A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Right!’ he said to Lucien, ‘the devil looks after his chaplain.’

  ‘You’re smoking on a powder-magazine.’

  ‘Incedo per ignes!’ replied Carlos with a smile, ‘that’s my profession.’

  The Grandlieus

  THE house of Grandlieu had divided into two branches towards the middle of the previous century: on the one hand the ducal house doomed to extinction, since the then duke had only daughters; on the other hand the viscounts Grandlieu who were to inherit the title and the arms of the senior branch. The ducal branch bears Gules, in a fess three battle-axes or, with the famous CAVEO NON TIMEO! for device, which tells the family’s whole story.

  The escutcheon of the viscounts is quartered Navarreins, which gives Gules, a fess battled or, and crested with a knight’s helm bearing: GRANDS FAITS, GRAND LIEU! for device. At the time of our story, the viscountess, a widow since 1813, had a son and a daughter. Though almost ruined on her return from exile, she recovered, thanks to the devotion of a solicitor, Derville, a not inconsiderable fortune.

  Returning in 1804, the duke and duchess of Grandlieu received friendly overtures from Napoleon; he not only had them at court but restored to them all that had come into the Demesne, about forty thousand francs in rent. Of all the great lords of the Faubourg Saint Germain who allowed themselves to be seduced by the Emperor, the duke and the duchess (an Ajuda of the senior branch, allied with the Braganzas) were alone in not later disowning him and his benefactions. Louis XVIII had regard to this fidelity when the Faubourg Saint Germain treated it as a crime; but perhaps, in this, Louis XVIII merely wished to tease MONSIEUR. It was thought probable that the young Vicomte de Grandlieu would marry Marie-Athénais, the duke’s last daughter, then aged nine. Sabine, the second youngest, was to marry the Baron du Guénic, after the July revolution. Josephine, the third, became Madame d’Ajuda-Pinto, when the marquis lost his first wife, Mademoiselle de Rochefide. The eldest had taken the veil in 1822. The second, Mademoiselle Clotilde-Frédérique, at the present moment aged twenty-seven, was deeply in love with Lucien de Rubempré.

  It is pointless to ask whether the hôtel of the Duc de Grandlieu, one of the finest in the rue Saint Dominique, impressed Lucien’s mind with its glamour; every time the enormous door turned on its hinges to admit his gig, he experienced that satisfaction of his vanity of which Mirabeau has spoken. ‘Although my father was a mere apothecary in Houmeau, I nevertheless enter there…’ That was his thought. He would have committed other crimes than associating with a forger to retain the right of walking up those few steps, to hear himself announced as: ‘Monsieur de Rubempré!’ in the big Louis XIV drawing-room, modelled, in the time of Louis XIV, on those of Versailles, where the cream of Paris was to be found, that society of the chosen, then called le petit Château.

  The Portuguese noblewoman, who cared very little for going out, was much of the time surrounded by her neighbours the Chaulieus, the Navarreins, the Lenoncourts. Frequently the pretty Baroness Macumer (née Chaulieu), the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, Madame d’Espard, Madame de Camps, Mademoiselle des Touches, allied to the Brittany Grandlieus, came to visit her, on their way to a ball or returning from the Opera. The Vicomte de Grandlieu, the Duc de Rhétoré, the Marquis de Chaulieu, who would one day be Duc de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu, his wife Madeleine de Mortsauf, grand-daughter of the Duc de Lenoncourt, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Blamont-Chauvry, the Marquis de Beau-séant, the Vidame de Pamiers, the Vandenesses, old Prince Cadignan and his son the Duc de Maufrigneuse, came regularly to this grandiose drawing-room in which one breathed the air of the Court, in which manners, breeding, temper harmonized with the noble birth of the owners whose high aristocratic style had ended by causing their Napoleonic bondage to be forgotten.

  The aged Duchesse d’Uxelles, mother of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, was the oracle of this drawing-room, to which Madame de Sérisy had never succeeded in gaining admission, though born de Ronquerolles.

