The Memoirs of Two Young Wives

by Honoré de Balzac

  Macumer gave that slanderous meddler one of those glances that to my mind are a poem in themselves, and answered with words to the effect of “I am in love with no little coquette!”

  Perfectly enchanted with his manner, I took off my glove and glanced at my father. Felipe had felt not the slightest fear, nor the slightest suspicion. He did just what I expected of him; he has faith in me alone. Society and its lies cannot touch him. The Abencerrage never blinked, his blue blood did not color his olive face.

  The two young counts went out. I then said to Macumer with a laugh, “Monsieur de Marsay seems to have whispered some epigram about me in your ear.”

  “Far more than an epigram,” he answered, “an epithalamium.”

  “You’re speaking Greek to me,” I told him, smiling and rewarding him with a special gaze that never fails to fluster him.

  “I should say so!” my father cried, speaking to Madame de Maufrigneuse. “There are vile rumors going about. The moment a young woman is introduced to society everyone is hell-bent on marrying her off, and they come up with the most outlandish ideas! I will never marry Armande against her will. I must go out for a stroll around the lobby, lest anyone think I am spreading this rumor to put a flea in the ambassador’s ear. Caesar’s daughter must be above suspicion, even more than his wife, who must be above all suspicion.”

  Madame d’Espard and the Duchess de Maufrigneuse looked first at my mother and then at the baron with an eager, sly, teasing air, full of unspoken questions. Those vigilant snakes had sensed something. Love is the most public of all private things, and I believe it radiates visibly from a woman. Only a monster could hide it! Our eyes say even more than our tongues. Having tasted the delight of finding Felipe every bit as grand as I’d wished, I naturally wanted more. I then gave him a sign we’d established as an order to come to my window by the perilous route you know well. A few hours later I found him standing straight as a statue, his back pressed to the wall, his hand on the corner of my balcony, his eye fixed on the light from my rooms.

  “My dear Felipe,” I said to him, “you were fine tonight: you did just as I would have, had I heard you were to be married.”

  “I thought you would surely have told me before anyone else,” he answered.

  “And by what right do you have that privilege?”

  “The right of a devoted servant.”

  “And is that what you are?

  ” “Yes,” he said, “and I always will be.”

  “Well, suppose such a marriage was necessary, suppose I’d resigned myself. . . .”

  The gentle moonlight was as if brightly lit up by the two glances he cast, first at me, then at the sort of sheer cliff that the wall formed before us. He seemed to be wondering if the fall could kill us both, but after flashing like a lightning bolt on his face and darting from his eyes, that emotion was repressed by a force even greater than passion.

  “An Arab’s word is forever,” he said in a thick voice. “I am your servant, and I belong to you: I will live my entire life for you.”

  The hand holding the balcony seemed to loosen its grip; I placed mine atop it, saying, “Felipe, my friend, by my will alone, I am your wife from this moment forward. Go and ask my father for my hand tomorrow afternoon. He means to keep my inheritance; promise to forgo it, and he will surely approve of you. I am no longer Armande de Chaulieu. Hurry down from that wall: Louise de Macumer does not wish to commit the slightest imprudence.”

  He paled, his legs appeared to go weak, he threw himself to the ground from a height of ten feet without hurting himself in the least; after causing me the most dreadful emotion, he gave me a wave and ran off. “And so I am loved,” I said to myself, “as no woman has ever been!” And I fell asleep as happy as a child, my destiny fixed forever.

  At around two in the afternoon, my father had me summoned to his study, where I found the duchess and Macumer. The necessary words were very elegantly exchanged. I simply answered that, if Monsieur Hénarez had come to an agreement with my father, I had no cause to object. With that, my mother invited the baron to stay for dinner; afterwards the four of us went out for a drive through the Bois de Boulogne. I shot Monsieur de Marsay a taunting look when he passed by on horseback, for he had spied Macumer and my father in the front seat of the calèche.

