Duchess of Omnium

“ The Duchess was one of those women who are the delight of existence. She was sprung from a house not inferior to that with which she had blended, and was gifted with that rare beauty which time ever spares, so that she seemed now only the elder sister of her own beautiful daughters. She, too, was distinguished by that perfect good breeding which is the result of nature and not of education: for it may be found in a cottage, and may be missed in a palace. ‘Tis a genial regard for the feelings of others that springs from an absence of selfishness. ”

“ I recollect saying something to her son, with whom I was a little acquainted, about the maids of honour attending on the Grand-Duchess, and I naturally expressed myself in the terms, “the ladies of the Grand-Duchess.” The young man, who just before had been talking to me with the civility usually shown to a young woman, suddenly reddened, and looked quite savage. “Madame,” said he, “the Grand-Duchess has no ladies; she has no right to have any. They are the ladies of our august sovereign, who allows them to attend upon the Grand-Duchess in her travels.” ”

“ She often kept watch by herself in the queen’s room; but every evening, while the illness lasted, she sat there watching with the king. And every evening the king sat looking at her with a cross look, wondering why she never brought out the magic fish-bone. As often as she noticed this, she ran up-stairs, whispered the secret to the duchess over again, and said to the duchess besides, ‘They think we children never have a reason or a meaning!’ And the duchess, though the most fashionable duchess that ever was heard of, winked her eye. ”

“ A brow, expansive and intellectual—hair of silken texture, that fell in massive luxuriance from beneath a jewelled head-dress which resembled the coronet of a duchess—cheeks that glowed with the rosy hue of health and a thousand fiery passions—eyes that sparkled with that peculiar expression so often seen in women of an ardent, impetuous nature, now languishing, melting with tender desires, now darting forth arrows of hate and rage—these were the characteristics of the Duchess! ”

“ He went to the court and solicited a hearing of the duchess. “Gracious sovereign of thy people and of my heart,” he said, “from thee no secret is concealed, thou knowest the flames that glow in this bosom, as purely and holily as those upon the altar of the gods, and thou knowest the celestial fire that has kindled them. The time is at hand when thou must give a prince to the land, at the bidding of thy people. Can’st thou slight a heart which only lives and beats for thee? ”

“ She might live well as a simple duchess; but not as one of the Royal Family of France. It is too true that she has always been ambitious of possessing, not my son's heart, but his power; she is always in fear lest some one else should govern him. ”

“ The Duchess is a beautiful, elegant, and dignified woman. It is said she is of a noble family; and her manners evidently betoken high cultivation. The Duchess told me kindly that she had not seen enough of me at the ball, and that I must take the visit as an evidence of her devotion and admiration. The Prince of Maulear approached. 'We are especially flattered, Duchess,' said he, and he emphasized the word, looking at the same time at some ladies I received; 'we are especially flattered by the honor you confer on us. We know how careful you are in the bestowal of such favors. ”

“ Tis he who, contrary to his oath and promise, has made known the happy life which, wronging none, we so long have led together. O my beloved, the love of whom alone has entered into my heart, and preserved my life, must you now be declared my deadly foe, while mine honour is given to the winds, my body to the dust, and my soul to its everlasting abode? Is the beauty of the Duchess so exceeding great that, like the beauty of Circe, it has bewitched and transformed you? Has she turned you from virtue to vice, from goodness to wickedness, from being a man to be a beast of prey? ”

“ Well, the Duchess, it seemed, welcomed it too; youth will have youth, and laughter turns to laughter; and the two matched each other like the candlesticks on an altar. The Duchess—you've seen her portrait—but to hear my grandmother, sir, it no more approached her than a weed comes up to a rose. The Cavaliere, indeed, as became a poet, paragoned her in his song to all the pagan goddesses of antiquity; and doubtless these were finer to look at than mere women ”

