Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


"So it was play which put those black circles round your eyes?" Sabine
said to him in a feeble voice.

The words made the doctor, the mother, and the viscountess tremble,
and they all three looked at one another covertly. Calyste turned as
red as a cherry.

"That's what comes of nursing a child," said Dommanget brutally, but
cleverly. "Husbands are lonely when separated from their wives, and
they go to the club and play. But you needn't worry over the thirty
thousand francs which Monsieur le baron lost last night--"

"Thirty thousand francs!" cried Ursula, in a silly tone.

"Yes, I know it," replied Dommanget. "They told me this morning at the
house of the young Duchesse Berthe de Maufrigneuse that it was
Monsieur de Trailles who won that money from you," he added, turning
to Calyste. "Why do you play with such men? Frankly, monsieur le
baron, I can well believe you are ashamed of it."

Seeing his mother-in-law, a pious duchess, the young viscountess, a
happy woman, and the old /accoucheur/, a confirmed egotist, all three
lying like a dealer in bric-a-brac, the kind and feeling Calyste
understood the greatness of the danger, and two heavy tears rolled
from his eyes and completely deceived Sabine.

"Monsieur," she said, sitting up in bed and looking angrily at
Dommanget, "Monsieur du Guenic can lose thirty, fifty, a hundred
thousand francs if it pleases him, without any one having a right to
think it wrong or read him a lesson. It is far better that Monsieur de
Trailles should win his money than that we should win Monsieur de
Trailles'."

Calyste rose, took his wife round the neck, kissed her on both cheeks
and whispered:--

"Sabine, you are an angel!"

Two days later the young wife was thought to be out of danger, and the
next day Calyste was at Madame de Rochefide's making a merit of his
infamy.

"Beatrix," he said, "you owe me happiness. I have sacrificed my poor
little wife to you; she has discovered all. That fatal paper on which
you made me write, bore your name and your coronet, which I never
noticed--I saw but you! Fortunately the 'B' was by chance effaced. But
the perfume you left upon me and the lies in which I involved myself
like a fool have betrayed my happiness. Sabine nearly died of it; her
milk went to the head; erysipelas set in, and possibly she may bear
the marks for the rest of her days."

As Beatrix listened to this tirade her face was due North, icy enough
to freeze the Seine had she looked at it.

"So much the better," she said; "perhaps it will whiten her for you."

And Beatrix, now become as hard as her bones, sharp as her voice,
harsh as her complexion, continued a series of atrocious sarcasms in
the same tone. There is no greater blunder than for a man to talk of
his wife, if she is virtuous, to his mistress, unless it be to talk of
his mistress, if she is beautiful, to his wife. But Calyste had not
received that species of Parisian education which we must call the
politeness of the passions. He knew neither how to lie to his wife,
nor how to tell his mistress the truth,--two apprenticeships a man in
his position must make in order to manage women. He was therefore
compelled to employ all the power of passion to obtain from Beatrix a
pardon which she forced him to solicit for two hours; a pardon refused
by an injured angel who raised her eyes to the ceiling that she might
not see the guilty man, and who put forth reasons sacred to marquises
in a voice quivering with tears which were furtively wiped with the
lace of her handkerchief.

"To speak to me of your wife on the very day after my fall!" she
cried. "Why did you not tell me she is a pearl of virtue? I know she
thinks you handsome; pure depravity! I, I love your soul! for let me
tell you, my friend, you are ugly compared to many shepherds on the
Campagna of Rome," etc., etc.

Such speeches may surprise the reader, but they were part of a system
profoundly meditated by Beatrix in this her third incarnation,--for at
each passion a woman becomes another being and advances one step more
into profligacy, the only word which properly renders the effect of
the experience given by such adventures. Now, the Marquise de
Rochefide had sat in judgment on herself before the mirror. Clever
women are never deceived about themselves; they count their wrinkles,
they assist at the birth of their crow's-feet, they know themselves by
heart, and even own it by the greatness of their efforts at
preservation. Therefore to struggle successfully against a splendid
young woman, to carry away from her six triumphs a week, Beatrix had
recourse to the knowledge and the science of courtesans. Without
acknowledging to herself the baseness of this plan, led away to the
employment of such means by a Turkish passion for Calyste's beauty,
she had resolved to make him think himself unpleasant, ugly, ill-made,
and to behave as if she hated him. No system is more fruitful with men
of a conquering nature. To such natures the presence of repugnance to
be vanquished is the renewal of the triumph of the first day on all
succeeding days. And it is something even better. It is flattery in
the guise of dislike. A man then says to himself, "I am irresistible,"
or "My love is all-powerful because it conquers her repugnance." If
you deny this principle, divined by all coquettes and courtesans
throughout all social zones, you may as well reject all seekers after
knowledge, all delvers into secrets, repulsed through years in their
duel with hidden causes. Beatrix added to the use of contempt as a
moral piston, a constant comparison of her own poetic, comfortable
home with the hotel du Guenic. All deserted wives who abandon
themselves in despair, neglect also their surroundings, so discouraged
are they. On this, Madame de Rochefide counted, and presently began an
underhand attack on the luxury of the faubourg Saint-Germain, which
she characterized as stupid.

