Part 1

THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78270 *** LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. =1044= Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius Another Study of Woman Honoré de Balzac HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS Copyright, 1926, Haldeman-Julius Company PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN TO LEON GOZLAN AS A TESTIMONY TO GOOD LITERARY BROTHERHOOD ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN[1] THE SALON OF MADEMOISELLE DES TOUCHES In Parisian society you will almost always find two very different evenings in the balls and social affairs. First, the official evening, at which all the invited guests are present--a gay world bored with itself and others. Each person poses for his neighbor. The majority of the young women have come there to meet only one person. When each is satisfied that she is the handsomest woman present in the eyes of that person, and that his opinion is probably shared by some others, she is ready to leave--after the exchange of a few trivial speeches, such as “Shall you go early to La Crampade?”--“Madame de Portenduère sang very well, I think.”--“Who is that little woman over there, weighted down with diamonds?” Or, perhaps, after throwing out a few epigrams, which give passing pleasure and permanent wounds, the groups begin to disperse, mere acquaintances take leave, and then the mistress of the house stops her personal friends and a few artists and lively fellows, saying in a whisper: “Don’t go, we shall have supper presently.” The company then gathers in a little salon. The second, the real evening begins--an evening like those of the old régime, when everybody understands what is talked about, conversation is general, and each person present is expected to show his wit and to contribute to the general entertainment. The scene has changed: frank laughter succeeds the stiff artificial air which dulls the prettiest faces in society.

In short, pleasure begins as the social time ends. The ball, that cold review of luxury, the parade of self-loves in full costume, is one of those English inventions which tend to turn all other nations into mere machines. England seems desirous that all the world should be as much and as often bored as herself. This second party succeeding the first is therefore in some French houses a lively protest of the former spirits of our joyous land. But, unfortunately, few houses thus protest; and the reason is plain: if suppers are no longer in vogue it is because at no time, under any régime, were there ever so few persons in France with settled positions, surroundings, fortunes, families, and names as under the reign of Louis Philippe, in which the Revolution was begun again legally. All the world is marching toward some end, or it is trotting after wealth. Time has become the most costly of all chattels; no one can allow himself the great indulgence of coming home late and sleeping late the next morning. The second party is therefore only found among women rich enough really to entertain; and since July, 1830, such women may be counted on one’s fingers.

In spite of the mute opposition of the faubourg Saint-Germain, two or three women, among them the Marquise d’Espard and Mademoiselle des Touches, refused to renounce the influence they had held up to that time over Paris, and did not close their salons. The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, which was very celebrated in Paris, was the last asylum of the true French wit of other days, with its hidden profundity, its thousand casuistries, and its exquisite politeness. There you might observe the grace of manner which underlay the conventions of politeness; the easy flow of conversation in spite of the natural reserve of well-bred persons; and, above all, generosity and tolerance of ideas. There, no one dreamed of reserving his thought for a drama; no one had in mind a book to be made out of a narrative. In short, the hideous skeleton of literature in want did not rise and show itself in the face of some piquant sally or some interesting topic. During the evening which I shall now describe, chance had collected in the salon of Mademoiselle des Touches a number of persons whose undeniable merits had won for them European reputations. This is not flattery of France, for several foreigners were among us. The men who shone most brilliantly were by no means the most distinguished.

Ingenious repartees, shrewd observations, excellent satires, descriptions given with brilliant clearness, sparkled and flowed extemporaneously, lavished themselves without reserve as without assumption, and were delightfully felt and delicately enjoyed. The men of the world were particularly noticeable for a grace, warmth of fancy that was wholly artistic. You will meet elsewhere in Europe elegant manners, cordiality, good-fellowship and knowledge, but in Paris only, in this salon and those I have just mentioned, will be found in perfection that particular form of intellect which gives to these social qualities an agreeable and varied harmony, a flowing motion by which this wealth of thoughts, of formulas, or narratives, of history itself, meanders easily along. Paris, the capital of taste, alone knows the science which changes conversation to a tournament in which the quality of each mind is condensed into a flash, where each tilter says his word and casts his experience into it, where all are amused, refreshed, and have their faculties exercised. There alone you can exchange ideas; there you do not carry, like the dolphin in the fable, a monkey on your back; there you are understood, and you run no risk of staking your gold against counterfeit coin or copper. There, in short, talk, light and deep, floats, undulates, and turns, changing aspect and color at every sentence; there, too, secrets are well betrayed. Lively criticism and pithy narrative lead each other on. Eyes are listening as well as ears; gestures put questions to which faces reply.

