by George Sand
She had no sooner descended thus into the recesses of her conscience, than her former piety, stern and terrifying, tormented her with repentance and dread. She passed the whole night in torture ; she tried in vain to sleep. At last, toward daybreak, intensely excited by her suffering, she determined upon a sublime and romantic project, which has tempted more than one wife at the moment of committing her first error: she determined to see her husband and implore his assistance.
Terrified at what she was about to do, she was no sooner dressed and ready to leave her room than she renounced the idea, recurred to it, shrank from it again, and, after a quarter of an hour of hesitation and anguish, she summoned courage to go down to the salon and send for Monsieur de Lansac.
It was just five o’clock ; the count had hoped to leave the château before his wife was awake. He flattered himself that he should in that way avoid the annoyance of more farewells and more dissimulation. So that the thought of the interview she requested vexed him beyond measure; but he could not in decency avoid it. He joined her in the salon, somewhat disturbed because he could not divine her object in wishing to see him.
The care with which Valentine closed the doors so that they might not be heard, and the agitation of her features and her voice, put the finishing touch to Monsieur de Lansac’s impatience, for he felt that he had no time for a sentimental scene. His mobile eyebrows involuntarily contracted, and, when Valentine attempted to speak, she found such a cold and repellent expression on his face that she stood before him crushed and tongue-tied.
A few polite words from her husband gave her to understand that he was tired of waiting; whereupon she made a violent effort to speak, but could not express her sorrow and her shame otherwise than by sobs.
“Come, come, my dear Valentine,” he said, forcing himself to assume an open and affectionate manner, “enough of this nonsense! Come, what have you to say to me ? I thought that we were perfectly agreed on every point. Let us not waste time, I beg you ; Grapp is waiting for me, and Grapp is pitiless.”
“Very good, monsieur,” said Valentine, summoning all her courage, “I will make my appeal to you in four words : take me with you.”
As she spoke, she almost kneeled before the count, who fell back.
“Take you with me! you! Do you mean it, madame ?”
“I know that you despise me,” cried Valentine, with the resolution of despair ; “ but I know that you have no right to. I swear to you, monsieur, that I am still worthy to be the wife of an honest man.”
“Will you oblige me by informing me,” retorted the count, speaking slowly and with ironical emphasis, “ how many times you have walked alone at night—as you did last night, for instance—to the pavilion in the park, in the two years more or less that we have been separated?”
Valentine, realizing that she was innocent, felt that her courage increased.
“I swear to you, by God and by my honor,” she said, “that last night was the first time,”
“God is indulgent and a woman’s honor is fragile. Try to swear by something else.”
“But, monsieur,” cried Valentine, grasping her husband’s arm with a commanding gesture, “ you heard our conversation last night; I am sure of it, I know it. And I appeal to your conscience to say if it did not prove that my madness was involuntary. Didn’t you understand that, although I was guilty and hateful in my own eyes, my conduct was not defiled by the stain which a man could not forgive. Oh ! you know, you know, that if it were otherwise, I should not have the effrontery to claim your protection. Oh ! Evariste, do not refuse it! There is still time to save me. Do not let me succumb to my destiny; rescue me from the seduction that environs me and presses me close. See ! I fly from it, I abhor it, I try to push it away; but I am a poor, weak woman, left alone, abandoned by everybody; help me! It is not too late, I tell you ; I can still look you in the face. Do I blush ? does my face lie ? You are shrewd and penetrating ; I could not deceive you so grossly. Should I dare to do it ? Great God! you do not believe me! Oh ! this doubt is a terrible punishment!”
As she spoke, poor Valentine, hopeless of overcoming the insulting coldness of that marble heart, fell on her knees, clasped her hands and held them up toward heaven, as if to call God to witness.
“Really,” said Monsieur de Lansac, after a savage silence, “ you are very lovely and very dramatic ! One must be very cruel to refuse what you ask so eloquently; but how can you expect me to expose you to the necessity of perjuring yourself anew ? Didn’t you swear to your lover last night that you would never belong to any man ?”
At that crushing retort Valentine rose indignantly, and, gazing at her husband with all the lofty scorn of outraged pride, she said:
“What do you think that I came here to demand, I pray to know ? You are laboring under a strange error ; monsieur, but you certainly do not think that I knelt to you to solicit a place in your bed ?”
Monsieur de Lansac, mortally offended by the haughty aversion of that woman who was so humble a moment before, bit his bloodless lip and walked toward the door. Valentine detained him.
“So you spurn me,” she said; “you deny me the protection of your house and the safeguard of your presence ! If you could deprive me of your name, doubtless you would do so ! Oh ! this is abominable, monsieur. You talked to me yesterday about our respective duties; how do you fulfil yours ? You see that I am on the point of rolling over a precipice from which I shrink in horror, and, when I implore you to give me your hand, you push me over with your foot. Very good ! may my sins recoil on your head !”
“Yes, Valentine, you are right,” he retorted in a sneering tone; “your sins will recoil on my head.”
