* * *
“With a mind to the bizarre information he gave me about his only relative, his sole heiress, I feel bound now to rummage into all the houses of ill repute in Paris just so that I can drop an immense fortune onto some loose woman. But most important, madame, you should understand this: Comte Ernest de Restaud will soon with all the legal formalities come into a fortune that would permit him to marry Mademoiselle Camille, as well as provide comfortable incomes and dowries to his mother, the Countess de Restaud, and to his brother and sister.”
“Well, dear Derville, we shall consider it,” replied Madame de Grandlieu. “Monsieur Ernest will have to be very rich for his mother to be accepted into a noble family. It is true, though, that Camille could arrange never to see her mother-in-law.”
“Madame de Beauséant did receive Madame de Restaud,” said the old uncle.
“Well—at very large receptions,” retorted the viscountess.
Paris, January 1830
Translated by Linda Asher
THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS
To Franz Liszt
1. SISTER THERESA
IN A SPANISH town on an island in the Mediterranean, there is a convent of Barefoot Carmelites where the rule of the order instituted by Saint Teresa has been preserved with all the primitive rigor of the reformation undertaken by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as this may seem, it is nonetheless the truth. While the religious houses on the peninsula and on the Continent were almost all destroyed or overturned by the outbreaks of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, this island was constantly protected by the English fleet, its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants sheltered from the general havoc and plunder. The storms of every kind that shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century were broken on this rock off the coast of Andalusia. If rumors of the emperor’s name reached this shore, it is doubtful that the holy sisters kneeling in this cloister would have comprehended his fabulous trail of glory and the flamboyant grandeur of his meteoric life. In the Catholic world’s memory, this convent’s unchanged discipline made it a preeminent refuge. And the purity of its rule attracted from the farthest points of Europe sad women whose souls, unfettered by human ties, yearned for this long suicide accomplished in the bosom of God. Furthermore, no convent was so well suited to the complete detachment from things here below required by the religious life. Yet on the Continent a great number of these houses are magnificently adapted to their surroundings. Some are shrouded in the depths of the most solitary valleys, others suspended above the steepest mountains or cast at the edge of precipices. Everywhere man has sought the poetry of the infinite, the solemn awe of silence; everywhere he has striven to draw closer to God, seeking Him on the peaks, in the depths of chasms, at the cliff’s edge, and found Him everywhere. Yet nowhere but on this rock, half European and half African, could you find so many harmonies that all converged to lift the soul, to leaven the most sorrowful memories, to dull their sting, to put life’s sufferings into a deep bed.
This monastery was built at the far edge of the island, at the highest point of the rock, which some great global upheaval broke cleanly off on the seaward side, where from every direction it offered the sharp crags of its heights eaten away to the high-water mark but no less unscalable. Any attempt to reach this rock is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch out to sea, where the shining waves of the Mediterranean play over them. Only from the sea, then, can you grasp the four wings of the square building whose form, height, and openings have been scrupulously prescribed by monastic law. From the town side, the church entirely masks the solid construction of the cloister, whose roofs are covered with broad tiles that make it invulnerable to wind, storms, and the action of the sun. Thanks to the generosity of a Spanish family, the church crowns the town. The bold, elegant façade gives a fine, imposing face to this small seaside town. Surely we all have a vision of a terrestrial idyll of a town, whose huddled roofs, nearly all placed like an amphitheater around a pretty port, are surmounted by a magnificent Gothic three-sided porch, campaniles, small bell towers, and filigreed spires. Religion dominating life, putting men continually in mind of its End and the Way, is a very Spanish image! Now throw this image into the Mediterranean, under a burning sky; add some palms, several stunted but evergreen trees mingling their moving fronds with the sculpted foliage of the motionless architecture; see the fringes of foam whitening the reefs in vivid contrast to the sapphire blue of the sea; now turn and admire the galleries, the terraces built above each house where the inhabitants come to take the evening air among the flowers, between the treetops in their little gardens. Then, in the port, a few sails. Finally, in the serenity of early evening, listen to the music of the organs, the chant of prayers, and the admirable sounds of the bells ringing out to sea. Everywhere noise and calm, but more often calm presides.
