Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  MEDITATION XXV. OF ALLIES.

  Of all the miseries that civil war can bring upon a country the greatest lies in the appeal which one of the contestants always ends by making to some foreign government.

  Unhappily we are compelled to confess that all women make this great mistake, for the lover is only the first of their soldiers. It may be a member of their family or at least a distant cousin. This Meditation, then, is intended to answer the inquiry, what assistance can each of the different powers which influence human life give to your wife? or better than that, what artifices will she resort to to arm them against you?

  Two beings united by marriage are subject to the laws of religion and society; to those of private life, and, from considerations of health, to those of medicine. We will therefore divide this important Meditation into six paragraphs:

  1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE. 2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS. 4. OF THE LOVER’S ALLIES. 5. OF THE MAID. 6. OF THE DOCTOR.

  1. OF RELIGIONS AND OF CONFESSION; CONSIDERED IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.

  La Bruyere has very wittily said, “It is too much for a husband to have ranged against him both devotion and gallantry; a woman ought to choose but one of them for her ally.”

  The author thinks that La Bruyere is mistaken.

  2. OF THE MOTHER-IN-LAW.

  Up to the age of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, it is another old woman.

  Some diplomats have attempted on more than one occasion the diabolical task of gaining over the dowagers who opposed their machinations; but if they have ever succeeded it was only after making enormous concessions to them; for diplomats are practiced people and we do not think that you can employ their recipe in dealing with your mother-in-law. She will be the first aid-de-camp of her daughter, for if the mother did not take her daughter’s side, it would be one of those monstrous and unnatural exceptions, which unhappily for husbands are extremely rare.

  When a man is so happy as to possess a mother-in-law who is well-preserved, he may easily keep her in check for a certain time, although he may not know any young celibate brave enough to assail her. But generally husbands who have the slightest conjugal genius will find a way of pitting their own mother against that of their wife, and in that case they will naturally neutralize each other’s power.

  To be able to keep a mother-in-law in the country while he lives in Paris, and vice versa, is a piece of good fortune which a husband too rarely meets with.

  What of making mischief between the mother and the daughter? — That may be possible; but in order to accomplish such an enterprise he must have the metallic heart of Richelieu, who made a son and a mother deadly enemies to each other. However, the jealousy of a husband who forbids his wife to pray to male saints and wishes her to address only female saints, would allow her liberty to see her mother.

  Many sons-in-law take an extreme course which settles everything, which consists in living on bad terms with their mothers-in-law. This unfriendliness would be very adroit policy, if it did not inevitably result in drawing tighter the ties that unite mother and daughter. These are about all the means which you have for resisting maternal influence in your home. As for the services which your wife can claim from her mother, they are immense; and the assistance which she may derive from the neutrality of her mother is not less powerful. But on this point everything passes out of the domain of science, for all is veiled in secrecy. The reinforcements which a mother brings up in support of a daughter are so varied in nature, they depend so much on circumstances, that it would be folly to attempt even a nomenclature for them. Yet you may write out among the most valuable precepts of this conjugal gospel, the following maxims.

  A husband should never let his wife visit her mother unattended.

  A husband ought to study all the reasons why all the celibates under forty who form her habitual society are so closely united by ties of friendship to his mother-in-law; for, if a daughter rarely falls in love with the lover of her mother, her mother has always a weak spot for her daughter’s lover.

  3. OF BOARDING SCHOOL FRIENDS AND INTIMATE FRIENDS.

  Louise de L — — -, daughter of an officer killed at Wagram, had been the object of Napoleon’s special protection. She left Ecouen to marry a commissary general, the Baron de V — — -, who is very rich.

  Louise was eighteen and the baron forty. She was ordinary in face and her complexion could not be called white, but she had a charming figure, good eyes, a small foot, a pretty hand, good taste and abundant intelligence. The baron, worn out by the fatigues of war and still more by the excesses of a stormy youth, had one of those faces upon which the Republic, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire seemed to have set their impress.

  He became so deeply in love with his wife, that he asked and obtained from the Emperor a post at Paris, in order that he might be enabled to watch over his treasure. He was as jealous as Count Almaviva, still more from vanity than from love. The young orphan had married her husband from necessity, and, flattered by the ascendancy she wielded over a man much older than herself, waited upon his wishes and his needs; but her delicacy was offended from the first days of their marriage by the habits and ideas of a man whose manners were tinged with republican license. He was a predestined.

  I do not know exactly how long the baron made his honeymoon last, nor when war was declared in his household; but I believe it happened in 1816, at a very brilliant ball given by Monsieur D — — -, a commissariat officer, that the commissary general, who had been promoted head of the department, admired the beautiful Madame B — — -, the wife of a banker, and looked at her much more amorously than a married man should have allowed himself to do.

  At two o’clock in the morning it happened that the banker, tired of waiting any longer, went home leaving his wife at the ball.

  “We are going to take you home to your house,” said the baroness to

  Madame B — — -. “Monsieur de V — — -, offer your arm to Emilie!”

