Honorine

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Honorine


"'"I have long known your kindness," said she.

"'"Though you should prefer to remain here," said I, "and to
preserve your independence; though the most ardent love should find no
favor in your eyes, still, do not toil."

"'I gave her three certificates for twelve thousand francs a year
each; she took them, opened them languidly, and after reading them
through she gave me only a look as my reward. She fully understood
that I was not offering her money, but freedom.

"'"I am conquered," said she, holding out her hand, which I kissed.
"Come and see me as often as you like."

"'So she had done herself a violence in receiving me. Next day I
found her armed with affected high spirits, and it took two months of
habit before I saw her in her true character. But then it was like a
delicious May, a springtime of love that gave me ineffable bliss; she
was no longer afraid; she was studying me. Alas! when I proposed that
she should go to England to return ostensibly to me, to our home, that
she should resume her rank and live in our new residence, she was
seized with alarm.

"'"Why not live always as we are?" she said.

"'I submitted without saying a word.

"'"Is she making an experiment?" I asked myself as I left her. On my
way from my own house to the Rue Saint-Maur thoughts of love had
swelled in my heart, and I had said to myself, like a young man, "This
evening she will yield."

"'All my real or affected force was blown to the winds by a smile, by a
command from those proud, calm eyes, untouched by passion. I remembered
the terrible words you once quoted to me, "Lucretia's dagger wrote in
letters of blood the watchword of woman's charter--Liberty!" and they
froze me. I felt imperatively how necessary to me was Honorine's
consent, and how impossible it was to wring it from her. Could she guess
the storms that distracted me when I left as when I came?

"'At last I painted my situation in a letter to her, giving up the
attempt to speak of it. Honorine made no answer, and she was so sad
that I made as though I had not written. I was deeply grieved by the
idea that I could have distressed her; she read my heart and forgave
me. And this was how. Three days ago she received me, for the first
time, in her own blue-and-white room. It was bright with flowers,
dressed, and lighted up. Honorine was in a dress that made her
bewitching. Her hair framed that face that you know in its light
curls; and in it were some sprays of Cape heath; she wore a white
muslin gown, a white sash with long floating ends. You know what she
is in such simplicity, but that day she was a bride, the Honorine of
long past days. My joy was chilled at once, for her face was terribly
grave; there were fires beneath the ice.

"'"Octave," she said, "I will return as your wife when you will. But
understand clearly that this submission has its dangers. I can be
resigned----"

"'I made a movement.

"'"Yes," she went on, "I understand: resignation offends you, and
you want what I cannot give--Love. Religion and pity led me to
renounce my vow of solitude; you are here!" She paused.

"'"At first," she went on, "you asked no more. Now you demand your
wife. Well, here I give you Honorine, such as she is, without
deceiving you as to what she will be.--What shall I be? A mother? I
hope it. Believe me, I hope it eagerly. Try to change me; you have my
consent; but if I should die, my dear, do not curse my memory, and do
not set down to obstinacy what I should call the worship of the Ideal,
if it were not more natural to call the indefinable feeling which must
kill me the worship of the Divine! The future will be nothing to me;
it will be your concern; consult your own mind."

"'And she sat down in the calm attitude you used to admire, and
watched me turning pale with the pain she had inflicted. My blood ran
cold. On seeing the effect of her words she took both my hands, and,
holding them in her own, she said:

"'"Octave, I do love you, but not in the way you wish to be loved. I
love your soul. . . . Still, understand that I love you enough to die
in your service like an Eastern slave, and without a regret. It will
be my expiation."

"'She did more; she knelt before me on a cushion, and in a spirit of
sublime charity she said:

"'"And perhaps I shall not die!"

"'For two months now I have been struggling with myself. What shall I
do? My heart is too full; I therefore seek a friend, and send out this
cry, "What shall I do?"'

"I did not answer this letter. Two months later the newspapers
announced the return on board an English vessel of the Comtesse
Octave, restored to her family after adventures by land and sea,
invented with sufficient probability to arouse no contradiction.

"When I moved to Genoa I received a formal announcement of the happy
event of the birth of a son to the Count and Countess. I held that
letter in my hand for two hours, sitting on this terrace--on this
bench. Two months after, urged by Octave, by M. de Grandville, and
Monsieur de Serizy, my kind friends, and broken by the death of my
uncle, I agreed to take a wife.

