BIOGRAPHY OF CAMILLE MAUPIN
The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen Calyste, its
flower and pride, going, morning or evening, often morning and
evening, to Les Touches, concluded that Mademoiselle Felicite des
Touches was passionately in love with the beautiful youth, and that
she practised upon him all kinds of sorceries. More than one young
girl and wife asked herself by what right an old woman exercised so
absolute an empire over that angel. When Calyste passed along the
Grand Rue to the Croisic gate many a regretful eye was fastened on
him.
It now became necessary to explain the rumors which hovered about the
person whom Calyste was on his way to see. These rumors, swelled by
Breton gossip, envenomed by public ignorance, had reached the rector.
The receiver of taxes, the /juge de paix/, the head of the
Saint-Nazaire custom-house and other lettered persons had not reassured
the abbe by relating to him the strange and fantastic life of the
female writer who concealed herself under the masculine name of Camille
Maupin. She did not as yet eat little children, nor kill her slaves
like Cleopatra, nor throw men into the river as the heroine of the
Tour de Nesle was falsely accused of doing; but to the Abbe Grimont
this monstrous creature, a cross between a siren and an atheist, was
an immoral combination of woman and philosopher who violated every
social law invented to restrain or utilize the infirmities of
womankind.
Just as Clara Gazul is the female pseudonym of a distinguished male
writer, George Sand the masculine pseudonym of a woman of genius, so
Camille Maupin was the mask behind which was long hidden a charming
young woman, very well-born, a Breton, named Felicite des Touches, the
person who was now causing such lively anxiety to the Baronne du
Guenic and the excellent rector of Guerande. The Breton des Touches
family has no connection with the family of the same name in Touraine,
to which belongs the ambassador of the Regent, even more famous to-day
for his writings than for his diplomatic talents.
Camille Maupin, one of the few celebrated women of the nineteenth
century, was long supposed to be a man, on account of the virility of
her first writings. All the world now knows the two volumes of plays,
not intended for representation on the stage, written after the manner
of Shakespeare or Lopez de Vega, published in 1822, which made a sort
of literary revolution when the great question of the classics and the
romanticists palpitated on all sides,--in the newspapers, at the
clubs, at the Academy, everywhere. Since then, Camille Maupin has
written several plays and a novel, which have not belied the success
obtained by her first publication--now, perhaps, too much forgotten.
To explain by what net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation
of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a
man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she
kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would
be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal
beings who rise in humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted
by its rarity,--for in twenty centuries we can count, at most, twenty
famous women. Therefore, although in these pages she stands as a
secondary character, in consideration of the fact that she plays a
great part in the literary history of our epoch, and that her
influence over Calyste was great, no one, we think, will regret being
made to pause before that figure rather longer than modern art
permits.
Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches became an orphan in 1793. Her
property escaped confiscation by reason of the deaths of her father
and brother. The first was killed on the 10th of August, at the
threshold of the palace, among the defenders of the king, near whose
person his rank as major of the guards of the gate had placed him. Her
brother, one of the body-guard, was massacred at Les Carmes.
Mademoiselle des Touches was two years old when her mother died,
killed by grief, a few days after this second catastrophe. When dying,
Madame des Touches confided her daughter to her sister, a nun of
Chelles. Madame de Faucombe, the nun, prudently took the orphan to
Faucombe, a good-sized estate near Nantes, belonging to Madame des
Touches, and there she settled with the little girl and three sisters
of her convent. The populace of Nantes, during the last days of the
Terror, tore down the chateau, seized the nuns and Mademoiselle des
Touches, and threw them into prison on a false charge of receiving
emissaries of Pitt and Coburg. The 9th Thermidor released them.
Felicite's aunt died of fear. Two of the sisters left France, and the
third confided the little girl to her nearest relation, Monsieur de
Faucombe, her maternal great-uncle, who lived in Nantes.
Monsieur de Faucombe, an old man sixty years of age, had married a
young woman to whom he left the management of his affairs. He busied
himself in archaeology,--a passion, or to speak more correctly, one of
those manias which enable old men to fancy themselves still living.
