At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
“Why all the falseness?” thought Augustine, replying only with a bow.
Her silence was compulsory. The young woman saw before her a superfluous
witness of the scene. This personage was, of all the Colonels in the
army, the youngest, the most fashionable, and the finest man. His face,
full of life and youth, but already expressive, was further enhanced by
a small moustache twirled up into points, and as black as jet, by a full
imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and a forest of black hair in
some disorder. He was whisking a riding whip with an air of ease and
freedom which suited his self-satisfied expression and the elegance of
his dress; the ribbons attached to his button-hole were carelessly tied,
and he seemed to pride himself much more on his smart appearance than
on his courage. Augustine looked at the Duchesse de Carigliano, and
indicated the Colonel by a sidelong glance. All its mute appeal was
understood.
“Good-bye, then, Monsieur d’Aiglemont, we shall meet in the Bois de
Boulogne.”
These words were spoken by the siren as though they were the result of
an agreement made before Augustine’s arrival, and she winged them with a
threatening look that the officer deserved perhaps for the admiration he
showed in gazing at the modest flower, which contrasted so well with the
haughty Duchess. The young fop bowed in silence, turned on the heels
of his boots, and gracefully quitted the boudoir. At this instant,
Augustine, watching her rival, whose eyes seemed to follow the brilliant
officer, detected in that glance a sentiment of which the transient
expression is known to every woman. She perceived with the deepest
anguish that her visit would be useless; this lady, full of artifice,
was too greedy of homage not to have a ruthless heart.
“Madame,” said Augustine in a broken voice, “the step I am about to take
will seem to you very strange; but there is a madness of despair which
ought to excuse anything. I understand only too well why Theodore
prefers your house to any other, and why your mind has so much power
over his. Alas! I have only to look into myself to find more than ample
reasons. But I am devoted to my husband, madame. Two years of tears have
not effaced his image from my heart, though I have lost his. In my folly
I dared to dream of a contest with you; and I have come to you to ask
you by what means I may triumph over yourself. Oh, madame,” cried the
young wife, ardently seizing the hand which her rival allowed her to
hold, “I will never pray to God for my own happiness with so much
fervor as I will beseech Him for yours, if you will help me to win back
Sommervieux’s regard--I will not say his love. I have no hope but in
you. Ah! tell me how you could please him, and make him forget the first
days----” At these words Augustine broke down, suffocated with sobs she
could not suppress. Ashamed of her weakness, she hid her face in her
handkerchief, which she bathed with tears.
“What a child you are, my dear little beauty!” said the Duchess, carried
away by the novelty of such a scene, and touched, in spite of herself,
at receiving such homage from the most perfect virtue perhaps in Paris.
She took the young wife’s handkerchief, and herself wiped the tears from
her eyes, soothing her by a few monosyllables murmured with gracious
compassion. After a moment’s silence the Duchess, grasping poor
Augustine’s hands in both her own--hands that had a rare character of
dignity and powerful beauty--said in a gentle and friendly voice:
“My first warning is to advise you not to weep so bitterly; tears are
disfiguring. We must learn to deal firmly with the sorrows that make us
ill, for love does not linger long by a sick-bed. Melancholy, at first,
no doubt, lends a certain attractive grace, but it ends by dragging the
features and blighting the loveliest face. And besides, our tyrants are
so vain as to insist that their slaves should be always cheerful.”
“But, madame, it is not in my power not to feel. How is it possible,
without suffering a thousand deaths, to see the face which once beamed
with love and gladness turn chill, colorless, and indifferent? I cannot
control my heart!”
“So much the worse, sweet child. But I fancy I know all your story.
In the first place, if your husband is unfaithful to you, understand
clearly that I am not his accomplice. If I was anxious to have him in my
drawing-room, it was, I own, out of vanity; he was famous, and he went
nowhere. I like you too much already to tell you all the mad things he
has done for my sake. I will only reveal one, because it may perhaps
help us to bring him back to you, and to punish him for the audacity of
his behavior to me. He will end by compromising me. I know the world
too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior
man. You should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry
them--that is a mistake! We women ought to admire men of genius, and
delight in them as a spectacle, but as to living with them? Never.--No,
no. It is like wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the machinery of
the opera instead of sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant illusions.
But this misfortune has fallen on you, my poor child, has it not? Well,
then, you must try to arm yourself against tyranny.”
“Ah, madame, before coming in here, only seeing you as I came in, I
already detected some arts of which I had no suspicion.”
“Well, come and see me sometimes, and it will not be long before you
have mastered the knowledge of these trifles, important, too, in their
way. Outward things are, to fools, half of life; and in that matter more
than one clever man is a fool, in spite of all his talent. But I dare
wager you never could refuse your Theodore anything!”
“How refuse anything, madame, if one loves a man?”
