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Title: The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: June, 1997  [Etext #1344]
Posting Date: February 22, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN ***




Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN


By Honore De Balzac



Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley



                            DEDICATION

                       To Theophile Gautier





THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN




CHAPTER I. THE LAST WORD OF TWO GREAT COQUETTES


After the disasters of the revolution of July, which destroyed so many
aristocratic fortunes dependent on the court, Madame la Princesse de
Cadignan was clever enough to attribute to political events the total
ruin she had caused by her own extravagance. The prince left France
with the royal family, and never returned to it, leaving the princess in
Paris, protected by the fact of his absence; for their debts, which
the sale of all their salable property had not been able to extinguish,
could only be recovered through him. The revenues of the entailed
estates had been seized. In short, the affairs of this great family were
in as bad a state as those of the elder branch of the Bourbons.

This woman, so celebrated under her first name of Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, very wisely decided to live in retirement, and to make
herself, if possible, forgotten. Paris was then so carried away by the
whirling current of events that the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, buried in
the Princesse de Cadignan, a change of name unknown to most of the new
actors brought upon the stage of society by the revolution of July, did
really become a stranger in her own city.

In Paris the title of duke ranks all others, even that of prince;
though, in heraldic theory, free of all sophism, titles signify nothing;
there is absolute equality among gentlemen. This fine equality was
formerly maintained by the House of France itself; and in our day it is
so still, at least, nominally; witness the care with which the kings of
France give to their sons the simple title of count. It was in virtue of
this system that Francois I. crushed the splendid titles assumed by the
pompous Charles the Fifth, by signing his answer: "Francois, seigneur
de Vanves." Louis XI. did better still by marrying his daughter to
an untitled gentleman, Pierre de Beaujeu. The feudal system was so
thoroughly broken up by Louis XIV. that the title of duke became, during
his reign, the supreme honor of the aristocracy, and the most coveted.

Nevertheless there are two or three families in France in which the
principality, richly endowed in former times, takes precedence of
the duchy. The house of Cadignan, which possesses the title of Duc de
Maufrigneuse for its eldest sons, is one of these exceptional families.
Like the princes of the house of Rohan in earlier days, the princes of
Cadignan had the right to a throne in their own domain; they could have
pages and gentlemen in their service. This explanation is necessary,
as much to escape foolish critics who know nothing, as to record the
customs of a world which, we are told, is about to disappear, and which,
evidently, so many persons are assisting to push away without knowing
what it is.

The Cadignans bear: or, five lozenges sable appointed, placed fess-wise,
with the word "Memini" for motto, a crown with a cap of maintenance,
no supporters or mantle. In these days the great crowd of strangers
flocking to Paris, and the almost universal ignorance of the science of
heraldry, are beginning to bring the title of prince into fashion.
There are no real princes but those possessed of principalities, to whom
belongs the title of highness. The disdain shown by the French nobility
for the title of prince, and the reasons which caused Louis XIV. to give
supremacy to the title of duke, have prevented Frenchmen from claiming
the appellation of "highness" for the few princes who exist in France,
those of Napoleon excepted. This is why the princes of Cadignan hold an
inferior position, nominally, to the princes of the continent.

The members of the society called the faubourg Saint-Germain protected
the princess by a respectful silence due to her name, which is one
of those that all men honor, to her misfortunes, which they ceased to
discuss, and to her beauty, the only thing she saved of her departed
opulence. Society, of which she had once been the ornament, was thankful
to her for having, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered herself
in her own home. This act of good taste was for her, more than for any
other woman, an immense sacrifice. Great deeds are always so keenly felt
in France that the princess gained, by her retreat, as much as she had
lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.

She now saw only one of her old friends, the Marquise d'Espard, and even
to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties. The princess
and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a certain
amount of secrecy. When the princess went to dine with her friend,
the marquise closed her doors. Madame d'Espard treated the princess
charmingly; she changed her box at the opera, leaving the first tier for
a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame de Cadignan could come
to the theatre unseen, and depart incognito. Few women would have been
capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the pleasure of bearing in
their train a fallen rival, and of publicly being her benefactress. Thus
relieved of the necessity for costly toilets, the princess could enjoy
the theatre, whither she went in Madame d'Espard's carriage, which she
would never have accepted openly in the daytime. No one has ever
known Madame d'Espard's reasons for behaving thus to the Princesse de
Cadignan; but her conduct was admirable, and for a long time included a
number of little acts which, viewed single, seem mere trifles, but taken
in the mass become gigantic.

In 1832, three years had thrown a mantle of snow over the follies and
adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so
thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall
them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose follies
might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained a woman
still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite justified
in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc Georges
de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome as Antinous, poor as
Job, who was expected to obtain great successes, and for whom his mother
desired, above all things, to find a rich wife. Perhaps this hope was
the secret of the intimacy she still kept up with the marquise, in whose
salon, which was one of the first in Paris, she might eventually be able
to choose among many heiresses for Georges' wife. The princess saw five
years between the present moment and her son's marriage,--five solitary
and desolate years; for, in order to obtain such a marriage for her
son, she knew that her own conduct must be marked in the corner with
discretion.

The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a small house, of which
she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made the
most of the relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of the great
lady was still redolent about her. She was still surrounded by beautiful
things which recalled her former existence. On her chimney-piece was a
fine miniature portrait of Charles X., by Madame Mirbel, beneath which
were engraved the words, "Given by the King"; and, as a pendant, the
portrait of "Madame", who was always her kind friend. On a table lay an
album of costliest price, such as none of the bourgeoises who now lord
it in our industrial and fault-finding society would have dared to
exhibit. This album contained portraits, about thirty in number, of
her intimate friends, whom the world, first and last, had given her as
lovers. The number was a calumny; but had rumor said ten, it might have
been, as her friend Madame d'Espard remarked, good, sound gossip. The
portraits of Maxime de Trailles, de Marsay, Rastignac, the Marquis
d'Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the Marquis de Ronquerolles and
d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs de Grandlieu and de
Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the handsome Lucien de Rubempre,
had all been treated with the utmost coquetry of brush and pencil by
celebrated artists. As the princess now received only two or three of
these personages, she called the book, jokingly, the collection of her
errors.

Misfortune had made this woman a good mother. During the fifteen years
of the Restoration she had amused herself far too much to think of
her son; but on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist
bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed to its extreme,
might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible
persons, who pardon everything to a good mother. She loved her son all
the more because she had nothing else to love. Georges de Maufrigneuse
was, moreover, one of those children who flatter the vanities of a
mother; and the princess had, accordingly, made all sorts of sacrifices
for him. She hired a stable and coach-house, above which he lived in a
little entresol with three rooms looking on the street, and charmingly
furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a saddle-horse,
a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For herself, she had only
her own maid, and as cook, a former kitchen-maid. The duke's groom
had, therefore, rather a hard place. Toby, formerly tiger to the "late"
Beaudenord (such was the jesting term applied by the gay world to that
ruined gentleman),--Toby, who at twenty-five years of age was still
considered only fourteen, was expected to groom the horses, clean the
cabriolet, or the tilbury, and the harnesses, accompany his master, take
care of the apartments, and be in the princess's antechamber to announce
a visitor, if, by chance, she happened to receive one.

When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had been
under the Restoration,--one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling queen,
whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of fashion
in London,--there was something touching in the sight of her in that
humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away from her
splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled her to keep,
and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished. The woman who
thought she was scarcely well served by thirty servants, who possessed
the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris, and the loveliest
little private apartments, and who made them the scene of such
delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five rooms,--an
antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a dressing-room,
with two women-servants only.

"Ah! she is devoted to her son," said that clever creature, Madame
d'Espard, "and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would
ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent
resolution! Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged
her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit."

Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate, and
to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly
lost. Those only who have an inner consciousness of being nothing in
themselves, show regrets in falling, or struggle, murmuring, to return
to a past which can never return,--a fact of which they themselves are
well aware. Compelled to do without the choice exotics in the midst of
which she had lived, and which set off so charmingly her whole being
(for it is impossible not to compare her to a flower), the princess
had wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there she enjoyed a pretty
little garden which belonged to it,--a garden full of shrubs, and an
always verdant turf, which brightened her peaceful retreat. She had
about twelve thousand francs a year; but that modest income was partly
made up of an annual stipend sent her by the old Duchesse de Navarreins,
paternal aunt of the young duke, and another stipend given by her
mother, the Duchesse d'Uxelles, who was living on her estate in the
country, where she economized as old duchesses alone know how to
economize; for Harpagon is a mere novice compared to them. The princess
still retained some of her past relations with the exiled royal family;
and it was in her house that the marshal to whom we owe the conquest of
Africa had conferences, at the time of "Madame's" attempt in La Vendee,
with the principal leaders of legitimist opinion,--so great was the
obscurity in which the princess lived, and so little distrust did the
government feel for her in her present distress.

Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth year, the bankruptcy of
love, beyond which there is so little for a woman as woman, the princess
had flung herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to reading,
she who for sixteen years had felt a cordial horror for serious things.
Literature and politics are to-day what piety and devotion once were
to her sex,--the last refuge of their feminine pretensions. In her
late social circle it was said that Diane was writing a book. Since
her transformation from a queen and beauty to a woman of intellect, the
princess had contrived to make a reception in her little house a great
honor which distinguished the favored person. Sheltered by her supposed
occupation, she was able to deceive one of her former adorers, de
Marsay, the most influential personage of the political bourgeoisie
brought to the fore in July 1830. She received him sometimes in the
evenings, and, occupied his attention while the marshal and a few
legitimists were talking, in a low voice, in her bedroom, about
the recovery of power, which could be attained only by a general
co-operation of ideas,--the one element of success which all
conspirators overlook. It was the clever vengeance of the pretty woman,
who thus inveigled the prime minister, and made him act as screen for a
conspiracy against his own government.

This adventure, worthy of the finest days of the Fronde, was the text
of a very witty letter, in which the princess rendered to "Madame" an
account of the negotiations. The Duc de Maufrigneuse went to La Vendee,
and was able to return secretly without being compromised, but not
without taking part in "Madame's" perils; the latter, however, sent
him home the moment she saw that her cause was lost. Perhaps, had he
remained, the eager vigilance of the young man might have foiled that
treachery. However great the faults of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse may
have seemed in the eyes of the bourgeoisie, the behavior of her son on
this occasion certainly effaced them in the eyes of the aristocracy.
There was great nobility and grandeur in thus risking her only son, and
the heir of an historic name. Some persons are said to intentionally
cover the faults of their private life by public services, and vice
versa; but the Princesse de Cadignan made no such calculation. Possibly
those who apparently so conduct themselves make none. Events count for
much in such cases.

On one of the first fine days in the month of May, 1833, the Marquise
d'Espard and the princess were turning about--one could hardly call
it walking--in the single path which wound round the grass-plat in
the garden, about half-past two in the afternoon, just as the sun was
leaving it. The rays reflected on the walls gave a warm atmosphere
to the little space, which was fragrant with flowers, the gift of the
marquise.

"We shall soon lose de Marsay," said the marquise; "and with him will
disappear your last hope of fortune for your son. Ever since you played
him that clever trick, he has returned to his affection for you."

"My son will never capitulate to the younger branch," returned the
princess, "if he has to die of hunger, or I have to work with my hands
to feed him. Besides, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne has no aversion to him."

"Children don't bind themselves to their parents' principles," said
Madame d'Espard.

"Don't let us talk about it," said the princess. "If I can't coax over
the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne, I shall marry Georges to the daughter of
some iron-founderer, as that little d'Esgrignon did."

"Did you love Victurnien?" asked the marquise.

"No," replied the princess, gravely, "d'Esgrignon's simplicity was
really only a sort of provincial silliness, which I perceived rather too
late--or, if you choose, too soon."

"And de Marsay?"

"De Marsay played with me as if I were a doll. I was so young at the
time! We never love men who pretend to teach us; they rub up all our
little vanities."

"And that wretched boy who hanged himself?"

"Lucien? An Antinous and a great poet. I worshiped him in all
conscience, and I might have been happy. But he was in love with a girl
of the town; and I gave him up to Madame de Serizy.... If he had cared
to love me, should I have given him up?"

