The Lily of the Valley

H >> Honore de Balzac >> The Lily of the Valley


During this hour when he spoke only of himself, and asked for my
friendship in his wife's name, he completed a picture in my mind of
the remarkable figure of the Emigre,--one of the most imposing types
of our period. In appearance he was frail and broken, but life seemed
persistent in him because of his sober habits and his country
avocations. He is still living.

Though Madeleine could see me on the terrace, she did not come down.
Several times she came out upon the portico and went back in again, as
if to signify her contempt. I seized a moment when she appeared to beg
the count to go to the house and call her, saying I had a last wish of
her mother to convey to her, and this would be my only opportunity of
doing so. The count brought her, and left us alone together on the
terrace.

"Dear Madeleine," I said, "if I am to speak to you, surely it should
be here where your mother listened to me when she felt she had less
reason to complain of me than of the circumstances of life. I know
your thoughts; but are you not condemning me without a knowledge of
the facts? My life and happiness are bound up in this place; you know
that, and yet you seek to banish me by the coldness you show, in place
of the brotherly affection which has always united us, and which death
should have strengthened by the bonds of a common grief. Dear
Madeleine, you for whom I would gladly give my life without hope of
recompense, without your even knowing it,--so deeply do we love the
children of those who have succored us,--you are not aware of the
project your adorable mother cherished during the last seven years. If
you knew it your feelings would doubtless soften towards me; but I do
not wish to take advantage of you now. All that I ask is that you do
not deprive me of the right to come here, to breathe the air on this
terrace, and to wait until time has changed your ideas of social life.
At this moment I desire not to ruffle them; I respect a grief which
misleads you, for it takes even from me the power of judging soberly
the circumstances in which I find myself. The saint who now looks down
upon us will approve the reticence with which I simply ask that you
stand neutral between your present feelings and my wishes. I love you
too well, in spite of the aversion you are showing me, to say one word
to the count of a proposal he would welcome eagerly. Be free. Later,
remember that you know no one in the world as you know me, that no man
will ever have more devoted feelings--"

Up to this moment Madeleine had listened with lowered eyes; now she
stopped me by a gesture.

"Monsieur," she said, in a voice trembling with emotion. "I know all
your thoughts; but I shall not change my feelings towards you. I would
rather fling myself into the Indre than ally myself to you. I will not
speak to you of myself, but if my mother's name still possesses any
power over you, in her name I beg you never to return to Clochegourde
so long as I am in it. The mere sight of you causes me a repugnance I
cannot express, but which I shall never overcome."

She bowed to me with dignity, and returned to the house without
looking back, impassible as her mother had been for one day only, but
more pitiless. The searching eye of that young girl had discovered,
though tardily, the secrets of her mother's heart, and her hatred to
the man whom she fancied fatal to her mother's life may have been
increased by a sense of her innocent complicity.

All before me was now chaos. Madeleine hated me, without considering
whether I was the cause or the victim of these misfortunes. She might
have hated us equally, her mother and me, had we been happy. Thus it
was that the edifice of my happiness fell in ruins. I alone knew the
life of that unknown, noble woman. I alone had entered every region of
her soul; neither mother, father, husband, nor children had ever known
her.--Strange truth! I stir this heap of ashes and take pleasure in
spreading them before you; all hearts may find something in them of
their closest experience. How many families have had their Henriette!
How many noble feelings have left this earth with no historian to
fathom their hearts, to measure the depth and breadth of their
spirits. Such is human life in all its truth! Often mothers know their
children as little as their children know them. So it is with
husbands, lovers, brothers. Did I imagine that one day, beside my
father's coffin, I should contend with my brother Charles, for whose
advancement I had done so much? Good God! how many lessons in the
simplest history.

