Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

“How can that be?” said the count, more and more amazed.

  “For a very simple reason. My health is perfect, my name and connections place me on a level with any one, my fortune is in landed property, I have always two years’ income ahead of my expenditures, I never play high, I never loan money, — how, then, am I ever to be miserable?”

  “But then you imagine there are no other troubles than physical pain or material embarrassment? And the sorrows of the heart?” said the count, and he really looked grieved. But I answered by such a burst of laughter that he seemed stunned; then he said:

  “If you can look at things like that, it is evident that you will never need anybody, and all I can say for you is, that I pity you very much. But, come now,” said he, almost impatiently, “admit that if I came to-morrow to ask a favour of you, you would not refuse me, even if you should grant it only out of respect of the world’s opinion; that is all the world cares for.”

  “But even admitting that I would render you a service, what would that prove? Only that you had need of me, not I of you—”

  “And thus you believe you will never be in need of any one?”

  “Yes, that is my principal luxury, and I hold fast to it.”

  “So let it be; your fortune is in land, it is safe; your position is equal to the very best, you do not believe in any heartaches, or, if they should come, you will suffer alone; but, for instance, suppose you ever have to fight a duel, you will have to ask some gentleman to be your second; that is a great obligation! You see you may need others to help you in this world.”

  “If ever I have a duel, I shall walk into the first barracks I come to, I shall pick up the first two non-commissioned officers or soldiers that I lay my hand on, and there I shall have two excellent seconds, and ones that no man of honour could take exception to.”

  “What a devil of a man you are!” said the count to me. “But suppose you are wounded, who will come to see you?”

  “Nobody, thank the Lord! In physical suffering I am like a wild beast, I want only solitude and the dark night.” —

  “But in the world, to talk to, to live with, to live in the world you must live with others.”

  “Oh, for all that, the others will not fail me any more than I shall abandon them. The world of society is a concert, where the most miserable musicians are placed on the same footing as the greatest artists, and where each one plays his one note, but such chance acquaintances cannot be called friends. Such attachments are like strong, free-growing plants, which have neither sweet perfume nor brilliant colouring, but which are ever green, and which we are not afraid of crushing; the proof is that, after all we have been saying to each other, we will remain on the same good terms as heretofore; to-morrow we will shake hands before everybody, we will talk about Madame de Pënâfiel’s adorers, or of anything else you may please; and in six months we will call each other ‘dear fellow,’ but in six months and a day, should you or I disappear from this happy earth, either you or I would be perfectly indifferent to the other’s disappearance. And it is perfectly natural that this should be the case. Why should it be otherwise? What right have I to exact any other sentiment of you? And why should you require it of me?”

  “What you say is very uncommon; every one does not think as you do.”

  “I hope they do not for their own sakes. I fancy that I am like no one because I am like all.”

  “And, no doubt, with such principles, you despise all alike, both men and women.”

  “In the first place, I do not despise men,” said I, “for a very simple reason; I am no better nor worse than another, and I have often had a mental struggle to decide one of those questions which prove a man’s honesty, or show that he is a scoundrel.”

  “Well?” said the count “Well, as I have always been very severe in my selfexaminations, I have often doubted my own motives more than those of other people; thus, being no better than other men, I cannot despise them. As for women, as I know no more about them than you do, it is impossible for me to give any opinion on the subject.”

  “No more than I?” said De Cernay, who was evidently displeased. “I know nothing about women?”

  “Neither you, nor I, nor any one can say that he perfectly understands women,” said I, with a smile. “What man is there who even knows himself? Where is one who knows how he would act under any conceivable circumstances? How much less, then, could he pretend to understand not women, but a single woman, even were she his mother, his mistress, or his sister? Of course, I do not discuss this subject with every one, nor am I expected to go through such a catechism, which would be about as reasonable as a manual for learning to speak a language, in which every conceivable question is given with its proper answer.”

