In 1817 this enchanting woman threw open her house to artists, famous authors, learned men, and journalists, the men to whom she was instinctively attracted. She had a drawing-room like that of Baron Gerard, where the aristocracy mingled with distinguished talents and the cream of Parisian womanhood. Mademoiselle des Touches’ family connections and her fine fortune, now augmented by that of her aunt the nun, protected her in her undertaking—a difficult one in Paris—of forming a circle. Her independence was one cause of her success. Many ambitious mothers dreamed of getting her to marry a son whose wealth was disproportioned to the splendor of his armorial bearings. Certain peers of Prance, attracted by her eighty thousand francs a year and tempted by her splendid house and establishment, brought the strictest and most fastidious ladies of their family. The diplomatic world, on the lookout for wit and amusement, came and found pleasure there.
Thus Mademoiselle des Touches, the centre of so many interests, could study the different comedies which all men, even the most distinguished, are led to play by passion, avarice, or ambition. She soon saw the world as it really is, and was so fortunate as not to fall at once into such an absorbing love as engrosses a woman’s intellect and faculties, and prevents her wholesome judgment. Generally a woman feels, enjoys, and judges, each in turn; hence three ages, the last coinciding with the sad period of old age. To Félicité the order was reversed. Her youth was shrouded in the snows of science, the chill of thoughtfulness. This transposition also explains the oddity of her life and the character of her talents. She was studying men at the age when most women see but one; she despised what they admire; she detected falsehood in the flatteries they accept as truth; she laughed at what makes them serious.
This contradictory state lasted a long time; it had a disastrous termination; it was her fate to find her first love, newborn and tender in her heart, at an age when women are required by nature to renounce love. Her first liaison was kept so secret that no one ever knew of it. Félicité, like all women who believe in the commonsense of their feelings, was led to count on finding a beautiful soul in a beautiful body; she fell in love with a face, and discovered all the foolishness of a lady’s man, who thought of her merely as a woman. It took her some time to get over her disgust and this mad connection. Another man guessed her trouble, and consoled her without looking for any return, or at any rate he concealed his purpose. Félicité thought she had found the magnanimity of heart and mind that the dandy had lacked. This man had one of the most original intellects of the day. He himself wrote under a pseudonym, and his first works revealed him as an admirer of Italy. Félicité must needs travel or perpetuate the only form of ignorance in which she remained. This man, a sceptic and a scoffer, took Félicité to study the land of Art. This famous “Anonymous” may be regarded as Camille Maupin’s teacher and creator. He reduced her vast information to order, he added to it a knowledge of the masterpieces of which Italy is full, and gave her that subtle and ingenious one, epigrammatic and yet deep, which is characteristic of his talent—always a little eccentric in its expression—but modified in Camille Maupin by the delicate feeling and the ingenious turn natural to women; he inoculated her with a taste for the works of English and German literature, and made her learn the two languages while traveling.
At Rome, in 1820, Mademoiselle des Touches found herself deserted for an Italian. But for this disaster she might never have become famous. Napoleon said that Misfortune was midwife to Genius. This event gave Mademoiselle des Touches at once and forever the scorn of mankind which is her great strength. Félicité was dead and Camille was born.
She returned to Paris in the company of Conti, the great musician, for whom she wrote the libretti of two operas; but she had no illusions left, and became, though the world did not know it, a sort of female Don Juan—without either debts or conquests. Encouraged by success, she published the two volumes of dramas which immediately placed Camille Maupin among the anonymous celebrities. She told the story of her betrayed love in an admirable little romance, one of the masterpieces of the time. This book, a dangerous example, was compared, and on the level, with Adolphe, a horrible lament, of which the counterpart was found in Camille’s tale. The delicate nature of her literary disguise is not yet fully understood; some refined intelligences still see nothing in it but the magnanimity that subjects a man to criticism and screens a woman from fame by allowing her to remain
