Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


"You are a lucky man, my dear marquis," cried old Prince Galathionne
as he finished his game of whist at the club. "Yesterday, after you
left us alone, I tried to get Madame Schontz away from you, but she
said: 'Prince, you are not handsomer, but you are a great deal older
than Rochefide; you would beat me, but he is like a father to me; can
you give me one-tenth of a reason why I should change? I've never had
the grand passion for Arthur that I once had for little fools in
varnished boots and whose debts I paid; but I love him as a wife loves
her husband when she is an honest woman.' And thereupon she showed me
the door."

This speech, which did not seem exaggerated, had the effect of greatly
increasing the state of neglect and degradation which reigned in the
hotel de Rochefide. Arthur now transported his whole existence and his
pleasures to Madame Schontz, and found himself well off; for at the
end of three years he had four hundred thousand francs to invest.

The third phase now began. Madame Schontz became the tenderest of
mothers to Arthur's son; she fetched him from school and took him back
herself; she overwhelmed with presents and dainties and pocket-money
the child who called her his "little mamma," and who adored her. She
took part in the management of Arthur's property; she made him buy
into the Funds when low, just before the famous treaty of London which
overturned the ministry of March 1st. Arthur gained two hundred
thousand francs by that transaction and Aurelie did not ask for a
penny of it. Like the gentleman that he was, Rochefide invested his
six hundred thousand francs in stock of the Bank of France and put
half of that sum in the name of Josephine Schiltz. A little house was
now hired in the rue de La Bruyere and given to Grindot, that great
decorative architect, with orders to make it a perfect bonbon-box.

Henceforth, Rochefide no longer managed his affairs. Madame Schontz
received the revenues and paid the bills. Become, as it were,
practically his wife, his woman of business, she justified the
position by making her /gros papa/ more comfortable than ever; she had
learned all his fancies, and gratified them as Madame de Pompadour
gratified those of Louis XV. In short, Madame Schontz reigned an
absolute mistress. She then began to patronize a few young men,
artists, men of letters, new-fledged to fame, who rejected both
ancients and moderns, and strove to make themselves a great reputation
by accomplishing little or nothing.

The conduct of Madame Schontz, a triumph of tactics, ought to reveal
to you her superiority. In the first place, these ten or a dozen young
fellows amused Arthur; they supplied him with witty sayings and clever
opinions on all sorts of topics, and did not put in doubt the fidelity
of the mistress; moreover, they proclaimed her a woman who was
eminently intelligent. These living advertisements, these
perambulating articles, soon set up Madame Schontz as the most
agreeable woman to be found in the borderland which separates the
thirteenth arrondissement from the twelve others. Her rivals--Suzanne
Gaillard, who, in 1838, had won the advantage over her of becoming a
wife married in legitimate marriage, Fanny Beaupre, Mariette, Antonia
--spread calumnies that were more than droll about the beauty of those
young men and the complacent good-nature with which Monsieur de
Rochefide welcomed them. Madame Schontz, who could distance, as she
said, by three /blagues/ the wit of those ladies, said to them one
night at a supper given by Nathan to Florine, after recounting her
fortune and her success, "Do as much yourselves!"--a speech which
remained in their memory.

It was during this period that Madame Schontz made Arthur sell his
race-horses, through a series of considerations which she no doubt
derived from the critical mind of Claude Vignon, one of her
/habitues/.

"I can conceive," she said one night, after lashing the horses for
some time with her lively wit, "that princes and rich men should set
their hearts on horse-flesh, but only for the good of the country, not
for the paltry satisfactions of a betting man. If you had a stud farm
on your property and could raise a thousand or twelve hundred horses,
and if all the horses of France and of Navarre could enter into one
great solemn competition, it would be fine; but you buy animals as the
managers of theatres trade in artists; you degrade an institution to a
gambling game; you make a Bourse of legs, as you make a Bourse of
stocks. It is unworthy. Don't you spend sixty thousand francs
sometimes merely to read in the newspapers: 'Lelia, belonging to
Monsieur de Rochefide beat by a length Fleur-de-Genet the property of
Monsieur le Duc de Rhetore'? You had much better give that money to
poets, who would carry you in prose and verse to immortality, like the
late Montyon."

By dint of being prodded, the marquis was brought to see the
hollowness of the turf; he realized that economy of sixty thousand
francs; and the next year Madame Schontz remarked to him,--

"I don't cost you anything now, Arthur."

