Valentine

by George Sand

  “Yes, it is you,” she said, raising her head again, “ my husband. I know you, my Bénédict; I love you too. Kiss me, but do not look at me. Put out the light; let me hide my face on your breast.”

  As she spoke, she threw her arms about him and drew him toward her with an astounding feverish strength. Her cheeks wore a deep flush, her lips glowed with color. A sudden, fleeting flame shone in her dull eyes. But how could Bénédict distinguish that unhealthy excitement from the passionate frenzy by which he was himself consumed ? He threw himself upon her in desperation and, on the point of yielding to the violence of his agonizing desires, he uttered nervous, heart-rending cries. Instantly he heard footsteps, and the key turned in the lock. He had barely time to jump behind the bed; Catherine entered.

  She scrutinized Valentine closely; was evidently surprised by the disordered condition of her bed, and that her sleep should be so agitated. She drew a chair to the bed and sat beside her for about a quarter of an hour. Bénédict supposed that she intended to pass the rest of the night there, and he cursed her a thousand times. But Valentine, no longer excited by her lover’s burning breath, relapsed into a state of motionless and peaceful torpor. Catherine, reassured as to her condition, concluded that she herself was dreaming when she thought that she heard shrieks. She rearranged the bed, drew the clothes over Valentine, replaced her hair under her cap, and adjusted the folds of her night-dress over her breast to keep off the night air; then she left the room on tiptoe and turned the key twice in the lock. Thus it was impossible to make his escape in that way.

  When he found himself once more master of Valentine, fully realizing now the danger of his position, he walked away from the bed in dismay and threw himself on a chair at the other end of the room. There he hid his face in his hands, and tried to anticipate the consequences of his night’s work.

  He no longer had the ferocious courage which would have made it possible for him, a few hours earlier, to kill Valentine. After gazing upon her modest and soul-stirring charms, he felt that he had not the strength to destroy that lovely work of God : Lansac was the one whom he must kill. But Lansac could not die alone ; he himself must follow him to the tomb; and what would become of Valentine without lover or husband ? How would the death of one benefit her, if the other were not left ? And then, who could say that she would not curse the murderer of the husband whom she did not love ? She was so pure and saintly, by nature so straightforward and honorable, would she appreciate the sublimity of a devotion which manifested itself by such a barbarous deed ? Would not Bénédict’s memory be hateful and painful to her, stained with her husband’s blood and branded with the terrible name of assassin?

  “Ah ! since I can never possess her,” he said to himself; “ I must see to it that she does not hate my memory ! I will die alone, and perhaps she will venture to weep for me in the privacy of her prayers.”

  He drew a chair to Valentine’s desk ; it contained everything necessary for writing. He lighted a candle and drew the bed-curtains so that the sight of her might not deprive him of the courage to bid her adieu forever. He bolted the door to avoid being taken by surprise, and wrote to Valentine as follows:

  “It is two o’clock in the morning, and I am alone with you, Valentine, alone in your chamber, and you are more entirely in my power than you will ever be in your husband’s, for you have told me that you love me; you have called me to your heart in the privacy of your dreams; you have almost returned my caresses; you have unconsciously made me the happiest and the most miserable of men; and yet, Valentine, I have respected you, amid the tortures of the most terrible frenzy that ever swallowed up the faculties of man. You are still lying there, pure and unprofaned at my hands, and you can wake without blushing. Oh ! Valentine, I must love you very dearly.

  “But, agonizing and incomplete as my happiness has been, I must pay for it with my life. After hours like those which I have just passed at your knees, with my lips glued to your hand, to your hair, to the unsubstantial garment which hardly covers you, I cannot live another day. After such transports I cannot return to commonplace life—to the hateful life which I should lead apart from you. Have no fear, Valentine ; the man who possessed you in his thoughts to-night will never again see the sunrise.

  “Except for this irrevocable resolution, how could I have found courage to make my way to this room and to dream dreams of happiness ? How could I have dared to look at you and speak to you as I have done, even while you slept ? All my blood will be too small a price to pay for the fate which has sold me such moments as these.

