Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  say, that the young girl would have lived forever, inlaid in the

  glory of the poet as Mary Magdalene in the cross and triumph of

  our Lord. If that is sublime, what say you to the reverse of the

  picture? As I am neither Goethe nor Lord Byron, the colossi of

  poetry and egotism, but simply the author of a few esteemed

  verses, I cannot expect the honors of a cult. Neither am I

  disposed to be a martyr. I have ambition, and I have a heart; I am

  still young and I have my career to make. See me for what I am.

  The bounty of the king and the protection of his ministers give me

  sufficient means of living. I have the outward bearing of a very

  ordinary man. I go to the soirees in Paris like any other

  empty-headed fop; and if I drive, the wheels of my carriage do not

  roll on the solid ground, absolutely indispensable in these days,

  of property invested in the funds. But if I am not rich, neither do

  I have the reliefs and consolations of life in a garret, the toil

  uncomprehended, the fame in penury, which belong to men who are

  worth far more than I, — D’Arthez, for instance.

  Ah! what prosaic conclusions will your young enthusiasm find to

  these enchanting visions. Let us stop here. If I have had the

  happiness of seeming to you a terrestrial paragon, you have been

  to me a thing of light and a beacon, like those stars that shine

  for a moment and disappear. May nothing ever tarnish this episode

  of our lives. Were we to continue it I might love you; I might

  conceive one of those mad passions which rend all obstacles, which

  light fires in the heart whose violence is greater than their

  duration. And suppose I succeeded in pleasing you? we should end

  our tale in the common vulgar way, — marriage, a household,

  children, Belise and Henriette Chrysale together! — could it be?

  Therefore, adieu.

  CHAPTER X. THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS

  To Monsieur de Canalis:

  My Friend, — Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But

  perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to

  each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and

  asks him for many things; he is mute. I seek to obtain in you the

  answers that God does not make to me. Cannot the friendship of

  Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us? Do you not

  remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva? The most

  lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that

  of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife, — happy to old age. Ah!

  friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist

  as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating

  with delicious melody in unison? Man alone of all creation is in

  himself the harp, the musician, and the listener. Do you think to

  find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women? I know that you go

  into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in

  Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has

  deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has

  inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is

  something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian

  coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called

  men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with

  the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to

  cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle

  fragrance can never fail, — it is eternal.

  Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or

  commonplace in me. Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude,

  I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of

  Lord Byron’s many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister.

  You have touched me to the quick. You do not know me, but you

  shall know me. I feel within me something that is sublime, of

  which I dare speak without vanity. God has put into my soul the

  roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak,

  and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and

  see it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty,

  intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the

  vulgarities of life! it is yours — yours, before any eye has

  blighted it, yours forever! Yes, my poet, to you belong my

  thoughts, — all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my

  heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection. If

  you should personally not please me, I shall never marry. I can

  live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your

  sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your

  friend. Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I

  have appreciated it, and that suffices me. In that is all my

  future. Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks

  not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a

  poet, — a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of

  his judgment and a source of his wealth. This handmaiden — so

  devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you — is Friendship,

  pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who

  listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of

  the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked

  with rain, or vexed in mind. Such shall be my destiny if I do not

  find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile

  alike at the thought of either fate. Do you believe France will be

  any the worse if Mademoiselle d’Este does not give it two or three

  sons, and never becomes a Madame Vilquin-something-or-other? As

  for me, I shall never be an old maid. I shall make myself a

  mother, by taking care of others and by my secret co-operation in

  the existence of a great man, to whom also I shall carry all my

  thoughts and all my earthly efforts.

  I have the deepest horror of commonplaceness. If I am free, if I

  am rich (and I know that I am young and pretty), I will never

  belong to any ninny just because he is the son of a peer of

  France, nor to a merchant who could ruin himself and me in a day,

  nor to a handsome creature who would be a sort of woman in the

  household, nor to a man of any kind who would make me blush twenty

  times a day for being his. Make yourself easy on that point. My

  father adores my wishes; he will never oppose them. If I please my

  poet, and he pleases me, the glorious structure of our love shall

  be built so high as to be inaccessible to any kind of misfortune.

  I am an eaglet; and you will see it in my eyes.

  I shall not repeat what I have already said, but I will put its

  substance in the least possible number of words, and confess to

  you that I should be the happiest of women if I were imprisoned by

  love as I am now imprisoned by the wish and will of a father. Ah!

  my friend, may we bring to a real end the romance that has come to

  us through the first exercise of my will: listen to its

  argument: —

  A young girl with a lively imagination,
locked up in a tower, is

  weary with longing to run loose in the park where her eyes only

  are allowed to rove. She invents a way to loosen her bars; she

  jumps from the casement; she scales the park wall; she frolics

  along the neighbor’s sward — it is the Everlasting comedy. Well,

  that young girl is my soul, the neighbor’s park is your genius. Is

  it not all very natural? Was there ever a neighbor that did not

  complain that unknown feet broke down his trellises? I leave it to

  my poet to answer.