When Madeleine disappeared into the house, I went away with a broken
heart. Bidding farewell to my host at Sache, I started for Paris,
following the right bank of the Indre, the one I had taken when I
entered the valley for the first time. Sadly I drove through the
pretty village of Pont-de-Ruan. Yet I was rich, political life courted
me; I was not the weary plodder of 1814. Then my heart was full of
eager desires, now my eyes were full of tears; once my life was all
before me to fill as I could, now I knew it to be a desert. I was
still young,--only twenty-nine,--but my heart was withered. A few
years had sufficed to despoil that landscape of its early glory, and
to disgust me with life. You can imagine my feelings when, on turning
round, I saw Madeleine on the terrace.

A prey to imperious sadness, I gave no thought to the end of my
journey. Lady Dudley was far, indeed, from my mind, and I entered the
courtyard of her house without reflection. The folly once committed, I
was forced to carry it out. My habits were conjugal in her house, and
I went upstairs thinking of the annoyances of a rupture. If you have
fully understood the character and manners of Lady Dudley, you can
imagine my discomfiture when her majordomo ushered me, still in my
travelling dress, into a salon where I found her sumptuously dressed
and surrounded by four persons. Lord Dudley, one of the most
distinguished old statesmen of England, was standing with his back to
the fireplace, stiff, haughty, frigid, with the sarcastic air he
doubtless wore in parliament; he smiled when he heard my name.
Arabella's two children, who were amazingly like de Marsay (a natural
son of the old lord), were near their mother; de Marsay himself was on
the sofa beside her. As soon as Arabella saw me she assumed a distant
air, and glanced at my travelling cap as if to ask what brought me
there. She looked me over from head to foot, as though I were some
country gentlemen just presented to her. As for our intimacy, that
eternal passion, those vows of suicide if I ceased to love her, those
visions of Armida, all had vanished like a dream. I had never clasped
her hand; I was a stranger; she knew me not. In spite of the
diplomatic self-possession to which I was gradually being trained, I
was confounded; and all others in my place would have felt the same.
De Marsay smiled at his boots, which he examined with remarkable
interest. I decided at once upon my course. From any other woman I
should modestly have accepted my defeat; but, outraged at the glowing
appearance of the heroine who had vowed to die for love, and who had
scoffed at the woman who was really dead, I resolved to meet insolence
with insolence. She knew very well the misfortunes of Lady Brandon; to
remind her of them was to send a dagger to her heart, though the
weapon might be blunted by the blow.

"Madame," I said, "I am sure you will pardon my unceremonious
entrance, when I tell you that I have just arrived from Touraine, and
that Lady Brandon has given me a message for you which allows of no
delay. I feared you had already started for Lancashire, but as you are
still in Paris I will await your orders at any hour you may be pleased
to appoint."

She bowed, and I left the room. Since that day I have only met her in
society, where we exchange a friendly bow, and occasionally a sarcasm.
I talk to her of the inconsolable women of Lancashire; she makes
allusion to Frenchwomen who dignify their gastric troubles by calling
them despair. Thanks to her, I have a mortal enemy in de Marsay, of
whom she is very fond. In return, I call her the wife of two
generations.

So my disaster was complete; it lacked nothing. I followed the plan I
had laid out for myself during my retreat at Sache; I plunged into
work and gave myself wholly to science, literature, and politics. I
entered the diplomatic service on the accession of Charles X., who
suppressed the employment I held under the late king. From that moment
I was firmly resolved to pay no further attention to any woman, no
matter how beautiful, witty, or loving she might be. This
determination succeeded admirably; I obtained a really marvellous
tranquillity of mind, and great powers of work, and I came to
understand how much these women waste our lives, believing, all the
while, that a few gracious words will repay us.

But--all my resolutions came to naught; you know how and why. Dear
Natalie, in telling you my life, without reserve, without concealment,
precisely as I tell it to myself, in relating to you feelings in which
you have had no share, perhaps I have wounded some corner of your
sensitive and jealous heart. But that which might anger a common woman
will be to you--I feel sure of it--an additional reason for loving me.
Noble women have indeed a sublime mission to fulfil to suffering and
sickened hearts,--the mission of the sister of charity who stanches
the wound, of the mother who forgives a child. Artists and poets are
not the only ones who suffer; men who work for their country, for the
future destiny of the nations, enlarging thus the circle of their
passions and their thoughts, often make for themselves a cruel
solitude. They need a pure, devoted love beside them,--believe me,
they understand its grandeur and its worth.