The education of his ward was therefore left to chance. Little
cared-for by her uncle's wife, a young woman given over to the social
pleasures of the imperial epoch, Felicite brought herself up as a boy.
She kept company with Monsieur de Faucombe in his library; where she
read everything it pleased her to read. She thus obtained a knowledge
of life in theory, and had no innocence of mind, though virgin
personally. Her intellect floated on the impurities of knowledge while
her heart was pure. Her learning became extraordinary, the result of a
passion for reading, sustained by a powerful memory. At eighteen years
of age she was as well-informed on all topics as a young man entering
a literary career has need to be in our day. Her prodigious reading
controlled her passions far more than conventual life would have done;
for there the imaginations of young girls run riot. A brain crammed
with knowledge that was neither digested nor classed governed the
heart and soul of the child. This depravity of the intellect, without
action upon the chastity of the body, would have amazed philosophers
and observers, had any one in Nantes even suspected the powers of
Mademoiselle des Touches.
The result of all this was in a contrary direction to the cause.
Felicite had no inclinations toward evil; she conceived everything by
thought, but abstained from deed. Old Faucombe was enchanted with her,
and she helped him in his work,--writing three of his books, which the
worthy old gentleman believed were his own; for his spiritual
paternity was blind. Such mental labor, not agreeing with the
developments of girlhood, had its effect. Felicite fell ill; her blood
was overheated, and her chest seemed threatened with inflammation. The
doctors ordered horseback exercise and the amusements of society.
Mademoiselle des Touches became, in consequence, an admirable
horsewoman, and recovered her health in a few months.
At the age of eighteen she appeared in the world, where she produced
so great a sensation that no one in Nantes called her anything else
than "the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches." Led to enter society by
one of the imperishable sentiments in the heart of a woman, however
superior she may be, the worship she inspired found her cold and
unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her
studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they
attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on
making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,--a woman, in short. But she
expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in
harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its
knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the
commonplaces of conversation, the silliness of gallantry; and more
especially was she shocked by the supremacy of military men, to whom
society made obeisance at that period. She had, not unnaturally,
neglected the minor accomplishments. Finding herself inferior to the
pretty dolls who played on the piano and made themselves agreeable by
singing ballads, she determined to be a musician. Retiring into her
former solitude she set to work resolvedly, under the direction of the
best master in the town. She was rich, and she sent for Steibelt when
the time came to perfect herself. The astonished town still talks of
this princely conduct. The stay of that master cost her twelve
thousand francs. Later, when she went to Paris, she studied harmony
and thorough-bass, and composed the music of two operas which have had
great success, though the public has never been admitted to the secret
of their authorship. Ostensibly these operas are by Conti, one of the
most eminent musicians of our day; but this circumstance belongs to
the history of her heart, and will be mentioned later on.
The mediocrity of the society of a provincial town wearied her so
excessively, her imagination was so filled with grandiose ideas that
although she returned to the salons to eclipse other women once more
by her beauty, and enjoy her new triumph as a musician, she again
deserted them; and having proved her power to her cousins, and driven
two lovers to despair, she returned to her books, her piano, the works
of Beethoven, and her old friend Faucombe. In 1812, when she was
twenty-one years of age, the old archaeologist handed over to her his
guardianship accounts. From that year, she took control of her
fortune, which consisted of fifteen thousand francs a year, derived
from Les Touches, the property of her father; twelve thousand a year
from Faucombe (which, however, she increased one-third on renewing the
leases); and a capital of three hundred thousand francs laid by during
her minority by her guardians.
Felicite acquired from her experience of provincial life, an
understanding of money, and that strong tendency to administrative
wisdom which enables the provinces to hold their own under the
ascensional movement of capital towards Paris. She drew her three
hundred thousand francs from the house of business where her guardian
had placed them, and invested them on the Grand-livre at the very
moment of the disasters of the retreat from Moscow. In this way, she
increased her income by thirty thousand francs. All expenses paid, she
found herself with fifty thousand francs a year to invest. At
twenty-one years of age a girl with such force of will is the equal of
a man of thirty. Her mind had taken a wide range; habits of criticism
enabled her to judge soberly of men, and art, and things, and public
questions. Henceforth she resolved to leave Nantes; but old Faucombe
falling ill with his last illness, she, who had been both wife and
daughter to him, remained to nurse him, with the devotion of an angel,
for eighteen months, closing his eyes at the moment when Napoleon was
struggling with all Europe on the corpse of France. Her removal to
Paris was therefore still further postponed until the close of that
crisis.
