"For instance," she remarks to a young woman whom she is edifying, "you will have children, G.o.d willing."
"Madame," I say, "don"t let us mix the deity up in this, unless it is an allusion--"
"You are impertinent," she replies, "you shouldn"t interrupt a woman--"
"When she is busy with children, I know: but, madame, you ought not to trifle with the innocence of young ladies. Mademoiselle is going to be married, and if she were led to count upon the intervention of the Supreme Being in this affair, she would fall into serious errors. We should not deceive the young. Mademoiselle is beyond the age when girls are informed that their little brother was found under a cabbage."
"You evidently want to get me confused," she replies, smiling and showing the loveliest teeth in the world. "I am not strong enough to argue with you, so I beg you to let me go on with Josephine. What was I saying?"
"That if I get married, I shall have children," returns the young lady.
"Very well. I will not represent things to you worse than they are, but it is extremely probable that each child will cost you a tooth.
With every baby I have lost a tooth."
"Happily," I remark at this, "this trouble was with you less than petty, it was positively nothing."--They were side teeth.--"But take notice, miss, that this vexation has no absolute, unvarying character as such. The annoyance depends upon the condition of the tooth. If the baby causes the loss of a decayed tooth, you are fortunate to have a baby the more and a bad tooth the less. Don"t let us confound blessings with bothers. Ah! if you were to lose one of your magnificent front teeth, that would be another thing! And yet there is many a woman that would give the best tooth in her head for a fine, healthy boy!"
"Well," resumes Caroline, with animation, "at the risk of destroying your illusions, poor child, I"ll just show you a petty trouble that counts! Ah, it"s atrocious! And I won"t leave the subject of dress which this gentleman considers the only subject we women are equal to."
I protest by a gesture.
"I had been married about two years," continues Caroline, "and I loved my husband. I have got over it since and acted differently for his happiness and mine. I can boast of having one of the happiest homes in Paris. In short, my dear, I loved the monster, and, even when out in society, saw no one but him. My husband had already said to me several times, "My dear, young women never dress well; your mother liked to have you look like a stick,--she had her reasons for it. If you care for my advice, take Madame de Fischtaminel for a model: she is a lady of taste." I, unsuspecting creature that I was, saw no perfidy in the recommendation.
"One evening as we returned from a party, he said, "Did you notice how Madame de Fischtaminel was dressed!" "Yes, very neatly." And I said to myself, "He"s always talking about Madame de Fischtaminel; I must really dress just like her." I had noticed the stuff and the make of the dress, and the style of the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. I was as happy as could be, as I went trotting about town, doing everything I could to obtain the same articles. I sent for the very same dressmaker.
""You work for Madame de Fischtaminel," I said.
""Yes, madame."
""Well, I will employ you as my dressmaker, but on one condition: you see I have procured the stuff of which her gown is made, and I want you to make me one exactly like it."
"I confess that I did not at first pay any attention to a rather shrewd smile of the dressmaker, though I saw it and afterwards accounted for it. "So like it," I added, "that you can"t tell them apart."
"Oh," says Caroline, interrupting herself and looking at me, "you men teach us to live like spiders in the depths of their webs, to see everything without seeming to look at it, to investigate the meaning and spirit of words, movements, looks. You say, "How cunning women are!" But you should say, "How deceitful men are!"
"I can"t tell you how much care, how many days, how many manoeuvres, it cost me to become Madame de Fischtaminel"s duplicate! But these are our battles, child," she adds, returning to Josephine. "I could not find a certain little embroidered neckerchief, a very marvel! I finally learned that it was made to order. I unearthed the embroideress, and ordered a kerchief like Madame de Fischtaminel"s.
The price was a mere trifle, one hundred and fifty francs! It had been ordered by a gentleman who had made a present of it to Madame de Fischtaminel. All my savings were absorbed by it. Now we women of Paris are all of us very much restricted in the article of dress.
There is not a man worth a hundred thousand francs a year, that loses ten thousand a winter at whist, who does not consider his wife extravagant, and is not alarmed at her bills for what he calls "rags"!
"Let my savings go," I said. And they went. I had the modest pride of a woman in love: I would not speak a word to Adolphe of my dress; I wanted it to be a surprise, goose that I was! Oh, how brutally you men take away our blessed ignorance!"
This remark is meant for me, for me who had taken nothing from the lady, neither tooth, nor anything whatever of the things with a name and without a name that may be taken from a woman.
"I must tell you that my husband took me to Madame de Fischtaminel"s, where I dined quite often. I heard her say to him, "Why, your wife looks very well!" She had a patronizing way with me that I put up with: Adolphe wished that I could have her wit and preponderance in society. In short, this phoenix of women was my model. I studied and copied her, I took immense pains not to be myself--oh!--it was a poem that no one but us women can understand! Finally, the day of my triumph dawned. My heart beat for joy, as if I were a child, as if I were what we all are at twenty-two. My husband was going to call for me for a walk in the Tuileries: he came in, I looked at him radiant with joy, but he took no notice. Well, I can confess it now, it was one of those frightful disasters--but I will say nothing about it --this gentleman here would make fun of me."
I protest by another movement.
"It was," she goes on, for a woman never stops till she has told the whole of a thing, "as if I had seen an edifice built by a fairy crumble into ruins. Adolphe manifested not the slightest surprise. We got into the carriage. Adolphe noticed my sadness, and asked me what the matter was: I replied as we always do when our hearts are wrung by these petty vexations, "Oh, nothing!" Then he took his eye-gla.s.s, and stared at the promenaders on the Champs Elysees, for we were to go the rounds of the Champs Elysees, before taking our walk at the Tuileries.
