The Human Comedy (58 page)

“Dear aunt, may I go to him in disguise?”

“But of course, this can always be denied,” said the old woman.

Only this idea had clearly caught the duchess’s attention in the sermon the princess had just delivered. When Madame de Blamont-Chauvry was seated in the corner of her carriage, Madame de Langeais bid her a gracious farewell and happily went back into her house.

“My person would have snared his heart. My aunt is right, a man surely cannot refuse a pretty woman when she knows how to offer herself.”

That evening, in Madame la Duchesse de Berry’s circle, the Duc de Navarreins, Monsieur de Pamiers, Monsieur de Marsay, Monsieur de Grandlieu, the Duc de Maufrigneuse triumphantly denied the offensive rumors that were circulating about the Duchesse de Langeais. So many officers and other people attested to having seen Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning that this silly story was attributed to chance, which takes everything on offer. And the following day, the reputation of the duchess, despite her parked carriage, became as clean and spotless as
Mambrino’s helmet
after Sancho had polished it. Except, at two o’clock in the Bois de Boulogne, Monsieur de Ronquerolles, passing Montriveau in a deserted allée, said to him, smiling, “She is doing well, your duchess—go on, keep it up!” he added, giving a meaningful cut of his riding whip to his mare, who took off like a bullet.

Two days after her useless scandal, Madame de Langeais wrote to Monsieur de Montriveau a letter that remained unanswered like the others. This time she had taken measures and corrupted Auguste, Armand’s personal valet. So that evening, at eight o’clock, she was led to Armand’s, into a room quite different from the room where the secret scene had transpired. The duchess learned that the general would not return that night. Did he have two residences? The valet did not want to reply. Madame de Langeais had bought the key to this room and not the man’s complete honesty. Left alone, she saw her fourteen letters resting on an old side table. They were uncreased and unopened. He had not read them. At this sight, she fell into an armchair and lost all consciousness for a moment. Upon waking, she saw Auguste, who was holding vinegar to her nose.

“A carriage, quickly,” she said.

The carriage arrived and she went down to it with a convulsive quickness, returned home, went to bed, and barred her door. She stayed there for twenty-four hours, letting no one come near but her chambermaid, who brought her several cups of orange-leaf tisane. Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice and caught a glimpse of tears in her bright eyes, now circled with dark shadows.

Two days later, amid despairing sobs, she resolved on the path she would take. Madame de Langeais had a meeting with her business consultant and doubtless charged him with some preparations. Then she sent for the old Vidame de Pamiers. While waiting for the commander, she wrote to Monsieur de Montriveau. The vidame was punctual. He found his young cousin pale and worn but resigned. Never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in the weakness of her agony.

“My dear cousin,” she said to the vidame, “your eighty years make you worthy of this meeting. Oh, do not smile, I beg of you, as a poor woman who is deeply unhappy. You are a gallant man, and I would like to believe that the adventures of your youth have inspired some indulgence for women.”

“Not in the least,” he said.

“Really!”

“Everything is in their favor,” he replied.

“Ah well, you are one of the inner family circle; perhaps you will be the last relation, the last friend whose hand I will grasp, so I can ask you for a good turn. My dear vidame, do me a favor I would not know how to ask from my father, or from my uncle Grandlieu, or from any woman. You must understand me. I beg you to obey me and to forget that you have obeyed me, whatever may come of it. The matter is this: Take this letter to Monsieur de Montriveau, see him, show it to him, talk things over man to man, for between you there is an integrity of feelings that you forget with us, ask him if he would be willing to read my letter, not in your presence—men conceal certain emotions from each other. I authorize you to decide, and if you judge it necessary, to tell him that for me this is a matter of life or death. If he deigns—”

“
Deigns!
” repeated the vidame.

