A DAUGHTER OF EVE

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 Translated By

 Katharine Prescott Wormeley

 DEDICATION

 To Madame la Comtesse Bolognini, nee Vimercati. 

 If you remember, madame, the pleasure your conversation gave to a traveller by recalling Paris to his memory in Milan, you will not be surprised to find him testifying his gratitude for many pleasant evenings passed beside you by laying one of his works at your feet, and begging you to protect it with your name, as in former days that name protected the tales of an ancient writer dear to the Milanese. 

 You have an Eugenie, already beautiful, whose intelligent smile gives promise that she has inherited from you the most precious gifts of womanhood, and who will certainly enjoy during her childhood and youth all those happinesses which a rigid mother denied to the Eugenie of these pages. Though Frenchmen are taxed with inconstancy, you will find me Italian in faithfulness and memory. While writing the name of "Eugenie, " my thoughts have often led me back to that cool stuccoed salon and little garden in the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the laughter of that dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But you have left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you are placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among the charming things with which no doubt you have surrounded yourself, but like one of those fine figures due to Raffaelle, Titian, Correggio, Allori, which seem abstractions, so distant are they from our daily lives. 

 If this book should wing its way across the Alps, it will prove to you the lively gratitude and respectful friendship of

Your devoted servant, De Balzac. 

 A DAUGHTER OF EVE

 CHAPTER I

 THE TWO MARIES

In one of the finest houses of the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, athalf-past eleven at night, two young women were sitting before thefireplace of a boudoir hung with blue velvet of that tender shade, with shimmering reflections, which French industry has lately learnedto fabricate. Over the doors and windows were draped soft folds ofblue cashmere, the tint of the hangings, the work of one of thoseupholsterers who have just missed being artists. A silver lamp studdedwith turquoise, and suspended by chains of beautiful workmanship, hungfrom the centre of the ceiling. The same system of decoration wasfollowed in the smallest details, and even to the ceiling of flutedblue silk, with long bands of white cashmere falling at equaldistances on the hangings, where they were caught back by ropes ofpearl. A warm Belgian carpet, thick as turf, of a gray ground withblue posies, covered the floor. The furniture, of carved ebony, aftera fine model of the old school, gave substance and richness to therather too decorative quality, as a painter might call it, of the restof the room. On either side of a large window, two etageres displayeda hundred precious trifles, flowers of mechanical art brought intobloom by the fire of thought. On a chimney-piece of slate-blue marblewere figures in old Dresden, shepherds in bridal garb, with delicatebouquets in their hands, German fantasticalities surrounding aplatinum clock, inlaid with arabesques. Above it sparkled thebrilliant facets of a Venice mirror framed in ebony, with figurescarved in relief, evidently obtained from some former royal residence. Two jardinieres were filled with the exotic product of a hot-house, pale, but divine flowers, the treasures of botany. 

In this cold, orderly boudoir, where all things were in place as iffor sale, no sign existed of the gay and capricious disorder of ahappy home. At the present moment, the two young women were weeping. Pain seemed to predominate. The name of the owner, Ferdinand duTillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, is enough to explain theluxury of the whole house, of which this boudoir is but a sample. 

Though without either rank or station, having pushed himself forward, heaven knows how, du Tillet had married, in 1831, the daughter of theComte de Granville, one of the greatest names in the Frenchmagistracy, --a man who became peer of France after the revolution ofJuly. This marriage of ambition on du Tillet's part was brought aboutby his agreeing to sign an acknowledgment in the marriage contract ofa dowry not received, equal to that of her elder sister, who wasmarried to Comte Felix de Vandenesse. On the other hand, theGranvilles obtained the alliance with de Vandenesse by the largenessof the "dot. " Thus the bank repaired the breach made in the pocket ofthe magistracy by rank. Could the Comte de Vandenesse have seenhimself, three years later, the brother-in-law of a Sieur Ferdinand DUTillet, so-called, he might not have married his wife; but what man ofrank in 1828 foresaw the strange upheavals which the year 1830 wasdestined to produce in the political condition, the fortunes, and thecustoms of France? Had any one predicted to Comte Felix de Vandenessethat his head would lose the coronet of a peer, and that of hisfather-in-law acquire one, he would have thought his informant alunatic. 

Bending forward on one of those low chairs then called "chaffeuses, "in the attitude of a listener, Madame du Tillet was pressing to herbosom with maternal tenderness, and occasionally kissing, the hand ofher sister, Madame Felix de Vandenesse. Society added the baptismalname to the surname, in order to distinguish the countess from hersister-in-law, the Marquise Charles de Vandenesse, wife of the formerambassador, who had married the widow of the Comte de Kergarouet, Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine. 

Half lying on a sofa, her handkerchief in the other hand, herbreathing choked by repressed sobs, and with tearful eyes, thecountess had been making confidences such as are made only from sisterto sister when two sisters love each other; and these two sisters didlove each other tenderly. We live in days when sisters married intosuch antagonist spheres can very well not love each other, andtherefore the historian is bound to relate the reasons of this tenderaffection, preserved without spot or jar in spite of their husbands'contempt for each other and their own social disunion. A rapid glanceat their childhood will explain the situation. 

Brought up in a gloomy house in the Marais, by a woman of narrow mind, a "devote" who, being sustained by a sense of duty (sacred phrase!), had fulfilled her tasks as a mother religiously, Marie-Angelique andMarie Eugenie de Granville reached the period of their marriage--thefirst at eighteen, the second at twenty years of age--without everleaving the domestic zone where the rigid maternal eye controlledthem. Up to that time they had never been to a play; the churches ofParis were their theatre. Their education in their mother's house hadbeen as rigorous as it would have been in a convent. From infancy theyhad slept in a room adjoining that of the Comtesse de Granville, thedoor of which stood always open. The time not occupied by the care oftheir persons, their religious duties and the studies considerednecessary for well-bred young ladies, was spent in needlework done forthe poor, or in walks like those an Englishwoman allows herself onSunday, saying, apparently, "Not so fast, or we shall seem to beamusing ourselves. "

Their education did not go beyond the limits imposed by confessors, who were chosen by their mother from the strictest and least tolerantof the Jansenist priests. Never were girls delivered over to theirhusbands more absolutely pure and virgin than they; their motherseemed to consider that point, essential as indeed it is, theaccomplishment of all her duties toward earth and heaven. These twopoor creatures had never, before their marriage, read a tale, or heardof a romance; their very drawings were of figures whose anatomy wouldhave been masterpieces of the impossible to Cuvier, designed tofeminize the Farnese Hercules himself. An old maid taught themdrawing. A worthy priest instructed them in grammar, the Frenchlanguage, history, geography, and the very little arithmetic it wasthought necessary in their rank for women to know. Their reading, selected from authorized books, such as the "Lettres Edifiantes, " andNoel's "Lecons de Litterature, " was done aloud in the evening; butalways in presence of their mother's confessor, for even in thosebooks there did sometimes occur passages which, without wise comments, might have roused their imagination. Fenelon's "Telemaque" was thoughtdangerous. 

The Comtesse de Granville loved her daughters sufficiently to wish tomake them angels after the pattern of Marie Alacoque, but the poorgirls themselves would have preferred a less virtuous and more amiablemother. This education bore its natural fruits. Religion, imposed as ayoke and presented under its sternest aspect, wearied with formalpractice these innocent young hearts, treated as sinful. It repressedtheir feelings, and was never precious to them, although it struck itsroots deep down into their natures. Under such training the two Marieswould either have become mere imbeciles, or they must necessarily havelonged for independence. Thus it came to pass that they looked tomarriage as soon as they saw anything of life and were able to comparea few ideas. Of their own tender graces and their personal value theywere absolutely ignorant. They were ignorant, too, of their owninnocence; how, then, could they know life? Without weapons to meetmisfortune, without experience to appreciate happiness, they found nocomfort in the maternal jail, all their joys were in each other. Theirtender confidences at night in whispers, or a few short sentencesexchanged if their mother left them for a moment, contained more ideasthan the words themselves expressed. Often a glance, concealed fromother eyes, by which they conveyed to each other their emotions, waslike a poem of bitter melancholy. The sight of a cloudless sky, thefragrance of flowers, a turn in the garden, arm in arm, --these weretheir joys. The finishing of a piece of embroidery was to them asource of enjoyment. 

Their mother's social circle, far from opening resources to theirhearts or stimulating their minds, only darkened their ideas anddepressed them; it was made up of rigid old women, withered andgraceless, whose conversation turned on the differences whichdistinguished various preachers and confessors, on their own pettyindispositions, on religious events insignificant even to the"Quotidienne" or "l'Ami de la Religion. " As for the men who appearedin the Comtesse de Granville's salon, they extinguished any possibletorch of love, so cold and sadly resigned were their faces. They wereall of an age when mankind is sulky and fretful, and naturalsensibilities are chiefly exercised at table and on the thingsrelating to personal comfort. Religious egotism had long dried upthose hearts devoted to narrow duties and entrenched behind piouspractices. Silent games of cards occupied the whole evening, and thetwo young girls under the ban of that Sanhedrim enforced by maternalseverity, came to hate the dispiriting personages about them withtheir hollow eyes and scowling faces. 

On the gloom of this life one sole figure of a man, that of amusic-master, stood vigorously forth. The confessors had decided thatmusic was a Christian art, born of the Catholic Church and developedwithin her. The two Maries were therefore permitted to study music. Aspinster in spectacles, who taught singing and the piano in aneighboring convent, wearied them with exercises; but when the eldestgirl was ten years old, the Comte de Granville insisted on theimportance of giving her a master. Madame de Granville gave all thevalue of conjugal obedience to this needed concession, --it is part ofa devote's character to make a merit of doing her duty. 

The master was a Catholic German; one of those men born old, who seemall their lives fifty years of age, even at eighty. And yet, hisbrown, sunken, wrinkled face still kept something infantile andartless in its dark creases. The blue of innocence was in his eyes, and a gay smile of springtide abode upon his lips. His iron-gray hair, falling naturally like that of the Christ in art, added to hisecstatic air a certain solemnity which was absolutely deceptive as tohis real nature; for he was capable of committing any silliness withthe most exemplary gravity. His clothes were a necessary envelope, towhich he paid not the slightest attention, for his eyes looked toohigh among the clouds to concern themselves with such materialities. This great unknown artist belonged to the kindly class of theself-forgetting, who give their time and their soul to others, just asthey leave their gloves on every table and their umbrella at all doors. His hands were of the kind that are dirty as soon as washed. In short, his old body, badly poised on its knotted old legs, proving to whatdegree a man can make it the mere accessory of his soul, belonged tothose strange creations which have been properly depicted only by aGerman, --by Hoffman, the poet of that which seems not to exist but yethas life. 

Such was Schmucke, formerly chapel-master to the Margrave of Anspach;a musical genius, who was now examined by a council of devotes, andasked if he kept the fasts. The master was much inclined to answer, "Look at me!" but how could he venture to joke with pious dowagers andJansenist confessors? This apocryphal old fellow held such a place inthe lives of the two Maries, they felt such friendship for the grandand simple-minded artist, who was happy and contented in the merecomprehension of his art, that after their marriage, they each gavehim an annuity of three hundred francs a year, --a sum which sufficedto pay for his lodging, beer, pipes, and clothes. Six hundred francs ayear and his lessons put him in Eden. Schmucke had never found courageto confide his poverty and his aspirations to any but these twoadorable young girls, whose hearts were blooming beneath the snow ofmaternal rigor and the ice of devotion. This fact explains Schmuckeand the girlhood of the two Maries. 

No one knew then, or later, what abbe or pious spinster had discoveredthe old German then vaguely wandering about Paris, but as soon asmothers of families learned that the Comtesse de Granville had found amusic-master for her daughters, they all inquired for his name andaddress. Before long, Schmucke had thirty pupils in the Marais. Thistardy success was manifested by steel buckles to his shoes, which werelined with horse-hair soles, and by a more frequent change of linen. His artless gaiety, long suppressed by noble and decent poverty, reappeared. He gave vent to witty little remarks and flowery speechesin his German-Gallic patois, very observing and very quaint and saidwith an air which disarmed ridicule. But he was so pleased to bring alaugh to the lips of his two pupils, whose dismal life his sympathyhad penetrated, that he would gladly have made himself wilfullyridiculous had he failed in being so by nature. 

According to one of the nobler ideas of religious education, the younggirls always accompanied their master respectfully to the door. Therethey would make him a few kind speeches, glad to do anything to givehim pleasure. Poor things! all they could do was to show him theirwomanhood. Until their marriage, music was to them another life withintheir lives, just as, they say, a Russian peasant takes his dreams forreality and his actual life for a troubled sleep. With the instinct ofprotecting their souls against the pettiness that threatened tooverwhelm them, against the all-pervading asceticism of their home, they flung themselves into the difficulties of the musical art, andspent themselves upon it. Melody, harmony, and composition, threedaughters of heaven, whose choir was led by an old Catholic faun drunkwith music, were to these poor girls the compensation of their trials;they made them, as it were, a rampart against their daily lives. Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Paesiello, Cimarosa, Haydn, and certainsecondary geniuses, developed in their souls a passionate emotionwhich never passed beyond the chaste enclosure of their breasts, though it permeated that other creation through which, in spirit, theywinged their flight. When they had executed some great work in amanner that their master declared was almost faultless, they embracedeach other in ecstasy and the old man called them his Saint Cecilias. 

The two Maries were not taken to a ball until they were sixteen yearsof age, and then only four times a year in special houses. They werenot allowed to leave their mother's side without instructions as totheir behavior with their partners; and so severe were thoseinstructions that they dared say only yes or no during a dance. Theeye of the countess never left them, and she seemed to know from themere movement of their lips the words they uttered. Even theball-dresses of these poor little things were piously irreproachable;their muslin gowns came up to their chins with an endless number ofthick ruches, and the sleeves came down to their wrists. Swathing inthis way their natural charms, this costume gave them a vagueresemblance to Egyptian hermae; though from these blocks of muslinrose enchanting little heads of tender melancholy. They feltthemselves the objects of pity, and inwardly resented it. What woman, however innocent, does not desire to excite envy?

No dangerous idea, unhealthy or even equivocal, soiled the pure pulpof their brain; their hearts were innocent, their hands were horriblyred, and they glowed with health. Eve did not issue more innocent fromthe hands of God than these two girls from their mother's home whenthey went to the mayor's office and the church to be married, afterreceiving the simple but terrible injunction to obey in all things twomen with whom they were henceforth to live and sleep by day and bynight. To their minds, nothing could be worse in the strange houseswhere they were to go than the maternal convent. 

Why did the father of these poor girls, the Comte de Granville, a wiseand upright magistrate (though sometimes led away by politics), refrain from protecting the helpless little creatures from suchcrushing despotism? Alas! by mutual understanding, about ten yearsafter marriage, he and his wife were separated while living under oneroof. The father had taken upon himself the education of his sons, leaving that of the daughters to his wife. He saw less danger forwomen than for men in the application of his wife's oppressive system. The two Maries, destined as women to endure tyranny, either of love ormarriage, would be, he thought, less injured than boys, whose mindsought to have freer play, and whose manly qualities would deteriorateunder the powerful compression of religious ideas pushed to theirutmost consequences. Of four victims the count saved two. 

The countess regarded her sons as too ill-trained to admit of theslightest intimacy with their sisters. All communication between thepoor children was therefore strictly watched. When the boys came homefrom school, the count was careful not to keep them in the house. Theboys always breakfasted with their mother and sisters, but after thatthe count took them off to museums, theatres, restaurants, or, duringthe summer season, into the country. Except on the solemn days of somefamily festival, such as the countess's birthday or New Year's day, orthe day of the distribution of prizes, when the boys remained in theirfather's house and slept there, the sisters saw so little of theirbrothers that there was absolutely no tie between them. On those daysthe countess never left them for an instant alone together. Calls of"Where is Angelique?"--"What is Eugenie about?"--"Where are mydaughters?" resounded all day. As for the mother's sentiments towardsher sons, the countess raised to heaven her cold and macerated eyes, as if to ask pardon of God for not having snatched them from iniquity. 

Her exclamations, and also her reticences on the subject of her sons, were equal to the most lamenting verses in Jeremiah, and completelydeceived the sisters, who supposed their sinful brothers to be doomedto perdition. 

When the boys were eighteen years of age, the count gave them rooms inhis own part of the house, and sent them to study law under thesupervision of a solicitor, his former secretary. The two Maries knewnothing therefore of fraternity, except by theory. At the time of themarriage of the sisters, both brothers were practising in provincialcourts, and both were detained by important cases. Domestic life inmany families which might be expected to be intimate, united, andhomogeneous, is really spent in this way. Brothers are sent to adistance, busy with their own careers, their own advancement, occupied, perhaps, about the good of the country; the sisters areengrossed in a round of other interests. All the members of such afamily live disunited, forgetting one another, bound together only bysome feeble tie of memory, until, perhaps, a sentiment of pride orself-interest either joins them or separates them in heart as theyalready are in fact. Modern laws, by multiplying the family by thefamily, has created a great evil, --namely, individualism. 

In the depths of this solitude where their girlhood was spent, Angelique and Eugenie seldom saw their father, and when he did enterthe grand apartment of his wife on the first floor, he brought withhim a saddened face. In his own home he always wore the grave andsolemn look of a magistrate on the bench. When the little girls hadpassed the age of dolls and toys, when they began, about twelve, touse their minds (an epoch at which they ceased to laugh at Schmucke)they divined the secret of the cares that lined their father'sforehead, and they recognized beneath that mask of sternness therelics of a kind heart and a fine character. They vaguely perceivedhow he had yielded to the forces of religion in his household, disappointed as he was in his hopes of a husband, and wounded in thetenderest fibres of paternity, --the love of a father for hisdaughters. Such griefs were singularly moving to the hearts of the twoyoung girls, who were themselves deprived of all tenderness. Sometimes, when pacing the garden between his daughters, with an armround each little waist, and stepping with their own short steps, thefather would stop short behind a clump of trees, out of sight of thehouse, and kiss them on their foreheads; his eyes, his lips, his wholecountenance expressing the deepest commiseration. 

"You are not very happy, my dear little girls, " he said one day; "butI shall marry you early. It will comfort me to have you leave home. "

"Papa, " said Eugenie, "we have decided to take the first man whooffers. "

"Ah!" he cried, "that is the bitter fruit of such a system. They wantto make saints, and they make--" he stopped without ending hissentence. 

Often the two girls felt an infinite tenderness in their father's"Adieu, " or in his eyes, when, by chance, he dined at home. Theypitied that father so seldom seen, and love follows often upon pity. 

This stern and rigid education was the cause of the marriages of thetwo sisters welded together by misfortune, as Rita-Christina by thehand of Nature. Many men, driven to marriage, prefer a girl taken froma convent, and saturated with piety, to a girl brought up to worldlyideas. There seems to be no middle course. A man must marry either aneducated girl, who reads the newspapers and comments upon them, whowaltzes with a dozen young men, goes to the theatre, devours novels, cares nothing for religion, and makes her own ethics, or an ignorantand innocent young girl, like either of the two Maries. Perhaps theremay be as much danger with the one kind as with the other. Yet thevast majority of men who are not so old as Arnolphe, prefer areligious Agnes to a budding Celimene. 

The two Maries, who were small and slender, had the same figure, thesame foot, the same hand. Eugenie, the younger, was fair-haired, likeher mother, Angelique was dark-haired, like the father. But they bothhad the same complexion, --a skin of the pearly whiteness which showsthe richness and purity of the blood, where the color rises through atissue like that of the jasmine, soft, smooth, and tender to thetouch. Eugenie's blue eyes and the brown eyes of Angelique had anexpression of artless indifference, of ingenuous surprise, which wasrendered by the vague manner with which the pupils floated on thefluid whiteness of the eyeball. They were both well-made; the ratherthin shoulders would develop later. Their throats, long veiled, delighted the eye when their husbands requested them to wear lowdresses to a ball, on which occasion they both felt a pleasing shame, which made them first blush behind closed doors, and afterwards, through a whole evening in company. 

On the occasion when this scene opens, and the eldest, Angelique, wasweeping, while the younger, Eugenie, was consoling her, their handsand arms were white as milk. Each had nursed a child, --one a boy, theother a daughter. Eugenie, as a girl, was thought very giddy by hermother, who had therefore treated her with especial watchfulness andseverity. In the eyes of that much-feared mother, Angelique, noble andproud, appeared to have a soul so lofty that it would guard itself, whereas, the more lively Eugenie needed restraint. There are manycharming beings misused by fate, --beings who ought by rights toprosper in this life, but who live and die unhappy, tortured by someevil genius, the victims of unfortunate circumstances. The innocentand naturally light-hearted Eugenie had fallen into the hands andbeneath the malicious despotism of a self-made man on leaving thematernal prison. Angelique, whose nature inclined her to deepersentiments, was thrown into the upper spheres of Parisian social life, with the bridle lying loose upon her neck. 

 CHAPTER II

 A CONFIDENCE BETWEEN SISTERS

Madame de Vandenesse, Marie-Angelique, who seemed to have broken downunder a weight of troubles too heavy for her soul to bear, was lyingback on the sofa with bent limbs, and her head tossing restlessly. Shehad rushed to her sister's house after a brief appearance at theOpera. Flowers were still in her hair, but others were scattered uponthe carpet, together with her gloves, her silk pelisse, and muff andhood. Tears were mingling with the pearls on her bosom; her swolleneyes appeared to make strange confidences. In the midst of so muchluxury her distress was horrible, and she seemed unable to summoncourage to speak. 

"Poor darling!" said Madame du Tillet; "what a mistaken idea you haveof my marriage if you think that I can help you!"

Hearing this revelation, dragged from her sister's heart by theviolence of the storm she herself had raised there, the countesslooked with stupefied eyes at the banker's wife; her tears stopped, and her eyes grew fixed. 

"Are you in misery as well, my dearest?" she said, in a low voice. 

"My griefs will not ease yours. "

"But tell them to me, darling; I am not yet too selfish to listen. Arewe to suffer together once more, as we did in girlhood?"

"But alas! we suffer apart, " said the banker's wife. "You and I livein two worlds at enmity with each other. I go to the Tuileries whenyou are not there. Our husbands belong to opposite parties. I am thewife of an ambitious banker, --a bad man, my darling; while you have anoble, kind, and generous husband. "

"Oh! don't reproach me!" cried the countess. "To understand myposition, a woman must have borne the weariness of a vapid and barrenlife, and have entered suddenly into a paradise of light and love; shemust know the happiness of feeling her whole life in that of another;of espousing, as it were, the infinite emotions of a poet's soul; ofliving a double existence, --going, coming with him in his coursesthrough space, through the world of ambition; suffering with hisgriefs, rising on the wings of his high pleasures, developing herfaculties on some vast stage; and all this while living calm, serene, and cold before an observing world. Ah! dearest, what happiness inhaving at all hours an enormous interest, which multiplies the fibresof the heart and varies them indefinitely! to feel no longer coldindifference! to find one's very life depending on a thousand trifles!--on a walk where an eye will beam to us from a crowd, on a glancewhich pales the sun! Ah! what intoxication, dear, to live! to _live_when other women are praying on their knees for emotions that nevercome to them! Remember, darling, that for this poem of delight thereis but a single moment, --youth! In a few years winter comes, and cold. Ah! if you possessed these living riches of the heart, and werethreatened with the loss of them--"

Madame du Tillet, terrified, had covered her face with her handsduring the passionate utterance of this anthem. 

