The Collection of Antiquities. Оноре де Бальзак

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СКАЧАТЬ of age had borne the stamp of the purest devotion; love for her brother was a sort of religion with her.

      “I shall die Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” she said simply, turning to the notary.

      “For you there could be no fairer title,” returned Chesnel, meaning to convey a compliment. Poor Mlle. d’Esgrignon reddened.

      “You have blundered, Chesnel,” said the Marquis, flattered by the steward’s words, but vexed that his sister had been hurt. “A d’Esgrignon may marry a Montmorency; their descent is not so pure as ours. The d’Esgrignons bear or, two bends, gules,” he continued, “and nothing during nine hundred years has changed their scutcheon; as it was at first, so it is to-day. Hence our device, Cil est nostre, taken at a tournament in the reign of Philip Augustus, with the supporters, a knight in armor or on the right, and a lion gules on the left.”

      “I do not remember that any woman I have ever met has struck my imagination as Mlle. d’Esgrignon did,” said Emile Blondet, to whom contemporary literature is indebted for this history among other things. “Truth to tell, I was a boy, a mere child at the time, and perhaps my memory-pictures of her owe something of their vivid color to a boy’s natural turn for the marvelous.

      “If I was playing with other children on the Parade, and she came to walk there with her nephew Victurnien, the sight of her in the distance thrilled me with very much the effect of galvanism on a dead body. Child as I was, I felt as though new life had been given me.

      “Mlle. Armande had hair of tawny gold; there was a delicate fine down on her cheek, with a silver gleam upon it which I loved to catch, putting myself so that I could see the outlines of her face lit up by the daylight, and feel the fascination of those dreamy emerald eyes, which sent a flash of fire through me whenever they fell upon my face. I used to pretend to roll on the grass before her in our games, only to try to reach her little feet, and admire them on a closer view. The soft whiteness of her skin, her delicate features, the clearly cut lines of her forehead, the grace of her slender figure, took me with a sense of surprise, while as yet I did not know that her shape was graceful, nor her brows beautiful, nor the outline of her face a perfect oval. I admired as children pray at that age, without too clearly understanding why they pray. When my piercing gaze attracted her notice, when she asked me (in that musical voice of hers, with more volume in it, as it seemed to me, than all other voices), ‘What are you doing little one? Why do you look at me?’—I used to come nearer and wriggle and bite my finger-nails, and redden and say, ‘I do not know.’ And if she chanced to stroke my hair with her white hand, and ask me how old I was, I would run away and call from a distance, ‘Eleven!’

      “Every princess and fairy of my visions, as I read the Arabian Nights, looked and walked like Mlle. d’Esgrignon; and afterwards, when my drawing-master gave me heads from the antique to copy, I noticed that their hair was braided like Mlle. d’Esgrignon’s. Still later, when the foolish fancies had vanished one by one, Mlle. Armande remained vaguely in my memory as a type; that Mlle. Armande for whom men made way respectfully, following the tall brown-robed figure with their eyes along the Parade and out of sight. Her exquisitely graceful form, the rounded curves sometimes revealed by a chance gust of wind, and always visible to my eyes in spite of the ample folds of stuff, revisited my young man’s dreams. Later yet, when I came to think seriously over certain mysteries of human thought, it seemed to me that the feeling of reverence was first inspired in me by something expressed in Mlle. d’Esgrignon’s face and bearing. The wonderful calm of her face, the suppressed passion in it, the dignity of her movements, the saintly life of duties fulfilled—all this touched and awed me. Children are more susceptible than people imagine to the subtle influences of ideas; they never make game of real dignity; they feel the charm of real graciousness, and beauty attracts them, for childhood itself is beautiful, and there are mysterious ties between things of the same nature.

      “Mlle. d’Esgrignon was one of my religions. To this day I can never climb the staircase of some old manor-house but my foolish imagination must needs picture Mlle. Armande standing there, like the spirit of feudalism. I can never read old chronicles but she appears before my eyes in the shape of some famous woman of old times; she is Agnes Sorel, Marie Touchet, Gabrielle; and I lend her all the love that was lost in her heart, all the love that she never expressed. The angel shape seen in glimpses through the haze of childish fancies visits me now sometimes across the mists of dreams.”

      Keep this portrait in mind; it is a faithful picture and sketch of character. Mlle. d’Esgrignon is one of the most instructive figures in this story; she affords an example of the mischief that may be done by the purest goodness for lack of intelligence.

      Two-thirds of the emigres returned to France during 1804 and 1805, and almost every exile from the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s province came back to the land of his fathers. There were certainly defections. Men of good birth entered the service of Napoleon, and went into the army or held places at the Imperial court, and others made alliances with the upstart families. All those who cast in their lots with the Empire retrieved their fortunes and recovered their estates, thanks to the Emperor’s munificence; and these for the most part went to Paris and stayed there. But some eight or nine families still remained true to the proscribed noblesse and loyal to the fallen monarchy. The La Roche-Guyons, Nouastres, Verneuils, Casterans, Troisvilles, and the rest were some of them rich, some of them poor; but money, more or less, scarcely counted for anything among them. They took an antiquarian view of themselves; for them the age and preservation of the pedigree was the one all-important matter; precisely as, for an amateur, the weight of metal in a coin is a small matter in comparison with clean lettering, a flawless stamp, and high antiquity. Of these families, the Marquis d’Esgrignon was the acknowledged head. His house became their cenacle. There His Majesty, Emperor and King, was never anything but “M. de Bonaparte”; there “the King” meant Louis XVIII., then at Mittau; there the Department was still the Province, and the prefecture the intendance.

      The Marquis was honored among them for his admirable behavior, his loyalty as a noble, his undaunted courage; even as he was respected throughout the town for his misfortunes, his fortitude, his steadfast adherence to his political convictions. The man so admirable in adversity was invested with all the majesty of ruined greatness. His chivalrous fair-mindedness was so well known, that litigants many a time had referred their disputes to him for arbitration. All gently bred Imperialists and the authorities themselves showed as much indulgence for his prejudices as respect for his personal character; but there was another and a large section of the new society which was destined to be known after the Restoration as the Liberal party; and these, with du Croisier as their unacknowledged head, laughed at an aristocratic oasis which nobody might enter without proof of irreproachable descent. Their animosity was all the more bitter because honest country squires and the higher officials, with a good many worthy folk in the town, were of the opinion that all the best society thereof was to be found in the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s salon. The prefect himself, the Emperor’s chamberlain, made overtures to the d’Esgrignons, humbly sending his wife (a Grandlieu) as ambassadress.

      Wherefore, those excluded from the miniature provincial Faubourg Saint-Germain nicknamed the salon “The Collection of Antiquities,” and called the Marquis himself “M. Carol.” The receiver of taxes, for instance, addressed his applications to “M. Carol (ci-devant des Grignons),” maliciously adopting the obsolete way of spelling.

      “For my own part,” said Emile Blondet, “if I try to recall my childhood memories, I remember that the nickname of ‘Collection of Antiquities’ always made me laugh, in spite of my respect—my love, I ought to say—for Mlle. d’Esgrignon. The Hotel d’Esgrignon stood at the angle of two of the busiest thoroughfares in the town, and not five hundred paces away from the market place. Two of the drawing-room windows looked upon the street and two upon the square; the room was like a glass cage, every one who came past could look through it from side to side. I was only a boy of twelve at the time, but I thought, even then, that the salon was one of those rare curiosities СКАЧАТЬ