Beatrix, Honoré de Balzac [great books for teens .TXT] 📗

To leave you at
this moment to make a fifth at _mouche_ (that is the name of the
game) can only be done in the depths of Brittany--Adieu.

Your Sabine.

Guerande, May, 1838.

I take up my Odyssey. On the third day your children no longer
used the ceremonious "you;" they thee'd and thou'd each other like
lovers. My mother-in-law, enchanted to see us so happy, is trying
to take your place to me, dear mother, and, as often happens when
people play a part to efface other memories, she has been so
charming that she is, _almost_, you to me.

I think she has guessed the heroism of my conduct, for at the
beginning of our journey she tried to hide her anxiety with such
care that it was visible from excessive precaution.

When I saw the towers of Guerande rising in the distance, I
whispered in the ear of your son-in-law, "Have you really
forgotten her?" My husband, now become _my angel_, can't know
anything, I think, about sincere and simple love, for the words
made him wild with happiness. Still, I think the desire to put
Madame de Rochefide forever out of his mind led me too far. But
how could I help it? I love, and I am half a Portuguese,--for I am
much more like you, mamma, than like my father.

Calyste accepts all from me as spoilt children accept things, they
think it their right; he is an only child, I remember that. But,
between ourselves, I will not give my daughter (if I have any
daughters) to an only son. I see a variety of tyrants in an only
son. So, mamma, we have rather inverted our parts, and I am the
devoted half of the pair. There are dangers, I know, in devotion,
though we profit by it; we lose our dignity, for one thing. I feel
bound to tell you of the wreck of that semi-virtue. Dignity, after
all, is only a screen set up before pride, behind which we rage as
we please; but how could I help it? you were not here, and I saw a
gulf opening before me. Had I remained upon my dignity, I should
have won only the cold joys (or pains) of a sort of brotherhood
which would soon have drifted into indifference. What sort of
future might that have led to? My devotion has, I know, made me
Calyste's slave; but shall I regret it? We shall see.

As for the present, I am delighted with it. I love Calyste; I love
him absolutely, with the folly of a mother, who thinks that all
her son may do is right, even if he tyrannizes a trifle over her.

Guerande, May 15th.

Up to the present moment, dear mamma, I find marriage a delightful
affair, I can spend all my tenderness on the noblest of men whom a
foolish woman disdained for a fiddler,--for that woman evidently
was a fool, and a cold fool, the worst kind! I, in my legitimate
love, am charitable; I am curing his wounds while I lay my heart
open to incurable ones. Yes, the more I love Calyste, the more I
feel that I should die of grief if our present happiness ever
ceased.

I must tell you how the whole family and the circle which meets at
the hotel de Guenic adore me. They are all personages born under
tapestries of the highest warp; in fact, they seem to have stepped
from those old tapestries as if to prove that the impossible may
exist. Some day, when we are alone together, I will describe to
you my Aunt Zephirine, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, the Chevalier du
Halga, the Demoiselles de Kergarouet, and others. They all, even
to the two servants, Gasselin and Mariotte (whom I wish they would
let me take to Paris), regard me as an angel sent from heaven;
they tremble when I speak. Dear people! they ought to be preserved
under glass.

My mother-in-law has solemnly installed us in the apartments
formerly occupied by herself and her late husband. The scene was
touching. She said to us,--

"I spent my whole married life, a happy woman, in these rooms; may
the omen be a happy one for you, my children."

She has taken Calyste's former room for hers. Saintly soul! she
seems intent on laying off her memories and all her conjugal
dignities to invest us with them. The province of Brittany, this
town, this family of ancient morals and ancient customs has, in
spite of certain absurdities which strike the eye of a frivolous
Parisian girl, something inexplicable, something grandiose even in
its trifles, which can only be defined by the word _sacred_.

