So I was obliged to pass the night alone, and separate like that after the scenes of the evening! Ah! that was a very gloomy housewarming in our new apartment.
XIII
EUGÉNIE AND MARGUERITE
After passing several weeks without speaking to each other, my wife and I came together again and became reconciled; but it seemed to me that the reconciliation was not very sincere, that it was simply a sort of smoothing over. Had these frequent scenes diminished our love? No, I still loved my wife; but when often repeated, disputes sour the temper and change the disposition. The words that people say to each other in passion, although forgotten afterward, deal a fatal blow to our illusions, and they never grow again.
We went again to Livry, to our daughter’s nurse, on a superb day in June. How little that excursion resembled the other! we had no dispute, but the tranquillity which reigned between us was like that which ordinarily follows twenty years of married life; and we returned home without driving our horse to the edge of a ditch.
A very sad event marked the first months of our life in our new home: Eugénie lost her mother. Dear Madame Dumeillan was taken from us after a short illness, when we had every reason to hope that we might long enjoy her presence and her affection. I felt the loss almost as keenly as my wife, for Madame Dumeillan was our best friend. Careful not to take part in our disputes, pretending not to notice them, Madame Dumeillan, without blaming either of us, had the art of bringing us together again, and of reviving the most affectionate sentiments in our hearts. Whenever Eugénie had been to see her mother, I knew it at once, because she was more amiable with me. Ah! how seldom do we see parents who long for our happiness without trying to govern our conduct, our actions; and without fatiguing us with their advice! The loss we had sustained was irreparable; one does not meet twice in one’s life people who love us for ourselves alone and who do not impose a thousand obligations on us as the price of their affection.
Eugénie’s sorrow was very deep and very keen. To divert her, I took her into society. We went to evening parties, to the theatre, to concerts; we received company at our house more frequently. The commotion of society does not altogether enable one to forget one’s loss, but it gives one employment and distraction. There are sorrows with which one loves to withdraw into oneself; there are others which compel us to shun ourselves, and in which reflection is deadly.
We brought our daughter home. Her presence helped to divert my wife’s thoughts from her grief. The sight of her Henriette, her caresses, her first words, unintelligible to anybody but ourselves, enabled Eugénie at last to endure the loss she had sustained. A woman is a daughter before she is a mother, but she is a mother much longer than she has been a daughter; and in our hearts affection does not look backward, it inclines rather toward the later generation.
Madame Dumeillan’s death made my wife richer than I by four thousand francs a year. I did not envy her her wealth, but I regretted that my children should owe more to their mother than to me. That thought led me to work much harder; I passed a large part of my time in my study and at the Palais. We saw each other less frequently; was that the reason that we agreed better? I hoped that that circumstance was not accountable for it. I was always glad to return to Eugénie and I was very happy when I held my daughter in my arms. My little Henriette was so pretty! she seemed already very bright and intelligent to me, and I was disposed to spoil her, to do whatever she wished; but my wife was more strict than I.
We saw my mother, but only very seldom; she considered that we played whist badly at our house. The Girauds came sometimes to see us; they were still busily engaged in negotiating marriages. I gave myself the pleasure of having them, with Bélan and his wife, at my house. There was a rattling discharge of epigrams on the part of Giraud. The superb Armide did not seem to notice them, and as for Bélan, he entrenched himself behind his wife, whose servant he seemed to be, and to whom he never spoke without bowing.
In the large parties, the boisterous entertainments which we frequently attended, there were some pretty married women, and some exceedingly pretty unmarried ones. I will frankly confess that I sometimes surprised myself, oblivious of the fact that I was married, making eyes at the ladies and paying court to the young women; the latter did not respond to my glances; the fact that I was a married man prevented them from taking any notice of me; but it was not always the same with the others. Those periods of forgetfulness, however, lasted only for an instant; then I was greatly surprised to find that I had been behaving like a bachelor. There is no great harm in casting a soft glance at another woman than one’s wife; but if Eugénie had done as much, if she had cast such a glance at a man, I should have considered it very wrong. Surely I did not regret that I was married; why then did I behave sometimes in society as if I were not? But that apparent frivolity was due to my disposition and not to my heart. I do not consider that because a man is married he must necessarily behave like an owl, and never dare to laugh and jest except with his wife; in that case marriage would be too heavy a chain.