Letters of Two Brides Read online

  Over the past five months, my little monkey has become the prettiest creature a mother ever bathed with tears of joy, or washed, brushed, combed, primped; for God knows with what indefatigable ardor one primps, dresses, brushes, washes, changes, kisses those little flowers! My monkey is no longer a monkey, but a baby, as my English nursemaid says, a pink-and-white baby, and since he feels that he is loved he never cries too much, but in truth I am nearly always beside him, and I strive to fill him with my soul.

  My dear, what I now feel for Louis in my heart is not love but a sentiment that must be love’s fullest consummation in a loving woman. I am in fact not sure that this tenderness, this selfless gratitude, does not go beyond love. From what you have told me, my darling, love is a horribly earthly thing, whereas there is something religious and divine in the affection a happy mother feels for the man who is the source of those long, those endless joys. A mother’s joy is a light that spills out onto the future, showing her the way, but reflecting onto the past as well, to offer her the charm of its memory.

  The elder l’Estorade and his son are more thoughtful than ever, I am like a new person to them: their words and gazes go straight to my soul, for they celebrate me anew each time they see me and speak to me. The old grandfather is becoming a child, I believe: he looks at me with wonderment. The first time I came down to breakfast, he wept to see me eating and nursing his grandson. That tear in those two dry eyes, so often lit by no thought other than money, did me more good than I can tell; I felt that the old man understood my joys. As for Louis, he could easily have told the trees and the pebbles on the road that he had a son. He can gaze on your sleeping godson for hours on end. He tells me he wonders if he will ever grow used to it. These excessive demonstrations of joy showed me the depth of their earlier fears and uncertainties. Louis finally admitted that he had doubted in himself, and thought he had been condemned never to have children. My poor Louis has suddenly changed for the better, he is studying even more seriously than before. The child has doubled the father’s ambition. As for me, my dear soul, I am happier with each passing moment. Every hour brings a new bond between a mother and her child. What I feel inside me proves that this sentiment is imperishable, natural, and constant, whereas love, I suspect, wanes and waxes. One does not love in the same way at every moment; love does not embroider the fabric of life with inevitably glowing flowers. Love can and must end, but motherhood need fear no decline, it grows in concert with the child’s needs, it develops along with him. Is it not all at once a passion, a need, an emotion, a duty, a necessity, happiness itself? Yes, darling, there is the life that is women’s alone. In it our thirst for devotion is sated; in it we find none of the turmoils of jealousy. For us, then, it is perhaps the only point at which Nature and Society coincide. And indeed, here Society has enriched Nature: to maternal sentiment it has added the family spirit, through the continuity of the family name, bloodline, and fortune. What love must a woman not lavish on the dear creature who first made her know such joys, who made her deploy the forces of her soul and taught her the great art of motherhood? I believe that primogeniture—an ancient right even in Antiquity, and a founding principle of all human societies—must never be questioned. Ah! a child teaches his mother so much. So many promises are made between virtue and us in our unceasing protection of a frail creature that woman is in her true sphere only when she is a mother; only then does she make use of all her forces; she sees to the duties of her life, she has all of life’s happinesses and all its pleasures. A woman who is not a mother is an incomplete, failed person. Hurry, my angel, and become a mother! You will be multiplying your current happiness by the joys I now feel.

  Eleven o’clock at night

  I left you on hearing a cry from your godson; I can hear that cry from the farthest point in the garden. I do not want this letter to go off without a word of farewell to you. I have just reread it, and I am mortified by the sentimental commonplaces I found. Alas, I believe every mother has felt just what I feel, and no doubt they express it in just the same way; I fear you may mock me, in the way people mock the naiveté of fathers who inevitably praise the intelligence and beauty of their children as if they were utterly unique. In any case, dear darling, here is the great message of this letter, which I will tell you again: I am as happy now as I was unhappy before. This bastide, soon to become an estate and a majorat, is for me the Promised Land. My time in the desert has come to an end. A thousand tendernesses, dear darling. Write me. Today I can read of your love and your happiness without weeping. Farewell.

