Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


"I love Brittany, madame," replied Camille, gravely. "I was born at
Guerande."

Calyste could not help admiring Mademoiselle des Touches, who, by the
tone of her voice, the tranquillity of her look, and her quiet manner,
put him at his ease, in spite of the terrible declarations of the
preceding night. She seemed, however, a little fatigued; her eyes were
enlarged by dark circles round them, showing that he had not slept;
but the brow dominated the inward storm with cold placidity.

"What queens!" he said to Charlotte, calling her attention to the
marquise and Camille as he gave the girl his arm, to Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel's great satisfaction.

"What an idea your mother has had," said the old maid, taking her
niece's other arm, "to put herself in the company of that reprobate
woman!"

"Oh, aunt, a woman who is the glory of Brittany!"

"The shame, my dear. Mind that you don't fawn upon her in that way."

"Mademoiselle Charlotte is right," said Calyste; "you are not just."

"Oh, you!" replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, "she has bewitched you."

"I regard her," said Calyste, "with the same friendship that I feel
for you."

"Since when have the du Guenics taken to telling lies?" asked the old
maid.

"Since the Pen-Hoels have grown deaf," replied Calyste.

"Are you not in love with her?" demanded the old maid.

"I have been, but I am so no longer," he said.

"Bad boy! then why have you given us such anxiety? I know very well
that love is only foolishness; there is nothing solid but marriage,"
she remarked, looking at Charlotte.

Charlotte, somewhat reassured, hoped to recover her advantages by
recalling the memories of childhood. She leaned affectionately on
Calyste's arm, who resolved in his own mind to have a clear
explanation with the little heiress.

"Ah! what fun we shall have at /mouche/, Calyste!" she said; "what
good laughs we used to have over it!"

The horses were now put in; Camille placed Madame de Kergarouet and
Charlotte on the back seat. Jacqueline having disappeared, she
herself, with the marquise, sat forward. Calyste was, of course,
obliged to relinquish the pleasure on which he had counted, of driving
back with Camille and Beatrix, but he rode beside the carriage all the
way; the horses, being tired with the journey, went slowly enough to
allow him to keep his eyes on Beatrix.

History must lose the curious conversations that went on between these
four persons whom accident had so strangely united in this carriage,
for it is impossible to report the hundred and more versions which
went the round of Nantes on the remarks, replies, and witticisms which
the viscountess heard from the lips of the celebrated Camille Maupin
/herself/. She was, however, very careful not to repeat, not even to
comprehend, the actual replies made by Mademoiselle des Touches to her
absurd questions about Camille's authorship,--a penance to which all
authors are subjected, and which often make them expiate the few and
rare pleasures that they win.

"How do you write your books?" she began.

"Much as you do your worsted-work or knitting," replied Camille.

"But where do you find those deep reflections, those seductive
pictures?"

"Where you find the witty things you say, madame; there is nothing so
easy as to write books, provided you will--"

"Ah! does it depend wholly on the will? I shouldn't have thought it.
Which of your compositions do you prefer?"

"I find it difficult to prefer any of my little kittens."

"I see you are /blasee/ on compliments; there is really nothing new
that one can say."

"I assure you, madame, that I am very sensible to the form which you
give to yours."

The viscountess, anxious not to seem to neglect the marquise,
remarked, looking at Beatrix with a meaning air,--

"I shall never forget this journey made between Wit and Beauty."

"You flatter me, madame," said the marquise, laughing. "I assure you
that my wit is but a small matter, not to be mentioned by the side of
genius; besides, I think I have not said much as yet."

Charlotte, who keenly felt her mother's absurdity, looked at her,
endeavoring to stop its course; but Madame de Kergarouet went bravely
on in her tilt with the satirical Parisians.

Calyste, who was trotting slowly beside the carriage, could only see
the faces of the two ladies on the front seat, and his eyes expressed,
from time to time, rather painful thoughts. Forced, by her position,
to let herself be looked at, Beatrix constantly avoided meeting the
young man's eyes, and practised a manoeuvre most exasperating to
lovers; she held her shawl crossed and her hands crossed over it,
apparently plunged in the deepest meditation.

At a part of the road which is shaded, dewy, and verdant as a forest
glade, where the wheels of the carriage scarcely sounded, and the
breeze brought down balsamic odors and waved the branches above their
heads, Camille called Madame de Rochefide's attention to the harmonies
of the place, and pressed her knee to make her look at Calyste.

