Honorine

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HONORINE

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated By
Clara Bell



DEDICATION

To Monsieur Achille Deveria

An affectionate remembrance from the Author.



HONORINE



If the French have as great an aversion for traveling as the English
have a propensity for it, both English and French have perhaps
sufficient reasons. Something better than England is everywhere to be
found; whereas it is excessively difficult to find the charms of
France outside France. Other countries can show admirable scenery, and
they frequently offer greater comfort than that of France, which makes
but slow progress in that particular. They sometimes display a
bewildering magnificence, grandeur, and luxury; they lack neither
grace nor noble manners; but the life of the brain, the talent for
conversation, the "Attic salt" so familiar at Paris, the prompt
apprehension of what one is thinking, but does not say, the spirit of
the unspoken, which is half the French language, is nowhere else to be
met with. Hence a Frenchman, whose raillery, as it is, finds so little
comprehension, would wither in a foreign land like an uprooted tree.
Emigration is counter to the instincts of the French nation. Many
Frenchmen, of the kind here in question, have owned to pleasure at
seeing the custom-house officers of their native land, which may seem
the most daring hyperbole of patriotism.

This preamble is intended to recall to such Frenchmen as have traveled
the extreme pleasure they have felt on occasionally finding their native
land, like an oasis, in the drawing-room of some diplomate: a pleasure
hard to be understood by those who have never left the asphalt of the
Boulevard des Italiens, and to whom the Quais of the left bank of the
Seine are not really Paris. To find Paris again! Do you know what that
means, O Parisians? It is to find--not indeed the cookery of the _Rocher
de Cancale_ as Borel elaborates it for those who can appreciate it, for
that exists only in the Rue Montorgueil--but a meal which reminds you of
it! It is to find the wines of France, which out of France are to be
regarded as myths, and as rare as the woman of whom I write! It is to
find--not the most fashionable pleasantry, for it loses its aroma
between Paris and the frontier--but the witty understanding, the
critical atmosphere in which the French live, from the poet down to the
artisan, from the duchess to the boy in the street.

In 1836, when the Sardinian Court was residing at Genoa, two
Parisians, more or less famous, could fancy themselves still in Paris
when they found themselves in a palazzo, taken by the French
Consul-General, on the hill forming the last fold of the Apennines
between the gate of San Tomaso and the well-known lighthouse, which is
to be seen in all the keepsake views of Genoa. This palazzo is one of
the magnificent villas on which Genoese nobles were wont to spend
millions at the time when the aristocratic republic was a power.

If the early night is beautiful anywhere, it surely is at Genoa, after
it has rained as it can rain there, in torrents, all the morning; when
the clearness of the sea vies with that of the sky; when silence
reigns on the quay and in the groves of the villa, and over the marble
heads with yawning jaws, from which water mysteriously flows; when the
stars are beaming; when the waves of the Mediterranean lap one after
another like the avowal of a woman, from whom you drag it word by
word. It must be confessed, that the moment when the perfumed air
brings fragrance to the lungs and to our day-dreams; when
voluptuousness, made visible and ambient as the air, holds you in your
easy-chair; when, a spoon in your hand, you sip an ice or a sorbet,
the town at your feet and fair woman opposite--such Boccaccio hours
can be known only in Italy and on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Imagine to yourself, round the table, the Marquis di Negro, a knight
hospitaller to all men of talent on their travels, and the Marquis
Damaso Pareto, two Frenchmen disguised as Genoese, a Consul-General
with a wife as beautiful as a Madonna, and two silent children--silent
because sleep has fallen on them--the French Ambassador and his wife,
a secretary to the Embassy who believes himself to be crushed and
mischievous; finally, two Parisians, who have come to take leave of
the Consul's wife at a splendid dinner, and you will have the picture
presented by the terrace of the villa about the middle of May--a
picture in which the predominant figure was that of a celebrated
woman, on whom all eyes centered now and again, the heroine of this
improvised festival.

One of the two Frenchmen was the famous landscape painter, Leon de
Lora; the other a well known critic Claude Vignon. They had both come
with this lady, one of the glories of the fair sex, Mademoiselle des
Touches, known in the literary world by the name of Camille Maupin.