As a Royalist, she hastened to be present at the return of the
Bourbons to Paris. There the Grandlieus, to whom she was related,
received her as their guest; but the catastrophes of March 20
intervened, and her future was vague and uncertain. She was thus
enabled to see with her own eyes that last image of the Empire, and
behold the Grand Army when it came to the Champ de Mars, as to a Roman
circus, to salute its Caesar before it went to its death at Waterloo.
The great and noble soul of Felicite was stirred by that magic
spectacle. The political commotions, the glamour of that theatrical
play of three months which history has called the Hundred Days,
occupied her mind and preserved her from all personal emotions in the
midst of a convulsion which dispersed the royalist society among whom
she had intended to reside. The Grandlieus followed the Bourbons to
Ghent, leaving their house to Mademoiselle des Touches. Felicite, who
did not choose to take a subordinate position, purchased for one
hundred and thirty thousand francs one of the finest houses in the rue
Mont Blanc, where she installed herself on the return of the Bourbons
in 1815. The garden of this house is to-day worth two millions.
Accustomed to control her own life, Felicite soon familiarized herself
with the ways of thought and action which are held to be exclusively
the province of man. In 1816 she was twenty-five years old. She knew
nothing of marriage; her conception of it was wholly that of thought;
she judged it in its causes instead of its effect, and saw only its
objectionable side. Her superior mind refused to make the abdication
by which a married woman begins that life; she keenly felt the value
of independence, and was conscious of disgust for the duties of
maternity.
It is necessary to give these details to explain the anomalies
presented by the life of Camille Maupin. She had known neither father
nor mother; she had been her own mistress from childhood; her guardian
was an old archaeologist. Chance had flung her into the regions of
knowledge and of imagination, into the world of literature, instead of
holding her within the rigid circle defined by the futile education
given to women, and by maternal instructions as to dress, hypocritical
propriety, and the hunting graces of their sex. Thus, long before she
became celebrated, a glance might have told an observer that she had
never played with dolls.
Toward the close of the year 1817 Felicite des Touches began to
perceive, not the fading of her beauty, but the beginning of a certain
lassitude of body. She saw that a change would presently take place in
her person as the result of her obstinate celibacy. She wanted to
retain her youth and beauty, to which at that time she clung. Science
warned her of the sentence pronounced by Nature upon all her
creations, which perish as much by the misconception of her laws as by
the abuse of them. The macerated face of her aunt returned to her
memory and made her shudder. Placed between marriage and love, her
desire was to keep her freedom; but she was now no longer indifferent
to homage and the admiration that surrounded her. She was, at the
moment when this history begins, almost exactly what she was in 1817.
Eighteen years had passed over her head and respected it. At forty she
might have been thought no more than twenty-five.
Therefore to describe her in 1836 is to picture her as she was in
1817. Women who know the conditions of temperament and happiness in
which a woman should live to resist the ravages of time will
understand how and why Felicite des Touches enjoyed this great
privilege as they study a portrait for which were reserved the
brightest tints of Nature's palette, and the richest setting.
Brittany presents a curious problem to be solved in the predominance
of dark hair, brown eyes, and swarthy complexions in a region so near
England that the atmospheric effects are almost identical. Does this
problem belong to the great question of races? to hitherto unobserved
physical influences? Science may some day find the reason of this
peculiarity, which ceases in the adjoining province of Normandy.
Waiting its solution, this odd fact is there before our eyes; fair
complexions are rare in Brittany, where the women's eyes are as black
and lively as those of Southern women; but instead of possessing the
tall figures and swaying lines of Italy and Spain, they are usually
short, close-knit, well set-up and firm, except in the higher classes
which are crossed by their alliances.
