Droll Stories

by Honoré de Balzac

  From this belief, she added the motive of jealousy to the others which tempted her to seduce her Argus, whom she did not wish to wound, but to perfume, kiss his head, and treat kindly.

  She was certainly more beautiful, young, and more appetizing and gentle than her rivals; at least, that was the melodious decree of her imagination. So, urged on by the chords and springs of conscience, and physical causes which affect women, she returned to the charge, to commence a fresh assault upon the heart of the chevalier, for the ladies like to take that which is well fortified.

  Then she played the pussy-cat, and nestled up close to him, became so sweetly sociable, and wheedled him so gently, that one evening when she was in a desponding state, although merry enough in her inmost soul, her guardian-brother asked her—

  “What is the matter with you?”

  To which she replied to him dreamily, being listened to by him as the sweetest music—

  That she had married Maillé against her heart’s will, and that she was very unhappy; that she knew not the sweets of love; that her husband did not understand her, and that her life was full of tears. In fact, that she was a maiden in heart and all, since she confessed that in marriage she had experienced nothing but the reverse of pleasure. And she added, that surely this holy state should be full of the sweetmeats and dainties of love, because all the ladies hurried into it, and hated and were jealous of those who out-bid them, for it cost certain people pretty dear; that she was so curious about it that for one good day or night of love, she would give her life, and always be obedient to her lover without a murmur; but that he with whom she would sooner than all others try the experiment would not listen to her; that, nevertheless, the secret of their loves might be kept eternally, so great was her husband’s confidence in him, and that finally if he still refused, it would kill her.

  And all these paraphrases of the common canticle known to the ladies at their birth were ejaculated between a thousand pauses, interrupted with sighs torn from the heart, ornamented with quiverings, appeals to heaven, upturned eyes, sudden blushings, and clutchings at her hair. In fact, no ingredient of temptation was lacking in the dish, and at the bottom of all these words there was a nipping desire which embellished even its blemishes. The good knight fell at the lady’s feet, and weeping took them and kissed them, and you may be sure the good woman was quite delighted to let him kiss them, and even without looking too carefully to see what she was going to do, she abandoned her dress to him, knowing well that to keep it from sweeping the ground it must be taken at the bottom to raise it; but it was written that for that evening she should be good, for the handsome Lavallière said to her with despair—

  “Ah, madame, I am an unfortunate man, and a wretch.”

  “Not at all,” said she.

  “Alas, the joy of loving you is denied to me.”

  “How?” said she.

  “I dare not confess my situation to you!”

  “Is it then very bad?”

  “Ah, you will be ashamed of me!”

  “Speak, I will hide my face in my hands,” and the cunning madam hid her face in such a way that she could look at her well-beloved between her fingers.

  “Alas!” said he, “the other evening when you addressed me in such gracious words, I was so treacherously inflamed, that not knowing my happiness to be so near, and not daring to confess my flame to you, I ran to a Bordel where all the gentlemen go, and there for love of you, and to save the honour of my brother whose head I should blush to dishonour, I was so badly infected that I am in great danger of dying of the Italian sickness.”

  The lady, seized with terror, gave vent to the cry of a woman in labour, and with great emotion, repulsed him with a gentle little gesture. Poor Lavallière, finding himself in so pitiable a state, went out of the room, but he had not even reached the tapestries of the door, when Marie d’Annebaut again contemplated him, saying to herself, “Ah! what a pity!” Then she fell into a state of great melancholy, pitying in herself the gentleman, and became the more in love with him because he was fruit three times forbidden.

  “But for Maillé,” said she to him, one evening that she thought him handsomer than usual, “I would willingly take your disease. Together we should then have the same terrors.”

  “I love you too well,” said the brother, “not to be good.”

