Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


"Have you loved many women in your life?" he asked him on the second
occasion, when, as seamen say, they sailed in company along the mall.

"Only one," replied Du Halga.

"Was she free?"

"No," exclaimed the chevalier. "Ah! how I suffered! She was the wife
of my best friend, my protector, my chief--but we loved each other
so!"

"Did she love you?" said Calyste.

"Passionately," replied the chevalier, with a fervency not usual with
him.

"You were happy?"

"Until her death; she died at the age of forty-nine, during the
emigration, at St. Petersburg, the climate of which killed her. She
must be very cold in her coffin. I have often thought of going there
to fetch her, and lay her in our dear Brittany, near to me! But she
lies in my heart."

The chevalier brushed away his tears. Calyste took his hand and
pressed it.

"I care for this little dog more than for life itself," said the old
man, pointing to Thisbe. "The little darling is precisely like the one
she held on her knees and stroked with her beautiful hands. I never
look at Thisbe but what I see the hands of Madame l'Amirale."

"Did you see Madame de Rochefide?" asked Calyste.

"No," replied the chevalier. "It is sixty-eight years since I have
looked at any woman with attention--except your mother, who has
something of Madame l'Amirale's complexion."

Three days later, the chevalier said to Calyste, on the mall,--

"My child, I have a hundred and forty /louis/ laid by. When you know
where Madame de Rochefide is, come and get them and follow her."

Calyste thanked the old man, whose existence he envied. But now, from
day to day, he grew morose; he seemed to love no one; all things hurt
him; he was gentle and kind to his mother only. The baroness watched
with ever increasing anxiety the progress of his madness; she alone
was able, by force of prayer and entreaty, to make him swallow food.
Toward the end of October the sick lad ceased to go even to the mall
in search of the chevalier, who now came vainly to the house to tempt
him out with the coaxing wisdom of an old man.

"We can talk of Madame de Rochefide," he would say. "I'll tell you my
first adventure."

"Your son is ill," he said privately to the baroness, on the day he
became convinced that all such efforts were useless.

Calyste replied to questions about his health that he was perfectly
well; but like all young victims of melancholy, he took pleasure in
the thought of death. He no longer left the house, but sat in the
garden on a bench, warming himself in the pale and tepid sunshine,
alone with his one thought, and avoiding all companionship.

Soon after the day when Calyste ceased to go even to Les Touches,
Felicite requested the rector of Guerande to come and see her. The
assiduity with which the Abbe Grimont called every morning at Les
Touches, and sometimes dined there, became the great topic of the
town; it was talked of all over the region, and even reached Nantes.
Nevertheless, the rector never missed a single evening at the hotel du
Guenic, where desolation reigned. Masters and servants were all
afflicted at Calyste's increasing weakness, though none of them
thought him in danger; how could it ever enter the minds of these good
people that youth might die of love? Even the chevalier had no example
of such a death among his memories of life and travel. They attributed
Calyste's thinness to want of food. His mother implored him to eat.
Calyste endeavored to conquer his repugnance in order to comfort her;
but nourishment taken against his will served only to increase the
slow fever which was now consuming the beautiful young life.

During the last days of October the cherished child of the house could
no longer mount the stairs to his chamber, and his bed was placed in
the lower hall, where he was surrounded at all hours by his family.
They sent at last for the Guerande physician, who broke the fever with
quinine and reduced it in a few days, ordering Calyste to take
exercise, and find something to amuse him. The baron, on this, came
out of his apathy and recovered a little of his old strength; he grew
younger as his son seemed to age. With Calyste, Gasselin, and his two
fine dogs, he started for the forest, and for some days all three
hunted. Calyste obeyed his father and went where he was told, from
forest to forest, visiting friends and acquaintances in the
neighboring chateaus. But the youth had no spirit or gaiety; nothing
brought a smile to his face; his livid and contracted features
betrayed an utterly passive being. The baron, worn out at last by
fatigue consequent on this spasm of exertion, was forced to return
home, bringing Calyste in a state of exhaustion almost equal to his
own. For several days after their return both father and son were so
dangerously ill that the family were forced to send, at the request of
the Guerande physician himself, for two of the best doctors in Nantes.

