At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Augustine wrapped herself in sullen and silent grief. These unconfessed
feelings placed a shroud between the husband and wife which could not
fail to grow thicker day by day. Though her husband never failed in
consideration for her, Augustine could not help trembling as she saw
that he kept for the outer world those treasures of wit and grace that
he formerly would lay at her feet. She soon began to find sinister
meaning in the jocular speeches that are current in the world as to the
inconstancy of men. She made no complaints, but her demeanor conveyed
reproach.
Three years after her marriage this pretty young woman, who dashed past
in her handsome carriage, and lived in a sphere of glory and riches
to the envy of heedless folk incapable of taking a just view of the
situations of life, was a prey to intense grief. She lost her color; she
reflected; she made comparisons; then sorrow unfolded to her the first
lessons of experience. She determined to restrict herself bravely within
the round of duty, hoping that by this generous conduct she might
sooner or later win back her husband’s love. But it was not so. When
Sommervieux, fired with work, came in from his studio, Augustine did not
put away her work so quickly but that the painter might find his wife
mending the household linen, and his own, with all the care of a good
housewife. She supplied generously and without a murmur the money needed
for his lavishness; but in her anxiety to husband her dear Theodore’s
fortune, she was strictly economical for herself and in certain details
of domestic management. Such conduct is incompatible with the easy-going
habits of artists, who, at the end of their life, have enjoyed it so
keenly that they never inquire into the causes of their ruin.
It is useless to note every tint of shadow by which the brilliant hues
of their honeymoon were overcast till they were lost in utter blackness.
One evening poor Augustine, who had for some time heard her husband
speak with enthusiasm of the Duchesse de Carigliano, received from a
friend certain malignantly charitable warnings as to the nature of the
attachment which Sommervieux had formed for this celebrated flirt of
the Imperial Court. At one-and-twenty, in all the splendor of youth and
beauty, Augustine saw herself deserted for a woman of six-and-thirty.
Feeling herself so wretched in the midst of a world of festivity which
to her was a blank, the poor little thing could no longer understand
the admiration she excited, or the envy of which she was the object.
Her face assumed a different expression. Melancholy, tinged her features
with the sweetness of resignation and the pallor of scorned love. Ere
long she too was courted by the most fascinating men; but she remained
lonely and virtuous. Some contemptuous words which escaped her husband
filled her with incredible despair. A sinister flash showed her the
breaches which, as a result of her sordid education, hindered the
perfect union of her soul with Theodore’s; she loved him well enough to
absolve him and condemn herself. She shed tears of blood, and perceived,
too late, that there are _mesalliances_ of the spirit as well as of
rank and habits. As she recalled the early raptures of their union,
she understood the full extent of that lost happiness, and accepted the
conclusion that so rich a harvest of love was in itself a whole life,
which only sorrow could pay for. At the same time, she loved too truly
to lose all hope. At one-and-twenty she dared undertake to educate
herself, and make her imagination, at least, worthy of that she admired.
“If I am not a poet,” thought she, “at any rate, I will understand
poetry.”
Then, with all the strength of will, all the energy which every woman
can display when she loves, Madame de Sommervieux tried to alter her
character, her manners, and her habits; but by dint of devouring books
and learning undauntedly, she only succeeded in becoming less ignorant.
Lightness of wit and the graces of conversation are a gift of nature, or
the fruit of education begun in the cradle. She could appreciate
music and enjoy it, but she could not sing with taste. She understood
literature and the beauties of poetry, but it was too late to
cultivate her refractory memory. She listened with pleasure to social
conversation, but she could contribute nothing brilliant. Her religious
notions and home-grown prejudices were antagonistic to the complete
emancipation of her intelligence. Finally, a foregone conclusion against
her had stolen into Theodore’s mind, and this she could not conquer. The
artist would laugh, at those who flattered him about his wife, and his
irony had some foundation; he so overawed the pathetic young creature
that, in his presence, or alone with him, she trembled. Hampered by her
too eager desire to please, her wits and her knowledge vanished in one
absorbing feeling. Even her fidelity vexed the unfaithful husband, who
seemed to bid her do wrong by stigmatizing her virtue as insensibility.
Augustine tried in vain to abdicate her reason, to yield to her
husband’s caprices and whims, to devote herself to the selfishness of
his vanity. Her sacrifices bore no fruit. Perhaps they had both let
the moment slip when souls may meet in comprehension. One day the young
wife’s too sensitive heart received one of those blows which so strain
the bonds of feeling that they seem to be broken. She withdrew into
solitude. But before long a fatal idea suggested to her to seek counsel
and comfort in the bosom of her family.