Many rich men envied the marquis and endeavored to entice Madame
Schontz away from him, but like the Russian prince they wasted their
old age.

"Listen to me," she said to Finot, now become immensely rich. "I am
certain that Rochefide would forgive me a little passion if I fell in
love with any one, but one doesn't leave a marquis with a kind heart
like that for a /parvenu/ like you. You couldn't keep me in the
position in which Arthur has placed me; he has made me half a wife and
a lady, and that's more than you could do even if you married me."

This was the last nail which clinched the fetters of that happy
galley-slave, for the speech of course reached the ears for which it
was intended.

The fourth phase had begun, that of /habit/, the final victory in
these plans of campaign, which make the women of this class say of a
man, "I hold him!" Rochefide, who had just bought the little hotel in
the name of Mademoiselle Josephine Schiltz (a trifle of eighty
thousand francs), had reached, at the moment the Duchesse de Grandlieu
was forming plans about him, the stage of deriving vanity from his
mistress (whom he now called Ninon II.), by vaunting her scrupulous
honesty, her excellent manners, her education, and her wit. He had
merged his own defects, merits, tastes, and pleasures in Madame
Schontz, and he found himself at this period of his life, either from
lassitude, indifference, or philosophy, a man unable to change, who
clings to wife or mistress.

We may understand the position won in five years by Madame Schontz
from the fact that presentation at her house had to be proposed some
time before it was granted. She refused to receive dull rich people
and smirched people; and only departed from this rule in favor of
certain great names of the aristocracy.

"They," she said, "have a right to be stupid because they are
well-bred."

She possessed ostensibly the three hundred thousand francs which
Rochefide had given her, and which a certain good fellow, a broker
named Gobenheim (the only man of that class admitted to her house)
invested and reinvested for her. But she manipulated for herself
secretly a little fortune of two hundred thousand francs, the result
of her savings for the last three years and of the constant movement
of the three hundred thousand francs,--for she never admitted the
possession of more than that known sum.

"The more you make, the less you get rich," said Gobenheim to her one
day.

"Water is so dear," she answered.

This secret hoard was increased by jewels and diamonds, which Aurelie
wore a month and then sold. When any one called her rich, Madame
Schontz replied that at the rate of interest in the Funds three
hundred thousand francs produced only twelve thousand, and she had
spent as much as that in the hardest days of her life.



XXIII

ONE OF THE DISEASES OF THE AGE

Such conduct implied a plan, and Madame Schontz had, as you may well
believe, a plan. Jealous for the last two years of Madame du Bruel,
she was consumed with the ambition to be married by church and mayor.
All social positions have their forbidden fruit, some little thing
magnified by desire until it has become the weightiest thing in life.
This ambition of course involved a second Arthur; but no espial on the
part of those about her had as yet discovered Rochefide's secret
rival. Bixiou fancied he saw the favored one in Leon de Lora; the
painter saw him in Bixiou, who had passed his fortieth year and ought
to be making himself a fate of some kind. Suspicions were also turned
on Victor de Vernisset, a poet of the school of Canalis, whose passion
for Madame Schontz was desperate; but the poet accused Stidmann, a
young sculptor, of being his fortune rival. This artist, a charming
lad, worked for jewellers, for manufacturers in bronze and
silver-smiths; he longed to be another Benvenuto Cellini. Claude Vignon,
the young Comte de la Palferine, Gobenheim, Vermanton a cynical
philosopher, all frequenters of this amusing salon, were severally
suspected, and proved innocent. No one had fathomed Madame Schontz,
certainly not Rochefide, who thought she had a penchant for the young
and witty La Palferine; she was virtuous from self-interest and was
wholly bent on making a good marriage.

Only one man of equivocal reputation was ever seen in Madame Schontz's
salon, namely Couture, who had more than once made his brother
speculators howl; but Couture had been one of Madame Schontz's
earliest friends, and she alone remained faithful to him. The false
alarm of 1840 swept away the last vestige of this stock-gambler's
credit; Aurelie, seeing his run of ill-luck, made Rochefide play, as
we have seen, in the other direction. Thankful to find a place for
himself at Aurelie's table, Couture, to whom Finot, the cleverest or,
if you choose, the luckiest of all parvenus, occasionally gave a note
of a thousand francs, was alone wise and calculating enough to offer
his hand and name to madame Schontz, who studied him to see if the
bold speculator had sufficient power to make his way in politics and
enough gratitude not to desert his wife. Couture, a man about
forty-three years of age, half worn-out, did not redeem the unpleasant
sonority of his name by birth; he said little of the authors of his
days.