"How well he rides!" she said.

"Oh! Calyste does everything well," said Charlotte.

"He rides like an Englishman," said the marquise, indifferently.

"His mother is Irish,--an O'Brien," continued Charlotte, who thought
herself insulted by such indifference.

Camille and the marquise drove through Guerande with the viscountess
and her daughter, to the great astonishment of the inhabitants of the
town. They left the mother and daughter at the end of the lane leading
to the Guenic mansion, where a crowd came near gathering, attracted by
so unusual a sight. Calyste had ridden on to announce the arrival of
the company to his mother and aunt, who expected them to dinner, that
meal having been postponed till four o'clock. Then he returned to the
gate to give his arm to the two ladies, and bid Camille and Beatrix
adieu.

He kissed the hand of Felicite, hoping thereby to be able to do the
same to that of the marquise; but she still kept her arms crossed
resolutely, and he cast moist glances of entreaty at her uselessly.

"You little ninny!" whispered Camille, lightly touching his ear with a
kiss that was full of friendship.

"Quite true," thought Calyste to himself as the carriage drove away.
"I am forgetting her advice--but I shall always forget it, I'm
afraid."

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel (who had intrepidly returned to Guerande on
the back of a hired horse), the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, and
Charlotte found dinner ready, and were treated with the utmost
cordiality, if luxury were lacking, by the du Guenics. Mademoiselle
Zephirine had ordered the best wine to be brought from the cellar, and
Mariotte had surpassed herself in her Breton dishes.

The viscountess, proud of her trip with the illustrious Camille
Maupin, endeavored to explain to the assembled company the present
condition of modern literature, and Camille's place in it. But the
literary topic met the fate of whist; neither the du Guenics, nor the
abbe, nor the Chevalier du Halga understood one word of it. The rector
and the chevalier had arrived in time for the liqueurs at dessert.

As soon as Mariotte, assisted by Gasselin and Madame de Kergarouet's
maid, had cleared the table, there was a general and enthusiastic cry
for /mouche/. Joy appeared to reign in the household. All supposed
Calyste to be free of his late entanglement, and almost as good as
married to the little Charlotte. The young man alone kept silence. For
the first time in his life he had instituted comparisons between his
life-long friends and the two elegant women, witty, accomplished, and
tasteful, who, at the present moment, must be laughing heartily at the
provincial mother and daughter, judging by the look he intercepted
between them.

He was seeking in vain for some excuse to leave his family on this
occasion, and go up as usual to Les Touches, when Madame de Kergarouet
mentioned that she regretted not having accepted Mademoiselle des
Touches' offer of her carriage for the return journey to
Saint-Nazaire, which for the sake of her three other "dear kittens,"
she felt compelled to make on the following day.

Fanny, who alone saw her son's uneasiness, and the little hold which
Charlotte's coquetries and her mother's attentions were gaining on
him, came to his aid.

"Madame," she said to the viscountess, "you will, I think, be very
uncomfortable in the carrier's vehicle, and especially at having to
start so early in the morning. You would certainly have done better to
take the offer made to you by Mademoiselle des Touches. But it is not
too late to do so now. Calyste, go up to Les Touches and arrange the
matter; but don't be long; return to us soon."

"It won't take me ten minutes," cried Calyste, kissing his mother
violently as she followed him to the door.



XI

FEMALE DIPLOMACY

Calyste ran with the lightness of a young fawn to Les Touches and
reached the portico just as Camille and Beatrix were leaving the grand
salon after their dinner. He had the sense to offer his arm to
Felicite.

"So you have abandoned your viscountess and her daughter for us," she
said, pressing his arm; "we are able now to understand the full merit
of that sacrifice."

"Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres, and to old Admiral
de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Vandenesse?" asked
Madame de Rochefide.

"The viscountess is the admiral's great-niece," replied Camille.

"Well, she's a charming girl," said Beatrix, placing herself
gracefully in a Gothic chair. "She will just do for you, Monsieur du
Guenic."

"The marriage will never take place," said Camille hastily.

Mortified by the cold, calm air with which the marquise seemed to
consider the Breton girl as the only creature fit to mate him, Calyste
remained speechless and even mindless.

"Why so, Camille?" asked Madame de Rochefide.