Mademoiselle des Touches, a true Breton, is of medium height, though
she looks taller than she really is. This effect is produced by the
character of her face, which gives height to her form. She has that
skin, olive by day and dazzling by candlelight, which distinguishes a
beautiful Italian; you might, if you pleased, call it animated ivory.
The light glides along a skin of that texture as on a polished
surface; it shines; a violent emotion is necessary to bring the
faintest color to the centre of the cheeks, where it goes away almost
immediately. This peculiarity gives to her face the calm impassibility
of the savage. The face, more long than oval, resembles that of some
beautiful Isis in the Egyptian bas-reliefs; it has the purity of the
heads of sphinxes, polished by the fire of the desert, kissed by a
Coptic sun. The tones of the skin are in harmony with the faultless
modelling of the head. The black and abundant hair descends in heavy
masses beside the throat, like the coif of the statues at Memphis, and
carries out magnificently the general severity of form. The forehead
is full, broad, and swelling about the temples, illuminated by
surfaces which catch the light, and modelled like the brow of the
hunting Diana, a powerful and determined brow, silent and
self-contained. The arch of the eye-brows, vigorously drawn, surmounts
a pair of eyes whose flame scintillates at times like that of a fixed
star. The white of the eye is neither bluish, nor strewn with scarlet
threads, nor is it purely white; it has the texture of horn, but the
tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of
bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil
has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of
foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of
cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a
sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the
infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the
absolute. The glance of an observer may be lost in that soul, which
gathers itself up and retires with as much rapidity as it gushed for a
second into those velvet eyes. In moments of passion the eyes of
Camille Maupin are sublime; the gold of her glance illuminates them
and they flame. But in repose they are dull; the torpor of meditation
often lends them an appearance of stupidity[*]; in like manner, when
the glow of the soul is absent the lines of the face are sad.
[*] George Sand says of herself, in "L'Histoire de Ma Vie," published
long after the above was written: "The habit of meditation gave me
/l'air bete/ (a stupid air). I say the word frankly, for all my
life I have been told this, and therefore it must be true."--TR.
The lashes of the eyelids are short, but thick and black as the tip of
an ermine's tail; the eyelids are brown and strewn with red fibrils,
which give them grace and strength,--two qualities which are seldom
united in a woman. The circle round the eyes shows not the slightest
blemish nor the smallest wrinkle. There, again, we find the granite
of an Egyptian statue softened by the ages. But the line of the
cheek-bones, though soft, is more pronounced than in other women and
completes the character of strength which the face expresses. The
nose, thin and straight, parts into two oblique nostrils, passionately
dilated at times, and showing the transparent pink of their delicate
lining. This nose is an admirable continuation of the forehead, with
which it blends in a most delicious line. It is perfectly white from
its spring to its tip, and the tip is endowed with a sort of mobility
which does marvels if Camille is indignant, or angry, or rebellious.
There, above all, as Talma once remarked, is seen depicted the anger
or the irony of great minds. The immobility of the human nostril
indicates a certain narrowness of soul; never did the nose of a miser
oscillate; it contracts like the lips; he locks up his face as he does
his money.
