A Prince of Bohemia

“‘I shall have real aunts now, do you understand?’ she said to us when she came back in the winter.

“She was so delighted with her respectability, so glad to renounce her independence, that she found means to compass her end. She flattered the old people. She went on foot every day to sit for a couple of hours with Mme. du Bruel the elder while that lady was ill – a Maintenon’s stratagem which amazed du Bruel. And he admired his wife without criticism; he was so fast in the toils already that he did not feel his bonds.

“Claudine succeeded in making him understand that only under the elastic system of a bourgeois government, only at the bourgeois court of the Citizen-King, could a Tullia, now metamorphosed into a Mme. du Bruel, be accepted in the society which her good sense prevented her from attempting to enter. Mme. de Bonfalot, Mme. de Chisse, and Mme. du Bruel received her; she was satisfied. She took up the position of a well-conducted, simple, and virtuous woman, and never acted out of character. In three years’ time she was introduced to the friends of these ladies.

“‘And still I cannot persuade myself that young Mme. du Bruel used to display her ankles, and the rest, to all Paris, with the light of a hundred gas-jets pouring upon her,’ Mme. Anselme Popinot remarked naively.

“From this point of view, July 1830 inaugurated an era not unlike the time of the Empire, when a waiting woman was received at Court in the person of Mme. Garat, a chief-justice’s ‘lady.’ Tullia had completely broken, as you may guess, with all her old associates; of her former acquaintances, she only recognized those who could not compromise her. At the time of her marriage she had taken a very charming little hotel between a court and a garden, lavishing money on it with wild extravagance and putting the best part of her furniture and du Bruel’s into it. Everything that she thought common or ordinary was sold. To find anything comparable to her sparkling splendor, you could only look back to the days when Sophie Arnould, a Guimard, or a Duthe, in all her glory, squandered the fortunes of princes.

“How far did this sumptuous existence affect du Bruel? It is a delicate question to ask, and a still more delicate one to answer. A single incident will suffice to give you an idea of Tullia’s crotchets. Her bed-spread of Brussels lace was worth ten thousand francs. A famous actress had another like it. As soon as Claudine heard this, she allowed her cat, a splendid Angora, to sleep on the bed. That trait gives you the woman. Du Bruel dared not say a word; he was ordered to spread abroad that challenge in luxury, so that it might reach the other. Tullia was very fond of this gift from the Duc de Rhetore; but one day, five years after her marriage, she played with her cat to such purpose that the coverlet – furbelows, flounces, and all – was torn to shreds, and replaced by a sensible quilt, a quilt that was a quilt, and not a symptom of the peculiar form of insanity which drives these women to make up by an insensate luxury for the childish days when they lived on raw apples, to quote the expression of a journalist. The day when the bed-spread was torn to tatters marked a new epoch in her married life.

“Cursy was remarkable for his ferocious industry. Nobody suspects the source to which Paris owes the patch-and-powder eighteenth century vaudevilles that flooded the stage. Those thousand-and-one vaudevilles, which raised such an outcry among the feuilletonistes, were written at Mme. du Bruel’s express desire. She insisted that her husband should purchase the hotel on which she had spent so much, where she had housed five hundred thousand francs’ worth of furniture. Wherefore Tullia never enters into explanations; she understands the sovereign woman’s reason to admiration.

“‘People made a good deal of fun of Cursy,’ said she; ‘but, as a matter of fact, he found this house in the eighteenth century rouge-box, powder, puffs, and spangles. He would never have thought of it but for me,’ she added, burying herself in the cushions in her fireside corner.

“She delivered herself thus on her return from a first night. Du Bruel’s piece had succeeded, and she foresaw an avalanche of criticisms. Tullia had her At Homes. Every Monday she gave a tea-party; her society was as select as might be, and she neglected nothing that could make her house pleasant. There was a bouillotte in one room, conversation in another, and sometimes a concert (always short) in the large drawing-room. None but the most eminent artists performed in the house. Tullia had so much good sense, that she attained to the most exquisite tact, and herein, in all probability, lay the secret of her ascendency over du Bruel; at any rate, he loved her with the love which use and wont at length makes indispensable to life. Every day adds another thread to the strong, irresistible, intangible web, which enmeshes the most delicate fancies, takes captive every most transient mood, and binding them together, holds a man captive hand and foot, heart and head.

