The Last Fay

by Honoré de Balzac

  P.S. Poppy-red is in vogue; I write that for your guidance; all will be lost if Abel doesn’t see you in poppy-red. Oh, what a pretty name Abel is! Are you glad to be able to combine it with a tender name, like “my dear Abel” or “my sweet Abel” without it sounding ridiculous? That’s another advantage I lost with Stainville, as calling him my sweet Marc, my dear Marc, would swear too much; it’s like combining satin with the fabric from which judges’ and prosecutors’ robes are made...

  Adieu, dear Jenny…Jenny! In a little while, we’ll be saying Abel and Jenny!

  Chapter XIV

  Catherine’s Adieux

  For some time poor Catherine was prey to a chagrin so profound that she did not emerge from her modest room, and pretended to be ill, which was easy to believe because of the alteration of her tender physiognomy.

  One morning, however, she got up, wanting to go for a walk, and headed slowly toward the hill, for one last smile of hope had sustained her: The duchesse is very beautiful, but that being said, she has deceived Abel, and I’ll see what Abel thinks about that.

  She went up the tortuous path to the cottage languidly, arrived in Abel’s company, and a soft pinkness mingled with the pallor of her face. Abel was on the stone, making his projects for the future—for he could not doubt his happiness, and he was only thinking about rendering the fay the happiest of fays.

  I shall try, he said to himself, to go far away with her, far from djinn and humans. We shall be in a beautiful palace, surrounded by delightful gardens; there, unknown and content, I shall be the most devoted and most attentive slave to her. In the same way that she poured me ambrosia in her divine abode some time ago, I shall watch out for her needs—if fays have any—her thoughts and her desires. To carry out her orders will be my delight, a glance my greatest joy; in sum, she will be a kind of visible deity that I shall adore incessantly; our thoughts and wishes will be the same, and my life will be all amour.

  At that point, Catherine appeared.

  “Oh, Catherine!” said Abel. “How changed you are! What’s the matter?”

  “Abel,” she replied, sitting down beside him, “you’re very lucky to love a fay.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “It’s that quality of being a fay, that brilliant power, that prestige, which charms you.”

  “Yes, Catherine; I shall fly with her on the clouds; my sentiments will be purified in the high regions of the sky—O joy!”

  “Well,” Catherine continued, prey to a cruel doubt, “what if your fay weren’t a fay, if she were only a woman like me…if she had deceived you...”

  Abel remained mute, his eyes expressing by turns a host of various sentiments, and poor Catherine consulted his face, as a criminal awaiting sentence consults the eyes of the jurors coming out of the room of their deliberations. Her heart was beating with an astonishing force and rapidity: joy first, then doubt, then joy…but finally, the greatest chagrin agitated her, for Abel ended up exclaiming:

  “Oh, dear Catherine, what idea are you daring to present to me? If she were...well, I would be the happiest of men, for she would no longer be above me. I feel in my heart so much love, such a great consciousness of strength, that she would then obtain her happiness from me. Her power made me adore her, her weakness would render her even more precious to me. Oh, Catherine, may you be telling the truth!”

  “You’ll soon find out,” the young peasant replied, getting up, “and in a little while, you’ll receive the adieux of your little Catherine; then you’ll know me…for in the brilliant society into which the Duchesse de Sommerset, your genteel fay, will draw you…Catherine would be out of place…what am I saying? She would harm your happiness, for you’re too sensible not to feel sorry for me; but I’ll try to make sure that my memory doesn’t trouble your prosperity. Abel, I can’t complain about our choice, for the duchesse merits being loved…she eclipses all the women on earth. Adieu, Abel.”

  “What you’re saying to me makes me shiver,” he replied. “What a tone!” After a moment’s silence, he exclaimed: “You think big!”

  “Shh!” she said, placing a pretty finger over his lips. “I only ask one favor of you, which is not to leave the cottage without having received Catherine’s adieu... Adieu; I can hear a carriage in the distance…it’s her; it’s the duchesse. Adieu!”

