Works of Honore De Balzac, page 190
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 ideas which are rushing
through my mind when she asks that question. Sometimes I am seeing
Italy or Paris, with all its sights; always thinking, however, of
Calyste, who is” — she said this in that poetic way you know and
admire so much — ”who is the sun of memory to me. I found,” she
continued, “that I was too old to be received among the
Carmelites, and I have entered the order of Saint-Francois de
Sales solely because he said, ‘I will bare your heads instead of
your feet,’ — objecting, as he did, to austerities which mortified
the body only. It is, in truth, the head that sins. The saintly
bishop was right to make his rule austere toward the intellect,
and terrible against the will. That is what I sought; for my head
was the guilty part of me. It deceived me as to my heart until I
reached that fatal age of forty, when, for a few brief moments, we
are forty times happier than young women, and then, speedily,
fifty times more unhappy. But, my child, tell me,” she asked,
ceasing with visible satisfaction to speak of herself, “are you
happy?”
“You see me under all the enchantments of love and happiness,” I
answered.
“Calyste is as good and simple as he is noble and beautiful,” she
said, gravely. “I have made you my heiress in more things than
property; you now possess the double ideal of which I dreamed. I
rejoice in what I have done,” she continued, after a pause. “But,
my child, make no mistake; do yourself no wrong. You have easily
won happiness; you have only to stretch out your hand to take it,
and it is yours; but be careful to preserve it. If you had come
here solely to carry away with you the counsels that my knowledge
of your husband alone can give you, the journey would be well
repaid. Calyste is moved at this moment by a communicated passion,
but you have not inspired it. To make your happiness lasting, try,
my dear child, to give him something of his former emotions. In
the interests of both of you, be capricious, be coquettish; to
tell you the truth, you must be. I am not advising any odious
scheming, or petty tyranny; this that I tell you is the science of
a woman’s life. Between usury and prodigality, my child, is
economy. Study, therefore, to acquire honorably a certain empire
over Calyste. These are the last words on earthly interests that I
shall ever utter, and I have kept them to say as we part; for
there are times when I tremble in my conscience lest to save
Calyste I may have sacrificed you. Bind him to you, firmly, give
him children, let him respect their mother in you — and,” she
added, in a low and trembling voice, “manage, if you can, that he
shall never again see Beatrix.”
That name plunged us both into a sort of stupor; we looked into
each other’s eyes, exchanging a vague uneasiness.
“Do you return to Guerande?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Never go to Les Touches. I did wrong to give him that property.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Child!” she answered, “Les Touches for you is Bluebeard’s
chamber. There is nothing so dangerous as to wake a sleeping
passion.”
I have given you, dear mamma, the substance, or at any rate, the
meaning of our conversation. If Mademoiselle des Touches made me
talk to her freely, she also gave me much to think of; and all the
more because, in the delight of this trip, and the charm of these
relations with my Calyste, I had well-nigh forgotten the serious
situation of which I spoke to you in my first letter, and about
which you warned me.
But oh! mother, it is impossible for me to follow these counsels.
I cannot put an appearance of opposition or caprice into my love;
it would falsify it. Calyste will do with me what he pleases.
According to your theory, the more I am a woman the more I make
myself his toy; for I am, and I know it, horribly weak in my
happiness; I cannot resist a single glance of my lord. But no! I
do not abandon myself to love; I only cling to it, as a mother
presses her infant to her breast, fearing some evil.
Note. — When “Beatrix” was first published, in 1839, the volume ended
with the following paragraph: “Calyste, rich and married to the
most beautiful woman in Paris, retains a sadness in his soul which
nothing dissipates, — not even the birth of a son at Guerande, in
1839, to the great joy of Zephirine du Guenic. Beatrix lives still
in the depths of his heart, and it is impossible to foresee what
disasters might result should he again meet with Madame de
Rochefide.” In 1842 this concluding paragraph was suppressed and
the story continued as here follows. — TR.
XVIII. THE END OF A HONEY-MOON
Guerande, July, 1838.
