_ Towards the end of August, 1812, on a Sunday evening after vespers, a
woman was sitting in a deep armchair placed before one of the windows
looking out upon the garden. The sun's rays fell obliquely upon the
house and athwart the parlor, breaking into fantastic lights on the
carved panellings of the wall, and wrapping the woman in a crimson
halo projected through the damask curtains which draped the window.
Even an ordinary painter, had he sketched this woman at this
particular moment, would assuredly have produced a striking picture of
a head that was full of pain and melancholy. The attitude of the body,
and that of the feet stretched out before her, showed the prostration
of one who loses consciousness of physical being in the concentration
of powers absorbed in a fixed idea: she was following its gleams in
the far future, just as sometimes on the shores of the sea, we gaze at
a ray of sunlight which pierces the clouds and draws a luminous line
to the horizon.
The hands of this woman hung nerveless outside the arms of her chair,
and her head, as if too heavy to hold up, lay back upon its cushions.
A dress of white cambric, very full and flowing, hindered any judgment
as to the proportions of her figure, and the bust was concealed by the
folds of a scarf crossed on the bosom and negligently knotted. If the
light had not thrown into relief her face, which she seemed to show in
preference to the rest of her person, it would still have been
impossible to escape riveting the attention exclusively upon it. Its
expression of stupefaction, which was cold and rigid despite hot tears
that were rolling from her eyes, would have struck the most
thoughtless mind. Nothing is more terrible to behold than excessive
grief that is rarely allowed to break forth, of which traces were left
on this woman's face like lava congealed about a crater. She might
have been a dying mother compelled to leave her children in abysmal
depths of wretchedness, unable to bequeath them to any human
protector.
The countenance of this lady, then about forty years of age and not
nearly so far from handsome as she had been in her youth, bore none of
the characteristics of a Flemish woman. Her thick black hair fell in
heavy curls upon her shoulders and about her cheeks. The forehead,
very prominent, and narrow at the temples, was yellow in tint, but
beneath it sparkled two black eyes that were capable of emitting
flames. Her face, altogether Spanish, dark skinned, with little color
and pitted by the small-pox, attracted the eye by the beauty of its
oval, whose outline, though slightly impaired by time, preserved a
finished elegance and dignity, and regained at times its full
perfection when some effort of the soul restored its pristine purity.
The most noticeable feature in this strong face was the nose, aquiline
as the beak of an eagle, and so sharply curved at the middle as to
give the idea of an interior malformation; yet there was an air of
indescribable delicacy about it, and the partition between the
nostrils was so thin that a rosy light shone through it. Though the
lips, which were large and curved, betrayed the pride of noble birth,
their expression was one of kindliness and natural courtesy.
The beauty of this vigorous yet feminine face might indeed be
questioned, but the face itself commanded attention. Short, deformed,
and lame, this woman remained all the longer unmarried because the
world obstinately refused to credit her with gifts of mind. Yet there
were men who were deeply stirred by the passionate ardor of that face
and its tokens of ineffable tenderness, and who remained under a charm
that was seemingly irreconcilable with such personal defects.
She was very like her grandfather, the Duke of Casa-Real, a grandee of
Spain. At this moment, when we first see her, the charm which in
earlier days despotically grasped the soul of poets and lovers of
poesy now emanated from that head with greater vigor than at any
former period of her life, spending itself, as it were, upon the void,
and expressing a nature of all-powerful fascination over men, though
it was at the same time powerless over destiny.
When her eyes turned from the glass globes, where they were gazing at
the fish they saw not, she raised them with a despairing action, as if
to invoke the skies. Her sufferings seemed of a kind that are told to
God alone. The silence was unbroken save for the chirp of crickets and
the shrill whirr of a few locusts, coming from the little garden then
hotter than an oven, and the dull sound of silver and plates, and the
moving of chairs in the adjoining room, where a servant was preparing
to serve the dinner.
At this moment, the distressed woman roused herself from her
abstraction and listened attentively; she took her handkerchief, wiped
away her tears, attempted to smile, and so resolutely effaced the
expression of pain that was stamped on every feature that she
presently seemed in the state of happy indifference which comes with a
life exempt from care. Whether it were that the habit of living in
this house to which infirmities confined her enabled her to perceive
certain natural effects that are imperceptible to the senses of
others, but which persons under the influence of excessive feeling are
keen to discover, or whether Nature, in compensation for her physical
defects, had given her more delicate sensations than better organized
beings,--it is certain that this woman had heard the steps of a man in
a gallery built above the kitchens and the servants' hall, by which
the front house communicated with the "back-quarter." The steps grew
more distinct. Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent
creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger
would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led
down from the gallery to the parlor.
