A Daughter of Eve | Page 8

their foreheads; his eyes, his lips, his
whole countenance expressing the deepest commiseration.
"You are not very happy, my dear little girls," he said one day; "but I
shall marry you early. It will comfort me to have you leave home."
"Papa," said Eugenie, "we have decided to take the first man who
offers."
"Ah!" he cried, "that is the bitter fruit of such a system. They want to
make saints, and they make--" he stopped without ending his sentence.
Often the two girls felt an infinite tenderness in their father's "Adieu,"

or in his eyes, when, by chance, he dined at home. They pitied that
father so seldom seen, and love follows often upon pity.
This stern and rigid education was the cause of the marriages of the two
sisters welded together by misfortune, as Rita-Christina by the hand of
Nature. Many men, driven to marriage, prefer a girl taken from a
convent, and saturated with piety, to a girl brought up to worldly ideas.
There seems to be no middle course. A man must marry either an
educated girl, who reads the newspapers and comments upon them,
who waltzes with a dozen young men, goes to the theatre, devours
novels, cares nothing for religion, and makes her own ethics, or an
ignorant and innocent young girl, like either of the two Maries. Perhaps
there may be as much danger with the one kind as with the other. Yet
the vast majority of men who are not so old as Arnolphe, prefer a
religious Agnes to a budding Celimene.
The two Maries, who were small and slender, had the same figure, the
same foot, the same hand. Eugenie, the younger, was fair-haired, like
her mother, Angelique was dark-haired, like the father. But they both
had the same complexion,--a skin of the pearly whiteness which shows
the richness and purity of the blood, where the color rises through a
tissue like that of the jasmine, soft, smooth, and tender to the touch.
Eugenie's blue eyes and the brown eyes of Angelique had an expression
of artless indifference, of ingenuous surprise, which was rendered by
the vague manner with which the pupils floated on the fluid whiteness
of the eyeball. They were both well-made; the rather thin shoulders
would develop later. Their throats, long veiled, delighted the eye when
their husbands requested them to wear low dresses to a ball, on which
occasion they both felt a pleasing shame, which made them first blush
behind closed doors, and afterwards, through a whole evening in
company.
On the occasion when this scene opens, and the eldest, Angelique, was
weeping, while the younger, Eugenie, was consoling her, their hands
and arms were white as milk. Each had nursed a child,--one a boy, the
other a daughter. Eugenie, as a girl, was thought very giddy by her
mother, who had therefore treated her with especial watchfulness and

severity. In the eyes of that much-feared mother, Angelique, noble and
proud, appeared to have a soul so lofty that it would guard itself,
whereas, the more lively Eugenie needed restraint. There are many
charming beings misused by fate,--beings who ought by rights to
prosper in this life, but who live and die unhappy, tortured by some evil
genius, the victims of unfortunate circumstances. The innocent and
naturally light-hearted Eugenie had fallen into the hands and beneath
the malicious despotism of a self-made man on leaving the maternal
prison. Angelique, whose nature inclined her to deeper sentiments, was
thrown into the upper spheres of Parisian social life, with the bridle
lying loose upon her neck.


CHAPTER II
A CONFIDENCE BETWEEN SISTERS
Madame de Vandenesse, Marie-Angelique, who seemed to have broken
down under a weight of troubles too heavy for her soul to bear, was
lying back on the sofa with bent limbs, and her head tossing restlessly.
She had rushed to her sister's house after a brief appearance at the
Opera. Flowers were still in her hair, but others were scattered upon the
carpet, together with her gloves, her silk pelisse, and muff and hood.
Tears were mingling with the pearls on her bosom; her swollen eyes
appeared to make strange confidences. In the midst of so much luxury
her distress was horrible, and she seemed unable to summon courage to
speak.
"Poor darling!" said Madame du Tillet; "what a mistaken idea you have
of my marriage if you think that I can help you!"
Hearing this revelation, dragged from her sister's heart by the violence
of the storm she herself had raised there, the countess looked with
stupefied eyes at the banker's wife; her tears stopped, and her eyes grew
fixed.

"Are you in misery as well, my dearest?" she said, in a low voice.
"My griefs will not ease yours."
"But tell them to me, darling;