Читать книгу Paula Monti; or, The Hôtel Lambert - Эжен Сю - Страница 10

A few words are now necessary with respect to M. de Brévannes, an important actor in this history.

M. de Brévannes' father was named Joseph Burdin: born at Lyons, he had come to seek his fortune at Paris under the Directory. By his management, perseverance, and fitness for business, he had, in a few years, realised, by contracts for the supply of the forces, one of those notorious fortunes so common at this period.

Become rich, the name of Burdin appeared vulgar to him, and he bought the estate of Brévannes, in Lorraine, called himself for some time Burdin de Brévannes, then sinking the Burdin, became Brévannes only. His wife, the daughter of a wealthy notary, who had ruined himself by hazardous speculations, died a short time before the Restoration (1815).

M. de Brévannes did not long survive her, and the guardianship of his son, Charles de Brévannes, was intrusted to one of his old associates. Either from negligence or want of principle, this man did not manage his ward's interests faithfully; so that when the young man came of age, in 1825, he only inherited about 40,000 livres (1600 l.) a-year.

M. de Brévannes, renewing his acquaintance with several of his college friends whom he met again in society, passed during several years a gay bachelor's life, without, however, running into any excess of extravagance—he was too selfish and calculating for that.

About the end of the year 1831 he married Bertha Raimond.

To explain this marriage it is necessary to sketch the character of M. de Brévannes. Badly brought up, and having received but the barren education of his college, nothing had softened or abated the innate violence of his temper; the main, leading, and integral characteristic of which was a remarkable degree of energy and hauteur, united to an invincible obstinacy of purpose.

To achieve his end, M. de Brévannes did not hesitate at any sacrifice, any excess, any obstacle.

What he desired, he sought to possess as much to satisfy his taste and caprice of the moment, as to satisfy the sort of tenacious pride which he had in succeeding, by good means or bad—at any cost, any risk—in every thing which he undertook.

M. de Brévannes pushed his economy to the bounds of avarice, his personal ease to selfishness, and his want of sympathy amounted to decided harshness. If he determined to surmount any obstacle, he became devoted, generous, delicate, if it served his purpose; but his aim once attained, these ephemeral and assumed qualities disappeared with the cause which had elicited them; and then his real character resumed its usual tone and course, and his evil inclinations found their compensation for a temporary restraint in increased violence.

Unfortunately, persons of this strong and deeply marked stamp too often prove that with them (as M. de Brévannes had said—to will is to be able to do) vouloir c'est pouvoir.

We will now add a word or two as to his marriage.

M. de Brévannes occupied the first floor of a house in Paris, which was his own property. Two new lodgers came to live in two small apartments on the fourth story,—they were Bertha Raimond and her father; the mother had been dead for a considerable period.

Pierre Raimond, a copper-plate engraver by profession, had so weakened his eyesight that he could at this period engrave nothing but music. Bertha, who was an admirable musician, gave lessons on the piano; and, thanks to these resources, the father and daughter lived almost in easy circumstances.

Bertha was remarkably handsome, and M. de Brévannes, who frequently met her in the house, was so much attracted by her, that, in his capacity of landlord, he introduced himself to Pierre Raimond.

Brévannes had a detestable idea of human kind, and he confidently trusted, by the use of cajolery, and some presents liberally and propitiously made, to triumph over the virtue of Bertha and the scruples of Pierre Raimond. He was deceived: and, paying the quarter's rent for his humble apartments, the engraver gave notice to quit to M. de Brévannes at the end of the ensuing three months, requesting him, at the same time, in very plain terms, to cease his calls, which had been but very few, however, up to that period.

M. de Brévannes was piqued at his failure; this unexpected resistance irritated his desires and wounded his pride, and his caprice became love, or, at least, had all its ardour and impatience.

Having contrived to obtain certain short conversations with Mademoiselle Raimond, either by following her into the streets when she left her home to give lessons, or meeting her at the residence of one of her pupils, M. de Brévannes contrived to maintain a correspondence with Bertha, who soon became much attached to him. He was young, witty, and had a good address—a face, if not handsome, yet manly and expressive. Bertha did not resist these attractions, but her love was as pure as her imagination, and M. de Brévannes' evil hopes were utterly frustrated. Confessing to him, unaffectedly, that she was not ashamed to disclose her love for him, Bertha added that he was too rich to marry her, and that, therefore, the communication between them must cease—vain as it was for him, and distressing for her.

The end of the quarter came, and Bertha and her father went to reside in one of the most lonely quarters of Paris, in the Rue Poultier, Ile Saint Louis.

This removal gave a fresh wound to the pride and feeling of M. de Brévannes. He discovered the abode of the young girl, pretended a long journey, and went secretly and took a lodging in the Ile Saint Louis, near the street in which Pierre Raimond resided.

