The Princesse De Cleves Page 17

  He found it impossible to go away without seeing Mme de Clèves, so he went to visit Mme de Mercoeur, who was at that time in the house that she had close to Coulommiers. She was most astonished at her brother’s arrival. He invented an excuse for his journey which was plausible enough to deceive her, and eventually schemed so well that he contrived to make her suggest herself that they go to Mme de Clèves’s. The proposal was carried out the same day and M. de Nemours told his sister that he would take his leave of her at Coulommiers, in order to return directly to the King. He devised this plan of leaving her at Coulommiers with the idea that she would be the first to set out; and he thought that he had discovered an infallible means of speaking to Mme de Clèves.

  When they arrived, she was walking in a broad avenue running alongside the gardens. The sight of M. de Nemours perturbed her to no small degree and dispelled any remaining doubts as to whom she had seen the previous night. The confirmation of this brought a sudden feeling of anger, when she considered how bold and imprudent his action had been. The prince noticed the coldness in her expression and was hurt by it. The conversation touched on nothing of any consequence; yet he managed to display so much wit, such consideration and admiration for Mme de Clèves that, despite herself, he succeeded in dispelling part of her initial coldness towards him.

  With this reassurance, he expressed himself most curious to go and see the pavilion in the forest. He mentioned it as the most pleasant spot in the world and even gave so minute a description of it that Mme de Mercoeur told him he must have been there several times to know its attractions so well.

  ‘But I cannot think,’ said Mme de Clèves, ‘that M. de Nemours has ever been inside there; the place was only completed a short time ago.’

  ‘Still, I was there only recently,’ said M. de Nemours, looking at her, ‘and I am not sure whether I should be relieved that you have forgotten seeing me there.’

  Mme de Mercoeur, who was studying the beauty of the garden, paid no attention to what her brother was saying. Mme de Clèves blushed, lowering her eyes without looking at M. de Nemours:

  ‘I do not remember,’ she answered, ‘having seen you; and if you were there, it was without my knowledge.’

  ‘It is true, madame,’ replied M. de Nemours, ‘that I went without your inviting me to do so, and spent there the sweetest and cruellest moments of my life.’

  Mme de Clèves understood quite well what the prince meant, but did not reply. She considered how to prevent Mme de Mercoeur from going into that room, since M. de Nemours’s portrait was there and she did not want her to see it. She was so successful in this that time passed without their noticing it and Mme de Mercoeur spoke of returning home. But when Mme de Clèves realized that M. de Nemours and his sister were not leaving together, she guessed the danger that awaited her; she found herself in the same predicament as in Paris and adopted the same course. Her resolve was strengthened to no small degree by the fear that this visit would merely confirm her husband’s suspicions; and, to avoid remaining alone with M. de Nemours, she told Mme de Mercoeur that she would accompany her to the edge of the forest, and gave orders for her carriage to follow. So extreme was the prince’s distress at finding that Mme de Clèves continued with the same severity towards him, that he paled instantly. Mme de Mercoeur asked if he was unwell; but he looked at Mme de Clèves, without anyone noticing, and his expression told her that he was enduring no sickness other than despair. However, he had to let them go without daring to follow and, after what he had said, could not return on a second visit with his sister. Instead, he went back to Paris and left there the following day.

  M. de Clèves’s gentleman had been watching him throughout: he also returned to Paris and, seeing M. de Nemours set out for Chambord, took the mailcoach so that he might arrive before him and give an account of his journey. His master had been awaiting his arrival as something that would decide his whole fate.

  As soon as he saw him, he guessed, from his expression and from his silence, that what he had to tell him would be unwelcome news. For some time he remained, overwhelmed with misery, unable to speak, hanging his head. At last, he motioned to him to withdraw.

  ‘Go,’ he said. ‘I can see what you have to tell me, but I do not have the strength to hear it.’

  ‘I have nothing to tell you,’ the gentleman replied, ‘that amounts to any definite proof. It is true M. de Nemours went to the garden in the forest on two successive nights, and that he visited Coulommiers the following day with Mme de Mercoeur.’

