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CHAPTER X. THE MARRIAGE OF SOULS

To Monsieur de Canalis:

My Friend, — Your letter gives me as much pain as pleasure. But

perhaps some day we shall find nothing but pleasure in writing to

each other. Understand me thoroughly. The soul speaks to God and

asks him for many things; he is mute. I seek to obtain in you the

answers that God does not make to me. Cannot the friendship of

Mademoiselle de Gournay and Montaigne be revived in us? Do you not

remember the household of Sismonde de Sismondi in Geneva? The most

lovely home ever known, as I have been told; something like that

of the Marquis de Pescaire and his wife, — happy to old age. Ah!

friend, is it impossible that two hearts, two harps, should exist

as in a symphony, answering each other from a distance, vibrating

with delicious melody in unison? Man alone of all creation is in

himself the harp, the musician, and the listener. Do you think to

find me uneasy and jealous like ordinary women? I know that you go

into the world and meet the handsomest and the wittiest women in

Paris. May I not suppose that some one of those mermaids has

deigned to clasp you in her cold and scaly arms, and that she has

inspired the answer whose prosaic opinions sadden me? There is

something in life more beautiful than the garlands of Parisian

coquetry; there grows a flower far up those Alpine peaks called

men of genius, the glory of humanity, which they fertilize with

the dews their lofty heads draw from the skies. I seek to

cultivate that flower and make it bloom; for its wild yet gentle

fragrance can never fail, — it is eternal.

Do me the honor to believe that there is nothing low or

commonplace in me. Were I Bettina, for I know to whom you allude,

I should never have become Madame von Arnim; and had I been one of

Lord Byron’s many loves, I should be at this moment in a cloister.

You have touched me to the quick. You do not know me, but you

shall know me. I feel within me something that is sublime, of

which I dare speak without vanity. God has put into my soul the

roots of that Alpine flower born on the summits of which I speak,

and I cannot plant it in an earthen pot upon my window-sill and

see it die. No, that glorious flower-cup, single in its beauty,

intoxicating in its fragrance, shall not be dragged through the

vulgarities of life! it is yours — yours, before any eye has

blighted it, yours forever! Yes, my poet, to you belong my

thoughts, — all, those that are secret, those that are gayest; my

heart is yours without reserve and with its infinite affection. If

you should personally not please me, I shall never marry. I can

live in the life of the heart, I can exist on your mind, your

sentiments; they please me, and I will always be what I am, your

friend. Yours is a noble moral nature; I have recognized it, I

have appreciated it, and that suffices me. In that is all my

future. Do not laugh at a young and pretty handmaiden who shrinks

not from the thought of being some day the old companion of a

poet, — a sort of mother perhaps, or a housekeeper; the guide of

his judgment and a source of his wealth. This handmaiden — so

devoted, so precious to the lives of such as you — is Friendship,

pure, disinterested friendship, to whom you will tell all, who

listens and sometimes shakes her head; who knits by the light of

the lamp and waits to be present when the poet returns home soaked

with rain, or vexed in mind. Such shall be my destiny if I do not

find that of a happy wife attached forever to her husband; I smile

alike at the thought of either fate. Do you believe France will be

any the worse if Mademoiselle d’Este does not give it two or three

sons, and never becomes a Madame Vilquin-something-or-other? As

for me, I shall never be an old maid. I shall make myself a

mother, by taking care of others and by my secret co-operation in

the existence of a great man, to whom also I shall carry all my

thoughts and all my earthly efforts.

I have the deepest horror of commonplaceness. If I am free, if I

am rich (and I know that I am young and pretty), I will never

belong to any ninny just because he is the son of a peer of

France, nor to a merchant who could ruin himself and me in a day,

nor to a handsome creature who would be a sort of woman in the

household, nor to a man of any kind who would make me blush twenty

times a day for being his. Make yourself easy on that point. My

father adores my wishes; he will never oppose them. If I please my

poet, and he pleases me, the glorious structure of our love shall

be built so high as to be inaccessible to any kind of misfortune.

I am an eaglet; and you will see it in my eyes.

I shall not repeat what I have already said, but I will put its

substance in the least possible number of words, and confess to

you that I should be the happiest of women if I were imprisoned by

love as I am now imprisoned by the wish and will of a father. Ah!

my friend, may we bring to a real end the romance that has come to

us through the first exercise of my will: listen to its

argument: —

A young girl with a lively imagination, locked up in a tower, is

weary with longing to run loose in the park where her eyes only

are allowed to rove. She invents a way to loosen her bars; she

jumps from the casement; she scales the park wall; she frolics

along the neighbor’s sward — it is the Everlasting comedy. Well,

that young girl is my soul, the neighbor’s park is your genius. Is

it not all very natural? Was there ever a neighbor that did not

complain that unknown feet broke down his trellises? I leave it to

my poet to answer.

