in the dissembling 
 words of my royal master. Vainly I tried to discover the 
 cause of your displeasure, and the lack of sympathy be- 
 tween 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 chastisement, what can be 
 the sweetness of your rewards? 
 
 Louise, for me it was happiness enough to be accepted 
 as your servant. You have given me the life of which I 
 despaired. No longer do I draw a useless breath, I have 
 something to spend myself for; my force has an outlet, if 
 only in suffering for you. Once more I say, as I have 
 said before, that you will never find me other than I was 
 when first I offered myself as your lowly bondman. Yes, 
 were you 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 stanch your 
 wounds, and my prayers should importune God with the 
 story of your innocence and your wrongs.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 525 
 
 Did I not tell you that the feelings of my "heart for you 
 are not a lover's only, that I will be to you father, mother, 
 sister, brother ay, a whole family anything or nothing, 
 as you may decree ? And is it not your own wish which 
 has confined within the compass of a lover's feeling so 
 many varying forms of devotion ? Pardon me, then, if at 
 times the father and brother disappear behind the lover, 
 since you know they are none the less there, though 
 screened from view. Would that you could read the 
 feelings of my heart when you appear before me, radi- 
 ant in your beauty, the centre of admiring eyes, reclin- 
 ing calmly in your carriage in the Champs Elyse'es, 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, I 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 
 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 fea- 
 ture and tracing its connection with some grace of the
 
 526 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 spirit, and th*en I pen a sonnet to you in Spanish on the 
 harmony of the twofold beauty in which nature has clothed 
 you. These sonnets you will never see, for my poetry is 
 too unworthy of its theme, I dare not send it to you. Not 
 a moment passes without thoughts of you, for my whole 
 being is bound up in you, and if you ceased to be its ani- 
 mating principle, every part would ache. 
 
 Now, Louise, can you realize the torture to me of know- 
 ing 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 forever 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 remain 
 your slave, FELIPE. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 October, 1825. 
 
 71 STY DEAR FBIEX&E.OW is it possible that you, 
 
 /\/i wno 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 ?
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 527 
 
 I had reserved for Felipe one last supreme test which was 
 to be decisive. I wanted to know whether his love was the 
 love of a Royalist for his King, who can do no wrong. Why 
 should the loyalty of a Catholic be less supreme? 
 
 He walked with me a whole night under the limes at the 
 bottom of the garden, and not a shadow of suspicion crossed 
 his soul, Next day he loved me better, but the feeling was 
 as reverent, as humble, as respectful 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 bal- 
 cony. 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 
 marrying your dear Armande to the nephew of an ambassa- 
 dor 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 
 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
 
 528 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 my right hand ungloved, you will give the lie to this imper- 
 tinent 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 seeing 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 re- 
 plied, 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. 
 
 Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de Man- 
 frigneuse and Mme. d'Espard, were all four blooming like 
 roses in the front of the box. I had seated myself sidewise, 
 giving only a shoulder to the house, so that I could see 
 everything, myself unseen, in that spacious box which fills 
 one of the two angles at the back of the hall, between the 
 columns. 
 
 Macumer came, stood up, and put his opera-glasses before 
 his eyes so that he might be able to look at me comfortably. 
 
 In the first ioterval entered the young man whom X 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 529 
 
 of satisfaction over his whole countenance. He first greeted 
 my mother, Mme. d'Espard, and the Duchesse de Maufri- 
 gneuse, 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 congratu- 
 late 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 
 lie said was this: 
 
 "Baron, you are perhaps in love with that little coquette, 
 who has used you for her own ends; but as the question is 
 one not of love, but of marriage, it is as well for you to know 
 what is going on." 
 
 Macumer treated this officious scandalmonger to one of 
 those glances of his which seem to me so eloquent of noble 
 scorn, and replied to the effect that he was "not in love with 
 any little coquette." His whole bearing so delighted me 
 that directly I caught sight of my father, the glove was off. 
 
 Felipe had not a shadow of fear or doubt. How well did 
 he bear out my expectations ! His faith is only in me, society 
 cannot hurt him with its lies. Not a muscle of the Arab's 
 face stirred, not a drop of the blue blood flushed his olive 
 cheek. 
 
 The two young Counts went out, and I said, laughing, to 
 Macumer: 
 
 "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 Maufri- 
 gneuse. 
 
 "I should think so!" he exclaimed. "The gossip which 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 23
 
 580 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 prome- 
 nade, 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 
 serpent's cunning they had at last got an inkling of some- 
 thing going on. Of all mysteries in life, love is the least 
 mysterious! It exhales from women, I believe, like a per- 
 fume, and she who can conceal it is a very monster! Our 
 eyes prattle even more than our tongues. 
 
 Having enjoyed the delightful sensation of finding Felipe 
 rise to the occasion, as I had wished, it was only in nature 
 I should hunger for more. So I made the signal agreed on 
 for telling him that he might come to my window by the 
 dangerous road you know of. A few hours later I found 
 him, upright as a statue, glued to the wall, his hand resting 
 on the balcony of my window, studying the reflections of the 
 light in my room. 
 
 "My dear Felipe," I said, "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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 531 
 
 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 pas- 
 sion, 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. Gro 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 forever fixed. 
 
 About two o'clock next day my father summoned me to 
 his private room, where I found the Duchess and Macumer. 
 There was an interchange of civilities. I replied quite simply 
 that if my father and M. He'narez were of one mind I had 
 no reason to oppose their wishes. Thereupon my mother 
 invited the Baron to dinner; and after dinner we all four 
 went for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, where I had the 
 pleasure of smiling ironically to M. de Marsay as he passed 
 on horseback and caught sight of Macumer sitting opposite 
 to us beside my father. 
 
 My bewitching Felipe has had his cards reprinted as 
 follows : 
 
 HENAREZ 
 
 (Baron de Macumer, formerly Due de Soria).
 
 532 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 com- 
 posed during the night. 
 
 Not to make this letter inordinately large. I send you as 
 specimens only the first and last of these sonnets, which I 
 have translated for your benefit, word for word, and line 
 for line: 
 
 FIRST SONNET 
 
 Many a time I've stood, clad in thin silken vest, 
 Drawn sword in hand, with steady pulse, 
 Waiting the charge of a raging bull. 
 
 And the thrust of his horn, sharper-pointed than Phoebe's 
 crescent. 
 
 I've scaled, on my lips the lilt of an Andalusian dance, 
 The steep redoubt under a rain of fire ; 
 I've staked my life upon a hazard of the dice, 
 Careless, as though it were a gold doubloon. 
 
 My hand would seek the ball out of the cannon's mouth, 
 But now meseems I grow more timid than a crouching hare, 
 Or a child spying some ghost in the curtain's folds. 
 
 For when your sweet eye rests on me, 
 
 An icy sweat covers my brow, my knees give way, 
 
 I tremble, shrink, my courage gone. 
 
 SECOND SONNET 
 
 Last night I fain would sleep to dream of thee, 
 But jealous sleep fled my eyelids, 
 I sought the balcony and looked toward 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 533 
 
 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 pros- 
 per as you wish ? And while the buds are opening on our 
 shrubs I will not venture to speak of the bedding- out 
 plants have they also blossomed in the bosom of the 
 wife? Does Louis continue his policy of madrigals? Do 
 you enter into each other's thoughts ? I wonder whether 
 your little runlet of wedded peace is better than the raging 
 torrent of my love! Has my sweet lady professor taken 
 offence? I cannot believe it; 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 congratulations 
 still tarry. 
 
 Seriously, my sweet Eenee, 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 inci- 
 dents of your married life are without interest for me? 
 I rnuse 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
 
 534 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 has her independence gone the way of other dead and 
 cast-off independences ? ' ' 
 A thousand loves. 
 
