Letters of Two Brides

by Honoré de Balzac

  That man will necessarily have the face, the manner, the walk, the way of doing both the greatest and the humblest of things that bespeaks a superior being, simple and natural. He may be ugly, but his hands will be beautiful. His upper lip will be slightly drawn back into an ironic and disdainful smile for people of no consequence; only those he loves will see the celestial, shining ray of his soulful gaze.

  “Would mademoiselle permit me,” he asked in Spanish, deep emotion in his voice, “to keep this as a memento? This is the last lesson I will have the honor of giving her, and the teachings I find in these lines may well rule my conduct forever. I left Spain an impoverished fugitive, but today I have received from my family a sum of money sufficient to my needs. I will have the honor of sending you some poor Spaniard to replace me.” With those words he seemed to be telling me, “This game has gone on long enough.” He stood up with incredible dignity, leaving me awed at the extraordinary delicacy of men of his class. He went downstairs and asked for a word with my father.

  At dinner my father said to me with a smile, “Louise, you have been given Spanish lessons by an ex-minister of the King of Spain, and a man with a death sentence on his head.”

  “The Duke de Soria,” I said.

  “The duke!” my father answered. “No longer: his title now is Baron de Macumer, named for a fiefdom he still holds in Sardinia. He seems a rather unusual man.”

  “On your lips, Father, there is always something ironic and contemptuous in that word,” I told him. “Do not use it to speak of a man who is every bit your equal, and who I believe has a very beautiful soul.”

  “Baroness de Macumer, I presume?” my father shot back at me with a teasing look. I proudly lowered my eyes.

  “But,” said my mother, “Hénarez must have run into the Spanish ambassador on the front step?”

  “Yes,” my father answered, “the ambassador even asked if I was conspiring against his master the king, but he greeted the former grandee with great deference, declaring himself at his service.”

  This, my dear Madame de l’Estorade, happened two weeks ago, and two weeks have gone by without my once seeing that man who loves me, for love me he does. What he is doing? I wish I were a fly, a mouse, a sparrow. I wish I could see him alone in his rooms, without his knowing. We now have a man to whom I can say, “Go and die for me!” And it would be in his nature to do it, or so at least I believe. In short, there is a man in Paris I am thinking of, one whose gaze floods my innermost self with light. Oh! he is an enemy I must trample underfoot. Can there truly exist on this earth a man I cannot live without, a man I need! You will soon be married, and I am in love! After four months, those two doves who once flew so high have fallen into the swamp of reality.

  Sunday

  Yesterday at the Italiens, I could feel myself being looked at; my eyes were magically drawn to two fiery eyes glowing like hot coals in a dark corner of the parterre. Hénarez never once looked away. The monster had sought out the only seat from which he could see me, and there he sits. I know nothing of his political gifts, but he has a genius for love. And that, dear Renée, is where we now stand, in the words of the great Corneille.[29]

  13

  FROM MADAME DE L’ESTORADE TO MADEMOISELLE DE CHAULIEU

  La Crampade, February

  My dear Louise, I had to wait some time before writing you, but now I know—or, more precisely, I have learned—a great many things that I must impart to you for your future happiness. So great is the difference between a girl and a married woman that the girl can no more imagine it than the married woman can become a girl again. I found marriage to Louis de l’Estorade preferable to the convent. That much is clear. Realizing that I would find myself back in the convent if I did not marry Louis, I had no choice but to resign myself, to use a girl’s language. Thus resigned, I sat down to consider my situation, with a view to making the most of it.

  The gravity of the marriage vows first filled me with terror. Marriage is for life, where love is only for pleasure, but marriage goes on after pleasure has faded and gives birth to interests far more precious than those of the man and woman it unites. Perhaps, then, a happy marriage requires only the kind of friendship that overlooks many human failings for harmony’s sake. There is nothing to stop me from feeling friendship for Louis de l’Estorade. Thoroughly resolved not to seek in marriage the amorous ecstasies we so often dreamt of, with such dangerous exaltation, I felt the sweetest tranquillity within me. “If I do not have love, why not seek happiness?” I asked myself. And indeed, I am loved and will allow myself to be loved. My marriage will not be a servitude, but it will be a perpetual commandment. What difficulties might that present for a woman who wishes to retain an absolute mastery over her person?

