Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


This bitter thought wrung Fanny's heart and destroyed her pleasure.

It may seem strange to those who calculate expenses that in a family
of six persons compelled to live on three thousand francs a year the
son should have a coat and the mother a gown of velvet; but Fanny
O'Brien had aunts and rich relations in London who recalled themselves
to her remembrance by many presents. Several of her sisters, married
to great wealth, took enough interest in Calyste to wish to find him
an heiress, knowing that he, like Fanny their exiled favorite, was
noble and handsome.

"You stayed at Les Touches longer than you did last night, my dear
one," said the mother at last, in an agitated tone.

"Yes, dear mother," he answered, offering no explanation.

The curtness of this answer brought clouds to his mother's brow, and
she resolved to postpone the explanation till the morrow. When mothers
admit the anxieties which were now torturing the baroness, they
tremble before their sons; they feel instinctively the effect of the
great emancipation that comes with love; they perceive what that
sentiment is about to take from them; but they have, at the same time,
a sense of joy in knowing that their sons are happy; conflicting
feelings battle in their hearts. Though the result may be the
development of their sons into superior men, true mothers do not like
this forced abdication; they would rather keep their children small
and still requiring protection. Perhaps that is the secret of their
predilection for feeble, deformed, or weak-minded offspring.

"You are tired, dear child; go to bed," she said, repressing her
tears.

A mother who does not know all that her son is doing thinks the worst;
that is, if a mother loves as much and is as much beloved as Fanny.
But perhaps all other mothers would have trembled now as she did. The
patient care of twenty years might be rendered worthless. This human
masterpiece of virtuous and noble and religious education, Calyste,
might be destroyed; the happiness of his life, so long and carefully
prepared for, might be forever ruined by this woman.

The next day Calyste slept till mid-day, for his mother would not have
him wakened. Mariotte served the spoiled child's breakfast in his bed.
The inflexible and semi-conventual rules which regulated the hours for
meals yielded to the caprices of the chevalier. If it became desirable
to extract from Mademoiselle du Guenic her array of keys in order to
obtain some necessary article of food outside of the meal hours, there
was no other means of doing it than to make the pretext of its serving
some fancy of Calyste.

About one o'clock the baron, his wife, and Mademoiselle were seated in
the salon, for they dined at three o'clock. The baroness was again
reading the "Quotidienne" to her husband, who was always more awake
before the dinner hour. As she finished a paragraph she heard the
steps of her son on the upper floor, and she dropped the paper,
saying:--

"Calyste must be going to dine again at Les Touches; he has dressed
himself."

"He amuses himself, the dear boy," said the old sister, taking a
silver whistle from her pocket and whistling once.

Mariotte came through the tower and appeared at the door of
communication which was hidden by a silken curtain like the other
doors of the room.

"What is it?" she said; "anything wanted?"

"The chevalier dines at Les Touches; don't cook the fish."

"But we are not sure as yet," said the baroness.

"You seem annoyed, sister; I know it by the tone of your voice."

"Monsieur Grimont has heard some very grave charges against
Mademoiselle des Touches, who for the last year has so changed our
dear Calyste."

"Changed him, how?" asked the baron.

"He reads all sorts of books."

"Ah! ah!" exclaimed the baron, "so that's why he has given up hunting
and riding."

"Her morals are very reprehensible, and she has taken a man's name,"
added Madame du Guenic.

"A war name, I suppose," said the old man. "I was called 'l'Intime,'
the Comte de Fontaine 'Grand-Jacques,' the Marquis de Montauran the
'Gars.' I was the friend of Ferdinand, who never submitted, any more
than I did. Ah! those were the good times; people shot each other, but
what of that? we amused ourselves all the same, here and there."

This war memory, pushing aside paternal anxiety, saddened Fanny for a
moment. The rector's revelations, the want of confidence shown to her
by Calyste, had kept her from sleeping.

"Suppose Monsieur le chevalier does love Mademoiselle des Touches,
where's the harm?" said Mariotte. "She has thirty thousand francs a
year and she is very handsome."

"What is that you say, Mariotte?" exclaimed the old baron. "A Guenic
marry a des Touches! The des Touches were not even grooms in the days
when du Guesclin considered our alliance a signal honor."

"A woman who takes a man's name,--Camille Maupin!" said the baroness.

