Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


I preferred the scandal of an irreparable deed to the shame of
constant deception; my own loss of station to a loss of honesty.
In the eyes of many persons whose esteem I value, I am still
worthy; but if I permitted another man to love me, I should fall
indeed. The world is indulgent to those whose constancy covers, as
with a mantle, the irregularity of their happiness; but it is
pitiless to vice.

You see I feel neither disdain nor anger; I am answering your
letter frankly and with simplicity. You are young; you are
ignorant of the world; you are carried away by fancy; you are
incapable, like all whose lives are pure, of making the
reflections which evil suggests. But I will go still further.

Were I destined to be the most humiliated of women, were I forced
to hide fearful sorrows, were I betrayed, abandoned,--which, thank
God, is wholly impossible,--no one in this world would see me
more. Yes, I believe I should find courage to kill a man who,
seeing me in that situation, should talk to me of love.

You now know my mind to its depths. Perhaps I ought to thank you
for having written to me. After receiving your letter, and, above
all, after making you this reply, I could be at my ease with you
in Camille's house, I could act out my natural self, and be what
you ask of me; but I hardly need speak to you of the bitter
ridicule that would overwhelm me if my eyes or my manner ceased to
express the sentiments of which you complain. A second robbery
from Camille would be a proof of her want of power which no woman
could twice forgive. Even if I loved you, if I were blind to all
else, if I forgot all else, I should still see Camille! Her love
for you is a barrier too high to be o'erleaped by any power, even
by the wings of an angel; none but a devil would fail to recoil
before such treachery. In this, my dear Calyste, are many motives
which delicate and noble women keep to themselves, of which you
men know nothing; nor could you understand them, even though you
were all as like our sex as you yourself appear to be at this
moment.

My child, you have a mother who has shown you what you ought to be
in life. She is pure and spotless; she fulfils her destiny nobly;
what I have heard of her has filled my eyes with tears, and in the
depths of my heart I envy her. I, too, might have been what she
is! Calyste, that is the woman your wife should be, and such
should be her life. I will never send you back, in jest, as I have
done, to that little Charlotte, who would weary you to death; but
I do commend you to some divine young girl who is worthy of your
love.

If I were yours, your life would be blighted. You would have given
me your whole existence, and I--you see, I am frank--I should have
taken it; I should have gone with you, Heaven knows where, far
from the world! But I should have made you most unhappy; for I am
jealous. I see lions lurking in the path, and monsters in drops of
water. I am made wretched by trifles that most women put up with;
inexorable thoughts--from my heart, not yours--would poison our
existence and destroy my life. If a man, after ten years'
happiness, were not as respectful and as delicate as he was to me
at first, I should resent the change; it would abase me in my own
eyes! Such a lover could not believe in the Amadis and the Cyrus
of my dreams. To-day true love is but a dream, not a reality. I
see in yours only the joy of a desire the end of which is, as yet,
unperceived by you.

For myself, I am not forty years old; I have not bent my pride
beneath the yoke of experience,--in short, I am a woman too young
to be anything but odious. I will not answer for my temper; my
grace and charm are all external. Perhaps I have not yet suffered
enough to have the indulgent manners and the absolute tenderness
which come to us from cruel disappointments. Happiness has its
insolence, and I, I fear, am insolent. Camille will be always your
devoted slave; I should be an unreasonable tyrant. Besides,
Camille was brought to you by your guardian angel, at the turning
point of your life, to show you the career you ought to follow,--a
career in which you cannot fail.

I know Felicite! her tenderness is inexhaustible; she may ignore
the graces of our sex, but she possesses that fruitful strength,
that genius for constancy, that noble intrepidity which makes us
willing to accept the rest. She will marry you to some young girl,
no matter what she suffers. She will find you a free Beatrix--if
it is a Beatrix indeed who answers to your desires in a wife, and
to your dreams; she will smooth all the difficulties in your way.
The sale of a single acre of her ground in Paris would free your
property in Brittany; she will make you her heir; are you not
already her son by adoption?

Alas! what could I do for your happiness? Nothing. Do not betray
that infinite love which contents itself with the duties of
motherhood. Ah! I think her very fortunate, my Camille! She can
well afford to forgive your feeling for poor Beatrix; women of her
age are indulgent to such fancies. When they are sure of being
loved, they will pardon a passing infidelity; in fact, it is often
one of their keenest pleasures to triumph over a younger rival.
Camille is above such women, and that remark does not refer to
her; but I make it to ease your mind.