The scene of reconciliation, in which Beatrix made Calyste swear and
reswear hatred to the wife, who, she said, was playing comedy, took
place in a perfect bower where she played off her graces amid
ravishing flowers, and rare plants of the costliest luxury. The
science of nothings, the trifles of the day, she carried to excess.
Fallen into a mortifying position through Conti's desertion, Beatrix
was determined to have, at any rate, the fame which unprincipled
conduct gives. The misfortune of the poor young wife, a rich and
beautiful Grandlieu, should be her pedestal.



XX

A SHORT TREATISE ON CERTAINTY:
BUT NOT FROM PASCAL'S POINT OF VIEW

When a woman returns to ordinary life after the nursing of her first
child she reappears in the world embellished and charming. This phase
of maternity, while it rejuvenates the women of a certain age, gives
to young women a splendor of freshness, a gay activity, a /brio/ of
mere existence,--if it is permissible to apply to the body a word
which Italy has discovered for the mind. In trying to return to the
charming habits of the honeymoon, Sabine discovered that her husband
was not the former Calyste. Again she observed him, unhappy girl,
instead of resting securely in her happiness. She sought for the fatal
perfume, and smelt it. This time she no longer confided in her friend,
nor in the mother who had so charitably deceived her. She wanted
certainty, and Certainty made no long tarrying. Certainty is never
wanting, it is like the sun; and presently shades are asked for to
keep it out. It is, in matters of the heart, a repetition of the fable
of the woodman calling upon Death,--we soon ask Certainty to leave us
blind.

One morning, about two weeks after the first crisis, Sabine received
this terrible letter:--

Guerande.

To Madame la Baronne du Guenic:

My dear Daughter,--Your aunt Zephirine and I are lost in
conjectures about the dressing-table of which you tell us in your
letter. I have written to Calyste about it, and I beg you to
excuse our ignorance. You can never doubt our hearts, I am sure.
We are piling up riches for you here. Thanks to the advice of
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel on the management of your property, you
will find yourself within a few years in possession of a
considerable capital without losing any of your income.

Your letter, dear child as dearly loved as if I had borne you in
my bosom and fed you with my milk, surprised me by its brevity,
and above all by your silence about my dearest little Calyste. You
told me nothing of the great Calyste either; but then, I know that
/he/ is happy, etc.

Sabine wrote across this letter these words, "Noble Brittany does not
always lie." She then laid the paper on Calyste's desk.

Calyste found the letter and read it. Seeing Sabine's sentence and
recognizing her handwriting he flung the letter into the fire,
determined to pretend that he had never received it. Sabine spent a
whole week in an agony the secrets of which are known only to angelic
or solitary souls whom the wing of the bad angel has never
overshadowed. Calyste's silence terrified her.

"I, who ought to be all gentleness, all pleasure to him, I have
displeased him, wounded him! My virtue has made itself hateful. I have
no doubt humiliated my idol," she said to herself. These thoughts
plowed furrows in her heart. She wanted to ask pardon for her fault,
but Certainty let loose upon her other proofs. Grown bold and
insolent, Beatrix wrote to Calyste at his own home; Madame du Guenic
received the letter, and gave it to her husband without opening it,
but she said to him, in a changed voice and with death in her soul:
"My friend, that letter is from the Jockey Club; I recognize both the
paper and the perfume."

Calyste colored, and put the letter into his pocket.

"Why don't you read it?"

"I know what it is about."

The young wife sat down. No longer did fever burn her, she wept no
more; but madness such as, in feeble beings, gives birth to miracles
of crime, madness which lays hands on arsenic for themselves or for
their rivals, possessed her. At this moment little Calyste was brought
in, and she took him in her arms to dance him. The child, just
awakened, sought the breast beneath the gown.

