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by Honoré de Balzac
Two sisters experience very different marriages, and one is saved from a disastrous liaison.
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A few passages to enter the atmosphere.
The Two Maries
It was half-past eleven in the evening, and two women were seated by the fire of a boudoir in one of the finest houses of the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. The room was hung in blue velvet, of the kind with tender melting lights, which French industry has only lately learned to manufacture. The doors and windows had been draped by a really artistic decorator with rich cashmere curtains, matching the walls in color. From a prettily moulded rose in the centre of the ceiling, hung, by three finely wrought chains, a silver lamp, studded with turquoises. The plan of decoration had been carried out to the very minutest detail; even the ceiling was covered with blue silk, while long bands of cashmere, folded across the silk at equal distances, made stars of white, looped up with pearl beading. The feet sank in the warm pile of a Belgian carpet, close as a lawn, where blue nosegays were sprinkled over a ground the color of unbleached linen. The warm tone of the furniture, which was of solid rosewood and carved after the best antique models, saved from insipidity the general effect which a painter might have called wanting in “accent.” On the chair backs small panels of splendid broche silk—white with blue flowers—were set in broad leafy frames, finely cut on the wood. On either side of the window stood a set of shelves, loaded with valuable knickknacks, the flower of mechanical art, sprung into being at the touch of creative fancy. The mantelpiece of African marble bore a platinum timepiece with arabesques in black enamel, flanked by extravagant specimens of old Dresden—the inevitable shepherd with dainty bouquet forever tripping to meet his bride—embodying the Teutonic conception of ceramic art. Above sparkled the beveled facets of a Venetian mirror in an ebony frame, crowded with figures in relief, relic of some royal residence. Two flower-stands displayed at this season the sickly triumphs of the hothouse, pale, spirit-like blossoms, the pearls of the world of flowers. The room might have been for sale, it was so desperately tidy and prim. It bore no impress of will and character such as marks a happy home, and even the women did not break the general chilly impression, for they were weeping.
The proprietor of the house, Ferdinand du Tillet, was one of the richest bankers in Paris, and the very mention of his name will account for the lavish style of the house decoration, of which the boudoir may be taken as a sample. Du Tillet, though a man of no family and sprung from Heaven knows where, had taken for wife, in 1831, the only unmarried daughter of the Comte de Granville, whose name was one of the most illustrious on the French bench, and who had been made a peer of the realm after the Revolution of July. This ambitious alliance was not got for nothing; in the settlement, du Tillet had to sign a receipt for a dowry of which he never touched a penny. This nominal dowry was the same in amount as the huge sum given to the elder sister on her marriage with Comte Félix de Vandenesse, and which, in fact, was the price paid by the Granvilles in their turn for a matrimonial prize. Thus, in the long run, the bank repaired the breach which aristocracy had made in the finances of the bench. Could the Comte de Vandenesse have seen himself, three years in advance, brother-in-law of a Master Ferdinand, self-styled du Tillet, it is possible he might have declined the match; but who could have foreseen at the close of 1828 the strange upheavals which 1830 was to produce in the political, financial, and moral condition of France? Had Count Félix been told that in the general shuffle he would lose his peer’s coronet, to find it again on his father-in-law’s brow, he would have treated his informant as a lunatic.
A Daughter of Eve
Continue readingCrouching in a listening attitude in one of those low chairs called a chauffeuse, Mme. du Tillet pressed her sister’s hand to her breast with motherly tenderness, and from time to time kissed it. This sister was known in society as Mme. Félix de Vandenesse, the Christian name being joined to that of the family, in order to distinguish the Countess from her sister-in-law, wife of the former ambassador, Charles de Vandenesse, widow of the late Comte de Kergarouët, whose wealth she had inherited, and by birth a de Fontaine. The Countess had thrown herself back upon a lounge, a handkerchief in her other hand, her eyes swimming, her breath choked with half-stifled sobs. She had just poured out her confidences to Mme. du Tillet in a way which proved the tenderness of their sisterly love. In an age like ours it would have seemed so natural for sisters, who had married into such very different spheres, not to be on intimate terms, that a rapid glance at the story of their childhood will be necessary in order to explain the origin of this affection which had survived, without jar or flaw, the alienating forces of society and the mutual scorn of their husbands.
The early home of Marie-Angélique and Marie-Eugénie was a dismal house in the Marais. Here they were brought up by a pious but narrow-minded woman, “imbued with high principle,” as the classic phrase has it, who conceived herself to have performed the whole duty of a mother when her girls arrived at the door of matrimony without ever having traveled beyond the domestic circle embraced by the maternal eye. Up to that time they had never even been to a play. A Paris church was their nearest approach to a theatre. In short, their upbringing in their mother’s house was as strict as it could have been in a convent. From the time that they had ceased to be mere infants they always slept in a room adjoining that of the Countess, the door of which was kept open at night. The time not occupied by dressing, religious observances, and the minimum of study requisite for the children of gentlefolk, was spent in making poor-clothes and in taking exercise, modeled on the English Sunday walk, where any quickening of the solemn pace is checked as being suggestive of cheerfulness. Their lessons were kept within the limits imposed by confessors, chosen from among the least liberal and most Jansenist of ecclesiastics. Never were girls handed over to their husbands more pure and virgin: in this point, doubtless one of great importance, their mother seemed to have seen the fulfilment of her whole duty to God and man. Not a novel did the poor things read till they were married. In drawing an old maid was their instructor, and their only copies were figures whose anatomy would have confounded Cuvier, and so drawn as to have made a woman of the Farnese Hercules. A worthy priest taught them grammar, French, history, geography, and the little arithmetic a woman needs to know. As for literature, they read aloud in the evening from certain authorized books, such as the Lettres édifiantes and Noël’s Leçons de littérature, but only in the presence of their mother’s confessor, since even here passages might occur, which, apart from heedful commentary, would be liable to stir the imagination. Fénelon’s Telemachus was held dangerous. The Comtesse de Granville was not without affection for her daughters, and it showed itself in wishing to make angels of them in the fashion of Marie Alacoque, but the daughters would have preferred a mother less saintly and more human.