Mademoiselle des Touches had been to Florence on business. With the
charming kindness of which she is prodigal, she had brought with her
Leon de Lora to show him Italy, and had gone on as far as Rome that he
might see the Campagna. She had come by Simplon, and was returning by
the Cornice road to Marseilles. She had stopped at Genoa, again on the
landscape painter's account. The Consul-General had, of course, wished
to do the honors of Genoa, before the arrival of the Court, to a woman
whose wealth, name, and position recommend her no less than her
talents. Camille Maupin, who knew her Genoa down to its smallest
chapels, had left her landscape painter to the care of the diplomate
and the two Genoese marquises, and was miserly of her minutes. Though
the ambassador was a distinguished man of letters, the celebrated lady
had refused to yield to his advances, dreading what the English call
an exhibition; but she had drawn in the claws of her refusals when it
was proposed that they should spend a farewell day at the Consul's
villa. Leon de Lora had told Camille that her presence at the villa
was the only return he could make to the Ambassador and his wife, the
two Genoese noblemen, the Consul and his wife. So Mademoiselle des
Touches had sacrificed one of those days of perfect freedom, which are
not always to be had in Paris by those on whom the world has its eye.

Now, the meeting being accounted for, it is easy to understand that
etiquette had been banished, as well as a great many women even of the
highest rank, who were curious to know whether Camille Maupin's manly
talent impaired her grace as a pretty woman, and to see, in a word,
whether the trousers showed below her petticoats. After dinner till
nine o'clock, when a collation was served, though the conversation had
been gay and grave by turns, and constantly enlivened by Leon de
Lora's sallies--for he is considered the most roguish wit of Paris
to-day--and by the good taste which will surprise no one after the
list of guests, literature had scarcely been mentioned. However, the
butterfly flittings of this French tilting match were certain to come
to it, were it only to flutter over this essentially French subject.
But before coming to the turn in the conversation which led the
Consul-General to speak, it will not be out of place to give some
account of him and his family.

This diplomate, a man of four-and-thirty, who had been married about
six years, was the living portrait of Lord Byron. The familiarity of
that face makes a description of the Consul's unnecessary. It may,
however, be noted that there was no affectation in his dreamy
expression. Lord Byron was a poet, and the Consul was poetical; women
know and recognize the difference, which explains without justifying
some of their attachments. His handsome face, thrown into relief by a
delightful nature, had captivated a Genoese heiress. A Genoese
heiress! the expression might raise a smile at Genoa, where, in
consequence of the inability of daughters to inherit, a woman is
rarely rich; but Onorina Pedrotti, the only child of a banker without
heirs male, was an exception. Notwithstanding all the flattering
advances prompted by a spontaneous passion, the Consul-General had not
seemed to wish to marry. Nevertheless, after living in the town for
two years, and after certain steps taken by the Ambassador during his
visits to the Genoese Court, the marriage was decided on. The young
man withdrew his former refusal, less on account of the touching
affection of Onorina Pedrotti than by reason of an unknown incident,
one of those crises of private life which are so instantly buried
under the daily tide of interests that, at a subsequent date, the most
natural actions seem inexplicable.

This involution of causes sometimes affects the most serious events of
history. This, at any rate, was the opinion of the town of Genoa,
where, to some women, the extreme reserve, the melancholy of the
French Consul could be explained only by the word passion. It may be
remarked, in passing, that women never complain of being the victims
of a preference; they are very ready to immolate themselves for the
common weal. Onorina Pedrotti, who might have hated the Consul if she
had been altogether scorned, loved her _sposo_ no less, and perhaps
more, when she know that he had loved. Women allow precedence in love
affairs. All is well if other women are in question.

A man is not a diplomate with impunity: the _sposo_ was as secret as
the grave--so secret that the merchants of Genoa chose to regard the
young Consul's attitude as premeditated, and the heiress might perhaps
have slipped through his fingers if he had not played his part of a
love-sick _malade imaginaire_. If it was real, the women thought it
too degrading to be believed.

Pedrotti's daughter gave him her love as a consolation; she lulled
these unknown griefs in a cradle of tenderness and Italian caresses.