"What an odd thing, that you should come into collision with an Esther!"

"She was handsomer than I," said the Princess.--"Very soon it shall be
three years that I have lived in solitude," she resumed, after a pause,
"and this tranquillity has nothing painful to me about it. To you
alone can I dare to say that I feel I am happy. I was surfeited with
adoration, weary of pleasure, emotional on the surface of things, but
conscious that emotion itself never reached my heart. I have found all
the men whom I have known petty, paltry, superficial; none of them ever
caused me a surprise; they had no innocence, no grandeur, no delicacy. I
wish I could have met with one man able to inspire me with respect."

"Then are you like me, my dear?" asked the marquise; "have you never
felt the emotion of love while trying to love?"

"Never," replied the princess, laying her hand on the arm of her friend.

They turned and seated themselves on a rustic bench beneath a jasmine
then coming into flower. Each had uttered one of those sayings that are
solemn to women who have reached their age.

"Like you," resumed the princess, "I have received more love than most
women; but through all my many adventures, I have never found happiness.
I committed great follies, but they had an object, and that object
retreated as fast as I approached it. I feel to-day in my heart, old
as it is, an innocence which has never been touched. Yes, under all my
experience, lies a first love intact,--just as I myself, in spite of all
my losses and fatigues, feel young and beautiful. We may love and not
be happy; we may be happy and never love; but to love and be happy, to
unite those two immense human experiences, is a miracle. That miracle
has not taken place for me."

"Nor for me," said Madame d'Espard.

"I own I am pursued in this retreat by dreadful regret: I have amused
myself all through life, but I have never loved."

"What an incredible secret!" cried the marquise.

"Ah! my dear," replied the princess, "such secrets we can tell to
ourselves, you and I, but nobody in Paris would believe us."

"And," said the marquise, "if we were not both over thirty-six years of
age, perhaps we would not tell them to each other."

"Yes; when women are young they have so many stupid conceits," replied
the princess. "We are like those poor young men who play with a
toothpick to pretend they have dined."

"Well, at any rate, here we are!" said Madame d'Espard, with coquettish
grace, and a charming gesture of well-informed innocence; "and, it seems
to me, sufficiently alive to think of taking our revenge."

"When you told me, the other day, that Beatrix had gone off with Conti,
I thought of it all night long," said the princess, after a pause. "I
suppose there was happiness in sacrificing her position, her future, and
renouncing society forever."

"She was a little fool," said Madame d'Espard, gravely. "Mademoiselle
des Touches was delighted to get rid of Conti. Beatrix never perceived
how that surrender, made by a superior woman who never for a moment
defended her claims, proved Conti's nothingness."

"Then you think she will be unhappy?"

"She is so now," replied Madame d'Espard. "Why did she leave her
husband? What an acknowledgment of weakness!"

"Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was not influenced by the
desire to enjoy a true love in peace?" asked the princess.

"No; she was simply imitating Madame de Beausant and Madame de Langeais,
who, be it said, between you and me, would have been, in a less vulgar
period than ours, the La Villiere, the Diane de Poitiers, the Gabrielle
d'Estrees of history."

"Less the king, my dear. Ah! I wish I could evoke the shades of those
women, and ask them--"

"But," said the marquise, interrupting the princess, "why ask the dead?
We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this very
subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she married
that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman in the
world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her; they
are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments, like
that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin, Madame de
Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I don't
know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme compliment of thinking
we are two rakes worthy of the court of the regent; whereas we are, in
truth, as innocent as a couple of school-girls."

"I should like that sort of innocence," cried the princess, laughing;
"but ours is worse, and it is very humiliating. Well, it is a
mortification we offer up in expiation of our fruitless search; yes,
my dear, fruitless, for it isn't probable we shall find in our autumn
season the fine flower we missed in the spring and summer."

"That's not the question," resumed the marquise, after a meditative
pause. "We are both still beautiful enough to inspire love, but we could
never convince any one of our innocence and virtue."

"If it were a lie, how easy to dress it up with commentaries, and
serve it as some delicious fruit to be eagerly swallowed! But how is
it possible to get a truth believed? Ah! the greatest of men have been
mistaken there!" added the princess, with one of those meaning smiles
which the pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone has rendered.

"Fools love well, sometimes," returned the marquise.

"But in this case," said the princess, "fools wouldn't have enough
credulity in their nature."

"You are right," said the marquise. "But what we ought to look for is
neither a fool nor even a man of talent. To solve our problem we need a
man of genius. Genius alone has the faith of childhood, the religion of
love, and willingly allows us to band its eyes. Look at Canalis and the
Duchesse de Chaulieu! Though we have both encountered men of genius,
they were either too far removed from us or too busy, and we too
absorbed, too frivolous."

"Ah! how I wish I might not leave this world without knowing the
happiness of true love," exclaimed the princess.

"It is nothing to inspire it," said Madame d'Espard; "the thing is to
feel it. I see many women who are only the pretext for a passion without
being both its cause and its effect."

"The last love I inspired was a beautiful and sacred thing," said the
princess. "It had a future in it. Chance had brought me, for once in a
way, the man of genius who is due to us, and yet so difficult to obtain;
there are more pretty women than men of genius. But the devil interfered
with the affair."

"Tell me about it, my dear; this is all news to me."

"I first noticed this beautiful passion about the middle of the winter
of 1829. Every Friday, at the opera, I observed a young man, about
thirty years of age, in the orchestra stalls, who evidently came there
for me. He was always in the same stall, gazing at me with eyes of fire,
but, seemingly, saddened by the distance between us, perhaps by the
hopelessness of reaching me."

"Poor fellow! When a man loves he becomes eminently stupid," said the
marquise.

"Between every act he would slip into the corridor," continued the
princess, smiling at her friend's epigrammatic remark. "Once or twice,
either to see me or to make me see him, he looked through the glass
sash of the box exactly opposite to mine. If I received a visit, I was
certain to see him in the corridor close to my door, casting a furtive
glance upon me. He had apparently learned to know the persons belonging
to my circle; and he followed them when he saw them turning in the
direction of my box, in order to obtain the benefit of the opening door.
I also found my mysterious adorer at the Italian opera-house; there he
had a stall directly opposite to my box, where he could gaze at me in
naive ecstasy--oh! it was pretty! On leaving either house I always found
him planted in the lobby, motionless; he was elbowed and jostled, but
he never moved. His eyes grew less brilliant if he saw me on the arm of
some favorite. But not a word, not a letter, no demonstration. You must
acknowledge that was in good taste. Sometimes, on getting home late
at night, I found him sitting upon one of the stone posts of the
porte-cochere. This lover of mine had very handsome eyes, a long, thick,
fan-shaped beard, with a moustache and side-whiskers; nothing could be
seen of his skin but his white cheek-bones, and a noble forehead; it was
truly an antique head. The prince, as you know, defended the Tuileries
on the riverside, during the July days. He returned to Saint-Cloud that
night, when all was lost, and said to me: 'I came near being killed at
four o'clock. I was aimed at by one of the insurgents, when a young
man, with a long beard, whom I have often seen at the opera, and who was
leading the attack, threw up the man's gun, and saved me.' So my adorer
was evidently a republican! In 1831, after I came to lodge in this
house, I found him, one day, leaning with his back against the wall of
it; he seemed pleased with my disasters; possibly he may have thought
they drew us nearer together. But after the affair of Saint-Merri I
saw him no more; he was killed there. The evening before the funeral of
General Lamarque, I had gone out on foot with my son, and my republican
accompanied us, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, from the Madeleine
to the Passage des Panoramas, where I was going."

"Is that all?" asked the marquise.

"Yes, all," replied the princess. "Except that on the morning
Saint-Merri was taken, a gamin came here and insisted on seeing me. He
gave me a letter, written on common paper, signed by my republican."

"Show it to me," said the marquise.

"No, my dear. Love was too great and too sacred in the heart of that
man to let me violate its secrets. The letter, short and terrible, still
stirs my soul when I think of it. That dead man gives me more emotions
than all the living men I ever coquetted with; he constantly recurs to
my mind."

"What was his name?" asked the marquise.

"Oh! a very common one: Michel Chrestien."

"You have done well to tell me," said Madame d'Espard, eagerly. "I have
often heard of him. This Michel Chrestien was the intimate friend of
a remarkable man you have already expressed a wish to see,--Daniel
d'Arthez, who comes to my house some two or three times a year.
Chrestien, who was really killed at Saint-Merri, had no lack of friends.
I have heard it said that he was one of those born statesmen to whom,
like de Marsay, nothing is wanting but opportunity to become all they
might be."

"Then he had better be dead," said the princess, with a melancholy air,
under which she concealed her thoughts.

"Will you come to my house some evening and meet d'Arthez?" said the
marquise. "You can talk of your ghost."

"Yes, I will," replied the princess.




CHAPTER II. DANIEL D'ARTHEZ


A few days after this conversation Blondet and Rastignac, who knew
d'Arthez, promised Madame d'Espard that they would bring him to dine
with her. This promise might have proved rash had it not been for
the name of the princess, a meeting with whom was not a matter of
indifference to the great writer.

Daniel d'Arthez, one of the rare men who, in our day, unite a noble
character with great talent, had already obtained, not all the
popularity his works deserve, but a respectful esteem to which souls
of his own calibre could add nothing. His reputation will certainly
increase; but in the eyes of connoisseurs it had already attained its
full development. He is one of those authors who, sooner or later, are
put in their right place, and never lose it. A poor nobleman, he had
understood his epoch well enough to seek personal distinction only. He
had struggled long in the Parisian arena, against the wishes of a rich
uncle who, by a contradiction which vanity must explain, after leaving
his nephew a prey to the utmost penury, bequeathed to the man who had
reached celebrity the fortune so pitilessly refused to the unknown
writer. This sudden change in his position made no change in Daniel
d'Arthez's habits; he continued to work with a simplicity worthy of
the antique past, and even assumed new toils by accepting a seat in the
Chamber of Deputies, where he took his seat on the Right.

Since his accession to fame he had sometimes gone into society. One of
his old friends, the now-famous physician, Horace Bianchon, persuaded
him to make the acquaintance of the Baron de Rastignac, under-secretary
of State, and a friend of de Marsay, the prime minister. These two
political officials acquiesced, rather nobly, in the strong wish of
d'Arthez, Bianchon, and other friends of Michel Chrestien for the
removal of the body of that republican to the church of Saint-Merri for
the purpose of giving it funeral honors. Gratitude for a service which
contrasted with the administrative rigor displayed at a time when
political passions were so violent, had bound, so to speak, d'Arthez to
Rastignac. The latter and de Marsay were much too clever not to profit
by that circumstance; and thus they won over other friends of Michel
Chrestien, who did not share his political opinions, and who now
attached themselves to the new government. One of them, Leon Giraud,
appointed in the first instance master of petitions, became eventually a
Councillor of State.

The whole existence of Daniel d'Arthez is consecrated to work; he sees
society only by snatches; it is to him a sort of dream. His house is a
convent, where he leads the life of a Benedictine; the same sobriety of
regimen, the same regularity of occupation. His friends knew that up to
the present time woman had been to him no more than an always dreaded
circumstance; he had observed her too much not to fear her; but by dint
of studying her he had ceased to understand her,--like, in this, to
those deep strategists who are always beaten on unexpected ground,
where their scientific axioms are either modified or contradicted. In
character he still remains a simple-hearted child, all the while
proving himself an observer of the first rank. This contrast, apparently
impossible, is explainable to those who know how to measure the depths
which separate faculties from feelings; the former proceed from the
head, the latter from the heart. A man can be a great man and a wicked
one, just as he can be a fool and a devoted lover. D'Arthez is one of
those privileged beings in whom shrewdness of mind and a broad expanse
of the qualities of the brain do not exclude either the strength or
the grandeur of sentiments. He is, by rare privilege, equally a man of
action and a man of thought. His private life is noble and generous. If
he carefully avoided love, it was because he knew himself, and felt a
premonition of the empire such a passion would exercise upon him.

