“Madame,” he said to her coldly, “you have plunged me into an abyss of woe by your thoughtless indiscretions. While I condemn the effects, I nonetheless applaud the cause, which surely stems from your love both for your daughter and myself. And since the initial wrongs are mine, I must forget the second. My dear and tender wife, who art half my life,” he went on, falling to his knees, “will you consent to a reconciliation which nothing can ever again disturb? I come here to offer you that reconciliation, and to seal it here is what I place in your hands. . . .”
So saying he lays at his wife’s feet all the forged papers and false correspondence with Valmont.
“Burn all these, my dear friend, I beseech you,” the traitor went on, with feigned tears, “and forgive what jealousy drove me to. Let us banish all this bitterness between us. Great are my wrongs, that I confess. But who knows whether Valmont, to assure the success of his plans, has not painted an even darker picture of me than I truly deserve. . . . If he dared tell you that I have ever ceased to love you . . . that you were other than the most precious object in the world, and the one most worthy of respect—ah, my dear angel, if he sullied himself with calumnies such as these, then I say I have done well to rid the world of such a rogue and imposter!”
“Oh! Monsieur,” Madame de Franval said in tears, “is it possible even to conceive the atrocities you devised against me? How do you expect me to have the least confidence in you after such horrors?”
“Oh! most tender and loving of women, my fondest desire is that you love me still! What I desire is that, accusing my head alone for the multitude of my sins, you convince yourself that this heart, wherein you reign eternally, has ever been incapable of betraying you. . . . Yes, I want you to know that there is not one of my errors which has not brought me closer to you. . . . The more I withdrew from my dear wife, and the greater the distance between us became, the more I came to realize how impossible it was to replace her in any realm whatsoever. Neither the pleasures nor the sentiments equaled those that my inconstancy caused me to lose with her, and in the very arms of her image I regretted reality. . . . Oh! my dear, my divine friend, where else could I find a heart such as yours? Where else savor the pleasures one culls only in your arms? Yes, I forsake all my errors, my failings . . . henceforth I wish to live only for you in this world . . . to restore in your wounded heart that love which my wrongs destroyed . . . wrongs whose very memory I now abjure.”
It was impossible for Madame de Franval to resist such tender effusions on the part of the man she still adored. Is it possible to hate what one has loved so dearly? Can a woman of her delicate and sensitive soul have naught but cold, unfeeling looks for the object which was once so precious to her, cast down at her feet, weeping bitter tears of remorse? She broke down and began to sob. . . .
“I who have never ceased adoring you, you cruel and wicked man,” she said, pressing her husband’s hands to her heart, “’tis I whom you have wantonly driven to despair. Ah! Heaven is my witness that of all the scourges with which you might have afflicted me, the fear of losing your heart, of being suspected by you, became the most painful of all to bear. . . . And what object do you choose to outrage me with? . . . My daughter . . . ’tis with her hands you pierce my heart . . . do you wish to oblige me to hate her whom Nature has made so dear to me?”
“Listen to me,” Franval said, his tone waxing ever more ardent, “I want to bring her back to you on her knees, humbled, I want her to abjure, as I have done, both her shamelessness and her sins; I want her to obtain, as I have, your pardon. Let us henceforth concern ourselves, all three of us, with nothing but our mutual happiness. I am going to return your daughter to you . . . return my wife to me . . . and let us flee.”
“Flee, Great God!”
“My adventure is stirring up trouble . . . tomorrow may already be too late. . . . My friends, the Minister, everyone has advised me to take a voyage to Valmor. . . . Please come with me, my love! Is it possible that at the very moment when I prostrate myself before you asking for your forgiveness you could break my heart by your refusal?”
“You frighten me. . . . What, this adventure . . .”
“. . . is being treated not as a duel but as a murder.”
“Dear God! And I am the cause of it! . . . Give me your orders, do: dispose of me as you will, my dear husband. I am ready to follow you, to the ends of the earth, if need be. . . . Ah! I am the most wretched woman alive!”
“Consider yourself rather the most fortunate, since every moment of my life is henceforth going to be dedicated to changing into flowers the thorns which in the past I have strewn in your path. . . . Is a desert not enough, when two people love each other? Moreover, this is a situation which cannot last forever. I have friends who have been apprised . . . who are going to act.”
“But my mother . . . I should like to see her. . . .”
“No, my love, above all not that. I have positive proof that ’tis she who is stirring up Valmont’s family against me, and that, with them, ’tis she who is working toward my destruction. . . .”
“She is incapable of such baseness. Stop imagining such perfidious horrors. Her soul, totally disposed toward love, has never known deceit. . . . You never did appreciate her, Franval. If only you had learned to love her as I do! In her arms we both would have found true happiness on earth. She was the angel of peace that Heaven offered to the errors of your life. Your injustice rejected her proffered heart, which was always open to tenderness, and by inconsequence or caprice, by ingratitude or libertinage, you voluntarily turned your back on the best and most loving friend that Nature ever created for you. . . . Is it true then, you really don’t want me to see her?”
