The Lily of the Valley, Honoré de Balzac [the little red hen read aloud TXT] 📗

bestow such services as to force others to ingratitude, for if you
do, they will become your most implacable enemies; obligations
sometimes lead to despair, like the despair of ruin itself, which
is capable of very desperate efforts. As for yourself, accept as
little as you can from others. Be no man's vassal; and bring
yourself out of your own difficulties.

You see, dear friend, I am advising you only on the lesser points
of life. In the world of politics things wear a different aspect;
the rules which are to guide your individual steps give way before
the national interests. If you reach that sphere where great men
revolve you will be, like God himself, the sole arbiter of your
determinations. You will no longer be a man, but law, the living
law; no longer an individual, you are then the Nation incarnate.
But remember this, though you judge, you will yourself be judged;
hereafter you will be summoned before the ages, and you know
history well enough to be fully informed as to what deeds and what
sentiments have led to true grandeur.

I now come to a serious matter, your conduct towards women.
Wherever you visit make it a principle not to fritter yourself
away in a petty round of gallantry. A man of the last century who
had great social success never paid attention to more than one
woman of an evening, choosing the one who seemed the most
neglected. That man, my dear child, controlled his epoch. He
wisely reckoned that by a given time all women would speak well of
him. Many young men waste their most precious possession, namely,
the time necessary to create connections which contribute more
than all else to social success. Your springtime is short,
endeavor to make the most of it. Cultivate influential women.
Influential women are old women; they will teach you the
intermarriages and the secrets of all the families of the great
world; they will show you the cross-roads which will bring you
soonest to your goal. They will be fond of you. The bestowal of
protection is their last form of love--when they are not devout.
They will do you innumerable good services; sing your praises and
make you desirable to society. Avoid young women. Do not think I
say this from personal self-interest. The woman of fifty will do
all for you, the woman of twenty will do nothing; she wants your
whole life while the other asks only a few attentions. Laugh with
the young women, meet them for pastime merely; they are incapable
of serious thought. Young women, dear friend, are selfish, vain,
petty, ignorant of true friendship; they love no one but
themselves; they would sacrifice you to an evening's success.
Besides, they all want absolute devotion, and your present
situation requires that devotion be shown to you; two
irreconcilable needs! None of these young women would enter into
your interests; they would think of themselves and not of you;
they would injure you more by their emptiness and frivolity than
they could serve you by their love; they will waste your time
unscrupulously, hinder your advance to fortune, and end by
destroying your future with the best grace possible. If you
complain, the silliest of them will make you think that her glove
is more precious than fortune, and that nothing is so glorious as
to be her slave. They will all tell you that they bestow
happiness, and thus lull you to forget your nobler destiny.
Believe me, the happiness they give is transitory; your great
career will endure. You know not with what perfidious cleverness
they contrive to satisfy their caprices, nor the art with which
they will convert your passing fancy into a love which ought to be
eternal. The day when they abandon you they will tell you that the
words, "I no longer love you," are a full justification of their
conduct, just as the words, "I love," justified their winning you;
they will declare that love is involuntary and not to be coerced.
Absurd! Believe me, dear, true love is eternal, infinite, always
like unto itself; it is equable, pure, without violent
demonstration; white hair often covers the head but the heart that
holds it is ever young. No such love is found among the women of
the world; all are playing comedy; this one will interest you by
her misfortunes; she seems the gentlest and least exacting of her
sex, but when once she is necessary to you, you will feel the
tyranny of weakness and will do her will; you may wish to be a
diplomat, to go and come, and study men and interests,--no, you
must stay in Paris, or at her country-place, sewn to her
petticoat, and the more devotion you show the more ungrateful and
exacting she will be. Another will attract you by her
submissiveness; she will be your attendant, follow you
romantically about, compromise herself to keep you, and be the
millstone about your neck. You will drown yourself some day, but
the woman will come to the surface.

The least manoeuvring of these women of the world have many nets.
The silliest triumph because too foolish to excite distrust. The
one to be feared least may be the woman of gallantry whom you love
without exactly knowing why; she will leave you for no motive and
go back to you out of vanity. All these women will injure you,
either in the present or the future. Every young woman who enters
society and lives a life of pleasure and of gratified vanity is
semi-corrupt and will corrupt you. Among them you will not find
the chaste and tranquil being in whom you may forever reign. Ah!
she who loves you will love solitude; the festivals of her heart
will be your glances; she will live upon your words. May she be
all the world to you, for you will be all in all to her. Love her
well; give her neither griefs nor rivals; do not rouse her
jealousy. To be loved, dear, to be comprehended, is the greatest
of all joys; I pray that you may taste it! But run no risk of
injuring the flower of your soul; be sure, be very sure of the
heart in which you place your affections. That woman will never be
her own self; she will never think of herself, but of you. She
will never oppose you, she will have no interests of her own; for
you she will see a danger where you can see none and where she
would be oblivious of her own. If she suffers it will be in
silence; she will have no personal vanity, but deep reverence for
whatever in her has won your love. Respond to such a love by
surpassing it. If you are fortunate enough to find that which I,
your poor friend, must ever be without, I mean a love mutually
inspired, mutually felt, remember that in a valley lives a mother
whose heart is so filled with the feelings you have put there that
you can never sound its depths. Yes, I bear you an affection which
you will never know to its full extent; before it could show
itself for what it is you would have to lose your mind and
intellect, and then you would be unable to comprehend the length
and breadth of my devotion.

Shall I be misunderstood in bidding you avoid young women (all
more or less artful, satirical, vain, frivolous, and extravagant)
and attach yourself to influential women, to those imposing
dowagers full of excellent good-sense, like my aunt, who will help
your career, defend you from attacks, and say for you the things
that you cannot say for yourself? Am I not, on the contrary,
generous in bidding you reserve your love for the coming angel
with the guileless heart? If the motto Noblesse oblige sums up the
advice I gave you just now, my further advice on your relations to
women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love
one!"

Your educational knowledge is immense; your heart, saved by early
suffering, is without a stain; all is noble, all is well with you.
Now, Felix, WILL! Your future lies in that one word, that word of
great men. My child, you will obey your Henriette, will you not?
You will permit her to tell you from time to time the thoughts
that are in her mind of you and of your relations to the world? I
have an eye in my soul which sees the future for you as for my
children; suffer me to use that faculty for your benefit; it is a
faculty, a mysterious gift bestowed by my lonely life; far from
its growing weaker, I find it strengthened and exalted by solitude
and silence.

I ask you in return to bestow a happiness on me; I desire to see
you becoming more and more important among men, without one single
success that shall bring a line of shame upon my brow; I desire
that you may quickly bring your fortunes to the level of your
noble name, and be able to tell me I have contributed to your
advancement by something better than a wish. This secret
co-operation in your future is the only pleasure I can allow
myself. For it, I will wait and hope.

I do not say farewell. We are separated; you cannot put my hand to
your lips, but you must surely know the place you hold in the
heart of your

Henriette.

As I read this letter I felt the maternal heart beating beneath my fingers which held the paper while I was still cold from the harsh greeting of my own mother. I understood why the countess had forbidden me to open it in Touraine; no doubt she feared that I would fall at her feet and wet them with my tears.

I now made the acquaintance of my brother Charles, who up to this time had been a stranger to me. But in all our intercourse he showed a haughtiness which kept us apart and prevented brotherly affection. Kindly feelings depend on similarity of