"Really, my dear," said Camille, seeing Calyste's despair, "you are
not generous; did I advise Conti to marry?"

Beatrix looked at her friend with a surprise that was mingled with
indefinable suspicions.

Calyste, unable to understand Camille's motive, but feeling that she
came to his assistance and seeing in her cheeks that faint spot of
color which he knew to mean the presence of some violent emotion, went
up to her rather awkwardly and took her hand. But she left him and
seated herself carelessly at the piano, like a woman so sure of her
friend and lover that she can afford to leave him with another woman.
She played variations, improvising them as she played, on certain
themes chosen, unconsciously to herself, by the impulse of her mind;
they were melancholy in the extreme.

Beatrix seemed to listen to the music, but she was really observing
Calyste, who, much too young and artless for the part which Camille
was intending him to play, remained in rapt adoration before his real
idol.

After about an hour, during which time Camille continued to play,
Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took
Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard;
for women have an amazing instinct of distrust.

"My child," she said, "if you want to succeed with Beatrix, you must
seem to love me still, or you will fail. You are a child; you know
nothing of women; all you know is how to love. Now loving and making
one's self beloved are two very different things. If you go your own
way you will fall into horrible suffering, and I wish to see you
happy. If you rouse, not the pride, but the self-will, the obstinacy
which is a strong feature in her character, she is capable of going
off at any moment to Paris and rejoining Conti; and what will you do
then?"

"I shall love her."

"You won't see her again."

"Oh! yes, I shall," he said.

"How?"

"I shall follow her."

"Why, you are as poor as Job, my dear boy."

"My father, Gasselin, and I lived for three months in Vendee on one
hundred and fifty francs, marching night and day."

"Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, "now listen to me. I know
that you have too much candor to play a part, too much honesty to
deceive; and I don't want to corrupt such a nature as yours. Yet
deception is the only way by which you can win Beatrix; I take it
therefore upon myself. In a week from now she shall love you."

"Is it possible?" he said clasping his hands.

"Yes," replied Camille, "but it will be necessary to overcome certain
pledges which she has made to herself. I will do that for you. You
must not interfere in the rather arduous task I shall undertake. The
marquise has a true aristocratic delicacy of perception; she is keenly
distrustful; no hunter could meet with game more wary or more
difficult to capture. You are wholly unable to cope with her; will you
promise me a blind obedience?"

"What must I do?" replied the youth.

"Very little," said Camille. "Come here every day and devote yourself
to me. Come to my rooms; avoid Beatrix if you meet her. We will stay
together till four o'clock; you shall employ the time in study, and I
in smoking. It will be hard for you not to see her, but I will find
you a number of interesting books. You have read nothing as yet of
George Sand. I will send one of my people this very evening to Nantes
to buy her works and those of other authors whom you ought to know.
The evenings we will spend together, and I permit you to make love to
me if you can--it will be for the best."

"I know, Camille, that your affection for me is great and so rare that
it makes me wish I had never met Beatrix," he replied with simple good
faith; "but I don't see what you hope from all this."

"I hope to make her love you."

"Good heavens! it cannot be possible!" he cried, again clasping his
hands toward Camille, who was greatly moved on seeing the joy that she
gave him at her own expense.

"Now listen to me carefully," she said. "If you break the agreement
between us, if you have--not a long conversation--but a mere exchange
of words with the marquise in private, if you let her question you, if
you fail in the silent part I ask you to play, which is certainly not
a very difficult one, I do assure you," she said in a serious tone,
"you will lose her forever."

"I don't understand the meaning of what you are saying to me," cried
Calyste, looking at Camille with adorable naivete.

"If you did understand it, you wouldn't be the noble and beautiful
Calyste that you are," she replied, taking his hand and kissing it.

Calyste then did what he had never before done; he took Camille round
the waist and kissed her gently, not with love but with tenderness, as
he kissed his mother. Mademoiselle des Touches did not restrain her
tears.

"Go now," she said, "my child; and tell your viscountess that my
carriage is at her command."

Calyste wanted to stay longer, but he was forced to obey her imperious
and imperative gesture.