The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being
into thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly. A precipitate,
headlong step produces fear. When a man springs forward and cries,
"Fire!" his feet speak as loudly as his voice. If this be so, then a
contrary gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion. The slow
approach, the dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an
unreflecting spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would
undoubtedly have felt something akin to terror at the measured tread
of feet that seemed devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked
loudly, as though two iron weights were striking them alternately. The
mind recognized at once either the heavy, undecided step of an old man
or the majestic tread of a great thinker bearing the worlds with him.
When the man had reached the lowest stair, and had planted both feet
upon the tiled floor with a hesitating, uncertain movement, he stood
still for a moment on the wide landing which led on one side to the
servants' hall, and on the other to the parlor through a door
concealed in the panelling of that room,--as was another door, leading
from the parlor to the dining-room. At this moment a slight shudder,
like the sensation caused by an electric spark, shook the woman seated
in the armchair; then a soft smile brightened her lips, and her face,
moved by the expectation of a pleasure, shone like that of an Italian
Madonna. She suddenly gained strength to drive her terrors back into
the depths of her heart. Then she turned her face to the panel of the
wall which she knew was about to open, and which in fact was now
pushed in with such brusque violence that the poor woman herself
seemed jarred by the shock.
Balthazar Claes suddenly appeared, made a few steps forward, did not
look at the woman, or if he looked at her did not see her, and stood
erect in the middle of the parlor, leaning his half-bowed head on his
right hand. A sharp pang to which the woman could not accustom
herself, although it was daily renewed, wrung her heart, dispelled her
smile, contracted the sallow forehead between the eyebrows, indenting
that line which the frequent expression of excessive feeling scores so
deeply; her eyes filled with tears, but she wiped them quickly as she
looked at Balthazar.
It was impossible not to be deeply impressed by this head of the
family of Claes. When young, he must have resembled the noble family
martyr who had threatened to be another Artevelde to Charles V.; but
as he stood there at this moment, he seemed over sixty years of age,
though he was only fifty; and this premature old age had destroyed the
honorable likeness. His tall figure was slightly bent,--either because
his labors, whatever they were, obliged him to stoop, or that the
spinal column was curved by the weight of his head. He had a broad
chest and square shoulders, but the lower parts of his body were lank
and wasted, though nervous; and this discrepancy in a physical
organization evidently once perfect puzzled the mind which endeavored
to explain this anomalous figure by some possible singularities of the
man's life.
His thick blond hair, ill cared-for, fell over his shoulders in the
Dutch fashion, and its very disorder was in keeping with the general
eccentricity of his person. His broad brow showed certain
protuberances which Gall identifies with poetic genius. His clear and
full blue eyes had the brusque vivacity which may be noticed in
searchers for occult causes. The nose, probably perfect in early life,
was now elongated, and the nostrils seemed to have gradually opened
wider from an involuntary tension of the olfactory muscles. The cheek-
bones were very prominent, which made the cheeks themselves, already
withered, seem more sunken; his mouth, full of sweetness, was squeezed
in between the nose and a short chin, which projected sharply. The
shape of the face, however, was long rather than oval, and the
scientific doctrine which sees in every human face a likeness to an
animal would have found its confirmation in that of Balthazar Claes,
which bore a strong resemblance to a horse's head. The skin clung
closely to the bones, as though some inward fire were incessantly
drying its juices. Sometimes, when he gazed into space, as if to see
the realization of his hopes, it almost seemed as though the flames
that devoured his soul were issuing from his nostrils.
The inspired feelings that animate great men shone forth on the pale
face furrowed with wrinkles, on the brow haggard with care like that
of an old monarch, but above all they gleamed in the sparkling eye,
whose fires were fed by chastity imposed by the tyranny of ideas and
by the inward consecration of a great intellect. The cavernous eyes
seemed to have sunk in their orbits through midnight vigils and the
terrible reaction of hopes destroyed, yet ceaselessly reborn. The
zealous fanaticism inspired by an art or a science was evident in this
man; it betrayed itself in the strange, persistent abstraction of his
mind expressed by his dress and bearing, which were in keeping with
the anomalous peculiarities of his person.
