Chapter 12

“On him Foedora exercised spells and witcheries unheard of; she drew him into her power, and arranged her whole mysterious business with him; I was left out, I heard not a word of it; she had made a tool of me! She did not seem to be aware of my existence while my cousin was present; she received me less cordially perhaps than when I was first presented to her. One evening she chose to mortify me before the duke by a look, a gesture, that it is useless to try to express in words. I went away with tears in my eyes, planning terrible and outrageous schemes of vengeance without end.

“I often used to go with her to the theatre. Love utterly absorbed me as I sat beside her; as I looked at her I used to give myself up to the pleasure of listening to the music, putting all my soul into the double joy of love and of hearing every emotion of my heart translated into musical cadences. It was my passion that filled the air and the stage, that was triumphant everywhere but with my mistress. Then I would take Foedora’s hand. I used to scan her features and her eyes, imploring of them some indication that one blended feeling possessed us both, seeking for the sudden harmony awakened by the power of music, which makes our souls vibrate in unison; but her hand was passive, her eyes said nothing.

“When the fire that burned in me glowed too fiercely from the face I turned upon her, she met it with that studied smile of hers, the conventional expression that sits on the lips of every portrait in every exhibition. She was not listening to the music. The divine pages of Rossini, Cimarosa, or Zingarelli called up no emotion, gave no voice to any poetry in her life; her soul was a desert.

“Foedora presented herself as a drama before a drama. Her lorgnette traveled restlessly over the boxes; she was restless too beneath the apparent calm; fashion tyrannized over her; her box, her bonnet, her carriage, her own personality absorbed her entirely. My merciless knowledge thoroughly tore away all my illusions. If good breeding consists in self-forgetfulness and consideration for others, in constantly showing gentleness in voice and bearing, in pleasing others, and in making them content in themselves, all traces of her plebeian origin were not yet obliterated in Foedora, in spite of her cleverness. Her self-forgetfulness was a sham, her manners were not innate but painfully acquired, her politeness was rather subservient. And yet for those she singled out, her honeyed words expressed natural kindness, her pretentious exaggeration was exalted enthusiasm. I alone had scrutinized her grimacings, and stripped away the thin rind that sufficed to conceal her real nature from the world; her trickery no longer deceived me; I had sounded the depths of that feline nature. I blushed for her when some donkey or other flattered and complimented her. And yet I loved her through it all! I hoped that her snows would melt with the warmth of a poet’s love. If I could only have made her feel all the greatness that lies in devotion, then I should have seen her perfected, she would have been an angel. I loved her as a man, a lover, and an artist; if it had been necessary not to love her so that I might win her, some cool-headed coxcomb, some self-possessed calculator would perhaps have had an advantage over me. She was so vain and sophisticated, that the language of vanity would appeal to her; she would have allowed herself to be taken in the toils of an intrigue; a hard, cold nature would have gained a complete ascendency over her. Keen grief had pierced me to my very soul, as she unconsciously revealed her absolute love of self. I seemed to see her as she one day would be, alone in the world, with no one to whom she could stretch her hand, with no friendly eyes for her own to meet and rest upon. I was bold enough to set this before her one evening; I painted in vivid colors her lonely, sad, deserted old age. Her comment on this prospect of so terrible a revenge of thwarted nature was horrible.

“‘I shall always have money,’ she said; ‘and with money we can always inspire such sentiments as are necessary for our comfort in those about us.’

“I went away confounded by the arguments of luxury, by the reasoning of this woman of the world in which she lived; and blamed myself for my infatuated idolatry. I myself had not loved Pauline because she was poor; and had not the wealthy Foedora a right to repulse Raphael? Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it. A specious voice said within me, ‘Foedora is neither attracted to nor repulses any one; she has her liberty, but once upon a time she sold herself to the Russian count, her husband or her lover, for gold. But temptation is certain to enter into her life. Wait till that moment comes!’ She lived remote from humanity, in a sphere apart, in a hell or a heaven of her own; she was neither frail nor virtuous. This feminine enigma in embroideries and cashmeres had brought into play every emotion of the human heart in me--pride, ambition, love, curiosity.

