Beatrix

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Beatrix


So saying, she held out the letter to him.

At this moment Claude Vignon entered the room. At his unexpected
apparition Calyste and Felicite were both silent for a moment,--she
from surprise, he from a vague uneasiness. The vast forehead, broad
and high, of the new-comer, who was bald at the age of thirty-seven,
now seemed darkened by annoyance. His firm, judicial mouth expressed a
habit of chilling sarcasm. Claude Vignon is imposing, in spite of the
precocious deteriorations of a face once magnificent, and now grown
haggard. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five he strongly
resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the
human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance
is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening;
leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of
weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent;
perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of
comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without
definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it
never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an
architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now
by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid
dark tints above the eyelids; the temples have lost their freshness.
The chin, of incomparable distinction, is getting doubled, but without
dignity. His voice, never sonorous, is weakening; without being either
hoarse or extinct, it touches the confines of hoarseness and
extinction. The impassibility of that fine head, the fixity of that
glance, cover irresolution and weakness, which the keenly intelligent
and sarcastic smile belies. The weakness lies wholly in action, not in
thought; there are traces of an encyclopedic comprehension on that
brow, and in the habitual movement of a face that is childlike and
splendid both. The man is tall, slightly bent already, like all those
who bear the weight of a world of thought. Such long, tall bodies are
never remarkable for continuous effort or creative activity.
Charlemagne, Belisarious, and Constantine are noted exceptions to this
rule.

Certainly Claude Vignon presents a variety of mysteries to be solved.
In the first place, he is very simple and very wily. Though he falls
into excesses with the readiness of a courtesan, his powers of thought
remain untouched. Yet his intellect, which is competent to criticise
art, science, literature, and politics, is incompetent to guide his
external life. Claude contemplates himself within the domain of his
intellectual kingdom, and abandons his outer man with Diogenic
indifference. Satisfied to penetrate all, to comprehend all by
thought, he despises materialities; and yet, if it becomes a question
of creating, doubt assails him; he sees obstacles, he is not inspired
by beauties, and while he is debating means, he sits with his arms
pendant, accomplishing nothing. He is the Turk of the intellect made
somnolent by meditation. Criticism is his opium; his harem of books to
read disgusts him with real work. Indifferent to small things as well
as great things, he is sometimes compelled, by the very weight of his
head, to fall into a debauch, and abdicate for a few hours the fatal
power of omnipotent analysis. He is far too preoccupied with the wrong
side of genius, and Camille Maupin's desire to put him back on the
right side is easily conceivable. The task was an attractive one.
Claude Vignon thinks himself a great politician as well as a great
writer; but this unpublished Machiavelli laughs within himself at all
ambitions; he knows what he can do; he has instinctively taken the
measure of his future on his faculties; he sees his greatness, but he
also sees obstacles, grows alarmed or disgusted, lets the time roll
by, and does not go to work. Like Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist,
like Nathan the dramatic author, like Blondet, another journalist, he
came from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, to which we owe the greater
number of our writers.

"Which way did you come?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches, coloring
with either pleasure or surprise.'

"By the door," replied Claude Vignon, dryly.

"Oh," she cried, shrugging her shoulders, "I am aware that you are not
a man to climb in by a window."

"Scaling a window is a badge of honor for a beloved woman."

"Enough!" said Felicite.

"Am I in the way?" asked Claude.

"Monsieur," said Calyste, artlessly, "this letter--"

"Pray keep it; I ask no questions; at our age we understand such
affairs," he answered, interrupting Calyste with a sardonic air.

"But, monsieur," began Calyste, much provoked.

"Calm yourself, young man; I have the utmost indulgence for
sentiments."

"My dear Calyste," said Camille, wishing to speak.

"'Dear'?" said Vignon, interrupting her.

"Claude is joking," said Camille, continuing her remarks to Calyste.
"He is wrong to do it with you, who know nothing of Parisian ways."

"I did not know that I was joking," said Claude Vignon, very gravely.

"Which way did you come?" asked Felicite again. "I have been watching
the road to Croisic for the last two hours."

"Not all the time," replied Vignon.

"You are too bad to jest in this way."

"Am I jesting?"

Calyste rose.

"Why should you go so soon? You are certainly at your ease here," said
Vignon.

"Quite the contrary," replied the angry young Breton, to whom Camille
Maupin stretched out a hand, which he took and kissed, dropping a tear
upon it, after which he took his leave.

"I should like to be that little young man," said the critic, sitting
down, and taking one end of the hookah. "How he will love!"

