The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan

H >> Honore de Balzac >> The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan

THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by
Katharine Prescott Wormeley



DEDICATION

To Theophile Gautier




THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN



CHAPTER I

THE LAST WORD OF TWO GREAT COQUETTES

After the disasters of the revolution of July, which destroyed so many
aristocratic fortunes dependent on the court, Madame la Princesse de
Cadignan was clever enough to attribute to political events the total
ruin she had caused by her own extravagance. The prince left France
with the royal family, and never returned to it, leaving the princess
in Paris, protected by the fact of his absence; for their debts, which
the sale of all their salable property had not been able to
extinguish, could only be recovered through him. The revenues of the
entailed estates had been seized. In short, the affairs of this great
family were in as bad a state as those of the elder branch of the
Bourbons.

This woman, so celebrated under her first name of Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, very wisely decided to live in retirement, and to make
herself, if possible, forgotten. Paris was then so carried away by the
whirling current of events that the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, buried
in the Princesse de Cadignan, a change of name unknown to most of the
new actors brought upon the stage of society by the revolution of
July, did really become a stranger in her own city.

In Paris the title of duke ranks all others, even that of prince;
though, in heraldic theory, free of all sophism, titles signify
nothing; there is absolute equality among gentlemen. This fine
equality was formerly maintained by the House of France itself; and in
our day it is so still, at least, nominally; witness the care with
which the kings of France give to their sons the simple title of
count. It was in virtue of this system that Francois I. crushed the
splendid titles assumed by the pompous Charles the Fifth, by signing
his answer: "Francois, seigneur de Vanves." Louis XI. did better still
by marrying his daughter to an untitled gentleman, Pierre de Beaujeu.
The feudal system was so thoroughly broken up by Louis XIV. that the
title of duke became, during his reign, the supreme honor of the
aristocracy, and the most coveted.

Nevertheless there are two or three families in France in which the
principality, richly endowed in former times, takes precedence of the
duchy. The house of Cadignan, which possesses the title of Duc de
Maufrigneuse for its eldest sons, is one of these exceptional
families. Like the princes of the house of Rohan in earlier days, the
princes of Cadignan had the right to a throne in their own domain;
they could have pages and gentlemen in their service. This explanation
is necessary, as much to escape foolish critics who know nothing, as
to record the customs of a world which, we are told, is about to
disappear, and which, evidently, so many persons are assisting to push
away without knowing what it is.

The Cadignans bear: or, five lozenges sable appointed, placed
fess-wise, with the word "Memini" for motto, a crown with a cap of
maintenance, no supporters or mantle. In these days the great crowd of
strangers flocking to Paris, and the almost universal ignorance of the
science of heraldry, are beginning to bring the title of prince into
fashion. There are no real princes but those possessed of
principalities, to whom belongs the title of highness. The disdain
shown by the French nobility for the title of prince, and the reasons
which caused Louis XIV. to give supremacy to the title of duke, have
prevented Frenchmen from claiming the appellation of "highness" for
the few princes who exist in France, those of Napoleon excepted. This
is why the princes of Cadignan hold an inferior position, nominally,
to the princes of the continent.

The members of the society called the faubourg Saint-Germain protected
the princess by a respectful silence due to her name, which is one of
those that all men honor, to her misfortunes, which they ceased to
discuss, and to her beauty, the only thing she saved of her departed
opulence. Society, of which she had once been the ornament, was
thankful to her for having, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered
herself in her own home. This act of good taste was for her, more than
for any other woman, an immense sacrifice. Great deeds are always so
keenly felt in France that the princess gained, by her retreat, as
much as she had lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.