"He remembers,--he, at any rate," she said in a low voice.

Calyste went to his own room to read his letter. When he was no longer
present the poor young woman burst into tears, and wept as women weep
when they are all alone.

Pain, as well as pleasure, has its initiation. The first crisis, like
that in which poor Sabine nearly succumbed, returns no more than the
first fruits of other things return. It is the first wedge struck in
the torture of the heart; all others are expected, the shock to the
nerves is known, the capital of our forces has been already drawn upon
for vigorous resistance. So Sabine, sure of her betrayal, spent three
hours with her son in her arms beside the fire in a way that surprised
herself, when Gasselin, turned into a footman, came to say:--

"Madame is served."

"Let monsieur know."

"Monsieur does not dine at home, Madame la baronne."

Who knows what torture there is for a young woman of twenty-three in
finding herself alone in the great dining-room of an old mansion,
served by silent servants, under circumstances like these?

"Order the carriage," she said suddenly; "I shall go to the Opera."

She dressed superbly; she wanted to exhibit herself alone and smiling
like a happy woman. In the midst of her remorse for the addition she
had made to Madame de Rochefide's letter she had resolved to conquer,
to win back Calyste by loving kindness, by the virtues of a wife, by
the gentleness of the paschal lamb. She wished, also, to deceive all
Paris. She loved,--loved as courtesans and as angels love, with pride,
with humility. But the opera chanced to be "Otello." When Rubini sang
/Il mio cor si divide/, she rushed away. Music is sometimes mightier
than actor or poet, the two most powerful of all natures, combined.
Savinien de Portenduere accompanied Sabine to the peristyle and put
her in the carriage without being able to understand this sudden
flight.

Madame du Guenic now entered a phase of suffering which is peculiar to
the aristocracy. Envious, poor, and miserable beings,--when you see on
the arms of such women golden serpents with diamond heads, necklaces
clasped around their necks, say to yourselves that those vipers sting,
those slender bonds burn to the quick through the delicate flesh. All
such luxury is dearly bought. In situations like that of Sabine, women
curse the pleasures of wealth; they look no longer at the gilding of
their salons; the silk of the divans is jute in their eyes, exotic
flowers are nettles, perfumes poison, the choicest cookery scrapes
their throat like barley-bread, and life becomes as bitter as the Dead
Sea.

Two or three examples may serve to show this reaction of luxury upon
happiness; so that all those women who have endured it may behold
their own experience.

Fully aware now of this terrible rivalry, Sabine studied her husband
when he left the house, that she might divine, if possible, the future
of his day. With what restrained fury does a woman fling herself upon
the red-hot spikes of that savage martyrdom! What delirious joy if she
could think he did not go to the rue de Chartres! Calyste returned,
and then the study of his forehead, his hair, his eyes, his
countenance, his demeanor, gave a horrible interest to mere nothings,
to observations pursued even to matters of toilet, in which a woman
loses her self-respect and dignity. These fatal investigations,
concealed in the depths of her heart, turn sour and rot the delicate
roots from which should spring to bloom the azure flowers of sacred
confidence, the golden petals of the One only love, with all the
perfumes of memory.

One day Calyste looked about him discontentedly; he had stayed at
home! Sabine made herself caressing and humble, gay and sparkling.

"You are vexed with me, Calyste; am I not a good wife? What is there
here that displeases you?" she asked.

"These rooms are so cold and bare," he replied; "you don't understand
arranging things."

"Tell me what is wanting."

"Flowers."

"Ah!" she thought to herself, "Madame de Rochefide likes flowers."

Two days later, the rooms of the hotel du Guenic had assumed another
aspect. No one in Paris could flatter himself to have more exquisite
flowers than those that now adorned them.

Some time later Calyste, one evening after dinner, complained of the
cold. He twisted about in his chair, declaring there was a draught,
and seemed to be looking for something. Sabine could not at first
imagine what this new fancy signified, she, whose house possessed a
calorifere which heated the staircases, antechambers, and passages. At
last, after three days' meditation, she came to the conclusion that
her rival probably sat surrounded by a screen to obtain the
half-lights favorable to faded faces; so Sabine had a screen, but hers
was of glass and of Israelitish splendor.

"From what quarter will the next storm come?" she said to herself.