I have studied Camille closely; she is, to my eyes, one of the
greatest women of our age. She has mind and she has goodness,--two
qualities almost irreconcilable in woman; she is generous and
simple,--two other grandeurs seldom found together in our sex. I
have seen in the depths of her soul such treasures that the
beautiful line of Dante on eternal happiness, which I heard her
interpreting to you the other day, "Senza brama sicura ricchezza,"
seems as if made for her. She has talked to me of her career; she
has related her life, showing me how love, that object of our
prayers, our dreams, has ever eluded her. I replied that she
seemed to me an instance of the difficulty, if not the
impossibility, of uniting in one person two great glories.

You, Calyste, are one of the angelic souls whose mate it seems
impossible to find; but Camille will obtain for you, even if she
dies in doing so, the hand of some young girl with whom you can
make a happy home.

For myself, I hold out to you a friendly hand, and I count, not on
your heart, but on your mind, to make you in future a brother to
me, as I shall be a sister to you; and I desire that this letter
may terminate a correspondence which, between Les Touches and
Guerande, is rather absurd.

Beatrix de Casteran.


The baroness, stirred to the depths of her soul by the strange
exhibitions and the rapid changes of her boy's emotions, could no
longer sit quietly at her work in the ancient hall. After looking at
Calyste from time to time, she finally rose and came to him in a
manner that was humble, and yet bold; she wanted him to grant a favor
which she felt she had a right to demand.

"Well," she said, trembling, and looking at the letter, but not
directly asking for it.

Calyste read it aloud to her. And these two noble souls, so simple, so
guileless, saw nothing in that wily and treacherous epistle of the
malice or the snares which the marquise had written into it.

"She is a noble woman, a grand woman!" said the baroness, with
moistened eyes. "I will pray to God for her. I did not know that a
woman could abandon her husband and child, and yet preserve a soul so
virtuous. She is indeed worthy of pardon."

"Have I not every reason to adore her?" cried Calyste.

"But where will this love lead you?" said the baroness. "Ah, my child,
how dangerous are women with noble sentiments! There is less to fear
in those who are bad! Marry Charlotte de Kergarouet and release
two-thirds of the estate. By selling a few farms, Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel can bestow that grand result upon you in the marriage contract,
and she will also help you, with her experience, to make the most of your
property. You will be able to leave your children a great name, and a
fine estate."

"Forget Beatrix!" said Calyste, in a muffled voice, with his eyes on
the ground.

He left the baroness, and went up to his own room to write an answer
to the marquise.

Madame du Guenic, whose heart retained every word of Madame de
Rochefide's letter, felt the need of some help in comprehending it
more clearly, and also the grounds of Calyste's hope. At this hour the
Chevalier du Halga was always to be seen taking his dog for a walk on
the mall. The baroness, certain of finding him there, put on her
bonnet and shawl and went out.

The sight of the Baronne du Guenic walking in Guerande elsewhere than
to church, or on the two pretty roads selected as promenades on /fete/
days, accompanied by the baron and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, was an
event so remarkable that two hours later, throughout the whole town,
people accosted each other with the remark,--

"Madame du Guenic went out to-day; did you meet her?"

As soon as this amazing news reached the ears of Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel, she said to her niece,--

"Something very extraordinary is happening at the du Guenics."

"Calyste is madly in love with that beautiful Marquise de Rochefide,"
said Charlotte. "I ought to leave Guerande and return to Nantes."

The Chevalier du Halga, much surprised at being sought by the
baroness, released the chain of his little dog, aware that he could
not divide himself between the two interests.

"Chevalier," began the baroness, "you used to practise gallantry?"

Here the Chevalier du Halga straightened himself up with an air that
was not a little vain. Madame du Guenic, without naming her son or the
marquise, repeated, as nearly as possible, the love-letter, and asked
the chevalier to explain to her the meaning of such an answer. Du
Halga snuffed the air and stroked his chin; he listened attentively;
he made grimaces; and finally, he looked fixedly at the baroness with
a knowing air, as he said,--

"When thoroughbred horses want to leap a barrier, they go up to
reconnoitre it, and smell it over. Calyste is a lucky dog!"

"Oh, hush!" she cried.