To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu:
Ah, my dear mamma! at the end of three months to know what it is
to be jealous! My heart completes its experience; I now feel the
deepest hatred and the deepest love! I am more than betrayed, — I
am not loved. How fortunate for me to have a mother, a heart on
which to cry out as I will!
It is enough to say to wives who are still half girls: “Here’s a
key rusty with memories among those of your palace; go everywhere,
enjoy everything, but keep away from Les Touches!” to make us
eager to go there hot-foot, our eyes shining with the curiosity of
Eve. What a root of bitterness Mademoiselle des Touches planted in
my love! Why did she forbid me to go to Les Touches? What sort of
happiness is mine if it depends on an excursion, on a visit to a
paltry house in Brittany? Why should I fear? Is there anything to
fear? Add to this reasoning of Mrs. Blue-Beard the desire that
nips all women to know if their power is solid or precarious, and
you’ll understand how it was that I said one day, with an
unconcerned little air: —
“What sort of place is Les Touches?”
“Les Touches belongs to you,” said my divine, dear mother-in-law.
“If Calyste had never set foot in Les Touches!” — cried my aunt
Zephirine, shaking her head.
“He would not be my husband,” I added.
“Then you know what happened there?” said my mother-in-law, slyly.
“It is a place of perdition!” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.
“Mademoiselle des Touches committed many sins there, for which she
is now asking the pardon of God.”
“But they saved the soul of that noble woman, and made the fortune
of a convent,” cried the Chevalier du Halga. “The Abbe Grimont
told me she had given a hundred thousand francs to the nuns of the
Visitation.”
“Should you like to go to Les Touches?” asked my mother-in-law.
“It is worth seeing.”
“No, no!” I said hastily.
Doesn’t this little scene read to you like a page out of some
diabolical drama?
It was repeated again and again under various pretexts. At last my
mother-in-law said to me: “I understand why you do not go to Les
Touches, and I think you are right.”
Oh! you must admit, mamma, that an involuntary, unconscious stab
like that would have decided you to find out if your happiness
rested on such a frail foundation that it would perish at a mere
touch. To do Calyste justice, he never proposed to me to visit
that hermitage, now his property. But as soon as we love we are
creatures devoid of common-sense, and this silence, this reserve
piqued me; so I said to him one day: “What are you afraid of at
Les Touches, that you alone never speak of the place?”
“Let us go there,” he replied.
So there I was caught, — like other women who want to be caught,
and who trust to chance to cut the Gordian knot of their
indecision. So to Les Touches we went.
It is enchanting, in a style profoundly artistic. I took delight
in that place of horror where Mademoiselle des Touches had so
earnestly forbidden me to go. Poisonous flowers are all charming;
Satan sowed them — for the devil has flowers as well as God; we
have only to look within our souls to see the two shared in the
making of us. What delicious acrity in a situation where I played,
not with fire, but — with ashes! I studied Calyste; the point was
to know if that passion was thoroughly extinct. I watched, as you
may well believe, every wind that blew; I kept an eye upon his
face as he went from room to room and from one piece of furniture
to another, exactly like a child who is looking for some hidden
thing. Calyste seemed thoughtful, but at first I thought that I
had vanquished the past. I felt strong enough to mention Madame de
Rochefide-whom in my heart I called la Rocheperfide. At last we
went to see the famous bush were Beatrix was caught when he flung
her into the sea that she might never belong to another man.
“She must be light indeed to have stayed there,” I said laughing.
Calyste kept silence, so I added, “We’ll respect the dead.”
Still Calyste was silent.
“Have I displeased you?” I asked.
“No; but cease to galvanize that passion,” he answered.
What a speech! Calyste, when he saw me all cast down by it,
redoubled his care and tenderness.
August.
I was, alas! at the edge of a precipice, amusing myself, like the
innocent heroines of all melodramas, by gathering flowers.
Suddenly a horrible thought rode full tilt through my happiness,
like the horse in the German ballad. I thought I saw that
Calyste’s love was increasing through his reminiscences; that he
was expending on me the stormy emotions I revived by reminding
him of the coquetries of that hateful Beatrix, — just think of it!
that cold, unhealthy nature, so persistent yet so flabby,
