Adolphe is dining with the Deschars: twelve persons are at table, and Caroline is seated next to a nice young man named Ferdinand, Adolphe’s cousin. Between the first and second course, conjugal happiness is the subject of conversation.
“There is nothing easier than for a woman to be happy,” says Caroline in reply to a woman who complains of her husband.
“Tell us your secret, madame,” says M. de Fischtaminel agreeably.
“A woman has nothing to do but to meddle with nothing to consider herself as the first servant in the house or as a slave that the master takes care of, to have no will of her own, and never to make an observation: thus all goes well.”
This, delivered in a bitter tone and with tears in her voice, alarms
Adolphe, who looks fixedly at his wife.
“You forget, madame, the happiness of telling about one’s happiness,” he returns, darting at her a glance worthy of the tyrant in a melodrama.
Quite satisfied with having shown herself assassinated or on the point of being so, Caroline turns her head aside, furtively wipes away a tear, and says:
“Happiness cannot be described!”
This incident, as they say at the Chamber, leads to nothing, but
Ferdinand looks upon his cousin as an angel about to be offered up.
Some one alludes to the frightful prevalence of inflammation of the stomach, or to the nameless diseases of which young women die.
“Ah, too happy they!” exclaims Caroline, as if she were foretelling the manner of her death.
Adolphe’s mother-in-law comes to see her daughter. Caroline says, “My husband’s parlor:” “Your master’s chamber.” Everything in the house belongs to “My husband.”
“Why, what’s the matter, children?” asks the mother-in-law; “you seem to be at swords’ points.”
“Oh, dear me,” says Adolphe, “nothing but that Caroline has had the management of the house and didn’t manage it right, that’s all.”
“She got into debt, I suppose?”
“Yes, dearest mamma.”
“Look here, Adolphe,” says the mother-in-law, after having waited to be left alone with her son, “would you prefer to have my daughter magnificently dressed, to have everything go on smoothly, without its costing you anything?”
Imagine, if you can, the expression of Adolphe’s physiognomy, as he hears this declaration of woman’s rights!
Caroline abandons her shabby dress and appears in a splendid one. She is at the Deschars’: every one compliments her upon her taste, upon the richness of her materials, upon her lace, her jewels.
“Ah! you have a charming husband!” says Madame Deschars. Adolphe tosses his head proudly, and looks at Caroline.
“My husband, madame! I cost that gentleman nothing, thank heaven! All
I have was given me by my mother.”
Adolphe turns suddenly about and goes to talk with Madame de
Fischtaminel.
After a year of absolute monarchy, Caroline says very mildly one morning:
“How much have you spent this year, dear?”
“I don’t know.”
“Examine your accounts.”
Adolphe discovers that he has spent a third more than during
Caroline’s worst year.
“And I’ve cost you nothing for my dress,” she adds.
Caroline is playing Schubert’s melodies. Adolphe takes great pleasure in hearing these compositions well-executed: he gets up and compliments Caroline. She bursts into tears.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, I’m nervous.”
“I didn’t know you were subject to that.”
“O Adolphe, you won’t see anything! Look, my rings come off my fingers: you don’t love me any more — I’m a burden to you — ”
She weeps, she won’t listen, she weeps afresh at every word Adolphe utters.
“Suppose you take the management of the house back again?”
“Ah!” she exclaims, rising sharply to her feet, like a spring figure in a box, “now that you’ve had enough of your experience! Thank you! Do you suppose it’s money that I want? Singular method, yours, of pouring balm upon a wounded heart. No, go away.”
“Very well, just as you like, Caroline.”
This “just as you like” is the first expression of indifference towards a wife: and Caroline sees before her an abyss towards which she had been walking of her own free will.
THE FRENCH CAMPAIGN.