“If he deigns to read it,” the duchess continued with dignity, “tell him one more thing. You will see him at five o’clock, he dines at home today at this time, I know. Well, by way of answer, he must come to see me. If three hours later, by eight o’clock, he has not left his house, it will all be settled. The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, my dear, no, but no human power will find me on this earth. Come dine with me. At least I will have a friend to help me in my last agony. Yes, this evening, dear cousin, my life will be decided, and whatever happens to me, it can be only a searing ordeal. Go now, not a word. I will hear nothing, neither comments nor advice. Let us chat and laugh together,” she said, holding out her hand, which he kissed. “Let us be like two old philosophers who know how to enjoy life until the moment of their death. I shall dress up, I will be enchanting for you. You will perhaps be the last man to see the Duchesse de Langeais.”

The vidame bowed, took the letter, and went on his mission without a word. At five o’clock he returned and found his cousin dressed with great care, indeed enchanting. The salon was decorated with flowers as though for a party. The meal was exquisite. For this old man, the duchess displayed all the brilliance of her wit and looked more seductive than she had ever been. The commander at first wished to see all these preparations as a young woman’s joke. But from time to time the false magic of his cousin’s seductions paled. He detected a shudder caused by a kind of sudden dread, and at times she seemed to listen in silence. Then if he said to her “What is the matter?” she would answer, “Hush!”

At seven o’clock the duchess left the old fellow. She returned promptly, but dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey. She took her companion’s arm and rushed into a hackney coach. Toward quarter to eight they were both at the door of Monsieur de Montriveau.

During this time, Montriveau read and meditated on the following letter:

My friend, I spent several moments at your house, without your knowledge; I took back my letters. Oh, Armand, you cannot be indifferent toward me, and hatred displays itself otherwise. If you love me, stop this cruel game. You are killing me. Later you will be in despair, realizing how much you are loved. If I have misunderstood you, if you feel only aversion for me, which leads to contempt and disgust, then I give up all hope. A person never recovers from these feelings. This thought will bring consolations to my long suffering. You will have no regrets! Ah, my Armand, if I have caused you a single regret . . . No, I will not tell you what desolation I would feel. I would be still alive and could not be your wife. After giving myself to you entirely in my thoughts, to whom could I give myself? . . . to God. Yes, the eyes that you loved for a moment will see no man’s face again, and may God’s glory close them! I will hear no human voice after hearing yours, so sweet at first, so terrible yesterday, for I am always on the day after your vengeance. May the word of God then consume me! Between His anger and yours, my friend, I will be left with only tears and prayers.

Perhaps you will wonder why I am writing to you? Alas, do not deprive me of a last glimmer of hope, of one more sigh for a happy life before leaving it forever. I am in a dreadful situation. I have all the serenity the soul imbibes from making a great resolution, yet I still feel the last rumblings of the storm. When you went on that terrible adventure that so drew me to you, Armand, you were going from the desert to an oasis with a good guide leading you. Well, as for me, I am dragging myself from the oasis to the desert, and you are a pitiless guide. Nonetheless, you alone, my friend, can understand the melancholy of my parting looks at happiness, and you are the only man to whom I can moan without blushing. If you grant me my wish, I will be happy; if you are inexorable, I will expiate my wrongs. Indeed, is it not natural for a woman to want to remain clothed in the noblest sentiments in the memory of her beloved? Oh, my only dear, let your creature bury herself with the belief that you acknowledge her greatness. Your harshness has made me reflect, and since I love you dearly, I have found myself less guilty than you think I am. Listen, therefore, to my justification: I owe it to you. And you, who mean everything in the world to me, you owe me at least a moment of justice.

I have come to know, through my own anguish, how my coquetry made you suffer. But then I was utterly ignorant of love. You are party to the secret of these tortures, and you impose them on me. During the first eight months you granted me, you never roused any feeling of love in me. Why, my friend? I no more know how to tell you than I can explain to you why I love you now. Oh, to be sure, I was flattered to see that I was the object of your passionate pleas, of your fiery looks, but you left me cold and without desire. No, I was not a woman, I had no conception of the devotion or the happiness of our sex. Who was to blame? You would have despised me, would you not, had I given myself without being carried away? Perhaps this is our sex’s experience of the sublime, to give oneself without receiving any pleasure; perhaps there is no merit in yielding to ardently desired bliss. Alas, my friend, I can tell you these thoughts came to me when I was playing the coquette, but I found you already so great that I did not want you to owe me to pity . . . What have I written here?

