The Marriage Contract - Honoré de Balzac (hardest books to read TXT) 📗

all your absence; for my
soul, too, is in it; that letter is my glory.

I shall go to live at Lanstrac with my mother. I die to the world;
I will economize my income and pay your debts to their last
farthing. From this day forth, Paul, I am another woman. I bid
farewell forever to society; I will have no pleasures that you
cannot share. Besides, Paul, I ought to leave Paris and live in
retirement. Dear friend, you will soon have a noble reason to make
your fortune. If your courage needed a spur you would find it in
this. Cannot you guess? We shall have a child. Your cherished
desires are granted. I feared to give you one of those false hopes
which hurt so much--have we not had grief enough already on that
score? I was determined not to be mistaken in this good news.
To-day I feel certain, and it makes me happy to shed this joy upon
your sorrows.

This morning, fearing nothing and thinking you still at home, I
went to the Assumption; all things smiled upon me; how could I
foresee misfortune? As I left the church I met my mother; she had
heard of your distress, and came, by post, with all her savings,
thirty thousand francs, hoping to help you. Ah! what a heart is
hers, Paul! I felt joyful, and hurried home to tell you this good
news, and to breakfast with you in the greenhouse, where I ordered
just the dainties that you like. Well, Augustine brought me your
letter,--a letter from you, when we had slept together! A cold
fear seized me; it was like a dream! I read your letter! I read it
weeping, and my mother shared my tears. I was half-dead. Such
love, such courage, such happiness, such misery! The richest
fortunes of the heart, and the momentary ruin of all interests! To
lose you at a moment when my admiration of your greatness thrilled
me! what woman could have resisted such a tempest of emotion? To
know you far away when your hand upon my heart would have stilled
its throbbings; to feel that YOU were not here to give me that
look so precious to me, to rejoice in our new hopes; that I was
not with you to soften your sorrows by those caresses which made
your Natalie so dear to you! I wished to start, to follow you, to
fly to you. But my mother told me you had taken passage in a ship
which leaves Bordeaux to-morrow, that I could not reach you except
by post, and, moreover, that it was madness in my present state to
risk our future by attempting to follow you. I could not bear such
violent emotions; I was taken ill, and am writing to you now in
bed.

My mother is doing all she can to stop certain calumnies which
seem to have got about on your disaster. The Vandenesses, Charles
and Felix, have earnestly defended you; but your friend de Marsay
treats the affair satirically. He laughs at your accusers instead
of replying to them. I do not like his way of lightly brushing
aside such serious attacks. Are you not deceived in him? However,
I will obey you; I will make him my friend. Do not be anxious, my
adored one, on the points that concern your honor; is it not mine
as well? My diamonds shall be pledged; we intend, mamma and I, to
employ our utmost resources in the payment of your debts; and we
shall try to buy back your vineyard at Belle-Rose. My mother, who
understands business like a lawyer, blames you very much for not
having told her of your embarrassments. She would not have bought
--thinking to please you--the Grainrouge domain, and then she
could have lent you that money as well as the thirty thousand
francs she brought with her. She is in despair at your decision;
she fears the climate of India for your health. She entreats you
to be sober, and not to let yourself be trapped by women--That
made me laugh; I am as sure of you as I am of myself. You will
return to me rich and faithful. I alone know your feminine
delicacy, and the secret sentiments which make you a human flower
worthy of the gardens of heaven. The Bordeaux people were right
when they gave you your floral nickname.

But alas! who will take care of my delicate flower? My heart is
rent with dreadful ideas. I, his wife, Natalie, I am here, and
perhaps he suffers far away from me! And not to share your pains,
your vexations, your dangers! In whom will you confide? how will
you live without that ear into which you have hitherto poured all?
Dear, sensitive plant, swept away by this storm, will you be able
to survive in another soil than your native land?