  Introduced by Madame de Maufrigneuse, who had persuaded her mother to act on Lucien’s behalf, having been mad on him for two years, the charming poet had maintained his position there thanks to the influence of the High Chaplaincy of France and the help of the Archbishop of Paris. He was only admitted nevertheless after obtaining the ordinance which restored to him the name and the arms of the house of Rubempré. The Duc de Rhétoré, the Chevalier d’Espard and a few others, jealous of Lucien, periodically affected the duke’s disposition towards him by telling stories of his antecedents; but the pious duchess, much frequented by dignitaries of the Church, and Clotilde de Grandlieu defended him. Lucien, moreover, was able to explain this unfriendliness by his youthful dealings with Madame d’Espard’s cousin, Madame de Bargeton, now Countess Châtelet. Moreover, feeling the need to be adopted by so powerful a family, and impelled by his intimate counsellor to charm Clotilde, Lucien had all the courage of an upstart: he appeared five days out of the seven, he gracefully swallowed the affronts of envy, he outfaced impertinent stares, he answered banter wittily. His assiduity, the charm of his manners, his obligingness in the end neutralized scruple and diminished obstacles. Always welcome at the house of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse whose ardent letters, written during the course of her passion, were kept by Carlos Herrera, idol of Madame de Sérisy, highly regarded at Mademoiselle des Touches’s, Lucien, happy to be admitted to these three houses, learned from the Spaniard to conduct his relations with the greatest reserve.

  ‘One can’t devote oneself to several houses at a time,’ his intimate adviser told him. ‘A man who goes everywhere is nowhere the subject of lively interest. The great protect only those who vie with their furniture, those whom they see every day, who become necessary to them, like the divan they sit on.’

  Accustomed to regard the Grandlieu drawing-room as his battlefield, Lucien reserved his wit, his epigrams, his news and his courtier’s graces for the time he spent there in the evening. Insinuating, affectionate in his manner, warned by Clotilde of the reefs to avoid, he flattered Monsieur de Grandlieu’s little manias. After having begun with envy of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse’s happiness, Clotilde’s love for Lucien soon knew no bounds.

  Perceiving all the advantages of such an alliance, Lucien played the lover’s part as it might have been played by Armand, the latest juvenile lead at the Comédie Française. He wrote Clotilde letters which were certainly literary masterpieces of the highest order and Clotilde replied to them in a strife of genius, furiously expressing her love on paper, which was the only way of loving she knew. Lucien went to mass at Saint Thomas of Aquino’s every Sunday, he gave himself out for a fervent Catholic, he preached monarchy and religion in the most impressive manner. He also wrote in periodicals devoted to the cause of the Congregation the most remarkable articles, for which he would take no payment and which he signed only L. He composed political pamphlets, demanded either by King Charles X, or by the Chaplaincy, without accepting the slightest remuneration. ‘The King,’ he said, ‘has already done so much for me, that I owe him my life’s blood.’ For some days past, the question had been mooted of attaching Lucien to the Prime Minister’s office as personal secretary; but Madame d’Espard set so many people on to campaign against him, that Charles X’s Jack-of-all-trades hesitated to make a decision. Not only was Lucien’s situation insufficiently clear, and the words: ‘What does he live on?’ which everybody asked as he rose in the world, still in need of a reply; but also benevolent curiosity, as much as that of the malicious, proceeded from investigation to investigation, and discovered more than one chink in the ambitious young man’s armour. Clotilde de Grandlieu spied innocently on her mother and father. A few days previously, she had led Lucien to a window embrasure to tell him of her family’s objections. ‘Own property worth a million, and you shall have my hand, that was my mother’s reply,’ Clotilde had said. ‘They will ask you later where your money comes from,’ Carlos had said to Lucien when Lucien reported this supposed last word to him. ‘My brother-in-law must have
made a fortune,’ Lucien had pointed out, ‘he can be responsible in law,’ ‘So all we need now is the million,’ Carlos had cried, ‘I’ll give the matter thought.’