The baron had received a fatal shock on realizing the change now so
visible in Calyste. With that lucidity of mind which nature gives to
the dying, he trembled at the thought that his race was about to
perish. He said no word, but he clasped his hands and prayed to God as
he sat in his chair, from which his weakness now prevented him from
rising. The father's face was turned toward the bed where the son lay,
and he looked at him almost incessantly. At the least motion Calyste
made, a singular commotion stirred within him, as if the flame of his
own life were flickering. The baroness no longer left the room where
Zephirine sat knitting in the chimney-corner in horrible uneasiness.
Demands were made upon the old woman for wood, father and son both
suffering from the cold, and for supplies and provisions, so that,
finally, not being agile enough to supply these wants, she had given
her precious keys to Mariotte. But she insisted on knowing everything;
she questioned Mariotte and her sister-in-law incessantly, asking in a
low voice to be told, over and over again, the state of her brother
and nephew. One night, when father and son were dozing, Mademoiselle
de Pen-Hoel told her that she must resign herself to the death of her
brother, whose pallid face was now the color of wax. The old woman
dropped her knitting, fumbled in her pocket for a while, and at length
drew out an old chaplet of black wood, on which she began to pray with
a fervor which gave to her old and withered face a splendor so
vigorous that the other old woman imitated her friend, and then all
present, on a sign from the rector, joining in the spiritual uplifting
of Mademoiselle de Guenic.

"Alas! I prayed to God," said the baroness, remembering her prayer
after reading the fatal letter written by Calyste, "and he did not
hear me."

"Perhaps it would be well," said the rector, "if we begged
Mademoiselle des Touches to come and see Calyste."

"She!" cried old Zephirine, "the author of all our misery! she who has
turned him from his family, who has taken him from us, led him to read
impious books, taught him an heretical language! Let her be accursed,
and may God never pardon her! She has destroyed the du Guenics!"

"She may perhaps restore them," said the rector, in a gentle voice.
"Mademoiselle des Touches is a saintly woman; I am her surety for
that. She has none but good intentions to Calyste. May she only be
enabled to carry them out."

"Let me know the day when she sets foot in this house, that I may get
out of it," cried the old woman passionately. "She has killed both
father and son. Do you think I don't hear death in Calyste's voice? he
is so feeble now that he has barely strength to whisper."

It was at this moment that the three doctors arrived. They plied
Calyste with questions; but as for his father, the examination was
short; they were surprised that he still lived on. The Guerande doctor
calmly told the baroness that as to Calyste, it would probably be best
to take him to Paris and consult the most experienced physicians, for
it would cost over a hundred /louis/ to bring one down.

"People die of something, but not of love," said Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel.

"Alas! whatever be the cause, Calyste is dying," said the baroness. "I
see all the symptoms of consumption, that most horrible disease of my
country, about him."

"Calyste dying!" said the baron, opening his eyes, from which rolled
two large tears which slowly made their way, delayed by wrinkles,
along his cheeks,--the only tears he had probably ever shed in his
life. Suddenly he rose to his feet, walked the few steps to his son's
bedside, took his hand, and looked earnestly at him.

"What is it you want, father?" said Calyste.

"That you should live!" cried the baron.

"I cannot live without Beatrix," replied Calyste.

The old man dropped into a chair.

"Oh! where could we get a hundred /louis/ to bring doctors from Paris?
There is still time," cried the baroness.

"A hundred /louis!/" cried Zephirine; "will that save him?"

Without waiting for her sister-in-law's reply, the old maid ran her
hands through the placket-holes of her gown, unfastened the petticoat
beneath it, which gave forth a heavy sound as it dropped to the floor.
She knew so well the places where she had sewn in her /louis/ that she
now ripped them out with the rapidity of magic. The gold pieces rang
as they fell, one by one, into her lap. The old Pen-Hoel gazed at this
performance in stupefied amazement.

"But they'll see you!" she whispered in her friend's ear.

"Thirty-seven," answered Zephirine, continuing to count.

"Every one will know how much you have."

"Forty-two."

"Double /louis!/ all new! How did you get them, you who can't see
clearly?"

"I felt them. Here's one hundred and four /louis/," cried Zephirine.
"Is that enough?"

"What is all this?" asked the Chevalier du Halga, who now came in,
unable to understand the attitude of his old blind friend, holding out
her petticoat which was full of gold coins.

