Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel could not help laughing at her niece's
gesture; but neither the chevalier nor the baron paid any heed to this
truly provincial satire against Paris.

"But the Marquise de Rochefide is a very handsome woman," said the old
maid.

"My dear," said the baroness to her husband, "I happen to know that
she is going over to Croisic to-morrow. Let us walk on the jetty; I
should like to see her."

While Calyste was racking his brains to imagine what could have closed
the doors of Les Touches to him, a scene was passing between Camille
and Beatrix which was to have its influence on the events of the
morrow.

Calyste's last letter had stirred in Madame de Rochefide's heart
emotions hitherto unknown to it. Women are not often the subject of a
love so young, guileless, sincere, and unconditional as that of this
youth, this child. Beatrix had loved more than she had been loved.
After being all her life a slave, she suddenly felt an inexplicable
desire to be a tyrant. But, in the midst of her pleasure, as she read
and re-read the letter, she was pierced through and through with a
cruel idea.

What were Calyste and Camille doing together ever since Claude
Vignon's departure? If, as Calyste said, he did not love Camille, and
if Camille knew it, how did they employ their mornings, and why were
they alone together? Memory suddenly flashed into her mind, in answer
to these questions, certain speeches of Camille; a grinning devil
seemed to show her, as in a magic mirror, the portrait of that heroic
woman, with certain gestures, certain aspects, which suddenly
enlightened her. What! instead of being her equal, was she crushed by
Felicite? instead of over-reaching her, was she being over-reached
herself? was she only a toy, a pleasure, which Camille was giving to
her child, whom she loved with an extraordinary passion that was free
from all vulgarity?

To a woman like Beatrix this thought came like a thunder-clap. She
went over in her mind minutely the history of the past week. In a
moment the part which Camille was playing, and her own, unrolled
themselves to their fullest extent before her eyes; she felt horribly
belittled. In her fury of jealous anger, she fancied she could see in
Camille's conduct an intention of vengeance against Conti. Was the
hidden wrath of the past two years really acting upon the present
moment?

Once on the path of these doubts and superstitions, Beatrix did not
pause. She walked up and down her room, driven to rapid motion by the
impetuous movements of her soul, sitting down now and then, and trying
to decide upon a course, but unable to do so. And thus she remained, a
prey to indecision until the dinner hour, when she rose hastily, and
went downstairs without dressing. No sooner did Camille see her, than
she felt that a crisis had come. Beatrix, in her morning gown, with a
chilling air and a taciturn manner, indicated to an observer as keen
as Maupin the coming hostilities of an embittered heart.

Camille instantly left the room and gave the order which so astonished
Calyste; she feared that he might arrive in the midst of the quarrel,
and she determined to be alone, without witnesses, in fighting this
duel of deception on both sides. Beatrix, without an auxiliary, would
infallibly succumb. Camille well knew the barrenness of that soul, the
pettiness of that pride, to which she had justly applied the epithet
of obstinate.

The dinner was gloomy. Camille was gentle and kind; she felt herself
the superior being. Beatrix was hard and cutting; she felt she was
being managed like a child. During dinner the battle began with
glances, gestures, half-spoken sentences,--not enough to enlighten the
servants, but enough to prepare an observer for the coming storm. When
the time to go upstairs came, Camille offered her arm maliciously to
Beatrix, who pretended not to see it, and sprang up the stairway
alone. When coffee had been served Mademoiselle des Touches said to
the footman, "You may go,"--a brief sentence, which served as a signal
for the combat.

"The novels you make, my dear, are more dangerous than those you
write," said the marquise.

"They have one advantage, however," replied Camille, lighting a
cigarette.

"What is that?" asked Beatrix.

"They are unpublished, my angel."

"Is the one in which you are putting me to be turned into a book?"

"I've no fancy for the role of OEdipus; I know you have the wit and
beauty of a sphinx, but don't propound conundrums. Speak out, plainly,
my dear Beatrix."

"When, in order to make a man happy, amuse him, please him, and save
him from ennui, we allow the devil to help us--"

"That man would reproach us later for our efforts on his behalf, and
would think them prompted by the genius of depravity," said Camille,
taking the cigarette from her lips to interrupt her friend.

