Extracts From the "A Daughter of Eve" :
On Marriage Contracts:
Though without either rank or station, having pushed himself forward,
heaven knows how, du Tillet had married, in 1831, the daughter of the
Comte de Granville, one of the greatest names in the French
magistracy,--a man who became peer of France after the revolution of
July. This marriage of ambition on du Tillet's part was brought about
by his agreeing to sign an acknowledgment in the marriage contract of
a dowry not received, equal to that of her elder sister, who was
married to Comte Felix de Vandenesse. On the other hand, the
Granvilles obtained the alliance with de Vandenesse by the largeness
of the "dot." Thus the bank repaired the breach made in the pocket of
the magistracy by rank. Could the Comte de Vandenesse have seen
himself, three years later, the brother-in-law of a Sieur Ferdinand DU
Tillet, so-called, he might not have married his wife; but what man of
rank in 1828 foresaw the strange upheavals which the year 1830 was
destined to produce in the political condition, the fortunes, and the
customs of France? Had any one predicted to Comte Felix de Vandenesse
that his head would lose the coronet of a peer, and that of his
father-in-law acquire one, he would have thought his informant a
lunatic.
....................
The strict upbringing of two sisters:
Their education did not go beyond the limits imposed by confessors,
who were chosen by their mother from the strictest and least tolerant
of the Jansenist priests. Never were girls delivered over to their
husbands more absolutely pure and virgin than they; their mother
seemed to consider that point, essential as indeed it is, the
accomplishment of all her duties toward earth and heaven. These two
poor creatures had never, before their marriage, read a tale, or heard
of a romance; their very drawings were of figures whose anatomy would
have been masterpieces of the impossible to Cuvier, designed to
feminize the Farnese Hercules himself. An old maid taught them
drawing. A worthy priest instructed them in grammar, the French
language, history, geography, and the very little arithmetic it was
thought necessary in their rank for women to know. Their reading,
selected from authorized books, such as the "Lettres Edifiantes," and
Noel's "Lecons de Litterature," was done aloud in the evening; but
always in presence of their mother's confessor, for even in those
books there did sometimes occur passages which, without wise comments,
might have roused their imagination. Fenelon's "Telemaque" was thought
dangerous.
................
The effect of their strict upbringing:
Religion, imposed as a
yoke and presented under its sternest aspect, wearied with formal
practice these innocent young hearts, treated as sinful. It repressed
their feelings, and was never precious to them, although it struck its
roots deep down into their natures. Under such training the two Maries
would either have become mere imbeciles, or they must necessarily have
longed for independence. Thus it came to pass that they looked to
marriage as soon as they saw anything of life and were able to compare
a few ideas. Of their own tender graces and their personal value they
were absolutely ignorant. They were ignorant, too, of their own
innocence; how, then, could they know life? Without weapons to meet
misfortune, without experience to appreciate happiness, they found no
comfort in the maternal jail, all their joys were in each other. Their
tender confidences at night in whispers, or a few short sentences
exchanged if their mother left them for a moment, contained more ideas
than the words themselves expressed. Often a glance, concealed from
other eyes, by which they conveyed to each other their emotions, was
like a poem of bitter melancholy. The sight of a cloudless sky, the
fragrance of flowers, a turn in the garden, arm in arm,--these were
their joys. The finishing of a piece of embroidery was to them a
source of enjoyment.
Their mother's social circle, far from opening resources to their
hearts or stimulating their minds, only darkened their ideas and
depressed them; it was made up of rigid old women, withered and
graceless, whose conversation turned on the differences which
distinguished various preachers and confessors, on their own petty
indispositions, on religious events insignificant even to the
"Quotidienne" or "l'Ami de la Religion." As for the men who appeared
in the Comtesse de Granville's salon, they extinguished any possible
torch of love, so cold and sadly resigned were their faces. They were
all of an age when mankind is sulky and fretful, and natural
sensibilities are chiefly exercised at table and on the things
relating to personal comfort. Religious egotism had long dried up
those hearts devoted to narrow duties and entrenched behind pious
practices. Silent games of cards occupied the whole evening, and the
two young girls under the ban of that Sanhedrim enforced by maternal
severity, came to hate the dispiriting personages about them with
their hollow eyes and scowling faces.