Camille's mouth, arching at the corners, is of a vivid red; blood
abounds there, and supplies the living, thinking oxide which gives
such seduction to the lips, reassuring the lover whom the gravity of
that majestic face may have dismayed. The upper lip is thin, the
furrow which unites it with the nose comes low, giving it a centre
curve which emphasizes its natural disdain. Camille has little to do
to express anger. This beautiful lip is supported by the strong red
breadth of its lower mate, adorable in kindness, swelling with love, a
lip like the outer petal of a pomegranate such as Phidias might have
carved, and the color of which it has. The chin is firm and rather
full; but it expresses resolution and fitly ends this profile, royal
if not divine. It is necessary to add that the upper lip beneath the
nose is lightly shaded by a charming down. Nature would have made a
blunder had she not cast that tender mist upon the face. The ears are
delicately convoluted,--a sign of secret refinement. The bust is
large, the waist slim and sufficiently rounded. The hips are not
prominent, but very graceful; the line of the thighs is magnificent,
recalling Bacchus rather than the Venus Callipyge. There we may see
the shadowy line of demarcation which separates nearly every woman of
genius from her sex; there such women are found to have a certain
vague similitude to man; they have neither the suppleness nor the soft
abandonment of those whom Nature destines for maternity; their gait is
not broken by faltering motions. This observation may be called
bi-lateral; it has its counterpart in men, whose thighs are those of
women when they are sly, cunning, false, and cowardly. Camille's neck,
instead of curving inward at the nape, curves out in a line that
unites the head to the shoulders without sinuosity, a most signal
characteristic of force. The neck itself presents at certain moments
an athletic magnificence. The spring of the arms from the shoulders,
superb in outline, seems to belong to a colossal woman. The arms are
vigorously modelled, ending in wrists of English delicacy and charming
hands, plump, dimpled, and adorned with rosy, almond-shaped nails;
these hands are of a whiteness which reveals that the body, so round,
so firm, so well set-up, is of another complexion altogether than the
face. The firm, cold carriage of the head is corrected by the mobility
of the lips, their changing expression, and the artistic play of the
nostrils.
And yet, in spite of all these promises--hidden, perhaps, from the
profane--the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what,
that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face is
marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason
Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles by
her silence and by that deep-reaching glance of intense fixity. No
educated person could see her without thinking of Cleopatra, that dark
little woman who almost changed the face of the world. But in Camille
the natural animal is so complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so
leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the
presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she
were wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an
abnormal soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to
passions in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon
more terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time?
Able for all things through her brain, ought her course to be
circumscribed by the limitations of other women? Has that intellectual
strength weakened her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to
those tender nothings by which a woman occupies, and soothes and
interests the man she loves? Will she not cast aside a sentiment when
it no longer responds to some vision of infinitude which she grasps
and contemplates in her soul? Who can scale the heights to which her
eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears to find in such a woman something
unattainable, unpossessable, unconquerable. The woman of strong mind
should remain a symbol; as a reality she must be feared. Camille
Maupin is in some ways the living image of Schiller's Isis, seated in
the darkness of the temple, at whose feet her priests find the dead
bodies of the daring men who have consulted her.
The adventures of her life declared to be true by the world, and which
Camille has never disavowed, enforce the questions suggested by her
personal appearance. Perhaps she likes those calumnies.
The nature of her beauty has not been without its influence on her
fame; it has served it, just as her fortune and position have
maintained her in society. If a sculptor desires to make a statue of
Brittany let him take Mademoiselle des Touches for his model. That
full-blooded, powerful temperament is the only nature capable of
repelling the action of time. The constant nourishment of the pulp, so
to speak, of that polished skin is an arm given to women by Nature to
resist the invasion of wrinkles; in Camille's case it was aided by the
calm impassibility of her features.
In 1817 this charming young woman opened her house to artists, authors
of renown, learned and scientific men, and publicists,--a society
toward which her tastes led her. Her salon resembled that of Baron
Gerard, where men of rank mingled with men of distinction of all
kinds, and the elite of Parisian women came. The parentage of
Mademoiselle des Touches, and her fortune, increased by that of her
aunt the nun, protected her in the attempt, always very difficult in
Paris, to create a society. Her worldly independence was one reason of
her success. Various ambitious mothers indulged in the hope of
inducing her to marry their sons, whose fortunes were out of
proportion to the age of their escutcheons. Several peers of France,
allured by the prospect of eighty thousand francs a year and a house
magnificently appointed, took their womenkind, even the most
fastidious and intractable, to visit her. The diplomatic world, always
in search of amusements of the intellect, came there and found
enjoyment. Thus Mademoiselle des Touches, surrounded by so many forms
of individual interests, was able to study the different comedies
which passion, covetousness, and ambition make the generality of men
perform,--even those who are highest in the social scale. She saw,
early in life, the world as it is; and she was fortunate enough not to
fall early into absorbing love, which warps the mind and faculties of
a woman and prevents her from judging soberly.
