Louis Lambert by Honoré de Balzac (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

His society, therefore, consisted of a few individuals of what were then called liberal or patriotic, or constitutional opinions, on whom he would call for a rubber of whist or of boston.

At the first house where he was introduced by his uncle, Louis met a young lady, whose circumstances obliged her to remain in this circle, so contemned by those of the fashionable world, though her fortune was such as to make it probable that she might by and by marry into the highest aristocracy of the province. Mademoiselle Pauline de Villenoix was sole heiress to the wealth amassed by her grandfather, a Jew named Salomon, who, contrary to the customs of his nation, had, in his old age, married a Christian and a Catholic. He had only one son, who was brought up in his mother's faith. At his father's death young Salomon purchased what was known at that time as a _savonnette a vilain_ (literally _a cake of soap for a serf_), a small estate called Villenoix, which he contrived to get registered with a baronial title, and took its name. He died unmarried, but he left a natural daughter, to whom he bequeathed the greater part of his fortune, including the lands of Villenoix. He appointed one of his uncles, Monsieur Joseph Salomon, to be the girl's guardian. The old Jew was so devoted to his ward that he seemed willing to make great sacrifices for the sake of marrying her well. But Mademoiselle de Villenoix's birth, and the cherished prejudice against Jews that prevails in the provinces, would not allow of her being received in the very exclusive circle which, rightly or wrongly, considers itself noble, notwithstanding her own large fortune and her guardian's.

Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could not secure a country squire, his niece should go to Paris and make choice of a husband among the peers of France, liberal or monarchical; as to happiness, that he believed he could secure her by the terms of the marriage contract.

Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her remarkable beauty and gifts of mind were surer guarantees of happiness than those offered by money. Her features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval lines, so noble and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the ideal, and seem to speak of the joys of the East, its unchangeably blue sky, the glories of its lands, and the fabulous riches of life there. She had fine eyes, shaded by deep eyelids, fringed with thick, curled lashes. Biblical innocence sat on her brow. Her complexion was of the pure whiteness of the Levite's robe. She was habitually silent and thoughtful, but her movements and gestures betrayed a quiet grace, as her speech bore witness to a woman's sweet and loving nature. She had not, indeed, the rosy freshness, the fruit-like bloom which blush on a girl's cheek during her careless years. Darker shadows, with here and there a redder vein, took the place of color, symptomatic of an energetic temper and nervous irritability, such as many men do not like to meet with in a wife, while to others they are an indication of the most sensitive chastity and passion mingled with pride.

As soon as Louis saw Mademoiselle de Villenoix, he discerned the angel within. The richest powers of his soul, and his tendency to ecstatic reverie, every faculty within him was at once concentrated in boundless love, the first love of a young man, a passion which is strong indeed in all, but which in him was raised to incalculable power by the perennial ardor of his senses, the character of his ideas, and the manner in which he lived. This passion became a gulf, into which the hapless fellow threw everything; a gulf whither the mind dare not venture, since his, flexible and firm as it was, was lost there. There all was mysterious, for everything went on in that moral world, closed to most men, whose laws were revealed to him--perhaps to his sorrow.

When an accident threw me in the way of his uncle, the good man showed me into the room which Lambert had at that time lived in. I wanted to find some vestiges of his writings, if he should have left any. There among his papers, untouched by the old man from that fine instinct of grief that characterized the aged, I found a number of letters, too illegible ever to have been sent to Mademoiselle de Villenoix. My familiarity with Lambert's writing enabled me in time to decipher the hieroglyphics of this shorthand, the result of impatience and a frenzy of passion. Carried away by his feelings, he had written without being conscious of the irregularity of words too slow to express his thoughts. He must have been compelled to copy these chaotic attempts, for the lines often ran into each other; but he was also afraid perhaps of not having sufficiently disguised his feelings, and at first, at any rate, he had probably written his love-letters twice over.

It required all the fervency of my devotion to his memory, and the sort of fanaticism which comes of such a task, to enable me to divine and restore the meaning of the five letters that here follow. These documents, preserved by me with pious care, are the only material evidence of his overmastering passion. Mademoiselle de Villenoix had no doubt destroyed the real letters that she received, eloquent witnesses to the delirium she inspired.