There all is, in a word, thought and wit. Never had the oral phenomenon--which, if well studied and well-managed, makes the power of the orator and the narrator--so completely bewitched me. I was not the only one sensitive to these influences, and we passed a delightful evening. The conversation finally turned to narrative, and led, in its rapid course, to curious confidences, striking portraits, and a multitude of fancies, which render that delightful improvisation altogether untransferable to paper. But, by leaving to a few things their pungency, their abrupt naturalness, their sophistical sinuosities, perhaps you will understand the charm of a true French soirée, taken at the moment when the pleasantest familiarity has made everyone forget his self-interests, self-loves, or, if you prefer so to call them, pretensions and affectations. At about two in the morning, when supper was over, none but a few intimates, all proved friends, tried by an intercourse of fifteen years, and certain men of the world, well-bred and gifted with taste, remained around the table. A tone of absolute equality held sway among them; and yet there was no one present who did not feel proud of being himself. Mademoiselle des Touches always obliged her guests to remain at table until they took their leave, having many times noticed the total change that takes place in the minds of those present by removal to another room.

On the way between a dining-room and a salon the charm snaps. According to Sterne, the ideas of an author are different after he has shaved from what they were before. If Sterne is right, we may boldly assert that the inclinations of people still seated around a dinner-table are not those of the same persons when returned to the salon. The atmosphere is heavier, the eye is no longer enlivened by the delightful disorder of the dessert; they have lost the benefits of that softening of the spirit, that kindliness and good-will which pervaded their being in the pleasant state of mind of those who have eaten well, and are sitting at their ease on chairs as comfortable as they can be made. Perhaps we talk more willingly in presence of the dessert and in company with choice wines, during the delightful moment when we rest our elbows on the table and lean our heads on our hands. Certain it is that people not only like to talk at such times, but they like to listen. Digestion, nearly always attentive, is, according to characters, either talkative or silent. Each person present then follows his inclination.

This preamble was needed to introduce you to the charms of a confidential narrative in which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted the innocent jesuitism of a woman with the crafty shrewdness of a man who has seen much of the world--a quality which makes public men the most delightful narrators when, like Talleyrand and Metternich, they condescend to tell a tale. De Marsay, who had been prime minister for more than six months, had already given proofs of superior capacity. Though friends who had long known him were not surprised to see him display both the talents and aptitudes of a statesman, they were still asking themselves whether he felt within himself a great political strength, or whether he had simply developed in the heat of circumstances. This question had just been put to him, with an evidently philosophical intention, by a man of intellect and observation whom he had made a prefect--a man who was a journalist for a long time, and who admired the prime minister without mingling his admiration with that touch of sour criticism by which, in Paris, one superior man excuses himself for admiring another. “Has there been in your earlier life any fact, thought, or desire, which made you foresee your vocation?” asked Emile Blondet, “for we all have, like Newton, our particular apple which falls, and takes us to the surroundings in which our faculties can develop.” “Yes,” replied de Marsay, “and I’ll tell you about it.” Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, all de Marsay’s intimates, settled themselves comfortably, each in his own way, and looked at the prime minister. Is it necessary to say that the servants had left the dining-room, that the doors were closed and the portières drawn? The silence which now fell was so deep that the murmur of the coachmen’s voices and the subdued stamping of the horses impatient for their stable came up from the courtyard. “A statesman, my friends, exists through one quality only,” said the minister, playing with his pearl-handled and gold dessert-knife. “To know how at all moments to be master of himself; to be able, on all occasions, to meet the crisis of events, however unexpected and accidental it may be; in short, to have, in his inner self, a cool, detached being, which looks on as a spectator at all the movements of our life, our passions, our sentiments, and which inspires us apropos of all things, with the decision of a kind of ready-reckoner.” “You are explaining to us why statesmen are so rare in France,” said old Lord Dudley. “From a sentimental point of view it is certainly horrible,” said the minister, “and therefore when this phenomenon appears in a young man--Richelieu, warned of Concini’s danger by a letter over-night, slept till midday, when he knew his benefactor would be killed at ten o’clock--that young man, be he Pitt, or Napoleon if you like, is a monstrosity. I became that monster very early in life, thanks to a woman.” “I thought,” said Madame de Montcornet (Virginie Blondet), smiling, “that we unmade more statesmen than we make.” “The monster of whom I speak is only a monster inasmuch as he resists your sex,” said the narrator, with an ironical bow. “If this tale relates to a love-affair,” said the Baronne de Nucingen, “I request that it may not be interrupted by reflections.” “Reflection being so contrary to love,” remarked Joseph Bridau. “I was nineteen years of age,” resumed de Marsay; “the Restoration was becoming re-established--my oldest friends know how impetuous and fiery I then was. I was in love for the first time, and I may, at this late day, be permitted to say that I was one of the handsomest young men in Paris.