Inside, the church is divided into three dark and mysterious naves. The fury of the winds doubtless prevented the architect from constructing those flying buttresses that ornament cathedrals almost everywhere and separate the chapels; as a result the walls that flanked the two smaller naves and sustained this vessel shed no light. On the outside, these strong walls presented the view of their gray mass leaning on huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the great nave and its two small side galleries were lit entirely by the rose window suspended by a miracle of art above the entry, whose favorable exposure had allowed the luxury of stone lacework and other beauties particular to the style improperly called Gothic.
The larger part of these three naves was left to the townsfolk, who came to hear the Mass and prayers. The choir stood behind a grille and a heavily pleated brown curtain, slightly open in the middle so that nothing of the choir could be seen but the officiating priest at the altar. The grille itself was separated at equal intervals by pillars that supported an interior organ loft and the organ. And this construction with its carved wooden exterior was in harmony with the small columns of the galleries supported by the pillars of the great nave. If a curious person were bold enough to climb the narrow balustrade of these galleries to see into the choir, he would see nothing but the tall, octagonal stained-glass windows placed in equal panels around the high altar.
At the time of the French expedition to Spain to restore King Ferdinand VII once more to his throne, and after the taking of Cádiz, a French general came to this island to enforce recognition of the royal government. He prolonged his stay in order to see this convent and to find a way to gain entry to it. The enterprise was certainly a delicate one. But a man of passion, a man whose life had been, as it were, one long series of poems in action and who had always lived novels instead of writing them, a man of acts above all was sure to be tempted by something so seemingly impossible. To open the doors to a convent of women by legal means? The pope or the archbishop would scarcely have allowed it. As for trickery or force, an indiscretion would surely cost him his position, his entire military career, and his goal as well. The Duc d’Angoulême was still in Spain, and of all the faults committed with impunity by a man in the generalissimo’s favor, this alone would have found him pitiless. Our general had solicited this mission in order to satisfy private motives of curiosity, although never had curiosity been more desperate. But this final attempt was a matter of conscience. The house of these Carmelites on the island was the only Spanish convent that had baffled his search. During the crossing, which took less than an hour, he felt hope rise in his soul. Then, although he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, although he had not yet glimpsed the nuns’ robes but only heard the chants of the liturgy, he encountered beneath these walls and in those chants slight clues that justified his slender hope. Indeed, however slight these presentiments so bizarrely awakened, never was a human passion more vehemently excited than the general’s curiosity at that moment. But there are no minor events when it comes to the heart. It magnifies everything: It weighs the fall of a fourteen-year empire and the fall of a woman’s glove on the same sc
ale, and the glove nearly always weighs more than the empire. Now here are the facts in all their prosaic simplicity. After the facts, emotions will follow.
One hour after the general had landed on the island, royal authority was reestablished. A few Spanish republicans, who had taken refuge there by night after the fall of Cádiz, were allowed by the general to charter a vessel and sail to London. There was, then, neither resistance nor reaction. But this insular little restoration could not take place without a Mass, which the two divisions under the general’s command were obliged to attend. Now the general had hoped that at this Mass he might to be able to obtain some information on the nuns sequestered in the convent, one of whom was perhaps dearer to him than life itself and more precious than honor. But he had no notion of the strictness of the order of Barefoot Carmelites.
His hopes were at first cruelly dashed. The Mass was, in truth, celebrated with great ceremony. In deference to the solemnity of the occasion, the curtains that usually hid the choir were open to display the riches, the valuable paintings and shrines ornamented with precious stones, whose brilliance eclipsed the numerous gold and silver ex-votos attached by the sailors of the port to the columns of the grand nave. The nuns had all taken refuge in the organ loft. However, in spite of this first failure, during the Mass of thanksgiving, the most secretly thrilling drama that ever battered a man’s heart was played out before him.
