The Jealousies of a Country Town

By Honoré de Balzac.

Translated by Ellen Marriage.

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Story I

The Old Maid

The Old Maid

To M. Eugène Auguste Georges Louis Midy de la Greneraye Surville, Civil Engineer of the Corps Royal, a token of affection from his brother-in-law.

De Balzac.

Plenty of people must have come across at least one Chevalier de Valois in the provinces; there was one in Normandy, another was extant at Bourges, a third flourished at Alençon in the year 1816, and the South very likely possessed one of its own. But we are not here concerned with the numbering of the Valois tribe. Some of them, no doubt, were about as much of Valois as Louis XIV was a Bourbon; and every Chevalier was so slightly acquainted with the rest, that it was anything but politic to mention one of them when speaking to another. All of them, however, agreed to leave the Bourbons in perfect tranquillity on the throne of France, for it is a little too well proven that Henri IV succeeded to the crown in default of heirs male in the Orléans, otherwise the Valois branch; so that if any Valois exist at all, they must be descendants of Charles of Valois, Duke of Angoulême, and Marie Touchet; and even there the direct line was extinct (unless proof to the contrary is forthcoming) in the person of the Abbé de Rothelin. As for the Valois Saint-Remy, descended from Henri II, they likewise came to an end with the too famous Lamothe-Valois of the Diamond Necklace affair.

Every one of the Chevaliers, if information is correct, was, like the Chevalier of Alençon, an elderly noble, tall, lean, and without fortune. The Bourges Chevalier had emigrated, the Touraine Valois went into hiding during the Revolution, and the Alençon Chevalier was mixed up in the Vendean war, and implicated to some extent in Chouannerie. The last-named gentleman spent the most part of his youth in Paris, where, at the age of thirty, the Revolution broke in upon his career of conquests. Accepted as a true Valois by persons of the highest quality in his province, the Chevalier de Valois d’Alençon (like his namesakes) was remarkable for his fine manners, and had evidently been accustomed to move in the best society.

He dined out every day, and played cards of an evening, and, thanks to one of his weaknesses, was regarded as a great wit; he had a habit of relating a host of anecdotes of the times of Louis Quinze, and those who heard his stories for the first time thought them passably well narrated. The Chevalier de Valois, moreover, had one virtue; he refrained from repeating his own good sayings, and never alluded to his conquests, albeit his smiles and airs were delightfully indiscreet. The old gentleman took full advantage of the old-fashioned Voltairean noble’s privilege of staying away from Mass, but his irreligion was very tenderly dealt with out of regard for his devotion to the Royalist cause.

One of his most remarkable graces (Molé must have learned it of him) was his way of taking snuff from an old-fashioned snuffbox with a portrait of a lady on the lid. The Princess Goritza, a lovely Hungarian, had been famous for her beauty towards the end of the reign of Louis XV; and the Chevalier could never speak without emotion of the foreign great lady whom he loved in his youth, for whom he had fought a duel with M. de Lauzun.

But by this time the Chevalier had lived fifty-eight years, and if he owned to but fifty of them, he might safely indulge himself in that harmless deceit. Thin, fair-complexioned men, among other privileges, retain that youthfulness of shape which in men, as in women, contributes as much as anything to stave off any appearance of age. And, indeed, it is a fact that all the life, or rather, all the grace, which is the expression of life, lies in the figure. Among the Chevalier’s personal traits, mention must be made of the portentous nose with which Nature had endowed him. It cut a pallid countenance sharply into two sections which seemed to have nothing to do with each other; so much so, indeed, that only one-half of his face would flush with the exertion of digestion after dinner; all the glow being confined to the left side, a phenomenon worthy of note in times when physiology is so much occupied with the human heart. M. de Valois’ health was not apparently robust, judging by his long, thin legs, lean frame, and sallow complexion; but he ate like an ogre, alleging, doubtless by way of excuse for his voracity, that he suffered from a complaint known in the provinces as a “hot liver.” The flush on his left cheek confirmed the story; but in a land where meals are developed on the lines of thirty or forty dishes, and last for four hours at a stretch, the Chevalier’s abnormal appetite might well seem to be a special mark of the favor of Providence vouchsafed to the good town. That flush on the left cheek, according to divers medical authorities, is a sign of prodigality of heart; and, indeed, the Chevalier’s past record of gallantry might seem to confirm a professional dictum for which the present chronicler (most fortunately) is in nowise responsible. But in spite of these symptoms, M. de Valois was of nervous temperament, and in consequence long-lived; and if his liver was hot, to use the old-fashioned phrase, his heart was not a whit less inflammable. If there was a line worn here and there in his face, and a silver thread or so in his hair, an experienced eye would have discerned in these signs and tokens the stigmata of desire, the furrows traced by past pleasure. And, in fact, in his face, the unmistakable marks of the crow’s foot and the serpent’s tooth took the shape of the delicate wrinkles so prized at the court of Cytherea.

Everything about the gallant Chevalier revealed the “ladies’ man.” So minutely careful was he over his ablutions, that it was a pleasure to see his cheeks; they might have been brushed over with some miraculous water. That portion of his head which the hair refused to hide from view shone like ivory. His eyebrows, like his hair, had a youthful look, so carefully was their growth trained and regulated by the comb. A naturally fair skin seemed to be yet further whitened by some mysterious preparation; and while the Chevalier never used scent, there was about him, as it were, a perfume of youth which enhanced the freshness of his looks. His hands, that told of race, were as carefully kept as if they belonged to some coxcomb of the gentler sex; you could not help noticing those rose-pink neatly-trimmed fingernails. Indeed, but for his lordly superlative nose, the Chevalier would have looked like a doll.

It takes some resolution to spoil this portrait with the admission of a foible; the Chevalier put cotton wool in his ears, and still continued to wear earrings—two tiny Negroes’ heads set with brilliants. They were of admirable workmanship, it is true, and their owner was so far attached to the singular appendages, that he used to justify his fancy by saying “that his sick headaches had left him since his ears were pierced.” He used to suffer from sick headaches. The Chevalier is not held up as a flawless character; but even if an old bachelor’s heart sends too much blood to his face, is he never therefore to be forgiven for his adorable absurdities? Perhaps (who knows?) there are sublime secrets hidden away beneath them. And besides, the Chevalier de Valois made amends for his Negroes’ heads with such a variety of other and different charms, that society ought to have felt itself sufficiently compensated. He really was at great pains to conceal his age and to make himself agreeable.

First and foremost, witness the extreme care which he gave to his linen, the one distinction in dress which a gentleman may permit himself in modern days. The Chevalier’s linen was invariably fine and white, as befitted a noble. His coat, though remarkably neat, was always somewhat worn, but spotless and uncreased. The preservation of this garment bordered on the miraculous in the opinion of those who noticed the Chevalier’s elegant indifference on this head; not that he went so far as to scrape his clothes with broken glass (a refinement invented by the Prince of Wales), but he set himself to carry out the first principles of dress as laid down by Englishmen of the very highest and finest fashion, and this with a personal element of coxcombry which Alençon was scarcely capable of appreciating. Does the world owe no esteem to those that take such pains for it? And what was all this labor but the fulfilment of that very hardest of sayings in the Gospel, which bids us return good for evil? The freshness of the toilet, the care for dress, suited well with the Chevalier’s blue eyes, ivory teeth, and bland personality; still, the superannuated Adonis had nothing masculine in his appearance, and it would seem that he employed the illusion of the toilet to hide the ravages of other than military campaigns.

To tell the whole truth, the Chevalier had a voice singularly at variance with his delicate fairness. So full was it and sonorous, that you would have been startled by the sound of it unless, with certain observers of human nature, you held the theory that the voice was only what might be expected of such a nose. With something less of volume than a giant double-bass, it was a full, pleasant baritone, reminding you of the hautboy among musical instruments, sweet and resistant, deep and rich.

M. de Valois had discarded the absurd costume still worn by a few antiquated Royalists, and frankly modernized his dress. He always appeared in a maroon coat with gilt buttons, loosely-fitting breeches with gold buckles at the knees, a white sprigged waistcoat, a tight stock, and a collarless shirt; this being a last vestige of eighteenth century costume, which its wearer was the less willing to relinquish because it enabled him to display a throat not unworthy of a lay abbé. Square gold buckles of a kind unknown to the present generation shone conspicuous upon his patent leather shoes. Two watch chains hung in view in parallel lines from a couple of fobs, another survival of an eighteenth century mode which the incroyable did not disdain to copy in the time of the Directory. This costume of a transition period, reuniting two centuries, was worn by the Chevalier with the grace of an old-world marquis, a grace lost to the French stage since Molé’s last pupil, Fleury, retired from the boards and took his secret with him.

The old bachelor’s private life, seemingly open to all eyes, was in reality inscrutable. He lived in a modest lodging (to say the least of it) up two pairs of stairs in a house in the Rue du Cours, his landlady being the laundress most in request in Alençon—which fact explains the extreme elegance of the Chevalier’s linen. Ill luck was so to order it that Alençon one day could actually believe that he had not always conducted himself as befitted a man of his quality, and that in his old age he privately married one Césarine, the mother of an infant which had the impertinence to come without being called.

“He gave his hand to her who for so long had lent her hand to iron his linen,” said a certain M. du Bousquier.

The sensitive noble’s last days were the more vexed by this unpleasant scandal, because, as shall be shown in the course of this present Scene, he had already lost a long-cherished hope for which he had made many a sacrifice.

Mme. Lardot’s two rooms were let to M. le Chevalier de Valois at the moderate rent of a hundred francs per annum. The worthy gentleman dined out every night, and only came home to sleep; he was therefore at charges for nothing but his breakfast, which always consisted of a cup of chocolate with butter and fruit, according to the season. A fire was never lighted in his rooms except in the very coldest winters, and then only while he was dressing. Between the hours of eleven and four M. de Valois took his walks abroad, read the newspapers, and paid calls.

When the Chevalier first settled in Alençon, he magnanimously owned that he had nothing but an annuity of six hundred livres paid in quarterly instalments by his old man of business, with whom the certificates were deposited. This was all that remained of his former wealth. And every three months, in fact, a banker in the town paid him a hundred and fifty francs remitted by one M. Bordin of Paris, the last of the procureurs du Châtelet. These particulars everybody knew, for the Chevalier had taken care to ask his confidant to keep the matter a profound secret. He reaped the fruits of his misfortunes. A cover was laid for him in all the best houses in Alençon; he was asked to every evening party. His talents as a cardplayer, a teller of anecdotes, a pleasant and well-bred man of the world, were so thoroughly appreciated that an evening was spoiled if the connoisseur of the town was not present. The host and hostess and all the ladies present missed his little approving grimace. “You are adorably well dressed,” from the old bachelor’s lips, was sweeter to a young woman in a ballroom than the sight of her rival’s despair.

There were certain old-world expressions which no one could pronounce so well. “My heart,” “my jewel,” “my little love,” “my queen,” and all the dear diminutives of the year 1770 took an irresistible charm from M. de Valois’ lips; in short, the privilege of superlatives was his. His compliments, of which, moreover, he was chary, won him the goodwill of the elderly ladies; he flattered everyone down to the officials of whom he had no need.