Works of Honore De Balzac, page 406
“And what is the cause of all these woes?” asked Bianchon.
“Paris is the monster that brings us grief,” replied the Superior Woman. “The evil is seven leagues round, and devastates the whole land. Provincial life is not self-existent. It is only when a nation is divided into fifty minor states that each can have a physiognomy of its own, and then a woman reflects the glory of the sphere where she reigns. This social phenomenon, I am told, may be seen in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany; but in France, as in every country where there is but one capital, a dead level of manners must necessarily result from centralization.”
“Then you would say that manners could only recover their individuality and native distinction by the formation of a federation of French states into one empire?” said Lousteau.
“That is hardly to be wished, for France would have to conquer too many countries,” said Bianchon.
“This misfortune is unknown in England,” exclaimed Dinah. “London does not exert such tyranny as that by which Paris oppresses France — for which, indeed, French ingenuity will at last find a remedy; however, it has a worse disease in its vile hypocrisy, which is a far greater evil!”
“The English aristocracy,” said Lousteau, hastening to put a word in, for he foresaw a Byronic paragraph, “has the advantage over ours of assimilating every form of superiority; it lives in the midst of magnificent parks; it is in London for no more than two months. It lives in the country, flourishing there, and making it flourish.”
“Yes,” said Madame de la Baudraye, “London is the capital of trade and speculation and the centre of government. The aristocracy hold a ‘mote’ there for sixty days only; it gives and takes the passwords of the day, looks in on the legislative cookery, reviews the girls to marry, the carriages to be sold, exchanges greetings, and is away again; and is so far from amusing, that it cannot bear itself for more than the few days known as ‘the season.’”
“Hence,” said Lousteau, hoping to stop this nimble tongue by an epigram, “in Perfidious Albion, as the Constitutionnel has it, you may happen to meet a charming woman in any part of the kingdom.”
“But charming English women!” replied Madame de la Baudraye with a smile. “Here is my mother, I will introduce you,” said she, seeing Madame Piedefer coming towards them.
Having introduced the two Paris lions to the ambitious skeleton that called itself woman under the name of Madame Piedefer — a tall, lean personage, with a red face, teeth that were doubtfully genuine, and hair that was undoubtedly dyed, Dinah left her visitors to themselves for a few minutes.
“Well,” said Gatien to Lousteau, “what do you think of her?”
“I think that the clever woman of Sancerre is simply the greatest chatterbox,” replied the journalist.
“A woman who wants to see you deputy!” cried Gatien. “An angel!”
“Forgive me, I forgot you were in love with her,” said Lousteau. “Forgive the cynicism of an old scamp. — Ask Bianchon; I have no illusions left. I see things as they are. The woman has evidently dried up her mother like a partridge left to roast at too fierce a fire.”
Gatien de Boirouge contrived to let Madame de la Baudraye know what the journalist had said of her in the course of the dinner, which was copious, not to say splendid, and the lady took care not to talk too much while it was proceeding. This lack of conversation betrayed Gatien’s indiscretion. Etienne tried to regain his footing, but all Dinah’s advances were directed to Bianchon.
However, half-way through the evening, the Baroness was gracious to Lousteau again. Have you never observed what great meanness may be committed for small ends? Thus the haughty Dinah, who would not sacrifice herself for a fool, who in the depths of the country led such a wretched life of struggles, of suppressed rebellion, of unuttered poetry, who to get away from Lousteau had climbed the highest and steepest peak of her scorn, and who would not have come down if she had seen the sham Byron at her feet, suddenly stepped off it as she recollected her album.
