The two young brides

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Honore de Balzac v-xliii

Henry James

Part First Louise De Chaulieu To Renee De Maucombe

Well, my dear! I, too, have reached the outer world, and if you haven't written to me from Blois, I am the first to keep our delightful epistolary rendezvous. Now lift up the beautiful black eyes you have fixed on this first sentence of mine, and keep your exclamations for the letter which shall tell you of my first love! People always talk about a first love; is there a second, then? "Hush!" you'll say. " Tell me rather," you'll add, " how you escaped from the convent in which you were to have taken your vows? " My dear, the miracle of my deliverance, though it did happen in the Carmelite convent, was the most natural thing in the world. The clamour of a terrified conscience finally prevailed over the fiat of an unwavering policy, and there's an end. My aunt, who did not choose to see me die of a consumption, got the better of my mother, who had always prescribed the novitiate as the one and only cure for my malady. The state of deep melancholy into which I fell when you departed hastened this happy solution. And I am in Paris, my dearest, and I am in all the delight of being there! My Renee, if you could have seen me, that day, when I found myself all alone, you would have been proud of having inspired so deep a feeling in so young a heart! We have dreamt so many dreams in company, we have spread our wings so often, and lived so much together, that I believe our souls are welded one to the other just like those two Hungarian girls, whose death-story was told us by M. Beauvisage, who certainly wasn't like his name — never was convent doctor better chosen! Were you not ill, too, when your darling fell sick? In my state of gloomy depression, I could only recognise, each in its turn, the bonds that make us one. I fancied separation had broken them. I loathed existence like some widowed turtle-dove. The thought of death was sweet to me, and I really was dying softly away. To be left alone at the Carmelite convent at Blois, tortured by the fear of having to take the veil, without Mile, de la Valliere's previous experience, and without my Renee, that was illness, indeed — a mortal sickness! The monotonous round in which each hour brings a duty, a labour, or a prayer, all so precisely alike that at any hour of the day or night any one may know exactly what a Carmelite nun must be doing — that hateful life, in which it matters not whether the things about us exist or not — had grown full of variety to us. The flight of our imagination knew no limit. On us fancy had bestowed the key of all her realms. Each of us in turn was the other's winged steed'. The liveliest stirred the dullest pulses of the other, and our fancy frolicked at will, in undisturbed possession of that outer world which was forbidden us.

Even the lives of the saints helped us to understand the things most carefully hidden from us. The day which robbed me of your sweet company saw me become that which we know a Carmelite to be — a modern Danaid, whose task does not, indeed, consist in filling a bottomless cask, but who daily draws, out of some hidden well, an empty bucket on the unceasing rope that she may find it full. My aunt knew of our inner life. To her, who had made herself a heaven of happiness within the two acres encircled by her convent walls, my loathing of existence was inexplicable. The girl who, at our age, embraces the religious life, must either possess an excessive simplicity (which we, my dear creature, cannot claim) or else that passion of devotion which makes my aunt so noble a figure. My aunt sacrificed herself to a brother whom she adored; but what girl can sacrifice herself to people she doesn't even know, or to an idea?

For almost a fortnight, now, I have been keeping back so many hasty remarks, and burying so many meditations deep in my heart, I have so many things to say, so many stories to tell, which I can confide to none but you, that but for this makeshift plan of writing you my confidences, and thus replacing our beloved talks, I really should choke! How indispensable is the life of the affections. This morning I begin this journal of mine, fancying that yours, too, is begun, and that in a few days I shall live in the depths of your beautiful valley at Gemenos, of which I know only what you have told me, just as you will live in Paris, of which you know nothing but what we used to dream together.

Well, my sweet child, on a morning which will always be written in rose-colour in the book of my life, a demoiselle de compagnie and my grandmother's last man-servant, Philippe, arrived from Paris to escort me back. When my aunt sent for me to her room and told me this piece of news, my joy quite struck me dumb and I stared stupidly at her.

" My child," said she in her guttural voice, " it is no grief to you to leave me, I can see that. But this farewell is not our last. We shall meet again. God has set the mark of the elect upon your forehead. You have the pride which either leads a woman up to heaven or down to hell. But you have too much nobility in you to sink. I know you better than you know yourself. Passion, in your case, will not be what it is to the common run of women."