The sister who was playing the organ stirred such intense enthusiasm that none of the soldiers regretted having come to the service. They even found pleasure in it, and all the officers were enraptured. As for the general, he appeared to remain calm and cold. The feelings stirred in him as the sister played various pieces of music are among a small number of things whose expression is not permitted to speech and renders it impotent, but which, like death, God, and eternity can be appreciated only in a slim point of contact with humanity. By singular chance, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of Rossini, the composer who brings the most human passion into musical art and whose works will one day inspire a Homeric respect. Among the scores penned by this genius, the nun seemed especially to have studied his Moses, no doubt because it embodies the highest expression of sacred music. Perhaps these two spirits—the great, gloriously European composer, the other an unknown nun—had met in the intuition of the same poetry. This was the opinion of two officers, true dilettantes, who must have regretted missing the Theater Favart in Spain.
At last, during the Te Deum, no one could fail to recognize a French soul in the music’s sudden change of character. Joy in the triumph of the Most Christian King surely touched this nun’s heart. She was certainly a Frenchwoman. Soon this patriotic feeling burst forth, pouring like shafts of light from a dialogue of organs as the sister introduced variations with all the delicacy of Parisian taste, vaguely mingled with allusions to our loveliest national airs. Spanish fingers would not have put such warmth into this gracious tribute to the victorious armies of France, revealing the musician’s nationality.
“We find France everywhere, it seems,” said a soldier.
The general had left during the Te Deum; it had been impossible for him to listen. The musician’s playing revealed to him a woman loved to intoxication, who had so deeply buried herself in the heart of religion and so carefully hidden herself from the eyes of the world that until now she had escaped the stubborn, ingenious searches made by men armed with great power and superior intelligence. The suspicion roused in the general’s heart became a virtual certainty with the vague reminder of a deliciously melancholy air, “Fleuve du Tage.” The woman he loved had often played this prelude to a French ballad in her Parisian boudoir, and here in the convent church the nun had just used it to express an exile’s regrets in the midst of triumphant joy. A dreadful sensation! To hope for the resurrection of a lost love, to find it still lost, to catch a mysterious glimpse of it after five years of pent-up passion, inflamed and increased with every vain attempt to satisfy it!
Who has not at least once in his life turned everything upside down, his papers, his house, impatiently rummaged in his memory seeking a precious object, and felt the ineffable pleasure of finding it after a day or two consumed in vain search—after hoping, despairing, after spending the most intense irritations of the soul for this important trifle that nearly became a passion? Well, extend this kind of rage over five years; put a woman, a heart, love in place of this trifle; transport this passion to the loftiest realms of feeling. Then imagine an ardent man, a man with a lion’s heart and a leonine mane, one of those men who imposes himself and inspires terror and awe in those who think of him! Perhaps you will understand, then, the general’s abrupt exit during the Te Deum, just as the prelude of a ballad he had once heard with delight in a gilt-paneled boudoir began to vibrate beneath the nave of this seaside church.
He walked down the steep street that led to the church and stopped only when the rumbling of the organ no longer reached his ears. Able to think only of his love, whose volcanic eruption was burning his heart, the French general only knew that the Te Deum was over when the Spanish congregation came pouring out of the church. Feeling that his conduct or his attitude might have seemed ridiculous, he went back to take his place at the head of the cortege, telling the alcalde and the governor of the town that a sudden indisposition had obliged him to take the air. Then, in order to prolong his stay on the island, he thought to exploit this pretext tossed off at first so carelessly, and pleading that his indisposition had grown worse, he declined to preside at the banquet offered by the island’s authorities to the French officers. He took to his bed and sent a message to the major general that temporary illness forced him to leave the colonel in command of the troops. Such a commonplace but credible ruse freed him from all responsibilities during the time necessary to carry out his plans. As a man who was in essence Catholic and monarchist, the general informed himself of the schedule of services and affected the greatest attachment to religious practices, a piety that surprised no one in Spain.
