Duchess of Langeais — Section 11
“My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man cannot surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to offer herself.
” That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse triumphantly refuted the scandals that were circulating with regard to the Duchesse de Langeais.
So many officers and other persons had seen Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning, that the silly story was set down to chance, which takes all that is offered.
And so, in spite of the fact that the Duchess’s carriage had waited before Montriveau’s door, her character became as clear and as spotless as Membrino’s sword after Sancho had polished it up.
But, at two o’clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a deserted alley, and said with a smile, “She is coming on, is your Duchess.
Go on, keep it up!
” he added, and gave a significant cut of the riding whip to his mare, who sped off like a bullet down the avenue.
Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M. de Montriveau.
That letter, like the preceding ones, remained unanswered.
This time she took her own measures, and bribed M. de Montriveau’s man, Auguste.
And so at eight o’clock that evening she was introduced into Armand’s apartment.
It was not the room in which that secret scene had passed; it was entirely different.
The Duchess was told that the General would not be at home that night.
Had he two houses?
The man would give no answer.
Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not the man’s whole loyalty.
When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened.
He had not read them.
She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she lost consciousness.
When she came to herself, Auguste was holding vinegar for her to inhale.
“A carriage; quick!
” she ordered.
The carriage came.
She hastened downstairs with convulsive speed, and left orders that no one was to be admitted.
For twenty-four hours she lay in bed, and would have no one near her but her woman, who brought her a cup of orange-flower water from time to time.
Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice, and caught a glimpse of tears in the brilliant eyes, now circled with dark shadows.
The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her resolution.
Her man of business came for an interview, and no doubt received instructions of some kind.
Afterwards she sent for the Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a letter to M. de Montriveau.
The Vidame punctually came towards two o’clock that afternoon, to find his young cousin looking white and worn, but resigned; never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in the languor of her agony.
“You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear cousin,” she said.
“Ah!
do not smile, I beg of you, when an unhappy woman has reached the lowest depths of wretchedness.
You are a gentleman, and after the adventures of your youth you must feel some indulgence for women.
” “None whatever,” said he.
“Indeed!
” “Everything is in their favour.
” “Ah!
Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you will be the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall press, so I can ask your good offices.
Will you, dear Vidame, do me a service which I could not ask of my own father, nor of my uncle Grandlieu, nor of any woman?
You cannot fail to understand.
I beg of you to do my bidding, and then to forget what you have done, whatever may come of it.
It is this: Will you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau?
will you see him yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask things between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between man and man which you do not use with us, and a different way of regarding things between yourselves--ask him if he will read this letter?
Not in your presence.
Certain feelings men hide from each other.
I give you authority to say, if you think it necessary to bring him, that it is a question of life or death for me.
If he deigns----” “_Deigns_!
” repeated the Vidame.
“If he deigns to read it,” the Duchess continued with dignity, “say one thing more.
You will go to see him about five o’clock, for I know that he will dine at home today at that time.
Very good.
By way of answer he must come to see me.
If, three hours afterwards, by eight o’clock, he does not leave his house, all will be over.
The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from the world.
I shall not be dead, dear friend, no, but no human power will ever find me again on this earth.
Come and dine with me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony.
Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever happens to me, I pass through an ordeal by fire.
There!
not a word.
I will hear nothing of the nature of comment or advice----Let us chat and laugh together,” she added, holding out a hand, which he kissed.
“We will be like two grey-headed philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to the last moment.
I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for you.
You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de Langeais.
” The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word.
At five o’clock he returned.
His cousin had studied to please him, and she looked lovely indeed.
The room was gay with flowers as if for a festivity; the dinner was exquisite.
For the grey-headed Vidame the Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of her wit; she was more charming than she had ever been before.
At first the Vidame tried to look on all these preparations as a young woman’s jest; but now and again the attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin’s charm was broken.
He detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and once she seemed to listen during a pause.
“What is the matter?
” he asked.
“Hush!
” she said.
At seven o’clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes.
When she came back again she was dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey.
She asked her guest to be her escort, took his arm, sprang into a hackney coach, and by a quarter to eight they stood outside M. de Montriveau’s door.
Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:-- “MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away.
This cannot be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show itself quite differently.
If you love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will kill me, and afterwards, learning how much you were loved, you might be in despair.
If I have not rightly understood you, if you have no feeling towards me but aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then I give up all hope.
A man never recovers from those feelings.
You will have no regrets.
Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me in my long sorrow.
Regrets?
Oh, my Armand, may I never know of them; if I thought that I had caused you a single regret----But, no, I will not tell you what desolation I should feel.
I should be living still, and I could not be your wife; it would be too late!
“Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom else should I give myself?
--to God.
The eyes that you loved for a little while shall never look on another man’s face; and may the glory of God blind them to all besides.
I shall never hear human voices more since I heard yours--so gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday; for it seems to me that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance.
And now may the will of God consume me.
Between His wrath and yours, my friend, there will be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and prayers.
“Perhaps you wonder why I write to you?
Ah!
do not think ill of me if I keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy life before I take leave of it forever.
I am in a hideous position.
I feel all the inward serenity that comes when a great resolution has been taken, even while I hear the last growlings of the storm.
When you went out on that terrible adventure which so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to the oasis with a good guide to show you the way.
Well, I am going out of the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me.
And yet you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is to look back for the last time on happiness--to you, and you only, I can make moan without a blush.
If you grant my entreaty, I shall be happy; if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the wrong that I have done.
After all, it is natural, is it not, that a woman should wish to live, invested with all noble feelings, in her friend’s memory?
Oh!
my one and only love, let her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief that she is great in your eyes.