These indirect comparisons with his mistress were not yet at an end.
When Calyste dined at home he ate his dinner in a way to drive Sabine
frantic; he would motion to the servants to take away his plates after
pecking at two or three mouthfuls.

"Wasn't it good?" Sabine would ask, in despair at seeing all the pains
she had taken in conference with her cook thrown away.

"I don't say that, my angel," replied Calyste, without anger; "I am
not hungry, that is all."

A woman consumed by a legitimate passion, who struggles thus, falls at
last into a fury of desire to get the better of her rival, and often
goes too far, even in the most secret regions of married life. So
cruel, burning, and incessant a combat in the obvious and, as we may
call them, exterior matters of a household must needs become more
intense and desperate in the things of the heart. Sabine studied her
attitudes, her toilets; she took heed about herself in all the
infinitely little trifles of love.

The cooking trouble lasted nearly a month. Sabine, assisted by
Mariotte and Gasselin, invented various little vaudeville schemes to
ascertain the dishes which Madame de Rochefide served to Calyste.
Gasselin was substituted for Calyste's groom, who had fallen
conveniently ill. This enabled Gasselin to consort with Madame de
Rochefide's cook, and before long, Sabine gave Calyste the same fare,
only better; but still he made difficulties.

"What is wanting now?" she said.

"Oh, nothing," he answered, looking round the table for something he
did not find.

"Ah!" exclaimed Sabine, as she woke the next morning, "Calyste wanted
some of those Indian sauces they serve in England in cruets. Madame de
Rochefide accustoms him to all sorts of condiments."

She bought the English cruets and the spiced sauces; but it soon
became impossible for her to make such discoveries in all the
preparations invented by her rival.

This period lasted some months; which is not surprising when we
remember the sort of attraction presented by such a struggle. It is
life. And that is preferable, with its wounds and its anguish, to the
gloomy darkness of disgust, to the poison of contempt, to the void of
abdication, to that death of the heart which is called indifference.
But all Sabine's courage abandoned her one evening when she appeared
in a toilet such as women are inspired to wear in the hope of
eclipsing a rival, and about which Calyste said, laughing:--

"In spite of all you can do, Sabine, you'll never be anything but a
handsome Andalusian."

"Alas!" she said, dropping on a sofa, "I may never make myself a
blonde, but I know if this continues I shall soon be thirty-five years
old."

She refused to go to the Opera as she intended, and chose to stay at
home the whole evening. But once alone she pulled the flowers from her
hair and stamped upon them; she tore off the gown and scarf and
trampled them underfoot, like a goat caught in the tangle of its
tether, which struggles till death comes. Then she went to bed.



XXI

THE WICKEDNESS OF A GOOD WOMAN

Playing for these terrible stakes Sabine grew thin; grief consumed
her; but she never for a moment forsook the role she had imposed upon
herself. Sustained by a sort of fever, her lips drove back into her
throat the bitter words that pain suggested; she repressed the
flashing of her glorious dark eyes, and made them soft even to
humility. But her failing health soon became noticeable. The duchess,
an excellent mother, though her piety was becoming more and more
Portuguese, recognized a moral cause in the physically weak condition
in which Sabine now took satisfaction. She knew the exact state of the
relation between Beatrix and Calyste; and she took great pains to draw
her daughter to her own house, partly to soothe the wounds of her
heart, but more especially to drag her away from the scene of her
martyrdom. Sabine, however, maintained the deepest silence for a long
time about her sorrows, fearing lest some one might meddle between
herself and Calyste. She declared herself happy! At the height of her
misery she recovered her pride, and all her virtues.

But at last, after some months during which her sister Clotilde and
her mother had caressed and petted her, she acknowledged her grief,
confided her sorrows, cursed life, and declared that she saw death
coming with delirious joy. She begged Clotilde, who was resolved to
remain unmarried, to be a mother to her little Calyste, the finest
child that any royal race could desire for heir presumptive.

One evening, as she sat with her young sister Athenais (whose marriage
to the Vicomte de Grandlieu was to take place at the end of Lent), and
with Clotilde and the duchess, Sabine gave utterance to the supreme
cries of her heart's anguish, excited by the pangs of a last
humiliation.

