полная версияПолная версия
The Lily of the Valley
No, your programme cannot be carried out. To attempt to be both Madame de Mortsauf and Lady Dudley, – why, my dear friend, it would be trying to unite fire and water within me! Is it possible that you don’t know women? Believe me, they are what they are, and they have therefore the defects of their virtues. You met Lady Dudley too early in life to appreciate her, and the harm you say of her seems to me the revenge of your wounded vanity. You understood Madame de Mortsauf too late; you punished one for not being the other, – what would happen to me if I were neither the one nor the other? I love you enough to have thought deeply about your future; in fact, I really care for you a great deal. Your air of the Knight of the Sad Countenance has always deeply interested me; I believed in the constancy of melancholy men; but I little thought that you had killed the loveliest and the most virtuous of women at the opening of your life.
Well, I ask myself, what remains for you to do? I have thought it over carefully. I think, my friend, that you will have to marry a Mrs. Shandy, who will know nothing of love or of passion, and will not trouble herself about Madame de Mortsauf or Lady Dudley; who will be wholly indifferent to those moments of ennui which you call melancholy, during which you are as lively as a rainy day, – a wife who will be to you, in short, the excellent sister of charity whom you are seeking. But as for loving, quivering at a word, anticipating happiness, giving it, receiving it, experiencing all the tempests of passion, cherishing the little weaknesses of a beloved woman – my dear count, renounce it all! You have followed the advice of your good angel about young women too closely; you have avoided them so carefully that now you know nothing about them. Madame de Mortsauf was right to place you high in life at the start; otherwise all women would have been against you, and you never would have risen in society.
It is too late now to begin your training over again; too late to learn to tell us what we long to hear; to be superior to us at the right moment, or to worship our pettiness when it pleases us to be petty. We are not so silly as you think us. When we love we place the man of our choice above all else. Whatever shakes our faith in our supremacy shakes our love. In flattering us men flatter themselves. If you intend to remain in society, to enjoy an intercourse with women, you must carefully conceal from them all that you have told me; they will not be willing to sow the flowers of their love upon the rocks or lavish their caresses to soothe a sickened spirit. Women will discover the barrenness of your heart and you will be ever more and more unhappy. Few among them would be frank enough to tell you what I have told you, or sufficiently good-natured to leave you without rancor, offering their friendship, like the woman who now subscribes herself
Your devoted friend,
Natalie de Manerville.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human ComedyBirotteau, Abbe Francois
Cesar Birotteau
The Vicar of Tours
Blamont-Chauvry, Princesse de
The Thirteen
Madame Firmiani
Brandon, Lady Marie Augusta
The Member for Arcis
La Grenadiere
Chessel, Madame de
The Government Clerks
Dudley, Lord
The Thirteen
A Man of Business
Another Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Dudley, Lady Arabella
The Ball at Sceaux
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Letters of Two Brides
Givry
Letters of Two Brides
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Lenoncourt, Duc de
Cesar Birotteau
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Gondreville Mystery
Beatrix
Lenoncourt-Givry, Duchesse de
Letters of Two Brides
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Listomere, Marquis de
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Study of Woman
Listomere, Marquise de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Study of Woman
A Daughter of Eve
Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Gondreville Mystery
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Ball at Sceaux
Colonel Chabert
The Government Clerks
Manerville, Comtesse Paul de
A Marriage Settlement
A Daughter of Eve
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Stanhope, Lady Esther
Lost Illusions
Vandenesse, Comte Felix de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Cesar Birotteau
Letters of Two Brides
A Start in Life
The Marriage Settlement
The Secrets of a Princess
Another Study of Woman
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