Ordinarily a woman feels, enjoys, and judges, successively; hence
three distinct ages, the last of which coincides with the mournful
period of old age. In Mademoiselle des Touches this order was
reversed. Her youth was wrapped in the snows of knowledge and the ice
of reflection. This transposition is, in truth, an additional
explanation of the strangeness of her life and the nature of her
talent. She observed men at an age when most women can only see one
man; she despised what other women admired; she detected falsehood in
the flatteries they accept as truths; she laughed at things that made
them serious. This contradiction of her life with that of others
lasted long; but it came to a terrible end; she was destined to find
in her soul a first love, young and fresh, at an age when women are
summoned by Nature to renounce all love.
Meantime, a first affair in which she was involved has always remained
a secret from the world. Felicite, like other women, was induced to
believe that beauty of body was that of soul. She fell in love with a
face, and learned, to her cost, the folly of a man of gallantry, who
saw nothing in her but a mere woman. It was some time before she
recovered from the disgust she felt at this episode. Her distress was
perceived by a friend, a man, who consoled her without personal
after-thought, or, at any rate, he concealed any such motive if he had
it. In him Felicite believed she found the heart and mind which were
lacking to her former lover. He did, in truth, possess one of the most
original minds of our age. He, too, wrote under a pseudonym, and his
first publications were those of an adorer of Italy. Travel was the
one form of education which Felicite lacked. A man of genius, a poet
and a critic, he took Felicite to Italy in order to make known to her
that country of all Art. This celebrated man, who is nameless, may be
regarded as the master and maker of "Camille Maupin." He bought into
order and shape the vast amount of knowledge already acquired by
Felicite; increased it by study of the masterpieces with which Italy
teems; gave her the frankness, freedom, and grace, epigrammatic, and
intense, which is the character of his own talent (always rather
fanciful as to form) which Camille Maupin modified by delicacy of
sentiment and the softer terms of thought that are natural to a woman.
He also roused in her a taste for German and English literature and
made her learn both languages while travelling. In Rome, in 1820,
Felicite was deserted for an Italian. Without that misery she might
never have been celebrated. Napoleon called misfortune the midwife of
genius. This event filled Mademoiselle des Touches, and forever, with
that contempt for men which later was to make her so strong. Felicite
died, Camille Maupin was born.
She returned to Paris with Conti, the great musician, for whom she
wrote the librettos of two operas. But she had no more illusions, and
she became, at heart, unknown to the world, a sort of female Don Juan,
without debts and without conquests. Encouraged by success, she
published the two volumes of plays which at once placed the name of
Camille Maupin in the list of illustrious anonymas. Next, she related
her betrayed and deluded love in a short novel, one of the
masterpieces of that period. This book, of a dangerous example, was
classed with "Adolphe," a dreadful lamentation, the counterpart of
which is found in Camille's work. The true secret of her literary
metamorphosis and pseudonym has never been fully understood. Some
delicate minds have thought it lay in a feminine desire to escape fame
and remain obscure, while offering a man's name and work to criticism.
In spite of any such desire, if she had it, her celebrity increased
daily, partly through the influence of her salon, partly from her own
wit, the correctness of her judgments, and the solid worth of her
acquirements. She became an authority; her sayings were quoted; she
could no longer lay aside at will the functions with which Parisian
society invested her. She came to be an acknowledged exception. The
world bowed before the genius and position of this strange woman; it
recognized and sanctioned her independence; women admired her mind,
men her beauty. Her conduct was regulated by all social conventions.