His large, hairy hands were dirty, and the nails, which were very
long, had deep black lines at their extremities. His shoes were not
cleaned and the shoe-strings were missing. Of all that Flemish
household, the master alone took the strange liberty of being
slovenly. His black cloth trousers were covered with stains, his
waistcoat was unbuttoned, his cravat awry, his greenish coat ripped at
the seams,--completing an array of signs, great and small, which in
any other man would have betokened a poverty begotten of vice, but
which in Balthazar Claes was the negligence of genius.
Vice and Genius too often produce the same effects; and this misleads
the common mind. What is genius but a long excess which squanders time
and wealth and physical powers, and leads more rapidly to a hospital
than the worst of passions? Men even seem to have more respect for
vices than for genius, since to the latter they refuse credit. The
profits accruing from the hidden labors of the brain are so remote
that the social world fears to square accounts with the man of
learning in his lifetime, preferring to get rid of its obligations by
not forgiving his misfortunes or his poverty.
If, in spite of this inveterate forgetfulness of the present,
Balthazar Claes had abandoned his mysterious abstractions, if some
sweet and companionable meaning had revisited that thoughtful
countenance, if the fixed eyes had lost their rigid strain and shone
with feeling, if he had ever looked humanly about him and returned to
the real life of common things, it would indeed have been difficult
not to do involuntary homage to the winning beauty of his face and the
gracious soul that would then have shone from it. As it was, all who
looked at him regretted that the man belonged no more to the world at
large, and said to one another: "He must have been very handsome in
his youth." A vulgar error! Never was Balthazar Claes's appearance
more poetic than at this moment. Lavater, had he seen him, would fain
have studied that head so full of patience, of Flemish loyalty, and
pure morality,--where all was broad and noble, and passion seemed calm
because it was strong.
The conduct of this man could not be otherwise than pure; his word was
sacred, his friendships seemed undeviating, his self-devotedness
complete: and yet the will to employ those qualities in patriotic
service, for the world or for the family, was directed, fatally,
elsewhere. This citizen, bound to guard the welfare of a household, to
manage property, to guide his children towards a noble future, was
living outside the line of his duty and his affections, in communion
with an attendant spirit. A priest might have thought him inspired by
the word of God; an artist would have hailed him as a great master; an
enthusiast would have taken him for a seer of the Swedenborgian faith.
At the present moment, the dilapidated, uncouth, and ruined clothes
that he wore contrasted strangely with the graceful elegance of the
woman who was sadly admiring him. Deformed persons who have intellect,
or nobility of soul, show an exquisite taste in their apparel. Either
they dress simply, convinced that their charm is wholly moral, or they
make others forget their imperfections by an elegance of detail which
diverts the eye and occupies the mind. Not only did this woman possess
a noble soul, but she loved Balthazar Claes with that instinct of the
woman which gives a foretaste of the communion of angels. Brought up
in one of the most illustrious families of Belgium, she would have
learned good taste had she not possessed it; and now, taught by the
desire of constantly pleasing the man she loved, she knew how to
clothe herself admirably, and without producing incongruity between
her elegance and the defects of her conformation. The bust, however,
was defective in the shoulders only, one of which was noticeably much
larger than the other.
She looked out of the window into the court-yard, then towards the
garden, as if to make sure she was alone with Balthazar, and presently
said, in a gentle voice and with a look full of a Flemish woman's
submissiveness,--for between these two love had long since driven out
the pride of her Spanish nature:--
"Balthazar, are you so very busy? this is the thirty-third Sunday
since you have been to mass or vespers."
Claes did not answer; his wife bowed her head, clasped her hands, and
waited: she knew that his silence meant neither contempt nor
indifference, only a tyrannous preoccupation. Balthazar was one of
those beings who preserve deep in their souls and after long years all
their youthful delicacy of feeling; he would have thought it criminal
to wound by so much as a word a woman weighed down by the sense of
physical disfigurement. No man knew better than he that a look, a
word, suffices to blot out years of happiness, and is the more cruel
because it contrasts with the unfailing tenderness of the past: our
nature leads us to suffer more from one discord in our happiness than
pleasure coming in the midst of trouble can bring us joy.
Presently Balthazar appeared to waken; he looked quickly about him,
and said,--
"Vespers? Ah, yes! the children are at vespers."
He made a few steps forward, and looked into the garden, where
magnificent tulips were growing on all sides; then he suddenly stopped
short as if brought up against a wall, and cried out,--
"Why should they not combine within a given time?"