  “You must know all, Valentine. I came here to kill your husband. When I found that he had escaped me, I determined to kill you and myself. Have no fear; when you read this, my heart will have ceased to beat; but to-night, Valentine, at the very moment that you called me to your arms, a loaded pistol was pointed at your head.

  “But I had not the courage—I should never have it. If I could kill you and myself with the same shot, it would have been done before this; but I should be compelled to see you suffer, to see your blood flow, your heart fight against death; and, though that sight should last but a second, that second alone would contain more agony than my whole life has known.

  “Live, therefore, and let your husband live also. The letting him live is even more painful than the respect for you which tied my hands just now as I stood, dying with desire, at the foot of your bed. It costs me more to renounce the satisfaction of my hatred than it costs me to overcome my love; but it may be that his death would bring dishonor upon you. Thus to exhibit my jealousy to the world would, perhaps, reveal your love as well as my own; for you love me, Valentine, you told me so just now, involuntarily. And last evening, in the field, when you were weeping on my breast, was not that love too ? Oh ! do not wake ; let me carry that belief with me to the tomb.

  “My suicide will not compromise you ; you alone will know for whom I die. The surgeon’s scalpel will not disclose your name written on my heart, but you will know that its last pulsations were for you.

  “Adieu, Valentine ; adieu, thou first and only love of my life ! Many others will love you, as who would not ? But you will have been loved once and once only as you deserve to be loved. The heart which you have loved must needs return to God’s bosom, in order not to degenerate on earth.

  “After I am gone, Valentine, what will your life be ? Alas ! I do not know. Doubtless you will submit to your lot. My memory will grow dim ; you will put up with all that seems hateful to you to-day—indeed you will have to do it. O Valentine, I spare your husband so that you may not curse me, and that God may not shut me out of heaven, where a place is reserved for you, O God, protect me ! O Valentine, pray for me !

  “Adieu ! I have just been to your bedside; you are sleeping quietly. Oh ! if you knew how lovely you are ! Never, oh! never, can a man’s heart contain without bursting all the love which I have for you.

  “If the soul is not an empty breath which the wind blows away, mine will live always near you.

  “At eve, when you go to the end of the field, think of me if the breeze plays with your hair, and if, amid its cool caresses, you suddenly feel a burning breath; at night, in your dreams, if a mysterious kiss grazes your cheek, remember Bénédict.”

  He folded the letter and placed it on the table where his pistols lay, which Catherine had almost touched without seeing them. He uncocked them, put them in his pocket, leaned over Valentine, gazed at her with rapture for the first and last time; then he rushed to the window, and, with the courage of a man who has nothing to risk, dropped to the ground at the peril of his life. He might fall thirty feet, or be shot for a thief; but what did it matter to him ? Only the fear of compromising Valentine led him to take precautions against waking anyone. Despair gave him superhuman strength; for, to anyone who observes in cold blood the distance between the second floor and ground-floor windows of the château of Raimbault, and the bare face of the wall with no projection or foothold, such an undertaking would seem utt
erly incredible.

  Nevertheless, he reached the ground without arousing anyone, and climbed the wall into the open country.

  The first rays of dawn were whitening the horizon.

  XXIV

  Valentine, more exhausted by such sleep than she would have been by a sleepless night, woke very late. The sun was high and hot in the heavens; myriads of insects buzzed in its rays. Buried for a long time in the indolent torpor which follows one’s waking, Valentine did not try at first to collect her thoughts ; she listened indifferently to the innumerable noises of the air and the fields. She did not suffer, because she had forgotten many things, and was in ignorance of many more.

  She sat up to take a glass of water from the table, and found Bénédict’s letter. She turned it over slowly in her fingers, not conscious of what she was doing. At last she looked at it, and, on recognizing the writing, started, and opened it with a convulsive hand. The curtain had fallen ; her whole life was laid bare before her eyes.

  On hearing her heart-rending shrieks, Catherine hastened to her side. The good woman’s face was intensely agitated : Valentine instantly realized the truth.

  “Speak !” she cried ; “where is Bénédict ? what has become of Bénédict ?”