The first time Bertha again met M. de Brévannes, she betrayed, by her emotion, the intensity of her sentiments towards him; concealing nothing from him,—neither the joy which his return occasioned to her, nor the cruel tears—yet dear as they were cruel—which she had shed during his absence.

In spite of these avowals M. de Brévannes was not the more happy. Seductive persuasion, stratagems, promises, excitement, despair—all, all failed before the virtue of Bertha—virtue as pure and strong as her love itself.

Those who know the heart of man, and especially of men as proud and self-willed as M. de Brévannes, will understand the bitter resentment which sprung up in his mind against this young girl, as inflexible in her purity, as he in his corruption.

A man never pardons a woman who escapes by her address, instinct, or virtue, from the dishonouring snare which he has spread for her.

It would be impossible to describe the mental imprecations with which M. de Brévannes overwhelmed Bertha; and to such a pitch did he attain, that he actually believed that "by her calculating refusals, this chit of a girl had the impertinent hope that he—he would one day marry her,"—a most abominable machination, and, no doubt, planned with the old engraver.

M. de Brévannes shrugged his shoulders in pity when he reflected on a manœuvre as odious as it was ridiculous, and resolved to quit Paris. Before he went he had a final interview with Bertha. He fully expected a despairing scene; he found the young girl sad, calm, resigned. She had never given way to any illusion as to her love for M. de Brévannes, but had always anticipated the painful consequences of her ill-omened attachment.

It was, besides, singular that Pierre Raimond, a worthy artist,—austere, and even stoical, in his ideas of right and wrong,—should have educated his daughter in such ideas of wealth that the disproportion of fortune existing between M. de Brévannes and Bertha should seem to her as insurmountable as the distance which separates a king from a daughter of one of the lowest class in society.

Thus far from asking why he, being free, did not make her his wife—a simple and decided mode of reconciling love and duty—Bertha had ingenuously confessed to M. de Brévannes that their love was the more hopeless as Pierre Raimond, in his proud poverty, would never consent to marry his daughter to a rich man.

At the moment of her separation from M. de Brévannes, Bertha promised him to do all she could to forget him, in order to marry a man as poor as herself, and if not, she would never marry.

These words, free from any exaggeration, as simple and true as the poor girl that uttered them, made no impression on De Brévannes; who but saw in the angelic resignation of Bertha a flagrant and final proof of the plot that was laid for him in order to entrap him into a compulsory marriage.

M. de Brévannes set out for Dieppe, believing that he was completely freed from this love affair; and, proud of having escaped from a shameful snare, he awaited with irritating impatience for a humble prayer to return—which he had decided on receiving and treating with extreme contempt; but, to his vast surprise, he did not even hear from Bertha.

At Dieppe, M. de Brévannes met with a Madame Beauvoisis (the domino of the chest)—very pretty, very much the fashion in a certain circle, very coquettish, and who had made a very deep impression on a most agreeable and gentlemanly person.

To revenge himself on Bertha's silence, and certain compunctious prickings of conscience, as well as to elevate himself in his own eyes, after the check which the engraver's daughter had given him, M. de Brévannes determined to play the agreeable with Madame de Beauvoisis, and supplant her favoured lover. He succeeded.

M. de Brévannes was the more annoyed, the more humiliated for his want of success with Bertha, in proportion as the conquest of Madame Beauvoisis seemed more flattering to him. His self-love revolted at the fact of a poor little unknown girl having been able to resist the advances of a man whom a most desirable woman had selected.

We are not pretending that M. de Brévannes had no love for Bertha, but with him the tender impatiences, the "charming agonies" of love—its hopes and melancholy fears—were perverted into strong desires and irritated pride.

He summed up the matter in his mind bitterly and brutally thus:—

"I am determined this girl shall be mine—cost it what it may, mine she shall be!"

Enraged at not receiving any letters from Bertha during the six weeks he had been away, M. de Brévannes suddenly broke off with Madame Beauvoisis, the idol of the season at Dieppe, and returned to his hiding-place in the Ile Saint Louis. When he arrived there, Bertha, unable to overcome her grief, was dying.

Almost touched at this proof of love, and wishing, moreover, at any cost, to have possession of this young girl, M. de Brévannes, in spite of his resolutions never to be duped into a marriage, as he declared, went to Pierre Raimond and demanded his daughter's hand formally in marriage, anticipating an exuberant outpouring of gratitude on the part of the old engraver.

Incredible—unheard of—strange as it may appear (and it completely upset all M. de Brévannes' ideas), Pierre Raimond would not give his consent to this union.

"'M. de Brévannes was born rich, Bertha was born poor—there was no sympathy existing between them;' this was Pierre Raimond's unchanging theme."