"Six months after the revolution of July I received this letter, which
concludes the story of this couple:--

"'MONSIEUR MAURICE,--I am dying though I am a mother--perhaps because
I am a mother. I have played my part as a wife well; I have deceived
my husband. I have had happiness not less genuine than the tears shed
by actresses on the stage. I am dying for society, for the family, for
marriage, as the early Christians died for God! I know not of what I
am dying, and I am honestly trying to find out, for I am not perverse;
but I am bent on explaining my malady to you--you who brought that
heavenly physician your uncle, at whose word I surrendered. He was my
director; I nursed him in his last illness, and he showed me the way
to heaven, bidding me persevere in my duty.

"'And I have done my duty.

"'I do not blame those who forget. I admire them as strong and
necessary natures; but I have the malady of memory! I have not been
able twice to feel that love of the heart which identifies a woman
with the man she loves. To the last moment, as you know, I cried to
your heart, in the confessional, and to my husband, "Have mercy!" But
there was no mercy. Well, and I am dying, dying with stupendous
courage. No courtesan was ever more gay than I. My poor Octave is
happy; I let his love feed on the illusions of my heart. I throw all
my powers into this terrible masquerade; the actress is applauded,
feasted, smothered in flowers; but the invisible rival comes every day
to seek its prey--a fragment of my life. I am rent and I smile. I
smile on two children, but it is the elder, the dead one, that will
triumph! I told you so before. The dead child calls me, and I am going
to him.

"'The intimacy of marriage without love is a position in which my
soul feels degraded every hour. I can never weep or give myself up to
dreams but when I am alone. The exigencies of society, the care of my
child, and that of Octave's happiness never leave me a moment to
refresh myself, to renew my strength, as I could in my solitude. The
incessant need for watchfulness startles my heart with constant
alarms. I have not succeeded in implanting in my soul the sharp-eared
vigilance that lies with facility, and has the eyes of a lynx. It is
not the lip of one I love that drinks my tears and kisses them; my
burning eyes are cooled with water, and not with tender lips. It is my
soul that acts a part, and that perhaps is why I am dying! I lock up
my griefs with so much care that nothing is to be seen of it; it must
eat into something, and it has attacked my life.

"'I said to the doctors, who discovered my secret, "Make me die of
some plausible complaint, or I shall drag my husband with me."

"'So it is quite understood by M. Desplein, Bianchon, and myself that I
am dying of the softening of some bone which science has fully
described. Octave believes that I adore him, do you understand? So I am
afraid lest he should follow me. I now write to beg you in that case to
be the little Count's guardian. You will find with this a codicil in
which I have expressed my wish; but do not produce it excepting in case
of need, for perhaps I am fatuously vain. My devotion may perhaps leave
Octave inconsolable but willing to live.--Poor Octave! I wish him a
better wife than I am, for he deserves to be well loved.

"'Since my spiritual spy is married, I bid him remember what the
florist of the Rue Saint-Maur hereby bequeaths to him as a lesson: May
your wife soon be a mother! Fling her into the vulgarest materialism
of household life; hinder her from cherishing in her heart the
mysterious flower of the Ideal--of that heavenly perfection in which I
believed, that enchanted blossom with glorious colors, and whose
perfume disgusts us with reality. I am a Saint-Theresa who has not
been suffered to live on ecstasy in the depths of a convent, with the
Holy Infant, and a spotless winged angel to come and go as she wished.

"'You saw me happy among my beloved flowers. I did not tell you all:
I saw love budding under your affected madness, and I concealed from
you my thoughts, my poetry; I did not admit you to my kingdom of
beauty. Well, well; you will love my child for love of me if he should
one day lose his poor father. Keep my secrets as the grave will keep
them. Do not mourn for me; I have been dead this many a day, if Saint
Bernard was right in saying that where there is no more love there is
no more life.'"

"And the Countess died," said the Consul, putting away the letters and
locking the pocket-book.

"Is the Count still living?" asked the Ambassador, "for since the
revolution of July he has disappeared from the political stage."

"Do you remember, Monsieur de Lora," said the Consul-General, "having
seen me going to the steamboat with----"

"A white-haired man! an old man?" said the painter.

"An old man of forty-five, going in search of health and amusement in
Southern Italy. That old man was my poor friend, my patron, passing
through Genoa to take leave of me and place his will in my hands. He
appoints me his son's guardian. I had no occasion to tell him of
Honorine's wishes."

"Does he suspect himself of murder?" said Mademoiselle des Touches to
the Baron de l'Hostal.

"He suspects the truth," replied the Consul, "and that is what is
killing him. I remained on board the steam packet that was to take him
to Naples till it was out of the roadstead; a small boat brought me
back. We sat for some little time taking leave of each other--for
ever, I fear. God only knows how much we love the confidant of our
love when she who inspired it is no more.

