Eve and David had put their own happiness second to his. Their wedding had been postponed until the workmen could finish the furnishing, painting and paper-hanging on the first floor, for Lucien’s concerns had been given priority. No one who knew Lucien would have been surprised at the devotion shown to him: he had such charming, such endearing manners! He so gracefully expressed his impatience and his desires! His cause was always won before he had opened his mouth. So fatal a privilege is disastrous rather than salutary to most young people. Accustomed to the attentions which their youth and good looks guarantee, and happy to receive the protection which humanity egoistically accords to any of its darlings in the same way that it gives alms to the mendicant who stirs its feelings and affords it emotional satisfaction, many of these overgrown children enjoy such favour but do not use it to advantage. Deceived as to the meaning and motives governing social relations, they always expect to be greeted with flattering smiles. But the moment comes when society discards them – perhaps on the threshold of a salon or at a street-corner – denuded, bald-headed, threadbare, worthless and destitute, like aging coquettes or worn-out garments.
Moreover Eve herself had desired this postponement because she wanted to cater as economically as possible for her future household needs. What could a loving couple refuse to a brother who, when he saw his sister at work, exclaimed with heart-felt sincerity: ‘How I wish I could sew!’ And David, grave and observant as he was, had joined in this conspiracy of self-sacrifice. None the less, since Lucien’s triumph in Madame de Bargeton’s salon, he was alarmed by the transformation he could discern in Lucien: he was afraid that he would come to despise their modest standard of living. Desiring to put his ‘brother’ to the test, he sometimes got him to choose between the patriarchal joys of family life and the pleasures of high society, and when he had seen Lucien giving up his vainglorious enjoyments for their sake, he had exclaimed: ‘They won’t succeed in spoiling him!’ On various occasions the three friends and Madame Chardon went off on pleasure parties, as provincial people do. They took walks in the woods near Angoulême which run along the river Charente; they picnicked on the grass with provisions which David’s apprentice brought to a certain spot at an agreed time; then they returned home in the evening, rather tired, but without having spent as much as three francs. On great occasions, when they dined at what is called a ‘restaurât’, a sort of rustic eating-house which is half-way between a provincial tavern and a Paris pleasure-garden, they went to the expense of five francs which David and the Chardons shared. David was infinitely grateful to Lucien for forgetting, during these rustic excursions, the satisfaction he drew from consorting with Madame de Bargeton and eating sumptuous society dinners. Each of them then wanted to fête the ‘great man’ of Angoulême.
At this conjuncture, just when all plans for the future household were practically complete, while David was making a journey to Marsac to prevail on his father to come to the wedding, in the hope that the old man would yield to his daughter-in-law’s charm and contribute to the enormous expenditure necessitated by the alterations to the house, one of those events occurred which entirely change the look of things in a small town.
In the person of du Châtelet, Lucien and Louise had a close spy who, with the persistency of hatred mingled with passion and avarice, was watching for an opportunity to provoke a scandal. Sixte wanted Madame de Bargeton to declare herself so openly for Lucien as to become what one calls a ‘lost woman’. He had posed as a humble confidant of Madame de Bargeton; but if, in her house in the Rue du Minage, he admired Lucien, he ran him down everywhere else. By imperceptible degrees he had gained the right to pay informal calls on Naïs, who was no longer suspicious of her elderly admirer; but he had staked too much on the love of Lucien and Louise which, to their very great regret, remained platonic. In fact there are passions which – put it as you will – are well or badly launched. Two persons make sentiment a matter of tactics, talk instead of acting, and fight in the open field instead of laying siege. As a result they often cool off towards each other because their desires spend themselves in a vacuum. Both lovers thus give themselves time to reflect and judge one another. Often passions which have taken the field with flying colours and fine array, with ardour enough to sweep all before them, end up by retreating to their quarters, with no victory gained, humiliated, disarmed, a laughing-stock for the vain stir they have made. These mischances are sometimes attributable to the timidity of youth and the temporisations with which women love to begin – for this kind of reciprocal deception happens neither to practised seducers nor to coquettes well versed in the strategy of passion.