The disasters of 1814 afflict every species of existence. After brilliant days of conquest, after the period during which obstacles change to triumphs, and the slightest check becomes a piece of good fortune, there comes a time when the happiest ideas turn out blunders, when courage leads to destruction, and when your very fortifications are a stumbling-block. Conjugal love, which, according to authors, is a peculiar phase of love, has, more than anything else, its French Campaign, its fatal 1814. The devil especially loves to dangle his tail in the affairs of poor desolate women, and to this Caroline has come.
Caroline is trying to think of some means of bringing her husband back. She spends many solitary hours at home, and during this time her imagination works. She goes and comes, she gets up, and often stands pensively at the window, looking at the street and seeing nothing, her face glued to the panes, and feeling as if in a desert, in the midst of her friends, in the bosom of her luxuriously furnished apartments.
Now, in Paris, unless a person occupy a house of his own, enclosed between a court and a garden, all life is double. At every story, a family sees another family in the opposite house. Everybody plunges his gaze at will into his neighbor’s domains. There is a necessity for mutual observation, a common right of search from which none can escape. At a given time, in the morning, you get up early, the servant opposite is dusting the parlor, she has left the windows open and has put the rugs on the railing; you divine a multitude of things, and vice-versa. Thus, in a given time, you are acquainted with the habits of the pretty, the old, the young, the coquettish, the virtuous woman opposite, or the caprices of the coxcomb, the inventions of the old bachelor, the color of the furniture, and the cat of the two pair front. Everything furnishes a hint, and becomes matter for divination. At the fourth story, a grisette, taken by surprise, finds herself — too late, like the chaste Susanne, — the prey of the delighted lorgnette of an aged clerk, who earns eighteen hundred francs a year, and who becomes criminal gratis. On the other hand, a handsome young gentleman, who, for the present, works without wages, and is only nineteen years old, appears before the sight of a pious old lady, in the simple apparel of a man engaged in shaving. The watch thus kept up is never relaxed, while prudence, on the contrary, has its moments of forgetfulness. Curtains are not always let down in time. A woman, just before dark, approaches the window to thread her needle, and the married man opposite may then admire a head that Raphael might have painted, and one that he considers worthy of himself — a National Guard truly imposing when under arms. Oh, sacred private life, where art thou! Paris is a city ever ready to exhibit itself half naked, a city essentially libertine and devoid of modesty. For a person’s life to be decorous in it, the said person should have a hundred thousand a year. Virtues are dearer than vices in Paris.
Caroline, whose gaze sometimes steals between the protecting muslins which hide her domestic life from the five stories opposite, at last discovers a young couple plunged in the delights of the honey-moon, and newly established in the first story directly in view of her window. She spends her time in the most exciting observations. The blinds are closed early, and opened late. One day, Caroline, who has arisen at eight o’clock notices, by accident, of course, the maid preparing a bath or a morning dress, a delicious deshabille. Caroline sighs. She lies in ambush like a hunter at the cover; she surprises the young woman, her face actually illuminated with happiness. Finally, by dint of watching the charming couple, she sees the gentleman and lady open the window, and lean gently on
e against the other, as, supported by the railing, they breathe the evening air. Caroline gives herself a nervous headache, by endeavoring to interpret the phantasmagorias, some of them having an explanation and others not, made by the shadows of these two young people on the curtains, one night when they have forgotten to close the shutters. The young woman is often seated, melancholy and pensive, waiting for her absent husband; she hears the tread of a horse, or the rumble of a cab at the street corner; she starts from the sofa, and from her movements, it is easy for Caroline to see that she exclaims: “‘Tis he!”
“How they love each other!” says Caroline to herself.
By dint of nervous headache, Caroline conceives an exceedingly ingenious plan: this plan consists in using the conjugal bliss of the opposite neighbors as a tonic to stimulate Adolphe. The idea is not without depravity, but then Caroline’s intention sanctifies the means!