Madame de la Baudraye had caught the mania for autographs; she possessed an oblong volume which deserved the name of album better than most, as two-thirds of the pages were still blank. The Baronne de Fontaine, who had kept it for three months, had with great difficulty obtained a line from Rossini, six bars written by Meyerbeer, the four lines that Victor Hugo writes in every album, a verse from Lamartine, a few words from Beranger, Calypso ne pouvait se consoler du depart d’Ulysse (the first words of Telemaque) written by George Sand, Scribe’s famous lines on the Umbrella, a sentence from Charles Nodier, an outline of distance by Jules Dupre, the signature of David d’Angers, and three notes written by Hector Berlioz. Monsieur de Clagny, during a visit to Paris, added a song by Lacenaire — a much coveted autograph, two lines from Fieschi, and an extremely short note from Napoleon, which were pasted on to pages of the album. Then Monsieur Gravier, in the course of a tour, had persuaded Mademoiselle Mars to write her name on this album, with Mademoiselles Georges, Taglioni, and Grisi, and some distinguished actors, such as Frederick Lemaitre, Monrose, Bouffe, Rubini, Lablache, Nourrit, and Arnal; for he knew a set of old fellows brought up in the seraglio, as they phrased it, who did him this favor.
This beginning of a collection was all the more precious to Dinah because she was the only person for ten leagues round who owned an album. Within the last two years, however, several young ladies had acquired such books, in which they made their friends and acquaintances write more or less absurd quotations or sentiments. You who spend your lives in collecting autographs, simple and happy souls, like Dutch tulip fanciers, you will excuse Dinah when, in her fear of not keeping her guests more than two days, she begged Bianchon to enrich the volume she handed to him with a few lines of his writing.
The doctor made Lousteau smile by showing him this sentence on the first page:
“What makes the populace dangerous is that it has in its pocket an
absolution for every crime.
“J. B. DE CLAGNY.”
“We will second the man who is brave enough to plead in favor of the Monarchy,” Desplein’s great pupil whispered to Lousteau, and he wrote below:
“The distinction between Napoleon and a water-carrier is evident
only to Society; Nature takes no account of it. Thus Democracy,
which resists inequality, constantly appeals to Nature.
H. BIANCHON.”
“Ah!” cried Dinah, amazed, “you rich men take a gold piece out of your purse as poor men bring out a farthing.... I do not know,” she went on, turning to Lousteau, “whether it is taking an unfair advantage of a guest to hope for a few lines — ”
“Nay, madame, you flatter me. Bianchon is a great man, but I am too insignificant! — Twenty years hence my name will be more difficult to identify than that of the Public Prosecutor whose axiom, written in your album, will designate him as an obscurer Montesquieu. And I should want at least twenty-four hours to improvise some sufficiently bitter reflections, for I could only describe what I feel.”
“I wish you needed a fortnight,” said Madame de la Baudraye graciously, as she handed him the book. “I should keep you here all the longer.”
At five next morning all the party in the Chateau d’Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a day’s sport for the Parisians — less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty thousand francs a year in the returns of the estate of Anzy.
“Do you know why the Public Prosecutor has not come out with us?” asked Gatien Boirouge of Monsieur Gravier.
“Why he told us that he was obliged to sit to-day; the minor cases are before the Court,” replied the other.
“And did you believe that?” cried Gatien. “Well, my papa said to me, ‘Monsieur Lebas will not join you early, for Monsieur de Clagny has begged him as his deputy to sit for him!’”
“Indeed!” said Gravier, changing countenance. “And Monsieur de la Baudraye is gone to La Charite!”
“But why do you meddle in such matters?” said Bianchon to Gatien.
“Horace is right,” said Lousteau. “I cannot imagine why you trouble your heads so much about each other; you waste your time in frivolities.”
Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say that newspaper epigrams and the satire of the “funny column” were incomprehensible at Sancerre.
On reaching a copse, Monsieur Gravier left the two great men and Gatien, under the guidance of a keeper, to make their way through a little ravine.
“Well, we must wait for Monsieur Gravier,” said Bianchon, when they had reached a clearing.
“You may be a great physician,” said Gatien, “but you are ignorant of provincial life. You mean to wait for Monsieur Gravier? — By this time he is running like a hare, in spite of his little round stomach; he is within twenty minutes of Anzy by now — — ” Gatien looked at his watch. “Good! he will be just in time.”
“Where?”