To-morrow I shall know if I have deceived myself in loving you.

Felix.




ANSWER TO THE ENVOI

Madame la Comtesse Natalie de Manerville to Monsieur le Comte
Felix de Vandenesse.

Dear Count,--You received a letter from poor Madame de Mortsauf,
which, you say, was of use in guiding you through the world,--a
letter to which you owe your distinguished career. Permit me to
finish your education.

Give up, I beg of you, a really dreadful habit; do not imitate
certain widows who talk of their first husband and throw the
virtues of the deceased in the face of their second. I am a
Frenchwoman, dear count; I wish to marry the whole of the man I
love, and I really cannot marry Madame de Mortsauf too. Having
read your tale with all the attention it deserves,--and you know
the interest I feel in you,--it seems to me that you must have
wearied Lady Dudley with the perfections of Madame de Mortsauf,
and done great harm to the countess by overwhelming her with the
experiences of your English love. Also you have failed in tact to
me, poor creature without other merit than that of pleasing you;
you have given me to understand that I cannot love as Henriette or
Arabella loved you. I acknowledge my imperfections; I know them;
but why so roughly make me feel them?

Shall I tell you whom I pity?--the fourth woman whom you love. She
will be forced to struggle against three others. Therefore, in
your interests as well as in hers, I must warn you against the
dangers of your tale. For myself, I renounce the laborious glory
of loving you,--it needs too many virtues, Catholic or Anglican,
and I have no fancy for rivalling phantoms. The virtues of the
virgin of Clochegourde would dishearten any woman, however sure of
herself she might be, and your intrepid English amazon discourages
even a wish for that sort of happiness. No matter what a poor
woman may do, she can never hope to give you the joys she will
aspire to give. Neither heart nor senses can triumph against these
memories of yours. I own that I have never been able to warm the
sunshine chilled for you by the death of your sainted Henriette. I
have felt you shuddering beside me.

My friend,--for you will always be my friend,--never make such
confidences again; they lay bare your disillusions; they
discourage love, and compel a woman to feel doubtful of herself.
Love, dear count, can only live on trustfulness. The woman who
before she says a word or mounts her horse, must ask herself
whether a celestial Henriette might not have spoken better,
whether a rider like Arabella was not more graceful, that woman
you may be very sure, will tremble in all her members. You
certainly have given me a desire to receive a few of those
intoxicating bouquets--but you say you will make no more. There
are many other things you dare no longer do; thoughts and
enjoyments you can never reawaken. No woman, and you ought to know
this, will be willing to elbow in your heart the phantom whom you
hold there.

You ask me to love you out of Christian charity. I could do much,
I candidly admit, for charity; in fact I could do all--except
love. You are sometimes wearisome and wearied; you call your
dulness melancholy. Very good,--so be it; but all the same it is
intolerable, and causes much cruel anxiety to one who loves you. I
have often found the grave of that saint between us. I have
searched my own heart, I know myself, and I own I do not wish to
die as she did. If you tired out Lady Dudley, who is a very
distinguished woman, I, who have not her passionate desires,
should, I fear, turn coldly against you even sooner than she did.
Come, let us suppress love between us, inasmuch as you can find
happiness only with the dead, and let us be merely friends--I wish
it.

Ah! my dear count, what a history you have told me! At your
entrance into life you found an adorable woman, a perfect
mistress, who thought of your future, made you a peer, loved you
to distraction, only asked that you would be faithful to her, and
you killed her! I know nothing more monstrous. Among all the
passionate and unfortunate young men who haunt the streets of
Paris, I doubt if there is one who would not stay virtuous ten
years to obtain one half of the favors you did not know how to
value! When a man is loved like that how can he ask more? Poor
woman! she suffered indeed; and after you have written a few
sentimental phrases you think you have balanced your account with
her coffin. Such, no doubt, is the end that awaits my tenderness
for you. Thank you, dear count, I will have no rival on either
side of the grave. When a man has such a crime upon his
conscience, at least he ought not to tell of it. I made you an
imprudent request; but I was true to my woman's part as a daughter
of Eve,--it was your part to estimate the effect of the answer.
You ought to have deceived me; later I should have thanked you. Is
it possible that you have never understood the special virtue of
lovers? Can you not feel how generous they are in swearing that
they have never loved before, and love at last for the first time?