  And observing the nurse’s distress and consternation, she added, clasping her hands :

  “O mon Dieu! it is really true, it is all over!”

  “Alas ! mademoiselle, how do you know about it ?” said Catherine, sitting down on the bed. “Who could have come into this room ? I had the key in my pocket. Did you hear anything ? But Mademoiselle Beaujon told me about it in such a low tone, for fear of waking you. I knew that the news would make you unhappy.”

  “Ah ! it is indeed everything to me !” cried Valentine impatiently, springing suddenly to her feet. “Speak, I say! What has become of Bénédict ?”

  Terrified by her vehemence, the nurse hung her head and dared not reply.

  “He is dead, I know it!” said Valentine, falling back on her bed, pale and gasping for breath; “ but how long since ?”

  “Alas !” said the nurse, “ no one knows ; the unfortunate young man was found on the edge of the field this morning at daybreak. He was lying in a ditch and covered with blood. The farmers from the Croix-Bleue found him when they were going to pasture with their cattle, and they carried him to his house at once. He had a pistol bullet in his head, and the pistol was still in his hand. The law people met there right away. Ah ! mon Dieuf what a misfortune ! What can have made that young man so unhappy ? Nobody can say that it was poverty. Monsieur Lhéry loved him like his own son, and Madame Lhéry, what will she say ? It will be a terrible blow to them.”

  Valentine was not listening; she had fallen back upon her bed, cold and stiff. In vain did Catherine try to rouse her by calling her name and by her caresses ; she was like one dead. The good nurse, trying to open her clinched hands, found a crumpled letter in them. She did not know how to read, but she had that instinct which warns us that the person we love is in danger ; she took the letter from her and concealed it carefully before calling for help.

  Valentine’s chamber was soon full of people, but all their efforts to revive her were fruitless. A physician who was hastily summoned found a very serious cerebral congestion, and succeeded, by bleeding her, in restoring the circulation; but that state of unconsciousness was succeeded by convulsions, and for a week Valentine hovered between life and death.

  The nurse was careful to say nothing as to the cause of her mistress’s dangerous agitation. She told the physician alone, under the seal of secrecy. This is how she was forced to believe that there was, behind all these distressing events, a liaison which no one must be allowed to suspect. Finding that Valentine was a little better after the bloodletting, on the day of the event which caused her illness, she began to reflect upon the supernatural way in which her young mistress had been informed of that event. The letter she found in her hand reminded her of the note which she had been asked to give her on the previous day, before the wedding, and which had been handed to her by Bénédict’s old housekeeper. Happening to go down for a moment to the butler’s pantry, she heard the servants discussing the cause of the suicide, and saying to one another, under their breath, that Pierre Blutty and Bénédict had quarrelled the night before on the subject of Mademoiselle de Raimbault. They added that Bénédict was still living, and that the same physician who was attending Valentine had dressed his wound in the morning, and had refused to give a positive opinion as to his condition. One bullet had entered his forehead and come out above the ear. That wound, although serious, might not prove fatal; but no one knew how many bullets there were in the pistol. It might be that a second one had lodged in the skull, and in that case the respite which the wounded man was enjoying at that moment might serve simply to prolong his suffering.

  Thus it was proved to Catherine’s satisfaction that that catastrophe and the painful events immediately preceding it were directly responsible for Valentine’s alarming condition. The good creature fancied that a gleam of hope, however feeble it might be, would have more effect upon her mistress’s trouble than all the physician’s remedies. She hurried to Bénédict’s cottage, which was only half a league from the château, and assured herself with her own eyes that the poor fellow was still alive. Many neighbors, drawn thither by curiosity rather than concern, were gathered about the door, but the physician had given orders that only a few should be admitted, and Monsieur Lhéry, who was installed by the dying man’s bedside, allowed Catherine to enter only after much resistance. Madame Lhéry was still in ignorance of the sad news; she had gone to Pierre Blutty’s farm to pay the wedding visit.

