At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
she felt an indefinable pride in her troubles, as she reflected that
they had their source in eighteen months of such happiness as, in her
eyes, was worth a thousand lives like this; its vacuity seemed to her
horrible. However, she concealed this not very charitable feeling, and
displayed for her parents her newly-acquired accomplishments of mind,
and the ingratiating tenderness that love had revealed to her, disposing
them to listen to her matrimonial grievances. Old people have a weakness
for this kind of confidence. Madame Guillaume wanted to know the most
trivial details of that alien life, which to her seemed almost fabulous.
The travels of Baron da la Houtan, which she began again and again and
never finished, told her nothing more unheard-of concerning the Canadian
savages.
“What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room with naked women!
And you are so simple as to believe that he draws them?”
As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid her spectacles
on a little work-table, shook her skirts, and clasped her hands on her
knees, raised by a foot-warmer, her favorite pedestal.
“But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models.”
“He took good care not to tell us that when he asked leave to marry
you. If I had known it, I would never had given my daughter to a man who
followed such a trade. Religion forbids such horrors; they are immoral.
And at what time of night do you say he comes home?”
“At one o’clock--two----”
The old folks looked at each other in utter amazement.
“Then he gambles?” said Monsieur Guillaume. “In my day only gamblers
stayed out so late.”
Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation.
“He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting for him,” said
Madame Guillaume. “But you go to bed, don’t you? And when he has lost,
the wretch wakes you.”
“No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very good spirits. Not
unfrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he suggests that I should get up
and go into the woods.”
“The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a small set of rooms that
his bedroom and his sitting-room are not enough, and that he must run
about? But it is just to give you cold that the wretch proposes such
expeditions. He wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man
settled in life, a well-behaved, quiet man galloping about like a
warlock?”
“But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he must have excitement
to fire his genius. He is fond of scenes which----”
“I would make scenes for him, fine scenes!” cried Madame Guillaume,
interrupting her daughter. “How can you show any consideration to such a
man? In the first place, I don’t like his drinking water only; it is not
wholesome. Why does he object to see a woman eating? What queer notion
is that! But he is mad. All you tell us about him is impossible. A man
cannot leave his home without a word, and never come back for ten days.
And then he tells you he has been to Dieppe to paint the sea. As if
any one painted the sea! He crams you with a pack of tales that are too
absurd.”
Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but Madame Guillaume
enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, which she obeyed by a survival
of habit, and her mother went on in harsh tones: “Don’t talk to me about
the man! He never set foot in church excepting to see you and to be
married. People without religion are capable of anything. Did Guillaume
ever dream of hiding anything from me, of spending three days without
saying a word to me, and of chattering afterwards like a blind magpie?”
“My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas
were the same as other folks’, they would not be men of genius.”
“Very well, then let men of genius stop at home and not get married.
What! A man of genius is to make his wife miserable? And because he is a
genius it is all right! Genius, genius! It is not so very clever to
say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other
people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know which foot you
are to stand on, to compel his wife never to be amused unless my lord is
in gay spirits, and to be dull when he is dull.”
“But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations----”
“What are such ‘imaginations’?” Madame Guillaume went on, interrupting
her daughter again. “Fine ones his are, my word! What possesses a man
that all on a sudden, without consulting a doctor, he takes it into his
head to eat nothing but vegetables? If indeed it were from religious
motives, it might do him some good--but he has no more religion than a
Huguenot. Was there ever a man known who, like him, loved horses better
than his fellow-creatures, had his hair curled like a heathen, laid
statues under muslin coverlets, shut his shutters in broad day to work
by lamp-light? There, get along; if he were not so grossly immoral, he
would be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult Monsieur Loraux,
the priest at Saint Sulpice, ask his opinion about it all, and he will
tell you that your husband, does not behave like a Christian.”
“Oh, mother, can you believe----?”
“Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see none of these things.
But I can remember in the early days after your marriage. I met him
in the Champs-Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was
galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said
to myself at that moment, ‘There is a man devoid of judgement.’”
“Ah, ha!” cried Monsieur Guillaume, “how wise I was to have your money
settled on yourself with such a queer fellow for a husband!”
