Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

go back to you out of vanity. All these women will injure you,

  either in the present or the future. Every young woman who enters

  society and lives a life of pleasure and of gratified vanity is

  semi-corrupt and will corrupt you. Among them you will not find

  the chaste and tranquil being in whom you may forever reign. Ah!

  she who loves you will love solitude; the festivals of her heart

  will be your glances; she will live upon your words. May she be

  all the world to you, for you will be all in all to her. Love her

  well; give her neither griefs nor rivals; do not rouse her

  jealousy. To be loved, dear, to be comprehended, is the greatest

  of all joys; I pray that you may taste it! But run no risk of

  injuring the flower of your soul; be sure, be very sure of the

  heart in which you place your affections. That woman will never be

  her own self; she will never think of herself, but of you. She

  will never oppose you, she will have no interests of her own; for

  you she will see a danger where you can see none and where she

  would be oblivious of her own. If she suffers it will be in

  silence; she will have no personal vanity, but deep reverence for

  whatever in her has won your love. Respond to such a love by

  surpassing it. If you are fortunate enough to find that which I,

  your poor friend, must ever be without, I mean a love mutually

  inspired, mutually felt, remember that in a valley lives a mother

  whose heart is so filled with the feelings you have put there that

  you can never sound its depths. Yes, I bear you an affection which

  you will never know to its full extent; before it could show

  itself for what it is you would have to lose your mind and

  intellect, and then you would be unable to comprehend the length

  and breadth of my devotion.

  Shall I be misunderstood in bidding you avoid young women (all

  more or less artful, satirical, vain, frivolous, and extravagant)

  and attach yourself to influential women, to those imposing

  dowagers full of excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help

  your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things

  that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary,

  generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel

  with the guileless heart? If the motto Noblesse oblige sums up the

  advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to

  women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, “Serve all, love

  one!”

  Your educational knowledge is immense; your heart, saved by early

  suffering, is without a stain; all is noble, all is well with you.

  Now, Felix, WILL! Your future lies in that one word, that word of

  great men. My child, you will obey your Henriette, will you not?

  You will permit her to tell you from time to time the thoughts

  that are in her mind of you and of your relations to the world? I

  have an eye in my soul which sees the future for you as for my

  children; suffer me to use that faculty for your benefit; it is a

  faculty, a mysterious gift bestowed by my lonely life; far from

  its growing weaker, I find it strengthened and exalted by solitude

  and silence.

  I ask you in return to bestow a happiness on me; I desire to see

  you becoming more and more important among men, without one single

  success that shall bring a line of shame upon my brow; I desire

  that you may quickly bring your fortunes to the level of your

  noble name, and be able to tell me I have contributed to your

  advancement by something better than a wish. This secret

  co-operation in your future is the only pleasure I can allow

  myself. For it, I will wait and hope.

  I do not say farewell. We are separated; you cannot put my hand to

  your lips, but you must surely know the place you hold in the

  heart of your

  Henriette.

  As I read this letter I felt the maternal heart beating beneath my fingers which held the paper while I was still cold from the harsh greeting of my own mother. I understood why the countess had forbidden me to open it in Touraine; no doubt she feared that I would fall at her feet and wet them with my tears.

  I now made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who up to this time had been a stranger to me. But in all our intercourse he showed a haughtiness which kept us apart and prevented brotherly affection. Kindly feelings depend on similarity of soul, and there was no point of touch between us. He preached to me dogmatically those social trifles which head or heart can see without instruction; he seemed to mistrust me. If I had not had the inward support of my great love he would have made me awkward and stupid by affecting to believe that I knew nothing of life. He presented me in society under the expectation that my dulness would be a foil to his qualities. Had I not remembered the sorrows of my childhood I might have taken his protecting vanity for brotherly affection; but inward solitude produces the same effects as outward solitude; silence within our souls enables us to hear the faintest sound; the habit of taking refuge within ourselves develops a perception which discerns every quality of the affections about us. Before I knew Madame de Mortsauf a hard look grieved me, a rough word wounded me to the heart; I bewailed these things without as yet knowing anything of a life of tenderness; whereas now, since my return from Clochegourde, I could make comparisons which perfected my instinctive perceptions. All deductions derived only from sufferings endured are incomplete. Happiness has a light to cast. I now allowed myself the more willingly to be kept under the heel of primogeniture because I was not my brother’s dupe.