  ‘That is enough,’ M. de Clèves replied, ‘that is enough,’ again gesturing to him to retire, ‘and you need enlighten me no further.’

  The gentleman was obliged to abandon his master to despair. This was as terrible as has ever been seen, and few men of such great courage and such a passionate nature as M. de Clèves, have at one and the same time suffered the pain of a mistress’s infidelity and the shame of being betrayed by a wife.

  M. de Clèves could not withstand the prostration of grief. The same night, he was taken with a fever, with such awful consequences that, from the start, his illness appeared very grave. Mme de Clèves was informed and came at all speed. When she arrived, his condition had worsened, and she found something so icily cold in his manner towards her that she was profoundly surprised and distressed. She even felt that he was reluctant to allow her to tend him, but thought that this was perhaps an effect of his illness.

  When first she was in Blois, where the court then was, M. de Nemours could not resist the joy of knowing that she was at the same place as himself. He tried to see her and went daily to M. de Cleves’s house, on the excuse of enquiring for news of him; but in vain. She did not leave her husband’s room and was deeply distressed at seeing him in this state. M. de Nemours was in desperation at her being so affected: he could well imagine how much this grief rekindled her affection for M. de Clèves and how dangerous a diversion this affection might be from the love in her heart. For some time, this feeling caused him mortal pain; but the gravity of M. de Cleves’s illness gave him fresh cause to hope. He saw that Mme de Clèves might perhaps be free to follow the dictates of her heart and that he could in the future enjoy a succession of enduring pleasures and happiness. He could not continue to think in this way, so great was the agitation and exultation he felt, and he put it from his mind, fearing to lapse into too profound a despair, should his hopes come to nothing.

  Meanwhile, M. de Clèves had been almost given up by his doctors. In one of the final days of his illness, after a most uncomfortable night, in the morning he said that he wanted to rest. Mme de Clèves stayed alone in his room and it seemed to her that, far from resting, he was suffering great agitation. She came close and knelt beside his bed, her face bathed in tears. M. de Clèves had decided not to reveal the extent of his bitterness against her, but her care and her sorrow, which at times seemed genuine to him and which he also at times considered as evidence of her hypocrisy and treachery, caused him such conflicting and painful feelings that he could not contain them.

  ‘You shed plenty of tears, madame,’ he said, ‘for a death which you yourself have inflicted and which cannot cause you the pain that you feign to endure. I am no longer in any state to upbraid you,’ he continued, his voice weakened by sickness and pain, ‘but I am dying from the cruel wound that you have given me. Did an act so extraordinary as yours, in speaking to me in Coulommiers, need to have so little consequence? Why inform me of your passion for M. de Nemours, if your virtue was unable to withstand it? I admit to my shame that I loved you to the point where I was happy to be misled; I have longed to return to the false sense of security from which you have now driven me. Why did you not leave me in that untroubled blindness so many husbands enjoy? I might perhaps have remained all my life in ignorance of your love for M. de Nemours. I shall die,’ he added. ‘But know that you make death welcome to me and that, after it had taken away the respect and the affection that I had for you, life appalled me. What should I do wi
th life,’ he said, ‘spending it with a person whom I have loved so much and who has so cruelly deceived me, or living apart from that same person, only to end in recriminations and outbursts of a kind so contrary to my nature and to the love I felt for you? It was greater than you knew, madame; I hid most of it, for fear of importuning you or losing a part of your respect through behaviour unsuited to a husband. In short, I deserved your heart and, once more, since I could not possess it and since I can no longer desire it, I die without any regret. Farewell, madame; you will one day mourn for a man who loved you with a true and lawful passion. You will feel the sorrow that all reasonable people feel in such affairs, and realize the difference between being loved as I loved you, and being loved by those who pretend love while only seeking the honour of seducing you. But my death will leave you free,’ he added, ‘and you can make M. de Nemours happy, without committing any sin. What does it matter,’ he went on, ‘what happens when I am no more: must I be so weak as even to think of it!’

