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Honore de Balzac - Analytical Studies

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Analytical Studies




Caroline is one day led to notice that her cherished Adolphe leaves
her rather too often upon a matter of business, that eternal
Chaumontel's affair, which never comes to an end.


Axiom.--Every household has its Chaumontel's affair. (See TROUBLE
WITHIN TROUBLE.)


In the first place, a woman no more believes in matters of business
than publishers and managers do in the illness of actresses and
authors. The moment a beloved creature absents himself, though she has
rendered him even too happy, every woman straightway imagines that he
has hurried away to some easy conquest. In this respect, women endow
men with superhuman faculties. Fear magnifies everything, it dilates
the eyes and the heart: it makes a woman mad.

"Where is my husband going? What is my husband doing? Why has he left
me? Why did he not take me with him?"

These four questions are the four cardinal points of the compass of
suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these
frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble,
unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the
shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the
angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate,
at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one of
them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the
public interest, they consider legal, legitimate and permissible, in
the interest of their love. This fatal woman's curiosity reduces them
to the necessity of having agents, and the agent of any woman who, in
this situation, has not lost her self-respect,--a situation in which
her jealousy will not permit her to respect anything: neither your
little boxes, nor your clothes, nor the drawers of your treasury, of
your desk, of your table, of your bureau, nor your pocketbook with
private compartments, nor your papers, nor your traveling
dressing-case, nor your toilet articles (a woman discovers in this way
that her husband dyed his moustache when he was a bachelor), nor your
india-rubber girdles--her agent, I say, the only one in whom a woman
trusts, is her maid, for her maid understands her, excuses her, and
approves her.

In the paroxysm of excited curiosity, passion and jealousy, a woman
makes no calculations, takes no observations. She simply wishes to
know the whole truth.

And Justine is delighted: she sees her mistress compromising herself
with her, and she espouses her passion, her dread, her fears and her
suspicions, with terrible friendship. Justine and Caroline hold
councils and have secret interviews. All espionage involves such
relationships. In this pass, a maid becomes the arbitress of the fate
of the married couple. Example: Lord Byron.

"Madame," Justine one day observes, "monsieur really _does_ go out to
see a woman."

Caroline turns pale.

"But don't be alarmed, madame, it's an old woman."

"Ah, Justine, to some men no women are old: men are inexplicable."

"But, madame, it isn't a lady, it's a woman, quite a common woman."

"Ah, Justine, Lord Byron loved a fish-wife at Venice, Madame de
Fischtaminel told me so."

And Caroline bursts into tears.

"I've been pumping Benoit."

"What is Benoit's opinion?"

"Benoit thinks that the woman is a go-between, for monsieur keeps his
secret from everybody, even from Benoit."

For a week Caroline lives the life of the damned; all her savings go
to pay spies and to purchase reports.

Finally, Justine goes to see the woman, whose name is Madame Mahuchet;
she bribes her and learns at last that her master has preserved a
witness of his youthful follies, a nice little boy that looks very
much like him, and that this woman is his nurse, the second-hand
mother who has charge of little Frederick, who pays his quarterly
school-bills, and through whose hands pass the twelve hundred or two
thousand francs which Adolphe is supposed annually to lose at cards.

"What of the mother?" exclaims Caroline.

To end the matter, Justine, Caroline's good genius, proves to her that
M'lle Suzanne Beauminet, formerly a grisette and somewhat later Madame
Sainte-Suzanne, died at the hospital, or else that she has made her
fortune, or else, again, that her place in society is so low there is
no danger of madame's ever meeting her.

Caroline breathes again: the dirk has been drawn from her heart, she
is quite happy; but she had no children but daughters, and would like
a boy. This little drama of unjust suspicions, this comedy of the
conjectures to which Mother Mahuchet gives rise, these phases of a
causeless jealousy, are laid down here as the type of a situation, the
varieties of which are as innumerable as characters, grades and sorts.

This source of petty troubles is pointed out here, in order that women
seated upon the river's bank may contemplate in it the course of their
own married life, following its ascent or descent, recalling their own
adventures to mind, their untold disasters, the foibles which caused
their errors, and the peculiar fatalities to which were due an instant
of frenzy, a moment of unnecessary despair, or sufferings which they
might have spared themselves, happy in their self-delusions.

This vexation has a corollary in the following, one which is much more
serious and often without remedy, especially when its root lies among
vices of another kind, and which do not concern us, for, in this work,
women are invariably esteemed honest--until the end.



THE DOMESTIC TYRANT.

"My dear Caroline," says Adolphe one day to his wife, "are you
satisfied with Justine?"

"Yes, dear, quite so."

"Don't you think she speaks to you rather impertinently?"