  32

  FROM MADAME DE MACUMER TO MADAME DE L’ESTORADE

  March 1826

  My dear, can it be? Three months have gone by, and I’ve neither written nor had a letter from you. . . . My fault is the greater, for I never answered you, but I do not believe you are easily hurt. Macumer and I took your silence as an approval of the breakfast service decorated with children, and will have those pretty things sent off to Marseille this morning; it took the artisans six months to make them. I thus woke with a start when Felipe suggested we go and inspect that service before the goldsmith boxed it up. It suddenly occurred to me that we’d said not a word to each other since your last letter, which made me feel a mother alongside you.

  My excuse, angel, is the tyranny of Paris; I await yours. Oh! what an abyss is the social world. Have I not already told you that in Paris one has no choice but to be a Parisienne? In Paris society crushes all sentiment, takes up all your time, it will devour your heart if you don’t take care. What an astonishing stroke of genius is the role of Célimène in Molière’s The Misanthrope! She is the worldly woman of Louis XVI’s age and our own, indeed the worldly woman of all ages. Where would I be without my shield, my love for Felipe? As I told him this morning, reflecting on all this, he is my savior. My evenings are taken up with parties and balls, concerts, the theater, and then when we come home I rediscover the joys and the follies of love, which bring a bloom to my heart and erase the bite marks left by society. I’ve dined at home only when we were receiving what people call friends, and I’ve stayed in only for my at-home days. I have my day, Wednesday, when I am at home for visitors. I have entered into competition with Mesdames d’Espard and de Maufrigneuse, and the aged Duchess de Lenoncourt. My house is considered an amusing place. I allowed myself to fall in with fashion on seeing my Felipe happy at my successes. I give him the first half of the day, for from four in the afternoon to two in the morning I belong to Paris. Macumer is an admirable host; he is so witty, so grave, so exceptional, so perfectly gracious that he could inspire love in the heart of a woman who married him purely for convenience. My father and mother have left for Madrid. With the death of Louis XVIII, the duchess had no difficulty obtaining a position for her charming poet from our good Charles X; he will be accompanying her as an attaché of the embassy. My brother the Duke de Rhétoré deigns to consider me an eminent person. As for the Count de Chaulieu, that make-believe soldier owes me his eternal gratitude: before my father set off, he used my inheritance to acquire enough land for a majorat with an annual income of forty thousand livres, and his marriage to Mademoiselle de Mortsauf, an heiress from the Touraine, is now definitively settled. So as to prevent the disappearance of the de Lenoncourt and de Givry houses, the king will issue a proclamation conferring their names, titles, and coats of arms on my brother. How, indeed, could those two fine crests be allowed to perish, and that sublime device, Faciem semper monstramus![41] Mademoiselle de Mortsauf, the granddaughter and sole heiress of the Duke de Lenoncourt-Givry, is said to have an inheritance in excess of one hundred thousand livres a year. My father asked only that the Chaulieu family crest be placed en abîme in the center of the Lenoncourt crest. My brother will thus be the Duke de Lenoncourt. The young de Mortsauf son, for whom all this fortune was intended, is in the final stages of consumption; he is expected to die any day. The wedding is planned for next winter, after the period of mourning. They say I will have a charming sister-in-law i
n Madeleine de Mortsauf. As you see, then, my father was right in every way.