All the tenants of the vast domains of the house of Guenic, bought
back, as you know, by Mademoiselle des Touches (whom we are going
to visit in her convent), have been in a body to pay their
respects to us. These worthy people, in their holiday costumes,
expressing their genuine joy in the fact that Calyste has now
become really and truly their master, made me understand Brittany,
the feudal system and _old_ France. The whole scene was a festival
I can't describe to you in writing, but I will tell you about it
when we meet. The terms of the leases have been proposed by the
_gars_ themselves. We shall sign them, after making a tour of
inspection round the estates, which have been mortgaged away from
us for one hundred and fifty years! Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel told
me that the _gars_ have reckoned up the revenues and estimated the
rentals with a veracity and justice Parisians would never believe.

We start in three days on horseback for this trip. I will write
you on my return, dear mother. I shall have nothing more to tell
you about myself, for my happiness is at its height--and how can
that be told? I shall write you only what you know already, and
that is, how I love you.

Nantes, June, 1838.

Having now played the role of a chatelaine, adored by her vassals
as if the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 had lowered no banners; and
after rides through forests, and halts at farmhouses, dinners on
oaken tables, covered with centenary linen, bending under Homeric
viands served on antediluvian dishes; after drinking the choicest
wines in goblets to volleys of musketry, accompanied by cries of
"Long live the Guenics!" till I was deafened; after balls, where
the only orchestra was a bagpipe, blown by a man for ten hours;
and after bouquets, and young brides who wanted us to bless them,
and downright weariness, which made me find in my bed a sleep I
never knew before, with delightful awakenings when love shone
radiant as the sun pouring in upon me, and scintillating with a
million of flies, all buzzing in the Breton dialect!--in short,
after a most grotesque residence in the Chateau du Guenic, where
the windows are gates and the cows grace peacefully on the grass
in the halls (which castle we have sworn to repair and to inhabit
for a while very year to the wild acclamations of the clan du
Guenic, a _gars_ of which bore high our banner)--ouf! I am at
Nantes.

But oh! what a day was that when we arrived at the old castle! The
rector came out, mother, with all his clergy, crowned with
flowers, to receive us and bless us, expressing such joy,--the
tears are in my eyes as I think of it. And my noble Calyste! who
played his part of seigneur like a personage in Walter Scott! My
lord received his tenants' homage as if he were back in the
thirteenth century. I heard the girls and the women saying to each
other, "Oh, what a beautiful seigneur we have!" for all the world
like an opera chorus. The old men talked of Calyste's resemblance
to the former Guenics whom they had known in their youth. Ah!
noble, sublime Brittany! land of belief and faith! But progress
has got its eye upon it; bridges are being built, roads made,
ideas are coming, and then farewell to the sublime! The peasants
will certainly not be as free and proud as I have now seen them,
when progress has proved to them that they are Calyste's equals
--if, indeed, they could ever be got to believe it.

After this poem of our pacific Restoration had been sung, and the
contracts and leases signed, we left that ravishing land, all
flowery, gay, solemn, lonely by turns, and came here to kneel with
our happiness at the feet of her who gave it to us.

Calyste and I both felt the need of thanking the sister of the
Visitation. In memory of her he has quartered his own arms with
those of Des Touches, which are: party couped, tranche and taille
or and sinople, on the latter two eagles argent. He means to take
one of the eagles argent for his own supporter and put this motto
in its beak: _Souviegne-vous_.

Yesterday we went to the convent of the ladies of the Visitation,
to which we were taken by the Abbe Grimont, a friend of the du
Guenic family, who told us that your dear Felicite, mamma, was
indeed a saint. She could not very well be anything else to him,
for her conversion, which was thought to be his doing, has led to
his appointment as vicar-general of the diocese. Mademoiselle des
Touches declined to receive Calyste, and would only see me. I
found her slightly changed, thinner and paler; but she seemed much
pleased at my visit.

"Tell Calyste," she said, in a low voice, "that it is a matter of
conscience with me not to see him, for I am permitted to do so. I
prefer not to buy that happiness by months of suffering. Ah, you
do not know what it costs me to reply to the question, 'Of what
are you thinking?' Certainly the mother of the novices has no
conception of the number and extent of the