"The Maupins are an old family," said the baron; "they bear: gules,
three--" He stopped. "But she cannot be a Maupin and a des Touches
both," he added.

"She is called Maupin on the stage."

"A des Touches could hardly be an actress," said the old man. "Really,
Fanny, if I did not know you, I should think you were out of your
head."

"She writes plays, and books," continued the baroness.

"Books?" said the baron, looking at his wife with an air of as much
surprise as though she were telling of a miracle. "I have heard that
Mademoiselle Scudery and Madame de Sevigne wrote books, but it was not
the best thing they did."

"Are you going to dine at Les Touches, monsieur?" said Mariotte, when
Calyste entered.

"Probably," replied the young man.

Mariotte was not inquisitive; she was part of the family; and she left
the room without waiting to hear what the baroness would say to her
son.

"Are you going again to Les Touches, my Calyste?" The baroness
emphasized the /my/. "Les Touches is not a respectable or decent
house. Its mistress leads an irregular life; she will corrupt our
Calyste. Already Camille Maupin has made him read many books; he has
had adventures--You knew all that, my naughty child, and you never
said one word to your best friends!"

"The chevalier is discreet," said his father,--"a virtue of the olden
time."

"Too discreet," said the jealous mother, observing the red flush on
her son's forehead.

"My dear mother," said Calyste, kneeling down beside the baroness, "I
didn't think it necessary to publish my defeat. Mademoiselle des
Touches, or, if you choose to call her so, Camille Maupin, rejected my
love more than eighteen months ago, during her last stay at Les
Touches. She laughed at me, gently; saying she might very well be my
mother; that a woman of forty committed a sort of crime against nature
in loving a minor, and that she herself was incapable of such
depravity. She made a thousand little jokes, which hurt me--for she is
witty as an angel; but when she saw me weep hot tears she tried to
comfort me, and offered me her friendship in the noblest manner. She
has more heart than even talent; she is as generous as you are
yourself. I am now her child. On her return here lately, hearing from
her that she loves another, I have resigned myself. Do not repeat the
calumnies that have been said of her. Camille is an artist, she has
genius, she leads one of those exceptional existences which cannot be
judged like ordinary lives."

"My child," said the religious Fanny, "nothing can excuse a woman for
not conducting herself as the Church requires. She fails in her duty
to God and to society by abjuring the gentle tenets of her sex. A
woman commits a sin in even going to a theatre; but to write the
impieties that actors repeat, to roam about the world, first with an
enemy to the Pope, and then with a musician, ah! Calyste, you can
never persuade me that such acts are deeds of faith, hope, or charity.
Her fortune was given her by God to do good, and what good does she do
with hers?"

Calyste sprang up suddenly, and looked at his mother.

"Mother," he said, "Camille is my friend; I cannot hear her spoken of
in this way; I would give my very life for her."

"Your life!" said the baroness, looking at her son, with startled
eyes. "Your life is our life, the life of all of us."

"My nephew has just said many things I do not understand," said the
old woman, turning toward him.

"Where did he learn them?" said the mother; "at Les Touches."

"Yes, my darling mother; she found me ignorant as a carp, and she has
taught me."

"You knew the essential things when you learned the duties taught us
by religion," replied the baroness. "Ah! this woman is fated to
destroy your noble and sacred beliefs."

The old maid rose, and solemnly stretched forth her hands toward her
brother, who was dozing in his chair.

"Calyste," she said, in a voice that came from her heart, "your father
has never opened books, he speaks Breton, he fought for God and for
the king. Educated people did the evil, educated noblemen deserted
their land,--be educated if you choose!"

So saying, she sat down and began to knit with a rapidity which
betrayed her inward emotion.

"My angel," said the mother, weeping, "I foresee some evil coming down
upon you in that house."

"Who is making Fanny weep?" cried the old man, waking with a start at
the sound of his wife's voice. He looked round upon his sister, his
son, and the baroness. "What is the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing, my friend," replied his wife.

"Mamma," said Calyste, whispering in his mother's ear, "it is
impossible for me to explain myself just now; but to-night you and I
will talk of this. When you know all, you will bless Mademoiselle des
Touches."

"Mothers do not like to curse," replied the baroness. "I could not
curse a woman who truly loved my Calyste."