Il Signor Pedrotti had indeed no reason to complain of the choice to
which he was driven by his beloved child. Powerful protectors in Paris
watched over the young diplomate's fortunes. In accordance with a
promise made by the Ambassador to the Consul-General's father-in-law,
the young man was created Baron and Commander of the Legion of Honor.
Signor Pedrotti himself was made a Count by the King of Sardinia.
Onorina's dower was a million of francs. As to the fortune of the Casa
Pedrotti, estimated at two millions, made in the corn trade, the young
couple came into it within six months of their marriage, for the first
and last Count Pedrotti died in January 1831.

Onorina Pedrotti is one of those beautiful Genoese women who, when
they are beautiful, are the most magnificent creatures in Italy.
Michael Angelo took his models in Genoa for the tomb of Giuliano.
Hence the fulness and singular placing of the breast in the figures of
Day and Night, which so many critics have thought exaggerated, but
which is peculiar to the women of Liguria. A Genoese beauty is no
longer to be found excepting under the mezzaro, as at Venice it is met
with only under the _fazzioli_. This phenomenon is observed among all
fallen nations. The noble type survives only among the populace, as
after the burning of a town coins are found hidden in the ashes. And
Onorina, an exception as regards her fortune, is no less an
exceptional patrician beauty. Recall to mind the figure of Night which
Michael Angelo has placed at the feet of the _Pensieroso_, dress her
in modern garb, twist that long hair round the magnificent head, a
little dark in complexion, set a spark of fire in those dreamy eyes,
throw a scarf about the massive bosom, see the long dress, white,
embroidered with flowers, imagine the statue sitting upright, with her
arms folded like those of Mademoiselle Georges, and you will see
before you the Consul's wife, with a boy of six, as handsome as a
mother's desire, and a little girl of four on her knees, as beautiful
as the type of childhood so laboriously sought out by the sculptor
David to grace a tomb.

This beautiful family was the object of Camille's secret study. It
struck Mademoiselle des Touches that the Consul looked rather too
absent-minded for a perfectly happy man.

Although, throughout the day, the husband and wife had offered her the
pleasing spectacle of complete happiness, Camille wondered why one of
the most superior men she had ever met, and whom she had seen too in
Paris drawing-rooms, remained as Consul-General at Genoa when he
possessed a fortune of a hundred odd thousand francs a year. But, at
the same time, she had discerned, by many of the little nothings which
women perceive with the intelligence of the Arab sage in _Zadig_, that
the husband was faithfully devoted. These two handsome creatures would
no doubt love each other without a misunderstanding till the end of
their days. So Camille said to herself alternately, "What is
wrong?--Nothing is wrong," following the misleading symptoms of the
Consul's demeanor; and he, it may be said, had the absolute calmness of
Englishmen, of savages, of Orientals, and of consummate diplomatists.

In discussing literature, they spoke of the perennial stock-in-trade
of the republic of letters--woman's sin. And they presently found
themselves confronted by two opinions: When a woman sins, is the man
or the woman to blame? The three women present--the Ambassadress, the
Consul's wife, and Mademoiselle des Touches, women, of course, of
blameless reputations--were without pity for the woman. The men tried
to convince these fair flowers of their sex that some virtues might
remain in a woman after she had fallen.

"How long are we going to play at hide-and-seek in this way?" said
Leon de Lora.

"_Cara vita_, go and put your children to bed, and send me by Gina the
little black pocket-book that lies on my Boule cabinet," said the
Consul to his wife.

She rose without a reply, which shows that she loved her husband very
truly, for she already knew French enough to understand that her
husband was getting rid of her.

"I will tell you a story in which I played a part, and after that we
can discuss it, for it seems to me childish to practise with the
scalpel on an imaginary body. Begin by dissecting a corpse."

Every one prepared to listen, with all the greater readiness because
they had all talked enough, and this is the moment to be chosen for
telling a story. This, then, is the Consul-General's tale:--

"When I was two-and-twenty, and had taken my degree in law, my old
uncle, the Abbe Loraux, then seventy-two years old, felt it necessary
to provide me with a protector, and to start me in some career. This
excellent man, if not indeed a saint, regarded each year of his life
as a fresh gift from God. I need not tell you that the father
confessor of a Royal Highness had no difficulty in finding a place for
a young man brought up by himself, his sister's only child. So one
day, towards the end of the year 1824, this venerable old man, who for
five years had been Cure of the White Friars at Paris, came up to the
room I had in his house, and said:

"'Get yourself dressed, my dear boy; I am going to introduce you to
some one who is willing to engage you as secretary. If I am not
mistaken, he may fill my place in the event of God's taking me to
Himself. I shall have finished mass at nine o'clock; you have
three-quarters of an hour before you. Be ready.'