  I always went alone to the Duchesse de Lenoncourt’s, where Henriette’s name was never mentioned; no one, except the good old duke, who was simplicity itself, ever spoke of her to me; but by the way he welcomed me I guessed that his daughter had privately commended me to his care. At the moment when I was beginning to overcome the foolish wonder and shyness which besets a young man at his first entrance into the great world, and to realize the pleasures it could give through the resources it offers to ambition, just, too, as I was beginning to make use of Henriette’s maxims, admiring their wisdom, the events of the 20th of March took place.

  My brother followed the court to Ghent; I, by Henriette’s advice (for I kept up a correspondence with her, active on my side only), went there also with the Duc de Lenoncourt. The natural kindness of the old duke turned to a hearty and sincere protection as soon as he saw me attached, body and soul, to the Bourbons. He himself presented me to his Majesty. Courtiers are not numerous when misfortunes are rife; but youth is gifted with ingenuous admiration and uncalculating fidelity. The king had the faculty of judging men; a devotion which might have passed unobserved in Paris counted for much at Ghent, and I had the happiness of pleasing Louis XVIII.

  A letter from Madame de Mortsauf to her father, brought with despatches by an emissary of the Vendeens, enclosed a note to me by which I learned that Jacques was ill. Monsieur de Mortsauf, in despair at his son’s ill-health, and also at the news of a second emigration, added a few words which enabled me to guess the situation of my dear one. Worried by him, no doubt, when she passed all her time at Jacques’ bedside, allowed no rest either day or night, superior to annoyance, yet unable always to control herself when her whole soul was given to the care of her child, Henriette needed the support of a friendship which might lighten the burden of her life, were it only by diverting her husband’s mind. Though I was now most impatient to rival the career of my brother, who had lately been sent to the Congress of Vienna, and was anxious at any risk to jus
tify Henriette’s appeal and become a man myself, freed from all vassalage, nevertheless my ambition, my desire for independence, the great interest I had in not leaving the king, all were of no account before the vision of Madame de Mortsauf’s sad face. I resolved to leave the court at Ghent and serve my true sovereign. God rewarded me. The emissary sent by the Vendeens was unable to return. The king wanted a messenger who would faithfully carry back his instructions. The Duc de Lenoncourt knew that the king would never forget the man who undertook so perilous an enterprise; he asked for the mission without consulting me, and I gladly accepted it, happy indeed to be able to return to Clochegourde employed in the good cause.

  After an audience with the king I returned to France, where, both in Paris and in Vendee, I was fortunate enough to carry out his Majesty’s instructions. Towards the end of May, being tracked by the Bonapartist authorities to whom I was denounced, I was obliged to fly from place to place in the character of a man endeavoring to get back to his estate. I went on foot from park to park, from wood to wood, across the whole of upper Vendee, the Bocage and Poitou, changing my direction as danger threatened.

  I reached Saumur, from Saumur I went to Chinon, and from Chinon I reached, in a single night, the woods of Nueil, where I met the count on horseback; he took me up behind him and we reached Clochegourde without passing any one who recognized me.

  “Jacques is better,” were the first words he said to me.

  I explained to him my position of diplomatic postman, hunted like a wild beast, and the brave gentleman in his quality of royalist claimed the danger over Chessel of receiving me. As we came in sight of Clochegourde the past eight months rolled away like a dream. When we entered the salon the count said: “Guess whom I bring you? — Felix!”