"Do you suppose I would notice a maid? But it seems _you_ notice her!"

"What do you say?" asks Adolphe in an indignant way that is always
delightful to women.

Justine is a genuine maid for an actress, a woman of thirty stamped by
the small-pox with innumerable dimples, in which the loves are far
from sporting: she is as brown as opium, has a good deal of leg and
not much body, gummy eyes, and a tournure to match. She would like to
have Benoit marry her, but at this unexpected suggestion, Benoit asked
for his discharge. Such is the portrait of the domestic tyrant
enthroned by Caroline's jealousy.

Justine takes her coffee in the morning, in bed, and manages to have
it as good as, not to say better than, that of her mistress. Justine
sometimes goes out without asking leave, dressed like the wife of a
second-class banker. She sports a pink hat, one of her mistress' old
gowns made over, an elegant shawl, shoes of bronze kid, and jewelry of
doubtful character.

Justine is sometimes in a bad humor, and makes her mistress feel that
she too is a woman like herself, though she is not married. She has
her whims, her fits of melancholy, her caprices. She even dares to
have her nerves! She replies curtly, she makes herself insupportable
to the other servants, and, to conclude, her wages have been
considerably increased.

"My dear, this girl is getting more intolerable every day," says
Adolphe one morning to his wife, on noticing Justine listening at the
key-hole, "and if you don't send her away, I will!"

Caroline, greatly alarmed, is obliged to give Justine a talking to,
while her husband is out.

"Justine, you take advantage of my kindness to you: you have high
wages, here, you have perquisites, presents: try to keep your place,
for my husband wants to send you away."

The maid humbles herself to the earth, she sheds tears: she is so
attached to madame! Ah! she would rush into the fire for her: she
would let herself be chopped into mince-meat: she is ready for
anything.

"If you had anything to conceal, madame, I would take it on myself and
say it was me!"

"Very well, Justine, very good, my girl," says Caroline, terrified:
"but that's not the point: just try to keep in your place."

"Ah, ha!" says Justine to herself, "monsieur wants to send me away,
does he? Wait and see the deuce of a life I'll lead you, you old
curmudgeon!"

A week after, Justine, who is dressing her mistress' hair, looks in
the glass to make sure that Caroline can see all the grimaces of her
countenance: and Caroline very soon inquires, "Why, what's the matter,
Justine?"

"I would tell you, readily, madame, but then, madame, you are so weak
with monsieur!"

"Come, go on, what is it?"

"I know now, madame, why master wanted to show me the door: he has
confidence in nobody but Benoit, and Benoit is playing the mum with
me."

"Well, what does that prove? Has anything been discovered?"

"I'm sure that between the two they are plotting something against you
madame," returns the maid with authority.

Caroline, whom Justine watches in the glass, turns pale: all the
tortures of the previous petty trouble return, and Justine sees that
she has become as indispensable to her mistress as spies are to the
government when a conspiracy is discovered. Still, Caroline's friends
do not understand why she keeps so disagreeable a servant girl, one
who wears a hat, whose manners are impertinent, and who gives herself
the airs of a lady.

This stupid domination is talked of at Madame Deschars', at Madame de
Fischtaminel's, and the company consider it funny. A few ladies think
they can see certain monstrous reasons for it, reasons which
compromise Caroline's honor.


Axiom.--In society, people can put cloaks on every kind of truth, even
the prettiest.


In short the _aria della calumnia_ is executed precisely as if
Bartholo were singing it.

It is averred that Caroline cannot discharge her maid.

Society devotes itself desperately to discovering the secret of this
enigma. Madame de Fischtaminel makes fun of Adolphe who goes home in a
rage, has a scene with Caroline and discharges Justine.

This produces such an effect upon Justine, that she falls sick, and
takes to her bed. Caroline observes to her husband, that it would be
awkward to turn a girl in Justine's condition into the street, a girl
who is so much attached to them, too, and who has been with them sine
their marriage.

"Let her go then as soon as she is well!" says Adolphe.

Caroline, reassured in regard to Adolphe, and indecently swindled by
Justine, at last comes to desire to get rid of her: she applies a
violent remedy to the disease, and makes up her mind to go under the
Caudine Forks of another petty trouble, as follows:



THE AVOWAL.

One morning, Adolphe is petted in a very unusual manner. The too happy
husband wonders what may be the cause of this development of
affection, and he hears Caroline, in her most winning tones, utter the
word: "Adolphe?"

"Well?" he replies, in alarm at the internal agitation betrayed by
Caroline's voice.

"Promise not to be angry."

"Well."

"Not to be vexed with me."

"Never. Go on."

"To forgive me and never say anything about it."

