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

“Now, we are going to the gentleman’s box at the Opera to-night, and M. le Baron de Macumer will visit us there.”

“Macumer needs a touch of the spur then,” said my father, smiling at me, as though I were a female ambassador.

“You mistake Clarissa Harlowe for Figaro!” I cried, with a glance of scorn and mockery. “When you see me with my right hand ungloved, you will give the lie to this impertinent gossip, and will mark your displeasure at it.”

“I may make my mind easy about your future. You have no more got a girl’s headpiece than Jeanne d’Arc had a woman’s heart. You will be happy, you will love nobody, and will allow yourself to be loved.”

This was too much. I burst into laughter.

“What is it, little flirt?” he said.

“I tremble for my country’s interests...”

And seeing him look quite blank, I added:

“At Madrid!”

“You have no idea how this little nun has learned, in a year’s time, to make fun of her father,” he said to the Duchess.

“Armande makes light of everything,” my mother replied, looking me in the face.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why, you are not even afraid of rheumatism on these damp nights,” she said, with another meaning glance at me.

“Oh!” I answered, “the mornings are so hot!”

The Duchess looked down.

“It’s high time she were married,” said my father, “and it had better be before I go.”

“If you wish it,” I replied demurely.

Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d’Espard, were all four blooming like roses in the front of the box. I had seated myself sideways, giving only a shoulder to the house, so that I could see everything, myself unseen, in that spacious box which fills one of the two angles at the back of the hall, between the columns.

Macumer came, stood up, and put his opera-glasses before his eyes so that he might be able to look at me comfortably.

In the first interval entered the young man whom I call “king of the profligates.” The Comte Henri de Marsay, who has great beauty of an effeminate kind, entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a smile upon his lips, and an air of satisfaction over his whole countenance. He first greeted my mother, Mme. d’Espard, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Comte d’Esgrignon, and M. de Canalis; then turning to me, he said:

“I do not know whether I shall be the first to congratulate you on an event which will make you the object of envy to many.”

“Ah! a marriage!” I cried. “Is it left for me, a girl fresh from the convent, to tell you that predicted marriages never come off.”

M. de Marsay bent down, whispering to Macumer, and I was convinced, from the movement of his lips, that what he said was this:

“Baron, you are perhaps in love with that little coquette, who has used you for her own ends; but as the question is one not of love, but of marriage, it is as well for you to know what is going on.”

Macumer treated this officious scandal-monger to one of those glances of his which seem to me so eloquent of noble scorn, and replied to the effect that he was “not in love with any little coquette.” His whole bearing so delighted me, that directly I caught sight of my father, the glove was off.

Felipe had not a shadow of fear or doubt. How well did he bear out my expectations! His faith is only in me, society cannot hurt him with its lies. Not a muscle of the Arab’s face stirred, not a drop of the blue blood flushed his olive cheek.

The two young counts went out, and I said, laughing, to Macumer:

“M. de Marsay has been treating you to an epigram on me.”

“He did more,” he replied. “It was an epithalamium.”

“You speak Greek to me,” I said, rewarding him with a smile and a certain look which always embarrasses him.

My father meantime was talking to Mme. de Maufrigneuse.

“I should think so!” he exclaimed. “The gossip which gets about is scandalous. No sooner has a girl come out than everyone is keen to marry her, and the ridiculous stories that are invented! I shall never force Armande to marry against her will. I am going to take a turn in the promenade, otherwise people will be saying that I allowed the rumor to spread in order to suggest the marriage to the ambassador; and Caesar’s daughter ought to be above suspicion, even more than his wife — if that were possible.”

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d’Espard shot glances first at my mother, then at the Baron, brimming over with sly intelligence and repressed curiosity. With their serpent’s cunning they had at last got an inkling of something going on. Of all mysteries in life, love is the least mysterious! It exhales from women, I believe, like a perfume, and she who can conceal it is a very monster! Our eyes prattle even more than our tongues.

Having enjoyed the delightful sensation of finding Felipe rise to the occasion, as I had wished, it was only in nature I should hunger for more. So I made the signal agreed on for telling him that he might come to my window by the dangerous road you know of. A few hours later I found him, upright as a statue, glued to the wall, his hand resting on the balcony of my window, studying the reflections of the light in my room.

“My dear Felipe,” I said, “You have acquitted yourself well to-night; you behaved exactly as I should have done had I been told that you were on the point of marrying.”

“I thought,” he replied, “that you would hardly have told others before me.”

“And what right have you to this privilege?”

“The right of one who is your devoted slave.”

“In very truth?”

“I am, and shall ever remain so.”

“But suppose this marriage was inevitable; suppose that I had agreed...”

Two flashing glances lit up the moonlight — one directed to me, the other to the precipice which the wall made for us. He seemed to calculate whether a fall together would mean death; but the thought merely passed like lightning over his face and sparkled in his eyes. A power, stronger than passion, checked the impulse.

“An Arab cannot take back his word,” he said in a husky voice. “I am your slave to do with as you will; my life is not mine to destroy.”

The hand on the balcony seemed as though its hold were relaxing. I placed mine on it as I said:

“Felipe, my beloved, from this moment I am your wife in thought and will. Go in the morning to ask my father for my hand. He wishes to retain my fortune; but if you promise to acknowledge receipt of it in the contract, his consent will no doubt be given. I am no longer Armande de Chaulieu. Leave me at once; no breath of scandal must touch Louise de Macumer.”

He listened with blanched face and trembling limbs, then, like a flash, had cleared the ten feet to the ground in safety. It was a moment of agony, but he waved his hand to me and disappeared.

“I am loved then,” I said to myself, “as never woman was before.” And I fell asleep in the calm content of a child, my destiny for ever fixed.

About two o’clock next day my father summoned me to his private room, where I found the Duchess and Macumer. There was an interchange of civilities. I replied quite simply that if my father and M. Henarez were of one mind, I had no reason to oppose their wishes. Thereupon my mother invited the Baron to dinner; and after dinner, we all four went for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, where I had the pleasure of smiling ironically to M. de Marsay as he passed on horseback and caught sight of Macumer sitting opposite to us beside my father.

My bewitching Felipe has had his cards reprinted as follows:

HENAREZ

(Baron de Macumer, formerly Duc de Soria.)

Every morning he brings me with his own hands a splendid bouquet, hidden in which I never fail to find a letter, containing a Spanish sonnet in my honor, which he has composed during the night.