Then came the disasters of July 1830, and for the space of two years society was broken up. Rich people spent the troubled interval on their estates or traveling in Europe; and the salons hardly reopened before 1833. The Faubourg Saint-Germain sulked, but it admitted as neutral ground a few houses, amongst others, that of the Ambassador of Austria. In these select rooms legitimist society and the new society met, represented by their most fashionable leaders. Vandenesse, though strong in his convictions and attached by a thousand ties of sympathy and gratitude to the exiled family, did not feel himself bound to follow his party in its stupid fanaticism. At a critical moment he had performed his duty at the risk of life by breasting the flood of popular fury in order to propose a compromise. He could afford therefore to take his wife into a society which could not possibly expose his good faith to suspicion.
Vandenesse’s former friends hardly recognized the young bride in the graceful, sparkling, and gentle Countess, who took her place with all the breeding of the highborn lady. Mmes. d’Espard and de Manerville, Lady Dudley, and other ladies of less distinction felt the stirring of a brood of vipers in their hearts; the dulcet moan of angry pride piped in their ears. The happiness of Félix enraged them, and they would have given a brand-new pair of shoes to do him an ill turn. In place of showing hostility to the Countess, these amiable intriguers buzzed about her with protestations of extreme friendliness and sang her praises to their male friends. Félix, who perfectly understood their little game, kept his eye upon their intercourse with Marie and warned her to be upon her guard. Divining, every one of them, the anxiety which their assiduity caused the Count, they could not pardon his suspicions. They redoubled their nattering attentions to their rival, and in this way contrived an immense success for her, to the disgust of the Marquise de Listomère, who was quite in the dark about it all. The Comtesse Félix de Vandenesse was everywhere pointed to as the most charming and brilliant woman in Paris; and Marie’s other sister-in-law, the Marquise Charles de Vandenesse, endured many mortifications from the confusion produced by the similarity of name and the comparisons to which it gave rise. For, though the Marquise was also a handsome and clever woman, the Countess had the advantage of her in being twelve years younger, a point of which her rivals did not fail to make use. They well knew what bitterness the success of the Countess would infuse into her relations with her sisters-in-law, who, indeed, were most chilling and disagreeable to Marie-Angélique in her triumph.
And so danger lurked in the family, enmity in friendship. It is well known how the literature of that day tried to overcome the indifference of the public, engrossed in the exciting political drama, by the production of more or less Byronic works, exclusively occupied with illicit love affairs. Conjugal infidelity furnished at this time the sole material of magazines, novels, and plays. This perennial theme came more than ever into fashion. The lover, that nightmare of the husband, was everywhere, except perhaps in the family circle, which saw less of him during that reign of the middle-class than at any other period. When the streets are ablaze with light and “Stop thief” is shouted from every window, it is hardly the moment robbers choose to be abroad. If, in the course of those years, so fruitful in civic, political, and moral upheavals, an occasional domestic misadventure took place, it was exceptional and attracted less notice than it would have done under the Restoration. Nevertheless, women talked freely among themselves of a subject in which both lyric and dramatic poetry then reveled. The lover, that being so rare and so bewitching, was a favorite theme. The few intrigues which came to light supplied matter for such conversation, which, then as ever, was confined to women of unexceptionable life. The repugnance to this sort of talk shown by women who have a stolen joy to conceal is indeed a noteworthy fact. They are the prudes of society, cautious, and even bashful; their attitude is one of perpetual appeal for silence or pardon. On the other hand, when a woman takes pleasure in hearing of such disasters and is curious about the temptations which lead to them, you may be sure she is halting at the crossroads, uncertain and hesitating.
During this winter the Comtesse de Vandenesse caught the distant roll of society’s thunder, and the rising storm whistled about her ears. Her so-called friends, whose reputations were under the safeguard of exalted rank and position, drew many sketches of the irresistible gallant for her benefit, and dropped into her heart burning words about love, the one solution of life for women, the master passion, according to Mme. de Staël, who did not speak without experience. When the Countess, in a friendly conclave, naively asked why a lover was so different from a husband, not one of these women failed to reply in such a way as to pique her curiosity, haunt her imagination, touch her heart, and interest her mind. They burned to see Vandenesse in trouble.
“With one’s husband, dear, one simply rubs along; with a lover it’s life,” said her sister-in-law, the Marquise de Vandenesse.
“Marriage, my child, is our purgatory, love is paradise,” said Lady Dudley.
“Don’t believe her,” cried Mlle. des Touches, “it’s hell!”
“Yes, but a hell with love in it,” observed the Marquise de Rochefide. “There may be more satisfaction in suffering than in an easy life. Look at the martyrs!”
“Little simpleton,” said the Marquise d’Espard, “in marriage, we live, so to speak, our own life; love is living in another.”
“In short, a lover is the forbidden fruit, and that’s enough for me!” laughingly spoke the pretty Moïna de