For several years the crushing toil by which he prepared the solid
ground of his subsequent works, and the chill of poverty, were
marvellous preservatives. But when ease with his inherited fortune came
to him, he formed a vulgar and most incomprehensible connection with a
rather handsome woman, belonging to the lower classes, without education
or manners, whom he carefully concealed from every eye. Michel Chrestien
attributed to men of genius the power of transforming the most
massive creatures into sylphs, fools into clever women, peasants into
countesses; the more accomplished a woman was, the more she lost her
value in their eyes, for, according to Michel, their imagination had the
less to do. In his opinion love, a mere matter of the senses to inferior
beings, was to great souls the most immense of all moral creations
and the most binding. To justify d'Arthez, he instanced the example of
Raffaele and the Fornarina. He might have offered himself as an
instance for this theory, he who had seen an angel in the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse. This strange fancy of d'Arthez might, however, be
explained in other ways; perhaps he had despaired of meeting here below
with a woman who answered to that delightful vision which all men of
intellect dream of and cherish; perhaps his heart was too sensitive, too
delicate, to yield itself to a woman of society; perhaps he thought best
to let nature have her way, and keep his illusions by cultivating his
ideal; perhaps he had laid aside love as being incompatible with his
work and the regularity of a monastic life which love would have wholly
upset.

For several months past d'Arthez had been subjected to the jests and
satire of Blondet and Rastignac, who reproached him with knowing neither
the world nor women. According to them, his authorship was sufficiently
advanced, and his works numerous enough, to allow him a few
distractions; he had a fine fortune, and here he was living like a
student; he enjoyed nothing,--neither his money nor his fame; he was
ignorant of the exquisite enjoyments of the noble and delicate love
which well-born and well-bred women could inspire and feel; he knew
nothing of the charming refinements of language, nothing of the proofs
of affection incessantly given by refined women to the commonest things.
He might, perhaps, know woman; but he knew nothing of the divinity.
Why not take his rightful place in the world, and taste the delights of
Parisian society?

"Why doesn't a man who bears party per bend gules and or, a bezant and
crab counterchanged," cried Rastignac, "display that ancient escutcheon
of Picardy on the panels of a carriage? You have thirty thousand francs
a year, and the proceeds of your pen; you have justified your motto:
Ars thesaurusque virtus, that punning device our ancestors were always
seeking, and yet you never appear in the Bois de Boulogne! We live in
times when virtue ought to show itself."

"If you read your works to that species of stout Laforet, whom you seem
to fancy, I would forgive you," said Blondet. "But, my dear fellow, you
are living on dry bread, materially speaking; in the matter of intellect
you haven't even bread."

This friendly little warfare had been going on for several months
between Daniel and his friends, when Madame d'Espard asked Rastignac and
Blondet to induce d'Arthez to come and dine with her, telling them that
the Princesse de Cadignan had a great desire to see that celebrated
man. Such curiosities are to certain women what magic lanterns are
to children,--a pleasure to the eyes, but rather shallow and full
of disappointments. The more sentiments a man of talent excites at
a distance, the less he responds to them on nearer view; the more
brilliant fancy has pictured him, the duller he will seem in reality.
Consequently, disenchanted curiosity is often unjust.

Neither Blondet nor Rastignac could deceive d'Arthez; but they told
him, laughing, that they now offered him a most seductive opportunity
to polish up his heart and know the supreme fascinations which love
conferred on a Parisian great lady. The princess was evidently in love
with him; he had nothing to fear but everything to gain by accepting the
interview; it was quite impossible he could descend from the pedestal on
which madame de Cadignan had placed him. Neither Blondet nor Rastignac
saw any impropriety in attributing this love to the princess; she whose
past had given rise to so many anecdotes could very well stand that
lesser calumny. Together they began to relate to d'Arthez the adventures
of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse: her first affair with de Marsay; her
second with d'Ajuda, whom she had, they said, distracted from his wife,
thus avenging Madame de Beausant; also her later connection with young
d'Esgrignon, who had travelled with her in Italy, and had horribly
compromised himself on her account; after that they told him how unhappy
she had been with a certain celebrated ambassador, how happy with a
Russian general, besides becoming the Egeria of two ministers of Foreign
affairs, and various other anecdotes. D'Arthez replied that he knew a
great deal more than they could tell him about her through their poor
friend, Michel Chrestien, who adored her secretly for four years, and
had well-nigh gone mad about her.

"I have often accompanied him," said Daniel, "to the opera. He would
make me run through the streets as far as her horses that he might see
the princess through the window of her coupe."

"Well, there you have a topic all ready for you," said Blondet, smiling.
"This is the very woman you need; she'll initiate you most gracefully
into the mysteries of elegance; but take care! she has wasted many
fortunes. The beautiful Diane is one of those spendthrifts who don't
cost a penny, but for whom a man spends millions. Give yourself up to
her, body and soul, if you choose; but keep your money in your hand,
like the old fellow in Girodet's 'Deluge.'"

From the tenor of these remarks it was to be inferred that the princess
had the depth of a precipice, the grace of a queen, the corruption
of diplomatists, the mystery of a first initiation, and the dangerous
qualities of a siren. The two clever men of the world, incapable of
foreseeing the denouement of their joke, succeeded in presenting Diane
d'Uxelles as a consummate specimen of the Parisian woman, the cleverest
of coquettes, the most enchanting mistress in the world. Right or wrong,
the woman whom they thus treated so lightly was sacred to d'Arthez; his
desire to meet her needed no spur; he consented to do so at the first
word, which was all the two friends wanted of him.

Madame d'Espard went to see the princess as soon as she had received
this answer.

"My dear, do you feel yourself in full beauty and coquetry?" she said.
"If so, come and dine with me a few days hence, and I'll serve up
d'Arthez. Our man of genius is by nature, it seems, a savage; he
fears women, and has never loved! Make your plans on that. He is
all intellect, and so simple that he'll mislead you into feeling no
distrust. But his penetration, which is wholly retrospective, acts
later, and frustrates calculation. You may hoodwink him to-day, but
to-morrow nothing can dupe him."

"Ah!" cried the princess, "if I were only thirty years old what
amusement I might have with him! The one enjoyment I have lacked up to
the present is a man of intellect to fool. I have had only partners,
never adversaries. Love was a mere game instead of being a battle."

"Dear princess, admit that I am very generous; for, after all, you
know!--charity begins at home."

The two women looked at each other, laughing, and clasped hands in a
friendly way. Assuredly they both knew each other's secrets, and this
was not the first man nor the first service that one had given to the
other; for sincere and lasting friendships between women of the world
need to be cemented by a few little crimes. When two friends are liable
to kill each other reciprocally, and see a poisoned dagger in each
other's hand, they present a touching spectacle of harmony, which is
never troubled, unless, by chance, one of them is careless enough to
drop her weapon.

So, eight days later, a little dinner such as are given to intimates by
verbal invitation only, during which the doors are closed to all other
visitors, took place at Madame d'Espard's house. Five persons were
invited,--Emile Blondet and Madame de Montcornet, Daniel d'Arthez,
Rastignac, and the Princesse de Cadignan. Counting the mistress of the
house, there were as many men as women.

Chance never exerted itself to make wiser preparations than those which
opened the way to a meeting between d'Arthez and Madame de Cadignan.
The princess is still considered one of the chief authorities on dress,
which, to women, is the first of arts. On this occasion she wore a gown
of blue velvet with flowing white sleeves, and a tulle guimpe, slightly
frilled and edged with blue, covering the shoulders, and rising nearly
to the throat, as we see in several of Raffaele's portraits. Her maid
had dressed her hair with white heather, adroitly placed among its blond
cascades, which were one of the great beauties to which she owed her
celebrity.

Certainly Diane did not look to be more than twenty-five years old.
Four years of solitude and repose had restored the freshness of her
complexion. Besides, there are moments when the desire to please gives
an increase of beauty to women. The will is not without influence on the
variations of the face. If violent emotions have the power to yellow
the white tones of persons of bilious and melancholy temperament, and to
green lymphatic faces, shall we not grant to desire, hope, and joy,
the faculty of clearing the skin, giving brilliancy to the eye, and
brightening the glow of beauty with a light as jocund as that of a
lovely morning? The celebrated faintness of the princess had taken on
a ripeness which now made her seem more august. At this moment of her
life, impressed by her many vicissitudes and by serious reflections,
her noble, dreamy brow harmonized delightfully with the slow, majestic
glance of her blue eyes. It was impossible for the ablest physiognomist
to imagine calculation or self-will beneath that unspeakable delicacy of
feature. There were faces of women which deceive knowledge, and mislead
observation by their calmness and delicacy; it is necessary to examine
such faces when passions speak, and that is difficult, or after they
have spoken, which is no longer of any use, for then the woman is old
and has ceased to dissimulate.

The princess is one of those impenetrable women; she can make herself
what she pleases to be: playful, childlike, distractingly innocent; or
reflective, serious, and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came to
Madame d'Espard's dinner with the intention of being a gentle, simple
woman, to whom life was known only through its deceptions: a woman full
of soul, and calumniated, but resigned,--in short, a wounded angel.

She arrived early, so as to pose on a sofa near the fire beside Madame
d'Espard, as she wished to be first seen: that is, in one of
those attitudes in which science is concealed beneath an exquisite
naturalness; a studied attitude, putting in relief the beautiful
serpentine outline which, starting from the foot, rises gracefully to
the hip, and continues with adorable curves to the shoulder, presenting,
in fact, a profile of the whole body. With a subtlety which few women
would have dreamed of, Diane, to the great amazement of the marquise,
had brought her son with her. After a moment's reflection, Madame
d'Espard pressed the princess's hand, with a look of intelligence that
seemed to say:--

"I understand you! By making d'Arthez accept all the difficulties at
once you will not have to conquer them later."

Rastignac brought d'Arthez. The princess made none of those compliments
to the celebrated author with which vulgar persons overwhelmed him; but
she treated him with a kindness full of graceful respect, which, with
her, was the utmost extent of her concessions. Her manner was doubtless
the same with the King of France and the royal princes. She seemed happy
to see this great man, and glad that she had sought him. Persons of
taste, like the princess, are especially distinguished for their manner
of listening, for an affability without superciliousness, which is to
politeness what practice is to virtue. When the celebrated man spoke,
she took an attentive attitude, a thousand times more flattering than
the best-seasoned compliments. The mutual presentation was made quietly,
without emphasis, and in perfectly good taste, by the marquise.

At dinner d'Arthez was placed beside the princess, who, far from
imitating the eccentricities of diet which many affected women display,
ate her dinner with a very good appetite, making it a point of honor
to seem a natural woman, without strange ways or fancies. Between two
courses she took advantage of the conversation becoming general to say
to d'Arthez, in a sort of aside:--

"The secret of the pleasure I take in finding myself beside you, is
the desire I feel to learn something of an unfortunate friend of yours,
monsieur. He died for another cause greater than ours; but I was under
the greatest obligations to him, although unable to acknowledge or thank
him for them. I know that you were one of his best friends. Your mutual
friendship, pure and unalterable, is a claim upon me. You will not, I am
sure, think it extraordinary, that I have wished to know all you could
tell me of a man so dear to you. Though I am attached to the exiled
family, and bound, of course, to hold monarchical opinions, I am not
among those who think it is impossible to be both republican and noble
in heart. Monarchy and the republic are two forms of government which do
not stifle noble sentiments."

"Michel Chrestien was an angel, madame," replied Daniel, in a voice of
emotion. "I don't know among the heroes of antiquity a greater than he.
Be careful not to think him one of those narrow-minded republicans who
would like to restore the Convention and the amenities of the Committee
of Public Safety. No, Michel dreamed of the Swiss federation applied
to all Europe. Let us own, between ourselves, that _after_ the glorious
government of one man only, which, as I think, is particularly suited to
our nation, Michel's system would lead to the suppression of war in this
old world, and its reconstruction on bases other than those of conquest,
which formerly feudalized it. From this point of view the republicans
came nearest to his idea. That is why he lent them his arm in July, and
was killed at Saint-Merri. Though completely apart in opinion, he and I
were closely bound together as friends."

"That is noble praise for both natures," said Madame de Cadignan,
timidly.

"During the last four years of his life," continued Daniel, "he made to
me alone a confidence of his love for you, and this confidence knitted
closer than ever the already strong ties of brotherly affection. He
alone, madame, can have loved you as you ought to be loved. Many a time
I have been pelted with rain as we accompanied your carriage at the pace
of the horses, to keep at a parallel distance, and see you--admire you."