She now saw only one of her old friends, the Marquise d'Espard, and
even to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties. The
princess and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a
certain amount of secrecy. When the princess went to dine with her
friend, the marquise closed her doors. Madame d'Espard treated the
princess charmingly; she changed her box at the opera, leaving the
first tier for a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame de
Cadignan could come to the theatre unseen, and depart incognito. Few
women would have been capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the
pleasure of bearing in their train a fallen rival, and of publicly
being her benefactress. Thus relieved of the necessity for costly
toilets, the princess could enjoy the theatre, whither she went in
Madame d'Espard's carriage, which she would never have accepted openly
in the daytime. No one has ever known Madame d'Espard's reasons for
behaving thus to the Princesse de Cadignan; but her conduct was
admirable, and for a long time included a number of little acts which,
viewed single, seem mere trifles, but taken in the mass become
gigantic.

In 1832, three years had thrown a mantle of snow over the follies and
adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so
thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall
them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies
might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a
woman still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite
justified in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of
Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome as
Antinous, poor as Job, who was expected to obtain great successes, and
for whom his mother desired, above all things, to find a rich wife.
Perhaps this hope was the secret of the intimacy she still kept up
with the marquise, in whose salon, which was one of the first in
Paris, she might eventually be able to choose among many heiresses for
Georges' wife. The princess saw five years between the present moment
and her son's marriage,--five solitary and desolate years; for, in
order to obtain such a marriage for her son, she knew that her own
conduct must be marked in the corner with discretion.

The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a small house, of
which she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made
the most of the relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of the
great lady was still redolent about her. She was still surrounded by
beautiful things which recalled her former existence. On her
chimney-piece was a fine miniature portrait of Charles X., by Madame
Mirbel, beneath which were engraved the words, "Given by the King";
and, as a pendant, the portrait of "Madame", who was always her kind
friend. On a table lay an album of costliest price, such as none of
the bourgeoises who now lord it in our industrial and fault-finding
society would have dared to exhibit. This album contained portraits,
about thirty in number, of her intimate friends, whom the world, first
and last, had given her as lovers. The number was a calumny; but had
rumor said ten, it might have been, as her friend Madame d'Espard
remarked, good, sound gossip. The portraits of Maxime de Trailles, de
Marsay, Rastignac, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the
Marquis de Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the
young Ducs de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the
handsome Lucien de Rubempre, had all been treated with the utmost
coquetry of brush and pencil by celebrated artists. As the princess
now received only two or three of these personages, she called the
book, jokingly, the collection of her errors.

Misfortune had made this woman a good mother. During the fifteen years
of the Restoration she had amused herself far too much to think of her
son; but on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist
bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed to its extreme,
might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible
persons, who pardon everything to a good mother. She loved her son all
the more because she had nothing else to love. Georges de Maufrigneuse
was, moreover, one of those children who flatter the vanities of a
mother; and the princess had, accordingly, made all sorts of
sacrifices for him. She hired a stable and coach-house, above which he
lived in a little entresol with three rooms looking on the street, and
charmingly furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a
saddle-horse, a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For
herself, she had only her own maid, and as cook, a former
kitchen-maid. The duke's groom had, therefore, rather a hard place.
Toby, formerly tiger to the "late" Beaudenord (such was the jesting
term applied by the gay world to that ruined gentleman),--Toby, who at
twenty-five years of age was still considered only fourteen, was
expected to groom the horses, clean the cabriolet, or the tilbury, and
the harnesses, accompany his master, take care of the apartments, and
be in the princess's antechamber to announce a visitor, if, by chance,
she happened to receive one.

When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had
been under the Restoration,--one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling
queen, whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of
fashion in London,--there was something touching in the sight of her
in that humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away
from her splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled her
to keep, and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished. The
woman who thought she was scarcely well served by thirty servants, who
possessed the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris, and the
loveliest little private apartments, and who made them the scene of
such delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five rooms,
--an antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a
dressing-room, with two women-servants only.

"Ah! she is devoted to her son," said that clever creature, Madame
d'Espard, "and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would
ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent
resolution! Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged
her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit."

Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate, and
to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly
lost. Those only who have an inner consciousness of being nothing in
themselves, show regrets in falling, or struggle, murmuring, to return
to a past which can never return,--a fact of which they themselves are
well aware. Compelled to do without the choice exotics in the midst of
which she had lived, and which set off so charmingly her whole being
(for it is impossible not to compare her to a flower), the princess
had wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there she enjoyed a pretty
little garden which belonged to it,--a garden full of shrubs, and an
always verdant turf, which brightened her peaceful retreat. She had
about twelve thousand francs a year; but that modest income was partly
made up of an annual stipend sent her by the old Duchesse de
Navarreins, paternal aunt of the young duke, and another stipend given
by her mother, the Duchesse d'Uxelles, who was living on her estate in
the country, where she economized as old duchesses alone know how to
economize; for Harpagon is a mere novice compared to them. The
princess still retained some of her past relations with the exiled
royal family; and it was in her house that the marshal to whom we owe
the conquest of Africa had conferences, at the time of "Madame's"
attempt in La Vendee, with the principal leaders of legitimist
opinion,--so great was the obscurity in which the princess lived, and
so little distrust did the government feel for her in her present
distress.

Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth year, the bankruptcy
of love, beyond which there is so little for a woman as woman, the
princess had flung herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to
reading, she who for sixteen years had felt a cordial horror for
serious things. Literature and politics are to-day what piety and
devotion once were to her sex,--the last refuge of their feminine
pretensions. In her late social circle it was said that Diane was
writing a book. Since her transformation from a queen and beauty to a
woman of intellect, the princess had contrived to make a reception in
her little house a great honor which distinguished the favored person.
Sheltered by her supposed occupation, she was able to deceive one of
her former adorers, de Marsay, the most influential personage of the
political bourgeoisie brought to the fore in July 1830. She received
him sometimes in the evenings, and, occupied his attention while the
marshal and a few legitimists were talking, in a low voice, in her
bedroom, about the recovery of power, which could be attained only by
a general co-operation of ideas,--the one element of success which all
conspirators overlook. It was the clever vengeance of the pretty
woman, who thus inveigled the prime minister, and made him act as
screen for a conspiracy against his own government.

This adventure, worthy of the finest days of the Fronde, was the text
of a very witty letter, in which the princess rendered to "Madame" an
account of the negotiations. The Duc de Maufrigneuse went to La
Vendee, and was able to return secretly without being compromised, but
not without taking part in "Madame's" perils; the latter, however,
sent him home the moment she saw that her cause was lost. Perhaps, had
he remained, the eager vigilance of the young man might have foiled
that treachery. However great the faults of the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse may have seemed in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, the
behavior of her son on this occasion certainly effaced them in the
eyes of the aristocracy. There was great nobility and grandeur in thus
risking her only son, and the heir of an historic name. Some persons
are said to intentionally cover the faults of their private life by
public services, and vice versa; but the Princesse de Cadignan made no
such calculation. Possibly those who apparently so conduct themselves
make none. Events count for much in such cases.

On one of the first fine days in the month of May, 1833, the Marquise
d'Espard and the princess were turning about--one could hardly call it
walking--in the single path which wound round the grass-plat in the
garden, about half-past two in the afternoon, just as the sun was
leaving it. The rays reflected on the walls gave a warm atmosphere to
the little space, which was fragrant with flowers, the gift of the
marquise.

"We shall soon lose de Marsay," said the marquise; "and with him will
disappear your last hope of fortune for your son. Ever since you
played him that clever trick, he has returned to his affection for
you."

"My son will never capitulate to the younger branch," returned the
princess, "if he has to die of hunger, or I have to work with my hands
to feed him. Besides, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne has no aversion to him."

"Children don't bind themselves to their parents' principles," said
Madame d'Espard.

"Don't let us talk about it," said the princess. "If I can't coax over
the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne, I shall marry Georges to the daughter of
some iron-founderer, as that little d'Esgrignon did."

"Did you love Victurnien?" asked the marquise.

"No," replied the princess, gravely, "d'Esgrignon's simplicity was
really only a sort of provincial silliness, which I perceived rather
too late--or, if you choose, too soon."

"And de Marsay?"

"De Marsay played with me as if I were a doll. I was so young at the
time! We never love men who pretend to teach us; they rub up all our
little vanities."