  “In that you are quite right,” said the count; “but stop, I am delighted at a chance of making you contradict yourself. I am going to do you a kindness: you would like to know Madame de Pënâfiel; some one, either I or another, will have to present you to her.”

  “Nothing could be more amiable,” said I, “and though I am a bankrupt in friendship, I certainly would find some means of requiting such a generous offer. Madame de Pënâfiel is charming; I believe all the wonderful tales you have told about her. I know that it is considered a compliment to be invited to her salon, which is very exclusive; but really and truly, I beg you, as I would any one else, not to ask her to receive me.”

  “What reason have you for doing so?”

  “Because whatever pleasure I might receive from being acquainted with her would be more than overbalanced by the humiliation I should feel in case she refuses to meet me.”

  “What childish vanity!” said the count “Not very long ago Lord Falmouth wished to present to her the young Duke of — , who is related to the royal family of England. Would you believe it? Madame de Pënâfiel flatly refused to see him.”

  “You are too well bred, my dear count, not to understand that my position places me on a certain social footing, and that I ought not to risk such a refusal. You may think me foolish, but it is thus; don’t let us speak of it again.”

  “Yes, one word more,” said the count; “will you wager two hundred louis that, when she returns, you will be presented to, and received by Madame de Pënâfiel inside of a month?”

  “At my own request?”

  “No; on the contrary.”

  “How could it be on the contrary?”

  “Certainly it could. I bet you that Madame de Pënâfiel, meeting you frequently in society, and seeing that you take no pains to be presented to her, will manage, out of pure contradiction, to have it brought about in spite of your opposition.”

  “That would be a triumph to be very proud of, — but I do not believe it will ever happen. In fact, I have so little confidence in it that I will accept your wager, which is this: A month after her return, I shall not have been presented to Madame de Pënâfiel.”

  “But,” said De Cernay, “it must be understood that, if such a proposition comes from her, you are not to refuse.”

  “It is so understood,” said I, interrupting him. “I certainly would never answer so honourable and flattering a proposal by a rudeness; so, as I repeat to you, I will accept your wager.”

  “Your two hundred louis are as good as mine,” said the count as he left me. “But stop a moment,” he added, as he held out his hand; “thanks for your frankness.”

  “What frankness?”

  “What you said about friendship, — your thoughts on the subject which you expressed so bluntly. It shows that you are very honest.”

  “With discretion, or rather dissimulation, honesty is my other virtue,” said I. shaking his hand cordially. And so we parted.

  CHAPTER XV.

  PROJECTS.

  AFTER M. DE Cernay had gone, I felt grieved to think of his friendly advances and how I had repulsed them. But what he said about my great attractiveness seemed a ridiculous untruth, and made me distrust him. Then the bitter hatred with which he pursued Madame d
e Pënâfiel gave me but a poor idea of the kind of a friend he would make.

  Perhaps I was mistaken, for women, in men’s eyes, are outside of the law, if that can be; and the unkind things they say about women to each other, and which they say with a certain self-glorification, in no way injure their reputation as men of honour. M. de Cernay might then have possessed all the good qualities of a warm and steadfast friend; but it was impossible for me to receive him as such, or to behave to him in any other way.

  I took great satisfaction, too, in having been able to conceal my real nature from him, and to have given him an absolutely false idea, or a singularly indefinite one, of myself.

  It was always hateful to me to be understood or divined by people I cared nothing about; and for an enemy to do so was dangerous. Indeed, I liked to have even a friend kept out of my secret thoughts.

  If there is in our moral organisation a culminating point, the source and termination of all our thoughts, our longings, our desires, if we are conscious that any one idea, whether good or evil, is steadily throbbing with every beat of our heart, this palpitating spot is the one that must be most sedulously hidden, most carefully defended from sudden attack, for there is the weak, the sore place, the infallibly vulnerable spot in our nature.

  If envy, pride, or covetousness are your predominating characteristics, you should attempt to appear modest, kind, and disinterested, as compassionate and generous persons sometimes hide their kindliness under a rough exterior; for through education we instinctively conceal our vices and our virtues, as nature gives to certain animals the means of protecting themselves when attacked in their weakest place.

  I had therefore pretended to the count that I was a terrible egotist and cynic, simply because I still felt an unconquerable yearning towards virtue and generosity. But, alas! it was only a yearning. The terrible lessons my father had taught me, besides filling my mind with distrust of all good motives, had developed to the highest degree my vanity and susceptibility. In fact, what I most dreaded, was to be taken for a fool, should I follow the enthusiastic instincts of my nature.

  But though day by day suspicion and vanity were drying up the germs of these noble instincts, their souvenir still remained with me, and, like fallen man, I remembered the lost Eden. I could understand, though I felt it not, all the divine ravishment there must be in self-sacrifice and confidence.

  On my part there was a continual aspiration towards an ethereal, radiant sphere, from the midst of which the most devoted friendships, the most passionate loves, smiled on me.

  But, alas! my implacable, shameful, distrusting spirit would whisper in my ear that all these adorable apparitions were but deceitful appearances, and his icy breath would dispel in an instant the enchanting visions.

  I knew that I did not deceive myself as to my own nature. What was mean, selfish, and weak in it, was stronger than what still remained of noble and generous sentiments.

  My conduct towards Hélène had proved this to be the case. The man who can calculate and meanly weigh the result of his impulses, who refuses a generous feeling of attraction, for fear of being repulsed, is devoid of strength of purpose, liberality, and kindness.

  Distrust is the next thing to cowardice. Prom cowardice to cruelty there is only one more step. I was to suffer miserably for my distrust of others, and to cause others to suffer as well.

  And yet I was not of a hateful or spiteful disposition. I was filled with the most pleasurable sensations when I had secretly rendered any one a service that I was not afraid of having to blush for. Then I loved to contemplate the beauties of nature, which is a sentiment that thoroughly wicked and perverse souls are not capable of. The sight of a magnificent sunset gave me intense delight. I was happy when I found the description of noble and generous actions in the books I read, and the deep sympathy I felt proved that all the noble cords of my heart were not yet broken. As much as I admired Walter Scott, that sublime benefactor of unhappy minds, whose genius leaves one so refreshed and purified, just so much did I detest Byron, whose sterile and desolating scepticism only leaves a taste of gall and bitterness.

  I had so just an appreciation of every kind of trouble or affliction that I carried my delicacy and fear of wounding the feelings of the unfortunate or lonely to a ridiculous length. I was seized with pity and tenderness for no apparent reason. I felt sometimes an immense need of loving some one, of devoting my life to some one. My first impulses were always sincere and unselfish; but then came reflections and second thoughts to blight everything. There was a perpetual struggle going on in my mind and heart. One said: Believe, love, hope; and the other said: Doubt, despise, fear.

  I was in this way constantly impelled by two opposite forces. I seemed to feel with my mother’s heart and think with my father’s mind; but the intellect was always stronger than the affections.

  I also possessed the terrible faculty of comparing myself with others, by the aid of which I found a thousand reasons why I was not lovable, consequently I considered every one in the light of a flatterer.

  My mother had adored me, and I had forgotten my mother; or, rather, I only thought of her when I was in desperate trouble. But when I was completely happy, when my vanity was satisfied, and I was dazzled with my own importance, all such pious recollections as I had momentarily evoked vanished into the shade of the maternal tomb.

  I owed everything to my father, and I only remembered him to curse the fatal experience he had given me. Hélène had loved me with the truest and purest affection, and I had returned her innocent love by insult and suspicion.

  Thus being always ungrateful, suspicious, and forgetful, what right had I to expect from others love and devotion?