When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her serious grievances
against her husband, the two old people were speechless with
indignation. But the word “divorce” was ere long spoken by Madame
Guillaume. At the sound of the word divorce the apathetic old draper
seemed to wake up. Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by
the excitement which the proceedings would bring into his uneventful
life, father Guillaume took up the matter. He made himself the leader of
the application for a divorce, laid down the lines of it, almost argued
the case; he offered to be at all the charges, to see the lawyers, the
pleaders, the judges, to move heaven and earth. Madame de Sommervieux
was frightened, she refused her father’s services, said she would not
be separated from her husband even if she were ten times as unhappy, and
talked no more about her sorrows. After being overwhelmed by her parents
with all the little wordless and consoling kindnesses by which the
old couple tried in vain to make up to her for her distress of heart,
Augustine went away, feeling the impossibility of making a superior mind
intelligible to weak intellects. She had learned that a wife must hide
from every one, even from her parents, woes for which it is so difficult
to find sympathy. The storms and sufferings of the upper spheres
are appreciated only by the lofty spirits who inhabit there. In any
circumstance we can only be judged by our equals.
Thus poor Augustine found herself thrown back on the horror of her
meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her home. Study was indifferent
to her, since study had not brought her back her husband’s heart.
Initiated into the secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their
resources, she was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing
their pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which to her seemed
mean and small as compared with the incidents of passion. In short, her
life was a failure.
One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up her dark grief like
a beam from heaven. Such an idea could never have smiled on a heart less
pure, less virtuous than hers. She determined to go to the Duchesse de
Carigliano, not to ask her to give her back her husband’s heart, but to
learn the arts by which it had been captured; to engage the interest of
this haughty fine lady for the mother of her lover’s children; to appeal
to her and make her the instrument of her future happiness, since she
was the cause of her present wretchedness.
So one day Augustine, timid as she was, but armed with supernatural
courage, got into her carriage at two in the afternoon to try for
admittance to the boudoir of the famous coquette, who was never visible
till that hour. Madame de Sommervieux had not yet seen any of the
ancient and magnificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As she
made her way through the stately corridors, the handsome staircases,
the vast drawing-rooms--full of flowers, though it was in the depth of
winter, and decorated with the taste peculiar to women born to opulence
or to the elegant habits of the aristocracy, Augustine felt a terrible
clutch at her heart; she coveted the secrets of an elegance of which
she had never had an idea; she breathed in an air of grandeur which
explained the attraction of the house for her husband. When she reached
the private rooms of the Duchess she was filled with jealousy and a sort
of despair, as she admired the luxurious arrangement of the furniture,
the draperies and the hangings. Here disorder was a grace, here luxury
affected a certain contempt of splendor. The fragrance that floated
in the warm air flattered the sense of smell without offending it.
The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a view, through
plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden planted with evergreen
trees. It was all bewitching, and the art of it was not perceptible. The
whole spirit of the mistress of these rooms pervaded the drawing-room
where Augustine awaited her. She tried to divine her rival’s character
from the aspect of the scattered objects; but there was here something
as impenetrable in the disorder as in the symmetry, and to the
simple-minded young wife all was a sealed letter. All that she could
discern was that, as a woman, the Duchess was a superior person. Then a
painful thought came over her.
“Alas! And is it true,” she wondered, “that a simple and loving heart
is not all-sufficient to an artist; that to balance the weight of these
powerful souls they need a union with feminine souls of a strength equal
to their own? If I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at
least might have been equal in the hour of struggle.”
“But I am not at home!” The sharp, harsh words, though spoken in an
undertone in the adjoining boudoir, were heard by Augustine, and her
heart beat violently.
“The lady is in there,” replied the maid.
“You are an idiot! Show her in,” replied the Duchess, whose voice was
sweeter, and had assumed the dulcet tones of politeness. She evidently
now meant to be heard.
Augustine shyly entered the room. At the end of the dainty boudoir she
saw the Duchess lounging luxuriously on an ottoman covered with brown
velvet and placed in the centre of a sort of apse outlined by soft folds
of white muslin over a yellow lining. Ornaments of gilt bronze, arranged
with exquisite taste, enhanced this sort of dais, under which the
Duchess reclined like a Greek statue. The dark hue of the velvet gave
relief to every fascinating charm. A subdued light, friendly to her
beauty, fell like a reflection rather than a direct illumination. A few
rare flowers raised their perfumed heads from costly Sevres vases. At
the moment when this picture was presented to Augustine’s astonished
eyes, she was approaching so noiselessly that she caught a glance from
those of the enchantress. This look seemed to say to some one whom
Augustine did not at first perceive, “Stay; you will see a pretty woman,
and make her visit seem less of a bore.”
On seeing Augustine, the Duchess rose and made her sit down by her.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, madame?” she said with
a most gracious smile.