"And that wretched boy who hanged himself?"

"Lucien? An Antinous and a great poet. I worshiped him in all
conscience, and I might have been happy. But he was in love with a
girl of the town; and I gave him up to Madame. de Serizy. . . . If he
had cared to love me, should I have given him up?"

"What an odd thing, that you should come into collision with an Esther!"

"She was handsomer than I," said the Princess.--"Very soon it shall be
three years that I have lived in solitude," she resumed, after a
pause, "and this tranquillity has nothing painful to me about it. To
you alone can I dare to say that I feel I am happy. I was surfeited
with adoration, weary of pleasure, emotional on the surface of things,
but conscious that emotion itself never reached my heart. I have found
all the men whom I have known petty, paltry, superficial; none of them
ever caused me a surprise; they had no innocence, no grandeur, no
delicacy. I wish I could have met with one man able to inspire me with
respect."

"Then are you like me, my dear?" asked the marquise; "have you never
felt the emotion of love while trying to love?"

"Never," replied the princess, laying her hand on the arm of her
friend.

They turned and seated themselves on a rustic bench beneath a jasmine
then coming into flower. Each had uttered one of those sayings that
are solemn to women who have reached their age.

"Like you," resumed the princess, "I have received more love than most
women; but through all my many adventures, I have never found
happiness. I committed great follies, but they had an object, and that
object retreated as fast as I approached it. I feel to-day in my
heart, old as it is, an innocence which has never been touched. Yes,
under all my experience, lies a first love intact,--just as I myself,
in spite of all my losses and fatigues, feel young and beautiful. We
may love and not be happy; we may be happy and never love; but to love
and be happy, to unite those two immense human experiences, is a
miracle. That miracle has not taken place for me."

"Nor for me," said Madame d'Espard.

"I own I am pursued in this retreat by dreadful regret: I have amused
myself all through life, but I have never loved."

"What an incredible secret!" cried the marquise.

"Ah! my dear," replied the princess, "such secrets we can tell to
ourselves, you and I, but nobody in Paris would believe us."

"And," said the marquise, "if we were not both over thirty-six years
of age, perhaps we would not tell them to each other."

"Yes; when women are young they have so many stupid conceits," replied
the princess. "We are like those poor young men who play with a
toothpick to pretend they have dined."

"Well, at any rate, here we are!" said Madame d'Espard, with
coquettish grace, and a charming gesture of well-informed innocence;
"and, it seems to me, sufficiently alive to think of taking our
revenge."

"When you told me, the other day, that Beatrix had gone off with
Conti, I thought of it all night long," said the princess, after a
pause. "I suppose there was happiness in sacrificing her position, her
future, and renouncing society forever."

"She was a little fool," said Madame d'Espard, gravely. "Mademoiselle
des Touches was delighted to get rid of Conti. Beatrix never perceived
how that surrender, made by a superior woman who never for a moment
defended her claims, proved Conti's nothingness."

"Then you think she will be unhappy?"

"She is so now," replied Madame d'Espard. "Why did she leave her
husband? What an acknowledgment of weakness!"

"Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was not influenced by the
desire to enjoy a true love in peace?" asked the princess.

"No; she was simply imitating Madame de Beausant and Madame de
Langeais, who, be it said, between you and me, would have been, in a
less vulgar period than ours, the La Villiere, the Diane de Poitiers,
the Gabrielle d'Estrees of history."

"Less the king, my dear. Ah! I wish I could evoke the shades of those
women, and ask them--"

"But," said the marquise, interrupting the princess, "why ask the
dead? We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this
very subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she
married that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman in
the world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her;
they are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments,
like that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin, Madame
de Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I
don't know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme compliment of
thinking we are two rakes worthy of the court of the regent; whereas
we are, in truth, as innocent as a couple of school-girls."

"I should like that sort of innocence," cried the princess, laughing;
"but ours is worse, and it is very humiliating. Well, it is a
mortification we offer up in expiation of our fruitless search; yes,
my dear, fruitless, for it isn't probable we shall find in our autumn
season the fine flower we missed in the spring and summer."

