Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan | Page 4

position, nominally, to the
princes of the continent.
The members of the society called the faubourg Saint-Germain
protected the princess by a respectful silence due to her name, which is
one of those that all men honor, to her misfortunes, which they ceased
to discuss, and to her beauty, the only thing she saved of her departed
opulence. Society, of which she had once been the ornament, was
thankful to her for having, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered
herself in her own home. This act of good taste was for her, more than

for any other woman, an immense sacrifice. Great deeds are always so
keenly felt in France that the princess gained, by her retreat, as much as
she had lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor.
She now saw only one of her old friends, the Marquise d'Espard, and
even to her she never went on festive occasions or to parties. The
princess and the marquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a
certain amount of secrecy. When the princess went to dine with her
friend, the marquise closed her doors. Madame d'Espard treated the
princess charmingly; she changed her box at the opera, leaving the first
tier for a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame de Cadignan
could come to the theatre unseen, and depart incognito. Few women
would have been capable of a delicacy which deprived them of the
pleasure of bearing in their train a fallen rival, and of publicly being her
benefactress. Thus relieved of the necessity for costly toilets, the
princess could enjoy the theatre, whither she went in Madame
d'Espard's carriage, which she would never have accepted openly in the
daytime. No one has ever known Madame d'Espard's reasons for
behaving thus to the Princesse de Cadignan; but her conduct was
admirable, and for a long time included a number of little acts which,
viewed single, seem mere trifles, but taken in the mass become
gigantic.
In 1832, three years had thrown a mantle of snow over the follies and
adventures of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them
so thoroughly that it now required a serious effort of memory to recall
them. Of the queen once adored by so many courtiers, and whose
follies might have given a theme to a variety of novels, there remained
a woman still adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite
justified in calling herself thirty, although she was the mother of Duc
Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young man of eighteen, handsome as
Antinous, poor as Job, who was expected to obtain great successes, and
for whom his mother desired, above all things, to find a rich wife.
Perhaps this hope was the secret of the intimacy she still kept up with
the marquise, in whose salon, which was one of the first in Paris, she
might eventually be able to choose among many heiresses for Georges'
wife. The princess saw five years between the present moment and her

son's marriage,--five solitary and desolate years; for, in order to obtain
such a marriage for her son, she knew that her own conduct must be
marked in the corner with discretion.
The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a small house, of which
she occupied the ground-floor at a moderate rent. There she made the
most of the relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of the great
lady was still redolent about her. She was still surrounded by beautiful
things which recalled her former existence. On her chimney- piece was
a fine miniature portrait of Charles X., by Madame Mirbel, beneath
which were engraved the words, "Given by the King"; and, as a
pendant, the portrait of "Madame", who was always her kind friend. On
a table lay an album of costliest price, such as none of the bourgeoises
who now lord it in our industrial and fault-finding society would have
dared to exhibit. This album contained portraits, about thirty in number,
of her intimate friends, whom the world, first and last, had given her as
lovers. The number was a calumny; but had rumor said ten, it might
have been, as her friend Madame d'Espard remarked, good, sound
gossip. The portraits of Maxime de Trailles, de Marsay, Rastignac, the
Marquis d'Esgrignon, General Montriveau, the Marquis de
Ronquerolles and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young Ducs
de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, the Vicomte de Serizy, and the handsome
Lucien de Rubempre, had all been treated with the utmost coquetry of
brush and pencil by celebrated artists. As the princess now received
only two or three of these personages, she called the book, jokingly, the
collection of her errors.
Misfortune had made this woman a good mother. During the fifteen
years of the Restoration she had amused herself