Domestic Peace

At last the Baron had found a seat by Madame de Soulanges. His eyes stole a long look at her neck, as fresh as dew and as fragrant as field flowers. He admired close at hand the beauty which had amazed him from afar. He could see a small, well-shod foot, and measure with his eye a slender and graceful shape. At that time women wore their sash tied close under the bosom, in imitation of Greek statues, a pitiless fashion for those whose bust was faulty. As he cast furtive glances at the Countess’ figure, Martial was enchanted with its perfection.

“You have not danced once this evening, madame,” said he in soft and flattering tones. “Not, I should suppose, for lack of a partner?”

“I never go to parties; I am quite unknown,” replied Madame de Soulanges coldly, not having understood the look by which her aunt had just conveyed to her that she was to attract the Baron.

Martial, to give himself countenance, twisted the diamond he wore on his left hand; the rainbow fires of the gem seemed to flash a sudden light on the young Countess’ mind; she blushed and looked at the Baron with an undefinable expression.

“Do you like dancing?” asked the Provencal, to reopen the conversation.

“Yes, very much, monsieur.”

At this strange reply their eyes met. The young man, surprised by the earnest accent, which aroused a vague hope in his heart, had suddenly questioned the lady’s eyes.

“Then, madame, am I not overbold in offering myself to be your partner for the next quadrille?”

Artless confusion colored the Countess’ white cheeks.

“But, monsieur, I have already refused one partner—a military man——”

“Was it that tall cavalry colonel whom you see over there?”

“Precisely so.”

“Oh! he is a friend of mine; feel no alarm. Will you grant me the favor I dare hope for?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

Her tone betrayed an emotion so new and so deep that the lawyer’s world-worn soul was touched. He was overcome by shyness like a schoolboy’s, lost his confidence, and his southern brain caught fire; he tried to talk, but his phrases struck him as graceless in comparison with Madame de Soulanges’ bright and subtle replies. It was lucky for him that the quadrille was forming. Standing by his beautiful partner, he felt more at ease. To many men dancing is a phase of being; they think that they can more powerfully influence the heart of woman by displaying the graces of their bodies than by their intellect. Martial wished, no doubt, at this moment to put forth all his most effective seductions, to judge by the pretentiousness of his movements and gestures.

He led his conquest to the quadrille in which the most brilliant women in the room made it a point of chimerical importance to dance in preference to any other. While the orchestra played the introductory bars to the first figure, the Baron felt it an incredible gratification to his pride to perceive, as he reviewed the ladies forming the lines of that formidable square, that Madame de Soulanges’ dress might challenge that even of Madame de Vaudremont, who, by a chance not perhaps unsought, was standing with Montcornet vis-a-vis to himself and the lady in blue. All eyes were for a moment turned on Madame de Soulanges; a flattering murmur showed that she was the subject of every man’s conversation with his partner. Looks of admiration and envy centered on her, with so much eagerness that the young creature, abashed by a triumph she seemed to disclaim, modestly looked down, blushed, and was all the more charming. When she raised her white eyelids it was to look at her ravished partner as though she wished to transfer the glory of this admiration to him, and to say that she cared more for his than for all the rest. She threw her innocence into her vanity; or rather she seemed to give herself up to the guileless admiration which is the beginning of love, with the good faith found only in youthful hearts. As she danced, the lookers-on might easily believe that she displayed her grace for Martial alone; and though she was modest, and new to the trickery of the ballroom, she knew as well as the most accomplished coquette how to raise her eyes to his at the right moment and drop their lids with assumed modesty.

When the movement of a new figure, invented by a dancer named Trenis, and named after him, brought Martial face to face with the Colonel—“I have won your horse,” said he, laughing.

“Yes, but you have lost eighty thousand francs a year!” retorted Montcornet, glancing at Madame de Vaudremont.

“What do I care?” replied Martial. “Madame de Soulanges is worth millions!”

At the end of the quadrille more than one whisper was poured into more than one ear. The less pretty women made moral speeches to their partners, commenting on the budding liaison between Martial and the Comtesse de Soulanges. The handsomest wondered at her easy surrender. The men could not understand such luck as the Baron’s, not regarding him as particularly fascinating. A few indulgent women said it was not fair to judge the Countess too hastily; young wives would be in a very hapless plight if an expressive look or a few graceful dancing steps were enough to compromise a woman.

Martial alone knew the extent of his happiness. During the last figure, when the ladies had to form the moulinet, his fingers clasped those of the Countess, and he fancied that, through the thin perfumed kid of her gloves, the young wife’s grasp responded to his amorous appeal.

“Madame,” said he, as the quadrille ended, “do not go back to the odious corner where you have been burying your face and your dress until now. Is admiration the only benefit you can obtain from the jewels that adorn your white neck and beautifully dressed hair? Come and take a turn through the rooms to enjoy the scene and yourself.”

Madame de Soulanges yielded to her seducer, who thought she would be his all the more surely if he could only show her off. Side by side they walked two or three times amid the groups who crowded the rooms. The Comtesse de Soulanges, evidently uneasy, paused for an instant at each door before entering, only doing so after stretching her neck to look at all the men there. This alarm, which crowned the Baron’s satisfaction, did not seem to be removed till he said to her, “Make yourself easy; he is not here.”

They thus made their way to an immense picture gallery in a wing of the mansion, where their eyes could feast in anticipation on the splendid display of a collation prepared for three hundred persons. As supper was about to begin, Martial led the Countess to an oval boudoir looking on to the garden, where the rarest flowers and a few shrubs made a scented bower under bright blue hangings. The murmurs of the festivity here died away. The Countess, at first startled, refused firmly to follow the young man; but, glancing in a mirror, she no doubt assured herself that they could be seen, for she seated herself on an ottoman with a fairly good grace.