The young man bade adieu to his father and went out. The baron and his
wife rose to see him pass through the court-yard, open the gate, and
disappear. The baroness did not again take up the newspaper; she was
too agitated. In this tranquil, untroubled life such a discussion was
the equivalent of a quarrel in other homes. Though somewhat calmed,
her motherly uneasiness was not dispersed. Whither would such a
friendship, which might claim the life of Calyste and destroy it, lead
her boy? Bless Mademoiselle des Touches? how could that be? These
questions were as momentous to her simple soul as the fury of
revolutions to a statesman. Camille Maupin was Revolution itself in
that calm and placid home.

"I fear that woman will ruin him," she said, picking up the paper.

"My dear Fanny," said the old baron, with a jaunty air, "you are too
much of an angel to understand these things. Mademoiselle des Touches
is, they say, as black as a crow, as strong as a Turk, and forty years
old. Our dear Calyste was certain to fall in love with her. Of course
he will tell certain honorable little lies to conceal his happiness.
Let him alone to amuse himself with his first illusions."

"If it had been any other woman--" began the baroness.

"But, my dear Fanny, if the woman were a saint she would not accept
your son." The baroness again picked up the paper. "I will go and see
her myself," added the baron, "and tell you all about her."

This speech has no savor at the present moment. But after reading the
biography of Camille Maupin you can then imagine the old baron
entering the lists against that illustrious woman.



VI

BIOGRAPHY OF CAMILLE MAUPIN

The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen Calyste, its
flower and pride, going, morning or evening, often morning and
evening, to Les Touches, concluded that Mademoiselle Felicite des
Touches was passionately in love with the beautiful youth, and that
she practised upon him all kinds of sorceries. More than one young
girl and wife asked herself by what right an old woman exercised so
absolute an empire over that angel. When Calyste passed along the
Grand Rue to the Croisic gate many a regretful eye was fastened on
him.

It now became necessary to explain the rumors which hovered about the
person whom Calyste was on his way to see. These rumors, swelled by
Breton gossip, envenomed by public ignorance, had reached the rector.
The receiver of taxes, the /juge de paix/, the head of the
Saint-Nazaire custom-house and other lettered persons had not reassured
the abbe by relating to him the strange and fantastic life of the
female writer who concealed herself under the masculine name of Camille
Maupin. She did not as yet eat little children, nor kill her slaves
like Cleopatra, nor throw men into the river as the heroine of the
Tour de Nesle was falsely accused of doing; but to the Abbe Grimont
this monstrous creature, a cross between a siren and an atheist, was
an immoral combination of woman and philosopher who violated every
social law invented to restrain or utilize the infirmities of
womankind.

Just as Clara Gazul is the female pseudonym of a distinguished male
writer, George Sand the masculine pseudonym of a woman of genius, so
Camille Maupin was the mask behind which was long hidden a charming
young woman, very well-born, a Breton, named Felicite des Touches, the
person who was now causing such lively anxiety to the Baronne du
Guenic and the excellent rector of Guerande. The Breton des Touches
family has no connection with the family of the same name in Touraine,
to which belongs the ambassador of the Regent, even more famous to-day
for his writings than for his diplomatic talents.

Camille Maupin, one of the few celebrated women of the nineteenth
century, was long supposed to be a man, on account of the virility of
her first writings. All the world now knows the two volumes of plays,
not intended for representation on the stage, written after the manner
of Shakespeare or Lopez de Vega, published in 1822, which made a sort
of literary revolution when the great question of the classics and the
romanticists palpitated on all sides,--in the newspapers, at the
clubs, at the Academy, everywhere. Since then, Camille Maupin has
written several plays and a novel, which have not belied the success
obtained by her first publication--now, perhaps, too much forgotten.
To explain by what net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation
of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a
man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she
kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would
be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal
beings who rise in humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted
by its rarity,--for in twenty centuries we can count, at most, twenty
famous women. Therefore, although in these pages she stands as a
secondary character, in consideration of the fact that she plays a
great part in the literary history of our epoch, and that her
influence over Calyste was great, no one, we think, will regret being
made to pause before that figure rather longer than modern art
permits.

Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches became an orphan in 1793. Her
property escaped confiscation by reason of the deaths of her father
and brother. The first was killed on the 10th of August, at the
threshold of the palace, among the defenders of the king, near whose
person his rank as major of the guards of the gate had placed him. Her
brother, one of the body-guard, was massacred at Les Carmes.
Mademoiselle des Touches was two years old when her mother died,
killed by grief, a few days after this second catastrophe. When dying,
Madame des Touches confided her daughter to her sister, a nun of
Chelles. Madame de Faucombe, the nun, prudently took the orphan to
Faucombe, a good-sized estate near Nantes, belonging to Madame des
Touches, and there she settled with the little girl and three sisters
of her convent. The populace of Nantes, during the last days of the
Terror, tore down the chateau, seized the nuns and Mademoiselle des
Touches, and threw them into prison on a false charge of receiving
emissaries of Pitt and Coburg. The 9th Thermidor released them.
Felicite's aunt died of fear. Two of the sisters left France, and the
third confided the little girl to her nearest relation, Monsieur de
Faucombe, her maternal great-uncle, who lived in Nantes.

Monsieur de Faucombe, an old man sixty years of age, had married a
young woman to whom he left the management of his affairs. He busied
himself in archaeology,--a passion, or to speak more correctly, one of
those manias which enable old men to fancy themselves still living.
The education of his ward was therefore left to chance. Little
cared-for by her uncle's wife, a young woman given over to the social
pleasures of the imperial epoch, Felicite brought herself up as a boy.
She kept company with Monsieur de Faucombe in his library; where she
read everything it pleased her to read. She thus obtained a knowledge
of life in theory, and had no innocence of mind, though virgin
personally. Her intellect floated on the impurities of knowledge while
her heart was pure. Her learning became extraordinary, the result of a
passion for reading, sustained by a powerful memory. At eighteen years
of age she was as well-informed on all topics as a young man entering
a literary career has need to be in our day. Her prodigious reading
controlled her passions far more than conventual life would have done;
for there the imaginations of young girls run riot. A brain crammed
with knowledge that was neither digested nor classed governed the
heart and soul of the child. This depravity of the intellect, without
action upon the chastity of the body, would have amazed philosophers
and observers, had any one in Nantes even suspected the powers of
Mademoiselle des Touches.

The result of all this was in a contrary direction to the cause.
Felicite had no inclinations toward evil; she conceived everything by
thought, but abstained from deed. Old Faucombe was enchanted with her,
and she helped him in his work,--writing three of his books, which the
worthy old gentleman believed were his own; for his spiritual
paternity was blind. Such mental labor, not agreeing with the
developments of girlhood, had its effect. Felicite fell ill; her blood
was overheated, and her chest seemed threatened with inflammation. The
doctors ordered horseback exercise and the amusements of society.
Mademoiselle des Touches became, in consequence, an admirable
horsewoman, and recovered her health in a few months.

At the age of eighteen she appeared in the world, where she produced
so great a sensation that no one in Nantes called her anything else
than "the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches." Led to enter society by
one of the imperishable sentiments in the heart of a woman, however
superior she may be, the worship she inspired found her cold and
unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her
studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they
attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on
making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,--a woman, in short. But she
expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in
harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its
knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the
commonplaces of conversation, the silliness of gallantry; and more
especially was she shocked by the supremacy of military men, to whom
society made obeisance at that period. She had, not unnaturally,
neglected the minor accomplishments. Finding herself inferior to the
pretty dolls who played on the piano and made themselves agreeable by
singing ballads, she determined to be a musician. Retiring into her
former solitude she set to work resolvedly, under the direction of the
best master in the town. She was rich, and she sent for Steibelt when
the time came to perfect herself. The astonished town still talks of
this princely conduct. The stay of that master cost her twelve
thousand francs. Later, when she went to Paris, she studied harmony
and thorough-bass, and composed the music of two operas which have had
great success, though the public has never been admitted to the secret
of their authorship. Ostensibly these operas are by Conti, one of the
most eminent musicians of our day; but this circumstance belongs to
the history of her heart, and will be mentioned later on.