He went home gaily; he believed that in a week the beautiful Beatrix
would love him. The players at /mouche/ found him once more the
Calyste they had missed for the last two months. Charlotte attributed
this change to herself. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was charming to him.
The Abbe Grimont endeavored to make out what was passing in the
mother's mind. The Chevalier du Halga rubbed his hands. The two old
maids were as lively as lizards. The viscountess lost one hundred sous
by accumulated /mouches/, which so excited the cupidity of Zephirine
that she regretted not being able to see the cards, and even spoke
sharply to her sister-in-law, who acted as the proxy of her eyes.

The party lasted till eleven o'clock. There were two defections, the
baron and the chevalier, who went to sleep in their respective chairs.
Mariotte had made galettes of buckwheat, the baroness produced a
tea-caddy. The illustrious house of du Guenic served a little supper
before the departure of its guests, consisting of fresh butter,
fruits, and cream, in addition to Mariotte's cakes; for which festal
event issued from their wrappings a silver teapot and some beautiful
old English china sent to the baroness by her aunts. This appearance
of modern splendor in the ancient hall, together with the exquisite
grace of its mistress, brought up like a true Irish lady to make and
pour out tea (that mighty affair to Englishwomen), had something
charming about them. The most exquisite luxury could never have
attained to the simple, modest, noble effect produced by this
sentiment of joyful hospitality.

A few moments after Calyste's departure from Les Touches, Beatrix, who
had heard him go, returned to Camille, whom she found with humid eyes
lying back on her sofa.

"What is it, Felicite?" asked the marquise.

"I am forty years old, and I love him!" said Mademoiselle des Touches,
with dreadful tones of agony in her voice, her eyes becoming hard and
brilliant. "If you knew, Beatrix, the tears I have shed over the lost
years of my youth! To be loved out of pity! to know that one owes
one's happiness only to perpetual care, to the slyness of cats, to
traps laid for innocence and all the youthful virtues--oh, it is
infamous! If it were not that one finds absolution in the magnitude of
love, in the power of happiness, in the certainty of being forever
above all other women in his memory, the first to carve on that young
heart the ineffaceable happiness of an absolute devotion, I would
--yes, if he asked it,--I would fling myself into the sea. Sometimes I
find myself wishing that he would ask it; it would then be an
oblation, not a suicide. Ah, Beatrix, by coming here you have,
unconsciously, set me a hard task. I know it will be difficult to keep
him against you; but you love Conti, you are noble and generous, you
will not deceive me; on the contrary, you will help me to retain my
Calyste's love. I expected the impression you would make upon him, but
I have not committed the mistake of seeming jealous; that would only
have added fuel to the flame. On the contrary, before you came, I
described you in such glowing colors that you hardly realize the
portrait, although you are, it seems to me, more beautiful than ever."

This vehement elegy, in which truth was mingled with deception,
completely duped the marquise. Claude Vignon had told Conti the
reasons for his departure, and Beatrix was, of course, informed of
them. She determined therefore to behave with generosity and give the
cold shoulder to Calyste; but at the same instant there came into her
soul that quiver of joy which vibrates in the heart of every woman
when she finds herself beloved. The love a woman inspires in any man's
heart is flattery without hypocrisy, and it is impossible for some
women to forego it; but when that man belongs to a friend, his homage
gives more than pleasure,--it gives delight. Beatrix sat down beside
her friend and began to coax her prettily.

"You have not a white hair," she said; "you haven't even a wrinkle;
your temples are just as fresh as ever; whereas I know more than one
woman of thirty who is obliged to cover hers. Look, dear," she added,
lifting her curls, "see what that journey to Italy has cost me."

Her temples showed an almost imperceptible withering of the texture of
the delicate skin. She raised her sleeves and showed Camille the same
slight withering of the wrists, where the transparent tissue suffered
the blue network of swollen veins to be visible, and three deep lines
made a bracelet of wrinkles.

"There, my dear, are two spots which--as a certain writer ferreting
for the miseries of women, has said--never lie," she continued. "One
must needs have suffered to know the truth of his observation. Happily
for us, most men know nothing about it; they don't read us like that
dreadful author."

