“What? What? You are going to marry me in that way! You have promised my hand to that man, who is double my age? I won’t have him, I won’t have him!”
“Juliette, you are absurd. We shall never find another such opportunity at Chauny, far from all Parisian acquaintances. He is sent to us by Providence. Besides, he is very good-looking. He resembles one of my heroes in Balzac, feature by feature. You shall see.”
And she went to get one of her favourite novels, which she knew nearly by heart, and read me several passages from it, which I have always remembered.
I took grandfather and Blondeau to witness the folly of my grandmother’s plan. It was useless. It was already too late. Early in the morning she had persuaded them, if not of the happiness I should find in this marriage, at least of the possibility of my living in Paris and “conquering celebrity” there.
My father and mother, who had been sent for, arrived a few days later. My father was in an extraordinary state of excitement. The coup d’état which he had foreseen had taken place.
My mother at once declared that she shared grandmother’s views regarding my marriage. My father flew into one of his rages. He said, in a loud voice, that he would never consent to the union of his only daughter with “an old man”—that was to say, a husband double the age of his wife. He raved, he overstepped all bounds in his objections, and finally left the drawing-room, swearing at and insulting everybody. He reappeared a few moments later, and, half-opening the door, called me, took me in his arms, after having wrapped me up in a shawl of my mother’s, bore me to his carriage, standing outside, and, whipping his horse, carried me off, while my mother and grandmother, screaming in the street, ordered him to leave me.
He was literally mad, and spoke in violent terms against Monsieur Lamessine, telling me things of which I had never heard about the life of “an old bachelor.”
However, the evening I passed alone with my father at Blérancourt touched my heart more than I can describe. He depicted the despair of a father who adored his daughter, who had scarcely ever had her to himself, and who was urged to give her, still a child, to an unworthy man. Tears ran down his face. He told me how unhappy he was, and related his whole life to me.
“The more I have loved, the more have I been crushed by what I loved,” he said. “At first, crushed in my faith, then in my affection for my wife, my first, my only love, crushed by friendship, deceived by my best friend, Doctor Bernhardt, for whom I abandoned everything, my small means, my happiness, and my child; am I now to be crushed in my affection for my idolised daughter, just at the moment when my love for the Republic and liberty is betrayed?”
Terror had reigned for several days. All the heads of the party of liberty were exiled. Twenty-six thousand were sent out of the country; the republican leaders were despatched to Noukahiva; their soldiers could not reassemble.