“There was a craze just then for praising a play at a little Boulevard theatre, prompted perhaps by a wish to appear original that besets us all, or due to some freak of fashion. The countess showed some signs of a wish to see the floured face of the actor who had so delighted several people of taste, and I obtained the honor of taking her to a first presentation of some wretched farce or other. A box scarcely cost five francs, but I had not a brass farthing. I was but half-way through the volume of Memoirs; I dared not beg for assistance of Finot, and Rastignac, my providence, was away. These constant perplexities were the bane of my life.

“We had once come out of the theatre when it was raining heavily, Foedora had called a cab for me before I could escape from her show of concern; she would not admit any of my excuses--my liking for wet weather, and my wish to go to the gaming-table. She did not read my poverty in my embarrassed attitude, or in my forced jests. My eyes would redden, but she did not understand a look. A young man’s life is at the mercy of the strangest whims! At every revolution of the wheels during the journey, thoughts that burned stirred in my heart. I tried to pull up a plank from the bottom of the vehicle, hoping to slip through the hole into the street; but finding insuperable obstacles, I burst into a fit of laughter, and then sat stupefied in calm dejection, like a man in a pillory. When I reached my lodging, Pauline broke in through my first stammering words with:

“‘If you haven’t any money----?’

“Ah, the music of Rossini was as nothing compared with those words. But to return to the performance at the Funambules.

“I thought of pawning the circlet of gold round my mother’s portrait in order to escort the countess. Although the pawnbroker loomed in my thoughts as one of the doors of a convict’s prison, I would rather myself have carried my bed thither than have begged for alms. There is something so painful in the expression of a man who asks money of you! There are loans that mulct us of our self-respect, just as some rebuffs from a friend’s lips sweep away our last illusion.

“Pauline was working; her mother had gone to bed. I flung a stealthy glance over the bed; the curtains were drawn back a little; Madame Gaudin was in a deep sleep, I thought, when I saw her quiet, sallow profile outlined against the pillow.

“‘You are in trouble?’ Pauline said, dipping her brush into the coloring.

“‘It is in your power to do me a great service, my dear child,’ I answered.

“The gladness in her eyes frightened me.

“‘Is it possible that she loves me?’ I thought. ‘Pauline,’ I began. I went and sat near to her, so as to study her. My tones had been so searching that she read my thought; her eyes fell, and I scrutinized her face. It was so pure and frank that I fancied I could see as clearly into her heart as into my own.

“‘Do you love me?’ I asked.

“‘A little,--passionately--not a bit!’ she cried.

“Then she did not love me. Her jesting tones, and a little gleeful movement that escaped her, expressed nothing beyond a girlish, blithe goodwill. I told her about my distress and the predicament in which I found myself, and asked her to help me.

“‘You do not wish to go to the pawnbroker’s yourself, M. Raphael,’ she answered, ‘and yet you would send me!’

“I blushed in confusion at the child’s reasoning. She took my hand in hers as if she wanted to compensate for this home-truth by her light touch upon it.

“‘Oh, I would willingly go,’ she said, ‘but it is not necessary. I found two five-franc pieces at the back of the piano, that had slipped without your knowledge between the frame and the keyboard, and I laid them on your table.’

“‘You will soon be coming into some money, M. Raphael,’ said the kind mother, showing her face between the curtains, ‘and I can easily lend you a few crowns meanwhile.’

“‘Oh, Pauline!’ I cried, as I pressed her hand, ‘how I wish that I were rich!’

“‘Bah! why should you?’ she said petulantly. Her hand shook in mine with the throbbing of her pulse; she snatched it away, and looked at both of mine.

“‘You will marry a rich wife,’ she said, ‘but she will give you a great deal of trouble. Ah, _Dieu_! she will be your death,--I am sure of it.’

“In her exclamation there was something like belief in her mother’s absurd superstitions.