 XXV 
 
 RENEE DE I/ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU 
 
 ryA UCY GIRL! Why should I write ? What could I 
 t | say? While your life is varied by social festivities, 
 as well as by the anguish, the tempers, and the 
 flowers of love all of which you describe so graphically 
 that I might be watching some first-rate acting at the the- 
 atre 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 servecl with a maddening punctuality. Noth- 
 ing ever happens. I have accustomed myself without much 
 difficulty to this mapping out of the day, which perhaps is, 
 after all, in the nature of things. Where would the life of 
 the universe be but for that subjection to fixed laws which, 
 according to the astronomers, so Louis tells me, rule the 
 spheres! It is not order of which we weary. 
 
 Then I have laid upon myself certain rules of dress, and 
 these occupy my time in the mornings. I hold it part of my 
 duty as a wife to look as charming as possible. I feel a cer- 
 tain 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 household 
 affairs or to read for I read a great deal or to write to 
 you. I come back to the others an hour before dinner; 
 and after dinner we play cards, or receive visits, or pay 
 them. Thus my 'days pass between a contented old man, 
 who has done with passions, and the man who owes his 
 happiness to me. Louis's happiness is so radiant that it 
 has at last warmed my heart.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 535 
 
 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 stroDg 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 i 
 
 Therefore I find it hard to understand why you are de- 
 termined to throw so much romance over it. Your ideal 
 man must have more soul than fire, more nobility and self- 
 command than passion. You persist in trying to clothe in 
 living form the dream of a girl on the threshold of life; 
 you demand sacrifices for the pleasure of rewarding them; 
 you submit your Felipe to tests in order to ascertain 
 whether desire, hope, and curiosity are enduring in their 
 nature. But, child, behind all your fantastic stage scen- 
 ery 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 hus- 
 band. Remember that there is no exemption for lovers. 
 For them, as for ordinary folk like Louis and me, there 
 lurks beneath the wedding rejoicings the great "Perhaps" 
 of Rabelais. 
 
 I do not blame you, though, of course, it was rash, for 
 talking with Felipe in the garden, or for spending a night 
 with him, you on your balcony, he on his wall; but you 
 make a plaything of life, and I am afraid that life may 
 some day turn the tables. I dare not give you the coun- 
 sel 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,
 
 53d BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 my heart. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENEE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 March, 1825. 
 
 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 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 fore- 
 head, "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 build- 
 ing up your father's family. (The Duke was listening. If 
 you knew, Een^e, 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 splendid position of a woman
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 537 
 
 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!" ex- 
 claimed 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 character worthy of mine, a heart of which the 
 delicacy, the generosity, 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." 
 
 "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 mar- 
 rying 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
 
 538 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 have gratified maternal pride, and have shown yourself a 
 sweet and loving daughter. I, in my turn, can promise 
 vou that you will always find a stanch friend in your 
 mother. You smile? Alas! it too often happens that a 
 mother who has lived on excellent terms with her daugh- 
 ter, 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 rny 
 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 appear 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 some- 
 times 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 barriers which 
 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 marvellously 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 intel- 
 ligence that you have shown during the days of courtship. 
 For, my little rogue, you know very well that you have 
 indulged 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 539 
 
 The happiness of your life requires at least as patient cher- 
 ishing 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 expedient 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 play- 
 ing at politics with your cards upon the table, and those 
 who let their own game be seen learn nothing of their op- 
 ponents'. 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. 
 
 Raising 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 unspoiled 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 
 evening before, a Russian princess had told us an anecdote
 
 540 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 "cross- 
 ing" the Alps. "Thank you; I've had quite enough cross- 
 ings already," he said. 
 
 You will understand, Rende, 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 
 approached, 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 depicted. 
 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 business, and 
 only the witnesses were present. 
 
 I am writing this tail to my letter while the} 7 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 
 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 forever!" he whis- 
 pered to me 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 
 contract, took me aside in order to present me with a pearl 
 necklace, 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.' 1
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 541 
 
 Two charming letters came with these presents, which, how- 
 ever, I would not accept without consulting Felipe. 
 
 "For," I said, "I should not like to see you wearing 
 ornaments 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 Kene*e, 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. 
 
 XXYII 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 October, 1825. 
 
 /HA VE NOT written to you, dear, since our marriage, 
 nearly eight months ago. And not a line from you ! 
 Madame, you are inexcusable. 
 
 To begin with, we set off in a post-chaise for the Castle 
 of Chantepleurs, the property which Macumer has bought 
 in Nivernais. 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 motlierly 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 blaz- 
 ing; the passionate gaze remained unchanged, but what
 
 542 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 r 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 
 glorious moon which lighted 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 prom- 
 ise in gesture or look ? Why should I be false in the future ? ' ' 
 
 Yet never were words or glances more full of mastery ; 
 his voice thrilled every fibre of my heart and roused a sleep- 
 ing 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 with- 
 out writing, you can now divine the cause. I have to recall 
 the girl's strange past in order to explain the woman to my- 
 self. Rene'e, 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 our own, an added rapture a thing 
 beyond words, too sacred for disclosure 1
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 543 
 
 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 Rene'e ! 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 
 ceremony, 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 understand the reason of this. Man obeys two forces one 
 sensual; one spiritual. Weak or inferior men mistake the 
 first for the last, while 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 inspires 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 something 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
 
 544 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 with him. His greatness of soul passes my comprehension. 
 Possession only attaches him more closely to me, and he dis- 
 covers 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 fing 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 Renee and her prosaic marriage flashed into my 
 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, while 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 charrn-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 545 
 
 ing house in the Eue du Bac, prepared for us by the archi- 
 tect 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 Rossini'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. 
 
 RENEE, my fair saint, the happiness of my own life pulls 
 me forever 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 my- 
 self 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 ignorance; 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 Chaulieu, that poor 
 cavalry officer whose campaigning so far has consisted in 
 marches from Paris to Fontainebleau and back again. 
 
 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 
 reward, and she would not make it greater than need be. 
 The unctuous axioms of social morality are only used to cloak 
 her disappointment." Ah! Rene'e, the best of happiness is 
 that it needs no dogma and no fine words to pave the way ;
 
 646 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 it speaks for itself, while theory has been piled upon theory 
 to justify the system of woman's vassalage and thraldom. 
 If self-denial be so noble, so sublime, what, pray, of my joy, 
 sheltered by the gold-and-white canopy of the church, and 
 witnessed 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 Benee 
 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 dark- 
 ness, 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 Rende, 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 Louis 
 de 1'Estorade. Very good; get him elected deputy at the 
 approaching 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 I 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 
 together.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 647 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 RENEE DE I/ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE MACUMER 
 
 December, 1825. 
 
 7j /T~Y THRICE happy Louise, your letter made me 
 /\/I 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 jessamine, some honey- 
 suckle, 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 phys- 
 ical life reacted upon the inner recesses of my soul. This 
 indefinable 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
 
 548 BALZAC 'S WORKS 
 
 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 un- 
 explored 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 
 essence 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 
 harvest will pass; mine, though late, will be but the more 
 enduring, for each hour will see it renewed. Love may be 
 the fairest 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 marvellous, and yet the 
 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 549 
 
 though I affect a little in order not to damp the general satis- 
 faction. 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 main- 
 taining that this chance works in harmony with nature, does 
 not den} 7 " that children who are the fruit of passionate love 
 are bound to be richly endowed both physically and men- 
 tally, 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 mys- 
 tery, 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's anxiety surrounds 
 me, I am conscious of a vague uneasiness, mingled with the 
 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
 
 550 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 deli- 
 cious, 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 even 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 am- 
 brosial food, and yet I have seen Louis turn aside, unable 
 to bear the smell. Then came to my mind the ghastly words 
 of Obermann in his gloomy elegy, which I wish I had never 
 read, "Boots 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 cir- 
 cumstances. 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 
 women, as it were, a new atmosphere, a new daylight, fresh 
 life! Ah! pet, I too understand love. Don't weary of tell- 
 ing 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 551 
 
 sovereign 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 maybe, avert dis- 
 aster. Religion has meant much more to me since I left the 
 convent and since my marriage; but your Paris news con- 
 tains no mention 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 
 expect, 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 
 deserve 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 un- 
 eventful, is not unfruitful. God bless you, then! 
 