  This outcome has earned me the admiration of a great many people, and my marriage is no longer seen as a mystery. Out of affection for my grandmother, Prince de Talleyrand is promoting Macumer; our success is complete. Once derided by Parisian society, I am now admired on all sides. At long last I reign over this place, I who was of so little consequence here just two years ago. Macumer finds his happiness the envy of all, for I am the most sparkling woman in Paris. You know that there are twenty most sparkling women in Paris in Paris. All the men purr words of love at me, or simply express it with longing glances. Truly, this concert of desires and admirations offers so constant a satisfaction of one’s vanity that I now understand the excessive expenses women incur to gain these small, ephemeral advantages. That triumph is an intoxicant for human pride, vanity, and self-love, for all the sentiments bound to our ego. So violently heady is this perpetual deification that I am no longer surprised to see women turn selfish, thoughtless, and superficial amid the festivities. Society goes to one’s head. You lavish the flowers of your mind and your soul, your most precious time, your most generous efforts on people who repay you with jealousy and smiles, who give you the counterfeit coin of their well-turned sentences, their compliments and adulations in exchange for the gold ingots of your courage, your sacrifices, all the ingenuity you devote to being beautiful, well-dressed, witty, affable, and agreeable. You know how dearly that commerce is costing you, you know you’re being robbed, but you abandon yourself to it all the same. Ah! my beautiful doe, how one thirsts for the heart of a true friend, and how precious is Felipe’s love and devotion! How I adore him! How happily one makes preparations for a trip to Chantepleurs and a respite from the playacting of the rue du Bac and the salons of Paris! In short, I who have just reread your last letter, I will have said all you need know of the infernal paradise that is Paris by telling you that no society woman could possibly be a mother.

  Goodbye for the moment, my dear: we will be staying at Chantepleurs for a week at most, to be by your side around the tenth of May. We will thus be seeing each other again after more than two years! And so many changes! We are both of us women now: I the happiest of all mistresses, you the happiest of all mothers. To be sure, my dear, I have not written you, but I have not forgotten you. And my godson, that monkey, is he still pretty? Does he do me proud? He will be more than nine months old now. I would so like to see his first steps in the world, but Macumer tells me that even the most precocious children are scarcely walking at ten months. We will have a good chinwag, in the old manner of Blois. I will see if, as they say, a child plays havoc with the figure.

  P.S. If you answer me, sublime mother, address your letter to Chantepleurs, as I am to leave at any moment.

  33

  FROM MADAME DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME DE MACUMER

  Well, my child, if ever you become a mother, you will see if the first nine months of nursing offer a single opportunity to write. There is never a moment’s peace for my English maid Mary and me. I have not told you, it is true, that I insist on doing everything myself. Before the event, I sewed all the baby clothes with my own fingers, I embroidered and trimmed the bonnets with my own hand. I am a slave, my darling, a slave day and night. For one thing, Armand-Louis nurses whenever he wants to, and he always wants to; for another, he so often has to be changed, cleaned, dressed, and his mother so loves to look at him as he sleeps, and to sing him songs, and to take him out walking when the weather is fine, holding him in her arms, that she has not a moment to herself. In other words, you have been busy with society, and I with my child, our child! What a full, rich life! Oh, my dear, soon you will be here, and then you shall see! But I fear that he may begin teething soon, and that you will find he wails and weeps a great deal. Until now he has cried little, because I am always there. Children cry only when they need something that no one has realized, and I forever seek to anticipate his every wish. Oh! my angel, how my heart has grown, while you were shrinking yours by making of it a servant of Paris! I await you as impatiently as one who lives alone. I want to know what you think of l’Estorade, as you no doubt want to know what I think of Macumer. Write me from your last stop on the way. My men want to go out and meet our illustrious guests on the road. Come, queen of Paris, come to our poor little bastide, where you will be loved!

  34

  FROM MADAME DE MACUMER TO VISCOUNTESS DE L’ESTORADE

  April 1826

  My dear, as you will see from this letter’s address, my solicitations have borne fruit. Your father-in-law is now Count de l’Estorade. I didn’t want to leave Paris before I’d fulfilled your wish; I write you this letter in the presence of the Keeper of the Seals, who has come to tell me that the proclamation has been signed.

  I shall see you soon.

  35

  FROM MADAME DE MACUMER TO MADAME VISCOUNTESS DE L’ESTORADE

  Marseille, July

  You will have been greatly surprised by my sudden departure, and I am ashamed, but because I am sincere above all else, and because I love you as much as I ever did, I will candidly tell you all in four words: I am desperately jealous. Felipe was looking at you too much. The two of you were often at the foot of your bluff, having little talks that tormented me terribly, that so filled me with spite that I scarcely knew myself. Your genuinely Spanish beauty must have reminded him of his homeland, not to mention Maria Hérédia, of whom I am jealous, for I am jealous even of the past. Your magnificent black hair, your beautiful brown eyes; that brow on which the joys of motherhood accent your poetic past sorrows, which are like shadows in a radiant light; that fresh southern complexion, fairer than my blond fairness; those vigorous forms, that breast glowing amid the lace like some delicious fruit, and my godson clinging to it: all of that hurt my eyes and my heart. I put cornflowers in my hair, I tried to enliven my drab blond locks with cherry-red ribbons, all in vain. No matter what I did, it paled before a Renée I never expected to find in the oasis that is La Crampade.

