Honoré de Balzac

“ D'Arthez remained on the low seat to which he had returned not daring to follow the princess; but he looked at her; he heard her blowing her nose. Was there ever a princess who blew her nose? but Diane attempted the impossible to convey an idea of her sensibility. D'Arthez believed his angel was in tears; he rushed to her side, took her round the waist, and pressed her to his heart.
"No, no, leave me!" she murmured in a feeble voice. "I have too many doubts to be good for anything. To reconcile me with life is a task beyond the powers of any man." ”

“ D'Arthez, for the first time, after sixty days of protocols, ventured to take that warm and perfumed hand, and press it to his lips with a long-drawn kiss, extending from the wrist to the tip of the fingers, which made the princess augur well of literature. She thought to herself that men of genius must know how to love with more perfection than conceited fops, men of the world, diplomatists, and even soldiers, although such beings have nothing else to do. She was a connoisseur, and knew very well that the capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere nothings. ”

“ Diane looked at the tender petitioner; then she lowered her eyes slowly, dropping their lids with a movement of noble modesty. None but a monster would have been capable of imagining hypocrisy in the graceful undulation of the neck with which the princess again lifted her charming head, to look once more into the eager eyes of that great man.
"Can I? ought I?" she murmured, with a gesture of hesitation, gazing at d'Arthez with a sublime expression of dreamy tenderness. "Men have so little faith in things of this kind; they think themselves so little bound to be discreet!" ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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.
"But in this case," said the princess, "fools wouldn't have enough credulity in their nature."
"You are right," said the marquise. "But what we ought to look for is neither a fool nor even a man of talent. To solve our problem we need a man of genius. Genius alone has the faith of childhood, the religion of love, and willingly allows us to band its eyes. ”

“ D'Arthez went to the princess, who was awaiting him with the keenest anxiety. The result of this experiment, which Diane had herself brought about, might be fatal to her. For the first time in her life this woman suffered in her heart. She knew not what she should do in case d'Arthez believed the world which spoke the truth, instead of believing her who lied; for never had so noble a nature, so complete a man, a soul so pure, a conscience so ingenuous come beneath her hand. ”

“ With what lucidity had Michel Chrestien read into that soul, that heart, illumined by the fires of love! Thus the princess acquired, in d'Arthez's eyes, another charm; a halo of poesy surrounded her.
As the dinner proceeded, Daniel called to mind the various confidences of his friend, his despair, his hopes, the noble poems of a true sentiment sung to his ear alone, in honor of this woman. It is rare that a man passes without remorse from the position of confidant to that of rival, and d'Arthez was free to do so without dishonor. ”

“ I have often heard miserable little specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, wishing they were men; I have always regarded them with pity. If I had to choose, I should still elect to be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one's triumph to force, and to all those powers which you give yourselves by the laws you make! But to see you at our feet, saying and doing foolish things,—ah! it is an intoxicating pleasure to feel within our souls that weakness triumphs! But when we triumph, we ought to keep silence, under pain of losing our empire. Beaten, a woman's pride should gag her. ”

“ She remained for a moment with her eyes in d'Arthez's eyes, expressing in that one glance happiness, prudery, fear, confidence, languor, a vague longing, and virgin modesty. She was twenty years old! but remember, she had prepared for this hour of comic falsehood by the choicest art of dress; she was there in her armchair like a flower, ready to blossom at the first kiss of sunshine. True or false, she intoxicated Daniel.
It if is permissible to risk a personal opinion we must avow that it would be delightful to be thus deceived for a good long time. ”

“ This chatter was uttered in a voice so softly sarcastic, so dainty, and with such coquettish motions of the head, that d'Arthez, to whom this style of woman was totally unknown, sat before her exactly like a partridge charmed by a setter.
"I entreat you, madame," he said, at last, "to tell me how it was possible that a man could make you suffer? Be assured that where, as you say, other women are common and vulgar, you can only seem distinguished; your manner of saying things would make a cook-book interesting." ”

“ Right or wrong, the woman whom they thus treated so lightly was sacred to d'Arthez; his desire to meet her needed no spur; he consented to do so at the first word, which was all the two friends wanted of him.
Madame d'Espard went to see the princess as soon as she had received this answer.
"My dear, do you feel yourself in full beauty and coquetry?" she said. "If so, come and dine with me a few days hence, and I'll serve up d'Arthez. Our man of genius is by nature, it seems, a savage; he fears women, and has never loved! ”

