And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the sentiment.Love would soon be convalescent, as the eighteenth century moralist remarked, were it not for vanity.And it is certainly true that for everyone, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of the beloved.Is she set so high by birth that a contemptuous glance can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to surround herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of kings, of finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into confusion? beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a small thing to know that your self-love will never suffer through her? A man makes these reflections in the twinkling of an eye.
And how if, in the future opened out by early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the changeful delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, the perils of love's voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of coquetry? Is not this enough to move the coldest man's heart?
This, therefore, was M.de Montriveau's position with regard to woman; his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary fact.He had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the hurricane of Napoleon's wars; his life had been spent on fields of battle.Of women he knew just so much as a traveller knows of a country when he travels across it in haste from one inn to another.The verdict which Voltaire passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, have been applied by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not thirty-seven follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was as much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively reading Faublas.Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he knew nothing; and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang from this virginity of feeling.
There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work demanded of them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M.de Montriveau by war and a life of adventure--these know what it is to be in this unusual position if they very seldom confess to it.
Every man in Paris is supposed to have been in love.No woman in Paris cares to take what other women have passed over.The dread of being taken for a fool is the source of the coxcomb's bragging so common in France; for in France to have the reputation of a fool is to be a foreigner in one's own country.Vehement desire seized on M.de Montriveau, desire that had gathered strength from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.
A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery over himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired within himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that thought lay the only way to love for him.Desire became a solemn compact made with himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived; for among them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny a man's whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one end.
A younger man would have said to himself, "I should very much like to have the Duchess for my mistress!" or, "If the Duchesse de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!"But the General said, "I will have Mme de Langeais for my mistress." And if a man takes such an idea into his head when his heart has never been touched before, and love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a hell he has set his foot.
Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known.When a man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it were, to stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires; a little later he realises that there is a gulf set between them, and that it is all but impossible to cross it.A sort of childish impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and trembles or cries.Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage made the heavier by his love.
The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become a most sacred and dreadful power.She was to be his world, his life, from this time forth.The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew colourless before the bare recollection of the least sensation stirred in him by her.
The swiftest revolutions in a man's outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete revulsion of feeling.
And so in those who live by feeling, rather than by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete revolution.In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau wiped out his whole past life.
A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, "Shall I go, or shall I not?" and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted.
He was to see the woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had seen yesterday, among lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling.He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of firing the first shot on a field of battle.