But does the lofty reasoner after the fashion of Moliere want

still better reasons? Well, here they are. My dear Geronte,

marriages are usually made in defiance of common-sense. Parents

make inquiries about a young man. If the Leander — who is supplied

by some friend, or caught in a ball-room — is not a thief, and has

no visible rent in his reputation, if he has the necessary

fortune, if he comes from a college or a law-school and so fulfils

the popular ideas of education, and if he wears his clothes with a

gentlemanly air, he is allowed to meet the young lady, whose

mother has ordered her to guard her tongue, to let no sign of her

heart or soul appear on her face, which must wear the smile of a

danseuse finishing a pirouette. These commands are coupled with

instructions as to the danger of revealing her real character, and

the additional advice of not seeming alarmingly well educated. If

the settlements have all been agreed upon, the parents are

good-natured enough to let the pair see each other for a few

moments; they are allowed to talk or walk together, but always

without the slightest freedom, and knowing that they are bound by

rigid rules. The man is as much dressed up in soul as he is in body,

and so is the young girl. This pitiable comedy, mixed with bouquets,

jewels, and theatre-parties is called “paying your addresses.” It

revolts me: I desire that actual marriage shall be the result of a

previous and long marriage of souls. A young girl, a woman, has

throughout her life only this one moment when reflection, second

sight, and experience are necessary to her. She plays her liberty,

her happiness, and she is not allowed to throw the dice; she risks

her all, and is forced to be a mere spectator. I have the right,

the will, the power to make my own unhappiness, and I use them, as

did my mother, who, won by beauty and led by instinct, married the

most generous, the most liberal, the most loving of men. I know

that you are free, a poet, and noble-looking. Be sure that I

should not have chosen one of your brothers in Apollo who was

already married. If my mother was won by beauty, which is perhaps

the spirit of form, why should I not be attracted by the spirit

and the form united? Shall I not know you better by studying you

in this correspondence than I could through the vulgar experience

of “receiving your addresses”? This is the question, as Hamlet

says.

But my proceedings, dear Chrysale, have at least the merit of not

binding us personally. I know that love has its illusions, and

every illusion its to-morrow. That is why there are so many

partings among lovers vowed to each other for life. The proof of

love lies in two things, — suffering and happiness. When, after

passing through these double trials of life two beings have shown

each other their defects as well as their good qualities, when

they have really observed each other’s character, then they may go

to their grave hand in hand. My dear Argante, who told you that

our little drama thus begun was to have no future? In any case

shall we not have enjoyed the pleasures of our correspondence?

I await your orders, monseigneur, and I am with all my heart,

Your handmaiden,

O. d’Este M.

To Mademoiselle O. d’Este M., — You are a witch, a spirit, and I

love you! Is that what you desire of me, most original of girls?

Perhaps you are only seeking to amuse your provincial leisure with

the follies which are you able to make a poet commit. If so, you

have done a bad deed. Your two letters have enough of the spirit

of mischief in them to force this doubt into the mind of a

Parisian. But I am no longer master of myself; my life, my future

depend on the answer you will make me. Tell me if the certainty of

an unbounded affection, oblivious of all social conventions, will

touch you, — if you will suffer me to seek you. There is anxiety

enough and uncertainty enough in the question as to whether I can

personally please you. If your reply is favorable I change my

life, I bid adieu to all the irksome pleasures which we have the

folly to call happiness. Happiness, my dear and beautiful unknown,

is what you dream it to be, — a fusion of feelings, a perfect

accordance of souls, the imprint of a noble ideal (such as God

does permit us to form in this low world) upon the trivial round

of daily life whose habits we must needs obey, a constancy of

heart more precious far than what we call fidelity. Can we say

that we make sacrifices when the end in view is our eternal good,

the dream of poets, the dream of maidens, the poem which, at the

entrance of life when thought essays its wings, each noble

intellect has pondered and caressed only to see it shivered to

fragments on some stone of stumbling as hard as it is vulgar? — for

to the great majority of men, the foot of reality steps instantly

on that mysterious egg so seldom hatched.