Ah, I have taken back all my letters, and I am throwing them in the fire! They are burning. You will never know what they confessed—love, passion, madness . . . I keep silent, Armand, I cease, I no longer wish to tell you anything of my feelings. If the prayers from my soul to yours have not been heard, as a woman I decline to owe your love to pity. It is my wish to be loved irresistibly or dropped without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it will be burned. If, having read it, you are not three hours later forever my only husband, I will have no shame knowing that it is in your hands: The pride of my despair will protect my memory from any insult and my end will be worthy of my love. As for you, when you see me no more on earth, though I shall still be alive, you will not think without a shudder of a woman who in three hours will no longer draw breath but to overwhelm you with her tenderness, a woman consumed by hopeless love, and faithful—not to shared pleasures but to unknown feelings.

The
Duchesse de La Vallière
wept for lost happiness, for her vanished power, while the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy in her weeping and will remain a power for you. Yes, you will regret me . . . I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I thank you for having made it clear to me.

Farewell, you will never touch my ax; yours was that of the executioner, mine is that of God; yours kills and mine saves. Your love was mortal, it knew how to bear neither disdain nor ridicule; mine can endure everything without weakening, it is eternally live. Oh, I feel a dark joy in crushing you, you who believed in your greatness, in humbling you by the calm and protective smile of weak angels who, in lying down at the feet of God, have the right and the power to watch over men in His name. You have had merely passing desires, while the poor nun will shed on you the light of her ardent prayers and cover you always with the wings of divine love.

I have a presentiment of your reply, Armand, and grant you a meeting . . . in heaven. Friend, there strength and weakness are equally admitted; both are bound to suffer. This thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal. You see, I am so calm that I would fear I no longer loved you, if it were not for you that I am leaving this world.

Antoinette

“Dear vidame,” said the duchess, arriving at Montriveau’s house, “do me the grace of asking at the door if he is in.”

The commander, obeying in the manner of the eighteenth century, disembarked from the carriage and returned to answer “yes” to his cousin’s question, an answer that made her shiver. At this word, she took the commander, squeezed his hand, let him kiss her on both cheeks, and begged him to go at once without spying on her or trying to protect her.

“But the passersby?” he said.

“No one can fail to respect me,” she replied.

This was the last word from the lady of fashion and the duchess. The commander went off. Madame de Langeais remained on the threshold, wrapped in her cloak, and waited for the clock to strike eight. The hour struck and all was still. This unhappy woman gave herself ten minutes, a quarter of an hour; indeed, she was inclined to see a new humiliation in this tardiness, and faith abandoned her. She could not help exclaiming, “Oh my God!” then left that deadly threshold. These were the first words of the Carmelite.

Montriveau was in a meeting with several friends; he hurried them to finish up, but his clock was slow and he left for the Langeais mansion only when the duchess, transported by cold rage, was fleeing on foot through the streets of Paris. She wept when she reached boulevard d’Enfer. There, for the last time, she looked at Paris, smoking, burning, covered with a reddish glow from its streetlights; then she mounted a cab for hire and left this city never to return. When the Marquis de Montriveau came to the Langeais mansion, he did not find his mistress there and thought she was toying with him. So he ran to the home of the vidame and was received there just as the good man was slipping into his dressing gown, thinking of his pretty cousin’s happiness. Montriveau gave him a terrible look, a look that struck men and women alike as an electric shock.

“Monsieur, would you lend yourself to this cruel joke?” he cried. “I have come from Madame de Langeais’s, and her servants say that she has left.”

“A great disaster has happened, doubtless because of you,” answered the vidame. “I left the duchess at your door—”