"'That man,' said Octave, 'holds a charm and wears an aureole.' the
Count went to the prow and looked down on the Mediterranean. It
happened to be fine, and, moved no doubt by the spectacle, he spoke
these last words: 'Ought we not, in the interests of human nature, to
inquire what is the irresistible power which leads us to sacrifice an
exquisite creature to the most fugitive of all pleasures, and in spite
of our reason? In my conscience I heard cries. Honorine was not alone
in her anguish. And yet I would have it! . . . I am consumed by
remorse. In the Rue Payenne I was dying of the joys I had not; now I
shall die in Italy of the joys I have had. . . . Wherein lay the
discord between two natures, equally noble, I dare assert?'"

For some minutes profound silence reigned on the terrace.

Then the Consul, turning to the two women, asked, "Was she virtuous?"

Mademoiselle des Touches rose, took the Consul's arm, went a few steps
away, and said to him:

"Are not men wrong too when they come to us and make a young girl a
wife while cherishing at the bottom of their heart some angelic image,
and comparing us to those unknown rivals, to perfections often
borrowed from a remembrance, and always finding us wanting?"

"Mademoiselle, you would be right if marriage were based on passion;
and that was the mistake of those two, who will soon be no more.
Marriage with heart-deep love on both sides would be Paradise."

Mademoiselle des Touches turned from the Consul, and was immediately
joined by Claude Vignon, who said in her ear:

"A bit of a coxcomb is M. de l'Hostal."

"No," replied she, whispering to Claude these words: "for he has not
yet guessed that Honorine would have loved him.--Oh!" she exclaimed,
seeing the Consul's wife approaching, "his wife was listening! Unhappy
man!"

Eleven was striking by all the clocks, and the guests went home on
foot along the seashore.

"Still, that is not life," said Mademoiselle des Touches. "That woman
was one of the rarest, and perhaps the most extraordinary exceptions
in intellect--a pearl! Life is made up of various incidents, of pain
and pleasure alternately. The Paradise of Dante, that sublime
expression of the ideal, that perpetual blue, is to be found only in
the soul; to ask it of the facts of life is a luxury against which
nature protests every hour. To such souls as those the six feet of a
cell, and the kneeling chair are all they need."

"You are right," said Leon de Lora; "but good-for-nothing as I may be,
I cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, as that one was, of
living by the side of a studio, under a painter's roof, and never
coming down, nor seeing the world, nor dipping her feet in the street
mud."

"Such a thing has been known--for a few months," said Claude Vignon,
with deep irony.

"Comtesse Honorine is not unique of her kind," replied the Ambassador
to Mademoiselle des Touches. "A man, nay, and a politician, a bitter
writer, was the object of such a passion; and the pistol shot which
killed him hit not him alone; the woman who loved lived like a nun
ever after."

"Then there are yet some great souls in this age!" said Camille
Maupin, and she stood for some minutes pensively leaning on the
balustrade of the quay.




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bauvan, Comte Octave de
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Bianchon, Horace
Father Goriot
The Atheist's Mass
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Secrets of a Princess
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Study of Woman
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Seamy Side of History
The Magic Skin
A Second Home
A Prince of Bohemia
Letters of Two Brides
The Muse of the Department
The Imaginary Mistress
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
The Country Parson
In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
Another Study of Woman
La Grande Breteche

Desplein
The Atheist's Mass
Cousin Pons
Lost Illusions
The Thirteen
The Government Clerks
Pierrette
A Bachelor's Establishment
The Seamy Side of History
Modeste Mignon
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Fontanon, Abbe
A Second Home
The Government Clerks
The Member for Arcis

Gaudissart, Felix
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Cousin Pons
Cesar Birotteau
Gaudissart the Great

Gaudron, Abbe
The Government Clerks
A Start in Life

Granville, Vicomte de (later Comte)
The Gondreville Mystery
A Second Home
Farewell (Adieu)
Cesar Birotteau
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
A Daughter of Eve
Cousin Pons

Lora, Leon de
The Unconscious Humorists
A Bachelor's Establishment
A Start in Life
Pierre Grassou
Cousin Betty
Beatrix

Loraux, Abbe
A Start in Life
A Bachelor's Establishment
Cesar Birotteau

Popinot, Jean-Jules
Cesar Birotteau
The Commission in Lunacy
The Seamy Side of History
The Middle Classes

Serizy, Comte Hugret de
A Start in Life
A Bachelor's Establishment
Modeste Mignon
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des
Beatrix
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Bachelor's Establishment
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Beatrix
The Muse of the Department

Vignon, Claude
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Daughter of Eve
Honorine
Beatrix
Cousin Betty
The Unconscious Humorists