 XXIX 
 
 M. DE L'ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE DE MACUMER 
 
 December, 1825. 
 
 7j /W~ADAME It is the desire of my wife that you 
 /\/i should not learn first from the formal announce- 
 ment of an event which has filled us with joy. 
 Eenee has just given birth to a fine boy, whose baptism we 
 are postponing till your return to Chantepleurs. Renee and 
 I both earnestly hope that you may then come as far as La 
 Crampade, and will consent to act as godmother to our first- 
 born. In this hope, I have had him placed on the register 
 under the name of Armand-Louis de 1'Estorade. 
 
 Our dear Renee suffered much, but bore it with angelic 
 patience. You, who know her, will easily understand that
 
 552 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Eende 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 
 allowed to express the hope that this joy, so vivid and in- 
 tense, which has brought fresh life into our house, and has 
 changed the face of existence for my dear wife, may ere long 
 be yours ? 
 
 Kene"e 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 Rene*e, 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 
 property with an annual rental of thirty thousand francs. 
 My father intends asking the King's permission to form an 
 entailed 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. 
 
 For my part, I shall carry out your suggestion solely with 
 the object of bringing you and Rene'e 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 553 
 
 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 MACUMEB TO REKEE DE L'ESTORADE 
 
 January, 
 
 71 /JT AGUMER has just wakened me, darling, with 
 
 /y/ 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 godfather. To take part in 
 
 a ceremony of the Church with another as rny 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. 
 
 So, my sweetheart, you have the fruit without the flow- 
 ers; 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. 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 24
 
 554 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 pret- 
 tier than Louise de Chaulieu: a happy love is a most be- 
 coming 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 contrast calls up a thousand fancies. 
 Suppose, after all, your last letter should be right in its 
 forecast, and we are too presumptuous! 
 
 If I am ignorant of a mother's joys, you shall tell me 
 about them; I will learn by sympathy. But my imagina- 
 tion 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, amid 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 
 wellnigh spent myself in love, not a leaf dropped from 
 my crown, not an illusion perished 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 declined. I threatened to leave him alone in 
 the world, and, poor child, he turned white as a sheet. 
 My dear, this distinguished statesman is neither more nor 
 less than a baby. It is incredible what youth and sim- 
 plicity he contrived to hide away. Now that I allow my- 
 self to think aloud with him, as I do with you, and have
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 56i 
 
 no secrets from him, we are always giving each other 
 surprises. 
 
 Dear Rene*e, 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 pleasant 
 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 oc- 
 curred 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 de- 
 lights be yours! I await with impatience your first letter, 
 which will tell me all about it, I hope. Some of the de- 
 tails in your husband's letter went to my heart. Poor 
 ReneX 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 
 
 /T 18 NEARLY five months now since baby was born, 
 and not once, dear heart, have I 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 me a little bit in making your own let- 
 ters so few and far between. Do write, my darling! Tell 
 me of your pleasures; lay on the blue as brightly as yu
 
 556 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 please. It mil 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 fam- 
 ilies of Provence. I was supported on either side by the 
 two grandfathers Louis's 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 
 amid these confused memories, 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 gar- 
 dens, not realizing yet how precious was the burden, spite 
 of all the discomforts it brought! I was haunted by fore- 
 bodings so gloomy and ghastly, that they got the better 
 even of curiosity; in vain did I reason with myself that 
 no natural function could be so very terrible, in vain did 
 I picture the delights of motherhood. My heart made no 
 response even to the thought of the little one, who an- 
 nounced 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 my- 
 self at least; you know 1 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 557 
 
 But enough of such sad thoughts, gone, I trust, forever. 
 
 When the crisis came, I summoned all my powers of 
 resistance, and braced myself so well for suffering, that I 
 bore the horrible agony so they tell me quite marvel- 
 lously. 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 covering 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
 
 558 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 all the pain and haziness of the first days, when every- 
 thing was still dim, uncomfortable, confused. .A ray of 
 light pierced 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 
 without 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, toward 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 very 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 nour- 
 ish 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, seek- 
 ing 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 nurs- 
 ling! 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 559 
 
 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. A child is 
 tied to our heartstrings 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 fin- 
 gers; 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 conscious- 
 ness of a common life is ample recompense for all the trouble 
 and suffering for suffering 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 beware ! it visits only a fair and deli- 
 cate skin. 
 
 My little ape has in five months developed into the pret- 
 tiest darling that ever mother bathed in tears of joy, washed, 
 brushed, combed, and made smart; for God knows what un- 
 wearied 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.
 
 560 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 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 
 something terribly earthly about it, while a strain of holy 
 pietv 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 expres- 
 sions 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 561 
 
 I shrewdly suspect love, for instance, of being intermittent. 
 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 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 alliance 
 with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage 
 except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand 
 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 mis- 
 sion. Your present happiness will then be multiplied by 
 the wealth of my delights. 
 
 23d. 
 
 I HAD to tear myself from you because your godson was 
 crying. 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 horri- 
 fied to see how vulgar are the feelings expressed! What I. 
 feel, every mother, alas! since the beginning must have felt,
 
 562 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 I suppose, in the same way, and put into the same words. 
 You will laugh at me, as we do at the naive father who dilates 
 on the beauty and cleverness of his (of course) quite excep- 
 tional offspring. But the refrain of my letter, darling, is this, 
 and I -repeat it: I am as happy now as I used to be miser- 
 able. 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. 
 
 TT\0 YOU KNOW, DEAR, that it is more than three 
 
 / M 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 
 regards 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 sud- 
 denly waked up to the fact that we had not interchanged 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 Pari- 
 sians? 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 master- 
 piece is the character of Celimene in Moliere's "Le Misan-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 563 
 
 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 
 are a continuous round of parties, balls, concerts, and the- 
 atres, at night my heart expands again, and is healed of the 
 wounds received in the world by 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 Mines. d'Espard and de Maufrigneuse, and with 
 the old Duchesse de Lenoncourt, and my house has the repu- 
 tation 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 after- 
 noon till two in the morning I belong to Paris. Macumer 
 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 obtaining from our good-natured Charles X. the appoint- 
 ment of her fascinating poet; so he is carried off in the 
 capacity of attache. 
 
 My brother, the Due de Bhe'tore', 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 Mortsauf, 
 an heiress from Touraiiie, 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.
 
 564 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Certainly it would never have clone to allow these two fine 
 names and their splendid motto, Faciem semper monstramus, 
 to perish. Mile, de Mortsauf, who is granddaughter and sole 
 heiress of the Due de Lenoncourt-Givrv, will, it is said, in- 
 herit altogether more than one hundred 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 Le- 
 noncourt escutcheon: thus my brother will be Due de Lenon- 
 court. 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 marriage 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 
 object of universal envy, as the husband of "the most charm- 
 ing 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 unconscion- 
 able price women are ready to pay for such frail and precari- 
 ous 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 566 
 
 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 
 without 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 pre- 
 paring for our move to Chantepleurs, where we can rest from 
 the comedy of the Kue du Bac and of the Paris drawing- 
 rooms. Having just read your letter again, I feel that I 
 cannot better describe this demoniac paradise than by saying 
 that no woman of fashion in Paris can possibly be a good 
 mother. 
 
 Good-by, 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 pina- 
 fores," as the Blois folk say. I shall see whether a child, 
 as the saying goes, spoils the pattern. 
 
 P.S. If you deign to reply from your maternal heights, 
 address to Chantepleurs. I am just off.
 
 566 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMEB 
 
 Tj ^r Y CHILD If ever you become a mother, you will 
 
 /I// 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 triie 
 
 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 con- 
 stantly 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 bidding of society ! I look for your 
 coming with all a hermit's longing. I want so much to 
 know what you think of 1'Estorade, just as you no doubt 
 are curious for my opinion of Macumer. 
 
 Write to me from your last resting-place. The gentle- 
 men want to go and meet our distinguished guests. Come, 
 Queen of Paris, come to our humble grange, where love at 
 least will greet you !
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 567 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 MME. DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 April, 1826, 
 
 rHE NAME on this address will tell you, dear, that 
 my petition 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 presence of the Keeper of the Seals, 
 who has come to tell me that the patent is signed. 
 Good- by for a short time! 
 