"Is he going mad?" thought the wife, much terrified.
To give greater interest to the present scene, which was called forth
by the situation of their affairs, it is absolutely necessary to
glance back at the past lives of Balthazar Claes and the granddaughter
of the Duke of Casa-Real.
Towards the year 1783, Monsieur Balthazar Claes-Molina de Nourho, then
twenty-two years of age, was what is called in France a fine man. He
came to finish his education in Paris, where he acquired excellent
manners in the society of Madame d'Egmont, Count Horn, the Prince of
Aremberg, the Spanish ambassador, Helvetius, and other Frenchmen
originally from Belgium, or coming lately thence, whose birth or
wealth won them admittance among the great seigneurs who at that time
gave the tone to social life. Young Claes found several relations and
friends ready to launch him into the great world at the very moment
when that world was about to fall. Like other young men, he was at
first more attracted by glory and science than by the vanities of
life. He frequented the society of scientific men, particularly
Lavoisier, who at that time was better known to the world for his
enormous fortune as a "fermier-general" than for his discoveries in
chemistry,--though later the great chemist was to eclipse the man of
wealth.
Balthazar grew enamored of the science which Lavoisier cultivated, and
became his devoted disciple; but he was young, and handsome as
Helvetius, and before long the Parisian women taught him to distil wit
and love exclusively. Though he had studied chemistry with such ardor
that Lavoisier commended him, he deserted science and his master for
those mistresses of fashion and good taste from whom young men take
finishing lessons in knowledge of life, and learn the usages of good
society, which in Europe forms, as it were, one family.
The intoxicating dream of social success lasted but a short time.
Balthazar left Paris, weary of a hollow existence which suited neither
his ardent soul nor his loving heart. Domestic life, so calm, so
tender, which the very name of Flanders recalled to him, seemed far
more fitted to his character and to the aspirations of his heart. No
gilded Parisian salon had effaced from his mind the harmonies of the
panelled parlor and the little garden where his happy childhood had
slipped away. A man must needs be without a home to remain in Paris,--
Paris, the city of cosmopolitans, of men who wed the world, and clasp
her with the arms of Science, Art, or Power.
The son of Flanders came back to Douai, like La Fontaine's pigeon to
its nest; he wept with joy as he re-entered the town on the day of the
Gayant procession,--Gayant, the superstitious luck of Douai, the glory
of Flemish traditions, introduced there at the time the Claes family
had emigrated from Ghent. The death of Balthazar's father and mother
had left the old mansion deserted, and the young man was occupied for
a time in settling its affairs. His first grief over, he wished to
marry; he needed the domestic happiness whose every religious aspect
had fastened upon his mind. He even followed the family custom of
seeking a wife in Ghent, or at Bruges, or Antwerp; but it happened
that no woman whom he met there suited him. Undoubtedly, he had
certain peculiar ideas as to marriage; from his youth he had been
accused of never following the beaten track.
One day, at the house of a relation in Ghent, he heard a young lady,
then living in Brussels, spoken of in a manner which gave rise to a
long discussion. Some said that the beauty of Mademoiselle de Temninck
was destroyed by the imperfections of her figure; others declared that
she was perfect in spite of her defects. Balthazar's old cousin, at
whose house the discussion took place, assured his guests that,
handsome or not, she had a soul that would make him marry her were he
a marrying man; and he told how she had lately renounced her share of
her parents' property to enable her brother to make a marriage worthy
of his name; thus preferring his happiness to her own, and sacrificing
her future to his interests,--for it was not to be supposed that
Mademoiselle de Temninck would marry late in life and without property
when, young and wealthy, she had met with no aspirant.
A few days later, Balthazar Claes made the acquaintance of
Mademoiselle de Temninck; with whom he fell deeply in love. At first,
Josephine de Temninck thought herself the object of a mere caprice,
and refused to listen to Monsieur Claes; but passion is contagious;
and to a poor girl who was lame and ill-made, the sense of inspiring
love in a young and handsome man carries with it such strong seduction
that she finally consented to allow him to woo her.
