Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan | Page 5

far too much to think
of her son; but on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist
bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed to its extreme,
might be an absolution for her past follies in the eyes of sensible
persons, who pardon everything to a good mother. She loved her son all
the more because she had nothing else to love. Georges de
Maufrigneuse was, moreover, one of those children who flatter the
vanities of a mother; and the princess had, accordingly, made all sorts
of sacrifices for him. She hired a stable and coach-house, above which

he lived in a little entresol with three rooms looking on the street, and
charmingly furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a
saddle-horse, a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For herself,
she had only her own maid, and as cook, a former kitchen- maid. The
duke's groom had, therefore, rather a hard place. Toby, formerly tiger
to the "late" Beaudenord (such was the jesting term applied by the gay
world to that ruined gentleman),--Toby, who at twenty-five years of
age was still considered only fourteen, was expected to groom the
horses, clean the cabriolet, or the tilbury, and the harnesses, accompany
his master, take care of the apartments, and be in the princess's
antechamber to announce a visitor, if, by chance, she happened to
receive one.
When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had
been under the Restoration,--one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling
queen, whose luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women of
fashion in London,--there was something touching in the sight of her in
that humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away
from her splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled
her to keep, and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished.
The woman who thought she was scarcely well served by thirty
servants, who possessed the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris,
and the loveliest little private apartments, and who made them the
scene of such delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five
rooms,-- an antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a
dressing- room, with two women-servants only.
"Ah! she is devoted to her son," said that clever creature, Madame
d'Espard, "and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would
ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent
resolution! Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged
her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit."
Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate,
and to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly
lost. Those only who have an inner consciousness of being nothing in

themselves, show regrets in falling, or struggle, murmuring, to return to
a past which can never return,--a fact of which they themselves are well
aware. Compelled to do without the choice exotics in the midst of
which she had lived, and which set off so charmingly her whole being
(for it is impossible not to compare her to a flower), the princess had
wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there she enjoyed a pretty
little garden which belonged to it,--a garden full of shrubs, and an
always verdant turf, which brightened her peaceful retreat. She had
about twelve thousand francs a year; but that modest income was partly
made up of an annual stipend sent her by the old Duchesse de
Navarreins, paternal aunt of the young duke, and another stipend given
by her mother, the Duchesse d'Uxelles, who was living on her estate in
the country, where she economized as old duchesses alone know how
to economize; for Harpagon is a mere novice compared to them. The
princess still retained some of her past relations with the exiled royal
family; and it was in her house that the marshal to whom we owe the
conquest of Africa had conferences, at the time of "Madame's" attempt
in La Vendee, with the principal leaders of legitimist opinion,--so great
was the obscurity in which the princess lived, and so little distrust did
the government feel for her in her present distress.
Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth year, the bankruptcy of
love, beyond which there is so little for a woman as woman, the
princess had flung herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to
reading, she who for sixteen years had felt a cordial horror for serious
things. Literature and politics are to-day what piety and devotion once
were to her sex,--the last refuge of their feminine pretensions. In her
late social circle it was said that Diane was writing a book. Since her
transformation from a queen