The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan

“You will readily understand, my friend, that I returned to society for the purpose of excitement and I may say of notoriety. I felt that I must conquer my independence. I led a life of dissipation. To divert my mind, to forget my real life in fictitious enjoyments I was gay, I shone, I gave fetes, I played the princess, and I ran in debt. At home I could forget myself in the sleep of weariness, able to rise the next day gay, and frivolous for the world; but in that sad struggle to escape my real life I wasted my fortune. The revolution of 1830 came; it came at the very moment when I had met, at the end of that Arabian Nights’’ life, a pure and sacred love which (I desire to be honest) I had longed to know. Was it not natural in a woman whose heart, repressed by many causes and accidents, was awakening at an age when a woman feels herself cheated if she has never known, like the women she sees about her, a happy love? Ah! why was Michel Chrestien so respectful? Why did he not seek to meet me? There again was another mockery! But what of that? in falling, I have lost everything; I have no illusions left; I had tasted of all things except the one fruit for which I have no longer teeth. Yes, I found myself disenchanted with the world at the very moment when I was forced to leave it. Providential, was it not? like all those strange insensibilities which prepare us for death” (she made a gesture full of pious unction). “All things served me then,” she continued; “the disasters of the monarchy and its ruin helped me to bury myself. My son consoles me for much. Maternal love takes the place of all frustrated feelings. The world is surprised at my retirement, but to me it has brought peace. Ah! if you knew how happy the poor creature before you is in this little place. In sacrificing all to my son I forget to think of joys of which I am and ever must be ignorant. Yes, hope has flown, I now fear everything; no doubt I should repulse the truest sentiment, the purest and most veritable love, in memory of the deceptions and the miseries of my life. It is all horrible, is it not? and yet, what I have told you is the history of many women.”

The last few words were said in a tone of easy pleasantry which recalled the presence of the woman of the world. D’Arthez was dumbfounded. In his eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggravated robbery, or for putting a wrong name to checks, were saints compared to the men and women of society. This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies, and steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been poured into his ears with the inimitable accent of truth. The grave author contemplated for a moment that adorable woman lying back in her easy-chair, her two hands pendant from its arms like dewdrops from a rose-leaf, overcome by her own revelation, living over again the sorrows of her life as she told them – in short an angel of melancholy.

“And judge,” she cried, suddenly lifting herself with a spring and raising her hand, while lightning flashed from eyes where twenty chaste years shone – “judge of the impression the love of a man like Michel must have made upon me. But by some irony of fate – or was it the hand of God? – well, he died; died in saving the life of, whom do you suppose? of Monsieur de Cadignan. Are you now surprised to find me thoughtful?”

This was the last drop; poor d’Arthez could bear no more. He fell upon his knees, and laid his head on Diane’s hand, weeping soft tears such as the angels shed, – if angels weep. As Daniel was in that bent posture, Madame de Cadignan could safely let a malicious smile of triumph flicker on her lips, a smile such as the monkeys wear after playing a sly trick – if monkeys smile.

“Ah! I have him,” thought she; and, indeed, she had him fast.

“But you are – ” he said, raising his fine head and looking at her with eyes of love.

“Virgin and martyr,” she replied, smiling at the commonness of that hackneyed expression, but giving it a freshness of meaning by her smile, so full of painful gayety. “If I laugh,” she continued, “it is that I am thinking of that princess whom the world thinks it knows, that Duchesse de Maufrigneuse to whom it gives as lovers de Marsay, that infamous de Trailles (a political cutthroat), and that little fool of a d’Esgrignon, and Rastignac, Rubempre, ambassadors, ministers, Russian generals, heaven knows who! all Europe! They have gossiped about that album which I ordered made, believing that those who admired me were my friends. Ah! it is frightful! I wonder that I allow a man at my feet! Despise them all, THAT should be my religion.”

She rose and went to the window with a gait and bearing magnificent in motifs.

D’Arthez remained on the low seat to which he had returned not daring to follow the princess; but he looked at her; he heard her blowing her nose. Was there ever a princess who blew her nose? but Diane attempted the impossible to convey an idea of her sensibility. D’Arthez believed his angel was in tears; he rushed to her side, took her round the waist, and pressed her to his heart.

“No, no, leave me!” she murmured in a feeble voice. “I have too many doubts to be good for anything. To reconcile me with life is a task beyond the powers of any man.”

“Diane! I will love you for your whole lost life.”

“No; don’t speak to me thus,” she answered. “At this moment I tremble, I am ashamed as though I had committed the greatest sins.”

She was now entirely restored to the innocence of little girls, and yet her bearing was august, grand, noble as that of a queen. It is impossible to describe the effect of these manoeuvres, so clever that they acted like the purest truth on a soul as fresh and honest as that of d’Arthez. The great author remained dumb with admiration, passive beside her in the recess of that window awaiting a word, while the princess awaited a kiss; but she was far too sacred to him for that. Feeling cold, the princess returned to her easy-chair; her feet were frozen.

“It will take a long time,” she said to herself, looking at Daniel’s noble brow and head.

“Is this a woman?” thought that profound observer of human nature. “How ought I to treat her?”

Until two o’clock in the morning they spent their time in saying to each other the silly things that women of genius, like the princess, know how to make adorable. Diane pretended to be too worn, too old, too faded; D’Arthez proved to her (facts of which she was well convinced) that her skin was the most delicate, the softest to the touch, the whitest to the eye, the most fragrant; she was young and in her bloom, how could she think otherwise? Thus they disputed, beauty by beauty, detail by detail with many: “Oh! do you think so?” – “You are beside yourself!” – “It is hope, it is fancy!” – “You will soon see me as I am. – I am almost forty years of age. Can a man love so old a woman?”

D’Arthez responded with impetuous and school-boy eloquence, larded with exaggerated epithets. When the princess heard this wise and witty writer talking the nonsense of an amorous sub-lieutenant she listened with an absorbed air and much sensibility; but she laughed in her sleeve.

When d’Arthez was in the street, he asked himself whether he might not have been rather less respectful. He went over in memory those strange confidences – which have, naturally, been much abridged here, for they needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abundance and the graces which accompanied them. The retrospective perspicacity of this man, so natural, so profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and its poignancy, and by the tones of the princess.

“It is true,” he said to himself, being unable to sleep, “there are such dramas as that in society. Society covers great horrors with the flowers of its elegance, the embroidery of its gossip, the wit of its lies. We writers invent no more than the truth. Poor Diane! Michel had penetrated that enigma; he said that beneath her covering of ice there lay volcanoes! Bianchon and Rastignac were right; when a man can join the grandeurs of the ideal and the enjoyments of human passion in loving a woman of perfect manners, of intellect, of delicacy, it must be happiness beyond words.”

So thinking, he sounded the love that was in him and found it infinite.

CHAPTER V. A TRIAL OF FAITH

The next day, about two in the afternoon, Madame d’Espard, who had seen and heard nothing of the princess for more than a month, went to see her under the impulse of extreme curiosity. Nothing was ever more amusing of its kind than the conversation of these two crafty adders during the first half-hour of this visit.

Diane d’Uxelles cautiously avoided, as she would the wearing of a yellow gown, all mention of d’Arthez. The marquise circled round and round that topic like a Bedouin round a caravan. Diane amused herself; the marquise fumed. Diane waited; she intended to utilize her friend and use her in the chase. Of these two women, both so celebrated in the social world, one was far stronger than the other. The princess rose by a head above the marquise, and the marquise was inwardly conscious of that superiority. In this, perhaps, lay the secret of their intimacy. The weaker of the two crouched low in her false attachment, watching for the hour, long awaited by feeble beings, of springing at the throat of the stronger and leaving the mark of a joyful bite. Diane saw clear; but the world was the dupe of the wile caresses of the two friends.

The instant that the princess perceived a direct question on the lips of her friend, she said: —

“Ah! dearest, I owe you a most complete, immense, infinite, celestial happiness.”

“What can you mean?”

“Have you forgotten what we ruminated three months ago in the little garden, sitting on a bench in the sun, under the jasmine? Ah! there are none but men of genius who know how to love! I apply to my grand Daniel d’Arthez the Duke of Alba’s saying to Catherine de’ Medici: ‘The head of a single salmon is worth all the frogs in the world.’”

“I am not surprised that I no longer see you,” said Madame d’Espard.

“Promise me, if you meet him, not to say to him one word about me, my angel,” said the princess, taking her friend’s hand. “I am happy, oh! happy beyond all expression; but you know that in society a word, a mere jest can do much harm. One speech can kill, for they put such venom into a single sentence! Ah! if you knew how I long that you might meet with a love like this! Yes, it is a sweet, a precious triumph for women like ourselves to end our woman’s life in this way; to rest in an ardent, pure, devoted, complete and absolute love; above all, when we have sought it long.”

“Why do you ask me to be faithful to my dearest friend?” said Madame d’Espard. “Do you think me capable of playing you some villainous trick?”

“When a woman possesses such a treasure the fear of losing it is so strong that it naturally inspires a feeling of terror. I am absurd, I know; forgive me, dear.”

A few moments later the marquise departed; as she watched her go the princess said to herself: —

“How she will pluck me! But to save her the trouble of trying to get Daniel away from here I’ll send him to her.”

At three o’clock, or a few moments after, d’Arthez arrived. In the midst of some interesting topic on which he was discoursing eloquently, the princess suddenly cut him short by laying her hand on his arm.

“Pardon me, my dear friend,” she said, interrupting him, “but I fear I may forget a thing which seems a mere trifle but may be of great importance. You have not set foot in Madame d’Espard’s salon since the ever-blessed day when I met you there. Pray go at once; not for your sake, nor by way of politeness, but for me. You may already have made her an enemy of mine, if by chance she has discovered that since her dinner you have scarcely left my house. Besides, my friend, I don’t like to see you dropping your connection with society, and neglecting your occupations and your work. I should again be strangely calumniated. What would the world say? That I held you in leading-strings, absorbed you, feared comparisons, and clung to my conquest knowing it to be my last! Who will know that you are my friend, my only friend? If you love me indeed, as you say you love me, you will make the world believe that we are purely and simply brother and sister – Go on with what you were saying.”

In his armor of tenderness, riveted by the knowledge of so many splendid virtues, d’Arthez obeyed this behest on the following day and went to see Madame d’Espard, who received him with charming coquetry. The marquise took very good care not to say a single word to him about the princess, but she asked him to dinner on a coming day.

On this occasion d’Arthez found a numerous company. The marquise had invited Rastignac, Blondet, the Marquis d’Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles, the Marquis d’Esgrignon, the two brothers Vandenesse, du Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, the Baron de Nucingen, Raoul Nathan, Lady Dudley, two very treacherous secretaries of embassies and the Chevalier d’Espard, the wiliest person in this assemblage and the chief instigator of his sister-in-law’s policy.

When dinner was well under way, Maxime de Trailles turned to d’Arthez and said smiling: —

“You see a great deal, don’t you, of the Princesse de Cadignan?”

To this question d’Arthez responded by curtly nodding his head. Maxime de Trailles was a “bravo” of the social order, without faith or law, capable of everything, ruining the women who trusted him, compelling them to pawn their diamonds to give him money, but covering this conduct with a brilliant varnish; a man of charming manners and satanic mind. He inspired all who knew him with equal contempt and fear; but as no one was bold enough to show him any sentiments but those of the utmost courtesy he saw nothing of this public opinion, or else he accepted and shared the general dissimulation. He owed to the Comte de Marsay the greatest degree of elevation to which he could attain. De Marsay, whose knowledge of Maxime was of long-standing, judged him capable of fulfilling certain secret and diplomatic functions which he confided to him and of which de Trailles acquitted himself admirably. D’Arthez had for some time past mingled sufficiently in political matters to know the man for what he was, and he alone had sufficient strength and height of character to express aloud what others thought or said in a whisper.

“Is it for her that you neglect the Chamber?” asked Baron de Nucingen in his German accent.

“Ah! the princess is one of the most dangerous women a man can have anything to do with. I owe to her the miseries of my marriage,” exclaimed the Marquis d’Esgrignon.

“Dangerous?” said Madame d’Espard. “Don’t speak so of my nearest friend. I have never seen or known anything in the princess that did not seem to come from the noblest sentiments.”

“Let the marquis say what he thinks,” cried Rastignac. “When a man has been thrown by a fine horse he thinks it has vices and he sells it.”

Piqued by these words, the Marquis d’Esgrignon looked at d’Arthez and said: —

“Monsieur is not, I trust, on such terms with the princess that we cannot speak freely of her?”

D’Arthez kept silence. D’Esgrignon, who was not wanting in cleverness, replied to Rastignac’s speech with an apologetic portrait of the princess, which put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was extremely obscure to d’Arthez he leaned towards his neighbor, Madame de Montcornet, and asked her, in a whisper, what it meant.

“Excepting yourself – judging by the excellent opinion you seem to have of the princess – all the other guests are said to have been in her good graces.”

“I can assure you that such an accusation is absolutely false,” said Daniel.

“And yet, here is Monsieur d’Esgrignon of an old family of Alencon, who completely ruined himself for her some twelve years ago, and, if all is true, came very near going to the scaffold.”