“Choose carefully! See what a complex situation you are in. In any case your children will be necessarily sacrificed to the fantasies of your heart and deprived of their estate. Heavens, when they are small, they will be charming, but one day they will reproach you for having thought more about yourself than about them. We know all this, we old gentlemen. Children become men, and men are ungrateful. Have I not heard young de Horn in Germany saying after supper, ‘If my mother had been an honest woman, I would be prince regent.’ But this ‘if’—we have spent our life hearing commoners say it, and it has brought about the revolution. When men can accuse neither their father nor their mother, they reproach God for their ill fate. In short, dear child, we are here to enlighten you. I will sum up what I have to say with a thought on which you ought to meditate: A woman must never allow her husband to be in the right.”
“My uncle, so long as I did not love anyone, I calculated. Like you, I saw only interests then, where now I have nothing but feelings,” said the duchess.
“But my dear girl, life is always quite simply a complication of interests and feelings,” replied the vidame. “And to be happy, especially in your position, one must try to bring feelings in line with interests. Let a shopgirl love according to her fancy, that is understandable, but you have a fine fortune, a family, a title, a place at court, and you must not toss these things out the window. And what do we ask you to do to reconcile these matters? To maneuver the conventions deftly instead of violating them. Heavens, I will soon be eighty years old, I do not remember having encountered under the ancien régime a love that was worth the price you wish to pay for the love of this fortunate young man.”
The duchess silenced the vidame with a look; and if Montriveau could have seen it, he would have forgiven everything.
“It would be very effective on the stage,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “and meaningless where your personal fortune, position, and independence are concerned. You are ungrateful, my dear niece. You will not find many families where the relatives are brave enough to offer the lessons of experience and make young, foolish minds listen to the language of reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if it pleases you to damn yourself—fine! But think a bit longer when it is a matter of renouncing your income. I do not know a confessor who absolves poverty. I believe I have the right to speak to you this way, for if you are damned, I alone will be able to offer you asylum. I am nearly Langeais’s uncle, and I alone will have the right to cross him.”
“My daughter,” said the Duc de Navarreins, in waking from a painful mediation, “since you are talking sentiment, let me remind you that a woman who bears your name owes herself to sentiments other than those that animate commoners. You want to give aid and comfort to the Liberals, those Robespierre Jesuits who claim to detest the nobility? There are certain things that a Navarreins cannot do without failing the whole house. You would not be the only one dishonored.”
“Come, come!” said the princess. “Dishonor? Do not make such a fuss about an empty carriage, children, and leave me alone with Antoinette. All three of you will come and dine with me. I take responsibility for making a suitable arrangement. You men understand nothing, letting bitterness seep into your words, and I do not want to see you quarrel with my dear girl. Do me the pleasure of leaving.”
The three gentlemen surely guessed the princess’s intentions, and they bid their relations goodbye. Monsieur de Navarreins came to kiss his daughter on the forehead, saying, “Come now, dear child, be good. If you want, there is still time.”
“Might we not find in the family some good fellow who would provoke a quarrel with this Montriveau?” said the vidame while descending the stairs.
“My precious one,” said the princess once they were alone, gesturing to her to come and sit on a low chair beside her, “I know nothing more slandered in this world below than God and the eighteenth century, for in reviewing my youth, I do not recall a single duchess who trampled the proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers dishonored the reign of Louis XV, but do not believe them. The Du Barry woman, my dear, was just as worthy as the widow Scarron, and she was a better person. In my time, a woman knew how to keep her dignity in the midst of her gallantries. Indiscretions were the ruin of us, and the beginning of all misfortune.