  And he left her to go to his beautiful Limeuil. You can imagine that being unable to refuse to receive the burning glances of the lady, during meal times, and the evenings, there was a fire nourished that warmed them both, but she was compelled to live without touching her cavalier, otherwise than with her eyes. Thus occupied, Marie d’Annebaut was fortified at every point against the gallants of the Court, for there are no bounds so impassable as those of love, and no better guardian; it is like the devil, he whom it has in its cluthches it surrounds with flames. One evening, Lavallière having escorted his friend’s wife to a dance given by Queen Catherine, he danced with the fair Limeuil, with whom he was madly in love. At that time the knights carried on their amours bravely two by two, and even in troops. Now all the ladies were jealous of La Limeuil, who at that time was thinking of yielding to the handsome Lavallière. Before taking their places in the quadrille, she had given him the sweetest of assignations for the morrow, during the hunt. Our great Queen Catherine, who from political motives fomented these loves and stirred them up, like pastrycooks make their oven fires burn by poking, glanced at all the pretty couples interwoven in the quadrille, and said to her husband—

  “When they combat here, can they conspire against you, eh?”

  “Ah! but the Protestants?”

  “Bah! have them here as well,” said she, laughing. “Why, look at Lavallière, who is suspected to be a Huguenot; he is converted by my dear little Limeuil, who does not play her cards badly for a young lady of sixteen. He will soon have her name down in his list.”

  “Ah, Madame! do not believe it,” said Marie d’Annebaut, “he is ruined through that same sickness of Naples which made you queen.”

  At this artless confession, Catherine, the fair Diana, and the king, who were sitting together, burst out laughing, and the thing ran round the room. This brought endless shame and mockery upon Lavallière. The poor gentleman, pointed at by every one, soon wished somebody else in his shoes, for La Limeuil, whom his rivals had not been slow laughingly to warn of her danger, appeared to shrink from her lover, so rapid was the spread, and so violent the apprehensions of this nasty disease. Thus Lavallière found himself abandoned by every one like a leper. The king made an offensive remark, and the good knight quitted the ball-room, followed by pool Marie in despair at the speech. She had in every way ruined the man she loved; she had destroyed his honour, and marred his life, since the physicians and master surgeons advanced as a fact, incapable of contradiction, that persons Italianized by this love sickness, lost through it their greatest attractions, as well as their generative powers, and their bones went black.

  Thus no woman would bind herself in legitimate marriage with the finest gentleman in the kingdom if he were only suspected of being one of those whom Master Francis Rabelais named “his very precious scabby ones….”

  As the handsome knight was very silent and melancholy, his companion said to him on the road home from Hercules House, where the fête had been held—

  “My dear lord, I have done you a great mischief.”

  “Ah, madame!” replied Lavallière, “my hurt is curable; but into what a predicament have you fallen? You should not have been aware of the danger of my love.”

  “Ah!” said she, “I am sure now always to have you to myself; in exchange for this great obloquy and dishonour, I will be forever your friend, your hostess, and your lady-love—more than that, your servant. My determination is to devote myself to you and efface the traces of this shame; to cure you by watch and ward; and if the learned in these matters declare that the disease has such a hold of you that it will kill you like our defunct Sovereign, I must sti
ll have your company in order to die gloriously in dying of your complaint. Even then,” said she, weeping, “that will not be penance enough to atone for the wrong I have done you.”

  These words were accompanied with big tears; her virtuous heart waxed faint, she fell to the ground exhausted. Lavallière, terrified, caught her and placed his hand upon her heart, below a breast of matchless beauty. The lady, revived at the warmth of this beloved hand, experienced such exquisite delights as nearly to make her again unconscious.

  “Alas!” said she, “this sly and superficial caress will be for the future the only pleasure of our love. It will still be a hundred times better than the joys which poor Maillé fancies he is bestowing on me…. Leave your hand there,” said she; “verily it is upon my soul, and touches it.”

  At these words the knight was in a pitiful plight, and innocently confessed to the lady that he experienced so much pleasure at this touch that the pains of his malady increased, and that death was preferable to this martyrdom.

  “Let us die then,” said she.

  But the litter was in the courtyard of the hotel, and as the means of death were not handy, each one slept far from the other, heavily weighed down with love, Lavallière having lost his fair Limeuil, and Marie d’Annebaut having gained pleasures without parallel.

  From this affair, which was quite unforeseen, Lavallière found himself under the ban of love and marriage and dared no longer appear in public, and he found how much it costs to guard the virtue of a woman; but the more honour and virtue he displayed the more pleasure did he experience in these great sacrifices offered at the shrine of brotherhood. Nevertheless his duty was very bitter, very ticklish, and intolerable to perform, towards the last days of his guard. And in this way.