"I did not even think of reproaching you, my beloved, " she said atlast, seeing her sister's face bathed in hot tears. "You have castinto my soul, in one moment, more brands than I have tears to quench. Yes, the life I live would justify to my heart a love like that youpicture. Let me believe that if we could have seen each other oftener, we should not now be where we are. If you had seen my sufferings, youmust have valued your own happiness the more, and you might havestrengthened me to resist my tyrant, and so have won a sort of peace. Your misery is an incident which chance may change, but mine is dailyand perpetual. To my husband I am a peg on which to hang his luxury, the sign-post of his ambition, a satisfaction to his vanity. He has noreal affection for me, and no confidence. Ferdinand is hard andpolished as that piece of marble, " she continued, striking thechimney-piece. "He distrusts me. Whatever I may want for myself isrefused before I ask it; but as for what flatters his vanity andproclaims his wealth, I have no occasion to express a wish. Hedecorates my apartments; he spends enormous sums upon myentertainments; my servants, my opera-box, all external matters aremaintained with the utmost splendor. His vanity spares no expense; hewould trim his children's swaddling-clothes with lace if he could, buthe would never hear their cries, or guess their needs. Do youunderstand me? I am covered with diamonds when I go to court; I wearthe richest jewels in society, but I have not one farthing I can use. Madame du Tillet, who, they say, is envied, who appears to float ingold, has not a hundred francs she can call her own. If the fathercares little for his child, he cares less for its mother. Ah! he hascruelly made me feel that he bought me, and that in marrying mewithout a 'dot' he was wronged. I might perhaps have won him to loveme, but there's an outside influence against it, --that of a woman, whois over fifty years of age, the widow of a notary, who rules him. Ishall never be free, I know that, so long as he lives. My life isregulated like that of a queen; my meals are served with the utmostformality; at a given hour I must drive to the Bois; I am alwaysaccompanied by two footmen in full dress; I am obliged to return at acertain hour. Instead of giving orders, I receive them. At a ball, atthe theatre, a servant comes to me and says: 'Madame's carriage isready, ' and I am obliged to go, in the midst, perhaps, of something Ienjoy. Ferdinand would be furious if I did not obey the etiquette heprescribes for his wife; he frightens me. In the midst of this hatefulopulence, I find myself regretting the past, and thinking that ourmother was kind; she left us the nights when we could talk together;at any rate, I was living with a dear being who loved me and sufferedwith me; whereas here, in this sumptuous house, I live in a desert. "

At this terrible confession the countess caught her sister's hand andkissed it, weeping. 

"How, then, can I help you, " said Eugenie, in a low voice. "He wouldbe suspicious at once if he surprised us here, and would insist onknowing all that you have been saying to me. I should be forced totell a lie, which is difficult indeed with so sly and treacherous aman; he would lay traps for me. But enough of my own miseries; let usthink of yours. The forty thousand francs you want would be, ofcourse, a mere nothing to Ferdinand, who handles millions with thatfat banker, Baron de Nucingen. Sometimes, at dinner, in my presence, they say things to each other which make me shudder. Du Tillet knowsmy discretion, and they often talk freely before me, being sure of mysilence. Well, robbery and murder on the high-road seem to me mercifulcompared to some of their financial schemes. Nucingen and he no moremind destroying a man than if he were an animal. Often I am told toreceive poor dupes whose fate I have heard them talk of the nightbefore, --men who rush into some business where they are certain tolose their all. I am tempted, like Leonardo in the brigand's cave, tocry out, 'Beware!' But if I did, what would become of me? So I keepsilence. This splendid house is a cut-throat's den! But Ferdinand andNucingen will lavish millions for their own caprices. Ferdinand is nowbuying from the other du Tillet family the site of their old castle;he intends to rebuild it and add a forest with large domains to theestate, and make his son a count; he declares that by the thirdgeneration the family will be noble. Nucingen, who is tired of hishouse in the rue Saint-Lazare, is building a palace. His wife is afriend of mine--Ah!" she cried, interrupting herself, "she might helpus; she is very bold with her husband; her fortune is in her ownright. Yes, she could save you. "

"Dear heart, I have but a few hours left; let us go to her thisevening, now, instantly, " said Madame de Vandenesse, throwing herselfinto Madame du Tillet's arms with a burst of tears. 

"I can't go out at eleven o'clock at night, " replied her sister. 

"My carriage is here. "

"What are you two plotting together?" said du Tillet, pushing open thedoor of the boudoir. 

He came in showing a torpid face lighted now by a speciously amiableexpression. The carpets had dulled his steps and the preoccupation ofthe two sisters had kept them from noticing the noise of hiscarriage-wheels on entering the court-yard. The countess, in whom thehabits of social life and the freedom in which her husband had lefther had developed both wit and shrewdness, --qualities repressed in hersister by marital despotism, which simply continued that of theirmother, --saw that Eugenie's terror was on the point of betraying them, and she evaded that danger by a frank answer. 

"I thought my sister richer than she is, " she replied, lookingstraight at her brother-in-law. "Women are sometimes embarrassed formoney, and do not wish to tell their husbands, like Josephine withNapoleon. I came here to ask Eugenie to do me a service. "

"She can easily do that, madame. Eugenie is very rich, " replied duTillet, with concealed sarcasm. 

"Is she?" replied the countess, smiling bitterly. 

"How much do you want?" asked du Tillet, who was not sorry to get hissister-in-law into his meshes. 

"Ah, monsieur! but I have told you already we do not wish to let ourhusbands into this affair, " said Madame de Vandenesse, cautiously, --aware that if she took his money, she would put herself at themercy of the man whose portrait Eugenie had fortunately drawn for hernot ten minutes earlier. "I will come to-morrow and talk with Eugenie. "

"To-morrow?" said the banker. "No; Madame du Tillet dines to-morrowwith a future peer of France, the Baron de Nucingen, who is to leaveme his place in the Chamber of Deputies. "

"Then permit her to join me in my box at the Opera, " said thecountess, without even glancing at her sister, so much did she fearthat Eugenie's candor would betray them. 

"She has her own box, madame, " said du Tillet, nettled. 

"Very good; then I will go to hers, " replied the countess. 

"It will be the first time you have done us that honor, " said duTillet. 

The countess felt the sting of that reproach, and began to laugh. 

"Well, never mind; you shall not be made to pay anything this time. Adieu, my darling. "

"She is an insolent woman, " said du Tillet, picking up the flowersthat had fallen on the carpet. "You ought, " he said to his wife, "tostudy Madame de Vandenesse. I'd like to see you before the world asinsolent and overbearing as your sister has just been here. You have asilly, bourgeois air which I detest. "

Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven as her only answer. 

"Ah ca, madame! what have you both been talking of?" said the banker, after a pause, pointing to the flowers. "What has happened to makeyour sister so anxious all of a sudden to go to your opera-box?"

The poor helot endeavored to escape questioning on the score ofsleepiness, and turned to go into her dressing-room to prepare for thenight; but du Tillet took her by the arm and brought her back underthe full light of the wax-candles which were burning in twosilver-gilt sconces between fragrant nosegays. He plunged his light eyesinto hers and said, coldly:--

"Your sister came here to borrow forty thousand francs for a man inwhom she takes an interest, who'll be locked up within three days in adebtor's prison. "

The poor woman was seized with a nervous trembling, which sheendeavored to repress. 

"You alarm me, " she said. "But my sister is far too well brought up, and she loves her husband too much to be interested in any man to thatextent. "

"Quite the contrary, " he said, dryly. "Girls brought up as you twowere, in the constraints and practice of piety, have a thirst forliberty; they desire happiness, and the happiness they get in marriageis never as fine as that they dreamt of. Such girls make bad wives. "

"Speak for me, " said poor Eugenie, in a tone of bitter feeling, "butrespect my sister. The Comtesse de Vandenesse is happy; her husbandgives her too much freedom not to make her truly attached to him. Besides, if your supposition were true, she would never have told meof such a matter. "

"It is true, " he said, "and I forbid you to have anything to do withthe affair. My interests demand that the man shall go to prison. Remember my orders. "

Madame du Tillet left the room. 

"She will disobey me, of course, and I shall find out all the facts bywatching her, " thought du Tillet, when alone in the boudoir. "Thesepoor fools always think they can do battle against us. "

He shrugged his shoulders and rejoined his wife, or to speak thetruth, his slave. 

The confidence made to Madame du Tillet by Madame Felix de Vandenesseis connected with so many points of the latter's history for the lastsix years, that it would be unintelligible without a succinct accountof the principal events of her life. 

 CHAPTER III

 THE HISTORY OF A FORTUNATE WOMAN

Among the remarkable men who owed their destiny to the Restoration, but whom, unfortunately, the restored monarchy kept, with Martignac, aloof from the concerns of government, was Felix de Vandenesse, removed, with several others, to the Chamber of peers during the lastdays of Charles X. This misfortune, though, as he supposed, temporary, made him think of marriage, towards which he was also led, as so manymen are, by a sort of disgust for the emotions of gallantry, thosefairy flowers of the soul. There comes a vital moment to most of uswhen social life appears in all its soberness. 

Felix de Vandenesse had been in turn happy and unhappy, oftenerunhappy than happy, like men who, at their start in life, have metwith Love in its most perfect form. Such privileged beings can neversubsequently be satisfied; but, after fully experiencing life, andcomparing characters, they attain to a certain contentment, takingrefuge in a spirit of general indulgence. No one deceives them, forthey delude themselves no longer; but their resignation, theirdisillusionment is always graceful; they expect what comes, andtherefor they suffer less. Felix might still rank among the handsomestand most agreeable men in Paris. He was originally commended to manywomen by one of the noblest creatures of our epoch, Madame deMortsauf, who had died, it was said, out of love and grief for him;but he was specially trained for social life by the handsome andwell-known Lady Dudley. 

In the eyes of many Parisian women, Felix, a sort of hero of romance, owed much of his success to the evil that was said of him. Madame deManerville had closed the list of his amorous adventures; and perhapsher dismissal had something to do with his frame of mind. At any rate, without being in any way a Don Juan, he had gathered in the world oflove as many disenchantments as he had met with in the world ofpolitics. That ideal of womanhood and of passion, the type of which--perhaps to his sorrow--had lighted and governed his dawn of life, hedespaired of ever finding again. 

At thirty years of age, Comte Felix determined to put an end to theburden of his various felicities by marriage. On that point his ideaswere extremely fixed; he wanted a young girl brought up in thestrictest tenets of Catholicism. It was enough for him to know how theComtesse de Granville had trained her daughters to make him, after hehad once resolved on marriage, request the hand of the eldest. Hehimself had suffered under the despotism of a mother; he stillremembered his unhappy childhood too well not to recognize, beneaththe reserves of feminine shyness, the state to which such a yoke musthave brought the heart of a young girl, whether that heart was soured, embittered, or rebellious, or whether it was still peaceful, lovable, and ready to unclose to noble sentiments. Tyranny produces twoopposite effects, the symbols of which exist in two grand figures ofancient slavery, Epictetus and Spartacus, --hatred and evil feelings onthe one hand, resignation and tenderness, on the other. 

The Comte de Vandenesse recognized himself in Marie-Angelique deGranville. In choosing for his wife an artless, innocent, and pureyoung girl, this young old man determined to mingle a paternal feelingwith the conjugal feeling. He knew his own heart was withered by theworld and by politics, and he felt that he was giving in exchange fora dawning life the remains of a worn-out existence. Beside thosespringtide flowers he was putting the ice of winter; hoary experiencewith young and innocent ignorance. After soberly judging the position, he took up his conjugal career with ample precaution; indulgence andperfect confidence were the two anchors to which he moored it. Mothersof families ought to seek such men for their daughters. A good mindprotects like a divinity; disenchantment is as keen-sighted as asurgeon; experience as foreseeing as a mother. Those three qualitiesare the cardinal virtues of a safe marriage. All that his past careerhad taught to Felix de Vandenesse, the observations of a life that wasbusy, literary, and thoughtful by turns, all his forces, in fact, werenow employed in making his wife happy; to that end he applied hismind. 

When Marie-Angelique left the maternal purgatory, she rose at onceinto the conjugal paradise prepared for her by Felix, rue du Rocher, in a house where all things were redolent of aristocracy, but wherethe varnish of society did not impede the ease and "laisser-aller"which young and loving hearts desire so much. From the start, Marie-Angelique tasted all the sweets of material life to the veryutmost. For two years her husband made himself, as it were, herpurveyor. He explained to her, by degrees, and with great art, thethings of life; he initiated her slowly into the mysteries of thehighest society; he taught her the genealogies of noble families; heshowed her the world; he guided her taste in dress; he trained her toconverse; he took her from theatre to theatre, and made her studyliterature and current history. This education he accomplished withall the care of a lover, father, master, and husband; but he did itsoberly and discreetly; he managed both enjoyments and instructionsin such a manner as not to destroy the value of her religious ideas. In short, he carried out his enterprise with the wisdom of a greatmaster. At the end of four years, he had the happiness of havingformed in the Comtesse de Vandenesse one of the most lovable andremarkable young women of our day. 

Marie-Angelique felt for Felix precisely the feelings with which Felixdesired to inspire her, --true friendship, sincere gratitude, and afraternal love, in which was mingled, at certain times, a noble anddignified tenderness, such as tenderness between husband and wifeought to be. She was a mother, and a good mother. Felix had thereforeattached himself to his young wife by every bond without anyappearance of garroting her, --relying for his happiness on the charmsof habit. 

None but men trained in the school of life--men who have gone roundthe circle of disillusionment, political and amorous--are capable offollowing out a course like this. Felix, however, found in his workthe same pleasure that painters, writers, architects take in theircreations. He doubly enjoyed both the work and its fruition as headmired his wife, so artless, yet so well-informed, witty, butnatural, lovable and chaste, a girl, and yet a mother, perfectly free, though bound by the chains of righteousness. The history of all goodhomes is that of prosperous peoples; it can be written in two lines, and has in it nothing for literature. So, as happiness is onlyexplicable to and by itself, these four years furnish nothing torelate which was not as tender as the soft outlines of eternalcherubs, as insipid, alas! as manna, and about as amusing as the taleof "Astrea. "

In 1833, this edifice of happiness, so carefully erected by Felix deVandenesse, began to crumble, weakened at its base without hisknowledge. The heart of a woman of twenty-five is no longer that of agirl of eighteen, any more than the heart of a woman of forty is thatof a woman of thirty. There are four ages in the life of woman; eachage creates a new woman. Vandenesse knew, no doubt, the law of thesetransformations (created by our modern manners and morals), but heforgot them in his own case, --just as the best grammarian will forgeta rule of grammar in writing a book, or the greatest general in thefield under fire, surprised by some unlooked-for change of base, forgets his military tactics. The man who can perpetually bring histhought to bear upon his facts is a man of genius; but the man of thehighest genius does not display genius at all times; if he did, hewould be like to God. 

After four years of this life, with never a shock to the soul, nor aword that produced the slightest discord in this sweet concert ofsentiment, the countess, feeling herself developed like a beautifulplant in a fertile soil, caressed by the sun of a cloudless sky, awoketo a sense of a new self. This crisis of her life, the subject of thisScene, would be incomprehensible without certain explanations, whichmay extenuate in the eyes of women the wrong-doing of this youngcountess, a happy wife, a happy mother, who seems, at first sight, inexcusable. 

Life results from the action of two opposing principles; when one ofthem is lacking the being suffers. Vandenesse, by satisfying everyneed, had suppressed desire, that king of creation, which fills anenormous place in the moral forces. Extreme heat, extreme sorrow, complete happiness, are all despotic principles that reign over spacesdevoid of production; they insist on being solitary; they stifle allthat is not themselves. Vandenesse was not a woman, and none but womenknow the art of varying happiness; hence their coquetry, refusals, fears, quarrels, and the all-wise clever foolery with which they putin doubt the things that seemed to be without a cloud the nightbefore. Men may weary by their constancy, but women never. Vandenessewas too thoroughly kind by nature to worry deliberately the woman heloved; on the contrary, he kept her in the bluest and least cloudyheaven of love. The problem of eternal beatitude is one of those whosesolution is known only to God. Here, below, the sublimest poets havesimply harassed their readers when attempting to picture paradise. Dante's reef was that of Vandenesse; all honor to such courage!

Felix's wife began to find monotony in an Eden so well arranged; theperfect happiness which the first woman found in her terrestrialparadise gave her at length a sort of nausea of sweet things, and madethe countess wish, like Rivarol reading Florian, for a wolf in thefold. Such, judging by the history of ages, appears to be the meaningof that emblematic serpent to which Eve listened, in all probability, out of ennui. This deduction may seem a little venturesome toProtestants, who take the book of Genesis more seriously than the Jewsthemselves. 

The situation of Madame de Vandenesse can, however, be explainedwithout recourse to Biblical images. She felt in her soul an enormouspower that was unemployed. Her happiness gave her no suffering; itrolled along without care or uneasiness; she was not afraid of losingit; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the samesmile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled byany breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on itsglassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that itought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God ofGenesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever, was aware that such sentiments were not permissible, and she refrainedfrom confiding them to her "dear little husband. " Her genuinesimplicity had not invented any other name for him; for one can't callup in cold blood that delightfully exaggerated language which loveimparts to its victims in the midst of flames. 

Vandenesse, glad of this adorable reserve, kept his wife, bydeliberate calculations, in the temperate regions of conjugalaffection. He never condescended to seek a reward or even anacknowledgment of the infinite pains which he gave himself; his wifethought his luxury and good taste her natural right, and she felt nogratitude for the fact that her pride and self-love had neversuffered. It was thus in everything. Kindness has its mishaps; oftenit is attributed to temperament; people are seldom willing torecognize it as the secret effort of a noble soul. 

About this period of her life, Madame Felix de Vandenesse had attainedto a degree of worldly knowledge which enabled her to quit theinsignificant role of a timid, listening, and observing supernumerary, --a part played, they say, for some time, by Giulia Grisi in thechorus at La Scala. The young countess now felt herself capable ofattempting the part of prima-donna, and she did so on severaloccasions. To the great satisfaction of her husband, she began tomingle in conversations. Intelligent ideas and delicate observationsput into her mind by her intercourse with her husband, made herremarked upon, and success emboldened her. Vandenesse, to whom theworld admitted that his wife was beautiful, was delighted when thesame assurance was given that she was clever and witty. On theirreturn from a ball, concert, or rout where Marie had shonebrilliantly, she would turn to her husband, as she took off herornaments, and say, with a joyous, self-assured air, --

"Were you pleased with me this evening?"

The countess excited jealousies; among others that of her husband'ssister, Madame de Listomere, who until now had patronized her, thinking that she protected a foil to her own merits. A countess, beautiful, witty and virtuous!--what a prey for the tongues of theworld! Felix had broken with too many women, and too many women hadbroken with him, to leave them indifferent to his marriage. When thesewomen beheld in Madame de Vandenesse a small woman with red hands, andrather awkward manner, saying little, and apparently not thinkingmuch, they thought themselves sufficiently avenged. The disasters ofJuly, 1830, supervened; society was dissolved for two years; the richevaded the turmoil and left Paris either for foreign travel or fortheir estates in the country, and none of the salons reopened until1833. When that time came, the faubourg Saint-Germain still sulked, but it held intercourse with a few houses, regarding them as neutralground, --among others that of the Austrian ambassador, where thelegitimist society and the new social world met together in thepersons of their best representatives. 

Attached by many ties of the heart and by gratitude to the exiledfamily, and strong in his personal convictions, Vandenesse did notconsider himself obliged to imitate the silly behavior of his party. In times of danger, he had done his duty at the risk of his life; hisfidelity had never been compromised, and he determined to take hiswife into general society without fear of its becoming so. His formermistresses could scarcely recognize the bride they had thought sochildish in the elegant, witty, and gentle countess, who now appearedin society with the exquisite manners of the highest femalearistocracy. Mesdames d'Espard, de Manerville, and Lady Dudley, withothers less known, felt the serpent waking up in the depths of theirhearts; they heard the low hissings of angry pride; they were jealousof Felix's happiness, and would gladly have given their prettiestjewel to do him some harm; but instead of being hostile to thecountess, these kind, ill-natured women surrounded her, showed her theutmost friendship, and praised her to me. Sufficiently aware of theirintentions, Felix watched their relations with Marie, and warned herto distrust them. They all suspected the uneasiness of the count attheir intimacy with his wife, and they redoubled their attentions andflatteries, so that they gave her an enormous vogue in society, to thegreat displeasure of her sister-in-law, the Marquise de Listomere, whocould not understand it. The Comtesse Felix de Vandenesse was cited asthe most charming and the cleverest woman in Paris. Marie's othersister-in-law, the Marquise Charles de Vandenesse, was consumed withvexation at the confusion of names and the comparisons it sometimesbrought about. Though the marquise was a handsome and clever woman, her rivals took delight in comparing her with her sister-in-law, withall the more point because the countess was a dozen years younger. These women knew very well what bitterness Marie's social vogue wouldbring into her intercourse with both of her sisters-in-law, who, infact, became cold and disobliging in proportion to her triumph insociety. She was thus surrounded by dangerous relations and intimateenemies. 

Every one knows that French literature at that particular period wasendeavoring to defend itself against an apathetic indifference (theresult of the political drama) by producing works more or lessByronian, in which the only topics really discussed were conjugaldelinquencies. Infringements of the marriage tie formed the staple ofreviews, books, and dramas. This eternal subject grew more and morethe fashion. The lover, that nightmare of husbands, was everywhere, except perhaps in homes, where, in point of fact, under the bourgeoisregime, he was less seen than formerly. It is not when every onerushes to their window and cries "Thief!" and lights the streets, thatrobbers abound. It is true that during those years so fruitful ofturmoil--urban, political, and moral--a few matrimonial catastrophestook place; but these were exceptional, and less observed than theywould have been under the Restoration. Nevertheless, women talked agreat deal together about books and the stage, then the two chiefforms of poesy. The lover thus became one of their leading topics, --abeing rare in point of act and much desired. The few affairs whichwere known gave rise to discussions, and these discussions were, asusually happens, carried on by immaculate women. 

A fact worthy of remark is the aversion shown to such conversations bywomen who are enjoying some illicit happiness; they maintain beforethe eyes of the world a reserved, prudish, and even timid countenance;they seem to ask silence on the subject, or some condonation of theirpleasure from society. When, on the contrary, a woman talks freely ofsuch catastrophes, and seems to take pleasure in doing so, allowingherself to explain the emotions that justify the guilty parties, wemay be sure that she herself is at the crossways of indecision, anddoes not know what road she might take. 

During this winter, the Comtesse de Vandenesse heard the great voiceof the social world roaring in her ears, and the wind of its stormygusts blew round her. Her pretended friends, who maintained theirreputations at the height of their rank and their positions, oftenproduced in her presence the seductive idea of the lover; they castinto her soul certain ardent talk of love, the "mot d'enigme" whichlife propounds to woman, the grand passion, as Madame de Stael calledit, --preaching by example. When the countess asked naively, in a smalland select circle of these friends, what difference there was betweena lover and a husband, all those who wished evil to Felix took care toreply in a way to pique her curiosity, or fire her imagination, ortouch her heart, or interest her mind. 

"Oh! my dear, we vegetate with a husband, but we live with a lover, "said her sister-in-law, the marquise. 

"Marriage, my dear, is our purgatory; love is paradise, " said LadyDudley. 

"Don't believe her, " cried Mademoiselle des Touches; "it is hell. "

"But a hell we like, " remarked Madame de Rochefide. "There is oftenmore pleasure in suffering than in happiness; look at the martyrs!"

"With a husband, my dear innocent, we live, as it were, in our ownlife; but to love, is to live in the life of another, " said theMarquise d'Espard. 

"A lover is forbidden fruit, and that to me, says all!" cried thepretty Moina de Saint-Heren, laughing. 

When she was not at some diplomatic rout, or at a ball given by richforeigners, like Lady Dudley or the Princesse Galathionne, theComtesse de Vandenesse might be seen, after the Opera, at the housesof Madame d'Espard, the Marquise de Listomere, Mademoiselle desTouches, the Comtesse de Montcornet, or the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, the only aristocratic houses then open; and never did she leave anyone of them without some evil seed of the world being sown in herheart. She heard talk of completing her life, --a saying much infashion in those days; of being comprehended, --another word to whichwomen gave strange meanings. She often returned home uneasy, excited, curious, and thoughtful. She began to find something less, she hardlyknew what, in her life; but she did not yet go so far as to think itlonely. 

 CHAPTER IV

 A CELEBRATED MAN

The most amusing society, but also the most mixed, which Madame Felixde Vandenesse frequented, was that of the Comtesse de Montcornet, acharming little woman, who received illustrious artists, leadingfinancial personages, distinguished writers; but only after subjectingthem to so rigid an examination that the most exclusive aristocrat hadnothing to fear in coming in contact with this second-class society. The loftiest pretensions were there respected. 

During the winter of 1833, when society rallied after the revolutionof July, some salons, notably those of Mesdames d'Espard and deListomere, Mademoiselle des Touches, and the Duchesse de Grandlieu, had selected certain of the celebrities in art, science, literature, and politics, and received them. Society can lose nothing of itsrights, and it must be amused. At a concert given by Madame deMontcornet toward the close of the winter of 1833, a man of risingfame in literature and politics appeared in her salon, brought thereby one of the wittiest, but also one of the laziest writers of thatepoch, Emile Blondet, celebrated behind closed doors, highly praisedby journalists, but unknown beyond the barriers. Blondet himself waswell aware of this; he indulged in no illusions, and, among his otherwitty and contemptuous sayings, he was wont to remark that fame is apoison good to take in little doses. 