“Tullia knew Cursy well; she knew every weak point in his armor, knew also how to heal his wounds.

“A passion of this kind is inscrutable for any observer, even for a man who prides himself, as I do, on a certain expertness. It is everywhere unfathomable; the dark depths in it are darker than in any other mystery; the colors confused even in the highest lights.

“Cursy was an old playwright, jaded by the life of the theatrical world. He liked comfort; he liked a luxurious, affluent, easy existence; he enjoyed being a king in his own house; he liked to be host to a party of men of letters in a hotel resplendent with royal luxury, with carefully chosen works of art shining in the setting. Tullia allowed du Bruel to enthrone himself amid the tribe; there were plenty of journalists whom it was easy enough to catch and ensnare; and, thanks to her evening parties and a well-timed loan here and there, Cursy was not attacked too seriously – his plays succeeded. For these reasons he would not have separated from Tullia for an empire. If she had been unfaithful, he would probably have passed it over, on condition that none of his accustomed joys should be retrenched; yet, strange to say, Tullia caused him no twinges on this account. No fancy was laid to her charge; if there had been any, she certainly had been very careful of appearances.

“‘My dear fellow,’ du Bruel would say, laying down the law to us on the boulevard, ‘there is nothing like one of these women who have sown their wild oats and got over their passions. Such women as Claudine have lived their bachelor life; they have been over head and ears in pleasure, and make the most adorable wives that could be wished; they have nothing to learn, they are formed, they are not in the least prudish; they are well broken in, and indulgent. So I strongly recommend everybody to take the “remains of a racer.” I am the most fortunate man on earth.’

“Du Bruel said this to me himself with Bixiou there to hear it.

“‘My dear fellow,’ said the caricaturist, ‘perhaps he is right to be in the wrong.’

“About a week afterwards, du Bruel asked us to dine with him one Tuesday. That morning I went to see him on a piece of theatrical business, a case submitted to us for arbitration by the commission of dramatic authors. We were obliged to go out again; but before we started he went to Claudine’s room, knocked, as he always does, and asked for leave to enter.

“‘We live in grand style,’ said he, smiling; ‘we are free. Each is independent.’

“We were admitted. Du Bruel spoke to Claudine. ‘I have asked a few people to dinner to-day – ”

“‘Just like you!’ cried she. ‘You ask people without speaking to me; I count for nothing here. – Now’ (taking me as arbitrator by a glance) ‘I ask you yourself. When a man has been so foolish as to live with a woman of my sort; for, after all, I was an opera dancer – yes, I ought always to remember that, if other people are to forget it – well, under those circumstances, a clever man seeking to raise his wife in public opinion would do his best to impose her upon the world as a remarkable woman, to justify the step he had taken by acknowledging that in some ways she was something more than ordinary women. The best way of compelling respect from others is to pay respect to her at home, and to leave her absolute mistress of the house. Well, and yet it is enough to awaken one’s vanity to see how frightened he is of seeming to listen to me. I must be in the right ten times over if he concedes a single point.’

“(Emphatic negative gestures from du Bruel at every other word.)

“‘Oh, yes, yes,’ she continued quickly, in answer to this mute dissent. ‘I know all about it, du Bruel, my dear, I that have been like a queen in my house all my life till I married you. My wishes were guessed, fulfilled, and more than fulfilled. After all, I am thirty-five, and at five-and-thirty a woman cannot expect to be loved. Ah, if I were a girl of sixteen, if I had not lost something that is dearly bought at the Opera, what attention you would pay me, M. du Bruel! I feel the most supreme contempt for men who boast that they can love and grow careless and neglectful in little things as time grows on. You are short and insignificant, you see, du Bruel; you love to torment a woman; it is your only way of showing your strength. A Napoleon is ready to be swayed by the woman he loves; he loses nothing by it; but as for such as you, you believe that you are nothing apparently, you do not wish to be ruled. – Five-and-thirty, my dear boy,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘that is the clue to the riddle. – “No,” does he say again? – You know quite well that I am thirty-seven. I am very sorry, but just ask your friends to dine at the Rocher de Cancale. I could have them here, but I will not; they shall not come. And then perhaps my poor little monologue may engrave that salutary maxim, “Each is master at home,” upon your memory. That is our character,’ she added, laughing, with a return of the opera girl’s giddiness and caprice.

