VIII

"And so," said Blondet, "our 'perfect lady' lives between English

hypocrisy and the delightful frankness of the eighteenth century--a

bastard system, symptomatic of an age in which nothing that grows up

is at all like the thing that has vanished, in which transition leads

nowhere, everything is a matter of degree; all the great figures

shrink into the background, and distinction is purely personal. I am

fully convinced that it is impossible for a woman, even if she were

born close to a throne, to acquire before the age of five-and-twenty

the encyclopaedic knowledge of trifles, the practice of manoeuvring,

the important small things, the musical tones and harmony of coloring,

the angelic bedevilments and innocent cunning, the speech and the

silence, the seriousness and the banter, the wit and the obtuseness,

the diplomacy and the ignorance which make up the perfect lady."

"And where, in accordance with the sketch you have drawn," said

Mademoiselle des Touches to Emile Blondet, "would you class the female

author? Is she a perfect lady, a woman /comme il faut/?"

"When she has no genius, she is a woman /comme il n'en faut pas/,"

Blondet replied, emphasizing the words with a stolen glance, which

might make them seem praise frankly addressed to Camille Maupin. "This

epigram is not mine, but Napoleon's," he added.

"You need not owe Napoleon any grudge on that score," said Canalis,

with an emphatic tone and gesture. "It was one of his weaknesses to be

jealous of literary genius--for he had his mean points. Who will ever

explain, depict, or understand Napoleon? A man represented with his

arms folded, and who did everything, who was the greatest force ever

known, the most concentrated, the most mordant, the most acid of all

forces; a singular genius who carried armed civilization in every

direction without fixing it anywhere; a man who could do everything

because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will,

conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in

bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code

and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that

foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who

risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads--

those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich,

diplomatists whose death would have saved the French Empire, and who

seemed to him of greater weight than thousands of soldiers; a man to

whom nature, as a rare privilege, had given a heart in a frame of

bronze; mirthful and kind at midnight amid women, and next morning

manipulating Europe as a young girl might amuse herself by splashing

water in her bath! Hypocritical and generous; loving tawdriness and

simplicity; devoid of taste, but protecting the arts; and in spite of

these antitheses, really great in everything by instinct or by

temperament; Caesar at five-and-twenty, Cromwell at thirty; and then,

like my grocer buried in Pere Lachaise, a good husband and a good

father. In short, he improvised public works, empires, kings, codes,

verses, a romance--and all with more range than precision. Did he not

aim at making all Europe France? And after making us weigh on the

earth in such a way as to change the laws of gravitation, he left us

poorer than on the day when he first laid hands on us; while he, who

had taken an empire by his name, lost his name on the frontier of his

empire in a sea of blood and soldiers. A man all thought and all

action, who comprehended Desaix and Fouche."

"All despotism and all justice at the right moments. The true king!"

said de Marsay.

"Ah! vat a pleashre it is to dichest vile you talk," said Baron de

Nucingen.

"But do you suppose that the treat we are giving you is a common one?"

asked Joseph Bridau. "If you had to pay for the charms of conversation

as you do for those of dancing or of music, your fortune would be

inadequate! There is no second performance of the same flash of wit."

"And are we really so much deteriorated as these gentlemen think?"

said the Princesse de Cadignan, addressing the women with a smile at

once sceptical and ironical. "Because, in these days, under a regime

which makes everything small, you prefer small dishes, small rooms,

small pictures, small articles, small newspapers, small books, does

that prove that women too have grown smaller? Why should the human

heart change because you change your coat? In all ages the passions

remain the same. I know cases of beautiful devotion, of sublime

sufferings, which lack the publicity--the glory, if you choose--which

formerly gave lustre to the errors of some women. But though one may

not have saved a King of France, one is not the less an Agnes Sorel.

Do you believe that our dear Marquise d'Espard is not the peer of

Madame Doublet, or Madame du Deffant, in whose rooms so much evil was

spoken and done? Is not Taglioni a match for Camargo? or Malibran the

equal of Saint-Huberti? Are not our poets superior to those of the

eighteenth century? If at this moment, through the fault of the

Grocers who govern us, we have not a style of our own, had not the

Empire its distinguishing stamp as the age of Louis XV. had, and was

not its splendor fabulous? Have the sciences lost anything?"

"I am quite of your opinion, madame; the women of this age are truly

great," replied the Comte de Vandenesse. "When posterity shall have

followed us, will not Madame Recamier appear in proportions as fine as

those of the most beautiful women of the past? We have made so much

history that historians will be lacking. The age of Louis XIV. had but

one Madame de Sevigne; we have a thousand now in Paris who certainly

write better than she did, and who do not publish their letters.

Whether the Frenchwoman be called 'perfect lady,' or great lady, she

will always be /the/ woman among women.

