The Romance of a Poor Young Man

"Have you ever been up there?" said Mme. Laroque to me as we finished dinner. She indicated the top of a lofty hill which commanded the meadow we were in.

"No, madame."

"Oh, but you should go. You get such a lovely view. You must see it … Marguerite will take you while they're putting the horses in. Won't you?"

"I, mother? I have only been there once, and it was a long time ago … However, I daresay I can find the way. Come, M. Odiot, and be prepared for a stiff climb."

Mlle. Marguerite and I started at once to climb a very steep path which wound along the side of the mountain, passing in some places through clumps of trees. The girl stopped from time to time in her swift and easy ascent to see if I were following her, and, panting a little, smiled at me without speaking. On reaching the bare heath which formed the plateau, I saw, a short way off, a village church, the lines of its little steeple sharply defined against the sky.

"That's where it is," said my young guide, quickening her pace.

Beyond the church was a cemetery shut in by walls. She opened the gate, and made her way with difficulty through the tall grass and trailing brambles, which choked the place of rest, towards a kind of semicircular perron which stood at the farther end. Two or three rough steps, defaced by time and rather strangely ornamented with massive balls, led to a narrow platform raised to the level of the wall. A granite cross stood in the centre of the semicircle.

Mlle. Marguerite had scarcely reached the platform and looked into the space that opened before her, when I saw her place her hand before her eyes as if she were suddenly dazzled. I hastened to join her. The beautiful day, nearing to its end, lighted with its last splendours a scene so vast, so strange, and so sublime, that I shall never forget it.

Facing us, and at a great depth below the platform, extended, farther than we could see, a sort of marsh studded with shining patches, and looking like a region slowly emerging from a deluge. This great bay stretched from under our feet to the heart of the jagged mountains. On the banks of mud and sand which separated the shifting lagoons, a growth of reeds and sea plants tinged with a thousand shades, sombre but distinct, contrasted sharply with the gleaming surfaces of the waters. At each of its rapid strides to the horizon, the sun lit up or darkened some of the many lakes which checkered the half-dried gulf. He seemed to take in turn from his celestial casket the most precious substances – silver and gold, ruby and diamond – and make them flash on each point of this gorgeous plain. As the planet neared the end of his career, a strip of undulating mist at the farther limit of the marshes, reddened all at once with the glare of a conflagration, and for a moment, kept the radiant transparency of a cloud furrowed by lightning. I was absorbed in the contemplation of a picture so full of divine grandeur, and enriched as with another ray of glory by the great memory of Cæsar, when a low, half-stifled voice murmured:

"Oh, how beautiful it is!"

I had not expected this sympathetic outburst from my companion. I turned eagerly towards her with a surprise that was not lessened, when the emotion in her face, and the slight trembling of her lips, had convinced me of the profound sincerity of her admiration.

"You admit that it is beautiful?" I said to her.

She shook her head; but at the same moment two tears fell slowly from her great eyes. She felt them rolling down her cheeks, made a gesture of annoyance, and then throwing herself suddenly on the granite cross, on the base of which she was standing, she embraced it with both hands, pressed her head close against the stone, and sobbed convulsively.

I did not think it right to say a word that might trouble the course of this sudden emotion, and I turned reverently away. After a moment, seeing her raise her forehead, and hastily replace her loosened hair, I came nearer.

"I am ashamed of myself," she murmured.

"You have more reason to rejoice. Believe me, you must give up trying to destroy the source of those tears; it is holy. Besides, you will never succeed."

"I must," said the girl desperately. "See, it is done! This weakness took me by surprise. I want to hate everything that is good and beautiful."

"In God's name, why?"

"Because I am beautiful, and I can never be loved."

Then, as a long-repressed torrent bursts its barriers at last, she continued, with extraordinary energy:

"It is true."

She put her hand on her heaving bosom.