"That's not the question," resumed the marquise, after a meditative
pause. "We are both still beautiful enough to inspire love, but we
could never convince any one of our innocence and virtue."

"If it were a lie, how easy to dress it up with commentaries, and
serve it as some delicious fruit to be eagerly swallowed! But how is
it possible to get a truth believed? Ah! the greatest of men have been
mistaken there!" added the princess, with one of those meaning smiles
which the pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone has rendered.

"Fools love well, sometimes," returned the marquise.

"But in this case," said the princess, "fools wouldn't have enough
credulity in their nature."

"You are right," said the marquise. "But what we ought to look for is
neither a fool nor even a man of talent. To solve our problem we need
a man of genius. Genius alone has the faith of childhood, the religion
of love, and willingly allows us to band its eyes. Look at Canalis and
the Duchesse de Chaulieu! Though we have both encountered men of
genius, they were either too far removed from us or too busy, and we
too absorbed, too frivolous."

"Ah! how I wish I might not leave this world without knowing the
happiness of true love," exclaimed the princess.

"It is nothing to inspire it," said Madame d'Espard; "the thing is to
feel it. I see many women who are only the pretext for a passion
without being both its cause and its effect."

"The last love I inspired was a beautiful and sacred thing," said the
princess. "It had a future in it. Chance had brought me, for once in a
way, the man of genius who is due to us, and yet so difficult to
obtain; there are more pretty women than men of genius. But the devil
interfered with the affair."

"Tell me about it, my dear; this is all news to me."

"I first noticed this beautiful passion about the middle of the winter
of 1829. Every Friday, at the opera, I observed a young man, about
thirty years of age, in the orchestra stalls, who evidently came there
for me. He was always in the same stall, gazing at me with eyes of
fire, but, seemingly, saddened by the distance between us, perhaps by
the hopelessness of reaching me."

"Poor fellow! When a man loves he becomes eminently stupid," said the
marquise.

"Between every act he would slip into the corridor," continued the
princess, smiling at her friend's epigrammatic remark. "Once or twice,
either to see me or to make me see him, he looked through the glass
sash of the box exactly opposite to mine. If I received a visit, I was
certain to see him in the corridor close to my door, casting a furtive
glance upon me. He had apparently learned to know the persons
belonging to my circle; and he followed them when he saw them turning
in the direction of my box, in order to obtain the benefit of the
opening door. I also found my mysterious adorer at the Italian
opera-house; there he had a stall directly opposite to my box, where
he could gaze at me in naive ecstasy--oh! it was pretty! On leaving
either house I always found him planted in the lobby, motionless; he
was elbowed and jostled, but he never moved. His eyes grew less
brilliant if he saw me on the arm of some favorite. But not a word,
not a letter, no demonstration. You must acknowledge that was in good
taste. Sometimes, on getting home late at night, I found him sitting
upon one of the stone posts of the porte-cochere. This lover of mine
had very handsome eyes, a long, thick, fan-shaped beard, with a
moustache and side-whiskers; nothing could be seen of his skin but his
white cheek-bones, and a noble forehead; it was truly an antique head.
The prince, as you know, defended the Tuileries on the riverside,
during the July days. He returned to Saint-Cloud that night, when all
was lost, and said to me: 'I came near being killed at four o'clock. I
was aimed at by one of the insurgents, when a young man, with a long
beard, whom I have often seen at the opera, and who was leading the
attack, threw up the man's gun, and saved me.' So my adorer was
evidently a republican! In 1831, after I came to lodge in this house,
I found him, one day, leaning with his back against the wall of it; he
seemed pleased with my disasters; possibly he may have thought they
drew us nearer together. But after the affair of Saint-Merri I saw him
no more; he was killed there. The evening before the funeral of
General Lamarque, I had gone out on foot with my son, and my
republican accompanied us, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, from
the Madeleine to the Passage des Panoramas, where I was going."