"Emile Blondet has given us a picture of the fascinations of a woman

of the day; but, at need, this creature who bridles or shows off, who

chirps out the ideas of Mr. This and Mr. That, would be heroic. And it

must be said, your faults, mesdames, are all the more poetical,

because they must always and under all circumstances be surrounded by

greater perils. I have seen much of the world, I have studied it

perhaps too late; but in cases where the illegality of your feelings

might be excused, I have always observed the effects of I know not

what chance--which you may call Providence--inevitably overwhelming

such as we consider light women."

"I hope," said Madame de Vandenesse, "that we can be great in other

ways----"

"Oh, let the Comte de Vandenesse preach to us!" exclaimed Madame de

Serizy.

"With all the more reason because he has preached a great deal by

example," said the Baronne de Nucingen.

"On my honor!" said General de Montriveau, "in all the dramas--a word

you are very fond of," he said, looking at Blondet--"in which the

finger of God has been visible, the most frightful I ever knew was

very near being by my act----"

"Well, tell us all about it!" cried Lady Barimore; "I love to

shudder!"

"It is the taste of a virtuous woman," replied de Marsay, looking at

Lord Dudley's lovely daughter.

"During the campaign of 1812," General de Montriveau began, "I was the

involuntary cause of a terrible disaster which may be of use to you,

Doctor Bianchon," turning to me, "since, while devoting yourself to

the human body, you concern yourself a good deal with the mind; it may

tend to solve some of the problems of the will.

"I was going through my second campaign; I enjoyed danger, and laughed

at everything, like the young and foolish lieutenant of artillery that

I was. When we reached the Beresina, the army had, as you know, lost

all discipline, and had forgotten military obedience. It was a medley

of men of all nations, instinctively making their way from north to

south. The soldiers would drive a general in rags and bare-foot away

from their fire if he brought neither wood nor victuals. After the

passage of this famous river disorder did not diminish. I had come

quietly and alone, without food, out of the marshes of Zembin, and was

wandering in search of a house where I might be taken in. Finding none

or driven away from those I came across, happily towards evening I

perceived a wretched little Polish farm, of which nothing can give you

any idea unless you have seen the wooden houses of Lower Normandy, or

the poorest farm-buildings of la Beauce. These dwellings consist of a

single room, with one end divided off by a wooden partition, the

smaller division serving as a store-room for forage.

"In the darkness of twilight I could just see a faint smoke rising

above this house. Hoping to find there some comrades more

compassionate than those I had hitherto addressed, I boldly walked as

far as the farm. On going in, I found the table laid. Several

officers, and with them a woman--a common sight enough--were eating

potatoes, some horseflesh broiled over the charcoal, and some frozen

beetroots. I recognized among the company two or three artillery

captains of the regiment in which I had first served. I was welcomed

with a shout of acclamation, which would have amazed me greatly on the

other side of the Beresina; but at this moment the cold was less

intense; my fellow-officers were resting, they were warm, they had

food, and the room, strewn with trusses of straw, gave the promise of

a delightful night. We did not ask for so much in those days. My

comrades could be philanthropists /gratis/--one of the commonest ways

of being philanthropic. I sat down to eat on one of the bundles of

straw.

"At the end of the table, by the side of the door opening into the

smaller room full of straw and hay, sat my old colonel, one of the

most extraordinary men I ever saw among all the mixed collection of

men it has been my lot to meet. He was an Italian. Now, whenever human

nature is truly fine in the lands of the South, it is really sublime.

I do not know whether you have ever observed the extreme fairness of

Italians when they are fair. It is exquisite, especially under an

artificial light. When I read the fantastical portrait of Colonel

Oudet sketched by Charles Nodier, I found my own sensations in every

one of his elegant phrases. Italian, then, as were most of the

officers of his regiment, which had, in fact, been borrowed by the

Emperor from Eugene's army, my colonel was a tall man, at least eight

or nine inches above the standard, and was admirably proportioned--a

little stout perhaps, but prodigiously powerful, active, and clean-

limbed as a greyhound. His black hair in abundant curls showed up his

complexion, as white as a woman's; he had small hands, a shapely foot,

a pleasant mouth, and an aquiline nose delicately formed, of which the

tip used to become naturally pinched and white whenever he was angry,

as happened often. His irascibility was so far beyond belief that I

will tell you nothing about it; you will have the opportunity of

judging of it. No one could be calm in his presence. I alone, perhaps,

was not afraid of him; he had indeed taken such a singular fancy to me

that he thought everything I did right. When he was in a rage his brow

was knit and the muscles of the middle of his forehead set in a delta,

or, to be more explicit, in Redgauntlet's horseshoe. This mark was,

perhaps, even more terrifying than the magnetic flashes of his blue

eyes. His whole frame quivered, and his strength, great as it was in

his normal state, became almost unbounded.