"I'm mute. Ah! in the olden time I knew all about it," said the old
chevalier, striking an attitude. "The weather was fine, the breeze
nor'east. /Tudieu/! how the 'Belle-Poule' kept close to the wind that
day when--Oh!" he cried, interrupting himself, "we shall have a change
of weather; my ears are buzzing, and I feel the pain in my ribs! You
know, don't you, that the battle of the 'Belle-Poule' was so famous
that women wore head-dresses '/a la/ Belle-Poule.' Madame de
Kergarouet was the first to come to the opera in that head-dress, and
I said to her: 'Madame, you are dressed for conquest.' The speech was
repeated from box to box all through the house."

The baroness listened pleasantly to the old hero, who, faithful to the
laws of gallantry, escorted her to the alley of her house, neglecting
Thisbe. The secret of Thisbe's existence had once escaped him. Thisbe
was the granddaughter of a delightful Thisbe, the pet of Madame
l'Amirale de Kergarouet, first wife of the Comte de Kergarouet, the
chevalier's commanding officer. The present Thisbe was eighteen years
old.

The baroness ran up to Calyste's room. He was absent; she saw a
letter, not sealed, but addressed to Madame de Rochefide, lying on the
table. An invincible curiosity compelled the anxious mother to read
it. This act of indiscretion was cruelly punished. The letter revealed
to her the depths of the gulf into which his passion was hurling
Calyste.

Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.

What care I for the race of the du Guenics in these days, Beatrix?
what is their name to me? My name is Beatrix; the happiness of
Beatrix is my happiness; her life is my life, and all my fortune
is in her heart. Our estates have been mortgaged these two hundred
years, and so they may remain for two hundred more; our farmers
have charge of them; no one can take them from us. To see you, to
love you,--that is my property, my object, my religion!

You talk to me of marrying! the very thought convulses my heart.
Is there another Beatrix? I will marry no one but you; I will wait
for you twenty years, if need be. I am young, and you will be ever
beautiful. My mother is a saint. I do not blame her, but she has
never loved. I know now what she has lost, and what sacrifices she
has made. You have taught me, Beatrix, to love her better; she is
in my heart with you, and no other can ever be there; she is your
only rival,--is not this to say that you reign in that heart
supreme? Therefore your arguments have no force upon my mind.

As for Camille, you need only say the word, or give me a mere
sign, and I will ask her to tell you herself that I do not love
her. She is the mother of my intellect; nothing more, nothing
less. From the moment that I first saw you she became to me a
sister, a friend, a comrade, what you will of that kind; but we
have no rights other than those of friendship upon each other. I
took her for a woman until I saw you. You have proved to me that
Camille is a man; she swims, hunts, smokes, drinks, rides on
horseback, writes and analyzes hearts and books; she has no
weaknesses; she marches on in all her strength; her motions even
have no resemblance to your graceful movements, to your step, airy
as the flight of a bird. Neither has she your voice of love, your
tender eyes, your gracious manner; she is Camille Maupin; there is
nothing of the woman about her, whereas in you are all the things
of womanhood that I love. It has seemed to me, from the first
moment when I saw you, that you were mine.

You will laugh at that fancy, but it has grown and is growing. It
seems to me unnatural, anomalous that we should be apart. You are
my soul, my life; I cannot live where you are not!

Let me love you! Let us fly! let us go into some country where you
know no one, where only God and I can reach your heart! My mother,
who loves you, might some day follow us. Ireland is full of
castles; my mother's family will lend us one. Ah, Beatrix, let us
go! A boat, a few sailors, and we are there, before any one can
know we have fled this world you fear so much.

You have never been loved. I feel it as I re-read your letter, in
which I fancy I can see that if the reasons you bring forward did
not exist, you would let yourself be loved by me. Beatrix, a
sacred love wipes out the past. Yes, I love you so truly that I
could wish you doubly shamed if so my love might prove itself by
holding you a saint!

You call my love an insult. Oh, Beatrix, you do not think it so!
The love of noble youth--and you have called me that--would honor
a queen. Therefore, to-morrow let us walk as lovers, hand in hand,
among the rocks and beside the sea; your step upon the sands of my
old Brittany will bless them anew to me! Give me this day of
happiness; and that passing alms, unremembered, alas! by you, will
be eternal riches to your

Calyste.