From the moment when the man we speak of, Raoul Nathan, after a longstruggle, forced his way to the public gaze, he had put to profit thesudden infatuation for form manifested by those elegant descendants ofthe middle ages, jestingly called Young France. He assumed thesingularities of a man of genius and enrolled himself among thoseadorers of art, whose intentions, let us say, were excellent; forsurely nothing could be more ridiculous than the costume of Frenchmenin the nineteenth century, and nothing more courageous than an attemptto reform it. Raoul, let us do him this justice, presents in hisperson something fine, fantastic, and extraordinary, which needs aframe. His enemies, or his friends, they are about the same thing, agree that nothing could harmonize better with his mind than hisoutward form. 

Raoul Nathan would, perhaps, be more singular if left to his naturalself than he is with his various accompaniments. His worn and haggardface gives him an appearance of having fought with angels or devils;it bears some resemblance to that the German painters give to the deadChrist; countless signs of a constant struggle between failing humannature and the powers on high appear in it. But the lines in hishollow cheeks, the projections of his crooked, furrowed skull, thecaverns around his eyes and behind his temples, show nothing weakly inhis constitution. His hard membranes, his visible bones are the signsof remarkable solidity; and though his skin, discolored by excesses, clings to those bones as if dried there by inward fires, itnevertheless covers a most powerful structure. He is thin and tall. His long hair, always in disorder, is worn so for effect. Thisill-combed, ill-made Byron has heron legs and stiffened knee-joints, an exaggerated stoop, hands with knotty muscles, firm as a crab'sclaws, and long, thin, wiry fingers. Raoul's eyes are Napoleonic, blueeyes, which pierce to the soul; his nose is crooked and very shrewd;his mouth charming, embellished with the whitest teeth that any womancould desire. There is fire and movement in the head, and genius onthat brow. Raoul belongs to the small number of men who strike yourmind as you pass them, and who, in a salon, make a luminous spot towhich all eyes are attracted. 

He makes himself remarked also by his "neglige, " if we may borrow fromMoliere the word which Eliante uses to express the want of personalneatness. His clothes always seem to have been twisted, frayed, andcrumpled intentionally, in order to harmonize with his physiognomy. Hekeeps one of his hands habitually in the bosom of his waistcoat in thepose which Girodet's portrait of Monsieur de Chateaubriand hasrendered famous; but less to imitate that great man (for he does notwish to resemble any one) than to rumple the over-smooth front of hisshirt. His cravat is no sooner put on than it is twisted by theconvulsive motions of his head, which are quick and abrupt, like thoseof a thoroughbred horse impatient of harness, and constantly tossingup its head to rid itself of bit and bridle. His long and pointedbeard is neither combed, nor perfumed, nor brushed, nor trimmed, likethose of the elegant young men of society; he lets it alone, to growas it will. His hair, getting between the collar of his coat and hiscravat, lies luxuriantly on his shoulders, and greases whatever spotit touches. His wiry, bony hands ignore a nailbrush and the luxury oflemon. Some of his cofeuilletonists declare that purifying watersseldom touch their calcined skin. 

In short, the terrible Raoul is grotesque. His movements are jerky, asif produced by imperfect machinery; his gait rejects all idea oforder, and proceeds by spasmodic zig-zags and sudden stoppages, whichknock him violently against peaceable citizens on the streets andboulevards of Paris. His conversation, full of caustic humor, ofbitter satire, follows the gait of his body; suddenly it abandons itstone of vengeance and turns sweet, poetic, consoling, gentle, withoutapparent reason; he falls into inexplicable silences, or turnssomersets of wit, which at times are somewhat wearying. In society, heis boldly awkward, and exhibits a contempt for conventions and acritical air about things respected which makes him unpleasant tonarrow minds, and also to those who strive to preserve the doctrinesof old-fashioned, gentlemanly politeness; but for all that there is asort of lawless originality about him which women do not dislike. Besides, to them, he is often most amiably courteous; he seems to takepleasure in making them forget his personal singularities, and thusobtains a victory over antipathies which flatters either his vanity, his self-love, or his pride. 

"Why do you present yourself like that?" said the Marquise deVandenesse one day. 

"Pearls live in oyster-shells, " he answered, conceitedly. 

To another who asked him somewhat the same question, he replied, --

"If I were charming to all the world, how could I seem better still tothe one woman I wish to please?"

Raoul Nathan imports this same natural disorder (which he uses as abanner) into his intellectual life; and the attribute is notmisleading. His talent is very much that of the poor girls who goabout in bourgeois families to work by the day. He was first a critic, and a great critic; but he felt himself cheated in that vocation. Hisarticles were equal to books, he said. The profits of theatrical workthen allured him; but, incapable of the slow and steady applicationrequired for stage arrangement, he was forced to associate withhimself a vaudevillist, du Bruel, who took his ideas, worked themover, and reduced them into those productive little pieces, full ofwit, which are written expressly for actors and actresses. Betweenthem, they had invented Florine, an actress now in vogue. 

Humiliated by this association, which was that of the Siamese twins, Nathan had produced alone, at the Theatre-Francais, a serious drama, which fell with all the honors of war amid salvos of thunderingarticles. In his youth he had once before appeared at the great andnoble Theatre-Francais in a splendid romantic play of the style of"Pinto, "--a period when the classic reigned supreme. The Odeon was soviolently agitated for three nights that the play was forbidden by thecensor. This second piece was considered by many a masterpiece, andwon him more real reputation than all his productive little piecesdone with collaborators, --but only among a class to whom littleattention is paid, that of connoisseurs and persons of true taste. 

"Make another failure like that, " said Emile Blondet, "and you'll beimmortal. "

But instead of continuing in that difficult path, Nathan had fallen, out of sheer necessity, into the powder and patches ofeighteenth-century vaudeville, costume plays, and the reproduction, scenically, of successful novels. 

Nevertheless, he passed for a great mind which had not said its lastword. He had, moreover, attempted permanent literature, havingpublished three novels, not to speak of several others which he keptin press like fish in a tank. One of these three books, the first(like that of many writers who can only make one real trip intoliterature), had obtained a very brilliant success. This work, imprudently placed in the front rank, this really artistic work he wasnever weary of calling the finest book of the period, the novel of thecentury. 

Raoul complained bitterly of the exigencies of art. He was one ofthose who contributed most to bring all created work, pictures, statues, books, building under the single standard of Art. He hadbegun his career by committing a volume of verse, which won him aplace in the pleiades of living poets; among these verses was anebulous poem that was greatly admired. Forced by want of means tokeep on producing, he went from the theatre to the press, and from thepress to the theatre, dissipating and scattering his talent, butbelieving always in his vein. His fame was therefore not unpublishedlike that of so many great minds in extremity, who sustain themselvesonly by the thought of work to be done. 

Nathan resembled a man of genius; and had he marched to the scaffold, as he sometimes wished he could have done, he might have struck hisbrow with the famous action of Andre Chenier. Seized with politicalambition on seeing the rise to power of a dozen authors, professors, metaphysicians, and historians, who encrusted themselves, so to speak, upon the machine during the turmoils of 1830 and 1833, he regrettedthat he had not spent his time on political instead of literaryarticles. He thought himself superior to all those parvenus, whosesuccess inspired him with consuming jealousy. He belonged to the classof minds ambitious of everything, capable of all things, from whomsuccess is, as it were, stolen; who go their way dashing at a hundredluminous points, and settling upon none, exhausting at last thegood-will of others. 

At this particular time he was going from Saint-Simonism intorepublicanism, to return, very likely, to ministerialism. He lookedfor a bone to gnaw in all corners, searching for a safe place where hecould bark secure from kicks and make himself feared. But he had themortification of finding he was held to be of no account by de Marsay, then at the head of the government, who had no consideration whateverfor authors, among whom he did not find what Richelieu called aconsecutive mind, or more correctly, continuity of ideas; he countedas any minister would have done on the constant embarrassment ofRaoul's business affairs. Sooner or later, necessity would bring himto accept conditions instead of imposing them. 

The real, but carefully concealed character of Raoul Nathan is of apiece with his public career. He is a comedian in good faith, selfishas if the State were himself, and a very clever orator. No one knowsbetter how to play off sentiments, glory in false grandeurs, deckhimself with moral beauty, do honor to his nature in language, andpose like Alceste while behaving like Philinte. His egotism trotsalong protected by this cardboard armor, and often almost reaches theend he seeks. Lazy to a superlative degree, he does nothing, however, until he is prodded by the bayonets of need. He is incapable ofcontinued labor applied to the creation of a work; but, in a paroxysmof rage caused by wounded vanity, or in a crisis brought on bycreditors, he leaps the Eurotas and attains to some great triumph ofhis intellect. After which, weary, and surprised at having createdanything, he drops back into the marasmus of Parisian dissipation;wants become formidable; he has no strength to face them; and then hecomes down from his pedestal and compromises. 

Influenced by a false idea of his grandeur and of his future, --themeasure of which he reckons on the noble success of one of his formercomrades, one of the few great talents brought to light by therevolution of July, --he allows himself, in order to get out of hisembarrassments, certain laxities of principle with persons who arefriendly to him, --laxities which never come to the surface, but areburied in private life, where no one ever mentions or complains ofthem. The shallowness of his heart, the impurity of his hand, whichclasps that of all vices, all evils, all treacheries, all opinions, have made him as inviolable as a constitutional king. Venial sins, which excite a hue and cry against a man of high character, arethought nothing of in him; the world hastens to excuse them. Men whomight otherwise be inclined to despise him shake hands with him, fearing that the day may come when they will need him. He has, infact, so many friends that he wishes for enemies. 

Judged from a literary point of view, Nathan lacks style andcultivation. Like most young men, ambitious of literary fame, hedisgorges to-day what he acquired yesterday. He has neither the timenor the patience to write carefully; he does not observe, but helistens. Incapable of constructing a vigorously framed plot, hesometimes makes up for it by the impetuous ardor of his drawing. He"does passion, " to use a term of the literary argot; but instead ofawaking ideas, his heroes are simply enlarged individualities, whoexcite only fugitive sympathies; they are not connected with any ofthe great interests of life, and consequently they represent nothing. Nevertheless, Nathan maintains his ground by the quickness of hismind, by those lucky hits which billiard-players call a "good stroke. "He is the cleverest shot at ideas on the fly in all Paris. Hisfecundity is not his own, but that of his epoch; he lives on chanceevents, and to control them he distorts their meaning. In short, he isnot _true_; his presentation is false; in him, as Comte Felix said, isthe born juggler. Moreover, his pen gets its ink in the boudoir of anactress. 

Raoul Nathan is a fair type of the Parisian literary youth of the day, with its false grandeurs and its real misery. He represents that youthby his incomplete beauties and his headlong falls, by the turbulenttorrent of his existence, with its sudden reverses and its unhoped-fortriumphs. He is truly the child of a century consumed with envy, --acentury with a thousand rivalries lurking under many a system, whichnourish to their own profit that hydra of anarchy which wants wealthwithout toil, fame without talent, success without effort, but whosevices force it, after much rebellion and many skirmishes, to acceptthe budget under the powers that be. When so many young ambitions, starting on foot, give one another rendezvous at the same point, thereis always contention of wills, extreme wretchedness, bitter struggles. In this dreadful battle, selfishness, the most overbearing or the mostadroit selfishness, gains the victory; and it is envied and applaudedin spite, as Moliere said, of outcries, and we all know it. 

When, in his capacity as enemy to the new dynasty, Raoul wasintroduced in the salon of Madame de Montcornet, his apparentgrandeurs were flourishing. He was accepted as the political critic ofthe de Marsays, the Rastignacs, and the Roche-Hugons, who had steppedinto power. Emile Blondet, the victim of incurable hesitation and ofhis innate repugnance to any action that concerned only himself, continued his trade of scoffer, took sides with no one, and kept wellwith all. He was friendly with Raoul, friendly with Rastignac, friendly with Montcornet. 

"You are a political triangle, " said de Marsay, laughing, when theymet at the Opera. "That geometric form, my dear fellow, belongs onlyto the Deity, who has nothing to do; ambitious men ought to followcurved lines, the shortest road in politics. "

Seen from a distance, Raoul Nathan was a very fine meteor. Fashionaccepted his ways and his appearance. His borrowed republicanism gavehim, for the time being, that Jansenist harshness assumed by thedefenders of the popular cause, while they inwardly scoff at it, --aquality not without charm in the eyes of women. Women like to performprodigies, break rocks, and soften natures which seem of iron. 

Raoul's moral costume was therefore in keeping with his clothes. Hewas fitted to be what he became to the Eve who was bored in herparadise in the rue du Rocher, --the fascinating serpent, the finetalker with magnetic eyes and harmonious motions who tempted the firstwoman. No sooner had the Comtesse Marie laid eyes on Raoul than shefelt an inward emotion, the violence of which caused her a species ofterror. The glance of that fraudulent great man exercised a physicalinfluence upon her, which quivered in her very heart, and troubled it. But the trouble was pleasure. The purple mantle which celebrity haddraped for a moment round Nathan's shoulders dazzled the ingenuousyoung woman. When tea was served, she rose from her seat among a knotof talking women, where she had been striving to see and hear thatextraordinary being. Her silence and absorption were noticed by herfalse friends. 

The countess approached the divan in the centre of the room, whereRaoul was perorating. She stood there with her arm in that of MadameOctave de Camp, an excellent woman, who kept the secret of theinvoluntary trembling by which these violent emotions betrayedthemselves. Though the eyes of a captivated woman are apt to shedwonderful sweetness, Raoul was too occupied at that moment in lettingoff fireworks, too absorbed in his epigrams going up like rockets (inthe midst of which were flaming portraits drawn in lines of fire) tonotice the naive admiration of one little Eve concealed in a group ofwomen. Marie's curiosity--like that which would undoubtedlyprecipitate all Paris into the Jardin des Plantes to see a unicorn, ifsuch an animal could be found in those mountains of the moon, stillvirgin of the tread of Europeans--intoxicates a secondary mind as muchas it saddens great ones; but Raoul was enchanted by it; although hewas then too anxious to secure all women to care very much for onealone. 

"Take care, my dear, " said Marie's kind and gracious companion in herear, "and go home. "

The countess looked at her husband to ask for his arm with one ofthose glances which husbands do not always understand. Felix did so, and took her home. 

"My dear friend, " said Madame d'Espard in Raoul's ear, "you are alucky fellow. You have made more than one conquest to-night, and amongthem that of the charming woman who has just left us so abruptly. "

"Do you know what the Marquise d'Espard meant by that?" said Raoul toRastignac, when they happened to be comparatively alone between oneand two o'clock in the morning. 

"I am told that the Comtesse de Vandenesse has taken a violent fancyto you. You are not to be pitied!" said Rastignac. 

"I did not see her, " said Raoul. 

"Oh! but you will see her, you scamp!" cried Emile Blondet, who wasstanding by. "Lady Dudley is going to ask you to her grand ball, thatyou may meet the pretty countess. "

Raoul and Blondet went off with Rastignac, who offered them hiscarriage. All three laughed at the combination of an eclecticunder-secretary of State, a ferocious republican, and a politicalatheist. 

"Suppose we sup at the expense of the present order of things?" saidBlondet, who would fain recall suppers to fashion. 

Rastignac took them to Very's, sent away his carriage, and all threesat down to table to analyze society with Rabelaisian laughs. Duringthe supper, Rastignac and Blondet advised their provisional enemy notto neglect such a capital chance of advancement as the one now offeredto him. The two "roues" gave him, in fine satirical style, the historyof Madame Felix de Vandenesse; they drove the scalpel of epigram andthe sharp points of much good wit into that innocent girlhood andhappy marriage. Blondet congratulated Raoul on encountering a womanguilty of nothing worse so far than horrible drawings in red chalk, attenuated water-colors, slippers embroidered for a husband, sonatasexecuted with the best intentions, --a girl tied to her mother'sapron-strings till she was eighteen, trussed for religious practices, seasoned by Vandenesse, and cooked to a point by marriage. At thethird bottle of champagne, Raoul unbosomed himself as he had neverdone before in his life. 

"My friends, " he said, "you know my relations with Florine; you alsoknow my life, and you will not be surprised to hear me say that I amabsolutely ignorant of what a countess's love may be like. I haveoften felt mortified that I, a poet, could not give myself a Beatrice, a Laura, except in poetry. A pure and noble woman is like an unstainedconscience, --she represents us to ourselves under a noble form. Elsewhere we may soil ourselves, but with her we are always proud, lofty, and immaculate. Elsewhere we lead ill-regulated lives; with herwe breathe the calm, the freshness, the verdure of an oasis--"

"Go on, go on, my dear fellow!" cried Rastignac; "twang that fourthstring with the prayer in 'Moses' like Paganini. "

Raoul remained silent, with fixed eyes, apparently musing. 

"This wretched ministerial apprentice does not understand me, " hesaid, after a moment's silence. 

So, while the poor Eve in the rue du Rocher went to bed in the sheetsof shame, frightened at the pleasure with which she had listened tothat sham great poet, these three bold minds were trampling with jestsover the tender flowers of her dawning love. Ah! if women only knewthe cynical tone that such men, so humble, so fawning in theirpresence, take behind their backs! how they sneer at what they saythey adore! Fresh, pure, gracious being, how the scoffing jesterdisrobes and analyzes her! but, even so, the more she loses veils, themore her beauty shines. 

Marie was at this moment comparing Raoul and Felix, without imaginingthe danger there might be for her in such comparisons. Nothing couldpresent a greater contrast than the disorderly, vigorous Raoul toFelix de Vandenesse, who cared for his person like a dainty woman, wore well-fitting clothes, had a charming "desinvoltura, " and was avotary of English nicety, to which, in earlier days, Lady Dudley hadtrained him. Marie, as a good and pious woman, soon forbade herselfeven to think of Raoul, and considered that she was a monster ofingratitude for making the comparison. 

"What do you think of Raoul Nathan?" she asked her husband the nextday at breakfast. 

"He is something of a charlatan, " replied Felix; "one of thosevolcanoes who are easily calmed down with a little gold-dust. Madamede Montcornet makes a mistake in admitting him. "

This answer annoyed Marie, all the more because Felix supported hisopinion with certain facts, relating what he knew of Raoul Nathan'slife, --a precarious existence mixed up with a popular actress. 

"If the man has genius, " he said in conclusion, "he certainly hasneither the constancy nor the patience which sanctifies it, and makesit a thing divine. He endeavors to impose on the world by placinghimself on a level which he does nothing to maintain. True talent, pains-taking and honorable talent does not act thus. Men who possesssuch talent follow their path courageously; they accept its pains andpenalties, and don't cover them with tinsel. "

A woman's thought is endowed with incredible elasticity. When shereceives a knockdown blow, she bends, seems crushed, and then renewsher natural shape in a given time. 

"Felix is no doubt right, " thought she. 

But three days later she was once more thinking of the serpent, recalled to him by that singular emotion, painful and yet sweet, whichthe first sight of Raoul had given her. The count and countess went toLady Dudley's grand ball, where, by the bye, de Marsay appeared insociety for the last time. He died about two months later, leaving thereputation of a great statesman, because, as Blondet remarked, he wasincomprehensible. 

Vandenesse and his wife again met Raoul Nathan at this ball, which wasremarkable for the meeting of several personages of the politicaldrama, who were not a little astonished to find themselves together. It was one of the first solemnities of the great world. The salonspresented a magnificent spectacle to the eye, --flowers, diamonds, andbrilliant head-dresses; all jewel-boxes emptied; all resources of thetoilet put under contribution. The ball-room might be compared to oneof those choice conservatories where rich horticulturists collect themost superb rarities, --same brilliancy, same delicacy of texture. Onall sides white or tinted gauzes like the wings of the airiestdragon-fly, crepes, laces, blondes, and tulles, varied as the fantasiesof entomological nature; dentelled, waved, and scalloped; spider's websof gold and silver; mists of silk embroidered by fairy fingers; plumescolored by the fire of the tropics drooping from haughty heads; pearlstwined in braided hair; shot or ribbed or brocaded silks, as thoughthe genius of arabesque had presided over French manufactures, --allthis luxury was in harmony with the beauties collected there as if torealize a "Keepsake. " The eye received there an impression of thewhitest shoulders, some amber-tinted, others so polished as to seemcolandered, some dewy, some plump and satiny, as though Rubens hadprepared their flesh; in short, all shades known to man in white. Herewere eyes sparkling like onyx or turquoise fringed with dark lashes;faces of varied outline presenting the most graceful types of manylands; foreheads noble and majestic, or softly rounded, as if thoughtruled, or flat, as if resistant will reigned there unconquered;beautiful bosoms swelling, as George IV. Admired them, or widelyparted after the fashion of the eighteenth century, or pressedtogether, as Louis XV. Required; some shown boldly, without veils, others covered by those charming pleated chemisettes which Raffaellepainted. The prettiest feet pointed for the dance, the slimmest waistsencircled in the waltz, stimulated the gaze of the most indifferentperson present. The murmur of sweet voices, the rustle of gowns, thecadence of the dance, the whir of the waltz harmoniously accompaniedthe music. A fairy's wand seemed to have commanded this dazzlingrevelry, this melody of perfumes, these iridescent lights glitteringfrom crystal chandeliers or sparkling in candelabra. This assemblageof the prettiest women in their prettiest dresses stood out upon agloomy background of men in black coats, among whom the eye remarkedthe elegant, delicate, and correctly drawn profile of nobles, theruddy beards and grave faces of Englishmen, and the more graciousfaces of the French aristocracy. All the orders of Europe glittered onthe breasts or hung from the necks of these men. 

Examining this society carefully, it was seen to present not only thebrilliant tones and colors and outward adornment, but to have a soul, --it lived, it felt, it thought. Hidden passions gave it aphysiognomy; mischievous or malignant looks were exchanged; fair andgiddy girls betrayed desires; jealous women told each other scandalsbehind their fans, or paid exaggerated compliments. Society, anointed, curled, and perfumed, gave itself up to social gaiety which went tothe brain like a heady liquor. It seemed as if from all foreheads, aswell as from all hearts, ideas and sentiments were exhaling, whichpresently condensed and reacted in a volume on the coldest personspresent, and excited them. At the most animated moment of thisintoxicating party, in a corner of a gilded salon where certainbankers, ambassadors, and the immoral old English earl, Lord Dudley, were playing cards, Madame Felix de Vandenesse was irresistibly drawnto converse with Raoul Nathan. Possibly she yielded to thatball-intoxication which sometimes wrings avowals from the mostdiscreet. 

At sight of such a fete, and the splendors of a world in which he hadnever before appeared, Nathan was stirred to the soul by freshambition. Seeing Rastignac, whose younger brother had just been madebishop at twenty-seven years of age, and whose brother-in-law, Martialde la Roche-Hugon, was a minister, and who himself was under-secretaryof State, and about to marry, rumor said, the only daughter of theBaron de Nucingen, --a girl with an illimitable "dot"; seeing, moreover, in the diplomatic body an obscure writer whom he hadformerly known translating articles in foreign journals for anewspaper turned dynastic since 1830, also professors now made peersof France, --he felt with anguish that he was left behind on a bad roadby advocating the overthrow of this new aristocracy of lucky talent, of cleverness crowned by success, and of real merit. Even Blondet, sounfortunate, so used by others in journalism, but so welcomed here, who could, if he liked, enter a career of public service through theinfluence of Madame de Montcornet, seemed to Nathan's eyes a strikingexample of the power of social relations. Secretly, in his heart, heresolved to play the game of political opinions, like de Marsay, Rastignac, Blondet, Talleyrand, the leader of this set of men; to relyon facts only, turn them to his own profit, regard his system as aweapon, and not interfere with a society so well constituted, soshrewd, so natural. 

"My influence, " he thought, "will depend on the influence of somewoman belonging to this class of society. "

With this thought in his mind, conceived by the flame of this frenzieddesire, he fell upon the Comtesse de Vandenesse like a hawk on itsprey. That charming young woman in her head-dress of marabouts, whichproduced the delightful "flou" of the paintings of Lawrence andharmonized well with her gentle nature, was penetrated through andthrough by the foaming vigor of this poet wild with ambition. LadyDudley, whom nothing escaped, aided this tete-a-tete by throwing theComte de Vandenesse with Madame de Manerville. Strong in her formerascendancy over him, Natalie de Manerville amused herself by leadingFelix into the mazes of a quarrel of witty teasing, blushinghalf-confidences, regrets coyly flung like flowers at his feet, recriminations in which she excused herself for the sole purpose ofbeing put in the wrong. 