“ Like all men younger than their actual age, d'Arthez was a prey to those agitating irresolutions which are caused by the force of desires and the terror of displeasing,—a situation which a young woman does not comprehend when she shares it, but which the princess had too often deliberately produced not to enjoy its pleasures. In fact, Diane enjoyed these delightful juvenilities all the more keenly because she knew that she could put an end to them at any moment. ”

“ A man can be a great man and a wicked one, just as he can be a fool and a devoted lover. D'Arthez is one of those privileged beings in whom shrewdness of mind and a broad expanse of the qualities of the brain do not exclude either the strength or the grandeur of sentiments. He is, by rare privilege, equally a man of action and a man of thought. His private life is noble and generous. If he carefully avoided love, it was because he knew himself, and felt a premonition of the empire such a passion would exercise upon him. ”

“ What a home is that of a man accustomed to the adulation of women of the world, when he finds neither incense nor censer in his own house! dead to all! and yet, perhaps for that very reason, jealous. I wished—when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was wholly mine—I wished to be a good wife, but I found myself repulsed with the harshness of a soured spirit by a man who treated me like a child and took pleasure in humiliating my self-respect at every turn, in crushing me under the scorn of his experience, and in convicting me of total ignorance. ”

“ Women know how to give a peculiar sacredness to their words; they communicate something vibrant to them, which extends the meaning of their ideas, and gives them depth; though later their fascinated listener may not remember precisely what they said, their end has been completely attained,—which is the object of all eloquence. The princess might at that moment have been wearing the diadem of France, and her brow could not have seemed more imposing than it was beneath that crown of golden hair, braided like a coronet, and adorned with heather. ”

“ If violent emotions have the power to yellow the white tones of persons of bilious and melancholy temperament, and to green lymphatic faces, shall we not grant to desire, hope, and joy, the faculty of clearing the skin, giving brilliancy to the eye, and brightening the glow of beauty with a light as jocund as that of a lovely morning? The celebrated faintness of the princess had taken on a ripeness which now made her seem more august. ”

“ The princess is one of those impenetrable women; she can make herself what she pleases to be: playful, childlike, distractingly innocent; or reflective, serious, and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came to Madame d'Espard's dinner with the intention of being a gentle, simple woman, to whom life was known only through its deceptions: a woman full of soul, and calumniated, but resigned,—in short, a wounded angel. ”

“ I know that you were one of his best friends. Your mutual friendship, pure and unalterable, is a claim upon me. You will not, I am sure, think it extraordinary, that I have wished to know all you could tell me of a man so dear to you. Though I am attached to the exiled family, and bound, of course, to hold monarchical opinions, I am not among those who think it is impossible to be both republican and noble in heart. Monarchy and the republic are two forms of government which do not stifle noble sentiments."
"Michel Chrestien was an angel, madame," replied Daniel, in a voice of emotion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ I see many women who are only the pretext for a passion without being both its cause and its effect."
"The last love I inspired was a beautiful and sacred thing," said the princess. "It had a future in it. Chance had brought me, for once in a way, the man of genius who is due to us, and yet so difficult to obtain; there are more pretty women than men of genius. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This evening was like a halt in the oasis of a desert,—a rare enjoyment, and well appreciated by these four persons, habitually victimized to the endless caution entailed by the world of salons and politics. There are beings who have the privilege of passing among men like beneficent stars, whose light illumines the mind, while its rays send a glow to the heart. D'Arthez was one of those beings. A writer who rises to his level, accustoms himself to free thought, and forgets that in society all things cannot be said ”

“ After all, I have never blamed my mother; she knew little of me. Mothers who lead a life like that of the Duchesse d'Uxelles keep their children at a distance. I saw and knew nothing of the world until my marriage. You can judge of my innocence! I knew nothing; I was incapable of understanding the causes of my marriage. I had a fine fortune; sixty thousand francs a year in forests, which the Revolution overlooked (or had not been able to sell) in the Nivernais, with the noble chateau of d'Anzy. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was steeped in debt. ”

“ D'Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior man whom all women desire and seek, if only to make a plaything of him,—that power which they consent to obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it; at last she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united with the simplicity of a heart all new to love ”