Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan | Page 7

the princess, laying her hand on the arm of her friend.
They turned and seated themselves on a rustic bench beneath a jasmine
then coming into flower. Each had uttered one of those sayings that are
solemn to women who have reached their age.
"Like you," resumed the princess, "I have received more love than most
women; but through all my many adventures, I have never found
happiness. I committed great follies, but they had an object, and that
object retreated as fast as I approached it. I feel to-day in my heart, old
as it is, an innocence which has never been touched. Yes, under all my
experience, lies a first love intact,--just as I myself, in spite of all my
losses and fatigues, feel young and beautiful. We may love and not be
happy; we may be happy and never love; but to love and be happy, to
unite those two immense human experiences, is a miracle. That miracle
has not taken place for me."
"Nor for me," said Madame d'Espard.
"I own I am pursued in this retreat by dreadful regret: I have amused
myself all through life, but I have never loved."
"What an incredible secret!" cried the marquise.
"Ah! my dear," replied the princess, "such secrets we can tell to
ourselves, you and I, but nobody in Paris would believe us."
"And," said the marquise, "if we were not both over thirty-six years of
age, perhaps we would not tell them to each other."
"Yes; when women are young they have so many stupid conceits,"
replied the princess. "We are like those poor young men who play with
a toothpick to pretend they have dined."
"Well, at any rate, here we are!" said Madame d'Espard, with

coquettish grace, and a charming gesture of well-informed innocence;
"and, it seems to me, sufficiently alive to think of taking our revenge."
"When you told me, the other day, that Beatrix had gone off with Conti,
I thought of it all night long," said the princess, after a pause. "I
suppose there was happiness in sacrificing her position, her future, and
renouncing society forever."
"She was a little fool," said Madame d'Espard, gravely. "Mademoiselle
des Touches was delighted to get rid of Conti. Beatrix never perceived
how that surrender, made by a superior woman who never for a
moment defended her claims, proved Conti's nothingness."
"Then you think she will be unhappy?"
"She is so now," replied Madame d'Espard. "Why did she leave her
husband? What an acknowledgment of weakness!"
"Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was not influenced by the
desire to enjoy a true love in peace?" asked the princess.
"No; she was simply imitating Madame de Beausant and Madame de
Langeais, who, be it said, between you and me, would have been, in a
less vulgar period than ours, the La Villiere, the Diane de Poitiers, the
Gabrielle d'Estrees of history."
"Less the king, my dear. Ah! I wish I could evoke the shades of those
women, and ask them--"
"But," said the marquise, interrupting the princess, "why ask the dead?
We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this
very subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she
married that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman
in the world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her;
they are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments,
like that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin,
Madame de Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you
and I don't know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme

compliment of thinking we are two rakes worthy of the court of the
regent; whereas we are, in truth, as innocent as a couple of
school-girls."
"I should like that sort of innocence," cried the princess, laughing; "but
ours is worse, and it is very humiliating. Well, it is a mortification we
offer up in expiation of our fruitless search; yes, my dear, fruitless, for
it isn't probable we shall find in our autumn season the fine flower we
missed in the spring and summer."
"That's not the question," resumed the marquise, after a meditative
pause. "We are both still beautiful enough to inspire love, but we could
never convince any one of our innocence and virtue."
"If it were a lie, how easy to dress it up with commentaries, and serve it
as some delicious fruit to be eagerly swallowed! But how is it possible
to get a truth believed? Ah! the greatest of men have been mistaken
there!" added the princess, with one of those meaning smiles which the
pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone has rendered.
"Fools love well, sometimes," returned the marquise.