Besides this, life in the provinces is singularly adverse to the satisfactions of love and favours passion only as a kind of intellectual debate. Also the obstacles it opposes to that sweet intercourse which so much binds lovers together drive ardent souls to extreme decisions. Provincial life is based on such meticulous espionage, it requires that private conduct shall be so open to inspection, it so reluctantly approves of any intimacy which consoles while not offending virtue, it so unjustly incriminates the most chaste relationship, that many women are stigmatized however innocent they may be. Thereupon some of them become angry with themselves for not having tasted all the felicity as well as the overwhelming unhappiness which a lapse from virtue brings. So that society, which without any serious examination blames or criticizes the overt act which brings long inward conflicts to an end, is primarily responsible for the ensuing scandal; but most of those people who rail against the supposedly shocking conduct of a few undeservedly calumniated women have never thought of the causes which have brought them into the open. Madame de Bargeton was to find herself in the same peculiar situation as many women who have fallen only after being unjustly accused.
In the early days of a passion, the inexperienced are intimidated by obstacles, and those which confronted the two lovers were very like the cords with which the Lilliputians tied up Gulliver. They were a multitude of trivialities which made all movement impossible and thwarted the most violent desires. So, Madame de Bargeton had always to remain in public view. If she had been ‘not at home’ at the time of Lucien’s visits, there would have been nothing more to say: she might just as well have eloped with him. True, she received him in her boudoir, and he was so used to being there that he looked upon it as his domain – but Louise was scrupulous in keeping open house. Nothing went beyond the bounds of strict propriety. Monsieur de Bargeton bumbled about the house like a cockchafer and it never occurred to him that his wife might wish to be alone with Lucien. Had he been the only obstacle, Naïs could very easily have sent him off or kept him busy; but she was inundated with visitors, and the keener curiosity became, the more their number increased. Provincial people are by nature malicious and love to balk nascent passion. The servants passed to and fro through the house without being summoned and gave no warning of their presence, in conformity with the long-standing habits which a woman who had nothing to conceal had allowed them to acquire. To have made any changes in the domestic routine would have been tantamount to confessing a love intrigue which Angoulême continued to suspect. Madame de Bargeton could not set foot outside her house without the town knowing where she was going. To have gone for solitary walks with Lucien outside the town would have been a decisive step: there would have been less danger in shutting herself up with him in her house. If Lucien had stayed with her after midnight, with no other company present, tongues would have wagged the next morning. And so, indoors and out of doors, Madame de Bargeton’s life was open to the public. These details give a complete picture of provincial life: a transgression is either openly avowed or made impossible.
Like all women involved in a love affair but lacking experience, Louise came to realize the difficulties of her situation one by one; they frightened her, and then the alarm she felt had its effect on those amorous discussions with which lovers, alone to themselves, most pleasantly while away the time. Madame de Bargeton had no est
ate to which she could take her beloved poet, like some women who cleverly manufacture some excuse for burying themselves in the country. Tired of living under the public gaze, exasperated by the tyranny whose yoke brought more vexation than her love afforded satisfaction, her mind turned towards L’Escarbas and she thought of paying her aged father a visit, so irritated she was with these miserable obstacles.
