Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


Calyste's stupefaction on hearing these words enabled Claude to say
them without interruption and leave the young Breton, who remained
like a traveller among the Alps to whom a guide has shown the depth of
some abyss by flinging a stone into it. To hear from the lips of
Claude himself that Camille loved him, at the very moment when he felt
that he loved Beatrix for life, was a weight too heavy for his untried
soul to bear. Goaded by an immense regret which now filled all the
past, overwhelmed with a sight of his position between Beatrix whom he
loved and Camille whom he had ceased to love, the poor boy sat
despairing and undecided, lost in thought. He sought in vain for the
reasons which had made Felicite reject his love and bring Claude
Vignon from Paris to oppose it. Every now and then the voice of
Beatrix came fresh and pure to his ears from the little salon; a
savage desire to rush in and carry her off seized him at such moments.
What would become of him? What must he do? Could he come to Les
Touches? If Camille loved him how could he come there to adore
Beatrix? He saw no solution to these difficulties.

Insensibly to him silence now reigned in the house; he heard, but
without noticing, the opening and shutting of doors. Then suddenly
midnight sounded on the clock of the adjoining bedroom, and the voices
of Claude and Camille roused him fully from his torpid contemplation
of the future. Before he could rise and show himself, he heard the
following terrible words in the voice of Claude Vignon.

"You came to Paris last year desperately in love with Calyste," Claude
was saying to Felicite, "but you were horrified at the thought of the
consequences of such a passion at your age; it would lead you to a
gulf, to hell, to suicide perhaps. Love cannot exist unless it thinks
itself eternal, and you saw not far before you a horrible parting; old
age you knew would end the glorious poem soon. You thought of
'Adolphe,' that dreadful finale of the loves of Madame de Stael and
Benjamin Constant, who, however, were nearer of an age than you and
Calyste. Then you took me, as soldiers use fascines to build
entrenchments between the enemy and themselves. You brought me to Les
Touches to mask your real feelings and leave you safe to follow your
own secret adoration. The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to
carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so
preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him. You
thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius. I am not a
man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as such I have divined you.
When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of your age, explaining to
you why Calyste had loved you, do you suppose I took to myself your
ravished, fascinated, fazzling glance? Had I not read into your soul?
The eyes were turned on me, but the heart was throbbing for Calyste.
You have never been loved, my poor Maupin, and you never will be after
rejecting the beautiful fruit which chance has offered to you at the
portals of that hell of woman, the lock of which is the numeral 50!"

"Why has love fled me?" she said in a low voice. "Tell me, you who
know all."

"Because you are not lovable," he answered. "You do not bend to love;
love must bend to you. You may perhaps have yielded to some follies of
youth, but there was no youth in your heart; your mind has too much
depth; you have never been naive and artless, and you cannot begin to
be so now. Your charm comes from mystery; it is abstract, not active.
Your strength repulses men of strength who fear a struggle. Your power
may please young souls, like that of Calyste, which like to be
protected; though, even them it wearies in the long run. You are
grand, and you are sublime; bear with the consequence of those two
qualities--they fatigue."

"What a sentence!" cried Camille. "Am I not a woman? Do you think me
an anomaly?"

"Possibly," said Claude.

"We will see!" said the woman, stung to the quick.

"Farewell, my dear Camille; I leave to-morrow. I am not angry with
you, my dear; I think you the greatest of women, but if I continued to
serve you as a screen, or a shield," said Claude, with two significant
inflections of his voice, "you would despise me. We can part now
without pain or remorse; we have neither happiness to regret nor hopes
betrayed. To you, as with some few but rare men of genius, love is not
what Nature made it,--an imperious need, to the satisfaction of which
she attaches great and passing joys, which die. You see love such as
Christianity has created it,--an ideal kingdom, full of noble
sentiments, of grand weaknesses, poesies, spiritual sensations,
devotions of moral fragrance, entrancing harmonies, placed high above
all vulgar coarseness, to which two creatures as one angel fly on the
wings of pleasure. This is what I hoped to share; I thought I held in
you a key to that door, closed to so many, by which we may advance
toward the infinite. You were there already. In this you have misled
me. I return to my misery,--to my vast prison of Paris. Such a
deception as this, had it come to me earlier in life, would have made
me flee from existence; to-day it puts into my soul a disenchantment
which will plunge me forever into an awful solitude. I am without the
faith which helped the Fathers to people theirs with sacred images. It
is to this, my dear Camille, to this that the superiority of our mind
has brought us; we may, both of us, sing that dreadful hymn which a
poet has put into the mouth of Moses speaking to the Almighty: 'Lord
God, Thou hast made me powerful and solitary.'"

