第42章 ON SOME FRENCH FASHIONABLE NOVELS(7)
a lovely creature is married to a brave, haughty, Alsacian nobleman, who allows her to spend her winters at Paris, he remaining on his terres, cultivating, carousing, and hunting the boar.The lovely-creature meets the fascinating Gerfaut at Paris;instantly the latter makes love to her; a duel takes place: baron killed; wife throws herself out of window; Gerfaut plunges into dissipation; and so the tale ends.
Next: "La Femme de Quarante Ans," a capital tale, full of exquisite fun and sparkling satire: La femme de quarante ans has a husband and THREE lovers; all of whom find out their mutual connection one starry night; for the lady of forty is of a romantic poetical turn, and has given her three admirers A STAR APIECE; saying to one and the other, "Alphonse, when yon pale orb rises in heaven, think of me;" "Isadore, when that bright planet sparkles in the sky, remember your Caroline," &c.
"Un Acte de Vertu," from which we have taken Dambergeac's history, contains him, the husband--a wife--and a brace of lovers; and a great deal of fun takes place in the manner in which one lover supplants the other.--Pretty morals truly!
If we examine an author who rejoices in the aristocratic name of le Comte Horace de Viel-Castel, we find, though with infinitely less wit, exactly the same intrigues going on.A noble Count lives in the Faubourg St.Honore, and has a noble Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife.The Countess his wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax--duel, death, despair, and what not? In the "Faubourg St.Germain," another novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, Prussia, and Austria, there is an old husband, of course; a sentimental young German nobleman, who falls in love with his wife; and the moral of the piece lies in the showing up of the conduct of the lady, who is reprehended--not for deceiving her husband (poor devil!)--but for being a flirt, AND TAKING A SECOND LOVER, to the utter despair, confusion, and annihilation of the first.
Why, ye gods, do Frenchmen marry at all? Had Pere Enfantin (who, it is said, has shaved his ambrosial beard, and is now a clerk in a banking-house) been allowed to carry out his chaste, just, dignified social scheme, what a deal of marital discomfort might have been avoided:--would it not be advisable that a great reformer and lawgiver of our own, Mr.Robert Owen, should be presented at the Tuileries, and there propound his scheme for the regeneration of France?
He might, perhaps, be spared, for our country is not yet sufficiently advanced to give such a philosopher fair play.In London, as yet, there are no blessed Bureaux de Mariage, where an old bachelor may have a charming young maiden--for his money; or a widow of seventy may buy a gay young fellow of twenty, for a certain number of bank-billets.If mariages de convenance take place here (as they will wherever avarice, and poverty, and desire, and yearning after riches are to be found), at least, thank God, such unions are not arranged upon a regular organized SYSTEM: there is a fiction of attachment with us, and there is a consolation in the deceit ("the homage," according to the old mot of Rochefoucauld) "which vice pays to virtue"; for the very falsehood shows that the virtue exists somewhere.We once heard a furious old French colonel inveighing against the chastity of English demoiselles: "Figurez-vous, sir,"said he (he had been a prisoner in England), "that these women come down to dinner in low dresses, and walk out alone with the men!"--and, pray heaven, so may they walk, fancy-free in all sorts of maiden meditations, and suffer no more molestation than that young lady of whom Moore sings, and who (there must have been a famous lord-lieutenant in those days) walked through all Ireland, with rich and rare gems, beauty, and a gold ring on her stick, without meeting or thinking of harm.
Now, whether Monsieur de Viel-Castel has given a true picture of the Faubourg St.Germain, it is impossible for most foreigners to say; but some of his descriptions will not fail to astonish the English reader; and all are filled with that remarkable naif contempt of the institution called marriage, which we have seen in M.de Bernard.The romantic young nobleman of Westphalia arrives at Paris, and is admitted into what a celebrated female author calls la creme de la creme de la haute volee of Parisian society.
He is a youth of about twenty years of age."No passion had as yet come to move his heart, and give life to his faculties; he was awaiting and fearing the moment of love; calling for it, and yet trembling at its approach; feeling in the depths of his soul, that that moment would create a mighty change in his being, and decide, perhaps, by its influence, the whole of his future life."Is it not remarkable, that a young nobleman, with these ideas, should not pitch upon a demoiselle, or a widow, at least? but no, the rogue must have a married woman, bad luck to him; and what his fate is to be, is thus recounted by our author, in the shape of A FRENCH FASHIONABLE CONVERSATION.
"A lady, with a great deal of esprit, to whom forty years'