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THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN
THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN HONORE DE BALZAC CHAPTER I
THE LAST WORD OF TWO GREAT COQUETTES
After the disasters of the revolution of July which destroyed so many
aristocratic fortunes dependent on the court Madame la Princesse de
Cadignan was clever enough to attribute to political events the total
ruin she had caused by her own extravagance. The prince left France
with the royal family and never returned to it leaving the princess
in Paris protected by the fact of his absence; for their debts which
the sale of all their salable property had not been able to
extinguish could only be recovered through him. The revenues of the
entailed estates had been seized. In short the affairs of this great
family were in as bad a state as those of the elder branch of the
Bourbons.
This woman so celebrated under her first name of Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse very wisely decided to live in retirement and to make
herself if possible forgotten. Paris was then so carried away by the
whirling current of events that the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse buried
in the Princesse de Cadignan a change of name unknown to most of the
new actors brought upon the stage of society by the revolution of
July did really become a stranger in her own city.
In Paris the title of duke ranks all others even that of prince;
though in heraldic theory free of all sophism titles signify
nothing; there is absolute equality among gentlemen. This fine
equality was formerly maintained by the House of France itself; and in
our day it is so still at least nominally; witness the care with
which the kings of France give to their sons the simple title of
count. It was in virtue of this system that Francois I. crushed the
splendid titles assumed by the pompous Charles the Fifth by signing
his answer: "Francois seigneur de Vanves." Louis XI. did better still
by marrying his daughter to an untitled gentleman Pierre de Beaujeu.
The feudal system was so thoroughly broken up by Louis XIV. that the
title of duke became during his reign the supreme honor of the
aristocracy and the most coveted.
Nevertheless there are two or three families in France in which the
principality richly endowed in former times takes precedence of the
duchy. The house of Cadignan which possesses the title of Duc de
Maufrigneuse for its eldest sons is one of these exceptional
families. Like the princes of the house of Rohan in earlier days the
princes of Cadignan had the right to a throne in their own domain;
they could have pages and gentlemen in their service. This explanation
is necessary as much to escape foolish critics who know nothing as
to record the customs of a world which we are told is about to
disappear and which evidently so many persons are assisting to push
away without knowing what it is.
The Cadignans bear: or five lozenges sable appointed placed fess-
wise with the word "Memini" for motto a crown with a cap of
maintenance no supporters or mantle. In these days the great crowd of
strangers flocking to Paris and the almost universal ignorance of the
science of heraldry are beginning to bring the title of prince into
fashion. There are no real princes but those possessed of
principalities to whom belongs the title of highness. The disdain
shown by the French nobility for the title of prince and the reasons
which caused Louis XIV. to give supremacy to the title of duke have
prevented Frenchmen from claiming the appellation of "highness" for
the few princes who exist in France those of Napoleon excepted. This
is why the princes of Cadignan hold an inferior position nominally
to the princes of the continent.
The members of the society called the faubourg Saint-Germain protected
the princess by a respectful silence due to her name which is one of
those that all men honor to her misfortunes which they ceased to
discuss and to her beauty the only thing she saved of her departed
opulence. Society of which she had once been the ornament was
thankful to her for having as it were taken the veil and cloistered
herself in her own home. This act of good taste was for her more than
for any other woman an immense sacrifice. Great deeds are always so
keenly felt in France that the princess gained by her retreat as
much as she had lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.
She now saw only one of her old friends the Marquise d'Espard and
even to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties. The
princess and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons with a
certain amount of secrecy. When the princess went to dine with her
friend the marquise closed her doors. Madame d'Espard treated the
princess charmingly; she changed her box at the opera leaving the
first tier for a baignoire on the ground-floor so that Madame de
Cadignan could come to the theatre unseen and depart incognito. Few
women would have been capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the
pleasure of bearing in their train a fallen rival and of publicly
being her benefactress. Thus relieved of the necessity for costly
toilets the princess could enjoy the theatre whither she went in
Madame d'Espard's carriage which she would never have accepted openly
in the daytime. No one has ever known Madame d'Espard's reasons for
behaving thus to the Princesse de Cadignan; but her conduct was
admirable and for a long time included a number of little acts which
viewed single seem mere trifles but taken in the mass become
gigantic.
In 1832 three years had thrown a mantle of snow over the follies and
adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and had whitened them so
thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall
them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers and whose follies
might have given a theme to a variety of novels there remained a
woman still adorably beautiful thirty-six years of age but quite
justified in calling herself thirty although she was the mother of
Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse a young man of eighteen handsome as
Antinous poor as Job who was expected to obtain great successes and
for whom his mother desired above all things to find a rich wife.
