Works of honore de balza.., p.762
Works of Honore De Balzac, page 762
“‘Go,’ he answered, with the gesture and attitude of a Mirabeau, ‘tell your master in what condition you find me.’
“The assistant apologized and withdrew. La Palferine, seeing the young man on the landing, rose in the attire celebrated in verse in Britannicus to add, ‘Remark the stairs! Pay particular attention to the stairs; do not forget to tell him about the stairs!’
“In every position into which chance has thrown La Palferine, he has never failed to rise to the occasion. All that he does is witty and never in bad taste; always and in everything he displays the genius of Rivarol, the polished subtlety of the old French noble. It was he who told that delicious anecdote of a friend of Laffitte the banker. A national fund had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in which the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend appeared at the offices of the fund with, ‘Here are five francs, give me a hundred sous change!’ — A caricature was made of it. — It was once La Palferine’s misfortune, in judicial style, to make a young girl a mother. The girl, not a very simple innocent, confessed all to her mother, a respectable matron, who hurried forthwith to La Palferine and asked what he meant to do.
“‘Why, madame,’ said he, ‘I am neither a surgeon nor a midwife.’
“She collapsed, but three or four years later she returned to the charge, still persisting in her inquiry, ‘What did La Palferine mean to do?’
“‘Well, madame,’ returned he, ‘when the child is seven years old, an age at which a boy ought to pass out of women’s hands’ — an indication of entire agreement on the mother’s part — ’if the child is really mine’ — another gesture of assent — ’if there is a striking likeness, if he bids fair to be a gentleman, if I can recognize in him my turn of mind, and more particularly the Rusticoli air; then, oh — ah!’ — a new movement from the matron — ’on my word and honor, I will make him a cornet of — sugar-plums!’
“All this, if you will permit me to make use of the phraseology employed by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of obscurities — all this, I repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet already somewhat decadent side of a strong race. It smacks rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the Hotel de Rambouillet. It is a race of the strong rather than of the sweet; I incline to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than I should wish in brilliant and generous natures; it is gallantry after the fashion of the Marechal de Richelieu, high spirits and frolic carried rather too far; perhaps we may see in it the outrances of another age, the Eighteenth Century pushed to extremes; it harks back to the Musketeers; it is an exploit stolen from Champcenetz; nay, such light-hearted inconstancy takes us back to the festooned and ornate period of the old court of the Valois. In an age as moral as the present, we are bound to regard audacity of this kind sternly; still, at the same time that ‘cornet of sugar-plums’ may serve to warn young girls of the perils of lingering where fancies, more charming than chastened, come thickly from the first; on the rosy flowery unguarded slopes, where trespasses ripen into errors full of equivocal effervescence, into too palpitating issues. The anecdote puts La Palferine’s genius before you in all its vivacity and completeness. He realizes Pascal’s entre-deux, he comprehends the whole scale between tenderness and pitilessness, and, like Epaminondas, he is equally great in extremes. And not merely so, his epigram stamps the epoch; the accoucheur is a modern innovation. All the refinements of modern civilization are summed up in the phrase. It is monumental.”
“Look here, my dear Nathan, what farrago of nonsense is this?” asked the Marquise in bewilderment.
“Madame la Marquise,” returned Nathan, “you do not know the value of these ‘precious’ phrases; I am talking Sainte-Beuve, the new kind of French. — I resume. Walking one day arm in arm with a friend along the boulevard, he was accosted by a ferocious creditor, who inquired:
“‘Are you thinking of me, sir?’
“‘Not the least in the world,’ answered the Count.
“Remark the difficulty of the position. Talleyrand, in similar circumstances, had already replied, ‘You are very inquisitive, my dear fellow!’ To imitate the inimitable great man was out of the question. — La Palferine, generous as Buckingham, could not bear to be caught empty-handed. One day when he had nothing to give a little Savoyard chimney-sweeper, he dipped a hand into a barrel of grapes in a grocer’s doorway and filled the child’s cap from it. The little one ate away at his grapes; the grocer began by laughing, and ended by holding out his hand.