The first of these papers, evidently a rough sketch, betrays by its style and by its length the many emendations, the heartfelt alarms, the innumerable terrors caused by a desire to please; the changes of expression and the hesitation between the whirl of ideas that beset a man as he indites his first love-letter--a letter he never will forget, each line the result of a reverie, each word the subject of long cogitation, while the most unbridled passion known to man feels the necessity of the most reserved utterance, and like a giant stooping to enter a hovel, speaks humbly and low, so as not to alarm a girl's soul.

No antiquary ever handled his palimpsests with greater respect than I showed in reconstructing these mutilated documents of such joy and suffering as must always be sacred to those who have known similar joy and grief.

I

"Mademoiselle, when you have read this letter, if you ever should
read it, my life will be in your hands, for I love you; and to me,
the hope of being loved is life. Others, perhaps, ere now, have,
in speaking of themselves, misused the words I must employ to
depict the state of my soul; yet, I beseech you to believe in the
truth of my expressions; though weak, they are sincere. Perhaps I
ought not thus to proclaim my love. Indeed, my heart counseled me
to wait in silence till my passion should touch you, that I might
the better conceal it if its silent demonstrations should
displease you; or till I could express it even more delicately
than in words if I found favor in your eyes. However, after having
listened for long to the coy fears that fill a youthful heart with
alarms, I write in obedience to the instinct which drags useless
lamentations from the dying.

"It has needed all my courage to silence the pride of poverty, and
to overleap the barriers which prejudice erects between you and
me. I have had to smother many reflections to love you in spite of
your wealth; and as I write to you, am I not in danger of the
scorn which women often reserve for profession of love, which they
accept only as one more tribute of flattery? But we cannot help
rushing with all our might towards happiness, or being attracted
to the life of love as a plant is to the light; we must have been
very unhappy before we can conquer the torment, the anguish of
those secret deliberations when reason proves to us by a thousand
arguments how barren our yearning must be if it remains buried in
our hearts, and when hopes bid us dare everything.

"I was happy when I admired you in silence; I was so lost in the
contemplation of your beautiful soul, that only to see you left me
hardly anything further to imagine. And I should not now have
dared to address you if I had not heard that you were leaving.
What misery has that one word brought upon me! Indeed, it is my
despair that has shown me the extent of my attachment--it is
unbounded. Mademoiselle, you will never know--at least, I hope you
may never know--the anguish of dreading lest you should lose the
only happiness that has dawned on you on earth, the only thing
that has thrown a gleam of light in the darkness of misery. I
understood yesterday that my life was no more in myself, but in
you. There is but one woman in the world for me, as there is but
one thought in my soul. I dare not tell you to what a state I am
reduced by my love for you. I would have you only as a gift from
yourself; I must therefore avoid showing myself to you in all the
attractiveness of dejection--for is it not often more impressive
to a noble soul than that of good fortune? There are many things I
may not tell you. Indeed, I have too lofty a notion of love to
taint it with ideas that are alien to its nature. If my soul is
worthy of yours, and my life pure, your heart will have a
sympathetic insight, and you will understand me!

"It is the fate of man to offer himself to the woman who can make
him believe in happiness; but it is your prerogative to reject the
truest passion if it is not in harmony with the vague voices in
your heart--that I know. If my lot, as decided by you, must be
adverse to my hopes, mademoiselle, let me appeal to the delicacy
of your maiden soul and the ingenuous compassion of a woman to
burn my letter. On my knees I beseech you to forget all! Do not
mock at a feeling that is wholly respectful, and that is too
deeply graven on my heart ever to be effaced. Break my heart, but
do not rend it! Let the expression of my first love, a pure and
youthful love, be lost in your pure and youthful heart! Let it die
there as a prayer rises up to die in the bosom of God!

"I owe you much gratitude: I have spent delicious hours occupied
in watching you, and giving myself up to the faint dreams of my
life; do not crush these long but transient joys by some girlish
irony. Be satisfied not to answer me. I shall know how to
interpret your silence; you will see me no more. If I must be