“At the chateau for breakfast,” replied Gatien. “Do you suppose I could rest easy if Madame de la Baudraye were alone with Monsieur de Clagny? There are two of them now; they will keep an eye on each other. Dinah will be well guarded.”
“Ah, ha! Then Madame de la Baudraye has not yet made up her mind?” said Lousteau.
“So mamma thinks. For my part, I am afraid that Monsieur de Clagny has at last succeeded in bewitching Madame de la Baudraye. If he has been able to show her that he had any chance of putting on the robes of the Keeper of the Seals, he may have hidden his moleskin complexion, his terrible eyes, his touzled mane, his voice like a hoarse crier’s, his bony figure, like that of a starveling poet, and have assumed all the charms of Adonis. If Dinah sees Monsieur de Clagny as Attorney-General, she may see him as a handsome youth. Eloquence has great privileges. — Besides, Madame de la Baudraye is full of ambition. She does not like Sancerre, and dreams of the glories of Paris.”
“But what interest have you in all this?” said Lousteau. “If she is in love with the Public Prosecutor! — Ah! you think she will not love him for long, and you hope to succeed him.”
“You who live in Paris,” said Gatien, “meet as many different women as there are days in the year. But at Sancerre, where there are not half a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite distance by looks as scornful as though she were of the blood royal, a young man of two-and-twenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at her secrets, since she must then treat him with some consideration.”
“Consideration! So that is what you call it in these parts?” said the journalist with a smile.
“I should suppose Madame de la Baudraye to have too much good taste to trouble her head about that ugly ape,” said Bianchon.
“Horace,” said Lousteau, “look here, O learned interpreter of human nature, let us lay a trap for the Public Prosecutor; we shall be doing our friend Gatien a service, and get a laugh out of it. I do not love Public Prosecutors.”
“You have a keen intuition of destiny,” said Horace. “But what can we do?”
“Well, after dinner we will tell sundry little anecdotes of wives caught out by their husbands, killed, murdered under the most terrible circumstances. — Then we shall see the faces that Madame de la Baudraye and de Clagny will make.”
“Not amiss!” said Bianchon; “one or the other must surely, by look or gesture — ”
“I know a newspaper editor,” Lousteau went on, addressing Gatien, “who, anxious to forefend a grievous fate, will take no stories but such as tell the tale of lovers burned, hewn, pounded, or cut to pieces; of wives boiled, fried, or baked; he takes them to his wife to read, hoping that sheer fear will keep her faithful — satisfied with that humble alternative, poor man! ‘You see, my dear, to what the smallest error may lead you!’ says he, epitomizing Arnolfe’s address to Agnes.”
“Madame de la Baudraye is quite guiltless; this youth sees double,” said Bianchon. “Madame Piedefer seems to me far too pious to invite her daughter’s lover to the Chateau d’Anzy. Madame de la Baudraye would have to hoodwink her mother, her husband, her maid, and her mother’s maid; that is too much to do. I acquit her.”
“Well with more reason because her husband never ‘quits her,’” said Gatien, laughing at his own wit.
“We can easily remember two or three stories that will make Dinah quake,” said Lousteau. “Young man — and you too, Bianchon — let me beg you to maintain a stern demeanor; be thorough diplomatists, an easy manner without exaggeration, and watch the faces of the two criminals, you know, without seeming to do so — out of the corner of your eye, or in a glass, on the sly. This morning we will hunt the hare, this evening we will hunt the Public Prosecutor.”
The evening began with a triumph for Lousteau, who returned the album to the lady with this elegy written in it:
SPLEEN
You ask for verse from me, the feeble prey
Of this self-seeking world, a waif and stray
With none to whom to cling;
From me — unhappy, purblind, hopeless devil!
Who e’en in what is good see only evil
In any earthly thing!
This page, the pastime of a dame so fair,
May not reflect the shadow of my care,
For all things have their place.
Of love, to ladies bright, the poet sings,
Of joy, and balls, and dress, and dainty things —
Nay, or of God and Grace.