These former lovers were speaking to each other for the first timesince their rupture; and while her husband's former love was stirringthe embers to see if a spark were yet alive, Madame Felix deVandenesse was undergoing those violent palpitations which a womanfeels at the certainty of doing wrong, and stepping on forbiddenground, --emotions that are not without charm, and which awaken variousdormant faculties. Women are fond of using Bluebeard's bloody key, that fine mythological idea for which we are indebted to Perrault. 

The dramatist--who knew his Shakespeare--displayed his wretchedness, related his struggle with men and things, made his hearer aware of hisbaseless grandeur, his unrecognized political genius, his life withoutnoble affections. Without saying a single definite word, he contrivedto suggest to this charming woman that she should play the noble partof Rebecca in Ivanhoe, and love and protect him. It was all, ofcourse, in the ethereal regions of sentiment. Forget-me-nots are notmore blue, lilies not more white than the images, thoughts, andradiantly illumined brow of this accomplished artist, who was likelyto send his conversation to a publisher. He played his part of reptileto this poor Eve so cleverly, he made the fatal bloom of the apple sodazzling to her eyes, that Marie left the ball-room filled with thatspecies of remorse which resembles hope, flattered in all hervanities, stirred to every corner of her heart, caught by her ownvirtues, allured by her native pity for misfortune. 

Perhaps Madame de Manerville had taken Vandenesse into the salon wherehis wife was talking with Nathan; perhaps he had come there himself tofetch Marie, and take her home; perhaps his conversation with hisformer flame had awakened slumbering griefs; certain it is that whenhis wife took his arm to leave the ball-room, she saw that his facewas sad and his look serious. The countess wondered if he wasdispleased with her. No sooner were they seated in the carriage thanshe turned to Felix and said, with a mischievous smile, --

"Did not I see you talking half the evening with Madame deManerville?"

Felix was not out of the tangled paths into which his wife had led himby this charming little quarrel, when the carriage turned into theircourt-yard. This was Marie's first artifice dictated by her newemotion; and she even took pleasure in triumphing over a man who, until then, had seemed to her so superior. 

 CHAPTER V

 FLORINE

Between the rue Basse-du-Rempart and the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, Raoul had, on the third floor of an ugly and narrow house, in thePassage Sandrie, a poor enough lodging, cold and bare, where he livedostensibly for the general public, for literary neophytes, and for hiscreditors, duns, and other annoying persons whom he kept on thethreshold of private life. His real home, his fine existence, hispresentation of himself before his friends, was in the house ofMademoiselle Florine, a second-class comedy actress, where, for tenyears, the said friends, journalists, certain authors, and writers ingeneral disported themselves in the society of equally illustriousactresses. For ten years Raoul had attached himself so closely to thiswoman that he passed more than half his life with her; he took all hismeals at her house unless he had some friend to invite, or aninvitation to dinner elsewhere. 

To consummate corruption, Florine added a lively wit, whichintercourse with artists had developed and practice sharpened day byday. Wit is thought to be a quality rare in comedians. It is sonatural to suppose that persons who spend their lives in showingthings on the outside have nothing within. But if we reflect on thesmall number of actors and actresses who live in each century, andalso on how many dramatic authors and fascinating women thispopulation has supplied relatively to its numbers, it is allowable torefute that opinion, which rests, and apparently will rest forever, ona criticism made against dramatic artists, --namely, that theirpersonal sentiments are destroyed by the plastic presentation ofpassions; whereas, in fact, they put into their art only their giftsof mind, memory, and imagination. Great artists are beings who, toquote Napoleon, can cut off at will the connection which Nature hasput between the senses and thought. Moliere and Talma, in their oldage, were more in love than ordinary men in all their lives. 

Accustomed to listen to journalists, who guess at most things, puttingtwo and two together, to writers, who foresee and tell all that theysee; accustomed also to the ways of certain political personages, whowatched one another in her house, and profited by all admissions, Florine presented in her own person a mixture of devil and angel, which made her peculiarly fitted to receive these roues. Theydelighted in her cool self-possession; her anomalies of mind and heartentertained them prodigiously. Her house, enriched by gallanttributes, displayed the exaggerated magnificence of women who, caringlittle about the cost of things, care only for the things themselves, and give them the value of their own caprices, --women who will break afan or a smelling-bottle fit for queens in a moment of passion, andscream with rage if a servant breaks a ten-franc saucer from whichtheir poodle drinks. 

Florine's dining-room, filled with her most distinguished offerings, will give a fair idea of this pell-mell of regal and fantastic luxury. Throughout, even on the ceilings, it was panelled in oak, picked out, here and there, by dead-gold lines. These panels were framed in reliefwith figures of children playing with fantastic animals, among whichthe light danced and floated, touching here a sketch by Bixiou, thatmaker of caricatures, there the cast of an angel holding a vessel ofholy water (presented by Francois Souchet), farther on a coquettishpainting of Joseph Bridau, a gloomy picture of a Spanish alchemist byHippolyte Schinner, an autograph of Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, framed in carved ebony, while, hanging opposite as a species ofpendant, was a letter from Napoleon to Josephine. All these thingswere placed about without the slightest symmetry, but with almostimperceptible art. On the chimney-piece, of exquisitely carved oak, there was nothing except a strange, evidently Florentine, ivorystatuette attributed to Michael Angelo, representing Pan discovering awoman under the skin of a young shepherd, the original of which is inthe royal palace of Vienna. On either side were candelabra ofRenaissance design. A clock, by Boule, on a tortoise-shell stand, inlaid with brass, sparkled in the centre of one panel between twostatuettes, undoubtedly obtained from the demolition of some abbey. Inthe corners of the room, on pedestals, were lamps of royalmagnificence, as to which a manufacturer had made strong remonstranceagainst adapting his lamps to Japanese vases. On a marvelloussideboard was displayed a service of silver plate, the gift of anEnglish lord, also porcelains in high relief; in short, the luxury ofan actress who has no other property than her furniture. 

The bedroom, all in violet, was a dream that Florine had indulged fromher debut, the chief features of which were curtains of violet velvetlined with white silk, and looped over tulle; a ceiling of whitecashmere with violet satin rays, an ermine carpet beside the bed; inthe bed, the curtains of which resembled a lily turned upside down wasa lantern by which to read the newspaper plaudits or criticisms beforethey appeared in the morning. A yellow salon, its effect heightened bytrimmings of the color of Florentine bronze, was in harmony with therest of these magnificences, a further description of which would makeour pages resemble the posters of an auction sale. To find comparisonsfor all these fine things, it would be necessary to go to a certainhouse that was almost next door, belonging to a Rothschild. 

Sophie Grignault, surnamed Florine by a form of baptism common intheatres, had made her first appearances, in spite of her beauty, onvery inferior boards. Her success and her money she owed to RaoulNathan. This association of their two fates, usual enough in thedramatic and literary world, did no harm to Raoul, who kept up theoutward conventions of a man of the world. Moreover, Florine's actualmeans were precarious; her revenues came from her salary and herleaves of absence, and barely sufficed for her dress and her householdexpenses. Nathan gave her certain perquisites which he managed to levyas critic on several of the new enterprises of industrial art. Butalthough he was always gallant and protecting towards her, thatprotection had nothing regular or solid about it. 

This uncertainty, and this life on a bough, as it were, did not alarmFlorine; she believed in her talent, and she believed in her beauty. Her robust faith was somewhat comical to those who heard her stakingher future upon it, when remonstrances were made to her. 

"I can have income enough when I please, " she was wont to say; "I haveinvested fifty francs on the Grand-livre. "

No one could ever understand how it happened that Florine, handsome asshe was, had remained in obscurity for seven years; but the fact is, Florine was enrolled as a supernumerary at thirteen years of age, andmade her debut two years later at an obscure boulevard theatre. Atfifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist; a woman is simply allpromise. 

She was now twenty-eight, --the age at which the beauties of a Frenchwoman are in their glory. Painters particularly admired the lustre ofher white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of theneck, and wonderfully firm and polished, so that the light shimmeredover them as it does on watered silk. When she turned her head, superbfolds formed about her neck, the admiration of sculptors. She carriedon this triumphant neck the small head of a Roman empress, thedelicate, round, and self-willed head of Pompeia, with features ofelegant correctness, and the smooth forehead of a woman who drives allcare away and all reflection, who yields easily, but is capable ofbalking like a mule, and incapable at such times of listening toreason. That forehead, turned, as it were, with one cut of the chisel, brought out the beauty of the golden hair, which was raised in front, after the Roman fashion, in two equal masses, and twisted up behindthe head to prolong the line of the neck, and enhance that whitenessby its beautiful color. Black and delicate eyebrows, drawn by aChinese brush, encircled the soft eyelids, which were threaded withrosy fibres. The pupils of the eyes, extremely bright, though stripedwith brown rays, gave to her glance the cruel fixity of a beast ofprey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan. The eyeswere gray, fringed with black lashes, --a charming contrast, which madetheir expression of calm and contemplative voluptuousness the moreobservable; the circle round the eyes showed marks of fatigue, but theartistic manner in which she could turn her eyeballs, right and left, or up and down, to observe, or seem to mediate, the way in which shecould hold them fixed, casting out their vivid fire without moving herhead, without taking from her face its absolute immovability (amanoeuvre learned upon the stage), and the vivacity of their glance, as she looked about a theatre in search of a friend, made her eyes themost terrible, also the softest, in short, the most extraordinary eyesin the world. Rouge had destroyed by this time the diaphanous tints ofher cheeks, the flesh of which was still delicate; but although shecould no longer blush or turn pale, she had a thin nose with rosy, passionate nostrils, made to express irony, --the mocking irony ofMoliere's women-servants. Her sensual mouth, expressive of sarcasm andlove of dissipation, was adorned with a deep furrow that united theupper lip with the nose. Her chin, white and rather fat, betrayed theviolence of passion. Her hands and arms were worthy of a sovereign. 

But she had one ineradicable sign of low birth, --her foot was shortand fat. No inherited quality ever caused greater distress. Florinehad tried everything, short of amputation, to get rid of it. The feetwere obstinate, like the Breton race from which she came; theyresisted all treatment. Florine now wore long boots stuffed withcotton, to give length, and the semblance of an instep. Her figure wasof medium height, threatened with corpulence, but still well-balanced, and well-made. 

Morally, she was an adept in all the attitudinizing, quarrelling, alluring, and cajoling of her business; and she gave to those actionsa savor of their own by playing childlike innocence, and slipping inamong her artless speeches philosophical malignities. Apparentlyignorant and giddy, she was very strong on money-matters andcommercial law, --for the reason that she had gone through so muchmisery before attaining to her present precarious success. She hadcome down, story by story, from the garret to the first floor, throughso many vicissitudes! She knew life, from that which begins in Briecheese and ends at pineapples; from that which cooks and washes in thecorner of a garret on an earthenware stove, to that which convokes thetribes of pot-bellied chefs and saucemakers. She had lived on creditand not killed it; she was ignorant of nothing that honest womenignore; she spoke all languages: she was one of the populace byexperience; she was noble by beauty and physical distinction. Suspicious as a spy, or a judge, or an old statesman, she wasdifficult to impose upon, and therefore the more able to see clearlyinto most matters. She knew the ways of managing tradespeople, and howto evade their snares, and she was quite as well versed in the pricesof things as a public appraiser. To see her lying on her sofa, like ayoung bride, fresh and white, holding her part in her hand andlearning it, you would have thought her a child of sixteen, ingenuous, ignorant, and weak, with no other artifice about her but herinnocence. Let a creditor contrive to enter, and she was up like astartled fawn, and swearing a good round oath. 

"Hey! my good fellow; your insolence is too dear an interest on themoney I owe you, " she would say. "I am sick of seeing you. Send thesheriff here; I'd prefer him to your silly face. "

Florine gave charming dinners, concerts, and well-attended soirees, where play ran high. Her female friends were all handsome; no oldwoman had ever appeared within her precincts. She was not jealous; infact, she would have thought jealousy an admission of inferiority. Shehad known Coralie and La Torpille in their lifetimes, and now knewTullia, Euphrasie, Aquilina, Madame du Val-Noble, Mariette, --thosewomen who pass through Paris like gossamer through the atmosphere, without our knowing where they go nor whence they came; to-day queens, to-morrow slaves. She also knew the actresses, her rivals, and all theprima-donnas; in short, that whole exceptional feminine society, sokindly, so graceful in its easy "sans-souci, " which absorbs into itsown Bohemian life all who allow themselves to be caught in the franticwhirl of its gay spirits, its eager abandonment, and its contemptuousindifference to the future. 

Though this Bohemian life displayed itself in her house in tumultuousdisorder, amid the laughter of artists of every description, the queenof the revels had ten fingers on which she knew better how to countthan any of her guests. In that house secret saturnalias of literatureand art, politics and finance were carried on; there, desire reigned asovereign; there, caprice and fancy were as sacred as honor and virtueto a bourgeoise; thither came Blondet, Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Vernouthe feuilletonist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac in his earlier days, Claude Vignon the critic, Nucingen the banker, du Tillet, Conti thecomposer, --in short, that whole devil-may-care legion of selfishmaterialists of all kinds; friends of Florine and of the singers, actresses and "danseuses" collected about her. They all hated or likedone another according to circumstances. 

This Bohemian resort, to which celebrity was the only ticket ofadmission, was a Hades of the mind, the galleys of the intellect. Noone could enter there without having legally conquered fortune, doneten years of misery, strangled two or three passions, acquired somecelebrity, either by books or waistcoats, by dramas or fine equipages;plots were hatched there, means of making fortune scrutinized, allthings were discussed and weighed. But every man, on leaving it, resumed the livery of his own opinions; there he could, withoutcompromising himself, criticise his own party, admit the knowledge andgood play of his adversaries, formulate thoughts that no one admitsthinking, --in short, say all, as if ready to do all. Paris is the onlyplace in the world where such eclectic houses exist; where all tastes, all vices, all opinions are received under decent guise. Therefore itis not yet certain that Florine will remain to the end of her career asecond-class actress. 

Florine's life was by no means an idle one, or a life to be envied. Many persons, misled by the magnificent pedestal that the stage givesto a woman, suppose her in the midst of a perpetual carnival. In thedark recesses of a porter's lodge, beneath the tiles of an attic roof, many a poor girl dreams, on returning from the theatre, of pearls anddiamonds, gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles; she fanciesherself adored, applauded, courted; but little she knows of thattreadmill life, in which the actress is forced to rehearsals underpain of fines, to the reading of new pieces, to the constant study ofnew roles. At each representation Florine changes her dress at leasttwo or three times; often she comes home exhausted and half-dead; butbefore she can rest, she must wash off with various cosmetics thewhite and the red she has applied, and clean all the powder from herhair, if she has played a part from the eighteenth century. Shescarcely has time for food. When she plays, an actress can live nolife of her own; she can neither dress, nor eat, nor talk. Florineoften has no time to sup. On returning from a play, which lasts, inthese days, till after midnight, she does not get to bed before two inthe morning; but she must rise early to study her part, order herdresses, try them on, breakfast, read her love-letters, answer them, discuss with the leader of the "claque" the place for the plaudits, pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid cash, and bespeakthose of the month ahead. In the days of Saint-Genest, the canonizedcomedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and wore a hairshirt, we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand thisincessant activity. Sometimes Florine, seized with a bourgeois desireto get out into the country and gather flowers, pretends to themanager that she is ill. 

But even these mechanical operations are nothing in comparison withthe intrigues to be carried on, the pains of wounded vanity to beendured, --preferences shown by authors, parts taken away or given toothers, exactions of the male actors, spite of rivals, naggings of thestage manager, struggles with journalists; all of which requireanother twelve hours to the day. But even so far, nothing has beensaid of the art of acting, the expression of passion, the practice ofpositions and gesture, the minute care and watchfulness required onthe stage, where a thousand opera-glasses are ready to detect a flaw, --labors which consumed the life and thought of Talma, Lekain, Baron, Contat, Clairon, Champmesle. In these infernal "coulisses" self-lovehas no sex; the artist who triumphs, be it man or woman, has all theother men and women against him or her. Then, as to money, howevermany engagements Florine may have, her salary does not cover the costsof her stage toilet, which, in addition to its costumes, requires animmense variety of long gloves, shoes, and frippery; and all thisexclusive of her personal clothing. The first third of such a life isspent in struggling and imploring; the next third, in getting afoothold; the last third, in defending it. If happiness is franticallygrasped, it is because it is so rare, so long desired, and found atlast only amid the odious fictitious pleasures and smiles of such alife. 

As for Florine, Raoul's power in the press was like a protectingsceptre; he spared her many cares and anxieties; she clung to him lessas a lover than a prop; she took care of him like a father, shedeceived him like a husband; but she would readily have sacrificed allshe had to him. Raoul could, and did do everything for her vanity asan actress, for the peace of her self-love, and for her future on thestage. Without the intervention of a successful author, there is nosuccessful actress; Champmesle was due to Racine, like Mars to Monveland Andrieux. Florine could do nothing in return for Raoul, though shewould gladly have been useful and necessary to him. She reckoned onthe charms of habit to keep him by her; she was always ready to openher salons and display the luxury of her dinners and suppers for hisfriends, and to further his projects. She desired to be for him whatMadame de Pompadour was to Louis XV. All actresses envied Florine'sposition, and some journalists envied that of Raoul. 

Those to whom the inclination of the human mind towards chance, opposition, and contrasts is known, will readily understand that afterten years of this lawless Bohemian life, full of ups and downs, offetes and sheriffs, of orgies and forced sobrieties, Raoul wasattracted to the idea of another love, --to the gentle, harmonioushouse and presence of a great lady, just as the Comtesse Felixinstinctively desired to introduce the torture of great emotions intoa life made monotonous by happiness. This law of life is the law ofall arts, which exist only by contrasts. A work done without thisincentive is the loftiest expression of genius, just as the cloisteris the highest expression of the Christian life. 

On returning to his lodging from Lady Dudley's ball, Raoul found anote from Florine, brought by her maid, which an invincible sleepinessprevented him from reading at that moment. He fell asleep, dreaming ofa gentle love that his life had so far lacked. Some hours later heopened the note, and found in it important news, which neitherRastignac nor de Marsay had allowed to transpire. The indiscretion ofa member of the government had revealed to the actress the comingdissolution of the Chamber after the present session. Raoul instantlywent to Florine's house and sent for Blondet. In the actress'sboudoir, with their feet on the fender, Emile and Raoul analyzed thepolitical situation of France in 1834. On which side lay the bestchance of fortune? They reviewed all parties and all shades of party, --pure republicans, presiding republicans, republicans without arepublic, constitutionals without a dynasty, ministerialconservatives, ministerial absolutists; also the Right, thearistocratic Right, the legitimist, henriquinquist Right, and thecarlest Right. Between the party of resistance and that of actionthere was no discussion; they might as well have hesitated betweenlife and death. 

At this period a flock of newspapers, created to represent all shadesof opinion, produced a fearful pell-mell of political principles. Blondet, the most judicious mind of the day, --judicious for others, never for himself, like some great lawyers unable to manage their ownaffairs, --was magnificent in such a discussion. The upshot was that headvised Nathan not to apostatize too suddenly. 

"Napoleon said it; you can't make young republics of old monarchies. Therefore, my dear fellow, become the hero, the support, the creatorof the Left Centre in the new Chamber, and you'll succeed. Onceadmitted into political ranks, once in the government, you can be whatyou like, --of any opinion that triumphs. "

Nathan was bent on creating a daily political journal and becoming theabsolute master of an enterprise which should absorb into it thecountless little papers then swarming from the press, and establishramifications with a review. He had seen so many fortunes made allaround him by the press that he would not listen to Blondet, whowarned him not to trust to such a venture, declaring that the plan wasunsound, so great was the present number of newspapers, all fightingfor subscribers. Raoul, relying on his so-called friends and his owncourage, was all for daring it; he sprang up eagerly and said, with aproud gesture, --

"I shall succeed. "

"But you haven't a sou. "

"I will write a play. "

"It will fail. "

"Let it fail!" replied Nathan. 

He rushed through the various rooms of Florine's apartment, followedby Blondet, who thought him crazy, looking with a greedy eye upon thewealth displayed there. Blondet understood that look. 

"There's a hundred and more thousand francs in them, " he remarked. 

"Yes, " said Raoul, sighing, as he looked at Florine's sumptuousbedstead; "but I'd rather be a pedler all my life on the boulevard, and live on fried potatoes, than sell one item of this apartment. "

"Not one item, " said Blondet; "sell all. Ambition is like death; ittakes all or nothing. "

"No, a hundred times no! I would take anything from my new countess;but rob Florine of her shell? no. "

"Upset our money-box, break one's balance-pole, smash our refuge, --yes, that would be serious, " said Blondet with a tragic air. 

"It seems to me from what I hear that you want to play politicsinstead of comedies, " said Florine, suddenly appearing. 

"Yes, my dear, yes, " said Raoul, affectionately taking her by the neckand kissing her forehead. "Don't make faces at that; you won't loseanything. A minister can do better than a journalist for the queen ofthe boards. What parts and what holidays you shall have!"

"Where will you get the money?" she said. 

"From my uncle, " replied Raoul. 

Florine knew Raoul's "uncle. " The word meant usury, as in popularparlance "aunt" means pawn. 

"Don't worry yourself, my little darling, " said Blondet to Florine, tapping her shoulder. "I'll get him the assistance of Massol, a lawyerwho wants to be deputy; also Finot, who has never yet got beyond his'petit-journal, ' and Pantin, who wants to be master of petitions, andwho dabbles in reviews. Yes, I'll save him from himself; we'll convokehere to supper Etienne Lousteau, who can do the feuilleton; ClaudeVignon for criticisms; Felicien Vernou as general care-taker; thelawyer will work, and du Tillet may take charge of the Bourse, themoney article, and all industrial questions. We'll see where thesevarious talents and slaves united will land the enterprise. "

"In a hospital or a ministry, --where all men ruined in body or mindare apt to go, " said Raoul, laughing. 

"Where and when shall we invite them?"

"Here, five days hence. "

"Tell me the sum you want, " said Florine, simply. 

"Well, the lawyer, du Tillet, and Raoul will each have to put up ahundred thousand francs before they embark on the affair, " repliedBlondet. "Then the paper can run eighteen months; about long enoughfor a rise and fall in Paris. "

Florine gave a little grimace of approval. The two friends jumpedinto a cabriolet to go about collecting guests and pens, ideas andself-interests. 

Florine meantime sent for certain dealers in old furniture, bric-a-brac, pictures, and jewels. These men entered her sanctuary andtook an inventory of every article, precisely as if Florine were dead. She declared she would sell everything at public auction if they didnot offer her a proper price. She had had the luck to please, she said, an English lord, and she wanted to get rid of all her property andlook poor, so that he might give her a fine house and furniture, fitto rival the Rothschilds. But in spite of these persuasions andsubterfuges, all the dealers would offer her for a mass of belongingsworth a hundred and fifty thousand was seventy thousand. Florinethereupon offered to deliver over everything in eight days for eightythousand, --"To take or leave, " she said, --and the bargain wasconcluded. After the men had departed she skipped for joy, like thehills of King David, and performed all manner of follies, not havingthought herself so rich. 

When Raoul came back she made him a little scene, pretending to behurt; she declared that he abandoned her; that she had reflected; mendid not pass from one party to another, from the stage to the Chamber, without some reason; there was a woman at the bottom; she had a rival!In short, she made him swear eternal fidelity. Five days later shegave a splendid feast. The new journal was baptized in floods of wineand wit, with oaths of loyalty, fidelity, and good-fellowship. Thename, forgotten now like those of the Liberal, Communal, Departmental, Garde National, Federal, Impartial, was something in "al" that wasequally imposing and evanescent. At three in the morning Florine couldundress and go to bed as if alone, though no one had left the house;these lights of the epoch were sleeping the sleep of brutes. And when, early in the morning, the packers and vans arrived to remove Florine'streasures she laughed to see the porters moving the bodies of thecelebrated men like pieces of furniture that lay in their way. "Sictransit" all her fine things! all her presents and souvenirs went tothe shops of the various dealers, where no one on seeing them wouldknow how those flowers of luxury had been originally paid for. It wasagreed that a few little necessary articles should be left, forFlorine's personal convenience until evening, --her bed, a table, a fewchairs, and china enough to give her guests their breakfast. 

Having gone to sleep beneath the draperies of wealth and luxury, thesedistinguished men awoke to find themselves within bare walls, full ofnail-holes, degraded into abject poverty. 

"Why, Florine!--The poor girl has been seized for debt!" cried Bixiou, who was one of the guests. "Quick! a subscription for her!"