“‘Well, well, my dear little puss; there, there, never mind. We can manage to get on together,’ said du Bruel, and he kissed her hands, and we came away. But he was very wroth.

“The whole way from the Rue de la Victoire to the boulevard a perfect torrent of venomous words poured from his mouth like a waterfall in flood; but as the shocking language which he used on occasion was quite unfit to print, the report is necessarily inadequate.

“‘My dear fellow, I will leave that vile, shameless opera dancer, a worn-out jade that has been set spinning like a top to every operatic air; a foul hussy, an organ-grinder’s monkey! Oh, my dear boy, you have taken up with an actress; may the notion of marrying your mistress never get a hold on you. It is a torment omitted from the hell of Dante, you see. Look here! I will beat her; I will give her a thrashing; I will give it to her! Poison of my life, she sent me off like a running footman.’

“By this time we had reached the boulevard, and he had worked himself up to such a pitch of fury that the words stuck in his throat.

“‘I will kick the stuffing out of her!’

“‘And why?’

“‘My dear fellow, you will never know the thousand-and-one fancies that slut takes into her head. When I want to stay at home, she, forsooth, must go out; when I want to go out, she wants me to stop at home; and she spouts out arguments and accusations and reasoning and talks and talks till she drives you crazy. Right means any whim that they happen to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion. Overwhelm them with something that cuts their arguments to pieces – they hold their tongues and look at you as if you were a dead dog. My happiness indeed! I lead the life of a yard-dog; I am a perfect slave. The little happiness that I have with her costs me dear. Confound it all. I will leave her everything and take myself off to a garret. Yes, a garret and liberty. I have not dared to have my own way once in these five years.’

“But instead of going to his guests, Cursy strode up and down the boulevard between the Rue de Richelieu and the Rue du Mont Blanc, indulging in the most fearful imprecations, his unbounded language was most comical to hear. His paroxysm of fury in the street contrasted oddly with his peaceable demeanor in the house. Exercise assisted him to work off his nervous agitation and inward tempest. About two o’clock, on a sudden frantic impulse, he exclaimed:

“‘These damned females never know what they want. I will wager my head now that if I go home and tell her that I have sent to ask my friends to dine with me at the Rocher de Cancale, she will not be satisfied though she made the arrangement herself. – But she will have gone off somewhere or other. I wonder whether there is something at the bottom of all this, an assignation with some goat? No. In the bottom of her heart she loves me!’”

The Marquise could not help smiling.

“Ah, madame,” said Nathan, looking keenly at her, “only women and prophets know how to turn faith to account. – Du Bruel would have me go home with him,” he continued, “and we went slowly back. It was three o’clock. Before he appeared, he heard a stir in the kitchen, saw preparations going forward, and glanced at me as he asked the cook the reason of this.

“‘Madame ordered dinner,’ said the woman. ‘Madame dressed and ordered a cab, and then she changed her mind and ordered it again for the theatre this evening.’

“‘Good,’ exclaimed du Bruel, ‘what did I tell you?’

“We entered the house stealthily. No one was there. We went from room to room until we reached a little boudoir, and came upon Tullia in tears. She dried her eyes without affectation, and spoke to du Bruel.

“‘Send a note to the Rocher de Cancale,’ she said, ‘and ask your guests to dine here.’

“She was dressed as only women of the theatre can dress, in a simply-made gown of some dainty material, neither too costly nor too common, graceful and harmonious in outline and coloring; there was nothing conspicuous about her, nothing exaggerated – a word now dropping out of use, to be replaced by the word ‘artistic,’ used by fools as current coin. In short, Tullia looked like a gentlewoman. At thirty-seven she had reached the prime of a Frenchwoman’s beauty. At this moment the celebrated oval of her face was divinely pale; she had laid her hat aside; I could see a faint down like the bloom of fruit softening the silken contours of a cheek itself so delicate. There was a pathetic charm about her face with its double cluster of fair hair; her brilliant gray eyes were veiled by a mist of tears; her nose, delicately carved as a Roman cameo, with its quivering nostrils; her little mouth, like a child’s even now; her long queenly throat, with the veins standing out upon it; her chin, flushed for the moment by some secret despair; the pink tips of her ears, the hands that trembled under her gloves, everything about her told of violent feeling. The feverish twitching of her eyebrows betrayed her pain. She looked sublime.

