Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  You know what disturbance follows the illness of a master; how the affairs of life seem to come to a standstill. Though the real care of the family and estate fell upon Madame de Mortsauf, the count was useful in his way; he talked with the farmers, transacted business with his bailiff, and received the rents; if she was the soul, he was the body. I now made myself her steward so that she could nurse the count without neglecting the property. She accepted this as a matter of course, in fact without thanking me. It was another sweet communion to share her family cares, to transmit her orders. In the evenings we often met in her room to discuss these interests and those of her children. Such conversations gave one semblance the more to our transitory marriage. With what delight she encouraged me to take a husband’s place, giving me his seat at table, sending me to talk with the bailiff, — all in perfect innocence, yet not without that inward pleasure the most virtuous woman in the world will feel when she finds a course where strict obedience to duty and the satisfaction of her wishes are combined.

  Nullified, as it were, by illness, the count no longer oppressed his wife or his household, the countess then became her natural self; she busied herself with my affairs and showed me a thousand kindnesses. With what joy I discovered in her mind a thought, vaguely conceived perhaps, but exquisitely expressed, namely, to show me the full value of her person and her qualities and make me see the change that would come over her if she lived understood. This flower, kept in the cold atmosphere of such a home, opened to my gaze, and to mine only; she took as much delight in letting me comprehend her as I felt in studying her with the searching eyes of love. She proved to me in all the trifling things of daily life how much I was in her thoughts. When, after my turn of watching, I went to bed and slept late, Henriette would keep the house absolutely silent near me; Jacques and Madeleine played elsewhere, though never ordered to do so; she invented excuses to serve my breakfast herself — ah, with what sparkling pleasure in her movements, what swallow-like rapidity, what lynx-eyed perception! and then! what carnation on her cheeks, what quiverings in her voice!

  Can such expansions of the soul be described in words?

  Often she was wearied out; but if, at such moments of lassitude my welfare came in question, for me, as for her children, she found fresh strength and sprang up eagerly and joyfully. How she loved to shed her tenderness like sunbeams in the air! Ah, Natalie, some women share the privileges of angels here below; they diffuse that light which Saint-Martin, the mysterious philosopher, declared to be intelligent, melodious, and perfumed. Sure of my discretion, Henriette took pleasure in raising the curtain which hid the future and in showing me two women in her, — the woman bound hand and foot who had won me in spite of her severity, and the woman freed, whose sweetness should make my love eternal! What a difference. Madame de Mortsauf was the skylark of Bengal, transported to our cold Europe, mournful on its perch, silent and dying in the cage of a naturalist; Henriette was the singing bird of oriental poems in groves beside the Ganges, flying from branch to branch like a living jewel amid the roses of a volkameria that ever blooms. Her beauty grew more beautiful, her mind recovered strength. The continual sparkle of this happiness was a secret between ourselves, for she dreaded the eye of the Abbe Dominis, the representative of the world; she masked her contentment with playfulness, and covered the proofs of her tenderness with the banner of gratitude.

  “We have put your friendship to a severe test, Felix; we may give you the same rights we give to Jacques, may we not, Monsieur l’abbe?” she said one day.

  The stern abbe answered with the smile of a man who can read the human heart and see its purity; for the countess he always showed the respect mingled with adoration which the angels inspire. Twice during those fifty days the countess passed beyond the limits in which we held our affection. But even these infringements were shrouded in a veil, never lifted until the final hour when avowal came. One morning, during the first days of the count’s illness, when she repented her harsh treatment in withdrawing the innocent privileges she had formerly granted me, I was expecting her to relieve my watch. Much fatigued, I fell asleep, my head against the wall. I wakened suddenly at the touch of something cool upon my forehead which gave me a sensation as if a rose had rested there. I opened my eyes and saw the countess, standing a few steps distant, who said, “I have just come.” I rose to leave the room, but as I bade her good-bye I took her hand; it was moist and trembling.