  This very serious question—that of my having a marriage but not a husband—was settled in a conversation between Louis and me, in which he revealed both the fineness of his character and the gentleness of his soul. My darling, I wanted nothing so much as to remain in that beautiful season when love is but an anticipation, a season that yields no pleasure and leaves the soul its virginity. To concede nothing to duty, to the law, to depend only on oneself, and retain one’s free will—what a noble and delicious thing! Such a compact, contradicting the law and the sacrament itself, could only be made between Louis and myself. That point of contention, the first to arise, was the sole impediment to the resolution of my marriage. In the beginning, I was prepared to do whatever was necessary to stay out of the convent, but it is in our nature to ask for more when we have been granted a little, and we, my dear angel, are the type of young women who must have it all. I studied my Louis from the corner of my eye, asking myself, “Have his miseries made him kindly or cruel?” Eventually my scrutiny convinced me that his love was in fact a true passion. Having attained the rank of idol, seeing him pale and tremble at even the slightest cool glance, I realized I could dare anything. I took him out for a casual stroll, far from his family’s ears, and carefully sounded his heart. I asked him to speak of his thoughts, of his plans, of our future. My questions implied so many carefully considered ideas, and so skillfully touched on the weaker spots of that dreaded shared life, that Louis has since confessed he was dismayed by so worldly a virginity. As for me, I listened closely to his answers; he tripped himself up like those who lose all their assurance in the face of fear. I soon realized that chance had given me an adversary all the feebler in that he could see what you so grandly call my great soul.

  Ravaged by sorrow and poverty, he considered himself a broken man, and he was consumed by three terrible fears. First, he is thirty-seven years old, and I seventeen; not without terror did he measure that twenty-year gulf. Second, it is generally agreed that I am very beautiful, and Louis, who shares our opinion on that score, was all too painfully aware of the youthfulness his sufferings had cost him. And third, he found me greatly superior as a woman to himself as a man. His confidence shaken by these three visible inferiorities, he feared he might not make me happy and believed he had been taken only as a last resort. Were it not for the convent, I would never be marrying him, he timidly told me one evening. “That is true,” I answered gravely. My dear friend, he then caused me the first great emotion of the sort men inspire in us. The two swelling tears in his eyes touched me deep in my heart. “Louis,” I reassured him, “it is entirely in your power to make this marriage of convenience a marriage to which I can wholly consent. What I intend to ask of you will require a sacrifice far greater than the apparent servitude of your love, however sincere. Can you rise to the level of friendship as I understand it? We have only one friend in our lives, and I want to be yours. Friendship is the coming together of two kindred souls, united in their strength and yet independent. Let us be friends and partners, and so endure this life together. Allow me to retain my complete independence. I do not forbid you to make me love you as you claim to love me, but I want to be your wife only of my own free will. Make me long to abandon that free will to you, and I will giv
e it at once. Understand, then, that I do not forbid you to inject passion into this friendship, to trouble it with the voice of love; for my part, I will see to it that our affection remains unbroken. Above all, spare me the trials that our somewhat unusual arrangement might cause me outside these walls. I would not want to seem capricious or prudish, because I am not, and I think you a fine enough man to assure you that I will keep up the appearances of marriage.”