“No. I’m afraid I must insist. Time is too precious! You will write her, you will describe my repentance to her. Perhaps she will be moved by my remorse . . . perhaps I shall one day win back her love and esteem. The storm will one day abate, and we shall come back to Paris, and there, in her arms, we shall revel in her forgiveness and tenderness. . . . But now, let us be off, dear friend, we must be gone within the hour at most, the carriage awaits without. . . .”
Terrified, Madame de Franval did not dare raise any further objections. She went about her preparations. Were not Franval’s slightest wishes her commands? The traitor flew back to his daughter and brought her back to her mother. There the false creature throws herself at her mother’s feet with full as much perfidy as had her father. She weeps, she implores her forgiveness, and she obtains it. Madame de Franval embraces her; how difficult it is to forget one is a mother, no matter how one’s children have sinned against her. In a sensitive soul, the voice of Nature is so imperious that the slightest tear from these sacred objects of a mother’s affection is enough to make her forget twenty years of faults and failings.
They set off for Valmor. The extreme haste with which this voyage had been prepared justified in Madame de Franval’s eyes, which were still as blind and credulous as ever, the paucity of servants that they took along with them. Crime shuns a plethora of eyes, and fears them all; feeling its security possible only in the darkness of mystery, it envelops itself in shadow whenever it desires to act.
When they reached the country estate, nothing was changed, all was as he had promised: constant attentions, respect, solicitous care, evidence of tenderness on the one hand . . . and on the other, the most ardent love—all this was lavished on poor Madame de Franval, who easily succumbed to it. At the end of the world, far removed from her mother, in the depths of a terrible solitude, she was happy because, as she would say, she had her husband’s heart again and because her daughter, constantly at her knees, was concerned solely with pleasing her.
Eugénie’s room and that of her father were no longer adjoining. Franval’s room was at the far end of the château, Eugénie’s was next to her mother’s. At Valmor, the qualities of decency, regularity, and modesty replaced to the utmost degree all the disorders of the capital. Night after night Franval repaired to his
wife’s room and there, in the bosom of innocence, candor, and love, the scoundrel shamelessly dared to nourish her hopes with his horrors. Cruel enough not to be disarmed by those naive and ardent caresses which the most delicate of women lavished upon him, it was at the torch of love itself that the villain lighted the torch of vengeance.
As one can easily imagine, however, Franval’s attentions toward Eugénie had not diminished. In the morning, while her mother was occupied with her toilet, Eugénie would meet her father at the far end of the garden, and from him she would receive the necessary instructions and the favors which she was far from willing to cede completely to her rival.
No more than a week after their arrival in this retreat, Franval learned that Valmont’s family was prosecuting him unremittingly, and that the affair was going to be dealt with in a most serious manner. It was becoming difficult, so they said, to pass it off as a duel, for unfortunately there had been too many witnesses. Furthermore, so Franval was informed, beyond any shadow of a doubt Madame de Farneille was leading the pack of her son-in-law’s enemies, her clear intention being to complete his ruin by putting him behind bars or obliging him to leave France, and thus to restore to her as soon as possible the two beloved creatures from whom she was presently separated.
Franval showed these missives to his wife. She at once took out pen and paper to calm her mother, to urge her to see matters in a different light, and to depict for her the happiness she had been enjoying ever since misfortune had succeeded in mollifying the soul of her poor husband. Furthermore, she assured her mother that all her efforts to force her back to Paris with her daughter would be quite in vain, for she had resolved not to leave Valmor until her husband’s difficulties had been settled, and ended by saying that if ever the malice of his enemies or the absurdity of his judges should cause a warrant for his arrest to be issued which was degrading to him, she had fully made up her mind to accompany him into exile.
Franval thanked his wife. But having not the least desire to sit and wait for the fate that was being prepared for him, he informed her that he was going to spend some time in Switzerland. He would leave Eugénie in her care, and he begged both women, nay made them promise, not to leave Valmor so long as his fate was still in doubt. No matter what fate might decide for him, he said, he would still return to spend twenty-four hours with his dear wife, to consult with her as to the means for returning to Paris if nothing stood in the way or, if fortune had turned against him, for leaving to go and live somewhere in safety.
Having taken these decisions, Franval, who had not for a moment forgotten that the sole cause of his misfortunes was his wife’s rash and imprudent plot with Valmont, and who was still consumed with a desire for revenge, sent word to his daughter that he was waiting for her in the remote part of the park. He locked himself in an isolated summer house with her, and after having made her swear blind obedience to everything he was going to order her to do, he kissed her and spoke to her in the following manner:
“You are about to lose me, my daughter, perhaps forever.”
And seeing tears welling up into Eugénie’s eyes:
“Calm yourself, my angel,” he said to her, “our future happiness is in your hands, and in yours alone. Only you can determine whether we can again find the happiness that once was ours, whether it be in France or somewhere else. You, Eugénie, I trust are as persuaded as one can possibly be that your mother is the sole cause of our misfortunes. You know that I have not lost sight of my plans for revenge. If I have concealed these plans from my wife, you have been aware of my reasons and have approved of them; in fact ’twas you who helped me fashion the blindfold with which it seemed prudent to cover her eyes. The time has come to act, Eugénie, the end is at hand. Your future peace of mind and body depends on it, and what you are going to undertake will assure mine forever as well. You will, I trust, hear me out, and you are too intelligent a girl to be in the least alarmed by what I am about to propose. Yes, my child, the time has come to act, and act we must, without delay and without remorse, and this must be your work.