Châtelet did not believe in such great innocence. He kept an eye on the times at which Lucien visited Madame de Bargeton and called on her a few minutes later; and he was always accompanied by Monsieur de Chandour, the most indiscreet member of their circle, whom he was careful to let go in first, hoping that some lucky chance, obstinately awaited, would enable him to take the lovers by surprise. His role and his prospects of success were the more dubious because he had to remain neutral in order to manoeuvre the actors in the drama he wanted to stage. And so, in order to lull any suspicion in Lucien, whom he flattered, and Madame de Bargeton, who was not lacking in perspicacity, he had attached himself to the jealous Amélie for appearances’ sake. So that a closer watch could be kept on Louise and Lucien, he had succeeded a few days since in starting a controversy about the two lovers between himself and Chandour. Du Châtelet claimed that Madame de Bargeton was playing with Lucien, that she was too proud and of too high rank to condescend to a chemist’s son. This pretence of incredulity suited his plans, for he wanted to figure as Madame de Bargeton’s champion. Stanislas de Chandour maintained that Lucien was by no means spurned as a lover. Amélie’s eagerness to know the truth added heat to the discussion. Each party had a reasoned case. As is typical in a small town, intimate friends of the Chandours would often turn up during a conversation in which both du Châtelet and Stanislas were very competently upholding their point of view. It was not very difficult for either disputant to recruit partisans by asking his neighbour: ‘What do you think about it?’ This controversy kept Madame de Bargeton and Lucien under constant surveillance. Finally, du Châtelet one day remarked that whenever Monsieur and himself called on Louise and Lucien was there, no sign was revealed of a suspect relationship: the boudoir door remained open, people came and went, no mysterious exchanges gave any hint of guilty love-play between the two people, etc. Stanislas, who had more than his share of stupidity, undertook to steal in next day on tiptoe, and the perfidious Amélie expressed strong approval.
That next day was for Lucien one of those occasions when young lovers tear their hair and vow they will not go on with the silly business of wooing. He had grown used to his position. The poet who had so timidly taken a chair in the sacred boudoir of the ‘queen’ of Angoulême had been metamorphosed into an exacting lover. Six months had sufficed for him to regard himself as Louise’s equal, and from then on he wanted to become her master. He left home that day promising himself that he would be very unreasonable, put his life to the hazard, bring all the resources of fiery eloquence into play, assert that his head was in a whirl and that he was incapable of conceiving an idea or writing a line. Now some women have a repugnance for deliberate decisions – and this does honour to their delicacy; they love to be swept off their feet rather than yield to stipulations; generally speaking, they will not have pleasure imposed on them. Madame de Bargeton observed on Lucien’s brow, in his eyes, face and manner, that tenderness which betrays a fixed resolution. She decided to frustrate it, partly from contrariness, but also because she had an exalted conception of love. Like any woman given to exaggeration, she exaggerated her own value. In her eyes, Madame de Bargeton was a sovereign lady, a Beatrice, a Laura. She was sitting on a dais as in medieval times, watching the literary tournament, and Lucien had to win several victories before he could merit the prize: he had to outshine Victor Hugo, the enfant sublime, Lamartine, Walter Scott and Byron. The noble creature considered her love as an uplifting principle: the desires she inspired in Lucien were to incite him to glory. This feminine quixotism gives a dedicated quality to love which, when it is devoted to a worthy purpose, acquires some honour and dignity. Intent on playing the role of Dulcinea in Lucien’s life for seven or eight years, Madame de Bargeton wished, like so many provincial women, that possession should be paid for by a kind of serfdom, a period of constancy which would enable her to gauge her lover’s worth.
After Lucien had engaged battle with one of those violent outbursts of petulance which are laughed at by women who are still uncommitted but sadden women who know what love is, Louise assumed a dignified pose and began one of her long speeches abounding in high-flown phrases.
‘Is that what you promised me, Lucien?’ she asked at the end of it. ‘Do not bring into the present, which is so sweet, a remorse which later would poison my life. Do not spoil the future! And – I say this with pride – do not spoil the present! Is not my heart all yours? What more can you want? Would you let your heart be dominated by your senses, when the finest privilege a woman has, if she is truly loved, is to impose silence on them? For whom then do you take me? If in your eyes I am not something more than a woman, I am less than a woman.’
‘You wouldn’t say anything else to a man you didn’t love,’ cried Lucien, in a rage.
‘If you do not feel all the real love there is in my thoughts, you will never be worthy of me.’
