Letters of Two Brides, Honoré de Balzac [i can read books TXT] 📗

both heroic and generous in so doing. Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue. Each human life is a substance compacted of widely dissimilar elements, though, viewed from a certain height, the general effect is the same.

If I wished to make Louis unhappy and to bring about a separation, all I need do is to leave the helm in his hands. I have not had your good fortune in meeting with a man of the highest distinction, but I may perhaps have the satisfaction of helping him on the road to it. Five years hence let us meet in Paris and see! I believe we shall succeed in mystifying you. You will tell me then that I was quite mistaken, and that M. de l'Estorade is a man of great natural gifts.

As for this brave love, of which I know only what you tell me, these tremors and night watches by starlight on the balcony, this idolatrous worship, this deification of woman--I knew it was not for me. You can enlarge the borders of your brilliant life as you please; mine is hemmed in to the boundaries of La Crampade.

And you reproach me for the jealous care which alone can nurse this modest and fragile shoot into a wealth of lasting and mysterious happiness! I believed myself to have found out how to adapt the charm of a mistress to the position of a wife, and you have almost made me blush for my device. Who shall say which of us is right, which is wrong? Perhaps we are both right and both wrong. Perhaps this is the heavy price which society exacts for our furbelows, our titles, and our children.

I too have my red camellias, but they bloom on my lips in smiles for my double charge--the father and the son--whose slave and mistress I am. But, my dear, your last letters made me feel what I have lost! You have taught me all a woman sacrifices in marrying. One single glance did I take at those beautiful wild plateaus where you range at your sweet will, and I will not tell you the tears that fell as I read. But regret is not remorse, though it may be first cousin to it.

You say, "Marriage has made you a philosopher!" Alas! bitterly did I feel how far this was from the truth, as I wept to think of you swept away on love's torrent. But my father has made me read one of the profoundest thinkers of these parts, the man on whom the mantle of Boussuet has fallen, one of those hard-headed theorists whose words force conviction. While you were reading _Corinne_, I conned Bonald; and here is the whole secret of my philosophy. He revealed to me the Family in its strength and holiness. According to Bonald, your father was right in his homily.

Farewell, my dear fancy, my friend, my wild other self.


XIX. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO MME. DE L'ESTORADE

Well, my Renee, you are a love of a woman, and I quite agree now that we can only be virtuous by cheating. Will that satisfy you? Moreover, the man who loves us is our property; we can make a fool or a genius of him as we please; only, between ourselves, the former happens more commonly. You will make yours a genius, and you won't tell the secret--there are two heroic actions, if you will!

Ah! if there were no future life, how nicely you would be sold, for this is martyrdom into which you are plunging of your own accord. You want to make him ambitious and to keep him in love! Child that you are, surely the last alone is sufficient.

Tell me, to what point is calculation a virtue, or virtue calculation? You won't say? Well, we won't quarrel over that, since we have Bonald to refer to. We are, and intend to remain, virtuous; nevertheless at this moment I believe that you, with all your pretty little knavery, are a better woman than I am.

Yes, I am shockingly deceitful. I love Felipe, and I conceal it from him with an odious hypocrisy. I long to see him leap from his tree to the top of the wall, and from the wall to my balcony--and if he did, how I should wither him with my scorn! You see, I am frank enough with you.

What restrains me? Where is the mysterious power which prevents me from telling Felipe, dear fellow, how supremely happy he has made me by the outpouring of his love--so pure, so absolute, so boundless, so unobtrusive, and so overflowing?

Mme. de Mirbel is painting my portrait, and I intend to give it to him, my dear. What surprises me more and more every day is the animation which love puts into life. How full of interest is every hour, every action, every trifle! and what amazing confusion between the past, the future, and the present! One lives in three tenses at once. Is it still so after the heights of happiness are reached? Oh! tell me, I implore you, what is happiness? Does it soothe, or does it excite? I am horribly restless; I seem to have lost all my bearings; a force in my heart drags me to him, spite of reason and spite of propriety. There is this gain, that I am better able to enter into your feelings.

