The confession which Mme. Félix de Vandenesse had poured into her sister’s ear was so intimately connected with her history during the six preceding years that a brief narrative of the chief incidents of her married life is necessary to its understanding.

Félix de Vandenesse was one of the band of distinguished men who owed their fortune to the Restoration, till a shortsighted policy excluded them, as followers of Martignac, from the inner circle of Government. In the last days of Charles X he was banished with some others to the Upper Chamber; and this disgrace, though in his eyes only temporary, led him to think of marriage. He was the more inclined to it from a sort of nausea of intrigue and gallantry not uncommon with men when the hour of youth’s gay frenzy is past. There comes then a critical moment when the serious side of social ties makes itself felt. Félix de Vandenesse had had his bright and his dark hours, but the latter predominated, as is apt to be the case with a man who has quite early in life become acquainted with passion in its noblest form. The initiated become fastidious. A long experience of life and study of character reconciles them at last to the second-best, when they take refuge in a universal tolerance. Having lost all illusions, they are proof against guile, yet they wear their cynicism with a grace, and, being prepared for the worst, are saved the pangs of disappointment.

In spite of this, Félix still passed for one of the handsomest and most agreeable men in Paris. With women his reputation was largely due to one of the noblest of their contemporaries, who was said to have died of a broken heart for him; but it was the beautiful Lady Dudley who had the chief hand in forming him. In the eyes of many Paris ladies Félix was a hero of romance, owing not a few of his conquests to his evil repute. Madame de Manerville had closed the chapter of his intrigues. Although not a Don Juan, he retired from the world of love, as from that of politics, a disillusioned man. That ideal type of woman and of love which, for his misfortune, had brightened and dominated his youth, he despaired of finding again. At the age of thirty, Count Félix resolved to cut short by marriage pleasures which had begun to pall. On one point he was determined: he would have none but a girl trained in the strictest dogmas of Catholicism. No sooner did he hear how the Comtesse de Granville brought up her daughters than he asked for the hand of the elder. His own mother had been a domestic tyrant; and he could still remember enough of his dismal childhood to descry, through the veil of maidenly modesty, what effect had been produced on a young girl’s character by such a bondage, to see whether she were sulky, soured, and inclined to revolt, or had remained sweet and loving, responsive to the voice of nobler feeling. Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in classical times⁠—Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other, meekness with its Christian graces. The Comte de Vandenesse read the history of his life again in Marie-Angélique de Granville. In thus choosing for wife a young girl in her fresh innocence and purity, he had made up his mind beforehand, as befitted a man old in everything but years, to unite paternal with conjugal affection. He was conscious that in him politics and society had blighted feeling, and that he had only the dregs of a used-up life to offer in exchange for one in the bloom of youth. The flowers of spring would be matched with winter frosts, hoary experience with a saucy, impulsive waywardness. Having thus impartially taken stock of his position, he entrenched himself in his married quarters with an ample store of provisions. Indulgence and trust were his two sheet anchors. Mothers with marriageable daughters ought to look out for men of this stamp, men with brains to act as protecting divinity, with worldly wisdom to diagnose like a surgeon, and with experience to take a mother’s place in warding off evil. These are the three cardinal virtues in matrimony.

The refinements and luxuries to which his habits as a man of fashion and of pleasure had accustomed Félix, his training in affairs of state, the insight of a life alternately devoted to action, reflection, and literature; all the resources, in short, at his command were applied intelligently to work out his wife’s happiness.

Marie-Angélique passed at once from the maternal purgatory to the wedded paradise prepared for her by Félix in their house in the Rue du Rocher, where every trifle breathed of distinction at the same time that the conventions of fashion were not allowed to interfere with that gracious spontaneity natural to warm young hearts. She began by enjoying to the full the merely material pleasures of life, her husband for two years acting as majordomo. Félix expounded to his wife very gradually and with great tact the facts of life, initiated her by degrees into the mysteries of the best society, taught her the genealogies of all families of rank, instructed her in the ways of the world, directed her in the arts of dress and conversation, took her to all the theatres, and put her through a course of literature and history. He carried out this education with the assiduity of a lover, a father, a master, and a husband combined; but with a wise discretion he allowed neither amusements nor studies to undermine his wife’s faith. In short, he acquitted himself of his task in a masterly manner, and had the gratification of seeing his pupil, at the end of four years, one of the most charming and striking women of her time.

