Beatrix Part 8

Criticism is his opium; his harem of books to read disgusts him with real work. Indifferent to small things as well as great things, he is sometimes compelled, by the very weight of his head, to fall into a debauch, and abdicate for a few hours the fatal power of omnipotent a.n.a.lysis. He is far too preoccupied with the wrong side of genius, and Camille Maupin's desire to put him back on the right side is easily conceivable. The task was an attractive one. Claude Vignon thinks himself a great politician as well as a great writer; but this unpublished Machiavelli laughs within himself at all ambitions; he knows what he can do; he has instinctively taken the measure of his future on his faculties; he sees his greatness, but he also sees obstacles, grows alarmed or disgusted, lets the time roll by, and does not go to work.

Like Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist, like Nathan the dramatic author, like Blondet, another journalist, he came from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, to which we owe the greater number of our writers.

"Which way did you come?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches, coloring with either pleasure or surprise.'

"By the door," replied Claude Vignon, dryly.

"Oh," she cried, shrugging her shoulders, "I am aware that you are not a man to climb in by a window."

"Scaling a window is a badge of honor for a beloved woman."

"Enough!" said Felicite.

"Am I in the way?" asked Claude.

"Monsieur," said Calyste, artlessly, "this letter--"

"Pray keep it; I ask no questions; at our age we understand such affairs," he answered, interrupting Calyste with a sardonic air.

"But, monsieur," began Calyste, much provoked.

"Calm yourself, young man; I have the utmost indulgence for sentiments."

"My dear Calyste," said Camille, wis.h.i.+ng to speak.

"'Dear'?" said Vignon, interrupting her.

"Claude is joking," said Camille, continuing her remarks to Calyste. "He is wrong to do it with you, who know nothing of Parisian ways."

"I did not know that I was joking," said Claude Vignon, very gravely.

"Which way did you come?" asked Felicite again. "I have been watching the road to Croisic for the last two hours."

"Not all the time," replied Vignon.

"You are too bad to jest in this way."

"Am I jesting?"

Calyste rose.

"Why should you go so soon? You are certainly at your ease here," said Vignon.

"Quite the contrary," replied the angry young Breton, to whom Camille Maupin stretched out a hand, which he took and kissed, dropping a tear upon it, after which he took his leave.

"I should like to be that little young man," said the critic, sitting down, and taking one end of the hookah. "How he will love!"

"Too much; for then he will not be loved in return," replied Mademoiselle des Touches. "Madame de Rochefide is coming here," she added.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Claude. "With Conti?"

"She will stay here alone, but he accompanies her."

"Have they quarrelled?"

"No."

"Play me a sonata of Beethoven's; I know nothing of the music he wrote for the piano."

Claude began to fill the tube of the hookah with Turkish tobacco, all the while examining Camille much more attentively than she observed. A dreadful thought oppressed him; he fancied he was being used for a blind by this woman. The situation was a novel one.

Calyste went home thinking no longer of Beatrix de Rochefide and her letter; he was furious against Claude Vignon for what he considered the utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it possible to be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on his knees, not believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He felt a desire to turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man. Ignorant he might be, as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of thought of the jesters of the press, but one thing he knew--Love was the human religion.

When his mother saw him entering the court-yard she uttered an exclamation of joy, and Zephirine whistled for Mariotte.

"Mariotte, the boy is coming! cook the fis.h.!.+"

"I see him, mademoiselle," replied the woman.

f.a.n.n.y, uneasy at the sadness she saw on her son's brow, picked up her worsted-work; the old aunt took out her knitting. The baron gave his arm-chair to his son and walked about the room, as if to stretch his legs before going out to take a turn in the garden. No Flemish or Dutch picture ever presented an interior in tones more mellow, peopled with faces and forms so harmoniously blending. The handsome young man in his black velvet coat, the mother, still so beautiful, and the aged brother and sister framed by that ancient hall, were a moving domestic harmony.

f.a.n.n.y would fain have questioned Calyste, but he had already pulled a letter from his pocket,--that letter of the Marquise Beatrix, which was, perhaps, destined to destroy the happiness of this n.o.ble family. As he unfolded it, Calyste's awakened imagination showed him the marquise dressed as Camille Maupin had fancifully depicted her.

From the Marquise de Rochefide to Mademoiselle des Touches.

Genoa, July 2.

I have not written to you since our stay in Florence, my dear friend, for Venice and Rome have absorbed my time, and, as you know, happiness occupies a large part of life; so far, we have neither of us dropped from its first level. I am a little fatigued; for when one has a soul not easy to _blaser_, the constant succession of enjoyments naturally causes la.s.situde.

Our friend has had a magnificent triumph at the Scala and the Fenice, and now at the San Carlo. Three Italian operas in two years! You cannot say that love has made him idle. We have been warmly received everywhere,--though I myself would have preferred solitude and silence. Surely that is the only suitable manner of life for women who have placed themselves in direct opposition to society? I expected such a life; but love, my dear friend, is a more exacting master than marriage,--however, it is sweet to obey him; though I did not think I should have to see the world again, even by s.n.a.t.c.hes, and the attentions I receive are so many stabs.

I am no longer on a footing of equality with the highest rank of women; and the more attentions are paid to me, the more my inferiority is made apparent.

Gennaro could not comprehend this sensitiveness; but he has been so happy that it would ill become me not to have sacrificed my petty vanity to that great and n.o.ble thing,--the life of an artist. We women live by love, whereas men live by love and action; otherwise they would not be men. Still, there are great disadvantages for a woman in the position in which I have put myself. You have escaped them; you continue to be a person in the eyes of the world, which has no rights over you; you have your own free will, and I have lost mine. I am speaking now of the things of the heart, not those of social life, which I have utterly renounced. You can be coquettish and self-willed, and have all the graces of a woman who loves, a woman who can give or refuse her love as she pleases; you have kept the right to have caprices, in the interests even of your love. In short, to-day you still possess your right of feeling, while I, I have no longer any liberty of heart, which I think precious to exercise in love, even though the love itself may be eternal. I have no right now to that privilege of quarrelling in jest to which so many women cling, and justly; for is it not the plummet line with which to sound the hearts of men? I have no threat at my command. I must draw my power henceforth from obedience, from unlimited gentleness; I must make myself imposing by the greatness of my love. I would rather die than leave Gennaro, and my pardon lies in the sanct.i.ty of my love. Between social dignity and my petty personal dignity, I did right not to hesitate. If at times I have a few melancholy feelings, like clouds that pa.s.s through a clear blue sky, and to which all women like to yield themselves, I keep silence about them; they might seem like regrets. Ah me! I have so fully understood the obligations of my position that I have armed myself with the utmost indulgence; but so far, Gennaro has not alarmed my susceptible jealousy. I don't as yet see where that dear great genius may fail.

Dear angel, I am like those pious souls who argue with their G.o.d, for are not you my Providence? do I not owe my happiness to you?

You must never doubt, therefore, that you are constantly in my thoughts.

I have seen Italy at last; seen it as you saw it, and as it ought to be seen,--lighted to our souls by love, as it is by its own bright sun and its masterpieces. I pity those who, being moved to adoration at every step, have no hand to press, no heart in which to shed the exuberance of emotions which calm themselves when shared. These two years have been to me a lifetime, in which my memory has stored rich harvests. Have you made plans, as I do, to stay forever at Chiavari, to buy a palazzo in Venice, a summer-house at Sorrento, a villa in Florence? All loving women dread society; but I, who am cast forever outside of it, ought I not to bury myself in some beautiful landscape, on flowery slopes, facing the sea, or in a valley that equals a sea, like that of Fiesole?

But alas! we are only poor artists, and want of money is bringing these two bohemians back to Paris. Gennaro does not want me to feel that I have lost my luxury, and he wishes to put his new work, a grand opera, into rehearsal at once. You will understand, of course, my dearest, that I cannot set foot in Paris. I could not, I would not, even if it costs me my love, meet one of those glances of women, or of men, which would make me think of murder or suicide. Yes, I could hack in pieces whoever insulted me with pity; like Chateauneuf, who, in the time of Henri III., I think, rode his horse at the Provost of Paris for a wrong of that kind, and trampled him under hoof.

I write, therefore, to say that I shall soon pay you a visit at Les Touches. I want to stay there, in that Chartreuse, while awaiting the success of our Gennaro's opera. You will see that I am bold with my benefactress, my sister; but I prove, at any rate, that the greatness of obligations laid upon me has not led me, as it does so many people, to ingrat.i.tude. You have told me so much of the difficulties of the land journey that I shall go to Croisic by water. This idea came to me on finding that there is a little Danish vessel now here, laden with marble, which is to touch at Croisic for a cargo of salt on its way back to the Baltic. I shall thus escape the fatigue and the cost of the land journey. Dear Felicite, you are the only person with whom I could be alone without Conti. Will it not be some pleasure to have a woman with you who understands your heart as fully as you do hers?

Adieu, _a bientot_. The wind is favorable, and I set sail, wafting you a kiss.

Beatrix.

"Ah! she loves, too!" thought Calyste, folding the letter sadly.