"Too much; for then he will not be loved in return," replied
Mademoiselle des Touches. "Madame de Rochefide is coming here," she
added.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Claude. "With Conti?"

"She will stay here alone, but he accompanies her."

"Have they quarrelled?"

"No."

"Play me a sonata of Beethoven's; I know nothing of the music he wrote
for the piano."

Claude began to fill the tube of the hookah with Turkish tobacco, all
the while examining Camille much more attentively than she observed. A
dreadful thought oppressed him; he fancied he was being used for a
blind by this woman. The situation was a novel one.

Calyste went home thinking no longer of Beatrix de Rochefide and her
letter; he was furious against Claude Vignon for what he considered
the utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it
possible to be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on
his knees, not believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He
felt a desire to turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man.
Ignorant he might be, as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of
thought of the jesters of the press, but one thing he knew--Love was
the human religion.

When his mother saw him entering the court-yard she uttered an
exclamation of joy, and Zephirine whistled for Mariotte.

"Mariotte, the boy is coming! cook the fish!"

"I see him, mademoiselle," replied the woman.

Fanny, uneasy at the sadness she saw on her son's brow, picked up her
worsted-work; the old aunt took out her knitting. The baron gave his
arm-chair to his son and walked about the room, as if to stretch his
legs before going out to take a turn in the garden. No Flemish or
Dutch picture ever presented an interior in tones more mellow, peopled
with faces and forms so harmoniously blending. The handsome young man
in his black velvet coat, the mother, still so beautiful, and the aged
brother and sister framed by that ancient hall, were a moving domestic
harmony.

Fanny would fain have questioned Calyste, but he had already pulled a
letter from his pocket,--that letter of the Marquise Beatrix, which
was, perhaps, destined to destroy the happiness of this noble family.
As he unfolded it, Calyste's awakened imagination showed him the
marquise dressed as Camille Maupin had fancifully depicted her.

From the Marquise de Rochefide to Mademoiselle des Touches.

Genoa, July 2.

I have not written to you since our stay in Florence, my dear
friend, for Venice and Rome have absorbed my time, and, as you
know, happiness occupies a large part of life; so far, we have
neither of us dropped from its first level. I am a little
fatigued; for when one has a soul not easy to /blaser/, the
constant succession of enjoyments naturally causes lassitude.

Our friend has had a magnificent triumph at the Scala and the
Fenice, and now at the San Carlo. Three Italian operas in two
years! You cannot say that love has made him idle. We have been
warmly received everywhere,--though I myself would have preferred
solitude and silence. Surely that is the only suitable manner of
life for women who have placed themselves in direct opposition to
society? I expected such a life; but love, my dear friend, is a
more exacting master than marriage,--however, it is sweet to obey
him; though I did not think I should have to see the world again,
even by snatches, and the attentions I receive are so many stabs.
I am no longer on a footing of equality with the highest rank of
women; and the more attentions are paid to me, the more my
inferiority is made apparent.

Gennaro could not comprehend this sensitiveness; but he has been
so happy that it would ill become me not to have sacrificed my
petty vanity to that great and noble thing,--the life of an
artist. We women live by love, whereas men live by love and
action; otherwise they would not be men. Still, there are great
disadvantages for a woman in the position in which I have put
myself. You have escaped them; you continue to be a person in the
eyes of the world, which has no rights over you; you have your own
free will, and I have lost mine. I am speaking now of the things
of the heart, not those of social life, which I have utterly
renounced. You can be coquettish and self-willed, and have all the
graces of a woman who loves, a woman who can give or refuse her
love as she pleases; you have kept the right to have caprices, in
the interests even of your love. In short, to-day you still
possess your right of feeling, while I, I have no longer any
liberty of heart, which I think precious to exercise in love, even
though the love itself may be eternal. I have no right now to that
privilege of quarrelling in jest to which so many women cling, and
justly; for is it not the plummet line with which to sound the
hearts of men? I have no threat at my command. I must draw my
power henceforth from obedience, from unlimited gentleness; I must
make myself imposing by the greatness of my love. I would rather
die than leave Gennaro, and my pardon lies in the sanctity of my
love. Between social dignity and my petty personal dignity, I did
right not to hesitate. If at times I have a few melancholy
feelings, like clouds that pass through a clear blue sky, and to
which all women like to yield themselves, I keep silence about
them; they might seem like regrets. Ah me! I have so fully
understood the obligations of my position that I have armed myself
with the utmost indulgence; but so far, Gennaro has not alarmed my
susceptible jealousy. I don't as yet see where that dear great
genius may fail.

Dear angel, I am like those pious souls who argue with their God,
for are not you my Providence? do I not owe my happiness to you?
You must never doubt, therefore, that you are constantly in my
thoughts.

