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PAZ
by Honore de Balzac (transl. Katharine Prescott Wormeley)
Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
PAZ
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Translated By
Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
Dedicated to the Comtesse Clara Maffei.
PAZ
(LA FAUSSE MAITRESSE)
I
In September, 1835, one of the richest heiresses of the faubourg
Saint-Germain, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, the only daughter of the
Marquis du Rouvre, married Comte Adam Mitgislas Laginski, a young
Polish exile.
We ask permission to write these Polish names as they are pronounced,
to spare our readers the aspect of the fortifications of consonants by
which the Slave language protects its vowels,--probably not to lose
them, considering how few there are.
The Marquis du Rouvre had squandered nearly the whole of a princely
fortune, which he obtained originally through his marriage with a
Demoiselle de Ronquerolles. Therefore, on her mother's side Clementine
du Rouvre had the Marquis de Ronquerolles for uncle, and Madame de
Serizy for aunt. On her father's side she had another uncle in the
eccentric person of the Chevalier du Rouvre, a younger son of the
house, an old bachelor who had become very rich by speculating in
lands and houses. The Marquis de Ronquerolles had the misfortune to
lose both his children at the time of the cholera, and the only son of
Madame de Serizy, a young soldier of great promise, perished in Africa
in the affair of the Makta. In these days rich families stand between
the danger of impoverishing their children if they have too many, or
of extinguishing their names if they have too few,--a singular result
of the Code which Napoleon never thought of. By a curious turn of
fortune Clementine became, in spite of her father having squandered
his substance on Florine (one of the most charming actresses in
Paris), a great heiress. The Marquis de Ronquerolles, a clever
diplomatist under the new dynasty, his sister, Madame de Serizy, and
the Chevalier du Rouvre agreed, in order to save their fortunes from
the dissipations of the marquis, to settle them on their niece, to
whom, moreover, they each pledged themselves to pay ten thousand
francs a year from the day of her marriage.
It is quite unnecessary to say that the Polish count, though an exile,
was no expense to the French government. Comte Adam Laginski belonged
to one of the oldest and most illustrious families in Poland, which
was allied to many of the princely houses of Germany,--Sapieha,
Radziwill, Mniszech, Rzewuski, Czartoryski, Leczinski, Lubormirski,
and all the other great Sarmatian SKIS. But heraldic knowledge is not
the most distinguishing feature of the French nation under Louis-
Philippe, and Polish nobility was no great recommendation to the
bourgeoisie who were lording it in those days. Besides, when Adam
first made his appearance, in 1833, on the boulevard des Italiens, at
Frascati, and at the Jockey-Club, he was leading the life of a young
man who, having lost his political prospects, was taking his pleasure
in Parisian dissipation. At first he was thought to be a student.
The Polish nationality had at this period fallen as low in French
estimation, thanks to a shameful governmental reaction, as the
republicans had sought to raise it. The singular struggle of the
Movement against Resistance (two words which will be inexplicable
thirty years hence) made sport of what ought to have been truly
respected,--the name of a conquered nation to whom the French had
offered hospitality, for whom fetes had been given (with songs and
dances by subscription), above all, a nation which in the Napoleonic
struggle between France and Europe had given us six thousand men, and
what men!
Do not infer from this that either side is taken here; either that of
the Emperor Nicholas against Poland, or that of Poland against the
Emperor. It would be a foolish thing to slip political discussion into
tales that are intended to amuse or interest. Besides, Russia and
Poland were both right,--one to wish the unity of its empire, the
other to desire its liberty. Let us say in passing that Poland might
have conquered Russia by the influence of her morals instead of
fighting her with weapons; she should have imitated China which, in
the end, Chinesed the Tartars, and will, it is to be hoped, Chinese
the English. Poland ought to have Polonized Russia. Poniatowski tried
to do so in the least favorable portion of the empire; but as a king
he was little understood,--because, possibly, he did not fully
understand himself.
But how could the Parisians avoid disliking an unfortunate people who
were the cause of that shameful falsehood enacted during the famous
review at which all Paris declared its will to succor Poland? The
Poles were held up to them as the allies of the republican party, and
they never once remembered that Poland was a republic of aristocrats.