Marie-Angélique’s feelings towards her husband were precisely such as he wished to inspire⁠—true friendship, lively gratitude, sisterly affection, with a dash of wifely fondness on occasion, not passing the due limits of dignity and self-respect. She was a good mother to her child.

Thus Félix, without any appearance of coercion, attached his wife to himself by all possible ties, reckoning on the force of habit to keep his heaven cloudless. Only men practised in worldly arts and who have run the gamut of disillusion in politics and love, have the knowledge necessary for acting on this system. Félix found in it also the pleasure which painters, authors, and great architects take in their work, while in addition to the artistic delight in creation he had the satisfaction of contemplating the result and admiring in his wife a woman of polished but unaffected manners and an unforced wit, a maiden and a mother, modestly attractive, unfettered and yet bound.

The history of a happy household is like that of a prosperous state; it can be summed up in half a dozen words, and gives no scope for fine writing. Moreover, the only explanation of happiness is the fact that it exists, these four years present nothing but the gray wash of an eternal lovemaking, insipid as manna, and as exciting as the romance of Astraea.

In 1833, however, this edifice of happiness, so carefully put together by Félix, was on the point of falling to the ground; the foundations had been sapped without his knowledge. The fact is, the heart of a woman of five-and-twenty is not that of a girl of eighteen, any more than the heart of a woman of forty is that of one ten years younger. A woman’s life has four epochs, and each epoch creates a new woman. Vandenesse was certainly not ignorant of the laws which determine this development, induced by our modern habits, but he neglected to apply them in his own case. Thus the soundest grammarian may be caught tripping when he turns author; the greatest general on the field of battle, under stress of fire, and at the mercy of the accidents of the ground, will cast to the winds a theoretic rule of military science. The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

Four years had passed of unruffled calm, four years of tuneful concert without one jarring note. The Countess, under these influences, felt her nature expanding like a healthy plant in good soil under the warm kisses of a sun shining in unclouded azure, and she now began to question her heart. The crisis in her life, which this tale is to unfold, would be unintelligible but for some explanations which may perhaps extenuate in the eyes of women the guilt of this young Countess, happy wife and happy mother, who at first sight might seem inexcusable.

Life is the result of a balance between two opposing forces; the absence of either is injurious to the creature. Vandenesse, in piling up satisfaction, had quenched desire, that lord of the universe, at whose disposal lie vast stores of moral energy. Extreme heat, extreme suffering, unalloyed happiness, like all abstract principles, reign over a barren desert. They demand solitude, and will suffer no existence but their own. Vandenesse was not a woman, and it is women only who know the art of giving variety to a state of bliss. Hence their coquetry, their coldness, their tremors, their tempers, and that ingenious battery of unreason, by which they demolish today what yesterday they found entirely satisfactory. Constancy in a man may pall, in a woman never. Vandenesse was too thoroughly good-hearted wantonly to plague the woman he loved; the heaven into which he plunged her could not be too ardent or too cloudless. The problem of perpetual felicity is one the solution of which is reserved for another and higher world. Here below, even the most inspired of poets do not fail to bore their readers when they attempt to sing of Paradise. The rock on which Dante split was to be the ruin also of Vandenesse; all honor to a desperate courage!

His wife began at last to find so well-regulated an Eden a little monotonous. The perfect happiness of Eve in her terrestrial paradise produced in her the nausea which comes from living too much on sweets. A longing seized her, as it seized Rivarol on reading Morian, to come across some wolf in the sheepfold. This, it appears, has been the meaning in all ages of that symbolical serpent to whom the first woman made advances, some day no doubt when she was feeling bored. The moral of this may not commend itself to certain Protestants who take Genesis more seriously than the Jews themselves, but the situation of Madame de Vandenesse requires no biblical images to explain it. She was conscious of a force within, which found no exercise. She was happy, but her happiness caused her no pangs; it was placid and uneventful; she was not haunted by the dread of losing it. It arrived every morning with the same smile and sunshine, the same soft words. Not a zephyr’s breath wrinkled this calm expanse; she longed for a ripple on the glassy surface.