 XXXV 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 MARSEILLES, July. 
 
 /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 He'redia, 
 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 the lace like some lus-
 
 568 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 cious fruit all this stabbed me in the eyes and in the 
 heart. In vain did I stick cornflowers in my curls, in 
 vain set off with cherry-colored ribbons the tameness of 
 my pale locks, everything looked washed out when Eene'e 
 appeared a Kenee 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 exuber- 
 ance of life which fills your house, making it gay with 
 shouts and laughter I wanted it for myself. I read a 
 regret in Macumer's eyes, and, unknown to him, I cried 
 over it two whole nights. I was miserable in your house. 
 You are too beautiful 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, dashed 
 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-Khone; 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 poli- 
 tics, dear, seems to me to consist in looking serious. At 
 this rate, Macumer, as I told him, ought certainly to have 
 a high position in the state. 
 
 And so, having completely satisfied myself of your hap- 
 piness, 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 56G 
 
 my misery. Two days more, and I should have made an 
 exhibition of myself; yes, there would have been an out- 
 break of vulgarity. 
 
 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 Mar- 
 seilles, 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 spoiled, 
 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 Provencal 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 jeal- 
 ous of me! Forgive me this little conventional fib. 
 
 Good-by. 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 con-
 
 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 sists in having a plan. Then he feels that he has a will 
 of his own, and this makes him very uneasy when he un- 
 folds it to me. Grood-by! 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 THE VICOMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE 
 DE MAGUMER 
 
 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 Marseilles 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 justifi- 
 cation for objecting to them. Ingrata ! 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 impresses 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 nec- 
 essary for intimate conversation. Further, this man has 
 been Prime Minister, and he idolizes you; whence it fol- 
 lows that he must be a profound dissembler. To fish up 
 secrets, therefore, from the rocky caverns of this diplo- 
 matic soul is a work demanding a skilful hand no less 
 than a ready brain. Nevertheless, I succeeded at last,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 571 
 
 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 which was imperceptible to 
 all except ourselves. I am a simple country viscountess, 
 very ambitious, 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 matter 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 friendship 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. 
 
 First, 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 
 depths of my own heart. Now, as the result of a careful 
 diagnosis of your case, I can say with confidence, this is 
 not love.
 
 572 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Yes, dear Queen of Paris, you cannot escape the des- 
 tiny 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 him- 
 self in adoration 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 devotion. 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 escap- 
 ing 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 hus- 
 band. 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 tc me important is 
 that the perfect equality which reign's between lovers ought 
 never to appear in the case of husband and wife, under pain 
 of undermining the whole fabric of society and entailing ter- 
 rible 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 
 completely molded him to your likeness, that your house- 
 hold will consist of only one person instead of two, and that 
 one necessarily imperfect. You will regret it bitterly; but
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 573 
 
 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 Macumer, blinded though he is, has a dim fore- 
 shadowing 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. Y"our position of vantage may be read 
 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's 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 spoiled unless we efface 
 ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of 
 inferiority. There is a wonderful sweetness in these hidden 
 sacrifices, and what a triumph for me in your unsuspecting 
 praises of Louis! There can be no doubt also that the happi- 
 ness, 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!
 
 574 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 discov- 
 ered 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 spoiled 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." 
 
 "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 hus- 
 band's strength will be exhausted, when pleasure will have 
 turned to satiety, and he sees himself, I will not say de- 
 graded, 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. Re member, 
 too, that scorn with a woman is only the earliest phase of 
 hatred. You are too noble and generous, I know, ever 
 to forget 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 aione 
 that women are insatiable. 
 
 Oh! Louise, change yet, while there is still time. If you 
 would only adopt the same course with Macumer that I have 
 done with 1'Estorade, 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 575 
 
 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. Bat I know that 
 you will read this thoughtfully and weigh my warnings. 
 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 you; 
 otherwise you would spend your life in mutual self-absorp- 
 tion. A married woman ought not to be too lavish of her- 
 self. The mother of a family, who never gives her house- 
 hold 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 
 Macumer, I am of Louis. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE VICOMTESSE 
 DE L'ESTORADE 
 
 GENOA. 
 
 7j jfT BELOVED BEAUTY I was bitten with the 
 /I/I 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
 
 576 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Leghorn on 
 the way. We shall stay a month in Tuscany and a month 
 at Naples, so as to reach Rome in November. Thence we 
 return home by Venice, where we shall spend the first fort- 
 night 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. 
 
 Gk>od-by, darling. Don't be angry if I don't write. It 
 is impossible to get a minute to one's self in travelling; my 
 whole time is taken up with seeing, admiring,, and realizing 
 my impressions. But not a word to you of these till memory 
 has given them their proper atmosphere. 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 THE V1COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE BAKONNE 
 
 DE MACUMEB 
 
 September. 
 
 DEAR There is lying for you at Chantepleurs 
 a full reply to the letter you wrote me from Mar- 
 seilles. 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES . 577 
 
 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 fouk 1 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 machine. His smiles are full of meaning. 
 I have been so successful in my profession of nurse that I 
 shall wean Armand 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 L'ESTORADE 
 
 rOUR ATROCIOUS letter has reached me here, the 
 steward having forwarded it by my orders. Oh! 
 Eenee . . but I will spare you the outburst of my 
 wounded feelings, and simply 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 
 horrible 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, declaring 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 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 25
 
 578 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 words worthy of the magnificent moonlight scene which lay 
 stretched before us. We both speak Italian now, and his 
 love, told in that voluptuous tongue, so admirably adapted 
 to the expression of passion, sounded in my ears like the most 
 exquisite poetry. He swore that, even were you right in 
 your predictions, he would not exchange for a lifetime a 
 single one of our blessed nights or charming mornings. At 
 this reckoning 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 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, sur- 
 prised 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 before 
 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. Kene'e 
 has 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 
 nut have known the depths of love in my noble, kingly Ma-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 579 
 
 cumer. Rome is the city of love; it is there that passion 
 should celebrate its feast, with art and religion as con- 
 federates. 
 
 At "Venice we shall find the Due and Duchesse de Soria. 
 If you write, address now to Paris, for we shall leave Eorae 
 in three days. The ambassador's was a farewell party. 
 
 P.S. 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 diverse 
 that no theory can embrace or co-ordinate them. A word 
 this for my little Professor with her armor of stays. 
 
 XL 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE BARONNE 
 
 DE MACTTMER 
 
 January, 1827. 
 
 It /TY FATHER has been elected to the Chamber, my 
 
 /y/ 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 Rome made my flesh creep. 
 You are nothing but a pair of children. Felipe is either 
 a dissembling 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 
 different 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
 
 580 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 patron- 
 age 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 in the days 
 of King Rene, and Charles X. will hardly say no to a Mau- 
 combe; 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 "con- 
 vulsions" 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 peev- 
 ish, cried for nothing, wanted to play, and then broke his 
 toys. Perhaps this sort of fractiousness is the usual sign 
 of approaching illness with children. While I was wonder- 
 ing about it, I noticed Armand's cheeks flush, but this I set 
 down to teething, for he is cutting four large teeth at once, 
 So I put him to bed beside me, and kept constantly waking
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 581 
 
 through the night. He was a little feverish, but not enough 
 to make me uneasy, mj mind being still full of the teething. 
 Toward morning he cried "Mamma!" and asked by signs for 
 something 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, un- 
 familiar voice, which was indeed by this time hardly a voice 
 at all. I took his hand, but it did not respond to my press- 
 ure; it was quite stiff. I put the cup to his lips; the poor 
 little fellow gulped down three or four mouthfuls in a con- 
 vulsive manner that was terrible to see, and the water made 
 a strange sound in 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 turning 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 con- 
 sciousness of his mother's existence. The pretty veins on 
 his forehead 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, shrivelled, 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 noth- 
 ing 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,
 
 582 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 con- 
 vulsions 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 tossing in a hurricane. It seemed as though every 
 tie which binds a child to its mother's heart were strained to 
 rending. My mother, who might have given me help, ad- 
 vice, or comfort, 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 be- 
 fore was playing about, and laughing, and trying to say 
 " Godmother !" 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 like- 
 ness 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 583 
 
 and beseeching God to grant him the life which I was striv- 
 ing 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 
 Arinand. 
 
