The Cross of Berny Part 2

IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN.

My address is, Madame Albert Guerin, Care Mme. Taverneau, Pont de l'Arche, Department of the Eure.

II.

ROGER DE MONBERT _to_ M. DE MEILHAN, Pont-de-l'Arche (Eure.)

Paris, May 19th, 18--.

Dear Edgar,--It cannot be denied that friendship is the refuge of adversity--the roof that shelters from the storm.

In my prosperous days I never wrote you. Happiness is selfish. We fear to distress a friend who may be in sorrow, by sending him a picture of our own bliss.

I am oppressed with a double burden; your absence, and my misfortunes.

This introduction will, doubtless, impress you with the idea that I wander about Paris with dejected visage and neglected dress. Undeceive yourself. It is one of my principles never to expose my sacred griefs to the gaze of an unsympathetic world, that only looks to laugh.

Pity I regard as an insult to my pride: the comforter humiliates the inconsolable mourner; besides, there are sorrows that all pretend to understand, but which none really appreciate. It is useless, then, to enumerate one's maladies to a would-be physician; and the world is filled with those who delight in the miseries of others; who follow the sittings of courts and luxuriate in heart-rending pictures of man's injustice to his fellow.

I do not care to serve as a relaxation to this cla.s.s of mankind, who, since the abolition of the circus and amphitheatre, are compelled to pick up their pleasure wherever they can find it; seeking the best places to witness the struggle of Christian fort.i.tude with adversity.

But every civilized age has its savage manners, and, knowing this, I resemble in public the favorite of fortune. I simulate content, and my face is radiant with deceit.

The idle and curious of the Boulevard Italien, the benches of the circus would hardly recognise me as the gladiator struggling with an iron-clawed monster--they are all deceived.

I feel a repugnance, dear Edgar, to entertaining you with a recital of my mysterious sorrow. I would prefer to leave you in ignorance, or let you divine them, but I explain to prevent your friendship imagining afflictions that are not mine.

In the first place, to rea.s.sure you, my fortune has not suffered during my absence. On my return to Paris, my agent dazzled me with the picture of my wealth.

"Happy man!" said he; "a great name, a large fortune, health that has defied the fires of the tropics, the ice of the poles,--and only thirty!" The notary reasoned well from a notary's stand-point. If I were to reduce my possessions to ingots, they would certainly balance a notary's estimate of happiness; therefore, fear nothing for my fortune.

Nor must you imagine that I grieve over my political and military prospects that were lost in the royal storm of '30, when plebeian cannon riddled the Tuilleries and shattered a senile crown. I was only sixteen, and hardly understood the lamentations of my father, whose daily refrain was, "My child, your future is destroyed."

A man's future lies in any honorable career. If I have left the epaulettes of my ancestors reposing in their domestic shrine, I can bequeath to my children other decorations.

I have just returned from a ten years' campaign against all nations, bringing back a marvellous quant.i.ty of trophies, but without causing one mother to mourn. In the light of a conqueror, Caesar, Alexander, and Hannibal pale in comparison, and yet to a certainty my military future could not have gained me the epaulettes of these ill.u.s.trious commanders.

You would not, my dear Edgar, suppose, from the gaiety of this letter, that I had pa.s.sed a frightful night.

You shall see what becomes of life when not taken care of; when there is an unguarded moment in the incessant duel that, forced by nature, we wage with her from the cradle to the grave.

What a long and glorious voyage I had just accomplished! What dangers I escaped! The treacherous sea defeated by a motion of the helm! The sirens to whom I turned a deaf ear. The Circes deserted under a baleful moon, ere the brutalizing change had come!

I returned to Paris, a man with soul so dead that his country was not dear to him--I felt guilty of an unknown crime, but reflection reduced the enormity of the offence. Long voyages impart to us a nameless virtue--or vice, made up of tolerance, stoicism and disdain. After having trodden over the graveyards of all nations, it seems as if we had a.s.sisted at the funeral ceremonies of the world, and they who survive on its surface seem like a band of adroit fugitives who have discovered the secret of prolonging to-day's agony until to-morrow.

I walked upon the Boulevard Italien without wonder, hatred, love, joy or sorrow. On consulting my inmost thoughts I found there an unimpa.s.sioned serenity, a something akin to ennui; I scarcely heard the noise of the wheels, the horses--the crowd that surrounded me.

Habituated to the turmoil of those grand dead nations near the vast ruins of the desert, this little hubbub of wearied citizens scarcely attracted my attention.

My face must have reflected the disdainful quietude of my soul.

By contemplative communion with the mute, motionless colossal faces of Egypt's and Persia's monuments, I felt that unwittingly my countenance typified the cold imperturbable tranquillity of their granite brows.