“ And the duchess? I was so disturbed to find myself disturbed at the thought of the duchess that I exclaimed:
“By Jove, I’d better go! By Jove, I had!”
A wishing-cap, or rather a hoping-cap—for if a man who is no philosopher may have an opinion, we do not always wish and hope for the same thing—could have done no more for me than the chance of Fate; for at the moment the duke’s voice called “Sampson!” loudly from the house. I ran in obedience to his summons. He stood in the porch with the little stranger by him; and the stranger wore a deferential, but extremely well-satisfied smile. ”

“ As a child she amused all who knew her by the airs she assumed. Before she was long out of the nursery she vowed that "she would be a Duchess," and a Duchess she was before she died. She was quick to learn the power of beauty and of a clever tongue; and before she was emancipated from short frocks she was a finished coquette. ”

“ Duchess.
Always. It is the very blood in my veins. It keeps me young. I shall die a romantic girl, however old I may be.
Quex.
You ought, you really ought, to have flourished in the Middle Ages.
Duchess.
You have frequently made that observation. [Rising.] I do live in the Middle Ages, in my imagination. I live in every age in which Love was not a cool, level emotion, but a fierce, all-conquering flame—a flame that grew in the heart of a woman, that of a sudden spread through her whole organism, that lit up her eyes with a light more refulgent than the light of sun or moon! ”

“ She knew by herself, and she gloried in the knowledge, that rare nobility and refinement of soul are sometimes found in the poorest and most obscure, and that which had oftenest offended her in her suitors were the slight imperfections, not apparent very possibly to any one save the duchess, but inexpressibly obnoxious to her. ”

“ The poor child, who worshipped the Duchess as a girl of her years will worship a beautiful kind mistress, spent a night of horror, you may fancy, shut out from her lady's room, hearing the cries that came from it, and seeing, as she crouched in her corner, the women rush to and fro with wild looks, the Duke's lean face in the door, and the chaplain skulking in the antechamber with his eyes on his breviary. ”

“ Duchess
Ay, there it is!
There speaks the man! yet had you come to me
With any heavy sin upon your soul,
Some murder done for hire, not for love,
Why, I had sat and watched at your bedside
All through the night-time, lest Remorse might come
And pour his poisons in your ear, and so
Keep you from sleeping! Sure it is the guilty,
Who, being very wretched, need love most.
Guido
There is no love where there is any guilt.
Duchess
No love where there is any guilt! O God,
How differently do we love from men! ”

“ The duchess sat with the air of a child who has been told that she is naughty, but declines to accept the statement. I was puzzled at the stern morality exhibited by my friend Gustave. His next remark threw some light on his feelings.
“Heavens! if it became known, what would be thought?” he demanded suddenly.
“If one thinks of what is thought,” said the duchess with a shrug, “one is—”
“A fool,” said I, “or—a lover!”
“Ah!” cried the duchess, a smile coming on her lips. “If it is that, I’ll forgive you, my dear Gustave. Whose good opinion do you fear to lose?” ”

“ Seldom has there been a more brilliant figure in history than that of the great duchess, a woman beloved and hated as few have ever been; holding on one side in absolute devotion to her the greatest hero of the time, and on the other rousing to the height of adoration the mild and obtuse nature of her mistress ”

“ Duchess
A grave is but a narrow wedding-bed.
Guido
It is enough for us
Duchess
And they will strew it
With a stark winding-sheet, and bitter herbs:
I think there are no roses in the grave,
Or if there are, they all are withered now
Since my Lord went there.
Guido
Ah! dear Beatrice,
Your lips are roses that death cannot wither.
Duchess
Nay, if we lie together, will not my lips
Fall into dust, and your enamoured eyes
Shrivel to sightless sockets, and the worms,
Which are our groomsmen, eat away your heart?
Guido
I do not care: Death has no power on love. ”

“ Perhaps even then he was attending to the Duchess's husband in the men's saloon. I suppose if you wanted to scrape up an acquaintance with anyone and took enough trouble, you could manage to manipulate circumstances so as to get an unconventional introduction. I guess some people would have just jumped at being as seasick as I was in order to scrape up an acquaintance with a Duchess. Now, I'm not lacking in the bump of veneration, but I've known a Duchess at home, and well, I don't mind confessing that I don't think that Duchess just exactly wants me to become a Duchess too. ”