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel explained.

"I knew it," said the chevalier, "and I have come to bring a hundred
and forty /louis/ which I have been holding at Calyste's disposition,
as he knows very well."

The chevalier drew the /rouleaux/ from his pocket and showed them.
Mariotte, seeing such wealth, sent Gasselin to lock the doors.

"Gold will not give him health," said the baroness, weeping.

"But it can take him to Paris, where he can find her. Come, Calyste."

"Yes," cried Calyste, springing up, "I will go."

"He will live," said the baron, in a shaking voice; "and I can
die--send for the rector!"

The words cast terror on all present. Calyste, seeing the mortal
paleness on his father's face, for the old man was exhausted by the
cruel emotions of the scene, came to his father's side. The rector,
after hearing the report of the doctors, had gone to Mademoiselle des
Touches, intending to bring her back with him to Calyste, for in
proportion as the worthy man had formerly detested her, he now admired
her, and protected her as a shepherd protects the most precious of his
flock.

When the news of the baron's approaching end became known in Guerande,
a crowd gathered in the street and lane; the peasants, the
/paludiers/, and the servants knelt in the court-yard while the rector
administered the last sacraments to the old Breton warrior. The whole
town was agitated by the news that the father was dying beside his
half-dying son. The probable extinction of this old Breton race was
felt to be a public calamity.

The solemn ceremony affected Calyste deeply. His filial sorrow
silenced for a moment the anguish of his love. During the last hour of
the glorious old defender of the monarchy, he knelt beside him,
watching the coming on of death. The old man died in his chair in
presence of the assembled family.

"I die faithful to God and his religion," he said. "My God! as the
reward of my efforts grant that Calyste may live!"

"I shall live, father; and I will obey you," said the young man.

"If you wish to make my death as happy as Fanny has made my life,
swear to me to marry."

"I promise it, father."

It was a touching sight to see Calyste, or rather his shadow, leaning
on the arm of the old Chevalier du Halga--a spectre leading a shade
--and following the baron's coffin as chief mourner. The church and the
little square were crowded with the country people coming in to the
funeral from a circuit of thirty miles.

But the baroness and Zephirine soon saw that, in spite of his
intention to obey his father's wishes, Calyste was falling back into a
condition of fatal stupor. On the day when the family put on their
mourning, the baroness took her son to a bench in the garden and
questioned him closely. Calyste answered gently and submissively, but
his answers only proved to her the despair of his soul.

"Mother," he said, "there is no life in me. What I eat does not feed
me; the air that enters my lungs does not refresh me; the sun feels
cold; it seems to you to light that front of the house, and show you
the old carvings bathed in its beams, but to me it is all a blur, a
mist. If Beatrix were here, it would be dazzling. There is but one
only thing left in this world that keeps its shape and color to my
eyes,--this flower, this foliage," he added, drawing from his breast
the withered bunch the marquise had given him at Croisic.

The baroness dared not say more. Her son's answer seemed to her more
indicative of madness than his silence of grief. She saw no hope, no
light in the darkness that surrounded them.

The baron's last hours and death had prevented the rector from
bringing Mademoiselle des Touches to Calyste, as he seemed bent on
doing, for reasons which he did not reveal. But on this day, while
mother and son still sat on the garden bench, Calyste quivered all
over on perceiving Felicite through the opposite windows of the
court-yard and garden. She reminded him of Beatrix, and his life
revived. It was therefore to Camille that the poor stricken mother
owed the first motion of joy that lightened her mourning.

"Well, Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, when they met, "I want
you to go to Paris with me. We will find Beatrix," she added in a low
voice.

The pale, thin face of the youth flushed red, and a smile brightened
his features.

"Let us go," he said.

"We shall save him," said Mademoiselle des Touches to the mother, who
pressed her hands and wept for joy.

A week after the baron's funeral, Mademoiselle des Touches, the
Baronne du Guenic and Calyste started for Paris, leaving the household
in charge of old Zephirine.



