Lost Illusions (Penguin Classics) (8 page)

A
NGOULÊME
is an ancient town built on the summit of a cone-shaped rock towering over the meadows through which the river Charente runs. From the Périgord direction this rock forms a long ridge which terminates abruptly on the Paris-Bordeaux road, thus forming a sort of promontory marked out by three picturesque valleys. The importance of this town at the time of the religious wars is attested by its ramparts, its city gates and the ruins of a fortress perched on the peak of the rock. Its situation formerly made it a strategic point which was equally valuable to Catholics and Calvinists; but its erstwhile strength constitutes its weakness today; the ramparts and the excessive slope of the rock have prevented it from sprawling out over the Charente valley and condemned it to the direst stagnation. About the time when our story begins, the Government was trying to push the town forward into Périgord by building the prefectoral palace, a marine school and military establishments along the hill, and laying plans for roads. But commerce had moved in the opposite direction. Long since, the suburb of L’Houmeau had spread out like a bed of mushrooms at the foot of the rock and along the river banks, parallel to which runs the main road from Paris to Bordeaux. The paper-mills of Angoulême are well-famed: during the last three centuries they had of necessity established themselves along the Charente and its tributaries, where waterfalls were available. At Ruelle the State had set up its most important foundry for naval cannons. Haulage, post-houses, inns, wheelwrights’ workshops, public transport services, all the industries which depend on roads and waterways clustered round the base of Angoulême in order to avoid the difficulties presented by access to the town itself. Naturally tanneries, laundries and all water-side trades remained within reach of the Charente, which was also lined with brandy warehouses, depots for all raw materials conveyed by water and in fact for all kinds of goods in transit. And so the suburb
of L’Houmeau became a busy and prosperous town, a second Angoulême, arousing resentment in the upper town where the administration, the Bishop’s palace, the courts of justice and the aristocracy remained. For this reason L’Houmeau, despite its increasing activity and importance, was a mere appendage of Angoulême. The nobility and the political authority held sway on high, commerce and finance down below: two social zones, everywhere and constantly hostile to each other; as a consequence, it is difficult to guess which of the two towns more cordially hates its rival. This state of things had remained fairly quiescent during the Empire; nine years of Restoration government had aggravated it. Most of the houses in Upper Angoulême are inhabited either by noble families or by long-established middle-class families living on their investments and constituting a sort of autochtonous nation to which strangers are never admitted. It is a rare occurrence if, even after living in the place for a couple of hundred years and contracting a marriage alliance with one of the original families, a family which has migrated from some neighbouring province is received into the fold: the native population still considers it a newcomer. Prefects, Receivers-General and civil service officials who have succeeded one another for forty years have tried to civilize these ancient families perched on their rock like so many watchful ravens: these families have attended their receptions and eaten their dinners, but they have persistently refused to welcome them to their own houses. Disdainful, disparaging, jealous and miserly, these houses intermarry and close their ranks to prevent anyone entering or leaving; they know nothing of the creations of modern luxury; in their view, to send a child to Paris is to seal its doom. Such prudence illustrates the antiquated manners and customs of these families, far gone in unintelligent royalism, fanatically devout though not genuinely pious, all of them as rigid in their way of life as the town itself and the rock on which it is built. And yet Angoulême enjoys a great reputation in the adjacent provinces for the education young people receive there. Neighbouring towns send their daughters to its boarding-schools and convents. It
is easy to imagine the influence exerted by class-consciousness in Angoulême and L’Houmeau. Business people are rich, the aristocracy is generally impoverished. Each vents its spite on the other by an equal show of contempt. Even the middle classes in Angoulême join in this antagonism. A shopkeeper in the upper town cannot put enough scorn into his voice when he refers to a merchant of the suburb as a man from L’Houmeau. The Restoration, when it defined the status of the French nobility and awakened its hopes of something which only a general social upheaval could bring about, widened the moral gulf which, far more than the difference of locality, divided Angoulême from L’Houmeau. The aristocratic society of Angoulême, at that time at one with the Government, became more exclusive than anywhere else in France. Anyone living in L’Houmeau was virtually a pariah. Hence the deep, underground hatreds which were to inspire a terrible unanimity in those who engineered the insurrection of 1830 and destroyed the elements of a durable social community in France. The arrogance of the court nobility was a cause of alienation between the throne and the provincial nobility, and the latter alienated the middle-classes by wounding all their susceptibilities. It follows that to introduce a man from L’Houmeau, the son of a chemist, into Madame de Bargeton’s circle constituted in itself a minor revolution. And who had started such ideas? Lamartine and Victor Hugo, Casimir Delavigne and Canalis, Villemain and Monsieur Aignan, Soumet and Tissot, Etienne and D’Avrigny, Benjamin Constant and Lamennais, Victor Cousin and Michaud: in short, all the older and younger literary celebrities, Liberals as well as Royalists. Madame de Bargeton was enamoured of art and letters, an extravagance of taste, a mania which Angoulême openly deplored; but some justification for it must be offered by sketching the life of this woman who was born for celebrity but whom an inevitable train of circumstances maintained in obscurity: her influence was to determine Lucien’s destinies.