Perhaps this hope was the secret of the intimacy she still kept up
with the marquise in whose salon which was one of the first in
Paris she might eventually be able to choose among many heiresses for
Georges' wife. The princess saw five years between the present moment
and her son's marriage--five solitary and desolate years; for in
order to obtain such a marriage for her son she knew that her own
conduct must be marked in the corner with discretion.
The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil in a small house of
which she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made
the most of the relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of the
great lady was still redolent about her. She was still surrounded by
beautiful things which recalled her former existence. On her chimney-
piece was a fine miniature portrait of Charles X. by Madame Mirbel
beneath which were engraved the words "Given by the King"; and as a
pendant the portrait of "Madame" who was always her kind friend. On
a table lay an album of costliest price such as none of the
bourgeoises who now lord it in our industrial and fault-finding
society would have dared to exhibit. This album contained portraits
about thirty in number of her intimate friends whom the world first
and last had given her as lovers. The number was a calumny; but had
rumor said ten it might have been as her friend Madame d'Espard
remarked good sound gossip. The portraits of Maxime de Trailles de
Marsay Rastignac the Marquis d'Esgrignon General Montriveau the
Marquis de Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto Prince Galathionne the
young Ducs de Grandlieu and de Rhetore the Vicomte de Serizy and the
handsome Lucien de Rubempre had all been treated with the utmost
coquetry of brush and pencil by celebrated artists. As the princess
now received only two or three of these personages she called the
book jokingly the collection of her errors.
Misfortune had made this woman a good mother. During the fifteen years
of the Restoration she had amused herself far too much to think of her
son; but on taking refuge in obscurity this illustrious egoist
bethought her that the maternal sentiment developed to its extreme
might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible
persons who pardon everything to a good mother. She loved her son all
the more because she had nothing else to love. Georges de Maufrigneuse
was moreover one of those children who flatter the vanities of a
mother; and the princess had accordingly made all sorts of
sacrifices for him. She hired a stable and coach-house above which he
lived in a little entresol with three rooms looking on the street and
charmingly furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a
saddle-horse a cab-horse and a little groom for his use. For
herself she had only her own maid and as cook a former kitchen-
maid. The duke's groom had therefore rather a hard place. Toby
formerly tiger to the "late" Beaudenord (such was the jesting term
applied by the gay world to that ruined gentleman)--Toby who at
twenty-five years of age was still considered only fourteen was
expected to groom the horses clean the cabriolet or the tilbury and
the harnesses accompany his master take care of the apartments and
be in the princess's antechamber to announce a visitor if by chance
she happened to receive one.
When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had
been under the Restoration--one of the queens of Paris a dazzling
queen whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of
fashion in London--there was something touching in the sight of her
in that humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil a few steps away
from her splendid mansion which no amount of fortune had enabled her
to keep and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished. The
woman who thought she was scarcely well served by thirty servants who
possessed the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris and the
loveliest little private apartments and who made them the scene of
such delightful fetes now lived in a small apartment of five rooms--
an antechamber dining-room salon one bed-chamber and a dressing-
room with two women-servants only.
"Ah! she is devoted to her son" said that clever creature Madame
d'Espard "and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would
ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent
resolution! Our good archbishop has consequently greatly encouraged
her; he is most kind to her and has just induced the old Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit."
Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate and
to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly
lost. Those only who have an inner consciousness of being nothing in
themselves show regrets in falling or struggle murmuring to return
to a past which can never return--a fact of which they themselves are
well aware. Compelled to do without the choice exotics in the midst of
which she had lived and which set off so charmingly her whole being
(for it is impossible not to compare her to a flower) the princess
had wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there she enjoyed a pretty
little garden which belonged to it--a garden full of shrubs and an
always verdant turf which brightened her peaceful retreat. She had
about twelve thousand francs a year; but that modest income was partly
made up of an annual stipend sent her by the old Duchesse de
Navarreins paternal aunt of the young duke and another stipend given
by her mother the Duchesse d'Uxelles who was living on her estate in
the country where she economized as old duchesses alone know how to
economize; for Harpagon is a mere novice compared to them. The
princess still retained some of her past relations with the exiled
royal family; and it was in her house that the marshal to whom we owe
the conquest of Africa had conferences at the time of "Madame's"
attempt in La Vendee with the principal leaders of legitimist
opinion--so great was the obscurity in which the princess lived and
so little distrust did the government feel for her in her present
distress.
Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth year the bankruptcy
of love beyond which there is so little for a woman as woman the
princess had flung herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to
reading she who for sixteen years had felt a cordial horror for
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