“Well,” said the marquise to Diane, “what do you think of him?”
“He is an adorable child, just out of swaddling-clothes! This time, like all other times, it will only be a triumph without a struggle.”
“Well, it is disappointing,” said Madame d’Espard. “But we might evade it.”
“How?”
“Let me be your rival.”
“Just as you please,” replied the princess. “I’ve decided on my course. Genius is a condition of the brain; I don’t know what the heart gets out of it; we’ll talk about that later.”
Hearing the last few words, which were wholly incomprehensible to her, Madame d’Espard returned to the general conversation, showing neither offence at that indifferent “As you please,” nor curiosity as to the outcome of the interview. The princess stayed an hour longer, seated on the sofa near the fire, in the careless, nonchalant attitude of Guerin’s Dido, listening with the attention of an absorbed mind, and looking at Daniel now and then, without disguising her admiration, which never went, however, beyond due limits. She slipped away when the carriage was announced, with a pressure of the hand to the marquise, and an inclination of the head to Madame de Montcornet.
The evening concluded without any allusion to the princess. The other guests profited by the sort of exaltation which d’Arthez had reached, for he put forth the treasures of his mind. In Blondet and Rastignac he certainly had two acolytes of the first quality to bring forth the delicacy of his wit and the breadth of his intellect. As for the two women, they had long been counted among the cleverest in society. This evening was like a halt in the oasis of a desert, — a rare enjoyment, and well appreciated by these four persons, habitually victimized to the endless caution entailed by the world of salons and politics. There are beings who have the privilege of passing among men like beneficent stars, whose light illumines the mind, while its rays send a glow to the heart. D’Arthez was one of those beings. A writer who rises to his level, accustoms himself to free thought, and forgets that in society all things cannot be said; it is impossible for such a man to observe the restraint of persons who live in the world perpetually; but as his eccentricities of thought bore the mark of originality, no one felt inclined to complain. This zest, this piquancy, rare in mere talent, this youthfulness and simplicity of soul which made d’Arthez so nobly original, gave a delightful charm to this evening. He left the house with Rastignac, who, as they drove home, asked him how he liked the princess.
“Michel did well to love her,” replied d’Arthez; “she is, indeed, an extraordinary woman.”
“Very extraordinary,” replied Rastignac, dryly. “By the tone of your voice I should judge you were in love with her already. You will be in her house within three days; and I am too old a denizen of Paris not to know what will be the upshot of that. Well, my dear Daniel, I do entreat you not to allow yourself to be drawn into any confusion of interests, so to speak. Love the princess if you feel any love for her in your heart, but keep an eye on your fortune. She has never taken or asked a penny from any man on earth, she is far too much of a d’Uxelles and a Cadignan for that; but, to my knowledge, she has not only spent her own fortune, which was very considerable, but she has made others waste millions. How? why? by what means? No one knows; she doesn’t know herself. I myself saw her swallow up, some thirteen years ago, the entire fortune of a charming young fellow, and that of an old notary, in twenty months.”
“Thirteen years ago!” exclaimed d’Arthez, — ”why, how old is she now?”
“Didn’t you see, at dinner,” replied Rastignac, laughing, “her son, the Duc de Maufrigneuse. That young man is nineteen years old; nineteen and seventeen make — ”
“Thirty-six!” cried the amazed author. “I gave her twenty.”
“She’ll accept them,” said Rastignac; “but don’t be uneasy, she will always be twenty to you. You are about to enter the most fantastic of worlds. Good-night, here you are at home,” said the baron, as they entered the rue de Bellefond, where d’Arthez lived in a pretty little house of his own. “We shall meet at Mademoiselle des Touches’s in the course of the week.”
CHAPTER III. THE PRINCESS GOES TO WORK
D’Arthez allowed love to enter his heart after the manner of my Uncle Toby, without making the slightest resistance; he proceeded by adoration without criticism, and by exclusive admiration. The princess, that noble creature, one of the most remarkable creations of our monstrous Paris, where all things are possible, good as well as evil, became — whatever vulgarity the course of time may have given to the expression — the angel of his dreams. To fully understand the sudden transformation of this illustrious author, it is necessary to realize the simplicity that constant work and solitude leave in the heart; all that love — reduced to a mere need, and now repugnant, beside an ignoble woman — excites of regret and longings for diviner sentiments in the higher regions of the soul. D’Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and seek, if only to make a plaything of him, — that power which they consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of a heart all new to love; and she saw, with untold happiness, that these merits were contained in a form that pleased her. She thought d’Arthez handsome, and perhaps he was. Though he had reached the age of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved a flower of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led. Like all men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired a certainly reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some resemblance to Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a man with black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign with blue eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of ardent and noble ambition in the great author’s eyes had been somewhat quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed had flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now spread its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow tones of the class of temperament whose forces band together to support a crushing and long-continued struggle. If you observe carefully the noble faces of ancient philosophers, you will always find those deviations from the type of a perfect human face which show the characteristic to which each countenance owes its originality, chastened by the habit of meditation, and by the calmness necessary for intellectual labor. The most irregular features, like those of Socrates, for instance, become, after a time, expressive of an almost divine serenity.
