A Daughter of Eve

“Yes,” said Raoul, indifferently, “marabouts are very becoming to her; but she seems wedded to them; she wore them on Saturday,” he added, in a careless tone, as if to repudiate the intimacy Madame d’Espard was fastening upon him.

“You know the proverb,” she replied. “There is no good fete without a morrow.”

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

“That proverb is true in my case,” he said, looking gallantly at the marquise.

“My dear friend, your speech comes too late; I can’t accept it,” she said, laughing. “Don’t be so prudish! Come, I know how it was; you complimented Madame de Vandenesse at the ball on her marabouts and she has 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 were mistaken you wouldn’t be twisting your gloves like a man who is furious at having to sit here with me instead of flying to the box of his idol. She has obtained,” continued Madame d’Espard, glancing at his person impertinently, “certain sacrifices which you refused to make 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 pass for one of genius. I am sure you will describe her in one of those delightful novels you write. And pray don’t forget Vandenesse; put him in to please me. Really, his self-sufficiency is too much. I can’t stand that Jupiter Olympian air of his, – the only mythological character exempt, they say, from ill-luck.”

“Madame,” cried Raoul, “you rate my soul very low if you think me capable of trafficking with my feelings, my affections. Rather than commit such literary baseness, I would do as they do in England, – put a 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 playing one himself!

“Comedy is no longer there,” he said, nodding at the stage; “it is here, in you.”

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

“You are not angry with me, I hope?” said the marquise, giving him a sidelong glance. “I should have had your secret somehow. Let us make peace. Come and see me; I receive every Wednesday, and I am sure the dear countess will never miss an evening if I let her know you will be there. So I shall be the gainer. Sometimes she comes between four and five o’clock, and I’ll be kind and add you to the little set of favorites 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 is charming. Your name will be the first engraved upon her heart with that infantine joy that makes a lad cut the initials of his love on the barks of trees.”

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

“Well?” said the Englishwoman to the marquise, “how far have they got?”

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

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

This origin, which Nathan thought carefully concealed, Lady Dudley had just discovered, and she enjoyed by anticipation the pleasure she should 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. “Some pleasures, my dear love, are costly.”

The news of the mutual attachment between Raoul and Madame de Vandenesse circulated in the world after this, but not without exciting denials and incredulity. The countess, however, was defended by 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 expressive by their tones than their ideas. In the midst of the elegant assembly both found pleasure in those enjoyable sensations given by the voice, the gestures, the attitude of one beloved. The soul then fastens upon absolute nothings. No longer do ideas or even language speak, but things; and these so loudly, that often a man lets another pay the small attentions – bring a cup of tea, or the sugar to sweeten it – demanded by the woman he loves, fearful of betraying his emotion to eyes that seem to see nothing and yet see all. Raoul, however, a man indifferent to the eyes of the world, betrayed his passion in his speech and was brilliantly witty. The company listened to the roar of a discourse inspired by the restraint put upon him; restraint being that which artists cannot endure. This Rolandic fury, this wit which slashed down all things, using epigram as its weapon, intoxicated Marie and amused the circle around them, as the sight of a bull goaded with 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 his irritation to the company. Madame d’Espard came up to offer him a cup of tea, and said loud enough for Madame de Vandenesse to hear: —

“You are certainly very amusing; come and see me sometimes at four o’clock.”

The word “amusing” offended Raoul, though it was used as the ground of an invitation. Blondet took pity on him.

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

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

“I’ll never set foot in this house again,” he cried. “That papier-mache marquise sells her tea too dear. She thinks me amusing! I understand now why Saint-Just wanted to guillotine this whole class of people.”

“You’ll be back here to-morrow.”

Blondet was right. Passions are as mean as they are cruel. The next day after long hesitation between “I’ll go – I’ll not go,” Raoul left his new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed to Madame d’Espard’s house in the faubourg Saint-Honore. Beholding Rastignac’s elegant cabriolet enter the court-yard while he was paying his cab at the gate, Nathan’s vanity was stung; he resolved to have a cabriolet himself, and its accompanying tiger, too. The carriage of the countess was in the court-yard, and the sight of it swelled Raoul’s heart with joy. Marie was advancing under the pressure of her desires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying the mainspring. He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in the little salon. Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, she looked at his reflection in a mirror.

“Monsieur le ministre,” said Madame d’Espard, addressing Nathan, and presenting him to de Marsay by a glance, “was maintaining, when you came in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secret understanding. You ought to know something about it; is it so?”

“If it were so,” said Raoul, “where’s the harm? We hate the same thing; we agree as to our hatreds, we differ only in our love. That’s the whole of it.”

“The alliance is odd enough,” said de Marsay, giving a comprehensively meaning glance at the Comtesse Felix and Nathan.

“It won’t last,” said Rastignac, thinking, perhaps, wholly of politics.

“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 be doubly our enemy.”

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

“Where can I see you? where can I speak with you?” he said. “It is death 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, unless the weather were extremely bad. This promise gave Raoul more pleasure than he had found in Florine for the last five years.

“I have so many things to say to you! I suffer from the silence to which we are condemned – ”

The countess looked at him eagerly without replying, and at that moment 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 he is dying? Rastignac is his nurse, – hoping to be put in the will.”

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

For this quarter of an hour Raoul had sacrificed important interests and most precious time. Marie was perfectly ignorant of the life of such men, involved in complicated affairs and burdened with exacting toil. Women of society are still under the influence of the traditions of the eighteenth century, in which all positions were definite and assured. Few women know the harassments in the life of most men who in these days have a position to make and to maintain, a fame to reach, a fortune to consolidate. Men of settled wealth and position can now be counted; old men alone have time to love; young men are rowing, like Nathan, the galleys of ambition. Women are not yet resigned to this change of customs; they suppose the same leisure of which they have too much in those who have none; they cannot imagine other occupations, other ends in life than their own. When a lover has vanquished the Lernean hydra in order to pay them a visit he has no merit in their eyes; they are only grateful to him for the pleasure he gives; they neither know nor care what it costs. Raoul became aware as he returned from this visit how difficult it would be to hold the reins of a love-affair in society, the ten-horsed chariot of journalism, his dramas on the stage, and his generally involved affairs.

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