I cannot speak to you any more of myself; not of my past life, nor

of my character, nor of an affection almost maternal on one side,

filial on mine, which you have already seriously changed — an

effect upon my life which must explain my use of the word

“sacrifice.” You have already rendered me forgetful, if not

ungrateful; does that satisfy you? Oh, speak! Say to me one word,

and I will love you till my eyes close in death, as the Marquis de

Pescaire loved his wife, as Romeo loved Juliet, and faithfully.

Our life will be, for me at least, that “felicity untroubled”

which Dante made the very element of his Paradiso, — a poem far

superior to his Inferno. Strange, it is not myself that I doubt in

the long reverie through which, like you, I follow the windings of

a dreamed existence; it is you. Yes, dear, I feel within me the

power to love, and to love endlessly, — to march to the grave with

gentle slowness and a smiling eye, with my beloved on my arm, and

with never a cloud upon the sunshine of our souls. Yes, I dare to

face our mutual old age, to see ourselves with whitening heads,

like the venerable historian of Italy, inspired always with the

same affection but transformed in soul by our life’s seasons. Hear

me, I can no longer be your friend only. Though Chrysale, Geronte,

and Argante re-live, you say, in me, I am not yet old enough to

drink from the cup held to my lips by the sweet hands of a veiled

woman without a passionate desire to tear off the domino and the

mask and see the face. Either write me no more, or give me hope.

Let me see you, or let me go. Must I bid you adieu? Will you

permit me to sign myself,

Your Friend?

To Monsieur de Canalis, — What flattery! with what rapidity is the

grave Anselme transformed into a handsome Leander! To what must I

attribute such a change? to this black which I put upon this

white? to these ideas which are to the flowers of my soul what a

rose drawn in charcoal is to the roses in the garden? Or is it to

a recollection of the young girl whom you took for me, and who is

personally as like me as a waiting-woman is like her mistress?

Have we changed roles? Have I the sense? have you the fancy? But a

truce with jesting.

Your letter has made me know the elating pleasures of the soul;

the first that I have known outside of my family affections. What,

says a poet, are the ties of blood which are so strong in ordinary

minds, compared to those divinely forged within us by mysterious

sympathies? Let me thank you — no, we must not thank each other for

such things — but God bless you for the happiness you have given

me; be happy in the joy you have shed into my soul. You explain to

me some of the apparent injustices in social life. There is

something, I know not what, so dazzling, so virile in glory, that

it belongs only to man; God forbids us women to wear its halo, but

he makes love our portion, giving us the tenderness which soothes

the brow scorched by his lightnings. I have felt my mission, and

you have now confirmed it.

Sometimes, my friend, I rise in the morning in a state of

inexpressible sweetness; a sort of peace, tender and divine, gives

me an idea of heaven. My first thought is then like a benediction.

I call these mornings my little German wakings, in opposition to

my Southern sunsets, full of heroic deeds, battles, Roman fetes

and ardent poems. Well, after reading your letter, so full of

feverish impatience, I felt in my heart all the freshness of my

celestial wakings, when I love the air about me and all nature,

and fancy that I am destined to die for one I love. One of your

poems, “The Maiden’s Song,” paints these delicious moments, when

gaiety is tender, when aspiration is a need; it is one of my

favorites. Do you want me to put all my flatteries into one? — well

then, I think you worthy to be me!

Your letter, though short, enables me to read within you. Yes, I

have guessed your tumultuous struggles, your piqued curiosity,

your projects; but I do not yet know you well enough to satisfy

your wishes. Hear me, dear; the mystery in which I am shrouded

allows me to use that word, which lets you see to the bottom of my

heart. Hear me: if we once meet, adieu to our mutual

comprehension! Will you make a compact with me? Was the first

disadvantageous to you? But remember it won you my esteem, and it

is a great deal, my friend, to gain an admiration lined throughout

with esteem. Here is the compact: write me your life in a few

words; then tell me what you do in Paris, day by day, with no

reservations, and as if you were talking to some old friend. Well,

having done that, I will take a step myself — I will see you, I

promise you that. And it is a great deal.

This, dear, is no intrigue, no adventure; no gallantry, as you men

say, can come of it, I warn you frankly. It involves my life, and

more than that, — something that causes me remorse for the many

thoughts that fly to you in flocks — it involves my father’s and my

mother’s life. I adore them, and my choice must please them; they

must find a son in you.

Tell me, to what extent can the superb spirits of your kind, to

whom God has given the wings of his angels, without always adding

their amiability, — how far can they bend under a family yoke, and

put up with its little miseries? That is a text I have meditated

upon. Ah! though I said to my heart before I came to you, Forward!