"'What, uncle! must I say good-bye to this room, where for four years
I have been so happy?'

"'I have no fortune to leave you,' said he.

"'Have you not the reputation of your name to leave me, the memory of
your good works----?'

"'We need say nothing of that inheritance,' he replied, smiling. 'You
do not yet know enough of the world to be aware that a legacy of that
kind is hardly likely to be paid, whereas by taking you this morning
to M. le Comte'--Allow me," said the Consul, interrupting himself, "to
speak of my protector by his Christian name only, and to call him
Comte Octave.--'By taking you this morning to M. le Comte Octave, I
hope to secure you his patronage, which, if you are so fortunate as to
please that virtuous statesman--as I make no doubt you can--will be
worth, at least, as much as the fortune I might have accumulated for
you, if my brother-in-law's ruin and my sister's death had not fallen
on me like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky.'

"'Are you the Count's director?'

"'If I were, could I place you with him? What priest could be capable
of taking advantage of the secrets which he learns at the tribunal of
repentance? No; you owe this position to his Highness, the Keeper of
the Seals. My dear Maurice, you will be as much at home there as in
your father's house. The Count will give you a salary of two thousand
four hundred francs, rooms in his house, and an allowance of twelve
hundred francs in lieu of feeding you. He will not admit you to his
table, nor give you a separate table, for fear of leaving you to the
care of servants. I did not accept the offer when it was made to me
till I was perfectly certain that Comte Octave's secretary was never
to be a mere upper servant. You will have an immense amount of work,
for the Count is a great worker; but when you leave him, you will be
qualified to fill the highest posts. I need not warn you to be
discreet; that is the first virtue of any man who hopes to hold public
appointments.'

"You may conceive of my curiosity. Comte Octave, at that time, held
one of the highest legal appointments; he was in the confidence of
Madame the Dauphiness, who had just got him made a State Minister; he
led such a life as the Comte de Serizy, whom you all know, I think;
but even more quietly, for his house was in the Marais, Rue Payenne,
and he hardly ever entertained. His private life escaped public
comment by its hermit-like simplicity and by constant hard work.

"Let me describe my position to you in a few words. Having found in
the solemn headmaster of the College Saint-Louis a tutor to whom my
uncle delegated his authority, at the age of eighteen I had gone
through all the classes; I left school as innocent as a seminarist,
full of faith, on quitting Saint-Sulpice. My mother, on her deathbed,
had made my uncle promise that I should not become a priest, but I was
as pious as though I had to take orders. On leaving college, the Abbe
Loraux took me into his house and made me study law. During the four
years of study requisite for passing all the examinations, I worked
hard, but chiefly at things outside the arid fields of jurisprudence.
Weaned from literature as I had been at college, where I lived in the
headmaster's house, I had a thirst to quench. As soon as I had read a
few modern masterpieces, the works of all the preceding ages were
greedily swallowed. I became crazy about the theatre, and for a long
time I went every night to the play, though my uncle gave me only a
hundred francs a month. This parsimony, to which the good old man was
compelled by his regard for the poor, had the effect of keeping a
young man's desires within reasonable limits.

"When I went to live with Comte Octave I was not indeed an innocent,
but I thought of my rare escapades as crimes. My uncle was so truly
angelic, and I was so much afraid of grieving him, that in all those
four years I had never spent a night out. The good man would wait till
I came in to go to bed. This maternal care had more power to keep me
within bounds than the sermons and reproaches with which the life of a
young man is diversified in a puritanical home. I was a stranger to
the various circles which make up the world of Paris society; I only
knew some women of the better sort, and none of the inferior class but
those I saw as I walked about, or in the boxes at the play, and then
only from the depths of the pit where I sat. If, at that period, any
one had said to me, 'You will see Canalis, or Camille Maupin,' I
should have felt hot coals in my head and in my bowels. Famous people
were to me as gods, who neither spoke, nor walked, nor ate like other
mortals.