Finally, a fit of impatience seized me. I felt a slight attack of fever, and when I got home, I composed myself to smile. "You haven"t said a word about my dress!" I muttered. "Ah, yes, your gown is somewhat like Madame de Fischtaminel"s." He turned on his heel and went away.
"The next day I pouted a little, as you may readily imagine. Just as we were finishing breakfast by the fire in my room--I shall never forget it--the embroideress called to get her money for the neckerchief. I paid her. She bowed to my husband as if she knew him. I ran after her on pretext of getting her to receipt the bill, and said: "You didn"t ask _him_ so much for Madame de Fischtaminel"s kerchief!"
"I a.s.sure you, madame, it"s the same price, the gentleman did not beat me down a mite." I returned to my room where I found my husband looking as foolish as--"
She hesitates and then resumes: "As a miller just made a bishop. "I understand, love, now, that I shall never be anything more than _somewhat like_ Madame de Fischtaminel." "You refer to her neckerchief, I suppose: well, I _did_ give it to her,--it was for her birthday. You see, we were formerly--" "Ah, you were formerly more intimate than you are now!" Without replying to this, he added, "_But it"s altogether moral._"
"He took his hat and went out, leaving me with this fine declaration of the Rights of Man. He did not return and came home late at night. I remained in my chamber and wept like a Magdalen, in the chimney-corner. You may laugh at me, if you will," she adds, looking at me, "but I shed tears over my youthful illusions, and I wept, too, for spite, at having been taken for a dupe. I remembered the dressmaker"s smile! Ah, that smile reminded me of the smiles of a number of women, who laughed at seeing me so innocent and unsuspecting at Madame de Fischtaminel"s! I wept sincerely. Until now I had a right to give my husband credit for many things which he did not possess, but in the existence of which young married women pertinaciously believe.
"How many great troubles are included in this petty one! You men are a vulgar set. There is not a woman who does not carry her delicacy so far as to embroider her past life with the most delightful fibs, while you--but I have had my revenge."
"Madame," I say, "you are giving this young lady too much information."
"True," she returns, "I will tell you the sequel some other time."
"Thus, you see, mademoiselle," I say, "you imagine you are buying a neckerchief and you find a _petty trouble_ round your neck: if you get it given to you--"
"It"s a _great_ trouble," retorts the woman of distinction. "Let us stop here."
The moral of this fable is that you must wear your neckerchief without thinking too much about it. The ancient prophets called this world, even in their time, a valley of woe. Now, at that period, the Orientals had, with the permission of the const.i.tuted authorities, a swarm of comely slaves, besides their wives! What shall we call the valley of the Seine between Calvary and Charenton, where the law allows but one lawful wife.
THE UNIVERSAL AMADIS.
You will understand at once that I began to gnaw the head of my cane, to consult the ceiling, to gaze at the fire, to examine Caroline"s foot, and I thus held out till the marriageable young lady was gone.
"You must excuse me," I said, "if I have remained behind, perhaps in spite of you: but your vengeance would lose by being recounted by and by, and if it const.i.tuted a petty trouble for your husband, I have the greatest interest in hearing it, and you shall know why."
"Ah," she returned, "that expression, "_it"s altogether moral,_" which he gave as an excuse, shocked me to the last degree. It was a great consolation, truly, to me, to know that I held the place, in his household, of a piece of furniture, a block; that my kingdom lay among the kitchen utensils, the accessories of my toilet, and the physicians" prescriptions; that our conjugal love had been a.s.similated to dinner pills, to veal soup and white mustard; that Madame de Fischtaminel possessed my husband"s soul, his admiration, and that she charmed and satisfied his intellect, while I was a kind of purely physical necessity! What do you think of a woman"s being degraded to the situation of a soup or a plate of boiled beef, and without parsley, at that! Oh, I composed a catilinic, that evening--"
"Philippic is better."
"Well, either. I"ll say anything you like, for I was perfectly furious, and I don"t remember what I screamed in the desert of my bedroom. Do you suppose that this opinion that husbands have of their wives, the parts they give them, is not a singular vexation for us?
Our petty troubles are always pregnant with greater ones. My Adolphe needed a lesson. You know the Vicomte de l.u.s.trac, a desperate amateur of women and music, an epicure, one of those ex-beaux of the Empire, who live upon their earlier successes, and who cultivate themselves with excessive care, in order to secure a second crop?"
"Yes," I said, "one of those laced, braced, corseted old fellows of sixty, who work such wonders by the grace of their forms, and who might give a lesson to the youngest dandies among us."
"Monsieur de l.u.s.trac is as selfish as a king, but gallant and pretentious, spite of his jet black wig."
"As to his whiskers, he dyes them."
"He goes to ten parties in an evening: he"s a b.u.t.terfly."
"He gives capital dinners and concerts, and patronizes inexperienced songstresses."
"He takes bustle for pleasure."
"Yes, but he makes off with incredible celerity whenever a misfortune occurs. Are you in mourning, he avoids you. Are you confined, he awaits your churching before he visits you. He possesses a mundane frankness and a social intrepidity which challenge admiration."
"But does it not require courage to appear to be what one really is?"
I asked.