On this they all roused up. Every pocket was emptied and produced atotal of thirty-seven francs, which Raoul carried in jest to Florine'sbedside. She burst out laughing and lifted her pillow, beneath whichlay a mass of bank-notes to which she pointed. 

Raoul called to Blondet. 

"Ah! I see!" cried Blondet. "The little cheat has sold herself outwithout a word to us. Well done, you little angel!"

Thereupon, the actress was borne in triumph into the dining-room wheremost of the party still remained. The lawyer and du Tillet haddeparted. 

That evening Florine had an ovation at the theatre; the story of hersacrifice had circulated among the audience. 

"I'd rather be applauded for my talent, " said her rival in thegreen-room. 

"A natural desire in an actress who has never been applauded at all, "remarked Florine. 

During the evening Florine's maid installed her in Raoul's apartmentin the Passage Sandrie. Raoul himself was to encamp in the house wherethe office of the new journal was established. 

Such was the rival of the innocent Madame de Vandenesse. Raoul was theconnecting link between the actress and the countess, --a knot severedby a duchess in the days of Louis XV. By the poisoning of AdrienneLecouvreur; a not inconceivable vengeance, considering the offence. 

Florine, however, was not in the way of Raoul's dawning passion. Sheforesaw the lack of money in the difficult enterprise he hadundertaken, and she asked for leave of absence from the theatre. Raoulconducted the negotiation in a way to make himself more than evervaluable to her. With the good sense of the peasant in La Fontaine'sfable, who makes sure of a dinner while the patricians talk, theactress went into the provinces to cut faggots for her celebrated manwhile he was employed in hunting power. 

 CHAPTER VI

 ROMANTIC LOVE

On the morrow of the ball given by Lady Dudley, Marie, without havingreceived the slightest declaration, believed that she was loved byRaoul according to the programme of her dreams, and Raoul was awarethat the countess had chosen him for her lover. Though neither hadreached the incline of such emotions where preliminaries are abridged, both were on the road to it. Raoul, wearied with the dissipations oflife, longed for an ideal world, while Marie, from whom the thought ofwrong-doing was far, indeed, never imagined the possibility of goingout of such a world. No love was ever more innocent or purer thantheirs; but none was ever more enthusiastic or more entrancing inthought. 

The countess was captivated by ideas worthy of the days of chivalry, though completely modernized. The glowing conversation of the poet hadmore echo in her mind than in her heart. She thought it fine to be hisprovidence. How sweet the thought of supporting by her white andfeeble hand this colossus, --whose feet of clay she did not choose tosee; of giving life where life was needed; of being secretly thecreator of a career; of helping a man of genius to struggle with fateand master it. Ah! to embroider his scarf for the tournament! toprocure him weapons! to be his talisman against ill-fortune! his balmfor every wound! For a woman brought up like Marie, religious andnoble as she was, such a love was a form of charity. Hence theboldness of it. Pure sentiments often compromise themselves with alofty disdain that resembles the boldness of courtesans. 

As soon as by her specious distinctions Marie had convinced herselfthat she did not in any way impair her conjugal faith, she rushed intothe happiness of loving Raoul. The least little things of her dailylife acquired a charm. Her boudoir, where she thought of him, became asanctuary. There was nothing there that did not rouse some sense ofpleasure; even her ink-stand was the coming accomplice in thepleasures of correspondence; for she would now have letters to readand answer. Dress, that splendid poesy of the feminine life, unknownor exhausted by her, appeared to her eyes endowed with a magichitherto unperceived. It suddenly became clear to her what it is tomost women, the manifestation of an inward thought, a language, asymbol. How many enjoyments in a toilet arranged to please _him_, todo _him_ honor! She gave herself up ingenuously to all those gracefullycharming things in which so many Parisian women spend their lives, andwhich give such significance to all that we see about them, and inthem, and on them. Few women go to milliners and dressmakers for theirown pleasure and interest. When old they never think of adornment. Thenext time you meet in the street a young woman stopping for a momentto look into a shop-window, examine her face carefully. "Will he thinkI look better in that?" are the words written on that fair brow, inthe eyes sparkling with hope, in the smile that flickers on the lips. 

Lady Dudley's ball took place on a Saturday night. On the followingMonday the countess went to the Opera, feeling certain of seeingRaoul, who was, in fact, watching for her on one of the stairwaysleading down to the stalls. With what delight did she observe theunwonted care he had bestowed upon his clothes. This despiser of thelaws of elegance had brushed and perfumed his hair; his waistcoatfollowed the fashion, his cravat was well tied, the bosom of his shirtwas irreproachably smooth. Raoul was standing with his arms crossed asif posed for his portrait, magnificently indifferent to the rest ofthe audience and full of repressed impatience. Though lowered, hiseyes were turned to the red velvet cushion on which lay Marie's arm. Felix, seated in the opposite corner of the box, had his back toNathan. 

So, in a moment, as it were, Marie had compelled this remarkable manto abjure his cynicism in the line of clothes. All women, high or low, are filled with delight on seeing a first proof of their power in oneof these sudden metamorphoses. Such changes are an admission ofserfdom. 

"Those women were right; there is a great pleasure in beingunderstood, " she said to herself, thinking of her treacherous friends. 

When the two lovers had gazed around the theatre with that glance thattakes in everything, they exchanged a look of intelligence. It was foreach as if some celestial dew had refreshed their hearts, burned-upwith expectation. 

"I have been here for an hour in purgatory, but now the heavens areopening, " said Raoul's eyes. 

"I knew you were waiting, but how could I help it?" replied those ofthe countess. 

Thieves, spies, lovers, diplomats, and slaves of any kind alone knowthe resources and comforts of a glance. They alone know what itcontains of meaning, sweetness, thought, anger, villainy, displayed bythe modification of that ray of light which conveys the soul. Betweenthe box of the Comtesse Felix de Vandenesse and the step on whichRaoul had perched there were barely thirty feet; and yet it wasimpossible to wipe out that distance. To a fiery being, who hadhitherto known no space between his wishes and their gratification, this imaginary but insuperable gulf inspired a mad desire to spring tothe countess with the bound of a tiger. In a species of rage hedetermined to try the ground and bow openly to the countess. Shereturned the bow with one of those slight inclinations of the headwith which women take from their adorers all desire to continue theirattempt. Comte Felix turned round to see who had bowed to his wife; hesaw Nathan, but did not bow, and seemed to inquire the meaning of suchaudacity; then he turned back slowly and said a few words to his wife. Evidently the door of that box was closed to Nathan, who cast aterrible look of hatred upon Felix. 

Madame d'Espard had seen the whole thing from her box, which was justabove where Raoul was standing. She raised her voice in crying bravoto some singer, which caused Nathan to look up to her; he bowed andreceived in return a gracious smile which seemed to say:--

"If they won't admit you there come here to me. "

Raoul obeyed the silent summons and went to her box. He felt the needof showing himself in a place which might teach that little Vandenessethat fame was every whit as good as nobility, and that all doorsturned on their hinges to admit him. The marquise made him sit infront of her. She wanted to question him. 

"Madame Felix de Vandenesse is fascinating in that gown, " she said, complimenting the dress as if it were a book he had published the daybefore. 

"Yes, " said Raoul, indifferently, "marabouts are very becoming to her;but she seems wedded to them; she wore them on Saturday, " he added, ina careless tone, as if to repudiate the intimacy Madame d'Espard wasfastening upon him. 

"You know the proverb, " she replied. "There is no good fete without amorrow. "

In the matter of repartees literary celebrities are often not as quickas women. Raoul pretended dulness, a last resort for clever men. 

"That proverb is true in my case, " he said, looking gallantly at themarquise. 

"My dear friend, your speech comes too late; I can't accept it, " shesaid, laughing. "Don't be so prudish! Come, I know how it was; youcomplimented Madame de Vandenesse at the ball on her marabouts and shehas put them on again for your sake. She likes you, and you adore her;it may be a little rapid, but it is all very natural. If I weremistaken you wouldn't be twisting your gloves like a man who isfurious at having to sit here with me instead of flying to the box ofhis idol. She has obtained, " continued Madame d'Espard, glancing athis person impertinently, "certain sacrifices which you refused tomake to society. She ought to be delighted with her success, --in fact, I have no doubt she is vain of it; I should be so in her place--immensely. She was never a woman of any mind, but she may now passfor one of genius. I am sure you will describe her in one of thosedelightful novels you write. And pray don't forget Vandenesse; put himin to please me. Really, his self-sufficiency is too much. I can'tstand that Jupiter Olympian air of his, --the only mythologicalcharacter exempt, they say, from ill-luck. "

"Madame, " cried Raoul, "you rate my soul very low if you think mecapable of trafficking with my feelings, my affections. Rather thancommit such literary baseness, I would do as they do in England, --puta rope round a woman's neck and sell her in the market. "

"But I know Marie; she would like you to do it. "

"She is incapable of liking it, " said Raoul, vehemently. 

"Oh! then you do know her well?"

Nathan laughed; he, the maker of scenes, to be trapped into playingone himself!

"Comedy is no longer there, " he said, nodding at the stage; "it ishere, in you. "

He took his opera-glass and looked about the theatre to recovercountenance. 

"You are not angry with me, I hope?" said the marquise, giving him asidelong glance. "I should have had your secret somehow. Let us makepeace. Come and see me; I receive every Wednesday, and I am sure thedear countess will never miss an evening if I let her know you will bethere. So I shall be the gainer. Sometimes she comes between four andfive o'clock, and I'll be kind and add you to the little set offavorites I admit at that hour. "

"Ah!" cried Raoul, "how the world judges; it calls you unkind. "

"So I am when I need to be, " she replied. "We must defend ourselves. But your countess I adore; you will be contented with her; she ischarming. Your name will be the first engraved upon her heart withthat infantine joy that makes a lad cut the initials of his love onthe barks of trees. "

Raoul was aware of the danger of such conversations, in which aParisian woman excels; he feared the marquise would extract someadmission from him which she would instantly turn into ridicule amongher friends. He therefore withdrew, prudently, as Lady Dudley entered. 

"Well?" said the Englishwoman to the marquise, "how far have theygot?"

"They are madly in love; he has just told me so. "

"I wish he were uglier, " said Lady Dudley, with a viperish look atComte Felix. "In other respects he is just what I want him: the son ofa Jew broker who died a bankrupt soon after his marriage; but themother was a Catholic, and I am sorry to say she made a Christian ofthe boy. "

This origin, which Nathan thought carefully concealed, Lady Dudley hadjust discovered, and she enjoyed by anticipation the pleasure sheshould have in launching some terrible epigram against Vandenesse. 

"Heavens! I have just invited him to my house!" cried Madame d'Espard. 

"Didn't I receive him at my ball?" replied Lady Dudley. "Somepleasures, my dear love, are costly. "

The news of the mutual attachment between Raoul and Madame deVandenesse circulated in the world after this, but not withoutexciting denials and incredulity. The countess, however, was defendedby her friends, Lady Dudley, and Mesdames d'Espard and de Manerville, with an unnecessary warmth that gave a certain color to the calumny. 

On the following Wednesday evening Raoul went to Madame d'Espard's, and was able to exchange a few sentences with Marie, more expressiveby their tones than their ideas. In the midst of the elegant assemblyboth found pleasure in those enjoyable sensations given by the voice, the gestures, the attitude of one beloved. The soul then fastens uponabsolute nothings. No longer do ideas or even language speak, butthings; and these so loudly, that often a man lets another pay thesmall attentions--bring a cup of tea, or the sugar to sweeten it--demanded by the woman he loves, fearful of betraying his emotion toeyes that seem to see nothing and yet see all. Raoul, however, a manindifferent to the eyes of the world, betrayed his passion in hisspeech and was brilliantly witty. The company listened to the roar ofa discourse inspired by the restraint put upon him; restraint beingthat which artists cannot endure. This Rolandic fury, this wit whichslashed down all things, using epigram as its weapon, intoxicatedMarie and amused the circle around them, as the sight of a bull goadedwith banderols amuses the company in a Spanish circus. 

"You may kick as you please, but you can't make a solitude about you, "whispered Blondet. 

The words brought Raoul to his senses, and he ceased to exhibit hisirritation to the company. Madame d'Espard came up to offer him a cupof tea, and said loud enough for Madame de Vandenesse to hear:--

"You are certainly very amusing; come and see me sometimes at fouro'clock. "

The word "amusing" offended Raoul, though it was used as the ground ofan invitation. Blondet took pity on him. 

"My dear fellow, " he said, taking him aside into a corner, "you arebehaving in society as if you were at Florine's. Here no one showsannoyance, or spouts long articles; they say a few words now and then, they look their calmest when most desirous of flinging others out ofthe window; they sneer softly, they pretend not to think of the womanthey adore, and they are careful not to roll like a donkey on thehigh-road. In society, my good Raoul, conventions rule love. Eithercarry off Madame de Vandenesse, or show yourself a gentleman. As itis, you are playing the lover in one of your own books. "

Nathan listened with his head lowered; he was like a lion caught in atoil. 

"I'll never set foot in this house again, " he cried. "Thatpapier-mache marquise sells her tea too dear. She thinks me amusing! Iunderstand now why Saint-Just wanted to guillotine this whole class ofpeople. "

"You'll be back here to-morrow. "

Blondet was right. Passions are as mean as they are cruel. The nextday after long hesitation between "I'll go--I'll not go, " Raoul lefthis new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed toMadame d'Espard's house in the faubourg Saint-Honore. BeholdingRastignac's elegant cabriolet enter the court-yard while he was payinghis cab at the gate, Nathan's vanity was stung; he resolved to have acabriolet himself, and its accompanying tiger, too. The carriage ofthe countess was in the court-yard, and the sight of it swelledRaoul's heart with joy. Marie was advancing under the pressure of herdesires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying themainspring. He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in thelittle salon. Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, shelooked at his reflection in a mirror. 

"Monsieur le ministre, " said Madame d'Espard, addressing Nathan, andpresenting him to de Marsay by a glance, "was maintaining, when youcame in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secretunderstanding. You ought to know something about it; is it so?"

"If it were so, " said Raoul, "where's the harm? We hate the samething; we agree as to our hatreds, we differ only in our love. That'sthe whole of it. "

"The alliance is odd enough, " said de Marsay, giving a comprehensivelymeaning glance at the Comtesse Felix and Nathan. 

"It won't last, " said Rastignac, thinking, perhaps, wholly ofpolitics. 

"What do you think, my dear?" asked Madame d'Espard, addressing Marie. 

"I know nothing of public affairs, " replied the countess. 

"But you soon will, madame, " said de Marsay, "and then you will bedoubly our enemy. "

So saying he left the room with Rastignac, and Madame d'Espardaccompanied them to the door of the first salon. The lovers had theroom to themselves for a few moments. Marie held out her ungloved handto Raoul, who took and kissed it as though he were eighteen years old. The eyes of the countess expressed so noble a tenderness that thetears which men of nervous temperament can always find at theirservice came into Raoul's eyes. 

"Where can I see you? where can I speak with you?" he said. "It isdeath to be forced to disguise my voice, my look, my heart, my love--"

Moved by that tear Marie promised to drive daily in the Bois, unlessthe weather were extremely bad. This promise gave Raoul more pleasurethan he had found in Florine for the last five years. 

"I have so many things to say to you! I suffer from the silence towhich we are condemned--"

The countess looked at him eagerly without replying, and at thatmoment Madame d'Espard returned to the room. 

"Why didn't you answer de Marsay?" she said as she entered. 

"We ought to respect the dead, " replied Raoul. "Don't you see that heis dying? Rastignac is his nurse, --hoping to be put in the will. "

The countess pretended to have other visits to pay, and left thehouse. 

For this quarter of an hour Raoul had sacrificed important interestsand most precious time. Marie was perfectly ignorant of the life ofsuch men, involved in complicated affairs and burdened with exactingtoil. Women of society are still under the influence of the traditionsof the eighteenth century, in which all positions were definite andassured. Few women know the harassments in the life of most men who inthese days have a position to make and to maintain, a fame to reach, afortune to consolidate. Men of settled wealth and position can now becounted; old men alone have time to love; young men are rowing, likeNathan, the galleys of ambition. Women are not yet resigned to thischange of customs; they suppose the same leisure of which they havetoo much in those who have none; they cannot imagine otheroccupations, other ends in life than their own. When a lover hasvanquished the Lernean hydra in order to pay them a visit he has nomerit in their eyes; they are only grateful to him for the pleasure hegives; they neither know nor care what it costs. Raoul became aware ashe returned from this visit how difficult it would be to hold thereins of a love-affair in society, the ten-horsed chariot ofjournalism, his dramas on the stage, and his generally involvedaffairs. 

"The paper will be wretched to-night, " he thought, as he walked away. "No article of mine, and only the second number, too!"

Madame Felix de Vandenesse drove three times to the Bois de Boulognewithout finding Raoul; the third time she came back anxious anduneasy. The fact was that Nathan did not choose to show himself in theBois until he could go there as a prince of the press. He employed awhole week in searching for horses, a phantom and a suitable tiger, and in convincing his partners of the necessity of saving time soprecious to them, and therefore of charging his equipage to the costsof the journal. His associates, Massol and du Tillet agreed to this soreadily that he really believed them the best fellows in the world. Without this help, however, life would have been simply impossible toRaoul; as it was, it became so irksome that many men, even those ofthe strongest constitutions, could not have borne it. A violent andsuccessful passion takes a great deal of space in an ordinary life;but when it is connected with a woman in the social position of Madamede Vandenesse it sucks the life out of a man as busy as Raoul. Here isa list of the obligations his passion imposed upon him. 

Every day, or nearly every day, he was obliged to be on horseback inthe Bois, between two and three o'clock, in the careful dress of agentleman of leisure. He had to learn at what house or theatre hecould meet Madame de Vandenesse in the evening. He was not able toleave the party or the play until long after midnight, having obtainednothing better than a few tender sentences, long awaited, said in adoorway, or hastily as he put her into her carriage. It frequentlyhappened that Marie, who by this time had launched him into the greatworld, procured for him invitations to dinner in certain houses whereshe went herself. All this seemed the simplest life in the world toher. Raoul moved by pride and led on by his passion never told her ofhis labors. He obeyed the will of this innocent sovereign, followed inher train, followed, also, the parliamentary debates, edited and wrotefor his newspaper, and put upon the stage two plays, the money forwhich was absolutely indispensable to him. It sufficed for Madame deVandenesse to make a little face of displeasure when he tried toexcuse himself from attending a ball, a concert, or from driving inthe Bois, to compel him to sacrifice his most pressing interests toher good pleasure. When he left society between one and two in themorning he went straight to work until eight or nine. He was scarcelyasleep before he was obliged to be up and concocting the opinions ofhis journal with the men of political influence on whom he depended, --not to speak of the thousand and one other details of the paper. Journalism is connected with everything in these days; with industrialconcerns, with public and private interests, with all new enterprises, and all the schemes of literature, its self-loves, and its products. 

When Nathan, harassed and fatigued, would rush from his editorialoffice to the theatre, from the theatre to the Chamber, from theChamber to face certain creditors, he was forced to appear in the Boiswith a calm countenance, and gallop beside Marie's carriage in theleisurely style of a man devoid of cares and with no other duties thanthose of love. When in return for this toilsome and wholly ignoreddevotion all he won were a few sweet words, the prettiest assurancesof eternal attachment, ardent pressures of the hand on the very fewoccasions when they found themselves alone, he began to feel he wasrather duped by leaving his mistress in ignorance of the enormouscosts of these "little attentions, " as our fathers called them. Theoccasion for an explanation arrived in due time. 

On a fine April morning the countess accepted Nathan's arm for a walkthrough the sequestered path of the Bois de Boulogne. She intended tomake him one of those pretty little quarrels apropos of nothing, whichwomen are so fond of exciting. Instead of greeting him as usual, witha smile upon her lips, her forehead illumined with pleasure, her eyesbright with some gay or delicate thought, she assumed a grave andserious aspect. 

"What is the matter?" said Nathan. 

"Why do you pretend to such ignorance?" she replied. "You ought toknow that a woman is not a child. "

"Have I displeased you?"

"Should I be here if you had?"

"But you don't smile to me; you don't seem happy to see me. "

"Oh! do you accuse me of sulking?" she said, looking at him with thatsubmissive air which women assume when they want to seem victims. 

Nathan walked on a few steps in a state of real apprehension whichoppressed him. 

"It must be, " he said, after a moment's silence, "one of thosefrivolous fears, those hazy suspicions which women dwell on more thanthey do on the great things of life. You all have a way of tipping theworld sideways with a straw, a cobweb--"

"Sarcasm!" she said, "I might have expected it!"

"Marie, my angel, I only said those words to wring your secret out ofyou. "

"My secret would be always a secret, even if I told it to you. "

"But all the same, tell it to me. "

"I am not loved, " she said, giving him one of those sly obliqueglances with which women question so maliciously the men they aretrying to torment. 

"Not loved!" cried Nathan. 

"No; you are too occupied with other things. What am I to you in themidst of them? forgotten on the least occasion! Yesterday I came tothe Bois and you were not here--"

"But--"

"I had put on a new dress expressly to please you; you did not come;where were you?"

"But--"

"I did not know where. I went to Madame d'Espard's; you were notthere. "

"But--"

"That evening at the Opera, I watched the balcony; every time a dooropened my heart was beating!"

"But--"

"What an evening I had! You don't reflect on such tempests of theheart. "

"But--"

"Life is shortened by such emotions. "

"But--"

"Well, what?" she said. 

"You are right; life is shortened by them, " said Nathan, "and in a fewmonths you will utterly have consumed mine. Your unreasonablereproaches drag my secret from me-- Ha! you say you are not loved; youare loved too well. "

And thereupon he vividly depicted his position, told of his sleeplessnights, his duties at certain hours, the absolute necessity ofsucceeding in his enterprise, the insatiable requirements of anewspaper in which he was required to judge the events of the wholeworld without blundering, under pain of losing his power, and solosing all, the infinite amount of rapid study he was forced to giveto questions which passed as rapidly as clouds in this all-consumingage, etc. , etc. 

Raoul made a great mistake. The Marquise d'Espard had said to him onone occasion, "Nothing is more naive than a first love. " As heunfolded before Marie's eyes this life which seemed to her immense, the countess was overcome with admiration. She had thought Nathangrand, she now considered him sublime. She blamed herself for lovinghim too much; begged him to come to her only when he could do sowithout difficulty. Wait? indeed she could wait! In future, she shouldknow how to sacrifice her enjoyments. Wishing to be his stepping-stonewas she really an obstacle? She wept with despair. 

"Women, " she said, with tears in her eyes, "can only love; men act;they have a thousand ways in which they are bound to act. But we canonly think, and pray, and worship. "

A love that had sacrificed so much for her sake deserved a recompense. She looked about her like a nightingale descending from a leafy covertto drink at a spring, to see if she were alone in the solitude, if thesilence hid no witness; then she raised her head to Raoul, who benthis own, and let him take one kiss, the first and the only one thatshe ever gave in secret, feeling happier at that moment than she hadfelt in five years. Raoul thought all his toils well-paid. They bothwalked forward they scarcely knew where, but it was on the road toAuteuil; presently, however, they were forced to return and find theircarriages, pacing together with the rhythmic step well-known tolovers. Raoul had faith in that kiss given with the quiet facility ofa sacred sentiment. All the evil of it was in the mind of the world, not in that of the woman who walked beside him. Marie herself, givenover to the grateful admiration which characterizes the love of woman, walked with a firm, light step on the gravelled path, saying, likeRaoul, but few words; yet those few were felt and full of meaning. Thesky was cloudless, the tall trees had burgeoned, a few green shootswere already brightening their myriad of brown twigs. The shrubs, thebirches, the willows, the poplars were showing their first diaphanousand tender foliage. No soul resists these harmonies. Love explainedNature as it had already explained society to Marie's heart. 

"I wish you have never loved any one but me, " she said. 

"Your wish is realized, " replied Raoul. "We have awakened in eachother the only true love. "

He spoke the truth as he felt it. Posing before this innocent youngheart as a pure man, Raoul was caught himself by his own finesentiments. At first purely speculative and born of vanity, his lovehad now become sincere. He began by lying, he had ended in speakingtruth. In all writers there is ever a sentiment, difficult to stifle, which impels them to admire the highest good. The countess, on herpart, after her first rush of gratitude and surprise, was charmed tohave inspired such sacrifices, to have caused him to surmount suchdifficulties. She was beloved by a man who was worthy of her! Raoulwas totally ignorant to what his imaginary grandeur bound him. Womenwill not suffer their idol to step down from his pedestal. They do notforgive the slightest pettiness in a god. Marie was far from knowingthe solution to the riddle given by Raoul to his friends at Very's. The struggle of this writer, risen from the lower classes, had costhim the ten first years of his youth; and now in the days of hissuccess he longed to be loved by one of the queens of the great world. Vanity, without which, as Champfort says, love would be but a feeblething, sustained his passion and increased it day by day. 