‘You are only casting doubt on my love in order to avoid responding to it,’ said Lucien, throwing himself at her feet and weeping.
The poor young man wept in earnest on seeing that he was to remain so long at the gates of Paradise. His tears were those of a poet whose sense of power was humiliated, those of a child in despair at being refused a coveted toy.
‘You have never loved me,’ he cried.
‘You don’t mean what you are saying,’ she replied, flattered at this vehemence.
‘Then prove to me that you will be mine,’ said Lucien, his hair all tousled.
At this moment, Stanislas arrived unheard, saw Lucien with bowed figure, his eyes full of tears and his head on Louise’s lap. Satisfied with this sufficiently compromising tableau, Stanislas backed out towards du Châtelet, who was standing outside the drawing-room door. Madame de Bargeton quickly rushed forward, but failed to reach the two spies who, aware that they were intruding, had beaten a hasty retreat.
‘Who were those people?’ she asked her servants.
‘Monsieur de Chandour and Monsieur du Châtelet,’ answered Gentil, her old manservant.
She returned pale and trembling to her boudoir.
‘If they saw you in that posture,’ she said to Lucien, ‘I am lost!’
‘So much the better!’ exclaimed the poet.
This selfish outburst, prompted by love, drew a smile from her. In the provinces an episode like this becomes worse in the telling. In no time at all, everyone knew that Lucien had been discovered on his knees before Naïs. Monsieur de Chandour, enjoying the importance which the affair conferred on him, went off to relate this great event to his cronies, after which he spread the news from house to house. Du Châtelet made haste to declare he had seen nothing; but while thus holding back he incited Stanislas to talk and improve on the details. Thinking himself witty, Stanislas added new ones each time he told the story. That evening Amélie’s drawing-room was crowded, for by evening the most extravagant versions were circulating among the nobility of Angoulême, since everyone enlarged on Stanislas’s story. Men and women alike were impatient to know the truth. The women who hid their faces in horror and talked most loudly of scandal and perversity were of course Amélie, Zéphirine, Fifine and Lolotte, who were all more or less involved in illicit relationships. All possible variations were sung on this cruel theme.
‘Well now!’ said one of them. ‘Have you heard about poor Naïs? I for one don’t believe it; her life has been wholly blameless. She’s much too proud to be more than a benefactress to Monsieur Chardon. But if it’s true, I’m heartily sorry for her.’
‘She’s so much more to be pitied because she’s making herself frightfully ridiculous. Why, she’s old enough to be
the mother of Monsieur Lulu, as Jacques called him. This little versifier is twenty-two at the most, and, between ourselves, Naïs is certainly forty.’
‘Well,’ said Châtelet, ‘I believe that the very posture in which Monsieur was discovered proves that Naïs is innocent. You don’t go down on your knees to get what you’ve had already.’
‘That depends!’ said Francis with a ribald air which earned him a disapproving glance from Zéphirine.
‘But do tell us what the situation is,’ Stanislas was asked as a secret conclave formed in a corner of the salon.
Stanislas had ended up by composing a little tale which was full of indecencies, and he accompanied it with gestures and postures which made the whole thing prodigiously incriminating.
‘It’s unbelievable,’ they all repeated.
‘In full daylight!’ said one of them.
‘Naïs is the last person I would have suspected.’
‘What will she do now?’
There followed all sorts of commentaries and conjectures!… Du Châtelet defended Madame de Bargeton, but so clumsily that he fanned the flame of scandal-mongering instead of extinguishing it. Lili, in desolation at the disgrace which had fallen on the fairest divinity on the Olympus of Angoulême, went off in a flood of tears to retail the news at the Bishop’s palace. As soon as the whole town was buzzing with the scandal, the happy du Châtelet went round to Madame de Bargeton’s house where, alas, only one game of whist was in progress. He tactfully asked Naïs to come and talk with him in her boudoir. They both sat down on the little sofa.