Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “In all that happens to me I will ask myself,” I said, “‘What would my Henriette say?’”

  “Yes, I will be the star and the sanctuary both,” she said, alluding to the dreams of my childhood.

  “You are my light and my religion,” I cried; “you shall be my all.”

  “No,” she answered; “I can never be the source of your pleasures.”

  She sighed; the smile of secret pain was on her lips, the smile of the slave who momentarily revolts. From that day forth she was to me, not merely my beloved, but my only love; she was not IN my heart as a woman who takes a place, who makes it hers by devotion or by excess of pleasure given; but she was my heart itself, — it was all hers, a something necessary to the play of my muscles. She became to me as Beatrice to the Florentine, as the spotless Laura to the Venetian, the mother of great thoughts, the secret cause of resolutions which saved me, the support of my future, the light shining in the darkness like a lily in a wood. Yes, she inspired those high resolves which pass through flames, which save the thing in peril; she gave me a constancy like Coligny’s to vanquish conquerors, to rise above defeat, to weary the strongest wrestler.

  The next day, having breakfasted at Frapesle and bade adieu to my kind hosts, I went to Clochegourde. Monsieur and Madame de Mortsauf had arranged to drive with me to Tours, whence I was to start the same night for Paris. During the drive the countess was silent; she pretended at first to have a headache; then she blushed at the falsehood, and expiated it by saying that she could not see me go without regret. The count invited me to stay with them whenever, in the absence of the Chessels, I might long to see the valley of the Indre once more. We parted heroically, without apparent tears, but Jacques, who like other delicate children was quickly touched, began to cry, while Madeleine, already a woman, pressed her mother’s hand.

  “Dear little one!” said the countess, kissing Jacques passionately.

  When I was alone at Tours after dinner a wild, inexplicable desire known only to young blood possessed me. I hired a horse and rode from Tours to Pont-de-Ruan in an hour and a quarter. There, ashamed of my folly, I dismounted, and went on foot along the road, stepping cautiously like a spy till I reached the terrace. The countess was not there, and I imagined her ill; I had kept the key of the little gate, by which I now entered; she was coming down the steps of the portico with the two children to breathe in sadly and slowly the tender melancholy of the landscape, bathed at that moment in the setting sun.

  “Mother, here is Felix,” said Madeleine.

  “Yes,” I whispered; “it is I. I asked myself why I should stay at Tours while I still could see you; why not indulge a desire that in a few days more I could not gratify.”

  “He won’t leave us again, mother,” cried Jacques, jumping round me.

  “Hush!” said Madeleine; “if you make such a noise the general will come.”

  “It is not right,” she said. “What folly!”

  The tears in her voice were the payment of what must be called a usurious speculation of love.

  “I had forgotten to return this key,” I said smiling.

  “Then you will never return,” she said.

  “Can we ever be really parted?” I asked, with a look which made her drop her eyelids for all answer.

  I left her after a few moments passed in that happy stupor of the spirit where exaltation ends and ecstasy begins. I went with lagging step, looking back at every minute. When, from the summit of the hill, I saw the valley for the last time I was struck with the contrast it presented to what it was when I first came there. Then it was verdant, then it glowed, glowed and blossomed like my hopes and my desires. Initiated now into the gloomy secrets of a family, sharing the anguish of a Christian Niobe, sad with her sadness, my soul darkened, I saw the valley in the tone of my own thoughts. The fields were bare, the leaves of the poplars falling, the few that remained were rusty, the vine-stalks were burned, the tops of the trees were tan-colored, like the robes in which royalty once clothed itself as if to hide the purple of its power beneath the brown of grief. Still in harmony with my thoughts, the valley, where the yellow rays of the setting sun were coldly dying, seemed to me a living image of my heart.

  To leave a beloved woman is terrible or natural, according as the mind takes it. For my part, I found myself suddenly in a strange land of which I knew not the language. I was unable to lay hold of things to which my soul no longer felt attachment. Then it was that the height and the breadth of my love came before me; my Henriette rose in all her majesty in this desert where I existed only through thoughts of her. That form so worshipped made me vow to keep myself spotless before my soul’s divinity, to wear ideally the white robe of the Levite, like Petrarch, who never entered Laura’s presence unless clothed in white. With what impatience I awaited the first night of my return to my father’s roof, when I could read the letter which I felt of during the journey as a miser fingers the bank-bills he carries about him. During the night I kissed the paper on which my Henriette had manifested her will; I sought to gather the mysterious emanations of her hand, to recover the intonations of her voice in the hush of my being. Since then I have never read her letters except as I read that first letter; in bed, amid total silence. I cannot understand how the letters of our beloved can be read in any other way; yet there are men, unworthy to be loved, who read such letters in the turmoil of the day, laying them aside and taking them up again with odious composure.

