This constancy in pride's revenge is not met, I think, except in the countries of the South.
In Piedmont I happened to be the involuntary witness of something very nearly parallel; though at the time I did not know the details. I was sent with twenty-five dragoons into the woods along the Sesia, to intercept contraband. Arriving in the evening at this wild and desolate spot, I caught sight between the trees of the ruins of an old castle. I went up to it and to my great surprise—it was inhabited. I found within a nobleman of the country, of sinister appearance, a man six foot high and forty years old. He gave me two rooms with a bad grace. I passed my time playing music with my quartermaster; after some days, we discovered that our friend kept a woman in the background, whom we used to call Camille, laughingly; but we were far from suspecting the fearful truth. Six weeks later she was dead. I had the morbid curiosity to see her in the coffin, paying a monk, who was watching, to introduce me into the chapel towards midnight, under pretext of going to sprinkle holy water. There I found one of those superb faces, which are beautiful even in the arms of death; she had a large aquiline nose—the nobility and delicacy of its outline I shall never forget. Then I left that deadly spot. Five years later, a detachment of my regiment accompanying the Emperor to his coronation as King of Italy[(15)], I had the whole story told me. I learnt that the jealous husband, Count ——, had found one morning fastened to his wife's bed an English watch, belonging to a young man of the small town in which they lived. That very day he carried her off to the ruined castle in the midst of the woods of the Sesia. Like Nello della Pietra, he never uttered a single word. If she made him any request, he coldly and silently presented to her the English watch, which he carried always with him. Almost three years passed, spent thus alone with her. At last she died of despair, in the flower of life. Her husband tried to put a knife into the proprietor of the watch, missed him, passed on to Genoa, took ship and no one has heard of him since. His property has been divided.
As for these women with feminine pride, if you take their injuries with a good grace, which the habits of a military life make easy, you annoy these proud souls; they take you for a coward, and very soon become outrageous. Such lofty characters yield with pleasure to men whom they see overbearing with other men. That is, I fancy, the only way—you must often pick a quarrel with your neighbour in order to avoid one with your mistress.
One day Miss Cornel, the celebrated London actress, was surprised by the unexpected appearance of the rich colonel, whom she found useful. She happened to be with a little lover, whom she just liked—and nothing more. "Mr. So-and-so," says she in great confusion to the colonel, "has come to see the pony I want to sell." "I am here for something very different," put in proudly the little lover who was beginning to bore her, but whom, from the moment of that answer, she started to love again madly.[5] Women of that kind sympathise with their lover's haughtiness, instead of exercising at his expense their own disposition to pride.
The character of the Duc de Lauzun (that of 1660[6]), if they can forgive the first day its want of grace, is very fascinating for such women, and perhaps for all women of distinction. Grandeur on a higher plane escapes them; they take for coldness the calm gaze which nothing escapes, but which a detail never disturbs. Have I not heard women at the Court of Saint-Cloud maintain that Napoleon had a dry and prosaic character?[7] A great man is like an eagle: the higher he rises the less he is visible, and he is punished for his greatness by the solitude of his soul.
From feminine pride arises what women call want of refinement. I fancy, it is not at all unlike what kings call lèse majesté, a crime all the more dangerous, because one slips into it without knowing. The tenderest lover may be accused of wanting refinement, if he is not very sharp, or, what is sadder, if he dares give himself up to the greatest charm of love—the delight of being perfectly natural with the loved one and of not listening to what he is told.
These are the sort of things, of which a well-born heart could have no inkling; one must have experience, in order to believe in them; for we are misled by the habit of dealing justly and frankly with our men friends.
It is necessary to keep in mind incessantly that we have to do with beings, who can, however wrongly, think themselves inferior in vigour of character, or, to put it better, can think that others believe they are inferior.
Should not a woman's true pride reside in the power of the feeling she inspires? A maid of honour to the queen and wife of Francis I was chaffed about the fickleness of her lover, who, it was said, did not really love her. A little time after, this lover had an illness and reappeared at Court—dumb. Two years later, people showing surprise one day that she still loved him, she turned to him, saying: "Speak." And he spoke.
[1] The Heart of Midlothian.