  Mme de Clèves was so far from believing that her husband could suspect her that she listened to all these words without understanding and with no other notion except that she was being reprimanded because of her liking for M. de Nemours. But at length, her eyes suddenly opened, she cried:

  ‘I – commit a sin! The very idea is unthinkable to me. The highest virtue could not have dictated any course apart from the one I have followed, and I have never done anything that I would not wish you to have seen.’

  ‘Would you wish me,’ M. de Clèves retorted, looking at her contemptuously, ‘to have witnessed the nights that you spent with M. de Nemours? Oh, madame, am I speaking of you in such terms – as a woman who has spent nights with a man?’

  ‘No, monsieur,’ she replied. ‘No, it is not of me that you are speaking. I have never spent either nights or any other time with M. de Nemours. He has never seen me alone, I have never endured him, or listened to him, and I will take any oath…’

  ‘Do not continue,’ M. de Clèves interrupted. ‘False oaths or a true confession would perhaps cause me equal distress.’

  Mme de Clèves could not answer, silenced by pain and tears. Eventually, with an effort:

  ‘At least look at me, hear me,’ she said. ‘If it were only a matter of my own interests, I should endure this blame; but your life is at stake. Listen to me, as you love yourself: with so much truth on my side, it is impossible that I should not convince you.’

  ‘Would to God that you could do so!’ he exclaimed. ‘But what can you tell me? Was M. de Nemours not in Coulommiers with his sister? And did he not spend the two previous nights with you in the garden in the woods?’

  ‘If that is my sin,’ she answered, ‘I can easily prove my innocence. I do not ask you to believe me: believe all your servants who will tell you if I went into the garden in the woods the day after M. de Nemours came to Coulommiers, and whether I did not return from there on the previous evening two hours earlier than usual.’

  Then she told him how she had imagined seeing somebody in the garden. She admitted that she thought it was M. de Nemours. She spoke with such assurance, and truth persuades so easily even when it is implausible, that M. de Clèves was almost convinced of her innocence.

  ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘whether I should allow myself to believe you. I feel myself so close to death that I do not wish to see anything that might make me regret losing life. You have enlightened me too late; but I shall be eternally consoled in taking with me the idea that you are worthy of the esteem I have felt for you. I beg you to give me also the consolation of thinking that you will cherish my memory and that, had it been within your power to do so, you would have felt for me what you feel for another.’

  He tried to go on, but weakness prevented him. Mme de Clèves called for the doctors; they found him almost without life. Yet he languished a few days more, and died at last with admirable fortitude.

  Mme de Clèves was left in such violent anguish that she almost lost her reason. The Queen solicitously came to see her and conducted her to a convent, though she did not understand where she was being taken. Her sisters-in-law brought her back to Paris even before she was in any condition to appreciate fully the extent of her grief. When she began to have enough strength to contemplate it; when she realized the husband she had lost; and when she considered that she was the cause of his death, and that it was through the love she had felt for another that she had become its cause, the disgust she conceived for herself and for M. de Nemours cannot be described.

  During these first times, the prince dared show her no other consideration except that dictated by good manners. He knew Mme de Clèves well enough to think she would not welcome any too obvious attentions; but what he later discovered made it clear he would have to continue for a long time in the same course.

  One of his equerries told him that M. de Clèves’s attendant, who was a close friend of his, had said, in his sorrow at the loss of his master, that M. de Nemours’s journey to Coulommiers had been the cause of his death. M. de Nemours was very surprised at this; but, on reflection, he guessed a part of the truth and rightly judged what Mme de Clèves’s feelings would be, and how estranged she would be from him, if she thought that her husband’s illness had been caused by jealousy. He decided that he should not even remind her so soon of his name, and acted accordingly, difficult though it was for him to do so.