The mediocrity of the society of a provincial town wearied her so
excessively, her imagination was so filled with grandiose ideas that
although she returned to the salons to eclipse other women once more
by her beauty, and enjoy her new triumph as a musician, she again
deserted them; and having proved her power to her cousins, and driven
two lovers to despair, she returned to her books, her piano, the works
of Beethoven, and her old friend Faucombe. In 1812, when she was
twenty-one years of age, the old archaeologist handed over to her his
guardianship accounts. From that year, she took control of her
fortune, which consisted of fifteen thousand francs a year, derived
from Les Touches, the property of her father; twelve thousand a year
from Faucombe (which, however, she increased one-third on renewing the
leases); and a capital of three hundred thousand francs laid by during
her minority by her guardians.

Felicite acquired from her experience of provincial life, an
understanding of money, and that strong tendency to administrative
wisdom which enables the provinces to hold their own under the
ascensional movement of capital towards Paris. She drew her three
hundred thousand francs from the house of business where her guardian
had placed them, and invested them on the Grand-livre at the very
moment of the disasters of the retreat from Moscow. In this way, she
increased her income by thirty thousand francs. All expenses paid, she
found herself with fifty thousand francs a year to invest. At
twenty-one years of age a girl with such force of will is the equal of
a man of thirty. Her mind had taken a wide range; habits of criticism
enabled her to judge soberly of men, and art, and things, and public
questions. Henceforth she resolved to leave Nantes; but old Faucombe
falling ill with his last illness, she, who had been both wife and
daughter to him, remained to nurse him, with the devotion of an angel,
for eighteen months, closing his eyes at the moment when Napoleon was
struggling with all Europe on the corpse of France. Her removal to
Paris was therefore still further postponed until the close of that
crisis.

As a Royalist, she hastened to be present at the return of the
Bourbons to Paris. There the Grandlieus, to whom she was related,
received her as their guest; but the catastrophes of March 20
intervened, and her future was vague and uncertain. She was thus
enabled to see with her own eyes that last image of the Empire, and
behold the Grand Army when it came to the Champ de Mars, as to a Roman
circus, to salute its Caesar before it went to its death at Waterloo.
The great and noble soul of Felicite was stirred by that magic
spectacle. The political commotions, the glamour of that theatrical
play of three months which history has called the Hundred Days,
occupied her mind and preserved her from all personal emotions in the
midst of a convulsion which dispersed the royalist society among whom
she had intended to reside. The Grandlieus followed the Bourbons to
Ghent, leaving their house to Mademoiselle des Touches. Felicite, who
did not choose to take a subordinate position, purchased for one
hundred and thirty thousand francs one of the finest houses in the rue
Mont Blanc, where she installed herself on the return of the Bourbons
in 1815. The garden of this house is to-day worth two millions.

Accustomed to control her own life, Felicite soon familiarized herself
with the ways of thought and action which are held to be exclusively
the province of man. In 1816 she was twenty-five years old. She knew
nothing of marriage; her conception of it was wholly that of thought;
she judged it in its causes instead of its effect, and saw only its
objectionable side. Her superior mind refused to make the abdication
by which a married woman begins that life; she keenly felt the value
of independence, and was conscious of disgust for the duties of
maternity.

It is necessary to give these details to explain the anomalies
presented by the life of Camille Maupin. She had known neither father
nor mother; she had been her own mistress from childhood; her guardian
was an old archaeologist. Chance had flung her into the regions of
knowledge and of imagination, into the world of literature, instead of
holding her within the rigid circle defined by the futile education
given to women, and by maternal instructions as to dress, hypocritical
propriety, and the hunting graces of their sex. Thus, long before she
became celebrated, a glance might have told an observer that she had
never played with dolls.

Toward the close of the year 1817 Felicite des Touches began to
perceive, not the fading of her beauty, but the beginning of a certain
lassitude of body. She saw that a change would presently take place in
her person as the result of her obstinate celibacy. She wanted to
retain her youth and beauty, to which at that time she clung. Science
warned her of the sentence pronounced by Nature upon all her
creations, which perish as much by the misconception of her laws as by
the abuse of them. The macerated face of her aunt returned to her
memory and made her shudder. Placed between marriage and love, her
desire was to keep her freedom; but she was now no longer indifferent
to homage and the admiration that surrounded her. She was, at the
moment when this history begins, almost exactly what she was in 1817.
Eighteen years had passed over her head and respected it. At forty she
might have been thought no more than twenty-five.