Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “No!”

  “Yes. Petit-Bon-Homme-vil-encore had abandoned the classicism of his youth for the romanticism now in fashion: he spoke of the soul, of angels, of adoration, of submission, he became ethereal, and of the darkest blue. He took me to the opera, and handed me to my carriage. This old young man went when I went, his waistcoats multiplied, he compressed his waist, he excited his horse to a gallop in order to catch and accompany my carriage to the promenade: he compromised me with the grace of a young collegian, and was considered madly in love with me. I was steadfastly cruel, but accepted his arm and his bouquets. We were talked about. I was delighted, and managed before long to be surprised by my husband, with the viscount on the sofa in my boudoir, holding my hands in his, while I listened in a sort of external ecstasy. It is incredible how much a desire for vengeance will induce us to put up with! I appeared vexed at the entrance of my husband, who made a scene on the viscount’s departure: ‘I assure you, sir,’ said I, after having listened to his reproaches, ‘that it’s altogether moral.’ My husband saw the point and went no more to Madame de Fischtaminel’s. I received Monsieur de Lustrac no more, either.”

  “But,” I interrupted, “this Lustrac that you, like many others, take for a bachelor, is a widower, and childless.”

  “Really!”

  “No man ever buried his wife deeper than he buried his: she will hardly be found at the day of judgment. He married before the Revolution, and your altogether moral reminds me of a speech of his that I shall have to repeat for your benefit. Napoleon appointed Lustrac to an important office, in a conquered province. Madame de Lustrac, abandoned for governmental duties, took a private secretary for her private affairs, though it was altogether moral: but she was wrong in selecting him without informing her husband. Lustrac met this secretary in a state of some excitement, in consequence of a lively discussion in his wife’s chamber, and at an exceedingly early hour in the morning. The city desired nothing better than to laugh at its governor, and this adventure made such a sensation that Lustrac himself begged the Emperor to recall him. Napoleon desired his representatives to be men of morality, and he held that such disasters as this must inevitably take from a man’s consideration. You know that among the Emperor’s unhappy passions, was that of reforming his court and his government. Lustrac’s request was granted, therefore, but without compensation. When he returned to Paris, he reappeared at his mansion, with his wife; he took her into society — a step which is certainly conformable to the most refined habits of the aristocracy — but then there are always people who want to find out about it. They inquired the reason of this chivalrous championship. ‘So you are reconciled, you and Madame de Lustrac,’ some one said to him in the lobby of the Emperor’s theatre, ‘you have pardoned her, have you? So much the better.’ ‘Oh,’ replied he, with a satisfied air, ‘I became convinced — ’ ‘Ah, that she was innocent, very good.’ ‘No, I became convinced that it was altogether physical.’“

  Caroline smiled.

  “The opinion of your admirer reduced this weighty trouble to what is, in this case as in yours, a very petty one.”

  “A petty trouble!” she exclaimed, “and pray for what do you take the fatigue of coquetting with a de Lustrac, of whom I have made an enemy! Ah, women often pay dearly enough for the bouquets they receive and the attentions they accept. Monsieur de Lustrac said of me to Monsieur de Bourgarel, ‘I would not advise you to pay court to that woman; she is too dear.’“

  WITHOUT AN OCCUPATION.

  “PARIS, 183-

  “You ask me, dear mother, whether I am happy with my husband. Certainly Monsieur de Fischtaminel was not the ideal of my dreams. I submitted to your will, as you know. His fortune, that supreme consideration, spoke, indeed, sufficiently loud. With these arguments, — a marriage, without stooping, with the Count de Fischtaminel, his having thirty thousand a year, and a home at Paris — you were strongly armed against your poor daughter. Besides, Monsieur de Fischtaminel is good looking for a man of thirty-six years; he received the cross of the Legion of Honor from Napoleon upon the field of battle, he is an ex-colonel, and had it not been for the Restoration, which put him upon half-pay, he would be a general. These are certainly extenuating circumstances.

