Chapter 2

five years of useless labor, and of privations which have grieved me deeply. In it I proposed an arrangement of which the stipulations will relieve all your fears, and make our domestic life possible. I have much to reproach myself with, and in seven years of sorrow I have discovered all my errors. I misunderstood marriage. I failed to scent danger when it threatened you. An angel was in the house. The Lord bid me guard it well! The Lord has punished me for my audacious confidence.

“‘You cannot give yourself a single lash without striking me. Have mercy on me, my dear Honorine. I so fully appreciated your susceptibilities that I would not bring you back to the old house in the Rue Payenne, where I can live without you, but which I could not bear to see again with you. I am decorating, with great pleasure, another house, in the Faubourg Saint-Honore, to which, in hope, I conduct not a wife whom I owe to her ignorance of life, and secured to me by law, but a sister who will allow me to press on her brow such a kiss as a father gives the daughter he blesses every day.

“‘Will you bereave me of the right I have conquered from your despair--that of watching more closely over your needs, your pleasures, your life even? Women have one heart always on their side, always abounding in excuses--their mother’s; you never knew any mother but my mother, who would have brought you back to me. But how is it that you never guessed that I had for you the heart of a mother, both of my mother and of your own? Yes, dear, my affection is neither mean nor grasping; it is one of those which will never let any annoyance last long enough to pucker the brow of the child it worships. What can you think of the companion of your childhood, Honorine, if you believe him capable of accepting kisses given in trembling, of living between delight and anxiety? Do not fear that you will be exposed to the laments of a suppliant passion; I would not want you back until I felt certain of my own strength to leave you in perfect freedom.

“‘Your solitary pride has exaggerated the difficulties. You may, if you will, look on at the life of a brother, or of a father, without either suffering or joy; but you will find neither mockery nor indifference, nor have any doubt as to his intentions. The warmth of the atmosphere in which you live will be always equable and genial, without tempests, without a possible squall. If, later, when you feel secure that you are as much at home as in your own little house, you desire to try some other elements of happiness, pleasures, or amusements, you can expand their circle at your will. The tenderness of a mother knows neither contempt nor pity. What is it? Love without desire. Well, in me admiration shall hide every sentiment in which you might see an offence.

“‘Thus, living side by side, we may both be magnanimous. In you the kindness of a sister, the affectionate thoughtfulness of a friend, will satisfy the ambition of him who wishes to be your life’s companion; and you may measure his tenderness by the care he will take to conceal it. Neither you nor I will be jealous of the past, for we may each acknowledge that the other has sense enough to look only straight forward.

“‘Thus you will be at home in your new house exactly as you are in the Rue Saint-Maur; unapproachable, alone, occupied as you please, living by your own law; but having in addition the legitimate protection, of which you are now exacting the most chivalrous labors of love, with the consideration which lends so much lustre to a woman, and the fortune which will allow of your doing many good works. Honorine, when you long for an unnecessary absolution, you have only to ask for it; it will not be forced upon you by the Church or by the Law; it will wait on your pride, on your own impulsion. My wife might indeed have to fear all the things you dread; but not my friend and sister, towards whom I am bound to show every form and refinement of politeness. To see you happy is enough happiness for me; I have proved this for the seven years past. The guarantee for this, Honorine, is to be seen in all the flowers made by you, carefully preserved, and watered by my tears. Like the _quipos_, the tally cords of the Peruvians, they are the record of our sorrows.

“‘If this secret compact does not suit you, my child, I have begged the saintly man who takes charge of this letter not to say a word in my behalf. I will not owe your return to the terrors threatened by the Church, nor to the bidding of the Law. I will not accept the simple and quiet happiness that I ask from any one but yourself. If you persist in condemning me to the lonely life, bereft even of a fraternal smile, which I have led for nine years, if you remain in your solitude and show no sign, my will yields to yours. Understand me perfectly: you shall be no more troubled than you have been until this day. I will get rid of the crazy fellow who has meddled in your concerns, and has perhaps caused you some annoyance...’