  My adorable Felipe has had new calling cards printed up:

  Hénarez

  of the Dukes de Soria, Baron de Macumer

  Every morning he personally brings me a splendid bouquet of flowers, amid which I find a letter with a Spanish sonnet in my honor, written by him during the night. So as not to make this envelope too thick, I am sending you as a sample only the first and the latest of those sonnets, which I have translated word for word and line by line.

  FIRST SONNET

  More than once, clad in a thin silken jacket,

  my sword held high, my heart beating not one beat faster,

  I have awaited the onrush of the furious bull,

  and its horn, sharper than Phoebe’s crescent.

  Humming an Andalusian seguidilla, I have climbed

  the steep slope of a redoubt, iron raining down around me;

  I have wagered my life at the gaming table of chance,

  thinking no more of it than I would a mere quadruple.

  I would gladly have pulled the cannonballs from the weapon’s mouth by hand;

  but I believe I have grown more timorous than a startled hare,

  than a child who sees a ghost in the folds of his curtains,

  For, when you look at me with your gentle eye,

  an icy sweat floods my brow, my knees buckle beneath me,

  I tremble, I retreat, all my courage is gone.

  SECOND SONNET

  Last night I wanted to sleep, and dream of you,

  but jealous sleep fled my eyes;

  I came to the balcony and looked at the sky:

  when I think of you, my gaze always turns heavenward.

  By some strange phenomenon that love alone can explain,

  the firmament had lost its sapphire hue;

  the stars, lusterless diamonds in their setting of gold,

  now scarcely gleamed, dull and faint, their rays gone cold.

  The moon, its lily-white and silver makeup washed away,

  was hanging sadly over the drear horizon,

  for you have stripped the heavens of all their splendors.

  The white of the moon gleams on your charming brow,

  all the azure of the sky is concentrated in your irises;

  and your lashes are the rays of the stars.

  Is there a more graceful way for a man to prove to a girl that his thoughts revolve around her alone? What do you think of this love that expresses itself with an offering of the mind’s flowers along with the earth’s? For some ten days now, I have known what is meant by that once-celebrated Spanish gallantry.

  Now, my dear, what is happening at La Crampade, where I so often go walking, observing our agriculture’s progress? Have you nothing to tell me of our mulberry trees, of last winter’s plantings? Is everything working out as you wish? Have the flowers bloomed in your wifely heart along with those in our garden plots? I dare not say flower beds. Has Louis kept up his methodical madrigals? Do you suit each other? Is the gentle murmur of your trickle of conjugal tenderness better than the turbulence of my love’s torrents? Have I angered my sweet professor in skirts? I would have great difficulty believing it, but if so I would dispatch Felipe to kneel at your feet and bring me back your head or my pardon. My life here is beautiful, dear love, and I would so like to know how yours is in Provence. We have just added to our family a Spaniard the color of a Havana cigar,[37] and I am still awaiting your congratulations.

  In all honesty, my lovely Renée, I am worried, I fear you may be holding back certain sorrows so as not to put a damper on my joys, you cruel thing! Write me a few pages at once, and paint me a picture of your life, down to its tiniest detail; tell me if you are still re
sisting, if your free will is on its two feet or on its knees, or sitting down, which would be a terrible thing. Do you believe I take no interest at all in the events of your marriage? The things you have written sometimes leave me thoughtful. Often, when I seemed to be watching the dancers pirouette at the Opéra, I was thinking: Here it is half past nine, she might be going to bed at this moment, what’s she doing? Is she happy? Is she alone with her free will? Or is her free will lying in that place where free wills go when we no longer care about them? . . . A thousand tendernesses.