  To be more precise about Lucien’s position at the Grandlieu establishment, he had never dined there. Neither Clotilde nor the Duchesse d’Uxelles, nor yet Madame de Maufrigneuse, who remained very much on Lucien’s side, could obtain this favour from the old duke, so obstinately in doubt was this gentleman about one whom he called the Sire de Rubempré. This element of discrimination, perceived by everyone in that society, keenly wounded Lucien’s self-esteem, he felt himself to be merely tolerated. Society has the right to be exacting, it is so often deceived! To cut a figure in Paris without having a known fortune, an acknowledged livelihood, is a situation which no artifice can long render tenable. Thus the higher Lucien climbed, the more force he gave to the objection: ‘What does he live on?’ He had been compelled to say to Madame de Sérisy, to whom he owed the support of the Attorney General Granville and of a privy councillor, Count Octave de Bauvan, president of the sovereign Court of Appeal: ‘I am running horribly into debt.’

  Entering the courtyard of the hôtel which could grant his vanities official recognition, he said to himself with some bitterness, thinking of what Dodgedeath had told him: ‘I hear everything crack under my feet!’ He loved Esther, and he wanted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu as his wife! A strange position! He must sell one in order to have the other. Only one man could carry on this traffic without Lucien’s honour suffering, that man was the false Spaniard: both needed equal discretion, each to each. Few pacts are made to which both parties are in turn dominated and dominator.

  Lucien drove off the clouds which darkened his brow, he stepped gaily and beaming into the reception rooms of the Grandlieus.

  The daughter of a great house

  AT that moment, the windows were open, the scents from the garden perfumed the drawing-room, a flower stand in the centre drew all eyes to its pyramid of blossom. The duchess, sitting in a corner, on a sofa, was talking with the Duchesse de Chaulieu. A group of women was remarkable for the diverse attitudes each took from her manner of playing mock grief. In society, nobody is interested in suffering or misfortune, everything is talk. The men walked up and down the drawing-room, or in the garden. Clotilde and Josephine were occupied about the tea-table. The Vidame de Pamiers, the Duc de Grandlieu, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, the Duc de Maufrigneuse played whist in a corner. When Lucien was announced, he crossed the drawing-room and went to greet the duchess, from whom he asked the reason for the grief depicted upon her visage.

  ‘Madame de Chaulieu has just received frightful news: her son-in-law the Baron de Macumer, former duke of Soria, has just died. The young Duke de Soria and his wife, who had gone to Chantepleurs to look after their brother, wrote to tell her of this sad event. The condition of Louise is heartrending.’

  ‘A woman is not loved twice in her life as Louise was by her husband,’ said Madeleine de Mortsauf.

  ‘She will be a rich widow,’ said the aged Duchesse d’Uxelles looking at Lucien whose face remained impassive.

  ‘Poor Louise,’ said Madame d’Espard, ‘I understand, and I am sorry for her.’

  The Marquise d’Espard had the wistful look of a woman all heart and soul. Although Sabine de Grandlieu was only ten, she gave her mother an intelligent look full of sly mockery which her mother’s stern glance removed. This is called bringing one’s children up well.

  ‘If my daughter recovers from this blow,’ said Madame de Chaulieu with a maternal look, ‘her future will give rise to uneasiness. Louise is very romantic.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said the old Duchesse d’Uxelles, ‘where our daughters can have picked it up?…’

  ‘It is difficult,’ said a cardinal of her generation, ‘to reconcile the heart and the proprieties nowadays.’

  Lucien, who hadn’t a word to say, went towards the tea-table, to pay his compliments to the Grandlieu girls. When the poet was a few yards away from the group of women, the Marquise d’Espard leaned over to speak in the Duchesse de Grandlieu’s ear.

  ‘Do you believe that that young fellow really loves your dear Clotilde, then?’ she asked.