“Adolphe,” she says, “we have a neighbor opposite, the loveliest woman, a brunette — ”
“Oh, yes,” returns Adolphe, “I know her. She is a friend of Madame de Fischtaminel’s: Madame Foullepointe, the wife of a broker, a charming man and a good fellow, very fond of his wife: he’s crazy about her. His office and rooms are here, in the court, while those on the street are madame’s. I know of no happier household. Foullepointe talks about his happiness everywhere, even at the Exchange; he’s really quite tiresome.”
“Well, then, be good enough to present Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe to me. I should be delighted to learn how she manages to make her husband love her so much: have they been married long?”
“Five years, just like us.”
“O Adolphe, dear, I am dying to know her: make us intimately acquainted. Am I as pretty as she?”
“Well, if I were to meet you at an opera ball, and if you weren’t my wife, I declare, I shouldn’t know which — ”
“You are real sweet to-day. Don’t forget to invite them to dinner
Saturday.”
“I’ll do it to-night. Foullepointe and I often meet on ‘Change.”
“Now,” says Caroline, “this young woman will doubtless tell me what her method of action is.”
Caroline resumes her post of observation. At about three she looks through the flowers which form as it were a bower at the window, and exclaims, “Two perfect doves!”
For the Saturday in question, Caroline invites Monsieur and Madame Deschars, the worthy Monsieur Fischtaminel, in short, the most virtuous couples of her society. She has brought out all her resources: she has ordered the most sumptuous dinner, she has taken the silver out of the chest: she means to do all honor to the model of wives.
“My dear, you will see to-night,” she says to Madame Deschars, at the moment when all the women are looking at each other in silence, “the most admirable young couple in the world, our opposite neighbors: a young man of fair complexion, so graceful and with such manners! His head is like Lord Byron’s, and he’s a real Don Juan, only faithful: he’s discovered the secret of making love eternal: I shall perhaps obtain a second crop of it from her example. Adolphe, when he sees them, will blush at his conduct, and — ”
The servant announces: “Monsieur and Madame Foullepointe.”
Madame Foullepointe, a pretty brunette, a genuine Parisian, slight and erect in form, the brilliant light of her eye quenched by her long lashes, charmingly dressed, sits down upon the sofa. Caroline bows to a fat gentleman with thin gray hair, who follows this Paris Andalusian, and who exhibits a face and paunch fit for Silenus, a butter-colored pate, a deceitful, libertine smile upon his big, heavy lips, — in short, a philosopher! Caroline looks upon this individual with astonishment.
“Monsieur Foullepointe, my dear,” says Adolphe, presenting the worthy quinquagenarian.
“I am delighted, madame,” says Caroline, good-naturedly, “that you have brought your father-in-law [profound sensation], but we shall soon see your husband, I trust — ”
“Madame — !”
Everybody listens and looks. Adolphe becomes the object of every one’s attention; he is literally dumb with amazement: if he could, he would whisk Caroline off through a trap, as at the theatre.
“This is Monsieur Foullepointe, my husband,” says Madame Foullepointe.
Caroline turns scarlet as she sees her ridiculous blunder, and Adolphe scathes her with a look of thirty-six candlepower.
“You said he was young and fair,” whispers Madame Deschars. Madame Foullepointe, — knowing lady that she is, — boldly stares at the ceiling.
A month after, Madame Foullepointe and Caroline become intimate. Adolphe, who is taken up with Madame de Fischtaminel, pays no attention to this dangerous friendship, a friendship which will bear its fruits, for — pray learn this —
Axiom. — Women have corrupted more women than men have ever loved.
A SOLO ON THE HEARSE.
After a period, the length of which depends on the strength of
Caroline’s principles, she appears to be languishing; and when
Adolphe, anxious for decorum’s sake, as he sees her stretched out upon
the sofa like a snake in the sun, asks her, “What is the matter, love?
What do you want?”
“I wish I was dead!” she replies.
“Quite a merry and agreeable wish!”
“It isn’t death that frightens me, it’s suffering.”