"Your letter told me all," replied Camille; "happiness ignores
everything but itself. You boasted too much of yours to be really
happy. Truth is deaf, dumb, and blind where love really is.
Consequently, seeing very plainly that you have your reasons for
abandoning Conti, I have feared to have you here. My dear, Calyste is
an angel; he is as good as he is beautiful; his innocent heart will
not resist your eyes; already he admires you too much not to love you
at the first encouragement; your coldness can alone preserve him to
me. I confess to you, with the cowardice of true passion, that if he
were taken from me I should die. That dreadful book of Benjamin
Constant, 'Adolphe,' tells us only of Adolphe's sorrows; but what
about those of the woman, hey? The man did not observe them enough to
describe them; and what woman would have dared to reveal them? They
would dishonor her sex, humiliate its virtues, and pass into vice. Ah!
I measure the abyss before me by my fears, by these sufferings that
are those of hell. But, Beatrix, I will tell you this: in case I am
abandoned, my choice is made."

"What is it?" cried Beatrix, with an eagerness that made Camille
shudder.

The two friends looked at each other with the keen attention of
Venetian inquisitors; their souls clashed in that rapid glance, and
struck fire like flints. The marquise lowered her eyes.

"After man, there is nought but God," said the celebrated woman. "God
is the Unknown. I shall fling myself into that as into some vast
abyss. Calyste has sworn to me that he admires you only as he would a
picture; but alas! you are but twenty-eight, in the full magnificence
of your beauty. The struggle thus begins between him and me by
falsehood. But I have one support; happily I know a means to keep him
true to me, and I shall triumph."

"What means?"

"That is my secret, dear. Let me have the benefits of my age. If
Claude Vignon, as Conti has doubtless told you, flings me back into
the gulf, I, who had climbed to a rock which I thought inaccessible,
--I will at least gather the pale and fragile, but delightful flowers
that grow in its depths."

Madame de Rochefide was moulded like wax in those able hands. Camille
felt an almost savage pleasure in thus entrapping her rival in her
toils. She sent her to bed that night piqued by curiosity, floating
between jealousy and generosity, but most assuredly with her mind full
of the beautiful Calyste.

"She will be enchanted to deceive me," thought Camille, as she kissed
her good-night.

Then, when she was alone, the author, the constructor of dramas, gave
place to the woman, and she burst into tears. Filling her hookah with
tobacco soaked in opium, she spent the greater part of the night in
smoking, dulling thus the sufferings of her soul, and seeing through
the clouds about her the beautiful young head of her late lover.

"What a glorious book to write, if I were only to express my pain!"
she said to herself. "But it is written already; Sappho lived before
me. And Sappho was young. A fine and touching heroine truly, a woman
of forty! Ah! my poor Camille, smoke your hookah; you haven't even the
resource of making a poem of your misery--that's the last drop of
anguish in your cup!"

The next morning Calyste came before mid-day and slipped upstairs, as
he was told, into Camille's own room, where he found the books.
Felicite sat before the window, smoking, contemplating in turn the
marshes, the sea, and Calyste, to whom she now and then said a few
words about Beatrix. At one time, seeing the marquise strolling about
the garden, she raised a curtain in a way to attract her attention,
and also to throw a band of light across Calyste's book.

"To-day, my child, I shall ask you to stay to dinner; but you must
refuse, with a glance at the marquise, which will show her how much
you regret not staying."

When the three actors met in the salon, and this comedy was played,
Calyste felt for a moment his equivocal position, and the glance that
he cast on Beatrix was far more expressive than Felicite expected.
Beatrix had dressed herself charmingly.

"What a bewitching toilet, my dearest!" said Camille, when Calyste had
departed.

These manoeuvres lasted six days, during which time many conversations,
into which Camille Maupin put all her ability, took place, unknown to
Calyste, between herself and the marquise. They were like the
preliminaries of a duel between two women,--a duel without truce, in
which the assault was made on both sides with snares, feints, false
generosities, deceitful confessions, crafty confidences, by which one
hid and the other bared her love; and in which the sharp steel of
Camille's treacherous words entered the heart of her friend, and left
its poison there. Beatrix at last took offence at what she thought
Camille's distrust; she considered it out of place between them. At
the same time she was enchanted to find the great writer a victim to
the pettiness of her sex, and she resolved to enjoy the pleasure of
showing her where her greatness ended, and how even she could be
humiliated.

"My dear, what is to be the excuse to-day for Monsieur du Guenic's not
dining with us?" she asked, looking maliciously at her friend. "Monday
you said we had engagements; Tuesday the dinner was poor; Wednesday
you were afraid his mother would be angry; Thursday you wanted to take
a walk with me; and yesterday you simply dismissed him without a
reason. To-day I shall have my way, and I mean that he shall stay."