Who could tell the tale of a honeymoon excepting the bride? And how many women would here admit that this period of uncertain duration—sometimes of only a single night—is the preface to married life? Sabine’s first three letters to her mother betrayed a state of things which, unfortunately, will not seem new to some young wives, nor to many old women. All who have become sick-nurses, so to speak, to a man’s heart have not found it out so quickly as Sabine did. But the girls of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, when they are keen-witted, are women already in mind. Before marriage, they have received the baptism of fine manners from the world and from their mothers. Duchesses, anxious to perpetuate the tradition, are often unaware of all the bearings of their lessons when they say to their daughters—“No one ever does that.”—“Do not laugh at such things.”—“You must never fling yourself on a sofa, you must sit down quietly.”—“Never do such a thing again.”—“It is most incorrect, my dear!” and so forth.
And critical middle-class folks refuse to recognize any innocence or virtue in young creatures who, like Sabine, are virgin souls, but perfected by cleverness, by the habits of good style, and good taste, knowing from the age of sixteen how to use an opera glass. Sabine, to lend herself to Mademoiselle des Touches’ schemes for her marriage, could not but be of the school of Mademoiselle de Chaulieu. This innate mother-wit, these gifts of birth, may perhaps make this young wife as interesting as the heroine of the Mémoires de deux jeunes Mariées, in which we see the vanity of such social advantages in the great crisis of married life, where they are often crushed under the double weight of unhappiness and passion.
I
To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu
Guérande, April 1838.
“Dear Mother—You can easily understand why I did not write to you on the journey; one’s mind turns like the wheels. So here I have been these two days in the depths of Brittany, at the Hôtel du Guénic, a house carved all over like a coconut box. Notwithstanding the affectionate attentions of Calyste’s family, I feel an eager longing to fly away to you, and tell you a thousand things which I feel can only be told to a mother.
“Dear mamma, Calyste married me cherishing a great sorrow in his soul; we all of us know it, and you did not disguise the difficulties of my position; but, alas! they are greater than you imagined. Oh, dear mamma, how much experience we may acquire in a few days—why should I not say to you in a few hours? All your counsels proved useless, and you will understand why by this simple fact: I love Calyste as if he were not my husband. That is to say, if I were married to another man and were traveling with Calyste, I should love him and hate my husband. Consider him, then, as a man loved entirety, involuntarily, absolutely, and as many more adverbs as you choose to supply. So, in spite of your warnings, my slavery is an established fact.
“You advised me to keep myself lofty, haughty, dignified, and proud, in order to bring Calyste to a state of feeling which should never undergo any changes throughout life; in the esteem and respect which must sanctify the wife in the home and family. You spoke warmly, and with reason, no doubt, against the young women of the day who, under the excuse of living on good terms with their husbands, begin by being docile, obliging, submissive, with a familiarity, a free-and-easyness which are, in your opinion, rather too cheap—a word I own to not understanding yet, but we shall see by and by—and which, if you are right, are only the early and rapid stages towards indifference and perhaps contempt.
“ ‘Remember that you are a Grandlieu,’ you said in my ear.
“This advice, full of the maternal eloquence of Dedalus, has shared the fate of mythological things. Dear, darling mother, could you believe that I should begin by the catastrophe which, according to you, closes the honeymoon of the young wives of our day?
“When Calyste and I were alone in the carriage, each thought the other as silly as himself, as we both perceived the importance of the first word, the first look; and each, bewildered by the marriage sacrament, sat looking out of a window. It was so preposterous that, as we got near the city gate, Monsieur made me a little speech in a rather broken voice—a speech prepared, no doubt, like all extempore efforts, to which I listened with a beating heart, and which I take the liberty of epitomizing for your benefit.
“ ‘My dear Sabine,’ said he, ‘I wish you to be happy, and, above all, to be happy in your own way,’ said he. ‘In our position, instead of deceiving each other as to our characters and sentiments by magnanimous concessions, let us both be now what we should be a few years hence. Regard me as being your brother, as I would wish to find a sister in you.’
“Though this was most delicately meant, I did not find in this first speech of married love anything answering to the eagerness of my soul, and, after replying that I felt quite as he did, I remained pensive. After this declaration of rights to be equally cold, we talked of the weather, the dust, the houses, and the scenery with the most gracious politeness, I laughing a rather forced laugh, he lost in dreams.
“Finally, as we left Versailles, I asked Calyste point-blank—calling him ‘my dear Calyste,’ as he called me ‘my dear Sabine’—if he could tell me the history of the events which had brought him to death’s
