The Human Comedy (46 page)

For eighteen months, the Duchesse de Langeais had led this empty life, exclusively filled with balls, visits after the ball, objectless triumphs, ephemeral passions that are born and die in the course of an evening. When she entered a salon, all eyes turned toward her; she harvested flattering words and several passionate expressions, which she encouraged by gesture or glance but never allowed to go more than skin deep. Her tone, her manners, everything about her was authoritative. She lived in a sort of fever of vanity and perpetual enjoyment that deafened her. She was daring enough in conversation, she would listen to anything, depraved, as it were, to the surface of her heart. Yet upon returning home, she often blushed at what had made her laugh, at some scandalous story that supplied the details used to discuss theories of love she knew nothing about. Complaisant hypocrites commented to her on the subtle distinctions of modern passion—for women say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each other than are corrupted by men. There was a moment, however, when the duchess understood that until a woman is loved, the world fails to recognize her beauty and wit. What did a husband prove? Simply that a young girl or a woman had a generous dowry or was well brought up, had a clever mother or satisfied the man’s ambitions. But a lover constantly bears witness to her personal perfections. So Madame de Langeais learned while still young that a woman could be loved without being complicit, without proving it, giving pleasure only by the most meager displays of love. And there was more than one saintly hypocrite who showed her how to act out these dangerous dramas.

So the duchess had her court, and the number of those who adored her or courted her guaranteed her virtue. She was flirtatious, friendly, and charming until the end of the ball or the party, then the curtain dropped, and she found herself once again alone, cold, carefree, and ready to revive the following evening for more, equally superficial sensations. There were two or three utterly deceived young men who truly loved her and whom she mocked with perfect callousness. She said to herself, “I am loved, he loves me!” This certainty was enough. Like the miser satisfied to know that his whims might be granted, perhaps she did not go even as far as desire.

One evening she was at the home of one of her close friends, Madame la Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of her humble rivals who cordially despised her and accompanied her everywhere. In such a barbed friendship, in which each one mistrusts the other and never disarms, confidences are cleverly discreet and not infrequently treacherous. After distributing small protective, fond, or disdainful greetings with the air natural to a woman who knew the worth of her smiles, her eyes fell on a man who was a total stranger but whose broad and serious aspect startled her. On seeing him, she felt something almost like dread.

“My dear,” she said, turning to Madame de Maufrigneuse, “who is that newcomer?”

“A man you’ve heard of, no doubt: the Marquis de Montriveau.”

“Ah! Is it he?”

She took her lorgnon and examined him quite impertinently, as she might have done a portrait meant to receive glances but not return them.

“Introduce me to him, then, he must be amusing.”

“No one is more dull and serious, my dear, but he is all the fashion.”

Monsieur Armand de Montriveau was at that moment the unwitting object of general curiosity and deserved it more than any of those fleeting idols Paris seems to need and adores for a few days in order to satisfy its periodic passion for infatuation and factitious enthusiasm. Armand de Montriveau was the only son of General Montriveau, one of those former aristocrats who served the Republic nobly and who perished at
Joubert’s side at Novi
. The orphan had been placed under Bonaparte’s orders at the school of Chalons, with several other sons of generals who died on the field of battle, under the protection of the French republic. Armand de Montriveau left this school without any sort of fortune, entered the artillery corps, and was still merely a major heading up a battalion at the time of
the Fontainebleau disaster
. In his branch of the service there was little opportunity for advancement. First of all, there are fewer officers than in other corps of the army; in the second place, the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican, the emperor’s fears inspired by a group of highly educated, thoughtful men, set against the military fortune of the majority among them. And contrary to usual practice, the officers who gained the status of generals were not always the most remarkable members of the army but rather mediocrities who inspired little fear. The artillery consisted of a separate unit within the army and belonged to Napoleon only on the fields of battle.

