Why do women confide in me, confess to me? Do they sense, perhaps, that I have something of the woman in me? It must be so. And as our friendship progressed, I told Princess Mathilde of my secret condition. Later I regretted this, for when I eventually betrayed her, she used this secret to hurt me. I am a real woman, and you are only a half-man. A friendship between us was never possible.
But the betrayal comes later. For now, my friendship with Princess Mathilde pleases us both. I visit her at her Paris house, and she comes to dine with me in mine. Adèle, my cook, always thrills at seeing the princess’s fancy four-wheeled carriage pull up outside our humble dwelling on rue du Montparnasse.
Princess Mathilde tells me about her love for the director of the Louvre, a man who has gold buttons on his garters and is a count. He is also utterly unfaithful to Princess Mathilde, which causes her much distress.
We talk mostly of her struggles with her lover, although once the princess asked me about my heart.
“What of your loves?” she said.
“Love,” I replied, “is a box I dare not open.”
Am I an ambitious man? There are some, like Balzac, who would say that I am, that I insinuate myself with greatness. There is the opinion that my friendship with Victor was about the advancement of my own career. No one, no one at all, seems to remember that it was I who first made Victor famous. This galls me.
Anyway, I would say that I am not ambitious, but rather that, as is natural in life, the older I get, the more comfortable I wish to be. Having an ease of circumstance when one is at an advanced age is compensation for the burdens of aging.
I have the ear of one of the most influential people in Paris. I have a direct line to the throne.
Do I use it to better my situation?
Of course.
I do not come from a wealthy family. When Mother died, she left me the house on rue du Montparnasse but little else. The house is really quite small. The income I make from my writing is unreliable. There is no comfort in not being able to depend on one’s salary, in having to struggle constantly to be paid. I am always working with an eye to how I can earn money from what I am writing. And as I get older, the insecurity of this weighs heavily on me.
So I lobby the princess to lobby the emperor to make me a senator. If I was a senator, I would be paid the fantastic sum of thirty thousand francs a year simply to attend Senate meetings. This would be enough to keep me very comfortably in my old age.
When I first propose the idea to Princess Mathilde, she suggests that I come to the country house of the emperor at Compiègne and dine with him and Empress Eugénie. She decides it will help my cause if the emperor meets me.
And so I go, reluctantly. I am not a man used to being presented at court. I do not have the clothes or the manner for such things. But Princess Mathilde loans me a pair of court shoes and a footman to be my valet for the weekend. We travel down together in the same carriage, and I must admit that I do like the feeling of importance the occasion generates.
I look out the window of the carriage as we drive through the impressive oak and beech forests at Compiègne. The sight of the château at the end of the path through the trees makes me catch my breath. It is really a palace. “Château” is much too humble a word for it.
“To think that could have been mine,” says Princess Mathilde, noting my reaction. She was once engaged to her cousin, the emperor. “And it would have been,” she adds, “if Louis hadn’t decided to marry for love.”
The château is even more impressive inside. There is a ballroom with gold pillars, walls of huge windows flanking each side, and several enormous chandeliers. There is a salon decorated entirely in blue—walls and chairs and drapery. My bedroom has gilt on the ceiling and an ornate marble fireplace.
I had thought that I was the only guest of the emperor and empress, but Mathilde just laughs when I mention this to her.
“They entertain over a hundred people a week,” she says. “There will be at least forty other guests this weekend.”
I don’t do well at Compiègne. My court shoes pinch. My borrowed valet rolls his eyes when I get lost trying to find my bedroom after lunch in the dining room. At dinner the first night, I am seated relatively close to the empress. For a while I concentrate on the heavy silver cutlery, but when I do look up, I notice that Empress Eugénie has a watch pinned to her vest, and that the watch does not show the right time. In fact, it does not seem to be working at all, is stuck at four o’clock, an hour long since past. I gather my courage, clear my throat, and address myself to the empress.
“Pardon me,” I say, “but I can’t help noticing that your watch seems to have stopped. You might want to get it repaired.”
The empress glowers at me. “I will never get it repaired,” she says.
From across the table, Mathilde is waving her fork at me. Too late, I realize she’s signalling me to stop talking.
“But why?” I persist.
“Because it is my lucky watch,” says the empress.
“All the more reason to get it fixed,” I say.
The empress looks over at Mathilde. “I think you need to educate your small friend,” she says.
After dinner, Mathilde pulls me aside.
“Eugénie was wearing that watch when she met Louis,” she says. “She was at a garden party and realized her watch had stopped, so she asked him the time. That stopped watch changed her life. She has no desire to have it repaired.”