  He went to Paris and could not refrain, in spite of himself, from calling at her door to know how she was. He learned that nobody saw her and that she had even forbidden them to tell her who had come to visit. It might be that these instructions had been given precisely because of the prince, so that she would not hear speak of him. M. de Nemours was too much in love to endure life when he was so completely deprived of seeing Mme de Clèves; thus he resolved to find some means, however difficult it might seem, to escape from a situation he found so intolerable.

  The princess’s sorrow exceeded the bounds of reason. She could not turn her mind from her dying husband, dying because of her and with such tender feelings towards her. She continually reviewed everything that she owed him and blamed herself for not having felt passionately towards him, as if this were something that had been in her power to do. She found consolation only in the idea that she mourned him as he deserved to be mourned and that, throughout what remained of her life, she would act only as he would have wished her to act, had he lived.

  She often considered how he could have known that M. de Nemours had been to Coulommiers. She did not suspect the prince of having told him, and she thought it a matter of indifference to her if he had repeated it, so much she felt cured and removed from the love she had felt for him. Yet she was deeply perturbed at the idea that he had been the cause of her husband’s death, and was pained to recall M. de Clèves’s fear on his deathbed that she might marry the prince; but all these sorrows were confused with what she felt at the loss of her husband, and she thought that she had no other sorrow than this.

  When several months had passed, she emerged from this deep sense of mourning that had overtaken her, and lapsed into a state of sadness and melancholy. Mme de Martigues came to Paris and was assiduous in visiting her during her stay. She spoke of the court and of everything that was happening there; and, although Mme de Clèves did not appear interested, Mme de Martigues continued to entertain her with the news.

  She told her about the Vidame, M. de Guise and all those others who were distinguished for their looks or their qualities.

  ‘As for M. de Nemours,’ she said, ‘I do not know if politics has taken the place of gallantry in his heart, but he is much less cheerful than he used to be, and even appears to take no interest in associating with women. He often comes to Paris and I even believe he is here at this moment.’

  The name of M. de Nemours took Mme de Clèves by surprise and caused her to blush. She changed the subject and Mme de Martigues did not notice that she was perturbed.

  The following day, the princess, who ha
d been looking for something fitting her present state to occupy the time, went to see a man close by who had a peculiar way of working in silks; she had the notion that she might do something of the kind. When they had been shown to her, she noticed the door of a room where she thought there were more of the same, and asked for it to be opened. The owner replied that he did not have the key and that the room was occupied by a man who came occasionally during the day to make drawings of the fine houses and gardens that could be seen from the windows.

  ‘He is the most distinguished man in the world,’ he added, ‘and does not at all resemble a person reduced to earning his living. Whenever he comes here, I see him look always at the houses and gardens, but at no time do I see him work.’ Mme de Clèves listened very closely to these remarks. What Mme de Martigues had told her about M. de Nemours sometimes being in Paris connected in her imagination with this handsome man who came close to where she lived, to suggest the idea of M. de Nemours, and of M. de Nemours determined to see her, which made her vaguely uneasy, though she did not know why. She went to the windows, to see what they overlooked, and found that they surveyed the whole of her garden and the front of her apartments. And, when she was back in her room, she could easily distinguish that same window at which she had been told the man stood. The thought that it was M. de Nemours completely altered her state of mind: she was no longer in that sort of sadness and calm to which she had been growing accustomed, but felt disturbed and anxious. Finally, unable to remain indoors, she went out to take some air in a garden beyond the city limits where she thought she would be alone. When she got there, she imagined this was correct: she saw no sign of anybody and walked for quite a long while.

  After going through a small wood, she noticed a kind of summerhouse open on all sides, at the end of an avenue in the remotest corner of the garden. She walked towards it, and as she drew near, saw a man lying on one of the benches, appearing deeply enwrapped in thought: she recognized him as M. de Nemours. She stopped dead at the sight of him; but her servants, who were following, made some noise which roused M. de Nemours from his reverie. Without looking to see the cause, he got up from his place, in order to avoid the people coming towards him, and turned down another path, making such a low bow that it prevented him even from seeing the objects of his salutation.