“‘Monsieur,’ said Honorine, folding up the letter, which she placed in her bosom, and looking at my uncle, ‘thank you very much. I will avail myself of Monsieur le Comte’s permission to remain here----’

“‘Ah!’ I exclaimed.

“This exclamation made my uncle look at me uneasily, and won from the Countess a mischievous glance, which enlightened me as to her motives.

“Honorine had wanted to ascertain whether I were an actor, a bird snarer; and I had the melancholy satisfaction of deceiving her by my exclamation, which was one of those cries from the heart which women understand so well.

“‘Ah, Maurice,’ said she, ‘you know how to love.’

“The light that flashed in my eyes was another reply which would have dissipated the Countess’ uneasiness if she still had any. Thus the Count found me useful to the very last.

“Honorine then took out the Count’s letter again to finish reading it. My uncle signed to me, and I rose.

“‘Let us leave the Countess,’ said he.

“‘You are going already Maurice?’ she said, without looking at me.

“She rose, and still reading, followed us to the door. On the threshold she took my hand, pressed it very affectionately, and said, ‘We shall meet again...’

“‘No,’ I replied, wringing her hand, so that she cried out. ‘You love your husband. I leave to-morrow.’

“And I rushed away, leaving my uncle, to whom she said:

“‘Why, what is the matter with your nephew?’

“The good Abbe completed my work by pointing to his head and heart, as much as to say, ‘He is mad, madame; you must forgive him!’ and with all the more truth, because he really thought it.

“Six days after, I set out with an appointment as vice-consul in Spain, in a large commercial town, where I could quickly qualify to rise in the career of a consul, to which I now restricted my ambition. After I had established myself there, I received this letter from the Count:--

“‘MY DEAR MAURICE,--

“‘If I were happy, I should not write to you, but I have entered on a new life of suffering. I have grown young again in my desires, with all the impatience of a man of forty, and the prudence of a diplomatist, who has learned to moderate his passion. When you left I had not yet been admitted to the _pavillon_ in the Rue Saint-Maur, but a letter had promised me that I should have permission--the mild and melancholy letter of a woman who dreaded the agitations of a meeting. After waiting for more than a month, I made bold to call, and desired Gobain to inquire whether I could be received. I sat down in a chair in the avenue near the lodge, my head buried in my hands, and there I remained for almost an hour.

“‘“Madame had to dress,” said Gobain, to hide Honorine’s hesitancy under a pride of appearance which was flattering to me.

“‘During a long quarter of an hour we both of us were possessed by an involuntary nervous trembling as great as that which seizes a speaker on the platform, and we spoke to each other sacred phrases, like those of persons taken by surprise who “make believe” a conversation.

“‘“You see, Honorine,” said I, my eyes full of tears, “the ice is broken, and I am so tremulous with happiness that you must forgive the incoherency of my language. It will be so for a long time yet.”

“‘“There is no crime in being in love with your wife,” said she with a forced smile.

“‘“Do me the favor,” said I, “no longer to work as you do. I have heard from Madame Gobain that for three weeks you have been living on your savings; you have sixty thousand francs a year of your own, and if you cannot give me back your heart, at least do not abandon your fortune to me.”

“‘“I have long known your kindness,” said she.

“‘“Though you should prefer to remain here,” said I, “and to preserve your independence; though the most ardent love should find no favor in your eyes, still, do not toil.”

“‘I gave her three certificates for twelve thousand francs a year each; she took them, opened them languidly, and after reading them through she gave me only a look as my reward. She fully understood that I was not offering her money, but freedom.

“‘“I am conquered,” said she, holding out her hand, which I kissed. “Come and see me as often as you like.”

“‘So she had done herself a violence in receiving me. Next day I found her armed with affected high spirits, and it took two months of habit before I saw her in her true character. But then it was like a delicious May, a springtime of love that gave me ineffable bliss; she was no longer afraid; she was studying me. Alas! when I proposed that she should go to England to return ostensibly to me, to our home, that she should resume her rank and live in our new residence, she was seized with alarm.