In addition to these general reasons, others inherent in Montriveau’s person and his character might account for the slow progress of his career. Alone in the world, thrown from the age of twenty into this whirlwind of men that surrounded Napoleon, he had no interest outside himself and prepared to perish each day. Armand de Montriveau grew used to living only by his own moral compass and the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was usually silent, but his shyness came by no means from a lack of courage; it was a kind of modesty that forbade any vain display. There was no arrogance in his intrepid conduct on the battlefield; he surveyed everything, could calmly give good advice to his comrades and lead them into a hail of bullets, crouching to avoid being hit. He was good, but his expression led one to imagine that he was haughty and severe. With a mathematical rigor in all things, he permitted no deviation from duty nor shirking the consequences of a deed. He never engaged in anything shameful and never asked anything for himself. In short, Armand de Montriveau was one of those great unknown men, philosophical enough to be skeptical of glory, living without much attachment to life because they have not found a way to develop the full extent of their strength or their feelings.

Montriveau was feared, admired, but hardly loved.

Men certainly allow you to rise above them, but they never forgive you for not descending to their level. Thus their feeling toward loftier natures is not unmixed with hatred and fear. Too much honor is, in their eyes, a tacit censure of themselves, something they forgive neither the living nor the dead.

After the farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, however noble and titled, was put on half pay. His old-fashioned probity alarmed the War Ministry, where his attachment to vows made to the Imperial Eagle were well known. During the Hundred Days he was named colonel of the guard and left on the field of Waterloo. Retained in Belgium by his wounds, he was not part of the army of the Loire, but the royal government would not recognize the promotions made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de Montriveau left France. Led by his enterprising spirit—that loftiness of thought previously satisfied by the hazards of war—and driven by his instinctive rectitude for projects of great utility, General Montriveau embarked on a plan to explore Upper Egypt and the unknown parts of Africa, especially the countries of central Africa, which excite so much interest among scholars today. His scientific expedition was long and unhappy. He had collected precious notes meant to resolve certain geographical or commercial problems so ardently sought in our times, and he had arrived, not without surmounting many obstacles, at the heart of Africa when treason delivered him into the hands of a savage tribe. He was stripped of everything, bound into slavery, and dragged for two years through the deserts, threatened with death at every turn and more mistreated than an animal at the whim of pitiless children. His physical strength and his mind’s constancy allowed him to bear all the horrors of his captivity, but his miraculous escape nearly exhausted all his energy. He reached the French colony of Senegal half dead, in tatters, and with nothing but vague memories. The great sacrifices of his journey, the study of African dialects, his discoveries and observations were all lost. A single fact will reveal all his sufferings. During several days, the children of the sheik of the tribe that had enslaved him amused themselves by playing a game that consisted of throwing the small bones of a horse from as far as possible to hit his head and make them stay on it. Montriveau returned to Paris toward the middle of 1818, a ruined man, without protectors, indifferent to society. He would sooner have died twenty times over than ask for favors, even the recognition of his legitimate claims. Adversity and hardship had developed his energy even in small things, and the habit of preserving his self-respect in the face of that moral entity we call conscience led him to put a price on the most seemingly trivial acts. However, his merits and adventures became known through his acquaintance with the principal Parisian men of science and several informed military men. The details of his captivity and the incidents of his journey bore witness to such sangfroid, intelligence, and courage that he won without knowing it that transitory celebrity the salons of Paris lavish but for which artists who would perpetuate it must exert untold efforts. Around the end of this year, his position suddenly changed. From poor, he became rich, or at least he had all the external trappings of wealth. The royal government, seeking to attract men of merit to strengthen the army, at the time made several concessions to certain former officers whose known loyalty and character offered guarantees of fidelity. Monsieur de Montriveau was reinstated in the officer’s corps, his rank of colonel restored; he received his back pay and was admitted into the Royal Guard. These favors, one after another, came to the Marquis de Montriveau though he had never made the slightest request. Friends had done for him what he would have refused to do for himself. Then, contrary to his habits, which were suddenly modified, he went out into society. There he was well received and met with testimonies of admiration on all sides. He seemed to have found some conclusion to his life, but with him everything happened within, there were no external signs. In society he was serious and composed, silent and cold. He had great social success precisely because he was such a contrast to the mass of conventional faces that furnished the salons of Paris, where he was, in effect, something quite new. His speech was concise, like the language of solitary people or savages. His shyness passed for arrogance and was highly pleasing. He was something strange and fine, and women were all the more taken with this original character since he escaped their clever flatteries, the circles they ran around the most powerful men, softening the most unbending spirits. Monsieur de Montriveau understood nothing of this petty Parisian monkey business, and his nature could answer only to the deep vibrations of fine feelings. He might have been promptly dropped without the poetry of his adventures and his life, without the admirers who sung his praises behind his back, without the triumph of self-regard that awaited any woman whom he courted.