Madame Schontz was bemoaning to herself the rarity of eligible men,
when Couture presented to her a provincial, supplied with the two
handles by which women take hold of such pitchers when they wish to
keep them. To sketch this person will be to paint a portion of the
youth of the day. The digression is history.

In 1838, Fabien du Ronceret, son of a chief-justice of the Royal court
at Caen (who had lately died), left his native town of Alencon,
resigning his judgeship (a position in which his father had compelled
him, he said, to waste his time), and came to Paris, with the
intention of making a noise there,--a Norman idea, difficult to
realize, for he could scarcely scrape together eight thousand francs a
year; his mother still being alive and possessing a life-interest in a
valuable estate in Alencon. This young man had already, during
previous visits to Paris, tried his rope, like an acrobat, and had
recognized the great vice of the social replastering of 1830. He meant
to turn it to his own profit, following the example of the longest
heads of the bourgeoisie. This requires a rapid glance on one of the
effects of the new order of things.

Modern equality, unduly developed in our day, has necessarily
developed in private life, on a line parallel with political life, the
three great divisions of the social /I;/ namely, pride, conceit, and
vanity. Fools wish to pass for wits; wits want to be thought men of
talent; men of talent wish to be treated as men of genius; as for men
of genius, they are more reasonable; they consent to be only demigods.
This tendency of the public mind of these days, which, in the Chamber,
makes the manufacturer jealous of the statesman, and the administrator
jealous of the writer, leads fools to disparage wits, wits to
disparage men of talent, men of talent to disparage those who outstrip
them by an inch or two, and the demigods to threaten institutions, the
throne, or whatever does not adore them unconditionally. So soon as a
nation has, in a very unstatesmanlike spirit, pulled down all
recognized social superiorities, she opens the sluice through which
rushes a torrent of secondary ambitions, the meanest of which resolves
to lead. She had, so democrats declare, an evil in her aristocracy;
but a defined and circumscribed evil; she exchanges it for a dozen
armed and contending aristocracies--the worst of all situations. By
proclaiming the equality of all, she has promulgated a declaration of
the rights of Envy. We inherit to-day the saturnalias of the
Revolution transferred to the domain, apparently peaceful, of the
mind, of industry, of politics; it now seems that reputations won by
toil, by services rendered, by talent, are privileges granted at the
expense of the masses. Agrarian law will spread to the field of glory.
Never, in any age, have men demanded the affixing of their names on
the nation's posters for reasons more puerile. Distinction is sought
at any price, by ridicule, by an affectation of interest in the
cause of Poland, in penitentiaries, in the future of liberated
galley-slaves, in all the little scoundrels above and below twelve
years, and in every other social misery. These diverse manias create
fictitious dignities, presidents, vice-presidents, and secretaries of
societies, the number of which is greater than that of the social
questions they seek to solve. Society on its grand scale has been
demolished to make a million of little ones in the image of the
defunct. These parasitic organizations reveal decomposition; are they
not the swarming of maggots in the dead body? All these societies are
the daughters of one mother, Vanity. It is not thus that Catholic
charity or true beneficence proceeds; /they/ study evils in wounds and
cure them; they don't perorate in public meetings upon deadly ills for
the pleasure of perorating.

Fabien du Ronceret, without being a superior man, had divined, by the
exercise of that greedy common-sense peculiar to a Norman, the gain he
could derive from this public vice. Every epoch has its character
which clever men make use of. Fabien's mind, though not clever, was
wholly bent on making himself talked about.

"My dear fellow, a man must make himself talked about, if he wants to
be anything," he said, on parting from the king of Alencon, a certain
du Bousquier, a friend of his father. "In six months I shall be better
known than you are!"

