A Prince of Bohemia

by Honoré de Balzac

“In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these affairs. La Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; but, at the same time, none of us saw her, nor so much as knew her name. For us Claudine was almost a mythical personage. All of us acted in the same way, reconciling the requirements of our common life with the rules of good taste. Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Empress, the Spaniard, the Lioness,—these were cryptic titles which permitted us to pour out our joys, our cares, vexations, and hopes, and to communicate our discoveries. Further, none of us went. It has been shown, in Bohemia, that chance discovered the identity of the fair unknown; and at once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of her again. This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know the limit line where jest must end, and all that host of things French covered by the slang word blague, a word which will shortly be cast out of the language (let us hope), and yet it is the only one which conveys an idea of the spirit of Bohemia.

“So we often used to joke about Claudine and the Count—‘Toujours Claudine?’ sung to the air of Toujours Gessle.—‘What are you making of Claudine?’—‘How is Claudine?’

“‘I wish you all such a mistress, for all the harm I wish you,’ La Palferine began one day. ‘No greyhound, no basset-dog, no poodle can match her in gentleness, submissiveness, and complete tenderness. There are times when I reproach myself, when I take myself to task for my hard heart. Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me, I tell her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she is out in the courtyard. I refuse to see her for a whole week at a time. I tell her to come at such an hour on Tuesday; and be it midnight or six o’clock in the morning, ten o’clock, five o’clock, breakfast time, dinner time, bed time, any particularly inconvenient hour in the day—she will come, punctual to the minute, beautiful, beautifully dressed, and enchanting. And she is a married woman, with all the complications and duties of a household. The fibs that she must invent, the reasons she must find for conforming to my whims would tax the ingenuity of some of us!... Claudine never wearies; you can always count upon her. It is not love, I tell her, it is infatuation. She writes to me every day; I do not read her letters; she found that out, but still she writes. See here; there are two hundred letters in this casket. She begs me to wipe my razors on one of her letters every day, and I punctually do so. She thinks, and rightly, that the sight of her handwriting will put me in mind of her.’

“La Palferine was dressing as he told us this. I took up the letter which he was about to put to this use, read it, and kept it, as he did not ask to have it back. Here it is. I looked for it, and found it as I promised.

“Monday (Midnight).

“‘Well, my dear, are you satisfied with me? I did not even ask
for your hand, yet you might easily have given it to me, and I
longed so much to hold it to my heart, to my lips. No, I did not
ask, I am so afraid of displeasing you. Do you know one thing?
Though I am cruelly sure that anything I do is a matter of perfect
indifference to you, I am none the less extremely timid in my
conduct: the woman that belongs to you, whatever her title to call
herself yours, must not incur so much as the shadow of blame. In
so far as love comes from the angels in heaven, from whom are no
secrets hid, my love is as pure as the purest; wherever I am I
feel that I am in your presence, and I try to do you honor.
“‘All that you said about my manner of dress impressed me very
much; I began to understand how far above others are those that
come of a noble race. There was still something of the opera girl
in my gowns, in my way of dressing my hair. In a moment I saw the
distance between me and good taste. Next time you will receive a
duchess, you shall not know me again! Ah! how good you have been
to your Claudine! How many and many a time I have thanked you for
telling me those things! What interest lay in those few words! You
have taken thought for that thing belonging to you called
Claudine? This imbecile would never have opened my eyes; he
thinks that everything I do is right; and besides, he is much too
humdrum, too matter-of-fact to have any feeling for the beautiful.
“‘Tuesday is very slow of coming for my impatient mind! On
Tuesday I shall be with you for several hours. Ah! when it comes I
will try to think that the hours are months, that it will be so
always. I am living in hope of that morning now, as I shall live
upon the memory of it afterwards. Hope is memory that craves; and
recollection, memory sated. What a beautiful life within life
thought makes for us in this way!
“‘Sometimes I dream of inventing new ways of tenderness all my
own, a secret which no other woman shall guess. A cold sweat
breaks out over me at the thought that something may happen to
prevent this morning. Oh, I would break with him for good, if
need was, but nothing here could possibly interfere; it would be
from your side. Perhaps you may decide to go out, perhaps to go to
see some other woman. Oh! spare me this Tuesday for pity’s sake.
If you take it from me, Charles, you do not know what he will
suffer; I should drive him wild. But even if you do not want me,
or you are going out, let me come, all the same, to be with you
while you dress; only to see you, I ask no more than that; only to
show you that I love you without a thought of self.
“‘Since you gave me leave to love you, for you gave me leave,
since I am yours; since that day I loved and love you with the
whole strength of my soul; and I shall love you for ever, for once
having loved you, no one could, no one ought to love another.
And, you see, when those eyes that ask nothing but to see you are
upon you, you will feel that in your Claudine there is a something
divine, called into existence by you.
“‘Alas! with you I can never play the coquette. I am like a
mother with her child; I endure anything from you; I, that was
once so imperious and proud. I have made dukes and princes fetch
and carry for me; aides-de-camp, worth more than all the court of
Charles X. put together, have done my errands, yet I am treating
you as my spoilt child. But where is the use of coquetry? It would
be pure waste. And yet, monsieur, for want of coquetry I shall
never inspire love in you. I know it; I feel it; yet I do as
before, feeling a power that I cannot withstand, thinking that
this utter self-surrender will win me the sentiment innate in all
men (so he tells me) for the thing that belongs to them.

“Wednesday.

“‘Ah! how darkly sadness entered my heart yesterday when I found
that I must give up the joy of seeing you. One single thought held
me back from the arms of Death!—It was thy will! To stay away was
to do thy will, to obey an order from thee. Oh! Charles, I was so
pretty; I looked a lovelier woman for you than that beautiful
German princess whom you gave me for an example, whom I have
studied at the Opera. And yet—you might have thought that I had
overstepped the limits of my nature. You have left me no
confidence in myself; perhaps I am plain after all. Oh! I loathe
myself, I dream of my radiant Charles Edward, and my brain turns.
I shall go mad, I know I shall. Do not laugh, do not talk to me of
the fickleness of women. If we are inconstant, you are strangely
capricious. You take away the hours of love that made a poor
creature’s happiness for ten whole days; the hours on which she
drew to be charming and kind to all that came to see her! After
all, you were the source of my kindness to him; you do not know
what pain you give him. I wonder what I must do to keep you, or
simply to keep the right to be yours sometimes.... When I think
that you never would come here to me!... With what delicious
emotion I would wait upon you!—There are other women more favored
than I. There are women to whom you say, ‘I love you.’ To me you
have never said more than ‘You are a good girl.’ Certain speeches
of yours, though you do not know it, gnaw at my heart. Clever men
sometimes ask me what I am thinking.... I am thinking of my
self-abasement—the prostration of the poorest outcast in the
presence of the Saviour.

“There are still three more pages, you see. La Palferine allowed me to take the letter, with the traces of tears that still seemed hot upon it! Here was proof of the truth of his story. Marcas, a shy man enough with women, was in ecstacies over a second which he read in his corner before lighting his pipe with it.

“‘Why, any woman in love will write that sort of thing!’ cried La Palferine. ‘Love gives all women intelligence and style, which proves that here in France style proceeds from the matter and not from the words. See now how well this is thought out, how clear-headed sentiment is’—and with that he reads us another letter, far superior to the artificial and labored productions which we novelists write.