It were a bitter jest to bid the pen
Of one so worn with life, so hating men,
Depict a scene of joy.
Would you exult in sight to one born blind,
Or — cruel! of a mother’s love remind
Some hapless orphan boy?
When cold despair has gripped a heart still fond,
When there is no young heart that will respond
To it in love, the future is a lie.
If there is none to weep when he is sad,
And share his woe, a man were better dead! —
And so I soon must die.
Give me your pity! often I blaspheme
The sacred name of God. Does it not seem
That I was born in vain?
Why should I bless him? Or why thank Him, since
He might have made me handsome, rich, a prince —
And I am poor and plain?
ETIENNE LOUSTEAU. September 1836, Chateau d’Anzy.
“And you have written those verses since yesterday?” cried Clagny in a suspicious tone.
“Dear me, yes, as I was following the game; it is only too evident! I would gladly have done something better for madame.”
“The verses are exquisite!” cried Dinah, casting up her eyes to heaven.
“They are, alas! the expression of a too genuine feeling,” replied Lousteau, in a tone of deep dejection.
The reader will, of course, have guessed that the journalist had stored these lines in his memory for ten years at least, for he had written them at the time of the Restoration in disgust at being unable to get on. Madame de la Baudraye gazed at him with such pity as the woes of genius inspire; and Monsieur de Clagny, who caught her expression, turned in hatred against this sham Jeune Malade (the name of an Elegy written by Millevoye). He sat down to backgammon with the cure of Sancerre. The Presiding Judge’s son was so extremely obliging as to place a lamp near the two players in such a way as that the light fell full on Madame de la Baudraye, who took up her work; she was embroidering in coarse wool a wicker-plait paper-basket. The three conspirators sat close at hand.
“For whom are you decorating that pretty basket, madame?” said Lousteau. “For some charity lottery, perhaps?”
“No,” she said, “I think there is too much display in charity done to the sound of a trumpet.”
“You are very indiscreet,” said Monsieur Gravier.
“Can there be any indiscretion,” said Lousteau, “in inquiring who the happy mortal may be in whose room that basket is to stand?”
“There is no happy mortal in the case,” said Dinah; “it is for Monsieur de la Baudraye.”
The Public Prosecutor looked slily at Madame de la Baudraye and her work, as if he had said to himself, “I have lost my paper-basket!”
“Why, madame, may we not think him happy in having a lovely wife, happy in her decorating his paper-baskets so charmingly? The colors are red and black, like Robin Goodfellow. If ever I marry, I only hope that twelve years after, my wife’s embroidered baskets may still be for me.”
“And why should they not be for you?” said the lady, fixing her fine gray eyes, full of invitation, on Etienne’s face.
“Parisians believe in nothing,” said the lawyer bitterly. “The virtue of women is doubted above all things with terrible insolence. Yes, for some time past the books you have written, you Paris authors, your farces, your dramas, all your atrocious literature, turn on adultery — ”
“Come, come, Monsieur the Public Prosecutor,” retorted Etienne, laughing, “I left you to play your game in peace, I did not attack you, and here you are bringing an indictment against me. On my honor as a journalist, I have launched above a hundred articles against the writers you speak of; but I confess that in attacking them it was to attempt something like criticism. Be just; if you condemn them, you must condemn Homer, whose Iliad turns on Helen of Troy; you must condemn Milton’s Paradise Lost. Eve and her serpent seem to me a pretty little case of symbolical adultery; you must suppress the Psalms of David, inspired by the highly adulterous love affairs of that Louis XIV. of Judah; you must make a bonfire of Mithridate, le Tartuffe, l’Ecole des Femmes, Phedre, Andromaque, le Mariage de Figaro, Dante’s Inferno, Petrarch’s Sonnets, all the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the romances of the Middle Ages, the History of France, and of Rome, etc., etc. Excepting Bossuet’s Histoire des Variations and Pascal’s Provinciales, I do not think there are many books left to read if you insist on eliminating all those in which illicit love is mentioned.”