"Can you swear to me, " said Marie, "that you belong and will neverbelong to any other woman?"

"There is neither time in my life nor place in my heart for any otherwoman, " replied Raoul, not thinking that he told a lie, so little didhe value Florine. 

"I believe you, " she said. 

When they reached the alley where their carriages were waiting, Mariedropped Raoul's arm, and the young man assumed a respectful anddistant attitude as if he had just met her; he accompanied her, withhis hat off, to her carriage, then he followed her by the AvenueCharles X. , breathing in, with satisfaction, the very dust her calecheraised. 

In spite of Marie's high renunciations, Raoul continued to follow hereverywhere; he adored the air of mingled pleasure and displeasure withwhich she scolded him for wasting his precious time. She tookdirection of his labors, she gave him formal orders on the employmentof his time; she stayed at home to deprive him of every pretext fordissipation. Every morning she read his paper, and became the heraldof his staff of editors, of Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist, whomshe thought delightful, of Felicien Vernou, of Claude Vignon, --inshort, of the whole staff. She advised Raoul to do justice to deMarsay when he died, and she read with deep emotion the noble eulogywhich Raoul published upon the dead minister while blaming hisMachiavelianism and his hatred for the masses. She was present, ofcourse, at the Gymnase on the occasion of the first representation ofthe play upon the proceeds of which Nathan relied to support hisenterprise, and was completely duped by the purchased applause. 

"You did not bid farewell to the Italian opera, " said Lady Dudley, towhose house she went after the performance. 

"No, I went to the Gymnase. They gave a first representation. "

"I can't endure vaudevilles. I am like Louis XIV. About Teniers, " saidLady Dudley. 

"For my part, " said Madame d'Espard, "I think actors have greatlyimproved. Vaudevilles in the present day are really charming comedies, full of wit, requiring great talent; they amuse me very much. "

"The actors are excellent, too, " said Marie. "Those at the Gymnaseplayed very well to-night; the piece pleased them; the dialogue waswitty and keen. "

"Like those of Beaumarchais, " said Lady Dudley. 

"Monsieur Nathan is not Moliere as yet, but--" said Madame d'Espard, looking at the countess. 

"He makes vaudevilles, " said Madame Charles de Vandenesse. 

"And unmakes ministries, " added Madame de Manerville. 

The countess was silent; she wanted to answer with a sharp repartee;her heart was bounding with anger, but she could find nothing betterto say than, --

"He will make them, perhaps. "

All the women looked at each other with mysterious significance. WhenMarie de Vandenesse departed Moina de Saint-Heren exclaimed:--

"She adores him. "

"And she makes no secret of it, " said Madame d'Espard. 

 CHAPTER VII

 SUICIDE

In the month of May Vandenesse took his wife, as usual, to theircountry-seat, where she was consoled by the passionate letters shereceived from Raoul, to whom she wrote every day. 

Marie's absence might have saved Raoul from the gulf into which he wasfalling, if Florine had been near him; but, unfortunately, he wasalone in the midst of friends who had become his enemies from themoment that he showed his intention of ruling them. His staff ofwriters hated him "pro tem. , " ready to hold out a hand to him andconsole him in case of a fall, ready to adore him in case of success. So goes the world of literature. No one is really liked but aninferior. Every man's hand is against him who is likely to rise. Thiswide-spread envy doubles the chances of common minds who exciteneither envy nor suspicion, who make their way like moles, and, foolsthough they be, find themselves gazetted in the "Moniteur, " for threeor four places, while men of talent are still struggling at the doorto keep each other out. 

The underhand enmity of these pretended friends, which Florine wouldhave scented with the innate faculty of a courtesan to get at truthamid a thousand misleading circumstances, was by no means Raoul'sgreatest danger. His partners, Massol the lawyer, and du Tillet thebanker, had intended from the first to harness his ardor to thechariot of their own importance and get rid of him as soon as he wasout of condition to feed the paper, or else to deprive him of hispower, arbitrarily, whenever it suited their purpose to take it. Tothem Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up, aliterary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ. Massol, oneof those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech foreloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the tormentof all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and whodesire to become personages at any cost, --Massol no longer wanted theplace as Keeper of the Seals; he had seen some five or six differentmen go through that office in four years, and the robes disgusted him. In exchange, his mind was now set on obtaining a chair on the Board ofEducation and a place in the Council of State; the whole adorned withthe cross of the Legion of honor. Du Tillet and Nucingen hadguaranteed the cross to him, and the office of Master of Petitionsprovided he obeyed them blindly. 

The better to deceive Raoul, these men allowed him to manage the paperwithout control. Du Tillet used it only for his stock-gambling, aboutwhich Nathan understood next to nothing; but he had given, throughNucingen, an assurance to Rastignac that the paper would be tacitlyobliging to the government on the sole condition of supporting hiscandidacy for Monsieur de Nucingen's place as soon as he was nominatedpeer of France. Raoul was thus being undermined by the banker and thelawyer, who saw him with much satisfaction lording it in thenewspaper, profiting by all advantages, and harvesting the fruits ofself-love, while Nathan, enchanted, believed them to be, as on theoccasion of his equestrian wants, the best fellows in the world. Hethought he managed them! Men of imagination, to whom hope is the basisof existence, never allow themselves to know that the most perilousmoment in their affairs is that when all seems going well according totheir wishes. 

This was a period of triumph by which Nathan profited. He appeared asa personage in the world, political and financial. Du Tillet presentedhim to the Nucingens. Madame de Nucingen received him cordially, lessfor himself than for Madame de Vandenesse; but when she ventured a fewwords about the countess he thought himself marvellously clever inusing Florine as a shield; he alluded to his relations with theactress in a tone of generous self-conceit. How could he desert agreat devotion, for the coquetries of the faubourg Saint-Germain?

Nathan, manipulated by Nucingen and Rastignac, by du Tillet andBlondet, gave his support ostentatiously to the "doctrinaires" oftheir new and ephemeral cabinet. But in order to show himself pure ofall bribery he refused to take advantage of certain profitableenterprises which were started by means of his paper, --he! who had noreluctance in compromising friends or in behaving with little decencyto mechanics under certain circumstances. Such meannesses, the resultof vanity and of ambition, are found in many lives like his. Themantle must be splendid before the eyes of the world, and we steal ourfriend's or a poor man's cloth to patch it. 

Nevertheless, two months after the departure of the countess, Raoulhad a certain Rabelaisian "quart d'heure" which caused him someanxiety in the midst of these triumphs. Du Tillet had advanced ahundred thousand francs, Florine's money had gone in the costs of thefirst establishment of the paper, which were enormous. It wasnecessary to provide for the future. The banker agreed to let theeditor have fifty thousand francs on notes for four months. Du Tilletthus held Raoul by the halter of an IOU. By means of this relief thefunds of the paper were secured for six months. In the eyes of somewriters six months is an eternity. Besides, by dint of advertising andby offering illusory advantages to subscribers two thousand had beensecured; an influx of travellers added to this semi-success, which wasenough, perhaps, to excuse the throwing of more bank-bills after therest. A little more display of talent, a timely political trial orcrisis, an apparent persecution, and Raoul felt certain of becomingone of those modern "condottieri" whose ink is worth more than powderand shot of the olden time. 

This loan from du Tillet was already made when Florine returned withfifty thousand francs. Instead of creating a savings fund with thatsum, Raoul, certain of success (simply because he felt it wasnecessary), and already humiliated at having accepted the actress'smoney, deceived Florine as to his actual position, and persuaded herto employ the money in refurnishing her house. The actress, who didnot need persuasion, not only spent the sum in hand, but she burdenedherself with a debt of thirty thousand francs, with which she obtaineda charming little house all to herself in the rue Pigale, whither herold society resorted. Raoul had reserved the production of his greatpiece, in which was a part especially suited to Florine, until herreturn. This comedy-vaudeville was to be Raoul's farewell to thestage. The newspapers, with that good nature which costs nothing, prepared the way for such an ovation to Florine that even theTheatre-Francais talked of engaging her. The feuilletons proclaimedher the heiress of Mars. 

This triumph was sufficiently dazzling to prevent Florine fromcarefully studying the ground on which Nathan was advancing; shelived, for the time being, in a round of festivities and glory. According to those about her, he was now a great political character;he was justified in his enterprise; he would certainly be a deputy, probably a minister in course of time, like so many others. As forNathan himself, he firmly believed that in the next session of theChamber he should find himself in government with two otherjournalists, one of whom, already a minister, was anxious to associatesome of his own craft with himself, and so consolidate his power. After a separation of six months, Nathan met Florine again withpleasure, and returned easily to his old way of life. All his comfortscame from the actress, but he embroidered the heavy tissue of his lifewith the flowers of ideal passion; his letters to Marie weremasterpieces of grace and style. Nathan made her the light of hislife; he undertook nothing without consulting his "guardian angel. " Indespair at being on the popular side, he talked of going over to thatof the aristocracy; but, in spite of his habitual agility, even he sawthe absolute impossibility of such a jump; it was easier to become aminister. Marie's precious replies were deposited in one of thoseportfolios with patent locks made by Huret or Fichet, two mechanicswho were then waging war in advertisements and posters all over Paris, as to which could make the safest and most impenetrable locks. 

This portfolio was left about in Florine's new boudoir, where Nathandid much of his work. No one is easier to deceive than a woman to whoma man is in the habit of telling everything; she has no suspicions;she thinks she sees and hears and knows all. Besides, since herreturn, Nathan had led the most regular of lives under her very nose. Never did she imagine that that portfolio, which she hardly glanced atas it lay there unconcealed, contained the letters of a rival, treasures of admiring love which the countess addressed, at Raoul'srequest, to the office of his newspaper. 

Nathan's situation was, therefore, to all appearance, extremelybrilliant. He had many friends. The two plays lately produced hadsucceeded well, and their proceeds supplied his personal wants andrelieved him of all care for the future. His debt to du Tillet, "hisfriend, " did not make him in the least uneasy. 

"Why distrust a friend?" he said to Blondet, who from time to timewould cast a doubt on his position, led to do so by his general habitof analyzing. 

"But we don't need to distrust our enemies, " remarked Florine. 

Nathan defended du Tillet; he was the best, the most upright of men. 

This existence, which was really that of a dancer on the tight ropewithout his balance-pole, would have alarmed any one, even the mostindifferent, had it been seen as it really was. Du Tillet watched itwith the cool eye and the cynicism of a parvenu. Through the friendlygood humor of his intercourse with Raoul there flashed now and then amalignant jeer. One day, after pressing his hand in Florine's boudoirand watching him as he got into his carriage, du Tillet remarked toLousteau (envier par excellence):--

"That fellow is off to the Bois in fine style to-day, but he is justas likely, six months hence, to be in a debtor's prison. "

"He? never!" cried Lousteau. "He has Florine. "

"How do you know that he'll keep her? As for you, who are worth adozen of him, I predict that you will be our editor-in-chief withinsix months. "

In October Nathan's notes to du Tillet fell due, and the bankergraciously renewed them, but for two months only, with the discountadded and a fresh loan. Sure of victory, Raoul was not afraid ofcontinuing to put his hand in the bag. Madame Felix de Vandenesse wasto return in a few days, a month earlier than usual, brought back, ofcourse, by her unconquerable desire to see Nathan, who felt that hecould not be short of money at a time when he renewed that assiduouslife. 

Correspondence, in which the pen is always bolder than speech, andthought, wreathing itself with flowers, allows itself to be seenwithout disguise, and brought the countess to the highest pitch ofenthusiasm. She believed she saw in Raoul one of the noblest spiritsof the epoch, a delicate but misjudged heart without a stain andworthy of adoration; she saw him advancing with a brave hand to graspthe sceptre of power. Soon that speech so beautiful in love would echofrom the tribune. Marie now lived only in this life of a world outsideher own. Her taste was lost for the tranquil joys of home, and shegave herself up to the agitations of this whirlwind life communicatedby a clever and adoring pen. She kissed Raoul's letters, written inthe midst of the ceaseless battles of the press, with time taken fromnecessary studies; she felt their value; she was certain of beingloved, and loved only, with no rival but the fame and ambition headored. She found enough in her country solitude to fill her soul andemploy her faculties, --happy, indeed, to have been so chosen by such aman, who to her was an angel. 

During the last days of autumn Marie and Raoul again met and renewedtheir walks in the Bois, where alone they could see each other untilthe salons reopened. But when the winter fairly began, Raoul appearedin social life at his apogee. He was almost a personage. Rastignac, now out of power with the ministry, which went to pieces on the deathof de Marsay, leaned upon Nathan, and gave him in return the warmestpraise. Madame de Vandenesse, feeling this change in public opinion, was desirous of knowing if her husband's judgment had altered also. She questioned him again; perhaps with the hope of obtaining one ofthose brilliant revenges which please all women, even the noblest andleast worldly, --for may we not believe that even the angels retainsome portion of their self-love as they gather in serried ranks beforethe Holy of Holies?

"Nothing was wanting to Raoul Nathan but to be the dupe he now is to aparcel of intriguing sharpers, " replied the count. 

Felix, whose knowledge of the world and politics enabled him to judgeclearly, had seen Nathan's true position. He explained to his wifethat Fieschi's attempt had resulted in attaching to the intereststhreatened by this attack on Louis-Philippe a large body of hithertolukewarm persons. The newspapers which were non-committal, and did notshow their colors, would lose subscribers; for journalism, likepolitics, was about to be simplified by falling into regular lines. IfNathan had put his whole fortune into that newspaper he would lose it. This judgment, so apparently just and clear-cut, though brief andgiven by a man who fathomed a matter in which he had no interest, alarmed Madame de Vandenesse. 

"Do you take an interest in him?" asked her husband. 

"Only as a man whose mind interests me and whose conversation I like. "

This reply was made so naturally that the count suspected nothing. 

The next day at four o'clock, Marie and Raoul had a long conversationtogether, in a low voice, in Madame d'Espard's salon. The countessexpressed fears which Raoul dissipated, only too happy to destroy byepigrams the conjugal judgment. Nathan had a revenge to take. Hecharacterized the count as narrow-minded, behind the age, a man whojudged the revolution of July with the eyes of the Restoration, whowould never be willing to admit the triumph of the middle-classes--thenew force of all societies, whether temporary or lasting, but a realforce. Instead of turning his mind to the study of an opinion givenimpartially and incidentally by a man well-versed in politics, Raoulmounted his stilts and stalked about in the purple of his own glory. Where is the woman who would not have believed his glowing talk soonerthan the cold logic of her husband? Madame de Vandenesse, completelyreassured, returned to her life of little enjoyments, clandestinepressures of the hand, occasional quarrels, --in short, to hernourishment of the year before, harmless in itself, but likely to draga woman over the border if the man she favors is resolute andimpatient of obstacles. Happily for her, Nathan was not dangerous. Besides, he was too full of his immediate self-interests to think atthis time of profiting by his love. 

But toward the end of December, when the second notes fell due, duTillet demanded payment. The rich banker, who said he was embarrassed, advised Raoul to borrow the money for a short time from a usurer, fromGigonnet, the providence of all young men who were pressed for money. In January, he remarked, the renewal of subscriptions to the paperwould be coming in, there would be plenty of money in hand, and theycould then see what had best be done. Besides, couldn't Nathan write aplay? As a matter of pride Raoul determined to pay off the notes atonce. Du Tillet gave Raoul a letter to Gigonnet, who counted out themoney on a note of Nathan's at twenty days' sight. Instead of askinghimself the reason of such unusual facility, Raoul felt vexed at hisfolly in not having asked for more. That is how men who are trulyremarkable for the power of thought are apt to behave in practicalbusiness; they seem to reserve the power of their mind for theirwritings, and are fearful of lessening it by putting it to use in thedaily affairs of life. 

Raoul related his morning to Florine and Blondet. He gave them aninimitable sketch of Gigonnet, his fireplace without fire, his shabbywall-paper, his stairway, his asthmatic bell, his aged straw mattress, his den without warmth, like his eye. He made them laugh about thisnew uncle; they neither troubled themselves about du Tillet and hispretended want of money, nor about an old usurer so ready to disburse. What was there to worry about in that?

"He has only asked you fifteen per cent, " said Blondet; "you ought tobe grateful to him. At twenty-five per cent you don't bow to those oldfellows. This is money-lending; usury doesn't begin till fifty percent; and then you despise the usurer. "

"Despise him!" cried Florine; "if any of your friends lent you moneyat that price they'd pose as your benefactors. "

"She is right; and I am glad I don't owe anything now to du Tillet, "said Raoul. 

Why this lack of penetration as to their personal affairs in men whosebusiness it is to penetrate all things? Perhaps the mind cannot becomplete at all points; perhaps artists of every kind live too much inthe present moment to study the future; perhaps they are too observantof the ridiculous to notice snares, or they may believe that nonewould dare to lay a snare for such as they. However this may be, thefuture arrived in due time. Twenty days later Raoul's notes wereprotested, but Florine obtained from the Court of commerce anextension of twenty-five days in which to meet them. Thus pressed, Raoul looked into his affairs and asked for the accounts, and it thenappeared that the receipts of the newspaper covered only two-thirds ofthe expenses, while the subscriptions were rapidly dwindling. Thegreat man now grew anxious and gloomy, but to Florine only, in whom heconfided. She advised him to borrow money on unwritten plays, andwrite than at once, giving a lien on his work. Nathan followed thisadvice and obtained thereby twenty thousand francs, which reduced hisdebt to forty thousand. 

On the 10th of February the twenty-five days expired. Du Tillet, whodid not want Nathan as a rival before the electoral college, where hemeant to appear himself, instigated Gigonnet to sue Nathan withoutcompromise. A man locked up for debt could not present himself as acandidate for election. Florine was herself in communication with thesheriff on the subject of her personal debts, and no resource was leftto her but the "I" of Medea, for her new furniture and belongings werenow attached. The ambitious Raoul heard the cracking in all directionsof his prosperous edifice, built, alas! without foundations. His nervefailed him; too weak already to sustain so vast an enterprise, he felthimself incapable of attempting to build it up again; he was fated toperish in its ashes. Love for the countess gave him still a fewthrills of life; his mask brightened for a moment, but behind it hopewas dead. He did not suspect the hand of du Tillet, and laid the blameof his misfortune on the usurer. Rastignac, Blondet, Lousteau, Vernou, Finot, and Massol took care not to enlighten him. Rastignac, whowanted to return to power, made common cause with Nucingen and duTillet. The others felt a satisfaction in the catastrophe of an equalwho had attempted to make himself their master. None of them, however, would have said a word to Florine; on the contrary, they praised Raoulto her. 

"Nathan, " they said, "has the shoulders of an Atlas; he'll pullhimself through; all will come right. "

"There were two new subscribers yesterday, " said Blondet, gravely. "Raoul will certainly be elected deputy. As soon as the budget isvoted the dissolution is sure to take place. "

But Nathan, sued, could no longer obtain even usury; Florine, with allher personal property attached, could count on nothing but inspiring apassion in some fool who might not appear at the right moment. Nathan's friends were all men without money and without credit. Anarrest for debt would destroy his hopes of a political career; andbesides all this, he had bound himself to do an immense amount ofdramatic work for which he had already received payment. He could seeno bottom to the gulf of misery that lay before him, into which he wasabout to roll. In presence of such threatened evil his boldnessdeserted him. Would the Comtesse de Vandenesse stand by him? Would shefly with him? Women are never led into a gulf of that kind except byan absolute love, and the love of Raoul and Marie had not bound themtogether by the mysterious and inalienable ties of happiness. Butsupposing that the countess did follow him to some foreign country;she would come without fortune, despoiled of everything, and then, alas! she would merely be one more embarrassment to him. A mind of asecond order, and a proud mind like that of Nathan, would be likely tosee, under these circumstances, and did see, in suicide the sword tocut the Gordian knots. The idea of failure in the face of the worldand that society he had so lately entered and meant to rule, ofleaving the chariot of the countess and becoming once more a muddiedpedestrian, was more than he could bear. Madness began to dance andwhirl and shake her bells at the gates of the fantastic palace inwhich the poet had been dreaming. In this extremity, Nathan waited forsome lucky accident, determined not to kill himself until the finalmoment. 

During the last days employed by the legal formalities required beforeproceeding to arrest for debt, Raoul went about, in spite of himself, with that coldly sullen and morose expression of face which may benoticed in persons who are either fated to commit suicide or aremeditating it. The funereal ideas they are turning over in their mindsappear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints, their smile hassomething fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappybeings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean toleave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to adeath-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them. These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's. Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest ofthe company were conversing in the salon. The countess went to thedoor, but he did not raise his head; he heard neither Marie'sbreathing nor the rustle of her silk dress; he was gazing at a flowerin the carpet, with fixed eyes, stupid with grief; he felt he hadrather die than abdicate. All the world can't have the rock of SaintHelena for a pedestal. Moreover, suicide was then the fashion inParis. Is it not, in fact, the last resource of all atheisticalsocieties? Raoul, as he sat there, had decided that the moment hadcome to die. Despair is in proportion to our hopes; that of Raoul hadno other issue than the grave. 

"What is the matter?" cried Marie, flying to him. 

"Nothing, " he answered. 

There is one way of saying that word "nothing" between lovers whichsignifies its exact contrary. Marie shrugged her shoulders. 

"You are a child, " she said. "Some misfortune has happened to you. "

"No, not to me, " he replied. "But you will know all soon enough, Marie, " he added, affectionately. 

"What were you thinking of when I came in?" she asked, in a tone ofauthority. 

"Do you want to know the truth?" She nodded. "I was thinking of you; Iwas saying to myself that most men in my place would have wanted to beloved without reserve. I am loved, am I not?"

"Yes, " she answered. 

"And yet, " he said, taking her round the waist and kissing herforehead at the risk of being seen, "I leave you pure and withoutremorse. I could have dragged you into an abyss, but you remain in allyour glory on its brink without a stain. Yet one thought troublesme--"

"What is it?" she asked. 

"You will despise me. " She smiled superbly. "Yes, you will neverbelieve that I have sacredly loved you; I shall be disgraced, I knowthat. Women never imagine that from the depths of our mire we raiseour eyes to heaven and truly adore a Marie. They assail that sacredlove with miserable doubts; they cannot believe that men of intellectand poesy can so detach their soul from earthly enjoyment as to lay itpure upon some cherished altar. And yet, Marie, the worship of theideal is more fervent in men then in women; we find it in women, whodo not even look for it in us. "

"Why are you making me that article?" she said, jestingly. 

"I am leaving France; and you will hear to-morrow, how and why, from aletter my valet will bring you. Adieu, Marie. "

Raoul left the house after again straining the countess to his heartwith dreadful pressure, leaving her stupefied and distressed. 

"What is the matter, my dear?" said Madame d'Espard, coming to lookfor her. "What has Monsieur Nathan been saying to you? He has justleft us in a most melodramatic way. Perhaps you are too reasonable ortoo unreasonable with him. "

The countess got into a hackney-coach and was driven rapidly to thenewspaper office. At that hour the huge apartments which they occupiedin an old mansion in the rue Feydeau were deserted; not a soul wasthere but the watchman, who was greatly surprised to see a young andpretty woman hurrying through the rooms in evident distress. She askedhim to tell her where was Monsieur Nathan. 

"At Mademoiselle Florine's, probably, " replied the man, taking Mariefor a rival who intended to make a scene. 

"Where does he work?"

"In his office, the key of which he carries in his pocket. "

"I wish to go there. "

The man took her to a dark little room looking out on a rearcourt-yard. The office was at right angles. Opening the window of theroom she was in, the countess could look through into the window of theoffice, and she saw Nathan sitting there in the editorial arm-chair. 

"Break in the door, and be silent about all this; I'll pay you well, "she said. "Don't you see that Monsieur Nathan is dying?"

The man got an iron bar from the press-room, with which he burst inthe door. Raoul had actually smothered himself, like any poorwork-girl, with a pan of charcoal. He had written a letter to Blondet, which lay on the table, in which he asked him to ascribe his death toapoplexy. The countess, however, had arrived in time; she had Raoulcarried to her coach, and then, not knowing where else to care forhim, she took him to a hotel, engaged a room, and sent for a doctor. In a few hours Raoul was out of danger; but the countess did not leavehim until she had obtained a general confession of the causes of hisact. When he had poured into her heart the dreadful elegy of his woes, she said, in order to make him willing to live:--

"I can arrange all that. "

But, nevertheless, she returned home with a heart oppressed with thesame anxieties and ideas that had darkened Nathan's brow the nightbefore. 