I have seen Italy at last; seen it as you saw it, and as it ought
to be seen,--lighted to our souls by love, as it is by its own
bright sun and its masterpieces. I pity those who, being moved to
adoration at every step, have no hand to press, no heart in which
to shed the exuberance of emotions which calm themselves when
shared. These two years have been to me a lifetime, in which my
memory has stored rich harvests. Have you made plans, as I do,
to stay forever at Chiavari, to buy a palazzo in Venice, a
summer-house at Sorrento, a villa in Florence? All loving women
dread society; but I, who am cast forever outside of it, ought I not
to bury myself in some beautiful landscape, on flowery slopes,
facing the sea, or in a valley that equals a sea, like that of
Fiesole?

But alas! we are only poor artists, and want of money is bringing
these two bohemians back to Paris. Gennaro does not want me to
feel that I have lost my luxury, and he wishes to put his new
work, a grand opera, into rehearsal at once. You will understand,
of course, my dearest, that I cannot set foot in Paris. I could
not, I would not, even if it costs me my love, meet one of those
glances of women, or of men, which would make me think of murder
or suicide. Yes, I could hack in pieces whoever insulted me with
pity; like Chateauneuf, who, in the time of Henri III., I think,
rode his horse at the Provost of Paris for a wrong of that kind,
and trampled him under hoof.

I write, therefore, to say that I shall soon pay you a visit at
Les Touches. I want to stay there, in that Chartreuse, while
awaiting the success of our Gennaro's opera. You will see that I
am bold with my benefactress, my sister; but I prove, at any rate,
that the greatness of obligations laid upon me has not led me, as
it does so many people, to ingratitude. You have told me so much
of the difficulties of the land journey that I shall go to Croisic
by water. This idea came to me on finding that there is a little
Danish vessel now here, laden with marble, which is to touch at
Croisic for a cargo of salt on its way back to the Baltic. I shall
thus escape the fatigue and the cost of the land journey. Dear
Felicite, you are the only person with whom I could be alone
without Conti. Will it not be some pleasure to have a woman with
you who understands your heart as fully as you do hers?

Adieu, /a bientot/. The wind is favorable, and I set sail, wafting
you a kiss.

Beatrix.


"Ah! she loves, too!" thought Calyste, folding the letter sadly.

That sadness flowed to the heart of the mother as if some gleam had
lighted up a gulf to her. The baron had gone out; Fanny went to the
door of the tower and pushed the bolt, then she returned, and leaned
upon the back of her boy's chair, like the sister of Dido in Guerin's
picture, and said,--

"What is it, my Calyste? what makes you so sad? You promised to
explain to me these visits to Les Touches; I am to bless its mistress,
--at least, you said so."

"Yes, indeed you will, dear mother," he replied. "She has shown me the
insufficiency of my education at an epoch when the nobles ought to
possess a personal value in order to give life to their rank. I was as
far from the age we live in as Guerande is from Paris. She has been,
as it were, the mother of my intellect."

"I cannot bless her for that," said the baroness, with tears in her
eyes.

"Mamma!" cried Calyste, on whose forehead those hot tears fell, two
pearls of sorrowful motherhood, "mamma, don't weep! Just now, when I
wanted to do her a service, and search the country round, she said,
'It will make your mother so uneasy.'"

"Did she say that? Then I can forgive her many things," replied Fanny.

"Felicite thinks only of my good," continued Calyste. "She often
checks the lively, venturesome language of artists so as not to shake
me in a faith which is, though she knows it not, unshakable. She has
told me of the life in Paris of several young men of the highest
nobility coming from their provinces, as I might do,--leaving families
without fortune, but obtaining in Paris, by the power of their will
and their intellect, a great career. I can do what the Baron de
Rastignac, now a minister of State, has done. Felicite has taught me;
I read with her; she gives me lessons on the piano; she is teaching me
Italian; she has initiated me into a thousand social secrets, about
which no one in Guerande knows anything at all. She could not give me
the treasures of her love, but she has given me those of her vast
intellect, her mind, her genius. She does not want to be a pleasure,
but a light to me; she lessens not one of my faiths; she herself has
faith in the nobility, she loves Brittany, she--"

"She has changed our Calyste," said his blind old aunt, interrupting
him. "I do not understand one word he has been saying. You have a
solid roof over your head, my good nephew; you have parents and
relations who adore you, and faithful servants; you can marry some
good little Breton girl, religious and accomplished, who will make you
happy. Reserve your ambitions for your eldest son, who may be four
times as rich as you, if you choose to live tranquilly, thriftily, in
obscurity,--but in the peace of God,--in order to release the burdens
on your estate. It is all as simple as a Breton heart. You will be,
not so rapidly perhaps, but more solidly, a rich nobleman."