  Here, Natalie, is the voice which echoed through the silence of that night. Behold the noble figure which stood before me and pointed to the right path among the cross-ways at which I stood.

  To Monsieur le Vicomte Felix de Vandenesse:

  What happiness for me, dear friend, to gather the scattered

  elements of my experience that I may arm you against the dangers

  of the world, through which I pray that you pass scatheless. I

  have felt the highest pleasures of maternal love as night after

  night I have thought of these things. While writing this letter,

  sentence by sentence, projecting my thoughts into the life you are

  about to lead, I went often to my window. Looking at the towers of

  Frapesle, visible in the moonlight, I said to myself, “He sleeps,

  I wake for him.” Delightful feelings! which recall the happiest of

  my life, when I watched Jacques sleeping in his cradle and waited

  till he wakened, to feed him with my milk. You are the man-child

  whose soul must now be strengthened by precepts never taught in

  schools, but which we women have the privilege of inculcating.

  These precepts will influence your success; they prepare the way

  for it, they will secure it. Am I not exercising a spiritual

  motherhood in giving you a standard by which to judge the actions

  of your life; a motherhood comprehended, is it not, by the child?

  Dear Felix, let me, even though I may make a few mistakes, let me

  give to our friendship a proof of the disinterestedness which

  sanctifies it.

  In yielding you to the world I am renouncing you; but I love you

  too well not to sacrifice my happiness to your welfare. For the

  last four months you have made me reflect deeply on the laws and

  customs which regulate our epoch. The conversations I have had

  with my aunt, well-known to you who have replaced her, the events

  of Monsieur de Mortsauf’s life, which he has told me, the tales

  related by my father, to whom society and the court are familiar

  in their greatest as well as in their smallest aspects, all these

  have risen in my memory for the benefit of my adopted child at the

  moment when he is about to be launched, well-nigh alone, among

  men; about to act without adviser in a world where many are

  wrecked by their own best q
ualities thoughtlessly displayed, while

  others succeed through a judicious use of their worst.

  I ask you to ponder this statement of my opinion of society as a

  whole; it is concise, for to you a few words are sufficient.

  I do not know whether societies are of divine origin or whether

  they were invented by man. I am equally ignorant of the direction

  in which they tend. What I do know certainly is the fact of their

  existence. No sooner therefore do you enter society, instead of

  living a life apart, than you are bound to consider its conditions

  binding; a contract is signed between you. Does society in these

  days gain more from a man than it returns to him? I think so; but

  as to whether the individual man finds more cost than profit, or

  buys too dear the advantages he obtains, concerns the legislator

  only; I have nothing to say to that. In my judgment you are bound

  to obey in all things the general law, without discussion, whether

  it injures or benefits your personal interests. This principle may

  seem to you a very simple one, but it is difficult of application;

  it is like sap, which must infiltrate the smallest of the

  capillary tubes to stir the tree, renew its verdure, develop its

  flowers, and ripen fruit. Dear, the laws of society are not all

  written in a book; manners and customs create laws, the more

  important of which are often the least known. Believe me, there

  are neither teachers, nor schools, nor text-books for the laws

  that are now to regulate your actions, your language, your visible

  life, the manner of your presentation to the world, and your quest

  of fortune. Neglect those secret laws or fail to understand them,

  and you stay at the foot of the social system instead of looking

  down upon it. Even though this letter may seem to you diffuse,

  telling you much that you have already thought, let me confide to

  you a woman’s ethics.

  To explain society on the theory of individual happiness adroitly

  won at the cost of the greater number is a monstrous doctrine,

  which in its strict application leads men to believe that all they

  can secretly lay hold of before the law or society or other

  individuals condemn it as a wrong is honestly and fairly theirs.

  Once admit that claim and the clever thief goes free; the woman

  who violates her marriage vow without the knowledge of the world

  is virtuous and happy; kill a man, leaving no proof for justice,

  and if, like Macbeth, you win a crown you have done wisely; your

  selfish interests become the higher law; the only question then is

  how to evade, without witnesses or proof, the obstacles which law

  and morality place between you and your self-indulgence. To those

  who hold this view of society, the problem of making their

  fortune, my dear friend, resolves itself into playing a game where

  the stakes are millions or the galleys, political triumphs or

  dishonor. Still, the green cloth is not long enough for all the

  players, and a certain kind of genius is required to play the

  game. I say nothing of religious beliefs, nor yet of feelings;

  what concerns us now is the running-gear of the great machine of

  gold and iron, and its practical results with which men’s lives

  are occupied. Dear child of my heart, if you share my horror at

  this criminal theory of the world, society will present to your

  mind, as it does to all sane minds, the opposite theory of duty.

