Letters of Two Brides

by Honoré de Balzac

  16

  FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

  March

  I am dressed in white; I have white camellias in my hair and a white camellia in my hand. My mother’s are red; I will take one from her if I choose. I feel a curious urge to make him pay dearly for his red camellia by hesitating a moment and making my decision only then and there. I am very beautiful! Griffith asked for a moment to look at me. The solemnity of this evening and the drama of this secret consent have colored my face: on each cheek I have a red camellia blooming against a white one!

  One o’clock in the morning

  Everyone admired me; only one was capable of adoring me. His face fell when he saw me with a white camellia in my hand, and I saw him turn white as that flower when I took a red one from my mother. I might have brought those two flowers purely by chance; by picking one before his eyes, I gave him an answer and so made of my confession an event! The opera that evening was Roméo et Juliette, and as you know nothing of the two lovers’ duet, you cannot understand the happiness that divine expression of tenderness inspires in two newcomers to love. I went to bed hearing footfalls on the resonant stones of the side street. Oh! Now, my angel, my heart is on fire, and my mind. What is he doing? What is he thinking? Does he have one thought in his mind that does not involve me? Is he the ever-willing slave that he claims? How to be sure? Does he have in his soul the slightest suspicion that my acceptance sweeps away any rebuke, any return, any gratitude? I am lost in the labyrinthine ruminations of the women in Cyrus and L’Astrée, in the subtleties of the Courts of Love.[32] Does he know that in love a woman’s slightest act is the conclusion of a world of reflections, inner battles, lost victories? What is he thinking at this moment? How may I order him to write me a detailed account of his day every evening? He is my slave, I must keep him busy, and I intend to drown him in work.

  Sunday morning

  I slept only a little, after dawn. It is now noon. I have just dictated the following letter to Griffith.

  To Monsieur le Baron de Macumer,

  Mademoiselle de Chaulieu has directed me, Monsieur le Baron, to ask for the return of a letter written her by one of her friends and copied out in her hand, which you took away with you.

  Yours, etc.

  Griffith

  My dear, Griffith went off to the rue Hillerin-Bertin and had that love note delivered to my slave, who returned my statement of purpose, damp with tears, in an envelope. He obeyed me. Oh! My dear, how much that page must have meant to him! Any other man would have refused in a letter overstuffed with flattery, but that Saracen did just as he promised: he obeyed. I am moved to tears.

  17

  FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

  April 2

  The weather yesterday was magnificent. I dressed in the manner of a girl who is loved and eager to please. At my request, my father gave me the finest conveyance to be seen in all of Paris: two dappled gray horses and a calèche of the greatest elegance. I wanted to try out my finery. I was like a flower beneath a parasol lined with white silk. As I drove up the Champs-Élysées, I saw my Abencerrage coming toward me on a magnificent stallion: people stopped in their tracks to examine it, for most men are amateur horse traders nowadays. He saluted me with one hand, and I gave him a friendly sign of encouragement; he slowed his horse, which gave me a moment to tell him, “Do not take it amiss that I asked for my letter back, Monsieur le Baron; it was of no further use to you.” To which, in a low voice, I added, “You have already exceeded those requirements.”

  I paused for a moment, then went on: “Your horse seems to attract a good deal of attention.”

  “My steward in Sardinia sent it to me as a point of pride, for this Arabian stallion was born in my maquis.”

  This morning, my dear, Hénarez was riding an English sorrel horse, again very beautiful, but causing no stir: the very slight mocking criticism in my words had sufficed. He saluted me, and I answered with a faint nod. Macumer’s horse had been bought by the Duke d’Angoulême. My slave understood that he was straying from the requisite simplicity by attracting the passing crowd’s gaze. A man must be noticed for himself alone, not for his horse nor for any mere thing. Riding too fine a horse seems to me as ridiculous as wearing an oversize diamond on one’s breast. I was enchanted to be taking him to task, and perhaps there was a touch of arrogance in his choice, forgivable in one who has been banished. That childishness pleases me. Oh my old reasoning friend! Are you finding as much pleasure in my love as I find grimness in your stern philosophy? Dear Philip II in a skirt, are you beside me here, riding in my calèche? Do you see the velvety gaze, humble and fulsome, proud of its servitude, briefly sent my way by that truly great man, who now wears my livery, since he always has a red camellia in his buttonhole, just as I hold a white one in my hand? What clarity love imparts! How well I understand Paris! Now everything here seems full of refinement. Yes, love here is prettier, grander, more charming than anywhere else in the world. I have realized that I could never torment or trouble a fool, nor have the slightest hold over him. Only superior men can fully understand us, and only on them can we exert our influence. Oh! poor friend, forgive me, I was forgetting about our l’Estorade, but did you not tell me that you planned to make of him a genius? Oh, I believe I understand why: you are carefully cultivating him so that one day you will be understood. Farewell, I’m feeling a bit giddy, and I prefer not to go on.

