Letters of Two Brides

by Honoré de Balzac

  Adieu, then, for me at least, to the novels and dramas of which we once made ourselves the heroines. I already know my life’s story line. It will be marked by such momentous events as the young de l’Estorade masters’ teething, by their feeding, by the ravages they will wreak on my flower beds and my person; embroidering their bonnets, being loved and admired by a poor sickly young man at the entry to the valley of Gémenos, those will be my enchantments. Perhaps one day that countrywoman will take to spending her winters in Marseille, but even then she would only be appearing on the narrow stage of the provinces, where there is little peril lurking in the wings. I will have nothing to fear, not even one of those admirations in which we women take such pride. We will have an abiding interest in silkworms, for which we will have mulberry leaves to sell. We will know the strange vicissitudes of Provençal life and the storms of a household where no quarrel is possible: Monsieur de l’Estorade has announced his definitive intention to let his wife lead him where she will. And since I will do nothing to ensure that he keeps to this wise course, he will very likely never stray from it. You, my dear Louise, will be the glamorous part of my existence, so tell me all your adventures, paint me pictures of the parties you go to, the balls, carefully describe your dress, the flowers crowning your beautiful blond hair, the words and ways of the menfolk. There will be two of you listening, dancing, having your fingertips squeezed. It would make me very happy to be amusing myself in Paris while you are mother to a family at La Crampade, for such is the name of our bastide. Poor man, who thinks he is marrying only one woman! Will he ever realize they are two? I am beginning to say foolish things. And as I can no longer do foolish things but vicariously, I will stop here. I hereby give you a kiss on both cheeks; my lips are still those of a girl (he has dared take only my hand). Oh! we are rather distressingly respectful and respectable. Ah, there I go again. Farewell, my dear!

  P.S. I have just opened your third letter. My dear, I have some thousand livres at my disposal: use them, then, for pretty things that cannot be found around here, nor even in Marseille. As you shop for yourself, think of your recluse in La Crampade. Remember that neither my intended nor I have grandparents with tasteful friends in Paris to make their purchases. I will answer that letter another time.

  6

  FROM DON FELIPE HÉNAREZ TO DON FERNAND

  Paris, September

  The date of this letter will tell you, my brother, that the head of your house is out of danger.[15] Although the massacre of our ancestors in the Court of the Lions made of us Spaniards and Christians in spite of ourselves, it also instilled in us the prudence of the Arabs; perhaps I owe my salvation to the Abencerrage blood still flowing in my veins. Terror made of King Ferdinand such a convincing actor that Valdez believed his protestations. Were it not for me, that poor admiral was a dead man. No Liberal will ever understand the nature of a king. I myself long ago grasped that Bourbon’s character; the more His Majesty assured us of his protection, the deeper my mistrust. A true Spaniard has no need to repeat his promises. He who speaks too much seeks to deceive. Valdez boarded a ship bound for England. As for myself, as soon as the sad fate of my beloved Spain was sealed in Andalusia, I wrote to the steward of my holdings in Sardinia with orders to provide for my safety. Skilled coral fishermen were awaiting me with a boat on a coastal point. As Ferdinand was ordering the French to take me into custody, I was in my own barony of Macumer, amid bandits who scoff at all laws and all threats of reprisal. Grenada’s last Hispano-Moorish house rediscovered the deserts of Africa, and even the Saracen horse, on lands passed down from the Saracens. Those bandits’ eyes glowed with savage joy and pride on learning that they were protecting their master, the Duke de Soria, from the King of Spain’s vendetta, that they had among them a Hénarez, the first to have visited them since the island belonged to the Moors, they who only the day before feared my justice! Twenty-two rifles offered to take aim at Ferdinand de Bourbon, that son of a race unknown on the day the Abencerrages arrived in triumph on the banks of the Loire. I thought I might live on the revenues brought in by those lands, to which we have unfortunately given so little thought; my stay there showed me my mistake and the truthfulness of Queverdo’s accounts. The poor man had twenty-two human lives at my service and not a real, twenty thousand arpents of open land and no house, virgin forests and no furniture. It would take a million piastres and half a century of the master’s attention to fully develop those magnificent lands; I will consider that. As they flee, the defeated turn their thoughts to themselves and their losses. With tears in my eyes, I imagined that noble corpse insulted by the monks, and I saw the sad future of Spain herself. It was in Marseille that I learned of Riego’s fate. I sadly mused that my life too would end in martyrdom, but of a long and obscure sort. Is a man truly alive when he can neither devote himself to a country nor live for a woman? Love and conquest, those two aspects of one single idea, were the law engraved on our sabers, written in letters of gold on the vaults of our palaces, endlessly repeated by the sprays of water shooting heavenward in our marble fountains. But in vain does that law rule my heart: the saber is broken, the palace lies in ruins, the rushing spring has been swallowed by the sterile sands.