Onward! it did not tremble and palpitate any the less on the way;

and I did not conceal from myself the stoniness of the path nor

the Alpine difficulties I had to encounter. I thought of all in my

long, long meditations. Do I not know that eminent men like you

have known the love they have inspired quite as well as that which

they themselves have felt; that they have had many romances in

their lives, — you particularly, who send forth those airy visions

of your soul that women rush to buy? Yet still I cried to myself,

“Onward!” because I have studied, more than you give me credit

for, the geography of the great summits of humanity, which you

tell me are so cold. Did you not say that Goethe and Byron were

the colossi of egoism and poetry? Ah, my friend, there you shared

a mistake into which superficial minds are apt to fall; but in you

perhaps it came from generosity, false modesty, or the desire to

escape from me. Vulgar minds may mistake the effect of toil for

the development of personal character, but you must not. Neither

Lord Byron, nor Goethe, nor Walter Scott, nor Cuvier, nor any

inventor, belongs to himself, he is the slave of his idea. And

this mysterious power is more jealous than a woman; it sucks their

blood, it makes them live, it makes them die for its sake. The

visible developments of their hidden existence do seem, in their

results, like egotism; but who shall dare to say that the man who

has abnegated self to give pleasure, instruction, or grandeur to

his epoch, is an egoist? Is a mother selfish when she immolates

all things to her child? Well, the detractors of genius do not

perceive its fecund maternity, that is all. The life of a poet is

so perpetual a sacrifice that he needs a gigantic organization to

bear even the ordinary pleasures of life. Therefore, into what

sorrows may he not fall when, like Moliere, he wishes to live the

life of feeling in its most poignant crises; to me, remembering

his personal life, Moliere’s comedy is horrible.

The generosity of genius seems to me half divine; and I place you

in this noble family of alleged egoists. Ah! if I had found

self-interest, ambition, a seared nature where I now can see my

best loved flowers of the soul, you know not what long anguish I

should have had to bear. I met with disappointment before I was

sixteen. What would have become of me had I learned at twenty that

fame is a lie, that he whose books express the feelings hidden in

my heart was incapable of feeling them himself? Oh! my friend, do

you know what would have become of me? Shall I take you into the

recesses of my soul? I should have gone to my father and said,

“Bring me the son-in-law whom you desire; my will abdicates, — marry

me to whom you please.” And the man might have been a notary,

banker, miser, fool, dullard, wearisome as a rainy day, common as

the usher of a school, a manufacturer, or some brave soldier without

two ideas, — he would have had a resigned and attentive servant in

me. But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded

in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur should have

revealed to my father, or my mother, or my children the suicide of

the creature who at this instant is shaking her fetters, casting

lightnings from her eyes, and flying towards you with eager wing.

See, she is there, at the angle of your desk, like Polyhymnia,

breathing the air of your presence, and glancing about her with a

curious eye. Sometimes in the fields where my husband would have

taken me to walk, I should have wept, apart and secretly, at sight

of a glorious morning; and in my heart, or hidden in a

bureau-drawer, I might have kept some treasure, the comfort of poor

girls ill-used by love, sad, poetic souls, — but ah! I have you, I

believe in you, my friend. That belief straightens all my thoughts

and fancies, even the most fantastic, and sometimes — see how far

my frankness leads me — I wish I were in the middle of the book we

are just beginning; such persistency do I feel in my sentiments,

such strength in my heart to love, such constancy sustained by

reason, such heroism for the duties for which I was created, — if

indeed love can ever be transmuted into duty.

If you were able to follow me to the exquisite retreat where I

fancy ourselves happy, if you knew my plans and projects, the

dreadful word “folly!” might escape you, and I should be cruelly

punished for sending poetry to a poet. Yes, I wish to be a spring

of waters inexhaustible as a fertile land for the twenty years

that nature allows me to shine. I want to drive away satiety by

charm. I mean to be courageous for my friend as most women are for

the world. I wish to vary happiness. I wish to put intelligence

into tenderness, and to give piquancy to fidelity. I am filled

with ambition to kill the rivals of the past, to conjure away all

outside griefs by a wife’s gentleness, by her proud abnegation, to

take a lifelong care of the nest, — such as birds can only take for

a few weeks.

Tell me, do you now think me to blame for my first letter? The

mysterious wind of will drove me to you, as the tempest brings the

little rose-tree to the pollard window. In your letter, which I

hold here upon my heart, you cried out, like your ancestor when he

departed for the Crusades, “God wills it.”

Ah! but you will cry out, “What a chatterbox!” All the people

round me say, on the contrary, “Mademoiselle is very taciturn.”

O. d’Este M.