 "He is saved!" exclaimed the oldest of them. 
 
 W hat 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 
 wliat tortures do you bind a mother to her child! To fasten 
 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 
 idolized her child? 
 
 As I write, our little Armand is playing, shouting, laugh- 
 ing. What can be the cause of this terrible disease with 
 children? Yainly 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 con- 
 vulsions? 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 peep- 
 ing 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
 
 584 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 certain, that 
 it is hell for a mother to see her child in convulsions. 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 con- 
 finement 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 1 
 
 XLI 
 
 THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE TICOMTESSE 
 DE L'ESTORADE 
 
 PARIS. 
 
 ~W~\OOR SWEET Macumer and I forgave you all your 
 
 /~~ naughtiness 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, Eenee, and you will prob- 
 ably 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 scutch- 
 eon 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 585 
 
 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 sweet- 
 ness 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: 
 
 ''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 l6nger. If the 
 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-by, 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 econo- 
 mize 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 1 opera or a bel quadro ! 
 
 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 Eome, Felipe's love for me has grown. He 
 told me yesterday (he is looking over my shoulder now)
 
 586 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 that his sister-in-law, the Princess HereMia, his destined 
 bride of old, the dream of his youth, had no brains. Oh! 
 ray dear, I am worse than a ballet-dancer! If you knew what 
 joy that slighting remark gave me ! I have pointed out to 
 Felipe that she does not speak French correctly. She says 
 esemple for exemple, sain for cinq, cheu for je. She is beau- 
 tiful 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 
 spoiled child. I am tempted to be naughty and make 
 you laugh; but I won't draw the long bow. Ever so 
 much love, darling. 
 
 XLII 
 
 RENEE TO LOUISE 
 
 7i 0"Y LITTLE GIRL is two months old. She is 
 / \// called Jeanne- Athe'nai's, and has for godmother 
 and godfather my mother, and an old grand - 
 uncle of Louis' So 
 
 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 precau- 
 tions necessary. Alas! my child, habit does not inure one
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 587 
 
 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. Athenai's de 1'Estorade wants her 
 dinner. Farewell, then; write me some nice long letters. 
 
 XLIII 
 
 MME. DE MACTJMER TO THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 TT\ OR THE FIRST time in my life, my dear Benee, I 
 /j 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 complete it, and I wait for 
 you. I have been married nearly three years, and no 
 child! The thought of your quiverful drove me to ex- 
 plore 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 (rod that I might have a cherub of my own, like 
 your Athenais!" 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 Eende ! I be- 
 lieve you divine my trouble. 
 
 Each time my hopes are disappointed, I fall a prey for 
 some days to the blackest melancholy. Then I compose
 
 588 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 teas- 
 ing despot whom my heart adores? Are there to be no 
 wheel-marks of a little carriage on the gravel, no broken 
 toys littered about the courtyard? Shall I never visit the 
 toy-shops, as mothers do x 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, bar- 
 renness 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 c He cannot stand any joking on 
 his love, so I let him off easily, and only called him a pal- 
 adin 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-by.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 589 
 
 XLIV 
 
 THE SAME TO THE SAME 
 
 PARIS, 1829. 
 
 yj WHOLE YEAR passed, my dear, without a letter! 
 S~W 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, Kene*e, 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 misun- 
 derstood. Your silence and seclusion in the country, at a 
 time when you might be in Paris enjoying all the Parlia- 
 mentary honors of the Comte de 1'Estorade, cause me seri- 
 ous 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 re- 
 moved from his Egeria. 
 
 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, 
 exclamations, and regrets, I at last defeated his strategy so 
 far as to discover that his grandunele, 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 Rende we are all at work for 
 Louis, Lenoncourts, Chaulieus, and the whole band of 
 Mme. de Macumer's followers. Martignac will probably
 
 590 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 
 RENEE TO LOUISE 
 
 rOU COMPLAIN of my silence; have you forgotten, 
 then, those two little brown heads, at once my sub- 
 jects 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 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's uncle, when he heard of the rank 
 his grandnephew had received, made me a present of two 
 hundred 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 thousand 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. cle
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 691 
 
 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 sup- 
 port 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 Armand may lay hold of it to make caps for his regi- 
 ments 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 charac- 
 teristics 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, according 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 sleep- 
 ing 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 im- 
 agining dangers for them. Perhaps it is Armand seizing 
 the razors to play with, or his coat taking 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 oat 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!
 
 592 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Yesterday, it must have been our guardian angel who roused 
 me in the middle of the night and summoned me in fear to 
 Athenais's cradle. Her head was too low, and I found Ar- 
 mand 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 hear 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, which 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- 
 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 
 defending 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 hap-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 593 
 
 pened to me, dear, to take up my stockings at eight o'clock 
 and be still barefooted 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 
 temperature 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 in- 
 vented 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 se- 
 riously. Prayers, scoldings, promises, are alike in requi- 
 sition; 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 diplomatist, 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 slipping from the hand, and what 
 merry shouts! And if our triumphs 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 fathom the glances of satisfac- 
 tion which Mary and I exchange when the little creatures' 
 toilet is at last concluded, and they stand, spotless and shin- 
 ing, 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 admirable. 
 My children shall always be bare-legged and wear woollen
 
 694 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 socks. There shall be no swaddling or bandages; on the 
 other hand, they shall never be left alone. The helplessness 
 of the French infant in its swaddling-bands means the lib- 
 erty 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 affec- 
 tion. 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 responsibility, of blowing on the spoonful of soup 
 which is too hot for my little Nais, 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 Nais, who has just cut her last 
 teeth, and mix the 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
 
 595 
 
 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 band- 
 box. 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 expedi- 
 tion is quite an epic to a mother! One dreams of it the 
 night before! Armand was for the first time to put on a lit- 
 tle black velvet jacket, a new collar which I had worked, a 
 Scotch cap with the Stuart colors and cock's feathers; Nail'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's is 
 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
 
 596 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 mj 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 
 thek things. I took the little one in my arms, never think- 
 ing of my own dress, which was ruined, while Mary seized 
 Armand, 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 catastrophes, 
 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 count- 
 ers, and give Nais my silks and wools to arrange in her own 
 fashion, which, I assure you, is so complicated 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 597 
 
 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 
 character. The other day we were followed by a poor man 
 begging 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 had 
 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, 
 madame, 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 childhood 
 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 
 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-by; Nais has just had a 
 tumble, and if I run on like this, my letter will become 
 a volume.
 
 598 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 MME. DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 1829. 
 
 Y SWEET, tender Ren^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 punishment; 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 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,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 599 
 
 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, sur- 
 rounded 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 
 Renee, 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 1 
 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 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! 
 
 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 bitter 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.
 
 600 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 an- 
 other 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 add- 
 ing it to the heap of the vanquished. My peaceful park 
 gives me all the company I care for; everything there is 
 full of glorious images 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! Ren^e, 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 
 throughout, a passion which was not ephemeral, and satis- 
 fied at once the spirit and the flesh. How rare it is to find 
 a man so gifted that to worship him brings no sense of deg- 
 radation! If such supreme fortune befall us once, we can- 
 not 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 601 
 
 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 intol- 
 erant of life, so the very purity and vehemence of a single- 
 hearted passion render it barren as hate ? Is it only a mar- 
 riage 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, then; none but Rene*e 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-by. Writing tires me; thoughts crowd fast, but 
 I have no heart to put them into words. Bring your chil- 
 dren; 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, oome and help me to bear my woe. 
 