“The philosophes, those men—the nobodies we admitted to our salons—had the indecency and the ingratitude to put a price on our benevolence, to make an inventory of our hearts, to condemn us all in detail, and to rant against the century. The people, who are not in a position to judge, saw the content but not the form. But in those days, my dearest, men and women were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the monarchy. Not one of your Werthers, none of your ‘notables,’ as they are called, not one of your men in yellow gloves whose trousers hide their spindly legs would cross Europe disguised as a peddler to shut himself up—at the risk of life and braving the Duke of Modena’s daggers—in the daughter of the regent’s cabinet de toilette. None of your little consumptives with tortoiseshell glasses would hide, like Lauzun, for six weeks in an armoire to a give his mistress courage while she gave birth. There was more passion in Monsieur de Jaucourt’s little finger than in all your race of rivals who leave women to pursue their advantage! Can you find me pages today who would be cut in pieces and buried under the floorboards for one kiss on Königsmarck’s mistress’s gloved finger?
“Really, today it would seem that the roles have reversed, and women must devote themselves to men. These gentlemen are worth less and think more of themselves. Believe me, my dear, those adventures that have become public and are now used to revile our good Louis XV were kept secret at first. Without a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists who spoke freely with our waiting women and wrote down their slanders, our era would have been portrayed in literature as a time in tune with convention. I justify the century and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were lost, but the wags counted a thousand, just as the gazetteers do when they reckon the dead of the defeated.
“Furthermore, I do not know what the Revolution and the Empire have to reproach us for: They were coarse, dull, licentious times. Fie! It is revolting. They were the fleshpots of French history . . .
“This preamble, my dear child,” she continued after a pause, “is only my way of coming around to tell you that if Montriveau pleases you, you are quite free to love him at your ease, and as much as you can. I know from experience (unless you are locked up, but that is out of fashion today), that you will do as you please, and that is what I would have done at your age. Only, my precious girl, I would not abdicate the right to be mother of the future Ducs de Langeais. So mind appearances. The vidame is right, no man is worth a single sacrifice that we are fool enough to pay for their love. Put yourself in the position of power: If you should have the misfortune to repent of your situation, you will still be the wife of Monsieur de Langeais. When you are old, you will have the comfort of hearing Mass at court and not in a provincial convent.
“Therein lies the whole question. A single imprudence means an allowance, a wandering life at the mercy of your love; it means the pain caused by the insolence of women who are less worthy than you, precisely because they have been villainously clever. It is worth a hundred times more to go to Montriveau’s every evening in a fiacre, disguised, than to send your carriage there in full daylight. You are a little fool, my dear child! Your carriage has flattered his vanity; your person would have conquered his heart. All that I have said is just and true, but I am not angry with you. You are two centuries behind with your false grandeur. Come along then, let us arrange your affairs, we will say that Montriveau has bribed your servants to satisfy his self-regard and to compromise you—”
“In the name of heaven, my aunt,” cried the duchess, jumping up, “do not slander him.”
“Oh, dear child,” said the princess whose eyes were sparkling, “I would like to see you with illusions that would not be fatal to you, but
all illusions must cease. You would soften me up if I were not so old. Come now, do not cause anyone grief, neither him nor us. I will take charge and satisfy everyone, but promise me not to permit yourself a single step from now on without consulting me. Tell me all, and perhaps I may steer you in the right direction.”
“Dear aunt, I promise you—”
“To tell me everything.”
“Yes, everything, everything that can be said.”
“But, my darling, it is precisely what cannot be said that I want to know. Let us understand each other. Come now, let me put my dry old lips to your beautiful forehead. No, let me do it, I forbid you to kiss my old bones. Old people have a courtesy of their own . . . Come now, take me to my carriage,” she said, after kissing her niece.
“Dear aunt, may I go to him in disguise?”
“But of course, this can always be denied,” said the old woman.
Only this idea had clearly caught the duchess’s attention in the sermon the princess had just delivered. When Madame de Blamont-Chauvry was seated in the corner of her carriage, Madame de Langeais bid her a gracious farewell and happily went back into her house.
“My person would have snared his heart. My aunt is right, a man surely cannot refuse a pretty woman when she knows how to offer herself.”