...................................
Portrait of a bad writer:
Judged from a literary point of view, Nathan lacks style and
cultivation. Like most young men, ambitious of literary fame, he
disgorges to-day what he acquired yesterday. He has neither the time
nor the patience to write carefully; he does not observe, but he
listens. Incapable of constructing a vigorously framed plot, he
sometimes makes up for it by the impetuous ardor of his drawing. He
"does passion," to use a term of the literary argot; but instead of
awaking ideas, his heroes are simply enlarged individualities, who
excite only fugitive sympathies; they are not connected with any of
the great interests of life, and consequently they represent nothing.
Nevertheless, Nathan maintains his ground by the quickness of his
mind, by those lucky hits which billiard-players call a "good stroke."
He is the cleverest shot at ideas on the fly in all Paris. His
fecundity is not his own, but that of his epoch; he lives on chance
events, and to control them he distorts their meaning. In short, he is
not TRUE; his presentation is false; in him, as Comte Felix said, is
the born juggler. Moreover, his pen gets its ink in the boudoir of an
actress.
.........
de Marsay's advice on politics:
"You are a political triangle," said de Marsay, laughing, when they
met at the Opera. "That geometric form, my dear fellow, belongs only
to the Deity, who has nothing to do; ambitious men ought to follow
curved lines, the shortest road in politics."
...............
What women like:
Women like to perform prodigies, break rocks, and soften natures which seem of iron.
............................
True talent:
"If the man has genius," he said in conclusion, "he certainly has
neither the constancy nor the patience which sanctifies it, and makes
it a thing divine. He endeavors to impose on the world by placing
himself on a level which he does nothing to maintain. True talent,
pains-taking and honorable talent does not act thus. Men who possess
such talent follow their path courageously; they accept its pains and
penalties, and don't cover them with tinsel."
......................................................
Play it as it lies:
Even Blondet, so unfortunate, so used by others in journalism,
but so welcomed here, who could, if he liked,
enter a career of public service through the influence of
Madame de Montcornet, seemed to Nathan's eyes a striking
example of the power of social relations. Secretly, in his heart, he
resolved to play the game of political opinions, like de Marsay,
Rastignac, Blondet, Talleyrand, the leader of this set of men; to rely
on facts only, turn them to his own profit, regard his system as a
weapon, and not interfere with a society so well constituted, so
shrewd, so natural.
"My influence," he thought, "will depend on the influence of some
woman belonging to this class of society."
..........................................................
Great art, cutting off the connection between the senses and thought:
Wit is thought to be a quality rare in comedians. It is so
natural to suppose that persons who spend their lives in showing
things on the outside have nothing within. But if we reflect on the
small number of actors and actresses who live in each century, and
also on how many dramatic authors and fascinating women this
population has supplied relatively to its numbers, it is allowable to
refute that opinion, which rests, and apparently will rest forever, on
a criticism made against dramatic artists,--namely, that their
personal sentiments are destroyed by the plastic presentation of
passions; whereas, in fact, they put into their art only their gifts
of mind, memory, and imagination. Great artists are beings who, to
quote Napoleon, can cut off at will the connection which Nature has
put between the senses and thought. Moliere and Talma, in their old
age, were more in love than ordinary men in all their lives.
..........................................................
How certain women place a value on objects:
Her house, enriched by gallant
tributes, displayed the exaggerated magnificence of women who, caring
little about the cost of things, care only for the things themselves,
and give them the value of their own caprices,--women who will break a
fan or a smelling-bottle fit for queens in a moment of passion, and
scream with rage if a servant breaks a ten-franc saucer from which
their poodle drinks.
..........................................................