"God had put into this heart all the qualities that I ridicule, that I blaspheme every hour of the day. But when he condemned me to be rich, he withdrew with one hand all that he had lavished with the other. What is the good of my beauty? What is the good of the devotion, tenderness, and enthusiasm which I feel burning within me? These are not the charms which make so many cowards weary me with their homage. I see it I know it – I know it too well. And if ever some disinterested, generous, and heroic soul loved me for what I am, and not for what I have … I should never know … never believe it. Eternal mistrust! That is my sentence – that is my torture. So I have decided … I will never love. I will never pour into some vile, worthless, and venal heart the pure passion which is burning in mine. My soul will die virgin in my bosom. Well, I am resigned, but – everything that is beautiful, everything that sets me dreaming, everything that speaks to me of realms forbidden, everything that stirs these vain fires in me – I thrust it away, I hate it, I will have nothing to do with it."

She stopped, trembling; then, in a lower tone, she said:

"Monsieur, I did not seek this opportunity. I have not chosen my words … I did not mean to tell you, but I have spoken … you know all, and if at any time I have wounded your feelings, I think you will forgive me now."

She held out her hand. When my lips touched that soft hand, still wet with tears, a mortal languor stole through my veins. Marguerite turned her head away, looked into the sombre sky, and then slowly descended the steps.

"Let us go," she said.

Another road, longer, but easier than the steep ascent of the mountain, brought us into the farmyard. Neither of us spoke a single word the whole way. What could I have said, I who was more to be suspected than any other? I felt that every word from my overcharged heart would separate me still further from this stormy, but adorable soul.

Night had fallen, and hid from every one the signs of our common emotion. We drove away. After telling us again how much she had enjoyed her day, Mme. Laroque gave herself up to dreaming about it. Mlle. Marguerite, invisible and motionless in the deep shadow, seemed also to be sleeping; but when a bend in the road caused a ray of pale light to fall upon her, the fixed and open eyes showed that she was wakeful and silent, beset by the thought that caused her despair. I can scarcely say what I felt. A strange sensation of deep joy and deep bitterness possessed me entirely. I yielded to it as one sometimes yields consciously to a dream the charm of which we are not strong enough to resist.

We reached home about midnight.

I got down at the beginning of the avenue, and took the short way through the park to my quarters. Entering a dim alley, I heard a faint sound of voices and approaching footsteps, and saw vaguely in the darkness two shadowy figures. It was late enough to justify me in stepping into a clump of trees, to watch these nocturnal wanderers. They passed slowly in front of me. I recognised Mlle. Hélouin; she was leaning on M. de Bévallan's arm. At this moment the sound of the carriage alarmed them; they shook hands and separated hurriedly, Mlle. Hélouin going towards the château, the other to the woods.

In my own room, fresh from my adventure, I asked myself indignantly whether I was to allow M. de Bévallan to carry on his double love affair uninterrupted, and to let him find a fiancée and a mistress in the same house. I am too much a man of my age and time to feel the Puritan's horror of certain weaknesses, and I am not hypocrite enough to affect what I do not feel. But I believe that the morality which is easiest and most indulgent in this respect, still demands some degree of dignity, self-respect, and delicacy. Even in these devious ways a man must walk straight to some extent. The real excuse of love is that it islove. But M. de Bévallan's catholic tendernesses exclude all possibility of self-forgetful passion. Such love-affairs are not even sins; they are something altogether lower in the moral scale; they are but the calculations and the wagers of brutalized horse-dealers.

The various incidents of this evening, combined to convince me, that this man was utterly unworthy of the hand and heart he dared to covet. Such a union would be monstrous. But I saw at once, that I should not be able to prevent it by using the weapons that chance had put into my hands. The best of objects does not justify base methods, and nothing can excuse the informer. This marriage will take place, and heaven will permit one of its noblest creatures to fall into the arms of a cold-hearted libertine. It will permit that profanation. Alas, it allows so many others!

I tried to imagine how this young girl could have chosen this man, by what process of false reasoning she had come to prefer him to all others. I think I have guessed. M. de Bévallan is very rich; he brings a fortune nearly equal to the one he acquires. That is a kind of guarantee; he could do without this additional wealth; he is assumed to be more disinterested than others, because he is better off.

