Some sixty years before Marin Plessis' union with Marie Deshayes, there lived in the neighbourhood of Evreux a spinster lady of good descent, though not very well provided with worldly goods. She was comely and sweet-tempered enough, but then, as now, comeliness and a sweet temper do not count for much in the French matrimonial market, and least of all in the provincial one. Owing to the modesty of her marriage portion, she had no suitors for her hand, and, being of an exceedingly amorous disposition, she bestowed her affection where she could, "without regret, and without false shame," as the old French chronicler has it.
The annals of the village—for, curiously enough, these annals do exist, though only in manuscripts—are commendably reticent about the exact number and names of her lovers. It would seem that the author, a contemporary of Mdlle. Anne du Mesnil d'Argentelles and the great-grandfather of the present possessor of the notes, a gentleman near Bernay, was divided between the wish of not being too hard upon his neighbour, who was, after all, a gentle-woman, and the desire to leave a record of a peculiar phase of the country manners of those days to posterity. Be this as it may, Mdlle. d'Argentelles' swains, previous to the very last one, have been doomed to anonymous obscurity. But with the advent of Étienne Deshayes, the annalist becomes less reticent, he is considered worthy of being mentioned in full, perhaps as a reward for having finally "made an honest woman" of his inamorata. For that is the final upshot of the love-story between him and Mdlle. d'Argentelles, which, in its earlier stages, bears a certain resemblance to that between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Madame de Warens, with this difference—that the Normand Jean-Jacques is considerably older than his mistress.
The children born of this marriage were very numerous. One of them, Louis-Deshayes, married a handsome peasant girl, Marie-Madeleine Marra, who appears to have been somewhat too intimate with a neighbouring squire, but who gave birth a few years after to a daughter, of whose paternity there could not be the smallest doubt, seeing that she grew up into a speaking likeness of her maternal grandmother, the erstwhile Mdlle. Anne du Mesnil d'Argentelles. Fate ought to have had a better lot in store for beautiful Marie Deshayes than a marriage with a poor pedlar like Marin Plessis; but the latter was very handsome, and, notwithstanding the opposition of the family, she became his wife. On the 15th of January, 1824, the child which was to be immortalized as "La Dame aux Camélias" saw the light, in a small village in Lower Normandy.—Editor.
[20] Curiously enough, he belonged to the same department, and died almost on the very spot where Marin Plessis was born.—Editor.
[21] An imitation of the line of Don Carlos in Hugo's "Hernani": "Empereur!... au refus de Frédéric-le-Sage!"—Editor.
[22] It shows that Lireux was not very familiar with the royal edicts affecting that order, and that Balzac himself exaggerated the social and monetary importance of its wearers. For, though Louis-Philippe at his accession suppressed the order, not less than twelve thousand new knights had been created by his two immediate predecessors. They, the recently created knights, were allowed to retain their honours and pensions; but, even before the fall of the Bourbons, the distinction had lost much of its prestige. After the Battle of Navarino, Admiral de Rigny, soliciting rewards for his officers who had distinguished themselves, tacitly ignored the order of Saint-Louis in favour of that of the Legion of Honour. The order, as founded by Louis XIV. in 1693, was only available to officers and Catholics. Several modifications were introduced afterwards in its statutes. The Order of Saint-Louis and that of "Military Merit" were the only two recognized by the Constituent Assembly of 1789; but the Convention suppressed the former, only leaving the latter.—Editor.
[23] The play upon the word is scarcely translatable. "Contre-maître" in the singular means foreman; as it is used here it means against the master.—Editor.
[24] Régnier's nose was always a subject of jokes among his fellow-actors. "It is not because it is large," said Beauvallet, "but because it is his principal organ of speech."—Editor.
[25] Damages claimed by one of the parties, pending the final verdict.—Editor.
[26] Curiously enough, it was Émile Augier's "Aventurière" that caused Mdlle. Plessy's secession, just as it did thirty-five years later, in the case of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt.—Editor.