You doubt yourself, and that is another form of stupidity. I am not happy, it seems, in my selection of those I desire to benefit.""But, madame, it cannot be indiscreet to ask to know in some remote way at least, what future your kind good-will has imagined for me.""It is very indiscreet," replied the countess, coldly, "and it shows plainly that you offer me only a conditional confidence. Let us say no more. You are certainly far advanced with Mademoiselle Colleville; she suits you, you say, in many ways; therefore marry her. I say again, you will no longer find me in your way.""But does Mademoiselle Colleville really suit me?" resumed la Peyrade;"that is the very point on which you have lately raised my doubts. Do you not think there is something cruel in casting me first in one direction and then in the other without affording me any ground to go upon?""Ah!" said the countess, in a tone of impatience, "you want my opinion on the premises! Well, monsieur, there is one very conclusive fact to which I can bring proof: Celeste does not love you.""So I have thought," said la Peyrade, humbly. "I felt that I was making a marriage of mere convenience.""And she cannot love you, because," continued Madame de Godollo, with animation, "she cannot comprehend you. Her proper husband is that blond little man, insipid as herself; from the union of those two natures without life or heat will result in that lukewarm existence which, in the opinion of the world where she was born and where she has lived, is the ne plus ultra of conjugal felicity. Try to make that little simpleton understand that when she had a chance to unite herself with true talent she ought to have felt highly honored! But, above all, try to make her miserable, odious family and surroundings understand it! Enriched bourgeois, parvenus! there's the roof beneath which you think to rest from your cruel labor and your many trials!
And do you believe that you will not be made to feel, twenty times a day, that your share in the partnership is distressingly light in the scale against their money? On one side, the Iliad, the Cid, Der Freyschutz, and the frescos of the Vatican; on the other, three hundred thousand francs in good, ringing coin! Tell me which side they will trust and admire! The artist, the man of imagination who falls into the bourgeois atmosphere--shall I tell you to what I compare him?
To Daniel cast into the lion's den, less the miracle of Holy Writ."This invective against the bourgeoisie was uttered in a tone of heated conviction which could scarcely fail to be communicated.
"Ah! madame," cried la Peyrade, "how eloquently you say things which again and again have entered my troubled and anxious mind! But I have felt myself lashed to that most cruel fate, the necessity of gaining a position--""Necessity! position!" interrupted the countess, again raising the temperature of her speech,--"words void of meaning! which have not even sound to able men, though they drive back fools as though they were formidable barriers. Necessity! does that exist for noble natures, for those who know how to will? A Gascon minister uttered a saying which ought to be engraved on the doors of all careers: 'All things come to him who knows how to wait.' Are you ignorant that marriage, to men of a high stamp, is either a chain which binds them to the lowest vulgarities of existence, or a wing on which to rise to the highest summits of the social world? The wife you need, monsieur, --and she would not be long wanting to your career if you had not, with such incredible haste, accepted the first 'dot' that was offered you,--the wife you should have chosen is a woman capable of understanding you, able to divine your intellect; one who could be to you a fellow-worker, an intellectual confidant, and not a mere embodiment of the 'pot-au-feu'; a woman capable of being now your secretary, but soon the wife of a deputy, a minister, an ambassador;one, in short, who could offer you her heart as a mainspring, her salon for a stage, her connections for a ladder, and who, in return for all she would give you of ardor and strength, asks only to shine beside your throne in the rays of the glory she predicts for you!"Intoxicated, as it were, with the flow of her own words, the countess was really magnificent; her eyes sparkled, her nostrils dilated; the prospect her vivid eloquence thus unrolled she seemed to see, and touch with her quivering fingers. For a moment, la Peyrade was dazzled by this sunrise which suddenly burst upon his life.
However, as he was a man most eminently prudent, who had made it his rule of life never to lend except on sound and solvent security, he was still impelled to weigh the situation.
"Madame la comtesse," he said, "you reproached me just now for speaking like a bourgeois, and I, in return, am afraid that you are talking like a goddess. I admire you, I listen to you, but I am not convinced. Such devotions, such sublime abnegations may be met with in heaven, but in this low world who can hope to be the object of them?""You are mistaken, monsieur," replied the countess, with solemnity;"such devotions are rare, but they are neither impossible nor incredible; only, it is necessary to have the heart to find them, and, above all, the hand to take them when they are offered to you."So saying, the countess rose majestically.
La Peyrade saw that he had ended by displeasing her, and he felt that she dismissed him. He rose himself, bowed respectfully, and asked to be received again.
"Monsieur," said Madame de Godollo, "we Hungarians, primitive people and almost savages that we are, have a saying that when our door is open both sides of it are opened wide; when we close it it is double-locked and bolted."
That dignified and ambiguous speech was accompanied by a slight inclination of the head. Bewildered, confounded by this behavior, to him so new, which bore but little resemblance to that of Flavie, Brigitte, and Madame Minard, la Peyrade left the house, asking himself again and again whether he had played his game properly.