“‘You are very credulous, Pauline!’

“‘The woman whom you will love is going to kill you--there is no doubt of it,’ she said, looking at me with alarm.

“She took up her brush again and dipped it in the color; her great agitation was evident; she looked at me no longer. I was ready to give credence just then to superstitious fancies; no man is utterly wretched so long as he is superstitious; a belief of that kind is often in reality a hope.

“I found that those two magnificent five-franc pieces were lying, in fact, upon my table when I reached my room. During the first confused thoughts of early slumber, I tried to audit my accounts so as to explain this unhoped-for windfall; but I lost myself in useless calculations, and slept. Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box the next morning, Pauline came to see me.

“‘Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,’ said the amiable, kind-hearted girl; ‘my mother told me to offer you this money. Take it, please, take it!’

“She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I would not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my eyes.

“‘You are an angel, Pauline,’ I said. ‘It is not the loan that touches me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to wish for a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I would rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are, with a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal passion which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.’

“‘That is enough,’ she said, and fled away; the fresh trills of her birdlike voice rang up the staircase.

“‘She is very happy in not yet knowing love,’ I said to myself, thinking of the torments I had endured for many months past.

“Pauline’s fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search of flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her feet. With a pleasure in which compunction mingled, I gave her a bouquet. I learned from its price the extravagance of superficial gallantry in the world. But very soon she complained of the heavy scent of a Mexican jessamine. The interior of the theatre, the bare bench on which she was to sit, filled her with intolerable disgust; she upbraided me for bringing her there. Although she sat beside me, she wished to go, and she went. I had spent sleepless nights, and squandered two months of my life for her, and I could not please her. Never had that tormenting spirit been more unfeeling or more fascinating.

“I sat beside her in the cramped back seat of the vehicle; all the way I could feel her breath on me and the contact of her perfumed glove; I saw distinctly all her exceeding beauty; I inhaled a vague scent of orris-root; so wholly a woman she was, with no touch of womanhood. Just then a sudden gleam of light lit up the depths of this mysterious life for me. I thought all at once of a book just published by a poet, a genuine conception of the artist, in the shape of the statue of Polycletus.

“I seemed to see that monstrous creation, at one time an officer, breaking in a spirited horse; at another, a girl, who gives herself up to her toilette and breaks her lovers’ hearts; or again, a false lover driving a timid and gentle maid to despair. Unable to analyze Foedora by any other process, I told her this fanciful story; but no hint of her resemblance to this poetry of the impossible crossed her--it simply diverted her; she was like a child over a story from the _Arabian Nights_.

“‘Foedora must be shielded by some talisman,’ I thought to myself as I went back, ‘or she could not resist the love of a man of my age, the infectious fever of that splendid malady of the soul. Is Foedora, like Lady Delacour, a prey to a cancer? Her life is certainly an unnatural one.’

“I shuddered at the thought. Then I decided on a plan, at once the wildest and the most rational that lover ever dreamed of. I would study this woman from a physical point of view, as I had already studied her intellectually, and to this end I made up my mind to spend a night in her room without her knowledge. This project preyed upon me as a thirst for revenge gnaws at the heart of a Corsican monk. This is how I carried it out. On the days when Foedora received, her rooms were far too crowded for the hall-porter to keep the balance even between goers and comers; I could remain in the house, I felt sure, without causing a scandal in it, and I waited the countess’ coming soiree with impatience. As I dressed I put a little English penknife into my waistcoat pocket, instead of a poniard. That literary implement, if found upon me, could awaken no suspicion, but I knew not whither my romantic resolution might lead, and I wished to be prepared.

“As soon as the rooms began to fill, I entered the bedroom and examined the arrangements. The inner and outer shutters were closed; this was a good beginning; and as the waiting-maid might come to draw back the curtains that hung over the windows, I pulled them together. I was running great risks in venturing to manoeuvre beforehand in this way, but I had accepted the situation, and had deliberately reckoned with its dangers.

