Like Kant, who lost the thread of his ideas when somebody cut down the fir-tree on which he fixed his eyes as he meditated, the good Abbé pacing up and down the shadowless alleys could not say his prayers with the same uplifting of soul. Du Bousquier had laid out an English garden!
“It looked nicer,” Mme. du Bousquier said. Not that she really thought so, but the Abbé Couturier had authorized her to say and do a good many things that she might please her husband.
With the restoration, all the glory departed from the old house, and all its quaint, cheerful, old-world look. If the Chevalier de Valois’ neglect of his person might be taken as a sort of abdication, the bourgeois majesty of the salon Cormon passed away when the drawing-room was decorated with white and gold; and blue silk curtains and mahogany ottomans made their appearance. In the dining-room, fitted up in the modern style, the dishes were somehow not so hot, nor the dinners quite what they had been. M. du Coudrai said that the puns stuck fast in his throat when he saw the painted figures on the walls and felt their eyes upon him. Without, the house was provincial as ever; within, the forage-contractor of the Directory made himself everywhere felt. All over the house you saw the stockbroker’s bad taste; stucco pilasters, glass doors, classic cornices, arid decoration—a medley of every imaginable style and ill-assorted magnificence.
Alençon criticised such unheard-of luxury for a fortnight, and grew proud of it at the end of a few months. Several rich manufacturers refurnished their houses in consequence, and set up fine drawing-rooms. Modern furniture made its appearance; astral lamps might even be seen in some places.
The Abbé de Sponde was the first to see the unhappiness which lay beneath the surface of his dear child’s married life. The old dignified simplicity which ruled their way of living was gone; du Bousquier gave two balls every month in the course of the first winter. The venerable house—oh, to think of it!—echoed with the sound of violins and worldly gaiety. The Abbé, on his knees, prayed while the merriment lasted.
The politics of the sober salon underwent a gradual change for the worse. The Abbé de Sponde divined du Bousquier; he shuddered at his nephew’s dictatorial tone. He saw tears in his niece’s eyes when the disposal of her fortune was taken out of her hands; her husband left her only the control of the linen, the table, and such things as fall to a woman’s lot. Rose had no more orders to give. Jacquelin, now coachman exclusively, took his orders from no one but his master; René, the groom, did likewise, so did the man-cook imported from Paris; Mariette was only the kitchen-maid; and Mme. du Bousquier had no one to tyrannize over but Josette.
Does anyone know how much it costs to give up the delicious exercise of authority? If the triumph of will is one of the most intoxicating of the great man’s joys, to have one’s own way is the whole life of narrow natures. No one but a cabinet minister fallen into disgrace can sympathize with Mme. du Bousquier’s bitter pain when she saw herself reduced to a cipher in her own house. She often drove out when she would rather have stayed at homo; she saw company which she did not like; she who had been free to spend as she pleased, and had never spent at all, had lost the control of the money which she loved. Impose limits, and who does not wish to go beyond them? Is there any sharper suffering than that which comes of thwarted will?
But these beginnings were the roses of life. Every concession was counseled by poor Rose’s love for her husband, and at first du Bousquier behaved admirably to his wife. He was very good to her; he brought forward sufficient reasons for every encroachment. The room, so long left empty, echoed with the voices of husband and wife in fireside talk. And so, for the first few years of married life, Mme. du Bousquier wore a face of content, and that little air of emancipation and mystery often seen in a young wife after a marriage of love. She had no more trouble with “heated blood.” This countenance of hers routed scoffers, gave the lie to gossip concerning du Bousquier, and put observers of human nature at fault.
Rose Marie Victoire was so afraid lest she should lose her husband’s affection or drive him from her side by setting her will against his, that she would have made any sacrifice, even of her uncle if need be. And the Abbé de Sponde, deceived by Mme. du Bousquier’s poor foolish little joys, bore his own discomforts the more easily for the thought that his niece was happy.
At first Alençon shared this impression. But there was one man less easy to deceive than all the rest of Alençon put together. The Chevalier de Valois had taken refuge on the Mons Sacer of the most aristocratic section, and spent his time with the d’Esgrignons. He lent an ear to the scandal and tittle-tattle; night and day he studied how to have his revenge before he died. The perpetrator of puns had been already brought low, and he meant to stab du Bousquier to the heart.
The poor Abbé, knowing as he did the cowardliness of his niece’s first and last love, shuddered as he guessed his nephew’s hypocritical nature and the man’s intrigues. Du Bousquier, be it said, put some constraint upon himself; he had an eye to the Abbé’s property, and had no wish to annoy his wife’s uncle in any way, yet he dealt the old man his deathblow.
If you can translate the word Intolerance by Firmness of Principle; if you can forbear to condemn in the old Roman Catholic Vicar-General that stoicism which