"Ah! monsieur," said the princess, "how can I repay such feelings!"

"Why is Michel not here!" exclaimed Daniel, in melancholy accents.

"Perhaps he would not have loved me long," said the princess, shaking
her head sadly. "Republicans are more absolute in their ideas than we
absolutists, whose fault is indulgence. No doubt he imagined me perfect,
and society would have cruelly undeceived him. We are pursued, we women,
by as many calumnies as you authors are compelled to endure in your
literary life; but we, alas! cannot defend ourselves either by our works
or by our fame. The world will not believe us to be what we are, but
what it thinks us to be. It would soon have hidden from his eyes the
real but unknown woman that is in me, behind the false portrait of the
imaginary woman which the world considers true. He would have come to
think me unworthy of the noble feelings he had for me, and incapable of
comprehending him."

Here the princess shook her head, swaying the beautiful blond curls,
full of heather, with a touching gesture. This plaintive expression of
grievous doubts and hidden sorrows is indescribable. Daniel understood
them all; and he looked at the princess with keen emotion.

"And yet, the night on which I last saw him, after the revolution of
July, I was on the point of giving way to the desire I felt to take
his hand and press it before all the world, under the peristyle of the
opera-house. But the thought came to me that such a proof of gratitude
might be misinterpreted; like so many other little things done
from noble motives which are called to-day the follies of Madame de
Maufrigneuse--things which I can never explain, for none but my son and
God have understood me."

These words, breathed into the ear of the listener, in tones inaudible
to the other guests, and with accents worthy of the cleverest actress,
were calculated to reach the heart; and they did reach that of d'Arthez.
There was no question of himself in the matter; this woman was seeking
to rehabilitate herself in favor of the dead. She had been calumniated;
and she evidently wanted to know if anything had tarnished her in the
eyes of him who had loved her; had he died with all his illusions?

"Michel," replied d'Arthez, "was one of those men who love absolutely,
and who, if they choose ill, can suffer without renouncing the woman
they have once elected."

"Was I loved thus?" she said, with an air of exalted beatitude.

"Yes, madame."

"I made his happiness?"

"For four years."

"A woman never hears of such a thing without a sentiment of proud
satisfaction," she said, turning her sweet and noble face to d'Arthez
with a movement full of modest confusion.

One of the most skilful manoeuvres of these actresses is to veil their
manner when words are too expressive, and speak with their eyes when
language is restrained. These clever discords, slipped into the music of
their love, be it false or true, produce irresistible attractions.

"Is it not," she said, lowering her voice and her eyes, after feeling
well assured they had produced her effect,--"is it not fulfilling one's
destiny to have rendered a great man happy?"

"Did he not write that to you?"

"Yes; but I wanted to be sure, quite sure; for, believe me, monsieur, in
putting me so high he was not mistaken."

Women know how to give a peculiar sacredness to their words; they
communicate something vibrant to them, which extends the meaning
of their ideas, and gives them depth; though later their fascinated
listener may not remember precisely what they said, their end has been
completely attained,--which is the object of all eloquence. The princess
might at that moment have been wearing the diadem of France, and her
brow could not have seemed more imposing than it was beneath that crown
of golden hair, braided like a coronet, and adorned with heather. She
was simple and calm; nothing betrayed a sense of any necessity to appear
so, nor any desire to seem grand or loving. D'Arthez, the solitary
toiler, to whom the ways of the world were unknown, whom study had
wrapped in its protecting veils, was the dupe of her tones and words. He
was under the spell of those exquisite manners; he admired that perfect
beauty, ripened by misfortune, placid in retirement; he adored the union
of so rare a mind and so noble a soul; and he longed to become, himself,
the heir of Michel Chrestien.

The beginning of this passion was, as in the case of almost all deep
thinkers, an idea. Looking at the princess, studying the shape of her
head, the arrangement of those sweet features, her figure, her hand,
so finely modelled, closer than when he accompanied his friend in
their wild rush through the streets, he was struck by the surprising
phenomenon of the moral second-sight which a man exalted by love
invariably finds within him. With what lucidity had Michel Chrestien
read into that soul, that heart, illumined by the fires of love! Thus
the princess acquired, in d'Arthez's eyes, another charm; a halo of
poesy surrounded her.

As the dinner proceeded, Daniel called to mind the various confidences
of his friend, his despair, his hopes, the noble poems of a true
sentiment sung to his ear alone, in honor of this woman. It is rare that
a man passes without remorse from the position of confidant to that of
rival, and d'Arthez was free to do so without dishonor. He had suddenly,
in a moment, perceived the enormous differences existing between a
well-bred woman, that flower of the great world, and common women,
though of the latter he did not know beyond one specimen. He was thus
captured on the most accessible and sensitive sides of his soul and of
his genius. Impelled by his simplicity, and by the impetuosity of his
ideas, to lay immediate claim to this woman, he found himself restrained
by society, also by the barrier which the manners and, let us say the
word, the majesty of the princess placed between them. The conversation,
which remained upon the topic of Michel Chrestien until the dessert, was
an excellent pretext for both to speak in a low voice: love, sympathy,
comprehension! she could pose as a maligned and misunderstood woman; he
could slip his feet into the shoes of the dead republican. Perhaps his
candid mind detected itself in regretting his dead friend less. The
princess, at the moment when the dessert appeared upon the table, and
the guests were separated by a brilliant hedge of fruits and sweetmeats,
thought best to put an end to this flow of confidences by a charming
little speech, in which she delicately expressed the idea that Daniel
and Michel were twin souls.

After this d'Arthez threw himself into the general conversation with
the gayety of a child, and a self-conceited air that was worthy of a
schoolboy. When they left the dining-room, the princess took d'Arthez's
arm, in the simplest manner, to return to Madame d'Espard's little
salon. As they crossed the grand salon she walked slowly, and when
sufficiently separated from the marquise, who was on Blondet's arm, she
stopped.

"I do not wish to be inaccessible to the friend of that poor man,"
she said to d'Arthez; "and though I have made it a rule to receive no
visitors, you will always be welcome in my house. Do not think this a
favor. A favor is only for strangers, and to my mind you and I seem old
friends; I see in you the brother of Michel."

D'Arthez could only press her arm, unable to make other reply.

After coffee was served, Diane de Cadignan wrapped herself, with
coquettish motions, in a large shawl, and rose. Blondet and Rastignac
were too much men of the world, and too polite to make the least
remonstrance, or try to detain her; but Madame d'Espard compelled her
friend to sit down again, whispering in her ear:--

"Wait till the servants have had their dinner; the carriage is not ready
yet."

So saying, the marquise made a sign to the footman, who was taking away
the coffee-tray. Madame de Montcornet perceived that the princess and
Madame d'Espard had a word to say to each other, and she drew around her
d'Arthez, Rastignac, and Blondet, amusing them with one of those clever
paradoxical attacks which Parisian women understand so thoroughly.

"Well," said the marquise to Diane, "what do you think of him?"

"He is an adorable child, just out of swaddling-clothes! This time, like
all other times, it will only be a triumph without a struggle."

"Well, it is disappointing," said Madame d'Espard. "But we might evade
it."

"How?"

"Let me be your rival."

"Just as you please," replied the princess. "I've decided on my course.
Genius is a condition of the brain; I don't know what the heart gets out
of it; we'll talk about that later."

Hearing the last few words, which were wholly incomprehensible to her,
Madame d'Espard returned to the general conversation, showing neither
offence at that indifferent "As you please," nor curiosity as to the
outcome of the interview. The princess stayed an hour longer, seated on
the sofa near the fire, in the careless, nonchalant attitude of Guerin's
Dido, listening with the attention of an absorbed mind, and looking
at Daniel now and then, without disguising her admiration, which never
went, however, beyond due limits. She slipped away when the carriage
was announced, with a pressure of the hand to the marquise, and an
inclination of the head to Madame de Montcornet.

The evening concluded without any allusion to the princess. The other
guests profited by the sort of exaltation which d'Arthez had reached,
for he put forth the treasures of his mind. In Blondet and Rastignac
he certainly had two acolytes of the first quality to bring forth the
delicacy of his wit and the breadth of his intellect. As for the two
women, they had long been counted among the cleverest in society. This
evening was like a halt in the oasis of a desert,--a rare enjoyment,
and well appreciated by these four persons, habitually victimized to the
endless caution entailed by the world of salons and politics. There
are beings who have the privilege of passing among men like beneficent
stars, whose light illumines the mind, while its rays send a glow to
the heart. D'Arthez was one of those beings. A writer who rises to his
level, accustoms himself to free thought, and forgets that in society
all things cannot be said; it is impossible for such a man to observe
the restraint of persons who live in the world perpetually; but as his
eccentricities of thought bore the mark of originality, no one felt
inclined to complain. This zest, this piquancy, rare in mere talent,
this youthfulness and simplicity of soul which made d'Arthez so nobly
original, gave a delightful charm to this evening. He left the house
with Rastignac, who, as they drove home, asked him how he liked the
princess.

"Michel did well to love her," replied d'Arthez; "she is, indeed, an
extraordinary woman."

"Very extraordinary," replied Rastignac, dryly. "By the tone of your
voice I should judge you were in love with her already. You will be in
her house within three days; and I am too old a denizen of Paris not to
know what will be the upshot of that. Well, my dear Daniel, I do entreat
you not to allow yourself to be drawn into any confusion of interests,
so to speak. Love the princess if you feel any love for her in your
heart, but keep an eye on your fortune. She has never taken or asked a
penny from any man on earth, she is far too much of a d'Uxelles and a
Cadignan for that; but, to my knowledge, she has not only spent her
own fortune, which was very considerable, but she has made others
waste millions. How? why? by what means? No one knows; she doesn't
know herself. I myself saw her swallow up, some thirteen years ago, the
entire fortune of a charming young fellow, and that of an old notary, in
twenty months."

"Thirteen years ago!" exclaimed d'Arthez,--"why, how old is she now?"

"Didn't you see, at dinner," replied Rastignac, laughing, "her son, the
Duc de Maufrigneuse. That young man is nineteen years old; nineteen and
seventeen make--"

"Thirty-six!" cried the amazed author. "I gave her twenty."

"She'll accept them," said Rastignac; "but don't be uneasy, she will
always be twenty to you. You are about to enter the most fantastic
of worlds. Good-night, here you are at home," said the baron, as they
entered the rue de Bellefond, where d'Arthez lived in a pretty little
house of his own. "We shall meet at Mademoiselle des Touches's in the
course of the week."




CHAPTER III. THE PRINCESS GOES TO WORK


D'Arthez allowed love to enter his heart after the manner of my Uncle
Toby, without making the slightest resistance; he proceeded by adoration
without criticism, and by exclusive admiration. The princess, that noble
creature, one of the most remarkable creations of our monstrous Paris,
where all things are possible, good as well as evil, became--whatever
vulgarity the course of time may have given to the expression--the angel
of his dreams. To fully understand the sudden transformation of this
illustrious author, it is necessary to realize the simplicity that
constant work and solitude leave in the heart; all that love--reduced
to a mere need, and now repugnant, beside an ignoble woman--excites of
regret and longings for diviner sentiments in the higher regions of the
soul. D'Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan
had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place
in the beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all
women desire and seek, if only to make a plaything of him,--that power
which they consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it;
at last she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with
the simplicity of a heart all new to love; and she saw, with untold
happiness, that these merits were contained in a form that pleased her.
She thought d'Arthez handsome, and perhaps he was. Though he had reached
the age of gravity (for he was now thirty-eight), he still preserved
a flower of youth, due to the sober and ascetic life which he had led.
Like all men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had acquired
a certainly reasonable embonpoint. When very young, he bore some
resemblance to Bonaparte; and the likeness still continued, as much as a
man with black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a sovereign
with blue eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. But whatever there once was of
ardent and noble ambition in the great author's eyes had been somewhat
quenched by successes. The thoughts with which that brow once teemed had
flowered; the lines of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now spread
its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the yellow tones
of the class of temperament whose forces band together to support a
crushing and long-continued struggle. If you observe carefully the noble
faces of ancient philosophers, you will always find those deviations
from the type of a perfect human face which show the characteristic to
which each countenance owes its originality, chastened by the habit of
meditation, and by the calmness necessary for intellectual labor. The
most irregular features, like those of Socrates, for instance, become,
after a time, expressive of an almost divine serenity.