“About midnight I hid myself in the embrasure of the window. I tried to scramble on to a ledge of the wainscoting, hanging on by the fastening of the shutters with my back against the wall, in such a position that my feet could not be visible. When I had carefully considered my points of support, and the space between me and the curtains, I had become sufficiently acquainted with all the difficulties of my position to stay in it without fear of detection if undisturbed by cramp, coughs, or sneezings. To avoid useless fatigue, I remained standing until the critical moment, when I must hang suspended like a spider in its web. The white-watered silk and muslin of the curtains spread before me in great pleats like organ-pipes. With my penknife I cut loopholes in them, through which I could see.

“I heard vague murmurs from the salons, the laughter and the louder tones of the speakers. The smothered commotion and vague uproar lessened by slow degrees. One man and another came for his hat from the countess’ chest of drawers, close to where I stood. I shivered, if the curtains were disturbed, at the thought of the mischances consequent on the confused and hasty investigations made by the men in a hurry to depart, who were rummaging everywhere. When I experienced no misfortunes of this kind, I augured well of my enterprise. An old wooer of Foedora’s came for the last hat; he thought himself quite alone, looked at the bed, and heaved a great sigh, accompanied by some inaudible exclamation, into which he threw sufficient energy. In the boudoir close by, the countess, finding only some five or six intimate acquaintances about her, proposed tea. The scandals for which existing society has reserved the little faculty of belief that it retains, mingled with epigrams and trenchant witticisms, and the clatter of cups and spoons. Rastignac drew roars of laughter by merciless sarcasms at the expense of my rivals.

“‘M. de Rastignac is a man with whom it is better not to quarrel,’ said the countess, laughing.

“‘I am quite of that opinion,’ was his candid reply. ‘I have always been right about my aversions--and my friendships as well,’ he added. ‘Perhaps my enemies are quite as useful to me as my friends. I have made a particular study of modern phraseology, and of the natural craft that is used in all attack or defence. Official eloquence is one of our perfect social products.

“‘One of your friends is not clever, so you speak of his integrity and his candor. Another’s work is heavy; you introduce it as a piece of conscientious labor; and if the book is ill written, you extol the ideas it contains. Such an one is treacherous and fickle, slips through your fingers every moment; bah! he is attractive, bewitching, he is delightful! Suppose they are enemies, you fling every one, dead or alive, in their teeth. You reverse your phraseology for their benefit, and you are as keen in detecting their faults as you were before adroit in bringing out the virtues of your friends. This way of using the mental lorgnette is the secret of conversation nowadays, and the whole art of the complete courtier. If you neglect it, you might as well go out as an unarmed knight-banneret to fight against men in armor. And I make use of it, and even abuse it at times. So we are respected--I and my friends; and, moreover, my sword is quite as sharp as my tongue.’

“One of Foedora’s most fervid worshipers, whose presumption was notorious, and who even made it contribute to his success, took up the glove thrown down so scornfully by Rastignac. He began an unmeasured eulogy of me, my performances, and my character. Rastignac had overlooked this method of detraction. His sarcastic encomiums misled the countess, who sacrificed without mercy; she betrayed my secrets, and derided my pretensions and my hopes, to divert her friends.

“‘There is a future before him,’ said Rastignac. ‘Some day he may be in a position to take a cruel revenge; his talents are at least equal to his courage; and I should consider those who attack him very rash, for he has a good memory----’

“‘And writes Memoirs,’ put in the countess, who seemed to object to the deep silence that prevailed.

“‘Memoirs of a sham countess, madame,’ replied Rastignac. ‘Another sort of courage is needed to write that sort of thing.’

“‘I give him credit for plenty of courage,’ she answered; ‘he is faithful to me.’

“I was greatly tempted to show myself suddenly among the railers, like the shade of Banquo in Macbeth. I should have lost a mistress, but I had a friend! But love inspired me all at once, with one of those treacherous and fallacious subtleties that it can use to soothe all our pangs.