"M. de Brévannes was born rich, Bertha was born poor: there was no sympathy existing between them, no similarity of position, or habits of life, education, and principles, which could offer or ensure any guarantee of happiness for the future."

This was Pierre Raimond's "unchanging theme." There was, in the absolute manner with which this stern old man regarded the distance which separates the rich from the poor, more pride than humility. He established between these two conditions, which he regarded as utterly irreconcilable and diverse, a line as entire and unsurpassable as that which republicans draw between themselves and aristocrats.

The determined obstinacy of M. de Brévannes would have failed before the haughty poverty of the old man, had not Bertha's life been compromised.

A father's instinct is almost always admirably clear-sighted, and when this instinct is allied with excellent common sense, it attains to divination.

Pierre Raimond anticipated his daughter's destiny. Still obliged to choose between the death of a beloved child, and a future, however dreaded, which might, perchance, be averted, the engraver consented at length to the marriage, which took place shortly after M. de Brévannes' return.

Bertha had not for a moment doubted the love of her husband.

Her heart—simple and good, noble and confiding—was unable to resist the unrelenting will of a man, whose energetic protestations had flattered and won her; and in her guileless vanity, the young girl asked herself, with a certain degree of pride, if M. de Brévannes must not have loved her to excess, when he pursued his suit with such unrelaxing tenacity.

Poor Bertha, alas! confounded the proud obstinacy of an uncontrollable temper, which could not endure opposition, with the self-denial, the devoted persistence, of intense passion.

M. de Brévannes was capable of employing every means—even those which had not apparently an honourable plea—to achieve his ends; but that attained, he was also capable of cruelly revenging those sacrifices which he had imposed on himself in order to triumph in a struggle in which his pride was more deeply interested than his love.

With such an intractable temper, the day that followed his victory was seldom one of happiness; the ruder the attack, the more the resistance had lasted, the more his vanity suffered. In the warmth of action he forgot the wounds of his self-love; but after success he felt intensely those bleeding wounds, and his disposition again resumed its ascendancy.

When the fever of his unbridled will, which had constrained M. de Brévannes to marry Bertha, had subsided, he began to regret his marriage very deeply. Yes, he was ashamed of his alliance with an obscure and poor girl, when he reflected on the wealthy alliances to which he might have aspired, and for which the charming qualities, the beauty, and pure mind of Bertha, were hardly a recompense. He believed that he was continually the butt of sarcastic comment, and could not find sufficient raillery to vindicate his ridiculous marriage of affection.

M. de Brévannes was deceived. Several persons, when they saw him marry a lovely, virtuous, and poor girl, gave him credit for a generous and noble spirit, and admired him, and vaunted his singular disinterestedness, and he was absolved, by anticipation, from all the torments which he would inflict on a woman for whom he had done so much.

Some regarded Bertha's conduct as a master-piece of trick and skill; others jeered at M. de Brévannes and his love-match, because they were of a class that mocks at all the world.

No one suspected the real motive of this marriage, and that M. de Brévannes' obstinacy had urged him to it, at least as much as his love.

One last trait of M. de Brévannes' disposition.

For the four years he had been married, Bertha, more loving, more resigned than ever, had not given him the slightest cause of complaint, although he had openly committed frequent infidelities, and sometimes given her rivals of very low degree; the wretched woman had wept her tears of bitterness in secret, but never made any complaint.

In spite of this patience—in spite of her perfect gentleness, M. de Brévannes sometimes gave himself up to inconceivable suspicions and jealousy, and under the most frivolous pretexts.

This violent jealousy was by no means a proof of De Brévannes' love. If he went into a rage at the mere thought (utterly false and unjust) that his wife might be faithless to him, it was because Bertha's fault would have covered (as he thought), with unextinguishable ridicule, this love-match, for which he had sacrificed so much. M. de Brévannes desired, at least, to be able to vaunt the irreproachable and exemplary conduct of the fair and obscure woman whom he had chosen.

After they had been eighteen months wedded, M. de Brévannes, becoming very tired of his happiness, had travelled in Italy for several months, leaving his wife under the care of Pierre Raimond, whose austere morality he fully recognised.

The old engraver would not consent to live with his daughter in M. de Brévannes' house during her husband's absence, and Bertha had, therefore, taken up her abode with her father in the Ile Saint Louis, and resumed, in the Rue Poultier, the room she occupied before she was married.

Since his journey to Italy, where he had formed Madame de Hansfeld's acquaintance (as we shall see hereafter), M. de Brévannes' temper had become much soured, and his disposition had grown sombre, irascible, and was often brutal; and Bertha had very frequently suffered acutely from it. These points enumerated, we will now follow M. de Brévannes to his residence after his return from the Opera-ball, where he had been so completely mystified by Madame Beauvoisis, the domino of the chest.