  The confession of her love, which she believed was returned, the wrong done by her to her cavalier, and the experience of an unknown pleasure, emboldened the fair Marie, who fell into a platonic love, gently tempered with those little indulgences in which there is no danger. From this cause sprang the diabolical pleasures of the game invented by the ladies, who since the death of Francis the First feared the contagion, but wished to gratify their lovers. To these cruel delights, in order to properly play his part, Lavallière could not refuse his sanction. Thus every evening the mournful Marie would attach her guest to her petticoats, holding his hands, kissing him with burning glances, her cheek placed gently against his, and during this virtuous embrace, in which the knight was held like the devil by a holy water brush, she told him of her great love, which was boundless since it stretched through the infinite spaces of unsatisfied desire. All the fire with which ladies endow their substantial amours, when the night has no other lights than their eyes, she transferred into the mystic motions of her head, the exultations of her soul, and the ecstasies of her heart. Then, naturally, and with the delicious joy of two angels united by thought alone, they intoned together those sweet litanies repeated by the lovers of the period in honour of love—anthems which the Abbot of Theleme has paragraphically saved from oblivion by engraving them on the walls of his abbey, situated, according to master Alcofribas, in our land of Chinon, where I have seen them in Latin, and have translated them for the benefit of Christians.

  “Alas!” cried Marie d’Annebaut, “thou art my strength and my life, my joy and my treasure.”

  “And you,” replied he, “you are a pearl, an angel.”

  “Thou art my seraphim.”

  “You my soul.”

  “Thou my God.”

  “You my evening star and morning star, my honour, my beauty, my universe.”

  “Thou my great, my divine master.”

  “You my glory, my faith, my religion.”

  “Thou my gentle one, my handsome one, my courageous one, my dear one, my cavalier, my defender, my king, my love.”

  “You my fairy, the flower of my days, the dream of my nights.”

  “Thou my thought at every moment.”

  “You the delight of my eyes.”

  “Thou the voice of my soul.”

  “You my light by day.”

  “Thou my glimmer in the night.”

  “You the best beloved among women.”

  “Thou the most adored of men.”

  “You my blood, a myself better than myself.”

  “Thou my heart, my lustre.”

  “You my saint, my only joy.”

  “I yield thee the palm of love, and how great soe’er mine be, I believe thou lovest me still more, for thou art the lord.”

  “No; the palm is yours, my goddess, my Virgin Marie.”

  “No; I am thy servant, thine handmaiden, a nothing thou canst crush to atoms.”

  “No, no; it is I who am your slave, your faithful page, whom you can use as a breath of air, upon whom you can walk as on a carpet. My heart is your throne.”

  “No, dearest, for thy voice transfigures me.”

  “Your regard burns me.”

  “I see but thee.”

  “I love but you.”

  “Oh, put thine hand upon my heart—only thine hand—and thou wilt see me pale, when my blood shall have taken the heat of thine.”

  Then during these struggles their eyes, already ardent, flamed still more brightly, and the good knight was a little the accomplice of the pleasure which Marie d’Annebaut took in feeling his hand upon her heart. Now, as in this light embrace all their strength was put forth, all their desires strained, all their ideas of the thing concentrated, it happened that the knight’s transport reached a climax. Their eyes wept warm tears, they seized each other hard and fast as fire seizes houses; but that was all. Lavallière had promised to return safe and sound to his friend the body only, not the heart.

  When Maillé announced his return, it was quite time, since no virtue could avoid melting upon this gridiron; and the less licence the lovers had, the more pleasure they had in their fantasies.

  Leaving Marie d’Annebaut, the good companion in arms went as far as Bondy to meet his friend, to help him to pass through the forest without accident, and the two brothers slept together, according to the ancient custom, in the village of Bondy.

  There, in their bed, they recounted to each other, one the adventures of his journey, the other the gossip of the camp, stories of gallantry, and the rest. But Maillé’s first question was touching Marie d’Annebaut, whom Lavallière swore to be intact in that precious place where the honour of husbands is lodged; at which the amorous Maillé was highly delighted.