"He forgets the love which carried us away, and is our sole
justification--but that's the way of men, they are all unjust and
ungrateful," continued Beatrix. "Women among themselves know each
other; they know how proud and noble their own minds are, and, let us
frankly say so, how virtuous! But, Camille, I have just recognized the
truth of certain criticisms upon your nature, of which you have
sometimes complained. My dear, you have something of the man about
you; you behave like a man; nothing restrains you; if you haven't all
a man's advantages, you have a man's spirit in all your ways; and you
share his contempt for women. I have no reason, my dear, to be
satisfied with you, and I am too frank to hide my dissatisfaction. No
one has ever given or ever will give, perhaps, so cruel a wound to my
heart as that from which I am now suffering. If you are not a woman in
love, you are one in vengeance. It takes a /woman/ of genius to
discover the most sensitive spot of all in another woman's delicacy. I
am talking now of Calyste, and the trickery, my dear,--that is the
word,--/trickery/,--you have employed against me. To what depths have
you descended, Camille Maupin! and why?"

"More and more sphinx-like!" said Camille, smiling.

"You want me to fling myself at Calyste's head; but I am still too
young for that sort of thing. To me, love is sacred; love is love with
all its emotions, jealousies, and despotisms. I am not an author; it
is impossible for me to see ideas where the heart feels sentiments."

"You think yourself capable of loving foolishly!" said Camille. "Make
yourself easy on that score; you still have plenty of sense. My dear,
you calumniate yourself; I assure you that your nature is cold enough
to enable your head to judge of every action of your heart."

The marquise colored high; she darted a look of hatred, a venomous
look, at Camille, and found, without searching, the sharpest arrows in
her quiver. Camille smoked composedly as she listened to a furious
tirade, which rang with such cutting insults that we do not reproduce
it here. Beatrix, irritated by the calmness of her adversary,
condescended even to personalities on Camille's age.

"Is that all?" said Felicite, when Beatrix paused, letting a cloud of
smoke exhale from her lips. "Do you love Calyste?"

"No; of course not."

"So much the better," replied Camille. "I do love him--far too much
for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy
for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black
as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in
short, you are /young/!--that's the final word, and you have not
spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against
me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However
little of a woman you may think me, I am woman enough, my dear, not to
allow a rival to triumph over me unless I choose to help her." (This
remark, made in apparently the most innocent manner, cut the marquise
to the heart). "You take me for a very silly person if you believe all
that Calyste tries to make you think of me. I am neither so great nor
so small; I am a woman, and very much of a woman. Come, put off your
grand airs, and give me your hand!" continued Camille, taking Madame
de Rochefide's hand. "You do not love Calyste, you say; that is true,
is it not? Don't be angry, therefore; be hard, and cold, and stern to
him to-morrow; he will end by submitting to his fate, especially after
certain little reproaches which I mean to make to him. Still, Calyste
is a Breton, and very persistent; if he should continue to pay court
to you, tell me frankly, and I will lend you my little country house
near Paris, where you will find all the comforts of life, and where
Conti can come out and see you. You said just now that Calyste
calumniated me. Good heavens! what of that? The purest love lies
twenty times a day; its deceptions only prove its strength."

Camille's face wore an air of such superb disdain that the marquise
grew fearful and anxious. She knew not how to answer. Camille dealt
her a last blow.

"I am more confiding and less bitter than you," she said. "I don't
suspect you of attempting to cover by a quarrel a secret injury, which
would compromise my very life. You know me; I shall never survive the
loss of Calyste, but I must lose him sooner or later. Still, Calyste
loves me now; of that I am sure."

"Here is what he answered to a letter of mine, urging him to be true
to you," said Beatrix, holding out Calyste's last letter.

Camille took it and read it; but as she read it, her eyes filled with
tears; and presently she wept as women weep in their bitterest
sorrows.

"My God!" she said, "how he loves her! I shall die without being
understood--or loved," she added.

She sat for a few moments with her head leaning against the shoulder
of her companion; her grief was genuine; she felt to the very core of
her being the same terrible blow which the Baronne du Guenic had
received in reading that letter.

"Do you love him?" she said, straightening herself up, and looking
fixedly at Beatrix. "Have you that infinite worship for him which
triumphs over all pains, survives contempt, betrayal, the certainty
that he will never love you? Do you love him for himself, and for the
very joy of loving him?"

"Dear friend," said the marquise, tenderly, "be happy, be at peace; I
will leave this place to-morrow."