  18

  FROM MADAME DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU

  April

  Dear angel, or should I say dear demon, you have saddened me without meaning to; were we not one single soul, I would say you have hurt me—but can one not also hurt oneself? How obvious it is that you have not yet let your thoughts linger on that word indissoluble as it applies to the contract binding a woman to a man! I have no wish to contradict the philosophers or the legislators—they are entirely capable of contradicting themselves—but, my dear, by making marriage irrevocable and imposing on it one single form, universal and unbending, they have made of each union an entirely unique thing, as distinct as one individual from the next. Every marriage has its own internal laws: those of a marriage in the country, where two people will constantly be in each other’s presence, are not those of a household in the city, where life is variegated by more numerous distractions, and those of a household in Paris, where life goes by like a rushing torrent, will not be those of a marriage in the provinces, where life is not so hectic. If the conditions vary with the location, they vary still more with the two natures involved. The wife of a man of genius has only to let herself be carried along; the wife of a fool, assuming she is more intelligent than he, must seize the controls lest still greater misfortunes befall her. Perhaps, taken to an extreme, reflection and reason can become what is known as depravity. For our purposes, by depravity do we not mean the presence of calculation in the sentiments? A passion that reasons is depraved; it is beautiful only when it is involuntary, only in those sublime surges of emotion untouched by self-interest. Ah! Sooner or later, my dear, you will say to yourself, “Yes! A woman requires artifice no less than her corset,” if by artifice we mean the silence of a woman who has the courage to hold her tongue, if by artifice we mean the calculations required for future security. Every married woman learns the laws of society at her own expense, laws that are in many ways incompatible with nature’s. A woman who marries at our age can have a dozen children in her marriage; if she did, she would be committing twelve crimes, she would be creating twelve miseries. Would she not be delivering charming creatures into the hands of misery and despair? Whereas two children are two joys, two good deeds, two creations in harmony with today’s laws and ways. Natural and civil law are enemies, and we are the field on which they do battle. Do you, then, call depravity the wisdom of a wife who sees to it that her family is not ruined by its own existence? With one calculation or a thousand, all is lost in the heart. You will find yourself engaging in that dreaded calculation, my beautiful Baroness de Macumer, whe
n you are the proud, happy wife of the man who loves you—or rather, that fine man will spare you the trouble, for he will undertake it himself. As you see, dear free spirit, I have carefully studied the civil code as it applies to conjugal love. You will learn that we are responsible only to ourselves and to God for the means we employ to ensure happiness in our homes; better a calculation that achieves that end than an unreflecting love that brings sorrow, strife, or distance. I have unflinchingly studied the role of the wife and the mother. Yes, dear angel, we have sublime lies to tell in order to be the noble creatures we are when we accomplish our duties. You accuse me of artifice because I want to mete out Louis’s knowledge of me from day to day, but is distance not caused precisely by too intimate a knowledge? I want to keep him busy so as to keep him distracted from me, in the name of his own happiness, and that has nothing to do with calculation in the passions. Affection may well be inexhaustible, but love is not, so it is an entirely worthwhile occupation for a woman to distribute it judiciously over her lifetime. You may well think me abominable, but I have not abandoned my principles, and I think myself very great and very generous for it. Virtue, my darling, is an abstract idea whose manifestations vary from one setting to the next: the virtues of Provence, of Constantinople, of London and Paris are perfectly disparate in their outward forms, but they are all virtue nonetheless. The tissue of every human life is woven of the most idiosyncratic combinations, but from a certain height they all look the same. If I wanted to make Louis unhappy and bring about an estrangement, I would have only to put myself on his leash. I have not had the happiness of meeting a superior man, as you have, but perhaps I will have the pleasure of making my man superior, and I hereby set a date with you in five years in Paris. You yourself will be taken in; you will tell me I was mistaken, that Monsieur de l’Estorade was born an exceptional person. As for the wonders of love, as for those emotions I feel only through you, as for those nightly lingerings on the balcony by the light of the stars, those adorations, those deifications, of those, I have learned, I must abandon all hope. Your glittering success in life radiates all around you, as far as you please; mine is confined, its walls are those of La Crampade, and you rebuke me for the precautions a poor, fragile, secret happiness requires to become durable, rich, and mysterious! I thought I had discovered the graces of a mistress in my wifely position, and you have almost made me blush at myself. Between the two of us, who is right, who is wrong? Perhaps we are both equally right and wrong, and perhaps society sells us our lace, our titles, and our children at a very dear price! I have red camellias of my own, I wear them on my lips, in the form of smiles that bloom for those two souls, father and son, to whom I am devoted, at once slave and mistress. But, my dear! your last letters have given me a sense of all I have lost. You have shown me the full extent of the sacrifices a married woman must make. I have scarcely so much as glimpsed those beautiful, wild steppes you are now bounding over, and I will say nothing to you of the tears I wiped away on reading your words—but regret is not remorse, even if it is a close cousin. “Marriage has made you philosophical!” you wrote me, but alas no, as I realized when I wept on learning you had been swept away on that surging wave of love. But some time ago my father advised me to read one of the most profound writers of our lands, an heir to Bossuet, one of those cruel manipulators who never fails to convince. While you were reading Corinne, I was reading Bonald,[33] and here is the whole secret of my philosophy: I came to see the Family as a powerful, holy thing. By Bonald, your father said only the truth in his little speech. Farewell, my dear imagination, my friend, you who are my only folly!