Monsieur de Bargeton was the great-grandson of an alderman of Bordeaux, Mirault by name, who in the reign of
Louis XIII had risen to noble status by virtue of his long-exercised function. Under Louis XIV his son, now Mirault de Bargeton, became an officer in the Household Guards and made such a lucrative marriage that, in the time of Louis XV, his son became purely and simply Monsieur de Bargeton. This Monsieur de Bargeton, grandson of the worshipful alderman, was so intent on behaving like a model nobleman that he squandered all the family property and checked its advance towards prosperity. Two of his brothers, great-uncles of the present-day Monsieur de Bargeton, reverted to commerce, so that there are still Miraults in business in Bordeaux. Since the Bargeton estate, situated in the province of Angoulême in dependency on the fief of La Rochefoucauld, was entailed, as well as a mansion in Angoulême which was called Bargeton House, the grandson of Monsieur de Bargeton the Squanderer inherited these two properties. In 1789 he lost all his effective feudal rights and had nothing more than the income from his land, which amounted to about ten thousand francs a year. If his grandfather had followed the glorious example set by Bargeton the First and Bargeton the Second, Bargeton the Fifth, who may be styled Bargeton the Silent, could have become the Marquis de Bargeton. He might have married into some great family and risen to be a duke and peer like so many others; whereas in 1805 he was very flattered to marry Mademoiselle Marie-Louise-Anaïs de Nègrepelisse, the daughter of a country gentleman who had long since been lost sight of in his manor-house although he belonged to the younger branch of one of the most ancient families in southern France. There was a Nègrepelisse among the hostages who stood surety for Saint Louis; but the chief of the elder branch bears the illustrious name of d’Espard, acquired under Henri IV through marriage with the heiress of that family. This gentleman, the younger son of a younger son, drew his subsistence from the property of his wife, a small estate near Barbezieux, which he exploited very successfully indeed by taking his own corn to market, distilling his own brandy and taking no heed of ridicule so long as he could fill his moneybags and enlarge his domain from time to time.

Circumstances which are unusual enough in the depths of the provinces had inspired in Madame de Bargeton a taste for music and literature. During the Revolution, a certain Abbé Niollant, the brightest pupil of the Abbé Roze, went into hiding in the little castle of Escarbas, bringing his musical compositions with him. He had amply paid for the old squire’s hospitality by educating his daughter Anaïs, Naïs for short; without this lucky chance she would have been left to herself or, by a still greater mischance, her education would have been entrusted to some ignorant chamber-maid. The Abbé was not only a musician: he was well versed in literature and knew Italian and German. And so he taught these two languages – and counterpoint – to Mademoiselle de Nègrepelisse; he revealed to her the great literary works of France, Italy and Germany and fingered out with her the music of all the great composers. Finally, as an antidote to the inactivity resulting from the deep solitude to which political events condemned him, he taught her Greek and Latin, and gave her a smattering of the natural sciences. Her mother’s presence in no way modified this masculine education of a young person whom life in the country already inclined to too great independence.