To the noble simplicity which characterized his head, d’Arthez added a naive expression, the naturalness of a child, and a touching kindliness. He did not have that politeness tinged with insincerity with which, in society, the best-bred persons and the most amiable assume qualities in which they are often lacking, leaving those they have thus duped wounded and distressed. He might, indeed, fail to observe certain rules of social life, owing to his isolated mode of living; but he never shocked the sensibilities, and therefore this perfume of savagery made the peculiar affability of a man of great talent the more agreeable; such men know how to leave their superiority in their studies, and come down to the social level, lending their backs, like Henry IV., to the children’s leap-frog, and their minds to fools.
If d’Arthez did not brace himself against the spell which the princess had cast about him, neither did she herself argue the matter in her own mind, on returning home. It was settled for her. She loved with all her knowledge and all her ignorance. If she questioned herself at all, it was to ask whether she deserved so great a happiness, and what she had done that Heaven should send her such an angel. She wanted to be worthy of that love, to perpetuate it, to make it her own forever, and to gently end her career of frivolity in the paradise she now foresaw. As for coquetting, quibbling, resisting, she never once thought of it. She was thinking of
something very different! — of the grandeur of men of genius, and the certainty which her heart divined that they would never subject the woman they chose to ordinary laws.
Here begins one of those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child’s play, — dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only the other side of it.
The princess began by sending for d’Arthez’s books, of which she had never, as yet, read a single word, although she had managed to maintain a twenty minutes’ eulogism and discussion of them without a blunder. She now read them all. Then she wanted to compare these books with the best that contemporary literature had produced. By the time d’Arthez came to see her she was having an indigestion of mind. Expecting this visit, she had daily made a toilet of what may be called the superior order; that is, a toilet which expresses an idea, and makes it accepted by the eye without the owner of the eye knowing why or wherefore. She presented an harmonious combination of shades of gray, a sort of semi-mourning, full of graceful renunciation, — the garments of a woman who holds to life only through a few natural ties, — her child, for instance, — but who is weary of life. Those garments bore witness to an elegant disgust, not reaching, however, as far as suicide; no, she would live out her days in these earthly galleys.
She received d’Arthez as a woman who expected him, and as if he had already been to see her a hundred times; she did him the honor to treat him like an old acquaintance, and she put him at his ease by pointing to a seat on a sofa, while she finished a note she was then writing. The conversation began in a commonplace manner: the weather, the ministry, de Marsay’s illness, the hopes of the legitimists. D’Arthez was an absolutist; the princess could not be ignorant of the opinions of a man who sat in the Chamber among the fifteen or twenty persons who represented the legitimist party; she found means to tell him how she had fooled de Marsay to the top of his bent, then, by an easy transition to the royal family and to “Madame,” and the devotion of the Prince de Cadignan to their service, she drew d’Arthez’s attention to the prince: —
“There is this to be said for him: he loved his masters, and was faithful to them. His public character consoles me for the sufferings his private life has inflicted upon me — Have you never remarked,” she went on, cleverly leaving the prince aside, “you who observe so much, that men have two natures: one of their homes, their wives, their private lives, — this is their true self; here no mask, no dissimulation; they do not give themselves the trouble to disguise a feeling; they are what they ARE, and it is often horrible! The other man is for others, for the world, for salons; the court, the sovereign, the public often see them grand, and noble, and generous, embroidered with virtues, adorned with fine language, full of admirable qualities. What a horrible jest it is! — and the world is surprised, sometimes, at the caustic smile of certain women, at their air of superiority to their husbands, and their indifference — ”
She let her hand fall along the arm of her chair, without ending her sentence, but the gesture admirably completed the speech. She saw d’Arthez watching her flexible figure, gracefully bending in the depths of her easy-chair, noting the folds of her gown, and the pretty little ruffle which sported on her breast, — one of those audacities of the toilet that are suited only to slender waists, — and she resumed the thread of her thoughts as if she were speaking to herself: —
“But I will say no more. You writers have ended by making ridiculous all women who think they are misunderstood, or ill-mated, and who try to make themselves dramatically interesting, — attempts which seem to me, I must say, intolerably vulgar. There are but two things for women in that plight to do, — yield, and all is over; resist, and amuse themselves; in either case they should keep silence. It is true that I neither yielded wholly, nor resisted wholly; but, perhaps, that was only the more reason why I should be silent. What folly for women to complain! If they have not proved the stronger, they have failed in sense, in tact, in capacity, and they deserve their fate. Are they not queens in France? They can play with you as they like, when they like, and as much as they like.” Here she danced her vinaigrette with an airy movement of feminine impertinence and mocking gayety. “I have often heard miserable little specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, wishing they were men; I have always regarded them with pity. If I had to choose, I should still elect to be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one’s triumph to force, and to all those powers which you give yourselves by the laws you make! But to see you at our feet, saying and doing foolish things, — ah! it is an intoxicating pleasure to feel within our souls that weakness triumphs! But when we triumph, we ought to keep silence, under pain of losing our empire. Beaten, a woman’s pride should gag her. The slave’s silence alarms the master.”
