The Human Comedy - La Comédie humaine (Complete Edition). Honore de Balzac
you with a
look as you passed; it was happy in its own existence,—you were
the sun of my native land to me, poor exile, who now writes to you
with tears in his eyes as he thinks of the happiness of those first
days.
“When I was eighteen years old, having no one to love, I took for
my ideal mistress a charming woman in Warsaw, to whom I confided
all my thoughts, my wishes; I made her the queen of my nights and
days. She knew nothing of all this; why should she? I loved my
love.
“You can fancy from this incident of my youth how happy I was
merely to live in the sphere of your existence, to groom your
horse, to find the new-coined gold for your purse, to prepare the
splendor of your dinners and your balls, to see you eclipsing the
elegance of those whose fortunes were greater than yours, and all
by my own good management. Ah! with what ardor I have ransacked
Paris when Adam would say to me, ‘She wants this or that.’ It was a joy such as I can never express to you. You wished for a trifle at one time which kept me seven hours in a cab scouring the city; and what delight it was to weary myself for you. Ah! when I saw you, unseen by you, smiling among your flowers, I could forget that no one loved me. On certain days, when my happiness turned my head, I went at night and kissed the spot where, to me, your feet had left their luminous traces. The air you had breathed was balmy; in it I breathed in more of life; I inhaled, as they say persons do in the tropics, a vapor laden with creative principles. “I must tell you these things to explain the strange presumption of my involuntary thoughts,—I would have died rather than avow it until now. “You will remember those few days of curiosity when you wished to know the man who performed the household miracles you had sometimes noticed. I thought,—forgive me, madame,—I believed you might love me. Your good-will, your glances interpreted by me, a lover, seemed to me so dangerous—for me—that I invented that story of Malaga, knowing it was the sort of liaison which women cannot forgive. I did it in a moment when I felt that my love would be communicated, fatally, to you. Despise me, crush me with the contempt you have so often cast upon me when I did not deserve it; and yet I am certain that, if, on that evening when your aunt took Adam away from you, I had said what I have now written to you, I should, like the tamed tiger that sets his teeth once more in living flesh, and scents the blood, and— “Midnight.” “I could not go on; the memory of that hour is still too living. Yes, I was maddened. Was there hope for me in your eyes? then victory with its scarlet banners would have flamed in mine and fascinated yours. My crime has been to think all this; perhaps wrongly. You alone can judge of that dreadful scene when I drove back love, desire, all the most invincible forces of our manhood, with the cold hand of gratitude,—gratitude which must be eternal. “Your terrible contempt has been my punishment. You have shown me there is no return from loathing or disdain. I love you madly. I should have gone had Adam died; all the more must I go because he lives. A man does not tear his friend from the arms of death to betray him. Besides, my going is my punishment for the thought that came to me that I would let him die, when the doctors said that his life depended on his nursing. “Adieu, madame; in leaving Paris I lose all, but you lose nothing now in my being no longer near you. “Your devoted “Thaddeus Paz.”
“If my poor Adam says he has lost a friend, what have I lost?” thought Clementine, sinking into a chair with her eyes fixed on the carpet.
The following letter Constantin had orders to give privately to the count:—
“My dear Adam,—Malaga has told me all. In the name of all your
future happiness, never let a word escape you to Clementine about
your visits to that girl; let her think that Malaga has cost me a
hundred thousand francs. I know Clementine’s character; she will
never forgive you either your losses at cards or your visits to
Malaga.
“I am not going to Khiva, but to the Caucasus. I have the spleen;
and at the pace at which I mean to go I shall be either Prince
Paz in three years, or dead. Good-by; though I have taken
sixty-thousand francs from Nucingen, our accounts are even.
“Thaddeus.”
“Idiot that I was,” thought Adam; “I came near to cutting my throat just now, talking about Malaga.”
It is now three years since Paz went away. The newspapers have as yet said nothing about any Prince Paz. The Comtesse Laginska is immensely interested in the expeditions of the Emperor Nicholas; she is Russian to the core, and reads with a sort of avidity all the news that comes from that distant land. Once or twice every winter she says to the Russian ambassador, with an air of indifference, “Do you know what has become of our poor Comte Paz?”
Alas! most Parisian women, those beings who think themselves so clever and clear-sighted, pass and repass beside a Paz and never recognize him. Yes, many a Paz is unknown and misconceived, but—horrible to think of!—some are misconceived even though they are loved. The simplest women in society exact a certain amount of conventional sham from the greatest men. A noble love signifies nothing to them if rough and unpolished; it needs the cutting and setting of a jeweller to give it value in their eyes.
In January, 1842, the Comtesse Laginska, with her charm of gentle melancholy, inspired a violent passion in the Comte de La Palferine, one of the most daring and presumptuous lions of the day. La Palferine was well aware that the conquest of a woman so guarded by reserve as the Comtesse Laginska was difficult, but he thought he could inveigle this charming creature into committing herself if he took her unawares, by the assistance of a certain friend of her own, a woman already jealous of her.
Quite incapable, in spite of her intelligence, of suspecting such treachery, the Comtesse Laginska committed the imprudence of going with her so-called friend to a masked ball at the Opera. About three in the morning, led away by the excitement of the scene, Clementine, on whom La Palferine had expended his seductions, consented to accept a supper, and was about to enter the carriage of her faithless friend. At this critical moment her arm was grasped by a powerful hand, and she was taken, in spite of her struggles, to her own carriage, the door of which stood open, though she did not know it was there.
“He has never left Paris!” she exclaimed to herself as she recognized Thaddeus, who disappeared when the carriage drove away.
Did any woman ever have a like romance in her life? Clementine is constantly hoping she may again see Paz.
STUDY OF A WOMAN
The Marquise de Listomere is one of those young women who have been brought up in the spirit of the Restoration. She has principles, she fasts, takes the sacrament, and goes to balls and operas very elegantly dressed; her confessor permits her to combine the mundane with sanctity. Always in conformity with the Church and with the world, she presents a living image of the present day, which seems to have taken the word "legality" for its motto. The conduct of the marquise shows precisely enough religious devotion to attain under a new Maintenon to the gloomy piety of the last days of Louis XIV., and enough worldliness to adopt the habits of gallantry of the first years of that reign, should it ever be revived. At the present moment she is strictly virtuous from policy, possibly from inclination. Married for the last seven years to the Marquis de Listomere, one of those deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving their opinion of her until the moment when Monsieur