"But tell me what it is!"

"Besides, you are the one that's in the wrong--"

"Speak, or I'll go away."

"There's no one but you that can get me out of the scrape--and it was
you that got me into it."

"Come, come."

"It's about--"

"About--"

"About Justine!"

"Don't speak of her, she's discharged. I won't see her again, her
style of conduct exposes your reputation--"

"What can people say--what have they said?"

The scene changes, the result of which is a secondary explanation
which makes Caroline blush, as she sees the bearing of the
suppositions of her best friends.

"Well, now, Adolphe, it's to you I owe all this. Why didn't you tell
me about Frederick?"

"Frederick the Great? The King of Prussia?"

"What creatures men are! Hypocrite, do you want to make me believe
that you have forgotten your son so soon, M'lle Suzanne Beauminet's
son?"

"Then you know--?"

"The whole thing! And old other Mahuchet, and your absences from home
to give him a good dinner on holidays."

"How like moles you pious women can be if you try!" exclaims Adolphe,
in his terror.

"It was Justine that found it out."

"Ah! Now I understand the reason of her insolence."

"Oh, your Caroline has been very wretched, dear, and this spying
system, which was produced by my love for you, for I do love you, and
madly too,--if you deceived me, I would fly to the extremity of
creation,--well, as I was going to say, this unfounded jealousy has
put me in Justine's power, so, my precious, get me out of it the best
way you can!"

"Let this teach you, my angel, never to make use of your servants, if
you want them to be of use to you. It is the lowest of tyrannies, this
being at the mercy of one's people."

Adolphe takes advantage of this circumstance to alarm Caroline, he
thinks of future Chaumontel's affairs, and would be glad to have no
more espionage.

Justine is sent for, Adolphe peremptorily dismisses her without
waiting to hear her explanation. Caroline imagines her vexations at an
end. She gets another maid.

Justine, whose twelve or fifteen thousand francs have attracted the
notice of a water carrier, becomes Madame Chavagnac, and goes into the
apple business. Ten months after, in Adolphe's absence, Caroline
receives a letter written upon school-boy paper, in strides which
would require orthopedic treatment for three months, and thus
conceived:


"Madam!

"Yu ar shaimphoolly diseeved bi yure huzban fur mame Deux
fischtaminelle, hee goze their evry eavning, yu ar az blynde az a
Batt. Your gott wott yu dizzurv, and I am Glad ovit, and I have thee
honur ov prezenting yu the assurunz ov Mi moaste ds Sting guischt
respecks."


Caroline starts like a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she
places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of
suspicion, and begins her struggle with the unknown all over again.

When she has discovered the injustice of her suspicions, there comes
another letter with an offer to furnish her with details relative to a
Chaumontel's affair which Justine has unearthed.

The petty trouble of avowals, ladies, is often more serious than this,
as you perhaps have occasion to remember.



HUMILIATIONS.

To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbands
even when their husbands care no more for them, not only because there
are more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man,
than between the man and the wife; but also because woman has more
delicacy and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as a
matter of course.


Axiom.--In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there
is a man, a father, a mother and a woman.


A married woman has sensibility enough for four, or for five even, if
you look closely.

Now, it is not improper to observe in this place, that, in a woman's
eyes, love is a general absolution: the man who is a good lover may
commit crimes, if he will, he is always as pure as snow in the eyes of
her who loves him, if he truly loves her. As to a married woman, loved
or not, she feels so deeply that the honor and consideration of her
husband are the fortune of her children, that she acts like the woman
in love,--so active is the sense of community of interest.

This profound sentiment engenders, for certain Carolines, petty
troubles which, unfortunately for this book, have their dismal side.

Adolphe is compromised. We will not enumerate all the methods of
compromising oneself, for we might become personal. Let us take, as an
example, the social error which our epoch excuses, permits,
understands and commits the most of any--the case of an honest
robbery, of skillfully concealed corruption in office, or of some
misrepresentation that becomes excusable when it has succeeded, as,
for instance, having an understanding with parties in power, for the
sale of property at the highest possible price to a city, or a
country.

Thus, in a bankruptcy, Adolphe, in order to protect himself (this
means to recover his claims), has become mixed up in certain unlawful
doings which may bring a man to the necessity of testifying before the
Court of Assizes. In fact, it is not known that the daring creditor
will not be considered a party.

Take notice that in all cases of bankruptcy, protecting oneself is
regarded as the most sacred of duties, even by the most respectable
houses: the thing is to keep the bad side of the protection out of
sight, as they do in prudish England.

