Part 14 (2/2)
”Say whatever you like about _La d.u.c.h.esse de Langeais_, your remarks do not affect me; but a lady whom you may perhaps know, ill.u.s.trious and elegant, has approved everything, corrected everything like a royal censor, and her authority on ducal matters is incontestable; I am safe under the shadow of her shawl.”
Balzac continued to call on her and to write to her occasionally, and was very sympathetic to her illness, especially as her Parisian friends seemed to have abandoned her. Though death did not come to her until more than twenty-five years later, he writes at this time:
”Madame de Castries is dying; the paralysis is attacking the other limb. Her beauty is no more; she is blighted. Oh! I pity her. She suffers horribly and inspires pity only. She is the only person I visit, and then, for one hour every week. It is more than I really can do, but the hour is compelled by the sight of that slow death.”
In her despondency he tries to cheer her:
”I do not like your melancholy; I should scold you well if you were here. I would put you on a large divan, where you would be like a fairy in the midst of her palace, and I would tell you that in this life you must love in order to live. Now, you do not love. A lively affection is the bread of the soul, and when the soul is not fed it grows starved, like the body. The bonds of the soul and body are such that each suffers with the other. . . . A thousand kindly things in return for your flowers, which bring me much happiness, but I wish for something more. . . . You have mingled bitterness with the flatteries you have the goodness to bestow on my book, as if you knew all the weight of your words and how far they would reach. I would a thousand times rather you would consider the book and the pen as things of your own, than receive these praises.”[*]
[*] It is interesting to note Balzac's fondness for flowers, as is seen in his a.s.sociation of them with various women, and the prominent place he has given them in some of his works.
Though his visits continued, their friends.h.i.+p gradually grew colder, and in 1836 he writes: ”I have broken the last frail relations of politeness with Madame de C----. She enjoys the society of MM. Janni and Sainte-Beauve, who have so outrageously wounded me. It seemed to me bad taste, and now I am happily out of it.”
_La d.u.c.h.esse de Langeais_ appeared in 1834, but Madame de Castries had not fully wreaked her revenge on Balzac. For some time an Irish woman, a Miss Patrickson, had insisted on translating Balzac's works. Madame de Castries engaged her as teacher of English, and used her as a means of ensnaring Balzac by having her write him a love letter and sign it ”Lady Nevil.” Though suspicious about this letter, he answered it, and a rendezvous was arranged at the opera. That day he called on Madame de Castries, and she had him remain for dinner. When he excused himself to go to the opera, she insisted on accompanying him; he then realized that he was a victim of her strategy, which he thus describes:
”I go to the opera. No one there. Then I write a letter, which brings the miss, old, horrible, with hideous teeth, but full of remorse for the part she had played, full of affection for me and contempt and horror for the Marquise. Though my letters were extremely ironical and written for the purpose of making a woman masquerading as a false lady blush, she (Miss Patrickson) had recovered them. I had the upper hand of Madame de C---- She ended by divining that in this intrigue she was on the down side. From that time forth she vowed me a hatred which will end only with life. In fact, she may rise out of her grave to calumniate me. She never opened _Seraphita_ on account of its dedication, and her jealousy is such that if she could completely destroy the book she would weep for joy.”[*]
[*] Seized with pity for this poor Irish woman, Balzac called later to see about some translations and found her overcome by drink in the midst of poverty and dirt. He learned afterwards that she was addicted to the habit of drinking gin.
Notwithstanding their enmity Balzac visited her occasionally. She had become so uncomely that he could not understand his infatuation at Aix, ten years before. He disliked her especially because she had for the moment, in posing as Madame de Balzac, made Madame Hanska believe he was married. He enjoyed telling her of Madame Hanska's admiration for and devotion to him, and sarcastically remarked to her that she was such a ”true friend” she would be happy to learn of his financial success. Thus, during a period of several years, while speaking of her as his enemy, the novelist continued to dine with her, but was ever ready to overwhelm her with sarcasm, even while her guest. Yet, in 1843, he dedicated to her _L'Ill.u.s.tre Gaudissart_, a work written ten years before.