To the noble simplicity which characterized his head, d'Arthez added a
naive expression, the naturalness of a child, and a touching kindliness.
He did not have that politeness tinged with insincerity with which, in
society, the best-bred persons and the most amiable assume qualities in
which they are often lacking, leaving those they have thus duped wounded
and distressed. He might, indeed, fail to observe certain rules of
social life, owing to his isolated mode of living; but he never shocked
the sensibilities, and therefore this perfume of savagery made the
peculiar affability of a man of great talent the more agreeable; such
men know how to leave their superiority in their studies, and come
down to the social level, lending their backs, like Henry IV., to the
children's leap-frog, and their minds to fools.

If d'Arthez did not brace himself against the spell which the princess
had cast about him, neither did she herself argue the matter in her own
mind, on returning home. It was settled for her. She loved with all her
knowledge and all her ignorance. If she questioned herself at all, it
was to ask whether she deserved so great a happiness, and what she had
done that Heaven should send her such an angel. She wanted to be worthy
of that love, to perpetuate it, to make it her own forever, and to
gently end her career of frivolity in the paradise she now foresaw. As
for coquetting, quibbling, resisting, she never once thought of it. She
was thinking of something very different!--of the grandeur of men of
genius, and the certainty which her heart divined that they would never
subject the woman they chose to ordinary laws.

Here begins one of those unseen comedies, played in the secret regions
of the consciousness between two beings of whom one will be the dupe of
the other, though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of those
dark and comic dramas to which that of _Tartuffe_ is mere child's
play,--dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are
natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which
may be characterized as not vice, only the other side of it.

The princess began by sending for d'Arthez's books, of which she had
never, as yet, read a single word, although she had managed to maintain
a twenty minutes' eulogism and discussion of them without a blunder. She
now read them all. Then she wanted to compare these books with the best
that contemporary literature had produced. By the time d'Arthez came to
see her she was having an indigestion of mind. Expecting this visit, she
had daily made a toilet of what may be called the superior order; that
is, a toilet which expresses an idea, and makes it accepted by the eye
without the owner of the eye knowing why or wherefore. She presented an
harmonious combination of shades of gray, a sort of semi-mourning, full
of graceful renunciation,--the garments of a woman who holds to life
only through a few natural ties,--her child, for instance,--but who is
weary of life. Those garments bore witness to an elegant disgust, not
reaching, however, as far as suicide; no, she would live out her days in
these earthly galleys.

She received d'Arthez as a woman who expected him, and as if he had
already been to see her a hundred times; she did him the honor to treat
him like an old acquaintance, and she put him at his ease by pointing
to a seat on a sofa, while she finished a note she was then writing. The
conversation began in a commonplace manner: the weather, the ministry,
de Marsay's illness, the hopes of the legitimists. D'Arthez was an
absolutist; the princess could not be ignorant of the opinions of a
man who sat in the Chamber among the fifteen or twenty persons who
represented the legitimist party; she found means to tell him how she
had fooled de Marsay to the top of his bent, then, by an easy transition
to the royal family and to "Madame," and the devotion of the Prince
de Cadignan to their service, she drew d'Arthez's attention to the
prince:--

"There is this to be said for him: he loved his masters, and was
faithful to them. His public character consoles me for the sufferings
his private life has inflicted upon me--Have you never remarked," she
went on, cleverly leaving the prince aside, "you who observe so much,
that men have two natures: one of their homes, their wives, their
private lives,--this is their true self; here no mask, no dissimulation;
they do not give themselves the trouble to disguise a feeling; they are
what they ARE, and it is often horrible! The other man is for others,
for the world, for salons; the court, the sovereign, the public often
see them grand, and noble, and generous, embroidered with virtues,
adorned with fine language, full of admirable qualities. What a horrible
jest it is!--and the world is surprised, sometimes, at the caustic smile
of certain women, at their air of superiority to their husbands, and
their indifference--"

She let her hand fall along the arm of her chair, without ending her
sentence, but the gesture admirably completed the speech. She saw
d'Arthez watching her flexible figure, gracefully bending in the depths
of her easy-chair, noting the folds of her gown, and the pretty little
ruffle which sported on her breast,--one of those audacities of the
toilet that are suited only to slender waists,--and she resumed the
thread of her thoughts as if she were speaking to herself:--

"But I will say no more. You writers have ended by making ridiculous
all women who think they are misunderstood, or ill-mated, and who try to
make themselves dramatically interesting,--attempts which seem to me, I
must say, intolerably vulgar. There are but two things for women in that
plight to do,--yield, and all is over; resist, and amuse themselves; in
either case they should keep silence. It is true that I neither yielded
wholly, nor resisted wholly; but, perhaps, that was only the more reason
why I should be silent. What folly for women to complain! If they
have not proved the stronger, they have failed in sense, in tact, in
capacity, and they deserve their fate. Are they not queens in France?
They can play with you as they like, when they like, and as much as they
like." Here she danced her vinaigrette with an airy movement of feminine
impertinence and mocking gayety. "I have often heard miserable little
specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, wishing they were
men; I have always regarded them with pity. If I had to choose, I should
still elect to be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one's triumph
to force, and to all those powers which you give yourselves by the
laws you make! But to see you at our feet, saying and doing foolish
things,--ah! it is an intoxicating pleasure to feel within our souls
that weakness triumphs! But when we triumph, we ought to keep silence,
under pain of losing our empire. Beaten, a woman's pride should gag her.
The slave's silence alarms the master."

This chatter was uttered in a voice so softly sarcastic, so dainty, and
with such coquettish motions of the head, that d'Arthez, to whom this
style of woman was totally unknown, sat before her exactly like a
partridge charmed by a setter.

"I entreat you, madame," he said, at last, "to tell me how it was
possible that a man could make you suffer? Be assured that where, as you
say, other women are common and vulgar, you can only seem distinguished;
your manner of saying things would make a cook-book interesting."

"You go fast in friendship," she said, in a grave voice which made
d'Arthez extremely uneasy.

The conversation changed; the hour was late, and the poor man of genius
went away contrite for having seemed curious, and for wounding the
sensitive heart of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered. As
for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself with men, and was
another Don Juan in female attire, with this difference: she would
certainly not have invited the Commander to supper, and would have got
the better of any statue.

It is impossible to continue this tale without saying a word about
the Prince de Cadignan, better known under the name of the Duc de
Maufrigneuse, otherwise the spice of the princess's confidences would
be lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian comedy she was
about to play for her man of genius.

The Duc de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old Prince de Cadignan,
is a tall, lean man, of elegant shape, very graceful, a sayer of witty
things, colonel by the grace of God, and a good soldier by accident;
brave as a Pole, which means without sense or discernment, and hiding
the emptiness of his mind under the jargon of good society. After the
age of thirty-six he was forced to be as absolutely indifferent to
the fair sex as his master Charles X., punished, like that master, for
having pleased it too well. For eighteen years the idol of the faubourg
Saint-Germain, he had, like other heirs of great families led a
dissipated life, spent solely on pleasure. His father, ruined by the
revolution, had somewhat recovered his position on the return of the
Bourbons, as governor of a royal domain, with salary and perquisites;
but this uncertain fortune the old prince spent, as it came, in keeping
up the traditions of a great seigneur before the revolution; so that
when the law of indemnity was passed, the sums he received were all
swallowed up in the luxury he displayed in his vast hotel.

The old prince died some little time before the revolution of July aged
eighty-seven. He had ruined his wife, and had long been on bad terms
with the Duc de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for a first
wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered his accounts. The Duc
de Maufrigneuse, early in life, had had relations with the Duchesse
d'Uxelles. About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was
forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his poverty, and seeing
that he stood very well at court, gave him her daughter Diane, then in
her seventeenth year, and possessing, in her own right, some fifty or
sixty thousand francs a year, not counting her future expectations.
Mademoiselle d'Uxelles thus became a duchess, and, as her mother very
well knew, she enjoyed the utmost liberty. The duke, after obtaining
the unexpected happiness of an heir, left his wife entirely to her
own devices, and went off to amuse himself in the various garrisons of
France, returning occasionally to Paris, where he made debts which his
father paid. He professed the most entire conjugal indulgence, always
giving the duchess a week's warning of his return; he was adored by
his regiment, beloved by the Dauphin, an adroit courtier, somewhat of
a gambler, and totally devoid of affectation. Having succeeded to his
father's office as governor of one of the royal domains, he managed to
please the two kings, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., which proves he made
the most of his nonentity; and even the liberals liked him; but his
conduct and life were covered with the finest varnish; language, noble
manners, and deportment were brought by him to a state of perfection.
But, as the old prince said, it was impossible for him to continue the
traditions of the Cadignans, who were all well known to have ruined
their wives, for the duchess was running through her property on her own
account.

These particulars were so well understood in the court circles and
in the faubourg Saint-Germain, that during the last five years of
the Restoration they were considered ancient history, and any one who
mentioned them would have been laughed at. Women never spoke of the
charming duke without praising him; he was excellent, they said, to his
wife; could a man be better? He had left her the entire disposal of her
own property, and had always defended her on every occasion. It is
true that, whether from pride, kindliness, or chivalry, Monsieur de
Maufrigneuse had saved the duchess under various circumstances which
might have ruined other women, in spite of Diane's surroundings, and
the influence of her mother and that of the Duc de Navarreins, her
father-in-law, and her husband's aunt.

For several ensuing days the princess revealed herself to d'Arthez as
remarkable for her knowledge of literature. She discussed with perfect
fearlessness the most difficult questions, thanks to her daily and
nightly reading, pursued with an intrepidity worthy of the highest
praise. D'Arthez, amazed, and incapable of suspecting that Diane
d'Uxelles merely repeated at night that which she read in the morning
(as some writers do), regarded her as a most superior woman. These
conversations, however, led away from Diane's object, and she tried to
get back to the region of confidences from which d'Arthez had prudently
retired after her coquettish rebuff; but it was not as easy as she
expected to bring back a man of his nature who had once been startled
away.

However, after a month of literary campaigning and the finest platonic
discourses, d'Arthez grew bolder, and arrived every day at three
o'clock. He retired at six, and returned at nine, to remain until
midnight, or one in the morning, with the regularity of an ardent and
impatient lover. The princess was always dressed with more or less
studied elegance at the hour when d'Arthez presented himself. This
mutual fidelity, the care they each took of their appearance, in fact,
all about them expressed sentiments that neither dared avow, for the
princess discerned very plainly that the great child with whom she had
to do shrank from the combat as much as she desired it. Nevertheless
d'Arthez put into his mute declarations a respectful awe which was
infinitely pleasing to her. Both felt, every day, all the more united
because nothing acknowledged or definite checked the course of their
ideas, as occurs between lovers when there are formal demands on one
side, and sincere or coquettish refusals on the other.

Like all men younger than their actual age, d'Arthez was a prey to those
agitating irresolutions which are caused by the force of desires and
the terror of displeasing,--a situation which a young woman does not
comprehend when she shares it, but which the princess had too often
deliberately produced not to enjoy its pleasures. In fact, Diane enjoyed
these delightful juvenilities all the more keenly because she knew that
she could put an end to them at any moment. She was like a great artist
delighting in the vague, undecided lines of his sketch, knowing well
that in a moment of inspiration he can complete the masterpiece still
waiting to come to birth. Many a time, seeing d'Arthez on the point
of advancing, she enjoyed stopping him short, with an imposing air and
manner. She drove back the hidden storms of that still young heart,
raised them again, and stilled them with a look, holding out her hand
to be kissed, or saying some trifling insignificant words in a tender
voice.

These manoeuvres, planned in cold blood, but enchantingly executed,
carved her image deeper and deeper on the soul of that great writer and
thinker whom she revelled in making childlike, confiding, simple, and
almost silly beside her. And yet she had moments of repulsion against
her own act, moments in which she could not help admiring the grandeur
of such simplicity. This game of choicest coquetry attached her,
insensibly, to her slave. At last, however, Diane grew impatient with
an Epictetus of love; and when she thought she had trained him to the
utmost credulity, she set to work to tie a thicker bandage still over
his eyes.