"Athenais," she said, when the Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu departed at
eleven o'clock, "you are going to marry; let my example be a warning
to you. Consider it a crime to display your best qualities; resist the
pleasure of adorning yourself to please Juste. Be calm, dignified,
cold; measure the happiness you give by that which you receive. This
is shameful, but it is necessary. Look at me. I perish through my best
qualities. All that I /know/ was fine and sacred and grand within me,
all my virtues, were rocks on which my happiness is wrecked. I have
ceased to please because I am not thirty-six years old. In the eyes of
some men youth is thought an inferiority. There is nothing to imagine
on an innocent face. I laugh frankly, and that is wrong; to captivate
I ought to play off the melancholy half-smile of the fallen angel, who
wants to hide her yellowing teeth. A fresh complexion is monotonous;
some men prefer their doll's wax made of rouge and spermaceti and cold
cream. I am straightforward; but duplicity is more pleasing. I am
loyally passionate, as an honest woman may be, but I ought to be
manoeuvring, tricky, hypocritical, and simulate a coldness I have not,
--like any provincial actress. I am intoxicated with the happiness of
having married one of the most charming men in France; I tell him,
naively, how distinguished he is, how graceful his movements are, how
handsome I think him; but to please him I ought to turn away my head
with pretended horror, to love nothing with real love, and tell him
his distinction is mere sickliness. I have the misfortune to admire
all beautiful things without setting myself up for a wit by caustic
and envious criticism of whatever shines from poesy and beauty. I
don't seek to make Canalis and Nathan say of /me/ in verse and prose
that my intellect is superior. I'm only a poor little artless child; I
care only for Calyste. Ah! if I had scoured the world like /her/, if I
had said as /she/ has said, 'I love,' in every language of Europe, I
should be consoled, I should be pitied, I should be adored for serving
the regal Macedonian with cosmopolitan love! We are thanked for our
tenderness if we set it in relief against our vice. And I, a noble
woman, must teach myself impurity and all the tricks of prostitutes!
And Calyste is the dupe of such grimaces! Oh, mother! oh, my dear
Clotilde! I feel that I have got my death-blow. My pride is only a
sham buckler; I am without defence against my misery; I love my
husband madly, and yet to bring him back to me I must borrow the
wisdom of indifference."

"Silly girl," whispered Clotilde, "let him think you will avenge
yourself--"

"I wish to die irreproachable and without the mere semblance of doing
wrong," replied Sabine. "A woman's vengeance should be worthy of her
love."

"My child," said the duchess to her daughter, "a mother must of course
see life more coolly than you can see it. Love is not the end, but the
means, of the Family. Do not imitate that poor Baronne de Macumer.
Excessive passion is unfruitful and deadly. And remember, God sends us
afflictions with knowledge of our needs. Now that Athenais' marriage
is arranged, I can give all my thoughts to you. In fact, I have
already talked of this delicate crisis in your life with your father
and the Duc de Chaulieu, and also with d'Ajuda; we shall certainly
find means to bring Calyste back to you."

"There is always one resource with the Marquise de Rochefide,"
remarked Clotilde, smiling, to her sister; "she never keeps her
adorers long."

"D'Ajuda, my darling," continued the duchess, "was Monsieur de
Rochefide's brother-in-law. If our dear confessor approves of certain
little manoeuvres to which we must have recourse to carry out a plan
which I have proposed to your father, I can guarantee to you the
recovery of Calyste. My conscience is repugnant to the use of such
means, and I must first submit them to the judgment of the Abbe
Brossette. We shall not wait, my child, till you are /in extremis/
before coming to your relief. Keep a good heart! Your grief to-night
is so bitter that my secret escapes me; but it is impossible for me
not to give you a little hope."

"Will it make Calyste unhappy?" asked Sabine, looking anxiously at the
duchess.

"Oh, heavens! shall I ever be as silly as that!" cried Athenais,
naively.

"Ah, little girl, you know nothing of the precipices down which our
virtue flings us when led by love," replied Sabine, making a sort of
moral revelation, so distraught was she by her woe.

The speech was uttered with such incisive bitterness that the duchess,
enlightened by the tone and accent and look of her daughter, felt
certain there was some hidden trouble.

"My dears, it is midnight; come, go to bed," she said to Clotilde and
Athenais, whose eyes were shining.

"In spite of my thirty-five years I appear to be /de trop/," said
Clotilde, laughing. While Athenais kissed her mother, Clotilde leaned
over Sabine and said in her ear: "You will tell what it is? I'll dine
with you to-morrow. If my mother's conscience won't let her act, I--I
myself will get Calyste out of the hands of the infidels."