 XL VII 
 
 RENEE TO LOUISE 
 
 1\ /fY DAELINGWhen you hold this letter in your 
 /I// 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 in Provence because of the ap- 
 proaching 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 
 Vol. A. BALZAC 26
 
 602 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 travelling toward 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 
 accomplish here. 
 
 I scribble these hasty lines in all the bustle of prepara- 
 tion, 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! 
 
 SECOND PART 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 THE BARONNE DE MACUMER TO THE COMTESSE DE 
 L'ESTORADE 
 
 October 15, 1833. 
 
 rES, RENfiE, it is quite true; you have been cor- 
 rectly informed. I have sold my house, I have 
 sold Chantepleurs, and the farms in Seine-et-Marne, 
 but no more, please! I am neither mad nor ruined, I as- 
 sure 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 ac- 
 count, 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 prop-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 603 
 
 erty yielded. Then, only think what my life was. Six 
 months of the year in the country, renewing leases, listen- 
 ing 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 thou- 
 sand 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 prosecuting; in addition 1 had to study 
 the law of mortgage. In short, there was business in Ni- 
 vernais, 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! 
 
 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 
 thousand 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 cen- 
 tury, 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 
 ol 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.
 
 604 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 
 mysteries of my conduct, the motives of which have baf- 
 fled 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, Kenee, 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. Be- 
 sides, de 1'Estorade and you would have deafened me with 
 remonstrances, and plagued me to death with your misgiv- 
 ings, to 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 responsi- 
 bility, what you, Renee, 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 except 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 ihe 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 lamen- 
 tation! 
 
 Lastly, he is a poet, and has lived by his trade that is 
 to say, on next to nothing, as you will readily understand. 
 Being 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 tar-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 605 
 
 ring 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, daring 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. 
 
 My friend has no other name than Marie Graston. 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 Graston 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 fath- 
 erly 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 bet- 
 ter days. 
 
 Alas! since then three years have passed, and my poor 
 poet has never heard again. So dearly did he love hie 
 brother, that he would have started to look for him but for
 
 606 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 Daniel d'Arthez, the well-known author, who took a gen- 
 erous interest in Marie Graston, and prevented him carrying 
 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 women are always afraid 
 of greatness which has no weak side to it. How many vic- 
 tories were needed before Josephine could see the great 
 Napoleon in the little Bonaparte whom she had married? 
 
 Poor Graston 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 pas- 
 sion. That which every woman seeks in love will be mine 
 in marriage. As poor Felipe once adored me, so do I now 
 adore Graston. 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 607 
 
 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 suffi- 
 cient 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 
 intense any day than it was the evening before, be sure of 
 this, Renee, 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, Rene"e, I know that my nature 
 is the lover's rather than the mother's. Therefore before 
 taking this vow upon my soul, I implore you, my Rende, 
 if this disaster befall me, to take the place of mother to my 
 children ; let them be my legacy to you ! All that I know 
 of you, your blind attachment to duty, your rare gifts, your 
 love of children, 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 posi-
 
 608 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 tion, 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 20th. 
 
 1 WILL tell you now the steps I have taken to insure 
 secrecy. My object has been to ward off every possible 
 incitement 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. 
 
 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. Finally, 
 they fall into the royal ponds, glimpses of which can be seen 
 here and there, gleaming in the distance. My little park h.is 
 been admirably laid out by the architect,. who has surrounded 
 it by hedges, walls, or ha-has, according to the lay 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 Ronce 
 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 travellers on the road from 
 Sion to Brieg, and which fascinated me when I was return-
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 609 
 
 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. An- 
 other building serves to lodge the gardeners and masks the 
 entrance 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 appear 
 to the outside world, save only the smoke visible from the 
 neighboring nills. 
 
 The surroundings of my chalet have been modelled on 
 what is called the King's Garden at Versailles, but it has 
 an outlook on my lakelet and island. The hills on every 
 side display their abundant foliage those splendid trees for 
 which your new civil list has so well cared. My gardeners 
 have orders to cultivate 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 imbedded in climbing plants of all kinds hops, 
 clematis, jasmine, azalea, copsea. 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 anteroom, 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
 
 610 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 present. 
 They are all aware that the slightest fault, or a mere sus- 
 picion 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. 
 
 All that is choice, pretty, or decorative in my house in 
 the Eue du Bac has been transported to the chalet. The 
 Rembrandt 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 Marie sent me from Madrid, 
 adorns the boudoir. The beautiful furniture picked up by 
 Felipe looks very well in the parlor, which the architect has 
 decorated most tastefully. Everything at the chalet is 
 charmingly simple, with the simplicity which can't be got 
 under a hundred thousand francs. Our ground-floor rests 
 on cellars, which are built of millstone and imbedded in 
 concrete; it is almost completely buried in flowers and 
 shrubs,, and is deliciously cool without a vestige of damp. 
 To complete the picture, a fleet of white swans sail over my 
 lake! 
 
 Oh! Rene"e, the silence which reigns in this valley would 
 bring joy to the dead! One is wakened by the birds singing 
 or the breeze rustling in the poplars. A little spring, dis- 
 covered by the architect in digging the foundations of the 
 wall, trickles down the hillside over silvery sand to the lake,
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 611 
 
 between two banks of watercress, hugging the edge of the 
 woods. I know nothing that money can buy to equal it. 
 
 May not (raston 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 
 insects. 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 thou- 
 sand francs." My only reply was to add the words, "To be 
 paid 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 build- 
 ings. 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 
 journeys, 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 business, and they who would succeed in it 
 should have no other. Henceforth I shall have no more 
 trouble from money matters ; 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
 
 612 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 death also gave me harsh lessons. Now I want to turn all 
 this to account. My one occupation will be to please him 
 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'Av- 
 ray; 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 reason. I intend to take as much trouble to make 
 myself beautiful 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 1 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 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! Renee, if Gaston has sounded, as 1 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 theatre 
 dressed by my hand for my own martyrdom ! 
 
 In two days from now I shall be Mme. Graston. My 
 God! is it fitting a Christian so to love mortal man? 
 
 "Well, at least you have the law with you," was the 
 comment of my man of business, who is to be one of my 
 witnesses, and who exclaimed, on discovering why my prop- 
 erty was to be realized, "I am losing a client!"
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 613 
 
 And you, my sweetheart (whom 1 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. 
 Gaston, 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. Nobody 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 rev- 
 olution 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. 
 
 XLIX 
 
 MARIE GASTON TO DANIEL D'ABTHEZ 
 
 October, 1833. 
 
 -n /r Y DEAR DANIEL I need two witnesses for my 
 Jwl marriage. I beg of you to come to-morrow even- 
 ing for this purpose, bringing with you our worthy 
 and honored friend, Joseph Bridau. She who is to be my 
 wife, with an instinctive divination 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 absolute 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 1 
 shall want you badly, but I shall not see you, at least not 
 in my own house. Here again she has forestalled our wishes.
 
 614 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 sympathy. 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 con- 
 scious of a lurking thought, not shared with her, the pang 
 of which is for me alone. You have too often come to the 
 help oi 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, 
 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 hu- 
 miliation, 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 re- 
 coiled, even when powerless to overcome it? The fact 
 remains that there is a point where, far from protecting, 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 mind is well informed and quick to understand; in person, 
 she is fair and lovely, with a rounded slimness, as though 
 Kaf ael and Eubens had conspired to create a woman ! I do 
 not know whether I could have worshipped 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 reverbera- 
 tion of the same thunderclap. We both love for the first 
 time, and this bewitching springtime has filled its days for 
 us with all the images of delight that fancy can paint in 
 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 G-ASTON.
 
 616 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. DE MACUMER 
 
 ZOUISE, 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 
 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 happi- 
 ness. I have not the courage to blame you for it, though 
 the instinct of affection urges me to dissuade you from this 
 marriage. Yes, a thousand times, yes, it is true that nature 
 and society are at one in making war on absolute happiness, 
 because 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 pene- 
 tration can give no definite form. I know neither whence 
 nor from whom it will arise; but one need be no prophet to 
 foretell that the mere weight of a boundless happiness will 
 overpower 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 617 
 
 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 forever!" 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. Un- 
 luckily, 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 and intelli- 
 gent of friends. That mysterious region, known as the centre 
 of Africa, has swallowed up many travellers, 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 na- 
 tives. 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. 
 
