Works of Honore De Balzac
Page 175
So saying, she held out the letter to him.
At this moment Claude Vignon entered the room. At his unexpected apparition Calyste and Felicite were both silent for a moment, — she from surprise, he from a vague uneasiness. The vast forehead, broad and high, of the new-comer, who was bald at the age of thirty-seven, now seemed darkened by annoyance. His firm, judicial mouth expressed a habit of chilling sarcasm. Claude Vignon is imposing, in spite of the precocious deteriorations of a face once magnificent, and now grown haggard. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five he strongly resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening; leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent; perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid dark tints above the eyelids; the temples have lost their freshness. The chin, of incomparable distinction, is getting doubled, but without dignity. His voice, never sonorous, is weakening; without being either hoarse or extinct, it touches the confines of hoarseness and extinction. The impassibility of that fine head, the fixity of that glance, cover irresolution and weakness, which the keenly intelligent and sarcastic smile belies. The weakness lies wholly in action, not in thought; there are traces of an encyclopedic comprehension on that brow, and in the habitual movement of a face that is childlike and splendid both. The man is tall, slightly bent already, like all those who bear the weight of a world of thought. Such long, tall bodies are never remarkable for continuous effort or creative activity. Charlemagne, Belisarious, and Constantine are noted exceptions to this rule.
Certainly Claude Vignon presents a variety of mysteries to be solved. In the first place, he is very simple and very wily. Though he falls into excesses with the readiness of a courtesan, his powers of thought remain untouched. Yet his intellect, which is competent to criticise art, science, literature, and politics, is incompetent to guide his external life. Claude contemplates himself within the domain of his intellectual kingdom, and abandons his outer man with Diogenic indifference. Satisfied to penetrate all, to comprehend all by thought, he despises materialities; and yet, if it becomes a question of creating, doubt assails him; he sees obstacles, he is not inspired by beauties, and while he is debating means, he sits with his arms pendant, accomplishing nothing. He is the Turk of the intellect made somnolent by meditation. Criticism is his opium; his harem of books to read disgusts him with real work. Indifferent to small things as well as great things, he is sometimes compelled, by the very weight of his head, to fall into a debauch, and abdicate for a few hours the fatal power of omnipotent analysis. He is far too preoccupied with the wrong side of genius, and Camille Maupin’s desire to put him back on the right side is easily conceivable. The task was an attractive one. Claude Vignon thinks himself a great politician as well as a great writer; but this unpublished Machiavelli laughs within himself at all ambitions; he knows what he can do; he has instinctively taken the measure of his future on his faculties; he sees his greatness, but he also sees obstacles, grows alarmed or disgusted, lets the time roll by, and does not go to work. Like Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist, like Nathan the dramatic author, like Blondet, another journalist, he came from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, to which we owe the greater number of our writers.
“Which way did you come?” asked Mademoiselle des Touches, coloring with either pleasure or surprise.’
“By the door,” replied Claude Vignon, dryly.
“Oh,” she cried, shrugging her shoulders, “I am aware that you are not a man to climb in by a window.”
“Scaling a window is a badge of honor for a beloved woman.”
“Enough!” said Felicite.
“Am I in the way?” asked Claude.
“Monsieur,” said Calyste, artlessly, “this letter — ”
“Pray keep it; I ask no questions; at our age we understand such affairs,” he answered, interrupting Calyste with a sardonic air.
“But, monsieur,” began Calyste, much provoked.
“Calm yourself, young man; I have the utmost indulgence for sentiments.”
“My dear Calyste,” said Camille, wishing to speak.
“‘Dear’?” said Vignon, interrupting her.
“Claude is joking,” said Camille, continuing her remarks to Calyste. “He is wrong to do it with you, who know nothing of Parisian ways.”
“I did not know that I was joking,” said Claude Vignon, very gravely.
“Which way did you come?” asked Felicite again. “I have been watching the road to Croisic for the last two hours.”
“Not all the time,” replied Vignon.
“You are too bad to jest in this way.”
“Am I jesting?”
Calyste rose.
“Why should you go so soon? You are certainly at your ease here,” said Vignon.
“Quite the contrary,” replied the angry young Breton, to whom Camille Maupin stretched out a hand, which he took and kissed, dropping a tear upon it, after which he took his leave.
“I should like to be that little young man,” said the critic, sitting down, and taking one end of the hookah. “How he will love!”
“Too much; for then he will not be loved in return,” replied Mademoiselle des Touches. “Madame de Rochefide is coming here,” she added.
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed Claude. “With Conti?”
“She will stay here alone, but he accompanies her.”
“Have they quarrelled?”
“No.”