How foolish an argument! What a terrible mistake to estimate people's venality by the amount of their wealth! In nine cases out of ten, opulence increases greed! The most self-seeking are not the poorest!

Was there, then, no hope that Marguerite would see the worthlessness of her choice, no hope that her own heart would give her the counsel I could not suggest? Might not a new, unlooked-for feeling arise in her heart, and, breathing on the vain resolutions of reason, destroy them? Was not this feeling already born, indeed, and had I not received irrefutable proofs of it? The strange caprices, the humiliations, struggles, and tears of which I had been so long the object, or the witness, proclaimed beyond doubt a reason that wavered, not mistress of itself. I had seen enough of life, to know that a scene like that of which chance had this evening made me the confidant, and almost the accomplice, does not, however spontaneous it may seem, occur in an atmosphere of indifference. Such emotions, such shocks, prove that there are two souls already shaken by the same storm, or about to be so shaken.

But if it were true, if she loved me, as too certainly I loved her, I might say of that love what she had said of her beauty: "What is the good of it?" For I could never hope that it would be strong enough to triumph over the eternal mistrust, which is at once the defect, and quality, of that noble girl. My character, I dare say it, resents the outrage of this mistrust; but my situation, more than that of any other, is calculated to rouse it. What miracle is to bridge the abyss between these suspicions, and the reserve they force upon me?

Finally, granting the miracle, if she offered me the hand for which I would give my life, but for which I will never ask, would our union be happy? Should I not have to fear, early or late, in this restless imagination, the slow awakening of a half-stifled mistrust? Could I, in the midst of wealth not mine, guard myself against misgivings? Could I really be happy in a love that is sullied by being a benefit as well? Our part as the protector of women is so strictly laid upon us by all sentiments of honour, that it cannot, even from the highest motives, be reversed for an instant without casting upon us some shadow of doubt and suspicion. Truly, wealth is not so great an advantage that we cannot find some counterpoise to it. I imagine that a man who brings his wife, in exchange for some bags of gold, a name that he has made illustrious, acknowledged worth, a great position, or the promise of a great future, does not feel that he is under a crushing obligation. But my hands are empty, my future is no better than my present; of all the advantages which the world worships I have only one – my title – and I am determined not to bear it, that it may not be said it was the price of a bargain. I should receive all and give nothing. A king may marry a shepherdess; that is generous and charming, and we congratulate him with good reason; but a shepherd who lets a queen marry him does not cut so fine a figure.

I have spent the night thinking these things over, and seeking a solution that I have not yet found. Perhaps I ought to leave this house and this place at once. Prudence counsels it. This business cannot end well. How often one minute of courage and firmness would spare us a lifetime of regret! I ought at least to be overwhelmed by sadness; I have never had such good reason for melancholy. But I cannot grieve. My brain, distracted and tortured, yet holds a thought which dominates everything, and fills me with more than mortal joy. My soul is as light as a bird of the air. I see – I shall always see – that little cemetery, that distant ocean, that vast horizon, and on that glowing hilltop, that angel of beauty bathed in divine tears! Still, I feel her hand under my lips, her tears in my eyes and in my heart. I love her! Well, to-morrow, if so it must be, I will decide. Till then, for God's sake, let me have a little rest. I have not been overdone with happiness. I may die of this love, but I will live in peace with it for one day at least.

August 26th.

That day, the single day I asked, has not been granted me. My brief weakness has not had long to wait for its punishment, which will be lasting. How could I have forgotten? Moral laws can no more be broken with impunity than physical, and their invariable action constitutes the permanent intervention of what we call Providence in the affairs of this world. A great, though weak man, writing the gospel of a sage with the hand of a quasi-maniac, said of the passions that were at once his misery, his reproach, and his glory:

"All are good while we are their masters; all are bad when we let them enslave us. Nature forbids us to let our attachments exceed our strength; reason forbids us to desire what we cannot obtain; conscience does not forbid us to be tempted, it does forbid us to yield to temptation. It does not rest with us to have or not to have passions, but it does rest with us to control them. All the feelings which we govern are legitimate; all those that govern us are criminal. Attach your heart only to the beauty that does not perish; limit your desires by your conditions; put your duties before your passions; extend the law of necessity to things moral; learn to lose what may be taken from you; learn to give up everything at the command of virtue!"