“ The office which the Duchess held about the person of the Queen rendered silence an imperative claim of honour; but, with an unrelenting coarseness, the Duchess laid bare the very privacies of the closet, the foibles, the vacillations, the manœuvres, the weaknesses, the peculiarities of her sovereign. No self-justification could be worth such a price—revenge upon the memory of one silent in the grave. ”

“ As the Lady Contemplation in the play of that name, as the Lady Chastity of the ‘Matrimonial Trouble,’ and in a score other characters, the duchess is recognisable. Not seldom the speeches assigned the characters in her plays are as scholastic and as voluminous as her letters or her philosophical opinions. She does not hesitate to introduce wanton characters and to employ language which goes beyond coarseness. Her philosophy is the dead weight which drags her to the ground. ”

“ Queen
Why are you so melancholy, Josephine? You are standing in the portals of joy—I confess they do not appear very much to intrigue you.
Duchess
Possibly I am melancholy because I am not curious.
Queen [sarcastically]
No, rocks could hardly be curious about [Pg 22] the waves or the wrecks washing against them. Come, Phedro.
[She goes. Prince bows after the Queen and then comes back to the Duchess.]
Prince
Beauty like yours is a penance for other women to regard. You are very like an exquisite temple in which there is no god. Yet I would not put a god in your temple. ”

“ Had she been blessed with an exalting and practical faith, such a faith as elevates the heart, and chastens those angry passions and wilful discontents which embitter the dark valley of old age far more even than bodily suffering, the Duchess, looking around her upon those whom she had the power to bless, might have been happy. ”

“ I shall find them there.”
“I read it in the same way; but I’m not so sure that the Delhasses are going.”
“You are so charitable,” said she, still quite sweetly. “You can’t bring yourself to think evil of anybody.”
The duchess chanced to look so remarkably calm and composed as she sat on the corn bin that I could not deny myself the pleasure of surprising her with the sudden apparition of the Cardinal’s Necklace. Without a word, I took the case out of my pocket, opened it, and held it out toward her. For once the duchess sat stock-still, her eyes round and large. ”

“ Ah, well . . . she was a mere slip, you understand, my grandmother, when the Duchess died, a niece of the upper maid, Nencia, and suffered about the Duchess because of her pranks and the funny songs she knew. It's possible, you think, she may have heard from others what she afterward fancied she had seen herself? How that is, it's not for an unlettered man to say; though indeed I myself seem to have seen many of the things she told me. This is a strange place. No one comes here, nothing changes, and the old memories stand up as distinct as the statues in the garden. ”

“ But the Duchess never sought, never asked for the common love-gift; it was worthless in her eyes, being worthless in itself; she had gold earrings now, and perhaps by-and-by--who could tell?--she would have earrings with sparkling stones in them, worth a handful of money. For in the Duchess's soul was growing a most intense hankering after fine things. She would wander by herself away from Sally and Seth and Rosemary Lane into the thoroughfares frequented by ladies and gentlemen, and watch them and their dress and ways with an eager, strange, and restless spirit. ”

“ I knew that the love of an Imperial Grand Duchess of the greatest family in Europe is just as intense, just is passionate, just as fervent as that of a commoner, be she only a typist, a seamstress, or a serving-maid. ”

“ Be only firm; they can prove nothing,” whispers the Duchess. “There is not a tittle of evidence against you.”
“Ah, but, my friend, you forget that the King is eager to repudiate me. Mademoiselle de Hautefort knows it from his own lips.”
“He cannot, without proofs of your guilt,” the Duchess answers resolutely. “There are none. And if he does, qu’importe? Why mar that queenly brow with sorrow, and wrinkle those delicate cheeks with tears? Be like me, Madame, a citizen of the world—Madrid, Paris, London—what matters? The sun shines as brightly in other lands as here. ”

“ It was not thought by the Queen incompatible with the deep feeling which she professed, to busy herself with those minutiæ to which minds of a common stamp affix so much importance, connected with the disposition of the dead.—The Duchess has commented upon the Queen’s particularities, with the freedom natural to her. ”