It would need a volume to paint the love of a young girl humbly
submissive to the verdict of a world that calls her plain, while she
feels within herself the irresistible charm which comes of sensibility
and true feeling. It involves fierce jealousy of happiness, freaks of
cruel vengeance against some fancied rival who wins a glance,--
emotions, terrors, unknown to the majority of women, and which ought,
therefore, to be more than indicated. The doubt, the dramatic doubt of
love, is the keynote of this analysis, where certain souls will find
once more the lost, but unforgotten, poetry of their early struggles;
the passionate exaltations of the heart which the face must not
betray; the fear that we may not be understood, and the boundless joy
of being so; the hesitations of the soul which recoils upon itself,
and the magnetic propulsions which give to the eyes an infinitude of
shades; the promptings to suicide caused by a word, dispelled by an
intonation; trembling glances which veil an inward daring; sudden
desires to speak and act that are paralyzed by their own violence; the
secret eloquence of common phrases spoken in a quivering voice; the
mysterious workings of that pristine modesty of soul and that divine
discernment which lead to hidden generosities, and give so exquisite a
flavor to silent devotion; in short, all the loveliness of young love,
and the weaknesses of its power.
Mademoiselle Josephine de Temninck was coquettish from nobility of
soul. The sense of her obvious imperfections made her as difficult to
win as the handsomest of women. The fear of some day displeasing the
eye roused her pride, destroyed her trustfulness, and gave her the
courage to hide in the depths of her heart that dawning happiness
which other women delight in making known by their manners,--wearing
it proudly, like a coronet. The more love urged her towards Balthazar,
the less she dared to express her feelings. The glance, the gesture,
the question and answer as it were of a pretty woman, so flattering to
the man she loves, would they not be in her case mere humiliating
speculation? A beautiful woman can be her natural self,--the world
overlooks her little follies or her clumsiness; whereas a single
criticising glance checks the noblest expression on the lips of an
ugly woman, adds to the ill-grace of her gesture, gives timidity to
her eyes and awkwardness to her whole bearing. She knows too well that
to her alone the world condones no faults; she is denied the right to
repair them; indeed, the chance to do so is never given. This
necessity of being perfect and on her guard at every moment, must
surely chill her faculties and numb their exercise? Such a woman can
exist only in an atmosphere of angelic forbearance. Where are the
hearts from which forbearance comes with no alloy of bitter and
stinging pity.
These thoughts, to which the codes of social life had accustomed her,
and the sort of consideration more wounding than insult shown to her
by the world,--a consideration which increases a misfortune by making
it apparent,--oppressed Mademoiselle de Temninck with a constant sense
of embarrassment, which drove back into her soul its happiest
expression, and chilled and stiffened her attitudes, her speech, her
looks. Loving and beloved, she dared to be eloquent or beautiful only
when alone. Unhappy and oppressed in the broad daylight of life, she
might have been enchanting could she have expanded in the shadow.
Often, to test the love thus offered to her, and at the risk of losing
it, she refused to wear the draperies that concealed some portion of
her defects, and her Spanish eyes grew entrancing when they saw that
Balthazar thought her beautiful as before.
Nevertheless, even so, distrust soiled the rare moments when she
yielded herself to happiness. She asked herself if Claes were not
seeking a domestic slave,--one who would necessarily keep the house?
whether he had himself no secret imperfection which obliged him to be
satisfied with a poor, deformed girl? Such perpetual misgivings gave a
priceless value to the few short hours during which she trusted the
sincerity and the permanence of a love which was to avenge her on the
world. Sometimes she provoked hazardous discussions, and probed the
inner consciousness of her lover by exaggerating her defects. At such
times she often wrung from Balthazar truths that were far from
flattering; but she loved the embarrassment into which he fell when
she had led him to say that what he loved in a woman was a noble soul
and the devotion which made each day of life a constant happiness; and
that after a few years of married life the handsomest of women was no
more to a husband than the ugliest. After gathering up what there was
of truth in all such paradoxes tending to reduce the value of beauty,
Balthazar would suddenly perceive the ungraciousness of his remarks,
and show the goodness of his heart by the delicate transitions of
thought with which he proved to Mademoiselle de Temninck that she was
perfect in his eyes.
The spirit of devotion which, it may be, is the crown of love in a
woman, was not lacking in this young girl, who had always despaired of
being loved; at first, the prospect of a struggle in which feeling and
sentiment would triumph over actual beauty tempted her; then, she
fancied a grandeur in giving herself to a man in whose love she did
not believe; finally, she was forced to admit that happiness, however
short its duration might be, was too precious to resign.
Such hesitations, such struggles, giving the charm and the
unexpectedness of passion to this noble creature, inspired Balthazar
with a love that was well-nigh chivalric. _