At this moment Calyste appeared.

"I ought not to leave you ignorant that I am here," he said.

Mademoiselle des Touches showed the utmost fear; a sudden flush
colored her impassible face with tints of fire. During this strange
scene she was more beautiful than at any other moment of her life.

"We thought you gone, Calyste," said Claude. "But this involuntary
discretion on both sides will do no harm; perhaps, indeed, you may be
more at your ease at Les Touches by knowing Felicite as she is. Her
silence shows me I am not mistaken as to the part she meant me to
play. As I told you before, she loves you, but it is for yourself, not
for herself,--a sentiment that few women are able to conceive and
practise; few among them know the voluptuous pleasure of sufferings
born of longing,--that is one of the magnificent passions reserved for
man. But she is in some sense a man," he added, sardonically. "Your
love for Beatrix will make her suffer and make her happy too."

Tears were in the eyes of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was unable to
look either at the terrible Vignon or the ingenuous Calyste. She was
frightened at being understood; she had supposed to impossible for
a man, however keen his perception, to perceive a delicacy so
self-immolating, a heroism so lofty as her own. Her evident humiliation
at this unveiling of her grandeur made Calyste share the emotion of the
woman he had held so high, and now beheld so stricken down. He threw
himself, from an irresistible impulse, at her feet, and kissed her
hands, laying his face, covered with tears, upon them.

"Claude," she said, "do not abandon me, or what will become of me?"

"What have you to fear?" replied the critic. "Calyste has fallen in
love at first sight with the marquise; you cannot find a better
barrier between you than that. This passion of his is worth more to
you than I. Yesterday there might have been some danger for you and
for him; to-day you can take a maternal interest in him," he said,
with a mocking smile, "and be proud of his triumphs."

Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Calyste, who had raised his head
abruptly at these words. Claude Vignon enjoyed, for his sole
vengeance, the sight of their confusion.

"You yourself have driven him to Madame de Rochefide," continued
Claude, "and he is now under the spell. You have dug your own grave.
Had you confided in me, you would have escaped the sufferings that
await you."

"Sufferings!" cried Camille Maupin, taking Calyste's head in her
hands, and kissing his hair, on which her tears fell plentifully. "No,
Calyste; forget what you have heard; I count for nothing in all this."

She rose and stood erect before the two men, subduing both with the
lightning of her eyes, from which her soul shone out.

"While Claude was speaking," she said, "I conceived the beauty and the
grandeur of love without hope; it is the sentiment that brings us
nearest God. Do not love me, Calyste; but I will love you as no woman
will!"

It was the cry of a wounded eagle seeking its eyrie. Claude himself
knelt down, took Camille's hand, and kissed it.

"Leave us now, Calyste," she said, "it is late, and your mother will
be uneasy."

Calyste returned to Guerande with lagging steps, turning again and
again, to see the light from the windows of the room in which was
Beatrix. He was surprised himself to find how little pity he felt for
Camille. But presently he felt once more the agitations of that scene,
the tears she had left upon his hair; he suffered with her suffering;
he fancied he heard the moans of that noble woman, so beloved, so
desired but a few short days before.

When he opened the door of his paternal home, where total silence
reigned, he saw his mother through the window, as she sat sewing by
the light of the curiously constructed lamp while she awaited him.
Tears moistened the lad's eyes as he looked at her.

"What has happened?" cried Fanny, seeing his emotion, which filled her
with horrible anxiety.

For all answer, Calyste took his mother in his arms, and kissed her on
her cheeks, her forehead and hair, with one of those passionate
effusions of feeling that comfort mothers, and fill them with the
subtle flames of the life they have given.

"It is you I love, you!" cried Calyste,--"you, who live for me; you,
whom I long to render happy!"

"But you are not yourself, my child," said the baroness, looking at
him attentively. "What has happened to you?"

"Camille loves me, but I love her no longer," he answered.

The next day, Calyste told Gasselin to watch the road to
Saint-Nazaire, and let him know if the carriage of Mademoiselle des
Touches passed over it. Gasselin brought word that the carriage had
passed.

"How many persons were in it?" asked Calyste.

"Four,--two ladies and two gentlemen."