  On the morrow they were all three re-united, to the great disgust of Marie, who, with the high jurisprudence of women, made a great fuss with her good husband, but with her finger she indicated her heart in an artless manner to Lavallière, as one who said, “This is thine!”

  At supper Lavallière announced his departure for the wars. Maillé was much grieved at this resolution, and wished to accompany his brother; but Lavallière refused him point blank.

  “Madame,” said he to Marie d’Annebaut, “I love you more than life, but not more than honour.”

  He turned pale, saying this, and Madame de Maillé blanched hearing him, because never in their amorous dalliance had there been so much true love as in this speech. Maillé insisted upon keeping his friend company as far as Meaux. When he came back, he was talking over with his wife the unknown reasons and secret causes of this departure, when Marie, who suspected the grief of poor Lavallière, said, “I know: he is ashamed to stop here because he has the Neapolitan sickness.”

  “He!” said Maillé, quite astonished. “I saw him when we were in bed together at Bondy the other evening, and yesterday at Meaux. There’s nothing the matter with him; he is as sound as a bell.”

  The lady burst into tears, admiring this great loyalty, the sublime resignation to his oath, and the extreme sufferings of this internal passion. But as she still kept her love in the recesses of her heart, she died when Lavallière fell before Metz, as has been elsewhere related by Messire Bourdeilles de Brantôme in his tittle-
tattle.

  THE VICAR OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU

  IN those days the priests no longer took any woman in legitimate marriage, but kept good mistresses as pretty as they could get; which custom has since been interdicted by the council, as every one knows, because, indeed, it was not pleasant that the private confessions of people should be retold to a wench who would laugh at them, besides the other secret doctrines, ecclesiastical arrangements, and speculations which are part and parcel of the politics of the Church of Rome. The last priest in our country who theologically kept a woman in his parsonage, regaling her with his scholastic love, was a certain Vicar of Azay-le-Ridel, a place later on most aptly named Azay-le-Brulé, and now Azay-le-Rideau, whose castle is one the marvels of Touraine. Now this said period, when the women were not averse to the odour of the priesthood, is not so far distant as some may think, for Monsieur D’Orgemont, son of the preceding bishop, still held the see of Paris, and the great quarrels of the Armagnacs had not finished. To tell the truth, this vicar did well to have his vicarage in that age, since he was well shapen, of a high colour, stout, big, strong, eating and drinking like a convalescent, and, indeed, was always rising from a little malady that attacked him at certain times; and, later on, he would have been his own executioner, had he determined to observe the canonical continence. Add to this that he was a Tourainian, id est, dark, and had in his eyes flame to light, and water to quench all the domestic furnaces that required lighting or quenching; and never since at Azay has been such vicar Seen! A handsome vicar was he, square-shouldered, fresh-coloured, always blessing and chuckling, preferring weddings and christenings to funerals, a good joker, pious in church, and a man in everything. There have been many vicars who have drunk well and eaten well; others who have blessed abundantly and chuckled consumedly; but all of them together would hardly make up the sterling worth of this aforesaid vicar; and he alone has worthily filled his post with benedictions, has held it with joy, and in it has consoled the afflicted, all so well, that no one saw him come out of his house without wishing to be in his heart, so much was he beloved. It was he who first said in a sermon that the devil was not so black as he was painted, and who for Madame de Candé transformed partridges into fish, saying that the perch of the Indre were partridges of the river, and, on the other hand, partridges perch in the air. He never played artful tricks under the cloak of morality, and often said, jokingly, he would rather be in a good bed than in anybody’s will, that he had plenty of everything, and wanted nothing. As for the poor and suffering, never did those who came to ask for wool at the vicarage go away shorn, for his hand was always in his pocket, and he melted (he who in all else was so firm) at the sight of all this misery and infirmity, and he endeavoured to heal all their wounds. There have been many good stories told concerning this king of vicars. It was he who caused such hearty laughter at the wedding of the lord of Valennes, near Sacché. The mother of the said lord had a good deal to do with the victuals, roast meats and other delicacies, of which there was sufficient quantity to feed a small town at least, and it is true, at the same time, that people came to the wedding from Montbazon, from Tours, from Chinon, from Langeais, and from everywhere, and stopped eight days.