  Here, then, is my testament.

  Don Fernand, you will soon understand why I reined in your fervor with the command to remain faithful to the rey netto.[16] As your brother and friend, I implore you to obey; as your master, I order it. You will go to the king, you will ask him for my grandezas and my holdings, my position and my titles; he may well hesitate, he will put on a few royal scowls, but you will tell him that you are loved by Maria Hérédia, and that Maria can only marry the Duke de Soria. You will then see him all atremble with joy: the Hérédia family’s vast fortune barred him from consummating my destruction, and now he will think it complete. He will immediately give you everything that was mine. You will marry Maria, for I have discovered the secret of your covert love, and I have prepared the old count for that substitution. Maria and I always respected the rules of good conduct, just as we respected our fathers’ wishes. You are as handsome as a child of love, and I as ugly as a Spanish grandee; you are loved, and I the object of an unspoken repugnance. You will soon overcome any resistance my misfortunes might inspire in her noble Spanish soul. Duke de Soria, your predecessor will exact from you not one single regret, will not deprive you of one single maravedi. With Maria’s jewels, you will have no need for my mother’s diamonds in your house; those diamonds will assure me an independent existence, and so you will send them to me along with my old nursemaid, Urraca, the only one of my former domestics I wish to keep, for she alone knows how to make my hot chocolate.

  During our short-lived revolution, my constant labors reduced my life to its barest essentials, and I lived solely on my ministerial salary. You will find the revenues of those last two years in your steward’s hands. That sum belongs to me: the wedding of a Duke de Soria will cost a great deal, and so we shall half it. You will not refuse this wedding present from your brother the bandit. In any case, such is my will. The barony of Macumer not being under the thumb of the King of Spain, it remains mine alone, and so I still have a fatherland and a name, should I ever wish to make something of myself.

  God be praised, it is over, the house of Soria is saved!

  At this moment, when I am nothing more than Baron de Macumer, the French cannons are announcing the Duke d’Angoulême’s entry into Madrid. You will understand, monsieur, why I interrupt my letter here. . . .

  October

  I had not ten quadruples to my name when I arrived in this place. Is there any smaller man than a man of state who, amid the catastrophes he failed to prevent, proves to have planned ahead for his preservation? For defeated Moors, only a horse and the desert; for disappointed Christians, the monastery and a handful of coins. Nonetheless, my resignation is for the moment nothing more than weariness. I am not so near the monastery as to give up all thoughts of living. Believing they might prove useful, Ozalg
a provided me with letters of introduction, among them one written to a bookdealer, who is for our com-patriots here what Galignani[17] is for the English. That man has found me eight students, at three francs a lesson. I visit my students every other day; each day, then, I teach four lessons and earn twelve francs, far more than I need. When Urraca comes, I will pass my clients on to some lucky Spanish exile. I have found lodging in a poor widow’s boardinghouse on the rue Hillerin-Bertin.[18] My bedroom faces south and overlooks a small garden. I hear none of the sounds of the city, I see only greenery, and all told I spend no more than one piaster per day; I am quite astonished at the pure, tranquil pleasures I find in this life, like Dionysius the Younger in Corinth.[19] From sunup to ten, I smoke and drink my chocolate, sitting at my window, gazing out at two Spanish plants, a broom plant standing tall amid clumps of jasmine: gold on a white background, an image that will always cheer a descendant of the Moors. At ten I set off for my lessons, returning home at four; I dine, then smoke and read until it comes time to retire. I can go on for some time leading this life, divided between labor and meditation, solitude and society. Be happy, then, Fernand: my abdication comes with no misgivings, none of the regrets felt by Charles V, no urge to leap back into the fray like Napoleon. It has been five nights and five days since I wrote my testament; my thoughts have moved on by five centuries. For me, it is as if those grandezas, those titles, that property never existed.