From that day forth the bourgeoisie treated with base contempt the
exiles of the nation it had worshipped a few days earlier. The wind of
a riot is always enough to veer the Parisians from north to south
under any regime. It is necessary to remember these sudden
fluctuations of feeling in order to understand why it was that in 1835
the word "Pole" conveyed a derisive meaning to a people who consider
themselves the wittiest and most courteous nation on earth, and their
city of Paris the focus of enlightenment, with the sceptre of arts and
literature within its grasp.
There are, alas! two sorts of Polish exiles,--the republican Poles,
sons of Lelewel, and the noble Poles, at the head of whom is Prince
Adam Czartoryski. The two classes are like fire and water; but why
complain of that? Such divisions are always to be found among exiles,
no matter of what nation they may be, or in what countries they take
refuge. They carry their countries and their hatreds with them. Two
French priests, who had emigrated to Brussels during the Revolution,
showed the utmost horror of each other, and when one of them was asked
why, he replied with a glance at his companion in misery: "Why?
because he's a Jansenist!" Dante would gladly have stabbed a Guelf had
he met him in exile. This explains the virulent attacks of the French
against the venerable Prince Adam Czartoryski, and the dislike shown
to the better class of Polish exiles by the shopkeeping Caesars and
the licensed Alexanders of Paris.
In 1834, therefore, Adam Mitgislas Laginski was something of a butt
for Parisian pleasantry.
"He is rather nice, though he is a Pole," said Rastignac.
"All these Poles pretend to be great lords," said Maxime de Trailles,
"but this one does pay his gambling debts, and I begin to think he
must have property."
Without wishing to offend these banished men, it may be allowable to
remark that the light-hearted, careless inconsistency of the Sarmatian
character does justify in some degree the satire of the Parisians,
who, by the bye, would behave in like circumstances exactly as the
Poles do. The French aristocracy, so nobly succored during the
Revolution by the Polish lords, certainly did not return the kindness
in 1832. Let us have the melancholy courage to admit this, and to say
that the faubourg Saint-Germain is still the debtor of Poland.
Was Comte Adam rich, or was he poor, or was he an adventurer? This
problem was long unsolved. The diplomatic salons, faithful to
instructions, imitated the silence of the Emperor Nicholas, who held
that all Polish exiles were virtually dead and buried. The court of
the Tuileries, and all who took their cue from it, gave striking proof
of the political quality which was then dignified by the name of
sagacity. They turned their backs on a Russian prince with whom they
had all been on intimate terms during the Emigration, merely because
it was said that the Emperor Nicholas gave him the cold shoulder.
Between the caution of the court and the prudence of the diplomates,
the Polish exiles of distinction lived in Paris in the Biblical
solitude of "super flumina Babylonis," or else they haunted a few
salons which were the neutral ground of all opinions. In a city of
pleasure, like Paris, where amusements abound on all sides, the
heedless gayety of a Pole finds twice as many encouragements as it
needs to a life of dissipation.
It must be said, however, that Adam had two points against him,--his
appearance, and his mental equipment. There are two species of Pole,
as there are two species of Englishwoman. When an Englishwoman is not
very handsome she is horribly ugly. Comte Adam belonged in the second
category of human beings. His small face, rather sharp in expression,
looked as if it had been pressed in a vise. His short nose, and fair
hair, and reddish beard and moustache made him look all the more like
a goat because he was small and thin, and his tarnished yellow eyes
caught you with that oblique look which Virgil celebrates. How came
he, in spite of such obvious disadvantages, to possess really
exquisite manners and a distinguished air? The problem is solved
partly by the care and elegance of his dress, and partly by the
training given him by his mother, a Radziwill. His courage amounted to
daring, but his mind was not more than was needed for the ephemeral
talk and pleasantry of Parisian conversation. And yet it would have
been difficult to find among the young men of fashion in Paris a
single one who was his superior. Young men talk a great deal too much
in these days of horses, money, taxes, deputies; French CONVERSATION
is no longer what it was. Brilliancy of mind needs leisure and certain
social inequalities to bring it out. There is, probably, more real
conversation in Vienna or St. Petersburg than in Paris. Equals do not
need to employ delicacy or shrewdness in speech; they blurt out things
as they are. Consequently the dandies of Paris did not discover the
great seigneur in the rather heedless young fellow who, in their
talks, would flit from one subject to another, all the more intent
upon amusement because he had just escaped from a great peril, and,
finding himself in a city where his family was unknown, felt at
liberty to lead a loose life without the risk of disgracing his name.