  My dear, I have never seen a man so happy as Louis was on hearing that proposition; his eyes were shining, the fire of happiness had dried his tears. “You must realize,” I told him, by way of conclusion, “that there is nothing perverse in what I am asking of you. The condition I make stems from my immense desire for your esteem. If you owed me only to marriage, would you one day be deeply grateful that your love had been consecrated by legal or religious formalities, but not by me? Suppose I had a child before I am drawn to you, passively fulfilling your wishes as my esteemed mother recommends: do you believe I would love that child as much as one born of a shared will? No doubt two people need not be as drawn to each other in the way lovers are, but you must concede, monsieur, that they must not displease each other. And we are about to find ourselves in a perilous situation: we are to live in the country. Must we not then consider the instability of the passions? May two thoughtful people not forearm themselves against the sorrows that come with changes of heart?” He was strangely surprised to find me both so reasonable and so reflective, but he gave me his solemn word, whereupon I took his hand and pressed it affectionately.

  We were married at the end of the week. Certain that I would not lose my liberty, I merrily made my way through the tedious details of the many ceremonies: I was free to be myself, and perhaps seemed a bold little miss, as we used to say back in Blois. I was taken for a headstrong woman, when I was simply a girl charmed by the new situation, full of possibilities, into which I had managed to place myself. My dear, I had seen all the difficulties of my life, as if in a vision, and I sincerely wanted to make that man happy. But in the solitude that is ours, marriage soon becomes intolerable if a woman does not take charge. A wife must have the charms of a mistress and the qualities of a spouse. By depriving pleasure of its certainties, does a woman not prolong her husband’s illusions and safeguard the joy of self-respect to which we all so rightly cling? Marital love, as I conceive it, cloaks a woman in anticipation, endows her with mastery, and gives her an inexhaustible force, a vital warmth that makes everything around her flourish and thrive. The more she is her own mistress, the more certain she is to make love and happiness last. Nonetheless, I demanded that our domestic arrangement be veiled by the most profound secrecy. Ridicule is rightly heaped on a man who is dominated by his wife. A woman’s influence must remain perfectly hidden: mystery is our greatest grace. If I undertake to rehabilitate that broken soul, to restore the luster to the qualities I have glimpsed in him, I want Louis to think it is all happening on its own. Such is the beautiful task I have set myself, more than enough to seal a woman’s glory. I am almost proud to have a secret to animate my life, a project to which I will devote all my efforts, known only to you and to God.

  Now I am almost happy, and perhaps I would be less so if I could not announce it to a beloved soul, for how could I ever tell him? He would be hurt by my happiness; I have had to keep it from him. He is as sensitive as a woman, my dear, like all men who have suffered terribly. For three months we lived just as we did before the wedding. As you will surely imagine, I carefully considered a host of little personal questions, on which love depends more than people think. In spite of my coolness, that emboldened soul came to life; I saw a changed look on that face, a newly youthful air. The elegance I was introducing into the house cast its glow onto his person. Little by little I grew accustomed to him, I made of him another me. I discovered the correspondence between his soul and his outward appearance. The animal we call a husband, as you put it, was no more to be seen. Eventually, one lovely evening, I saw before me a lover, one whose words went straight to my soul, on whose arm I walked with a pleasure beyond words. At long last, to speak true to you, as I would to God who cannot be deceived, Curiosity rose up in my heart, perhaps roused by the admirable devotion with which he had kept his word. I resisted, ashamed of myself. But alas! when one resists only out of dignity, the mind soon comes up with concessions. And so the moment was celebrated—in secret, as two lovers would, and our secret it must remain. When you marry, you will see the sense in my discretion. Know, however, that nothing the most exacting love might demand was missing, nor the element of surprise, which is in a sense the glory of that moment: the mysterious beauties our fancy asks of it, the irresistibility that excuses it, the surrender, the long-imagined delights that overpower our soul before we abandon ourselves to the reality, all the charms were there in their most rapturous forms.