Her friendships seemed purely platonic. There was, moreover, nothing
of the female author about her. Mademoiselle des Touches is charming
as a woman of the world,--languid when she pleases, indolent,
coquettish, concerned about her toilet, pleased with the airy nothings
so seductive to women and to poets. She understands very well that
after Madame de Stael there is no place in this century for a Sappho,
and that Ninon could not exist in Paris without /grands seigneurs/ and
a voluptuous court. She is the Ninon of the intellect; she adores Art
and artists; she goes from the poet to the musician, from the sculptor
to the prose-writer. Her heart is noble, endowed with a generosity
that makes her a dupe; so filled is she with pity for sorrow,--filled
also with contempt for the prosperous. She has lived since 1830, the
centre of a choice circle, surrounded by tried friends who love her
tenderly and esteem each other. Far from the noisy fuss of Madame de
Stael, far from political strifes, she jokes about Camille Maupin,
that junior of George Sand (whom she calls her brother Cain), whose
recent fame has now eclipsed her own. Mademoiselle des Touches admires
her fortunate rival with angelic composure, feeling no jealousy and no
secret vexation.
Until the period when this history begins, she had led as happy a life
as a woman strong enough to protect herself can be supposed to live.
From 1817 to 1834 she had come some five or six times to Les Touches.
Her first stay was after her first disillusion in 1818. The house was
uninhabitable, and she sent her man of business to Guerande and took a
lodging for herself in the village. At that time she had no suspicion
of her coming fame; she was sad, she saw no one; she wanted, as it
were, to contemplate herself after her great disaster. She wrote to
Paris to have the furniture necessary for a residence at Les Touches
sent down to her. It came by a vessel to Nantes, thence by small boats
to Croisic, from which little place it was transported, not without
difficulty, over the sands to Les Touches. Workmen came down from
Paris, and before long she occupied Les Touches, which pleased her
immensely. She wanted to meditate over the events of her life, like a
cloistered nun.
At the beginning of the winter she returned to Paris. The little town
of Guerande was by this time roused to diabolical curiosity; its whole
talk was of the Asiatic luxury displayed at Les Touches. Her man of
business gave orders after her departure that visitors should be
admitted to view the house. They flocked from the village of Batz,
from Croisic, and from Savenay, as well as from Guerande. This public
curiosity brought in an enormous sum to the family of the porter and
gardener, not less, in two years, than seventeen francs.
After this, Mademoiselle des Touches did not revisit Les Touches for
two years, not until her return from Italy. On that occasion she came
by way of Croisic and was accompanied by Conti. It was some time
before Guerande became aware of her presence. Her subsequent
apparitions at Les Touches excited comparatively little interest. Her
Parisian fame did not precede her; her man of business alone knew the
secret of her writings and of her connection with the celebrity of
Camille Maupin. But at the period of which we are now writing the
contagion of the new ideas had made some progress in Guerande, and
several persons knew of the dual form of Mademoiselle des Touches'
existence. Letters came to the post-office, directed to Camille Maupin
at Les Touches. In short, the veil was rent away. In a region so
essentially Catholic, archaic, and full of prejudice, the singular
life of this illustrious woman would of course cause rumors, some of
which, as we have seen, had reached the ears of the Abbe Grimont and
alarmed him; such a life could never be comprehended in Guerande; in
fact, to every mind, it seemed unnatural and improper.
Felicite, during her present stay, was not alone in Les Touches. She
had a guest. That guest was Claude Vignon, a scornful and powerful
writer who, though doing criticism only, has found means to give the
public and literature the impression of a certain superiority.
Mademoiselle des Touches had received this writer for the last seven
years, as she had so many other authors, journalists, artists, and men
of the world. She knew his nerveless nature, his laziness, his utter
penury, his indifference and disgust for all things, and yet by the
way she was now conducting herself she seemed inclined to marry him.
She explained her conduct, incomprehensible to her friends, in various
ways,--by ambition, by the dread she felt of a lonely old age; she
wanted to confide her future to a superior man, to whom her fortune
would be a stepping-stone, and thus increase her own importance in the
literary world.
With these apparent intentions she had brought Claude Vignon from
Paris to Les Touches, as an eagle bears away a kid in its talons,--to
study him, and decide upon some positive course. But, in truth, she
was misleading both Calyste and Claude; she was not even thinking of
marriage; her heart was in the throes of the most violent convulsion
that could agitate a soul as strong as hers. She found herself the
dupe of her own mind; too late she saw life lighted by the sun of
love, shining as love shines in a heart of twenty.
Let us now see Camille's convent where this was happening.