He left the room, delighted with that witty retort. She still clung to him, and at that critical moment she resorted to every form of entreaty, humble, touching, pathetic, that a woman can devise. She was so eloquent and so sincere that Monsieur de Lansac, surprised by her powers of pleading, looked at her for a moment with an expression which aroused the hope that she had moved him. But he gently freed himself from her grasp, saying:
“All this is sublime, my dear, but it is absolutely ridiculous. You are very wrong; take a friend’s advice: a woman should never take her husband for her confessor; that is asking of him more virtue than is consistent with his profession. For my own part, I consider you charming ; but my own life is too busy for me to undertake to cure you of a great passion. Indeed, I could never be so conceited as to hope to succeed. I have done enough for you, it seems to me, by closing my eyes; you have opened them by force. That being so, I must run away, for my position in relation to you here is intolerable, and we could not look at each other without laughing.”
“Without laughing, monsieur! laughing!” she exclaimed with justifiable wrath.
“Adieu, Valentine,” he continued; “I have had too much experience, I confess, to blow my brains out for an infidelity, but I have too much sense to care to serve as chaperon to such an excitable brain as yours. For the same reason I am none too anxious to have you break this liaison, which has to you all the romantic beauty of a first love. The second would be more rapid, the third——”
“You insult me,” said Valentine, with a disheartened air; “ but God will protect me. Adieu, monsieur. I thank you for this harsh lesson; I will try to profit by it.”
They bowed to each other, and a quarter of an hour later, as Bénédict and Valentin were walking along the highroad, they saw the post-chaise pass which bore the nobleman and the usurer Parisward.
XXXV
Valentine, terrified and at the same time mortally offended by her husband’s insulting prophecies, went to her room to devour her tears and her shame. More than ever alarmed by the consequences of an error which society punishes with such scorn, Valentine, being accustomed to regard public opinion with religious respect, looked with horror upon her mistakes and imprudence. Her mind dwelt constantly upon the plan of flying from the perils of her situation. She sought means of resistance fro
m without, for she no longer found any such in herself, and the dread of yielding took away her last remaining strength. She complained bitterly of her destiny for depriving her of all help, all protection.
“Alas!” she said, “my husband spurns me, my mother cannot understand me, my sister dares not do anything; who will stop me on this slope which is so steep that I cannot stop myself ?”
Brought up to shine in society, and according to its principles, Valentine could not find anywhere in society the support which she was entitled to expect from it in return for her sacrifices. If she had not possessed the inestimable treasure of faith, she would undoubtedly, in her despair, have trampled on all the precepts of her youth. But her religious belief sustained and encouraged all her other beliefs.
She did not feel strong enough to see Bénédict that evening; so she did not advise him of her husband’s departure, and flattered herself that he would not know of it. She wrote a note to Louise, asking her to come to the pavilion at the usual time.
But they had hardly exchanged greetings when Mademoiselle Beaujon sent Catherine to the small park, to inform Valentine that her grandmother was seriously ill, and was asking for her.
The old marchioness had taken a cup of chocolate in the morning; her weakened organs refused to digest it, and she was suffering from a violent attack of indigestion and fever. The old doctor, Monsieur Faure, considered her situation very dangerous.
Valentine was attending to her wants with affectionate zeal when the marchioness suddenly sat up in bed, and, with a distinctness of speech and expression which she had not shown for a long time, requested to be left alone with her granddaughter. All who were in the room at once withdrew, with the exception of La Beaujon, who could not believe that the dismissal extended to her. But the old marchioness, suddenly recovering, by virtue of a miraculous revolution wrought by the fever, her keenness of perception and freedom of will, imperiously ordered her to leave the room.
“Valentine,” she said to her granddaughter when they were alone, “I have a favor to ask of you. I have been imploring La Beaujon to do it for a long time, but she confuses my mind by her replies; you will do it, I am sure.”
“O grandmamma !” cried Valentine, kneeling beside her bed, “tell me what it is—command me.”
“Well, my child,” said the marchioness, leaning toward her and lowering her voice, “I don’t want to die without seeing your sister.”
Valentine sprang eagerly to her feet and ran to a bell.
“Oh ! that can be soon arranged,” she said joyfully; “she isn’t far away. How happy she will be, dear grandma! Her kisses will restore you to life and health !”
Valentine bade Catherine go to fetch Louise, who was still at the pavilion.
“That is not all,” said the marchioness; “I would like to see her son too.”
Valentin had just arrived at the small park when Catherine appeared. He had been sent by Bénédict, who was anxious about Valentine, and dared not appear in her presence without orders from her. In a few moments, Louise and her son were ushered into their grandmother’s chamber.
Louise, abandoned by that woman long ago with unfeeling selfishness, had succeeded in forgetting her; but when she saw her on her deathbed, haggard and decrepit ; when she saw the features of her whose indulgent affection had kept watch, whether well or ill, over her early years of innocence and happiness, she was conscious of a reawakening of that inextinguishable sentiment of respect and love which is a part of the first affections of life. She threw herself into her grandmother’s arms, and her tears, the source of which she believed to be dry, flowed freely on the breast of her who had rocked her to sleep in infancy.