"No, do not go; he loves you, I see that. Well, I love him so much
that I could not endure to see him wretched and unhappy. Still, I had
formed plans for him, projects; but if he loves you, all is over."

"And I love him, Camille," said the marquise, with a sort of
/naivete/, and coloring.

"You love him, and yet you cast him off!" cried Camille. "Ah! that is
not loving; you do not love him."

"I don't know what fresh virtue he has roused in me, but certainly he
has made me ashamed of my own self," said Beatrix. "I would I were
virtuous and free, that I might give him something better than the
dregs of a heart and the weight of my chains. I do not want a hampered
destiny either for him or for myself."

"Cold brain!" exclaimed Camille, with a sort of horror. "To love and
calculate!"

"Call it what you like," said Beatrix, "but I will not spoil his life,
or hang like a millstone round his neck, to become an eternal regret
to him. If I cannot be his wife, I shall not be his mistress. He has
--you will laugh at me? No? Well, then, he has purified me."

Camille cast on Beatrix the most sullen, savage look that female
jealousy ever cast upon a rival.

"On that ground, I believed I stood alone," she said. "Beatrix, those
words of yours must separate us forever; we are no longer friends.
Here begins a terrible conflict between us. I tell you now; you will
either succumb or fly."

So saying, Camille bounded into her room, after showing her face,
which was that of a maddened lioness, to the astonished Beatrix. Then
she raised the portiere and looked in again.

"Do you intend to go to Croisic to-morrow," she asked.

"Certainly," replied the marquise, proudly. "I shall not fly, and I
shall not succumb."

"I play above board," replied Camille; "I shall write to Conti."

Beatrix became as white as the gauze of her scarf.

"We are staking our lives on this game," she replied, not knowing what
to say or do.

The violent passions roused by this scene between the two women calmed
down during the night. Both argued with their own minds and returned
to those treacherously temporizing courses which are so attractive to
the majority of women,--an excellent system between men and women, but
fatally unsafe among women alone. In the midst of this tumult of their
souls Mademoiselle des Touches had listened to that great Voice whose
counsels subdue the strongest will; Beatrix heard only the promptings
of worldly wisdom; she feared the contempt of society.

Thus Felicite's last deception succeeded; Calyste's blunder was
repaired, but a fresh indiscretion might be fatal to him.



XIV

AN EXCURSION TO CROISIC

It was now the end of August, and the sky was magnificently clear.
Near the horizon the sea had taken, as it is wont to do in southern
climes, a tint of molten silver; on the shore it rippled in tiny
waves. A sort of glowing vapor, an effect of the rays of the sun
falling plumb upon the sands, produced an atmosphere like that of the
tropics. The salt shone up like bunches of white violets on the
surface of the marsh. The patient /paludiers/, dressed in white to
resist the action of the sun, had been from early morning at their
posts, armed with long rakes. Some were leaning on the low mud-walls
that divided the different holdings, whence they watched the process
of this natural chemistry, known to them from childhood. Others were
playing with their wives and children. Those green dragons, otherwise
called custom-house officers, were tranquilly smoking their pipes.

There was something foreign, perhaps oriental, about the scene; at any
rate a Parisian suddenly transported thither would never have supposed
himself in France. The baron and baroness, who had made a pretext of
coming to see how the salt harvest throve, were on the jetty, admiring
the silent landscape, where the sea alone sounded the moan of her
waves at regular intervals, where boats and vessels tracked a vast
expanse, and the girdle of green earth richly cultivated, produced an
effect that was all the more charming because so rare on the desolate
shores of ocean.

"Well, my friends, I wanted to see the marshes of Guerande once more
before I die," said the baron to the /paludiers/, who had gathered
about the entrance of the marshes to salute him.

"Can a Guenic die?" said one of them.

Just then the party from Les Touches arrived through the narrow
pathway. The marquise walked first alone; Calyste and Camille followed
arm-in-arm. Gasselin brought up the rear.

"There are my father and mother," said the young man to Camille.

The marquise stopped short. Madame du Guenic felt the most violent
repulsion at the appearance of Beatrix, although the latter was
dressed to much advantage. A Leghorn hat with wide brims and a wreath
of blue-bells, her crimped hair fluffy beneath it, a gown of some gray
woollen stuff, and a blue sash with floating ends gave her the air of
a princess disguised as a milkmaid.

