II

Mademoiselle des Touches always insists on her guests remaining at

table till they leave, having frequently remarked the change which a

move produces in the spirit of a party. Between the dining-room and

the drawing-room the charm is destroyed. According to Sterne, the

ideas of an author after shaving are different from those he had

before. If Sterne is right, may it not be boldly asserted that the

frame of mind of a party at table is not the same as that of the same

persons returned to the drawing-room? The atmosphere is not heady, the

eye no longer contemplates the brilliant disorder of the dessert, lost

are the happy effects of that laxness of mood, that benevolence which

comes over us while we remain in the humor peculiar to the well-filled

man, settled comfortably on one of the springy chairs which are made

in these days. Perhaps we are not more ready to talk face to face with

the dessert and in the society of good wine, during the delightful

interval when every one may sit with an elbow on the table and his

head resting on his hand. Not only does every one like to talk then,

but also to listen. Digestion, which is almost always attent, is

loquacious or silent, as characters differ. Then every one finds his

opportunity.

Was not this preamble necessary to make you know the charm of the

narrative, by which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted the innocent

jesuistry of women, painting it with the subtlety peculiar to persons

who have seen much of the world, and which makes statesmen such

delightful storytellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince

Metternich, they vouchsafe to tell a story?

De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already given

proofs of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were not

indeed surprised to see him display all the talents and various

aptitudes of a statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he

would prove to be a solid politician, or had merely been moulded in

the fire of circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man

whom he had made a prefet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a

long time been a journalist, and who admired de Marsay without

infusing into his admiration that dash of acrid criticism by which, in

Paris, one superior man excuses himself from admiring another.

"Was there ever," said he, "in your former life, any event, any

thought or wish which told you what your vocation was?" asked Emile

Blondet; "for we all, like Newton, have our apple, which falls and

leads us to the spot where our faculties develop----"

"Yes," said de Marsay; "I will tell you about it."

Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, de Marsay's

intimate friends,--all settled themselves comfortably, each in his

favorite attitude, to look at the Minister. Need it be said that the

servants had left, that the doors were shut, and the curtains drawn

over them? The silence was so complete that the murmurs of the

coachmen's voices could be heard from the courtyard, and the pawing

and champing made by horses when asking to be taken back to their

stable.

"The statesman, my friends, exists by one single quality," said the

Minister, playing with his gold and mother-of-pearl dessert knife. "To

wit: the power of always being master of himself; of profiting more or

less, under all circumstances, by every event, however fortuitous; in

short, of having within himself a cold and disinterested other self,

who looks on as a spectator at all the changes of life, noting our

passions and our sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the

judgment of a sort of moral ready-reckoner."

"That explains why a statesman is so rare a thing in France," said old

Lord Dudley.

"From a sentimental point of view, this is horrible," the Minister

went on. "Hence, when such a phenomenon is seen in a young man--

Richelieu, who, when warned overnight by a letter of Concini's peril,

slept till midday, when his benefactor was killed at ten o'clock--or

say Pitt, or Napoleon, he was a monster. I became such a monster at a

very early age, thanks to a woman."

"I fancied," said Madame de Montcornet with a smile, "that more

politicians were undone by us than we could make."

"The monster of which I speak is a monster just because he withstands

you," replied de Marsay, with a little ironical bow.

"If this is a love-story," the Baronne de Nucingen interposed, "I

request that it may not be interrupted by any reflections."

"Reflection is so antipathetic to it!" cried Joseph Bridau.

"I was seventeen," de Marsay went on; "the Restoration was being

consolidated; my old friends know how impetuous and fervid I was then.

I was in love for the first time, and I was--I may say so now--one of

the handsomest young fellows in Paris. I had youth and good looks, two

advantages due to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as of

a conquest. I must be silent as to the rest.--Like all youths, I was

in love with a woman six years older than myself. No one of you here,"

said he, looking carefully round the table, "can suspect her name or

recognize her. Ronquerolles alone, at the time, ever guessed my

secret. He had kept it well, but I should have feared his smile.

However, he is gone," said the Minister, looking round.

"He would not stay to supper," said Madame de Nucingen.

"For six months, possessed by my passion," de Marsay went on, "but

incapable of suspecting that it had overmastered me, I had abandoned

myself to that rapturous idolatry which is at once the triumph and the

frail joy of the young. I treasured /her/ old gloves; I drank an

infusion of the flowers /she/ had worn; I got out of bed at night to

go and gaze at /her/ window. All my blood rushed to my heart when I

inhaled the perfume she used. I was miles away from knowing that woman

is a stove with a marble casing."

"Oh! spare us your terrible verdicts," cried Madame de Montcornet with

a smile.

"I believe I should have crushed with my scorn the philosopher who

first uttered this terrible but profoundly true thought," said de

Marsay. "You are all far too keen-sighted for me to say any more on

that point. These few words will remind you of your own follies.

"A great lady if ever there was one, a widow without children--oh! all

was perfect--my idol would shut herself up to mark my linen with her

hair; in short, she responded to my madness by her own. And how can we

fail to believe in passion when it has the guarantee of madness?

"We each devoted all our minds to concealing a love so perfect and so

beautiful from the eyes of the world; and we succeeded. And what charm

we found in our escapades! Of her I will say nothing. She was

perfection then, and to this day is considered one of the most

beautiful women in Paris; but at that time a man would have endured

death to win one of her glances. She had been left with an amount of

fortune sufficient for a woman who had loved and was adored; but the

Restoration, to which she owed renewed lustre, made it seem inadequate

in comparison with her name. In my position I was so fatuous as never

to dream of a suspicion. Though my jealousy would have been of a

hundred and twenty Othello-power, that terrible passion slumbered in

me as gold in the nugget. I would have ordered my servant to thrash me

if I had been so base as ever to doubt the purity of that angel--so

fragile and so strong, so fair, so artless, pure, spotless, and whose

blue eyes allowed my gaze to sound it to the very depths of her heart

with adorable submissiveness. Never was there the slightest hesitancy

in her attitude, her look, or word; always white and fresh, and ready

for the Beloved like the Oriental Lily of the 'Song of Songs!' Ah! my

friends!" sadly exclaimed the Minister, grown young again, "a man must

hit his head very hard on the marble to dispel that poem!"

This cry of nature, finding an echo in the listeners, spurred the

curiosity he had excited in them with so much skill.

"Every morning, riding Sultan--the fine horse you sent me from

England," de Marsay went on, addressing Lord Dudley, "I rode past her

open carriage, the horses' pace being intentionally reduced to a walk,

and read the order of the day signaled to me by the flowers of her

bouquet in case we were unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw

each other almost every evening in society, and she wrote to me every

day, to deceive the curious and mislead the observant we had adopted a

scheme of conduct: never to look at each other; to avoid meeting; to

speak ill of each other. Self-admiration, swagger, or playing the

disdained swain,--all these old manoeuvres are not to compare on

either part with a false passion professed for an indifferent person

and an air of indifference towards the true idol. If two lovers will

only play that game, the world will always be deceived; but then they

must be very secure of each other.