第84章 A DEATH: A MARRIAGE(3)

Who can relate a honeymoon, unless it be the bride? How many women reading this history will admit to themselves that this period of uncertain duration is the forecast of conjugal life? The first three letters of Sabine to her mother will depict a situation not surprising to some young brides and to many old women. All those who find themselves the sick-nurses, so to speak, of a husband's heart, do not, as Sabine did, discover this at once. But young girls of the faubourg Saint-Germain, if intelligent, are women in mind. Before marriage, they have received from their mothers and the world they live in the baptism of good manners; though women of rank, anxious to hand down their traditions, do not always see the bearing of their own lessons when they say to their daughters: "That is a motion that must not be made;" "Never laugh at such things;" "No lady ever flings herself on a sofa; she sits down quietly;" "Pray give up such detestable ways;" "My dear, that is a thing which is never done," etc.

Many bourgeois critics unjustly deny the innocence and virtue of young girls who, like Sabine, are truly virgin at heart, improved by the training of their minds, by the habit of noble bearing, by natural good taste, while, from the age of sixteen, they have learned how to use their opera-glasses. Sabine was a girl of this school, which was also that of Mademoiselle de Chaulieu. This inborn sense of the fitness of things, these gifts of race made Sabine de Grandlieu as interesting a young woman as the heroine of the "Memoirs of two young Married Women." Her letters to her mother during the honeymoon, of which we here give three or four, will show the qualities of her mind and temperament.

Guerande, April, 1838.

To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu:

Dear Mamma,--You will understand why I did not write to you during the journey,--our wits are then like wheels. Here I am, for the last two days, in the depths of Brittany, at the hotel du Guenic, --a house as covered with carving as a sandal-wood box. In spite of the affectionate devotion of Calyste's family, I feel a keen desire to fly to you, to tell you many things which can only be trusted to a mother.

Calyste married, dear mamma, with a great sorrow in his heart. We all knew that, and you did not hide from me the difficulties of my position; but alas! they are greater than you thought. Ah! my dear mother, what experience we acquire in the short space of a few days--I might even say a few hours! All your counsels have proved fruitless; you will see why from one sentence: I love Calyste as if he were not my husband,--that is to say, if I were married to another, and were travelling with Calyste, I should love Calyste and hate my husband.

Now think of a man beloved so completely, involuntarily, absolutely, and all the other adverbs you may choose to employ, and you will see that my servitude is established in spite of your good advice. You told me to be grand, noble, dignified, and self-respecting in order to obtain from Calyste the feelings that are never subject to the chances and changes of life,--esteem, honor, and the consideration which sanctifies a woman in the bosom of her family. I remember how you blamed, I dare say justly, the young women of the present day, who, under pretext of living happily with their husbands, begin by compliance, flattery, familiarity, an abandonment, you called it, a little too wanton (a word I did not fully understand), all of which, if I must believe you, are relays that lead rapidly to indifference and possibly to contempt.

"Remember that you are a Grandlieu!" yes, I remember that you told me all that--But oh! that advice, filled with the maternal eloquence of a female Daedelus has had the fate of all things mythological. Dear, beloved mother, could you ever have supposed it possible that Ishould begin by the catastrophe which, according to you, ends the honeymoon of the young women of the present day?

When Calyste and I were fairly alone in the travelling carriage, we felt rather foolish in each other's company, understanding the importance of the first word, the first look; and we both, bewildered by the solemnity, looked out of our respective windows.

It became so ridiculous that when we reached the barrier monsieur began, in a rather troubled tone of voice, a set discourse, prepared, no doubt, like other improvisations, to which I listened with a beating heart, and which I take the liberty of here abridging.

"My dear Sabine," he said, "I want you to be happy, and, above all, do I wish you to be happy in your own way. Therefore, in the situation in which we are, instead of deceiving ourselves mutually about our characters and our feelings by noble compliances, let us endeavor to be to each other at once what we should be years hence. Think always that you have a friend and a brother in me, as I shall feel I have a sister and a friend in you."Though it was all said with the utmost delicacy, I found nothing in this first conjugal love-speech which responded to the feelings in my soul, and I remained pensive after replying that I was animated by the same sentiments. After this declaration of our rights to mutual coldness, we talked of weather, relays, and scenery in the most charming manner,--I with rather a forced little laugh, he absent-mindedly.