"Then saddle my horse and my father's."

Gasselin departed.

"My, nephew, what mischief is in you now?" said his Aunt Zephirine.

"Let the boy amuse himself, sister," cried the baron. "Yesterday he
was dull as an owl; to-day he is gay as a lark."

"Did you tell him that our dear Charlotte was to arrive to-day?" said
Zephirine, turning to her sister-in-law.

"No," replied the baroness.

"I thought perhaps he was going to meet her," said Mademoiselle du
Guenic, slyly.

"If Charlotte is to stay three months with her aunt, he will have
plenty of opportunities to see her," said his mother.

"Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel wants me to marry Charlotte, to save me from
perdition," said Calyste, laughing. "I was on the mall when she and
the Chevalier du Halga were talking about it. She can't see that it
would be greater perdition for me to marry at my age--"

"It is written above," said the old maid, interrupting Calyste, "that
I shall not die tranquil or happy. I wanted to see our family
continued, and some, at least, of the estates brought back; but it is
not to be. What can you, my fine nephew, put in the scale against such
duties? Is it that actress at Les Touches?"

"What?" said the baron; "how can Mademoiselle des Touches hinder
Calyste's marriage, when it becomes necessary for us to make it? I
shall go and see her."

"I assure you, father," said Calyste, "that Felicite will never be an
obstacle to my marriage."

Gasselin appeared with the horses.

"Where are you going, chevalier?" said his father.

"To Saint-Nazaire."

"Ha, ha! and when is the marriage to be?" said the baron, believing
that Calyste was really in a hurry to see Charlotte de Kergarouet. "It
is high time I was a grandfather. Spare the horses," he continued, as
he went on the portico with Fanny to see Calyste mount; "remember that
they have more than thirty miles to go."

Calyste started with a tender farewell to his mother.

"Dear treasure!" she said, as she saw him lower his head to ride
through the gateway.

"God keep him!" replied the baron; "for we cannot replace him."

The words made the baroness shudder.

"My nephew does not love Charlotte enough to ride to Saint-Nazaire
after her," said the old blind woman to Mariotte, who was clearing the
breakfast-table.

"No; but a fine lady, a marquise, has come to Les Touches, and I'll
warrant he's after her; that's the way at his age," said Mariotte.

"They'll kill him," said Mademoiselle du Guenic.

"That won't kill him, mademoiselle; quite the contrary," replied
Mariotte, who seemed to be pleased with Calyste's behavior.

The young fellow started at a great pace, until Gasselin asked him if
he was trying to catch the boat, which, of course, was not at all his
desire. He had no wish to see either Conti or Claude again; but he did
expect to be invited to drive back with the ladies, leaving Gasselin
to lead his horse. He was gay as a bird, thinking to himself,--

"/She/ has just passed here; /her/ eyes saw those trees!--What a
lovely road!" he said to Gasselin.

"Ah! monsieur, Brittany is the most beautiful country in all the
world," replied the Breton. "Where could you find such flowers in the
hedges, and nice cool roads that wind about like these?"

"Nowhere, Gasselin."

"/Tiens/! here comes the coach from Nazaire," cried Gasselin
presently.

"Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel and her niece will be in it. Let us hide,"
said Calyste.

"Hide! are you crazy, monsieur? Why, we are on the moor!"

The coach, which was coming up the sandy hill above Saint-Nazaire, was
full, and, much to the astonishment of Calyste, there were no signs of
Charlotte.

"We had to leave Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, her sister and niece; they
are dreadfully worried; but all my seats were engaged by the
custom-house," said the conductor to Gasselin.

"I am lost!" thought Calyste; "they will meet me down there."

When Calyste reached the little esplanade which surrounds the church
of Saint-Nazaire, and from which is seen Paimboeuf and the magnificent
Mouths of the Loire as they struggle with the sea, he found Camille
and the marquise waving their handkerchiefs as a last adieu to two
passengers on the deck of the departing steamer. Beatrix was charming
as she stood there, her features softened by the shadow of a
rice-straw hat, on which were tufts and knots of scarlet ribbon. She
wore a muslin gown with a pattern of flowers, and was leaning with one
well-gloved hand on a slender parasol. Nothing is finer to the eyes than
a woman poised on a rock like a statue on its pedestal. Conti could see
Calyste from the vessel as he approached Camille.

"I thought," said the young man, "that you would probably come back
alone."

"You have done right, Calyste," she replied, pressing his hand.

Beatrix turned round, saw her young lover, and gave him the most
imperious look in her repertory. A smile, which the marquise detected
on the eloquent lips of Mademoiselle des Touches, made her aware of
the vulgarity of such conduct, worthy only of a bourgeoise. She then
said to Calyste, smiling,--

"Are you not guilty of a slight impertinence in supposing that I
should bore Camille, if left alone with her?"

"My dear, one man to two widows is none too much," said Mademoiselle
des Touches, taking Calyste's arm, and leaving Beatrix to watch the
vessel till it disappeared.

At this moment Calyste heard the approaching voices of Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel, the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, Charlotte, and Gasselin, who
were all talking at once, like so many magpies. The old maid was
questioning Gasselin as to what had brought him and his master to
Saint-Nazaire; the carriage of Mademoiselle des Touches had already
caught her eye. Before the young Breton could get out of sight,
Charlotte had seen him.

"Why, there's Calyste!" she exclaimed eagerly.

"Go and offer them seats in my carriage," said Camille to Calyste;
"the maid can sit with the coachman. I saw those ladies lose their
places in the mail-coach."

Calyste, who could not help himself, carried the message. As soon as
Madame de Kergarouet learned that the offer came from the celebrated
Camille Maupin, and that the Marquise de Rochefide was of the party,
she was much surprised at the objections raised by her elder sister,
who refused positively to profit by what she called the devil's
carryall. At Nantes, which boasted of more civilization than Guerande,
Camille was read and admired; she was thought to be the muse of
Brittany and an honor to the region. The absolution granted to her in
Paris by society, by fashion, was there justified by her great fortune
and her early successes in Nantes, which claimed the honor of having
been, if not her birthplace, at least her cradle. The viscountess,
therefore, eager to see her, dragged her old sister forward, paying no
attention to her jeremiads.

"Good-morning, Calyste," said Charlotte.

"Oh! good-morning, Charlotte," replied Calyste, not offering his arm.

Both were confused; she by his coldness, he by his cruelty, as they
walked up the sort of ravine, which is called in Saint-Nazaire a
street, following the two sisters in silence. In a moment the little
girl of sixteen saw her castle in Spain, built and furnished with
romantic hopes, a heap of ruins. She and Calyste had played together
so much in childhood, she was so bound up with him, as it were, that
she had quietly supposed her future unassailable; she arrived now,
swept along by thoughtless happiness, like a circling bird darting
down upon a wheat-field, and lo! she was stopped in her flight, unable
to imagine the obstacle.

"What is the matter, Calyste?" she said, taking his hand.

"Nothing," replied the young man, releasing himself with cruel haste
as he remembered the projects of his aunt and her friend.

Tears came into Charlotte's eyes. She looked at the handsome Calyste
without ill-humor; but a first spasm of jealousy seized her, and she
felt the dreadful madness of rivalry when she came in sight of the two
Parisian women, and suspected the cause of his coldness.

Charlotte de Kergarouet was a girl of ordinary height, and commonplace
coloring; she had a little round face, made lively by a pair of black
eyes which sparkled with cleverness, abundant brown hair, a round
waist, a flat back, thin arms, and the curt, decided manner of a
provincial girl, who did not want to be taken for a little goose. She
was the petted child of the family on account of the preference her
aunt showed for her. At this moment she was wrapped in a mantle of
Scotch merino in large plaids, lined with green silk, which she had
worn on the boat. Her travelling-dress, of some common stuff, chastely
made with a chemisette body and a pleated collar, was fated to appear,
even to her own eyes, horrible in comparison with the fresh toilets of
Beatrix and Camille. She was painfully aware of the stockings soiled
among the rocks as she had jumped from the boat, of shabby leather
shoes, chosen for the purpose of not spoiling better ones on the
journey,--a fixed principle in the manners and customs of provincials.

As for the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, she might stand as the type of a
provincial woman. Tall, hard, withered, full of pretensions, which did
not show themselves until they were mortified, talking much, and
catching, by dint of talking (as one cannons at billiards), a few
ideas, which gave her the reputation of wit, endeavoring to humiliate
Parisians, whenever she met them, with an assumption of country wisdom
and patronage, humbling herself to be exalted and furious at being
left upon her knees; fishing, as the English say, for compliments,
which she never caught; dressed in clothes that were exaggerated in
style, and yet ill cared for; mistaking want of good manners for
dignity, and trying to embarrass others by paying no attention to
them; refusing what she desired in order to have it offered again, and
to seem to yield only to entreaty; concerned about matters that others
have done with, and surprised at not being in the fashion; and
finally, unable to get through an hour without reference to Nantes,
matters of social life in Nantes, complaints of Nantes, criticism of
Nantes, and taking as personalities the remarks she forced out of
absent-minded or wearied listeners.