“‘“Why not live always as we are?” she said.

“‘I submitted without saying a word.

“‘“Is she making an experiment?” I asked myself as I left her. On my way from my own house to the Rue Saint-Maur thoughts of love had swelled in my heart, and I had said to myself, like a young man, “This evening she will yield.”

“‘All my real or affected force was blown to the winds by a smile, by a command from those proud, calm eyes, untouched by passion. I remembered the terrible words you once quoted to me, “Lucretia’s dagger wrote in letters of blood the watchword of woman’s charter--Liberty!” and they froze me. I felt imperatively how necessary to me was Honorine’s consent, and how impossible it was to wring it from her. Could she guess the storms that distracted me when I left as when I came?

“‘At last I painted my situation in a letter to her, giving up the attempt to speak of it. Honorine made no answer, and she was so sad that I made as though I had not written. I was deeply grieved by the idea that I could have distressed her; she read my heart and forgave me. And this was how. Three days ago she received me, for the first time, in her own blue-and-white room. It was bright with flowers, dressed, and lighted up. Honorine was in a dress that made her bewitching. Her hair framed that face that you know in its light curls; and in it were some sprays of Cape heath; she wore a white muslin gown, a white sash with long floating ends. You know what she is in such simplicity, but that day she was a bride, the Honorine of long past days. My joy was chilled at once, for her face was terribly grave; there were fires beneath the ice.

“‘“Octave,” she said, “I will return as your wife when you will. But understand clearly that this submission has its dangers. I can be resigned----”

“‘I made a movement.

“‘“Yes,” she went on, “I understand: resignation offends you, and you want what I cannot give--Love. Religion and pity led me to renounce my vow of solitude; you are here!” She paused.

“‘“At first,” she went on, “you asked no more. Now you demand your wife. Well, here I give you Honorine, such as she is, without deceiving you as to what she will be.--What shall I be? A mother? I hope it. Believe me, I hope it eagerly. Try to change me; you have my consent; but if I should die, my dear, do not curse my memory, and do not set down to obstinacy what I should call the worship of the Ideal, if it were not more natural to call the indefinable feeling which must kill me the worship of the Divine! The future will be nothing to me; it will be your concern; consult your own mind.”

“‘And she sat down in the calm attitude you used to admire, and watched me turning pale with the pain she had inflicted. My blood ran cold. On seeing the effect of her words she took both my hands, and, holding them in her own, she said:

“‘“Octave, I do love you, but not in the way you wish to be loved. I love your soul.... Still, understand that I love you enough to die in your service like an Eastern slave, and without a regret. It will be my expiation.”

“‘She did more; she knelt before me on a cushion, and in a spirit of sublime charity she said:

“‘“And perhaps I shall not die!”

“‘For two months now I have been struggling with myself. What shall I do? My heart is too full; I therefore seek a friend, and send out this cry, “What shall I do?”’

“I did not answer this letter. Two months later the newspapers announced the return on board an English vessel of the Comtesse Octave, restored to her family after adventures by land and sea, invented with sufficient probability to arouse no contradiction.

“When I moved to Genoa I received a formal announcement of the happy event of the birth of a son to the Count and Countess. I held that letter in my hand for two hours, sitting on this terrace--on this bench. Two months after, urged by Octave, by M. de Grandville, and Monsieur de Serizy, my kind friends, and broken by the death of my uncle, I agreed to take a wife.

“Six months after the revolution of July I received this letter, which concludes the story of this couple:--

“‘MONSIEUR MAURICE,--I am dying though I am a mother--perhaps because I am a mother. I have played my part as a wife well; I have deceived my husband. I have had happiness not less genuine than the tears shed by actresses on the stage. I am dying for society, for the family, for marriage, as the early Christians died for God! I know not of what I am dying, and I am honestly trying to find out, for I am not perverse; but I am bent on explaining my malady to you--you who brought that heavenly physician your uncle, at whose word I surrendered. He was my director; I nursed him in his last illness, and he showed me the way to heaven, bidding me persevere in my duty.

“‘And I have done my duty.