  “Is it possible!” she said, with pendant arms and a bewildered face.

  I showed myself and we both remained motionless; she in her armchair, I on the threshold of the door; looking at each other with that hunger of the soul which endeavors to make up in a single glance for the lost months. Then, recovering from a surprise which left her heart unveiled, she rose and I went up to her.

  “I have prayed for your safety,” she said, giving me her hand to kiss.

  She asked news of her father; then she guessed my weariness and went to prepare my room, while the count gave me something to eat, for I was dying of hunger. My room was the one above hers, her aunt’s room; she requested the count to take me there, after setting her foot on the first step of the staircase, deliberating no doubt whether to accompany me; I turned my head, she blushed, bade me sleep well, and went away. When I came down to dinner I heard for the first time of the disasters at Waterloo, the flight of Napoleon, the march of the Allies to Paris, and the probable return of the Bourbons. These events were all in all to the count; to us they were nothing. What think you was the great event I was to learn, after kissing the children? — for I will not dwell on the alarm I felt at seeing the countess pale and shrunken; I knew the injury I might do by showing it and was careful to express only joy at seeing her. But the great event for us was told in the words, “You shall have ice to-day!” She had often fretted the year before that the water was not cold enough for me, who, never drinking anything else, liked it iced. God knows how many entreaties it had cost her to get an ice-house built. You know better than any one that a word, a look, an inflection of the voice, a trifling attention, suffices for love; love’s noblest privilege is to prove itself by love. Well, her words, her look, her pleasure, showed me her feelings, as I had formerly shown her mine by that first game of backgammon. These ingenuous proofs of her affection were many; on the seventh day after my arrival she recovered her freshness, she sparkled with health and youth and happiness; my lily expanded in beauty just as the treasures of my heart increased. Only in petty minds or in common hearts can absence lessen love or efface the features or diminish the beauty of our dear one. To ardent imaginations, to all beings through whose veins enthusiasm passes like a crimson tide, and in whom passion takes the form of constancy, absence has the same effect as the sufferings of the early Christians, which strengthened their faith and made God visible to them. In hearts that abound in love are there not incessant longings for a desired object, to which the glowing fire of our dreams gives higher value and a deeper tint? Are we not conscious of instigations which give to the beloved features the beauty of the ideal by inspiring them with thought? The past, dwelt on in all its details becomes magnified; the future teems with hope. When two hearts filled with these electric clouds meet each other, their interview is like the welcome storm which revives the earth and stimulates it with the swift lightnings of the thunderbolt. How many tender pleasures came to me when I found these thoughts and these sensations reciprocal! With what glad eyes I followed the development of happiness in Henriette! A woman who renews her life from that of her beloved gives, perhaps, a greater proof of feeling than she who dies killed by a doubt, withered on her stock for want of sap; I know not which of the two is the more touching.

  The revival of Madame de Mortsauf was wholly natural, like the effects of the month of May upon the meadows, or those of the sun and of the brook upon the drooping flowers. Henriette, like our dear valley of love, had had her winter; she revived like the valley in the springtime. Before dinner we went down to the beloved terrace. There, with one hand stroking the head of her son, who walked feebly beside her, silent, as though he were breeding an illness, she told me of her nights beside his pillow.

  For three months, she said, she had lived wholly within herself, inhabiting, as it were, a dark palace; afraid to enter sumptuous rooms where the light shone, where festivals were given, to her denied, at the door of which she stood, one glance turned upon her child, another to a dim and distant figure; one ear listening for moans, another for a voice. She told me poems, born of solitude, such as no poet ever sang; but all ingenuously, without one vestige of love, one trace of voluptuous thought, one echo of a poesy orientally soothing as the rose of Frangistan. When the count joined us she continued in the same tone, like a woman secure within herself, able to look proudly at her husband and kiss the forehead of her son without a blush. She had prayed much; she had clasped her hands for nights together over her child, refusing to let him die.