I had youth and beauty, two advantages due to chance, of which we are as proud as if we had won them. I say nothing about the rest. Like all young men, I was in love with a woman about six years older than myself. Only one of you,” he said, looking round the table, “will guess her name or recognize her. Ronquerolles was the only one in those days who guessed my secret, and he kept it carefully. I might fear _his_ smile, but he seems to be gone,” said the minister, again looking about him. “He would not stay to supper,” said his sister, Madame de Sérizy. “For six months possessed by this love, but incapable of suspecting that it mastered me,” continued the minister, “I gave myself up to that adorable worship which is both the triumph and the fragile happiness of youth. I treasured _her_ glove, I drank infusions of the flowers _she_ had worn, I rose from my bed to go to stand beneath _her_ windows. All my blood rushed to my heart as I breathed the perfume that _she_ preferred.

I was then a thousand leagues from suspecting that women are furnaces without and marble within.” “Oh, spare us those horrible sentiments,” said Madame de Camps, laughing. “I would then have blasted with contempt the philosopher who published to the world that terrible opinion, so profoundly true,” replied de Marsay. “You are all too wise and witty to need me to say more on that point; but perhaps the rest that I have to tell may recall to you your own follies. Well--a great lady, if ever there was one, a widow without children (oh! she had every advantage), my idol went so far as to shut herself up to mark my handkerchiefs with her own hair; in short, she responded to my follies with follies of her own. How is it possible not to believe in a passion when it is guaranteed by folly? We had put, each of us, all our wits into concealing so complete and glorious a love from the eyes of the world; and we succeeded. Of her, I shall tell you nothing; perfect in those days, she was considered until quite recently one of the handsomest women in Paris; at the time of which I speak men would have risked death to secure her favor. She was left comfortably as to fortune, for a woman who loved and was beloved; but the Restoration, to which she was indebted for higher honors, made her wealth insufficient to meet the requirements of her name and rank. As for me, I had the self-conceit that conceives no suspicions. Although my natural jealousy had in those days a hundred-and-twenty-Othello power, that terrible sentiment slumbered in my breast like gold in its bed of ore.

I would have made my valet flog me had I felt the baseness to doubt the purity and fidelity of that angel, so frail, so strong, so fair, so naive, so pure, so candid, whose blue eyes let me penetrate with adorable submission to the bottom of her heart. Never the least hesitation in pose, or look, or word; always white and fresh and tender to her beloved as the eastern lily of the Song of Songs. Ah, my friends!” cried the minister, sorrowfully, becoming for the moment a young man, “we must knock our heads very hard against the marble to dispel that poetry.” This cry of nature, which found its echo among the guests, piqued their curiosity, already so cleverly excited. “Every morning, mounted on that splendid Sultan you sent me from England,” he said to Lord Dudley, “I rode past her _calèche_ and read my orders for the day in her bouquet, prepared in case we were unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw each other nearly every evening in society, and she wrote to me every day, we had invented, in order to deceive the world and baffle observation, a system of behavior. Not to look at each other, to avoid ever being together, to speak slightingly of each other’s qualities, all those well-worn maneuvers were of little value compared with our device of a mutual false devotion to an indifferent person, and an air of indifference to the true idol. If two lovers will play that game they can always dupe society, but they must be very sure of each other. Her substitute was a man high in court favor, cold and devout, whom she did not receive in her own house. Our comedy was only played for the benefit of fools in salons.

