



Produced by John Bickers and Dagny





LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES

By Honore de Balzac

Translated by R. S. Scott




DEDICATION

  To George Sand

  Your name, dear George, while casting a reflected radiance on my
  book, can gain no new glory from this page. And yet it is neither
  self-interest nor diffidence which has led me to place it there,
  but only the wish that it should bear witness to the solid
  friendship between us, which has survived our wanderings and
  separations, and triumphed over the busy malice of the world. This
  feeling is hardly likely now to change. The goodly company of
  friendly names, which will remain attached to my works, forms an
  element of pleasure in the midst of the vexation caused by their
  increasing number. Each fresh book, in fact, gives rise to fresh
  annoyance, were it only in the reproaches aimed at my too prolific
  pen, as though it could rival in fertility the world from which I
  draw my models! Would it not be a fine thing, George, if the
  future antiquarian of dead literatures were to find in this
  company none but great names and generous hearts, friends bound by
  pure and holy ties, the illustrious figures of the century? May I
  not justly pride myself on this assured possession, rather than on
  a popularity necessarily unstable? For him who knows you well, it
  is happiness to be able to sign himself, as I do here,

  Your friend,
  DE BALZAC.

  PARIS, June 1840.





LETTERS OF TWO BRIDES




FIRST PART




I. LOUISE DE CHAULIEU TO RENEE DE MAUCOMBE. PARIS, September.

Sweetheart, I too am free! And I am the first too, unless you have
written to Blois, at our sweet tryst of letter-writing.

Raise those great black eyes of yours, fixed on my opening sentence,
and keep this excitement for the letter which shall tell you of my first
love. By the way, why always "first?" Is there, I wonder, a second love?

Don't go running on like this, you will say, but tell me rather how
you made your escape from the convent where you were to take your vows.
Well, dear, I don't know about the Carmelites, but the miracle of my own
deliverance was, I can assure you, most humdrum. The cries of an alarmed
conscience triumphed over the dictates of a stern policy--there's the
whole mystery. The sombre melancholy which seized me after you left
hastened the happy climax, my aunt did not want to see me die of a
decline, and my mother, whose one unfailing cure for my malady was a
novitiate, gave way before her.

So I am in Paris, thanks to you, my love! Dear Renee, could you have
seen me the day I found myself parted from you, well might you have
gloried in the deep impression you had made on so youthful a bosom. We
had lived so constantly together, sharing our dreams and letting our
fancy roam together, that I verily believe our souls had become welded
together, like those two Hungarian girls, whose death we heard about
from M. Beauvisage--poor misnamed being! Never surely was man better cut
out by nature for the post of convent physician!

Tell me, did you not droop and sicken with your darling?

In my gloomy depression, I could do nothing but count over the ties
which bind us. But it seemed as though distance had loosened them; I
wearied of life, like a turtle-dove widowed of her mate. Death smiled
sweetly on me, and I was proceeding quietly to die. To be at Blois, at
the Carmelites, consumed by dread of having to take my vows there, a
Mlle. de la Valliere, but without her prelude, and without my Renee! How
could I not be sick--sick unto death?

How different it used to be! That monotonous existence, where every hour
brings its duty, its prayer, its task, with such desperate regularity
that you can tell what a Carmelite sister is doing in any place, at any
hour of the night or day; that deadly dull routine, which crushes out
all interest in one's surroundings, had become for us two a world of
life and movement. Imagination had thrown open her fairy realms, and in
these our spirits ranged at will, each in turn serving as magic steed
to the other, the more alert quickening the drowsy; the world from
which our bodies were shut out became the playground of our fancy, which
reveled there in frolicsome adventure. The very _Lives of the Saints_
helped us to understand what was so carefully left unsaid! But the day
when I was reft of your sweet company, I became a true Carmelite, such
as they appeared to us, a modern Danaid, who, instead of trying to fill
a bottomless barrel, draws every day, from Heaven knows what deep, an
empty pitcher, thinking to find it full.

My aunt knew nothing of this inner life. How could she, who has made a
paradise for herself within the two acres of her convent, understand my
revolt against life? A religious life, if embraced by girls of our age,
demands either an extreme simplicity of soul, such as we, sweetheart, do
not possess, or else an ardor for self-sacrifice like that which makes
my aunt so noble a character. But she sacrificed herself for a brother
to whom she was devoted; to do the same for an unknown person or an idea
is surely more than can be asked of mortals.

For the last fortnight I have been gulping down so many reckless words,
burying so many reflections in my bosom, and accumulating such a store
of things to tell, fit for your ear alone, that I should certainly
have been suffocated but for the resource of letter-writing as a sorry
substitute for our beloved talks. How hungry one's heart gets! I am
beginning my journal this morning, and I picture to myself that yours
is already started, and that, in a few days, I shall be at home in your
beautiful Gemenos valley, which I know only through your descriptions,
just as you will live that Paris life, revealed to you hitherto only in
our dreams.

Well, then, sweet child, know that on a certain morning--a red-letter
day in my life--there arrived from Paris a lady companion and Philippe,
the last remaining of my grandmother's valets, charged to carry me off.
When my aunt summoned me to her room and told me the news, I could not
speak for joy, and only gazed at her stupidly.

"My child," she said, in her guttural voice, "I can see that you leave
me without regret, but this farewell is not the last; we shall meet
again. God has placed on your forehead the sign of the elect. You have
the pride which leads to heaven or to hell, but your nature is too noble
to choose the downward path. I know you better than you know yourself;
with you, passion, I can see, will be very different from what it is
with most women."

She drew me gently to her and kissed my forehead. The kiss made my flesh
creep, for it burned with that consuming fire which eats away her life,
which has turned to black the azure of her eyes, and softened the lines
about them, has furrowed the warm ivory of her temples, and cast a
sallow tinge over the beautiful face.

Before replying, I kissed her hands.

"Dear aunt," I said, "I shall never forget your kindness; and if it has
not made your nunnery all that it ought to be for my health of body and
soul, you may be sure nothing short of a broken heart will bring me
back again--and that you would not wish for me. You will not see me
here again till my royal lover has deserted me, and I warn you that if I
catch him, death alone shall tear him from me. I fear no Montespan."

She smiled and said:

"Go, madcap, and take your idle fancies with you. There is certainly
more of the bold Montespan in you than of the gentle la Valliere."

I threw my arms round her. The poor lady could not refrain from
escorting me to the carriage. There her tender gaze was divided between
me and the armorial bearings.

At Beaugency night overtook me, still sunk in a stupor of the mind
produced by these strange parting words. What can be awaiting me in this
world for which I have so hungered?

To begin with, I found no one to receive me; my heart had been schooled
in vain. My mother was at the Bois de Boulogne, my father at the
Council; my brother, the Duc de Rhetore, never comes in, I am told,
till it is time to dress for dinner. Miss Griffith (she is not unlike a
griffin) and Philippe took me to my rooms.

The suite is the one which belonged to my beloved grandmother, the
Princess de Vaure