"Your aunt is right, my darling; she plans for your happiness with as
much anxiety as I do myself. If I do not succeed in marrying you to my
niece, Margaret, the daughter of your uncle, Lord Fitzwilliam, it is
almost certain that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel will leave her fortune to
whichever of her nieces you may choose."

"And besides, there's a little gold to be found here," added the old
aunt in a low voice, with a mysterious glance about her.

"Marry! at my age!" he said, casting on his mother one of those looks
which melt the arguments of mothers. "Am I to live without my
beautiful fond loves? Must I never tremble or throb or fear or gasp,
or lie beneath implacable looks and soften them? Am I never to know
beauty in its freedom, the fantasy of the soul, the clouds that course
through the azure of happiness, which the breath of pleasure
dissipates? Ah! shall I never wander in those sweet by-paths moist
with dew; never stand beneath the drenching of a gutter and not know
it rains, like those lovers seen by Diderot; never take, like the Duc
de Lorraine, a live coal in my hand? Are there no silken ladders for
me, no rotten trellises to cling to and not fall? Shall I know nothing
of woman but conjugal submission; nothing of love but the flame of its
lamp-wick? Are my longings to be satisfied before they are roused?
Must I live out my days deprived of that madness of the heart that
makes a man and his power? Would you make me a married monk? No! I
have eaten of the fruit of Parisian civilization. Do you not see that
you have, by the ignorant morals of this family, prepared the fire
that consumes me, that /will/ consume me utterly, unless I can adore
the divineness I see everywhere,--in those sands gleaming in the sun,
in the green foliage, in all the women, beautiful, noble, elegant,
pictured in the books and in the poems I have read with Camille? Alas!
there is but one such woman in Guerande, and it is you, my mother! The
birds of my beautiful dream, they come from Paris, they fly from the
pages of Scott, of Byron,--Parisina, Effie, Minna! yes, and that royal
duchess, whom I saw on the moors among the furze and the ferns, whose
very aspect sent the blood to my heart."

The baroness saw these thoughts flaming in the eyes of her son,
clearer, more beautiful, more living than art can tell to those who
read them. She grasped them rapidly, flung to her as they were in
glances like arrows from an upset quiver. Without having read
Beaumarchais, she felt, as other women would have felt, that it would
be a crime to marry Calyste.

"Oh! my child!" she said, taking him in her arms, and kissing the
beautiful hair that was still hers, "marry whom you will, and when you
will, but be happy! My part in life is not to hamper you."

Mariotte came to lay the table. Gasselin was out exercising Calyste's
horse, which the youth had not mounted for two months. The three
women, mother, aunt, and Mariotte, shared in the tender feminine
wiliness, which taught them to make much of Calyste when he dined at
home. Breton plainness fought against Parisian luxury, now brought to
the very doors of Guerande. Mariotte endeavored to wean her young
master from the accomplished service of Camille Maupin's kitchen, just
as his mother and aunt strove to hold him in the net of their
tenderness and render all comparison impossible.

"There's a salmon-trout for dinner, Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and
pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said
Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the cloth, a
cascade of snow.

After dinner, when the old aunt had taken up her knitting, and the
rector and Monsieur du Halga had arrived, allured by their precious
/mouche/, Calyste went back to Les Touches on the pretext of returning
the letter.

Claude Vignon and Felicite were still at table. The great critic was
something of a gourmand, and Felicite pampered the vice, knowing how
indispensable a woman makes herself by such compliance. The
dinner-table presented that rich and brilliant aspect which modern
luxury, aided by the perfecting of handicrafts, now gives to its service.
The poor and noble house of Guenic little knew with what an adversary it
was attempting to compete, or what amount of fortune was necessary to
enter the lists against the silverware, the delicate porcelain, the
beautiful linen, the silver-gilt service brought from Paris by
Mademoiselle des Touches, and the science of her cook. Calyste
declined the liqueurs contained in one of those superb cases of
precious woods, which are something like tabernacles.

"Here's the letter," he said, with innocent ostentation, looking at
Claude, who was slowly sipping a glass of /liqueur-des-iles/.

"Well, what did you think of it?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches,
throwing the letter across the table to Vignon, who began to read it,
taking up and putting down at intervals his little glass.

"I thought--well, that Parisian women were very fortunate to have men
of genius to adore who adore them."

