A Woman of Thirty

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A WOMAN OF THIRTY

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by
Ellen Marriage




DEDICATION

To Louis Boulanger, Painter.




A WOMAN OF THIRTY



I.

EARLY MISTAKES

It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April 1813, a morning
which gave promise of one of those bright days when Parisians, for the
first time in the year, behold dry pavements underfoot and a cloudless
sky overhead. It was not yet noon when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by
two spirited horses, turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue
de Rivoli, and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the
newly opened barrier half-way down the Terrasse de Feuillants. The
owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of health; the thin hair
on his sallow temples, turning gray already, gave a look of premature
age to his face. He flung the reins to a servant who followed on
horseback, and alighted to take in his arms a young girl whose dainty
beauty had already attracted the eyes of loungers on the Terrasse. The
little lady, standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to
be taken by the waist, putting an arm round the neck of her guide, who
set her down upon the pavement without so much as ruffling the
trimming of her green rep dress. No lover would have been so careful.
The stranger could only be the father of the young girl, who took his
arm familiarly without a word of thanks, and hurried him into the
Garden of the Tuileries.

The old father noted the wondering stare which some of the young men
gave the couple, and the sad expression left his face for a moment.
Although he had long since reached the time of life when a man is fain
to be content with such illusory delights as vanity bestows, he began
to smile.

"They think you are my wife," he said in the young lady's ear, and he
held himself erect and walked with slow steps, which filled his
daughter with despair.

He seemed to take up the coquette's part for her; perhaps of the two,
he was the more gratified by the curious glances directed at those
little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella; at the dainty figure
outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in with an embroidered
chemisette, which only partially concealed the girlish throat. Her
dress was lifted by her movements as she walked, giving glimpses
higher than the shoes of delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work
silk stockings. More than one of the idlers turned and passed the pair
again, to admire or to catch a second glimpse of the young face, about
which the brown tresses played; there was a glow in its white and red,
partly reflected from the rose-colored satin lining of her fashionable
bonnet, partly due to the eagerness and impatience which sparkled in
every feature. A mischievous sweetness lighted up the beautiful,
almond-shaped dark eyes, bathed in liquid brightness, shaded by the
long lashes and curving arch of eyebrow. Life and youth displayed
their treasures in the petulant face and in the gracious outlines of
the bust unspoiled even by the fashion of the day, which brought the
girdle under the breast.

The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admiration. Her
eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the Palace of the Tuileries,
the goal, doubtless, of her petulant promenade. It wanted but fifteen
minutes of noon, yet even at that early hour several women in gala
dress were coming away from the Tuileries, not without backward
glances at the gates and pouting looks of discontent, as if they
regretted the lateness of the arrival which had cheated them of a
longed-for spectacle. Chance carried a few words let fall by one of
these disappointed fair ones to the ears of the charming stranger, and
put her in a more than common uneasiness. The elderly man watched the
signs of impatience and apprehension which flitted across his
companion's pretty face with interest, rather than amusement, in his
eyes, observing her with a close and careful attention, which perhaps
could only be prompted by some after-thought in the depths of a
father's mind.



It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two days' time
Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous campaign in which he was
to lose first Bessieres, and then Duroc; he was to win the memorable
battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, to see himself treacherously deserted
by Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the
dreadful field of Leipsic. The magnificent review commanded for that
day by the Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long drawn
forth the admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. For the last
time the Old Guard would execute their scientific military manoeuvres
with the pomp and precision which sometimes amazed the Giant himself.
Napoleon was nearly ready for his duel with Europe. It was a sad
sentiment which brought a brilliant and curious throng to the
Tuileries. Each mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in
every mind another thought was dimly present, how that in the future,
when the heroic age of France should have taken the half-fabulous
color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men's imaginations would
more than once seek to retrace the picture of the pageant which they
were assembled to behold.

"Do let us go more quickly, father; I can hear the drums," the young
girl said, and in a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner she urged her
companion forward.

"The troops are marching into the Tuileries," said he.

"Or marching out of it--everybody is coming away," she answered in
childish vexation, which drew a smile from her father.

"The review only begins at half-past twelve," he said; he had fallen
half behind his impetuous daughter.