  “Are you ill?” I said.

  “Why do you ask that question?” she replied.

  I looked at her blushing and confused. “I was dreaming,” I replied.

  Another time, when Monsieur Origet had announced positively that the count was convalescent, I was lying with Jacques and Madeleine on the step of the portico intent on a game of spillikins which we were playing with bits of straw and hooks made of pins; Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep. The doctor, while waiting for his horse to be harnessed, was talking with the countess in the salon. Monsieur Origet went away without my noticing his departure. After he left, Henriette leaned against the window, from which she watched us for some time without our seeing her. It was one of those warm evenings when the sky is copper-colored and the earth sends up among the echoes a myriad mingling noises. A last ray of sunlight was leaving the roofs, the flowers in the garden perfumed the air, the bells of the cattle returning to their stalls sounded in the distance. We were all conforming to the silence of the evening hour and hushing our voices that we might not wake the count. Suddenly, I heard the guttural sound of a sob violently suppressed; I rushed into the salon and found the countess sitting by the window with her handkerchief to her face. She heard my step and made me an imperious gesture, commanding me to leave her. I went up to her, my heart stabbed with fear, and tried to take her handkerchief away by force. Her face was bathed in tears and she fled into her room, which she did not leave again until the hour for evening prayer. When that was over, I led her to the terrace and asked the cause of her emotion; she affected a wild gaiety and explained it by the news Monsieur Origet had given her.

  “Henriette, Henriette, you knew that news when I saw you weeping. Between you and me a lie is monstrous. Why did you forbid me to dry your tears? were they mine?”

  “I was thinking,” she said, “that for me this illness has been a halt in pain. Now that I no longer fear for Monsieur de Mortsauf I fear for myself.”

  She was right. The count’s recovery was soon attested by the return of his fantastic humor. He began by saying that neither the countess, nor I, nor the doctor had known how to take care of him; we were ignorant of his constitution and also of his disease; we misunderstood his sufferings and the necessary remedies. Origet, infatuated with his own doctrines, had mistaken the case, he ought to have attended only to the pylorus. One day he looked at us maliciously, with an air of having guessed our thoughts, and said to his wife with a smile, “Now, my dear, if I had died you would have regretted me, no doubt, but pray admit you would have been quite resigned.”

  “Yes, I should have mourned you in pink and black, court mourning,” she answered laughing, to change the tone of his remarks.

  But it was chiefly about his food, which the doctor insisted on regulating, that scenes of violence and wrangling now took place, unlike any that had hitherto occurred; for the character of the count was all the more violent for having slumbered. The countess, fortified by the doctor’s orders and the obedience of her servants, stimulated too by me, who thought this struggle a good means to teach her to exercise authority over the count, held out against his violence. She showed a calm front to his demented cries, and even grew accustomed to his insulting epithets, taking him for what he was, a child. I had the happiness of at last seeing her take the reins in hand and govern that unsound mind. The count cried out, but he obeyed; and he obeyed all the better when he had made an outcry. But in spite of the evidence of good results, Henriette often wept at the spectacle of this emaciated, feeble old man, with a forehead yellower than the fall
ing leaves, his eyes wan, his hands trembling. She blamed herself for too much severity, and could not resist the joy she saw in his eyes when, in measuring out his food, she gave him more than the doctor allowed. She was even more gentle and gracious to him than she had been to me; but there were differences here which filled my heart with joy. She was not unwearying, and she sometimes called her servants to wait upon the count when his caprices changed too rapidly, and he complained of not being understood.

  The countess wished to return thanks to God for the count’s recovery; she directed a mass to be said, and asked if I would take her to church. I did so, but I left her at the door, and went to see Monsieur and Madame Chessel. On my return she reproached me.

  “Henriette,” I said, “I cannot be false. I will throw myself into the water to save my enemy from drowning, and give him my coat to keep him warm; I will forgive him, but I cannot forget the wrong.”

  She was silent, but she pressed my arm.