  Now that the respectful barrier that separated us has fallen, I can allow you to read into my heart, dear child. Clad by my gravity in impregnable armor, that heart is brimming with untapped tenderness and devotion, but no woman has ever seen it, not even she who, from my cradle, was destined to be mine. That is the secret behind my passion for matters of state. Lacking a mistress, I adored Spain. And Spain too has escaped me! Now that I am nothing, I can contemplate my ruined I, wonder why life came to me and when it will leave me; why the most chivalrous race there ever was should instill in its last offspring its prime virtues, its African ardor, its fiery poetry; whether the seed must forever be sealed away in its coarse envelope, never to send out a shoot, never to release its Oriental perfumes from a radiant flower. What crime did I commit in some previous existence that I have never inspired love in a woman? Was I born a mere piece of wreckage, destined to wash up on an arid shore? In my soul I find the deserts of my fathers, condemned to sterility by a blazing sun. The proud remnant of a fallen race, my strength useless, my love lost, an old young man, I will thus wait here, better than anywhere else, for the final favor that will be my death. Alas! beneath these gray skies, no spark will revive the flame amid all these ashes. And so, as my last words, I might well say, like Jesus Christ, My God, you have abandoned me! Fearsome words that no one has yet dared to examine.

  Consider, Fernand, how happy I am for the chance to live anew through you and Maria! I will contemplate you with the pride of a creator pleased at his handiwork. Love each other well and forever, cause me no sorrows: one tempest between you would hurt me more than it would you. Our mother foresaw that events would one day fulfill her hopes. Perhaps a mother’s wish is a compact between her and God. Was she not one of those mysterious beings who can communicate with heaven and bring back a vision of the future? How often I read in the wrinkles of her brow that she wished Felipe’s properties and honors on Fernand! I used to tell her just that, and she answered with two tears, showing me the wounds of a heart owed to us both, but which an invincible love gave to you alone. Her joyful shade will hover over your heads when you kneel at the altar. Will you finally come and caress your Felipe, Dona Clara? As you see, he has abandoned to your beloved even the girl you reluctantly placed on his knees. What I do here is pleasing to women, to the dead, to the king; it was God’s will, so do not resist it, Fernand: only obey, and hold your tongue.

  P.S. Tell Urraca she must never call me by any name other than Monsieur Hénarez. Say nothing of me to Maria. You must be the only living creature who knows the secrets of the last Christianized Moor, in whose veins the blood of a great desert-born family will die, and who will live out his days alone. Farewell.

  7

  FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENÉE DE MAUCOMBE

  January 1824

  Soon married? Can it be? But does one hire even a servant like that? You promise yourself to a man after only a month, knowing nothing of him, never having made his acquaintance! That man might be deaf—there are so many ways!—or feeble, or dull, or intolerable. Renée, do you not see what they want to make of you? They need you to perpetuate the glorious house of l’Estorade, nothing more. You will become a provincial. Is that what we promised each other? In your place, I would sooner make for the Hyères Islands in a skiff, waiting for some Algerian corsair to kidnap me and sell me to the grand vizier; I would become a sultana, and then one day a valide sultan[20]; young and old alike, I would sow havoc in the seraglio. You’re simply leaving one convent for another! I know you, you’re weak, you will enter into married life with the submissiveness of a lamb. Let me advise you, you’ll come up to Paris, we’ll drive all the men mad, we will be queens! Within three years, my beautiful doe, your husband could be a député.[21] I now know what a député is, I’ll explain everything; you will master this machine beautifully, you can live in Paris and become what my mother calls a woman of fashion. Oh! one thing is certain, I will not leave you there in your bastide.