There was something childish in all this, which may partly excuse her; but society is no more lenient in its judgments than was the Jehovah of Genesis. The Countess was quite enough woman of the world now to know how improper these feelings were, and nothing would have induced her to confide them to her “darling husband.” This was the most impassioned epithet her innocence could devise, for it is given to no one to forge in cold blood that delicious language of hyperbole which love dictates to its victims at the stake. Vandenesse, pleased with this pretty reserve, applied his arts to keep his wife within the temperate zone of wedded fervor. Moreover, this model husband wanted to be loved for himself, and judged unworthy of an honorable man those tricks of the trade which might have imposed upon his wife or awakened her feeling. He would owe nothing to the expedients of wealth. The Comtesse Marie would smile to see a shabby turnout in the Bois, and turn her eyes complacently to her own elegant equipage and the horses which, harnessed in the English fashion, moved with very free action and kept their distance perfectly. Félix would not stoop to gather the fruit of all his labors; his lavish expenditure, and the good taste which guided it, were accepted as a matter of course by his wife, ignorant that to them she owed her perfect immunity from vexations or wounding comparisons. It was the same throughout. Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper, and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

About this period Mme. de Vandenesse was sufficiently drilled in the practices of society to abandon the insignificant part of timid supernumerary, all eyes and ears, which even Grisi is said, once on a time, to have played in the choruses of the La Scala theatre. The young Countess felt herself equal to the part of prima donna, and made some essays in it. To the great satisfaction of Félix, she began to take her share in conversation. Sharp repartees and shrewd reflections, which were the fruit of talks with her husband, brought her into notice, and this success emboldened her. Vandenesse, whose wife had always been allowed to be pretty, was charmed when she showed herself clever also. On her return from the ball or concert or rout where she had shone, Marie, as she laid aside her finery, would turn to Félix and say with a little air of prim delight, “Please, have I done well tonight?”

At this stage the Countess began to rouse jealousy in the breasts of certain women, amongst whom was the Marquise de Listomère, her husband’s sister, who hitherto had patronized Marie, looking on her as a good foil for her own charms. Poor innocent victim! A Countess with the sacred name of Marie, beautiful, witty, and good, a musician and not a flirt⁠—no wonder society whetted its teeth. Félix de Vandenesse numbered amongst his acquaintance several women who⁠—although their connection with him was broken off, whether by their own doing or his⁠—were by no means indifferent to his marriage. When these ladies saw in Marie de Vandenesse a sheepish little woman with red hands, rather silent, and to all appearance stupid also, they considered themselves sufficiently avenged.

Then came the disasters of July 1830, and for the space of two years society was broken up. Rich people spent the troubled interval on their estates or traveling in Europe; and the salons hardly reopened before 1833. The Faubourg Saint-Germain sulked, but it admitted as neutral ground a few houses, amongst others, that of the Ambassador of Austria. In these select rooms legitimist society and the new society met, represented by their most fashionable leaders. Vandenesse, though strong in his convictions and attached by a thousand ties of sympathy and gratitude to the exiled family, did not feel himself bound to follow his party in its stupid fanaticism. At a critical moment he had performed his duty at the risk of life by breasting the flood of popular fury in order to propose a compromise. He could afford therefore to take his wife into a society which could not possibly expose his good faith to suspicion.