  The perfidy of this question can only be understood after Clotilde has been sketched. This young person, aged twenty-seven, was standing. Her attitude permitted the mocking gaze of the Marquise d’Espard to take in Clotilde’s narrow, un-modulated figure which closely resembled a stick of asparagus. The poor girl’s bosom was too flat to allow of those colonial resources known to the dressmaker as helpful trimmings. Indeed, conscious of the advantages her name gave her, Clotilde, instead of being at pains to disguise the defect, heroically drew attention to it. With close-fitting gowns, she obtained the effect of the sharp, rigid style which the sculptors of the Middle Ages sought in the figures which stand out so distinctly against the shadow of the niches in which they have placed them in cathedrals. Clotilde stood five feet four inches. To use a familiar expression which has at least the merit of being readily understood, she was all legs. This fault in proportion gave the upper part of her body an appearance of deformity. Of a dark complexion, her hair black and harsh, her eyebrows thick, her burning eyes set in orbits themselves coal-black, her profile arched like a moon’s first quarter and dominated by a protruding forehead, she was a caricature of her mother, one of the most beautiful women of Portugal. Nature amuses itself with games like that. One often sees, in families, a sister of astonishing beauty whose features, in her brother, have taken on remarkable ugliness, although there is a likeness between the two. Upon her mouth, which was sunk in, Clotilde bore a stereotyped expression of disdain. At the same time, her lips revealed more of the secret feelings of her heart than any other feature of her face, for affection lent them a charming expression, while her cheeks too dark for blushes and her black, expressionless eyes told one nothing. Despite so many disadvantages, despite the fact that she carried herself like a plank, her education and her breeding had given her looks some element of grandeur, of pride, what is known as a certain something, perhaps due to her uncompromising way of dressing, which betokened the daughter of a great house. The strength, the length and thickness of her hair might be considered beautiful. Her cultivated voice was full of charm. She sang admirably. Clotilde was the kind of young person of whom one says : ‘She has fine eyes,’ or: ‘She has a charming disposition!’ To someone who addressed her in the English manner as: ‘Your Grace,’ she once replied: ‘Call me Your Thinness.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t one love my poor Clotilde?’ the duchess replied to the marquise. ‘Do you know what she said to me yesterday? “If I am loved out of ambition, I undertake in the end to be loved for myself!” She is witty and ambitious, two qualities which may appeal to a man. As to the man, my dear, he is as handsome as a dream; and if he can buy the Rubempré estate, the King, out of regard for us, will restore the title of marquis to him… After all, his mother is the last of the Rubemprés…’

  ‘Poor boy, where will he pick up a million?’ said the marchioness.

  ‘That is not our concern,’ the duchess went on; ‘but one thing is certain, he wouldn’t steal them… And, besides, we shouldn’t give Clotilde to a schemer or to anyone at all dishonest, however handsome, however much a poet and young like Monsieur de Rubempré.’

  ‘You’re late,’ said Clotilde with an infinitely gracious smile to Lucien.

  ‘Yes, I was dining out.’

  ‘You go out into society a great deal these last few days,’ said she, hiding her jealousy and her uneasiness beneath a smile.

  ‘Society?…’ replied Lucien, ‘no, by pure chance, I’ve been dining with bankers all week, today Nucingen, yesterday du Tillet and the day before that the Kellers…’

  It will be seen that Lucien had picked up the great lords’ tone of witty impertinence.

  ‘You have many enemies,’ Clotilde told him offering him (with how much grace!) a cup of tea. ‘Someone came and s
aid to my father that you were blest with sixty thousand francs of debts, that before long you’d be cooling your heels in Sainte Pélagie. And if you knew what all these calumnies cost me… Everything falls on my head. I’m not speaking of what I suffer (my father gives me looks which crucify me), but of what you must suffer, if any of it bore the least resemblance to the truth…’

  ‘Don’t worry yourself about that kind of nonsense, love me as I love you, and trust me for a few months,’ replied Lucien putting his empty cup down on the chased silver tray.

  ‘Don’t show yourself to my father, he would be rude to you; and as you wouldn’t put up with that, we should be lost… That malicious Marquise d’Espard told him that your mother looked after women in childbirth, and that your sister took in ironing…’