It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their progress by
a movement of her right arm, for it swung like an oar blade through
the water. In her impatience she had crushed her handkerchief into a
ball in her tiny, well-gloved fingers. Now and then the old man
smiled, but the smiles were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed
his withered face and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl
by his side, he was as fain to exalt the present moment as to dread
the future. "She is happy to-day; will her happiness last?" he seemed
to ask himself, for the old are somewhat prone to foresee their own
sorrows in the future of the young.

Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower where the
tricolor flag was still waving; but as they passed under the arch by
which people came and went between the Gardens of the Tuileries and
the Place du Carrousel, the sentries on guard called out sternly:

"No admittance this way."

By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a glimpse of a
crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either side of the old marble
arcade along which the Emperor was to pass.

"We were too late in starting, father; you can see that quite well." A
little piteous pout revealed the immense importance which she attached
to the sight of this particular review.

"Very well, Julie--let us go away. You dislike a crush."

"Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse of the
Emperor; he might die during this campaign, and then I should never
have seen him."

Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were tears in the
girl's voice; he looked at her, and thought that he saw tears beneath
her lowered eyelids; tears caused not so much by the disappointment as
by one of the troubles of early youth, a secret easily guessed by an
old father. Suddenly Julie's face flushed, and she uttered an
exclamation. Neither her father nor the sentinels understood the
meaning of the cry; but an officer within the barrier, who sprang
across the court towards the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly
at the sound. He went to the arcade by the Gardens of the Tuileries,
and recognized the young lady who had been hidden for a moment by the
tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He set aside in favor of the
pair the order which he himself had given. Then, taking no heed of the
murmurings of the fashionable crowd seated under the arcade, he gently
drew the enraptured child towards him.

"I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, if _you_ are
in waiting," the old man said with a half-mocking, half-serious glance
at the officer.

"If you want a good position, M. le Duc," the young man answered, "we
must not spend any time in talking. The Emperor does not like to be
kept waiting, and the Grand Marshal has sent me to announce our
readiness."

As he spoke, he had taken Julie's arm with a certain air of old
acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the Place du
Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An immense crowd was
penned up in a narrow space, shut in between the gray walls of the
palace and the limits marked out by chains round the great sanded
squares in the midst of the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of
sentries posted to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff
had great difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human
beings.

"Is it going to be a very fine sight?" Julie asked (she was radiant
now).

"Pray take care!" cried her guide, and seizing Julie by the waist, he
lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and set her down beside a
pillar.

But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would have come into
collision with the hindquarters of a white horse which Napoleon's
Mameluke held by the bridle; the animal in its trappings of green
velvet and gold stood almost under the arcade, some ten paces behind
the rest of the horses in readiness for the Emperor's staff.

The young officer placed the father and daughter in front of the crowd
in the first space to the right, and recommended them by a sign to the
two veteran grenadiers on either side. Then he went on his way into
the palace; a look of great joy and happiness had succeeded to his
horror-struck expression when the horse backed. Julie had given his
hand a mysterious pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little
service he had done her, or did she tell him, "After all, I shall
really see you?" She bent her head quite graciously in response to the
respectful bow by which the officer took leave of them before he
vanished.

The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked grave. He
seemed to have left the two young people together for some purpose of
his own, and now he furtively watched the girl, trying to lull her
into false security by appearing to give his whole attention to the
magnificent sight in the Place du Carrousel. When Julie's eyes turned
to her father with the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he
answered her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had
followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that passed
was lost upon him.

"What a grand sight!" said Julie in a low voice, as she pressed her
father's hand; and indeed the pomp and picturesquesness of the
spectacle in the Place du Carrousel drew the same exclamation from
thousands upon thousands of spectators, all agape with wonder. Another
array of sightseers, as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old
noble and his daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the
railings which crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a
line parallel with the Palace of the Tuileries. The dense living mass,
variegated by the colors of the women's dresses, traced out a bold
line across the centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in the
fourth side of a vast parallelogram, surrounded on three sides by the
Palace of the Tuileries itself. Within the precincts thus railed off
stood the regiments of the Old Guard about to be passed in review,
drawn up opposite the Palace in imposing blue columns, ten ranks in
depth. Without and beyond in the Place du Carrousel stood several
regiments likewise drawn up in parallel lines, ready to march in
through the arch in the centre; the Triumphal Arch, where the bronze
horses of St. Mark from Venice used to stand in those days. At either
end, by the Galeries du Louvre, the regimental bands were stationed,
masked by the Polish Lancers then on duty.

The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an arena,
ready for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed with the
symmetry of military art. The sunlight blazed back from ten thousand
bayonets in thin points of flame; the breeze ruffled the men's helmet
plumes till they swayed like the crests of forest-trees before a gale.
The mute glittering ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting
colors, thanks to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements,
and aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature
battlefield before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering
walls of the Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival in
their immobility. Involuntarily the spectator made the comparison
between the walls of men and the walls of stone. The spring sunlight,
flooding white masonry reared but yesterday and buildings centuries
old, shone full likewise upon thousands of bronzed faces, each one
with its own tale of perils passed, each one gravely expectant of
perils to come.

The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before the ranks of
heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered with blue and
silver and gold and purple, the curious could discern the tricolor
pennons on the lances of some half-a-dozen indefatigable Polish
cavalry, rushing about like shepherds' dogs in charge of a flock,
caracoling up and down between the troops and the crowd, to keep the
gazers within their proper bounds. But for this slight flutter of
movement, the whole scene might have been taking place in the
courtyard of the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The very spring
breeze, ruffling up the long fur on the grenadiers' bearskins, bore
witness to the men's immobility, as the smothered murmur of the crowd
emphasized their silence. Now and again the jingling of Chinese bells,
or a chance blow to a big drum, woke the reverberating echoes of the
Imperial Palace with a sound like the far-off rumblings of thunder.

An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in the
expectancy of the multitude. France was about to take farewell of
Napoleon on the eve of a campaign of which the meanest citizen foresaw
the perils. The existence of the French Empire was at stake--to be, or
not to be. The whole citizen population seemed to be as much inspired
with this thought as that other armed population standing in serried
and silent ranks in the enclosed space, with the Eagles and the genius
of Napoleon hovering above them.

Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop of blood;
and this accounted for not a little of the anxious interest of the
scene. Most of the gazers in the crowd had bidden farewell--perhaps
farewell for ever--to the men who made up the rank and file of the
battalions; and even those most hostile to the Emperor, in their
hearts, put up fervent prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and
those most weary of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left
their hatreds behind as they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. They
too felt that in the hour of danger Napoleon meant France herself.

The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a moment the hum
of the crowd ceased. The silence was so deep that you might have heard
a child speak. The old noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming
to live only by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank
of swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle.

And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure in a green
uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man wearing on his head a
cocked hat well-nigh as magically potent as its wearer; the broad red
ribbon of the Legion of Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short
sword hung at his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by
all eyes in all parts of the square.

Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up a martial
refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every instrument from the
thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The clangor of that call to arms
thrilled through every soul. The colors dropped, and the men presented
arms, one unanimous rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the
foremost front near the Palace to the last rank in the Place du
Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line like echoes.
The whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a shout of "Long live the
Emperor!"

Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon had mounted
his horse. It was his movement that had put life into those silent
masses of men; the dumb instruments had found a voice at his coming,
the Eagles and the colors had obeyed the same impulse which had
brought emotion into all faces.

The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed to cry
aloud, "Long live the Emperor!"

There was something preternatural about it--it was magic at work, a
counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a
fugitive image of a reign itself so fugitive.

And _he_ the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devotion, and so
many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven the clouds from the sky,
was sitting there on his horse, three paces in front of his Golden
Squadron, with the grand Marshal on his left, and the Marshal-in-waiting
on his right. Amid all the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a
feature of his face appeared to alter.

"Oh! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the field of
Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucumber _he_ is!" said
the grenadier, in answer to the questions with which the young girl
plied him. For a moment Julie was absorbed in the contemplation of
that face, so quiet in the security of conscious power. The Emperor
noticed Mlle. de Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to
Duroc, which drew a smile from the Grand Marshal. Then the review
began.

If hitherto the young lady's attention had been divided between
Napoleon's impassive face and the blue, red, and green ranks of
troops, from this time forth she was wholly intent upon a young
officer moving among the lines as they performed their swift
symmetrical evolutions. She watched him gallop with tireless activity
to and from the group where the plainly dressed Napoleon shone
conspicuous. The officer rode a splendid black horse. His handsome
sky-blue uniform marked him out amid the variegated multitude as one
of the Emperor's orderly staff-officers. His gold lace glittered in
the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall, narrow shako,
so that the gazer might have compared him to a will-o'-the-wisp, or to
a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor to infuse movement into
those battalions whose swaying bayonets flashed into flames; for, at a
mere glance from his eyes, they broke and gathered again, surging to
and fro like the waves in a bay, or again swept before him like the
long ridges of high-crested wave which the vexed Ocean directs against
the shore.