That evening, in Madame la Duchesse de Berry’s circle, the Duc de Navarreins, Monsieur de Pamiers, Monsieur de Marsay, Monsieur de Grandlieu, the Duc de Maufrigneuse triumphantly denied the offensive rumors that were circulating about the Duchesse de Langeais. So many officers and other people attested to having seen Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning that this silly story was attributed to chance, which takes everything on offer. And the following day, the reputation of the duchess, despite her parked carriage, became as clean and spotless as Mambrino’s helmet after Sancho had polished it. Except, at two o’clock in the Bois de Boulogne, Monsieur de Ronquerolles, passing Montriveau in a deserted allée, said to him, smiling, “She is doing well, your duchess—go on, keep it up!” he added, giving a meaningful cut of his riding whip to his mare, who took off like a bullet.
Two days after her useless scandal, Madame de Langeais wrote to Monsieur de Montriveau a letter that remained unanswered like the others. This time she had taken measures and corrupted Auguste, Armand’s personal valet. So that evening, at eight o’clock, she was led to Armand’s, into a room quite different from the room where the secret scene had transpired. The duchess learned that the general would not return that night. Did he have two residences? The valet did not want to reply. Madame de Langeais had bought the key to this room and not the man’s complete honesty. Left alone, she saw her fourteen letters resting on an old side table. They were uncreased and unopened. He had not read them. At this sight, she fell into an armchair and lost all consciousness for a moment. Upon waking, she saw Auguste, who was holding vinegar to her nose.
“A carriage, quickly,” she said.
The carriage arrived and she went down to it with a convulsive quickness, returned home, went to bed, and barred her door. She stayed there for twenty-four hours, letting no one come near but her chambermaid, who brought her several cups of orange-leaf tisane. Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice and caught a glimpse of tears in her bright eyes, now circled with dark shadows.
Two days later, amid despairing sobs, she resolved on the path she would take. Madame de Langeais had a meeting with her business consultant and doubtless charged him with some preparations. Then she sent for the old Vidame de Pamiers. While waiting for the commander, she wrote to Monsieur de Montriveau. The vidame was punctual. He found his young cousin pale and worn but resigned. Never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in the weakness of her agony.
“My dear cousin,” she said to the vidame, “your eighty years make you worthy of this meeting. Oh, do not smile, I beg of you, as a poor woman who is deeply unhappy. You are a gallant man, and I would like to believe that the adventures of your youth have inspired some indulgence for women.”
“Not in the least,” he said.
“Really!”
“Everything is in their favor,” he replied.
“Ah well, you are one of the inner family circle; perhaps you will be the last relation, the last friend whose hand I will grasp, so I can ask you for a good turn. My dear vidame, do me a favor I would not know how to ask from my father, or from my uncle Grandlieu, or from any woman. You must understand me. I beg you to obey me and to forget that you have obeyed me, whatever may come of it. The matter is this: Take this letter to Monsieur de Montriveau, see him, show it to him, talk things over man to man, for between you there is an integrity of feelings that you forget with us, ask him if he would be willing to read my letter, not in your presence—men conceal certain emotions from each other. I authorize you to decide, and if you judge it necessary, to tell him that for me this is a matter of life or death. If he deigns—”
“Deigns!” repeated the vidame.
“If he deigns to read it,” the duchess continued with dignity, “tell him one more thing. You will see him at five o’clock, he dines at home today at this time, I know. Well, by way of answer, he must come to see me. If three hours later, by eight o’clock, he has not left his house, it will all be settled. The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, my dear, no, but no human power will find me on this earth. Come dine with me. At least I will have a friend to help me in my last agony. Yes, this evening, dear cousin, my life will be decided, and whatever happens to me, it can be only a searing ordeal. Go now, not a word. I will hear nothing, neither comments nor advice. Let us chat and laugh together,” she said, holding out her hand, which he kissed. “Let us be like two old philosophers who know how to enjoy life until the moment of their death. I shall dress up, I will be enchanting for you. You will perhaps be the last man to see the Duchesse de Langeais.”