"She has no heart," thought the baroness.

"Mademoiselle," said Calyste to Camille, "this is Madame du Guenic,
and this is my father." Then he said turning to the baron and
baroness, "Mademoiselle des Touches, and Madame la Marquise de
Rochefide, /nee/ de Casteran, father."

The baron bowed to Mademoiselle des Touches, who made a respectful
bow, full of gratitude, to the baroness.

"That one," thought Fanny, "really loves my boy; she seems to thank me
for bringing him into the world."

"I suppose you have come to see, as I have, whether the harvest is a
good one. But I believe you have better reasons for doing so than I,"
said the baron to Camille. "You have property here, I think,
mademoiselle."

"Mademoiselle is the largest of all the owners," said one of the
/paludiers/ who were grouped about them, "and may God preserve her to
us, for she's a /good/ lady."

The two parties bowed and separated.

"No one would suppose Mademoiselle des Touches to be more than
thirty," said the baron to his wife. "She is very handsome. And
Calyste prefers that haggard Parisian marquise to a sound Breton
girl!"

"I fear he does," replied the baroness.

A boat was waiting at the steps of the jetty, where the party embarked
without a smile. The marquise was cold and dignified. Camille had
lectured Calyste on his disobedience, explaining to him clearly how
matters stood. Calyste, a prey to black despair, was casting glances
at Beatrix in which anger and love struggled for the mastery. Not a
word was said by any of them during the short passage from the jetty
of Guerande to the extreme end of the port of Croisic, the point where
the boats discharge the salt, which the peasant-women then bear away
on their heads in huge earthen jars after the fashion of caryatides.
These women go barefooted with very short petticoats. Many of them let
the kerchiefs which cover their bosoms fly carelessly open. Some wear
only shifts, and are the more dignified; for the less clothing a woman
wears, the more nobly modest is her bearing.

The little Danish vessel had just finished lading, therefore the
landing of the two handsome ladies excited much curiosity among the
female salt-carriers; and as much to avoid their remarks as to serve
Calyste, Camille sprang forward toward the rocks, leaving him to
follow with Beatrix, while Gasselin put a distance of some two hundred
steps between himself and his master.

The peninsula of Croisic is flanked on the sea side by granite rocks
the shapes of which are so strangely fantastic that they can only be
appreciated by travellers who are in a position to compare them with
other great spectacles of primeval Nature. Perhaps the rocks of
Croisic have the same advantage over sights of that kind as that
accorded to the road to the Grande Chartreuse over all other narrow
valleys. Neither the coasts of Croisic, where the granite bulwark is
split into strange reefs, nor those of Sardinia, where Nature is
dedicated to grandiose and terrible effects, nor even the basaltic
rocks of the northern seas can show a character so unique and so
complete. Fancy has here amused itself by composing interminable
arabesques where the most fantastic figures wind and twine. All forms
are here. The imagination is at last fatigued by this vast gallery of
abnormal shapes, where in stormy weather the sea makes rough assaults
which have ended in polishing all ruggedness.

You will find under a naturally vaulted roof, of a boldness imitated
from afar by Brunelleschi (for the greatest efforts of art are always
the timid copying of effects of nature), a rocky hollow polished like
a marble bath-tub and floored with fine white sand, in which is four
feet of tepid water where you can bathe without danger. You walk on,
admiring the cool little covers sheltered by great portals; roughly
carved, it is true, but majestic, like the Pitti palace, that other
imitation of the whims of Nature. Curious features are innumerable;
nothing is lacking that the wildest imagination could invent or
desire.

There even exists a thing so rare on the rocky shores of ocean that
this may be the solitary instance of it,--a large bush of box. This
bush, the greatest curiosity of Croisic, where trees have never grown,
is three miles distant from the harbor, on the point of rocks that
runs farthest into the sea. On this granite promontory, which rises to
a height that neither the waves nor the spray can touch, even in the
wildest weather, and faces southerly, diluvian caprice has constructed
a hollow basin, which projects about four feet. Into this basin, or
cleft, chance, possibly man, has conveyed enough vegetable earth for
the growth of a box-plant, compact, well-nourished, and sown, no
doubt, by birds. The shape of the roots would indicate to a botanist
an existence of at least three hundred years. Above it the rock has
been broken off abruptly. The natural convulsion which did this, the
traces of which are ineffaceably written here, must have carried away
the broken fragments of the granite I know not where.