 'RA T HAS come to you, my dear ? After a silence 
 of two years, surely Kenee 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 chil- 
 drenmore even perhaps than you to your Gaston a moth- 
 er's love has something expansive about it which does not 
 allow it to steal from other affections, t>r interfere with the 
 claims of friendship. I miss your letters, I long for a sight
 
 618 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 Athenais and my poor little beggar Rene* ? Was 
 it not a dut}' to live on our salary and prudently allow the 
 income of the estate to accumulate ? In this way we shall, 
 in twenty years, have put together about six hundred thou- 
 sand francs, which will provide portions for my daughter 
 and for Bene', whom I destine for the navy. The poor little 
 chap will have an income of ten thousand livres, and per- 
 haps we may contrive to leave him in cash enough to bring 
 his portion 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 govern- 
 ment and administration are fully appreciated, and all parties 
 consider him indispensable. I may tell you that he was
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 619 
 
 recently offered an embassy, but I would not let him accept 
 it. I am tied to Paris by the education of Armand and 
 Athe'nais who are now respectively thirteen and nearly 
 eleven and I don't intend leaving till little Kene has com- 
 pleted 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 
 allowing 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 referendary 
 for Armand in the Audit Department. 
 
 As for Rene, the navy will doubtless make a diplomatist 
 of him. The little rogue, at seven years old, has all the 
 cunning 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 IY. '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 Ar- 
 mand 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 my 
 boy 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 Nais and the baby
 
 620 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 feel- 
 ing that at any moment I can fly to ArmancPs 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 subter- 
 fuges. The finer distinctions, which regulate the conduct 
 of matured men and women, elude their perceptions, and 
 they take feeling and passion for their guide instead of 
 subordinating these to the code of society; while the gay 
 trappings and tinsel which attract so much of the world's 
 favor blind them to the importance of the more sober vir- 
 tues. 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 surface. A 
 mother, therefore, who wishes not to part from her chil- 
 dren, must resolutely determine that they shall not enter 
 the gay world; she must have courage to resist their incli- 
 nations, 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 
 immense encouragement. It would almost seem as though 
 my trio can read my thoughts and shape themselves ac- 
 cordingly. A mysterious bond of sympathy unites me to
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 621 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren never do, the aim of all this preparatory work, which 
 is to sharpen the intelligence, to get them into habits of ap- 
 plication, 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 
 for an essay. I went quite white when his name was called 
 out, and longed to shout aloud, "I am his mother!" Little 
 Nais 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 Kene', 
 who wants to go to school too. Sometimes the three chil- 
 dren 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 tax- 
 ing, 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 distin- 
 guished by ease of manner and tact, two acquired quali- 
 ties 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 differ-
 
 622 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ence 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 man- 
 ners. How could any woman defraud her children of such a 
 possession? You see what rewards attend the performance 
 of my tasks! 
 
 Armand, 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 Rene will be a few years 
 hence? The little rascal has already an iron will, whatever 
 he wants he manages to get; he will try a thousand circui- 
 tous 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, 
 Rene 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 Nais? Nais 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 ass 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 crea- 
 ture, 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 wel- 
 fare it is you who have recalled to my mind the terrible 
 possibilities of marriage, so full of anguish for a mother
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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. 
 
 #, AFTER A SILENCE of two years, you are 
 pricked by curiosity, and want to know why I have 
 not written. My dear Kene"e, 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 sympathy. The whole 
 two years have known no note of discord in the harmony, 
 no jarring word in the interchange of feeling, no shade of 
 difference in our lightest wish. Not one in this long suc- 
 cession of days has failed to bear its own peculiar fruit; 
 not a moment has passed without being enriched 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 creations of a 
 love as rich and varied in its development as Nature her- 
 self. Of disappointment not a trace! We find more pleas- 
 ure 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
 
 624 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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, Ren^e, it is not 
 possible 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 effects 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 
 likeness 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, may 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 en- 
 dowed 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 ac- 
 cords 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 innocence of the ancient poets which, 
 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 625 
 
 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 fitted 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 gravelled 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 hill-tops 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 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 proportions, 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 com- 
 plexion; his jet-black hair contrasts finely with the lus- 
 treless tints of the neck and forehead. He has the tragic 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAO-27
 
 626 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 head of Louia XIII. His mustache and tuft have been 
 allowed to grow, but I made him shave the whiskers and 
 beard, which were getting too common. 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 have 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 them 
 because they have ceased themselves to be attractive all 
 these are horrors unknown to youth. They are the penalty 
 of unequal unions. Oh! my dear, whatever you do, don't 
 marry Athe'nais 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 
 everything is alive and eloquent of ourselves. An old moss- 
 growri oak, near the woodman's house on the roadside, re- 
 minds 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 627 
 
 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 taking in all its points of view, and the proof we are con- 
 stantly 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, 
 nevertheless, 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 initi- 
 ated 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 pre- 
 cision of 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, snakelike, in order that
 
 628 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 my master may find me, dainty as a spring morning, at his 
 wakening. He is charmed with his 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 pur- 
 pose. 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 
 interest in our flowers, in the beauties of the hothouse, and 
 in our trees. We give ourselves in all seriousness to horti- 
 culture, 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 millionnaire. And noth- 
 ing, I assure you, can match the beauty of our walled garden. 
 We are regular gluttons over our fruit, and watch with tender 
 interest our Montreuil peaches, our hotbeds, our laden trel- 
 lises, and pyramidal pear-trees. 
 
 But lest these rural pursuits should fail to satisfy my 
 beloved'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 demand 
 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 ac- 
 company him even in the boldest flights of his imagination. 
 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.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 629 
 
 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 travelling. 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 inge- 
 nuity 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 amus- 
 ing, 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 
 jealousy, the jealousy of the lover. A single indifferent 
 glance 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! Een^e, 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 flowering 
 tree that bears no fruit. The thought of your lovely chil- 
 dren goes through me like a knife. My life has grown nar- 
 rower, while yours has expanded and shed its rays afar. The 
 passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood wid- 
 ens the circle of our feelings. How well I felt this difference 
 when I read your kind, tender letter! To see you thus liv- 
 ing in three hearts roused my envy. Yes, you are happy;
 
 630 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 you have had wisdom to obey the laws of social life, while 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 Rene*e, 
 you understand I believe him. 
 
 Good-by, 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 "In- 
 ferno." 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. 
 
 LIII 
 
 MME. DE L'ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON 
 
 li ^TY DEAR LOUISE I have read and reread your 
 
 /\/i 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 passion 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 631 
 
 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 yourself 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 gayety of the home ? 
 
 Oh I my sweet, once again you have taken the wrong turn- 
 ing in life. To be adored is a young girl's dream, which 
 may survive a few springtimes; it cannot be that of the 
 mature woman, the wife and mother. To a woman's vanity 
 it is, perhaps, enough to know that she can command adora- 
 tion 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 
 warning: 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 
 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 Gaston, 
 I would still cling to the duties and the children, who are 
 so dear to me. To a woman's heart the feelings of a mother 
 are among the simple, natural, fruitful, and inexhaustible 
 things of life. I can recall the day, now nearly fourteen 
 years ago, when I embarked on a life of self -sacrifice 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
 
 632 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 that I would make the same choice again. No other guiJ- 
 ing principle is so safe, or leads to such rich reward. 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 convic- 
 tions. This is the last time I shall speak to you in this way ; 
 but I could not refrain from once more pleading with you 
 when I found that your happiness had been proof against 
 the most searching of all trials. 
 
