Оноре де Бальзак
Beatrix
“Forget Beatrix!” said Calyste, in a muffled voice, with his eyes on the ground.
He left the baroness, and went up to his own room to write an answer to the marquise.
Madame du Guenic, whose heart retained every word of Madame de Rochefide’s letter, felt the need of some help in comprehending it more clearly, and also the grounds of Calyste’s hope. At this hour the Chevalier du Halga was always to be seen taking his dog for a walk on the mall. The baroness, certain of finding him there, put on her bonnet and shawl and went out.
The sight of the Baronne du Guenic walking in Guerande elsewhere than to church, or on the two pretty roads selected as promenades on fete days, accompanied by the baron and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, was an event so remarkable that two hours later, throughout the whole town, people accosted each other with the remark, —
“Madame du Guenic went out to-day; did you meet her?”
As soon as this amazing news reached the ears of Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, she said to her niece, —
“Something very extraordinary is happening at the du Guenics.”
“Calyste is madly in love with that beautiful Marquise de Rochefide,” said Charlotte. “I ought to leave Guerande and return to Nantes.”
The Chevalier du Halga, much surprised at being sought by the baroness, released the chain of his little dog, aware that he could not divide himself between the two interests.
“Chevalier,” began the baroness, “you used to practise gallantry?”
Here the Chevalier du Halga straightened himself up with an air that was not a little vain. Madame du Guenic, without naming her son or the marquise, repeated, as nearly as possible, the love-letter, and asked the chevalier to explain to her the meaning of such an answer. Du Halga snuffed the air and stroked his chin; he listened attentively; he made grimaces; and finally, he looked fixedly at the baroness with a knowing air, as he said, —
“When thoroughbred horses want to leap a barrier, they go up to reconnoitre it, and smell it over. Calyste is a lucky dog!”
“Oh, hush!” she cried.
“I’m mute. Ah! in the olden time I knew all about it,” said the old chevalier, striking an attitude. “The weather was fine, the breeze nor’east. Tudieu! how the ‘Belle-Poule’ kept close to the wind that day when – Oh!” he cried, interrupting himself, “we shall have a change of weather; my ears are buzzing, and I feel the pain in my ribs! You know, don’t you, that the battle of the ‘Belle-Poule’ was so famous that women wore head-dresses ‘a la Belle-Poule.’ Madame de Kergarouet was the first to come to the opera in that head-dress, and I said to her: ‘Madame, you are dressed for conquest.’ The speech was repeated from box to box all through the house.”
The baroness listened pleasantly to the old hero, who, faithful to the laws of gallantry, escorted her to the alley of her house, neglecting Thisbe. The secret of Thisbe’s existence had once escaped him. Thisbe was the granddaughter of a delightful Thisbe, the pet of Madame l’Amirale de Kergarouet, first wife of the Comte de Kergarouet, the chevalier’s commanding officer. The present Thisbe was eighteen years old.
The baroness ran up to Calyste’s room. He was absent; she saw a letter, not sealed, but addressed to Madame de Rochefide, lying on the table. An invincible curiosity compelled the anxious mother to read it. This act of indiscretion was cruelly punished. The letter revealed to her the depths of the gulf into which his passion was hurling Calyste.
Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.
What care I for the race of the du Guenics in these days, Beatrix? what is their name to me? My name is Beatrix; the happiness of Beatrix is my happiness; her life is my life, and all my fortune is in her heart. Our estates have been mortgaged these two hundred years, and so they may remain for two hundred more; our farmers have charge of them; no one can take them from us. To see you, to love you, – that is my property, my object, my religion!
You talk to me of marrying! the very thought convulses my heart. Is there another Beatrix? I will marry no one but you; I will wait for you twenty years, if need be. I am young, and you will be ever beautiful. My mother is a saint. I do not blame her, but she has never loved. I know now what she has lost, and what sacrifices she has made. You have taught me, Beatrix, to love her better; she is in my heart with you, and no other can ever be there; she is your only rival, – is not this to say that you reign in that heart supreme? Therefore your arguments have no force upon my mind.