It was thus that Fabien interpreted the spirit of his age; he did not
rule it, he obeyed it. He made his debut in Bohemia, a region in the
moral topography of Paris where he was known as "The Heir" by reason
of certain premeditated prodigalities. Du Ronceret had profited by
Couture's follies for the pretty Madame Cadine, for whom, during his
ephemeral opulence, he had arranged a delightful ground-floor
apartment with a garden in the rue Blanche. The Norman, who wanted his
luxury ready-made, bought Couture's furniture and all the improvements
he was forced to leave behind him,--a kiosk in the garden, where he
smoked, a gallery in rustic wood, with India mattings and adorned with
potteries, through which to reach the kiosk if it rained. When the
Heir was complimented on his apartment, he called it his /den/. The
provincial took care not to say that Grindot, the architect, had
bestowed his best capacity upon it, as did Stidmann on the carvings,
and Leon de Lora on the paintings, for Fabien's crowning defect was
the vanity which condescends to lie for the sake of magnifying the
individual self.

The Heir complimented these magnificences by a greenhouse which he
built along a wall with a southern exposure,--not that he loved
flowers, but he meant to attack through horticulture the public notice
he wanted to excite. At the present moment he had all but attained his
end. Elected vice-president of some sort of floral society presided
over by the Duc de Vissembourg, brother of the Prince de Chiavari,
youngest son of the late Marechal Vernon, he adorned his coat with the
ribbon of the Legion of honor on the occasion of an exhibition of
products, the opening speech at which, delivered by him, and bought of
Lousteau for five hundred francs, was boldly pronounced to be his own
brew. He also made himself talked about by a flower, given to him by
old Blondet of Alencon, father of Emile Blondet, which he presented to
the horticultural world as the product of his own greenhouse.

But this success was nothing. The Heir, who wished to be accepted as a
wit, had formed a plan of consorting with clever celebrities and so
reflecting their fame,--a plan somewhat hard to execute on a basis of
an exchequer limited to eight thousand francs a year. With this end in
view, Fabien du Ronceret had addressed himself again and again,
without success, to Bixiou, Stidmann, and Leon de Lora, asking them to
present him to Madame Schontz, and allow him to take part in that
menageria of lions of all kinds. Failing in those directions he
applied to Couture, for whose dinners he had so often paid that the
late speculator felt obliged to prove categorically to Madame Schontz
that she ought to acquire such an original, if it was only to make him
one of those elegant footmen without wages whom the mistresses of
households employ to do errands, when servants are lacking.

In the course of three evenings Madame Schontz read Fabien like a book
and said to herself,--

"If Couture does not suit me, I am certain of saddling that one. My
future can go on two legs now."

This queer fellow whom everybody laughed at was really the chosen one,
--chosen, however, with an intention which made such preference
insulting. The choice escaped all public suspicion by its very
improbability. Madame Schontz intoxicated Fabien with smiles given
secretly, with little scenes played on the threshold when she bade him
good-night, if Monsieur de Rochefide stayed behind. She often made
Fabien a third with Arthur in her opera-box and at first
representations; this she excused by saying he had done her such or
such a service and she did not know how else to repay him. Men have a
natural conceit as common to them as to women,--that of being loved
exclusively. Now of all flattering passions there is none more prized
than that of a Madame Schontz, for the man she makes the object of a
love she calls "from the heart," in distinction from another sort of
love. A woman like Madame Schontz, who plays the great lady, and whose
intrinsic value is real, was sure to be an object of pride to Fabien,
who fell in love with her to the point of never presenting himself
before her eyes except in full dress, varnished boots, lemon-kid
gloves, embroidered shirt and frill, waistcoat more or less
variegated,--in short, with all the external symptoms of profound
worship.

A month before the conference of the duchess and her confessor, Madame
Schontz had confided the secret of her birth and her real name to
Fabien, who did not in the least understand the motive of the
confidence. A fortnight later, Madame Schontz, surprised at this want
of intelligence, suddenly exclaimed to herself:--

"Heavens! how stupid I am! he expects me to love him for himself."

Accordingly the next day she took the Heir in her /caleche/ to the
Bois, for she now had two little carriages, drawn by two horses. In
the course of this public /tete-a-tete/ she opened the question of her
future, and declared that she wished to marry.

"I have seven hundred thousand francs," she said, "and I admit to you
that if I could find a man full of ambition, who knew how to
understand my character, I would change my position; for do you know
what is the dream of my life? To become a true bourgeoise, enter an
honorable family, and make my husband and children truly happy."

