Letters of Two Brides

De Balzac Honore

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too, unless you have written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819935872
• Langue: English

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LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
By Honore de Balzac
Translated by R. S. Scott
DEDICATION
To George Sand
Your name, dear George, while casting a reflectedradiance on my
book, can gain no new glory from this page. And yetit is neither
self-interest nor diffidence which has led me toplace it there,
but only the wish that it should bear witness to thesolid
friendship between us, which has survived ourwanderings and
separations, and triumphed over the busy malice ofthe world. This
feeling is hardly likely now to change. The goodlycompany of
friendly names, which will remain attached to myworks, forms an
element of pleasure in the midst of the vexationcaused by their
increasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, givesrise to fresh
annoyance, were it only in the reproaches aimed atmy too prolific
pen, as though it could rival in fertility the worldfrom which I
draw my models! Would it not be a fine thing,George, if the
future antiquarian of dead literatures were to findin this
company none but great names and generous hearts,friends bound by
pure and holy ties, the illustrious figures of thecentury? May I
not justly pride myself on this assured possession,rather than on
a popularity necessarily unstable? For him who knowsyou well, it
is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I dohere,
Your friend,
DE BALZAC.
PARIS, June 1840.
LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES
FIRST PART
I. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE.PARIS, September.
Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too,unless you have written to Blois, at our sweet tryst ofletter-writing.
Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on myopening sentence, and keep this excitement for the letter whichshall tell you of my first love. By the way, why always “first? ”Is there, I wonder, a second love?
Don't go running on like this, you will say, buttell me rather how you made your escape from the convent where youwere to take your vows. Well, dear, I don't know about theCarmelites, but the miracle of my own deliverance was, I can assureyou, most humdrum. The cries of an alarmed conscience triumphedover the dictates of a stern policy— there's the whole mystery. Thesombre melancholy which seized me after you left hastened the happyclimax, my aunt did not want to see me die of a decline, and mymother, whose one unfailing cure for my malady was a novitiate,gave way before her.
So I am in Paris, thanks to you, my love! DearRenee, could you have seen me the day I found myself parted fromyou, well might you have gloried in the deep impression you hadmade on so youthful a bosom. We had lived so constantly together,sharing our dreams and letting our fancy roam together, that Iverily believe our souls had become welded together, like those twoHungarian girls, whose death we heard about from M. Beauvisage—poor misnamed being! Never surely was man better cut out by naturefor the post of convent physician!
Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with yourdarling?
In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing butcount over the ties which bind us. But it seemed as though distancehad loosened them; I wearied of life, like a turtle-dove widowed ofher mate. Death smiled sweetly on me, and I was proceeding quietlyto die. To be at Blois, at the Carmelites, consumed by dread ofhaving to take my vows there, a Mlle. de la Valliere, but withouther prelude, and without my Renee! How could I not be sick— sickunto death?
How different it used to be! That monotonousexistence, where every hour brings its duty, its prayer, its task,with such desperate regularity that you can tell what a Carmelitesister is doing in any place, at any hour of the night or day; thatdeadly dull routine, which crushes out all interest in one'ssurroundings, had become for us two a world of life and movement.Imagination had thrown open her fairy realms, and in these ourspirits ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed to theother, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from whichour bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, whichreveled there in frolicsome adventure. The very Lives of theSaints helped us to understand what was so carefully leftunsaid! But the day when I was reft of your sweet company, I becamea true Carmelite, such as they appeared to us, a modern Danaid,who, instead of trying to fill a bottomless barrel, draws everyday, from Heaven knows what deep, an empty pitcher, thinking tofind it full.
My aunt knew nothing of this inner life. How couldshe, who has made a paradise for herself within the two acres ofher convent, understand my revolt against life? A religious life,if embraced by girls of our age, demands either an extremesimplicity of soul, such as we, sweetheart, do not possess, or elsean ardor for self-sacrifice like that which makes my aunt so noblea character. But she sacrificed herself for a brother to whom shewas devoted; to do the same for an unknown person or an idea issurely more than can be asked of mortals.