  25

  FROM RENÉE DE L’ESTORADE TO LOUISE DE CHAULIEU

  October

  Impudent girl! Why should I have written you? What would I have said? As you lead a life illuminated by the celebrations and torments of love, by its rages and bouquets, with me looking on as if watching a well-acted play, my days are as orderly and unchanging as those of the convent. We are always in bed by nine o’clock and up at daybreak. We take our meals at depressingly regular hours, with never the slightest disruption. I have grown used to that schedule, and without too much difficulty. Perhaps it is simply the way of things; what would life be without this obedience to fixed rules that, according to the astronomers and Louis, govern the cosmos itself? Order never grows wearisome. Indeed, I have imposed on myself a beauty regimen that occupies my every hour between rising and breakfast: I am determined to offer a charming appearance at table, out of deference to my wifely duty; I find pleasure in that, and I give heartfelt pleasure to that sweet old man and Louis. After breakfast we go out for a stroll. When the newspapers come, I disappear to see to my household tasks, or to read—for I read a great deal—or to write you. I reappear one hour before dinner, after which we play cards, receive visitors, or go calling. I spend my days between a happy old man who wants nothing and a man for whom I am happiness itself. Louis is so contented that in the end his joy warmed my own soul. For us, pleasure is not the true source of happiness. Some evenings, when I am not needed at the card table and so settle comfortably into a bergère, my thought is powerful enough to place me inside you; I follow your beautiful life, so rich, so varied, so tumultuous, and I wonder where these turbulent prologues will lead you—will they not spoil the book? My dear darling, you may enjoy the illusions of love; I myself have only the realities of the household. Yes, your love seems to me a dream! Which is why I find it difficult to understand why you insist on making it so like a novel. You want a man with more soul than sense, more greatness and virtue than love. You want the man every girl dreams of as she nears adulthood; you demand sacrifices so that you may reward them; you test your Felipe to learn if desire, anticipation, and curiosity can last. But, my child, behind all your fantastical adornments stands an altar at which an eternal bond is to be forged. The day after the wedding, the terrible deed that changes a girl to a wife and a lover to a husband can easily topple the elegant scaffolding of your ingenious precautions. You must realize that two lovers, no less than two married people such as Louis and me, are, beyond the festivities of the wedding party, setting off in search of something very like Rabelais’s great perhaps![38]

  However heedless the act, I do not fault you for speaking with Don Felipe at the far end of the garden, for questioning him, for spending a night on your balcony with him on the wall, but you are playing with life, child, and I fear that life may well end up playing with you. I dare not advise you to do what experience tells me would be best for your happiness, but allow me to tell you once again, from the depths of my valley, that the key to marriage is to be found in these two words: resignation and devotion! For in spite of all your tests, all your coquetry and petulance, you will marry exactly as I have, I can see it. By prolonging one’s desire, one simply digs the hole a little deeper, nothing more.

  Oh! how I would like to meet Baron de Macumer, to have a long talk with him, so badly do I want you to be happy!

  26

  FROM LOUISE DE MACUMER TO RENÉE DE L’ESTORADE

  March 1825

  By forswearing my inheritance, with typical Saracen generosity, Felipe has furthered my parents’ designs, and the duchess is even friendlier with me than before. She calls me little slyboots, little vixen, tells me I have a gift for wrapping men around my finger.

  “But, dear Mama,” I said to her the day before the papers were signed, “you are crediting ruse and maneuvers and cleverness with what is simply the natural outcome of the truest, most naive, most disinterested, most entire love that ever was! You must understand, I am not the vixen you do me the honor of taking me for.”

  “Come now, Armande,” she answered, placing her hand on the back of my neck, drawing me to her, and kissing my brow, “you didn’t want to go back to the convent, you didn’t want to remain unmarried, and, like the great, beautiful Chaulieu you are, you wanted to do your part for your father’s house.” (If you only knew, Renée, how those words sought to flatter the duke, who was close by, listening!) “Through an entire winter I saw you sniffing the air at every quadrille, astutely appraising the men, studying the state of French society. You thus sought out the only Spaniard who could offer you the ideal life, that of a wife who rules in her home. My dear girl, you treated him exactly as Tullia treats your brother.”

  “What a school is that convent of my sister’s!” cried my father.