Your harshness led me to reflect; and now that I love you so, it seems to me that I am less guilty than you think.
Listen to my justification, I owe it to you; and you that are all the world to me, owe me at least a moment’s justice.
“I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by my coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love.
_You_ know what the torture is, and you mete it out to me!
During those first eight months that you gave me you never roused any feeling of love in me.
Do you ask why this was so, my friend?
I can no more explain it than I can tell you why I love you now.
Oh!
certainly it flattered my vanity that I should be the subject of your passionate talk, and receive those burning glances of yours; but you left me cold.
No, I was not a woman; I had no conception of womanly devotion and happiness.
Who was to blame?
You would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without the impulse of passion?
Perhaps it is the highest height to which we can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps there is no merit in yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen and ardently desired.
Alas, my friend, I can say this now; these thoughts came to me when I played with you; and you seemed to me so great even then that I would not have you owe the gift to pity----What is this that I have written?
“I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one on the fire; they are burning.
You will never know what they confessed--all the love and the passion and the madness---- “I will say no more, Armand; I will stop.
I will not say another word of my feelings.
If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours, I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity.
It is my wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to be left without mercy.
If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be burnt.
If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three hours, to be henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for me; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands, the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my end shall be worthy of my love.
When you see me no more on earth, albeit I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder of the woman who, in three hours’ time, will live only to overwhelm you with her tenderness; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and faithful--not to memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.
“The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power;
but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a power for you still.
Yes, you will regret me.
I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I thank you for making it clear to me.
“Farewell; you will never touch _my_ axe.
Yours was the executioner’s axe, mine is God’s; yours kills, mine saves.
Your love was but mortal, it could not endure disdain or ridicule; mine can endure all things without growing weaker, it will last eternally.
Ah!
I feel a sombre joy in crushing you that believe yourself so great; in humbling you with the calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels that lie at the feet of God, for to them is given the right and the power to protect and watch over men in His name.
You have but felt fleeting desires, while the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath the wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.
“I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall be--in heaven.
Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear Armand; the strong and the weak are bound to suffer.
This thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal.
So calm am I that I should fear that I had ceased to love you if I were not about to leave the world for your sake.
“ANTOINETTE.
” “Dear Vidame,” said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau’s house, “do me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at home.
” The Vidame, obedient after the manner of the eighteenth century to a woman’s wish, got out, and came back to bring his cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through her.
She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to kiss her on either cheek, and begged him to go at once.
He must not watch her movements nor try to protect her.
“But the people passing in the street,” he objected.
“No one can fail in respect to me,” she said.
It was the last word spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
The Vidame went.
Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight.
The last stroke died away.
The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen minutes; to the last she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the delay, then her faith ebbed.
She turned to leave the fatal threshold.
“Oh, God!
” the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was the first word spoken by the Carmelite.
Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together.
He tried to hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and by the time he started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess was hurrying on foot through the streets of Paris, goaded by the dull rage in her heart.
She reached the Boulevard d’Enfer, and looked out for the last time through falling tears on the noisy, smoky city that lay below in a red mist, lighted up by its own lamps.
Then she hailed a cab, and drove away, never to return.
When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de Langeais, and found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had been duped.
He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that worthy gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered dressing-gown, thinking the while of his fair cousin’s happiness.
Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the effect of an electric shock on men and women alike.
“Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax, monsieur?
” Montriveau exclaimed.
“I have just come from Mme de Langeais’ house; the servants say that she is out.
” “Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt,” returned the Vidame, “and through your fault.
I left the Duchess at your door----” “When?
” “At a quarter to eight.
” “Good evening,” returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask the porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep that evening.
“Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much put out.
She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a sound, and stood as upright as a post.
Then at last she went, and my wife and I that were watching her while she could not see us, heard her say, ‘Oh, God!
’ so that it went to our hearts, asking your pardon, to hear her say it.
” Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those few words.
He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the message at once, and went up to his rooms.
Ronquerolles came just about midnight.
Armand gave him the Duchess’s letter to read.
“Well?
” asked Ronquerolles.
“She was here at my door at eight o’clock; at a quarter-past eight she had gone.
I have lost her, and I love her.
Oh!
if my life were my own, I could blow my brains out.
” “Pooh, pooh!
Keep cool,” said Ronquerolles.
“Duchesses do not fly off like wagtails.
She cannot travel faster than three leagues an hour, and tomorrow we will ride six.
--Confound it!
Mme de Langeais is no ordinary woman,” he continued.
“Tomorrow we will all of us mount and ride.
The police will put us on her track during the day.
She must have a carriage; angels of that sort have no wings.
We shall find her whether she is on the road or hidden in Paris.
There is the semaphore.
We can stop her.
You shall be happy.
But, my dear fellow, you have made a blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty.
They judge others by themselves, and do not know the point when human nature gives way if you strain the cords too tightly.
Why did you not say a word to me sooner?
I would have told you to be punctual.
Good-bye till tomorrow,” he added, as Montriveau said nothing.
“Sleep if you can,” he added, with a grasp of the hand.
But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the disposal of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human power, in fact, were all exhausted in vain.
Neither Montriveau nor his friends could find any trace of the Duchess.
It was clear that she had entered a convent.
Montriveau determined to search, or to institute a search, for her through every convent in the world.
He must have her, even at the cost of all the lives in a town.
And in justice to this extraordinary man, it must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same ardour daily and lasted through five years.
Only in 1829 did the Duc de Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to Spain as Lady Julia Hopwood’s maid, that she had left her service at Cadiz, and that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline was the illustrious duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the minds of the highest society of Paris.