  But does the lofty reasoner after the fashion of Moliere want

  still better reasons? Well, here they are. My dear Geronte,

  marriages are usually made in defiance of common-sense. Parents

  make inquiries about a young man. If the Leander — who is supplied

  by some friend, or caught in a ball-room — is not a thief, and has

  no visible rent in his reputation, if he has the necessary

  fortune, if he comes from a college or a law-school and so fulfils

  the popular ideas of education, and if he wears his clothes with a

  gentlemanly air, he is allowed to meet the young lady, whose

  mother has ordered her to guard her tongue, to let no sign of her

  heart or soul appear on her face, which must wear the smile of a

  danseuse finishing a pirouette. These commands are coupled with

  instructions as to the danger of revealing her real character, and

  the additional advice of not seeming alarmingly well educated. If

  the settlements have all been agreed upon, the parents are

  good-natured enough to let the pair see each other for a few

  moments; they are allowed to talk or walk together, but always

  without the slightest freedom, and knowing that they are bound by

  rigid rules. The man is as much dressed up in soul as he is in body,

  and so is the young girl. This pitiable comedy, mixed with bouquets,

  jewels, and theatre-parties is called “paying your addresses.” It

  revolts me: I desire that actual marriage shall be the result of a

  previous and long marriage of souls. A young girl, a woman, has

  throughout her life only this one moment when reflection, second

  sight, and experience are necessary to her. She plays her liberty,

  her happiness, and she is not allowed to throw the dice; she risks

  her all, and is forced to be a mere spectator. I have the right,

  the will, the power to make my own unhappiness, and I use them, as

  did my mother, who, won by beauty and led by instinct, married the

  most generous, the most liberal, the most loving of men. I know

  that you are free, a poet, and noble-looking. Be sure that I

  should not have chosen one of your brothers in Apollo who was

  already married. If my mother was won by beauty, which is perhaps

  the spirit of form, why should I not be attracted by the spirit

  and the form united? Shall I not know you better by studying you

  in this correspondence than I could through the vulgar experience

  of “receiving your addresses”? This is the question, as Hamlet

  says.

  But my proceedings, dear Chrysale, have at least the merit of not

  binding us personally. I know that love has its illusions, and

  every illusion its to-morrow. That is why there are so many

  partings among lovers vowed to each other for life. The proof of

  love lies in two things, — suffering and happiness. When, after

  passing through these double trials of life two beings have shown

  each other their defects as well as their good qualities, when

  they have really observed each other’s character, then they may go

  to their grave hand in hand. My dear Argante, who told you that

  our little drama thus begun was to have no future? In any case

  shall we not have enjoyed the pleasures of our correspondence?

  I await your orders, monseigneur, and I am with all my heart,

  Your handmaiden,

  O. d’Este M.

  To Mademoiselle O. d’Este M., — You are a witch, a spirit, and I

  love you! Is that what you desire of me, most original of girls?

  Perhaps you are only seeking to amuse your provincial leisure with

  the follies which are you able to make a poet commit. If so, you

  have done a bad deed. Your two letters have enough of the spirit

  of mischief in them to force this doubt into the mind of a

  Parisian. But I am no longer master of myself; my life, my future

  depend on the answer you will make me. Tell me if the certainty of

  an unbounded affection, oblivious of all social conventions, will

  touch you, — if you will suffer me to seek you. There is anxiety

  enough and uncertainty enough in the question as to whether I can

  personally please you. If your reply is favorable I change my

  life, I bid adieu to all the irksome pleasures which we have the

  folly to call happiness. Happiness, my dear and beautiful unknown,

  is what you dream it to be, — a fusion of feelings, a perfect

  accordance of souls, the imprint of a noble ideal (such as God

  does permit us to form in this low world) upon the trivial round

  of daily life whose habits we must needs obey, a constancy of

  heart more precious far than what we call fidelity. Can we say

  that we make sacrifices when the end in view is our eternal good,

  the dream of poets, the dream of maidens, the poem which, at the

  entrance of life when thought essays its wings, each noble

  intellect has pondered and caressed only to see it shivered to

  fragments on some stone of stumbling as hard as it is vulgar? — for

  to the great majority of men, the foot of reality steps instantly

  on that mysterious egg so seldom hatched.

  I cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor

  of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side,

  filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed — an

  effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word

  “sacrifice.” You have already rendered me forgetful, if not

  ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word,

  and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de

  Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully.

  Our life will be, for me at least, that “felicity untroubled”

  which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso, — a poem far

  superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in

  the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of

  a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the

  power to love, and to love endlessly, — to march to the grave with

  gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and

  with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to

  face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads,

  like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the

  same affection but transformed in soul by our life’s seasons. Hear

  me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte,

  and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to

  drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled

  woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the

  mask and see the face.
Either write me no more, or give me hope.

  Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you

  permit me to sign myself,

  Your Friend?

  To Monsieur de Canalis, — What flattery! with what rapidity is the

  grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I

  attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this

  white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a

  rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to

  a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is

  personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress?

  Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a

  truce with jesting.

  Your letter has made me know the elating pleasures of the soul;

  the first that I have known outside of my family affections. What,

  says a poet, are the ties of blood which are so strong in ordinary

  minds, compared to those divinely forged within us by mysterious

  sympathies? Let me thank you — no, we must not thank each other for

  such things — but God bless you for the happiness you have given

  me; be happy in the joy you have shed into my soul. You explain to

  me some of the apparent injustices in social life. There is

  something, I know not what, so dazzling, so virile in glory, that

  it belongs only to man; God forbids us women to wear its halo, but

  he makes love our portion, giving us the tenderness which soothes

  the brow scorched by his lightnings. I have felt my mission, and

  you have now confirmed it.

  Sometimes, my friend, I rise in the morning in a state of

  inexpressible sweetness; a sort of peace, tender and divine, gives

  me an idea of heaven. My first thought is then like a benediction.

  I call these mornings my little German wakings, in opposition to

  my Southern sunsets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman fetes

  and ardent poems. Well, after reading your letter, so full of

  feverish impatience, I felt in my heart all the freshness of my

  celestial wakings, when I love the air about me and all nature,

  and fancy that I am destined to die for one I love. One of your