  Yes, you will see that man owes himself to man in a thousand

  differing ways. To my mind, the duke and peer owe far more to the

  workman and the pauper than the pauper and the workman owe to the

  duke. The obligations of duty enlarge in proportion to the

  benefits which society bestows on men; in accordance with the

  maxim, as true in social politics as in business, that the burden

  of care and vigilance is everywhere in proportion to profits. Each

  man pays his debt in his own way. When our poor toiler at the

  Rhetoriere comes home weary with his day’s work has he not done

  his duty? Assuredly he has done it better than many in the ranks

  above him.

  If you take this view of society, in which you are about to seek a

  place in keeping with your intellect and your faculties, you must

  set before you as a generating principle and mainspring, this

  maxim: never permit yourself to act against either your own

  conscience or the public conscience. Though my entreaty may seem

  to you superfluous, yet I entreat, yes, your Henriette implores

  you to ponder the meaning of that rule. It seems simple but, dear,

  it means that integrity, loyalty, honor, and courtesy are the

  safest and surest instruments for your success. In this selfish

  world you will find many to tell you that a man cannot make his

  way by sentiments, that too much respect for moral considerations

  will hinder his advance. It is not so; you will see men

  ill-trained, ill-taught, incapable of measuring the future, who are

  rough to a child, rude to an old woman, unwilling to be irked by

  some worthy old man on the ground that they can do nothing for

  him; later, you will find the same men caught by the thorns which

  they might have rendered pointless, and missing their triumph for

  some trivial reason; whereas the man who is early trained to a

  sense of duty does not meet the same obstacles; he may attain

  success less rapidly, but when attained it is solid and does not

  crumble like that of others.

  When I show you that the application of this doctrine demands in

  the first place a mastery of the science of manners, you may think

  my jurisprudence has a flavor of the court and of the training I

  received as a Lenoncourt. My dear friend, I do attach great

  importance to that training, trifling as it seems. You will find

  that the habits of the great world are as important to you as the

  wide and varied knowledge that you possess. Often they take the

  place of such knowledge; for some really ignorant men, born with

  natural gifts and accustomed to give connection to their ideas,

  have been known to attain a grandeur never reached by others far

  more worthy of it. I have studied you thoroughly, Felix, wishing

  to know if your education, derived wholly from schools, has

  injured your nature. God knows the joy with which I find you fit

  for that further education of which I speak.

  The manners of many who are brought up in the traditions of the

  great world are purely external; true politeness, perfect manners,

  come from the heart, and from a deep sense of personal dignity.

  This is why some men of noble birth are, in spite of their

  training, ill-mannered, while others, among the middle classes,

  have instinctive good taste and only need a few lessons to give

  them excellent manners without any signs of awkward imitation.

  Believe a poor woman who no longer leaves her valley when she

  tells you that this dignity of tone, this courteous simplicity in

  words, in gesture, in bearing, and even in the character of the

  home, is a living and material poem, the charm of which is

  irresistible; imagine t
herefore what it is when it takes its

  inspiration from the heart. Politeness, dear, consists in seeming

  to forget ourselves for others; with many it is social cant, laid

  aside when personal self-interest shows its cloven-foot; a noble

  then becomes ignoble. But — and this is what I want you to

  practise, Felix — true politeness involves a Christian principle;

  it is the flower of Love, it requires that we forget ourselves

  really. In memory of your Henriette, for her sake, be not a

  fountain without water, have the essence and the form of true

  courtesy. Never fear to be the dupe and victim of this social

  virtue; you will some day gather the fruit of seeds scattered

  apparently to the winds.

  My father used to say that one of the great offences of sham

  politeness was the neglect of promises. When anything is demanded

  of you that you cannot do, refuse positively and leave no

  loopholes for false hopes; on the other hand, grant at once

  whatever you are willing to bestow. Your prompt refusal will make

  you friends as well as your prompt benefit, and your character

  will stand the higher; for it is hard to say whether a promise

  forgotten, a hope deceived does not make us more enemies than a

  favor granted brings us friends.

  Dear friend, there are certain little matters on which I may

  dwell, for I know them, and it comes within my province to impart

  them. Be not too confiding, nor frivolous, nor over enthusiastic,

  — three rocks on which youth often strikes. Too confiding a nature

  loses respect, frivolity brings contempt, and others take

  advantage of excessive enthusiasm. In the first place, Felix, you

  will never have more than two or three friends in the course of

  your life. Your entire confidence is their right; to give it to

  many is to betray your real friends. If you are more intimate with

  some men than with others keep guard over yourself; be as cautious

  as though you knew they would one day be your rivals, or your