Letters of Two Brides

by Honoré de Balzac

  Yesterday I threw out a jape that must have cut Hénarez to the quick, for he made no reply; he finished the lesson, put on his hat, and took his leave, giving me a look that convinces me he will not come again. That suits me very nicely: there would be something sinister about reliving Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloïse, which I have just read and which has inspired in me a great hatred of love. I can’t bear a love that’s all philosophizing and fine words. Clarissa Harlowe is also entirely too happy when she writes her long little letter, but at the same time, my father tells me, Richardson’s novel explains the soul of the Englishwoman admirably. Rousseau’s strikes me as a philosophical sermon in letters.

  I see love as an entirely private poem. No writer says anything of it that is not true and false at the same time. In truth, my dear beauty, since the only love you can now tell me of is a conjugal love, I believe—in the interest, of course, of our double existence—that I must never marry but must rather experience some wonderful passion, so that together we might know life to the fullest. Give me a detailed account of everything that happens to you, especially in the first days, with that animal I call a husband. I promise to be no less precise, should I ever be loved. Farewell, my poor swallowed-up love.

  11

  FROM MADAME DE L’ESTORADE TO MADEMOISELLE DE CHAULIEU

  La Crampade

  You and your Spaniard make me shiver, dear beauty. I write these few lines to beseech you to send him away. Everything you tell me of him bespeaks the dangerous nature of those who have nothing to lose and so risk everything. That man must not be your lover, and he cannot be your husband. I will write you more fully of the secret events of my marriage, but only when my heart is free of the anxiety your last letter has created in it.

  12

  FROM MADEMOISELLE DE CHAULIEU TO MADAME DE L’ESTORADE

  February

  My beautiful doe, this morning at nine o’clock my father had himself announced in my rooms; I was up and dressed. I found him sitting gravely by the fire in my salon, more pensive than usual. He nodded at the armchair facing his; I understood his meaning and sank into it with a gravity so perfectly imitating his own that he broke into a smile, but a smile stamped with solemn sadness.

  “You are at least as sharp-witted as your grandmother,” he said.

  “Come now, Father,” I answered. “Don’t play the courtier with me: you have something to say!”

  He rose to his feet, greatly agitated, and spoke to me for a full half hour. This conversation deserves to be recorded, my dear. As soon as he went on his way I sat down at my table and endeavored to capture his words. Never before have I heard my father truly speak his mind. He began by flattering me, and he did not go about it at all badly; I was grateful to him for so well understanding and appreciating me.

  “Armande,” he said, “you have curiously misled me and agreeably surprised me. On your arrival from the convent, I took you for a young girl like all the rest, of limited intelligence, uninformed, the sort who can be won over at little expense with baubles, a pretty gem, and who do not think overmuch.”

  “On behalf of youth, Father, I thank you.”

  “Oh! there’s no such thing as youth anymore,” he said, reflexively making an orator’s gesture. “You have a mind of astonishing breadth, you judge all things at their true value, you are farsighted and shrewd: you seem to have seen nothing, when in fact you have already discovered the causes while others are still examining the effects. You are a minister in skirts; you are the only one here who can understand me. Should anyone seek some sacrifice from you, you are the only one who will successfully argue against you, so let me frankly lay out certain plans I made some time ago, which I have not abandoned. If I am to make you concur with them, I must convince you that they are rooted in fine and elevated sentiments, and so I must delve with you into political considerations of the highest importance for the kingdom, which would bore anyone else. Once you have heard me out, I would ask you to carefully think over my words: I am prepared to give you six months, if need be. You are your own mistress, without question. Should you refuse the sacrifices I ask of you, I will accept your refusal and torment you no further.”