  “You are an angel, and you were sincere in your thanksgiving,” I said, continuing. “The mother of the Prince of the Peace was saved from the hands of an angry populace who sought to kill her, and when the queen asked, ‘What did you do?’ she answered, ‘I prayed for them.’ Women are ever thus. I am a man, and necessarily imperfect.”

  “Don’t calumniate yourself,” she said, shaking my arm, “perhaps you are more worthy than I.”

  “Yes,” I replied, “for I would give eternity for a day of happiness, and you — ”

  “I!” she said haughtily.

  I was silent and lowered my eyes to escape the lightning of hers.

  “There is many an I in me,” she said. “Of which do you speak? Those children,” pointing to Jacques and Madeleine, “are one — Felix,” she cried in a heartrending voice, “do you think me selfish? Ought I to sacrifice eternity to reward him who devotes to me his life? The thought is dreadful; it wounds every sentiment of religion. Could a woman so fallen rise again? Would her happiness absolve her? These are questions you force me to consider. — Yes, I betray at last the secret of my conscience; the thought has traversed my heart; often do I expiate it by penance; it caused the tears you asked me to account for yesterday — ”

  “Do you not give too great importance to certain things which common women hold at a high price, and — ”

  “Oh!” she said, interrupting me; “do you hold them at a lower?”

  This logic stopped all argument.

  “Know this,” she continued. “I might have the baseness to abandon that poor old man whose life I am; but, my friend, those other feeble creatures there before us, Madeleine and Jacques, would remain with their father. Do you think, I ask you do you think they would be alive in three months under the insane dominion of that man? If my failure of duty concerned only myself — ” A noble smile crossed her face. “But shall I kill my children! My God!” she exclaimed. “Why speak of these things? Marry, and let me die!”

  She said the words in a tone so bitter, so hollow, that they stifled the remonstrances of my passion.

  “You uttered cries that day beneath the walnut-tree; I have uttered my cries here beneath these alders, that is all,” I said; “I will be silent henceforth.”

  “Your generosity shames me,” she said, raising her eyes to heaven.

  We reached the terrace and found the count sitting in a chair, in the sun. The sight of that sunken face, scarcely brightened by a feeble smile, extinguished the last flames that came from the ashes. I leaned against the balustrade and considered the picture of that poor wreck, between his sickly children and his wife, pale with her vigils, worn out by extreme fatigue, by the fears, perhaps also by the joys of these terrible months, but whose cheeks now glowed from the emotions she had just passed through. At the sight of that suffering family beneath the trembling leafage through which the gray light of a cloudy autumn sky came dimly, I felt within me a rupture of the bonds which hold the body to the spirit. There came upon me then that moral spleen which, they say, the strongest wrestlers know in the crisis of their combats, a species of cold madness which makes a coward of the bravest man, a bigot of an unbeliever, and renders those it grasps indifferent to all things, even to vital sentiments, to honor, to love — for the doubt it brings takes from us the knowledge of ourselves and disgusts us with life itself. Poor, nervous creatures, whom the very richness of your organization delivers over to this mysterious, fatal power, who are your peers and who your judges? Horrified by the thoughts that rose within me, and demanding, like the wicked man, “Where is now thy God?” I could not restrain the tears that rolled down my cheeks.

  “What is it, dear Felix?” said Madeleine in her childish voice.

  Then Henriette put to flight these dark horrors of the mind by a look of tender solicitude which shone into my soul like a sunbeam. Just then the old huntsman brought me a letter from Tours, at sight of which I made a sudden cry of surprise, which made Madame de Mortsauf tremble. I saw the king’s signet and knew it contained my recall. I gave her the letter and she read it at a glance.

  “What will become of me?” she murmured, beholding her desert sunless.

  We fell into a stupor of thought which oppressed us equally; never had we felt more strongly how necessary we were to one another. The countess, even when she spoke indifferently of other things, seemed to have a new voice, as if the instrument had lost some chords and others were out of tune. Her movements were apathetic, her eyes without light. I begged her to tell me her thoughts.