“This room is charming,” said she, admiring the sky-blue hangings looped with pearls.

“All here is love and delight!” said the Baron, with deep emotion.

In the mysterious light which prevailed he looked at the Countess, and detected on her gently agitated face an expression of uneasiness, modesty, and eagerness which enchanted him. The young lady smiled, and this smile seemed to put an end to the struggle of feeling surging in her heart; in the most insinuating way she took her adorer’s left hand, and drew from his finger the ring on which she had fixed her eyes.

“What a fine diamond!” she exclaimed in the artless tone of a young girl betraying the incitement of a first temptation.

Martial, troubled by the Countess’ involuntary but intoxicating touch, like a caress, as she drew off the ring, looked at her with eyes as glittering as the gem.

“Wear it,” he said, “in memory of this hour, and for the love of——”

She was looking at him with such rapture that he did not end the sentence; he kissed her hand.

“You give it me?” she said, looking much astonished.

“I wish I had the whole world to offer you!”

“You are not joking?” she went on, in a voice husky with too great satisfaction.

“Will you accept only my diamond?”

“You will never take it back?” she insisted.

“Never.”

She put the ring on her finger. Martial, confident of coming happiness, was about to put his hand round her waist, but she suddenly rose, and said in a clear voice, without any agitation:

“I accept the diamond, monsieur, with the less scruple because it belongs to me.”

The Baron was speechless.

“Monsieur de Soulanges took it lately from my dressing-table, and told me he had lost it.”

“You are mistaken, madame,” said Martial, nettled. “It was given me by Madame de Vaudremont.”

“Precisely so,” she said with a smile. “My husband borrowed this ring of me, he gave it to her, she made it a present to you; my ring has made a little journey, that is all. This ring will perhaps tell me all I do not know, and teach me the secret of always pleasing.—Monsieur,” she went on, “if it had not been my own, you may be sure I should not have risked paying so dear for it; for a young woman, it is said, is in danger with you. But, you see,” and she touched a spring within the ring, “here is M. de Soulanges’ hair.”

She fled into the crowded rooms so swiftly, that it seemed useless to try to follow her; besides, Martial, utterly confounded, was in no mood to carry the adventure further. The Countess’ laugh found an echo in the boudoir, where the young coxcomb now perceived, between two shrubs, the Colonel and Madame de Vaudremont, both laughing heartily.

“Will you have my horse, to ride after your prize?” said the Colonel.

The Baron took the banter poured upon him by Madame de Vaudremont and Montcornet with a good grace, which secured their silence as to the events of the evening, when his friend exchanged his charger for a rich and pretty young wife.

As the Comtesse de Soulanges drove across Paris from the Chausee d’Antin to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she lived, her soul was prey to many alarms. Before leaving the Hotel Gondreville she went through all the rooms, but found neither her aunt nor her husband, who had gone away without her. Frightful suspicions then tortured her ingenuous mind. A silent witness of her husbands’ torments since the day when Madame de Vaudremont had chained him to her car, she had confidently hoped that repentance would ere long restore her husband to her. It was with unspeakable repugnance that she had consented to the scheme plotted by her aunt, Madame de Lansac, and at this moment she feared she had made a mistake.

The evening’s experience had saddened her innocent soul. Alarmed at first by the Count’s look of suffering and dejection, she had become more so on seeing her rival’s beauty, and the corruption of society had gripped her heart. As she crossed the Pont Royal she threw away the desecrated hair at the back of the diamond, given to her once as a token of the purest affection. She wept as she remembered the bitter grief to which she had so long been a victim, and shuddered more than once as she reflected that the duty of a woman, who wishes for peace in her home, compels her to bury sufferings so keen as hers at the bottom of her heart, and without a complaint.

“Alas!” thought she, “what can women do when they do not love? What is the fount of their indulgence? I cannot believe that, as my aunt tells me, reason is all-sufficient to maintain them in such devotion.”

She was still sighing when her man-servant let down the handsome carriage-step down which she flew into the hall of her house. She rushed precipitately upstairs, and when she reached her room was startled by seeing her husband sitting by the fire.

“How long is it, my dear, since you have gone to balls without telling me beforehand?” he asked in a broken voice. “You must know that a woman is always out of place without her husband. You compromised yourself strangely by remaining in the dark corner where you had ensconced yourself.”

“Oh, my dear, good Leon,” said she in a coaxing tone, “I could not resist the happiness of seeing you without your seeing me. My aunt took me to this ball, and I was very happy there!”

This speech disarmed the Count’s looks of their assumed severity, for he had been blaming himself while dreading his wife’s return, no doubt fully informed at the ball of an infidelity he had hoped to hide from her; and, as is the way of lovers conscious of their guilt, he tried, by being the first to find fault, to escape her just anger. Happy in seeing her husband smile, and in finding him at this hour in a room whither of late he had come more rarely, the Countess looked at him so tenderly that she blushed and cast down her eyes. Her clemency enraptured Soulanges all the more, because this scene followed on the misery he had endured at the ball. He seized his wife’s hand and kissed it gratefully. Is not gratitude often a part of love?

“Hortense, what is that on your finger that has hurt my lip so much?” asked he, laughing.

“It is my diamond which you said you had lost, and which I have found.”

General Montcornet did not marry Madame de Vaudremont, in spite of the mutual understanding in which they had lived for a few minutes, for she was one of the victims of the terrible fire which sealed the fame of the ball given by the Austrian ambassador on the occasion of Napoleon’s marriage with the daughter of the Emperor Joseph II.

JULY, 1829.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.