“I suppose that means that I don’t make you happy! That’s the way with women!”
Adolphe strides about the room, talking incoherently: but he is brought to a dead halt by seeing Caroline dry her tears, which are really flowing artistically, in an embroidered handkerchief.
“Do you feel sick?”
“I don’t feel well. [Silence.] I only hope that I shall live long enough to see my daughter married, for I know the meaning, now, of the expression so little understood by the young — the choice of a husband! Go to your amusements, Adolphe: a woman who thinks of the future, a woman who suffers, is not at all diverting: come, go and have a good time.”
“Where do you feel bad?”
“I don’t feel bad, dear: I never was better. I don’t feel anything.
No, really, I am better. There, leave me to myself.”
This time, being the first, Adolphe goes away almost sad.
A week passes, during which Caroline orders all the servants to conceal from her husband her deplorable situation: she languishes, she rings when she feels she is going off, she uses a great deal of ether. The domestics finally acquaint their master with madame’s conjugal heroism, and Adolphe remains at home one evening after dinner, and sees his wife passionately kissing her little Marie.
“Poor child! I regret the future only for your sake! What is life, I should like to know?”
“Come, my dear,” says Adolphe, “don’t take on so.”
“I’m not taking on. Death doesn’t frighten me — I saw a funeral this morning, and I thought how happy the body was! How comes it that I think of nothing but death? Is it a disease? I have an idea that I shall die by my own hand.”
The more Adolphe tries to divert Caroline, the more closely she wraps herself up in the crape of her hopeless melancholy. This second time, Adolphe stays at home and is wearied to death. At the third attack of forced tears, he goes out without the slightest compunction. He finally gets accustomed to these everlasting murmurs, to these dying postures, these crocodile tears. So he says:
“If you are sick, Caroline, you’d better have a doctor.”
“Just as you like! It will end quicker, so. But bring a famous one, if you bring any.”
At the end of a month, Adolphe, worn out by hearing the funereal air that Caroline plays him on every possible key, brings home a famous doctor. At Paris, doctors are all men of discernment, and are admirably versed in conjugal nosography.
“Well, madame,” says the great physician, “how happens it that so pretty a woman allows herself to be sick?”
“Ah! sir, like th
e nose of old father Aubry, I aspire to the tomb — ”
Caroline, out of consideration for Adolphe, makes a feeble effort to smile.
“Tut, tut! But your eyes are clear: they don’t seem to need our infernal drugs.”
“Look again, doctor, I am eaten up with fever, a slow, imperceptible fever — ”
And she fastens her most roguish glance upon the illustrious doctor, who says to himself, “What eyes!”
“Now, let me see your tongue.”
Caroline puts out her taper tongue between two rows of teeth as white as those of a dog.
“It is a little bit furred at the root: but you have breakfasted — ” observes the great physician, turning toward Adolphe.
“Oh, a mere nothing,” returns Caroline; “two cups of tea — ”
Adolphe and the illustrious leech look at each other, for the doctor wonders whether it is the husband or the wife that is trifling with him.
“What do you feel?” gravely inquires the physician.
“I don’t sleep.”
“Good!”
“I have no appetite.”
“Well!”
“I have a pain, here.”
The doctor examines the part indicated.
“Very good, we’ll look at that by and by.”
“Now and then a shudder passes over me — ”
“Very good!”
“I have melancholy fits, I am always thinking of death, I feel promptings of suicide — ”
“Dear me! Really!”
“I have rushes of heat to the face: look, there’s a constant trembling in my eyelid.”
“Capital! We call that a trismus.”
The doctor goes into an explanation, which lasts a quarter of an hour, of the trismus, employing the most scientific terms. From this it appears that the trismus is the trismus: but he observes with the greatest modesty that if science knows that the trismus is the trismus, it is entirely ignorant of the cause of this nervous affection, which comes and goes, appears and disappears — ”and,” he adds, “we have decided that it is altogether nervous.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1320