“Her first words had crushed du Bruel. She looked at us both, with that penetrating, impenetrable cat-like glance which only actresses and great ladies can use. Then she held out her hand to her husband.

“‘Poor dear, you had scarcely gone before I blamed myself a thousand times over. It seemed to me that I had been horribly ungrateful. I told myself that I had been unkind. – Was I very unkind?’ she asked, turning to me. – ‘Why not receive your friends? Is it not your house? Do you want to know the reason of it all? Well, I was afraid that I was not loved; and indeed I was half-way between repentance and the shame of going back. I read the newspapers, and saw that there was a first night at the Varietes, and I thought you had meant to give the dinner to a collaborator. Left to myself, I gave way, I dressed to hurry out after you – poor pet.’

“Du Bruel looked at me triumphantly, not a vestige of a recollection of his orations contra Tullia in his mind.

“‘Well, dearest, I have not spoken to any one of them,’ he said.

“‘How well we understand each other!’ quoth she.

“Even as she uttered those bewildering sweet words, I caught sight of something in her belt, the corner of a little note thrust sidewise into it; but I did not need that indication to tell me that Tullia’s fantastic conduct was referable to occult causes. Woman, in my opinion, is the most logical of created beings, the child alone excepted. In both we behold a sublime phenomenon, the unvarying triumph of one dominant, all-excluding thought. The child’s thought changes every moment; but while it possesses him, he acts upon it with such ardor that others give way before him, fascinated by the ingenuity, the persistence of a strong desire. Woman is less changeable, but to call her capricious is a stupid insult. Whenever she acts, she is always swayed by one dominant passion; and wonderful it is to see how she makes that passion the very centre of her world.

“Tullia was irresistible; she twisted du Bruel round her fingers, the sky grew blue again, the evening was glorious. And ingenious writer of plays as he is, he never so much as saw that his wife had buried a trouble out of sight.

“‘Such is life, my dear fellow,’ he said to me, ‘ups and downs and contrasts.’

“‘Especially life off the stage,’ I put in.

“‘That is just what I mean,’ he continued. ‘Why, but for these violent emotions, one would be bored to death! Ah! that woman has the gift of rousing me.’

“We went to the Varietes after dinner; but before we left the house I slipped into du Bruel’s room, and on a shelf among a pile of waste papers found the copy of the Petites-Affiches, in which, agreeably to the reformed law, notice of the purchase of the house was inserted. The words stared me in the face – ‘At the request of Jean Francois du Bruel and Claudine Chaffaroux, his wife – ’ Here was the explanation of the whole matter. I offered my arm to Claudine, and allowed the guests to descend the stairs in front of us. When we were alone – ‘If I were La Palferine,’ I said, ‘I would not break an appointment.’

“Gravely she laid her finger on her lips. She leant on my arm as we went downstairs, and looked at me with almost something like happiness in her eyes because I knew La Palferine. Can you see the first idea that occurred to her? She thought of making a spy of me, but I turned her off with the light jesting talk of Bohemia.

“A month later, after a first performance of one of du Bruel’s plays, we met in the vestibule of the theatre. It was raining; I went to call a cab. We had been delayed for a few minutes, so that there were no cabs in sight. Claudine scolded du Bruel soundly; and as we rolled through the streets (for she set me down at Florine’s), she continued the quarrel with a series of most mortifying remarks.

“‘What is this about?’ I inquired.

“‘Oh, my dear fellow, she blames me for allowing you to run out for a cab, and thereupon proceeds to wish for a carriage.’

“‘As a dancer,’ said she, ‘I have never been accustomed to use my feet except on the boards. If you have any spirit, you will turn out four more plays or so in a year; you will make up your mind that succeed they must, when you think of the end in view, and that your wife will not walk in the mud. It is a shame that I should have to ask for it. You ought to have guessed my continual discomfort during the five years since I married you.’

“‘I am quite willing,’ returned du Bruel. ‘But we shall ruin ourselves.’

“‘If you run into debt,’ she said, ‘my uncle’s money will clear it off some day.’

“‘You are quite capable of leaving me the debts and taking the property.’

“‘Oh! is that the way you take it?’ retorted she. ‘I have nothing more to say to you; such a speech stops my mouth.’