CHAPTER IV. THE CONFESSION OF A PRETTY WOMAN


One evening Daniel found the princess thoughtful, one elbow resting on
a little table, her beautiful blond head bathed in light from the lamp.
She was toying with a letter which lay on the table-cloth. When d'Arthez
had seen the paper distinctly, she folded it up, and stuck it in her
belt.

"What is the matter?" asked d'Arthez; "you seem distressed."

"I have received a letter from Monsieur de Cadignan," she replied.
"However great the wrongs he has done me, I cannot help thinking of his
exile--without family, without son--from his native land."

These words, said in a soulful voice, betrayed angelic sensibility.
D'Arthez was deeply moved. The curiosity of the lover became, so to
speak, a psychological and literary curiosity. He wanted to know the
height that woman had attained, and what were the injuries she thus
forgave; he longed to know how these women of the world, taxed with
frivolity, cold-heartedness, and egotism, could be such angels.
Remembering how the princess had already repulsed him when he first
tried to read that celestial heart, his voice, and he himself, trembled
as he took the transparent, slender hand of the beautiful Diane with its
curving finger-tips, and said,--

"Are we now such friends that you will tell me what you have suffered?"

"Yes," she said, breathing forth the syllable like the most mellifluous
note that Tulou's flute had ever sighed.

Then she fell into a revery, and her eyes were veiled. Daniel remained
in a state of anxious expectation, impressed with the solemnity of the
occasion. His poetic imagination made him see, as it were, clouds slowly
dispersing and disclosing to him the sanctuary where the wounded lamb
was kneeling at the divine feet.

"Well?" he said, in a soft, still voice.

Diane looked at the tender petitioner; then she lowered her eyes slowly,
dropping their lids with a movement of noble modesty. None but a
monster would have been capable of imagining hypocrisy in the graceful
undulation of the neck with which the princess again lifted her charming
head, to look once more into the eager eyes of that great man.

"Can I? ought I?" she murmured, with a gesture of hesitation, gazing at
d'Arthez with a sublime expression of dreamy tenderness. "Men have so
little faith in things of this kind; they think themselves so little
bound to be discreet!"

"Ah! if you distrust me, why am I here?" cried d'Arthez.

"Oh, friend!" she said, giving to the exclamation the grace of an
involuntary avowal, "when a woman attaches herself for life, think you
she calculates? It is not question of refusal (how could I refuse you
anything?), but the idea of what you may think of me if I speak. I would
willingly confide to you the strange position in which I am at my age;
but what would you think of a woman who could reveal the secret wounds
of her married life? Turenne kept his word to robbers; do I not owe to
my torturers the honor of a Turenne?"

"Have you passed your word to say nothing?"

"Monsieur de Cadignan did not think it necessary to bind me to
secrecy--You are asking more than my soul! Tyrant! you want me to bury
my honor itself in your breast," she said, casting upon d'Arthez a
look, by which she gave more value to her coming confidence than to her
personal self.

"You must think me a very ordinary man, if you fear any evil, no matter
what, from me," he said, with ill-concealed bitterness.

"Forgive me, friend," she replied, taking his hand in hers caressingly,
and letting her fingers wander gently over it. "I know your worth. You
have related to me your whole life; it is noble, it is beautiful, it is
sublime, and worthy of your name; perhaps, in return, I owe you mine.
But I fear to lower myself in your eyes by relating secrets which
are not wholly mine. How can you believe--you, a man of solitude and
poesy--the horrors of social life? Ah! you little think when you invent
your dramas that they are far surpassed by those that are played in
families apparently united. You are wholly ignorant of certain gilded
sorrows."

"I know all!" he cried.

"No, you know nothing."

D'Arthez felt like a man lost on the Alps of a dark night, who sees,
at the first gleam of dawn, a precipice at his feet. He looked at the
princess with a bewildered air, and felt a cold chill running down his
back. Diane thought for a moment that her man of genius was a weakling,
but a flash from his eyes reassured her.

"You have become to me almost my judge," she said, with a desperate air.
"I must speak now, in virtue of the right that all calumniated beings
have to show their innocence. I have been, I am still (if a poor recluse
forced by the world to renounce the world is still remembered) accused
of such light conduct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed
me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I cannot be driven.
Hitherto I have always considered self-justification an insult to
innocence; and that is why I have disdained to defend myself. Besides,
to whom could I appeal? Such cruel things can be confided to none but
God or to one who seems to us very near Him--a priest, or another self.
Well! I do know this, if my secrets are not as safe there," she said,
laying her hand on d'Arthez's heart, "as they are here" (pressing the
upper end of her busk beneath her fingers), "then you are not the grand
d'Arthez I think you--I shall have been deceived."

A tear moistened d'Arthez's eyes, and Diane drank it in with a side
look, which, however, gave no motion either to the pupils or the lids of
her eyes. It was quick and neat, like the action of a cat pouncing on a
mouse.

D'Arthez, for the first time, after sixty days of protocols, ventured
to take that warm and perfumed hand, and press it to his lips with a
long-drawn kiss, extending from the wrist to the tip of the fingers,
which made the princess augur well of literature. She thought to herself
that men of genius must know how to love with more perfection than
conceited fops, men of the world, diplomatists, and even soldiers,
although such beings have nothing else to do. She was a connoisseur, and
knew very well that the capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere
nothings. A woman well informed in such matters can read her future in
a simple gesture; just as Cuvier could say from the fragment of a bone:
This belonged to an animal of such or such dimensions, with or without
horns, carnivorous, herbivorous, amphibious, etc., age, so many thousand
years. Sure now of finding in d'Arthez as much imagination in love as
there was in his written style, she thought it wise to bring him up at
once to the highest pitch of passion and belief.

She withdrew her hand hastily, with a magnificent movement full of
varied emotions. If she had said in words: "Stop, or I shall die," she
could not have spoken more plainly. She remained for a moment with
her eyes in d'Arthez's eyes, expressing in that one glance happiness,
prudery, fear, confidence, languor, a vague longing, and virgin modesty.
She was twenty years old! but remember, she had prepared for this hour
of comic falsehood by the choicest art of dress; she was there in her
armchair like a flower, ready to blossom at the first kiss of sunshine.
True or false, she intoxicated Daniel.

It if is permissible to risk a personal opinion we must avow that it
would be delightful to be thus deceived for a good long time. Certainly
Talma on the stage was often above and beyond nature, but the Princesse
de Cadignan is the greatest true comedian of our day. Nothing was
wanting to this woman but an attentive audience. Unfortunately, at
epochs perturbed by political storms, women disappear like water-lilies
which need a cloudless sky and balmy zephyrs to spread their bloom to
our enraptured eyes.

The hour had come; Diane was now to entangle that great man in the
inextricable meshes of a romance carefully prepared, to which he was
fated to listen as the neophyte of early Christian times listened to the
epistles of an apostle.

"My friend," began Diane, "my mother, who still lives at Uxelles,
married me in 1814, when I was seventeen years old (you see how old I am
now!) to Monsieur de Maufrigneuse, not out of affection for me, but out
of regard for him. She discharged her debt to the only man she had ever
loved, for the happiness she had once received from him. Oh! you need
not be astonished at so horrible a conspiracy; it frequently takes
place. Many women are more lovers than mothers, though the majority
are more mothers than wives. The two sentiments, love and motherhood,
developed as they are by our manners and customs, often struggle
together in the hearts of women; one or other must succumb when they
are not of equal strength; when they are, they produce some exceptional
women, the glory of our sex. A man of your genius must surely comprehend
many things that bewilder fools but are none the less true; indeed I may
go further and call them justifiable through difference of characters,
temperaments, attachments, situations. I, for example, at this moment,
after twenty years of misfortunes, of deceptions, of calumnies endured,
and weary days and hollow pleasures, is it not natural that I should
incline to fall at the feet of a man who would love me sincerely and
forever? And yet, the world would condemn me. But twenty years of
suffering might well excuse a few brief years which may still remain to
me of youth given to a sacred and real love. This will not happen. I am
not so rash as to sacrifice my hopes of heaven. I have borne the burden
and heat of the day, I shall finish my course and win my recompense."

"Angel!" thought d'Arthez.

"After all, I have never blamed my mother; she knew little of me.
Mothers who lead a life like that of the Duchesse d'Uxelles keep their
children at a distance. I saw and knew nothing of the world until my
marriage. You can judge of my innocence! I knew nothing; I was incapable
of understanding the causes of my marriage. I had a fine fortune; sixty
thousand francs a year in forests, which the Revolution overlooked (or
had not been able to sell) in the Nivernais, with the noble chateau of
d'Anzy. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was steeped in debt. Later I learned
what it was to have debts, but then I was too utterly ignorant of life
to suspect my position; the money saved out of my fortune went to pacify
my husband's creditors. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was forty-eight years
of age when I married him; but those years were like military campaigns,
they ought to count for twice what they were. Ah! what a life I led for
ten years! If any one had known the suffering of this poor, calumniated
little woman! To be watched by a mother jealous of her daughter!
Heavens! You who make dramas, you will never invent anything as direful
as that. Ordinarily, according to the little that I know of literature,
a drama is a suite of actions, speeches, movements which hurry to a
catastrophe; but what I speak of was a catastrophe in action. It was an
avalanche fallen in the morning and falling again at night only to
fall again the next day. I am cold now as I speak to you of that cavern
without an opening, cold, sombre, in which I lived. I, poor little thing
that I was! brought up in a convent like a mystic rose, knowing nothing
of marriage, developing late, I was happy at first; I enjoyed the
goodwill and harmony of our family. The birth of my poor boy, who is
all me--you must have been struck by the likeness? my hair, my eyes, the
shape of my face, my mouth, my smile, my teeth!--well, his birth was a
relief to me; my thoughts were diverted by the first joys of maternity
from my husband, who gave me no pleasure and did nothing for me that
was kind or amiable; those joys were all the keener because I knew no
others. It had been so often rung into my ears that a mother should
respect herself. Besides, a young girl loves to play the mother. I was
so proud of my flower--for Georges was beautiful, a miracle, I thought!
I saw and thought of nothing but my son, I lived with my son. I never
let his nurse dress or undress him. Such cares, so wearing to mothers
who have a regiment of children, were all my pleasure. But after three
or four years, as I was not an actual fool, light came to my eyes in
spite of the pains taken to blindfold me. Can you see me at that
final awakening, in 1819? The drama of 'The Brothers at enmity' is a
rose-water tragedy beside that of a mother and daughter placed as we
then were. But I braved them all, my mother, my husband, the world,
by public coquetries which society talked of,--and heaven knows how it
talked! You can see, my friend, how the men with whom I was accused of
folly were to me the dagger with which to stab my enemies. Thinking only
of my vengeance, I did not see or feel the wounds I was inflicting on
myself. Innocent as a child, I was thought a wicked woman, the worst of
women, and I knew nothing of it! The world is very foolish, very blind,
very ignorant; it can penetrate no secrets but those which amuse it and
serve its malice: noble things, great things, it puts its hand before
its eyes to avoid seeing. But, as I look back, it seems to me that I had
an attitude and aspect of indignant innocence, with movements of pride,
which a great painter would have recognized. I must have enlivened many
a ball with my tempests of anger and disdain. Lost poesy! such sublime
poems are only made in the glowing indignation which seizes us at
twenty. Later, we are wrathful no longer, we are too weary, vice no
longer amazes us, we are cowards, we fear. But then--oh! I kept a great
pace! For all that I played the silliest personage in the world; I was
charged with crimes by which I never benefited. But I had such pleasure
in compromising myself. That was my revenge! Ah! I have played many
childish tricks! I went to Italy with a thoughtless youth, whom I
crushed when he spoke to me of love, but later, when I herd that he was
compromised on my account (he had committed a forgery to get money) I
rushed to save him. My mother and husband kept me almost without means;
but, this time, I went to the king. Louis XVIII., that man without a
heart, was touched; he gave me a hundred thousand francs from his privy
purse. The Marquis d'Esgrignon--you must have seen him in society for he
ended by making a rich marriage--was saved from the abyss into which he
had plunged for my sake. That adventure, caused by my own folly, led me
to reflect. I saw that I myself was the first victim of my vengeance.
My mother, who knew I was too proud, too d'Uxelles, to conduct
myself really ill, began to see the harm that she had done me and was
frightened by it. She was then fifty-two years of age; she left Paris
and went to live at Uxelles. There she expiates her wrong-doing by a
life of devotion and expresses the utmost affection for me. After her
departure I was face to face, alone, with Monsieur de Maufrigneuse. Oh!
my friend, you men can never know what an old man of gallantry can be.
What a home is that of a man accustomed to the adulation of women of the
world, when he finds neither incense nor censer in his own house! dead
to all! and yet, perhaps for that very reason, jealous. I wished--when
Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was wholly mine--I wished to be a good wife,
but I found myself repulsed with the harshness of a soured spirit by
a man who treated me like a child and took pleasure in humiliating
my self-respect at every turn, in crushing me under the scorn of his
experience, and in convicting me of total ignorance. He wounded me on
all occasions. He did everything to make me detest him and to give me
the right to betray him; but I was still the dupe of my own hope and of
my desire to do right through several years. Shall I tell you the cruel
saying that drove me to further follies? 'The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
has gone back to her husband,' said the world. 'Bah! it is always a
triumph to bring the dead to life; it is all she can now do,' replied my
best friend, a relation, she, at whose house I met you--"

"Madame d'Espard!" cried Daniel, with a gesture of horror.