Felipe's happiness consists in feeling himself mine; the aloofness of his love, his strict obedience, irritate me, just as his attitude of profound respect provoked me when he was only my Spanish master. I am tempted to cry out to him as he passes, "Fool, if you love me so much as a picture, what will it be when you know the real me?"

Oh! Renee, you burn my letters, don't you? I will burn yours. If other eyes than ours were to read these thoughts which pass from heart to heart, I should send Felipe to put them out, and perhaps to kill the owners, by way of additional security.

Monday.

Oh! Renee, how is it possible to fathom the heart of man? My father ought to introduce me to M. Bonald, since he is so learned; I would ask him. I envy the privilege of God, who can read the undercurrents of the heart.

Does he still worship? That is the whole question.

If ever, in gesture, glance, or tone, I were to detect the slightest falling off in the respect he used to show me in the days when he was my instructor in Spanish, I feel that I should have strength to put the whole thing from me. "Why these fine words, these grand resolutions?" you will say. Dear, I will tell you.

My fascinating father, who treats me with the devotion of an Italian _cavaliere servente_ for his lady, had my portrait painted, as I told you, by Mme. de Mirbel. I contrived to get a copy made, good enough to do for the Duke, and sent the original to Felipe. I despatched it yesterday, and these lines with it:

"Don Felipe, your single-hearted devotion is met by a blind
confidence. Time will show whether this is not to treat a man as
more than human."

It was a big reward. It looked like a promise and--dreadful to say--a challenge; but--which will seem to you still more dreadful--I quite intended that it should suggest both these things, without going so far as actually to commit me. If in his reply there is "Dear Louise!" or even "Louise," he is done for!

Tuesday.

No, he is not done for. The constitutional minister is perfect as a lover. Here is his letter:--

"Every moment passed away from your sight has been filled by me
with ideal pictures of you, my eyes closed to the outside world
and fixed in meditation on your image, which used to obey the
summons too slowly in that dim palace of dreams, glorified by your
presence. Henceforth my gaze will rest upon this wondrous ivory--
this talisman, might I not say?--since your blue eyes sparkle with
life as I look, and paint passes into flesh and blood. If I have
delayed writing, it is because I could not tear myself away from
your presence, which wrung from me all that I was bound to keep
most secret.

"Yes, closeted with you all last night and to-day, I have, for the
first time in my life, given myself up to full, complete, and
boundless happiness. Could you but see yourself where I have
placed you, between the Virgin and God, you might have some idea
of the agony in which the night has passed. But I would not offend
you by speaking of it; for one glance from your eyes, robbed of
the tender sweetness which is my life, would be full of torture
for me, and I implore your clemency therefore in advance. Queen of
my life and of my soul, oh! that you could grant me but one-
thousandth part of the love I bear you!

"This was the burden of my prayer; doubt worked havoc in my soul
as I oscillated between belief and despair, between life and
death, darkness and light. A criminal whose verdict hangs in the
balance is not more racked with suspense than I, as I own to my
temerity. The smile imaged on your lips, to which my eyes turned
ever and again, and alone able to calm the storm roused by the
dread of displeasing you. From my birth no one, not even my
mother, has smiled on me. The beautiful young girl who was
designed for me rejected my heart and gave hers to my brother.
Again, in politics all my efforts have been defeated. In the eyes
of my king I have read only thirst for vengeance; from childhood
he has been my enemy, and the vote of the Cortes which placed me
in power was regarded by him as a personal insult.

"Less than this might breed despondency in the stoutest heart.
Besides, I have no illusion; I know the gracelessness of my
person, and am well aware how difficult it is to do justice to the
heart within so rugged a shell. To be loved had ceased to be more
than a dream to me when I met you. Thus when I bound myself to
your service I knew that devotion alone could excuse my passion.

"But, as I look upon this portrait and listen to your smile that
whispers of rapture, the rays of a hope which I had sternly
banished pierced the gloom, like the light of dawn, again to be
obscured by rising mists of doubt and fear of your displeasure, if
the morning should break to day. No, it is impossible you should
love me yet--I feel it; but in time, as you make proof of the
strength, the constancy, and depth of my affection, you may yield
me