A courtesan: a physical and mental description:
She was now twenty-eight,--the age at which the beauties of a French
woman are in their glory. Painters particularly admired the lustre of
her white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of the
neck, and wonderfully firm and polished, so that the light shimmered
over them as it does on watered silk. When she turned her head, superb
folds formed about her neck, the admiration of sculptors. She carried
on this triumphant neck the small head of a Roman empress, the
delicate, round, and self-willed head of Pompeia, with features of
elegant correctness, and the smooth forehead of a woman who drives all
care away and all reflection, who yields easily, but is capable of
balking like a mule, and incapable at such times of listening to
reason. That forehead, turned, as it were, with one cut of the chisel,
brought out the beauty of the golden hair, which was raised in front,
after the Roman fashion, in two equal masses, and twisted up behind
the head to prolong the line of the neck, and enhance that whiteness
by its beautiful color. Black and delicate eyebrows, drawn by a
Chinese brush, encircled the soft eyelids, which were threaded with
rosy fibres. The pupils of the eyes, extremely bright, though striped
with brown rays, gave to her glance the cruel fixity of a beast of
prey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan. The eyes
were gray, fringed with black lashes,--a charming contrast, which made
their expression of calm and contemplative voluptuousness the more
observable; the circle round the eyes showed marks of fatigue, but the
artistic manner in which she could turn her eyeballs, right and left,
or up and down, to observe, or seem to mediate, the way in which she
could hold them fixed, casting out their vivid fire without moving her
head, without taking from her face its absolute immovability (a
manoeuvre learned upon the stage), and the vivacity of their glance,
as she looked about a theatre in search of a friend, made her eyes the
most terrible, also the softest, in short, the most extraordinary eyes
in the world. Rouge had destroyed by this time the diaphanous tints of
her cheeks, the flesh of which was still delicate; but although she
could no longer blush or turn pale, she had a thin nose with rosy,
passionate nostrils, made to express irony,--the mocking irony of
Moliere's women-servants. Her sensual mouth, expressive of sarcasm and
love of dissipation, was adorned with a deep furrow that united the
upper lip with the nose. Her chin, white and rather fat, betrayed the
violence of passion. Her hands and arms were worthy of a sovereign.
But she had one ineradicable sign of low birth,--her foot was short
and fat. No inherited quality ever caused greater distress. Florine
had tried everything, short of amputation, to get rid of it. The feet
were obstinate, like the Breton race from which she came; they
resisted all treatment. Florine now wore long boots stuffed with
cotton, to give length, and the semblance of an instep. Her figure was
of medium height, threatened with corpulence, but still well-balanced,
and well-made.
Morally, she was an adept in all the attitudinizing, quarrelling,
alluring, and cajoling of her business; and she gave to those actions
a savor of their own by playing childlike innocence, and slipping in
among her artless speeches philosophical malignities. Apparently
ignorant and giddy, she was very strong on money-matters and
commercial law,--for the reason that she had gone through so much
misery before attaining to her present precarious success. She had
come down, story by story, from the garret to the first floor, through
so many vicissitudes! She knew life, from that which begins in Brie
cheese and ends at pineapples; from that which cooks and washes in the
corner of a garret on an earthenware stove, to that which convokes the
tribes of pot-bellied chefs and saucemakers. She had lived on credit
and not killed it; she was ignorant of nothing that honest women
ignore; she spoke all languages: she was one of the populace by
experience; she was noble by beauty and physical distinction.
Suspicious as a spy, or a judge, or an old statesman, she was
difficult to impose upon, and therefore the more able to see clearly
into most matters. She knew the ways of managing tradespeople, and how
to evade their snares, and she was quite as well versed in the prices
of things as a public appraiser. To see her lying on her sofa, like a
young bride, fresh and white, holding her part in her hand and
learning it, you would have thought her a child of sixteen, ingenuous,
ignorant, and weak, with no other artifice about her but her
innocence. Let a creditor contrive to enter, and she was up like a
startled fawn, and swearing a good round oath.
"Hey! my good fellow; your insolence is too dear an interest on the
money I owe you," she would say. "I am sick of seeing you. Send the
sheriff here; I'd prefer him to your silly face."
.................................................