“‘Oh, fie! monsieur,’ said La Palferine, ‘your left hand ought not to know what my right hand doth.’
“With his adventurous courage, he never refuses any odds, but there is wit in his bravado. In the Passage de l’Opera he chanced to meet a man who had spoken slightingly of him, elbowed him as he passed, and then turned and jostled him a second time.
“‘You are very clumsy!’
“‘On the contrary; I did it on purpose.’
“The young man pulled out his card. La Palferine dropped it. ‘It has been carried too long in the pocket. Be good enough to give me another.’
“On the ground he received a thrust; blood was drawn; his antagonist wished to stop.
“‘You are wounded, monsieur!’
“‘I disallow the botte,’ said La Palferine, as coolly as if he had been in the fencing-saloon; then as he riposted (sending the point home this time), he added, ‘There is the right thrust, monsieur!’
“His antagonist kept his bed for six months.
“This, still following on M. Sainte-Beuve’s tracks, recalls the raffines, the fine-edged raillery of the best days of the monarchy. In this speech you discern an untrammeled but drifting life; a gaiety of imagination that deserts us when our first youth is past. The prime of the blossom is over, but there remains the dry compact seed with the germs of life in it, ready against the coming winter. Do you not see that these things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an unrest impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not incomprehensible; a something ready to break out if occasion calls into flying upleaping flame? It is the accidia of the cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a vague, obscure melancholy.”
“That will do,” said the Marquise; “you are giving me a mental shower bath.”
“It is the early afternoon languor. If a man has nothing to do, he will sooner get into mischief than do nothing at all; this invariably happens in France. Youth at present day has two sides to it; the studious or unappreciated, and the ardent or passionne.”
“That will do!” repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with an authoritative gesture. “You are setting my nerves on edge.”
“To finish my portrait of La Palferine, I hasten to make the plunge into the gallant regions of his character, or you will not understand the peculiar genius of an admirable representative of a certain section of mischievous youth — youth strong enough, be it said, to laugh at the position in which it is put by those in power; shrewd enough to do no work, since work profiteth nothing; yet so full of life that it fastens upon pleasure — the one thing that cannot be taken away. And meanwhile a bourgeois, mercantile, and bigoted policy continues to cut off all the sluices through which so much aptitude and ability would find an outlet. Poets and men of science are not wanted.
“To give you an idea of the stupidity of the new court, I will tell you of something which happened to La Palferine. There is a sort of relieving officer on the civil list. This functionary one day discovered that La Palferine was in dire distress, drew up a report, no doubt, and brought the descendant of the Rusticolis fifty francs by way of alms. La Palferine received the visitor with perfect courtesy, and talked of various persons at court.
“‘Is it true,’ he asked, ‘that Mlle. d’Orleans contributes such and such a sum to this benevolent scheme started by her nephew? If so, it is very gracious of her.’
“Now La Palferine had a servant, a little Savoyard, aged ten, who waited on him without wages. La Palferine called him Father Anchises, and used to say, ‘I have never seen such a mixture of besotted foolishness with great intelligence; he would go through fire and water for me; he understands everything — and yet he cannot grasp the fact that I can do nothing for him.’
“Anchises was despatched to a livery stable with instructions to hire a handsome brougham with a man in livery behind it. By the time the carriage arrived below, La Palferine had skilfully piloted the conversation to the subject of the functions of his visitor, whom he has since called ‘the unmitigated misery man,’ and learned the nature of his duties and his stipend.
“‘Do they allow you a carriage to go about the town in this way?’
“‘Oh! no.’