  Furthermore, Felipe was too envious of that child, whom I found myself despising. Yes, that insolent life that fills your house, animates it, makes it ring with shouts and laughter, I wanted all that for myself. I could see regret in Macumer’s eyes; for two nights I wept in secret. It was torture to be in your house. You are too beautiful a woman and too happy a mother; I cannot stay with you. And here you were complaining, imposter! First of all, your l’Estorade is fine, his conversation is pleasant, his salt-and-pepper hair is pretty, he has beautiful eyes, and there is in his southern ways the je ne sais quoi that never fails to please. From what I have seen of him, he will surely be named député for the Bouches-du-Rhône district sooner or later, and will make his way in the National Assembly, for I am forever at your service where your ambitions are concerned. The miseries of exile have given him the calm, steady air that I believe is half of all success in politics. If you want my opinion, my dear, there is nothing more to politics than a grave demeanor, which is why I told Macumer he must be a very great statesman indeed.

  Satisfied that you are happy, I am now contentedly racing back to my beloved Chantepleurs, where Felipe will find some way to become a father. I want to welcome you there only when I have a child like yours at my breast. I deserve all the names you might call me: I am silly, ignoble, absurd. Alas! one is indeed all of that when one is jealous. Through no fault of yours, I was suffering, and you will forgive me for fleeing that pain. Two days more and I would have done something terrible—yes, something gauche. Despite the rage gnawing at my heart, I am glad I came, glad to have found you such a beautiful, fertile mother, still my friend amid all your maternal joys, just as I remain yours amid all the raptures of my love. Here I am just a stone’s throw away from you, in Marseille, and already I’m proud of you, proud of the magnificent mother you’ll be. How perceptive of you to see your true vocation! For to my mind you were born to be a mother more than a lover, just as I was born more for love than for
motherhood. Some women, too ugly or dull, can be neither one. A good mother and a mistress-wife both require a quick mind, sound judgment, and an ability to draw as needed on all womankind’s most exquisite qualities. Oh! I studied you closely: is that not to say, my kitten, that I admired you? Yes, your children will be happy and well-bred, they will be bathed in the effusions of your tenderness, caressed by the gleaming light of your soul.

  Tell Louis truthfully why I left in such haste, but find a few decent pretexts with which to varnish that truth for your father-in-law, who seems to be your steward, and above all for your family, the very image of the Harlowe family, albeit with a touch of the Provençal spirit. Felipe does not yet know why I left, and he never will. If he asks, I will invent some excuse. Very likely I will tell him you were jealous of me. Please allow me that little white lie. Farewell, I must hurry to finish this letter: I want it to reach you at breakfast, and the coachman, who has promised to deliver it to you, is here drinking and waiting. Kiss my dear little godson for me. Come to Chantepleurs in October: I will be there alone while Macumer is away in Sardinia, for he has ambitious improvements in mind for his lands. Such at least is his project of the moment; he makes it a point of pride always to have a project, as it makes him feel independent—hence his anxiety when he speaks of it to me. Farewell!

  36

  FROM VISCOUNTESS DE L’ESTORADE TO BARONESS DE MACUMER

  My dear, there are no words to express our surprise when we learned at breakfast that you had gone on your way, and particularly when the coachman who drove you to Marseille handed me your extraordinary letter. But, you wicked thing, your happiness was the one single subject of all those conversations at the foot of the bluff—on Louise’s bench—and you were very wrong to take umbrage. Ingrata! I sentence you to return here the moment I summon you. You did not say, in that odious letter scrawled on some inn’s common paper, just where you would be stopping, and so I am sending this answer to Chantepleurs.