  “Have I any?” she replied in a dazed way.

  She drew me into her chamber, made me sit upon the sofa, took a package from the drawer of her dressing-table, and knelt before me, saying: “This hair has fallen from my head during the last year; take it, it is yours; you will some day know how and why.”

  Slowly I bent to meet her brow, and she did not avoid my lips. I kissed her sacredly, without unworthy passion, without one impure impulse, but solemnly, with tenderness. Was she willing to make the sacrifice; or did she merely come, as I did once, to the verge of the precipice? If love were leading her to give herself could she have worn that calm, that holy look; would she have asked, in that pure voice of hers, “You are not angry with me, are you?”

  I left that evening; she wished to accompany me on the road to Frapesle; and we stopped under my walnut-tree. I showed it to her, and told her how I had first seen her four years earlier from that spot. “The valley was so beautiful then!” I cried.

  “And now?” she said quickly.

  “You are beneath my tree, and the valley is ours!”

  She bowed her head and that was our farewell; she got into her carriage with Madeleine, and I into mine alone.

  On my return to Paris I was absorbed in pressing business which took all my time and kept me out of society, which for a while forgot me. I corresponded with Madame de Mortsauf, and sent her my journal once a week. She answered twice a month. It was a life of solitude yet teeming, like those sequestered spots, blooming unknown, which I had sometimes found in the depths of woods when gathering the flowers for my poems.

  Oh, you who love! take these obligations on you; accept these daily duties, like those the Church imposes upon Christians. The rigorous observances of the Roman faith contain a great idea; they plough the furrow of duty in the soul by the daily repetition of acts which keep alive the sense of hope and fear. Sentiments flow clearer in furrowed channels which purify their stream; they refresh the heart, they fertilize the life from the abundant treasures of a hidden faith, the source divine in which the single thought of a single love is multiplied indefinitely.

  My love, an echo of the Middle Ages and of chivalry, was known, I know not how; possibly the king and the Duc de Lenoncourt had spoken of it. From that upper sphere the romantic yet simple story of a young man piously adoring a beautiful woman remote from the world, noble in her solitude, faithful without support to duty, spread, no doubt quickly, through the faubourg St. Germain. In the salons I was the object of embarr
assing notice; for retired life has advantages which if once experienced make the burden of a constant social intercourse insupportable. Certain minds are painfully affected by violent contrasts, just as eyes accustomed to soft colors are hurt by glaring light. This was my condition then; you may be surprised at it now, but have patience; the inconsistencies of the Vandenesse of to-day will be explained to you.

  I found society courteous and women most kind. After the marriage of the Duc de Berry the court resumed its former splendor and the glory of the French fetes revived. The Allied occupation was over, prosperity reappeared, enjoyments were again possible. Noted personages, illustrious by rank, prominent by fortune, came from all parts of Europe to the capital of the intellect, where the merits and the vices of other countries were found magnified and whetted by the charms of French intellect.

  Five months after leaving Clochegourde my good angel wrote me, in the middle of the winter, a despairing letter, telling me of the serious illness of her son. He was then out of danger, but there were many fears for the future; the doctor said that precautions were necessary for his lungs — the suggestion of a terrible idea which had put the mother’s heart in mourning. Hardly had Jacques begun to convalesce, and she could breathe again, when Madeleine made them all uneasy. That pretty plant, whose bloom had lately rewarded the mother’s culture, was now frail and pallid and anemic. The countess, worn-out by Jacques’ long illness, found no courage, she said, to bear this additional blow, and the ever present spectacle of these two dear failing creatures made her insensible to the redoubled torment of her husband’s temper. Thus the storms were again raging; tearing up by the roots the hopes that were planted deepest in her bosom. She was now at the mercy of the count; weary of the struggle, she allowed him to regain all the ground he had lost.