  “Many women consider that I have made a good match, and I am bound to confess that there is every appearance of happiness, — for the public, that is. But you will acknowledge that if you had known of the return of my Uncle Cyrus and of his intention to leave me his money, you would have given me the privilege of choosing for myself.

  “I have nothing to say against Monsieur de Fischtaminel: he does not gamble, he is indifferent to women, he doesn’t like wine, and he has no expensive fancies: he possesses, as you said, all the negative qualities which make husbands passable. Then, what is the matter with him? Well, mother, he has nothing to do. We are together the whole blessed day! Would you believe that it is during the night, when we are the most closely united, that I am the most alone? His sleep is my asylum, my liberty begins when he slumbers. This state of siege will yet make me sick: I am never alone. If Monsieur de Fischtaminel were jealous, I should have a resource. There would then be a struggle, a comedy: but how could the aconite of jealousy have taken root in his soul? He has never left me since our marriage. He feels no shame in stretching himself out upon a sofa and remaining there for hours together.

  “Two felons pinioned to the same chain do not find time hang heavy: for they have their escape to think of. But we have no subject of conversation; we have long since talked ourselves out. A little while ago he was so far reduced as to talk politics. But even politics are exhausted, Napoleon, unfortunately for me, having died at St. Helena, as is well known.

  “Monsieur de Fischtaminel abhors reading. If he sees me with a book, he comes and says a dozen times an hour — ’Nina, dear, haven’t you finished yet?’

  “I endeavored to persuade this innocent persecutor to ride out every day on horseback, and I alleged a consideration usually conclusive with men of forty years, — his health! But he said that after having been twelve years on horseback, he felt the need of repose.

  “My husband, dear mother, is a man who absorbs you, he uses up the vital fluid of his neighbor, his ennui is gluttonous: he likes to be amused by those who call upon us, and, after five years of wedlock, no one ever comes: none visit us but those whose intentions are evidently dishonorable for him, and who endeavor, unsuccessfully, to amuse him, in order to earn the right to weary his wife.

  “Monsieur de Fischtaminel, mother, opens the door of my chamber, or of the room to which I have flown for refuge, five or six times an hour, and comes up to me in an excited way, and says, ‘Well, what are you doing, my belle?’ (the expression in fashion during the Empire) without perceiving that he is constantly repeating the same phrase, which is to me like the one pint too much that the executioner formerly poured into the torture by water.

  “Then there’s another bore! We can’t go to walk any more. A promenade without conversation, without interest, is impossible. My husband walks with me for the walk, as if he were alone. I have the fatigue without the pleasure.

  “The interval between getting up and breakfast is employed in my toilet, in my household duties; and I manage to get through with this part of the day. But between breakfast and dinner, there is a whole desert to plough, a waste to traverse. My husband’s want of occupation does not leave me a moment of repose, he overpowers me by his uselessness; his idle life positively wears me out. His two eyes always open and gazing at mine compel me to keep them lowered. Then his monotonous remarks:

  “‘What o’clock is it, love? What are you doing now? What are you thinking of? What do you mean to do? Where shall we go this evening? Anything new? What weather! I don’t feel well, etc., etc.’

  “All these variations upon the same theme — the interrogation point — which compose Fischtaminel’s repertory, will drive me mad. Add to these leaden arrows everlastingly shot off at me, one last trai
t which will complete the description of my happiness, and you will understand my life.

  “Monsieur de Fischtaminel, who went away in 1809, with the rank of sub-lieutenant, at the age of eighteen, has had no other education than that due to discipline, to the natural sense of honor of a noble and a soldier: but though he possesses tact, the sentiment of probity, and a proper subordination, his ignorance is gross, he knows absolutely nothing, and he has a horror of learning anything. Oh, dear mother, what an accomplished door-keeper this colonel would have made, had he been born in indigence! I don’t think a bit the better of him for his bravery, for he did not fight against the Russians, the Austrians, or the Prussians: he fought against ennui. When he rushed upon the enemy, Captain Fischtaminel’s purpose was to get away from himself. He married because he had nothing else to do.