  Catherine, after examining the wounded man and asking Lhéry’s opinion, turned away, knowing as little as before of the probable results of the wound, but fully enlightened as to the cause of the suicide. Just as she was leaving the house, she happened to glance at a chair on which Bénédict’s blood-stained clothes had been placed. She started, and as it always happens, do what we will, that our eyes are attracted by a shocking or disgusting object, Catherine could not remove hers from that chair, and she discovered there a handkerchief of India silk, horribly stained with blood. She instantly recognized the kerchief which she herself had tied about Valentine’s neck when she left the house on the evening before the wedding, and which she had lost during her walk in the fields. That was an indisputable ray of light; so she took advantage of a moment when no one was looking at her to possess herself of the handkerchief, which might have compromised Valentine, and thrust it in her pocket.

  When she returned to the château, she lost no time in concealing it in her room, and gave no further thought to it. On the rare occasions when she was left alone with Valentine, she tried to make her understand that Bénédict might be saved, but it was all in vain. Valentine’s mental faculties seemed to be completely exhausted ; she did not raise her eyelids to see who spoke to her. If she had any thought at all in her mind, it was one of satisfaction to see that she was dying.

  A week passed in this way. Then there was a perceptible change for the better; Valentine seemed to recover her memory, and found relief in floods of tears. But as no one could induce her to divulge the cause of her grief, they believed that there was still some trouble with the brain. The nurse alone was on the watch for a favorable moment to speak, but Monsieur de Lansac, being on the eve of going away, made it his duty not to leave his wife’s apartments.

  Monsieur de Lansac had received his appointment as first secretary of Embassy—hitherto he had been only second secretary—and, at the same time, orders to join his chief at once, and to start for Russia, with or without his wife.

  Monsieur de Lansac had never really intended to take his wife abroad with him. In the days when he had been most fascinating to Valentine, she had asked him if he would take her to his post of duty, and he, in order not to fall short of the devotion which he affected, had answered that it was his most fervent wish never to be part
ed from her. But he had secretly determined to use all his adroitness and, if necessary, his authority, to preserve his wandering life from domestic annoyances. Thus the coincidence of an illness, which was no longer desperate, but which threatened to be of long duration, with the necessity of leaving France immediately, was favorable to Monsieur de Lansac’s interests and desires. Although Madame de Raimbault was very shrewd in financial matters, she had allowed herself to be completely circumvented by the far superior skill of her son-in-law. The marriage contract, after discussions most revolting as to substance, but most refined as to form, had been drawn altogether in Monsieur de Lansac’s favor. He had availed himself to the greatest possible extent of the elasticity of the laws, to make himself master of his wife’s fortune, and he had made the contracting parties consent to offer his creditors flattering expectations based on the estate of Raimbault. These trifling peculiarities of his conduct had come very near breaking off the marriage ; but, by dint of flattering all the countess’s pet ambitions, he had succeeded in obtaining a stronger hold upon her than before. As for Valentine, she was so ignorant of business, and had such a distaste for it, that she agreed, without understanding anything about it, to whatever was demanded of her.

  So it was that Monsieur de Lansac, seeing that his debts were paid, so to speak, left Raimbault with no great regret for his wife, and he rubbed his hands as he felicitated himself inwardly upon having brought so delicate and advantageous an affair to a satisfactory conclusion. His orders to repair to his post arrived most opportunely to relieve him from the difficult part he had been playing at Raimbault since his marriage. Suspecting, perhaps, that a thwarted fancy was the cause of Valentine’s distress and illness, and, at all events, bitterly aggrieved by the feeling which she manifested for him, he had had no excuse thus far for showing his irritation. Under the eyes of those two mothers, who made a great parade of their affection and their anxiety, he dared not allow the ennui and impatience which consumed him to make themselves manifest. So that his situation was extremely trying ; whereas, by going away for an indefinite time, he would avoid, in addition, the disagreeable consequences sure to result from the forced sale of the Raimbault estates; for his principal creditor was imperatively demanding the amount of his claim, which was about five hundred thousand francs; and before long that beautiful domain, which Madame de Raimbault had taken so much pride in improving, would be, to her unbounded disgust, dismembered and reduced to paltry dimensions.