The baroness let fall the letter, without reading all of it. She knelt
upon a chair, and made a mental prayer to God to save her Calyste's
reason, to put his madness, his error far away from him; to lead him
from the path in which she now beheld him.

"What are you doing, mother?" said Calyste, entering the room.

"I am praying to God for you," she answered, simply, turning her
tearful eyes upon him. "I have committed the sin of reading that
letter. My Calyste is mad!"

"A sweet madness!" said the young man, kissing her.

"I wish I could see that woman," she sighed.

"Mamma," said Calyste, "we shall take a boat to-morrow and cross to
Croisic. If you are on the jetty you can see her."

So saying, he sealed his letter and departed for Les Touches.

That which, above all, terrified the baroness was to see a sentiment
attaining, by the force of its own instinct, to the clear-sightedness
of practised experience. Calyste's letter to Beatrix was such as the
Chevalier du Halga, with his knowledge of the world, might have
dictated.



XIII

DUEL BETWEEN WOMEN

Perhaps one of the greatest enjoyments that small minds or inferior
minds can obtain is that of deceiving a great soul, and laying snares
for it. Beatrix knew herself far beneath Camille Maupin. This
inferiority lay not only in the collection of mental and moral
qualities which we call /talent/, but in the things of the heart
called /passion/.

At the moment when Calyste was hurrying to Les Touches with the
impetuosity of a first love borne on the wings of hope, the marquise
was feeling a keen delight in knowing herself the object of the first
love of so charming a young man. She did not go so far as to wish
herself a sharer in the sentiment, but she thought it heroism on her
part to repress the /capriccio/, as the Italians say. She thought she
was equalling Camille's devotion, and told herself, moreover, that she
was sacrificing herself to her friend. The vanities peculiar to
Frenchwomen, which constitute the celebrated coquetry of which she was
so signal an instance, were flattered and deeply satisfied by
Calyste's love. Assailed by such powerful seduction, she was resisting
it, and her virtues sang in her soul a concert of praise and
self-approval.

The two women were half-sitting, half lying, in apparent indolence on
the divan of the little salon, so filled with harmony and the
fragrance of flowers. The windows were open, for the north wind had
ceased to blow. A soothing southerly breeze was ruffling the surface
of the salt lake before them, and the sun was glittering on the sands
of the shore. Their souls were as deeply agitated as the nature before
them was tranquil, and the heat within was not less ardent.

Bruised by the working of the machinery which she herself had set in
motion, Camille was compelled to keep watch for her safety, fearing
the amazing cleverness of the friendly enemy, or, rather, the inimical
friend she had allowed within her borders. To guard her own secrets
and maintain herself aloof, she had taken of late to contemplations of
nature; she cheated the aching of her own heart by seeking a meaning
in the world around her, finding God in that desert of heaven and
earth. When an unbeliever once perceives the presence of God, he
flings himself unreservedly into Catholicism, which, viewed as a
system, is complete.

That morning Camille's brow had worn the halo of thoughts born of
these researches during a night-time of painful struggle. Calyste was
ever before her like a celestial image. The beautiful youth, to whom
she had secretly devoted herself, had become to her a guardian angel.
Was it not he who led her into those loftier regions, where suffering
ceased beneath the weight of incommensurable infinity? and now a
certain air of triumph about Beatrix disturbed her. No woman gains an
advantage over another without allowing it to be felt, however much
she may deny having taken it. Nothing was ever more strange in its
course than the dumb, moral struggle which was going on between these
two women, each hiding from the other a secret,--each believing
herself generous through hidden sacrifices.

Calyste arrived, holding the letter between his hand and his glove,
ready to slip it at some convenient moment into the hand of Beatrix.
Camille, whom the subtle change in the manner of her friend had not
escaped, seemed not to watch her, but did watch her in a mirror at the
moment when Calyste was just entering the room. That is always a
crucial moment for women. The cleverest as well as the silliest of
them, the frankest as the shrewdest, are seldom able to keep their
secret; it bursts from them, at any rate, to the eyes of another
woman. Too much reserve or too little; a free and luminous look; the
mysterious lowering of eyelids,--all betray, at that sudden moment,
the sentiment which is the most difficult of all to hide; for real
indifference has something so radically cold about it that it can
never be simulated. Women have a genius for shades,--shades of detail,
shades of character; they know them all. There are times when their
eyes take in a rival from head to foot; they can guess the slightest
movement of a foot beneath a gown, the almost imperceptible motion of
the waist; they know the significance of things which, to a man, seem
insignificant. Two women observing each other play one of the choicest
scenes of comedy that the world can show.