I cannot seem to get anything right. After dinner there is the choice of dancing in the ballroom or listening to the mechanical piano in the blue salon. I choose the piano, thinking it will be less complicated than dancing, a pastime of which I’ve never been particularly fond. But the mechanical piano needs to be turned by a crank to play, and the empress, seeing me enter the room, immediately volunteers me for the job. After a few rotations I am exhausted, but I can’t free myself until the empress says so. She has me cranking the piano for ages, perspiration running down my face, my arm feeling as though it is going to drop off from the terrible exertion. Afterwards my arm hurts so badly that I ask my valet to massage it. He laughs and goes out to smoke in the garden.
The next morning, every man except for me goes hunting. Mathilde asks me to come with her and the empress on a drive to Pierrefonds to see Eugénie’s collection of armour, but I decline. I can only imagine what horrible faux pas I will commit if I spend any more time in the empress’s company.
I look for the emperor, hoping to have a chat with him about becoming a senator, but he has gone hunting with the male guests. I look for the library, don’t find it, and end up in the magnificent ballroom. But here my luck changes. There is a young lady in the ballroom, a beautiful young lady, and instead of avoiding or ignoring me, she comes up to me. She offers her hand. I take it.
“Will you take me to dinner tonight?” she says.
I can’t believe my good fortune.
“Of course,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “I’ll look for you in the reception room at eight.” And she turns on her delicate heel and is gone.
I search out my valet, who is chatting to one of the parlour maids in the hallway outside my bedroom.
“Where is the nearest inn?” I ask.
“Inn?”
“Somewhere to dine tonight.”
“But you’re a guest here,” he says. “Why would you want to go and dine elsewhere?”
Princess Mathilde finally returns from her tour of the armour. I walk out with her through the garden.
“I’ve met the most charming young lady,” I say. “And she is enamoured of me also. She has asked me to take her to dinner tonight. Do you know of anywhere nearby where we could go?”
Mathilde touches my arm and I flinch, as it is still sore from winding the mechanical piano. “You don’t have much experience at court, do you, Sainte-Beuve?”
“No, I suppose I don’t.”
“It is customary at Compiègne for a young woman
to ask a man to escort her to the dining room. Here,” says Mathilde, squeezing my arm affectionately, “at the château.”
Napoleon III believes in social reform. He has been impressed with the Industrial Revolution in England, which he witnessed when he was there in exile, and so his new Paris is modelled on the new London. I preferred the old labyrinth of streets to the modern boulevards. It is harder to hide in the new Paris.
An advocate of science and technology, the emperor seems a lot less interested in literature. My attempts at conversation with him about books at dinner the next night fall flat. He keeps asking me to speak up, then loses interest in my questions about his reading habits and turns to talk to the man on the other side of him about the quality of the dinner wine.
When the list of senators is published, I am not on it.
Like my admittance into the Académie française, my elevation to the Senate takes two tries.
And now comes the betrayal, and the end of my friendship with Napoleon’s niece.
I should not have been surprised that the members of the Senate were cronies of the emperor. Other writers in Paris assumed that I was also of this camp. They felt that I had defected from their midst, that my liberal views had just been a pretence, that my presence in the Senate was a reflection of my true political feelings. What is more true is that I am not a political man—meaning, I am not a man who is driven by politics. I have always been devoted to literature. Devotion and drive are two different things. Someone with drive likes to lead. Someone with devotion likes to serve. Politics are always the province of those with drive and direction. Action is required to advance a political movement. I had not really given up my liberal views; I was just not defined by them.
So when one of the senators attacked the work of Renan in a speech, I defended my Magny dining companion. And when the ratepayers of Saint-Etienne petitioned the Senate to ban certain books from their local library, I made a speech against this. (The books submitted for banning included Candide by Voltaire, the works of Rousseau, and all the novels of Balzac and George Sand.)
I was accused of being an atheist. One of my fellow senators challenged me to a duel, which, thankfully, the president of the Senate dismissed.
Next up was the Press Law, which proposed charging anyone who wished to start a newspaper fifty thousand francs. Of course, I had to make a speech about the inherent freedom of the press. During this speech, some of the senators actually walked out of the chambers.
Then there was the education bill, which proposed denying a liberal education to the young. My speech about the absurdity of this brought a delegation of students to my house with flowers. I had tea with them in the garden. It was all very pleasant.
None of my liberal Senate speeches went over well with Princess Mathilde. She regarded my words and actions as treacherous. To her mind, I had supported Bonapartism until I became a senator and then, when I was safely ensconced in the Senate, had renounced the politics of the man who had put me there.
She had a point.
I am in my sixties when I become a senator. I am in my sixties, and my health has begun to fail. I am afflicted in my weakest spot by the condition that has plagued me all my adult life—hypospadias. My bladder has become obstructed. I have had an operation to remove a stone, but nothing has really improved since then. I am still in pain. My bladder is weak, and I am forced to use a catheter. During the course of a dinner party, I have to rise three or four times to relieve myself. I don’t believe that I have long to live. This condition that has made my life miserable will inevitably be the death of me.
So I mind losing the friendship of Princess Mathilde very much. I mind not having a confidante. I miss the intimacy. It cannot be said that this friendship was merely one of convenience for me.