But one fine day in 1834 Adam suddenly bought a house in the rue de la
Pepiniere. Six months later his style of living was second to none in
Paris. About the time when he thus began to take himself seriously he
had seen Clementine du Rouvre at the Opera and had fallen in love with
her. A year later the marriage took place. The salon of Madame
d'Espard was the first to sound his praises. Mothers of daughters then
learned too late that as far back as the year 900 the family of the
Laginski was among the most illustrious of the North. By an act of
prudence which was very unPolish, the mother of the young count had
mortgaged her entire property on the breaking out of the insurrection
for an immense sum lent by two Jewish bankers in Paris. Comte Adam was
now in possession of eighty thousand francs a year. When this was
discovered society ceased to be surprised at the imprudence which had
been laid to the charge of Madame de Serizy, the Marquis de
Ronquerolles, and the Chevalier du Rouvre in yielding to the foolish
passion of their niece. People jumped, as usual, from one extreme of
judgment to the other.
During the winter of 1836 Comte Adam was the fashion, and Clementine
Laginska one of the queens of Paris. Madame Laginska is now a member
of that charming circle of young women represented by Mesdames de
Lestorade, de Portenduere, Marie de Vandenesse, du Guenic, and de
Maufrigneuse, the flowers of our present Paris, who live at such
immeasurable distance from the parvenus, the vulgarians, and the
speculators of the new regime.
This preamble is necessary to show the sphere in which was done one of
those noble actions, less rare than the calumniators of our time
admit,--actions which, like pearls, the fruit of pain and suffering,
are hidden within rough shells, lost in the gulf, the sea, the tossing
waves of what we call society, the century, Paris, London, St.
Petersburg,--or what you will.
If the axiom that architecture is the expression of manner and morals
was ever proved, it was certainly after the insurrection of 1830,
during the present reign of the house of Orleans. As all the old
fortunes are diminishing in France, the majestic mansions of our
ancestors are constantly being demolished and replaced by species of
phalansteries, in which the peers of July occupy the third floor above
some newly enriched empirics on the lower floors. A mixture of styles
is confusedly employed. As there is no longer a real court or nobility
to give the tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never,
on the other hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways
of imitating the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more
talent, in distributing them. Propose to an architect to build upon
the garden at the back of an old mansion, and he will run you up a
little Louvre overloaded with ornament. He will manage to get in a
courtyard, stables, and if you care for it, a garden. Inside the house
he will accommodate a quantity of little rooms and passages. He is so
clever in deceiving the eye that you think you will have plenty of
space; but it is only a nest of small rooms, after all, in which a
ducal family has to turn itself about in the space that its own
bakehouse formerly occupied.
The hotel of the Comtesse Laginska, rue de la Pepiniere, is one of
these creations, and stands between court and garden. On the right, in
the court, are the kitchens and offices; to the left the coachhouse
and stables. The porter's lodge is between two charming portes-
cocheres. The chief luxury of the house is a delightful greenhouse
contrived at the end of a boudoir on the ground-floor which opens upon
an admirable suite of reception rooms. An English philanthropist had
built this architectural bijou, designed the garden, added the
greenhouse, polished the doors, bricked the courtyard, painted the
window-frames green, and realized, in short, a dream which resembled
(proportions excepted) George the Fourth's Pavilion at Brighton. The
inventive and industrious Parisian workmen had moulded the doors and
window-frames; the ceilings were imitated from the middle-ages or
those of a Venetian palace; marble veneering abounded on the outer
walls. Steinbock and Francois Souchet had designed the mantel-pieces
and the panels above the doors; Schinner had painted the ceilings in
his masterly manner. The beauties of the staircase, white as a woman's
arm, defied those of the hotel Rothschild. On account of the riots and
the unsettled times, the cost of this folly was only about eleven
hundred thousand francs,--to an Englishman a mere nothing. All this
luxury, called princely by persons who do not know what real princes
are, was built in the garden of the house of a purveyor made a Croesus
by the Revolution, who had escaped to Brussels and died there after
going into bankruptcy. The Englishman died in Paris, of Paris; for to
many persons Paris is a disease,--sometimes several diseases. His
widow, a Methodist, had a horror of the little nabob establishment,
and ordered it to be sold. Comte Adam bought it at a bargain; and how
he came to do so shall presently be made known, for bargains were not
at all in his line as a grand seigneur.