As for Camille, you need only say the word, or give me a mere sign, and I will ask her to tell you herself that I do not love her. She is the mother of my intellect; nothing more, nothing less. From the moment that I first saw you she became to me a sister, a friend, a comrade, what you will of that kind; but we have no rights other than those of friendship upon each other. I took her for a woman until I saw you. You have proved to me that Camille is a man; she swims, hunts, smokes, drinks, rides on horseback, writes and analyzes hearts and books; she has no weaknesses; she marches on in all her strength; her motions even have no resemblance to your graceful movements, to your step, airy as the flight of a bird. Neither has she your voice of love, your tender eyes, your gracious manner; she is Camille Maupin; there is nothing of the woman about her, whereas in you are all the things of womanhood that I love. It has seemed to me, from the first moment when I saw you, that you were mine.
You will laugh at that fancy, but it has grown and is growing. It seems to me unnatural, anomalous that we should be apart. You are my soul, my life; I cannot live where you are not!
Let me love you! Let us fly! let us go into some country where you know no one, where only God and I can reach your heart! My mother, who loves you, might some day follow us. Ireland is full of castles; my mother’s family will lend us one. Ah, Beatrix, let us go! A boat, a few sailors, and we are there, before any one can know we have fled this world you fear so much.
You have never been loved. I feel it as I re-read your letter, in which I fancy I can see that if the reasons you bring forward did not exist, you would let yourself be loved by me. Beatrix, a sacred love wipes out the past. Yes, I love you so truly that I could wish you doubly shamed if so my love might prove itself by holding you a saint!
You call my love an insult. Oh, Beatrix, you do not think it so! The love of noble youth – and you have called me that – would honor a queen. Therefore, to-morrow let us walk as lovers, hand in hand, among the rocks and beside the sea; your step upon the sands of my old Brittany will bless them anew to me! Give me this day of happiness; and that passing alms, unremembered, alas! by you, will be eternal riches to your
Calyste.
The baroness let fall the letter, without reading all of it. She knelt upon a chair, and made a mental prayer to God to save her Calyste’s reason, to put his madness, his error far away from him; to lead him from the path in which she now beheld him.
“What are you doing, mother?” said Calyste, entering the room.
“I am praying to God for you,” she answered, simply, turning her tearful eyes upon him. “I have committed the sin of reading that letter. My Calyste is mad!”
“A sweet madness!” said the young man, kissing her.
“I wish I could see that woman,” she sighed.
“Mamma,” said Calyste, “we shall take a boat to-morrow and cross to Croisic. If you are on the jetty you can see her.”
So saying, he sealed his letter and departed for Les Touches.
That which, above all, terrified the baroness was to see a sentiment attaining, by the force of its own instinct, to the clear-sightedness of practised experience. Calyste’s letter to Beatrix was such as the Chevalier du Halga, with his knowledge of the world, might have dictated.
XIII. DUEL BETWEEN WOMEN
Perhaps one of the greatest enjoyments that small minds or inferior minds can obtain is that of deceiving a great soul, and laying snares for it. Beatrix knew herself far beneath Camille Maupin. This inferiority lay not only in the collection of mental and moral qualities which we call talent, but in the things of the heart called passion.
At the moment when Calyste was hurrying to Les Touches with the impetuosity of a first love borne on the wings of hope, the marquise was feeling a keen delight in knowing herself the object of the first love of so charming a young man. She did not go so far as to wish herself a sharer in the sentiment, but she thought it heroism on her part to repress the capriccio, as the Italians say. She thought she was equalling Camille’s devotion, and told herself, moreover, that she was sacrificing herself to her friend. The vanities peculiar to Frenchwomen, which constitute the celebrated coquetry of which she was so signal an instance, were flattered and deeply satisfied by Calyste’s love. Assailed by such powerful seduction, she was resisting it, and her virtues sang in her soul a concert of praise and self-approval.
The two women were half-sitting, half lying, in apparent indolence on the divan of the little salon, so filled with harmony and the fragrance of flowers. The windows were open, for the north wind had ceased to blow. A soothing southerly breeze was ruffling the surface of the salt lake before them, and the sun was glittering on the sands of the shore. Their souls were as deeply agitated as the nature before them was tranquil, and the heat within was not less ardent.