  And now the baron is seated in his carriage next to a woman who, during the whole evening, had been offered and had refused a thousand attentions, and from whom he had hoped in vain to win a single look. There she was, in all the lustre of her youth and beauty, displaying the whitest shoulders and the most ravishing lines of beauty. Her face, which still reflected the pleasures of the evening, seemed to vie with the brilliancy of her satin gown; her eyes to rival the blaze of her diamonds; and her skin to cope with the soft whiteness of the marabouts which tied in her hair, set off the ebon tresses and the ringlets dangling from her headdress. Her tender voice would stir the chords of the most insensible hearts; in a word, so powerfully did she wake up love in the human breast that Robert d’Abrissel himself would perhaps have yielded to her.

  The baron glanced at his wife, who, overcome with fatigue, had sunk to sleep in a corner of the carriage. He compared, in spite of himself, the toilette of Louise and that of Emilie. Now on occasions of this kind the presence of a wife is singularly calculated to sharpen the unquenchable desires of a forbidden love. Moreover, the glances of the baron, directed alternately to his wife and to her friend, were easy to interpret, and Madame B — — - interpreted them.

  “Poor Louise,” she said, “she is overtired. Going out does not suit her, her tastes are so simple. At Ecouen she was always reading — ”

  “And you, what used you to do?”

  “I, sir? Oh, I thought about nothing but acting comely. It was my passion!”

  “But why do you so rarely visit Madame de V — — -? We have a country house at Saint-Prix, where we could have a comedy acted, in a little theatre which I have built there.”

  “If I have not visited Madame de V — — -, wh
ose fault is it?” she replied. “You are so jealous that you will not allow her either to visit her friends or to receive them.”

  “I jealous!” cried Monsieur de V — — -, “after four years of marriage, and after having had three children!”

  “Hush,” said Emilie, striking the fingers of the baron with her fan,

  “Louise is not asleep!”

  The carriage stopped, and the baron offered his hand to his wife’s fair friend and helped her to get out.

  “I hope,” said Madame B — — -, “that you will not prevent Louise from coming to the ball which I am giving this week.”

  The baron made her a respectful bow.

  This ball was a triumph of Madame B — — -’s and the ruin of the husband of Louise; for he became desperately enamored of Emilie, to whom he would have sacrificed a hundred lawful wives.

  Some months after that evening on which the baron gained some hopes of succeeding with his wife’s friend, he found himself one morning at the house of Madame B — — -, when the maid came to announce the Baroness de V — — -.

  “Ah!” cried Emilie, “if Louise were to see you with me at such an hour as this, she would be capable of compromising me. Go into that closet and don’t make the least noise.”

  The husband, caught like a mouse in a trap, concealed himself in the closet.

  “Good-day, my dear!” said the two women, kissing each other.

  “Why are you come so early?” asked Emilie.

  “Oh! my dear, cannot you guess? I came to have an understanding with you!”

  “What, a duel?”

  “Precisely, my dear. I am not like you, not I! I love my husband and am jealous of him. You! you are beautiful, charming, you have the right to be a coquette, you can very well make fun of B — — -, to whom your virtue seems to be of little importance. But as you have plenty of lovers in society, I beg you that you will leave me my husband. He is always at your house, and he certainly would not come unless you were the attraction.”

  “What a very pretty jacket you have on.”

  “Do you think so? My maid made it.”

  “Then I shall get Anastasia to take a lesson from Flore — ”

  “So, then, my dear, I count on your friendship to refrain from bringing trouble in my house.”

  “But, my child, I do not know how you can conceive that I should fall in love with your husband; he is coarse and fat as a deputy of the centre. He is short and ugly — Ah! I will allow that he is generous, but that is all you can say for him, and this is a quality which is all in all only to opera girls; so that you can understand, my dear, that if I were choosing a lover, as you seem to suppose I am, I wouldn’t choose an old man like your baron. If I have given him any hopes, if I have received him, it was certainly for the purpose of amusing myself, and of giving you liberty; for I believed you had a weakness for young Rostanges.”

  “I?” exclaimed Louise, “God preserve me from it, my dear; he is the most intolerable coxcomb in the world. No, I assure you, I love my husband! You may laugh as you choose; it is true. I know it may seem ridiculous, but consider, he has made my fortune, he is no miser, and he is everything to me, for it has been my unhappy lot to be left an orphan. Now even if I did not love him, I ought to try to preserve his esteem. Have I a family who will some day give me shelter?”

  “Come, my darling, let us speak no more about it,” said Emilie, interrupting her friend, “for it tires me to death.”

  After a few trifling remarks the baroness left.