The Duchesse de Langeais’s curiosity about this man was as lively as it was natural. By chance, her interest in him had been piqued the evening before when she heard the story of one of Monsieur de Montriveau’s travel adventures that made the most stirring impression on a woman’s lively imagination. During an excursion to find the sources of the Nile, Monsieur de Montriveau had an argument with one of his guides that was surely the most extraordinary debate known in the annals of travel. He had to cross a desert and could go only on foot to the place he wanted to explore. One guide alone was capable of leading him there; no traveler before him had been able to penetrate this part of the country, where the intrepid officer hoped to find the solution to several scientific problems. In spite of his guide’s warning and those of several old men of the region, he decided to undertake this terrible journey.

Gathering all his courage, already sharpened by the warning of ghastly difficulties ahead, he set out the next morning. After walking for an entire day on shifting ground that seemed to slip beneath him at every step, he experienced an unfamiliar fatigue and slept that evening on the sand. He knew that he would have to get up and on his way by dawn the following day, but his guide had promised him that toward midday they would reach their journey’s end. This promise gave him courage and revived his strength, and in spite of his sufferings he continued on his way, cursing science under his breath. But he was ashamed to complain in front of his guide and kept his troubles to himself. After walking a third of the day, his strength failing and his feet bloodied by the march, he asked the guide if they would soon arrive. “In one hour,” the guide told him. Armand found an hour’s worth of strength in himself and continued on. The hour passed without his notice but the horizon remained the same, a horizon of sand as vast as the middle of the ocean, with no palm trees or mountains whose crests ought to have announced the end of his journey. He stopped, threatened the guide, and refused to go farther, reproaching the guide for murdering him, for tricking him; then tears of rage and fatigue rolled down his inflamed cheeks; he was bowed down by the recurrent pain of the march, and his throat felt parched by the desert thirst. The guide, standing quite still, listened to his complaints with an ironic expression while studying, with the seeming indifference of Orientals, the imperceptible random shifts of that almost blackish sand, like darkened gold. “I was mistaken,” he remarked coldly. “It’s been too long since I came this way. We are certainly on the right track but it will take another two hours.” “This man is right,” thought Monsieur de Montriveau.

So he continued on his way with some difficulty, following the pitiless African, as if he were bound by a thread to the guide, like a condemned man invisibly bound to his executioner. But two hours passed, the Frenchman spent his last drops of energy, and the horizon remained unsullied—he saw neither palm trees nor mountains. He could neither cry nor groan and simply lay down in the sand to die. But his look would have appalled the most intrepid man and seemed to announce that he would not die alone. His guide, like a real demon, answered him with a calm glance, full of power, and left him stretched out, taking care to keep his distance so as to escape his victim’s despair. Finally, Monsieur de Montriveau found the strength for a last curse. The guide approached him, silenced him with a sign and a steady look, and said, “In spite of our warnings, you wanted to go where I am leading you, did you not? You reproach me for tricking you. If I had not done that, you would not have come this far. You want the truth, here it is. We still have another five hours’ march, and we can no longer turn back. Search the depths of your heart, and if you do not have courage enough, here is my dagger.” Surprised by this terrifying understanding of human suffering and strength, Monsieur de Montriveau would not be less than a barbarian, and drawing a new measure of courage from his pride as a European, he rose up to follow his guide. The five hours passed. Monsieur de Montriveau still saw nothing ahead and turned a failing eye toward his guide, but then the Nubian hoisted him onto his shoulders and showed him, a hundred paces away, a pool surrounded by greenery and an admirable forest, illuminated in the fires of the setting sun. They were now some distance from a huge granite ledge that hid this sublime landscape as if in a shroud. Armand felt reborn, and his guide, that giant of intelligence and courage, finished his labor of devotion by carrying him across the hot, polished paths scarcely traced on the granite. On one side he saw the hell of burning sand and on the other the earthly paradise of the most beautiful oasis in these deserts.