When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at full speed,
pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was not ten paces from
Julie as he stood before the Emperor, much as General Rapp stands in
Gerard's _Battle of Austerlitz_. The young girl could behold her lover
in all his soldierly splendor.

Colonel Victor d'Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was tall,
slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure never showed to
better advantage than now as he exerted his strength to hold in the
restive animal, whose back seemed to curve gracefully to the rider's
weight. His brown masculine face possessed the indefinable charm of
perfectly regular features combined with youth. The fiery eyes under
the broad forehead, shaded by thick eyebrows and long lashes, looked
like white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose had the
delicate curve of an eagle's beak; the sinuous lines of the inevitable
black moustache enhanced the crimson of the lips. The brown and tawny
shades which overspread the wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of
unusual vigor, and his whole face bore the impress of dashing courage.
He was the very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical
hero of Imperial France. The horse which he rode was covered with
sweat, the animal's quivering head denoted the last degree of
restiveness; his hind hoofs were set down wide apart and exactly in a
line, he shook his long thick tail to the wind; in his fidelity to his
master he seemed to be a visible presentment of that master's devotion
to the Emperor.

Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor's glances, and
felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet he had not given her a
look. Suddenly at a word from his sovereign Victor gripped his horse's
flanks and set out at a gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow
cast by a post, shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his
rider was all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white,
people looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes were
fixed upon the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave the horse a
sharp admonitory cut with the whip, and galloped off with Napoleon's
order.

Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that
unconsciously she clung to her father's arm so tightly that he could
read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. When Victor
was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched her father with a
convulsive grip as if she herself were in danger of falling, and the
old man looked at his daughter's tell-tale face with dark and painful
anxiety. Pity, jealousy, something even of regret stole across every
drawn and wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the unwonted
light in Julie's eyes, when that cry broke from her, when the
convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the veil and put him in
possession of her secret, then with that revelation of her love there
came surely some swift revelation of the future. Mournful forebodings
could be read in his own face.

Julie's soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the officer's
being. A torturing thought more cruel than any previous dread
contracted the old man's painworn features, as he saw the glance of
understanding that passed between the soldier and Julie. The girl's
eyes were wet, her cheeks glowed with unwonted color. Her father
turned abruptly and led her away into the Garden of the Tuileries.

"Why, father," she cried, "there are still the regiments in the Place
du Carrousel to be passed in review."

"No, child, all the troops are marching out."

"I think you are mistaken, father; M. d'Aiglemont surely told them to
advance----"

"But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay."

Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at his face; he
looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties.

"Are you feeling very ill?" she asked indifferently, her mind was so
full of other thoughts.

"Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?" returned her father.

"Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking about your
death? I was in such spirits! Do pray get rid of those horrid gloomy
ideas of yours."

The father heaved a sigh. "Ah! spoiled child," he cried, "the best
hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our whole lives to you, you
are our one thought, we plan for your welfare, sacrifice our tastes to
your whims, idolize you, give the very blood in our veins for you, and
all this is nothing, is it? Alas! yes, you take it all as a matter of
course. If we would always have your smiles and your disdainful love,
we should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes another, a
lover, a husband, and steals away your heart."

Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly along, and
there was no light in the eyes which he turned upon her.

"You hide yourself even from us," he continued, "but, perhaps, also
you hide yourself from yourself--"

"What do you mean by that, father?"

"I think that you have secrets from me, Julie.--You love," he went on
quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. "Oh! I hoped that you
would stay with your old father until he died. I hoped to keep you
with me, still radiant and happy, to admire you as you were but so
lately. So long as I knew nothing of your future I could believe in a
happy lot for you; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope
of happiness for your life, for you love the colonel even more than
the cousin. I can no longer doubt it."

"And why should I be forbidden to love him?" asked Julie, with lively
curiosity in her face.

"Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me," sighed the father.

"Tell me, all the same," said Julie, with an involuntary petulant
gesture.