"How many tales of the Thousand-and-one Nights are comprehended in the
ripening of a youth! How many wonderful lamps must we have rubbed
before we understand that the True Wonderful Lamp is either luck, or
work, or genius. In some men this dream of the aroused spirit is but
brief; mine has lasted until now! In those days I always went to sleep
as Grand Duke of Tuscany,--as a millionaire,--as beloved by a
princess,--or famous! So to enter the service of Comte Octave, and
have a hundred louis a year, was entering on independent life. I had
glimpses of some chance of getting into society, and seeking for what
my heart desired most, a protectress, who would rescue me from the
paths of danger, which a young man of two-and-twenty can hardly help
treading, however prudent and well brought up he may be. I began to be
afraid of myself.

"The persistent study of other people's rights into which I had
plunged was not always enough to repress painful imaginings. Yes,
sometimes in fancy I threw myself into theatrical life; I thought I
could be a great actor; I dreamed of endless triumphs and loves,
knowing nothing of the disillusion hidden behind the curtain, as
everywhere else--for every stage has its reverse behind the scenes. I
have gone out sometimes, my heart boiling, carried away by an impulse
to rush hunting through Paris, to attach myself to some handsome woman
I might meet, to follow her to her door, watch her, write to her,
throw myself on her mercy, and conquer her by sheer force of passion.
My poor uncle, a heart consumed by charity, a child of seventy years,
as clear-sighted as God, as guileless as a man of genius, no doubt
read the tumult of my soul; for when he felt the tether by which he
held me strained too tightly and ready to break, he would never fail
to say, 'Here, Maurice, you too are poor! Here are twenty francs; go
and amuse yourself, you are not a priest!' And if you could have seen
the dancing light that gilded his gray eyes, the smile that relaxed
his fine lips, puckering the corners of his mouth, the adorable
expression of that august face, whose native ugliness was redeemed by
the spirit of an apostle, you would understand the feeling which made
me answer the Cure of White Friars only with a kiss, as if he had been
my mother.

"'In Comte Octave you will find not a master, but a friend,' said my
uncle on the way to the Rue Payenne. 'But he is distrustful, or to be
more exact, he is cautious. The statesman's friendship can be won only
with time; for in spite of his deep insight and his habit of gauging
men, he was deceived by the man you are succeeding, and nearly became
a victim to his abuse of confidence. This is enough to guide you in
your behavior to him.'

"When we knocked at the enormous outer door of a house as large as the
Hotel Carnavalet, with a courtyard in front and a garden behind, the
sound rang as in a desert. While my uncle inquired of an old porter in
livery if the Count were at home, I cast my eyes, seeing everything at
once, over the courtyard where the cobblestones were hidden in the
grass, the blackened walls where little gardens were flourishing above
the decorations of the elegant architecture, and on the roof, as high
as that of the Tuileries. The balustrade of the upper balconies was
eaten away. Through a magnificent colonnade I could see a second court
on one side, where were the offices; the door was rotting. An old
coachman was there cleaning an old carriage. The indifferent air of
this servant allowed me to assume that the handsome stables, where of
old so many horses had whinnied, now sheltered two at most. The
handsome facade of the house seemed to me gloomy, like that of a
mansion belonging to the State or the Crown, and given up to some
public office. A bell rang as we walked across, my uncle and I, from
the porter's lodge--_Inquire of the Porter_ was still written over the
door--towards the outside steps, where a footman came out in a livery
like that of Labranche at the Theatre Francais in the old stock plays.
A visitor was so rare that the servant was putting his coat on when he
opened a glass door with small panes, on each side of which the smoke
of a lamp had traced patterns on the walls.

"A hall so magnificent as to be worthy of Versailles ended in a
staircase such as will never again be built in France, taking up as
much space as the whole of a modern house. As we went up the marble
steps, as cold as tombstones, and wide enough for eight persons to
walk abreast, our tread echoed under sonorous vaulting. The banister
charmed the eye by its miraculous workmanship--goldsmith's work in
iron--wrought by the fancy of an artist of the time of Henri III.
Chilled as by an icy mantle that fell on our shoulders, we went
through ante-rooms, drawing-rooms opening one out of the other, with
carpetless parquet floors, and furnished with such splendid
antiquities as from thence would find their way to the curiosity
dealers. At last we reached a large study in a cross wing, with all
the windows looking into an immense garden.