Behind the house lay the verdant velvet of an English lawn shaded at
the lower end by a clump of exotic trees, in the midst of which stood
a Chinese pagoda with soundless belfries and motionless golden eggs.
The greenhouse concealed the garden wall on the northern side, the
opposite wall was covered with climbing plants trained upon poles
painted green and connected with crossway trellises. This lawn, this
world of flowers, the gravelled paths, the simulated forest, the
verdant palisades, were contained within the space of five and twenty
square rods, which are worth to-day four hundred thousand francs,--the
value of an actual forest. Here, in this solitude in the middle of
Paris, the birds sang, thrushes, nightingales, warblers, bulfinches,
and sparrows. The greenhouse was like an immense jardiniere, filling
the air with perfume in winter as in summer. The means by which its
atmosphere was made to order, torrid as in China or temperate as in
Italy, were cleverly concealed. Pipes in which hot water circulated,
or steam, were either hidden under ground or festooned with plants
overhead. The boudoir was a large room. The miracle of the modern
Parisian fairy named Architecture is to get all these many and great
things out of a limited bit of ground.
The boudoir of the young countess was arranged to suit the taste of
the artist to whom Comte Adam entrusted the decoration of the house.
It is too full of pretty nothings to be a place for repose; one scarce
knows where to sit down among carved Chinese work-tables with their
myriads of fantastic figures inlaid in ivory, cups of yellow topaz
mounted on filagree, mosaics which inspire theft, Dutch pictures in
the style which Schinner has adopted, angels such as Steinbock
conceived but often could not execute, statuettes modelled by genius
pursued by creditors (the real explanation of the Arabian myth),
superb sketches by our best artists, lids of chests made into panels
alternating with fluted draperies of Italian silk, portieres hanging
from rods of old oak in tapestried masses on which the figures of some
hunting scene are swarming, pieces of furniture worthy to have
belonged to Madame de Pompadour, Persian rugs, et cetera. For a last
graceful touch, all these elegant things were subdued by the half-
light which filtered through embroidered curtains and added to their
charm. On a table between the windows, among various curiosities, lay
a whip, the handle designed by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, which proved
that the countess rode on horseback.
Such is a lady's boudoir in 1837,--an exhibition of the contents of
many shops, which amuse the eye, as if ennui were the one thing to be
dreaded by the social world of the liveliest and most stirring capital
in Europe. Why is there nothing of an inner life? nothing which leads
to revery, nothing reposeful? Why indeed? Because no one in our day is
sure of the future; we are living our lives like prodigal annuitants.
One morning Clementine appeared to be thinking of something. She was
lying at full length on one of those marvellous couches from which it
is almost impossible to rise, the upholsterer having invented them for
lovers of the "far niente" and its attendant joys of laziness to sink
into. The doors of the greenhouse were open, letting the odors of
vegetation and the perfume of the tropics pervade the room. The young
wife was looking at her husband who was smoking a narghile, the only
form of pipe she would have suffered in that room. The portieres, held
back by cords, gave a vista through two elegant salons, one white and
gold, comparable only to that of the hotel Forbin-Janson, the other in
the style of the Renaissance. The dining-room, which had no rival in
Paris except that of the Baron de Nucingen, was at the end of a short
gallery decorated in the manner of the middle-ages. This gallery
opened on the side of the courtyard upon a large antechamber, through
which could be seen the beauties of the staircase.
The count and countess had just finished breakfast; the sky was a
sheet of azure without a cloud, April was nearly over. They had been
married two years, and Clementine had just discovered for the first
time that there was something resembling a secret or a mystery in her
household. The Pole, let us say it to his honor, is usually helpless
before a woman; he is so full of tenderness for her that in Poland he
becomes her inferior, though Polish women make admirable wives. Now a
Pole is still more easily vanquished by a Parisian woman. Consequently
Comte Adam, pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent
roguery of selling the suspected secret. It is always wise with a
woman to get some good out of a mystery; she will like you the better
for it, as a swindler respects an honest man the more when he finds he
cannot swindle him. Brave in heart but not in speech, Comte Adam
merely stipulated that he should not be compelled to answer until he
had finished his narghile.