  “How is this, monsieur?” cried Madame B — — -, opening the door of the closet where the baron was frozen with cold, for this incident took place in winter; “how is this? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for not adoring a little wife who is so interesting? Don’t speak to me of love; you may idolize me, as you say you do, for a certain time, but you will never love me as you love Louise. I can see that in your heart I shall never outweigh the interest inspired by a virtuous wife, children, and a family circle. I should one day be deserted and become the object of your bitter reflections. You would coldly say of me ‘I have had that woman!’ That phrase I have heard pronounced by men with the most insulting indifference. You see, monsieur, that I reason in cold blood, and that I do not love you, because you never would be able to love me.”

  “What must I do then to convince you of my love?” cried the baron, fixing his gaze on the young woman.

  She had never appeared to him so ravishingly beautiful as at that moment, when her soft voice poured forth a torrent of words whose sternness was belied by the grace of her gestures, by the pose of her head and by her coquettish attitude.

  “Oh, when I see Louise in possession of a lover,” she replied, “when I know that I am taking nothing away from her, and that she has nothing to regret in losing your affection; when I am quite sure that you love her no longer, and have obtained certain proof of your indifference towards her — Oh, then I may listen to you! — These words must seem odious to you,” she continued in an earnest voice; “and so indeed they are, but do not think that they have been pronounced by me. I am the rigorous mathematician who makes his deductions from a preliminary proposition. You are married, and do you deliberately set about making love to some one else? I should be mad to give any encouragement to a man who cannot be mine eternally.”

  “Demon!” exclaimed the husband. “Yes, you are a demon, and not a woman!”

  “Come now, you are really amusing!” said the young woman as she seized the bell-rope.

  “Oh! no, Emilie,” continued the lover of forty, in a calmer voice. “Do not ring; stop, forgive me! I will sacrifice everything for you.”

  “But I do not promise you anything!” she answered quickly with a laugh.

  “My God! How you make me suffer!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, and have not you in your life caused the unhappiness of more than one person?” she asked. “Remember all the tears which have been shed through you and for you! Oh, your passion does not inspire me with the least pity. If you do not wish to make me laugh, make me share your feelings.”

  “Adieu, madame, there is a certain clemency in your sternness. I appreciate the lesson you have taught me. Yes, I have many faults to expiate.”

  “Well then, go and repent of them,” she said with a mocking smile; “in making Louise happy you will perform the rudest penance in your power.”

  They parted. But the love of the baron was too violent to allow of Madame B — — -’s harshness failing to accomplish her end, namely, the separation of the married couple.

  At the end of some months the Baron de V — — - and his wife lived apart, though they lived in the same mansion. The baroness was the object of universal pity, for in public she always did justice to her husband and her resignation seemed wonderful. The most prudish women of society found nothing to blame in the friendship which united Louise to the young Rostanges. And all was laid to the charge of Monsieur de V — — -’s folly.

  When this last had made all the sacrifices that a man could make for

  Madame B — — -, his perfidious mistress started for the waters of Mount

  Dore, for Switzerland and for Italy, on the pretext of seeking the

  restoration of her health.

  The baron died of inflammation of the liver, being attended during his sickness by the most touching ministrations which his wife could lavish upon him; and judging from the grief which he manifested at having deserted her, he seemed never to have suspected her participation in the plan which had been his ruin.

  This anecdote, which we have chosen from a thousand others, exemplifies the services which two women can render each other.

  From the words — ”Let me have the pleasure of bringing my husband” up to the conception of the drama, whose denouement was inflammation of the liver, every female perfidy was assembled to work out the end. Certain incidents will, of course, be met with which diversify more or less the typical example which we have given, but the march o
f the drama is almost always the same. Moreover a husband ought always to distrust the woman friends of his wife. The subtle artifices of these lying creatures rarely fail of their effect, for they are seconded by two enemies, who always keep close to a man — and these are vanity and desire.

  4. OF THE LOVER’S ALLIES.

  The man who hastens to tell another man that he has dropped a thousand franc bill from his pocket-book, or even that the handkerchief is coming out of his pocket, would think it a mean thing to warn him that some one was carrying off his wife. There is certainly something extremely odd in this moral inconsistency, but after all it admits of explanation. Since the law cannot exercise any interference with matrimonial rights, the citizens have even less right to constitute themselves a conjugal police; and when one restores a thousand franc bill to him who has lost it, he acts under a certain kind of obligation, founded on the principle which says, “Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you!”

  But by what reasoning can justification be found for the help which one celibate never asks in vain, but always receives from another celibate in deceiving a husband, and how shall we qualify the rendering of such help? A man who is incapable of assisting a gendarme in discovering an assassin, has no scruple in taking a husband to a theatre, to a concert or even to a questionable house, in order to help a comrade, whom he would not hesitate to kill in a duel to-morrow, in keeping an assignation, the result of which is to introduce into a family a spurious child, and to rob two brothers of a portion of their fortune by giving them a co-heir whom they never perhaps would otherwise have had; or to effect the misery of three human beings. We must confess that integrity is a very rare virtue, and, very often, the man that thinks he has most actually has least. Families have been divided by feuds, and brothers have been murdered, which events would never have taken place if some friend had refused to perform what passes to the world as a harmless trick.