Her manners, language, and ideas had, more or less, descended to her
four daughters. To know Camille Maupin and Madame de Rochefide would
be for her a future, and the topic of a hundred conversations.
Consequently, she advanced toward the church as if she meant to take
it by assault, waving her handkerchief, unfolded for the purpose of
displaying the heavy corners of domestic embroidery, and trimmed with
flimsy lace. Her gait was tolerably bold and cavalier, which, however,
was of no consequence in a woman forty-seven years of age.

"Monsieur le chevalier," she said to Camille and Beatrix, pointing to
Calyste, who was mournfully following with Charlotte, "has conveyed to
me your friendly proposal, but we fear--my sister, my daughter, and
myself--to inconvenience you."

"Sister, I shall not put these ladies to inconvenience," said
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, sharply; "I can very well find a horse in
Saint-Nazaire to take me home."

Camille and Beatrix exchanged an oblique glance, which Calyste
intercepted, and that glance sufficed to annihilate all the memories
of his childhood, all his beliefs in the Kergarouets and Pen-Hoels,
and to put an end forever to the projects of the three families.

"We can very well put five in the carriage," replied Mademoiselle des
Touches, on whom Jacqueline turned her back, "even if we were
inconvenienced, which cannot be the case, with your slender figures.
Besides, I should enjoy the pleasure of doing a little service to
Calyste's friends. Your maid, madame, will find a seat by the
coachman, and your luggage, if you have any, can go behind the
carriage; I have no footman with me."

The viscountess was overwhelming in thanks, and complained that her
sister Jacqueline had been in such a hurry to see her niece that she
would not give her time to come properly in her own carriage with
post-horses, though, to be sure, the post-road was not only longer,
but more expensive; she herself was obliged to return almost
immediately to Nantes, where she had left three other little kittens,
who were anxiously awaiting her. Here she put her arm round
Charlotte's neck. Charlotte, in reply, raised her eyes to her mother
with the air of a little victim, which gave an impression to onlookers
that the viscountess bored her four daughters prodigiously by dragging
them on the scene very much as Corporal Trim produces his cap in
"Tristram Shandy."

"You are a fortunate mother and--" began Camille, stopping short as
she remembered that Beatrix must have parted from her son when she
left her husband's house.

"Oh, yes!" said the viscountess; "if I have the misfortune of spending
my life in the country, and, above all, at Nantes, I have at least the
consolation of being adored by my children. Have you children?" she
said to Camille.

"I am Mademoiselle des Touches," replied Camille. "Madame is the
Marquise de Rochefide."

"Then I must pity you for not knowing the greatest happiness that
there is for us poor, simple women--is not that so, madame?" said the
viscountess, turning to Beatrix. "But you, mademoiselle, have so many
compensations."

The tears came into Madame de Rochefide's eyes, and she turned away
toward the parapet to hide them. Calyste followed her.

"Madame," said Camille, in a low voice to the viscountess, "are you
not aware that the marquise is separated from her husband? She has not
seen her son for two years, and does not know when she will see him."

"You don't say so!" said Madame de Kergarouet. "Poor lady! is she
legally separated?"

"No, by mutual consent," replied Camille.

"Ah, well! I understand that," said the viscountess boldly.

Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, furious at being thus dragged into the
enemy's camp, had retreated to a short distance with her dear
Charlotte. Calyste, after looking about him to make sure that no one
could see him, seized the hand of the marquise, kissed it, and left a
tear upon it. Beatrix turned round, her tears dried by anger; she was
about to utter some terrible word, but it died upon her lips as she
saw the grief on the angelic face of the youth, as deeply touched by
her present sorrow as she was herself.

"Good heavens, Calyste!" said Camille in his ear, as he returned with
Madame de Rochefide, "are you to have /that/ for a mother-in-law, and
the little one for a wife?"

"Because her aunt is rich," replied Calyste, sarcastically.

The whole party now moved toward the inn, and the viscountess felt
herself obliged to make Camille a speech on the savages of
Saint-Nazaire.