  She fled through the rocks, with the gait of a creature deprived of reason.

  Indeed, as she had said, a brilliant caleche arrived in front of the cottage, and the Duchesse de Sommerset descended from it.

  Abel received her in his arms and exclaimed: “Catherine has just told me that you’re not a fay.”

  “No, she replied, “for fays don’t exist; they’re an imaginary creation.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “More than a fay,” she said.

  “What?” asked Abel, with a keen curiosity.

  “I am,” she said, embracing her beloved, “a woman in love! Who is consecrating herself to your existence, who will try to embellish it, who is sacrificing rank, fortune, honors and prejudices, burning all human vanities like an incense scarcely worthy of the altar of amour. Your naïve soul cannot know society as yet, its bizarreries and its distinctions. One day, Abel, you’ll understand the kind of sacrifice I’m making for you; you’ll even be astonished that a woman of the world has done it; but seeing every day how much I love you, you’ll find it quite simple.

  “If I were to tell you that I’m a duchesse, that I have an income in excess of a million, you wouldn’t be any the wiser. You don’t have anything, except for the one thing that can’t be bought: a beautiful soul, of which all the pure, harmonious sounds resonate like an echo of heaven.

  “See, I’m discarding any sentiment of coquetry; it’s futile with the pupil of nature; I’m coming to you, taking you by the hand, placing it against my heart—which it completes—depositing an amorous kiss on your lips and telling you, with the naivety you have in your soul, and of which I only have a reflection: ‘Abel, I love you, would you like to walk with me in life? I will always smile at you; when you fall asleep on the route, I shall stay awake in order to extend branches over your head and prevent the insects from troubling your sleep; the path will always be strewn with flowers; your life will be a continuous enchantment, and I shall try to be always a fay to you.”

  Abel was kneeling before the duchesse, his head confounded with the feet of the charming woman, and tears were dampening the elegant cothurnes she was wearing.

  “Get up, Abel; it’s to my heart that it’s necessary to come.”

  She sat down beside him.

  “Would you like me to take you away,” she said, smiling, “and quit this cottage today in order to come and live in my house—yours, that is to say, for everything is yours.”

  “Oh, dear fay—yes, fay, that name will always remain yours—can I quit this place so suddenly? How can I abandon Caliban, and Catherine my loving sister, without saying adieu, and go to live in cities with you? My father told me that then I had to lift the stone in the fireplace, and that I’d find a talisman there.”

  “Well, my dear Abel, I’ll leave you until tomorrow. But tomorrow, my love, my heaven, permit me to come and take you away from this place, and enjoy your gaze and your presence forever...”

  “Yes, yes,” said Abel, at the peak of his joy.

  After having spent a delightful morning together, one of those moments in which the soul alone overflows, in which one has, in a way, a double existence, the duchesse quit her husband-to-be, and left him intoxicated by happiness.

  He said to Caliban: “Old friend, I give you my cabin and my garden; be happy here. Every year I shall come to see you; I shall give you someone to be your Caliban beside you, as you were for me. Conserve the cottage carefully, all of my father respires here. His soul seems to have taken refuge in those furnaces; his grave is nearby; this place ought to be sacred; nothing should profane it.

  Caliban said to him: “If you are to be happy, Abel, go. But
your father was wise, and he wanted you to stay here: fear that society is not worth as much as this solitude...”

  Together, they lifted the stone in the fireplace, and found a heavy coffer. Their surprise was extreme on opening it, for it was full of diamonds of the greatest beauty, either because they had been made by the chemist or because he had realized his fortune in that fashion.

  “Oh!” Abel exclaimed. “If I could be as rich as her!”

  There were old parchments with the diamonds. After having read them, Abel found that he had another name than that of Abel, and that name was Comte Osterwald. How indignant a recent ennobled man would be on learning that that discovery could not make Abel feel anything!

  Caliban went to the village; he went to the Maire’s house and told Catherine that Abel would be leaving tomorrow with the Duchesse de Sommerset. She was by the fireside, playing in a melancholy fashion with the jet necklace, her greatest treasure. Her father, whom she no longer entertained with her sweet songs, was asleep.