  Monday

  For two weeks now, my dear, I have been living the life of high society: one evening at the Théâtre des Italiens, another at the Grand Opéra, and from there, always, to the ball. Ah! this world is a magical place. The music at the Italiens thrills me, and as my soul swoons in divine rapture I am ogled and admired from all sides—but with a single glance I can make the boldest young man lower his eyes. I have seen charming young men there; not one of them pleases me, none has ever caused me the emotion I feel when I hear Garcia sing his magnificent duo with Pellegrini in Otello. My God! what a jealous man this Rossini must be, to have expressed jealousy with such eloquence! Il mio cor si divide, what a devastating cry! I’m speaking Greek to you, you’ve never heard Garcia, but you do know how jealous I am! What a dreary dramatist Shakespeare is! Othello triumphs, he conquers, he commands, he struts, he comes and goes, leaving Desdemona to languish all alone, and Desdemona sees him preferring the trivialities of public life to her, but she never explodes? That sheep deserves to die. Just let the man I will one day deign to love take it into his head to do anything other than love me! I strongly approve of the endless trials required by the old chivalric code. I see only impertinence and stupidity in that delicate young lord who complained when his lady dispatched him to retrieve her glove from among a pack of lions:[22] very likely she had in store for him some beautiful flower of love, and he lost it after having earned it, the insolent dolt! But listen to me babbling on, as if I did not have great news! My father will very likely serve as our master the king’s representative in Madrid; I say our master because I will be a part of the embassy as well. My mother wishes to stay here in Paris, and so my father will take me with him, to have a woman at his side.

  My dear, to you this may all seem perfectly simple, but there are enormities behind it. In the past two weeks I have discovered all the secrets of my house. My mother would follow my father to Madrid if he were willing to engage Monsieur de Canalis as ambassadorial secretary, but secretaries are named by the king, and the duke dares not vex that king, who is quite absolute, nor upset my mother. My father the brilliant politician believes he has adroitly solved the problem by leaving the duchess behind. Monsieur de Canalis, the great poet of the day, is the young man cultivating my mother’s company, who I suppose is studying diplomacy with her each afternoon from three to five. Diplomacy must be a wonderful thing, because he is as punctual and regular as a speculator in the stock market. The good Duke de Rhétoré, our elder brother, solemn, cold, and peculiar, would be utterly outshone by my father in Madrid; he too will stay in Paris. Not to mention that
Miss Griffith has it on good authority that Alphonse is in love with a dancer at the Opéra. How can one possibly fall in love with legs and pirouettes? We have observed that my brother never misses a performance when Tullia is dancing; he applauds that creature’s turns and then leaves at once. I do believe that two unmarried women can do more damage in a house than the plague ever could. As for my other brother, he is off with his regiment, I have yet to see him. And so I am destined to be the Antigone of an ambassador of His Majesty. Perhaps I will marry in Spain; perhaps my father’s plan is to marry me off there with no dowry, exactly as you are being married to that wreck of the Honor Guard. It was my father’s suggestion that I come with him, and he offered me the services of his Spanish teacher. “Do you hope many men will come seeking my hand in Spain?” I asked him. A sly look was his only answer. For several days now he’s been annoying me at breakfast, studying me as I pretend not to notice, so in petto I played a good trick on him, both as a father and an ambassador. Did he not take me for a naive little fool? He asked what I thought of some young man and several young ladies I’d run into at various parties. I answered with the most mindless discussion of the color of their hair, the differences between their figures, the young men’s appearance. My father seemed disappointed to find me so shallow; he was secretly sorry he’d asked.