The very next day, during his soldiers’ departure, the general went to the convent to hear vespers. He found the church deserted by the inhabitants who, despite their piety, had gone to the port to see the troops set sail. The Frenchman, happy to find himself alone in the church, took care to let the echoing arches ring out with the clanking of his spurs. He walked there noisily, he coughed, he spoke out loud to himself to inform the nuns, and especially the musician, that if the French troops had departed, one Frenchman remained. Was this singular notice heard and understood? The general thought so. At the Magnificat, the organ seemed to answer him through its airborne vibrations. The soul of the nun flew toward him on the wings of music and was transported in the movement of its sounds. The music burst forth in all its power and filled the church with warmth. This song of joy, consecrated by the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity expressing the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the living God, became the utterance of a heart nearly frightened by its happiness in the presence of a mortal love. This love still endured and had come to trouble her from beyond the tomb, where these women buried themselves in order to be reborn as brides of Christ.
The organ is surely the grandest, the most daring, the most magnificent of all the instruments created by human genius. It is a whole orchestra, and a skillful hand can play it to express everything. Is it not in some sense a pedestal on which the soul pauses before launching into space while in its flight attempting to trace a thousand pictures, to paint life, to traverse the infinite that separates heaven and earth? The more a poet listens to its vast harmonies, the more he realizes that only the hundred voices of this earthly choir can conquer the distances between men kneeling at prayer and the God hidden in the dazzling rays of the sanctuary. Only the organ is an intermediary strong enough to bear humanity’s prayers to heaven in their omnipotent modes, in their diverse melancholy, with the shades of their meditative ecstasy, with the impetuous burst of their repentance and the thousand imaginings o
f every belief. Yes, beneath these long arches, the melodies imagined by the genius of the sacred find unexpected grandeurs, which they nurture and strengthen. In the dim light, the deep silence, the chanting that alternates with the thunder of the organ weaves a veil for God, and through it his luminous attributes shine forth.
This wealth of sacred things seemed to be tossed like a drop of incense upon the frail altar of love that sits opposite the eternal throne of a jealous and vengeful God. Indeed, the joy of the nun did not have the quality of grandeur and gravity that ought to harmonize with the solemnities of the Magnificat. She enriched it with graceful developments whose different rhythms spoke of a human gladness. In its brilliant trills a soprano might try to express her love, and her songs fluttered like a bird near its nest. Then at moments she leaped back into the past, now to frolic, now to weep. Her changing mode had something disordered about it, like the agitation of the happy woman at her lover’s return. At last, after the shifting flights of delirium and the marvelous effects of this imagined recognition, the speaking soul turned back on itself. Shifting from a major to a minor key, the musician was able to inform her listener of her present lot. Now she told him of her long melancholy, her lingering moral malady. How each day she deadened the senses, each night erased some thought, gradually reducing her heart to ashes. After several soft undulations, her music shaded into a color of profound sadness, and soon the echoes of sorrow spilled forth in torrents. Then all at once the high notes rang out in a concert of angelic voices, as if to announce to the lost but not forgotten lover that the reunion of their two souls would take place only in heaven—a touching hope! Then the Amen. No more joy or tears in the melodies, no melancholy or regrets. The Amen was a return to God; this last chord was deep, terrifyingly solemn. The musician deployed all the nun’s black flowing crepe, and after the final thundering of the bass pipes, which made the listeners tremble to the roots of their hair, she seemed to plunge back into the tomb from which she had momentarily risen. When the vibrations slowly died away, it seemed that the church, luminous until this moment, once again entered a profound darkness.
The Human Comedy: Selected Stories Page 33