“At that La Palferine and a friend who happened to be with him went downstairs with the poor soul, and insisted on putting him into the carriage. It was raining in torrents. La Palferine had thought of everything. He offered to drive the official to the next house on his list; and when the almoner came down again, he found the carriage waiting for him at the door. The man in livery handed him a note written in pencil:
“‘The carriage has been engaged for three days. Count Rusticoli
de la Palferine is too happy to associate himself with Court
charities by lending wings to Royal beneficence.’
“La Palferine now calls the civil list the uncivil list.
“He was once passionately loved by a lady of somewhat light conduct. Antonia lived in the Rue du Helder; she had seen and been seen to some extent, but at the time of her acquaintance with La Palferine she had not yet ‘an establishment.’ Antonia was not wanting in the insolence of old days, now degenerating into rudeness among women of her class. After a fortnight of unmixed bliss, she was compelled, in the interest of her civil list, to return to a less exclusive system; and La Palferine, discovering a certain lack of sincerity in her dealings with him, sent Madame Antonia a note which made her famous.
“‘MADAME, — Your conduct causes me much surprise and no less
distress. Not content with rending my heart with your disdain, you
have been so little thoughtful as to retain a toothbrush, which my
means will not permit me to replace, my estates being mortgaged
beyond their value.
“‘Adieu, too fair and too ungrateful friend! May we meet again in
a better world.
“‘CHARLES EDWARD.’”
“Assuredly (to avail ourselves yet further of Sainte-Beuve’s Babylonish dialect), this far outpasses the raillery of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey; it might be Scarron without his grossness. Nay, I do not know but that Moliere in his lighter mood would not have said of it, as of Cyrano de Bergerac’s best — ’This is mine.’ Richelieu himself was not more complete when he wrote to the princess waiting for him in the Palais Royal — ’Stay there, my queen, to charm the scullion lads.’ At the same time, Charles Edward’s humor is less biting. I am not sure that this kind of wit was known among the Greeks and Romans. Plato, possibly, upon a closer inspection approaches it, but from the austere and musical side — ”
“No more of that jargon,” the Marquise broke in, “in print it may be endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is a punishment which I do not in the least deserve.”
“He first met Claudine on this wise,” continued Nathan. “It was one of the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to itself; days when youth, reduced by the overweening presumption of Age to a condition of potential energy and dejection, emerges therefrom (like Blondet under the Restoration), either to get into mischief or to set about some colossal piece of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its conception. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and down the pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the Rue de Richelieu, when in the distance he descried a woman too elegantly dressed, covered, as he phrased it, with a great deal of portable property, too expensive and too carelessly worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the court or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which. But after July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the indications — the princess can only be a princess of the stage.
“The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had given him an assignation. He followed her with a courteous persistence, a persistence in good taste, giving the lady from time to time, and always at the right moment, an authoritative glance, which compelled her to submit to his escort. Anybody but La Palferine would have been frozen by his reception, and disconcerted by the lady’s first efforts to rid herself of her cavalier, by her chilly air, her curt speeches; but no gravity, with all the will in the world, could hold out long against La Palferine’s jesting replies. The fair stranger went into her milliner’s shop. Charles Edward followed, took a seat, and gave his opinions and advice like a man that meant to pay. This coolness disturbed the lady. She went out.
“On the stairs she spoke to her persecutor.
“‘Monsieur, I am about to call upon one of my husband’s relatives, an elderly lady, Mme. de Bonfalot — ’
“‘Ah! Mme. de Bonfalot, charmed, I am sure. I am going there.’
“The pair accordingly went. Charles Edward came in with the lady, every one believed that she had brought him with her. He took part in the conversation, was lavish of his polished and brilliant wit. The visit lengthened out. That was not what he wanted.
“‘Madame,’ he said, addressing the fair stranger, ‘do not forget that your husband is waiting for us, and only allowed us a quarter of an hour.’
“Taken aback by such boldness (which, as you know, is never displeasing to you women), led captive by the conqueror’s glance, by the astute yet candid air which Charles Edward can assume when he chooses, the lady rose, took the arm of her self-constituted escort, and went downstairs, but on the threshold she stopped to speak to him.