  When Caliban had gone, she hid her face in her hands and started to weep. Overwhelmed with questions by her father, who had woken up, she did not want to answer any of them, and when she heard Jacques Bontems coming, she withdrew precipitately, because she did not want anyone to witness her dolor.

  The next morning, she went to the cottage. She was dressed exactly as he had been when she saw Abel for the first time. She went into the cottage, but as soon as she had crossed the threshold she dissolved in tears. She sat down in the worm-eaten armchair and looked at Abel, unable to speak.

  The young man drew near and took her by the hand—which she let him take—and he said to her: “Catherine, I’m going to leave this place, but you’re going to stay here, so be sure that I’ll come back often—unless you prefer to come with me....”

  “Come with you! Abel, Abel, I’ll accompany you with my soul; I’ll follow you everywhere. Know, then—it would have been finer to keep quiet, but that effort is beyond my strength—that I love you amorously, that I will never love anyone but you, that your fraternal affection is nothing...what am I saying?...it’s everything, but it’s still not enough. For a long time I’ve been drying up in tears; I’m losing you forever, but I can’t forget you. How unhappy I am, Abel! Reason told me that it couldn’t be otherwise, but my heart still hoped...”

  Sobs prevented her from going on.

  “Oh, Catherine!” cried Abel. “You’re breaking my heart! How I want you to be happy! What is necessary for that? It’s said that in society, riches are something for happiness. Here, Catherine, take them...” And seizing a handful of large diamonds, he poured them over Catherine.

  “Abel!” she cried, weeping. “Is that worthy of you? Can anything console a heart deprived of the one it loves?” And with a movement of scorn and indignation as rapid as thought, she stood up, threw the diamonds on the ground, and, looking at Abel with an admirable tenderness full of profound dolor, she said to him: “Give me, just give me one loving kiss, and even the tomb will seem charming to me! Kiss me to say adieu, and that simple, chaste caress will be more to me than all the world, more than the heavens!”

  Abel gripped her by her slender waist and deposited a tender kiss on her burning lips...

  Catherine went pale, and fainted, saying: “That’s fire! Oh, I’ve lived!”

  Catherine, pale and almost dead, was in Abel’s arms when the duchesse came in...

  “Madame,” said Catherine, recovering her senses, “may you be forever ignorant of what your happiness has cost me.”

  She looked at Abel, contemplated him, carried him away entire in her heart, and disappeared.

  Abel, left alone with the fay, told her everything that his father had done for him, and the duchesse was at the peak of delight when she learned that Abel was a Comte and worth millions. That joy came from the fact that she saw all conveniences coming together, and that the marriage would give less purchase to malicious talk.

  Would Catherine have had that surge of joy?

  Poor Catherine went to her father’s house. There, Jacques Bontems and Grandvani pressed her to consent to the marriage, and the young woman, looking at the cuirassier, made a frightful movement of the head as a sign of assent....

  That movement…I can only compare it to that of the head of a skeleton detaching itself from the body.

  They looked at her, wondering with their eyes: What’s the matter with her, then?

  The joy disappeared; Catherine’s color faded away; she became distracted; she wandered rather than walking. Often, she gazed without seeing.

  Meanwhile, in Paris, the Duchesse de Sommerset’s adventure was on all lips. Their marriage decided, the two fiancés would not wait for long. It was the same in the village.

  Chapter XV

  The Two Weddings

  In Paris, in the Duchesse of Sommerset’s magnificent town house, a joyful crowd inundated all the rooms; the most sumptuous costumes, the prettiest women, important men and a multitude of strangers shone with a splendid glare. Every room in the house, in the reception apartments, was decorated with several chandeliers ornamented by a multitude of candles that were reflected by a thousand mirrors. The most precious and most elegant items of furniture, silks of a hundred colors, brilliant satins, precious porcelains, gilded ornaments, sculpted bronzes, crystals full of artificial flowers and perfumes—everything, in sum, that the most frenzied luxury of modernity has been able to invent of the exquisite, the voluptuous and the delicate—was brought together in that palace, and offered as a trophy to ornament the temple of the happiest marriage that had ever been contracted.