Though he was fully recovered with time, this drama, played by a coquette, was almost tragic for the author of the _Comedie humaine_.
No other woman left so deep a mark of pa.s.sion or such rankling wounds in his bleeding heart, as did she of whom he says:
”It has required five years of wounds for my tender nature to detach itself from one of iron. A gracious woman, this d.u.c.h.ess of whom I spoke to you, and one who had come to me under an incognito, which, I render her this justice, she laid aside the day I asked her to. . . . This _liaison_ which, whatever may be said, be a.s.sured has remained by the will of the woman in the most reproachable conditions, has been one of the great sorrows of my life. The secret misfortunes of my situation actually come from the fact that I sacrificed everything to her, for a single one of her desires; she never divined anything. A wounded man must be pardoned for fearing injuries. . . . I alone know what there is of horror in the _d.u.c.h.esse de Langeais_.”
In 1831 Balzac asked for the hand of a young lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Mademoiselle Eleonore de Trumilly, second daughter of his friend the Baron de Trumilly, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Artillery of the Royal guard under the Restoration, a former _emigre_, and of Madame Alexandra-Anna de Montiers. This request was received by her father, who transmitted it to her, but she rejected the suitor and married June 18, 1833, Francois-Felix-Claude-Marie-Marguerite Labroue, Baron de Vareilles-Sommieres, of the diocese of Poitiers.
The Baron de Trumilly (died April 7, 1832) held high rank among the officers of the artillery, and his cultured mind rendered him one of the ornaments of society. He lived in friendly and intellectual relations with Balzac while the future novelist was working on the _Chouans_ and the _Physiologie du Mariage_, and at the time Balzac was revising the latter for publication, he went to dine frequently at the home of the Baron, who used to work with him until late in the evening. In this work he introduces an old _emigre_ under the initials of Marquis de T---- which are quite similar to those of the Baron de Trumilly. This Marquis de T---- went to Germany about 1791, which corresponds to the life of the Baron.
Baron de Trumilly welcomed Balzac into his home, took a great interest in his work, and seemed willing to give him one of his three daughters; but one can understand how the young novelist, who had not yet attained great fame, might not favorably impress a young lady of the social standing of Mademoiselle de Trumilly, and her father did not urge her to accept him.
Although Balzac wrote Madame Hanska that when he called the girl loved by Dr. Bena.s.sis in his ”Confession” (Le Medecin de Campagne) ”Evelina,” he said to himself, ”She will quiver with joy in seeing that her name has occupied me, that she was present to my memory, and that what I deemed loveliest and n.o.blest in the young girl, I have named for her,” some think that the lady he had in mind was not Mme.
Hanska, but Eleonore de Trumilly, who really was a young unmarried girl, while Madame Hanska was not only married, but the mother of several children. Again, letters written by the author to his family show his condition to have been desperate at that time. Balzac a.s.serts that the story of _Louis Lambert_ is true to life; hence, despondent over his own situation, he makes Louis Lambert become insane, and causes Dr. Bena.s.sis to think of suicide when disappointed in love.
Thus was the novelist doomed, early in his literary career, to meet with a disappointment which, as has been seen, was to be repeated some months later with more serious results, when his adoration for the d.u.c.h.esse de Castries was suddenly turned into bitterness.
MADAME HANSKA.--LA COMTESSE MNISZECH.--MADEMOISELLE BOREL.
--MESDEMOISELLES WYLEZYNSKA.--LA COMTESSE ROSALIE RZEWUSKA.
--MADEMOISELLE CALISTE RZEWUSKA.--MADAME CHERKOWITSCH.
--MADAME RIZNITSCH.--LA COMTESSE MARIE POTOCKA.
”And they talk of the first love! I know nothing as terrible as the last, it is strangling.”
The longest and by far the most important of Balzac's friends.h.i.+ps began by correspondence was the one with Madame Eveline Hanska, whose first letter arrived February 28, 1832. The friends.h.i.+p soon developed into a more sentimental relations.h.i.+p culminating March 14, 1850, when Madame Hanska became Madame Honore de Balzac. This ”grand and beautiful soul-drama” is one of the n.o.blest in the world, and in the history of literature the longest.
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