“‘I do not blame those who forget. I admire them as strong and necessary natures; but I have the malady of memory! I have not been able twice to feel that love of the heart which identifies a woman with the man she loves. To the last moment, as you know, I cried to your heart, in the confessional, and to my husband, “Have mercy!” But there was no mercy. Well, and I am dying, dying with stupendous courage. No courtesan was ever more gay than I. My poor Octave is happy; I let his love feed on the illusions of my heart. I throw all my powers into this terrible masquerade; the actress is applauded, feasted, smothered in flowers; but the invisible rival comes every day to seek its prey--a fragment of my life. I am rent and I smile. I smile on two children, but it is the elder, the dead one, that will triumph! I told you so before. The dead child calls me, and I am going to him.

“‘The intimacy of marriage without love is a position in which my soul feels degraded every hour. I can never weep or give myself up to dreams but when I am alone. The exigencies of society, the care of my child, and that of Octave’s happiness never leave me a moment to refresh myself, to renew my strength, as I could in my solitude. The incessant need for watchfulness startles my heart with constant alarms. I have not succeeded in implanting in my soul the sharp-eared vigilance that lies with facility, and has the eyes of a lynx. It is not the lip of one I love that drinks my tears and kisses them; my burning eyes are cooled with water, and not with tender lips. It is my soul that acts a part, and that perhaps is why I am dying! I lock up my griefs with so much care that nothing is to be seen of it; it must eat into something, and it has attacked my life.

“‘I said to the doctors, who discovered my secret, “Make me die of some plausible complaint, or I shall drag my husband with me.”

“‘So it is quite understood by M. Desplein, Bianchon, and myself that I am dying of the softening of some bone which science has fully described. Octave believes that I adore him, do you understand? So I am afraid lest he should follow me. I now write to beg you in that case to be the little Count’s guardian. You will find with this a codicil in which I have expressed my wish; but do not produce it excepting in case of need, for perhaps I am fatuously vain. My devotion may perhaps leave Octave inconsolable but willing to live.--Poor Octave! I wish him a better wife than I am, for he deserves to be well loved.

“‘Since my spiritual spy is married, I bid him remember what the florist of the Rue Saint-Maur hereby bequeaths to him as a lesson: May your wife soon be a mother! Fling her into the vulgarest materialism of household life; hinder her from cherishing in her heart the mysterious flower of the Ideal--of that heavenly perfection in which I believed, that enchanted blossom with glorious colors, and whose perfume disgusts us with reality. I am a Saint-Theresa who has not been suffered to live on ecstasy in the depths of a convent, with the Holy Infant, and a spotless winged angel to come and go as she wished.

“‘You saw me happy among my beloved flowers. I did not tell you all: I saw love budding under your affected madness, and I concealed from you my thoughts, my poetry; I did not admit you to my kingdom of beauty. Well, well; you will love my child for love of me if he should one day lose his poor father. Keep my secrets as the grave will keep them. Do not mourn for me; I have been dead this many a day, if Saint Bernard was right in saying that where there is no more love there is no more life.’”

“And the Countess died,” said the Consul, putting away the letters and locking the pocket-book.

“Is the Count still living?” asked the Ambassador, “for since the revolution of July he has disappeared from the political stage.”

“Do you remember, Monsieur de Lora,” said the Consul-General, “having seen me going to the steamboat with----”

“A white-haired man! an old man?” said the painter.

“An old man of forty-five, going in search of health and amusement in Southern Italy. That old man was my poor friend, my patron, passing through Genoa to take leave of me and place his will in my hands. He appoints me his son’s guardian. I had no occasion to tell him of Honorine’s wishes.”

“Does he suspect himself of murder?” said Mademoiselle des Touches to the Baron de l’Hostal.

“He suspects the truth,” replied the Consul, “and that is what is killing him. I remained on board the steam packet that was to take him to Naples till it was out of the roadstead; a small boat brought me back. We sat for some little time taking leave of each other--for ever, I fear. God only knows how much we love the confidant of our love when she who inspired it is no more.