  “I went,” she said, “to the gate of the sanctuary and asked his life of God.”

  She had had visions, and she told them to me; but when she said, in that angelic voice of hers, these exquisite words, “While I slept my heart watched,” the count harshly interrupted her.

  “That is to say, you were half crazy,” he cried.

  She was silent, as deeply hurt as though it were a first wound; forgetting that for thirteen years this man had lost no chance to shoot his arrows into her heart. Like a soaring bird struck on the wing by vulgar shot, she sank into a dull depression; then she roused herself.

  “How is it, monsieur,” she said, “that no word of mine ever finds favor in your sight? Have you no indulgence for my weakness, — no comprehension of me as a woman?”

  She stopped short. Already she regretted the murmur, and measured the future by the past; how could she expect comprehension? Had she not drawn upon herself some virulent attack? The blue veins of her temples throbbed; she shed no tears, but the color of her eyes faded. Then she looked down, that she might not see her pain reflected on my face, her feelings guessed, her soul wooed by my soul; above all, not see the sympathy of young love, ready like a faithful dog to spring at the throat of whoever threatened his mistress, without regard to the assailant’s strength or quality. At such cruel moments the count’s air of superiority was supreme. He thought he had triumphed over his wife, and he pursued her with a hail of phrases which repeated the one idea, and were like the blows of an axe which fell with unvarying sound.

  “Always the same?” I said, when the count left us to follow the huntsman who came to speak to him.

  “Always,” answered Jacques.

  “Always excellent, my
son,” she said, endeavoring to withdraw Monsieur de Mortsauf from the judgment of his children. “You see only the present, you know nothing of the past; therefore you cannot criticise your father without doing him injustice. But even if you had the pain of seeing that your father was to blame, family honor requires you to bury such secrets in silence.”

  “How have the changes at the Cassine and the Rhetoriere answered?” I asked, to divert her mind from bitter thoughts.

  “Beyond my expectations,” she replied. “As soon as the buildings were finished we found two excellent farmers ready to hire them; one at four thousand five hundred francs, taxes paid; the other at five thousand; both leases for fifteen years. We have already planted three thousand young trees on the new farms. Manette’s cousin is delighted to get the Rabelaye; Martineau has taken the Baude. All our efforts have been crowned with success. Clochegourde, without the reserved land which we call the home-farm, and without the timber and vineyards, brings in nineteen thousand francs a year, and the plantations are becoming valuable. I am battling to let the home-farm to Martineau, the keeper, whose eldest son can now take his place. He offers three thousand francs if Monsieur de Mortsauf will build him a farm-house at the Commanderie. We might then clear the approach to Clochegourde, finish the proposed avenue to the main road, and have only the woodland and the vineyards to take care of ourselves. If the king returns, our pension will be restored; WE shall consent after clashing a little with our wife’s common-sense. Jacques’ fortune will then be permanently secured. That result obtained, I shall leave monsieur to lay by as much as he likes for Madeleine, though the king will of course dower her, according to custom. My conscience is easy; I have all but accomplished my task. And you?” she said.

  I explained to her the mission on which the king had sent me, and showed her how her wise counsel had borne fruit. Was she endowed with second sight thus to foretell events?

  “Did I not write it to you?” she answered. “For you and for my children alone I possess a remarkable faculty, of which I have spoken only to my confessor, Monsieur de la Berge; he explains it by divine intervention. Often, after deep meditation induced by fears about the health of my children, my eyes close to the things of earth and see into another region; if Jacques and Madeleine there appear to me as two luminous figures they are sure to have good health for a certain period of time; if wrapped in mist they are equally sure to fall ill soon after. As for you, I not only see you brilliantly illuminated, but I hear a voice which explains to me without words, by some mental communication, what you ought to do. Does any law forbid me to use this wonderful gift for my children and for you?” she asked, falling into a reverie. Then, after a pause, she added, “Perhaps God wills to take the place of their father.”