She drew me gently towards her, and kissed me on the forehead, so that I could feel the fire that consumes her — that has blackened the azure of her eyes and weighted her eye-lids, lined her smooth temples, and sallowed her beautiful face. It made my flesh creep. Before I answered her, I kissed her hands.

Then I said: " Dear aunt, since your adorable goodness has not made your Paraclete seem either healthy to my body or dear to my heart, I must shed so many tears before I came back, that you could hardly wish for my return. I never will come back, unless my Louis XIV betrays me. And if I once lay my hand on one, nothing but Death shall take him from me. No Montespan shall frighten me! "

" Hush, giddy child," she said, with a smile. " You must not leave those vain thoughts here behind you. Take them away with you, and know that there is more of the Montespan than of the La Valliere in your composition."

I kissed her. The poor soul could not resist coming with me to the carriage, and her eyes wandered backward and forward between the family coat of arms and me.

At Beaugency night overtook me, still lost in the moral stupor caused by this strange farewell. What is my destiny in this outer world for which I have so greatly longed? In the first place, I found nobody to meet me. The demonstrations of affection I had prepared were all wasted. My mother was at the Bois de Boulogne, my father was at the Councilboard. My brother, the Due de Rhetore, never comes in, I am told, except to dress before dinner. Miss Griffiths (she has claws) and Philippe showed me to my rooms.

These rooms belonged to that beloved grandmother, the Princess de Vauremont, to whom I owe a fortune of some kind, which nobody has mentioned to me. As you read these words, you will share the sadness that overwhelmed me when I entered the apartments hallowed to me by so many memories. They remained just as she had left them. I was to sleep in the very bed in which she died. I sat down on the edge of her sofa, and burst into tears, quite forgetting that I was not alone. How often, I thought, I had knelt here beside her — so as to catch her words more easily — and from this couch had watched her face, half hidden amid yellowish laces, and worn as much by age as by the sufferings of approaching death! The room still seemed full of the warmth she had always kept up in it. How comes it, thought I, that Mile. Armande Louise Marie de Chaulieu is obliged, like any peasant, to sleep in her grandmother's bed almost on the day of her death? For to me it seemed that the Princess, who had really passed away in 1817, had died only on the previous night. There were things in this room which should not have been there, and which proved how careless people taken up with the affairs of the kingdom are apt to be about their own, and how little thought was given, once she was dead, to the noble-hearted woman who will always remain one of the great feminine figures of the eighteenth century. Philippe had an inkling of the cause of my tears. He told me the Princess had left me all her furniture, and also that my father had left the great reception rooms in the condition into which they had fallen during the Revolution.

Then I rose to my feet, Philippe opened the door of the small drawing-room leading into the saloons, and I found them in the state of complete ruin I recollected. Above the doors the empty panels, once filled by valuable pictures, still gape; the marble figures are all smashed, the looking-glasses have been carried off. In the old days I used to dread going up the great stair-case and crossing the huge lonely, lofty rooms, and I used to pass to the Princess's apartment by a small stair-case which runs under the hollow of the great one, and leads to the wainscot door of her dressing-room.

The apartment, consisting of a sitting-room, a bed-room, and that pretty vermilion and gold dressing-room of which I have often spoken to you, is in the wing that lies towards the Invalides. The house is only separated from the boulevard by a creeper-covered wall, and by a splendid double row of trees, whose foliage mingles with that of the elms on the side of the boulevard. But for the gold and blue dome and the gray outlines of the Invalides one might fancy one's self in a forest. The style of these three rooms and their position marks them as having formed the old state apartments of the Duchess of Chaulieu. Those of the Duke must have been in the opposite wing. The two are decently parted by the principal building and by the front wing, which contains those great dark, resounding rooms, which, as Philippe had shown me, are still stripped of their splendour, and just as I used to see them in my childish days. When Philippe perceived the astonishment depicted on my countenance he took on a confidential air. " In this diplomatic household, my dear, every servant is mysterious and discreet." He informed me that the passing of a law which was to restore the value of their property to the emigre families was shortly expected. My father is putting off the decoration of his house till that restitution is made. The King's architect has calculated the expense at three hundred thousand francs. The result of this confidence was to send me back to my sofa in the drawing-room. What! Then my father, instead of using this sum of money for my dowry, would have let me* die in a convent?

This was the thought that struck me on the threshold of that door. Ah, Renee! how I did lean my head against your shoulder, and how my mind went back to the days when my grandmother's presence filled these two rooms with life! She, who lives nowhere now, save in my heart, and you, who are at Maucombe, two hundred leagues away from me, are the only two human beings who love, or ever have loved me! That dear old lady with the young eyes delighted to be roused in the mornings by my voice. How we understood each other! The memory of her brought a sudden change in the feelings I had first experienced. That which had seemed a profanation now appeared to me something almost holy! It was sweet to me, now, to breathe the vague odour of Pondre a la Marechale that hung about the room. It would be sweet to sleep under the protecting yellow satin curtains with their white pattern, in which her eyes and her breath must surely have left something of herself. I told Philippe to restore their bright polish to the bits of old furniture and to impart a look of habitation to my rooms. I showed him myself how I wished things to be arranged, pointing out where each piece of furniture should stand. I looked over everything, and took formal possession, explaining how he was to freshen up the antique things which are so dear to me. The decoration of the room is all white, somewhat dimmed by time, and the gilding of the fanciful arabesques shows a touch of red here and there. But this is all in harmony with the faded tints of the Savonnerie carpet, given to my grandmother, with his own portrait, by Louis XV. The clock was a present from the Marechal de Saxe, the china on the chimney-piece a gift from the Marechal de Richelieu. My grandmother's picture, painted when she was five-and-twenty, hangs in an oval frame facing the King's portrait. There is no picture of the Prince. I like this frank omission, which, in a flash, without a touch of hypocrisy in it, depicts her fascinating personality. Once, when my aunt was very ill, her confessor pressed her to allow the Prince, who was waiting in the drawing-room, to enter the sickroom.

" With the doctor and his prescriptions," said my grandmother.

Over the bed there is a canopy, the bed-head is padded, and the curtains looped up in fine ample

ii folds. The furniture is of gilt wood, covered with the same yellow damask, patterned with white flowers, of which the window hangings are made, and which is lined with a white silken material something like moire. I do not know who painted the panels over the doors, but they represent a sunrise and a moonlight effect. The chimney-piece is treated in a very peculiar style. It is clear that in those days people spent a great deal of their time at their own firesides. All sorts of important events took place there. The fire-place, all of gilt bronze, is a wonderful bit of work; the chimney-piece itself is exquisitely finished, the shovel and tongs are beautifully modelled, the bellows are quite lovely. The tapestry in the fire-screen comes from the Gobelins works, and it is exquisitely mounted. The merry figures that run along the outline, the feet, the cross-bar of the frame, are all enchanting; the whole is carried out as carefully as if it had been for a fan. Who gave her that pretty bit of furniture, of which she was so fond? I wish I knew. How often have I seen her, with her foot on that cross-bar, leaning back in her easy chair, her gown lifted half-way up to her knee by her posture, taking up her snuff-box, laying it down, and then taking it up again from its place on the shelf between her bonbonniere and her silk mittens. What a coquette she was! Till the day of her death she took as much care of her person as if it were still the morrow of the time when that beautiful picture had been painted, and as if she were still expecting the flower of the Court to gather round her.

That easy chair made me think of the inimitable wave she would give her skirts as she dropped into it. The women of that period have carried away with them certain characteristic secrets peculiar to their times. The Princess had a way of moving her head and a way of dropping her words and her glances, and a particular fashion of speech, especially, which I never was able to discover in my own mother. It was both clever and good-natured; there was purpose in it, but there was no affectation. Her conversation was at once prolix and laconic; she could tell a story well, and she could sketch a thing in half a dozen words. Above all, she had that excessive breadth of judgment which has certainly influenced my own turn of mind. From my sixth year to my tenth I spent my life in her pocket — she was as fond of having me with her as I was of going to her. This fondness gave rise to more than one quarrel between her and my mother. Nothing fans a sentiment like the ice-cold wind of persecution. What a charm there was in the way she would say to me, " Here you are, little witch! " when, curious as any snake, I had slipped through doorway after doorway to reach her rooms. She felt I loved her, and she loved my artless love, which brought a ray of sunshine to her winter days. I don't know what went on in her rooms at night, but she had a great many visitors. In the mornings, when I crept tip-toe to see if her windows were open, I used to find the furniture in her drawing-room all pushed hither and thither, card-tables set, and snuff lying here and there in heaps. The drawing-room is in much the same style as the bed-room. The furniture is of curious shapes, with deeply moulded wood-work and claw feet. Wreaths of flowers, richly carved and finely modelled, twine across the mirrors and hang in festoons along their edges. On the marble tables there are beautiful Chinese vases. The prevailing shades in the furniture and hangings are poppy-colour and white. My grandmother was a stately and striking brunette. Her complexion accounts for her favourite colours. In the drawing-room I found a writing-table, the figures on which used to keep my eyes very busy in the old days. It is adorned with chiselled silver plaques, and was given her by one of the Genoese Lomellini. Each side of this table represents the occupations appropriate to one of the four seasons. The figures are all in relief, there are hundreds of them in each scene. I spent two hours quite alone, gathering up my memories, one by one, in the sacred precincts within which one of the most famous women, both for beauty and for wit, at the Court of Louis XV, breathed her last sigh. You know how suddenly I was parted from her in 1816.

" Go and say good-bye to your grandmother," said my mother to me.

I found the Princess not at all surprised, but apparently unmoved by my departure. " You are going to the convent, my treasure," she said. " You'll see your aunt there — a most excellent woman. I'll take care you are not sacrificed; you shall be independent, and able to marry whomsoever you may choose."

Six months later she was dead. She had given her will into the keeping of one of her most trusted friends, the Prince de Talleyrand, who contrived, when he came to see Mile, de Chargeboeuf, to let me know, through her, that my grandmother forbade me to take religious vows. I very much hope that sooner or later I may meet the Prince, and then, no doubt, he will tell me more.

So, my dear, though I found nobody waiting to greet me, I consoled myself with the shade of my dear Princess, and I set myself to fulfil one of our agreements, which — do you remember it? — was that we should mutually inform each other of the tiniest details concerning our dwellings and our lives. It is so sweet to know the where and how of the existence of the beloved being! So be sure you describe all the very smallest matters about you, every single thing, even to the effects of the sunset among the tall trees!

October ioth.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when I arrived. Towards half past five Rose came to tell me my mother had returned, and I went downstairs to pay her my respects. My mother's rooms are on the ground floor; they are planned just like mine, and are in the same wing. I live just above her, and we have the same private stair-case. My father lives in the opposite wing. But as he has all the space on the court-yard side, which in our case is taken up by the grand stair-case, his rooms are much larger than ours. In spite of the social duties incumbent on the position to which the return of the Bourbons has restored my parents, they still continue living on the ground floor, and are able to entertain there, so roomy are the houses built by our forefathers. I found my mother in her own drawing-room, in which nothing has been altered. As I went down the stairs I kept asking myself how this woman, who has been so little of a mother to me that in eight years she has only written me two letters you wot of, would receive me. Thinking it unworthy of myself to simulate a tenderness I could not feel, I had composed my countenance after the fashion of a silly nun, and when I entered her room I felt, inwardly, exceedingly embarrassed. This shyness soon passed away. My mother was perfectly charming. She made no pretence of sham tenderness. She was not cold; she did not treat me as if I had been her best beloved daughter.

She welcomed me as though we had only parted the night before. She was the gentlest, the frankest of friends. She spoke to me as to a grown-up woman, and began by kissing me on the forehead.

" My dear child," she said. " If you are to die of your convent, you had much better come and live with us. You have upset your father's plans and mine, but the days of blind obedience to parents are gone by. M. de Chaulieu's intention, with which mine agrees, is that nothing shall be left undone which can make your life pleasant and enable you to see the world. At your age, I should have thought as you do. So I have no feeling against you on that score; you are not capable of understanding what we asked of you. You will not find any absurd severity in me. If you have doubted my affection you will soon find out you were mistaken. Though I intend to leave you in perfect freedom, I think you will do wisely to listen, at first, to the advice of a mother who will treat you as if you were her sister."

The Duchess spoke in a soft voice, and as she talked she straightened my school-girl's cape. She fascinated me. She is eight-and-thirty, and she is an angel of beauty. She has blue eyes that are almost black, eye-lashes like silk, not a line on her forehead, her skin so pink and white you would fancy she painted, wonderful shoulders and bust, a waist as slight and well curved as your own; an extraordinarily beautiful hand, as white as milk; finger-nails that hold the light, they are so polished; her little finger a little separate from the other four, her thumb as smooth as ivory. And then she has a foot to match her hand — the Spanish foot of Mile, de Vandenesse. If she is like this at forty, she will be beautiful still, at sixty.

I answered her, my dear, as a submissive daughter should. I was all she had been to me, and I was better still. Her beauty had conquered me; I forgave her for forsaking me. I realized that such a woman had been swept off her feet by her queenly position. I said all this to her, simply, as though I had been talking to

i 7 you. Perhaps she had not expected to hear words of affection from her daughter's lips. The tribute of my honest admiration touched her deeply, her manner changed and grew even more gracious; she dropped the second person plural.

" You are a good child," she said, " and I hope we shall continue friends."

The words struck me as being exquisitely artless. I would not have her see how I took them, for I realized at once that I must let her think she has much more wit and cleverness than her daughter. So I played the ninny, and she was delighted with me. I kissed her hands several times over, saying how happy I was at her treating me in this way, that I felt quite relieved, and I even confessed my terrors to her. She smiled, and put her arm round my neck with an affectionate gesture to draw me close to her, and kiss me on the forehead.

" Dear child," she said, " we have company to dinner to-day. I dare say you'll agree with me that you had better not make your appearance in society until the dressmaker has made you some clothes; so, after you have seen your father and your brother, you had better go back to your own rooms."

To this arrangement I agreed with all my heart. My mother's exquisite gown was my first revelation of the world of which we had glimpses in our dreams. But I did not feel the slightest touch of jealousy.

My father entered the room.

" Sir," said the Duchesse, " this is your daughter." 18

My father suddenly became quite tender in his manner to me. So perfectly did he play the father's part, that I believed he felt it.

" So here you are, unruly daughter/' he cried, taking my two hands in his and kissing them in a way that was more gallant than paternal. Then he drew me close, put his arm round my waist and clasped me to him, kissing my cheeks and forehead.

' You'll make up for the sorrow your change of vocation has caused us by the pleasure your success in society will bring us.

" Do you know, Madame, she is very pretty, and some day you may be proud of her. Here's your brother Rhetore. . . . Alphonse," said he to a good-looking young man who had just come in, " here's your nun-sister who wants to cast off her habit"

My brother came forward in a very leisurely fashion, took my hand and shook it.

" Why don't you kiss her? " said the Duke. And he kissed me on each cheek.

" I am very glad to see you, sister," he said, " and I'm on your side against my father."

I thanked him, but I think he might have come to Blois, when he used to go to Orleans to see our brother, the Marquis, in his quarters there. Fearing strangers might appear, I beat a retreat. I settled a few things in my own room and laid out all I needed for writing to you on the red velvet top of my beautiful table, pondering, meanwhile, over my new surroundings.

Thus, first and last, dearest love, has come to pass the return of the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the greatest families in France to the bosom of her kindred, after an absence lasting some nine years. The journey had tired me, and so had the emotions of this family meeting. Wherefore I sought my bed, just as I should have sought it in the convent, as soon as I had eaten my supper. They have even kept the little Dresden knife and fork and spoon my dear old Princess used whenever she took it into her head to have a meal served to her apart, in her own rooms.

II November 25th

The next morning I found my rooms had been set in order and prepared for me by old Philippe, who had put flowers into all the vases, so I settled down at last. But it had never occurred to anybody that a school-girl from the Carmelite convent was likely to feel hungry early in the morning, and Rose had the greatest difficulty in getting me some breakfast.

" Mademoiselle went to bed just when dinner was being served, and she got up just after her father had come home," she said.

I sat down to write. Towards one o'clock my father knocked at the door of my little sitting-room and asked if he might come in. I opened the door, he entered and found me writing to you.

" My dear," he said, " you have to buy your clothes and settle down here. In this purse you will find twelve thousand francs. That represents one year of the income I shall allow you for your personal expenses. You must settle with your mother about engaging a governess who will suit you, if you do not care about Miss Griffiths, for Madame de Chaulieu will not have time to go out with you in the mornings. You will have a carriage and a servant at your orders."

" Let me keep Philippe," I said.

" So be it," he answered. " But do not worry yourself, your own fortune is large enough to prevent your being a burden either to your mother or to me."