The question of marriage had not been discussed between us; six years’ difference in our ages might cause her to reflect. She knew nothing of the amount of my fortune, which, on principle, I have always concealed. As for me, charmed by her mind, her manners, the extent of her information and her knowledge of the world, I would have married her without reflection. And yet her reserve pleased me. Had she been the first to speak to me of marriage, I might have found something vulgar in that accomplished soul. Six full and perfect months! a diamond of the purest water! That was my allowance of love in this low world. One morning, being attacked by one of those bone-fevers which begin a severe cold, I wrote her a note putting off the happiness of a meeting for another day.

No sooner was the letter gone than I regretted it. ‘She certainly will not believe that I am ill,’ I said to myself; for she was fond of seeming jealous and suspicious. When jealousy is real,” said de Marsay, interrupting himself, “it is the evident sign of a single-minded love.” “Why?” asked the Princesse de Cadignan, eagerly. “A true and single-minded love,” said de Marsay, “produces a sort of bodily apathy in harmony with the contemplation into which the person falls. The mind then complicates all things; it works upon itself, it sets up fantasies in place of realities, which only torture it; but this jealousy is as fascinating as it is embarrassing.” A foreign minister smiled, recognizing by the light of memory the truth of this remark. “‘Besides,’ I said to myself, ‘why lose a happy day?’” continued de Marsay, resuming his narrative. “Wasn’t it better to go, ill as I was? For if she thought me ill I believed her capable of coming to see me and so compromising herself. I made an effort; I wrote a second letter, and as my confidential man was not on hand, I took it myself. The river lay between us; I had all Paris to cross. When I came within suitable distance of her house I called a porter and told him to deliver the letter immediately. Then the fine idea came into my head of driving past the house in a hackney-coach to see if the letter was delivered promptly.

Just as I passed in front of it, about two o’clock in the afternoon, the great gate opened to admit the carriage of--whom do you suppose? The substitute! It is fifteen years since that happened; well! as I tell you of it, this exhausted orator, this minister dried to the core by contact with public business, still feels the boiling of something in his heart and a fire in his diaphragm. At the end of an hour I passed again--the carriage was still in the courtyard; my note had doubtless not been taken up to her. At last, at half-past three o’clock, the carriage drove away and I was able to study the face of my rival. He was grave, he did not smile; but he was certainly in love, and no doubt some plan was in the wind. At the appointed hour I kept my tryst; the queen of my soul was calm and serene. Here I must tell you that I have always thought Othello not only stupid, but guilty of very bad taste.

No man but one who was half a Negro would have behaved as he did. Shakespeare felt that when he called his play the Moor of Venice. The mere sight of the beloved woman has something so healing to the heart, that it dissipates all vexations, doubts, sorrows; my wrath subsided and I smiled again. This, at my present age, would have been horribly dissimulating, but then it was simply the result of my youth and love. My jealousy thus buried, I had the power to observe. I was visibly ill; the horrible doubts which had tortured me increased the appearance of illness, and she showed me the most tender solicitude. I found occasion, however, to slip in the words: ‘Had you any visitor this morning?’ explaining that I had wondered how she would amuse herself after receiving my first note. “‘I?’ she said, ‘how could I think of any amusement after hearing of your illness? Until your second note came I was planning how to go to you.’ “‘Then you were quite alone?’ “‘Quite,’ she answered, looking at me with so perfect an expression of innocence that it rivaled that which drove the Moor to kill his Desdemona.

As she alone occupied her house, that word was a shocking falsehood. A single lie destroys that absolute confidence which, for certain souls, is itself the basis of love. To express to you what went on inside of me at that moment, it is necessary to admit that we have an inner being of which the visible man is the scabbard, and that that being, brilliant as light itself, is as delicate as a vapor. Well, that glorious inward _I_ was thenceforth and forever clothed in crêpe. Yes, I felt a cold and fleshless hand placing upon me the shroud of experience, imposing upon my soul the eternal mourning which follows a first betrayal. Lowering my eyes not to let her see my dazed condition, a proud thought came into my mind which restored to me some strength: ‘If she deceives you she is unworthy of you.’ I excused the flush in my face, and a few tears that came into my eyes, on the ground of increased illness, and the gentle creature insisted on taking me home in her carriage. On the way she was tenderness itself; her solicitude would have deceived the same Moor of Venice whom I take for my point of comparison. In fact, if that big child had hesitated two seconds longer he would, as any intelligent spectator divines, have asked pardon of Desdemona.