Bruised by the working of the machinery which she herself had set in motion, Camille was compelled to keep watch for her safety, fearing the amazing cleverness of the friendly enemy, or, rather, the inimical friend she had allowed within her borders. To guard her own secrets and maintain herself aloof, she had taken of late to contemplations of nature; she cheated the aching of her own heart by seeking a meaning in the world around her, finding God in that desert of heaven and earth. When an unbeliever once perceives the presence of God, he flings himself unreservedly into Catholicism, which, viewed as a system, is complete.
That morning Camille’s brow had worn the halo of thoughts born of these researches during a night-time of painful struggle. Calyste was ever before her like a celestial image. The beautiful youth, to whom she had secretly devoted herself, had become to her a guardian angel. Was it not he who led her into those loftier regions, where suffering ceased beneath the weight of incommensurable infinity? and now a certain air of triumph about Beatrix disturbed her. No woman gains an advantage over another without allowing it to be felt, however much she may deny having taken it. Nothing was ever more strange in its course than the dumb, moral struggle which was going on between these two women, each hiding from the other a secret, – each believing herself generous through hidden sacrifices.
Calyste arrived, holding the letter between his hand and his glove, ready to slip it at some convenient moment into the hand of Beatrix. Camille, whom the subtle change in the manner of her friend had not escaped, seemed not to watch her, but did watch her in a mirror at the moment when Calyste was just entering the room. That is always a crucial moment for women. The cleverest as well as the silliest of them, the frankest as the shrewdest, are seldom able to keep their secret; it bursts from them, at any rate, to the eyes of another woman. Too much reserve or too little; a free and luminous look; the mysterious lowering of eyelids, – all betray, at that sudden moment, the sentiment which is the most difficult of all to hide; for real indifference has something so radically cold about it that it can never be simulated. Women have a genius for shades, – shades of detail, shades of character; they know them all. There are times when their eyes take in a rival from head to foot; they can guess the slightest movement of a foot beneath a gown, the almost imperceptible motion of the waist; they know the significance of things which, to a man, seem insignificant. Two women observing each other play one of the choicest scenes of comedy that the world can show.
“Calyste has committed some folly,” thought Camille, perceiving in each of her guests an indefinable air of persons who have a mutual understanding.
There was no longer either stiffness or pretended indifference on the part of Beatrix; she now regarded Calyste as her own property. Calyste was even more transparent; he colored, as guilty people, or happy people color. He announced that he had come to make arrangements for the excursion on the following day.
“Then you really intend to go, my dear?” said Camille, interrogatively.
“Yes,” said Beatrix.
“How did you know it, Calyste?” asked Mademoiselle des Touches.
“I came here to find out,” replied Calyste, on a look flashed at him by Madame de Rochefide, who did not wish Camille to gain the slightest inkling of their correspondence.
“They have an agreement together,” thought Camille, who caught the look in the powerful sweep of her eye.
Under the pressure of that thought a horrible discomposure overspread her face and frightened Beatrix.
“What is the matter, my dear?” she cried.
“Nothing. Well, then, Calyste, send my horses and yours across to Croisic, so that we may drive home by way of Batz. We will breakfast at Croisic, and get home in time for dinner. You must take charge of the boat arrangements. Let us start by half-past eight. You will see some fine sights, Beatrix, and one very strange one; you will see Cambremer, a man who does penance on a rock for having wilfully killed his son. Oh! you are in a primitive land, among a primitive race of people, where men are moved by other sentiments than those of ordinary mortals. Calyste shall tell you the tale; it is a drama of the seashore.”
She went into her bedroom, for she was stifling. Calyste gave his letter to Beatrix and followed Camille.
“Calyste, you are loved, I think; but you are hiding something from me; you have done some foolish thing.”
“Loved!” he exclaimed, dropping into a chair.
Camille looked into the next room; Beatrix had disappeared. The fact was odd. Women do not usually leave a room which contains the man they admire, unless they have either the certainty of seeing him again, or something better still. Mademoiselle des Touches said to herself: —
“Can he have given her a letter?”
But she thought the innocent Breton incapable of such boldness.
“If you have disobeyed me, all will be lost, through your own fault,” she said to him very gravely. “Go, now, and make your preparations for to-morrow.”
She made a gesture which Calyste did not venture to resist.
As he walked toward Croisic, to engage the boatmen, fears came into Calyste’s mind. Camille’s speech foreshadowed something fatal, and he believed in the second sight of her maternal affection. When he returned, four hours later, very tired, and expecting to dine at Les Touches, he found Camille’s maid keeping watch over the door, to tell him that neither her mistress nor the marquise could receive him that evening. Calyste, much surprised, wished to question her, but she bade him hastily good-night and closed the door.
Six o’clock was striking on the steeple of Guerande as Calyste entered his own house, where Mariotte gave him his belated dinner; after which, he played mouche in gloomy meditation. These alternations of joy and gloom, happiness and unhappiness, the extinction of hopes succeeding the apparent certainty of being loved, bruised and wounded the young soul which had flown so high on outstretched wings that the fall was dreadful.
“Does anything trouble you, my Calyste?” said his mother.
“Nothing,” he replied, looking at her with eyes from which the light of the soul and the fire of love were withdrawn.
It is not hope, but despair, which gives the measure of our ambitions. The finest poems of hope are sung in secret, but grief appears without a veil.
“Calyste, you are not nice,” said Charlotte, after vainly attempting on him those little provincial witcheries which degenerate usually into teasing.
“I am tired,” he said, rising, and bidding the company good-night.
“Calyste is much changed,” remarked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.
“We haven’t beautiful dresses trimmed with lace; we don’t shake our sleeves like this, or twist our bodies like that; we don’t know how to give sidelong glances, and turn our eyes,” said Charlotte, mimicking the air, and attitude, and glances of the marquise. “We haven’t that head voice, nor the interesting little cough, heu! heu! which sounds like the sigh of a spook; we have the misfortune of being healthy and robust, and of loving our friends without coquetry; and when we look at them, we don’t pretend to stick a dart into them, or to watch them slyly; we can’t bend our heads like a weeping willow, just to look the more interesting when we raise them – this way.”
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel could not help laughing at her niece’s gesture; but neither the chevalier nor the baron paid any heed to this truly provincial satire against Paris.
“But the Marquise de Rochefide is a very handsome woman,” said the old maid.
“My dear,” said the baroness to her husband, “I happen to know that she is going over to Croisic to-morrow. Let us walk on the jetty; I should like to see her.”
While Calyste was racking his brains to imagine what could have closed the doors of Les Touches to him, a scene was passing between Camille and Beatrix which was to have its influence on the events of the morrow.
Calyste’s last letter had stirred in Madame de Rochefide’s heart emotions hitherto unknown to it. Women are not often the subject of a love so young, guileless, sincere, and unconditional as that of this youth, this child. Beatrix had loved more than she had been loved. After being all her life a slave, she suddenly felt an inexplicable desire to be a tyrant. But, in the midst of her pleasure, as she read and re-read the letter, she was pierced through and through with a cruel idea.
What were Calyste and Camille doing together ever since Claude Vignon’s departure? If, as Calyste said, he did not love Camille, and if Camille knew it, how did they employ their mornings, and why were they alone together? Memory suddenly flashed into her mind, in answer to these questions, certain speeches of Camille; a grinning devil seemed to show her, as in a magic mirror, the portrait of that heroic woman, with certain gestures, certain aspects, which suddenly enlightened her. What! instead of being her equal, was she crushed by Felicite? instead of over-reaching her, was she being over-reached herself? was she only a toy, a pleasure, which Camille was giving to her child, whom she loved with an extraordinary passion that was free from all vulgarity?
To a woman like Beatrix this thought came like a thunder-clap. She went over in her mind minutely the history of the past week. In a moment the part which Camille was playing, and her own, unrolled themselves to their fullest extent before her eyes; she felt horribly belittled. In her fury of jealous anger, she fancied she could see in Camille’s conduct an intention of vengeance against Conti. Was the hidden wrath of the past two years really acting upon the present moment?
Once on the path of these doubts and superstitions, Beatrix did not pause. She walked up and down her room, driven to rapid motion by the impetuous movements of her soul, sitting down now and then, and trying to decide upon a course, but unable to do so. And thus she remained, a prey to indecision until the dinner hour, when she rose hastily, and went downstairs without dressing. No sooner did Camille see her, than she felt that a crisis had come. Beatrix, in her morning gown, with a chilling air and a taciturn manner, indicated to an observer as keen as Maupin the coming hostilities of an embittered heart.
Camille instantly left the room and gave the order which so astonished Calyste; she feared that he might arrive in the midst of the quarrel, and she determined to be alone, without witnesses, in fighting this duel of deception on both sides. Beatrix, without an auxiliary, would infallibly succumb. Camille well knew the barrenness of that soul, the pettiness of that pride, to which she had justly applied the epithet of obstinate.
The dinner was gloomy. Camille was gentle and kind; she felt herself the superior being. Beatrix was hard and cutting; she felt she was being managed like a child. During dinner the battle began with glances, gestures, half-spoken sentences, – not enough to enlighten the servants, but enough to prepare an observer for the coming storm. When the time to go upstairs came, Camille offered her arm maliciously to Beatrix, who pretended not to see it, and sprang up the stairway alone. When coffee had been served Mademoiselle des Touches said to the footman, “You may go,” – a brief sentence, which served as a signal for the combat.
“The novels you make, my dear, are more dangerous than those you write,” said the marquise.
“They have one advantage, however,” replied Camille, lighting a cigarette.
“What is that?” asked Beatrix.
“They are unpublished, my angel.”
“Is the one in which you are putting me to be turned into a book?”
“I’ve no fancy for the role of OEdipus; I know you have the wit and beauty of a sphinx, but don’t propound conundrums. Speak out, plainly, my dear Beatrix.”
“When, in order to make a man happy, amuse him, please him, and save him from ennui, we allow the devil to help us – ”
“That man would reproach us later for our efforts on his behalf, and would think them prompted by the genius of depravity,” said Camille, taking the cigarette from her lips to interrupt her friend.
“He forgets the love which carried us away, and is our sole justification – but that’s the way of men, they are all unjust and ungrateful,” continued Beatrix. “Women among themselves know each other; they know how proud and noble their own minds are, and, let us frankly say so, how virtuous! But, Camille, I have just recognized the truth of certain criticisms upon your nature, of which you have sometimes complained. My dear, you have something of the man about you; you behave like a man; nothing restrains you; if you haven’t all a man’s advantages, you have a man’s spirit in all your ways; and you share his contempt for women. I have no reason, my dear, to be satisfied with you, and I am too frank to hide my dissatisfaction. No one has ever given or ever will give, perhaps, so cruel a wound to my heart as that from which I am now suffering. If you are not a woman in love, you are one in vengeance. It takes a woman of genius to discover the most sensitive spot of all in another woman’s delicacy. I am talking now of Calyste, and the trickery, my dear, – that is the word, —trickery, – you have employed against me. To what depths have you descended, Camille Maupin! and why?”
“More and more sphinx-like!” said Camille, smiling.
“You want me to fling myself at Calyste’s head; but I am still too young for that sort of thing. To me, love is sacred; love is love with all its emotions, jealousies, and despotisms. I am not an author; it is impossible for me to see ideas where the heart feels sentiments.”
“You think yourself capable of loving foolishly!” said Camille. “Make yourself easy on that score; you still have plenty of sense. My dear, you calumniate yourself; I assure you that your nature is cold enough to enable your head to judge of every action of your heart.”
The marquise colored high; she darted a look of hatred, a venomous look, at Camille, and found, without searching, the sharpest arrows in her quiver. Camille smoked composedly as she listened to a furious tirade, which rang with such cutting insults that we do not reproduce it here. Beatrix, irritated by the calmness of her adversary, condescended even to personalities on Camille’s age.
“Is that all?” said Felicite, when Beatrix paused, letting a cloud of smoke exhale from her lips. “Do you love Calyste?”
“No; of course not.”
“So much the better,” replied Camille. “I do love him – far too much for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in short, you are young! – that’s the final word, and you have not spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However little of a woman you may think me, I am woman enough, my dear, not to allow a rival to triumph over me unless I choose to help her.” (This remark, made in apparently the most innocent manner, cut the marquise to the heart). “You take me for a very silly person if you believe all that Calyste tries to make you think of me. I am neither so great nor so small; I am a woman, and very much of a woman. Come, put off your grand airs, and give me your hand!” continued Camille, taking Madame de Rochefide’s hand. “You do not love Calyste, you say; that is true, is it not? Don’t be angry, therefore; be hard, and cold, and stern to him to-morrow; he will end by submitting to his fate, especially after certain little reproaches which I mean to make to him. Still, Calyste is a Breton, and very persistent; if he should continue to pay court to you, tell me frankly, and I will lend you my little country house near Paris, where you will find all the comforts of life, and where Conti can come out and see you. You said just now that Calyste calumniated me. Good heavens! what of that? The purest love lies twenty times a day; its deceptions only prove its strength.”
Camille’s face wore an air of such superb disdain that the marquise grew fearful and anxious. She knew not how to answer. Camille dealt her a last blow.
“I am more confiding and less bitter than you,” she said. “I don’t suspect you of attempting to cover by a quarrel a secret injury, which would compromise my very life. You know me; I shall never survive the loss of Calyste, but I must lose him sooner or later. Still, Calyste loves me now; of that I am sure.”
“Here is what he answered to a letter of mine, urging him to be true to you,” said Beatrix, holding out Calyste’s last letter.
Camille took it and read it; but as she read it, her eyes filled with tears; and presently she wept as women weep in their bitterest sorrows.
“My God!” she said, “how he loves her! I shall die without being understood – or loved,” she added.
She sat for a few moments with her head leaning against the shoulder of her companion; her grief was genuine; she felt to the very core of her being the same terrible blow which the Baronne du Guenic had received in reading that letter.
“Do you love him?” she said, straightening herself up, and looking fixedly at Beatrix. “Have you that infinite worship for him which triumphs over all pains, survives contempt, betrayal, the certainty that he will never love you? Do you love him for himself, and for the very joy of loving him?”
“Dear friend,” said the marquise, tenderly, “be happy, be at peace; I will leave this place to-morrow.”
“No, do not go; he loves you, I see that. Well, I love him so much that I could not endure to see him wretched and unhappy. Still, I had formed plans for him, projects; but if he loves you, all is over.”
“And I love him, Camille,” said the marquise, with a sort of naivete, and coloring.
“You love him, and yet you cast him off!” cried Camille. “Ah! that is not loving; you do not love him.”
“I don’t know what fresh virtue he has roused in me, but certainly he has made me ashamed of my own self,” said Beatrix. “I would I were virtuous and free, that I might give him something better than the dregs of a heart and the weight of my chains. I do not want a hampered destiny either for him or for myself.”
“Cold brain!” exclaimed Camille, with a sort of horror. “To love and calculate!”
“Call it what you like,” said Beatrix, “but I will not spoil his life, or hang like a millstone round his neck, to become an eternal regret to him. If I cannot be his wife, I shall not be his mistress. He has – you will laugh at me? No? Well, then, he has purified me.”
Camille cast on Beatrix the most sullen, savage look that female jealousy ever cast upon a rival.
“On that ground, I believed I stood alone,” she said. “Beatrix, those words of yours must separate us forever; we are no longer friends. Here begins a terrible conflict between us. I tell you now; you will either succumb or fly.”
So saying, Camille bounded into her room, after showing her face, which was that of a maddened lioness, to the astonished Beatrix. Then she raised the portiere and looked in again.
“Do you intend to go to Croisic to-morrow,” she asked.
“Certainly,” replied the marquise, proudly. “I shall not fly, and I shall not succumb.”
“I play above board,” replied Camille; “I shall write to Conti.”
Beatrix became as white as the gauze of her scarf.
“We are staking our lives on this game,” she replied, not knowing what to say or do.
The violent passions roused by this scene between the two women calmed down during the night. Both argued with their own minds and returned to those treacherously temporizing courses which are so attractive to the majority of women, – an excellent system between men and women, but fatally unsafe among women alone. In the midst of this tumult of their souls Mademoiselle des Touches had listened to that great Voice whose counsels subdue the strongest will; Beatrix heard only the promptings of worldly wisdom; she feared the contempt of society.
Thus Felicite’s last deception succeeded; Calyste’s blunder was repaired, but a fresh indiscretion might be fatal to him.