Vandenesse’s former friends hardly recognized the young bride in the graceful, sparkling, and gentle Countess, who took her place with all the breeding of the highborn lady. Mmes. d’Espard and de Manerville, Lady Dudley, and other ladies of less distinction felt the stirring of a brood of vipers in their hearts; the dulcet moan of angry pride piped in their ears. The happiness of Félix enraged them, and they would have given a brand-new pair of shoes to do him an ill turn. In place of showing hostility to the Countess, these amiable intriguers buzzed about her with protestations of extreme friendliness and sang her praises to their male friends. Félix, who perfectly understood their little game, kept his eye upon their intercourse with Marie and warned her to be upon her guard. Divining, every one of them, the anxiety which their assiduity caused the Count, they could not pardon his suspicions. They redoubled their nattering attentions to their rival, and in this way contrived an immense success for her, to the disgust of the Marquise de Listomère, who was quite in the dark about it all. The Comtesse Félix de Vandenesse was everywhere pointed to as the most charming and brilliant woman in Paris; and Marie’s other sister-in-law, the Marquise Charles de Vandenesse, endured many mortifications from the confusion produced by the similarity of name and the comparisons to which it gave rise. For, though the Marquise was also a handsome and clever woman, the Countess had the advantage of her in being twelve years younger, a point of which her rivals did not fail to make use. They well knew what bitterness the success of the Countess would infuse into her relations with her sisters-in-law, who, indeed, were most chilling and disagreeable to Marie-Angélique in her triumph.

And so danger lurked in the family, enmity in friendship. It is well known how the literature of that day tried to overcome the indifference of the public, engrossed in the exciting political drama, by the production of more or less Byronic works, exclusively occupied with illicit love affairs. Conjugal infidelity furnished at this time the sole material of magazines, novels, and plays. This perennial theme came more than ever into fashion. The lover, that nightmare of the husband, was everywhere, except perhaps in the family circle, which saw less of him during that reign of the middle-class than at any other period. When the streets are ablaze with light and “Stop thief” is shouted from every window, it is hardly the moment robbers choose to be abroad. If, in the course of those years, so fruitful in civic, political, and moral upheavals, an occasional domestic misadventure took place, it was exceptional and attracted less notice than it would have done under the Restoration. Nevertheless, women talked freely among themselves of a subject in which both lyric and dramatic poetry then reveled. The lover, that being so rare and so bewitching, was a favorite theme. The few intrigues which came to light supplied matter for such conversation, which, then as ever, was confined to women of unexceptionable life. The repugnance to this sort of talk shown by women who have a stolen joy to conceal is indeed a noteworthy fact. They are the prudes of society, cautious, and even bashful; their attitude is one of perpetual appeal for silence or pardon. On the other hand, when a woman takes pleasure in hearing of such disasters and is curious about the temptations which lead to them, you may be sure she is halting at the crossroads, uncertain and hesitating.

During this winter the Comtesse de Vandenesse caught the distant roll of society’s thunder, and the rising storm whistled about her ears. Her so-called friends, whose reputations were under the safeguard of exalted rank and position, drew many sketches of the irresistible gallant for her benefit, and dropped into her heart burning words about love, the one solution of life for women, the master passion, according to Mme. de Staël, who did not speak without experience. When the Countess, in a friendly conclave, naively asked why a lover was so different from a husband, not one of these women failed to reply in such a way as to pique her curiosity, haunt her imagination, touch her heart, and interest her mind. They burned to see Vandenesse in trouble.

“With one’s husband, dear, one simply rubs along; with a lover it’s life,” said her sister-in-law, the Marquise de Vandenesse.

“Marriage, my child, is our purgatory, love is paradise,” said Lady Dudley.

“Don’t believe her,” cried Mlle. des Touches, “it’s hell!”

“Yes, but a hell with love in it,” observed the Marquise de Rochefide. “There may be more satisfaction in suffering than in an easy life. Look at the martyrs!”

“Little simpleton,” said the Marquise d’Espard, “in marriage, we live, so to speak, our own life; love is living in another.”

“In short, a lover is the forbidden fruit, and that’s enough for me!” laughingly spoke the pretty Moïna de Saint-Héren.

When there were no diplomatic at homes, or balls given by wealthy foreigners, such as Lady Dudley or the Princesse de Galathionne, the Countess went almost every evening after the opera to one of the few aristocratic drawing-rooms still open⁠—whether that of the Marquise d’Espard, Mme. de Listomère, Mlle. des Touches, the Comtesse de Montcornet, or the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu. Never did she leave these gatherings without some seeds of evil scattered in her soul. She heard talk about “completing her life,” an expression much in vogue then, or about being “understood,” another word to which women attach marvelous meanings. She would return home uneasy, pensive, dreamy, and curious. Her life seemed somehow impoverished, but she had not yet gone so far as to feel it entirely barren.