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

a whole encyclopaedia of gossip which the women have an
interest in swelling. Your wife is having an immense success. Last
evening at the opera Madame Firmiani began to repeat to me some of
the things that are being said. "Don't talk of that," I replied.
"You know nothing of the real truth, you people. Paul has robbed
the Bank, cheated the Treasury, murdered Ezzelin and three Medoras
in the rue Saint-Denis, and I think, between ourselves, that he is
a member of the Dix-Mille. His associate is the famous Jacques
Collin, on whom the police have been unable to lay a hand since he
escaped from the galleys. Paul gave him a room in his house; you
see he is capable of anything; in fact, the two have gone off to
India together to rob the Great Mogul." Madame Firmiani, like the
distinguished woman that she is, saw that she ought not to convert
her beautiful lips into a mouthpiece for false denunciation.

Many persons, when they hear of these tragi-comedies of life,
refuse to believe them. They take the side of human nature and
fine sentiments; they declare that these things do not exist. But
Talleyrand said a fine thing, my dear fellow: "All things happen."
Truly, things happen under our very noses which are more amazing
than this domestic plot of yours; but society has an interest in
denying them, and in declaring itself calumniated. Often these
dramas are played so naturally and with such a varnish of good
taste that even I have to rub the lens of my opera-glass to see to
the bottom of them. But, I repeat to you, when a man is a friend
of mine, when we have received together the baptism of champagne
and have knelt together before the altar of the Venus Commodus,
when the crooked fingers of play have given us their benediction,
if that man finds himself in a false position I'd ruin a score of
families to do him justice.

You must be aware from all this that I love you. Have I ever in my
life written a letter as long as this? No. Therefore, read with
attention what I still have to say.

Alas! Paul, I shall be forced to take to writing, for I am taking
to politics. I am going into public life. I intend to have, within
five years, the portfolio of a ministry or some embassy. There
comes an age when the only mistress a man can serve is his
country. I enter the ranks of those who intend to upset not only
the ministry, but the whole present system of government. In
short, I swim in the waters of a certain prince who is lame of the
foot only,--a man whom I regard as a statesman of genius whose
name will go down to posterity; a prince as complete in his way as
a great artist may be in his.

Several of us, Ronquerolles, Montriveau, the Grandlieus, La
Roche-Hugon, Serisy, Feraud, and Granville, have allied ourselves
against the "parti-pretre," as the party-ninny represented by the
"Constitutionnel" has ingeniously said. We intend to overturn the
Navarreins, Lenoncourts, Vandenesses, and the Grand Almonry. In
order to succeed we shall even ally ourselves with Lafayette, the
Orleanists, and the Left,--people whom we can throttle on the
morrow of victory, for no government in the world is possible with
their principles. We are capable of anything for the good of the
country--and our own.

Personal questions as to the King's person are mere sentimental
folly in these days; they must be cleared away. From that point of
view, the English with their sort of Doge, are more advanced than
we are. Politics have nothing to do with that, my dear fellow.
Politics consist in giving the nation an impetus by creating an
oligarchy embodying a fixed theory of government, and able to
direct public affairs along a straight path, instead of allowing
the country to be pulled in a thousand different directions, which
is what has been happening for the last forty years in our
beautiful France--at once so intelligent and so sottish, so wise
and so foolish; it needs a system, indeed, much more than men.
What are individuals in this great question? If the end is a great
one, if the country may live happy and free from trouble, what do
the masses care for the profits of our stewardship, our fortune,
privileges, and pleasures?

I am now standing firm on my feet. I have at the present moment a
hundred and fifty thousand francs a year in the Three per Cents,
and a reserve of two hundred thousand francs to repair damages.
Even this does not seem to me very much ballast in the pocket of a
man starting left foot foremost to scale the heights of power.