That evening La Favorita was played at the opera. Charming work! full of grace, pa.s.sion, love. Reaching the end of Le Pelletier street, my walk was blocked by a line of carriages coming down Provence street; not having the patience to wait the pa.s.sage of this string of vehicles, nor being very dainty in my distinction between pavement and street, I followed in the wake of the carriages, and as they did not conceal the facade of the opera at the end of the court, I saw it, and said "I will go in."

I took a box below, because my family-box had changed hands, hangings and keys at least five times in ten years, and seated myself in the background to avoid recognition, and leave undisturbed friends who would feel in duty bound to pay fashionable court to a traveller due ten years. I was not familiar with La Favorita, and my ear took in the new music slowly. Great scores require of the indolent auditor a long novitiate.

While I listened indolently to the orchestra and the singers, I examined the boxes with considerable interest, to discover what little revolutions a decade could bring about in the aristocratic personnel of the opera. A confused noise of words and some distinct sentences reached my ear from the neighboring boxes when the orchestra was silent. I listened involuntarily; the occupants were not talking secrets, their conversation was in the domain of idle chat, that divides with the libretto the attention of the habitues of the opera.

They said, "I could distinguish her in a thousand, I mistrust my sight a little, but my gla.s.s is infallible; it is certainly Mlle. de Bressuire--a superb figure, but she spoils her beauty by affectation."

"Your gla.s.s deceives you, my dear sir, we know Mlle. de Bressuire."

"Madame is right; it is not Mlle. That young lady at whom everybody is gazing, and who to-night is the favorite--excuse the pun--of the opera, is a Spaniard; I saw her at the Bois de Boulogne in M. Martinez de la Hosa's carriage. They told me her name, but I have forgotten. I never could remember names."

"Ladies," said a young man, who noisily entered the box, "we are at last enlightened. I have just questioned the box-keeper--she is a maid of honor to the Queen of Belgium."

"And her name?" demanded five voices.

"She has a Belgian name, unp.r.o.nounceable by the box-keeper; something like Wallen, or Meulen."

"We are very much wiser."

From the general commotion it was easy to perceive that the same subject was being discussed by the whole house, and doubtless in the same terms; for people do not vary their formulas much on such occasions.

A strain of music recalled to the stage every eye that during the intermission had been fastened upon one woman. I confess that I felt some interest in the episode, but, owing to my habitual reserve, barely discovered by random and careless glances the young girl thus handed over to the curious glances of the fashionable world. She was in a box of the first tier, and the native grace of her att.i.tude first riveted my attention. The cynosure of all eyes, she bore her triumph with the ease of a woman accustomed to admiration.

To appear unconscious she a.s.sumed with charming cleverness a pose of artistic contemplation. One would have said that she was really absorbed in the music, or that she was following the advice of the Tuscan poet:

"Bel ange, descendu d'un monde aerien, Laisse-toi regarder et ne regarde rien."

From my position I could only distinguish the outline of her figure, except by staring through my gla.s.ses, which I regard as a polite rudeness, but she seemed to merit the homage that all eyes looked and all voices sang.

Once she appeared in the full blaze of the gas as she leaned forward from her box, and it seemed as if an apparition by some theatro-optical delusion approached and dazzled me.

The rapt attention of the audience, the mellow tones of the singer, the orchestral accompaniment full of mysterious harmony, seemed to awaken the ineffable joy that love implants in the human heart. How much weakness there is in the strength of man!

To travel for years over oceans, through deserts, among all varieties of peoples and sects; shipwrecked, to cling with bleeding hands to sea-beaten rocks; to laugh at the storm and brave the tiger in his lair; to be bronzed in torrid climes; to subject one's digestion to the baleful influences of the salt seas; to study wisdom before the ruins of every portico where rhetoricians have for three thousand years paraphrased in ten tongues the words of Solomon, "All is vanity;" to return to one's native sh.o.r.es a used-up man, persuaded of the emptiness of all things save the overhanging firmament and the never-fading stars; to scatter the fancies of too credulous youth by a contemptuous smile, or a lesson of bitter experience, and yet, while boasting a victory over all human fallacies and weaknesses, to be enslaved by the melody of a song, the smile of a woman.

Life is full of hidden mysteries. I looked upon the stranger's face with a sense of danger, so antagonistic to my previous tranquillity that I felt humiliated.

By the side of the beautiful unknown, I saw a large fan open and shut with a certain affectation, but not until its tenth movement did I glance at its possessor. She was my nearest relative, the d.u.c.h.ess de Langeac.

The situation now began to be interesting. In a moment the interlude would procure for me a position to be envied by every one in the house.