Another Study of Woman | Page 5

returned
to the drawing-room? The atmosphere is not heady, the eye no longer
contemplates the brilliant disorder of the dessert, lost are the happy
effects of that laxness of mood, that benevolence which comes over us
while we remain in the humor peculiar to the well-filled man, settled
comfortably on one of the springy chairs which are made in these days.
Perhaps we are not more ready to talk face to face with the dessert and
in the society of good wine, during the delightful interval when every
one may sit with an elbow on the table and his head resting on his hand.
Not only does every one like to talk then, but also to listen. Digestion,
which is almost always attent, is loquacious or silent, as characters
differ. Then every one finds his opportunity.
Was not this preamble necessary to make you know the charm of the
narrative, by which a celebrated man, now dead, depicted the innocent
jesuistry of women, painting it with the subtlety peculiar to persons
who have seen much of the world, and which makes statesmen such

delightful storytellers when, like Prince Talleyrand and Prince
Metternich, they vouchsafe to tell a story?
De Marsay, prime minister for some six months, had already given
proofs of superior capabilities. Those who had known him long were
not indeed surprised to see him display all the talents and various
aptitudes of a statesman; still it might yet be a question whether he
would prove to be a solid politician, or had merely been moulded in the
fire of circumstance. This question had just been asked by a man whom
he had made a prefet, a man of wit and observation, who had for a long
time been a journalist, and who admired de Marsay without infusing
into his admiration that dash of acrid criticism by which, in Paris, one
superior man excuses himself from admiring another.
"Was there ever," said he, "in your former life, any event, any thought
or wish which told you what your vocation was?" asked Emile Blondet;
"for we all, like Newton, have our apple, which falls and leads us to the
spot where our faculties develop----"
"Yes," said de Marsay; "I will tell you about it."
Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, de Marsay's intimate
friends,--all settled themselves comfortably, each in his favorite attitude,
to look at the Minister. Need it be said that the servants had left, that
the doors were shut, and the curtains drawn over them? The silence was
so complete that the murmurs of the coachmen's voices could be heard
from the courtyard, and the pawing and champing made by horses
when asking to be taken back to their stable.
"The statesman, my friends, exists by one single quality," said the
Minister, playing with his gold and mother-of-pearl dessert knife. "To
wit: the power of always being master of himself; of profiting more or
less, under all circumstances, by every event, however fortuitous; in
short, of having within himself a cold and disinterested other self, who
looks on as a spectator at all the changes of life, noting our passions
and our sentiments, and whispering to us in every case the judgment of
a sort of moral ready-reckoner."
"That explains why a statesman is so rare a thing in France," said old
Lord Dudley.
"From a sentimental point of view, this is horrible," the Minister went
on. "Hence, when such a phenomenon is seen in a young man--
Richelieu, who, when warned overnight by a letter of Concini's peril,

slept till midday, when his benefactor was killed at ten o'clock--or say
Pitt, or Napoleon, he was a monster. I became such a monster at a very
early age, thanks to a woman."
"I fancied," said Madame de Montcornet with a smile, "that more
politicians were undone by us than we could make."
"The monster of which I speak is a monster just because he withstands
you," replied de Marsay, with a little ironical bow.
"If this is a love-story," the Baronne de Nucingen interposed, "I request
that it may not be interrupted by any reflections."
"Reflection is so antipathetic to it!" cried Joseph Bridau.
"I was seventeen," de Marsay went on; "the Restoration was being
consolidated; my old friends know how impetuous and fervid I was
then. I was in love for the first time, and I was--I may say so now--one
of the handsomest young fellows in Paris. I had youth and good looks,
two advantages due to good fortune, but of which we are all as proud as
of a conquest. I must be silent as to the rest.--Like all youths, I was in
love with a woman six years older than myself. No one of you here,"
said he, looking carefully round the table, "can suspect