  “We have another slight difficulty to content with: my husband harasses the servants to such a degree that we change them every six months.

  “I so ardently desire, dear mother, to remain a virtuous woman, that I am going to try the effect of traveling for half the year. During the winter, I shall go every evening to the Italian or the French opera, or to parties: but I don’t know whether our fortune will permit such an expenditure. Uncle Cyrus ought to come to Paris — I would take care of him as I would of an inheritance.

  “If you discover a cure for my woes, let your daughter know of it — your daughter who loves you as much as she deplores her misfortunes, and who would have been glad to call herself by some other name than that of

  “NINA FISCHTAMINEL.”

  Besides the necessity of describing this petty trouble, which could only be described by the pen of a woman, — and what a woman she was! — it was necessary to make you acquainted with a character whom you saw only in profile in the first half of this book, the queen of the particular set in which Caroline lived, — a woman both envied and adroit, who succeeded in conciliating, at an early date, what she owed to the world with the requirements of the heart. This letter is her absolution.

  INDISCRETIONS.

  Women are either chaste — or vain — or simply proud. They are therefore all subject to the following petty trouble:

  Certain husbands are so delighted to have, in the form of a wife, a woman to themselves, — a possession exclusively due to the legal ceremony, — that they dread the public’s making a mistake, and they hasten to brand their consort, as lumber-dealers brand their logs while floating down stream, or as the Berry stock-raisers brand their sheep. They bestow names of endearment, right before people, upon their wives: names taken, after the Roman fashion (columbella), from the animal kingdom, as: my chick, my duck, my dove, my lamb; or, choosing from the vegetable kingdom, they call them: my cabbage, my fig (this only in Provence), my plum (this only in Alsatia). Never: — My flower! Pray note this discretion.

  Or else, which is more serious, they call their wives: — Bobonne, — mother, — daughter, — good woman, — old lady: this last when she is very young.

  Some venture upon names of doubtful propriety, such as: Mon bichon, ma niniche, Tronquette!

  We once heard one of our politicians, a man extremely remarkable for his ugliness, call his wife, Moumoutte!

  “I would rather he would strike me,” said this unfortunate to her neighbor.

  “Poor little woman, she is really unhappy,” resumed the neighbor, looking at me when Moumoutte had gone: “when she is in company with her husband she is upon pins and needles, and keeps out of his way. One evening, he actually seized her by the neck and said: ‘Come fatty, let’s go home!’“

  It has been alleged that the cause of a very famous husband-poisoning with arsenic, was nothing less than a series of constant indiscretions like these that the wife had to bear in society. This husband used to give the woman he had won at the point of the Code, public little taps on her shoulder, he would startle her by a resounding kiss, he dishonored her by a conspicuous tenderness, seasoned by those impertinent attentions the secret of which belongs to the French savages who dwell in the depths of the provinces, and whose manners are very little known, despite the efforts of the realists in fiction. It was, it is said, this shocking situation, — one perfectly appreciated by a discerning jury, — which won the prisoner a verdict softened by the extenuating circumstances.

  The jurymen said to themselves:

  “For a wife to murder her husband for these conjugal offences, is certainly going rather far; but then a woman is very excusable, when she is so harassed!”

  We deeply regret, in the interest of elegant manners, that these arguments are not more generally known. Heaven grant, therefore, that our book may have an immense success, as women will obtain this advantage from it, that they will be treated as they deserve, that is, as queens.

  In this respect, love is much superior to marriage, it is proud of indiscreet sayings and doings. There are some women that seek them, fish for them, and woe to the man who does not now and then commit one!

  What passion lies in an accidental thou!

  Out in the country I heard a husband call his wife: “Ma berline!” She was delighted with it, and saw nothing ridiculous in it: she called her husband, “Mon fiston!” This delicious couple were ignorant of the existence of such things as petty troubles.