But still, this is said.
I have done enough work. I do not have books hovering inside me, waiting to be released. I have written my fill. I have had my say. Work is a continuing solace to me, but I do not feel the burning need to produce another book.
There is just one thing I would like before I die. One thing I would like above all others. I have wanted this for many years, and so, when it finally does happen, it seems entirely miraculous.
Halifax, Canada
Dédé
MY DARLING ALBERT,
I know you will be anxious for news of me, and so I am sending word that my ship has docked and I have taken a room at the Halifax Hotel. I have registered under the name Miss Lewly, and you will find me waiting for you any afternoon that you are free to come. I have used a nom de plume because I want to avoid any association with Papa. It seems that he is as popular in the New World as he is in France, and I do not wish to engage in conversation about his books. I do not wish to be known here as Victor Hugo’s daughter. I long, instead, to be Albert Pinson’s wife.
As your French is better than my English, I am writing to you in my language.
Your beloved Adèle
My darling Albert,
I am worried that you did not receive my last letter. I think perhaps the mail service in Halifax is not what it was in France, so I have delivered this letter myself to the garrison where I know you are stationed. The soldier in the guardhouse assured me it would find its way into your hands, and so, knowing that you will read this, I wait eagerly for a reply. Or better still, a visit. I have taken a room in the Halifax Hotel under the name of Miss Lewly. I will wait in every afternoon for your arrival there. It will be so wonderful to see you again. I have missed you so much and simply long to be in your presence.
Your beloved Adèle
Dear Maman,
Do not worry for me, Maman. I had to leave. You know how Papa is, how he would never have let me marry Albert if I had remained on Guernsey. I could only follow the man I loved, even to this dismal town that grows colder with each passing day. There was no other choice. Please understand that I did this not to hurt you, but rather to be with my beloved. Now we can be married. Nothing will make me happier than to be Madame Pinson. Please be happy for me, Maman. I beg you.
Your Dédé
My darling Albert,
I do not understand why you haven’t come. I will take this letter to the garrison, and again I will ask the soldier in the guardhouse to deliver it to you. I know you are busy with your duties, but you must have a few hours free each day. I see many soldiers around the town. I have asked after you, and several of the soldiers have reported to me that you are indeed here at the garrison, and that they have seen you. Oh, if only I could be so fortunate! It was no small undertaking to leave my family, to lie about my whereabouts, to take passage, alone, across the North Atlantic. I was frightened on the ship, but I consoled myself with thoughts of you. I would do anything for you, Albert. Will you not come and see me and let me prove my love to you?
Your impatient, beloved Adèle
Dear François-Victor,
Is it not possible to prise some more coins from Papa’s talons? It is costly preparing for the wedding, and I have had to outfit myself in warmer clothes for the coming winter. It is very cold in Halifax, a cold you could not imagine. Remember that day when we were children and we awoke to snow? It was a mere dusting on the roofs and grass, but it made us so happy. Remember, dear brother? Well, here, apparently, when the snow comes it can be as high as a man’s chest, and so cold that one is forced to remain indoors for weeks at a time. The wind off the sea in Guernsey is nothing compared to the bitter gales that blow in from the sea here.
Nothing of the Old World is adequate enough to meet the demands of the New World, including my allowance. It is one thing to have a pittance while I am living at home on Guernsey, but quite another to have to survive on it here. I know you will understand, François-Victor. Please see what you can do with Papa.
Your loving sister, Adèle
My darling Albert,
You must be very busy with your duties. Vexing as it is not to see you, I understand how frustrating it must be for you to
be unable to walk the few blocks to the Halifax Hotel and take me in your arms. So I will come to you, my darling. I have found out that there is to be a dance tonight at the big house at the top of the hill. (Forgive me, Albert, for not having learned the street names yet, even though I walk out every day with that very intent.) I will come to the dance and we will be reunited. I understand. It must be me who finds you. Just as I had to journey across the ocean, I will walk the final mile or so between our two bodies. Oh, to be with you again! I can hardly wait. I will wear my best dress. It is a new one that I had sent from Paris before I left Guernsey. You have not seen it.
Your beloved Adèle
My darling Albert,
Why did you refuse to see me at the dance? And then, when I lingered outside, why did you come out onto the darkened steps and tell me to leave? Why do you lie and say that you don’t love me, and that you never asked me to come to Halifax? In Jersey you were my beloved. How can you change your mind? Why did you tell me that you have changed your mind? How does one stop loving? Please tell me that. How does one stop loving?
My dress was ruined from my rush back to the hotel, from my skirts dragging in the mud. The streets are too rough here. They are not meant for a lady. The mud and the cold and the darkness—it takes all my courage to remain here. Why did you say you wanted me to return to France? How can you mean that?
How can you stop loving me, Albert, when I love you more than ever?
How can you?
My dear Maman,
The Reinvention of Love Page 17