“‘Monsieur, I like a joke — — ’
“‘And so do I.’
“She laughed.
“‘But this may turn to earnest,’ he added; ‘it only rests with you. I am the Comte de la Palferine, and I am delighted that it is in my power to lay my heart and my fortune at your feet.’
“La Palferine was at that time twenty-two years old. (This happened in 1834.) Luckily for him, he was fashionably dressed. I can paint his portrait for you in a few words. He was the living image of Louis XIII., with the same white forehead and gracious outline of the temples, the same olive skin (that Italian olive tint which turns white where the light falls on it), the brown hair worn rather long, the black ‘royale,’ the grave and melancholy expression, for La Palferine’s character and exterior were amazingly at variance.
“At the sound of the name, and the sight of its owner, something like a quiver thrilled through Claudine. La Palferine saw the vibration, and shot a glance at her out of the dark depths of almond-shaped eyes with purpled lids, and those faint lines about them which tell of pleasures as costly as painful fatigue. With those eyes upon her, she said — ’Your address?’
“‘What want of address!’
“‘Oh, pshaw!’ she said, smiling. ‘A bird on the bough?’
“‘Good-bye, madame, you are such a woman as I seek, but my fortune is far from equaling my desire — — ’
“He bowed, and there and then left her. Two days later, by one of the strange chances that can only happen in Paris, he had betaken himself to a money-lending wardrobe dealer to sell such of his clothing as he could spare. He was just receiving the price with an uneasy air, after long chaffering, when the stranger lady passed and recognized him.
“‘Once for all,’ cried he to the bewildered wardrobe dealer, ‘I tell you I am not going to take your trumpet!’
“He pointed to a huge, much-dinted musical instrument, hanging up outside against a background of uniforms, civil and military. Then, proudly and impetuously, he followed the lady.
“From that great day of the trumpet these two understood one another to admiration. Charles Edward’s ideas on the subject of love are as sound as possible. According to him, a man cannot love twice, there is but one love in his lifetime, but that love is a deep and shoreless sea. It may break in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found St. Paul; and a man may live sixty years and never know love. Perhaps, to quote Heine’s superb phrase, it is ‘the secret malady of the heart’ — a sense of the Infinite that there is within us, together with the revelation of the ideal Beauty in its visible form. This love, in short, comprehends both the creature and creation. But so long as there is no question of this great poetical conception, the loves that cannot last can only be taken lightly, as if they were in a manner snatches of song compared with Love the epic.
“To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the thunderbolt signal of love’s coming, nor yet that gradual revelation of an inward fairness which draws two natures by degrees more and more strongly each to each. For there are but two ways of love — love at first sight, doubtless akin to the Highland ‘second-sight,’ and that slow fusion of two natures which realizes Plato’s ‘man-woman.’ But if Charles Edward did not love, he was loved to distraction. Claudine found love made complete, body and soul; in her, in short, La Palferine awakened the one passion of her life; while for him Claudine was only a most charming mistress. The Devil himself, a most potent magician certainly, with all hell at his back, could never have changed the natures of these two unequal fires. I dare affirm that Claudine not unfrequently bored Charles Edward.
“‘Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to fling out of the window after three days,’ he used to say.
“In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these affairs. La Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; but, at the same time, none of us saw her, nor so much as knew her name. For us Claudine was almost a mythical personage. All of us acted in the same way, reconciling the requirements of our common life with the rules of good taste. Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Empress, the Spaniard, the Lioness, — these were cryptic titles which permitted us to pour out our joys, our cares, vexations, and hopes, and to communicate our discoveries. Further, none of us went. It has been shown, in Bohemia, that chance discovered the identity of the fair unknown; and at once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of her again. This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know the limit line where jest must end, and all that host of things French covered by the slang word blague, a word which will shortly be cast out of the language (let us hope), and yet it is the only one which conveys an idea of the spirit of Bohemia.