"If any difficulty occurred when we were travelling," said Clementine,
"you always dismissed it by saying, 'Paz will settle that.' You never
wrote to any one but Paz. When we returned here everybody kept saying,
'the captain, the captain.' If I want the carriage--'the captain.' Is
there a bill to pay--'the captain.' If my horse is not properly
bitted, they must speak to Captain Paz. In short, it is like a game of
dominoes--Paz is everywhere. I hear of nothing but Paz, but I never
see Paz. Who and what is Paz? Why don't you bring forth your Paz?"
"Isn't everything going on right?" asked the count, taking the
"bocchettino" of his narghile from his lips.
"Everything is going on so right that other people with an income of
two hundred thousand francs would ruin themselves by going at our
pace, and we have only one hundred and ten thousand."
So saying she pulled the bell-cord (an exquisite bit of needlework). A
footman entered, dressed like a minister.
"Tell Captain Paz that I wish to see him."
"If you think you are going to find out anything that way--" said
Comte Adam, laughing.
It is well to mention that Adam and Clementine, married in December,
1835, had gone soon after the wedding to Italy, Switzerland, and
Germany, where they spent the greater part of two years. Returning to
Paris in November, 1837, the countess entered society for the first
time as a married woman during the winter which had just ended, and
she then became aware of the existence, half-suppressed and wholly
dumb but very useful, of a species of factotum who was personally
invisible, named Paz,--spelt thus, but pronounced "Patz."
"Monsieur le capitaine Paz begs Madame la comtesse to excuse him,"
said the footman, returning. "He is at the stables; as soon as he has
changed his dress Comte Paz will present himself to Madame."
"What was he doing at the stables?"
"He was showing them how to groom Madame's horse," said the man. "He
was not pleased with the way Constantin did it."
The countess looked at the footman. He was perfectly serious and did
not add to his words the sort of smile by which servants usually
comment on the actions of a superior who seems to them to derogate
from his position.
"Ah! he was grooming Cora."
"Madame la comtesse intends to ride out this morning?" said the
footman, leaving the room without further answer.
"Is Paz a Pole?" asked Clementine, turning to her husband, who nodded
by way of affirmation.
Madame Laginska was silent, examining Adam. With her feet extended
upon a cushion and her head poised like that of a bird on the edge of
its nest listening to the noises in a grove, she would have seemed
enchanting even to a blase man. Fair and slender, and wearing her hair
in curls, she was not unlike those semi-romantic pictures in the
Keepsakes, especially when dressed, as she was this morning, in a
breakfast gown of Persian silk, the folds of which could not disguise
the beauty of her figure or the slimness of her waist. The silk with
its brilliant colors being crossed upon the bosom showed the spring of
the neck,--its whiteness contrasting delightfully against the tones of
a guipure lace which lay upon her shoulders. Her eyes and their long
black lashes added at this moment to the expression of curiosity which
puckered her pretty mouth. On the forehead, which was well modelled,
an observer would have noticed a roundness characteristic of the true
Parisian woman,--self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible
to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were
hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering
fingers, slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like
almonds, which caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife's impatience,
and looked at her with a glance which two years of married life had
not yet chilled. Already the little countess had made herself mistress
of the situation, for she scarcely paid attention to her husband's
admiration. In fact, in the look which she occasionally cast at him,
there seemed to be the consciousness of a Frenchwoman's ascendancy
over the puny, volatile, and red-haired Pole.
"Here comes Paz," said the count, hearing a step which echoed through
the gallery.
The countess beheld a tall and handsome man, well-made, and bearing on
his face the signs of pain which come of inward strength and secret
endurance of sorrow. He wore one of those tight, frogged overcoats
which were then called "polonaise." Thick, black hair, rather unkempt,
covered his square head, and Clementine noticed his broad forehead
shining like a block of white marble, for Paz held his visored cap in
his hand. The hand itself was like that of the Infant Hercules. Robust
health flourished on his face, which was divided by a large Roman nose
and reminded Clementine of some handsome Transteverino. A black silk
cravat added to the martial appearance of this six-foot mystery, with
eyes of jet and Italian fervor. The amplitude of his pleated trousers,
which allowed only the tips of his boots to be seen, revealed his
faithfulness to the fashions of his own land. There was something
really burlesque to a romantic woman in the striking contrast no one
could fail to remark between the captain and the count, the little
Pole with his pinched face and the stalwart soldier.