Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honoré de Balzac (icecream ebook reader txt) 📕

witty writer talking the nonsense of an amorous sub-lieutenant she listened with an absorbed air and much sensibility; but she laughed in her sleeve.

When d'Arthez was in the street, he asked himself whether he might not have been rather less respectful. He went over in memory those strange confidences--which have, naturally, been much abridged here, for they needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abundance and the graces which accompanied them. The retrospective perspicacity of this man, so natural, so profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and its poignancy, and by the tones of the princess.

"It is true," he said to himself, being unable to sleep, "there are such dramas as that in society. Society covers great horrors with the flowers of its elegance, the embroidery of its gossip, the wit of its lies. We writers invent no more than the truth. Poor Diane! Michel had penetrated that enigma; he said that beneath her covering of ice there lay volcanoes! Bianchon and Rastignac were right; when a man can join the grandeurs of the ideal and the enjoyments of human passion in loving a woman of perfect manners, of intellect, of delicacy, it must be happiness beyond words."

So thinking, he sounded the love that was in him and found it infinite.


CHAPTER V. A TRIAL OF FAITH

The next day, about two in the afternoon, Madame d'Espard, who had seen and heard nothing of the princess for more than a month, went to see her under the impulse of extreme curiosity. Nothing was ever more amusing of its kind than the conversation of these two crafty adders during the first half-hour of this visit.

Diane d'Uxelles cautiously avoided, as she would the wearing of a yellow gown, all mention of d'Arthez. The marquise circled round and round that topic like a Bedouin round a caravan. Diane amused herself; the marquise fumed. Diane waited; she intended to utilize her friend and use her in the chase. Of these two women, both so celebrated in the social world, one was far stronger than the other. The princess rose by a head above the marquise, and the marquise was inwardly conscious of that superiority. In this, perhaps, lay the secret of their intimacy. The weaker of the two crouched low in her false attachment, watching for the hour, long awaited by feeble beings, of springing at the throat of the stronger and leaving the mark of a joyful bite. Diane saw clear; but the world was the dupe of the wile caresses of the two friends.

The instant that the princess perceived a direct question on the lips of her friend, she said:--

"Ah! dearest, I owe you a most complete, immense, infinite, celestial happiness."

"What can you mean?"

"Have you forgotten what we ruminated three months ago in the little garden, sitting on a bench in the sun, under the jasmine? Ah! there are none but men of genius who know how to love! I apply to my grand Daniel d'Arthez the Duke of Alba's saying to Catherine de' Medici: 'The head of a single salmon is worth all the frogs in the world.'"

"I am not surprised that I no longer see you," said Madame d'Espard.

"Promise me, if you meet him, not to say to him one word about me, my angel," said the princess, taking her friend's hand. "I am happy, oh! happy beyond all expression; but you know that in society a word, a mere jest can do much harm. One speech can kill, for they put such venom into a single sentence! Ah! if you knew how I long that you might meet with a love like this! Yes, it is a sweet, a precious triumph for women like ourselves to end our woman's life in this way; to rest in an ardent, pure, devoted, complete and absolute love; above all, when we have sought it long."

"Why do you ask me to be faithful to my dearest friend?" said Madame d'Espard. "Do you think me capable of playing you some villainous trick?"

"When a woman possesses such a treasure the fear of losing it is so strong that it naturally inspires a feeling of terror. I am absurd, I know; forgive me, dear."

A few moments later the marquise departed; as she watched her go the princess said to herself:--

"How she will pluck me! But to save her the trouble of trying to get Daniel away from here I'll send him to her."

At three o'clock, or a few moments after, d'Arthez arrived. In the midst of some interesting topic on which he was discoursing eloquently, the princess suddenly cut him short by laying her hand on his arm.

"Pardon me, my dear friend," she said, interrupting him, "but I fear I may forget a thing which seems a mere trifle but may be of great importance. You have not set foot in Madame d'Espard's salon since the ever-blessed day when I met you there. Pray go at once; not for your sake, nor by way of politeness, but for me. You may already have made her an enemy of mine, if by chance she has discovered that since her dinner you have scarcely left my house. Besides, my friend, I don't like to see you dropping your connection with society, and neglecting your occupations and your work. I should again be strangely calumniated. What would the world say? That I held you in leading-strings, absorbed you, feared comparisons, and clung to my conquest knowing it to be my last! Who will know that you are my friend, my only friend? If you love me indeed, as you say you love me, you will make the world believe that we are purely and simply brother and sister--Go on with what you were saying."

In his armor of tenderness, riveted by the knowledge of so many splendid virtues, d'Arthez obeyed this behest on the following day and went to see Madame d'Espard, who received him with charming coquetry. The marquise took very good care not to say a single word to him about the princess, but she asked him to dinner on a coming day.