No, your programme cannot be carried out. To attempt to be both
Madame de Mortsauf and Lady Dudley,--why, my dear friend, it would
be trying to unite fire and water within me! Is it possible that
you don't know women? Believe me, they are what they are, and they
have therefore the defects of their virtues. You met Lady Dudley
too early in life to appreciate her, and the harm you say of her
seems to me the revenge of your wounded vanity. You understood
Madame de Mortsauf too late; you punished one for not being the
other,--what would happen to me if I were neither the one nor the
other? I love you enough to have thought deeply about your future;
in fact, I really care for you a great deal. Your air of the
Knight of the Sad Countenance has always deeply interested me; I
believed in the constancy of melancholy men; but I little thought
that you had killed the loveliest and the most virtuous of women
at the opening of your life.

Well, I ask myself, what remains for you to do? I have thought it
over carefully. I think, my friend, that you will have to marry a
Mrs. Shandy, who will know nothing of love or of passion, and will
not trouble herself about Madame de Mortsauf or Lady Dudley; who
will be wholly indifferent to those moments of ennui which you
call melancholy, during which you are as lively as a rainy day,--a
wife who will be to you, in short, the excellent sister of charity
whom you are seeking. But as for loving, quivering at a word,
anticipating happiness, giving it, receiving it, experiencing all
the tempests of passion, cherishing the little weaknesses of a
beloved woman--my dear count, renounce it all! You have followed
the advice of your good angel about young women too closely; you
have avoided them so carefully that now you know nothing about
them. Madame de Mortsauf was right to place you high in life at
the start; otherwise all women would have been against you, and
you never would have risen in society.

It is too late now to begin your training over again; too late to
learn to tell us what we long to hear; to be superior to us at the
right moment, or to worship our pettiness when it pleases us to be
petty. We are not so silly as you think us. When we love we place
the man of our choice above all else. Whatever shakes our faith in
our supremacy shakes our love. In flattering us men flatter
themselves. If you intend to remain in society, to enjoy an
intercourse with women, you must carefully conceal from them all
that you have told me; they will not be willing to sow the flowers
of their love upon the rocks or lavish their caresses to soothe a
sickened spirit. Women will discover the barrenness of your heart
and you will be ever more and more unhappy. Few among them would
be frank enough to tell you what I have told you, or sufficiently
good-natured to leave you without rancor, offering their
friendship, like the woman who now subscribes herself

Your devoted friend,

Natalie de Manerville.




ADDENDUM

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

Birotteau, Abbe Francois
Cesar Birotteau
The Vicar of Tours

Blamont-Chauvry, Princesse de
The Thirteen
Madame Firmiani

Brandon, Lady Marie Augusta
The Member for Arcis
La Grenadiere

Chessel, Madame de
The Government Clerks

Dudley, Lord
The Thirteen
A Man of Business
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve

Dudley, Lady Arabella
The Ball at Sceaux
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Letters of Two Brides

Givry
Letters of Two Brides
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Lenoncourt, Duc de
Cesar Birotteau
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Gondreville Mystery
Beatrix

Lenoncourt-Givry, Duchesse de
Letters of Two Brides
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

Listomere, Marquis de
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Study of Woman

Listomere, Marquise de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve

Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Gondreville Mystery
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Ball at Sceaux
Colonel Chabert
The Government Clerks

Manerville, Comtesse Paul de
A Marriage Settlement
A Daughter of Eve

Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve

Stanhope, Lady Esther
Lost Illusions

Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Cesar Birotteau
Letters of Two Brides
A Start in Life
The Marriage Settlement
The Secrets of a Princess
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve