The miller of Angibault; a novel

Front matter

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Introduction

/^NE ^ hour after midnight rang from St. Thomas d’ A quin, as a dark, slender figure rapidly glided beneath the high and shadowy wall of one of the fine gardens still found in Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. The night was warm and serene. A delicate fragrance breathed from the flowering daturas, which stood in the light of the full moon like tall, white spectres. There was an air of ancient splendor about th'e broad fliglit of steps leading up to the Plotel de Blanchemont ; and the apparent opulence of the mansion, dark and silent as it novv rose against the moonlight, was ’enhanced by the extent and beauty of the surrounding garden.

But the brilliant moonlight was not quite agreeable to the young woman in mourning, who took her way, by the darkest alleys, to a little door placed at the extremity of the wall. Nevertheless, she went resolutely on, for it was not the first time she had risked her reputation -for the sake of a love, always pure, and henceforth legitimate, — she had been a widow now for a month.

She took advantage of a shadowing clump of acacias to reach, unperceived, the little private door, which opened on a narrow and unfrequented street. Almost at the same moment the door turned on its hinges, and the person she had summoned entered softly, and followed his mistress, in silence, to a small summer-house. But, as soon as the door was closed, the young baroness of

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BlaDchemont, from instinctive modesty, taking from her pocket a pretty little Russia leather box, drew a match, and lighted a candle, which seemed to have been hidden beforehand in a corner, while the young man, in a simple, timid, and respectful manner, assisted her in dispelling the darkness of the room. He was so happy to see her again !

The summer-house was closed with large wooden shutters. It may have been the voluptuous retreat of some marquise of the old regime ; but the only furniture and light left to the now deserted boudoir consisted of a rustic bench, a few empty boxes, some gardening tools, and the little taper, with no better candlestick than a broken flower-pot.

Marcelle, the fair descendant of its former occupants, Avas dressed with the siniplicity and decorum befitting a modest widow. Her only ornament Avas the beautiful golden hair, Avhich fell over her black crape collar. But for the delicacy of her alabaster hands, and of her satinslippered foot, Avhich alone betrayed her aristocratic habits, she might have been taken for the natural companion, in rank, of the man noAv kneeling by her side — for a Parisian grisette. There are grisettes Avith brows of queenly dignity and of saintly grace.

Henri Lemor had an agreeable face, but intelligent and striking rather than handsome. It was dark and pale, and shadowed by abundant black hair. It was easy to see that he Avas a true Parisian — strong through Avill, delicate by organization. His dress, neat and modest, betokened humble circumstances ; his ill-tied craA^at showed an entire absence of foppery, or habitual preoccupation of mind ; his broAvn gloves Avere enough to prove that he Avas not, as the Blanchemont servants Avould haA'e phrased it, a “suitable” man to be the lover or husband of their lady.

These tAvo young people, scarcely older the one than the other, had more than once held tender interviews in the summer-house during the mysterious hours of night ; but Avithiu a month, that they had not met, deep anxiety had darkened the romance of their love. Henri Lemor

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was dismayed and trembling ; Marcelle de Blanchemont seemed frozen with fear. He knelt before her as if to thank her for having granted him a last meeting ; but he soon rose without speaking, and his manner was constrained, and almost cold.

“At last!” she made an effort to say, and reached him her hand. He carried it to his lips with a convulsive movement, but no gleam of joy appeared upon his countenance.

“ He loves me no more,” thought she, pressing both her hands upon her eyes ; and she remained mute, and stiffened witli dread.

last? ” repeated Lemor. “ Is it not so soon that you would say? I ought to have had strength to wait longer. It was wanting — forgive me ! ”

“I do not understand you,” said the young widow, letting her hands fall dejectedly.

Lemor saw her tearful eyes, and mistook the cause of her emotion.

“Oh yes!” he resumed; “I am to blame; I see, by your grief, the remorse I cause you. These four weeks have seemed to me so long, that I had not the courage to tell myself they were too few ! Yet I had scarcely written to you this morning to ask leave to see you, when I repented. I blushed for my own cowardice, I reproached myself for the scruples of conscience I was forcing you to stifle ; and when I received your calm, sweet answer, I saw that you recalled me from pity alone.”

“ Oh, Henri, how you pain me by speaking so ! Is -it jest, ot pretext? Why ask to see me, if you return with so little happiness and confidence?”

The young man started, and throwing himself again at her feet —

“ I had rather meet your pride and your reproaches,” cried he ; “ your kindness kills me ! ”

“ Henri ! Henri ! ” cried Marcelle, “ you have, then, been false to me? Oh, you do look guilty! You have 'forgotten me, or slighted me — I see it too well ! ”

“ Neither, neither ; to my eternal grief, I revere you.

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I adore you, I believe in you as I do in God — I love only you on this earth ! ”

“Ah, well then!” said the young woman, throwing her arms around the poor fellow’s dark head, “it is not so great a misfortune to love me thus, since I love you in the same way. Listen, Henri ! I am now free, and I have nothing with which to reproach myself. So little did I desire the death of my husband, that I have never permitted myself to imagine what I would do with my liberty, were it restored to me. You know we have never spoken of this, you knew that I loved you passionately, aud yet this is the first time that I have uttered it I But how pale you are, my friend ! your hands are icy — you seem in great pain 1 You frighten me !”

“ No, no ! speak on, speak on ! ” answered Lemor, yielding to the forc'e of emotions at once most sweet and distressing.

“Well!” continued Mme. de Blanchemont, “it is impossible for me to feel the conscientious scruples and distress which ybii dread for me. When the bloody corpse of my Imsbhnd, killed in a duel for another woman, was brought to me, I own that I was struck with horror and consternation ; I believed it my duty, when sending you the terrible news, to bid you remain for a certain time absent from me ; oh, if it were a crime to feel that time very long, I have been sufficiently punished by your scrupulous obedience ! But during this month of seclusion, while I have been occupied solely with the care of my boy, and with doing my utmost to console M. de Blanchemont’s parents, I have carefully examined my heart, and I do not find it guilty. I could not love that man. He never loved me ; and all that I could do was to respect his honor. Now, Henri, I owe nothing to his memory, but an external respect to decorum. I must see you in secret, and seldom, till the end of my mourning ; but in a year, in two years, if necessary — ”

“ Well, Marcelle ! in two years?” ^

“You ask me what we shall be to one another, Henri? You love me no longer— -I told you so !”

Henri deserved this reproach too little to be moved by

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it. Anxiously attentive to every word of his mistress, he entreated her to continue.

“Well,” she resumed, blushing like a young girl, “ do you not wish to marry me then, Henri?”

Henri let his head sink upon Marcelle’s lap, and remained several moments as if overpowered by joy and gratitude ; but he rose abruptly, with a look of the deepest despair.

“Has not your experience of marriage been sad enough?” said he, almost harshly. “Would yoil place yourself again under the yoke?”

“You frighten me,” said Mme. de Blanchemont, after a moment of silent terror. “Are you conscious of tyrannical instincts, or is it for yourself that you dread the yoke of eternal fidelity?”

“No no ! it is nothing of the sort*,” replied Lemor, in a dejected manner. “What I dread, what I cannot endure for myself or for you, you know ; but you will not — you cannot understand it. Yet we hay.§ often spoken of it, before we imagined that such discussions were ever to interest us personally, or could contain me the sentence of life or death ! ”

“Is it possible, Henri, that you carry fanaticism so far ? What ! cannot even love conquer it ? Ah ! you men, how little do you love ! ” added she, with a heavy sigh. “When it is not vice that hardens your souls, it is virtue ; and whether base or noble, you love nothing but yourselves.”

“Listen, Marcelle ! if I had asked you a mouth ago to fail in your duty, if my love had implored what your religion and your principles would have made you consider a great and irreparable fault — ”

“You did not ask me,” said Marcelle, blushing.

“I loved you too well to ask you to suffer and weep for me. But if I had, Marcelle?”

“It is an inconsiderate question,” said she, endeavoring, with amiable coquetry, to elude a req)ly.

Her grace and beauty stirred Lemor’s blood. He clasped her passionately to his heart ; but instantly repressing his excitement, he left her, and walking hurriedly

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to and fro behind the bench on which she was seated, said in an altered voice :

“And if I asked of you now this sacrifice, which your husband’s death would certainly render less terrible — less alarming’ — ”

Mme. de Blanchemont was again pale and serious.

“Henri,” she replied, “I should be ofifended and wounded to my heart’s core by such a thought, when I have just offered you my hand, and you seem to refuse it.”

“I am indeed unhappy that I cannot make myself understood, and am taken for a villain, when I feel within me the very heroism of love ! ” answered he, bitterly. “You think the phrase ambitious, and are ready to smile with pity. Nevertheless it is true, and God knows my agony — it is fierce, it passes my courage ! — ”

And Henri burst into tears.

The young man’s grief was so deep and unfeigned, as to terrify Mme. de Blanchemont. These burning tears seemed like an invincible refusal of happiness, like an eternal farewell to all the illusions of youth and love.

“ Oh, my dear Henri ! ” cried Marcelle, “ what wrong can you have resolved to do us both ? Why this despair, when you are the master of my life,, when nothing longer prevents our union before God and man ? Can my son be an obstacle between us? Do you not feel largehearted enough to bestow upon him part of your affection for me? Do you fear ever having to reproach yourself with the misery and desertion of the child of my bosom?”

“Your sou ! ” cried Henri, sobbing. “ I should have a more serious fear than that of not loving him. I should fear to love him too well, and that I could not resign myself to seeing his life borne on the current of the time in an opposite direction from mine. Custom and opinion would command me to leave him to the world, and I should desire to tear him from it, even should I render him unhappy, poor, and desolate, with me. No, I could not look upon him with enough indifference and selfishness to consent that he should grow up like other men of his class — no.

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no ! that, and other things, everything, in your position and mine, is an insurmountable obstacle. From whichever side I contemplate such a future, I see nothing but a frenzied struggle, — misery for you, anathema upon me ! It is impossible, Marcelle, eternally impossible. I love you too well to accept sacrifices whose extent you cannot measure, and whose results you cannot foresee. I see that you do not know me. You take me for a weak and vacillating visionary. I am an dl)stinate and incorrigible visionary. You have sometimes, perhaps, accused me of afiectation ; you believed that one word of yours would bring me back to what you think reason and truth. Oh, I am more unfortunate than you imagine, and I love you more than you can yet understand. In future — yes, in the time to come — you will thank me in your deepest thoughts for having chosen to be unhappy alone.”

“In the future.^ And why? And when? What do you mean?”

“In the future, I mean, when you awake from this dark and evil dream into which I have drawn you, when you return to the world, and share its sweet and easy pleasures ; when you are no longeii an angel, in short, and descend again to earth.”

^ “Yes, yes, when I am withered by selfishness, and corrupted by flattery ! That is what you would say, that is your prophecy for me ! Your stern pride does not believe me capable of receiving your thoughts, or of comprehending your heart. Say it out, — you do not think me worthy of you, Henri I ”

“These are terrible words, madam, and this struggle cannot be longer endured. Let me fly, for we cannot understand one another now.”

“You leave me thus I ”

“ No, I do not leave you. I go, far from yoiir presence, to contemplate you in myself, and to adore you in my secret heart. I go to constant suffering, but with the hope that you will forget me, with remorse for having desired and sought your love, and with the one consolation, at least, of not having basely abused it.”

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Mme. cle Blaiichemont had risen to prevent Henri from going. She fell back, exhausted, upon her bench.

“ AVhy, then, did you ask to see me? ” inquired she, in a cold and offended tone, as he turned away.

“ Yes, yes,” said he, “ you are right to blame me for it. It was my last piece of cowardice. I felt it, but I yielded to the necessity of seeing you once more. I hoped to find you changed toward me : your silence made me think you 'were ; I was consumed by sorrow, and thought to obtain strength for my cure in your coldness. Why did I come ! Why do you love me ! Am I not the coarsest, most .ungrateful, savage, and detestable of men? But it is well that you should see me so, and know that there is nothing to regret in me. That is best ; and thus was it not Avell that I came ? ”

Henri spoke distractedly ; his calm, grave features were distorted, and his voice, usually sweet and sympathetic, was painfully hard and untoned. Marcelle saw his suffering, but her own was so keen that she could say and do nothing for their mutual consolation. She sat pale and mute, her hands clenched together, and her body rigid as marble. Just on the point of leaving, Henri turned, and, seeing her thus, filing himself at her feet, covering them with tears and kisses. “ Farewell,” said he, “loveliest and purest of women, best of friends, noblest of lovers ! Mayst thou find a heart worthy of thee, a man who shall love thee as I do, and who will bring thee a better marriage gift than discouragement and weariness of life ! Mayst thou be happy, and bestow happiness, without encountering the struggles of an existence like mine ! And finally, if there remain in the world where thou livest one spark of loyalty arid of human charity, mayst thou rekindle it with tliy divine breath, and find grace before God for thy caste and thy generation,

• whom thy perfection alone is sufficient to ransom ! ”

With these words, Henri rushed out, forgetting that^ he left Marcelle in despair. He seemed like one driven by the F uries.

Mme. de Blanchemont remained a long time as if stunned. When she returned to her apartments, she paced

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her chamber slowly till morning, without shedding one tear, or disturbing by one sigh the stillness of the night.

It would be rash to say that this young widow, only twenty-two, beautiful, wealthy, and distinguished in society for her grace-, talents, and intelligence, was not in a certain degi'ee mortified and affronted at -seeing her hand refused by a man without birth, fortune, or reputation. Offended feminine pride probably sustained her at first. But the true nobility of her sentiments soon suggested more serious reflections, and for the first time she looked deeply into her own life, and into the general life of those about her. She recalled all that Lemor had said to her in former days, when the only connection possible betw'een them was that of hopeless love. She was astonished that she had not been more seriously impressed by the austerity of his opinions, and had let them pass as romantic fancies. She began to estimate him with the calmness attained by a strong and generous determination, even amidst violent emotion. As the liours of the night passed on, and were echoed by the clear and silvery voices of the distant steeples through the silence of the great sleeping city, Mlircelle arrived at that clearness of perception which sorrow draws from the meditations of long watchfulness. Educated with different views from Lemor, she had, nevertheless, been as it w^ere predestined to share the love of this plebeian, and to find it her shelter from all the languor and weariness of aristocratic life. Hers was one of those strong and loving souls to wdiom self-sacrifice is a necessity, and who imagine no other happiness than that they give. Unhappy at home, w^eary of society, she had yielded with a girl’s romantic confidence to a sentiment which had soon become sacred to her. Sincerely religious in lier youth, it wms inevitable that she should bo passionately attached to a lover wdio respected her scruples and worshipped her purity. She was impelled by hef very piety to heighten her love, and to desire to consecrate it by indissoluble bonds the moment she found herself free. She had thought with joy of bravely sacrificing those external advantages w'hicli are valued by the world,- and the narrow prejulO

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dices of birth, by which her own judgment had never been misled. The poor child thought to do a great thing, and it was really great, for the world would have laughed or blamed. She had not foreseen that all this was yet as nought, and that the pride of the plebeian would repel her sacrifice almost as an affront.

Suddenly enlightened by the dismay, the grief, and the resistance of Lemor, Marcelle revolved in her perturbed mind all that she had dimly seen of the social crisis of the age. The high regions of thought are no longer unfamiliar to the women of our time. All, according to the rate of their intelligence, can henceforth, without affectation on their own part, or ridicule on that of others, read daily, under all its forms, newspaper or romance, philosophy, politics, or poetry, ofiacial statement or intimate conversation, the great book of actual life, sad, diffuse, contradictory, yet always full of depth and significance. Thus she well knew, as-we all do, that this diseased and benumbed Present is at war with the Past, Avhich holds it back, and the Future, which beckons it on. She saw* sharp lightnings dart over her head, she felt the approach, sooner or later, of a great struggle. Her nature was not cowardly ; she neither feared, nor closed her eyes. The regrets, complaints, terrors, and recriminations of her noble relations had wearied and disgusted her with fear. Youth will not belie the season of its bloom, and holds its sweet summer dear, though laden with storms ! The affectionate and courageous Marcelle felt that, while with the being she loved, she could smile in the wildest tempest, and under the lowliest shelter. The threatening strife of external interests appeared to her as nothing. “ Of what consequence are ruin, exile, and imprisonment?” thoaght she, when those who w*ere deemed fortunate trembled around her. ‘‘ They can never exile love ; and as for me, thanks to Heaven, I love a poor man who will be unmolested.”

But it had not occurred to her that she might be stricken in her very affections by this obscure and mysterious war, which exists in defiance of all official restraint and apparent discouragement. This conflict of feeling and opinion

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II is now thoroughly opened, and Marcelle saw her illusions drop from her as suddenly as if she had awakened from a dream. War, moral and intellectual, is declared between the different classes imbued with opposite behefs and passions, and Mine, de Blanchemont found, in the man who adored her, a sort of irreconcilable enemy. Shocked at first by the discovery, she familiarized herself gradually with the idea, which suggested to her new designs still more romantic and generous than those which had sustained her during the past month, and at the end of her long walk through her silent and deserted rooms, she found composure in a resolution which perhaps no one but herself could regard without a smile of admiration or of pity.

This took place quite recently — it may be last year.* ♦This novel was published in 1846. — Tr.

Chapter II. The Journey

IV/I' ARCELLE having married her cousin-german, bore the name of Blanchemont both before and after her marriage, and the estate and chateau of Blanchemont made part of her patrimony. The estate was valuable, but the chateau was no longer inhabited, even by the tenants to whom it had been abandoned for more than two hundred years, because it was much decayed, and would have cost too much in repairs. Mile, de Blanchemont, early left an orphan, brought up in a Parisian convent, married very young, and, not initiated by her husband into the management of her affairs, had never seen this, her ancestral domain. Resolved to quit Paris, and to seek in the country a mode of life in accordance with her new projects, she chose Blanchemont as the commencement of her pilgrimage, with the intention of establisliing herself in this residence, if it met her purpose. She was aware of the dilapidated state of her chateau, and this was one reason why she looked toward it ill preference. The embarrassment and disorder in which her husband had left all her affairs and his own, served her as pretext for undertaking a journey, of which she spoke as only to last some weeks, but to which, in her secret thought, she assigned no precise object or term ; her own real design being to quit Paris, and the maimer of life’ to which she was there compelled.