Adolphe does not know what to do, as his counsel has told him not to
appear in the matter: so he has recourse to Caroline. He gives her a
lesson, he coaches her, he teaches her the Code, he examines her
dress, he equips her as a brig sent on a voyage, and despatches her to
the office of some judge, or some syndic. The judge is apparently a
man of severe morality, but in reality a libertine: he retains his
serious expression on seeing a pretty woman enter, and makes sundry
very uncomplimentary remarks about Adolphe.

"I pity you, madame, you belong to a man who may involve you in
numerous unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he will
be quite disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you are
so young, it is perfectly natural." And the judge comes as near to
Caroline as possible.

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, great heavens! what a prospect is yours! My first thought was for
the woman, but now I pity you doubly, I think of the mother. Ah, how
you must have suffered in coming here! Poor, poor woman!"

"Ah, sir, you take an interest in me, do you not?"

"Alas, what can I do?" says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at
Caroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a
magistrate before I am a man."

"Oh, sir, only be a man--"

"Are you aware of the full bearing of that request, fair creature?" At
this point the magistrate tremblingly takes Caroline's hand.

Caroline, who remembers that the honor of her husband and children is
at stake, says to herself that this is not the time to play the prude.
She abandons her hand, making just resistance enough for the old man
(happily he is an old man) to consider it a favor.

"Come, come, my beauty," resumes the judge, "I should be loath to
cause so lovely a woman to shed tears; we'll see about it. You shall
come to-morrow evening and tell me the whole affair. We must look at
the papers, we will examine them together--"

"Sir--"

"It's indispensable."

"But, sir--"

"Don't be alarmed, my dear, a judge is likely to know how to grant
what is due to justice and--" he puts on a shrewd look here--"to
beauty."

"But, sir--"

"Be quite at your ease," he adds, holding her hand closely in his,
"and we'll try to reduce this great crime down to a peccadillo." And
he goes to the door with Caroline, who is frightened to death at an
appointment thus proposed.

The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe with
a smile. He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her round
the waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist,
especially as she says to herself, "Adolphe particularly recommended
me not to vex the syndic."

Nevertheless Caroline escapes, in the interest of the syndic himself,
and again pronounces the "Sir!" which she had said three times to the
judge.

"Don't be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and
your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to
a young man whom he knows to be inflammable!"

"Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, and
you threatened him so terribly that the urgency of the matter--"

"Hasn't he got a lawyer, an attorney?"

Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe's profound
rascality.

"He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a
family, upon her children--"

"Ta, ta, ta," returns the syndic. "You have come to influence my
independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up to
you: well, I'll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Your
husband wants to save _his_ honor, _my_ honor is at your disposal!"

"Sir," cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown
himself at her feet. "You alarm me!"

She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out
of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without
compromising anything or anybody.

"I will come again," she says smiling, "when you behave better."

"You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himself
seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a
fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are
not by any means honorable. It is not his first departure from
rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up
in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor
of a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours."

Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes
back.

"What do you mean, sir?" she exclaims, furious at this outrageous
broadside.

"Why, this affair--"

"Chaumontel's affair?"

"No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were
insolvent."

Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his
income: (See _The Jesuitism of Women_) she trembles. Her curiosity is
in the syndic's favor.

"Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can
look at you."

And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the
banker, interrupting himself to say: "Oh, what a pretty, cunning,
little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that--_Du
Tillet, therefore, compromised._ What an ear, too! You have been
doubtless told that you had a delicious ear--_And du Tillet was
right, for judgment had already been given_--I love small ears, but
let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like--_du
Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic
husband_: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!"

"Where were we, sir?"

"How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?"

At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man
of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning
much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up
three hundred thousand francs.

There are many huge variations of this petty trouble.


EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs
Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several
ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety:
Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to
keep her husband out of a duel.


ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in
the presence of everybody:

"Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?"

"Certainly not."

"Why do you ask, my little man?" inquires Madame Foullepointe.

"Because she just gave father a big slap, and he's ever so much
stronger than me."

Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court to
her, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrel
with Caroline.



THE LAST QUARREL.

In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking
of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a
great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if
it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her
husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires
in the last quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise.


Axiom.--When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaur
has seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with his
cane.


Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty trouble
which often explodes about nothing, but more often still on some
occasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewell
to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degree
as capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house.

Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties of
quarrels, if he desires to be precise.

Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of the
syndic in Chaumontel's affair, hides a robe of infinitely softer
stuff, of an agreeable, silky color: that Chaumontel's hair, in short,
is fair, and that his eyes are blue.

Or else Caroline, who arose before Adolphe, may have seen his
greatcoat thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a little
perfumed paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have
attracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark
room through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in
her arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to
crackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things by
a foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have read
these lines:


"Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yu
shal se whether I Love yu."


Or this:

"Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it be
to-morrow?"

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