  Hearing that preamble, my doe, I grew genuinely serious, and I said to him, “Speak, Father.” And here is the speech that statesman then made:

  “My child, France is in a precarious position known only to the king and a handful of great thinkers, but the king is a head without arms, and the great thinkers privy to this danger have no authority over those who must be used to arrive at a favorable outcome. Those men, vomited up by popular election, do not wish to be tools. However worthy they may be, they continue the work of society’s demolition, rather than help us to shore up the edifice. In a word, there are only two parties left: the party of Marius and the party of Sulla. I am for Sulla and against Marius.[25] There, in a nutshell, is the matter at hand. To explain all this more fully: the Revolution has not come to an end. It is implanted in our laws, it is written on our soil, it is in every mind, it is all the more formidable in that most of those counselors to the throne believe it has been defeated, seeing no soldiers or fortunes now serving it. The king is a man of great perception and sees all this clearly, but with each passing day he is increasingly won over by his brother’s people, who want to go too quickly; he has not two years to live, and is preparing his deathbed so that he might die in peace.[26] Child, do you know the Revolution’s most destructive effect? You would never guess. When it decapitated Louis XVI, the Revolution decapitated fathers everywhere. There is no family today, only individuals. Wanting to become a nation, the French gave up on being an empire. By proclaiming that every child has an equal right to the father’s legacies, they killed the family spirit, they created the Tax Office! But in this they have foreordained the weakening of the elite and the rise of the masses’ blind force, the ruination of the arts, the reign of personal interest, and they have paved the way for conquest. We find ourselves between two systems: a state founded on the family or a state founded on personal interest. Democracy or aristocracy, argument or obedience, Catholicism or religious indifference, there is the question in a few words. I belong to the small number who would resist what is known as the people, in the people’s own interest, of course. This has nothing to do with feudal rights, as fools are often told, nor with the ruling class; this is a matter of the state, it is a matter of France’s survival. Any country not founded in paternal authority has no guarantee of existence, for with that authority begins the ladder of responsibilities and subordinations, which runs straight up to the king. The king is us all! To die for the king is to die for oneself, for one’s family, which does not die, anymore than the kingdom dies. Every animal has its own instinct; man’s is the family spirit. A country is strong when it is composed of rich families, with every member engaged in the defense of the common treasure, a treasure of money, of glory, of privileges, of enjoyments; it is weak when it is composed of individuals without solidarity, who little care if they are obeying seven men or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each individual still owns his own plot of land, and that wretched egoist cannot foresee the day when it will be taken from him. We are headed toward a terrible debacle, should we fail. There will be nothing left but penal or fiscal laws, your money or your life. The most generous country on earth will no longer be guided by sentiment. Incurable wounds will have been inflicted and treated. Universal jealousy, to begin with: the superior classes will be confounded, equality of desires will be mistaken for equality of abilities, and the true elite, recognized and acknowledged, will be invaded by the onrush of the bourgeoisie. Once we could choose one man out of a thousand; now we can find nothing among three million similar ambitions, all dressed in the same livery, the livery of mediocrity. This triumphant horde will not realize that it is opposed by another fearsome horde, that of the landowning peasants: twenty million arpents of land living, walking, arguing, understanding nothing, always wanting more, throwing
up barricades everywhere, brute force at its service—”

  “But,” I said, interrupting my father, “what can I do for the state? I have no inclination to become the Joan of Arc of the Family and to perish over a slow fire tied to some convent’s stake.”

  “You are a little pest,” said my father. “If I speak reasonably to you, you answer with jokes; when I joke, you speak like an ambassador.”

  “Variety is the spice of life,” I told him. And he laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks.

  “I want you to think about what I have just explained to you; you will realize how much trust and forthrightness there is in speaking to you as I just have, and perhaps events will serve to further my plans. From your point of view, I realize, those plans are hurtful and unjust; I seek the approval, then, not so much of your heart and imagination as of your reason, for I have found in you more reason and good sense than I have seen in anyone. . . .”

  “You flatter yourself,” I answered with a smile. “I am your daughter, after all!”

  “I believe I am no fool, at least,” he said. “He who desires a certain end must desire the necessary means, and we must serve as an example to all. For that reason, you will have no fortune so long as your younger brother’s is not guaranteed; I would like to use all your capital to establish a majorat for him.”[27]

  “But,” I replied, “you do not forbid me to live as I please, and to be happy, even as I relinquish my fortune?”