Yes, such is the law. I knew it; I have broken it; I am punished. It is right. I had scarcely set foot on my cloud of folly when I was thrown violently off, and now, after five days, I have barely courage to recount the almost ridiculous details of my downfall.

Mme. Laroque and her daughter had gone in the morning to pay another visit to Mme. de Saint-Cast, and to bring back Mme. Aubry. I found Mlle. Hélouin alone at the château. I had brought her quarter's salary; for, though my duties do not, in a general way, trench on the maintenance and internal discipline of the house, the ladies had wished, no doubt from consideration for Mlle. Hélouin and for me, that I should pay both our salaries. The young lady was sitting in the small boudoir near the dining-room. She received me with a pensive sweetness which touched me. For at that moment I felt in myself that fulness of heart which inclines us to confidence and kindness. I quixotically resolved to hold out a helping hand to this poor lonely creature.

"Mademoiselle," I said, abruptly, "you have withdrawn your friendship from me, but my friendship for you remains unaltered. May I give you a proof of it?"

She looked at me and murmured a timid assent.

"Well, my poor child, you are bent on your own ruin."

She rose quickly.

"You saw me in the park that night!" she cried.

"I did."

"My God!"

She came towards me.

"M. Maxime, I swear to you that I am a virtuous girl."

"I believe it, mademoiselle, but I must warn you that in this little romance, perfectly innocent, no doubt, on your side, whatever it may be on the other, you are imperilling your reputation and your peace of mind. I beg you to reflect seriously on this matter, and at the same time I beg to assure you that no one but you will ever hear a word on this subject from me."

I was leaving the room, when she sank on her knees before a couch, and burst out sobbing, leaning her forehead against my hand, which she had seized. It was not long since I had seen sweeter and nobler tears, but still I was touched.

"Come, my dear young lady," I said; "it is not too late, is it?"

She shook her head decisively.

"Very well, my child. Be brave, and we will save you. What can I do to help you – tell me? Has this man any proof, any letter, I can demand from him on your behalf? Command me as if I were your brother."

She released my hand angrily.

"How hard you are!" she said. "You talk of saving me … it is you who are ruining me. After pretending to love me, you repulsed me … you have humiliated me and made me desperate. You are the sole cause of what has happened."

"Mademoiselle, you are unjust. I never pretended to love you. I had a sincere affection for you, and I have it still. I admit that your beauty, your wit, and your talents fully entitle you to look for more than fraternal friendship from those who see you every day. But my situation, and my duties to my family preclude my indulging any other feeling for you without being dishonourable. I tell you frankly that I think you are charming, and I assure you that in restricting my sentiments towards you within the limits imposed by loyalty, I have not been without merit. I see nothing humiliating for you in that; what might, indeed, humiliate you, mademoiselle, would be the determined pursuit of a man determined not to marry you."

She gave me an evil look.

"What do you know about it?" she said. "Every man is not a fortune-hunter."

"Oh! mademoiselle, are you a spiteful little person?" I said, very calmly. "If so, I will wish you good-day."

"M. Maxime!" she cried, rushing forward to stop me, "forgive me! have pity on me! Alas! I am so unhappy. Imagine what must be the thoughts of a poor creature like me, who has been given – cruelly – a heart, a soul, a brain … and who can only use them to suffer … and to hate! What is my life? What is my future? My life is the perception of my poverty, ceaselessly aggravated by the luxury which surrounds me! My future will be to regret, some day, to weep bitterly for even this life – this slave's life, odious as it is! You talk of my youth, my wit, and my talents. Would that I had never had the capacity for anything higher than breaking stones on the road! I should have been happier. My talents! I shall have passed the best part of my life in decking another woman with them, and giving her thereby additional beauty, power – and insolence. And when my best blood has passed into this doll's veins, she will go off on the arm of a happy husband to take her part in the best pleasures of life, while, old, solitary, and deserted, I shall go to die in some hole with the pension of a lady's maid. What have I done to deserve this fate, tell me that? Why should it be mine rather than that of those other women? Because I am not as good as they are? If I am bad, it is because suffering has envenomed me, because injustice has blackened my soul. I was born with a disposition as great as theirs – perhaps greater – to be good and loving and charitable. My God! benefits cost little when you're rich, and kindness is easy when you're happy. If I were in their place, and they in mine, they would hate me … as I hate them… We do not love our masters. Ah! this is horrible – what I am saying to you. I know it, and this is the crowning bitterness – I feel my own degradation, I blush for it … and increase it. Alas! now you despise me more than ever … you, whom I could have loved so much, if you would have let me; you, who could have given me all that I have lost hope, peace, goodness, self-respect! Ah! there was a moment when I believed that I was saved … when for the first time I dreamed of happiness, of hope, of pride! … Poor wretch! …"