"Calyste has committed some folly," thought Camille, perceiving in
each of her guests an indefinable air of persons who have a mutual
understanding.

There was no longer either stiffness or pretended indifference on the
part of Beatrix; she now regarded Calyste as her own property. Calyste
was even more transparent; he colored, as guilty people, or happy
people color. He announced that he had come to make arrangements for
the excursion on the following day.

"Then you really intend to go, my dear?" said Camille,
interrogatively.

"Yes," said Beatrix.

"How did you know it, Calyste?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches.

"I came here to find out," replied Calyste, on a look flashed at him
by Madame de Rochefide, who did not wish Camille to gain the slightest
inkling of their correspondence.

"They have an agreement together," thought Camille, who caught the
look in the powerful sweep of her eye.

Under the pressure of that thought a horrible discomposure overspread
her face and frightened Beatrix.

"What is the matter, my dear?" she cried.

"Nothing. Well, then, Calyste, send my horses and yours across to
Croisic, so that we may drive home by way of Batz. We will breakfast
at Croisic, and get home in time for dinner. You must take charge of
the boat arrangements. Let us start by half-past eight. You will see
some fine sights, Beatrix, and one very strange one; you will see
Cambremer, a man who does penance on a rock for having wilfully killed
his son. Oh! you are in a primitive land, among a primitive race of
people, where men are moved by other sentiments than those of ordinary
mortals. Calyste shall tell you the tale; it is a drama of the
seashore."

She went into her bedroom, for she was stifling. Calyste gave his
letter to Beatrix and followed Camille.

"Calyste, you are loved, I think; but you are hiding something from
me; you have done some foolish thing."

"Loved!" he exclaimed, dropping into a chair.

Camille looked into the next room; Beatrix had disappeared. The fact
was odd. Women do not usually leave a room which contains the man they
admire, unless they have either the certainty of seeing him again, or
something better still. Mademoiselle des Touches said to herself:--

"Can he have given her a letter?"

But she thought the innocent Breton incapable of such boldness.

"If you have disobeyed me, all will be lost, through your own fault,"
she said to him very gravely. "Go, now, and make your preparations for
to-morrow."

She made a gesture which Calyste did not venture to resist.

As he walked toward Croisic, to engage the boatmen, fears came into
Calyste's mind. Camille's speech foreshadowed something fatal, and he
believed in the second sight of her maternal affection. When he
returned, four hours later, very tired, and expecting to dine at Les
Touches, he found Camille's maid keeping watch over the door, to tell
him that neither her mistress nor the marquise could receive him that
evening. Calyste, much surprised, wished to question her, but she bade
him hastily good-night and closed the door.

Six o'clock was striking on the steeple of Guerande as Calyste entered
his own house, where Mariotte gave him his belated dinner; after
which, he played /mouche/ in gloomy meditation. These alternations of
joy and gloom, happiness and unhappiness, the extinction of hopes
succeeding the apparent certainty of being loved, bruised and wounded
the young soul which had flown so high on outstretched wings that the
fall was dreadful.

"Does anything trouble you, my Calyste?" said his mother.

"Nothing," he replied, looking at her with eyes from which the light
of the soul and the fire of love were withdrawn.

It is not hope, but despair, which gives the measure of our ambitions.
The finest poems of hope are sung in secret, but grief appears without
a veil.

"Calyste, you are not nice," said Charlotte, after vainly attempting
on him those little provincial witcheries which degenerate usually
into teasing.

"I am tired," he said, rising, and bidding the company good-night.

"Calyste is much changed," remarked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

"We haven't beautiful dresses trimmed with lace; we don't shake our
sleeves like this, or twist our bodies like that; we don't know how to
give sidelong glances, and turn our eyes," said Charlotte, mimicking
the air, and attitude, and glances of the marquise. "/We/ haven't that
head voice, nor the interesting little cough, /heu! heu!/ which sounds
like the sigh of a spook; /we/ have the misfortune of being healthy
and robust, and of loving our friends without coquetry; and when we
look at them, we don't pretend to stick a dart into them, or to watch
them slyly; /we/ can't bend our heads like a weeping willow, just to
look the more interesting when we raise them--this way."