  Flocking, on the word of Renown, to contemplate the chemist’s son with the millions, the charming, noble and rich hero of his adventure, the numerous friends of the duchesse and many strangers flooded the house. The Place Vendôme was encumbered by a hot of carriages each more brilliant than the next, and there was an immense assembly of domestics under the peristyle and in the courtyard.

  In one of the galleries of the house a sumptuous feast was being prepared; the walls of the gallery were ornamented with paintings by the most famous masters, and the curious could not tear themselves away from the contemplation of that magnificent gallery, worthy of a sovereign. Several of them, doubtless gastronomes, reposed their admiration, settling it on the organization of a long table on which silverware glittered, along with candles, plates, magical decorations, the most sought-after foodstuffs—the latest productions of luxury—sculptures and vases, all masterpieces of art. It was a veritable enchantment.

  In the principal salon, amid a thousand beauties, Jenny de Sommerset, wearing the rich costume of the Pearl Fay, eclipsed everyone else; she attracted all gazes; her vivid beauty, her grace, her seductiveness, rendered her the object of all desires; and, in the same way that everything in nature in related to the sun, everything in the hearts and visages of the guests only lived by virtue of her, and were combined in her. She was the center of a multitude of radii.

  As for Comte Osterwald, he reigned as a sovereign over the fay, as his fay reigned over everything else. One could not call what was happening at that moment in his being “living”; all the women were admiring him, and there was no one who did not agree that there was reason to do so, for Abel, in the midst of the most handsome men who surrounded him, made himself remarkable, and prevailed, by the expression of happiness that emerged from every pore of his celestial visage. An angelic candor, a gentle pride, a moist and magical gaze, hair floating in rounded jet-black curls, elegant and pure forms, and that naïve and naturally casual bearing, rendered him a living image of the famous Greek statuary in which all human perfections are assembled.

  Abel found himself transplanted from the bosom of the ignorant life of nature to the summit of civilization, into the midst of all that society offers of the most seductive; he was accompanied by the woman he loved and enjoyed the superhuman voluptuousness of seeing her the queen of her circle; he sensed that everyone envied him his happiness,
and his ideas had acquired sufficient extension for him to perceive that, at that moment, he was the sole individual among fifty million human beings who had such a sensation, with which all the forces of creation seemed to concur.

  In fact, the most harmonious music have the signal for that celebration, and Abel remained plunged therein in a cloud of voluptuous sensation so renascent that his soul no longer had the strength to do anything but feel; he was no longer able to think; he gazed incessantly at that profusion of wealth, and always came to confound his sight in the enchanting aspect of his dear little fay, who intoxicated him with the most delicate, the most amorous and the sweetest glances. Everything was smiling at them; the entire universe was poring over their amour. No tales of enchantment had ever given the image of such a fête. In sum, he was all enjoyment, and had not sufficient eyes to see or soul to feel.

  How, then, could he have thought about Catherine?

  Catherine, the poor child! Her name recalls us to the village. We know the modest abode of Père Grandvani: that kitchen so clean and so cluttered, and Françoise scarcely sufficient to direct the ovens. The Maire’s room has been cleared of the furniture that once garnished it; on the table where Catherine’s needlework once lay, one sees the Maire’s modest white faience crockery. A few white porcelain cups, poorly served fruits, scant silverware, but a frank cheerfulness on all faces: that is what one perceives.

  The sergeant of the cuirassiers of the guard is there, his uniform shiny with his medal, as large as a half-franc coin; he turns up his moustache, and thinks profoundly on seeing Catherine. The poor girl is in front of the modest fireplace. Juliette is putting the finishing touches to her costume and attaching the virginal bouquet to it. Catherine is pale; she gazes without seeing; her lips are colorless; they are slightly parted, and a painful breath escapes between her white teeth. The adornment that she has put on is that which he gave her.