  All these wonderful things notwithstanding, I must confess that I have once again asserted my free will, and I prefer not to explain all the reasons. You are most assuredly the only soul to whom I will entrust that semi-secret. Even as we belong to our husbands, beloved or otherwise, I believe we have much to lose from not concealing our emotions and our judgment of our marriage. The only joy I felt, which was heavenly, derived from the certainty that I had given life back to that poor man, before giving it to his children. Louis has recovered his youth, his strength, his good cheer. He is not the same man. Like a good fairy, I have erased the very memory of his sorrows. I have transformed Louis: he has become charming. Sure that he appeals to me, he gives free rein to his wit and reveals ever new qualities. To know that one is the perpetual source of a man’s happiness, when that man realizes it and mingles his gratitude with love, oh! my dear, that certainty fuels a force in the soul far mightier than the most wholehearted love. That fearless, enduring force, single and varied, finally gives birth to the family, that magnificent creation of womankind, which I now see in all its fertile beauty. The aged father is a miser no more, he blindly provides whatever I wish. The servants are cheerful; Louis’s felicity seems to have radiated all through the house, which I rule by love. The old man has remade himself to harmonize with the improvements we have undertaken, not wanting to be a blot on my luxury; to please me, he has adopted the garb, and with it the manners, of the present day. We have English horses, a coupé, a calèche, and a tilbury. Our servants are simply but elegantly dressed, and so we are widely thought of as spendthrifts. I make use of my intelligence (I do not mean that as a joke) to run my house in an economical way, to create the greatest pleasure at the smallest possible cost. I have already shown Louis the need to make an effort to earn the reputation of a man concerned with the good of his province. I am forcing him to complete his education. I hope to see him soon on the Regional Council, relying on the influence of my family and his mother’s. I told him outright that I am a woman with ambitions, that I did not think it a bad thing for his father to go on overseeing our assets, looking for savings, because I wanted him wholly devoted to politics; were we to have children, I wanted to see them happy, with a comfortable place in the state. Lest he lose my esteem and affection, he must be named député in the next election; my family would offer their support for his candidacy, and we would have the pleasure of spending our winters in Paris. Ah! my angel, from the ardor with which he obeyed me, I could see how deeply I was loved. And then yesterday he wrote me this letter from Marseille, where he had gone for a few hours:

  When you gave me permission to love you, my sweet Renée, I believed happiness might be possible, but today I see happiness without end. The past is no more than a dim memory, a shadow to bring out the dazzling light of my joy. When I am near you, love so transports me that I cannot begin to express the depth of my affection: I can only admire you, adore you. Words return to me only when I am far away. You are perfectly beautiful, with a beauty so serious, so majestic, that time will have difficulty altering it, and, although love between spouses cares less for beauty than for the sentiments
, which in you are exquisite, allow me to say that this certainty of seeing you forever beautiful gives me a gladness that grows each time I look at you. Your sublime soul shines forth from your face; behind the hearty, robust cast of your skin there is a kind of purity, created by your serene and harmonious features. The gleam of your black eyes and the bold curve of your brow express the loftiness of your virtues, the steadiness of your company, the resilience of your heart in the face of life’s tempests, should they ever arise. Nobility is your distinctive trait; I do not claim to reveal that to you, but I write these lines that you might understand how well I know the worth of the treasure that is mine. Whatever you may grant me will always be pure happiness, years from now as today, for I see all that is elevated in our mutual vow to hold fast to our absolute freedom. We will never owe a manifestation of tenderness to anything other than our own desire to offer it. In spite of the tight bonds that unite us, we will always be free. Knowing the value you place on it, I will be all the prouder to make your conquest anew. Never will you speak or breathe, act or think, without my admiring ever the more the grace of your body and soul. There is something divine in you, something wise, something captivating, that brings together thought, honor, pleasure, and hope, something that gives love an expansiveness greater than life. Oh! my angel, may the genius of love remain ever faithful to me, and may the future be full of those raptures with whose aid you have brought beauty to everything around me! When will you become a mother, that I might see you laud the vitality that is in you, that I might hear you, with your musical voice and your subtle ideas, so fresh and so curiously well-turned, bless the love that has renewed my soul, that has restored my faculties, that has filled me with pride, and from which I have drawn a new life, as from some magical spring? Yes, I will be everything you would have me be: I will become a man useful to my homeland, and I will reflect that glory onto you, for your satisfaction will be its only aim.