Marie-Angelique felt for Felix precisely the feelings with which Felix desired to inspire her,--true friendship,sincere gratitude,and a fraternal love,in which was mingled,at certain times,a noble and dignified tenderness,such as tenderness between husband and wife ought to be.She was a mother,and a good mother.Felix had therefore attached himself to his young wife by every bond without any appearance of garroting her,--relying for his happiness on the charms of habit.
None but men trained in the school of life--men who have gone round the circle of disillusionment,political and amorous--are capable of following out a course like this.Felix,however,found in his work the same pleasure that painters,writers,architects take in their creations.He doubly enjoyed both the work and its fruition as he admired his wife,so artless,yet so well-informed,witty,but natural,lovable and chaste,a girl,and yet a mother,perfectly free,though bound by the chains of righteousness.The history of all good homes is that of prosperous peoples;it can be written in two lines,and has in it nothing for literature.So,as happiness is only explicable to and by itself,these four years furnish nothing to relate which was not as tender as the soft outlines of eternal cherubs,as insipid,alas!as manna,and about as amusing as the tale of "Astrea."In 1833,this edifice of happiness,so carefully erected by Felix de Vandenesse,began to crumble,weakened at its base without his knowledge.The heart of a woman of twenty-five is no longer that of a girl of eighteen,any more than the heart of a woman of forty is that of a woman of thirty.There are four ages in the life of woman;each age creates a new woman.Vandenesse knew,no doubt,the law of these transformations (created by our modern manners and morals),but he forgot them in his own case,--just as the best grammarian will forget a rule of grammar in writing a book,or the greatest general in the field under fire,surprised by some unlooked-for change of base,forgets his military tactics.The man who can perpetually bring his thought to bear upon his facts is a man of genius;but the man of the highest genius does not display genius at all times;if he did,he would be like to God.
After four years of this life,with never a shock to the soul,nor a word that produced the slightest discord in this sweet concert of sentiment,the countess,feeling herself developed like a beautiful plant in a fertile soil,caressed by the sun of a cloudless sky,awoke to a sense of a new self.This crisis of her life,the subject of this Scene,would be incomprehensible without certain explanations,which may extenuate in the eyes of women the wrong-doing of this young countess,a happy wife,a happy mother,who seems,at first sight,inexcusable.
Life results from the action of two opposing principles;when one of them is lacking the being suffers.Vandenesse,by satisfying every need,had suppressed desire,that king of creation,which fills an enormous place in the moral forces.Extreme heat,extreme sorrow,complete happiness,are all despotic principles that reign over spaces devoid of production;they insist on being solitary;they stifle all that is not themselves.Vandenesse was not a woman,and none but women know the art of varying happiness;hence their coquetry,refusals,fears,quarrels,and the all-wise clever foolery with which they put in doubt the things that seemed to be without a cloud the night before.Men may weary by their constancy,but women never.Vandenesse was too thoroughly kind by nature to worry deliberately the woman he loved;on the contrary,he kept her in the bluest and least cloudy heaven of love.The problem of eternal beatitude is one of those whose solution is known only to God.Here,below,the sublimest poets have simply harassed their readers when attempting to picture paradise.
Dante's reef was that of Vandenesse;all honor to such courage!
Felix's wife began to find monotony in an Eden so well arranged;the perfect happiness which the first woman found in her terrestrial paradise gave her at length a sort of nausea of sweet things,and made the countess wish,like Rivarol reading Florian,for a wolf in the fold.Such,judging by the history of ages,appears to be the meaning of that emblematic serpent to which Eve listened,in all probability,out of ennui.This deduction may seem a little venturesome to Protestants,who take the book of Genesis more seriously than the Jews themselves.
The situation of Madame de Vandenesse can,however,be explained without recourse to Biblical images.She felt in her soul an enormous power that was unemployed.Her happiness gave her no suffering;it rolled along without care or uneasiness;she was not afraid of losing it;each morning it shone upon her,with the same blue sky,the same smile,the same sweet words.That clear,still lake was unruffled by any breeze,even a zephyr;she would fain have seen a ripple on its glassy surface.Her desire had something so infantine about it that it ought to be excused;but society is not more indulgent than the God of Genesis.Madame de Vandenesse,having now become intelligently clever,was aware that such sentiments were not permissible,and she refrained from confiding them to her "dear little husband."Her genuine simplicity had not invented any other name for him;for one can't call up in cold blood that delightfully exaggerated language which love imparts to its victims in the midst of flames.