Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

sixteen. What would have become of me had I learned at twenty that

fame is a lie, that he whose books express the feelings hidden in

my heart was incapable of feeling them himself? Oh! my friend, do

you know what would have become of me? Shall I take you into the

recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said,

“Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates, — marry

me to whom you please.” And the man might have been a notary,

banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as

the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without

two ideas, — he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in

me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded

in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur should have

revealed to my father, or my mother, or my children the suicide of

the creature who at this instant is shaking her fetters, casting

lightnings from her eyes, and flying towards you with eager wing.

See, she is there, at the angle of your desk, like Polyhymnia,

breathing the air of your presence, and glancing about her with a

curious eye. Sometimes in the fields where my husband would have

taken me to walk, I should have wept, apart and secretly, at sight

of a glorious morning; and in my heart, or hidden in a

bureau-drawer, I might have kept some treasure, the comfort of poor

girls ill-used by love, sad, poetic souls, — but ah! I have you , I

believe in you , my friend. That belief straightens all my thoughts

and fancies, even the most fantastic, and sometimes — see how far

my frankness leads me — I wish I were in the middle of the book we

are just beginning; such persistency do I feel in my sentiments,

such strength in my heart to love, such constancy sustained by

reason, such heroism for the duties for which I was created, — if

indeed love can ever be transmuted into duty.

If you were able to follow me to the exquisite retreat where I

fancy ourselves happy, if you knew my plans and projects, the

dreadful word “folly!” might escape you, and I should be cruelly

punished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, I wish to be a spring

of waters inexhaustible as a fertile land for the twenty years

that nature allows me to shine. I want to drive away satiety by

charm. I mean to be courageous for my friend as most women are for

the world. I wish to vary happiness. I wish to put intelligence

into tenderness, and to give piquancy to fidelity. I am filled

with ambition to kill the rivals of the past, to conjure away all

outside griefs by a wife’s gentleness, by her proud abnegation, to

take a lifelong care of the nest, — such as birds can only take for

a few weeks.

Tell me, do you now think me to blame for my first letter? The

mysterious wind of will drove me to you, as the tempest brings the

little rose-tree to the pollard window. In your letter, which I

hold here upon my heart, you cried out, like your ancestor when he

departed for the Crusades, “God wills it.”

Ah! but you will cry out, “What a chatterbox!” All the people

round me say, on the contrary, “Mademoiselle is very taciturn.”

O. d’Este M.

CHAPTER XI. WHAT COMES OF CORRESPONDENCE

The foregoing letters seemed very original to the persons from whom the author of the “Comedy of Human Life” obtained them; but their interest in this duel, this crossing of pens between two minds, may not be shared. For every hundred readers, eighty might weary of the battle. The respect due to the majority in every nation under a constitutional government, leads us, therefore, to suppress eleven other letters exchanged between Ernest and Modeste during the month of September. If, later on, some flattering majority should arise to claim them, let us hope that we can then find means to insert them in their proper place.

Urged by a mind that seemed as aggressive as the heart was lovable, the truly chivalrous feelings of the poor secretary gave themselves free play in these suppressed letters, which seem, perhaps, more beautiful than they really are, because the imagination is charmed by a sense of the communion of two free souls. Ernest’s whole life was now wrapped up in these sweet scraps of paper; they were to him what banknotes are to a miser; while in Modeste’s soul a deep love took the place of her delight in agitating a glorious life, and being, in spite of distance, its mainspring. Ernest’s heart was the complement of Canalis’s glory. Alas! it often takes two men to make a perfect lover, just as in literature we compose a type by collecting the peculiarities of several similar characters. How many a time a woman has been heard to say in her own salon after close and intimate conversations: —

“Such a one is my ideal as to soul, and I love the other who is only a dream of the senses.”

The last letter written by Modeste, which here follows, gives us a glimpse of the enchanted isle to which the meanderings of this correspondence had led the two lovers.

To Monsieur de Canalis, — Be at Havre next Sunday; go to church;

after the morning service, walk once or twice round the nave, and

go out without speaking to any one; but wear a white rose in your

button-hole. Then return to Paris, where you shall receive an

answer. I warn you that this answer will not be what you wish;

for, as I told you, the future is not yet mine. But should I not

indeed be mad and foolish to say yes without having seen you? When

I have seen you I can say no without wounding you; I can make sure

that you shall not see me.

This letter had been sent off the evening before the day when the abortive struggle between Dumay and Modeste had taken place. The happy girl was impatiently awaiting Sunday, when her eyes were to vindicate or condemn her heart and her actions, — a solemn moment in the life of any woman, and which three months of close communion of souls now rendered as romantic as the most imaginative maiden could have wished. Every one, except the mother, had taken this torpor of expectation for the calm of innocence. No matter how firmly family laws and religious precepts may bind, there will always be the Clarissas and the Julies, whose souls like flowing cups o’erlap the brim under some spiritual pressure. Modeste was glorious in the savage energy with which she repressed her exuberant youthful happiness and remained demurely quiet. Let us say frankly that the memory of her sister was more potent upon her than any social conventions; her will was iron in the resolve to bring no grief upon her father and her mother. But what tumultuous heavings were within her breast! no wonder that a mother guessed them.

On the following day Modeste and Madame Dumay took Madame Mignon about mid-day to a seat in the sun among the flowers. The blind woman turned her wan and blighted face toward the ocean; she inhaled the odors of the sea and took the hand of her daughter who remained beside her. The mother hesitated between forgiveness and remonstrance ere she put the important question; for she comprehended the girl’s love and recognized, as the pretended Canalis had done, that Modeste was exceptional in nature.

“God grant that your father return in time! If he delays much longer he will find none but you to love him. Modeste, promise me once more never to leave him,” she said in a fond maternal tone.

Modeste lifted her mother’s hands to her lips and kissed them gently, replying: “Need I say it again?”

“Ah, my child! I did this thing myself. I left my father to follow my husband; and yet my father was all alone; I was all the child he had. Is that why God has so punished me? What I ask of you is to marry as your father wishes, to cherish him in your heart, not to sacrifice him to your own happiness, but to make him the centre of your home. Before losing my sight, I wrote him all my wishes, and I know he will execute them. I enjoined him to keep his property intact and in his own hands; not that I distrust you, my Modeste, for a moment, but who can be sure of a son-in-law? Ah! my daughter, look at me; was I reasonable? One glance of the eye decided my life. Beauty, so often deceitful, in my case spoke true; but even were it the same with you, my poor child, swear to me that you will let your father inquire into the character, the habits, the heart, and the previous life of the man you distinguish with your love — if, by chance, there is such a man.”