“Whereupon du Bruel poured out his soul in excuses and protestations of love. Not a word did she say. He took her hands, she allowed him to take them; they were like ice, like a dead woman’s hands. Tullia, you can understand, was playing to admiration the part of corpse that women can play to show you that they refuse their consent to anything and everything; that for you they are suppressing soul, spirit, and life, and regard themselves as beasts of burden. Nothing so provokes a man with a heart as this strategy. Women can only use it with those who worship them.

“She turned to me. ‘Do you suppose,’ she said scornfully, ‘that a Count would have uttered such an insult even if the thought had entered his mind? For my misfortune I have lived with dukes, ambassadors, and great lords, and I know their ways. How intolerable it makes bourgeois life! After all, a playwright is not a Rastignac nor a Rhetore – ’

“Du Bruel looked ghastly at this. Two days afterwards we met in the foyer at the Opera, and took a few turns together. The conversation fell on Tullia.

“‘Do not take my ravings on the boulevard too seriously,’ said he; ‘I have a violent temper.’

“For two winters I was a tolerably frequent visitor at du Bruel’s house, and I followed Claudine’s tactics closely. She had a splendid carriage. Du Bruel entered public life; she made him abjure his Royalist opinions. He rallied himself; he took his place again in the administration; the National Guard was discreetly canvassed, du Bruel was elected major, and behaved so valorously in a street riot, that he was decorated with the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor. He was appointed Master of Requests and head of a department. Uncle Chaffaroux died and left his niece forty thousand francs per annum, three-fourths of his fortune. Du Bruel became a deputy; but beforehand, to save the necessity of re-election, he secured his nomination to the Council of State. He reprinted divers archaeological treatises, a couple of political pamphlets, and a statistical work, by way of pretext for his appointment to one of the obliging academies of the Institut. At this moment he is a Commander of the Legion, and (after fishing in the troubled waters of political intrigue) has quite recently been made a peer of France and a count. As yet our friend does not venture to bear his honors; his wife merely puts ‘La Comtesse du Bruel’ on her cards. The sometime playwright has the Order of Leopold, the Order of Isabella, the cross of Saint-Vladimir, second class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria, the Papal Order of the Golden Spur, – all the lesser orders, in short, besides the Grand Cross.

“Three months ago Claudine drove to La Palferine’s door in her splendid carriage with its armorial bearings. Du Bruel’s grandfather was a farmer of taxes ennobled towards the end of Louis Quatorze’s reign. Cherin composed his coat-of-arms for him, so the Count’s coronet looks not amiss above a scutcheon innocent of Imperial absurdities. In this way, in the short space of three years, Claudine had carried out the programme laid down for her by the charming, light-hearted La Palferine.

“One day, just above a month ago, she climbed the miserable staircase to her lover’s lodging; climbed in her glory, dressed like a real countess of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to our friend’s garret. La Palferine, seeing her, said, ‘You have made a peeress of yourself I know. But it is too late, Claudine; every one is talking just now about the Southern Cross, I should like it see it!’

“‘I will get it for you.’

“La Palferine burst into a peal of Homeric laughter.

“‘Most distinctly,’ he returned, ‘I do not wish to have a woman as ignorant as a carp for my mistress, a woman that springs like a flying fish from the green-room of the Opera to Court, for I should like to see you at the Court of the Citizen King.’

“She turned to me.

“‘What is the Southern Cross?’ she asked, in a sad, downcast voice.

“I was struck with admiration for this indomitable love, outdoing the most ingenious marvels of fairy tales in real life – a love that would spring over a precipice to find a roc’s egg, or to gather the singing flower. I explained that the Southern Cross was a nebulous constellation even brighter than the Milky Way, arranged in the form of a cross, and that it could only be seen in southern latitudes.

“‘Very well, Charles, let us go,’ said she.

“La Palferine, ferocious though he was, had tears in his eyes; but what a look there was in Claudine’s face, what a note in her voice! I have seen nothing like the thing that followed, not even in the supreme touch of a great actor’s art; nothing to compare with her movement when she saw the hard eyes softened in tears; Claudine sank upon her knees and kissed La Palferine’s pitiless hand. He raised her with his grand manner, his ‘Rusticoli air,’ as he calls it – ‘There, child!’ he said, ‘I will do something for you; I will put you – in my will.’