"Ah! you are still in your village," said Felicite, laughing. "What!
did you not see that she loves him less, and--"

"That is evident," said Claude Vignon, who had only read the first
page. "Do people reason on their situation when they really love; are
they as shrewd as the marquise, as observing, as discriminating? Your
dear Beatrix is held to Conti now by pride only; she is condemned to
love him /quand meme/."

"Poor woman!" said Camille.

Calyste's eyes were fixed on the table; he saw nothing about him. The
beautiful woman in the fanciful dress described that morning by
Felicite appeared to him crowned with light; she smiled to him, she
waved her fan; the other hand, issuing from its ruffle of lace, fell
white and pure on the heavy folds of her crimson velvet robe.

"She is just the thing for you," said Claude Vignon, smiling
sardonically at Calyste.

The young man was deeply wounded by the words, and by the manner in
which they were said.

"Don't put such ideas into Calyste's mind; you don't know how
dangerous such jokes may prove to be," said Mademoiselle des Touches,
hastily. "I know Beatrix, and there is something too grandiose in her
nature to allow her to change. Besides, Conti will be here."

"Ha!" said Claude Vignon, satirically, "a slight touch of jealousy,
eh?"

"Can you really think so?" said Camille, haughtily.

"You are more perspicacious than a mother," replied Claude Vignon,
still sarcastically.

"But it would be impossible," said Camille, looking at Calyste.

"They are very well matched," remarked Vignon. "She is ten years older
than he; and it is he who appears to be the girl--"

"A girl, monsieur," said Calyste, waking from his reverie, "who has
been twice under fire in La Vendee! If the Cause had had twenty
thousand more such girls--"

"I was giving you some well-deserved praise, and that is easier than
to give you a beard," remarked Vignon.

"I have a sword for those who wear their beards too long," cried
Calyste.

"And I am very good at an epigram," said the other, smiling. "We are
Frenchmen; the affair can easily be arranged."

Mademoiselle des Touches cast a supplicating look on Calyste, which
calmed him instantly.

"Why," said Felicite, as if to break up the discussion, "do young men
like my Calyste, begin by loving women of a certain age?"

"I don't know any sentiment more artless or more generous," replied
Vignon. "It is the natural consequence of the adorable qualities of
youth. Besides, how would old women end if it were not for such love?
You are young and beautiful, and will be for twenty years to come, so
I can speak of this matter before you," he added, with a keen look at
Mademoiselle des Touches. "In the first place the semi-dowagers, to
whom young men pay their first court, know much better how to make
love than younger women. An adolescent youth is too like a young woman
himself for a young woman to please him. Such a passion trenches on
the fable of Narcissus. Besides that feeling of repugnance, there is,
as I think, a mutual sense of inexperience which separates them. The
reason why the hearts of young women are only understood by mature
men, who conceal their cleverness under a passion real or feigned, is
precisely the same (allowing for the difference of minds) as that
which renders a woman of a certain age more adroit in attracting
youth. A young man feels that he is sure to succeed with her, and the
vanities of the woman are flattered by his suit. Besides, isn't it
natural for youth to fling itself on fruits? The autumn of a woman's
life offers many that are very toothsome,--those looks, for instance,
bold, and yet reserved, bathed with the last rays of love, so warm, so
sweet; that all-wise elegance of speech, those magnificent shoulders,
so nobly developed, the full and undulating outline, the dimpled
hands, the hair so well arranged, so cared for, that charming nape of
the neck, where all the resources of art are displayed to exhibit the
contrast between the hair and the flesh-tones, and to set in full
relief the exuberance of life and love. Brunettes themselves are fair
at such times, with the amber colors of maturity. Besides, such women
reveal in their smiles and display in their words a knowledge of the
world; they know how to converse; they can call up the whole of social
life to make a lover laugh; their dignity and their pride are
stupendous; or, in other moods, they can utter despairing cries which
touch his soul, farewells of love which they take care to render
useless, and only make to intensify his passion. Their devotions are
absolute; they listen to us; they love us; they catch, they cling to
love as a man condemned to death clings to the veriest trifles of
existence,--in short, love, absolute love, is known only through them.
I think such women can never be forgotten by a man, any more than he
can forget what is grand and sublime. A young woman has a thousand
distractions; these women have none. No longer have they self-love,
pettiness, or vanity; their love--it is the Loire at its mouth, it is
vast, it is swelled by all the illusions, all the affluents of life,
and this is why--but my muse is dumb," he added, observing the
ecstatic attitude of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was pressing
Calyste's hand with all her strength, perhaps to thank him for having
been the occasion of such a moment, of such an eulogy, so lofty that
she did not see the trap that it laid for her.