The old woman likewise was very deeply moved at the sight of Louise, once so full of life and so rich in youth, health and passion, now so fragile and melancholy. She expressed her feelings with a fervor which was as it were the last gleam of that ineffable love with which heaven has endowed woman in her rôle of mother. She asked forgiveness for her neglect with a warmth which called forth sobs of gratitude from her granddaughters ; then she embraced Valentin in her lean arms, and went into ecstasies over his beauty, his grace, his resemblance to Valentine. They both resembled the Comte de Raimbault, the marchioness’s youngest son. She also discovered in them some of the features of her husband. How can the sacred ties of family be shattered and forgotten on earth ? What has more power over the human heart than a type of beauty handed down as an heirloom by several generations of loved children ? What a bond of affection is that which epitomizes memory and hope ! What an imperious influence is that of one whose glance revives a whole past of love and regret, a life which you thought extinct, but whose intense emotions you find renewed in a child’s smile !
But soon the marchioness’s emotion seemed to fade away, whether because it had hastened the exhaustion of her faculties, or because her natural fickleness needed to reassert itself. She bade Louise sit on her bed, Valentine at the foot and Valentin by her pillow. She talked to them wittily and cheerfully, and with as much ease of manner as if she had parted from them the day before. She asked Valentin many questions concerning his studies, his tastes, his dreams of the future.
In vain did her granddaughter urge that she would tire herself by talking so long. They noticed that her ideas gradually became confused. Her memory failed her; the extraordinary intelligence which she had temporarily recovered gave way to vague and effusive reminiscences, to confused thoughts; her cheeks, burning with fever, turned purple; her speech became thick. The doctor was sent for and administered a sedative. It was no longer needed ; they saw that she was rapidly sinking.
Suddenly she raised her head on her pillow, called Valentine again, and motioned to the others to retire to the end of the room.
“Here is an idea that has just occurred to me,” she whispered. “I knew that I had forgotten something, and I did not want to die without telling you of it. I know many secrets which I pretend not to know. There is one which you haven’t confided to me, Valentine, but I guessed it a long while ago: you are in love, my child.”
Valentine shuddered from head to foot. Completely mastered by the mental exaltation produced by the crowding of all these events into a few days, she believed that a voice from on high was speaking to her through her dying grandmother’s mouth.
“Yes, it is true,” she replied, resting her burning cheek on the marchioness’s icy hands; “I am very guilty. Do not curse me, but say something to encourage and save me.”
“Ah! my child!” said the marchioness, trying to smile, “it isn’t easy to save a young creature like you from the passions ! Oh ! in my last hour I can afford to be sincere. Why should I play the hypocrite with you ? Could I do it for an instant before God ? No, I say. It is not possible to keep from that disease while you are young. So love on, my child; that is the only good thing in life. But listen to your grandmother’s last advice, and don’t forget it: never take a lover who is not of your own rank.”
At this point the marchioness lost the power of speech.
A few drops of her potion restored her to life for a few moments more. She bestowed a wan smile on those who stood about her, and murmured a prayer with her lips. Then she turned to Valentine.
“Tell your mother that I thank her for her kindness, and forgive her for her unkindness. For a woman of no birth she has behaved well enough toward me, after all. I didn’t expect so much, I confess, from Mademoiselle Chignon.”
She uttered that name with an affectation of scorn. They were the last words she spoke; and, to her mind, the most satisfying vengeance at her command, amid the sufferings of old age, was to denounce Madame de Raimbault’s plebeian extraction as her greatest vice.
The loss of her grandmother, although it touched Valentine’s heart, could not cause her real unhappiness. Nevertheless, in her then frame of mind, she looked upon it as a fresh blow of her fatal destiny, and took pleasure in saying to herself that all her natural protectors were taken from her, as i
f designedly, at the time when they were most necessary to her.
Losing heart more and more over her plight, Valentine determined to write to her mother and beg her to come to her rescue, and resolved that she would not see Bénédict again until she had consummated that sacrifice. And so, after performing the last duties for the marchioness, she went to her own room, locked the door, saying that she was ill and did not wish to see anyone, and wrote to the Comtesse de Raimbault.
Although Monsieur de Lansac’s harshness might well have sickened her of pouring out her grief into an insensible heart, she confessed herself humbly before that arrogant woman who had made her tremble all her life. But Valentine, exasperated by suffering, had the courage, born of despair, to undertake anything. She no longer used her reason; one dread overshadowed every other. To escape her love she would have walked upon the sea. Moreover, when everything failed her at once, an additional pang was less terrifying to her than at ordinary times. She felt that she could be strong and pitiless toward herself, provided that she had not to struggle with Bénédict; the maledictions of the whole world had less terror for her than the idea of facing her lover’s grief.
So she confessed to her mother that she loved another man than her husband. That was all the information she gave her with respect to Bénédict; but she painted with glowing colors the state of her mind and her need of some one to lean upon. She implored her to write for her to join her; for the countess always exacted such absolute submission from her dependents that Valentine would not have dared to join her without her permission.
In default of affection, Madame de Raimbault might, perhaps, have received her daughter’s confidence with a thrill of vanity; perhaps she would have granted her request, had not the same mail brought her another letter from the château of Raimbault, which she read first; it was a formal denunciation from Mademoiselle Beaujon.