 One more point I must urge on you, suggested by 
 my meditations on your retirement. Life, whether of the 
 body or the heart, consists iii 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 mere 
 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 
 Sully, to some one who remarked that her husband, for all 
 his grave exterior, did not scruple to keep a mistress. "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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 633 
 
 everything 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 gen- 
 tleness to all about her! My proud, self-sufficing temper 
 gradually 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 fami- 
 ly 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 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 despair that the letter which I hoped might recon- 
 cile you to society by its picture of my happiness should 
 have brought forth only a pean of selfishness. Yes, your 
 love is selfish; you love Gaston far less for himself than 
 for what he is to you.
 
 634 ' BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 JJV 
 
 MME. GASTOX TO THE COMTESSE DE L'ESTORADE 
 
 May 20th. 
 
 ~W~^\ENEE^ calamity has come no, that is no word for 
 i\ 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 for 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?" 
 1 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 distress 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. 
 
 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 Gaston 
 motioned them away, Once left to ourselves, I refused to
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 635 
 
 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. 
 
 "Nothing," I said; "I saw the mud of Paris on Fe- 
 delta'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-morrow," 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 1 
 adore this heartless boy? I hate that mare! Fool that I 
 was to keep horses! But the 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 pointblank, "Do I bore you?"
 
 636 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ''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 
 answered. 
 
 "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! Renee, 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 poison- 
 ous 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 
 attempt 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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 637 
 
 meaning, a glance contains a volume, icicles drift on ut- 
 tered 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 Rene'e, 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 possibili- 
 ties, 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 carried 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 radi- 
 ant, 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 bear- 
 ing plainly showed the restrained triumph of the successful 
 plotter; for there is a radiance of the soul which is reflected 
 in every feature and turn of the body. While still exam-
 
 638 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ining 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 25ih. 
 
 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 rny 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 mold." 
 
 He turned white, and fixed his eyes on me ratner 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 
 behind which you are hiding something from me. ' ' 
 
 Thereupon I gave myself the gratification of watching 
 his hopeless entanglement in the coverts and labyrinths of
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 639 
 
 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 between 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 
 another. 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 carpets. 
 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 treachery 
 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 
 devoutest 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 30th. 
 
 SINCE that fatal day Gaston no longer works with the 
 careless ease of the wealthy artist, whose work is merely 
 pastime; he sets himself tasks like a professional writer, 
 Four hours a day he devotes to finishing his two plays.
 
 640 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 "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 midnight, 
 while he was sleeping. I went to see if the money was still 
 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 imme- 
 diately; 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 consciousness 
 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 creat- 
 ures 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 over my left arm, gave him my right, and we walked
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 
 
 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 vis- 
 ible 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, look- 
 ing 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 
 Nathan, the dramatic author, informing Gaston that a play 
 of his had been accepted, learned, rehearsed, and would be 
 produced the following Saturday. He also inclosed 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 suc- 
 cess!" 
 
 Nothing would be easier than for me to ransack the 
 drawer some time when he is working and pretend great sur- 
 prise 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
 
 642 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 of the two stars in the legend; Et M * *. I saw tne first 
 night from the depths of one of the stage boxes. 
 
 July 1st. 
 
 G ASTON ? s work and his visits to Paris still 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 com- 
 missioned. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinent 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, Eenee, 
 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 Graston'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 643 
 
 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 savr 
 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 his 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 distinc- 
 tion about her; nothing of the English lady. Probably she 
 is a farmer's daughter from some wretched and remote coun- 
 try village, or, it may be, the eleventh child of some poor 
 clergyman ! 
 
 I reached home, after a miserable journey, during which 
 all sort 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
 
 644 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 through 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.'" 
 
 July 15th. 
 
 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'Eveque ?" 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!" 
 
 "What makes you think so?" 
 
 "I have consulted the best doctors, and they agree in 
 advising me to travel for a couple of months." 
 
 "Gaston," I said, "if love in absence had been possi- 
 ble 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 prohibi- 
 tion is removed. 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-by, dear sister soul, whose affection has never wav- 
 ered 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 bitter- 
 ness. How rightly you have judged of life! Farewell.
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 645 
 
 LV 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO MME. GASTON 
 
 July 16th. 
 
 71 /TY DEAR LOUISE I send this letter by an ex- 
 j[VjL press 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 your will approve. I went so far as to set the police 
 to work, but the whole thing remains 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 ser- 
 vice 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 ruined, and the sudden shock affected Louis Gas- 
 ton's brain. He ,had no mental energy left to resist the 
 disease which attacked him, and he died in Bengal, whither 
 he had gone to try and realize the remnants of his wife's 
 property. 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's widow, the handsome woman whom you took
 
 ttdtti BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 in- 
 structions 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 disap- 
 peared without leaving any address, Mine. 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, tell- 
 ing him that Gaston was now a rich man through his mar- 
 riage 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 destitu- 
 tion. A touching story, is it not? 
 
 D'Arthez naturally wrote, after a time, to tell your hus- 
 band of the condition of his sister-in-law and her children, 
 informing him. at the same time, of the generous intentions 
 of the Indian Gaston toward his Paris brother, which an un- 
 happy chance alone had frustrated. Gaston, as you may im- 
 agine, 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 fur- 
 nished his sister-in-law's rooms, and promised her a quar- 
 terly allowance 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. 
 
 lime. Gaston, therefore, is no rival of yours, and lias
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 647 
 
 every right to jour 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 you gave 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 de- 
 clares 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 embar- 
 rassment to which they give rise. Nothing is more natural 
 than Gaston's wish to provide in secret a suitable mainte 
 nance 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 handsome 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 
 husband, 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 mir- 
 rored 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 sur- 
 prise, in your turn, for Gaston.
 
 648 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 LVI 
 
 MME. GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, what can I say in an 
 swer except the cruel "It is too late" of that fool 
 Lafayette to his royal master? Oh! my life, my 
 sweet life, what physician will give 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 "In- 
 ferno." Come to see me die! 
 
 LVII 
 
 THE COMTESSE DE I/ESTORADE TO THE COMTE DE 
 
 L'ESTORADE 
 
 THE CHALET, August 7th. 
 
 Y 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!
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 649 
 
 They were like two lovely children together in their re- 
 stored confidence. For a moment I was deceived, like 
 Gaston, by this effrontery ; 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 spot on her cheeks. I congratulated myself on 
 my prudence in leaving the doctors in the wood till they 
 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 Kene*e, I have no doubt, has 
 things to confide in me/' 
 
 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 perspiration in the night, 
 and then ran out and lay down by the side of the lake 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 
 
 Vol. A. BALZAC-28
 
 650 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 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 that I have strength to do it. I am full of youth 
 and spirit, and can die standing! For myself, I have no 
 regrets. I am dying as I wished to die, still young and 
 beautiful, 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, while 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 Kene"e, 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:
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 651 
 
 "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 pas- 
 sionate eagerness with which I threw myself into wedded 
 life was bound in nature to dimmish. 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 
 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 toward 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 des- 
 ert 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 selfishness 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 man-
 
 652 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 ner, until Gaston entered, bringing with him his sister-in- 
 law, the two children, and the English nurse, whom, at 
 Louise's request, 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 
 ChauHeu manner, in which no one can rival her. 
 
 I wrote at once to the Due and Duchesse de Chaiilieu, 
 the Due de Rhetore", 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, 
 Madeleine de Lenoncourt, her two brothers, and her mother 
 arrived. The coolness which Louise's second marriage had 
 caused between herself and her family disappeared. Every 
 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; medi- 
 cines, ointments, the whole apparatus of nursing, is carefully 
 concealed. 
 
 "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
 
 LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES 653 
 
 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 walk- 
 ing 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-by, my love. 
 
 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 nobodies o In a mere thread of a voice she sang some 
 Italian airs from "I Puritani," "La Somnambula, " "Moi'se," 
 while we stood round the bed in silence. Not one of us, not 
 even the Due de Khe'tore', 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 flicker 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.
 
 654 BALZAC'S WORKS 
 
 The last sacrament had been administered the evening 
 before, 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 26th. 
 
 MY HEART is broken. I have just seen her in her wind- 
 ing-sheet; her face is quite pale now with purple shadows. 
 Oh! I want my children I my children 1 Bring me my 
 children !
 
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