  I shot him a glance that silenced him at once, then turned back to the duchess and answered, “Madame, I love my suitor Felipe de Soria with all my soul. I never chose that love, and indeed I struggled mightily against it when it arose in my heart, but I swear that I surrendered to it only when I recognized in Baron de Macumer a soul worthy of my own, a heart whose sensitivity, generosity, devotion, character, and sentiments mirrored mine.”

  “But my dear,” she broke in, “he is as ugly as—”

  “As whatever you please,” I answered sharply, “but I love that ugliness.”

  “Well, Armande,” said my father, “if you love him, and if you have found the force to contain your love, you must take care not to imperil your happiness. Now, happiness depends a great deal on the first days of a marriage—”

  “Why not say the first nights?” my mother cried. “Leave us alone, monsieur,” the duchess added, looking at my father.

  “In three days you will be married, my dear girl,” my mother whispered in my ear. “I must therefore now give you the serious advice all mothers give their daughters, but with no bourgeois sentimentality. You are marrying a man you love, and so I need not feel sorry for you, nor for myself. I have known you for only a year, long enough to love you but not enough to weep at the thought of losing you. Your intelligence has outshone even your beauty; you have flattered my maternal pride; you have been a good and lovable daughter, and you will always find me an excellent mother. Ah, that makes you smile? Often, alas, though the mother and daughter lived together happily, the two wives cannot see eye to eye. I want you to be happy, so listen to me closely. The love you now feel is a girl’s love, the love natural to all women who are born to cleave to a man, but alas, my little girl, there is only one man in the world for us, not two, and the man we are meant to adore is not always the man we have taken as a husband, however sure we were that we loved him. These words may seem strange to you; reflect on them all the same. If we do not love the man we have chosen, the fault is ours and not his; sometimes it must be blamed on circumstances that depend neither on him nor on us. Nonetheless, nothing prevents the man who speaks to our heart, the man we love, from being the man given us by our family. The barrier that later distances us from him often comes from a lack of perseverance, on our part and his. It is every bit as difficult an undertaking to make a lover out of your husband as it is to make a husband out of your lover, and you have just performed it magnificently. Now, I repeat: I want you to be happy. You must thus reflect that three months into your marriage you may find yourself unhappy, if you do not submit to your marriage with the obedience, tenderness, and intelligence you have shown in your love. For, my litt
le vixen, you have indulged in all the innocent pleasures of clandestine love. Should you first find in sanctified love only disillusionments, displeasures, perhaps even sorrows, well then, come and see me. Do not hope for too much from the early days of your marriage; it may well give you more pain than joy. Your happiness must be cultivated, no less than your love. But even were you to lose the husband, you would still be gaining the father of your children. That, my dear child, is the very soul of life in society. Sacrifice everything to the man whose name is yours, whose honor and standing cannot be harmed without wounding you cruelly. Sacrificing all to a husband is not only an absolute duty for women of our rank; it is also the shrewdest move. The finest attribute of great moral principles is to be true and profitable from whatever angle one considers them. Enough said of that. Now, I believe you are inclined to jealousy; I am a jealous woman myself! . . . But I would not want you to be foolishly jealous. Listen to me: A jealousy revealed is like a politician who divulges his strategy. If you say you are jealous, if you let it be seen, are you not showing your cards, knowing nothing of your opponent’s hand? In all things, it is vital that we know how to suffer in silence. On the eve of your wedding, of course, I will have a serious talk about you with Macumer.”

  I took my mother’s lovely arm and kissed her hand, dampening it with a tear brought to my eye by her tone. In that admirable moral lesson, worthy of her and of me, I glimpsed the deepest wisdom, a tenderness without social pieties, and above all a genuine esteem for my character. In those simple words she summed up all the knowledge she’d acquired, perhaps at a very dear price, from her life and experience. Moved, she looked at me and said, “Dear thing! you will soon cross over from girlhood to womanhood; it is a difficult crossing. And most ignorant or disabused women are perfectly capable of imitating the Count of Westmoreland.”