  19

  FROM LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MADAME DE L’ESTORADE

  Well, you are a wonderful wife, my Renée, and I now quite agree that it is an honorable thing to deceive: there, are you happy? Besides, the man who loves us belongs to us; we have the right to make of him a fool or a man of genius, though, between us, they are most often our fools. You will make a man of genius out of yours, and you will keep it a secret: two glorious deeds! Ah! It would be a good joke on you if there were no heaven, for you have abandoned yourself to voluntary martyrdom. You want to make him ambitious and keep him in love with you! But, child that you are, simply keeping him in love with you is endeavor enough. To what degree is calculation virtue or virtue calculation? Hmm? We won’t quarrel over that question, since Bonald is here. We are and we want to be virtuous, but at this moment I believe that, for all your charming little games, you are a better woman than I. Yes, I am a horribly duplicitous girl: I love Felipe, and I hide it from him with an appalling dissimulation. I would like to see him leap from his tree to the top of the wall, from the top of the wall to my balcony, and if he did as I wish I would wither him with my disdain. As you see, I am brutally honest. Who is stopping me? What power prevents me from telling that dear Felipe of all the happiness his pure, whole, great, secret love sends flooding through me? Madame de Mirbel is painting my portrait; I intend to give it to him. I am each day more astonished at the vitality love brings to life. How interesting each hour becomes, every act, down to the tiniest things! And what a wonderful mingling of the past and the future in the present! One lives in three tenses at once. Oh! Answer me, tell me about happiness—does it calm, or does it excite? I am sick with anxiety, I have no idea what to do: there is a force in my heart that draws me to him, against all reason and convention. I finally understand your curiosity about Louis, are you happy? Felipe’s joy in being mine, his love from afar, his obedience, all that goads me no less than his deep respect needled me when he was only my Spanish teacher. Seeing him pass by, I am tempted to cry out, “Idiot, if you love me in a painting, what would it be to truly know me?”

  Oh! Renée, you do burn my letters, don’t you? And I will burn yours. If any eyes but ours were to read these thoughts spilled out heart to heart, I would order Felipe to go and gouge them out, and then kill their owners while he’s about it, just to be sure.

  Monday

  Ah! Renée, how to sound the heart of a man? My father must introduce your Monsieur Bonald to me, and then, since he’s so wise, I’ll ask him. God is lucky indeed to be able to plumb the depths of the human heart. Am I still an angel for that man? That is the great question.

  If ever I were to glimpse, in a gesture, a glance, a tone of voice, any waning of the respect he showed me as my Spanish teacher, I believe I would find the strength to forget everything! Why these grand words, these grand resolutions, you will ask? Ah! I shall tell you, my dear. As I say, my charming father, who behaves with me like an old consort with a woman of Italy, has been having my portrait done by Madame de Mirbel. I succeeded in having a rather skillful copy made; that copy was for the duke, the original for Felipe. I sent it off yesterday, accompanied by these few lines:

  Don Felipe, your wholehearted devotion is answered by an implicit trust. Does any man merit this blind faith? Only time will tell.

  It’s a generous reward, it sounds like a promise and, horrors, an invitation, but what you will find more awful still is that I wanted the reward to express both a promise and an invitation, without going so far as an offer. If in his answer I see the words my Louise, or even simply Louise, he is lost.

  Tuesday

  No! he is not lost. That constitutional minister is a glorious lover. Here is his reply:

  I have not gone one moment away from you without thinking of you, my eyes closed to everything around me and riveted through my meditations on your image, which could never appear promptly enough in that dark palace where dreams are set, a palace that you filled with light. Henceforth my gaze will find repose in that marvelous miniature—or that talisman, I should say, for I see your blue eyes come to life, and all at once the painting becomes a reality. My delay in writing you this letter comes from my insistent, imperious need to luxuriate in that contemplation, and that opportunity to tell you all the things I must never say. Yes, since yesterday, closeted away alone with you, I abandoned myself to a whole, unmingled, i
nfinite happiness for the first time in my life. If you could see yourself where I have placed you, between God and the Virgin, you would understand the terrors that filled my night, but I hope I will not offend you by speaking of them, for I find so many torments in one single glance unlit by the angelic goodness I live for that I can only beg your pardon in advance. Oh queen of my life and soul, if only you would consent to grant me one one-thousandth of the love I feel for you!