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Page 12
"Monsieur de Breuilly!" said the marquis, as he presented me to the
punctilious gentleman, "my best friend, who will infallibly become yours
also, and who, quite as infallibly, will cut your throat if you attempt to
show any attention to his wife."
"Mon Dieu! my dear friend," replied Monsieur de Breuilly, with a laugh
that was anything but joyful, and accentuating each word in his peculiar
style, "why represent me to this gentleman as a Norman Othello? Monsieur
may surely--monsieur is perfectly free to--besides, he knows and can
observe the proper limits of things. At any rate, sir, here is Madame de
Breuilly; suffer me to recommend her myself to your kind attentions."
Somewhat surprised at this language, I had the simplicity, or perhaps the
innocent malice, of interpreting it literally. I sat down squarely by the
side of Madame de Breuilly, and I began paying her marked attention,
while, however, "observing the proper limits of things." In the meantime,
Monsieur de Breuilly was watching us from a distance, with an
extraordinary countenance. I could see his little gray eyes sparkling like
glowing ashes; he was laughing loud, grinning, stamping, and fairly
disjointing his fingers with sinister cracks. Monsieur de Malouet came
suddenly to me, handed me a whist card, and taking me aside:
"What the duse has got into you?" he said.
"Into me? why, nothing!"
"Have I not warned you? It's quite a serious matter. Look at Breuilly! It
is the only weakness of that gallant man; every one respects it here. Do
likewise, I beg of you."
From the weakness of that gallant man, it results that his wife is
condemned in society to perpetual quarantine. The fighting propensities of
a husband are often but an additional attraction for the lightning; but
men hesitate to risk their lives without any prospect of possible
compensation, and we have here a man who threatens you at least with a
public scandal, not only before harvest, as they say, but even before the
seed has been fairly sown. Such a state of affairs manifestly discourages
the most enterprising, and it is quite rare that Madame de Breuilly has
not two vacant seats on her right and on her left, despite her nonchalant
grace, despite her great creole eyes, and despite her plaintive and
beseeching looks, that seem to be ever saying: "Mon Dieu! will no one lead
me into temptation?"
You would doubtless think that the evident neglect in which the poor wife
lives ought to be, for her husband, a motive of security. Not at all! His
ingenious mania manages to discover in that fact a fresh motive of
perplexity.
"My friend," he was saying yesterday to Monsieur de Malouet, "you know
that I am no more jealous than any one else; but without being Orosmane, I
do not pretend to be George Dandin. Well! one thing troubles me, my
friend; have you noticed that apparently no one pays any attention to my
wife?"
"Parbleu! if that's what troubles you--"
"Of course it is; you must admit that it is not natural. My wife is
pretty; why don't they pay attention to her as well as to other ladies?
There is something suspicious there!"
Fortunately, and to the great advantage of the social question, all the
young women who reside in turn at the chateau are not guarded by dragons
of that caliber. A few even, and among them two or three Parisians out for
a holiday, display a freedom of manner, a love of pleasure, and an
exaggerated elegance that certainly pass the bounds of discretion. You are
aware that I have not the highest opinion of that sort of behavior, which
does not answer my idea of the duties of a woman, and even of a woman of
the world; nevertheless, I take side without hesitation with these giddy
ones; and their conduct even appears to me the very ideal of truth and
sincerity, when I hear nightly certain pious matrons distilling against
them, amid low and vulgar gossip, the venom of the basest envy that can
swell a rural heart. Moreover, it is not always necessary to leave Paris
in order to have the ugly spectacle of these provincials let loose against
what they call vice, namely, youth, elegance, distinction, charm--in a
word, all the qualities which the worthy ladies possess no more, or have
perhaps never possessed.
Nevertheless, with whatever disgust, these chaste vixens inspire me for
the virtue they pretend to uphold (Oh, virtue! how many crimes are
committed in thy name!), I am compelled, to my great regret to agree with
them on one point, and to admit that one of their victims at least gives
an appearance of justice to their reprobation and to their calumnies. The
angel of kindness himself would hide his face in presence of this complete
specimen of dissipation, of turbulence, of futility, and finally of
worldly extravagance that bears the name of Countess de Palme, and the
nickname of the Little Countess; a rather ill-fitting nickname, by the
way, for the lady is not small, but simply slender and lithe. Madame de
Palme is twenty-five years of age; she is a widow; she spends the winter
in Paris with her sister, and the summer in an old Norman manor-house,
with her aunt, Madame de Pontbrian. Let me get rid of the aunt first.
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