XVII

A DEATH: A MARRIAGE

Felicite's tender love was preparing for Calyste a prosperous future.
Being allied to the family of Grandlieu, the ducal branch of which was
ending in five daughters for lack of a male heir, she had written to
the Duchesse de Grandlieu, describing Calyste and giving his history,
and also stating certain intentions of her own, which were as follows:
She had lately sold her house in the rue du Mont-Blanc, for which a
party of speculators had given her two millions five hundred thousand
francs. Her man of business had since purchased for her a charming new
house in the rue de Bourbon for seven hundred thousand francs; one
million she intended to devote to the recovery of the du Guenic
estates, and the rest of her fortune she desired to settle upon Sabine
de Grandlieu. Felicite had long known the plans of the duke and
duchess as to the settlement of their five daughters: the youngest was
to marry the Vicomte de Grandlieu, the heir to their ducal title;
Clotilde-Frederique, the second daughter, desired to remain unmarried,
in memory of a man she had deeply loved, Lucien de Rubempre, while, at
the same time, she did not wish to become a nun like her eldest
sister; two of the remaining sisters were already married, and the
youngest but one, the pretty Sabine, just twenty years old, was the
only disposable daughter left. It was Sabine on whom Felicite resolved
to lay the burden of curing Calyste's passion for Beatrix.

During the journey to Paris Mademoiselle des Touches revealed to the
baroness these arrangements. The new house in the rue de Bourbon was
being decorated, and she intended it for the home of Sabine and
Calyste if her plans succeeded.

The party had been invited to stay at the hotel de Grandlieu, where
the baroness was received with all the distinction due to her rank as
the wife of a du Guenic and the daughter of a British peer.
Mademoiselle des Touches urged Calyste to see Paris, while she herself
made the necessary inquiries about Beatrix (who had disappeared from
the world, and was travelling abroad), and she took care to throw him
into the midst of diversions and amusements of all kinds. The season
for balls and fetes was just beginning, and the duchess and her
daughters did the honors of Paris to the young Breton, who was
insensibly diverted from his own thoughts by the movement and life of
the great city. He found some resemblance of mind between Madame de
Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who was certainly one of the
handsomest and most charming girls in Parisian society, and this
fancied likeness made him give to her coquetries a willing attention
which no other woman could possibly have obtained from him. Sabine
herself was greatly pleased with Calyste, and matters went so well
that during the winter of 1837 the young Baron du Guenic, whose youth
and health had returned to him, listened without repugnance to his
mother when she reminded him of the promise made to his dying father
and proposed to him a marriage with Sabine de Grandlieu. Still, while
agreeing to fulfil his promise, he concealed within his soul an
indifference to all things, of which the baroness alone was aware, but
which she trusted would be conquered by the pleasures of a happy home.

On the day when the Grandlieu family and the baroness, accompanied by
her relations who came from England for this occasion, assembled in
the grand salon of the hotel de Grandlieu to sign the marriage
contract, and Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the
preliminaries of that contract before reading it, Calyste, on whose
forehead every one present might have noticed clouds, suddenly and
curtly refused to accept the benefactions offered him by Mademoiselle
des Touches. Did he still count on Felicite's devotion to recover
Beatrix? In the midst of the embarrassment and stupefaction of the
assembled families, Sabine de Grandlieu entered the room and gave him
a letter, explaining that Mademoiselle des Touches had requested her
to give it to him on this occasion.

Calyste turned away from the company to the embrasure of a window and
read as follows:--

Camille Maupin to Calyste.

Calyste, before I enter my convent cell I am permitted to cast a
look upon the world I am now to leave for a life of prayer and
solitude. That look is to you, who have been the whole world to me
in these last months. My voice will reach you, if my calculations
do not miscarry, at the moment of a ceremony I am unable to take
part in.

On the day when you stand before the altar giving your hand and
name to a young and charming girl who can love you openly before
earth and heaven, I shall be before another altar in a convent at
Nantes betrothed forever to Him who will neither fail nor betray
me. But I do not write to sadden you,--only to entreat you not to
hinder by false delicacy the service I have wished to do you since
we first met. Do not contest my rights so dearly bought.

If love is suffering, ah! I have loved you indeed, my Calyste. But
feel no remorse; the only happiness I have known in life I owe to
you; the pangs were caused by my own self. Make me compensation,
then, for all those pangs, those sorrows, by causing me an
everlasting joy. Let the poor Camille, who /is/ no longer, still
be something in the material comfort you enjoy. Dear, let me be
like the fragrance of flowers in your life, mingling myself with
it unseen and not importunate.