So one morning she made her way towards the grotesque facade of the
humble, silent home where she had spent her childhood. She sighed as she
looked up at the sash-window, whence one day she had sent her first kiss
to him who now shed as much sorrow as glory on her life. Nothing was
changed in the cavern, where the drapery business had, however, started
on a new life. Augustine’s sister filled her mother’s old place at the
desk. The unhappy young woman met her brother-in-law with his pen behind
his ear; he hardly listened to her, he was so full of business. The
formidable symptoms of stock-taking were visible all round him; he
begged her to excuse him. She was received coldly enough by her sister,
who owed her a grudge. In fact, Augustine, in her finery, and stepping
out of a handsome carriage, had never been to see her but when passing
by. The wife of the prudent Lebas, imagining that want of money was the
prime cause of this early call, tried to keep up a tone of reserve which
more than once made Augustine smile. The painter’s wife perceived that,
apart from the cap and lappets, her mother had found in Virginie a
successor who could uphold the ancient honor of the Cat and Racket. At
breakfast she observed certain changes in the management of the house
which did honor to Lebas’ good sense; the assistants did not rise before
dessert; they were allowed to talk, and the abundant meal spoke of ease
without luxury. The fashionable woman found some tickets for a box at
the Francais, where she remembered having seen her sister from time to
time. Madame Lebas had a cashmere shawl over her shoulders, of which
the value bore witness to her husband’s generosity to her. In short, the
couple were keeping pace with the times. During the two-thirds of the
day she spent there, Augustine was touched to the heart by the equable
happiness, devoid, to be sure, of all emotion, but equally free from
storms, enjoyed by this well-matched couple. They had accepted life as
a commercial enterprise, in which, above all, they must do credit to the
business. Not finding any great love in her husband, Virginie had set to
work to create it. Having by degrees learned to esteem and care for his
wife, the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was to Joseph
Lebas a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when Augustine plaintively
set forth her painful position, she had to face the deluge of
commonplace morality which the traditions of the Rue Saint-Denis
furnished to her sister.
“The mischief is done, wife,” said Joseph Lebas; “we must try to give
our sister good advice.” Then the clever tradesman ponderously analyzed
the resources which law and custom might offer Augustine as a means
of escape at this crisis; he ticketed every argument, so to speak, and
arranged them in their degrees of weight under various categories, as
though they were articles of merchandise of different qualities; then he
put them in the scale, weighed them, and ended by showing the necessity
for his sister-in-law’s taking violent steps which could not satisfy the
love she still had for her husband; and, indeed, the feeling had
revived in all its strength when she heard Joseph Lebas speak of
legal proceedings. Augustine thanked them, and returned home even more
undecided than she had been before consulting them. She now ventured
to go to the house in the Rue du Colombier, intending to confide her
troubles to her father and mother; for she was like a sick man who, in
his desperate plight, tries every prescription, and even puts faith in
old wives’ remedies.
The old people received their daughter with an effusiveness that touched
her deeply. Her visit brought them some little change, and that to them
was worth a fortune. For the last four years they had gone their way
like navigators without a goal or a compass. Sitting by the chimney
corner, they would talk over their disasters under the old law of
_maximum_, of their great investments in cloth, of the way they had
weathered bankruptcies, and, above all, the famous failure of Lecocq,
Monsieur Guillaume’s battle of Marengo. Then, when they had exhausted
the tale of lawsuits, they recapitulated the sum total of their most
profitable stock-takings, and told each other old stories of the
Saint-Denis quarter. At two o’clock old Guillaume went to cast an eye on
the business at the Cat and Racket; on his way back he called at all the
shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where the young proprietors hoped
to inveigle the old draper into some risky discount, which, as was his
wont, he never refused point-blank. Two good Normandy horses were dying
of their own fat in the stables of the big house; Madame Guillaume never
used them but to drag her on Sundays to high Mass at the parish church.
Three times a week the worthy couple kept open house. By the influence
of his son-in-law Sommervieux, Monsieur Guillaume had been named a
member of the consulting board for the clothing of the Army. Since her
husband had stood so high in office, Madame Guillaume had decided
that she must receive; her rooms were so crammed with gold and silver
ornaments, and furniture, tasteless but of undoubted value, that the
simplest room in the house looked like a chapel. Economy and expense
seemed to be struggling for the upper hand in every accessory. It was as
though Monsieur Guillaume had looked to a good investment, even in the
purchase of a candlestick. In the midst of this bazaar, where splendor
revealed the owner’s want of occupation, Sommervieux’s famous picture
filled the place of honor, and in it Monsieur and Madame Guillaume found
their chief consolation, turning their eyes, harnessed with eye-glasses,
twenty times a day on this presentment of their past life, to them so
active and amusing. The appearance of this mansion and these rooms,
where everything had an aroma of staleness and mediocrity, the spectacle
offered by these two beings, cast away, as it were, on a rock far from
the world and the ideas which are life, startled Augustine; she could
here contemplate the sequel of the scene of which the first part had
struck her at the house of Lebas--a life of stir without movement, a
mechanical and instinctive existence like that of the beaver; and then