A fortunate accident settled the question of my setting out on
this career, which did not particularly smile on me, for you know
my predilection for the life of the East. After thirty-five years
of slumber, my highly-respected mother woke up to the recollection
that she had a son who might do her honor. Often when a vine-stock
is eradicated, some years after shoots come up to the surface of
the ground; well, my dear boy, my mother had almost torn me up by
the roots from her heart, and I sprouted again in her head. At the
age of fifty-eight, she thinks herself old enough to think no more
of any men but her son. At this juncture she has met in some
hot-water cauldron, at I know not what baths, a delightful old maid
--English, with two hundred and forty thousand francs a year; and,
like a good mother, she has inspired her with an audacious
ambition to become my wife. A maid of six-and-thirty, my word!
Brought up in the strictest puritanical principles, a steady
sitting hen, who maintains that unfaithful wives should be
publicly burnt. 'Where will you find wood enough?' I asked her. I
could have sent her to the devil, for two hundred and forty
thousand francs a year are no equivalent for liberty, nor a fair
price for my physical and moral worth and my prospects. But she is
the sole heiress of a gouty old fellow, some London brewer, who
within a calculable time will leave her a fortune equal at least
to what the sweet creature has already. Added to these advantages,
she has a red nose, the eyes of a dead goat, a waist that makes
one fear lest she should break into three pieces if she falls
down, and the coloring of a badly painted doll. But--she is
delightfully economical; but--she will adore her husband, do what
he will; but--she has the English gift; she will manage my house,
my stables, my servants, my estates better than any steward. She
has all the dignity of virtue; she holds herself as erect as a
confidante on the stage of the Francais; nothing will persuade me
that she has not been impaled and the shaft broken off in her
body. Miss Stevens is, however, fair enough to be not too
unpleasing if I must positively marry her. But--and this to me is
truly pathetic--she has the hands of a woman as immaculate as the
sacred ark; they are so red that I have not yet hit on any way to
whiten them that will not be too costly, and I have no idea how to
fine down her fingers, which are like sausages. Yes; she evidently
belongs to the brew-house by her hands, and to the aristocracy by
her money; but she is apt to affect the great lady a little too
much, as rich English women do who want to be mistaken for them,
and she displays her lobster's claws too freely.

She has, however, as little intelligence as I could wish in a
woman. If there were a stupider one to be found, I would set out
to seek her. This girl, whose name is Dinah, will never criticise
me; she will never contradict me; I shall be her Upper Chamber,
her Lords and Commons. In short, Paul, she is indefeasible
evidence of the English genius; she is a product of English
mechanics brought to their highest pitch of perfection; she was
undoubtedly made at Manchester, between the manufactory of Perry's
pens and the workshops for steam-engines. It eats, it drinks, it
walks, it may have children, take good care of them, and bring
them up admirably, and it apes a woman so well that you would
believe it real.

When my mother introduced us, she had set up the machine so
cleverly, had so carefully fitted the pegs, and oiled the wheels
so thoroughly, that nothing jarred; then, when she saw I did not
make a very wry face, she set the springs in motion, and the woman
spoke. Finally, my mother uttered the decisive words, "Miss Dinah
Stevens spends no more than thirty thousand francs a year, and has
been traveling for seven years in order to economize."--So there
is another image, and that one is silver.

Matters are so far advanced that the banns are to be published. We
have got as far as "My dear love." Miss makes eyes at me that
might floor a porter. The settlements are prepared. My fortune is
not inquired into; Miss Stevens devotes a portion of hers to
creating an entail in landed estate, bearing an income of two
hundred and forty thousand francs, and to the purchase of a house,
likewise entailed. The settlement credited to me is of a million
francs. She has nothing to complain of. I leave her uncle's money
untouched.

The worthy brewer, who has helped to found the entail, was near
bursting with joy when he heard that his niece was to be a
marquise. He would be capable of doing something handsome for my
eldest boy.

I shall sell out of the funds as soon as they are up to eighty,
and invest in land. Thus, in two years I may look to get six
hundred thousand francs a year out of real estate. So, you