  “Ah!” he answered, “so long as the life you intend to lead does no harm to the honor, the reputation—and, may I add, the glory—of our family.”

  “Well now,” I cried, “you’re very quick to discount my superior reason.”

  “In all of France,” he said bitterly, “we will not find one man willing to take as his wife a girl of the highest nobility with no dowry, who gives him only a promissory note. Should such a husband be found, he would necessarily be a bourgeois social climber. In such matters I come straight from the eleventh century.”

  “As do I,” I told him. “But why should I despair? Are there no elderly peers of France?”

  “You are making admirable progress, Louise!” he cried. And on that he took his leave, smiling and kissing my hand.

  I had received your letter that very morning, and it made me carefully consider the abyss into which you claim I might fall. I thought I could hear a voice crying out from inside me: “Fall you will!” I thus took my precautions. Hénarez dares to look at me, my dear, and his eyes trouble me, they produce a sensation I can only compare to deep terror. One mustn’t look at that man, anymore than at a toad: he is ugly and fascinating. I have been debating with myself for two days, wondering if I should inform my father that I am tired of studying Spanish and have that Hénarez sent away, but no sooner have I bravely resolved to do just that than I feel a need for the horrible sensation the sight of him causes me, and I tell myself: Just one more lesson, and then I will speak. My dear, there is a penetrating sweetness to his voice, he speaks like La Fodor sings. His manners are simple, entirely unaffected. And such beautiful teeth! Just now, as he was leaving, he thought he had seen how deeply he interests me, and he very respectfully reached out to take my hand and kiss it, but then he held back, as if terrified by his boldness and the great leap he was about to make. Little of this could be seen, but I sensed it; I smiled, for there is nothing more endearing than seeing an inferior’s surge of emotion retreat in this way. There is such audacity in a commoner’s love for a noble girl! My smile emboldened him, the poor man looked around for his hat, seeing it nowhere, not wanting to find it; I gravely brought it to him. His eyes were damp with ill-repressed tears. There was a world of things and thoughts in that very brief moment. We understood each other so well that I abruptly held out my hand for him to kiss. Perhaps that was a way of saying that love could fill the gap separating us. Now I cannot say what made me take that step: Griffith turned her back, I proudly extended my white paw, and I felt the fire of his lips tempered by two swollen teardrops. Ah! my angel, I sat drained in my armchair, pensive, I was happy, and I cannot explain how or why. What I felt was pure poetry. I had lowered myself, and at this hour I am ashamed of it, but at the time I thought it a beautiful and elevated thing. I had fallen under his spell: there is my excuse.

  Friday

  He truly is a beautiful man. His words are elegant, his mind remarkably fine. My dear, he shows the confidence and logic of Bossuet as he explains the mechanics not only of Spanish but of all languages and all human thought. French might almost be his mother tongue. When I expressed my surprise at this, he answered that he had come to France at a very young age, to Valençay, with the King of Spain.[28] What has happened in the depths of that soul? He is not the same as before: he appeared at our house dressed very simply, but in every way like a true gentleman out for a morning walk. His mind shone as bright as a lighthouse in that lesson: he deployed all his eloquence. Like an exhausted man regaining his strength, he revealed a vast soul, heretofore carefully hidden. He told me the story of a poor devil of a valet who went to his death for a single glance from a Queen of Spain. “Death was his only choice!” I told him. That answer filled his heart with joy, and his gaze left me genuinely terrified.

  That evening I went to a ball at the Duchess de Lenoncourt’s, where I spied the Prince de Talleyrand. By way of Monsieur Vandenesse, a charming young man, I inquired if he might have had a guest by the name of Hénarez at his château in 1809.

  “Hénarez is the Moorish name of the de Soria family, who are said to be Abencerrages converted to Christianity. The aged duke and his two sons accompanied the king. The elder son, become Duke de Soria in his turn, has just been stripped of his assets, honors, and titles by King Ferdinand, thereby avenging an old enmity. The duke made an enormous mistake by accepting a constitutional ministry with Valdez. Happily, he escaped Cadiz before the arrival of Monseigneur the Duke d’Angoulême, for despite his best efforts, the duke could never have protected him from the king’s wrath.”