"Oh! I have forgiven her. Besides, it was very witty; and I have myself
made just as cruel epigrams on other poor women as innocent as myself."

D'Arthez again kissed the hand of that saintly woman who, having hacked
her mother in pieces, and turned the Prince de Cadignan into an Othello,
now proceeded to accuse herself in order to appear in the eyes of that
innocent great man as immaculate as the silliest or the wisest of women
desire to seem at all costs to their lovers.

"You will readily understand, my friend, that I returned to society for
the purpose of excitement and I may say of notoriety. I felt that I must
conquer my independence. I led a life of dissipation. To divert my mind,
to forget my real life in fictitious enjoyments I was gay, I shone, I
gave fetes, I played the princess, and I ran in debt. At home I could
forget myself in the sleep of weariness, able to rise the next day gay,
and frivolous for the world; but in that sad struggle to escape my real
life I wasted my fortune. The revolution of 1830 came; it came at the
very moment when I had met, at the end of that _Arabian Nights'_ life, a
pure and sacred love which (I desire to be honest) I had longed to know.
Was it not natural in a woman whose heart, repressed by many causes and
accidents, was awakening at an age when a woman feels herself cheated
if she has never known, like the women she sees about her, a happy love?
Ah! why was Michel Chrestien so respectful? Why did he not seek to meet
me? There again was another mockery! But what of that? in falling, I
have lost everything; I have no illusions left; I had tasted of all
things except the one fruit for which I have no longer teeth. Yes, I
found myself disenchanted with the world at the very moment when I was
forced to leave it. Providential, was it not? like all those strange
insensibilities which prepare us for death" (she made a gesture full
of pious unction). "All things served me then," she continued; "the
disasters of the monarchy and its ruin helped me to bury myself. My son
consoles me for much. Maternal love takes the place of all frustrated
feelings. The world is surprised at my retirement, but to me it has
brought peace. Ah! if you knew how happy the poor creature before you is
in this little place. In sacrificing all to my son I forget to think of
joys of which I am and ever must be ignorant. Yes, hope has flown, I
now fear everything; no doubt I should repulse the truest sentiment,
the purest and most veritable love, in memory of the deceptions and the
miseries of my life. It is all horrible, is it not? and yet, what I have
told you is the history of many women."

The last few words were said in a tone of easy pleasantry which recalled
the presence of the woman of the world. D'Arthez was dumbfounded. In his
eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggravated robbery, or
for putting a wrong name to checks, were saints compared to the men and
women of society. This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies,
and steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been poured into his
ears with the inimitable accent of truth. The grave author contemplated
for a moment that adorable woman lying back in her easy-chair, her two
hands pendant from its arms like dewdrops from a rose-leaf, overcome
by her own revelation, living over again the sorrows of her life as she
told them--in short an angel of melancholy.

"And judge," she cried, suddenly lifting herself with a spring and
raising her hand, while lightning flashed from eyes where twenty chaste
years shone--"judge of the impression the love of a man like Michel
must have made upon me. But by some irony of fate--or was it the hand of
God?--well, he died; died in saving the life of, whom do you suppose? of
Monsieur de Cadignan. Are you now surprised to find me thoughtful?"

This was the last drop; poor d'Arthez could bear no more. He fell upon
his knees, and laid his head on Diane's hand, weeping soft tears such
as the angels shed,--if angels weep. As Daniel was in that bent posture,
Madame de Cadignan could safely let a malicious smile of triumph flicker
on her lips, a smile such as the monkeys wear after playing a sly
trick--if monkeys smile.

"Ah! I have him," thought she; and, indeed, she had him fast.

"But you are--" he said, raising his fine head and looking at her with
eyes of love.

"Virgin and martyr," she replied, smiling at the commonness of that
hackneyed expression, but giving it a freshness of meaning by her smile,
so full of painful gayety. "If I laugh," she continued, "it is that I am
thinking of that princess whom the world thinks it knows, that Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse to whom it gives as lovers de Marsay, that infamous de
Trailles (a political cutthroat), and that little fool of a d'Esgrignon,
and Rastignac, Rubempre, ambassadors, ministers, Russian generals,
heaven knows who! all Europe! They have gossiped about that album which
I ordered made, believing that those who admired me were my friends. Ah!
it is frightful! I wonder that I allow a man at my feet! Despise them
all, THAT should be my religion."

She rose and went to the window with a gait and bearing magnificent in
motifs.

D'Arthez remained on the low seat to which he had returned not daring
to follow the princess; but he looked at her; he heard her blowing her
nose. Was there ever a princess who blew her nose? but Diane attempted
the impossible to convey an idea of her sensibility. D'Arthez believed
his angel was in tears; he rushed to her side, took her round the waist,
and pressed her to his heart.

"No, no, leave me!" she murmured in a feeble voice. "I have too many
doubts to be good for anything. To reconcile me with life is a task
beyond the powers of any man."

"Diane! I will love you for your whole lost life."

"No; don't speak to me thus," she answered. "At this moment I tremble, I
am ashamed as though I had committed the greatest sins."

She was now entirely restored to the innocence of little girls, and
yet her bearing was august, grand, noble as that of a queen. It is
impossible to describe the effect of these manoeuvres, so clever that
they acted like the purest truth on a soul as fresh and honest as that
of d'Arthez. The great author remained dumb with admiration, passive
beside her in the recess of that window awaiting a word, while the
princess awaited a kiss; but she was far too sacred to him for that.
Feeling cold, the princess returned to her easy-chair; her feet were
frozen.

"It will take a long time," she said to herself, looking at Daniel's
noble brow and head.

"Is this a woman?" thought that profound observer of human nature. "How
ought I to treat her?"

Until two o'clock in the morning they spent their time in saying to each
other the silly things that women of genius, like the princess, know how
to make adorable. Diane pretended to be too worn, too old, too faded;
D'Arthez proved to her (facts of which she was well convinced) that her
skin was the most delicate, the softest to the touch, the whitest to the
eye, the most fragrant; she was young and in her bloom, how could she
think otherwise? Thus they disputed, beauty by beauty, detail by detail
with many: "Oh! do you think so?"--"You are beside yourself!"--"It is
hope, it is fancy!"--"You will soon see me as I am.--I am almost forty
years of age. Can a man love so old a woman?"

D'Arthez responded with impetuous and school-boy eloquence, larded with
exaggerated epithets. When the princess heard this wise and witty writer
talking the nonsense of an amorous sub-lieutenant she listened with an
absorbed air and much sensibility; but she laughed in her sleeve.

When d'Arthez was in the street, he asked himself whether he might not
have been rather less respectful. He went over in memory those strange
confidences--which have, naturally, been much abridged here, for they
needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abundance and the graces
which accompanied them. The retrospective perspicacity of this man, so
natural, so profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and its
poignancy, and by the tones of the princess.

"It is true," he said to himself, being unable to sleep, "there are such
dramas as that in society. Society covers great horrors with the flowers
of its elegance, the embroidery of its gossip, the wit of its lies. We
writers invent no more than the truth. Poor Diane! Michel had penetrated
that enigma; he said that beneath her covering of ice there lay
volcanoes! Bianchon and Rastignac were right; when a man can join the
grandeurs of the ideal and the enjoyments of human passion in loving
a woman of perfect manners, of intellect, of delicacy, it must be
happiness beyond words."

So thinking, he sounded the love that was in him and found it infinite.




CHAPTER V. A TRIAL OF FAITH


The next day, about two in the afternoon, Madame d'Espard, who had seen
and heard nothing of the princess for more than a month, went to see her
under the impulse of extreme curiosity. Nothing was ever more amusing
of its kind than the conversation of these two crafty adders during the
first half-hour of this visit.

Diane d'Uxelles cautiously avoided, as she would the wearing of a yellow
gown, all mention of d'Arthez. The marquise circled round and round that
topic like a Bedouin round a caravan. Diane amused herself; the marquise
fumed. Diane waited; she intended to utilize her friend and use her in
the chase. Of these two women, both so celebrated in the social world,
one was far stronger than the other. The princess rose by a head
above the marquise, and the marquise was inwardly conscious of that
superiority. In this, perhaps, lay the secret of their intimacy. The
weaker of the two crouched low in her false attachment, watching for the
hour, long awaited by feeble beings, of springing at the throat of the
stronger and leaving the mark of a joyful bite. Diane saw clear; but the
world was the dupe of the wile caresses of the two friends.

The instant that the princess perceived a direct question on the lips of
her friend, she said:--

"Ah! dearest, I owe you a most complete, immense, infinite, celestial
happiness."

"What can you mean?"

"Have you forgotten what we ruminated three months ago in the little
garden, sitting on a bench in the sun, under the jasmine? Ah! there are
none but men of genius who know how to love! I apply to my grand Daniel
d'Arthez the Duke of Alba's saying to Catherine de' Medici: 'The head of
a single salmon is worth all the frogs in the world.'"

"I am not surprised that I no longer see you," said Madame d'Espard.

"Promise me, if you meet him, not to say to him one word about me, my
angel," said the princess, taking her friend's hand. "I am happy, oh!
happy beyond all expression; but you know that in society a word, a mere
jest can do much harm. One speech can kill, for they put such venom into
a single sentence! Ah! if you knew how I long that you might meet with
a love like this! Yes, it is a sweet, a precious triumph for women like
ourselves to end our woman's life in this way; to rest in an ardent,
pure, devoted, complete and absolute love; above all, when we have
sought it long."

"Why do you ask me to be faithful to my dearest friend?" said Madame
d'Espard. "Do you think me capable of playing you some villainous
trick?"

"When a woman possesses such a treasure the fear of losing it is so
strong that it naturally inspires a feeling of terror. I am absurd, I
know; forgive me, dear."

A few moments later the marquise departed; as she watched her go the
princess said to herself:--

"How she will pluck me! But to save her the trouble of trying to get
Daniel away from here I'll send him to her."

At three o'clock, or a few moments after, d'Arthez arrived. In the midst
of some interesting topic on which he was discoursing eloquently, the
princess suddenly cut him short by laying her hand on his arm.

"Pardon me, my dear friend," she said, interrupting him, "but I fear
I may forget a thing which seems a mere trifle but may be of great
importance. You have not set foot in Madame d'Espard's salon since the
ever-blessed day when I met you there. Pray go at once; not for your
sake, nor by way of politeness, but for me. You may already have made
her an enemy of mine, if by chance she has discovered that since her
dinner you have scarcely left my house. Besides, my friend, I don't like
to see you dropping your connection with society, and neglecting your
occupations and your work. I should again be strangely calumniated. What
would the world say? That I held you in leading-strings, absorbed you,
feared comparisons, and clung to my conquest knowing it to be my last!
Who will know that you are my friend, my only friend? If you love me
indeed, as you say you love me, you will make the world believe that
we are purely and simply brother and sister--Go on with what you were
saying."

In his armor of tenderness, riveted by the knowledge of so many splendid
virtues, d'Arthez obeyed this behest on the following day and went
to see Madame d'Espard, who received him with charming coquetry. The
marquise took very good care not to say a single word to him about the
princess, but she asked him to dinner on a coming day.

On this occasion d'Arthez found a numerous company. The marquise
had invited Rastignac, Blondet, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de
Trailles, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, the two brothers Vandenesse, du
Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, the Baron de Nucingen,
Raoul Nathan, Lady Dudley, two very treacherous secretaries of embassies
and the Chevalier d'Espard, the wiliest person in this assemblage and
the chief instigator of his sister-in-law's policy.

When dinner was well under way, Maxime de Trailles turned to d'Arthez
and said smiling:--

"You see a great deal, don't you, of the Princesse de Cadignan?"

To this question d'Arthez responded by curtly nodding his head. Maxime
de Trailles was a "bravo" of the social order, without faith or law,
capable of everything, ruining the women who trusted him, compelling
them to pawn their diamonds to give him money, but covering this conduct
with a brilliant varnish; a man of charming manners and satanic mind.
He inspired all who knew him with equal contempt and fear; but as no
one was bold enough to show him any sentiments but those of the utmost
courtesy he saw nothing of this public opinion, or else he accepted and
shared the general dissimulation. He owed to the Comte de Marsay the
greatest degree of elevation to which he could attain. De Marsay,
whose knowledge of Maxime was of long-standing, judged him capable of
fulfilling certain secret and diplomatic functions which he confided to
him and of which de Trailles acquitted himself admirably. D'Arthez had
for some time past mingled sufficiently in political matters to know the
man for what he was, and he alone had sufficient strength and height of
character to express aloud what others thought or said in a whisper.

"Is it for her that you neglect the Chamber?" asked Baron de Nucingen in
his German accent.

"Ah! the princess is one of the most dangerous women a man can have
anything to do with. I owe to her the miseries of my marriage,"
exclaimed the Marquis d'Esgrignon.

"Dangerous?" said Madame d'Espard. "Don't speak so of my nearest friend.
I have never seen or known anything in the princess that did not seem to
come from the noblest sentiments."

"Let the marquis say what he thinks," cried Rastignac. "When a man has
been thrown by a fine horse he thinks it has vices and he sells it."

Piqued by these words, the Marquis d'Esgrignon looked at d'Arthez and
said:--

"Monsieur is not, I trust, on such terms with the princess that we
cannot speak freely of her?"

D'Arthez kept silence. D'Esgrignon, who was not wanting in cleverness,
replied to Rastignac's speech with an apologetic portrait of the
princess, which put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was
extremely obscure to d'Arthez he leaned towards his neighbor, Madame de
Montcornet, and asked her, in a whisper, what it meant.

"Excepting yourself--judging by the excellent opinion you seem to have
of the princess--all the other guests are said to have been in her good
graces."

"I can assure you that such an accusation is absolutely false," said
Daniel.

"And yet, here is Monsieur d'Esgrignon of an old family of Alencon, who
completely ruined himself for her some twelve years ago, and, if all is
true, came very near going to the scaffold."

"I know the particulars of that affair," said d'Arthez. "Madame de
Cadignan went to Alencon to save Monsieur d'Esgrignon from a trial
before the court of assizes; and this is how he rewards her to-day!"

Madame de Montcornet looked at d'Arthez with a surprise and curiosity
that were almost stupid, then she turned her eyes on Madame d'Espard
with a look which seemed to say: "He is bewitched!"

During this short conversation Madame de Cadignan was protected by
Madame d'Espard, whose protection was like that of the lightning-rod
which draws the flash. When d'Arthez returned to the general
conversation Maxime de Trailles was saying:--

"With Diane, depravity is not an effect but a cause; perhaps she owes
that cause to her exquisite nature; she doesn't invent, she makes no
effort, she offers you the choicest refinements as the inspiration of
a spontaneous and naive love; and it is absolutely impossible not to
believe her."

This speech, which seemed to have been prepared for a man of d'Arthez's
stamp, was so tremendous an arraignment that the company appeared to
accept it as a conclusion. No one said more; the princess was crushed.
D'Arthez looked straight at de Trailles and then at d'Esgrignon with a
sarcastic air, and said:--

"The greatest fault of that woman is that she has followed in the wake
of men. She squanders patrimonies as they do; she drives her lovers to
usurers; she pockets 'dots'; she ruins orphans; she inspires, possibly
she commits, crimes, but--"

Never had the two men, whom d'Arthez was chiefly addressing, listened
to such plain talk. At that BUT the whole table was startled, every one
paused, fork in air, their eyes fixed alternately on the brave author
and on the assailants of the princess, awaiting the conclusion of that
horrible silence.

"_But_," said d'Arthez, with sarcastic airiness, "Madame la Princesse
de Cadignan has one advantage over men: when they have put themselves in
danger for her sake, she saves them, and says no harm of any one. Among
the multitude, why shouldn't there be one woman who amuses herself with
men as men amuse themselves with women? Why not allow the fair sex to
take, from time to time, its revenge?"

"Genius is stronger than wit," said Blondet to Nathan.

This broadside of sarcasms was in fact the discharge of a battery of
cannons against a platoon of musketry. When coffee was served, Blondet
and Nathan went up to d'Arthez with an eagerness no one else dared to
imitate, so unable were the rest of the company to show the admiration
his conduct inspired from the fear of making two powerful enemies.

"This is not the first time we have seen that your character equals your
talent in grandeur," said Blondet. "You behaved just now more like a
demi-god than a man. Not to have been carried away by your heart or
your imagination, not to have taken up the defence of a beloved woman--a
fault they were enticing you to commit, because it would have given
those men of society eaten up with jealousy of your literary fame a
triumph over you--ah! give me leave to say you have attained the height
of private statesmanship."

"Yes, you are a statesman," said Nathan. "It is as clever as it is
difficult to avenge a woman without defending her."

"The princess is one of those heroines of the legitimist party, and
it is the duty of all men of honor to protect her quand meme," replied
d'Arthez, coldly. "What she has done for the cause of her masters would
excuse all follies."

"He keeps his own counsel!" said Nathan to Blondet.

"Precisely as if the princess were worth it," said Rastignac, joining
the other two.

D'Arthez went to the princess, who was awaiting him with the keenest
anxiety. The result of this experiment, which Diane had herself brought
about, might be fatal to her. For the first time in her life this woman
suffered in her heart. She knew not what she should do in case d'Arthez
believed the world which spoke the truth, instead of believing her who
lied; for never had so noble a nature, so complete a man, a soul so
pure, a conscience so ingenuous come beneath her hand. Though she had
told him cruel lies she was driven to do so by the desire of knowing a
true love. That love--she felt it dawning in her heart; yes, she loved
d'Arthez; and now she was condemned forever to deceive him! She must
henceforth remain to him the actress who had played that comedy to blind
his eyes.

When she heard Daniel's step in the dining-room a violent commotion, a
shudder which reached to her very vitals came over her. That convulsion,
never felt during all the years of her adventurous existence, told her
that she had staked her happiness on this issue. Her eyes, gazing
into space, took in the whole of d'Arthez's person; their light poured
through his flesh, she read his soul; suspicion had not so much as
touched him with its bat's-wing. The terrible emotion of that fear then
came to its reaction; joy almost stifled her; for there is no human
being who is not more able to endure grief than to bear extreme
felicity.

"Daniel, they have calumniated me, and you have avenged me!" she cried,
rising, and opening her arms to him.

In the profound amazement caused by these words, the roots of which were
utterly unknown to him, Daniel allowed his hand to be taken between her
beautiful hands, as the princess kissed him sacredly on the forehead.

"But," he said, "how could you know--"

"Oh! illustrious ninny! do you not see that I love you fondly?"

Since that day nothing has been said of the Princess de Cadignan, nor
of d'Arthez. The princess has inherited some fortune from her mother and
she spends all her summers in a villa on the lake of Geneva, where the
great writer joins her. She returns to Paris for a few months in winter.
D'Arthez is never seen except in the Chamber. His writings are becoming
exceedingly rare. Is this a conclusion? Yes, for people of sense; no,
for persons who want to know everything.




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

     Ajuda-Pinto, Marquis Miguel d'
       Father Goriot
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Beatrix

     Arthez, Daniel d'
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Member for Arcis

     Bianchon, Horace
       Father Goriot
       The Atheist's Mass
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Commission in Lunacy
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       The Government Clerks
       Pierrette
       A Study of Woman
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Honorine
       The Seamy Side of History
       The Magic Skin
       A Second Home
       A Prince of Bohemia
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Muse of the Department
       The Imaginary Mistress
       The Middle Classes
       Cousin Betty
       The Country Parson
     In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:
       Another Study of Woman
       La Grande Breteche

     Blondet, Emile
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Modeste Mignon
       Another Study of Woman
       A Daughter of Eve
       The Firm of Nucingen
       The Peasantry

     Blondet, Virginie
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Peasantry
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Another Study of Woman
       The Member for Arcis
       A Daughter of Eve

     Cadignan, Prince de
       Modeste Mignon

     Chrestien, Michel
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

     Cinq-Cygne, Laurence, Comtesse (afterwards Marquise de)
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Seamy Side of History
       The Member for Arcis

     Dudley, Lady Arabella
       The Lily of the Valley
       The Ball at Sceaux
       The Magic Skin
        A Daughter of Eve
       Letters of Two Brides

     Esgrignon, Victurnien, Comte (then Marquis d')
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Letters of Two Brides
       A Man of Business
       Cousin Betty

     Espard, Chevalier d'
       The Commission in Lunacy
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Espard, Jeanne-Clementine-Athenais de Blamont-Chauvry, Marquise d'
       The Commission in Lunacy
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Letters of Two Brides
       Another Study of Woman
       The Gondreville Mystery
       A Daughter of Eve
       Beatrix

     Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story)
       The Middle Classes
       Father Goriot
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Daughter of Eve
       Beatrix

     Giraud, Leon
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Marsay, Henri de
       The Thirteen
       The Unconscious Humorists
       Another Study of Woman
       The Lily of the Valley
       Father Goriot
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Marriage Settlement
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Ball at Sceaux
       Modest Mignon
       The Gondreville Mystery
       A Daughter of Eve

     Maufrigneuse, Duc de
       A Start in Life
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

      Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de
       Modeste Mignon
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Muse of the Department
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Letters of Two Brides
       Another Study of Woman
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Member for Arcis

     Maufrigneuse, Georges de
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Beatrix
       The Member for Arcis

     Mirbel, Madame de
       Letters of Two Brides
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

     Nathan, Raoul
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       A Daughter of Eve
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Seamy Side of History
       The Muse of the Department
       A Prince of Bohemia
       A Man of Business
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Navarreins, Duc de
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       Colonel Chabert
       The Muse of the Department
       The Thirteen
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Peasantry
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       The Country Parson
       The Magic Skin
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Cousin Betty

     Nucingen, Baron Frederic de
       The Firm of Nucingen
       Father Goriot
       Pierrette
       Cesar Birotteau
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       Another Study of Woman
       A Man of Business
       Cousin Betty
       The Muse of the Department
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Rastignac, Eugene de
       Father Goriot
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
       The Ball at Sceaux
       The Interdiction
       A Study of Woman
       Another Study of Woman
       The Magic Skin
       A Daughter of Eve
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Firm of Nucingen
       Cousin Betty
       The Member for Arcis
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Rochefide, Marquise de
       Beatrix
       A Daughter of Eve
       Sarrasine
       A Prince of Bohemia

     Tillet, Ferdinand du
       Cesar Birotteau
       The Firm of Nucingen
       The Middle Classes
       A Bachelor's Establishment
       Pierrette
       Melmoth Reconciled
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Daughter of Eve
       The Member for Arcis
       Cousin Betty
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Toby (Joby, Paddy)
       The Firm of Nucingen

     Trailles, Comte Maxime de
       Cesar Birotteau
       Father Goriot
       Gobseck
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Man of Business
       The Member for Arcis
       Cousin Betty
       The Member for Arcis
       Beatrix
       The Unconscious Humorists

     Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
       The Lily of the Valley
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Cesar Birotteau
       Letters of Two Brides
       A Start in Life
       The Marriage Settlement
       Another Study of Woman
       The Gondreville Mystery
       A Daughter of Eve






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