It seems to me that I have been alone for centuries. I have wept
sorely. To be the cause of your ruin! What a text for the thoughts
of a loving woman! You treated me like a child to whom we give all
it asks, or like a courtesan, allowed by some thoughtless youth to
squander his fortune. Ah! such indulgence was, in truth, an
insult. Did you think I could not live without fine dresses, balls
and operas and social triumphs? Am I so frivolous a woman? Do you
think me incapable of serious thought, of ministering to your
fortune as I have to your pleasures? If you were not so far away,
and so unhappy, I would blame you for that impertinence. Why lower
your wife in that way? Good heavens! what induced me to go into
society at all?--to flatter your vanity; I adorned myself for you,
as you well know. If I did wrong, I am punished, cruelly; your
absence is a harsh expiation of our mutual life.

Perhaps my happiness was too complete; it had to be paid by some
great trial--and here it is. There is nothing now for me but
solitude. Yes, I shall live at Lanstrac, the place your father
laid out, the house you yourself refurnished so luxuriously. There
I shall live, with my mother and my child, and await you,--sending
you daily, night and morning, the prayers of all. Remember that
our love is a talisman against all evil. I have no more doubt of
you than you can have of me. What comfort can I put into this
letter,--I so desolate, so broken, with the lonely years before
me, like a desert to cross. But no! I am not utterly unhappy; the
desert will be brightened by our son,--yes, it must be a _son_,
must it not?

And now, adieu, my own beloved; our love and prayers will follow
you. The tears you see upon this paper will tell you much that I
cannot write. I kiss you on this little square of paper, see!
below. Take those kisses from

Your Natalie.

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This letter threw Paul into a reverie caused as much by memories of the past as by these fresh assurances of love. The happier a man is, the more he trembles. In souls which are exclusively tender--and exclusive tenderness carries with it a certain amount of weakness--jealousy and uneasiness exist in direct proportion to the amount of the happiness and its extent. Strong souls are neither jealous nor fearful; jealousy is doubt, fear is meanness. Unlimited belief is the principal attribute of a great man. If he is deceived (for strength as well as weakness may make a man a dupe) his contempt will serve him as an axe with which to cut through all. This greatness, however, is the exception. Which of us has not known what it is to be abandoned by the spirit which sustains our frail machine, and to hearken to that mysterious Voice denying all? Paul, his mind going over the past, and caught here and there by irrefutable facts, believed and doubted all. Lost in thought, a prey to an awful and involuntary incredulity, which was combated by the instincts of his own pure love and his faith in Natalie, he read and re-read that wordy letter, unable to decide the question which it raised either for or against his wife. Love is sometimes as great and true when smothered in words as it is in brief, strong sentences.

To understand the situation into which Paul de Manerville was about to enter we must think of him as he was at this moment, floating upon the ocean as he floated upon his past, looking back upon the years of his life as he looked at the limitless water and cloudless sky about him, and ending his reverie by returning, through tumults of doubt, to faith, the pure, unalloyed and perfect faith of the Christian and the lover, which enforced the voice of his faithful heart.

It is necessary to give here his own letter to de Marsay written on leaving Paris, to which his friend replied in the letter he received through old Mathias from the dock:--

From Comte Paul de Manerville to Monsieur le Marquis Henri de
Marsay:

Henri,--I have to say to you one of the most vital words a man can
say to his friend:--I am ruined. When you read this I shall be on
the point of sailing from Bordeaux to Calcutta on the brig
"Belle-Amelie."

You will find in the hands of your notary a deed which only needs
your signature to be legal. In it, I lease my house to you for six
years at a nominal rent. Send a duplicate of that deed to my wife.
I am forced to take this precaution that Natalie may continue to
live in her own home without fear of being driven out by
creditors.

I also convey to you by deed the income of my share of the
entailed property for four years; the whole amounting to one
hundred and fifty thousand francs, which sum I beg you to lend me
and to send in a bill of exchange on some house in Bordeaux to my
notary, Maitre Mathias. My wife will give you her signature to