She had seized both my hands; her head fell on them, and she wept wildly under her long, flowing curls.

"My dear child," I said to her, "I know better than any one the trials and humiliations of your position, but let me tell you that you increase them greatly by nourishing the sentiments you have just expressed. They are hideous, and you will end by deserving all the hardships of your lot. But, after all, your imagination strangely exaggerates those hardships. As for the present, whatever you may say, you are treated like a friend here; as to the future, I see nothing to prevent you from leaving this house on the arm of a happy husband, too. For my part, I shall be grateful for your affection throughout my life; but – I will tell you once more, and finish with the subject forever – I have duties that bind me, and I do not wish, nor am I able, to marry."

She looked at me suddenly.

"Not even Marguerite?" she said.

"I do not see that it is necessary to introduce Mlle. Marguerite's name."

With one hand she threw back the hair which fell over her face, and the other she held out at me with a menacing gesture.

"You love her!" she said in a hoarse voice. "No, you love her money, but you shall not have it!"

"Mademoiselle Hélouin!"

"Ah!" she continued, "you must be a child indeed if you think you can deceive a woman who was fool enough to love you. I see through your manoeuvres. Besides, I know who you are. I was not far off when Mlle. de Porhoët conveyed your well-calculated confidence to Mme. Laroque – "

"So you listen at doors, mademoiselle!"

"I care nothing for your insults… Besides, I shall avenge myself, and soon, too… Oh, there's no doubt you're very clever, M. de Chamcey! I congratulate you. Wonderfully well have you played your little part of disinterestedness and reserve, as your friend Laubépin advised you to do when he sent you here. He knew the person you would have to deal with. He knew well enough this girl's absurd mania. And you think you've already got your prey, don't you? Adorable millions, aren't they? There are queer stories about their origin. But, at any rate, they will serve very well to furbish up your marquisate, and regild your escutcheon. Well, from this moment you can give up that idea … for I swear you shall not keep your mask a day longer, and this hand shall tear it from you."

"Mlle. Hélouin, it is quite time we brought this scene to an end; we are verging on melodrama. You have given me an opportunity of forestalling you in tale-bearing and calumniation; but you are perfectly safe. I give you my word of honour that I shall not use those weapons. And, mademoiselle, I am your humble servant."

I left the unhappy girl with a feeling of mingled disgust and pity. I have always thought that the highest organization must, from its very nature, be galled and warped in a situation as equivocal and humiliating as that which Mlle. Hélouin occupies here. But I was not prepared for the abyss of venom that had just opened under my eyes. Most assuredly – when one thinks the matter out – one can scarcely conceive a situation which subjects a human soul to more hateful temptations, or is better calculated to develop and sharpen envy, to arouse the protests of pride, and to exasperate feminine vanity and jealousy. Most of the unhappy girls who are driven to this occupation only escape the troubles Mlle. Hélouin had not been able to guard herself against, either by the moderation of their feeling, or, by the grace of God, through the firmness of their principles. Sometimes I had thought that our misfortunes might make it necessary for my sister to go as governess into some rich family. I swore then that whatever future might be reserved for us, I would rather share the hardest life in the poorest garret with Hélène than let her sit at the poisoned banquets of an opulent and hateful servitude.