The vidame bowed, took the letter, and went on his mission without a word. At five o’clock he returned and found his cousin dressed with great care, indeed enchanting. The salon was decorated with flowers as though for a party. The meal was exquisite. For this old man, the duchess displayed all the brilliance of her wit and looked more seductive than she had ever been. The commander at first wished to see all these preparations as a young woman’s joke. But from time to time the false magic of his cousin’s seductions paled. He detected a shudder caused by a kind of sudden dread, and at times she seemed to listen in silence. Then if he said to her “What is the matter?” she would answer, “Hush!”
At seven o’clock the duchess left the old fellow. She returned promptly, but dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey. She took her companion’s arm and rushed into a hackney coach. Toward quarter to eight they were both at the door of Monsieur de Montriveau.
During this time, Montriveau read and meditated on the following letter:
My friend, I spent several moments at your house, without your knowledge; I took back my letters. Oh, Armand, you cannot be indifferent toward me, and hatred displays itself otherwise. If you love me, stop this cruel game. You are killing me. Later you will be in despair, realizing how much you are loved. If I have misunderstood you, if you feel only aversion for me, which leads to contempt and disgust, then I give up all hope. A person never recovers from these feelings. This thought will bring consolations to my long suffering. You will have no regrets! Ah, my Armand, if I have caused you a single regret . . . No, I will not tell you what desolation I would feel. I would be still alive and could not be your wife. After giving myself to you entirely in my thoughts, to whom could I give myself? . . . to God. Yes, the eyes that you loved for a moment will see no man’s face again, and may God’s glory close them! I will hear no human voice after hearing yours, so sweet at first, so terrible yesterday, for I am always on the day after your vengeance. May the word of God then consume me! Between His anger and yours, my friend, I will be left with only tears and prayers.
Perhaps
you will wonder why I am writing to you? Alas, do not deprive me of a last glimmer of hope, of one more sigh for a happy life before leaving it forever. I am in a dreadful situation. I have all the serenity the soul imbibes from making a great resolution, yet I still feel the last rumblings of the storm. When you went on that terrible adventure that so drew me to you, Armand, you were going from the desert to an oasis with a good guide leading you. Well, as for me, I am dragging myself from the oasis to the desert, and you are a pitiless guide. Nonetheless, you alone, my friend, can understand the melancholy of my parting looks at happiness, and you are the only man to whom I can moan without blushing. If you grant me my wish, I will be happy; if you are inexorable, I will expiate my wrongs. Indeed, is it not natural for a woman to want to remain clothed in the noblest sentiments in the memory of her beloved? Oh, my only dear, let your creature bury herself with the belief that you acknowledge her greatness. Your harshness has made me reflect, and since I love you dearly, I have found myself less guilty than you think I am. Listen, therefore, to my justification: I owe it to you. And you, who mean everything in the world to me, you owe me at least a moment of justice.
I have come to know, through my own anguish, how my coquetry made you suffer. But then I was utterly ignorant of love. You are party to the secret of these tortures, and you impose them on me. During the first eight months you granted me, you never roused any feeling of love in me. Why, my friend? I no more know how to tell you than I can explain to you why I love you now. Oh, to be sure, I was flattered to see that I was the object of your passionate pleas, of your fiery looks, but you left me cold and without desire. No, I was not a woman, I had no conception of the devotion or the happiness of our sex. Who was to blame? You would have despised me, would you not, had I given myself without being carried away? Perhaps this is our sex’s experience of the sublime, to give oneself without receiving any pleasure; perhaps there is no merit in yielding to ardently desired bliss. Alas, my friend, I can tell you these thoughts came to me when I was playing the coquette, but I found you already so great that I did not want you to owe me to pity . . . What have I written here?
The Human Comedy: Selected Stories Page 46