“Play me a sonata of Beethoven’s; I know nothing of the music he wrote for the piano.”
Claude began to fill the tube of the hookah with Turkish tobacco, all the while examining Camille much more attentively than she observed. A dreadful thought oppressed him; he fancied he was being used for a blind by this woman. The situation was a novel one.
Calyste went home thinking no longer of Beatrix de Rochefide and her letter; he was furious against Claude Vignon for what he considered the utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it possible to be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on his knees, not believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He felt a desire to turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man. Ignorant he might be, as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of thought of the jesters of the press, but one thing he knew — Love was the human religion.
When his mother saw him entering the court-yard she uttered an exclamation of joy, and Zephirine whistled for Mariotte.
“Mariotte, the boy is coming! cook the fish!”
“I see him, mademoiselle,” replied the woman.
Fanny, uneasy at the sadness she saw on her son’s brow, picked up her worsted-work; the old aunt took out her knitting. The baron gave his arm-chair to his son and walked about the room, as if to stretch his legs before going out to take a turn in the garden. No Flemish or Dutch picture ever presented an interior in tones more mellow, peopled with faces and forms so harmoniously blending. The handsome young man in his black velvet coat, the mother, still so beautiful, and the aged brother and sister framed by that ancient hall, were a moving domestic harmony.
Fanny would fain have questioned Calyste, but he had already pulled a letter from his pocket, — that letter of the Marquise Beatrix, which was, perhaps, destined to destroy the happiness of this noble family. As he unfolded it, Calyste’s awakened imagination showed him the marquise dressed as Camille Maupin had fancifully depicted her.
From the Marquise de Rochefide to Mademoiselle des Touches.
Genoa, July 2.
I
have not written to you since our stay in Florence, my dear
friend, for Venice and Rome have absorbed my time, and, as you
know, happiness occupies a large part of life; so far, we have
neither of us dropped from its first level. I am a little
fatigued; for when one has a soul not easy to blaser, the
constant succession of enjoyments naturally causes lassitude.
Our friend has had a magnificent triumph at the Scala and the
Fenice, and now at the San Carlo. Three Italian operas in two
years! You cannot say that love has made him idle. We have been
warmly received everywhere, — though I myself would have preferred
solitude and silence. Surely that is the only suitable manner of
life for women who have placed themselves in direct opposition to
society? I expected such a life; but love, my dear friend, is a
more exacting master than marriage, — however, it is sweet to obey
him; though I did not think I should have to see the world again,
even by snatches, and the attentions I receive are so many stabs.
I am no longer on a footing of equality with the highest rank of
women; and the more attentions are paid to me, the more my
inferiority is made apparent.
Gennaro could not comprehend this sensitiveness; but he has been
so happy that it would ill become me not to have sacrificed my
petty vanity to that great and noble thing, — the life of an
artist. We women live by love, whereas men live by love and
action; otherwise they would not be men. Still, there are great
disadvantages for a woman in the position in which I have put
myself. You have escaped them; you continue to be a person in the
eyes of the world, which has no rights over you; you have your own
free will, and I have lost mine. I am speaking now of the things
of the heart, not those of social life, which I have utterly
renounced. You can be coquettish and self-willed, and have all the
graces of a woman who loves, a woman who can give or refuse her
love as she pleases; you have kept the right to have caprices, in
the interests even of your love. In short, to-day you still
possess your right of feeling, while I, I have no longer any
liberty of heart, which I think precious to exercise in love, even
though the love itself may be eternal. I have no right now to that
privilege of quarrelling in jest to which so many women cling, and
justly; for is it not the plummet line with which to sound the
hearts of men? I have no threat at my command. I must draw my
power henceforth from obedience, from unlimited gentleness; I must
make myself imposing by the greatness of my love. I would rather
die than leave Gennaro, and my pardon lies in the sanctity of my
love. Between social dignity and my petty personal dignity, I did
right not to hesitate. If at times I have a few melancholy
feelings, like clouds that pass through a clear blue sky, and to
which all women like to yield themselves, I keep silence about
them; they might seem like regrets. Ah me! I have so fully
understood the obligations of my position that I have armed myself
with the utmost indulgence; but so far, Gennaro has not alarmed my
susceptible jealousy. I don’t as yet see where that dear great
genius may fail.
Dear angel, I am like those pious souls who argue with their God,
for are not you my Providence? do I not owe my happiness to you?
You must never doubt, therefore, that you are constantly in my
thoughts.
I have seen Italy at last; seen it as you saw it, and as it ought
to be seen, — lighted to our souls by love, as it is by its own
bright sun and its masterpieces. I pity those who, being moved to
adoration at every step, have no hand to press, no heart in which