A writer tries something new:
Those to whom the inclination of the human mind towards chance,
opposition, and contrasts is known, will readily understand that after
ten years of this lawless Bohemian life, full of ups and downs, of
fetes and sheriffs, of orgies and forced sobrieties, Raoul was
attracted to the idea of another love,--to the gentle, harmonious
house and presence of a great lady, just as the Comtesse Felix
instinctively desired to introduce the torture of great emotions into
a life made monotonous by happiness. This law of life is the law of
all arts, which exist only by contrasts. A work done without this
incentive is the loftiest expression of genius, just as the cloister
is the highest expression of the Christian life.
............................................................
How to behave in society:
"My dear fellow," he said, taking him aside into a corner, "you are
behaving in society as if you were at Florine's. Here no one shows
annoyance, or spouts long articles; they say a few words now and then,
they look their calmest when most desirous of flinging others out of
the window; they sneer softly, they pretend not to think of the woman
they adore, and they are careful not to roll like a donkey on the
high-road. In society, my good Raoul, conventions rule love. Either
carry off Madame de Vandenesse, or show yourself a gentleman. As it
is, you are playing the lover in one of your own books."
Nathan listened with his head lowered; he was like a lion caught in a
toil.
"I'll never set foot in this house again," he cried. "That papier-
mache marquise sells her tea too dear. She thinks me amusing! I
understand now why Saint-Just wanted to guillotine this whole class of
people."
"You'll be back here to-morrow."
Blondet was right. Passions are as mean as they are cruel. The next
day after long hesitation between "I'll go--I'll not go," Raoul left
his new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed to
Madame d'Espard's house in the faubourg Saint-Honore.
......................................................
The tedium of maintaining a mistress:
Every day, or nearly every day, he was obliged to be on horseback in
the Bois, between two and three o'clock, in the careful dress of a
gentleman of leisure. He had to learn at what house or theatre he
could meet Madame de Vandenesse in the evening. He was not able to
leave the party or the play until long after midnight, having obtained
nothing better than a few tender sentences, long awaited, said in a
doorway, or hastily as he put her into her carriage. It frequently
happened that Marie, who by this time had launched him into the great
world, procured for him invitations to dinner in certain houses where
she went herself. All this seemed the simplest life in the world to
her. Raoul moved by pride and led on by his passion never told her of
his labors. He obeyed the will of this innocent sovereign, followed in
her train, followed, also, the parliamentary debates, edited and wrote
for his newspaper, and put upon the stage two plays, the money for
which was absolutely indispensable to him. It sufficed for Madame de
Vandenesse to make a little face of displeasure when he tried to
excuse himself from attending a ball, a concert, or from driving in
the Bois, to compel him to sacrifice his most pressing interests to
her good pleasure. When he left society between one and two in the
morning he went straight to work until eight or nine. He was scarcely
asleep before he was obliged to be up and concocting the opinions of
his journal with the men of political influence on whom he depended,--
not to speak of the thousand and one other details of the paper.
Journalism is connected with everything in these days; with industrial
concerns, with public and private interests, with all new enterprises,
and all the schemes of literature, its self-loves, and its products.
When Nathan, harassed and fatigued, would rush from his editorial
office to the theatre, from the theatre to the Chamber, from the
Chamber to face certain creditors, he was forced to appear in the Bois
with a calm countenance, and gallop beside Marie's carriage in the
leisurely style of a man devoid of cares and with no other duties than
those of love. When in return for this toilsome and wholly ignored
devotion all he won were a few sweet words, the prettiest assurances
of eternal attachment, ardent pressures of the hand on the very few
occasions when they found themselves alone, he began to feel he was
rather duped by leaving his mistress in ignorance of the enormous
costs of these "little attentions," as our fathers called them. The
occasion for an explanation arrived in due time.
........................................
Journalists or replacable light bulb?
His partners, Massol the lawyer, and du Tillet the
banker, had intended from the first to harness his ardor to the
chariot of their own importance and get rid of him as soon as he was
out of condition to feed the paper, or else to deprive him of his
power, arbitrarily, whenever it suited their purpose to take it. To
them Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up, a
literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ.