  It was in observing this happy pair that the author discovered this axiom:

  Axiom: — In order to be happy in wedlock, you must either be a man of genius married to an affectionate and intellectual woman, or, by a chance which is not as common as might be supposed, you must both of you be exceedingly stupid.

  The too celebrated history of the cure of a wounded self-love by arsenic, proves that, properly speaking, there are no petty troubles for women in married life.

  Axiom. — Woman exists by sentiment where man exists by action.

  Now, sentiment can at any moment render a petty trouble either a great misfortune, or a wasted life, or an eternal misery. Should Caroline begin, in her ignorance of life and the world, by inflicting upon her husband the vexations of her stupidity (re-read REVELATIONS), Adolphe, like any other man, may find a compensation in social excitement: he goes out, comes back, goes here and there, has business. But for Caroline, the question everywhere is, To love or not to love, to be or not to be loved.

  Indiscretions are in harmony with the character of the individuals, with times and places. Two examples will suffice.

  Here is the first. A man is by nature dirty and ugly: he is ill-made and repulsive. There are men, and often rich ones, too, who, by a sort of unobserved constitution, soil a new suit of clothes in twenty-four hours. They were born disgusting. It is so disgraceful for a women to be anything more than just simply a wife to this sort of Adolphe, that a certain Caroline had long ago insisted upon the suppression of the modern thee and thou and all other insignia of the wifely dignity. Society had been for five or six years accustomed to this sort of thing, and supposed Madame and Monsieur completely separated, and all the more so as it had noticed the accession of a Ferdinand II.

  One evening, in the presence of a dozen persons, this man said to his wife: “Caroline, hand me the tongs, there’s a love.” It is nothing, and yet everything. It was a domestic revelation.

  Monsieur de Lustrac, the Universal Amadis, hurried to Madame de Fischtaminel’s, narrated this little scene with all the spirit at his command, and Madame de Fischtaminel put on an air something like Celimene’s and said: “Poor creature, what an extremity she must be in!”

  I say nothing of Caroline’s confusion, — you have already divined it.

  Here is the second. Think of the frightful situation in which a lady of great refinement was lately placed: she was conversing agreeably at her country seat near Paris, when her husband’s servant came and whispered in her ear, “Monsieur has come, madame.”

  “Very well, Benoit.”

  Everybody had heard the rumblings of the vehicle. It was known that the husband had been at Paris since Monday, and this took place on Sat
urday, at four in the afternoon.

  “He’s got something important to say to you, madame.”

  Though this dialogue was held in a whisper, it was perfectly understood, and all the more so from the fact that the lady of the house turned from the pale hue of the Bengal rose to the brilliant crimson of the wheatfield poppy. She nodded and went on with the conversation, and managed to leave her company on the pretext of learning whether her husband had succeeded in an important undertaking or not: but she seemed plainly vexed at Adolphe’s want of consideration for the company who were visiting her.

  During their youth, women want to be treated as divinities, they love the ideal; they cannot bear the idea of being what nature intended them to be.

  Some husbands, on retiring to the country, after a week in town, are worse than this: they bow to the company, put their arm round their wife’s waist, take a little walk with her, appear to be talking confidentially, disappear in a clump of trees, get lost, and reappear half an hour afterward.

  This, ladies, is a genuine petty trouble for a young woman, but for a woman beyond forty, this sort of indiscretion is so delightful, that the greatest prudes are flattered by it, for, be it known:

  That women of a certain age, women on the shady side, want to be treated as mortals, they love the actual; they cannot bear the idea of no longer being what nature intended them to be.

  Axiom. — Modesty is a relative virtue; there is the modesty of the woman of twenty, the woman of thirty, the woman of forty-five.

  Thus the author said to a lady who told him to guess at her age:

  “Madame, yours is the age of indiscretion.”

  This charming woman of thirty-nine was making a Ferdinand much too conspicuous, while her daughter was trying to conceal her Ferdinand I.