To you, Calyste, I shall owe my eternal happiness; will you not
accept a few paltry and fleeting benefits from me? Surely you will
not be wanting in generosity? Do you not see in this the last
message of a renounced love? Calyste, the world without you had
nothing more for me; you made it the most awful of solitudes; and
you have thus brought Camille Maupin, the unbeliever, the writer
of books, which I am soon to repudiate solemnly--you have cast
her, daring and perverted, bound hand and foot, before God.

I am to-day what I might have been, what I was born to be,
--innocent, and a child. I have washed my robes in the tears of
repentance; I can come before the altar whither my guardian angel,
my beloved Calyste, has led me. With what tender comfort I give
you that name, which the step I now take sanctifies. I love you
without self-seeking, as a mother loves her son, as the Church
loves her children. I can pray for you and for yours without one
thought or wish except for your happiness. Ah! if you only knew
the sublime tranquillity in which I live, now that I have risen in
thought above all petty earthly interests, and how precious is the
thought of DOING (as your noble motto days) our duty, you would
enter your beautiful new life with unfaltering step and never a
glance behind you or about you. Above all, my earnest prayer to
you is that you be faithful to yourself and to those belonging to
you. Dear, society, in which you are to live, cannot exist without
the religion of duty, and you will terribly mistake it, as I
mistook it, if you allow yourself to yield to passion and to
fancy, as I did. Woman is the equal of man only in making her life
a continual offering, as that of man is a perpetual action; my
life has been, on the contrary, one long egotism. If may be that
God placed you, toward evening, by the door of my house, as a
messenger from Himself, bearing my punishment and my pardon.

Heed this confession of a woman to whom fame has been like a
pharos, warning her of the only true path. Be wise, be noble;
sacrifice your fancy to your duties, as head of your race, as
husband, as father. Raise the fallen standard of the old du
Guenics; show to this century of irreligion and want of principle
what a gentleman is in all his grandeur and his honor. Dear child
of my soul, let me play the part of a mother to you; your own
mother will not be jealous of this voice from a tomb, these hands
uplifted to heaven, imploring blessings on you. To-day, more than
ever, does rank and nobility need fortune. Calyste, accept a part
of mine, and make a worthy use of it. It is not a gift; it is a
trust I place in your hands. I have thought more of your children
and of your old Breton house than of you in offering you the
profits which time has brought to my property in Paris.

"Let us now sign the contract," said the young baron, returning to the
assembled company.

The Abbe Grimont, to whom the honor of the conversion of this
celebrated woman was attributed, became, soon after, vicar-general of
the diocese.

The following week, after the marriage ceremony, which, according to
the custom of many families of the faubourg Saint-Germain, was
celebrated at seven in the morning at the church of Saint Thomas
d'Aquin, Calyste and Sabine got into their pretty travelling-carriage,
amid the tears, embraces, and congratulations of a score of friends,
collected under the awning of the hotel de Grandlieu. The
congratulations came from the four witnesses, and the men present; the
tears were in the eyes of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and her daughter
Clotilde, who both trembled under the weight of the same thought,--

"She is launched upon the sea of life! Poor Sabine! at the mercy of a
man who does not marry entirely of his own free will."

Marriage is not wholly made up of pleasures,--as fugitive in that
relation as in all others; it involves compatibility of temper,
physical sympathies, harmonies of character, which make of that social
necessity an eternal problem. Marriageable daughters, as well as
mothers, know the terms as well as the dangers of this lottery; and
that is why women weep at a wedding while men smile; men believe that
they risk nothing, while women know, or very nearly know, what they
risk.

In another carriage, which preceded the married pair, was the Baronne
du Guenic, to whom the duchess had said at parting,--

"You are a mother, though you have only had one son; try to take my
place to my dear Sabine."

On the box of the bridal carriage sat a /chasseur/, who acted as
courier, and in the rumble were two waiting-maids. The four postilions
dressed in their finest uniforms, for each carriage was drawn by four
horses, appeared with bouquets on their breasts and ribbons on their
hats, which the Duc de Grandlieu had the utmost difficulty in making
them relinquish, even by bribing them with money. The French postilion
is eminently intelligent, but he likes his fun. These fellows took
their bribes and replaced their ribbons at the barrier.