A Daughter of Eve | Page 9

I am not yet too selfish to listen. Are we
to suffer together once more, as we did in girlhood?"
"But alas! we suffer apart," said the banker's wife. "You and I live in
two worlds at enmity with each other. I go to the Tuileries when you
are not there. Our husbands belong to opposite parties. I am the wife of
an ambitious banker,--a bad man, my darling; while you have a noble,
kind, and generous husband."
"Oh! don't reproach me!" cried the countess. "To understand my
position, a woman must have borne the weariness of a vapid and barren
life, and have entered suddenly into a paradise of light and love; she
must know the happiness of feeling her whole life in that of another; of
espousing, as it were, the infinite emotions of a poet's soul; of living a
double existence,--going, coming with him in his courses through space,
through the world of ambition; suffering with his griefs, rising on the
wings of his high pleasures, developing her faculties on some vast stage;
and all this while living calm, serene, and cold before an observing
world. Ah! dearest, what happiness in having at all hours an enormous
interest, which multiplies the fibres of the heart and varies them
indefinitely! to feel no longer cold indifference! to find one's very life
depending on a thousand trifles! --on a walk where an eye will beam to
us from a crowd, on a glance which pales the sun! Ah! what
intoxication, dear, to live! to LIVE when other women are praying on
their knees for emotions that never come to them! Remember, darling,
that for this poem of delight there is but a single moment,--youth! In a
few years winter comes, and cold. Ah! if you possessed these living
riches of the heart, and were threatened with the loss of them--"
Madame du Tillet, terrified, had covered her face with her hands during
the passionate utterance of this anthem.
"I did not even think of reproaching you, my beloved," she said at last,
seeing her sister's face bathed in hot tears. "You have cast into my soul,

in one moment, more brands than I have tears to quench. Yes, the life I
live would justify to my heart a love like that you picture. Let me
believe that if we could have seen each other oftener, we should not
now be where we are. If you had seen my sufferings, you must have
valued your own happiness the more, and you might have strengthened
me to resist my tyrant, and so have won a sort of peace. Your misery is
an incident which chance may change, but mine is daily and perpetual.
To my husband I am a peg on which to hang his luxury, the sign-post
of his ambition, a satisfaction to his vanity. He has no real affection for
me, and no confidence. Ferdinand is hard and polished as that piece of
marble," she continued, striking the chimney-piece. "He distrusts me.
Whatever I may want for myself is refused before I ask it; but as for
what flatters his vanity and proclaims his wealth, I have no occasion to
express a wish. He decorates my apartments; he spends enormous sums
upon my entertainments; my servants, my opera-box, all external
matters are maintained with the utmost splendor. His vanity spares no
expense; he would trim his children's swaddling-clothes with lace if he
could, but he would never hear their cries, or guess their needs. Do you
understand me? I am covered with diamonds when I go to court; I wear
the richest jewels in society, but I have not one farthing I can use.
Madame du Tillet, who, they say, is envied, who appears to float in
gold, has not a hundred francs she can call her own. If the father cares
little for his child, he cares less for its mother. Ah! he has cruelly made
me feel that he bought me, and that in marrying me without a "dot" he
was wronged. I might perhaps have won him to love me, but there's an
outside influence against it,--that of a woman, who is over fifty years of
age, the widow of a notary, who rules him. I shall never be free, I know
that, so long as he lives. My life is regulated like that of a queen; my
meals are served with the utmost formality; at a given hour I must drive
to the Bois; I am always accompanied by two footmen in full dress; I
am obliged to return at a certain hour. Instead of giving orders, I
receive them. At a ball, at the theatre, a servant comes to me and says:
'Madame's carriage is ready,' and I am obliged to go, in the midst,