“If Foedora loved me, I thought, she would be sure to disguise her feelings by some mocking jest. How often the heart protests against a lie on the lips!

“Well, very soon my audacious rival, left alone with the countess, rose to go.

“‘What! already?’ asked she in a coaxing voice that set my heart beating. ‘Will you not give me a few more minutes? Have you nothing more to say to me? will you never sacrifice any of your pleasures for me?’

“He went away.

“‘Ah!’ she yawned; ‘how very tiresome they all are!’

“She pulled a cord energetically till the sound of a bell rang through the place; then, humming a few notes of _Pria che spunti_, the countess entered her room. No one had ever heard her sing; her muteness had called forth the wildest explanations. She had promised her first lover, so it was said, who had been held captive by her talent, and whose jealousy over her stretched beyond his grave, that she would never allow others to experience a happiness that he wished to be his and his alone.

“I exerted every power of my soul to catch the sounds. Higher and higher rose the notes; Foedora’s life seemed to dilate within her; her throat poured forth all its richest tones; something well-nigh divine entered into the melody. There was a bright purity and clearness of tone in the countess’ voice, a thrilling harmony which reached the heart and stirred its pulses. Musicians are seldom unemotional; a woman who could sing like that must know how to love indeed. Her beautiful voice made one more puzzle in a woman mysterious enough before. I beheld her then, as plainly as I see you at this moment. She seemed to listen to herself, to experience a secret rapture of her own; she felt, as it were, an ecstasy like that of love.

“She stood before the hearth during the execution of the principal theme of the _rondo_; and when she ceased her face changed. She looked tired; her features seemed to alter. She had laid the mask aside; her part as an actress was over. Yet the faded look that came over her beautiful face, a result either of this performance or of the evening’s fatigues, had its charms, too.

“‘This is her real self,’ I thought.

“She set her foot on a bronze bar of the fender as if to warm it, took off her gloves, and drew over her head the gold chain from which her bejeweled scent-bottle hung. It gave me a quite indescribable pleasure to watch the feline grace of every movement; the supple grace a cat displays as it adjusts its toilette in the sun. She looked at herself in the mirror and said aloud ill-humoredly--‘I did not look well this evening, my complexion is going with alarming rapidity; perhaps I ought to keep earlier hours, and give up this life of dissipation. Does Justine mean to trifle with me?’ She rang again; her maid hurried in. Where she had been I cannot tell; she came in by a secret staircase. I was anxious to make a study of her. I had lodged accusations, in my romantic imaginings, against this invisible waiting-woman, a tall, well-made brunette.

“‘Did madame ring?’

“‘Yes, twice,’ answered Foedora; ‘are you really growing deaf nowadays?’

“‘I was preparing madame’s milk of almonds.’

“Justine knelt down before her, unlaced her sandals and drew them off, while her mistress lay carelessly back on her cushioned armchair beside the fire, yawned, and scratched her head. Every movement was perfectly natural; there was nothing whatever to indicate the secret sufferings or emotions with which I had credited her.

“‘George must be in love!’ she remarked. ‘I shall dismiss him. He has drawn the curtains again to-night. What does he mean by it?’

“All the blood in my veins rushed to my heart at this observation, but no more was said about curtains.

“‘Life is very empty,’ the countess went on. ‘Ah! be careful not to scratch me as you did yesterday. Just look here, I still have the marks of your nails about me,’ and she held out a silken knee. She thrust her bare feet into velvet slippers bound with swan’s-down, and unfastened her dress, while Justine prepared to comb her hair.

“‘You ought to marry, madame, and have children.’

“‘Children!’ she cried; ‘it wants no more than that to finish me at once; and a husband! What man is there to whom I could----? Was my hair well arranged to-night?’

“‘Not particularly.’

“‘You are a fool!’

“‘That way of crimping your hair too much is the least becoming way possible for you. Large, smooth curls suit you a great deal better.’

“‘Really?’

“‘Yes, really, madame; that wavy style only looks nice in fair hair.’