"Well, what was the matter with your sister?" said Felix, when hiswife returned. "You look distressed. "

"It is a dreadful history about which I am bound to secrecy, " shesaid, summoning all her nerve to appear calm before him. 

In order to be alone and to think at her ease, she went to the Operain the evening, after which she resolved to go (as we have seen) anddischarge her heart into that of her sister, Madame du Tillet;relating to her the horrible scene of the morning, and begging heradvice and assistance. Neither the one nor the other could then knowthat du Tillet himself had lighted the charcoal of the vulgar brazier, the sight of which had so justly terrified the countess. 

"He has but me in all the world, " said Marie to her sister, "and Iwill not fail him. "

That speech contains the secret motive of most women; they can beheroic when they are certain of being all in all to a grand andirreproachable being. 

 CHAPTER VIII

 A LOVER SAVED AND LOST

Du Tillet had heard some talk even in financial circles of the more orless possible adoration of his sister-in-law for Nathan; but he wasone of those who denied it, thinking it incompatible with Raoul'sknown relations with Florine. The actress would certainly drive offthe countess, or vice versa. But when, on coming home that evening, hefound his sister-in-law with a perturbed face, in consultation withhis wife about money, it occurred to him that Raoul had, in allprobability, confided to her his situation. The countess musttherefore love him; she had doubtless come to obtain from her sisterthe sum due to old Gigonnet. Madame du Tillet, unaware, of course, ofthe reasons for her husband's apparently supernatural penetration, hadshown such stupefaction when he told her the sum wanted, that duTillet's suspicions became certainties. He was sure now that he heldthe thread of all Nathan's possible manoeuvres. 

No one knew that the unhappy man himself was in bed in a small hotelin the rue du Mail, under the name of the office watchman, to whomMarie had promised five hundred francs if he kept silence as to theevents of the preceding night and morning. Thus bribed, the man, whosename was Francois Quillet, went back to the office and left word withthe portress that Monsieur Nathan had been taken ill in consequence ofoverwork, and was resting. Du Tillet was therefore not surprised atRaoul's absence. It was natural for the journalist to hide under anysuch pretence to avoid arrest. When the sheriff's spies made inquiriesthey learned that a lady had carried him away in a public coach earlyin the morning; but it took three days to ferret out the number of thecoach, question the driver, and find the hotel where the debtor wasrecovering his strength. Thus Marie's prompt action had really gainedfor Nathan a truce of four days. 

Both sisters passed a cruel night. Such a catastrophe casts the luridgleams of its charcoal over the whole of life, showing reefs, pools, depths, where the eye has hitherto seen only summits and grandeurs. Struck by the horrible picture of a young man lying back in his chairto die, with the last proofs of his paper before him, containing intype his last thoughts, poor Madame du Tillet could think of nothingelse than how to save him and restore a life so precious to hersister. It is the nature of our mind to see effects before we analyzetheir causes. Eugenie recurred to her first idea of consulting MadameDelphine de Nucingen, with whom she was to dine, and she resolved tomake the attempt, not doubting of success. Generous, like all personswho are not bound in the polished steel armor of modern society, Madame du Tillet resolved to take the whole matter upon herself. 

The countess, on the other hand, happy in the thought that she hadsaved Raoul's life, spent the night in devising means to obtain theforty thousand francs. In emergencies like these women are sublime;they find contrivances which would astonish thieves, business men, andusurers, if those three classes of industrials were capable of beingastonished. First, the countess sold her diamonds and decided onwearing paste; then she resolved to ask the money from Vandenesse onher sister's account; but these were dishonorable means, and her soulwas too noble not to recoil at them; she merely conceived them, andcast them from her. Ask money of Vandenesse to give to Nathan! Shebounded in her bed with horror at such baseness. Wear false diamondsto deceive her husband! Next she thought of borrowing the money fromthe Rothschilds, who had so much, or from the archbishop of Paris, whose mission it was to help persons in distress; darting thus fromthought to thought, seeking help in all. She deplored belonging to aclass opposed to the government. Formerly, she could easily haveborrowed the money on the steps of the throne. She thought ofappealing to her father, the Comte de Granville. But that greatmagistrate had a horror of illegalities; his children knew how littlehe sympathized with the trials of love; he was now a misanthrope andheld all affairs of the heart in horror. As for the Comtesse deGranville, she was living a retired life on one of her estates inNormandy, economizing and praying, ending her days between priests andmoney-bags, cold as ever to her dying moment. Even supposing thatMarie had time to go to Bayeux and implore her, would her mother giveher such a sum unless she explained why she wanted it? Could she sayshe had debts? Yes, perhaps her mother would be softened by the wantsof her favorite child. Well, then! in case all other means failed, she_would_ go to Normandy. The dreadful sight of the morning, the effectsshe had made to revive Nathan, the hours passed beside his pillow, hisbroken confession, the agony of a great soul, a vast genius stopped inits upward flight by a sordid vulgar obstacle, --all these thingsrushed into her memory and stimulated her love. She went over and overher emotions, and felt her love to be deeper in these days of miserythan in those of Nathan's fame and grandeur. She felt the nobility ofhis last words said to her in Lady Dudley's boudoir. What sacrednessin that farewell! What grandeur in the immolation of a selfishhappiness which would have been her torture! The countess had longedfor emotions, and now she had them, --terrible, cruel, and yet mostprecious. She lived a deeper life in pain than in pleasure. With whatdelight she said to herself: "I have saved him once, and I will savehim again. " She heard him cry out when he felt her lips upon hisforehead, "Many a poor wretch does not know what love is!"

"Are you ill?" said her husband, coming into her room to take her tobreakfast. 

"I am dreadfully worried about a matter that is happening at mysister's, " she replied, without actually telling a lie. 

"Your sister has fallen into bad hands, " replied Felix. "It is a shamefor any family to have a du Tillet in it, --a man without honor of anykind. If disaster happened to her she would get no pity from him. "

"What woman wants pity?" said the countess, with a convulsive motion. "A man's sternness is to us our only pardon. "

"This is not the first time that I read your noble heart, " said thecount. "A woman who thinks as you do needs no watching. "

"Watching!" she said; "another shame that recoils on you. "

Felix smiled, but Marie blushed. When women are secretly to blame theyoften show ostensibly the utmost womanly pride. It is a dissimulationof mind for which we ought to be obliged to them. The deception isfull of dignity, if not of grandeur. Marie wrote two lines to Nathanunder the name of Monsieur Quillet, to tell him that all went well, and sent them by a street porter to the hotel du Mail. That night, atthe Opera, Felix thought it very natural that she should wish to leaveher box and go to that of her sister, and he waited till du Tillet hadleft his wife to give Marie his arm and take her there. Who can tellwhat emotions agitated her as she went through the corridors andentered her sister's box with a face that was outwardly serene andcalm!

"Well?" she said, as soon as they were alone. 

Eugenie's face was an answer; it was bright with a joy which somepersons might have attributed to the satisfaction of vanity. 

"He can be saved, dear; but for three months only; during which timewe must plan some other means of doing it permanently. Madame deNucingen wants four notes of hand, each for ten thousand francs, endorsed by any one, no matter who, so as not to compromise you. Sheexplained to me how they were made, but I couldn't understand her. Monsieur Nathan, however, can make them for us. I thought of Schmucke, our old master. I am sure he could be very useful in this emergency;he will endorse the notes. You must add to the four notes a letter inwhich you guarantee their payment to Madame de Nucingen, and she willgive you the money to-morrow. Do the whole thing yourself; don't trustit to any one. I feel sure that Schmucke will make no objection. Todivert all suspicion I told Madame de Nucingen you wanted to obligeour old music-master who was in distress, and I asked her to keep thematter secret. "

"You have the sense of angels! I only hope Madame de Nucingen won'ttell of it until after she gives me the money, " said the countess. 

"Schmucke lives in the rue de Nevers on the quai Conti; don't forgetthe address, and go yourself. "

"Thanks!" said the countess, pressing her sister's hand. "Ah! I'd giveten years of life--"

"Out of your old age--"

"If I could put an end to these anxieties, " said the countess, smilingat the interruption. 

The persons who were at that moment levelling their opera-glasses atthe two sisters might well have supposed them engaged in somelight-hearted talk; but any observer who had come to the Opera morefor the pleasure of watching faces than for mere idle amusement mighthave guessed them in trouble, from the anxious look which followed themomentary smiles on their charming faces. Raoul, who did not fear thebailiffs at night, appeared, pale and ashy, with anxious eye andgloomy brow, on the step of the staircase where he regularly took hisstand. He looked for the Countess in her box and, finding it empty, buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows on the balustrade. 

"Can she be here!" he thought. 

"Look up, unhappy hero, " whispered Mme. Du Tillet. 

As for Marie, at all risks she fixed on him that steady magnetic gaze, in which the will flashes from the eye, as rays of light from the sun. Such a look, mesmerizers say, penetrates to the person on whom it isdirected, and certainly Raoul seemed as though struck by a magic wand. Raising his head, his eyes met those of the sisters. With thatcharming feminine readiness which is never at fault, Mme. DeVandenesse seized a cross, sparkling on her neck, and directed hisattention to it by a swift smile, full of meaning. The brilliance ofthe gem radiated even upon Raoul's forehead, and he replied with alook of joy; he had understood. 

"Is it nothing then, Eugenie, " said the Countess, "thus to restorelife to the dead?"

"You have a chance yet with the Royal Humane Society, " repliedEugenie, with a smile. "

"How wretched and depressed he looked when he came, and how happy hewill go away!"

At this moment du Tillet, coming up to Raoul with every mark offriendliness, pressed his hand, and said:

"Well, old fellow, how are you?"

"As well as a man is likely to be who has just got the best possiblenews of the election. I shall be successful, " replied Raoul, radiant. 

"Delighted, " said du Tillet. "We shall want money for the paper. "

"The money will be found, " said Raoul. 

"The devil is with these women!" exclaimed du Tillet, stillunconvinced by the words of Raoul, whom he had nicknamed Charnathan. 

"What are you talking about?" said Raoul. 

"My sister-in-law is there with my wife, and they are hatchingsomething together. You seem in high favor with the Countess; she isbowing to you right across the house. "

"Look, " said Mme. Du Tillet to her sister, "they told us wrong. Seehow my husband fawns on M. Nathan, and it is he who they declared wastrying to get him put in prison!"

"And men call us slanderers!" cried the Countess. "I will give him awarning. "

She rose, took the arm of Vandenesse, who was waiting in the passage, and returned jubilant to her box; by and by she left the Opera andordered her carriage for the next morning before eight o'clock. 

The next morning, by half-past eight, Marie had driven to the quaiConti, stopping at the hotel du Mail on her way. The carriage couldnot enter the narrow rue de Nevers; but as Schmucke lived in a houseat the corner of the quai she was not obliged to walk up its muddypavement, but could jump from the step of her carriage to the brokenstep of the dismal old house, mended like porter's crockery, with ironrivets, and bulging out over the street in a way that was quitealarming to pedestrians. The old chapel-master lived on the fourthfloor, and enjoyed a fine view of the Seine from the pont Neuf to theheights of Chaillot. 

The good soul was so surprised when the countess's footman announcedthe visit of his former scholar that in his stupefaction he let herenter without going down to receive her. Never did the countesssuspect or imagine such an existence as that which suddenly revealeditself to her eyes, though she had long known Schmucke's contempt fordress, and the little interest he held in the affairs of this world. But who could have believed in such complete indifference, in theutter laisser-aller of such a life? Schmucke was a musical Diogenes, and he felt no shame whatever in his untidiness; in fact, he was soaccustomed to it that he would probably have denied its existence. Theincessant smoking of a stout German pipe had spread upon the ceilingand over a wretched wall-paper, scratched and defaced by the cat, ayellowish tinge. The cat, a magnificently long-furred, fluffy animal, the envy of all portresses, presided there like the mistress of thehouse, grave and sedate, and without anxieties. On the top of anexcellent Viennese piano he sat majestically, and cast upon thecountess, as she entered, that coldly gracious look which a woman, surprised by the beauty of another woman, might have given. He did notmove, and merely waved the two silver threads of his right whisker ashe turned his golden eyes on Schmucke. 

The piano, decrepit on its legs, though made of good wood paintedblack and gilded, was dirty, defaced, and scratched; and its keys, worn like the teeth of old horses, were yellowed with the fuliginouscolors of the pipe. On the desk, a little heap of ashes showed thatthe night before Schmucke had bestrode the old instrument to somemusical Walhalla. The floor, covered with dried mud, torn papers, tobacco-dust, fragments indescribable, was like that of a boy'sschool-room, unswept for a week, on which a mound of thingsaccumulate, half rags, half filth. 

A more practised eye than that of the countess would have seen certainother revelations of Schmucke's mode of life, --chestnut-peels, apple-parings, egg-shells dyed red in broken dishes smeared withsauer-kraut. This German detritus formed a carpet of dusty filth whichcrackled under foot, joining company near the hearth with a mass ofcinders and ashes descending majestically from the fireplace, wherelay a block of coal, before which two slender twigs made a show ofburning. On the chimney-piece was a mirror in a painted frame, adornedwith figures dancing a saraband; on one side hung the glorious pipe, on the other was a Chinese jar in which the musician kept his tobacco. Two arm-chairs bought at auction, a thin and rickety cot, a worm-eatenbureau without a top, a maimed table on which lay the remains of afrugal breakfast, made up a set of household belongings as plain asthose of an Indian wigwam. A shaving-glass, suspended to the fasteningof a curtainless window, and surmounted by a rag striped by manywipings of a razor, indicated the only sacrifices paid by Schmucke tothe Graces and society. The cat, being the feebler and protectedpartner, had rather the best of the establishment; he enjoyed thecomforts of an old sofa-cushion, near which could be seen a whitechina cup and plate. But what no pen can describe was the state intowhich Schmucke, the cat, and the pipe, that existing trinity, hadreduced these articles. The pipe had burned the table. The cat andSchmucke's head had greased the green Utrecht velvet of the twoarm-chairs and reduced it to a slimy texture. If it had not been forthe cat's magnificent tail, which played a useful part in the household, the uncovered places on the bureau and the piano would never have beendusted. In one corner of the room were a pile of shoes which need anepic to describe them. The top of the bureau and that of the pianowere encumbered by music-books with ragged backs and whitened corners, through which the pasteboard showed its many layers. Along the wallsthe names and addresses of pupils written on scraps of paper werestuck on by wafers, --the number of wafers without paper indicating thenumber of pupils no longer taught. On the wall-papers were manycalculations written with chalk. The bureau was decorated withbeer-mugs used the night before, their newness appearing very brilliantin the midst of this rubbish of dirt and age. Hygiene was representedby a jug of water with a towel laid upon it, and a bit of common soap. Two ancient hats hung to their respective nails, near which also hungthe self-same blue box-coat with three capes, in which the countesshad always seen Schmucke when he came to give his lessons. On thewindow-sill were three pots of flowers, German flowers, no doubt, andnear them a stout holly-wood stick. 

Though Marie's sight and smell were disagreeably affected, Schmucke'ssmile and glance disguised these abject miseries by rays of celestiallight which actually illuminated their smoky tones and vivified thechaos. The soul of this dear man, which saw and revealed so manythings divine, shone like the sun. His laugh, so frank, so guilelessat seeing one of his Saint-Cecilias, shed sparkles of youth and gaietyand innocence about him. The treasures he poured from the inner to theouter were like a mantle with which he covered his squalid life. Themost supercilious parvenu would have felt it ignoble to care for theframe in which this glorious old apostle of the musical religion livedand moved and had his being. 

"Hey! by what good luck do I see you here, dear Madame la comtesse?"he said. "Must I sing the canticle of Simeon at my age?" (This idea sotickled him that he laughed immoderately. ) "Truly I'm 'en bonnefortune. '" (And again he laughed like a merry child. ) "But, ah!" hesaid, changing to melancholy, "you come for the music, and not for apoor old man like me. Yes, I know that; but come for what you will, Iam yours, you know, body and soul and all I have!"

This was said in his unspeakable German accent, a rendition of whichwe spare the reader. 

He took the countess's hand, kissed it and left a tear there, for theworthy soul was always on the morrow of her benefit. Then he seized abit of chalk, jumped on a chair in front of the piano, and wrote uponthe wall in big letters, with the rapidity of a young man, "February17th, 1835. " This pretty, artless action, done in such a passion ofgratitude, touched the countess to tears. 

"My sister will come too, " she said. 

"The other, too! When? when? God grant it be before I die!"

"She will come to thank you for a great service I am now here to askof you. "

"Quick! quick! tell me what it is, " cried Schmucke. "What must I do?go to the devil?"

"Nothing more than write the words 'Accepted for ten thousand francs, 'and sign your name on each of these papers, " she said, taking from hermuff four notes prepared for her by Nathan. 

"Hey! that's soon done, " replied the German, with the docility of alamb; "only I'm sure I don't know where my pens and ink are-- Get awayfrom there, Meinherr Mirr!" he cried to the cat, which lookedcomposedly at him. "That's my cat, " he said, showing him to thecountess. "That's the poor animal that lives with poor Schmucke. Hasn't he fine fur?"

"Yes, " said the countess. 

"Will you have him?" he cried. 

"How can you think of such a thing?" she answered. "Why, he's yourfriend!"

The cat, who hid the inkstand behind him, divined that Schmucke wantedit, and jumped to the bed. 

"He's as mischievous as a monkey, " said Schmucke. "I call him Mirr inhonor of our great Hoffman of Berlin, whom I knew well. "

The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who doeswhat his mother orders without question, so sure is he that all isright. He was thinking much more of presenting the cat to the countessthan of the papers by which his liberty might be, according to thelaws relating to foreigners, forever sacrificed. 

"You assure me that these little papers with the stamps on them--"

"Don't be in the least uneasy, " said the countess. 

"I am not uneasy, " he said, hastily. "I only meant to ask if theselittle papers will give pleasure to Madame du Tillet. "

"Oh, yes, " she said, "you are doing her a service, as if you were herfather. "

"I am happy, indeed, to be of any good to her-- Come and listen to mymusic!" and leaving the papers on the table, he jumped to his piano. 

The hands of this angel ran along the yellowing keys, his glance wasrising to heaven, regardless of the roof; already the air of someblessed climate permeated the room and the soul of the old musician;but the countess did not allow the artless interpreter of thingscelestial to make the strings and the worn wood speak, likeRaffaelle's Saint Cecilia, to the listening angels. She quicklyslipped the notes into her muff and recalled her radiant master fromthe ethereal spheres to which he soared, by laying her hand upon hisshoulder. 

"My good Schmucke--" she said. 

"Going already?" he cried. "Ah! why did you come?"

He did not murmur, but he sat up like a faithful dog who listens tohis mistress. 

"My good Schmucke, " she repeated, "this is a matter of life and death;minutes can save tears, perhaps blood. "

"Always the same!" he said. "Go, angel! dry the tears of others. Yourpoor Schmucke thinks more of your visit than of your gifts. "

"But we must see each other often, " she said. "You must come and dineand play to me every Sunday, or we shall quarrel. Remember, I shallexpect you next Sunday. "

"Really and truly?"

"Yes, I entreat you; and my sister will want you, too, for anotherday. "

"Then my happiness will be complete, " he said; "for I only see you nowin the Champs Elysees as you pass in your carriage, and that is veryseldom. "

This thought dried the tears in his eyes as he gave his arm to hisbeautiful pupil, who felt the old man's heart beat violently. 

"You think of us?" she said. 

"Always as I eat my food, " he answered, --"as my benefactresses; butchiefly as the first young girls worthy of love whom I ever knew. "

So respectful, faithful, and religious a solemnity was in this speechthat the countess dared say no more. That smoky chamber, full of dirtand rubbish, was the temple of the two divinities. 

"There we are loved--and truly loved, " she thought. 

The emotion with which old Schmucke saw the countess get into hercarriage and leave him she fully shared, and she sent him from thetips of her fingers one of those pretty kisses which women give eachother from afar. Receiving it, the old man stood planted on his feetfor a long time after the carriage had disappeared. 

A few moments later the countess entered the court-yard of the hotelde Nucingen. Madame de Nucingen was not yet up; but anxious not tokeep a woman of the countess's position waiting, she hastily threw ona shawl and wrapper. 

"My visit concerns a charitable action, madame, " said the countess, "or I would not disturb you at so early an hour. "

"But I am only too happy to be disturbed, " said the banker's wife, taking the notes and the countess's guarantee. She rang for her maid. 

"Therese, " she said, "tell the cashier to bring me up himself, immediately, forty thousand francs. "

Then she locked into a table drawer the guarantee given by Madame deVandenesse, after sealing it up. 

"You have a delightful room, " said the countess. 

"Yes, but Monsieur de Nucingen is going to take it from me. He isbuilding a new house. "

"You will doubtless give this one to your daughter, who, I am told, isto marry Monsieur de Rastignac. "

The cashier appeared at this moment with the money. Madame de Nucingentook the bank-bills and gave him the notes of hand. 

"That balances, " she said. 

"Except the discount, " replied the cashier. "Ha, Schmucke; that's themusician of Anspach, " he added, examining the signatures in asuspicious manner that made the countess tremble. 

"Who is doing this business?" said Madame de Nucingen, with a haughtyglance at the cashier. "This is my affair. "

The cashier looked alternately at the two ladies, but he coulddiscover nothing on their impenetrable faces. 

"Go, leave us-- Have the kindness to wait a few moments that thepeople in the bank may not connect you with this negotiation, " saidMadame de Nucingen to the countess. 

"I must ask you to add to all your other kindness that of keeping thismatter secret, " said Madame de Vandenesse. 

"Most assuredly, since it is for charity, " replied the baroness, smiling. "I will send your carriage round to the garden gate, so thatno one will see you leave the house. "

"You have the thoughtful grace of a person who has suffered, " said thecountess. 

"I do not know if I have grace, " said the baroness; "but I havesuffered much. I hope that your anxieties cost less than mine. "

When a man has laid a plot like that du Tillet was scheming againstNathan, he confides it to no man. Nucingen knew something of it, buthis wife knew nothing. The baroness, however, aware that Raoul wasembarrassed, was not the dupe of the two sisters; she guessed intowhose hands that money was to go, and she was delighted to oblige thecountess; moreover, she felt a deep compassion for all suchembarrassments. Rastignac, so placed that he was able to fathom themanoeuvres of the two bankers, came to breakfast that morning withMadame de Nucingen. 

Delphine and Rastignac had no secrets from each other; and thebaroness related to him her scene with the countess. Eugene, who hadnever supposed that Delphine could be mixed up in the affair, whichwas only accessory to his eyes, --one means among many others, --openedher eyes to the truth. She had probably, he told her, destroyed duTillet's chances of selection, and rendered useless the intrigues anddeceptions of the past year. In short, he put her in the secret of thewhole affair, advising her to keep absolute silence as to the mistakeshe had just committed. 

"Provided the cashier does not tell Nucingen, " she said. 

A few moments after mid-day, while du Tillet was breakfasting, Monsieur Gigonnet was announced. 

"Let him come in, " said the banker, though his wife was at table. "Well, my old Shylock, is our man locked up?"

"No. "

"Why not? Didn't I give you the address, rue du Mail, hotel--"

"He has paid up, " said Gigonnet, drawing from his wallet a pile ofbank-bills. Du Tillet looked furious. "You should never frown atmoney, " said his impassible associate; "it brings ill-luck. "

"Where did you get that money, madame?" said du Tillet, suddenlyturning upon his wife with a look which made her color to the roots ofher hair. 

"I don't know what your question means, " she said. 

"I will fathom this mystery, " he cried, springing furiously up. "Youhave upset my most cherished plans. "

"You are upsetting your breakfast, " said Gigonnet, arresting thetable-clock, which was dragged by the skirt of du Tillet'sdressing-gown. 

Madame du Tillet rose to leave the room, for her husband's wordsalarmed her. She rang the bell, and a footman entered. 

"The carriage, " she said. "And call Virginie; I wish to dress. "

"Where are you going?" exclaimed du Tillet. 

"Well-bred husbands do not question their wives, " she answered. "Ibelieve that you lay claim to be a gentleman. "

"I don't recognize you ever since you have seen more of yourimpertinent sister. "

"You ordered me to be impertinent, and I am practising on you, " shereplied. 

"Your servant, madame, " said Gigonnet, taking leave, not anxious towitness this family scene. 

Du Tillet looked fixedly at his wife, who returned the look withoutlowering her eyes. 