  That answer, relayed word for word by the Viscount de Vandenesse, gave me much food for thought. I cannot tell you how anxiously I awaited my next lesson, which took place this morning. For the first quarter of an hour I studied him, trying to determine if he was a duke or a commoner, and unable to arrive at an answer. He seemed to read my thoughts as they came and to take pleasure in frustrating them. Finally I could bear it no longer. I brusquely put down the book I was translating aloud and said to him in Spanish, “You are deceiving us, monsieur. You are not a poor liberal commoner, you are the Duke de Soria, are you not?”

  “Mademoiselle,” he answered with a dispirited gesture, “I am, sadly, not the Duke de Soria.”

  I clearly perceived all the despair in that sadly. Ah! my dear, no man will ever be able to put so much meaning and passion into one single word. He had lowered his eyes, no longer daring to look at me.

  “Monsieur de Talleyrand,” I said, “at whose château you spent the king’s years of exile, believes a Hénarez can only be either a disgraced Duke de Soria or a servant.”

  He looked up, showing two dark, glowing embers, two eyes at once fiery and humiliated. He seemed to be in torment.

  “My father was indeed a servant of the King of Spain,” he said.

  Griffith was finding all this a very curious way of studying. With every question, every answer, we fell into worrisome silences.

  “Are you a noble or a commoner, then?” I asked him.

  “You know, mademoiselle, in Spain everyone is noble, even the beggars.”

  My patience had had more than its fill of these evasions. After the last lesson, I’d prepared one of those amusements that so tease the imagination: I wrote a letter describing the ideal man I would like to be loved by, telling myself I would give it to him as an exercise in translation. I have so far translated only from Spanish to French, never from French to Spanish; I observed as much, and asked Griffith to go and fetch the latest letter I had received from one of my
girlfriends. I told myself that the effect produced in him by this statement of purpose would show me what manner of blood he has in his veins. I took the page from Griffith with the words “I do hope I’ve copied this out properly,” for it was written in my own hand. I gave him the paper—the bait, if you prefer—and studied him as he read the following:

  The man who will win me, my dear, must be brusque and haughty with other men, but gentle with women. His eagle-like stare will have the power to instantly silence anything resembling ridicule. He will have a pitying smile for those who want to make light of sacred things, especially those underlying the poetry of the heart, those without which life would be no more than a drab reality. I have only deep scorn for any man who would deprive us of the source of religious ideas, so rich in consolations. His beliefs must thus be as simple as a child’s, with the unshakable conviction of a thoughtful man who has carefully considered his own reasons for believing. His mind, inventive and original, will be free of artifice or ostentation: he can say nothing excessive or out of place, will no more bore others than be bored himself, for he will have a rich treasury in his soul. All his thoughts must be of a noble, elevated, chivalrous sort, with no trace of selfishness. His every act will reveal an absolute absence of calculation or self-interest. His faults will spring from the very breadth of his ideas, which will be above those of his fellows. In all things, I must find him ahead of his time. Full of the delicate attentions owed to the weak, he will be kindly with all women, but very slow to love: he will see that as a thing too serious to be trifled with. He may well, then, go his entire life and never truly know love, even as he displays all the qualities that can inspire profound passion. But should he one day find his ideal woman, she whom he has glimpsed in those dreams one dreams with eyes open, should he meet a creature who understands him, who fills up his soul and casts a ray of happiness over his entire life, who to his eyes shines like a star through the clouds of this dark, cold, glacial world, who lends a wholly new charm to his existence and sets once-mute strings vibrating inside him, I believe there is no need to say that he will recognize and appreciate his happiness, and so he will make her perfectly happy. Never, by word or glance, will he hurt the loving heart entrusted to his hands with the blind love of a child asleep in a mother’s arms, for were she to wake from that sweet dream, her heart and soul would be forever blighted: he would never set sail on that ocean without engaging his entire future.