The sea rushes in, meeting no reefs, to the foot of this cliff, which
rises to a height of some four or five hundred feet; at its base lie
several scattered rocks, just reaching the surface at high water, and
describing a semi-circle. It requires some nerve and resolution to
climb to the summit of this little Gibraltar, the shape of which is
nearly round, and from which a sudden gust of wind might precipitate
the rash gazer into the sea, or, still more to be feared, upon the
rocks.

This gigantic sentinel resembles the look-out towers of old castles,
from which the inhabitants could look the country over and foresee
attacks. Thence we see the clock towers and the arid fields of
Croisic, with the sandy dunes, which injure cultivation, and stretch
as far as Batz. A few old men declare that in days long past a
fortress occupied the spot. The sardine-fishers have given the rock,
which can be seen far out at sea, a name; but it is useless to write
it here, its Breton consonants being as difficult to pronounce as to
remember.

Calyste led Beatrix to this point, whence the view is magnificent, and
where the natural sculpture of the granite is even more imposing to
the spectator than the mass of the huge breastwork when seen from the
sandy road which skirts the shore.

Is it necessary to explain why Camille had rushed away alone? Like
some wounded wild animal, she longed for solitude, and went on and on,
threading her way among the fissures and caves and little peaks of
nature's fortress. Not to be hampered in climbing by women's clothing,
she wore trousers with frilled edges, a short blouse, a peaked cap,
and, by way of staff, she carried a riding-whip, for Camille has
always had a certain vanity in her strength and her agility. Thus
arrayed, she looked far handsomer than Beatrix. She wore also a little
shawl of crimson China crape, crossed on her bosom and tied behind, as
they dress a child. For some time Beatrix and Calyste saw her flitting
before them over the peaks and chasms like a ghost or vision; she was
trying to still her inward sufferings by confronting some imaginary
peril.

She was the first to reach the rock in which the box-bush grew. There
she sat down in the shade of a granite projection, and was lost in
thought. What could a woman like herself do with old age, having
already drunk the cup of fame which all great talents, too eager to
sip slowly the stupid pleasures of vanity, quaff at a single draught?
She has since admitted that it was here--at this moment, and on this
spot--that one of those singular reflections suggested by a mere
nothing, by one of those chance accidents that seem nonsense to common
minds, but which, to noble souls, do sometimes open vast depths of
thought, decided her to take the extraordinary step by which she was
to part forever from social life.

She drew from her pocket a little box, in which she had put, in case
of thirst, some strawberry lozenges; she now ate several; and as she
did so, the thought crossed her mind that the strawberries, which
existed no longer, lived nevertheless in their qualities. Was it not
so with ourselves? The ocean before her was an image of the infinite.
No great spirit can face the infinite, admitting the immortality of
the soul, without the conviction of a future of holiness. The thought
filled her mind. How petty then seemed the part that she was playing!
there was no real greatness in giving Beatrix to Calyste! So thinking,
she felt the earthly woman die within her, and the true woman, the
noble and angelic being, veiled until now by flesh, arose in her
place. Her great mind, her knowledge, her attainments, her false loves
had brought her face to face with what? Ah! who would have thought it?
--with the bounteous mother, the comforter of troubled spirits, with
the Roman Church, ever kind to repentance, poetic to poets, childlike
with children, and yet so profound, so full of mystery to anxious,
restless minds that they can burrow there and satisfy all longings,
all questionings, all hopes. She cast her eyes, as it were, upon the
strangely devious way--like the tortuous rocky path before her--over
which her love for Calyste had led her. Ah! Calyste was indeed a
messenger from heaven, her divine conductor! She had stifled earthly
love, and a divine love had come from it.

After walking for some distance in silence, Calyste could not refrain,
on a remark of Beatrix about the grandeur of the ocean, so unlike the
smiling beauty of the Mediterranean, from comparing in depth, purity,
extent, unchanging and eternal duration, that ocean with his love.

"It is met by a rock!" said Beatrix, laughing.

"When you speak thus," he answered, with a sublime look, "I hear you,
I see you, and I can summon to my aid the patience of the angels; but
when I am alone, you would pity me if you could see me then. My mother
weeps for my suffering."