"What does all this mean?" he said. 

"It means that I am no longer a little girl whom you can frighten, "she replied. "I am, and shall be, all my life, a good and loyal wifeto you; you may be my master if you choose, my tyrant, never!"

Du Tillet left the room. After this effort Marie-Eugenie broke down. 

"If it were not for my sister's danger, " she said to herself, "Ishould never have dared to brave him thus; but, as the proverb says, 'There's some good in every evil. '"

 CHAPTER IX

 THE HUSBAND'S TRIUMPH

During the preceding night Madame du Tillet had gone over in her mindher sister's revelations. Sure, now, of Nathan's safety, she was nolonger influenced by the thought of an imminent danger in thatdirection. But she remembered the vehement energy with which thecountess had declared that she would fly with Nathan if that wouldsave him. She saw that the man might determine her sister in someparoxysm of gratitude and love to take a step which was nothing shortof madness. There were recent examples in the highest society of justsuch flights which paid for doubtful pleasures by lasting remorse andthe disrepute of a false position. Du Tillet's speech brought herfears to a point; she dreaded lest all should be discovered; she knewher sister's signature was in Nucingen's hands, and she resolved toentreat Marie to save herself by confessing all to Felix. 

She drove to her sister's house, but Marie was not at home. Felix wasthere. A voice within her cried aloud to Eugenie to save her sister;the morrow might be too late. She took a vast responsibility uponherself, but she resolved to tell all to the count. Surely he would beindulgent when he knew that his honor was still safe. The countess wasdeluded rather than sinful. Eugenie feared to be treacherous and basein revealing secrets that society (agreeing on this point) holds to beinviolable; but--she saw her sister's future, she trembled lest sheshould some day be deserted, ruined by Nathan, poor, suffering, disgraced, wretched, and she hesitated no longer; she sent in her nameand asked to see the count. 

Felix, astonished at the visit, had a long conversation with hissister-in-law, in which he seemed so calm, so completely master ofhimself, that she feared he might have taken some terrible resolution. 

"Do not be uneasy, " he said, seeing her anxiety. "I will act in amanner which shall make your sister bless you. However much you maydislike to keep the fact that you have spoken to me from herknowledge, I must entreat you to do so. I need a few days to searchinto mysteries which you don't perceive; and, above all, I must actcautiously. Perhaps I can learn all in a day. I, alone, my dearsister, am the guilty person. All lovers play their game, and it isnot every woman who is able, unassisted, to see life as it is. "

Madame du Tillet returned home comforted. Felix de Vandenesse drewforty thousand francs from the Bank of France, and went direct toMadame de Nucingen He found her at home, thanked her for theconfidence she had placed in his wife, and returned the money, explaining that the countess had obtained this mysterious loan for hercharities, which were so profuse that he was trying to put a limit tothem. 

"Give me no explanations, monsieur, since Madame de Vandenesse hastold you all, " said the Baronne de Nucingen. 

"She knows the truth, " thought Vandenesse. 

Madame de Nucingen returned to him Marie's letter of guarantee, andsent to the bank for the four notes. Vandenesse, during the short timethat these arrangements kept him waiting, watched the baroness withthe eye of a statesman, and he thought the moment propitious forfurther negotiation. 

"We live in an age, madame, when nothing is sure, " he said. "Eventhrones rise and fall in France with fearful rapidity. Fifteen yearshave wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and arevolution. No one can now dare to count upon the future. You know myattachment to the cause of legitimacy. Suppose some catastrophe; wouldyou not be glad to have a friend in the conquering party?"

"Undoubtedly, " she said, smiling. 

"Very good; then, will you have in me, secretly, an obliged friend whocould be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supportinghis claim to the peerage he is seeking?"

"What do you want of me?" she asked. 

"Very little, " he replied. "All that you know about Nathan's affairs. "

The baroness repeated to him her conversation with Rastignac, andsaid, as she gave him the four notes, which the cashier had meantimebrought to her:

"Don't forget your promise. "

So little did Vandenesse forget this illusive promise that he used itagain on Baron Eugene de Rastignac to obtain from him certain otherinformation. Leaving Rastignac's apartments, he dictated to a streetamanuensis the following note to Florine. 

 "If Mademoiselle Florine wishes to know of a part she may play she is requested to come to the masked opera at the Opera next Sunday night, accompanied by Monsieur Nathan. "

To this ball he determined to take his wife and let her own eyesenlighten her as to the relations between Nathan and Florine. He knewthe jealous pride of the countess; he wanted to make her renounce herlove of her own will, without causing her to blush before him, andthen to return to her her own letters, sold by Florine, from whom heexpected to be able to buy them. This judicious plan, rapidlyconceived and partly executed, might fail through some trick of chancewhich meddles with all things here below. 

After dinner that evening, Felix brought the conversation round to themasked balls of the Opera, remarking that Marie had never been to one, and proposing that she should accompany him the following evening. 

"I'll find you some one to 'intriguer, '" he said. 

"Ah! I wish you would, " she replied. 

"To do the thing well, a woman ought to fasten upon some good prey, acelebrity, a man of enough wit to give and take. There's Nathan; willyou have him? I know, through a friend of Florine, certain secrets ofhis which would drive him crazy. "

"Florine?" said the countess. "Do you mean the actress?"

Marie had already heard that name from the lips of the watchmanQuillet; it now shot like a flash of lightning through her soul. 

"Yes, his mistress, " replied the count. "What is there so surprisingin that?"

"I thought Monsieur Nathan too busy to have a mistress. Do authorshave time to make love?"

"I don't say they love, my dear, but they are forced to _lodge_somewhere, like other men, and when they haven't a home of their ownthey _lodge_ with their mistresses; which may seem to you ratherloose, but it is far more agreeable than lodging in a prison. "

Fire was less red than Marie's cheeks. 

"Will you have him for a victim? I can help you to terrify him, "continued the count, not looking at his wife's face. "I'll put you inthe way of proving to him that he is being tricked like a child byyour brother-in-law du Tillet. That wretch is trying to put Nathan inprison so as to make him ineligible to stand against him in theelectoral college. I know, through a friend of Florine, the exact sumderived from the sale of her furniture, which she gave to Nathan tofound his newspaper; I know, too, what she sent him out of hersummer's harvest in the departments and in Belgium, --money which hasreally gone to the profit of du Tillet, Nucingen, and Massol. Allthree of them, unknown to Nathan, have privately sold the paper to thenew ministry, so sure are they of ejecting him. "

"Monsieur Nathan is incapable of accepting money from an actress. "

"You don't know that class of people, my dear, " said the count. "Hewould not deny the fact if you asked him. "

"I will certainly go to the ball, " said the countess. 

"You will be very much amused, " replied Vandenesse. "With such weaponsin hand you can cut Nathan's complacency to the quick, and you willalso do him a great service. You will put him in a fury; he'll try tobe calm, though inwardly fuming; but, all the same, you will enlightena man of talent as to the peril in which he really stands; and youwill also have the satisfaction of laming the horses of the'juste-milieu' in their stalls-- But you are not listening to me, mydear. "

"On the contrary, I am listening intently, " she said. "I will tell youlater why I feel desirous to know the truth of all this. "

"You shall know it, " said Vandenesse. "If you stay masked I will takeyou to supper with Nathan and Florine; it would be rather amusing fora woman of your rank to fool an actress after bewildering the wits ofa clever man about these important facts; you can harness them both tothe same hoax. I'll make some inquiries about Nathan's infidelities, and if I discover any of his recent adventures you shall enjoy thesight of a courtesan's fury; it is magnificent. Florine will boil andfoam like an Alpine torrent; she adores Nathan; he is everything toher; she clings to him like flesh to the bones or a lioness to hercubs. I remember seeing, in my youth, a celebrated actress (who wrotelike a scullion) when she came to a friend of mine to demand herletters. I have never seen such a sight again, such calm fury, suchinsolent majesty, such savage self-control-- Are you ill, Marie?"

"No; they have made too much fire. " The countess turned away and threwherself on a sofa. Suddenly, with an unforeseen movement, impelled bythe horrible anguish of her jealousy, she rose on her trembling legs, crossed her arms, and came slowly to her husband. 

"What do you know?" she asked. "You are not a man to torture me; youwould crush me without making me suffer if I were guilty. "

"What do you expect me to know, Marie?"

"Well! about Nathan. "

"You think you love him, " he replied; "but you love a phantom made ofwords. "

"Then you know--"

"All, " he said. 

The word fell on Marie's head like the blow of a club. 

"If you wish it, I will know nothing, " he continued. "You are standingon the brink of a precipice, my child, and I must draw you from it. Ihave already done something. See!"

He drew from his pocket her letter of guarantee and the four notesendorsed by Schmucke, and let the countess recognize them; then hethrew them into the fire. 

"What would have happened to you, my poor Marie, three months hence?"he said. "The sheriffs would have taken you to a public court-room. Don't bow your head, don't feel humiliated; you have been the dupe ofnoble feelings; you have coquetted with poesy, not with a man. Allwomen--all, do you hear me, Marie?--would have been seduced in yourposition. How absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed athousand follies through a score of years, if we were not willing togrant you one imprudence in a lifetime! God keep me from triumphingover you or from offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently theother day. Perhaps that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote toyou, sincere in attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning thatsame night to Florine. Men are worth less than women. It is not for myown sake that I speak at this moment, but for yours. I am indulgent, but the world is not; it shuns a woman who makes a scandal. Is thatjust? I know not; but this I know, the world is cruel. Society refusesto calm the woes itself has caused; it gives its honors to those whobest deceive it; it has no recompense for rash devotion. I see andknow all that. I can't reform society, but this I can do, I canprotect you, Marie, against yourself. This matter concerns a man whohas brought you trouble only, and not one of those high and sacredloves which do, at times, command our abnegation, and even bear theirown excuse. Perhaps I have been wrong in not varying your happiness, in not providing you with gayer pleasures, travel, amusements, distractions for the mind. Besides, I can explain to myself theimpulse that has driven you to a celebrated man, by the jealous envyyou have roused in certain women. Lady Dudley, Madame d'Espard, and mysister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this. Those women, against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on your guard, have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause meunhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe, you would never have entered. "

As she listened to these words, so full of kindness, the countess wastorn by many conflicting feelings; but the storm within her breast wasruled by one of them, --a keen admiration for her husband. Proud andnoble souls are prompt to recognize the delicacy with which they aretreated. Tact is to sentiments what grace is to the body. Marieappreciated the grandeur of the man who bowed before a woman in fault, that he might not see her blush. She ran from the room like one besideherself, but instantly returned, fearing lest her hasty action mightcause him uneasiness. 

"Wait, " she said, and disappeared again. 

Felix had ably prepared her excuse, and he was instantly rewarded forhis generosity. His wife returned with Nathan's letters in her hand, and gave them to him. 

"Judge me, " she said, kneeling down beside him. 

"Are we able to judge where we love?" he answered, throwing theletters into the fire; for he felt that later his wife might notforgive him for having read them. Marie, with her head upon his knee, burst into tears. 

"My child, " he said, raising her head, "where are your letters?"

At this question the poor woman no longer felt the intolerable burningof her cheeks; she turned cold. 

"That you may not suspect me of calumniating a man whom you thinkworthy of you, I will make Florine herself return you those letters. "

"Oh! Surely he would give them back to me himself. "

"Suppose that he refused to do so?"

The countess dropped her head. 

"The world disgusts me, " she said. "I don't want to enter it again. Iwant to live alone with you, if you forgive me. "

"But you might get bored again. Besides, what would the world say ifyou left it so abruptly? In the spring we will travel; we will go toItaly, and all over Europe; you shall see life. But to-morrow night wemust go to the Opera-ball; there is no other way to get those letterswithout compromising you; besides, by giving them up, Florine willprove to you her power. "

"And must I see that?" said the countess, frightened. 

"To-morrow night. "

The next evening, about midnight, Nathan was walking about the foyerof the Opera with a mask on his arm, to whom he was attending in asufficiently conjugal manner. Presently two masked women came up tohim. 

"You poor fool! Marie is here and is watching you, " said one of them, who was Vandenesse, disguised as a woman. 

"If you choose to listen to me I will tell you secrets that Nathan ishiding from you, " said the other woman, who was the countess, toFlorine. 

Nathan had abruptly dropped Florine's arm to follow the count, whoadroitly slipped into the crowd and was out of sight in a moment. Florine followed the countess, who sat down on a seat close at hand, to which the count, doubling on Nathan, returned almost immediately toguard his wife. 

"Explain yourself, my dear, " said Florine, "and don't think I shallstand this long. No one can tear Raoul from me, I'll tell you that; Ihold him by habit, and that's even stronger than love. "

"In the first place, are you Florine?" said the count, speaking in hisnatural voice. 

"A pretty question! if you don't know that, my joking friend, whyshould I believe you?"

"Go and ask Nathan, who has left you to look for his other mistress, where he passed the night, three days ago. He tried to kill himselfwithout a word to you, my dear, --and all for want of money. That showshow much you know about the affairs of a man whom you say you love, and who leaves you without a penny, and kills himself, --or, rather, doesn't kill himself, for his misses it. Suicides that don't kill areabout as absurd as a duel without a scratch. "

"That's a lie, " said Florine. "He dined with me that very day. Thepoor fellow had the sheriff after him; he was hiding, as well hemight. "

"Go and ask at the hotel du Mail, rue du Mail, if he was not takenthere that morning, half dead of the fumes of charcoal, by a handsomeyoung woman with whom he has been in love over a year. Her letters areat this moment under your very nose in your own house. If you want toteach Nathan a good lesson, let us all three go there; and I'll showyou, papers in hand, how you can save him from the sheriff and Clichyif you choose to be the good girl that you are. "

"Try that on others than Florine, my little man. I am certain thatNathan has never been in love with any one but me. "

"On the contrary, he has been in love with a woman in society for overa year--"

"A woman in society, he!" cried Florine. "I don't trouble myself aboutsuch nonsense as that. "

"Well, do you want me to make him come and tell you that he will nottake you home from here to-night. "

"If you can make him tell me that, " said Florine, "I'll take _you_home, and we'll look for those letters, which I shall believe in when Isee them, and not till then. He must have written them while I slept. "

"Stay here, " said Felix, "and watch. "

So saying, he took the arm of his wife and moved to a little distance. Presently, Nathan, who had been hunting up and down the foyer like adog looking for its master, returned to the spot where the mask hadaddressed him. Seeing on his face an expression he could not conceal, Florine placed herself like a post in front of him, and said, imperiously:--

"I don't wish you to leave me again; I have my reasons for this. "

The countess then, at the instigation of her husband, went up to Raouland said in his ear, --

"Marie. Who is this woman? Leave her at once, and meet me at the footof the grand staircase. "

In this difficult extremity Raoul dropped Florine's arm, and thoughshe caught his own and held it forcibly, she was obliged, after amoment, to let him go. Nathan disappeared into the crowd. 

"What did I tell you?" said Felix in Florine's astonished ears, offering her his arm. 

"Come, " she said; "whoever you are, come. Have you a carriage here?"

For all answer, Vandenesse hurried Florine away, followed by his wife. A few moments later the three masks, driven rapidly by the Vandenessecoachman, reached Florine's house. As soon as she had entered her ownapartments the actress unmasked. Madame de Vandenesse could notrestrain a quiver of surprise at Florine's beauty as she stood therechoking with anger, and superb in her wrath and jealousy. 

"There is, somewhere in these rooms, " said Vandenesse, "a portfolio, the key of which you have never had; the letters are probably in it. "

"Well, well, for once in my life I am bewildered; you know somethingthat I have been uneasy about for some days, " cried Florine, rushinginto the study in search of the portfolio. 

Vandenesse saw that his wife was turning pale beneath her mask. Florine's apartment revealed more about the intimacy of the actressand Nathan than any ideal mistress would wish to know. The eye of awoman can take in the truth of such things in a second, and thecountess saw vestiges of Nathan which proved to her the certainty ofwhat Vandenesse had said. Florine returned with the portfolio. 

"How am I to open it?" she said. 

The actress rang the bell and sent into the kitchen for the cook'sknife. When it came she brandished it in the air, crying out inironical tones:--

"With this they cut the necks of 'poulets. '"

The words, which made the countess shiver, explained to her, evenbetter than her husband had done the night before, the depths of theabyss into which she had so nearly fallen. 

"What a fool I am!" said Florine; "his razor will do better. "

She fetched one of Nathan's razors from his dressing-table, and slitthe leather cover of the portfolio, through which Marie's lettersdropped. Florine snatched one up hap-hazard, and looked it over. 

"Yes, she must be a well-bred woman. It looks to me as if there wereno mistakes in spelling here. "

The count gathered up the letters hastily and gave them to his wife, who took them to a table as if to see that they were all there. 

"Now, " said Vandenesse to Florine, "will you let me have those lettersfor these?" showing her five bank-bills of ten thousand francs each. "They'll replace the sums you have paid for him. "

"Ah!" cried Florine, "didn't I kill myself body and soul in theprovinces to get him money, --I, who'd have cut my hand off to servehim? But that's men! damn your soul for them and they'll march overyou rough-shod! He shall pay me for this!"

Madame de Vandenesse was disappearing with the letters. 

"Hi! stop, stop, my fine mask!" cried Florine; "leave me one toconfound him with. "

"Not possible, " said Vandenesse. 

"Why not?"

"That mask is your ex-rival; but you needn't fear her now. "

"Well, she might have had the grace to say thank you, " cried Florine. 

"But you have the fifty thousand francs instead, " said Vandenesse, bowing to her. 

It is extremely rare for young men, when driven to suicide, to attemptit a second time if the first fails. When it doesn't cure life, itcures all desire for voluntary death. Raoul felt no disposition to tryit again when he found himself in a more painful position than thatfrom which he had just been rescued. He tried to see the countess andexplain to her the nature of his love, which now shone more vividly inhis soul than ever. But the first time they met in society, Madame deVandenesse gave him that fixed and contemptuous look which at once andforever puts an impassable gulf between a man and a woman. In spite ofhis natural assurance, Nathan never dared, during the rest of thewinter, either to speak to the countess or even approach her. 

But he opened his heart to Blondet; to him he talked of his Laura andhis Beatrice, apropos of Madame de Vandenesse. He even made aparaphrase of the following beautiful passage from the pen ofTheophile Gautier, one of the most remarkable poets of our day:--

"'Ideala, flower of heaven's own blue, with heart of gold, whosefibrous roots, softer, a thousandfold, than fairy tresses, strike toour souls and drink their purest essence; flower most sweet andbitter! thou canst not be torn away without the heart's blood flowing, without thy bruised stems sweating with scarlet tears. Ah! cursedflower, why didst thou grow within my soul?'"

"My dear fellow, " said Blondet, "you are raving. I'll grant it was apretty flower, but it wasn't a bit ideal, and instead of singing likea blind man before an empty niche, you had much better wash your handsand make submission to the powers. You are too much of an artist everto be a good politician; you have been fooled by men of not one-halfyour value. Think about being fooled again--but elsewhere. "

"Marie cannot prevent my loving her, " said Nathan; "she shall be myBeatrice. "

"Beatrice, my good Raoul, was a little girl twelve years of age whenDante last saw her; otherwise, she would not have been Beatrice. Tomake a divinity, it won't do to see her one day wrapped in a mantle, and the next with a low dress, and the third on the boulevard, cheapening toys for her last baby. When a man has Florine, who is inturn duchess, bourgeoise, Negress, marquise, colonel, Swiss peasant, virgin of the sun in Peru (only way she can play the part), I don'tsee why he should go rambling after fashionable women. "

Du Tillet, to use a Bourse term, _executed_ Nathan, who, for lack ofmoney, gave up his place on the newspaper; and the celebrated manreceived but five votes in the electoral college where the banker waselected. 

When, after a long and happy journey in Italy, the Comtesse deVandenesse returned to Paris late in the following winter, all herhusband's predictions about Nathan were justified. He had takenBlondet's advice and negotiated with the government, which employedhis pen. His personal affairs were in such disorder that one day, onthe Champs-Elysees, Marie saw her former adorer on foot, in shabbyclothes, giving his arm to Florine. When a man becomes indifferent tothe heart of a woman who has once loved him, he often seems to hervery ugly, even horrible, especially when he resembles Nathan. Madamede Vandenesse had a sense of personal humiliation in the thought thatshe had once cared for him. If she had not already been cured of allextra-conjugal passion, the contrast then presented by the count tothis man, grown less and less worthy of public favor, would havesufficed her. 

To-day the ambitious Nathan, rich in ink and poor in will, has endedby capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, likeany other commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizingefforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of aministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly thefruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. "Peace at anyprice, " ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionaryeditorship, is now the topic of his laudatory articles. Heredity, attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases, he now defends with solidarguments. This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanationin the change of front performed by many men besides Raoul during ourrecent political evolutions. 

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy. 

Bidault (known as Gigonnet) The Government Clerks Gobseck The Vendetta Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen

Blondet, Emile Jealousies of a Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess The Firm of Nucingen The Peasantry

Blondet, Virginie Jealousies of a Country Town The Secrets of a Princess The Peasantry A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Another Study of Woman The Member for Arcis

Bruel, Jean Francois du A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks A Start in Life A Prince of Bohemia The Middle Classes A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Camps, Madame Octave de Madame Firmiani The Government Clerks A Woman of Thirty The Member for Arcis

Dudley, Lord The Lily of the Valley The Thirteen A Man of Business Another Study of Woman

Dudley, Lady Arabella The Lily of the Valley The Ball at Sceaux The Magic Skin The Secrets of a Princess Letters of Two Brides

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 The Secrets of a Princess Beatrix

Galathionne, Prince and Princess (both not in each story) The Secrets of a Princess The Middle Classes Father Goriot A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Beatrix

Grandlieu, Duchesse Ferdinand de Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Beatrix

Grandlieu, Vicomtesse Juste de Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Gobseck

Granville, Vicomte de The Gondreville Mystery A Second Home Farewell (Adieu) Cesar Birotteau Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Cousin Pons

Granville, Comtesse Angelique de A Second Home The Thirteen

Granville, Vicomte de A Second Home The Country Parson

La Roche-Hugon, Martial de Domestic Peace The Peasantry The Member for Arcis The Middle Classes Cousin Betty

Listomere, Marquise de The Lily of the Valley Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Daughter of Eve

Lousteau, Etienne A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Beatrix The Muse of the Department Cousin Betty A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business The Middle Classes The Unconscious Humorists

Manerville, Comtesse Paul de A Marriage Settlement The Lily of the Valley

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 Modeste Mignon The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville Mystery

Massol Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Magic Skin Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists

Nathan, Raoul Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Secrets of a Princess 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

Nathan, Madame Raoul (Florine) The Muse of the Department Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Government Clerks A Bachelor's Establishment Ursule Mirouet Eugenie Grandet The Imaginary Mistress A Prince of Bohemia The Unconscious Humorists

Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de Father Goriot The Thirteen Eugenie Grandet Cesar Birotteau Melmoth Reconciled Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Commission in Lunacy Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon The Firm of Nucingen Another Study of Woman The Member for Arcis

Rastignac, Eugene de Father Goriot A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Ball at Sceaux The Commission in Lunacy A Study of Woman Another Study of Woman The Magic Skin The Secrets of a Princess The Gondreville Mystery The Firm of Nucingen Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis The Unconscious Humorists

Rastignac, Monseigneur Gabriel de Father Goriot The Country Parson

Rochefide, Marquise de Beatrix The Secrets of a Princess Sarrasine A Prince of Bohemia

Roguin, Madame Cesar Birotteau At the Sign of the Cat and Racket Pierrette A Second Home

Saint-Hereen, Comtesse Moina de A Woman of Thirty The Member for Arcis

Schmucke, Wilhelm Ursule Mirouet Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Cousin Pons

Souchet, Francois The Purse The Imaginary Mistress

Therese Father Goriot

Tillet, Ferdinand du Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen The Middle Classes A Bachelor's Establishment Pierrette Melmoth Reconciled A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Secrets of a Princess The Member for Arcis Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists

Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des Beatrix Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Another Study of Woman Honorine Beatrix The Muse of the Department

Vandenesse, Marquis Charles de A Woman of Thirty A Start in Life

Vandenesse, Marquise Charles de Cesar Birotteau The Ball at Sceaux Ursule Mirouet A Daughter of Eve

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 The Secrets of a Princess Another Study of Woman The Gondreville Mystery

Vandenesse, Comtesse Felix de A Second Home The Muse of the Department

Vernou, Felicien A Bachelor's Establishment Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Cousin Betty

Vignon, Claude A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Honorine Beatrix Cousin Betty The Unconscious Humorists