“Poor innocent, I could adore you for your simplicity. You should know
that the more we love the less we should allow a man, above all, a
husband, to see the whole extent of our passion. The one who loves most
is tyrannized over, and, which is worse, is sooner or later neglected.
The one who wishes to rule should----”
“What, madame, must I then dissimulate, calculate, become false, form an
artificial character, and live in it? How is it possible to live in such
a way? Can you----” she hesitated; the Duchess smiled.
“My dear child,” the great lady went on in a serious tone, “conjugal
happiness has in all times been a speculation, a business demanding
particular attention. If you persist in talking passion while I am
talking marriage, we shall soon cease to understand each other. Listen
to me,” she went on, assuming a confidential tone. “I have been in
the way of seeing some of the superior men of our day. Those who have
married have for the most part chosen quite insignificant wives. Well,
those wives governed them, as the Emperor governs us; and if they were
not loved, they were at least respected. I like secrets--especially
those which concern women--well enough to have amused myself by seeking
the clue to the riddle. Well, my sweet child, those worthy women had the
gift of analyzing their husbands’ nature; instead of taking fright, like
you, at their superiority, they very acutely noted the qualities they
lacked, and either by possessing those qualities, or by feigning to
possess them, they found means of making such a handsome display of them
in their husbands’ eyes that in the end they impressed them. Also, I
must tell you, all these souls which appear so lofty have just a speck
of madness in them, which we ought to know how to take advantage of. By
firmly resolving to have the upper hand and never deviating from that
aim, by bringing all our actions to bear on it, all our ideas, our
cajolery, we subjugate these eminently capricious natures, which, by
the very mutability of their thoughts, lend us the means of influencing
them.”
“Good heavens!” cried the young wife in dismay. “And this is life. It is
a warfare----”
“In which we must always threaten,” said the Duchess, laughing. “Our
power is wholly factitious. And we must never allow a man to despise
us; it is impossible to recover from such a descent but by odious
manoeuvring. Come,” she added, “I will give you a means of bringing your
husband to his senses.”
She rose with a smile to guide the young and guileless apprentice
to conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her palace. They came to
a back-staircase, which led up to the reception rooms. As Madame de
Carigliano pressed the secret springlock of the door she stopped,
looking at Augustine with an inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace.
“The Duc de Carigliano adores me,” said she. “Well, he dare not enter by
this door without my leave. And he is a man in the habit of commanding
thousands of soldiers. He knows how to face a battery, but before
me,--he is afraid!”
Augustine sighed. They entered a sumptuous gallery, where the painter’s
wife was led by the Duchess up to the portrait painted by Theodore of
Mademoiselle Guillaume. On seeing it, Augustine uttered a cry.
“I knew it was no longer in my house,” she said, “but--here!----”
“My dear child, I asked for it merely to see what pitch of idiocy a man
of genius may attain to. Sooner or later I should have returned it to
you, for I never expected the pleasure of seeing the original here face
to face with the copy. While we finish our conversation I will have it
carried down to your carriage. And if, armed with such a talisman,
you are not your husband’s mistress for a hundred years, you are not a
woman, and you deserve your fate.”
Augustine kissed the Duchess’ hand, and the lady clasped her to her
heart, with all the more tenderness because she would forget her by the
morrow. This scene might perhaps have destroyed for ever the candor and
purity of a less virtuous woman than Augustine, for the astute politics
of the higher social spheres were no more consonant to Augustine than
the narrow reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or Madame Guillaume’s vapid
morality. Strange are the results of the false positions into which
we may be brought by the slightest mistake in the conduct of life!
Augustine was like an Alpine cowherd surprised by an avalanche; if he
hesitates, if he listens to the shouts of his comrades, he is almost
certainly lost. In such a crisis the heart steels itself or breaks.
Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such agitation as it is
difficult to describe. Her conversation with the Duchesse de Carigliano
had roused in her mind a crowd of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep
in the fable, full of courage in the wolf’s absence, she preached
to herself, and laid down admirable plans of conduct; she devised a
thousand coquettish stratagems; she even talked to her husband, finding,
away from him, all the springs of true eloquence which never desert a
woman; then, as she pictured to herself Theodore’s clear and steadfast
gaze, she began to quake. When she asked whether monsieur were at home
her voice shook. On learning that he would not be in to dinner, she felt
an unaccountable thrill of joy. Like a criminal who has appealed against
sentence of death, a respite, however short, seemed to her a lifetime.
She placed the portrait in her room, and waited for her husband in all
the agonies of hope. That this venture must decide her future life, she
felt too keenly not to shiver at every sound, even the low ticking of
the clock, which seemed to aggravate her terrors by doling them out to
her. She tried to cheat time by various devices. The idea struck her of
dressing in a way which would make her exactly like the portrait. Then,
knowing her husband’s restless temper, she had her room lighted up with
unusual brightness, feeling sure that when he came in curiosity would