.................................................
Being picky about how you'll be corrupt:
But in order to show himself pure of
all bribery he refused to take advantage of certain profitable
enterprises which were started by means of his paper,--he! who had no
reluctance in compromising friends or in behaving with little decency
to mechanics under certain circumstances. Such meannesses, the result
of vanity and of ambition, are found in many lives like his. The
mantle must be splendid before the eyes of the world, and we steal our
friend's or a poor man's cloth to patch it.
..........................................................
A cat's tail, useful...
If it had not been for the
cat's magnificent tail, which played a useful part in the household,
the uncovered places on the bureau and the piano would never have been
dusted. In one corner of the room were a pile of shoes which need an
epic to describe them.
..........................................................
Where do writers live?
"I thought Monsieur Nathan too busy to have a mistress. Do authors
have time to make love?"
"I don't say they love, my dear, but they are forced to LODGE
somewhere, like other men, and when they haven't a home of their own
they LODGE with their mistresses; which may seem to you rather loose,
but it is far more agreeable than lodging in a prison."
.............................................................
What she actually loves:
"You think you love him," he replied; "but you love a phantom made of
words."
...............................................................
How a noble husband takes his wife's infidelities:
"What would have happened to you, my poor Marie, three months hence?"
he said. "The sheriffs would have taken you to a public court-room.
Don't bow your head, don't feel humiliated; you have been the dupe of
noble feelings; you have coquetted with poesy, not with a man. All
women--all, do you hear me, Marie?--would have been seduced in your
position. How absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed a
thousand follies through a score of years, if we were not willing to
grant you one imprudence in a lifetime! God keep me from triumphing
over you or from offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently the
other day. Perhaps that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote to
you, sincere in attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning that
same night to Florine. Men are worth less than women. It is not for my
own sake that I speak at this moment, but for yours. I am indulgent,
but the world is not; it shuns a woman who makes a scandal. Is that
just? I know not; but this I know, the world is cruel. Society refuses
to calm the woes itself has caused; it gives its honors to those who
best deceive it; it has no recompense for rash devotion. I see and
know all that. I can't reform society, but this I can do, I can
protect you, Marie, against yourself. This matter concerns a man who
has brought you trouble only, and not one of those high and sacred
loves which do, at times, command our abnegation, and even bear their
own excuse. Perhaps I have been wrong in not varying your happiness,
in not providing you with gayer pleasures, travel, amusements,
distractions for the mind. Besides, I can explain to myself the
impulse that has driven you to a celebrated man, by the jealous envy
you have roused in certain women. Lady Dudley, Madame d'Espard, and my
sister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this. Those women,
against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on your guard,
have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause me
unhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe,
you would never have entered."
................................................................
How she holds him:
No one can tear Raoul from me, I'll tell you that; I
hold him by habit, and that's even stronger than love."
.................................................................
Who Dante's Beatrice actually was...
"Marie cannot prevent my loving her," said Nathan; "she shall be my
Beatrice."
"Beatrice, my good Raoul, was a little girl twelve years of age when
Dante last saw her; otherwise, she would not have been Beatrice. To
make a divinity, it won't do to see her one day wrapped in a mantle,
and the next with a low dress, and the third on the boulevard,
cheapening toys for her last baby. When a man has Florine, who is in
turn duchess, bourgeoise, Negress, marquise, colonel, Swiss peasant,
virgin of the sun in Peru (only way she can play the part), I don't
see why he should go rambling after fashionable women."
............................................................
The political evolution of one writer:
To-day the ambitious Nathan, rich in ink and poor in will, has ended
by capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, like
any other commonplace man. After lending his pen to all disorganizing
efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a
ministerial organ. The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the
fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole. "Peace at any
price," ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionary
editorship, is now the topic of his laudatory articles. Heredity,
attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases, he now defends with solid
arguments. This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanation
in the change of front performed by many men besides Raoul during our
recent political evolutions.
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