“‘That man,’ said Octave, ‘holds a charm and wears an aureole.’ the Count went to the prow and looked down on the Mediterranean. It happened to be fine, and, moved no doubt by the spectacle, he spoke these last words: ‘Ought we not, in the interests of human nature, to inquire what is the irresistible power which leads us to sacrifice an exquisite creature to the most fugitive of all pleasures, and in spite of our reason? In my conscience I heard cries. Honorine was not alone in her anguish. And yet I would have it!... I am consumed by remorse. In the Rue Payenne I was dying of the joys I had not; now I shall die in Italy of the joys I have had.... Wherein lay the discord between two natures, equally noble, I dare assert?’”

For some minutes profound silence reigned on the terrace.

Then the Consul, turning to the two women, asked, “Was she virtuous?”

Mademoiselle des Touches rose, took the Consul’s arm, went a few steps away, and said to him:

“Are not men wrong too when they come to us and make a young girl a wife while cherishing at the bottom of their heart some angelic image, and comparing us to those unknown rivals, to perfections often borrowed from a remembrance, and always finding us wanting?”

“Mademoiselle, you would be right if marriage were based on passion; and that was the mistake of those two, who will soon be no more. Marriage with heart-deep love on both sides would be Paradise.”

Mademoiselle des Touches turned from the Consul, and was immediately joined by Claude Vignon, who said in her ear:

“A bit of a coxcomb is M. de l’Hostal.”

“No,” replied she, whispering to Claude these words: “for he has not yet guessed that Honorine would have loved him.--Oh!” she exclaimed, seeing the Consul’s wife approaching, “his wife was listening! Unhappy man!”

Eleven was striking by all the clocks, and the guests went home on foot along the seashore.

“Still, that is not life,” said Mademoiselle des Touches. “That woman was one of the rarest, and perhaps the most extraordinary exceptions in intellect--a pearl! Life is made up of various incidents, of pain and pleasure alternately. The Paradise of Dante, that sublime expression of the ideal, that perpetual blue, is to be found only in the soul; to ask it of the facts of life is a luxury against which nature protests every hour. To such souls as those the six feet of a cell, and the kneeling chair are all they need.”

“You are right,” said Leon de Lora; “but good-for-nothing as I may be, I cannot help admiring a woman who is capable, as that one was, of living by the side of a studio, under a painter’s roof, and never coming down, nor seeing the world, nor dipping her feet in the street mud.”

“Such a thing has been known--for a few months,” said Claude Vignon, with deep irony.

“Comtesse Honorine is not unique of her kind,” replied the Ambassador to Mademoiselle des Touches. “A man, nay, and a politician, a bitter writer, was the object of such a passion; and the pistol shot which killed him hit not him alone; the woman who loved lived like a nun ever after.”

“Then there are yet some great souls in this age!” said Camille Maupin, and she stood for some minutes pensively leaning on the balustrade of the quay.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bauvan, Comte Octave de Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot The Atheist’s Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor’s Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La Grande Breteche

Desplein The Atheist’s Mass Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor’s Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Fontanon, Abbe A Second Home The Government Clerks The Member for Arcis

Gaudissart, Felix Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life Cousin Pons Cesar Birotteau Gaudissart the Great

Gaudron, Abbe The Government Clerks A Start in Life

Granville, Vicomte de (later Comte) The Gondreville Mystery A Second Home Farewell (Adieu) Cesar Birotteau Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life A Daughter of Eve Cousin Pons

Lora, Leon de The Unconscious Humorists A Bachelor’s Establishment A Start in Life Pierre Grassou Cousin Betty Beatrix

Loraux, Abbe A Start in Life A Bachelor’s Establishment Cesar Birotteau

Popinot, Jean-Jules Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy The Seamy Side of History The Middle Classes

Serizy, Comte Hugret de A Start in Life A Bachelor’s Establishment Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des Beatrix Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor’s Establishment Another Study of Woman A Daughter of Eve Beatrix The Muse of the Department

Vignon, Claude A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Daughter of Eve Honorine Beatrix Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists