He unworthy you say?
’Tis impossible.
It would Be more easy to die .
DECKAR.
[This motto and that prefixed to Chapter XXII are quoted by Beyle in English, which makes it seem probable that by Deckar he meant the voluminous writer Thomas Dekker, the “Mr. Dickers” of Henslowe’s Diary , the author of Satiromastix and The Honest Whore and the Gull’s Horn-book and the Witch of Edmonton ; but this quotation, which the French editors religiously print in three lines, imagining it to be a specimen of English poetry, bears the marks of Beyle’s composition.— C. K. S. M.]
Octave thought he observed that Mademoiselle de Zohiloff looked at him now and again quite calmly. In spite of his peculiar sense of honour, which formally forbade him to dwell upon relations that no longer existed, he could not help thinking that this was the first time that he had seen her since his admission to himself that he loved her; that morning, in the garden, he had been disturbed by the need for action. “So this,” he told himself, “is the impression a man feels at the sight of a woman whom he loves. But it is possible that Armance feels no more than friendship for me. Last night it was only a piece of presumption on my part that made me think otherwise.”
Throughout this distressing meal, not a word was uttered on the subject that was filling every heart. While Octave was with his father, Madame de Malivert had sent for Armance to inform her of this strange plan of foreign travel. The poor girl felt a need of sincerity; she could not help saying to Madame de Malivert: “Ah, well, Mama, you see now what foundation there was for your ideas!”
These two charming women were plunged in the bitterest grief. “What is the reason for this sudden departure?” Madame de Malivert repeated, “for it cannot be an insane freak; you have cured him of that.” It was agreed that they should not say a word to any one of Octave’s travels, not even to Madame de Bonnivet. It would never do to bind him to his plan, “and perhaps,” said Madame de Malivert, “we may still be allowed to hope. He will abandon an intention so suddenly conceived. It is the reaction from some distressing occurrence.”
This conversation made Armance’s grief more acute, were that possible, than before; ever loyal to the eternal secrecy which she felt to be due to the sentiment that existed between her cousin and herself, she paid the penalty of her discretion. The words uttered by Madame de Malivert, so prudent a friend and one who loved her so tenderly, since they related to facts of which she was but imperfectly aware, offered no consolation to Armance.
And yet, how sorely she needed the counsels of a woman friend as to the several reasons, any one of which, it seemed to her, might equally well have led to this strange conduct on her cousin’s part! But nothing in the world, not even the intense grief that was lacerating her heart, could make her forget the respect that a woman owes to herself. She would have died of shame rather than repeat the words which the man of her choice had addressed to her that morning. “If I made such a disclosure,” she told herself, “and Octave were to hear of it, he would cease to respect me.”
After luncheon, Octave made hasty preparations to start for Paris. He acted precipitately; he had ceased to account to himself for his movements. He was beginning to feel all the bitterness of his plan of departure and was in dread of the danger of finding himself alone with Armance. If her angelic goodness was not irritated by the frightful harshness of his conduct, if she deigned to speak to him, could he promise himself that he would not be swayed by emotion in bidding farewell to so beautiful, so perfect a cousin?
She would see that he loved her; he must nevertheless leave immediately after, and with the undying remorse of not having done his duty even in that supreme moment. Were not his most sacred duties towards the creature who was dearer to him than any one in the world, and whose tranquillity he had perhaps endangered?
Octave drove out of the courtyard with the feelings of a man going to his death; and in truth he would have been glad to feel no more than the grief of a man who is being led to execution. He had dreaded the loneliness of the journey, he was scarcely conscious of it; he was amazed at this momentary respite which he owed to misery.
He had just received a lesson in modesty too severe for him to attribute this tranquillity to that vain philosophy which had been his pride in the past. In this respect misery had made a new man of him. His strength was exhausted by so many violent efforts and feelings; he was no longer capable of feeling. Scarcely had he come down from Andilly upon the plain before he fell into a lethargic slumber, and he was astonished, on reaching Paris, to find himself being driven by the servant who, when they started, had been at the back of his cabriolet.
Armance, hidden in the attic of the house, behind the shutters, had watched every incident of his departure. When Octave’s cabriolet had passed out of sight behind the trees, standing motionless at her post, she had said to herself: “All is over, he will not return.”
Towards evening, after a long spell of weeping, a question that occurred to her caused her some distraction from her grief. “How in the world could Octave, who is so distinguished for his exquisite manners, and was so attentive, so devoted, perhaps even so tender a friend,” she added with a blush, “last night, when we were strolling together, adopt a tone that was so harsh, so insulting, so out of keeping with his character, at an interval of a few hours? Certainly he can have heard nothing about me that could offend him.”
Armance sought to recall every detail of her own conduct, with the secret desire to come upon some fault which might justify the odd tone that Octave had adopted towards her. She could find nothing that was reprehensible; she was in despair at not seeing herself in the wrong, when suddenly an old idea came to her mind.
Might not Octave have felt a recurrence of that frenzy which in the past had led him to commit many strange acts of violence? This memory, albeit painful at first, shed a ray of light in her mind. Armance was so wretched that every argument which she was capable of advancing very soon proved to her that this explanation was the most probable. The conviction that Octave had not been unfair, whatever excuse he might have, was to her an extreme consolation.
As for his madness, if he was mad, it only made her love him more passionately. “He will need all my devotion, and never shall that devotion fail him,” she added with tears in her eyes, and her heart throbbed with generous courage. “Perhaps at this moment Octave exaggerates the obligation that compels a young gentleman who has done nothing hitherto to go to the aid of Greece. Was not his father anxious, some years ago, to make him assume the Cross of Malta? Several members of his family have been Knights of Malta. Perhaps, since he inherits their fame, he thinks himself obliged to keep the vows which they took to fight the Turks?”
Armance recalled that Octave had said to her on the day on which the news came of the fall of Missolonghi: “I cannot understand the calm tranquillity of my uncle the Commander, he who has taken vows, and, before the Revolution, enjoyed the stipend of a considerable Commandery. And we hope to be respected by the Industrial Party!”
By dint of pondering this comforting way of accounting for her cousin’s conduct, Armance said to herself: “Perhaps some personal motive came to reinforce this general obligation by which it is quite possible that Octave’s noble soul believes itself to be bound?
“The idea of becoming a priest which he once held, before the success of one section of the clergy, has perhaps been responsible for some recent criticism of him. Perhaps he thinks it more worthy of his name to go to Greece and to shew there that he is no degenerate scion of his ancestors than to seek in Paris some obscure quarrel the grounds of which would always be difficult to explain and might leave a stain?
“He has not told me, because things of that sort are not mentioned to a woman. He is afraid that his habit of confiding in me may lead him to confess it; that accounts for the harshness of his words. He did not wish to be led on to confide in me something that was not proper....”
Thus it was that Armance’s imagination strayed among suppositions that were consoling, since they portrayed an Octave innocent and generous. “It is only from excess of virtue,” she told herself, with tears in her eyes, “that so generous a being can have the appearance of being in the wrong.”
“A fine woman! a fair woman! a sweet woman!”
“Nay, you must forget that.”
“... O, the world hath not a sweeter creature .”
OTHELLO, Act IV.
While Armance was walking by herself in a part of the woods of Andilly that was screened from every eye, Octave was in Paris occupied with preparations for his departure. He was alternating between a sort of tranquillity, which he was surprised to feel, and moments of the most poignant despair. Shall we attempt to record the different kinds of grief that marked every moment of his life? Will not the reader weary of these melancholy details?
He seemed to hear a continual sound of voices speaking close to his ear, and this strange and unexpected sensation made it impossible for him to forget his misery for an instant.
The most insignificant objects reminded him of Armance. So great was his distraction that he could not see at the head of an advertisement or on a shop sign an A or a Z without being violently compelled to think of that Armance de Zohiloff whom he had vowed to himself that he would forget. This thought fastened upon him like a destroying fire and with all that attraction of novelty, all the interest he would have felt in it, if for ages past the idea of his cousin had never occurred to his mind.
Everything conspired against him; he was helping his servant, the worthy Voreppe, to pack his pistols; the garrulous talk of the man, enchanted to be going off alone with his master and to be in charge of all the arrangements, was some distraction. Suddenly he caught sight of the words engraved in abbreviated characters on the mounting of one of the pistols: “Armance tried to fire this weapon, September 3rd, 182 —.”
He took up a map of Greece; as he unfolded it, there fell out one of the pins decorated with a tiny red flag with which Armance had marked the Turkish positions at the time of the siege of Missolonghi.
The map of Greece slipped from his hands. He stood paralysed by despair. “It is forbidden me, then, to forget!” he cried, raising his eyes to heaven. In vain did he endeavour to stiffen his resistance. Everything round about him was stamped with some memory of Armance. The abbreviated form of that beloved name, followed by some significant date, was everywhere inscribed.
Octave wandered aimlessly about his room; he kept giving orders which he instantly countermanded. “Ah! I do not know what I want,” he told himself in a Paroxysm of grief. “O heavens! What suffering can be greater than this?”
He found no relief in any position. He kept making he strangest movements. If he derived from them a certain surprise and some physical pain, for half an hour, the image of Armance ceased to tonnent him. He tried to inflict on himself a physical pain of some violence whenever his thoughts turned to Armance. Of all the remedies that he could imagine, this was the least ineffectual.
“Ah!” he said to himself at other moments, “I must never see her any more! That is a grief which outweighs all the rest. It is a whetted blade the point of which I must employ to pierce my heart.”
He sent his servant to purchase something that would be required on the journey; he needed to be rid of the man’s presence; he wished for a few moments to abandon himself to his frightful grief. Constraint seemed to envenom it more than ever.
The servant had not been out of the room for five minutes before it seemed to Octave that he would have found some relief in being able to speak to him; to have to suffer in solitude had become the keenest of torments. “And suicide is impossible!” he cried. He went and stood by the window in the hope of seeing something that would occupy his mind for a moment.
Evening came, intoxication proved powerless to help him. He had hoped to derive a little help from sleep, it only maddened him.
Alarmed by the ideas that came to him, ideas which might make him the talk of the household and indirectly compromise Armance: “it would be better,” he told himself, “to give myself leave to make an end of things,” and he turned the key in his door.
Night had fallen; standing motionless on the balcony of his window, he gazed at the sky. The slightest sound attracted his attention; but gradually, every sound ceased. This perfect silence, by leaving him entirely to himself, seemed to him to add yet more to the horror of his position. Did his extreme exhaustion procure him an instant of partial repose, the confused hum of human speech which he seemed to hear sounding in his ear made him awake with a start.
Next morning, when his door opened, the mental torment which urged him to take action was so atrocious that he felt a desire to throw his arms round the neck of the barber who was cutting his hair, and to tell the man how greatly he was to be pitied. It is by a wild shriek that the wretch who is being tortured by the surgeon’s bistouri thinks to relieve his pain.
In his least unendurable moments, Octave felt the need to make conversation with his servant. The most childish trivialities seemed to absorb his whole attention, which he applied to them with a marked assiduity.
His misery had endowed him with an exaggerated modesty. Did his memory recall to him any of those little differences of opinion which arise in society, he was invariably astonished at the positively discourteous emphasis which he had displayed; it seemed to him that his adversary had been entirely in the right and himself in the wrong.
The picture of each of the misfortunes which he had encountered in his life presented itself to him with a Painful intensity; and because he was not to see Armance again, the memory of that swarm of minor evils which a glance from her eyes would have made him forget, revived now with greater bitterness than ever before. He who had so detested boring visitors began now to long for them. A fool who came to see him was his benefactor for the space of an hour. He had to write a polite letter to a distant relative; this ladv was tempted to regard it as a declaration of love, with such sincerity and profundity did he speak of himself, so plain was it from his words that the writer stood in need of pity.
Between these painful alternatives, Octave had reached the evening of the second day after his parting with Armance; he was coming away from his saddler’s. All his preparations would at last be completed during the night, and by the following morning he would be free to start.
Ought he to return to Andilly? This was the question that he was inwardly debating. He perceived with horror that he no longer loved his mother, for she had no place in the reasons that he advanced for visiting Andilly again. He dreaded the sight of Mademoiselle de Zohiloff, all the more because at certain moments he said to himself: “But is not the whole of my conduct an act of deception?”
He dared not answer: “Yes,” whereupon the voice of the tempter said: “Is it not a sacred duty to visit my poor mother whom I promised that I would see again?” “No, wretch,” cried conscience; “that answer is a mere subterfuge; you no longer love your mother.” At this agonizing moment his eyes came to rest mechanically upon a playbill, he saw there the word Otello printed in bold characters. This word recalled to him the existence of Madame d’Aumale. “Perhaps she has come to Paris for Otello ; in that event, it is my duty to speak to her once again. I must make her regard my sudden departure as the idea of a man who is suffering from boredom. I have long kept this plan from my friends; but for many months my departure has been delayed only by pecuniary difficulties of a sort of which a man cannot speak to his wealthy friends.”
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis .
VlRGIL.
[This line, taken from the Aeneid (I, 207), is inadvertently ascribed by Beyle to Horace.— C. K. S. M.]
Octave entered the Théatre-Italien; there he-did indeed find Madame d’Aumale and in her box a certain Marquis de Crêveroche; he was one of the fops who especially besieged that charming woman; but being less intelligent or more self-satisfied than the rest, he fancied himself to enjoy some distinction. As soon as Octave appeared, Madame d’Aumale had no eyes for any one else, and the Marquis de Crêveroche, mad with jealousy, left the box without their so much as noticing his departure.
Octave took his place in the front of the box, and, from force of habit, for, this evening, he was far from seeking any sort of affectation, began to talk to Madame d’Aumale in a voice which sometimes drowned those of the singers. We must confess that he slightly exceeded the amount of impertinence which is tolerated, and, if the audience in the stalls of the Théatre-Italien had been such as is to be found in the other playhouses, he would have had the distraction of a public scene.
In the middle of the second act of Otetto, the boy messenger who sells the libretti of the opera, and proclaims them in nasal accents, came to him with a note couched as follows:
“I am, Sir, naturally contemptuous of all affectations ; one comes upon so many in society, that I take notice of them only when they annoy me. You are annoying me by the racket you are making with the little d’Aumale. Hold your tongue.
“I have the honour to be, etc.,
“Le marquis de Crêveroche.
“Rue de Verneuil, no. 54.”
Octave was profoundly astonished by this note which recalled him to the sordid concerns of life; he was at first like a man who has been drawn up for a moment from hell. His first thought was to feign the joy which soon flooded his heart. He decided that M. de Crêveroche’s opera-glass must be directed at Madame d’Aumale’s box, and that this would give his rival an advantage, if she appeared to be less amused after the delivery of his note.
This word rival which he employed in his unspoken thoughts made him laugh aloud; there was a strange look in his eyes. “Why, what is the matter?” asked Madame d’Aumale. “I am thinking of my rivals. Can there be anywhere in the world a man who tries to do more to win your favour than I?” This touching reflexion was more precious to the young Comtesse than the most impassioned notes of the sublime Pasta.
Late that night, after escorting home Madame d’Aumale, who wished to sup, Octave, once more master of himself, was calm and cheerful. What a difference from the state in which he had been since the night he spent in the forest!
It was by no means easy for him to find a second. His manner created such a barrier and he had so few friends that he was greatly afraid of being indiscreet should he ask one of his boon companions to accompany him to M. de Crêveroche’s. At last he remembered a M. Dolier, an officer on half-pay, whom he saw but seldom, but who was his cousin.
At three o’clock in the morning he sent a note to M. Dolier’s porter; at half-past five he called in person, and shortly afterwards the two presented themselves at the house of M. de Creveroche, who received them with a politeness that was somewhat mannered but adhered strictly to the forms. “I have been expecting you, gentlemen,” he said to them in a careless tone; “I was in hopes that you would be so kind as to do me the honour of taking tea with my friend, M. de Meylan, whom I have the honour to present to you, and myself.”
They drank tea. As they rose from table, M. de Crêveroche mentioned the forest of Meudon.
“This gentleman’s affected politeness is beginning to make me lose my temper, too,” said the officer of the old army as he stepped into Octave’s cabriolet. “Let me drive, you must not tire your wrist. How long is it since you were last in a fencing school?” “Three or four years,” said Octave, “as far as I can remember.” “When did you last fire a pistol?” “Six months ago, perhaps, but I never dreamed of fighting with pistols.” “The devil!” said M. Dolier, “six months! This is beginning to be serious. Hold out your arm. You are trembling like a leaf.” “That is a weakness I have always had,” said Octave.
M. Dolier, greatly annoyed, said not another word. The silent hour that they spent in driving from Paris to Meudon was to Octave the pleasantest moment he had known since his disaster. He had in no way provoked this duel. He meant to defend himself keenly; still, should he be killed, he would be in no way to blame. Situated as he then was, death was for him the greatest good fortune possible.
They arrived at a secluded spot in the forest of Meudon; but M. de Crêveroche, more affected and more of a dandy than ever, offered absurd objections to two or three places. M. Dolier could barely contain himself; Octave had the greatest difficulty in controlling him. “Let me at least talk to the second,” said M. Dolier; “I intend to let him know what I think of the pair of them.” “Let them wait till tomorrow,” Octave checked him in a severe tone; “bear in mind that today you have had the privilege of promising to do me a service.”
M. de Crêveroche’s second chose pistols without making any mention of swords. Octave thought this in bad taste and made a sign to M. Dolier who at once agreed. Finally; it was time to fire. M. de Crêveroche, a skilled marksman, scored the first hit; Octave was wounded in the thigh; his blood flowed in streams. “I have the right to fire,” he said coolly; and M. de Crêveroche received a graze on the leg. “Bandage my thigh with my handkerchief and your own,” Octave said to his servant; “the blood must not flow for some minutes.” “Why, what is your idea?” said M. Dolier. “To continue,” Octave replied. “I do not feel at all weak, I am just as strong as when we came here; I should carry through any other business, why not make an end of this?” “But it seems to me to be more than finished,” said M. Dolier. “And your anger of ten minutes ago, what is become of that?” “The man had no thought of insulting us,” replied M. Dolier; “he is merely a fool.” The seconds met in conference; both were emphatically opposed to a continuation of the duel. Octave had observed that M. de Crêveroche’s second was an inferior creature whom his valour had perhaps thrust into social prominence, but who at heart lived in a state of perpetual adoration of the Marquis; he addressed a few stinging words to the latter. M. de Meylan was reduced to silence by a firm rebuke from his friend, and Octave’s second could not in decency open his lips. As he spoke, Octave was perhaps happier than he had ever been in his life. I cannot say what vague and criminal hope he was founding upon a wound that would keep him prisoner for some days in his mother’s house, and at no great distance, therefore, from Armance. Finally, M. de Crêveroche, purple with rage, and Octave the happiest of men, succeeded after a quarter of an hour in making their seconds reload their pistols.
M. de Crêveroche, made furious by the fear of not being able to dance for some weeks, owing to the graze on his leg, suggested in vain their firing at one another point blank; the seconds threatened to leave their principals on the ground with their servants and to take the pistols from them if they moved one pace nearer. Luck was once again with M. de Crêveroche; he took a careful aim and wounded Octave severely in the right arm. “Sir,” Octave called to him, “you are bound to await my fire, allow me to have my arm bandaged.” This operation having been rapidly performed, and Octave’s servant, an old soldier, having soaked the handkerchief in brandy which made it cling tightly to the arm; “I feel quite strong,” Octave told M. Dolier. He fired, M. de Crêveroche fell, and a minute or two later, died.
Octave, leaning upon his servant’s arm, walked back to his cabriolet, into which he climbed without uttering a single word. M. Dolier could not help expressing his pity for the handsome young fellow who lay dying, and whose limbs they could see growing rigid only a few yards away. “It only means one fop the less,” said Octave calmly.
Twenty minutes later, although the cabriolet was going at a walking pace, “My arm is hurting me badly,” Octave said to M. Dolier, “the handkerchief is too tight,” and all of a sudden he fainted. He recovered consciousness only an hour later, in the cottage of a gardener, a kind-hearted fellow whom M. Dolier had taken the precaution of paying liberally as soon as he entered the cottage.
“You know, my dear cousin,” Octave said to him, “my mother’s delicate health; leave me, go to the Rue Saint-Dominique; if you do not find my mother in Paris, be so extremely kind as to go out to Andilly; tell her, with every possible precaution, that I have had a fall from my horse and have broken a bone in my right arm. Not a word about duels or bullets. I have reason to hope that certain circumstances, about which I shall tell you later, may prevent my mother from being distressed by this slight wound; say nothing about a duel unless to the police, if necessary, and send me a surgeon. If you go on to the mansion house of Andilly, which is five minutes’ walk from the village, ask for Mademoiselle Armance de Zohiloff, she will prepare my mother for the story you have to tell her.”
The sound of Armance’s name revolutionised Octave’s situation. So he dared to utter that name, a luxury he had so often forbidden himself! He would not be parted from her for another month, perhaps. It was an exquisite moment.
While the duel was in progress, the thought of Armance had many times occurred to Octave, but he banished it sternly. After mentioning her name, he ventured to think of her for a moment; a little later, he felt very weak. “Ah! If I were to die,” he said to himself with joy, and allowed himself to think of Armance as in the days before the fatal discovery of his love for her. Octave observed that the peasants who stood round him appeared greatly alarmed; their evident anxiety diminished his remorse for the liberty he was allowing himself in thinking of his cousin. “If my wounds prove serious,” he said to himself, “I shall be allowed to write to her; I have treated her most cruelly.”
No sooner had the idea of writing to Armance occurred to him than it took entire possession of Octave’s mind. “If I feel better,” he said to himself at length, to hush the reproachful voice of conscience, “I shall still be at liberty to burn my letter.” Octave was in great pain; his head had begun to ache violently. “I may die at any moment,” he told himself cheerfully, making an effort to recall a few scraps of anatomical science. “Ah, surely I am entitled to write!”
In the end he was weak enough to call for pen, paper and ink. There was no difficulty in providing him with a sheet of coarse essay paper and a bad pen; but there was no ink in the house. Dare we confess it? Octave was so childish as to write with his own blood, which continued to ooze from the bandage on his right arm. He wrote with his left hand, and found this less difficult than he had supposed:
“My DEAR COUSIN:
“I have just received two wounds, each of which may confine me to the house for a fortnight. As you are, next to my mother, the person whom I venerate most m the world, I write these lines to give you the above information. Were I in any danger, I should tell you. You have made me accustomed to the proofs of your tender affection; would you be so kind as to pay a call, as though by chance, upon my mother, whom M. Dolier is going to inform of a mere fall from my horse and a fracture of my right arm. Are you aware, my dear Armance, that we have two bones in the part of the arm next to the hand? It is one of those bones that is broken. Of all the injuries that confine one to the house for a month, it is the simplest that I can think of. I do not know whether it will be proper for you to come and see me during my illness; I am afraid not. I intend to do something rash: because of the narrow stair to my room, they will perhaps suggest placing my bed in the sitting-room through which one has to pass to reach my mother’s bedroom, and I shall agree. I beg you to burn this letter.... I have just fainted, it is the natural and in no way dangerous effect of a haemorrhage; you see, I am already using scientific terms. You were my last thought as I lost consciousness, my first upon coming to myself. If you think it quite proper, come to Paris before my mother; in the transport of a wounded man, even when it is merely a flesh-wound, there is always something sinister which she must be spared. One of your misfortunes, dear Armance, is that you have lost your parents; if I by any chance (though it is most improbable) die, you will be parted from one who loved you more dearly than a father loves his daughter. I pray to God that He will grant you the happiness that you deserve. That is saying a great, great deal.
“OCTAVE.”
“P.S. Forgive my harsh words, which were necessary at the time.”
The idea of death having come to Octave, he asked for a second sheet of paper, upon which, in the middle, he wrote:
“I bequeath absolutely everything that I now possess to Mademoiselle Armance de Zohiloff, my cousin, as a trifling token of my gratitude for the care which I am sure that she will take of my mother when I am no longer here.
“Signed at Clamart, the.................. 182..
“OCTAVE DE MALJVERT.”
And he made two witnesses attest, the nature of his ink leaving him in some doubt as to the validity of the deed.
Chaptear 22
To the dull plodding man whose vulgar soul is awake only to the
gross and paltry interests of every-day life, the spectacle of a
noble being plunged in misfortune by the resistless force of
passion, serves only as an object of scorn and ridicule.
DECKAR.
[Compare the motto prefixed to Chapter XIX. This, like the other, is presumably of Beyle’s composition.]
As the witnesses completed their attestation, he fainted again; the peasants, greatly concerned, had gone in search of their parish priest.
Finally two surgeons arrived from Paris and pronounced Octave’s condition to be serious. These gentlemen realised what a nuisance it would be for them to come every day to Clamart, and decided that the patient should be removed to Paris.
Octave had sent his letter to Armance by an obliging young peasant who engaged a horse from the post and promised to be, within two hours, at the mansion of Andilly. This letter outstripped M. Dolier, who had been kept for some time in Paris looking for surgeons. The young peasant succeeded admirably in having himself admitted to Mademoiselle de Zohiloff’s presence without making any stir in the house. She read the letter. She had barely the strength to ask a few questions. Her courage had completely deserted her.
The receipt of these dreadful tidings induced in her that tendency to discouragement which is the sequel to great sacrifices, made at the call of duty but with no immediate effect save tranquillity and inertia. She was trying to accustom herself to the thought that she would never see Octave any more, but the idea of his dying had never once occurred to her. This final blow of fortune took her unprepared.
As she listened to the highly alarming details which the young peasant was giving her, she began to sob convulsively, and Mesdames de Bonnivet and de Malivert were in the next room! Armance shuddered at the thought of their hearing her and of having to meet their gaze in the state in which she then was. Such a sight would have been the death of Madame de Malivert, and, in due course, Madame de Bonnivet would have worked it into a tragic and touching anecdote, extremely unpleasant for its heroine.
Mademoiselle de Zohiloff could not, in any case, allow an unhappy mother to see this letter written in the blood of her son. She settled upon the plan of going to Paris, accompanied by her maid. The woman encouraged her to take the young peasant in the carriage with her. I shall pass over the painful details that were repeated to her during the drive. They reached the Rue Saint-Dominique.
She shuddered as the carriage came in sight of the house in a bedroom in which Octave was perhaps drawing his last breath. As it happened, he had not yet arrived; Armance’s last doubt vanished, she was sure that he was lying dead in the peasant’s cottage at Clamart. Her despair made her incapable of giving the simplest orders; finally she was able to say that a bed must be made ready in the drawing-room. The astonished servants did not understand, but obeyed.
Armance had sent out for a hackney carriage, and her one thought was of how to find an excuse that would allow her to go to Clamart. Everything, it seemed to her, must give way to the obligation to succour Octave in his last moments if he still lived. “What is the world to me, or its vain judgments?” she asked herself. “I considered it only for his sake; besides, if people are reasonable, they must approve of my conduct.”
Just as she was about to start, she realised, from a clattering sound at the carriage entrance, that Octave was arriving. The exhaustion caused by the motion of the journey had made him relapse into a state of complete unconsciousness. Armance, drawing open a window that overlooked the court, saw, between the shoulders of the peasants who were carrying the litter, the pale face of Octave in a dead faint. The spectacle of that lifeless head, keeping time with the motion of the litter and swaying from side to side on its pillow, was too painful for Armance who sank upon the window-sill and lay there motionless.
When the surgeons, after a preliminary dressing of his injuries, came to report to her upon their patient’s condition, as to the one member of the family that was in the house, they found her speechless, staring fixedly at them, incapable of replying, and in a state which they judged to be bordering upon insanity.
She listened incredulously to all that they said to her; she believed what her own eyes had seen. This most rational young person had lost all her self-control. Choked by her sobs, she read Octave’s letter over and over again. Carried away by her grief, she dared, in the presence of a maid, to raise it to her lips. At last, as she re-read the letter, she saw the injunction to burn it.
Never was any sacrifice more painful; so she must part with all that remained to her of Octave; still, it was his wish. Notwithstanding her sobs, Armance set to work to copy the letter; she broke off at every line, to press it to her lips. Finally she had the courage to burn it on the marble top of her little table; she gathered up the ashes with loving care.
Octave’s servant, the faithful Voreppe, was sobbing by his master’s bedside; he remembered that he had a second letter written by his master: it was the will. This document reminded Armance that she was not the only sufferer. It was incumbent on her to return to Andilly, to carry news of Octave to his mother. She passed by the bed of the wounded man, whose extreme pallor and immobility seemed to indicate the approach of death; he was still breathing, however. To abandon him in this state to the care of the servants and of a humble surgeon of the neighbourhood, whom she had called in, was the most painful sacrifice of all.
On reaching Andilly, Armance found M. Dolier who had not yet seen Octave’s mother; Armance had forgotten that the whole party had gone off together that morning on an excursion to the Chateau d’Ecouen. They had a long time to wait before the ladies returned, and M. Dolier was able to relate what had occurred that morning: he did not know the motive of the quarrel with M. de Crèveroche.
Finally they heard the horses enter the courtyard. M. Dolier decided to withdraw and to appear only in in the event of M. de Malivert’s desiring his presence. Armance, trying to look as little alarmed as possible, announced to Madame de Malivert that her son had had a fall from his horse while out riding that morning and had broken a bone in his right arm. But her sobs, which after the first sentence she was incapable of controlling, gave the lie to every word of her story.
It would be superfluous to speak of Madame de Mali-vert’s despair; the poor Marquis was dumbfounded.
Madame de Bonnivet, deeply moved herself, and absolutely insisting upon going with them to Paris, failed completely to restore his courage. Madame d’Aumale had made off at the first word of Octave’s accident and went at a gallop along the road to the Clichy barrier; she reached the Rue Saint-Dominique long before the family, learned the whole truth from Octave’s servant and vanished when she heard Madame de Malivert’s carriage stop at the door.
The surgeons had said that in the state of extreme weakness in which their patient lay every strong emotion must be carefully avoided. Madame de Mali-vert took her stand behind her son’s bed so that she could watch him without his seeing her.
She sent in haste for her friend, the famous surgeon Duquerrel; on the first day, that able man pronounced favourably upon Octave’s injuries; the household began to hope. As for Armance, she had been convinced from the first moment, and was never under the slightest illusion. Octave, not being able to speak to her before so many witnesses, tried once to press her hand.
On the fifth day tetanus appeared. In a moment in which an increase of fever gave him strength, Octave begged M. Duquerrel very seriously to tell him the whole truth.
This surgeon, a man of true courage, who had himself been wounded more than once upon the field of battle by a Cossack lance, answered him: “Sir, I shall not conceal from you that there is danger, but I have seen more than one wounded man in your condition survive tetanus.” “In what proportion?” Octave went on.
“Since you are determined to end your life like a man,” said M. Duquerrel, “the odds are two to one that in three days you will have ceased to suffer; if you have to make your peace with heaven, now is your time.” Octave remained pensive after this announcement but presently his reflexions gave place to a feeling of joy and an emphatic smile. The excellent Duquerrel was alarmed by this joy, which he took to be the first signs of delirium.
Tu, sei un nientc, o morte! Ma sarebbe mai dopo sceso il primo
gradino délia mia tomba, che mi verrebbe data di veder la vita come
ella è realmente?
GUASCO.
Until that moment Armance had not seen her cousin save in his mother’s presence. That day, after the surgeon had left, Madame de Malivert thought she could detect in Octave’s eyes an unusual access of strength coupled with a wish to talk to Mademoiselle de Zohiloff. She asked her young relative to take her place for a moment by her son’s bedside, while she herself went to the next room where she was obliged to write a letter.
Octave followed his mother with his eyes; as soon as she was out of sight: “Dear Armance,” he said, “I am going to die; there are certain privileges attached to such a moment, and you will not take offence at what I am now going to say to you for the first time in my life; I die as I have lived, loving you with passion; and death is sweet to me, because it enables me to make you this confession.”
Armance was too much overcome to reply; tears welled into her eyes, and strange to relate, they were tears of happiness. “The most devoted, the tenderest friendship,” she said at length, “binds my destiny to yours.” “I hear you,” Octave replied, “I am doubly glad to die. You bestow on me your friendship, but your heart belongs to another, to that happy man who has received the promise of your hand.”
Octave’s accents were too eloquent of misery; Armance had not the heart to distress him at this supreme moment. “No, my dear cousin,” she said to him, “I can feel nothing more for you than friendship; but no one upon earth is dearer to me than you are.” “And the marriage of which you spoke to me?” said Octave. “In all my life I have allowed myself to tell but that one lie, and I implore you to forgive me. I saw no other way of opposing a plan suggested to Madame de Malivert by her extreme interest in my welfare. Never will I be her daughter, but never shall I love any one more than I love you; it is for you, cousin, to decide whether you desire my friendship at such a price.” “Were I fated to live, it would make me happy.” “I have still a condition to make,” Armance went on. “So that I may venture without constraint to enjoy the happiness of being perfectly sincere with you, promise me that, if heaven grants us your life, there shall never be any question of marriage between us.” “What a strange condition!” said Octave. “Are you prepared to swear to me again that you are not in love with any one?” “I swear to you,” Armance replied with tears in her eyes, “that never in my life have I loved any one but Octave, and that he is by far the dearest person in the world to me; but I can feel nothing stronger for him than friendship,” she added, blushing a deep red at this speech, “and I shall never be able to place any confidence in him unless he gives me his word of honour that, whatever may happen, he will never as long as he lives make any direct or indirect attempt to obtain my hand.” “I swear it,” said Octave, profoundly astonished... “but will Armance permit me to speak to her of my love?” “It will be the name that you will give to our friendship,” said Armance with a bewitching glance. “It is only for the last few days,” Octave went on, “that I have known that I love you. This is not to say that, for a very long time back, never have five minutes passed without the memory of Armance arising to determine whether I ought to deem myself fortunate or unfortunate; but I was blind.
“A moment after our conversation in the woods of Andilly, a pleasantry which Madame d’Aumale let fall proved to me that I love you. That night, I tasted the most cruel torments of despair, I felt that I ought to shun you, I made a vow to forget you and to go-away. Next morning, as I returned from the forest, I came upon you in the garden, and spoke to you harshly, in order that your righteous indignation at such atrocious behaviour on my part might arm me with strength to resist the sentiment that was keeping me in France. Had you addressed to me but a single one of those tender words which you have said to me at times in the past, had you looked me in the face, I should never have found the courage that I required to make me go. Do you forgive me?” “You have made me very unhappy, but I had forgiven you before the confession you have just made me.”
An hour followed during which Octave for the first time in his life tasted the happiness of speaking of his love to the beloved.
A single utterance had at once altered the whole situation between Octave and Armance; and as for a long time past every moment of the life of each had been occupied in thinking of the other, an astonishment that was full of charm made them forget the approach of death; they could not utter a word to one another without finding fresh reasons for loving one another.
More than once Madame de Malivert had come, on tiptoe, to the door of her own room. She had remained unobserved by two creatures who had forgotten everything, even the cruel death that was waiting to part them. In the end she became afraid that Octave’s agitation might increase the peril; she went up to them and said, almost with a laugh: “Are you aware, children, that you have been chattering for more than an hour and a half, it may send up his temperature.” “Dear Mama, I can assure you,” replied Octave, “that I have not felt so well for four days.” He said to Armance: “There is one thing that worries me when my fever is very high. That poor Marquis de Crèveroche had a very fine dog which seemed to be greatly attached to him. I am afraid the poor beast may be neglected now that his master is no more. Could not Voreppe dress up as a gamekeeper and go and buy that fine sporting dog. I should like at least to be certain that it is being well treated. I hope to see it. In any case, I give it to you, my dear cousin.”
After this day of agitation, Octave fell into a deep sleep, but on the morrow the tetanus reappeared. M. Duquerrel felt it his duty to speak to the Marquis, and the whole household was plunged in despair. Notwithstanding the stiffness of his nature, Octave was beloved by the servants; they admired his firmness and sense of justice.
As for him, albeit suffering at times the most agonising torments, happier than he had ever yet been in the whole course of his life, the approaching end of that life made him judge of it at last in a rational manner which intensified his love for Armance. It was to her that he was indebted for the few happy moments which he could perceive amid that ocean of bitter sensations and misfortunes. Acting upon her advice, instead of shunning the world, he had acted, and was cured of many false judgments which had increased his misery. Octave was in constant pain, but, greatly to the astonishment of the worthy Duquerrel, he still lived, he had even some strength.
It took him a whole week to renounce the vow never to fall in love which had been the principal motive of his whole life. The approach of death obliged him first of all to forgive himself with sincerity for having violated his oath. “People die as and how they must,” he told himself, “but I am dying on the pinnacle of happiness; fortune owed me perhaps this compensation after dooming me continually to such misery.
“But I may live,” he thought, and was then more embarrassed than before. At length he arrived at the conclusion that, in the unlikely event of his surviving his injuries, the sign of weakness of character would be in his keeping the rash vow made in early youth and not in breaking it. “For after all the pledge was given solely in the interests of my own happiness and honour. Why, if I live, may I not continue to enjoy in Armance’s company the delights of that tender affection which she has sworn for me? Is it within my power not to feel the passionate love that I have for her?”
Octave was astonished to find himself alive; when at length, after a week of inward struggle, he had solved all the problems that were troubling his spirit, and had entirely resigned himself to accepting the unexpected pleasure which heaven was sending him, in twenty-four hours there was a complete change in his condition, and the most pessimistical of the doctors ventured to answer to Madame de Malivert for her son’s life. Shortly afterwards, the fever ceased, and he sank into a state of extreme weakness, barely able to speak.
On returning to life, Octave was seized with a lasting astonishment; everything was altered in his eyes. “It seems to me,” he said to Armance, “that before that accident I was mad. Every moment I dreamed of you, and managed to extract unhappiness from that charming thought. Instead of making my behaviour conform to the incidents which I encountered in life, I had made myself an a priori rule anterior to all experience.”
“There is bad philosophy,” said Armance with a laugh, “that is why my aunt was so determined to convert you. You are really mad from excess of pride, you learned gentlemen; I cannot think why we choose you, for you are far from merry. For my own part, I despise myself for not having formed a friendship with some quite inconsequent young man who talks of nothing but his tilbury.”
When he was in full possession of his faculties, Octave continued to reproach himself with having broken his word; he had fallen slightly in his own estimation. But the happiness of being able to say everything to Armance, even the remorse that he felt for loving her with passion, created, for a person who had never in his life confided in any one, a state of bliss so far exceeding anything that he had expected that he never had any serious intention of returning to his old moods and prejudices.
“When I promised myself that I would never fall in love, I was setting myself a task beyond human capacity; that is why I have always been miserable. And that violation of nature lasted for five years! I have found a heart the like of which I never had the slightest idea could exist anywhere on earth. Fortune, outwitting my folly, plants happiness in my way, I take offence at it, I almost fly into a passion! In what respect am I breaking the law of honour? Who is there that knew of my vow to reproach me with breaking it? But it is a contemptible habit, this of forgetting one’s promises; is it nothing to have to blush in one’s own sight? But this is a vicious circle; have I not furnished myself with excellent reasons for breaking that rash vow made by a boy of sixteen? The existence of a heart like Armance’s excuses everything.”
Anyhow, such is the force of habit, Octave found perfect happiness only with his cousin. He needed her presence.
An uncertainty crept in now and again to trouble Armance’s happiness. She felt that Octave had not taken her completely into his confidence as to the motives that had led him to avoid her society and to leave France after the night he had spent in the woods of Andilly. She considered it beneath her dignity to ask questions, but she did say to him one day, indeed with a distinct air of severity: “If you wish me to give way to the inclination which I feel in myself to become your great friend, you must give me assurances against the fear of being abandoned at any moment, at the prompting of some odd fancy that may have entered your head. Promise me that you will never leave the place in which I am with you, Paris or Andilly or wherever it may be, without telling me all your reasons.” Octave promised.
On the sixtieth day after his injury, he was able to rise, and the Marquise, who felt keenly the absence of Mademoiselle de Zohiloff, reclaimed her from Madame de Malivert, who was almost pleased to see her go.
People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions. The want of fortune of this young relative and her foreign name, which M. de Soubirane was always careful to mispronounce, had led the Commander, and even M. de Malivert himself at times, to address her almost as they would have addressed a paid companion.
Madame de Malivert was trembling lest Octave should perceive this. The respect which sealed his lips with regard to his father, would have made him all the more insolent towards M. de Soubirane, and the Commander’s easily irritated vanity would not have failed to take its revenge in some discreditable anecdote which he would put in circulation at Mademoiselle de Zohiloff’s expense.
These rumours might come to Octave’s ears, and, knowing the violence of his nature, Madame de Malivert anticipated the most painful scenes, the most impossible, perhaps, to conceal. Fortunately nothing of all that her somewhat vivid imagination had pictured did occur. Octave had noticed nothing. Armance had turned the tables on M. de Soubirane with a few veiled epigrams on the ferocity of the war which, in recent years, the Knights of Malta had waged upon the Turks, while the Russian officers, with names unknown in history, were taking Ismailoff.
Madame de Malivert, thinking in anticipation of her daughter-inlaw’s interests, and of the immense disadvantage of entering society without either a fortune or a name, imparted to a few intimate friends confidences intended to discredit beforehand anything that wounded vanity might inspire in M. de Soubirane. These extreme precautions had perhaps not been out of place; but the Commander, who had been gambling on ‘Change since his sister’s indemnity, and gambling on certainties , lost quite a considerable sum, which made him forget all the niceties of his hatred.
After Armance’s departure, Octave, who saw her now only in Madame de Bonnivet’s presence, began to nourish dark thoughts; his mind dwelt once again upon his old vow. As the wound in his arm gave him constant pain, and even fever at times, the doctors suggested sending him to take the waters at Bareges; but M. Duquerrel, who was intelligent enough not to prescribe the same treatment for all his patients, declared that any air that was at all keen would suffice for his patient’s convalescence, and ordered him to spend the autumn on the slopes of Andilly.
This was a spot dear to Octave; by the following day he had removed there. Not that he had any hope of finding Armance there; Madame de Bonnivet had long been speaking of an expedition into the heart of Poitou. She was having restored at great expense the ancient castle in which Admiral de Bonnivet had had the honour, in times past, to entertain Fran?ois I, and Mademoiselle de Zohiloff was to accompany her.
But the Marquise had had secret information of an approaching list of promotion to the Order of the Holy Spirit. The late King had promised the Blue Riband to M. de Bonnivet. Consequently, the Poitevin architect soon wrote to say that Madame’s presence would be superfluous at that moment, since they were short of workmen, and, a few days after Octave’s arrival, Madame de Bonnivet came and settled at Andilly.
In case the noise made by the servants in moving about their attic quarters should disturb Octave, Madame de Bonnivet transferred them to a peasant’s house near at hand. It was in what one might call material considerations of this sort that the Marquise’s genius triumphed; she brought an exquisite grace to bear upon what she was doing, and was most skilful in employing her wealth to enhance her reputation for cleverness.
The core of her little world was composed of people who for the last forty years had never done anything that was not strictly conventional, the people who set the fashions and are then surprised at them. These declared that, since Madame de Bonnivet was deliberately sacrificing the prospect of a visit to her estates in the country, and was going instead to spend the autumn at Andilly, in order to keep her dear friend Madame de Malivert company, it was the bounden duty of every one with a heart in his bosom to go out and share her solitude.
So popular was this solitude that the Marquise was obliged to take rooms in the little village down the hill in order to accommodate all the friends who came crowding to see her. She put in wallpapers and beds. Soon half the houses in the village had been decorated under her guidance and were occupied. It became the correct thing to come out from Paris and keep this admirable Marquise, who was looking after that poor Madame de Malivert, company, and Andilly was as thronged with fashion throughout the month of September as any watering-place. This new fashion threatened even to invade the Court. “If we had a score of clever women like Madame de Bonnivet,” some one was heard to say, “we might risk going to live at Versailles.” And M. de Bonnivet’s Blue Riband appeared certain.
Never had Octave been so happy. The Duchesse d’Ancre felt this happiness to be quite natural. “Octave,” she said, “may well regard himself as being in a sense the centre of all this movement to Andilly: in the mornings every one sends to inquire after his health; what could be more flattering at his age? That young man is extremely fortunate,” the Duchesse went on to say. “He is getting to know the whole of Paris, and it will make him more impertinent than ever.” This, however, was not the true reason for Octave’s happiness.
He saw that beloved mother, to whom he had given so much cause for anxiety, perfectly happy. She was overjoyed at the brilliant manner in which her son was making his entry into society. Since his triumph, she had begun not to conceal from herself that this kind of distinction was too original and too little copied from recognised types not to need the support of the all-powerful influence of fashion. Failing that reinforcement, it would have passed unnoticed.
One of the things that gave Madame de Malivert great pleasure about this time was a conversation that she had with the famous Prince de R———, who came to spend a night at Andilly.
This most outspoken of courtiers, whose word moreover was law in society, appeared to be taking notice of Octave. “Have you observed, as I have, Madame,” he said to Madame de Malivert, “that your son never utters a syllable of that rehearsed wit which is the curse of our age? He scorns to appear in a drawing-room armed with his tablets, and his wit varies with the feelings that may be aroused in him. That is why the fools are sometimes so cross with him and withhold their support. When any one succeeds in interesting the Vicomte de Malivert, his wit appears to spring at once from his heart or from his character, and that character seems to me to be one of the strongest. Don’t you agree with me, Madame, that character is an organ which has grown obsolete among the men of today? Your son seems to me to be destined to play an exceptional part. He is bound to enjoy the very highest reputation among his contemporaries: he is the most solid, and the most obviously solid man that I know. I should like to see him enter the peerage early in life, or to see you get him made Ma?tre des Requêtes.” “But,” put in Madame de Malivert, almost breathless with the pleasure she felt at the praise of so good a judge, “Octave’s success is anything but general.”
“All the better,” M. de R———— went on with a smile; “it will take the imbeciles of this country three or four years, perhaps, to understand Octave, and you will be able, before any jealousy appears, to push him almost to his proper place; I ask one thing only: restrain your son from appearing in print, he is too well born for that sort of thing.”
The Vicomte de Malivert had still a long way to go before he should be worthy of the brilliant horoscope that had been drawn for him; he had still many prejudices to overcome. His distaste for his fellow men was deeply rooted in his heart; were they prosperous, they filled him with revulsion; wretched, the sight of them was more burdensome still. It was only rarely that he had been able to attempt to cure himself of this distaste by a course of good actions. Had he succeeded in this, his unbounded ambition would have thrust him into their midst and into places where fame is purchased with the most costly sacrifices.
At the time of which we are speaking, Octave was far from any thought of a brilliant destiny for himself. Madame de Malivert had had the good sense not to speak to him of the singular future which M. le Prince de R———— predicted for him; it was only with Armance that she ventured to indulge in the blissful discussion of this prophecy.
Armance possessed in a supreme degree the art of banishing from Octave’s mind all the annoyances that society caused him. Now that he ventured to confess these to her, she was more and more astonished at the revelation of his singular character. There were still days upon which he would draw the most sinister conclusions from the most casual utterances. There was much talk of him at Andilly. “You are tasting the immediate fruits of celebrity,” Armance told him; “people are saying all sorts of foolish things about you. Do you expect a fool, simply because he has the honour to be speaking about you, to find witty things to say?” This was a severe test for a man inclined to take offence.
Armance insisted upon his making her a full and immediate report of all the speeches offensive to himself that he might hear uttered in society. She had no difficulty in proving to him that they had been uttered without any reference to himself, or that they contained only that amount of malice which every one feels towards every one else.
Octave’s self-esteem had nothing now to keep secret from Armance, and these two young hearts had arrived at that unbounded confidence which is perhaps the most charming thing about love. They could not discuss anything under the sun without secretly comparing the charm of their present taste of mutual confidence with the constraint by which they had been bound a few months earlier when they spoke of the same subjects. And this constraint itself, the memory of which was so strong, and in spite of which they were already, at this period, so happy, was a proof of the old and lasting nature of their friendship.
Next day, on reaching Andilly, Octave was not without some hope that Armance would come there also; he announced that he was ill and kept the house. A few davs later, Armance did indeed arrive with Madame de Bonnivet. Octave so arranged that his first outing might take place precisely at seven o’clock in the morning. Armance met him in the garden, where he led her up to an orange tree planted beneath his mother’s windows. There, some months earlier, Armance, her heart wrung by the strange words that he was addressing to her, had fallen to the ground in a momentary faint. She recognised the spot, smiled, and leaned against the tub of the orange tree, shutting her eyes. But for the absence of pallor, she was almost as beautiful as upon the day when she had fainted for love of him. Octave felt keenly aware of the change in their relations. He recognised the little diamond cross which Armance had received from Russia and which was a relic of her mother. As a rule it was hidden, it was now brought to light by the movement which Armance made. Octave for a moment lost his senses; he seized her hand, as upon the day when she had fainted, and his lips ventured to brush her cheek. Armance drew herself up quickly and blushed a deep red. She reproached herself bitterly for this flirtation. “Do you wish to make me angry?” she asked him. “Do you wish to force me never to leave the house without a maid?”
A breach that lasted for some days was the immediate result of Octave’s indiscretion. But between two people who felt a perfect attachment to one another, occasions for quarrelling were rare: whatever Octave might have occasion to do, before considering whether it would be agreeable to himself, he would seek to discover whether Armance would be able to see in it a fresh proof of his devotion.
In the evening, when they were at opposite ends of the immense drawing-room in which Madame de Bonni-vet assembled all the most remarkable and influential people in the Paris of the day, if Octave had to answer a question, he would make use of some word which Armance had just employed, and she could see that the pleasure of repeating this word made him oblivious of the interest he might otherwise have felt in what he was saying. Without any deliberate intention, there grew up thus for the two of them, amid the most delightful and animated society, not so much a habit of private conversation as a sort of echo which, without expressing anything distinctly, seemed to speak of a perfect friendship and an unbounded affection.
May we venture to reproach with a trace of stiffness the extreme politeness which the present generation thinks itself to have inherited from that blissful eighteenth century when there was nothing to hate?
In the midst of this advanced civilisation which for every one of our actions, however trivial it may be, insists upon furnishing us with a pattern which we must copy or state our case against it, this sentiment of sincere and unbounded devotion comes very near to creating perfect happiness.
Armance never found herself alone with her cousin save in the garden, beneath the windows of the mansion, the ground floor of which was occupied, or in Madame de Malivert’s bedroom and in her presence. But this room was very large, and often the frail state of Madame de Malivert’s health obliged her to lie down for a little; she would then ask her children (for thus it was that she always spoke of them) to go over to the bay of the window overlooking the garden, so as not to disturb her rest with the sound of their voices. This tranquil, entirely intimate life in the morning hours gave place in the evening to the life of the highest society.
In addition to the people staying in the village, many carriages would come out from Paris, returning after supper. These cloudless days passed rapidly. It never occurred to either of these two young hearts to admit that they were enjoying one of the rarest forms of happiness that is to be met with here below; on the contrary they supposed that they had still many unsatisfied desires. Having no experience of life, they did not see that these fortunate moments could only be of very brief duration. At most, this happiness, wholly sentimental and deriving nothing from vanity or ambition, might have survived in the bosom of some poor family who never saw any strangers. But they were living in society, they were but twenty years old, they were spending all their time together, and, what was the height of imprudence, they let it be guessed that they were happy, and had an air of caring singularly little what society might think. It was bound to have its revenge.
Armance gave no thought to this peril. The only thing that troubled her from time to time was the necessity of renewing her private vow never to accept her cousin’s hand, whatever might happen. Madame de Malivert, for her part, was quite calm; she had not the least doubt that her son’s present way of life was bringing about an event for which she passionately longed.
Notwithstanding the happy days with which Armance was filling the life of Octave, in her absence there were darker moments in which he pondered the destiny in store for him, and he arrived at the following conclusion: “The most favourable impression of myself reigns in Armance’s heart. I might confess to her the strangest things about myself, and, so far from despising me, or taking a horror of me, she would pity me.”
Octave told his friend that in his boyhood he had had a passion for stealing. Armance was appalled by the terrible details into which his imagination was pleased to enter as to the lamentable consequences of this strange weakness. This admission overturned her whole existence; she sank into a profound abstraction for which she was scolded; but, before a week had passed since this strange confession, she was pitying Octave and more tender to him, were that possible, than ever before. “He needs my consolation,” she told herself, “to make him pardon himself.”
Octave, assured by this experience of the unbounded devotion of her whom he loved, and no longer having to conceal his dark thoughts, became far more affable in society; before the confession of his love, induced by the approach of death, he had been an extremely witty and remarkable, rather than an affable young man; he appealed especially to serious people. These thought they could detect in him the every-day side of a man destined to do great things. The idea of duty was too much in evidence in his manner, and went the length at times of giving him an English expression. His misanthropy was interpreted as pride and ill-humour by the older element of society, and shunned the effort to conquer it. Had he been a peer at this date, he would have won a reputation.
It is the want of the hard school of misfortune that often mars the perfection of the young men who were created to be the most charming. In a day, Octave had been formed by the lessons of that terrible master. It may be said that, at the period of which we are speaking, nothing was wanting to the personal beauty of the young Vicomte, or to the brilliant existence which he enjoyed in society. His praises were sung there without ceasing by Mesdames d’Aumale and de Bonnivet and by the older men.
Madame d’Aumale was justified in saying that he was the most attractive man she had ever met, “for he never bores one,” was her foolish explanation. “Until I knew him, I had never even dreamed of such a recommendation, and the great thing, after all, is to be amused.” “And I,” thought Armance as she listened to this artless speech, “I refuse this man who is so welcome everywhere else the permission to clasp my hand; it is a duty,” she went on, with a sigh, “and never shall I fail to observe it.” There were evenings on which Octave indulged in the supreme happiness of not talking, and of watching the spectacle of Armance, as presented before his eyes. These moments did not pass unobserved, either by Madame d’Aumale, vexed that any one should neglect to provide her with amusement, or by Armance, delighted to see the man she adored occupied exclusively with herself.
The list of promotions in the Order of the Holy Spirit appeared to have been delayed; it was a question of Madame de Bonnivet’s departure for the old castle situated in the heart of Poitou, which had given its name to the family. A new personage was to join the expedition, namely, M. le Chevalier de Bonnivet, the youngest of the sons that the Marquis had had by a former marriage.
Totus mundus stult .
HUNGARIAE R———
About the time of Octave’s wound, a fresh person had arrived from Saint-Acheul to join the Marquise’s party. This was the Chevalier de Bonnivet, her husband’s third son.
Had the old order been still in existence, he would have been destined for Episcopal rank, and, albeit many things have now changed, a sort of family tradition had persuaded everybody, himself included, that he ought to belong to the Church.
This young man, who was barely twenty, was supposed to be very clever; his chief characteristic was a wisdom beyond his years. He was a little creature, very pale; he had a plump face, and, taking him all round, a somewhat priestly air.
One evening the Etoile was brought in. The single paper band that is used to wrap this newspaper happened to be displaced; it was evident that the porter had read it. “And this paper, too!” was the Chevalier de Bonnivet’s impulsive exclamation, “simply to save the cost of a second band of grey paper, folded across the other, it is not afraid of running the risk of letting the lower orders read it, as though the lower orders were intended to read! As though the lower orders were capable of distinguishing good from evil! What are we to expect of the Jacobin papers when we see the Monarchist sheets behave like this?”
This burst of spontaneous eloquence greatly enhanced the Chevalier’s reputation. It at once brought over to his side the elderly people and every one who in Andilly society had more pretensions than wit. The taciturn Baron de Bisset, whom the reader may perhaps remember, rose gravely and crossed the room to embrace the Chevalier without uttering a word. This action cast an air of solemnity over the room for some minutes and amused Madame d’Aumale. She called the Chevalier to her side, tried to make him talk, and took him to some extent under her wing.
All the young women followed in her wake. They made the Chevalier a sort of rival to Octave, who had already been wounded and was confined to the house, in Paris.
But presently they began to find that the Chevalier de Bonnivet, young as he was, gave them a sense of revulsion. He was felt to be singularly wanting in sympathy with all the things in which people are interested. The young man had a future of his own. There might be detected in him an element of deeply rooted treachery towards every one in the world.
On the day following that on which he had shone at the expense of the Etoile , the Chevalier de Bonnivet, who saw Madame d’Aumale from an early hour, opened the ball with her on the lines of Tartufe when he offers a handkerchief to Dorine so that she may cover “things which ought not to be seen.” He read her a serious lecture upon some frivolous remark which she had just made about a procession.
The young Comtesse retorted sharply, brought him repeatedly back to the charge, and was in ecstasies at his absurdity. “He is just like my husband,” she thought. “What a pity poor Octave is not here, how we should laugh!”
The Chevalier de Bonnivet was shocked more than by anvthing else by the sort of renown that clung to the Vicomte de Malivert, whose name he heard upon every tongue. Octave came to Andilly and reappeared in society. The Chevalier supposed him to be in love with Madame d’Aumalc, and, with this idea in his head, formed the plan of developing a passion for the pretty Comtesse, with whom he was most affable.
The Chevalier’s conversation was a perpetual and very clever string of allusions to the masterpieces of the great writers and poets of French and Latin literature. Madame d’Aumalc, whose knowledge was scanty, made him explain the allusions to her, and nothing amused her more. The Chevalier’s really astounding memory did him good service; he repeated without hesitation the lines of Racine or the passages from Bossuet to which he had referred, and indicated clearly and elegantly the bearing of the allusion he had intended to make upon the subject of their conversation. All this had the charm of novelty in the eyes of Madame d’Aumale.
One day the Chevalier said: “A single short article in La Pandore is enough to spoil all the pleasure that we derive from power.” This was considered very deep.
Madame d’Aumale greatly admired the Chevalier; but after a very few weeks had passed he had begun to alarm her. “You have the effect upon me,” she told him, “of a venomous animal encountered in some solitary spot in the heart of the forest. The cleverer you are, the more capable you become of doing me harm.”
Another day she said to him that she would wager that he had of his own initiative discovered the great principle: that speech was given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts.
The Chevalier had been highly successful with the rest of society. For instance, although separated from his father for the last eight years, which he had spent at Saint-Acheul, Brig, and elsewhere, often without the Marquis’s even knowing where he was, once he had returned and was living with him, in less than two months he succeeded in acquiring a complete domination over the mind of the old man, one of the shrewdest courtiers of the time.
M. de Bonnivet had always been afraid of seeing the French Restoration end like the English; but for the last year or so this fear had made a regular miser of him. Society was therefore greatly astonished to see him give thirty thousand francs to his son the Chevalier, as a contribution to the foundation of certain houses of Jesuits.
Every evening, at Andilly, the Chevalier used to recite prayers, together with the forty or fifty servants in attendance upon the people who were staying in the mansion or in the peasants’ houses that had been secured for the Marquise’s friends. These prayers were followed by a short exhortation, improvised and very well expressed.
The elderly women began to make their way to the orangery, where these evening exercises were held. The Chevalier had it decorated with charming flowers, constantly renewed, for which he sent to Paris. Soon this pious and severe exhortation began to arouse a general interest; it was in marked contrast to the frivolous manner in which the rest of the evening was spent.
Commander de Soubirane declared himself one of the warmest supporters of this method of leading back to good principles all the subordinates who of necessity surround important persons and who, he would add, shewed such cruelty the moment the reign of terror began. This was a favourite expression with the Commander, who went about everywhere announcing that within ten years, unless we re-established the Knights of Malta and the Jesuits, we should have a second Robespierre.
Madame de Bonnivet had not failed to send to her son-inlaw’s pious exercises those of her own people whom she could trust. She was greatly astonished to learn that he made doles of money to the servants who came to confide to him in private that they were in want.
The list of promotions in the Order of the Holy Spirit being apparently delayed, Madame de Bonnivet announced that her architect had written to her from Poitou that he had managed to collect a sufficient number of workmen. She made her preparations for the journey, as did Armance. She was none too well pleased when the Chevalier de Bonnivet announced his intention of accompanying her to Bonnivet, in order, he said, to see once more the old castle, the cradle of his race.
The Chevalier saw quite well that his presence annoyed his mother-inlaw; all the more reason for him to accompany her on this expedition. He hoped to impress Armance by recalling the glories of his ancestors; for he had noticed that Armance was friends with the Vicomte de Malivert, and intended to take her from him. These projects, long under consideration, became apparent only at the moment of their execution.
No less successful with the young people than with the more serious element of society, before leaving An-dilly, the Chevalier de Bonnivet had managed artfully to fill Octave with jealousy. After the departure of Armance, Octave even began to think that this Chevalier de Bonnivet, who boasted an esteem and a respect for her that were unbounded, might well be that mysterious suitor whom an old friend of her mother had found for her.
On taking leave of one another, Armance and her cousin were alike tormented by dark suspicions. Armance felt that she was leaving Octave with Madame d’Aumale; but she did not think that she could allow herself to write to him.
During this cruel separation, Octave could do nothing but address to Madame Bonnivet two or three letters, quite charming but couched in a singular tone. Had any one who was a stranger to their society seen these letters, he would have thought that Octave was madly in love with Madame de Bonnivet and dared not confess his love to her.
In the course of this month of absence, Mademoiselle de Zohiloff, whose good sense was no longer troubled by the bliss of being under the same roof as her friend and of seeing him thrice daily, made some severe reflexions. Albeit her behaviour had been perfectly proper, she could not blind herself to the fact that it must be easy to read the exnression in her eyes when she looked at her cousin.
The promiscuity of travel was the cause of her overhearing a conversation among Madame de Bonnivet’s maids which drew many tears from her eyes. These women, like every one who is connected with persons of importance, seeing nothing anywhere but pecuniary interests, set down to this motive the appearance of passion which Armance was assuming, they said, in order to become Vicomtesse de Malivert; no small matter to a penniless girl of such obscure birth.
The idea of her being slandered to such a degree had never occurred to Armance. “I am a ruined girl,” she said to herself; “my feeling for Octave has passed beyond suspicion, and even that is not the worst of my supposed offences. I live under the same roof as he, and it is not possible for him to marry me....” From that instant, the thought of the slanders that were being uttered against her, resisting every argument that Armance could advance, poisoned her life.
There were moments in which she fancied that she had forgotten even her love for Octave. “Marriage is not intended for a girl in my position. I shall not marry him;” she thought; “and I shall have to live far more apart from him. If he forgets me, as is highly probable, I shall go and end my days in a convent; that will be a very proper asylum, and greatly to be desired, for the rest of my existence. I shall think of him, I shall hear of his triumphs. People in society will be able to recall many examples of lives similar to that which I shall be leading.”
These precautions were sound; but the thought, terrible for a girl, that she might, with some appearance of justice, be exposed to the slander of a whole household, and that the household in which Octave was living, cast a shadow over Armance’s life which nothing could dissipate. Did she endeavour to escape from the memory of her misdeeds, for this was the name she gave to the sort of life she had led at Andilly, she would begin to think of Madame d’Aumale, whose attractions she would unconsciously exaggerate. Chevalier de Bonnivet’s company made her regard as even more irremediable than they actually are all the harm that society can do us when we have offended it. Towards the end of her stay at the old Chateau de Bonnivet, Armance spent every night in weeping. Her aunt noticed this melancholy, and did not conceal from the girl how angry it made her.
It was during her stay in Poitou that Armance learned of an event which affected her but little. She had three uncles in the Russian service; these young men perished by suicide during the troubles in that country. Their death was kept secret; but finally, after many months, some letters which the police had not succeeded in intercepting were delivered to Mademoiselle de Zohiloff. She had succeeded to a comfortable fortune, which would make her a suitable match for Octave.
This event was not calculated to appease the anger of Madame de Bonnivet, to whom Armance was necessary. The poor girl had to listen to some very sharp comments on the preference that she shewed for Madame de Malivert’s drawing-room. Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their societv a greater susceptibiltv, and feels more profoundly and, if I may venture to use the expression, more irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.
Armance supposed that nothing was wanting to complete her misery, when the Chevalier de Bonnivet informed her, one morning, with the indifferent air which people assume in repeating a piece of news which is already stale, that Octave was again far from well, and that the wound in his arm had opened and was causing anxiety. Since Armance had left him, Octave, who had become hard to please, was often bored with his mother’s drawing-room. He was guilty of acts of imprudence when shooting, which had serious consequences. He had had the idea of using a little gun, very light, which he fired with his left hand; his success with this weapon encouraged him.
One day, as he was going after a winged partridge, he jumped a ditch and hit his arm against a tree, which brought back his fever. During this fever and the state of weakness that followed it, the artificial happiness, so to speak, which he had enjoyed in the company of Armance, seemed to have become as unsubstantial as a dream.
Mademoiselle de Zohiloff returned at length to Paris, and the following day, at Andilly, the lovers met once more; but they were very sad, and this sorrow was of the worst possible kind: it sprang from a mutual doubt. Armance did not know what tone to adopt with her cousin; and they barely spoke to one another the first day.
While Madame de Bonnivet was indulging in the pleasure of building gothic towers in Poitou and imagining that she was reconstructing the twelfth century, Madame d’Aumale had taken decisive action to ensure the great triumph which came at last to crown the long-nourished ambition of M. de Bonnivet. She was the heroine of Andilly. In order not to have to part with so valuable a friend, during her own absence, Madame del Bonnivet had made the Comtesse d’Aumale agree to occupy a little apartment in the highest part of the mansion, close to Octave’s room. And Madame d’Aumale seemed to every one to be perfectly well aware that it was in a sense for her sake that Octave had received the wound which was causing his fever. It was in extremely bad taste to remind people of the affair, which had cost the Marquis de Crêveroche his life; Madame d’Aumale could not, however, refrain from making frequent allusions to it: the fact is that the way of the world is to natural delicacy pretty much what science is to the mind. Her character, entirely on the surface and not at all romantic, was impressed first and foremost by realities. Armance had not been more than a few hours at Andilly before this constant recurrence to the same topics, by a mind that as a rule was so frivolous, struck her forcibly.
Armance arrived there very sad and greatly discouraged; she felt for the second time in her life the assault of a sentiment that is terrifying, especially when it coincides in a single heart with an exquisite sense of the proprieties. Armance imagined that she had serious fault to find with herself in this respect. “I must keep a strict watch over myself,” she said to herself as she turned away her gaze, which was resting on Octave, to examine the brilliant Comtesse d’Aumale. And each separate charm of the Comtesse was for Armance the occasion of an excessive act of humility. “How could Octave fail to give her the preference?” she said to herself; “I myself feel that she is adorable.”
Such painful sentiments, combined with the remorse which Armance was feeling, wrongly no doubt, but none the less painfully for that, made her far from affable to Octave. On the morning after her arrival, she did not come down betimes to the garden; this had been her habit in the past, and she knew very well that Octave was waiting for her there.
In the course of the day, Octave spoke to her two or three times. An extreme shyness which seized her, with the thought that everybody was watching them, paralysed her, and she barely answered him.
That day, at dinner, mention was made of the fortune which chance had just brought to Armance; and she observed that the news seemed to give little pleasure to Octave, who did not say a single word to her about it. The word that was not uttered, had her cousin addressed it to her, would not have given birth in her heart to a pleasure equivalent to one hundredth part of the grief which his silence caused her.
Octave was not listening; he was thinking of the singular manner that Armance had adopted towards him since her return. “No doubt she no longer cares for me,” he was saying to himself, “or she has made some definite engagement with the Chevalier de Bonnivet.” Octave’s indifference to the news of Armance’s fortune opened for the poor girl a fountain of sorrows both new and deep. For the first time, she thought long and earnestly of this inheritance which had come to her from the North, and which, had Octave loved her, would have made her a more or less suitable match for him.
Octave, to obtain an excuse for writing her a page, had sent to her, in Poitou, a short poem about Greece which had just been published by Lady Nelcombe, a young Englishwoman who was a friend of Madame de Bonnivet. In the whole of France there were but two copies of this poem, which was greatly discussed. Had the copy which had made the journey to Poitou appeared in the drawing-room, a score of indiscreet attempts would have been made to intercept it; Octave begged his cousin to have it sent to his room. Armance, greatly intimidated, could not summon up courage to entrust such a mission to her maid. She went up to the second floor of the mansion and placed the little English poem on the handle of Octave’s door, so that he could not enter his room without noticing it.
Octave was greatly troubled; he saw that Armance was definitely reluctant to speak to him. Feeling himself by no means in the humour to speak to her, he left the drawing-room before ten o’clock. He was agitated by a thousand sinister thoughts. Madame d’Aumale was soon bored with the drawing-room: they were talking politics, and in a depressing tone; she pleaded a headache, and by half-past ten had retired to her own apartment. Probably Octave and Madame d’Aumale were taking a stroll together; this idea, which occurred to every one, made Armance turn pale. Whereupon she reproached herself with her very grief as an impropriety which made her less worthy of her cousin’s esteem.
Next morning, at an early hour, Armance was with Madame de Malivert, who needed a particular hat. Her maid had gone to the village; Armance hurried to the room in which the hat was; she was obliged to pass by the door of Octave’s room. She stood as though thunderstruck on catching sight of the little English poem balanced upon the handle of the door, exactly as she had left it overnight. It was evident that Octave had not gone to his own room.
This was the absolute truth. He had gone out shooting, notwithstanding the recent accident to his arm; and, so as to be able to rise betimes and unobserved, had spent the night in the game-keeper’s cottage. He intended to return to the house at eleven, when the bell rang for luncheon, and thus to escape the reproaches which would have been heaped on him for his imprudence.
On returning to Madame de Malivert’s room, Armance found herself obliged to say that she was unwell. From that moment she was a different person. “I am bearing a fit punishment,” she told herself, “for the false position in which I have placed myself, and which is so improper in a young person. I have come to the stage of sufferings which I cannot admit even to myself.”
When she saw Octave again, Armance had not the courage to put to him any question as to the accident which had prevented him from seeing the little English poem; she would have felt that she was wanting in everything that she owed to herself. This third day was even more sombre than those that had gone before.