The Abbé Niollant, a man full of poetry and enthusiasm, was remarkable above all else for possessing that outlook peculiar to artists which, though in many respects commendable, rises superior to bourgeois ideas through its freedom of judgement and broad-mindedness. In mundane society, such intellectual boldness escapes censure because it is original and strikes deep, but in private life it may be found harmful on account of the deviations it may inspire. The Abbé was a man of feeling, and so his ideas were contagious for a girl whose exuberance of mind, so natural in the young, was encouraged by the solitude of country life. The Abbé imbued his pupil with his own spirit of enquiry and readiness to pass judgement; and it did not occur to him that qualities essential in a man can become defects in a woman destined to the humble occupation of wife and mother. Although he constantly reminded his pupil that additional graciousness and modesty should go with more extensive knowledge, Mademoiselle de
Nègrepelisse acquired an excellent opinion of herself and conceived a sturdy contempt for humanity at large. Surrounded by inferiors and domestics who were at her beck and call, she had all the haughtiness of great ladies but not their politeness in dispensing soothing blandishments. Flattered in every one of her particular vanities by a humble abbé who admired her as his own creation, she was so unfortunate as to find no criterion for self-criticism. Lack of company is one of the great drawbacks of country life. When no relationships exist which call for minor concessions in dress and deportment, we lose the habit of accepting inconvenience for the sake of others and a deterioration sets in which affects our inner and our outer selves. Subjected to no check from social exchange, Mademoiselle de Nègrepelisse’s bold habits of thought passed into her manners and expression; she adopted that cavalier air which at first sight betokens originality but which is only fitting for women who lead an adventurous life. And so this kind of education, which would have had its rough edges smoothed down in higher social circles, was destined to bring ridicule on her in Angoulême, once her worshippers ceased to divinize her errors, which could appear graceful only in youth. As for Monsieur de Nègrepelisse, he would have given all his daughters’ books to save a sick ox from dying; he was so miserly that he would not have allotted her a farthing more than the income to which she was entitled, even to the extent of buying the smallest thing needed for her education. The Abbé died in 1802, before his dear child was married – a match of which he would no doubt have disapproved. When the Abbé was dead, the old nobleman was at a loss to know how to deal with his daughter. He felt too weak to sustain the impending conflict between his avarice and the self-will of a daughter who had nothing to keep her busy. Like all young people who have left the beaten track which women ought to follow, Naïs had weighed up the idea of marriage: the prospect did not entice her. She objected to submitting her intelligence and her person to any of the men of poor calibre and negative personality who had come her way. She wanted to command and was expected to obey. Had
the choice confronted her of yielding to the gross whims or incompatible tastes of a husband or elopement with a congenial lover, she would not have hesitated. Monsieur de Nègrepelisse was still aristocratic enough to fear an ill-sorted union. Like many fathers, he resolved to marry off his daughter, less for her sake than for his own peace of mind. He wanted to find an unintelligent nobleman or country squire, incapable of haggling over the account he must render to his daughter as custodian of her mother’s estate, sufficiently devoid of wit and will for Nais to be free to behave as she pleased, and unmercenary enough to marry her without a dowry. But how was he to find a son-in-law whom he and his daughter would both judge suitable? Such a man would be a paragon among sons-in-law. To serve this double purpose, Monsieur de Nègrepelisse took stock of the men in the province, and Monsieur de Bargeton seemed to be the only one who answered his requirements. Monsieur de Bargeton, a man in his forties, very much the worse for the amorous dissipations of his youth, was reckoned to be remarkably deficient in intelligence; but he had just enough common sense to manage his property, and good enough manners to live among the Angoulême
élite
without committing social solecisms or follies. Monsieur de Nègrepelisse quite bluntly explained to his daughter the negative value of the model husband he was offering her, and showed how conducive to her own happiness the match could be: she was marrying a coat of arms which was already two hundred years old, for the Bargetons bear
quarterly, or, three stag’s heads caboshed gules, 2 and 1, alternant with three bull’s heads sable, 1 and 2; barry of six azure and argent, the azure charged with six escallops or, 3, 2 and 1.
Thus furnished with a male chaperon, she would manage her fortune as she pleased under the aegis of a covering name and with the aid of relationships which her wit and beauty would procure for her in Paris. Naïs was much attracted by the prospect of such freedom. Monsieur de Bargeton thought he was making a brilliant marriage, reckoning that before long his father-in-law would leave him the landed property he was so lovingly rounding off. At the time however it looked as if Monsieur de Nègrepelisse might well have to write his son-in-law’s epitaph.