A Marriage Settlement

By Honoré de Balzac.

Translated by Clara Bell.

Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on digital scans from the Internet Archive.

The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.

To G. Rossini

A Marriage Settlement

Monsieur de Manerville the elder was a worthy gentleman of Normandy, well known to the Maréchal de Richelieu, who arranged his marriage with one of the richest heiresses of Bordeaux at the time when the old Duke held court in that city as Governor of Guienne. The Norman gentleman sold the lands he owned in Bessin, and established himself as a Gascon, tempted to this step by the beauty of the estate of Lanstrac, a delightful residence belonging to his wife. Towards the end of Louis XV’s reign, he purchased the post of Major of the King’s bodyguard, and lived till 1813, having happily survived the Revolution.

This was how. In the winter of 1790 he made a voyage to Martinique, where his wife had property, leaving the management of his estates in Gascony to a worthy notary’s clerk named Mathias, who had some taint of the new ideas. On his return, the Comte de Manerville found his possessions safe and profitably managed. This shrewdness was the fruit of a graft of the Gascon on the Norman.

Madame de Manerville died in 1810. Her husband, having learned by the dissipations of his youth the importance of money, and, like many old men, ascribing to it a greater power in life than it possesses, Monsieur de Manerville became progressively thrifty, avaricious, and mean. Forgetting that stingy fathers make spendthrift sons, he allowed scarcely anything to his son, though he was an only child.

Paul de Manerville came home from college at Vendôme towards the end of 1810, and for three years lived under his father’s rule. The tyranny exercised by the old man of sixty-nine over his sole heir could not fail to affect a heart and character as yet unformed. Though he did not lack the physical courage which would seem to be in the air of Gascony, Paul dared not contend with his father, and lost the elasticity of resistance that gives rise to moral courage. His suppressed feelings were pent at the bottom of his heart, where he kept them long in reserve without daring to express them; thus, at a later time, when he felt that they were not in accordance with the maxims of the world, though he could think rightly, he could act wrongly. He would have fought at a word, while he quaked at the thought of sending away a servant; for his shyness found a field in any struggle which demanded persistent determination. Though capable of much to escape persecution, he would never have taken steps to hinder it by systematic antagonism, nor have met it by a steady display of strength. A coward in mind, though bold in action, he preserved till late that unconfessed innocence which makes a man the victim, the voluntary dupe, of things against which such natures hesitate to rebel, preferring to suffer rather than complain.

He was a prisoner in his father’s old house, for he had not money enough to disport himself with the young men of the town; he envied them their amusements, but could not share them. The old gentleman took him out every evening in an antique vehicle, drawn by a pair of shabbily-harnessed horses, attended to by two antique and shabbily-dressed menservants, into the society of a royalist clique, consisting of the waifs of the nobility of the old Parlement and of the sword. These two bodies of magnates, uniting after the Revolution to resist Imperial influence, had by degrees become an aristocracy of landowners. Overpowered by the wealth and the shifting fortunes of a great seaport, this Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux responded with scorn to the magnificence of commerce and of the civil and military authorities.

Too young to understand social distinctions and the poverty hidden under the conspicuous vanity to which they give rise, Paul was bored to death among these antiques, not knowing that these associations of his youth would secure to him the aristocratic preeminence for which France will always have a weakness.

He found some little compensation for the dreariness of these evenings in certain exercises such as young men love, for his father insisted on them. In the old aristocrat’s eyes, to be a master of all weapons, to ride well, to play tennis, and have fine manners—in short, the superficial training of the gentleman of the past—constituted the accomplished man. So, every morning Paul fenced, rode, and practised with pistols. The rest of his time he spent in novel-reading, for his father would not hear of the transcendental studies which put a finishing touch to education in these days.

So monotonous an existence might have killed the young man, but that his father’s death delivered him from this tyranny at the time when it was becoming unendurable. Paul found that his father’s avarice had accumulated a considerable fortune, and left him an estate in the most splendid order possible; but he had a horror of Bordeaux, and no love for Lanstrac, where his father had always spent the summer and kept him out shooting from morning till night.

As soon as the legal business was got through, the young heir, eager for pleasure, invested his capital in securities, left the management of the land to old Mathias, his father’s agent, and spent six years away from Bordeaux. Attaché at first to the Embassy at Naples, he subsequently went as secretary to Madrid and London, thus making the tour of Europe. After gaining knowledge of the world, and dissipating a great many illusions, after spending all the money his father had saved, a moment came when Paul, to continue this dashing existence, had to draw on the revenues from his estate which the notary had saved for him. So, at this critical moment, struck by one of those impulses which are regarded as wisdom, he resolved to leave Paris, to return to Bordeaux, to manage his own affairs, to lead the life of a country gentleman, settling at Lanstrac and improving his estate—to marry, and one day to be elected Deputy.

Paul was a Count; titles were recovering their value in the matrimonial market; he could, and ought to marry well. Though many women wish to marry for a title, a great many more look for a husband who has an intimate acquaintance with life. And Paul—at a cost of seven hundred thousand francs, consumed in six years—had acquired this official knowledge, a qualification which cannot be sold, and which is worth more than a stockbroker’s license; which, indeed, demands long studies, an apprenticeship, examinations, acquaintances, friends, and enemies, a certain elegance of appearance, good manners, and a handsome, tripping name; which brings with it success with women, duels, betting at races, many disappointments, dull hours, tiresome tasks, and indigestible pleasures.

In spite of lavish outlay, he had never been the fashion. In the burlesque army of the gay world, the man who is the fashion is the Field Marshal of the forces, the merely elegant man is the Lieutenant-General. Still, Paul enjoyed his little reputation for elegance, and lived up to it. His servants were well drilled, his carriages were approved, his suppers had some success, and his bachelor’s den was one of the seven or eight which were a match in luxury for the finest houses in Paris. But he had not broken a woman’s heart; he played without losing, nor had he extraordinarily brilliant luck; he was too honest to be false to anyone, not even a girl of the streets; he did not leave his love-letters about, nor keep a boxful for his friends to dip into while he was shaving or putting a collar on; but, not wishing to damage his estates in Guienne, he had not the audacity that prompts a young man into startling speculations, and attracts all eyes to watch him; he borrowed of no one, and was so wrongheaded as to lend to friends, who cut him and never mentioned him again, either for good or evil. He seemed to have worked out the sum of his extravagance. The secret of his character lay in his father’s tyranny, which had made him a sort of social hybrid.

One morning Paul de Manerville said to a friend of his named de Marsay, who has since become famous:

“My dear fellow, life has a meaning.”

“You must be seven-and-twenty before you understand it,” said de Marsay, laughing at him.

“Yes, I am seven-and-twenty, and for that very reason I mean to go to live at Lanstrac as a country gentleman. At Bordeaux I shall have my father’s old house, whither I shall send my Paris furniture, and I shall spend three months of every winter here in my rooms, which I shall not give up.”

“And you will marry?”

“I shall marry.”

“I am your friend, my worthy Paul, as you know,” said de Marsay, after a moment’s silence; “well, be a good father and a good husband—and ridiculous for the rest of your days. If you could be happy being ridiculous, the matter would deserve consideration; but you would not be happy. You have not a strong enough hand to rule a household. I do you every justice: you are a perfect horseman; no one holds the ribbons better, makes a horse plunge, or keeps his seat more immovably. But, my dear boy, the paces of matrimony are quite another thing. Why, I can see you led at a round pace by Madame la Comtesse de Manerville, galloping, more often than not much against your will, and presently thrown—thrown into the ditch, and left there with both legs broken.

“Listen to me. You have still forty odd thousand francs a year in land in the Department of the Gironde. Take your horses and your servants, and furnish your house in Bordeaux; you will be King in Bordeaux, you will promulgate there the decrees we pronounce in Paris, you will be the corresponding agent of our follies. Well and good. Commit follies in your provincial capital—nay, even absurdities. So much the better; they may make you famous. But—do not marry.

“Who are the men who marry nowadays? Tradesmen, to increase their capital or to have a second hand at the plough; peasants, who, by having large families, manufacture their own laborers; stockbrokers or notaries, to get money to pay for their licenses; the miserable kings, to perpetuate their miserable dynasties. We alone are free from the packsaddle; why insist on loading yourself? In short, what do you marry for? You must account for such a step to your best friend.

“In the first place, if you should find an heiress as rich as yourself, eighty thousand francs a year for two are not the same thing as forty thousand for one, because you very soon are three—and four if you have a child. Do you really feel any affection for the foolish propagation of Manervilles, who will never give anything but trouble? Do you not know what the duties are of a father and mother? Marriage, my deal Paul, is the most foolish of social sacrifices; our children alone profit by it, and even they do not know its cost till their horses are cropping the weeds that grow over our graves.