This chatter was uttered in a voice so softly sarcastic, so dainty, and with such coquettish motions of the head, that d’Arthez, to whom this style of woman was totally unknown, sat before her exactly like a partridge charmed by a setter.
“I entreat you, madame,” he said, at last, “to tell me how it was possible that a man could make you suffer? Be assured that where, as you say, other women are common and vulgar, you can only seem distinguished; your manner of saying things would make a cook-book interesting.”
“You go fast in friendship,” she said, in a grave voice which made d’Arthez extremely uneasy.
The conversation changed; the hour was late, and the poor man of genius went away contrite for having seemed curious, and for wounding the sensitive heart of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered. As for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself with men, and was another Don Juan in female attire, with this difference: she would certainly not have invited the Commander to supper, and would have got the better of any statue.
It is impossible to continue this tale without saying a word about the Prince de Cadignan, better known under the name of the Duc de Maufrigneuse, otherwise the spice of the princess’s confidences would be lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian comedy she was about to play for her man of genius.
The Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old Prince de Cadignan, is a tall, lean man, of elegant shape, very graceful, a sayer of witty things, colonel by the grace of God, and a good soldier by accident; brave as a Pole, which means without sense or discernment, and hiding the emptiness of his mind under the jargon of good society. After the age of thirty-six he was forced to be as absolutely indifferent to the fair sex as his master Charles X., punished, like that master, for having pleased it too well. For eighteen years the idol of the faubourg Saint-Germain, he had, like other heirs of great families led a dissipated life, spent solely on pleasure. His father, ruined by the revolution, had somewhat recovered his position on the return of the Bourbons, as governor of a royal domain, with salary and perquisites; but this uncertain fortune the old prince spent, as it came, in keeping up the traditions of a great seigneur before the revolution; so that when the law of indemnity was passed, the sums he received were all swallowed up in the luxury he displayed in his vast hotel.
The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July aged eighty-seven. He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad terms with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a first wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts. The Duc de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the Duchesse d’Uxelles. About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his poverty, and seeing that he stood very well at court, gave him her daughter Diane, then in her seventeenth year, and possessing, in her own right, some fifty or sixty thousand francs a year, not counting her future expectations. Mademoiselle d’Uxelles thus b
ecame a duchess, and, as her mother very well knew, she enjoyed the utmost liberty. The duke, after obtaining the unexpected happiness of an heir, left his wife entirely to her own devices, and went off to amuse himself in the various garrisons of France, returning occasionally to Paris, where he made debts which his father paid. He professed the most entire conjugal indulgence, always giving the duchess a week’s warning of his return; he was adored by his regiment, beloved by the Dauphin, an adroit courtier, somewhat of a gambler, and totally devoid of affectation. Having succeeded to his father’s office as governor of one of the royal domains, he managed to please the two kings, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., which proves he made the most of his nonentity; and even the liberals liked him; but his conduct and life were covered with the finest varnish; language, noble manners, and deportment were brought by him to a state of perfection. But, as the old prince said, it was impossible for him to continue the traditions of the Cadignans, who were all well known to have ruined their wives, for the duchess was running through her property on her own account.
These particulars were so well understood in the court circles and in the faubourg Saint-Germain, that during the last five years of the Restoration they were considered ancient history, and any one who mentioned them would have been laughed at. Women never spoke of the charming duke without praising him; he was excellent, they said, to his wife; could a man be better? He had left her the entire disposal of her own property, and had always defended her on every occasion. It is true that, whether from pride, kindliness, or chivalry, Monsieur de Maufrigneuse had saved the duchess under various circumstances which might have ruined other women, in spite of Diane’s surroundings, and the influence of her mother and that of the Duc de Navarreins, her father-in-law, and her husband’s aunt.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 667