On this occasion d'Arthez found a numerous company. The marquise had invited Rastignac, Blondet, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, the two brothers Vandenesse, du Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, the Baron de Nucingen, Raoul Nathan, Lady Dudley, two very treacherous secretaries of embassies and the Chevalier d'Espard, the wiliest person in this assemblage and the chief instigator of his sister-in-law's policy.

When dinner was well under way, Maxime de Trailles turned to d'Arthez and said smiling:--

"You see a great deal, don't you, of the Princesse de Cadignan?"

To this question d'Arthez responded by curtly nodding his head. Maxime de Trailles was a "bravo" of the social order, without faith or law, capable of everything, ruining the women who trusted him, compelling them to pawn their diamonds to give him money, but covering this conduct with a brilliant varnish; a man of charming manners and satanic mind. He inspired all who knew him with equal contempt and fear; but as no one was bold enough to show him any sentiments but those of the utmost courtesy he saw nothing of this public opinion, or else he accepted and shared the general dissimulation. He owed to the Comte de Marsay the greatest degree of elevation to which he could attain. De Marsay, whose knowledge of Maxime was of long-standing, judged him capable of fulfilling certain secret and diplomatic functions which he confided to him and of which de Trailles acquitted himself admirably. D'Arthez had for some time past mingled sufficiently in political matters to know the man for what he was, and he alone had sufficient strength and height of character to express aloud what others thought or said in a whisper.

"Is it for her that you neglect the Chamber?" asked Baron de Nucingen in his German accent.

"Ah! the princess is one of the most dangerous women a man can have anything to do with. I owe to her the miseries of my marriage," exclaimed the Marquis d'Esgrignon.

"Dangerous?" said Madame d'Espard. "Don't speak so of my nearest friend. I have never seen or known anything in the princess that did not seem to come from the noblest sentiments."

"Let the marquis say what he thinks," cried Rastignac. "When a man has been thrown by a fine horse he thinks it has vices and he sells it."

Piqued by these words, the Marquis d'Esgrignon looked at d'Arthez and said:--

"Monsieur is not, I trust, on such terms with the princess that we cannot speak freely of her?"

D'Arthez kept silence. D'Esgrignon, who was not wanting in cleverness, replied to Rastignac's speech with an apologetic portrait of the princess, which put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was extremely obscure to d'Arthez he leaned towards his neighbor, Madame de Montcornet, and asked her, in a whisper, what it meant.

"Excepting yourself--judging by the excellent opinion you seem to have of the princess--all the other guests are said to have been in her good graces."

"I can assure you that such an accusation is absolutely false," said Daniel.

"And yet, here is Monsieur d'Esgrignon of an old family of Alencon, who completely ruined himself for her some twelve years ago, and, if all is true, came very near going to the scaffold."

"I know the particulars of that affair," said d'Arthez. "Madame de Cadignan went to Alencon to save Monsieur d'Esgrignon from a trial before the court of assizes; and this is how he rewards her to-day!"

Madame de Montcornet looked at d'Arthez with a surprise and curiosity that were almost stupid, then she turned her eyes on Madame d'Espard with a look which seemed to say: "He is bewitched!"

During this short conversation Madame de Cadignan was protected by Madame d'Espard, whose protection was like that of the lightning-rod which draws the flash. When d'Arthez returned to the general conversation Maxime de Trailles was saying:--

"With Diane, depravity is not an effect but a cause; perhaps she owes that cause to her exquisite nature; she doesn't invent, she makes no effort, she offers you the choicest refinements as the inspiration of a spontaneous and naive love; and it is absolutely impossible not to believe her."

This speech, which seemed to have been prepared for a man of d'Arthez's stamp, was so tremendous an arraignment that the company appeared to accept it as a conclusion. No one said more; the princess was crushed. D'Arthez looked straight at de Trailles and then at d'Esgrignon with a sarcastic air, and said:--

"The greatest fault of that woman is that she has followed in the wake of men. She squanders patrimonies as they do; she drives her lovers to usurers; she pockets 'dots'; she ruins orphans; she inspires, possibly she commits, crimes, but--"

Never had the two men, whom d'Arthez was chiefly addressing, listened to such plain talk. At that BUT the whole table was startled, every one paused, fork in air, their eyes fixed alternately on the brave author and on the assailants of the princess, awaiting the conclusion of that horrible silence.

"_But_," said d'Arthez, with sarcastic airiness, "Madame la Princesse de Cadignan has one advantage over men: when they have put themselves in danger for her sake, she saves them, and says no harm of any one. Among the multitude, why shouldn't there be one woman who amuses herself with men as men amuse themselves with women? Why not allow the fair sex to take, from time to time, its revenge?"

"Genius is