  In vain I would say to myself: “My father, my mother, and Hélène loved me just as I was; why, then, should not others do the same?” But my father was my father, my mother was my mother, and Hélène was Hélène (for I very properly placed Hélène’s love for me among the innate, natural family affections). And yet the aversion with which I had inspired her had been so great that the love she had borne me in her heart from her earliest childhood was destroyed in a day.

  Ah, that was a fearful and useless punishment, and I had been both the victim and the executioner; but all my useless grief bad made me no better, nor more useful to myself or my fellow men.

  I will return to Madame de Pënâfiel. I had not told my plans to M. de Cernay, because his intervention might be useful to me, and I knew that the best of all accomplices is one who is unconscious and perfectly honest. I felt the greatest desire to become acquainted with this strange woman, in spite of all the ill things that were said of her, or, perhaps, because, in at least one instance, I had known that they were slanderous exaggerations; but my defiant and proud nature saw an insurmountable obstacle in this very desire.

  When I had undertaken to defend Madame de Pënâfiel against the attacks of De Pommerive, that night at the Opéra, when he was telling his story about Ismaël, she might have heard me. Now if this were the case, I thought that to ask to be presented to her would be the height of bad taste, as my discussion with De Pommerive might appear simply a prelude to such a request.

  My scruples may have been exaggerated, but they were real, and I had firmly resolved to make no attempt to be admitted to the circle of Madame de Pënâfiel’s acquaintances. I hoped, however, that if she knew that I had defended her she would appreciate my reserve, and, with the tact of a well-bred woman, would find some very simple way of having me presented to her, for she would frequently meet me in society. In this way my self-respect would not suffer.

  What made it all the easier for me to reason in this way, and wait for developments, was the fact that, on the whole, my desire to meet Madame de Pënâfiel was not strong enough to preoccupy my mind so as to exclude all other interests. If I should receive a refusal, it would not greatly disappoint me.

  Neither did I fear in any sense (except in the improbable possibility of my falling very much in love with Madame de
Pënâfiel) that danger with which M. de Cernay had threatened me. I did not believe there could be any danger for me, because I was certainly able to hide any wounds my vanity might receive, and was surely able (so wise and suspicious did I think myself) to see through any of her attempts at deception, in case she meant to play me false. Only I felt that, in case I meant to range myself among the number of her adorers, so many and so invisible though they appeared to be, it would be well that, on her return from her voyage to Brittany, I should be, or at least seem to be, interested in some one, so as to appear to sacrifice another to Madame de Pënâfiel, for a woman is always the most pleased when, in addition to doing her homage, a man sacrifices a former affection for her sake. Then there is not only triumph, but triumph over another woman.

  I therefore resolved, that before Madame de Pënâfiel returned, I would become assiduous in my attentions to some well-known woman of fashion, to one who had some officially recognised admirer.

  I insisted on both of these conditions, for, in this way, my supposed interest would be talked about all the more and the sooner.

  This was a very simple calculation, inasmuch as, when my pretended admiration should be noticed, rumour would, with its usual charily and veracity, instantly proclaim the downfall of the former admirer, and my promotion to his place.

  I decided, then, to persuade some fashionable lady to receive my attentions.

  What really saddened me was that, as I coldly calculated such a series of lies and deceptions, I perfectly understood their meanness. I had not the excuse of passion, not even any very great desire of pleasing Madame de Pënâfiel. It was simply as a means of distraction, and the necessity of occupying my restless and discontented spirit, that I forced myself to seek, in the miserable chances and changes of mundane life, some unforeseen event that might save me from the mournful and deadening apathy that was crushing my life out.

  Strange enough, when I was once in for it, I recovered my spirits, my youthfulness, my gaiety, and many joyful hours of contented vanity. It seemed as if there were two of me, so astonished was I to hear myself talk in this extravagant way, and then, as soon as I was left alone with my reflections, my mind became agitated by my old painful, baseless worries, and by a thousand uncertainties as to myself, every one, and everything.