For the last fortnight I have been gulping down somany reckless words, burying so many reflections in my bosom, andaccumulating such a store of things to tell, fit for your earalone, that I should certainly have been suffocated but for theresource of letter-writing as a sorry substitute for our belovedtalks. How hungry one's heart gets! I am beginning my journal thismorning, and I picture to myself that yours is already started, andthat, in a few days, I shall be at home in your beautiful Gemenosvalley, which I know only through your descriptions, just as youwill live that Paris life, revealed to you hitherto only in ourdreams.
Well, then, sweet child, know that on a certainmorning— a red-letter day in my life— there arrived from Paris alady companion and Philippe, the last remaining of my grandmother'svalets, charged to carry me off. When my aunt summoned me to herroom and told me the news, I could not speak for joy, and onlygazed at her stupidly.
“My child, ” she said, in her guttural voice, “I cansee that you leave me without regret, but this farewell is not thelast; we shall meet again. God has placed on your forehead the signof the elect. You have the pride which leads to heaven or to hell,but your nature is too noble to choose the downward path. I knowyou better than you know yourself; with you, passion, I can see,will be very different from what it is with most women. ”
She drew me gently to her and kissed my forehead.The kiss made my flesh creep, for it burned with that consumingfire which eats away her life, which has turned to black the azureof her eyes, and softened the lines about them, has furrowed thewarm ivory of her temples, and cast a sallow tinge over thebeautiful face.
Before replying, I kissed her hands.
“Dear aunt, ” I said, “I shall never forget yourkindness; and if it has not made your nunnery all that it ought tobe for my health of body and soul, you may be sure nothing short ofa broken heart will bring me back again— and that you would notwish for me. You will not see me here again till my royal lover hasdeserted me, and I warn you that if I catch him, death alone shalltear him from me. I fear no Montespan. ”
She smiled and said:
“Go, madcap, and take your idle fancies with you.There is certainly more of the bold Montespan in you than of thegentle la Valliere. ”
I threw my arms round her. The poor lady could notrefrain from escorting me to the carriage. There her tender gazewas divided between me and the armorial bearings.
At Beaugency night overtook me, still sunk in astupor of the mind produced by these strange parting words. Whatcan be awaiting me in this world for which I have so hungered?
To begin with, I found no one to receive me; myheart had been schooled in vain. My mother was at the Bois deBoulogne, my father at the Council; my brother, the Duc de Rhetore,never comes in, I am told, till it is time to dress for dinner.Miss Griffith (she is not unlike a griffin) and Philippe took me tomy rooms.
The suite is the one which belonged to my belovedgrandmother, the Princess de Vauremont, to whom I owe some sort ofa fortune which no one has ever told me about. As you read this,you will understand the sadness which came over me as I entered aplace sacred to so many memories, and found the rooms just as shehad left them! I was to sleep in the bed where she died.
Sitting down on the edge of the sofa, I burst intotears, forgetting I was not alone, and remembering only how often Ihad stood there by her knees, the better to hear her words. There Ihad gazed upon her face, buried in its brown laces, and worn asmuch by age as by the pangs of approaching death. The room seemedto me still warm with the heat which she kept up there. How comesit that Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu must be like some peasantgirl, who sleeps in her mother's bed the very morrow of her death?For to me it was as though the Princess, who died in 1817, hadpassed away but yesterday.
I saw many things in the room which ought to havebeen removed. Their presence showed the carelessness with whichpeople, busy with the affairs of state, may treat their own, andalso the little thought which had been given since her death tothis grand old lady, who will always remain one of the strikingfigures of the eighteenth century. Philippe seemed to divinesomething of the cause of my tears. He told me that the furnitureof the Princess had been left to me in her will and that my fatherhad allowed all the larger suites to remain dismantled, as theRevolution had left them. On hearing this I rose, and Philippeopened the door of the small drawing-room which leads into thereception-rooms.
In these I found all the well-remembered wreckage;the panels above the doors, which had contained valuable pictures,bare of all but empty frames; broken marbles, mirrors carried off.In old days I was afraid to go up the state staircase and crossthese vast, deserted rooms; so I used to get to the Princess' roomsby a small staircase which runs under th