Fortunately for her plans, thei^ was no member of lier family who could easily accompany her. She was an only child, and not troubled by the protection of elder brothers or sisters. Her husband’s parents were aged, and as they were somewhat alarmed at the debt left by

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their son, which could be paid off only by excellent management, they were at once astonished and delighted to see a w*oman of twenty-two, who had hitherto shown no taste or aptitude for business, determine to arrange her own, and go to see for herself into the state of her property. Still they made several objections to her starting alone with her child. They wished that she should be attended by her man of business. They feared lest the child should suffer from a journey in such hot weather. Marcelle replied to her father and mother-in-law that a prolonged tete-a-tete with an old lawyer would not exactly alleviate the burden she was about to take upon herself ; that she should obtain more direct information and advice better adapted to the locality, from the provincial advocates and notaries ; in fine, that there was nothing so very difficult in settling accounts with tenants, and renewing leases. As to the child, the air of Paris enfeebled him more and more. The country, exercise, and sunshine would do him only good. And then Marcelle, grown suddenly adroit in overcoming the obstacles Avhich she had foreseen and considered during her vigil related in the preceding chapter, laid stress upon her duty as guardian of her son. She was still in partial ignorance of the condition of M. de Blanchemont’s estate, she said, and knew not whether he had drawn largely in advance upon his agents, or given heavy mortgages upon his lands, etc. All these things it was her duty to examine, and make a personal investigation, that she might know how to arrange her future establishment without compromising her boy’s interests. She 'talked so wisely of these interests, of which in reality she thought very little, that at the end of twelve ho-urs she had carried the day, and brought all the family to approve and praise her resolution. Her love for Henri had remained so secret, that no suspicion of it disturbed the confidence of the grandparents.

Sustained by unaccustomed activity and enthusiastic hope, Marcelle slept little better the night following that of her interview with Lemor. She had strange dreams, now cheerful, now sad. At last, awaking with the dawn,

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she cast a thoughtful look around her apartment, and was struck, for the first time, with the useless and extravagant luxury displayed about her, with the satin hangings, the extreme ease and softness of the furniture, the number of expensive trifles and costly toys ; in short, the whole array of gilding, china, carved wood, and frippery which now crowds the house of a fine lady. “ I should like to know,” thought she, “why we have such contempt for women of the town. They make others give them what we are able to give ourselves. They sacrifice their modesty to the possession of things which should liave no value in the eyes of thoughtful and serious women, and which we,* nevertheless, regard as indispensable. They have tastes like ours, and it is to appear as jich and fortunate as we that they degrade themselves. We should give them the example of severe simplicity in our lives, before condemning them. And if our indissoluble marriages were compared with their transient unions, would there be found much more disinterestedness among the young girls of our class Would there not be seen as often among us, as with them, a child bound to an old man, beauty profaned by the ugliness of vice, and intellect subjected to imbecility, all for love of a set of diamonds, a carriage, and an opera-box ? Unhappy women ! They say you also despise us, and Avell you may ! ” Meanwhile, the pale, clear light which penetrated the curtains, showed all the enchantment of the sanctuary, which, in former times. Mine, de Blanchemont had pleased herself in decorating with exquisite taste. She had almost always lived apart from her husband, and this retired and beautiful chamber, into which Henri himself had never dared penetrate, was endeared to her only by sweet and pensive recollections. It was here that, %ing from the world, she had read and meditated amid the perfume of flowers of unequalled beauty, — flowers such as are found only in Paris, \nd which now form part of the daily life of the wealthy. She had made this retreat as poetic as she could. She had adorned and beautified it for herself; she was attached to it as a mysterious refuge, where the sorrows of her life, and the passionate

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storms of her spirit, had always been soothed by meditation and prayer. She gazed around it long and affectionately, and then pronounced in her heart an eternal farewell to all these silent witnesses of her inner life, — a life concealed like that of the flower, whose stainless beauty could endure the broadest sunlight, but which bows its head beneath the foliage, for love of the shade and coolness. “ My chosen retreat, my beloved ornaments, you have been dear to me,” thought she ; but I can love you no longer, for you belong to wealth and indolence, and help to consecrate them. You typify to me, henceforth, all that divides me from Henri, and I could not look upon you without disgust and bitterness of heart. Let us part before we hate. Thou, stern Madonna, wouldst cease to protect me ; clear and deep mirrors, you would make me detest my own image ; and you, beautiful flower-vases, would have for me neither grace nor fragrance ! ”