The Norman would fain be "distinguished" by Madame Schontz, but as
for marrying her, that folly seemed debatable to a bachelor of
thirty-eight whom the revolution of July had made a judge. Seeing his
hesitation, Madame Schontz made the Heir the butt of her wit, her
jests, and her disdain, and turned to Couture. Within a week, the
latter, whom she put upon the scent of her fortune, had offered his
hand, and heart, and future,--three things of about the same value.

The manoeuvres of Madame Schontz had reached this stage of proceeding,
when Madame de Grandlieu began her inquiries into the life and habits
of the Beatrix of the Place Saint-Georges.



XXIV

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL RELATIONS AND POSITION

In accordance with the advice of the Abbe Brossette the Duchesse de
Grandlieu asked the Marquis d'Ajuda to bring her that king of
political cut-throats, the celebrated Comte Maxime de Trailles,
archduke of Bohemia, the youngest of young men, though he was now
fully fifty years of age. Monsieur d'Ajuda arranged to dine with
Maxime at the club in the rue de Beuane, and proposed to him after
dinner to go and play dummy whist with the Duc de Grandlieu, who had
an attack of gout and was all alone.

Though the son-in-law of the duke and the cousin of the duchess had
every right to present him in a salon where he had never yet set foot,
Maxime de Trailles did not deceive himself as to the meaning of an
invitation thus given. He felt certain that the duke or the duchess
had some need of him. Club life where men play cards with other men
whom they do not receive in their own houses is by no means one of the
most trifling signs of the present age.

The Duc de Grandlieu did Maxime the honor of appearing to suffer from
his gout. After several games of whist he went to bed, leaving his
wife /tete-a-tete/ with Maxime and d'Ajuda. The duchess, seconded by
the marquis, communicated her project to Monsieur de Trailles, and
asked his assistance, while ostensibly asking only for his advice.
Maxime listened to the end without committing himself, and waited till
the duchess should ask point-blank for his co-operation before
replying.

"Madame, I fully understand you," he then said, casting on her and the
marquis one of those shrewd, penetrating, astute, comprehensive
glances by which such great scamps compromise their interlocutors.
"D'Ajuda will tell you that if any one in Paris can conduct that
difficult negotiation, it is I,--of course without mixing you up in
it; without its being even known that I have come here this evening.
Only, before anything is done, we must settle preliminaries. How much
are you willing to sacrifice?"

"All that is necessary."

"Very well, then, Madame la duchesse. As the price of my efforts you
must do me the honor to receive in your house and seriously protect
Madame la Comtesse de Trailles."

"What! are you married?" cried d'Ajuda.

"I shall be married within a fortnight to the heiress of a rich but
extremely bourgeois family,--a sacrifice to opinion! I imbibe the very
spirit of my government, and start upon a new career. Consequently,
Madame la duchesse will understand how important it is to me to have
my wife adopted by her and by her family. I am certain of being made
deputy by the resignation of my father-in-law, and I am promised a
diplomatic post in keeping with my new fortune. I do not see why my
wife should not be as well received as Madame de Portenduere in that
society of young women which includes Mesdames de la Bastie, Georges
de Maufrigneuse, de L'Estorade, du Guenic, d'Ajuda, de Restaud, de
Rastignac, de Vandenesse. My wife is pretty, and I will undertake to
/un-cotton-night-cap/ her. Will this suit you, Madame la duchesse? You
are religious, and if you say yes, your promise, which I know to be
sacred, will greatly aid in my change of life. It will be one more
good action to your account. Alas! I have long been the king of
/mauvais sujets/, and I want to make an end of it. After all, we bear,
azure, a wivern or, darting fire, ongle gules, and scaled vert, a
chief ermine, from the time of Francois I., who thought proper to
ennoble the valet of Louis XI., and we have been counts since
Catherine de' Medici."

"I will receive and protect your wife," said the duchess, solemnly,
"and my family will not turn its back upon her; I give you my word."

"Ah! Madame la duchesse," cried Maxime, visibly touched, "if Monsieur
le duc would also deign to treat me with some kindness, I promise you
to make your plan succeed without its costing you very much. But," he
continued after a pause, "you must take upon yourself to follow my
instructions. This is the last intrigue of my bachelor life; it must
be all the better managed because it concerns a good action," he
added, smiling.

"Follow your instructions!" said the duchess. "Then I must appear in
all this."