“Your mother has wished to make you miserable, she has defiled the bonds to which she lays claim, and by so doing she has lost all rights to them. Henceforth she is not only no longer anything more than an ordinary woman for you, but she has even become your worst, your mortal enemy. Now, the law of Nature most deeply graven in our hearts is that we must above all rid ourselves, if we can, of those who conspire against us. This sacred law, which constantly moves and inspires us, does not instill within us the love of our neighbor as being above the love we owe ourselves. First ourselves, then the others: this is Nature’s order of progression. Consequently, we must show no respect, no quarter for others as soon as they have shown that our misfortune or our ruin is the object of their desires. To act differently, my daughter, would be to show preference for others above ourselves, and that would be absurd. Now, let me come to the reasons behind the action I shall counsel you to take.
“I am obliged to leave, and you know the reasons why. If I leave you with this woman, Eugénie, within the space of a month her mother will have enticed her back to Paris, and since, after the scandal that has just occurred, you can no longer marry, you can rest assured that these two cruel persons will gain ascendancy over you only to send you to a convent, there to weep over your weakness and repent of our pleasures. ’Tis your grandmother who hounds and pursues me, Eugénie, ’tis she who joins hands with my enemies to complete my destruction. Can such zeal, such methods have any purpose other than to regain possession of you, and can you doubt that once she has you she will have you confined? The worse things go with me, the more those who are persecuting and tormenting us will grow strong and increasingly influential. Now, it would be wrong to doubt that, inwardly, your mother is the brains behind this group, as it would be wrong to doubt that, once I have gone, she will rejoin them. And yet this faction desires my ruin only in order to make you the most wretched woman alive. Therefore we must lose no time in weakening it, and it will be deprived of its most sturdy pillar if your mother is removed from it. Can we opt for another course of action? Can I take you with me? Your mother will be most annoyed, will run back to her mother, and from that day on, Eugénie, we will never know another moment’s peace. We will be persecuted and pursued from place to place, no country will have the right to offer us asylum, no refuge on the face of the earth will be held sacred . . . inviolable, in the eyes of the monsters whose fury will pursue us. Do you have any idea how far these odious arms of despotism and tyranny can stretch when they have the weight of gold behind them and are directed by malice? But with your mother dead, on the contrary, Madame de Farneille, who loves her more than she loves you and who has acted solely for her sake in this whole endeavor, seeing her faction deprived of the only person to whom she was really attached in the group, will abandon everything, will stop goading my enemies and arousing them against me. At this juncture, one of two things will happen: either the Valmont incident will be settled and we shall be able to return to Paris in safety, or else the case will become more serious, in which case we shall be obliged to leave France and go to another country, but at least we shall be safe from Madame de Farneille’s machinations. But as long as her daughter is still alive, Madame de Farneille will have but a single purpose in mind, and that will be our ruin, because, once again, she believes that her daughter’s happiness can be obtained only at the price of our downfall.
“No matter from what angle we view our situation, then, you will see that Madame de Franval is the constant thorn in the side of our security, and her loathsome presence is the most certain obstacle to our happiness.
“Eugénie, Eugénie,” Franval continued warmly, taking his daughter’s hands in his, “my dear Eugénie, you do love me. Do you therefore consent to lose forever the person who adores you, for fear of an act as essential to our interests? My dear and loving Eugénie, you must decide: you can keep only one of us. You are obliged to kill one of your parents, only t
he choice of which heart you shall choose as the target of your dagger yet remains. Either your mother must perish, or else you must give me up. . . . What am I saying? You will have to slit my throat. . . . Alas, could I live without you? Do you think it would be possible for me to live without my Eugénie? Could I endure the memory of the pleasures I have tasted in these arms, these delightful pleasures that I shall have lost forever? Your crime, Eugénie, your crime is the same in either case: either you must destroy a mother who loathes you and who lives only to make you unhappy, or else you must murder a father whose every breath is drawn only for you. Choose, Eugénie, go ahead and choose, and if ’tis I you condemn, then do not hesitate, ungrateful daughter: show no pity when you pierce this heart whose only wrong has been to love you too deeply; strike, and I shall bless the blows you strike, and with my last breath I shall say again how I adore you.”
Franval fell silent, to hear what his daughter would reply, but she seemed to be lost in deep thought. Finally she threw herself into her father’s arms.
“Oh, you, you whom I shall love all my life, can you doubt of the choice I shall make? Can you suspect my courage? Arm me at once, and she who, by her terrible deeds and the threat she poses to your safety, is proscribed will soon fall beneath my blows. Instruct me, Franval, tell me what to do; leave, since your safety demands it, and I shall act while you are gone. I shall keep you apprised of everything. But no matter what turn things may take, once our enemy has been disposed of, do not leave me alone in this château. . . . Come back for me, or send for me to come and join you wherever you may be.”
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings Page 46