The Human Comedy (8 page)

“The wives of today’s princes are mere creatures of fashion, obliged to share the expense of a box at the theater with their girlfriends, a box that not even the favor of the king could enlarge by a quarter inch, confined to the murky waters between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, neither entirely noble nor wholly bourgeois,” said the Marquise de Rochefide in disgust.

“Woman’s role has been inherited by the press,” cried Rastignac. “Once every woman was a living gazette, a font of delicious slanders cast in beautiful language. Today all our gazettes are written, and written in a jargon that changes every three years, little journals amusing as undertakers, light as the lead in their souls. French conversations are couched in revolutionary babble from one end of France to the other, in long columns printed in
hôtels
particulier
where the grind of a printing press has replaced the elegant circles that once scintillated there.”

“The death knell of high society is sounding, do you hear?” said a Russian prince. “And the first toll is that modern expression of yours, ‘the creature of fashion’!”

“Quite right, prince,” said de Marsay. “This woman, fallen from the ranks of the nobility or hoisted up from the bourgeoisie, this woman who comes from anywhere at all, even the provinces, is the very image of our times, one final exemplum of good taste, wit, grace, and distinction, all bound up together but shrunken. We will see no more grandes dames in France, but for a long time to come there will be creatures of fashion, elected by public opinion to a feminine high chamber, and who will be for the fair sex what the
gentleman
is in England.”

“And they call that progressing!” said Mademoiselle des Touches. “Where is the progress, I’d like to know.”

“Ah! Here it is,” said Madame de Nucingen. “In times past a woman could have the voice of a fishmonger, the walk of a grenadier, the brow of a brazen courtesan, cowlicks in her hair, an oversize foot, a fleshy hand, and she was still a grande dame, but today, even if she were a Montmorency, assuming the demoiselles de Montmorency could ever be thus, she would not be a creature of fashion.”

“But what do you mean by
creature of fashion
?” Count Adam Laginski asked, ingenuously.

“She is a modern creation, a deplorable triumph of the electoral system applied to the fair sex,” said the minister. “Every revolution has its word, a word that summarizes and portrays it.”

“It’s true,” said the Russian prince, who had come to Paris in hopes of making his name in the literary world. “An explanation of certain words that have been added to your beautiful language over the centuries would be a magnificent history in itself.
Organization
, for instance, is a word of the Empire and contains all of Napoleon within it.”

“But none of this tells me what a creature of fashion might be,” cried the young Pole.

“Well, let me explain,” Émile Blondet said to Count Adam. “You’re out strolling the streets of Paris on a fine afternoon. It’s past two o’clock but not yet five. You see a woman approaching, and your first glimpse of her is like the preface of a wonderful book, it hints at a whole world of fine and elegant things. Like a botanist combing hill and dale for exceptional specimens, you have finally chanced onto a rare flower in the midst of the Parisian vulgarities. She may be accompanied by two very distinguished men, at least one of them decorated; if not, some domestic in town clothes is following ten steps behind her. She wears neither bright colors nor openwork stockings, nor too finely wrought a belt buckle, nor pantaloons with embroidered cuffs ruffling about her ankles. You will observe on her feet either prunella flats with laces crisscrossed over a stocking of exceedingly fine cotton or solid gray silk, or perhaps lace-up boots of the most exquisite simplicity. A rather pretty fabric of moderate price will draw your eye to her gown, whose cut surprises more than one woman of the bourgeoisie: It’s nearly always a fitted coat closed by knots and prettily edged with a braid or a discreet cord. This stranger has her own particular way with a shawl or a mantle; she can envelop herself from her neck to the small of her back, devising a sort of shell that would make a turtle of any bourgeoise, but beneath which this woman shows you the shapeliest curves, even as she veils them. How does she do it? This secret she keeps to herself, unprotected though it be by any patent. Her walk creates a certain concentric and harmonious movement that sets her innocent or dangerous forms wriggling under the fabric, like the noontime garter snake beneath the green netting of the quivering grass. Is it to an angel or a demon that she owes the graceful undulation that plays beneath the long cloak of black silk, that stirs the lace at its hem, that fills the air with an ethereal balm I might call the breeze of the Parisienne? About her arms, around her waist and throat, you will see the work of a science of drapery that bends even the most resistant cloth to its will and find yourself thinking of the ancient Mnemosyne. Ah! How perfectly she understands, if you will allow me this expression,
the cut of the walk
! See how she thrusts out her foot, molding the dress with such chaste precision that she excites in the passing stranger a wonderment spiked with desire but restrained by a profound respect! When an Englishwoman attempts that gait, she resembles a grenadier charging on a redoubt. None but the Parisienne knows the fine art of walking—hence the asphalt on our sidewalks, the least the city could do for her. This beautiful stranger does not jostle or shove: when she wishes to pass someone by, she waits with proud modesty for room to be made. The distinction peculiar to women of breeding is most clearly displayed by her way of holding the shawl or mantle crossed over her breast. Even as she walks, her air is tranquil and dignified, like the Madonnas of Raphael in their frames. Her manner, at once serene and aloof, compels even the most insolent dandy to step aside for her. Her hat is remarkably simple and adorned with crisp ribbons. There may be flowers, but the most expert of these women will have only bows. Feathers require a carriage, flowers too insistently attract the eye. Beneath that hat you will see the fresh, rested face of a woman who is confident but not smug, who looks at nothing and sees everything, whose vanity, jaded by ceaseless gratification, imbues her face with an indifference that arouses the interest of all who behold her. She knows she is being studied, she knows that nearly everyone, even the ladies, will turn around for a second look when she passes. Thus does she drift through Paris like gossamer, white and pure. This magnificent species prefers to keep to the warmest latitudes, the cleanest longitudes of Paris; you will find her between the 10th and 110th arcades on rue de Rivoli; along the equator of the Grands Boulevards, from the parallel of the Passage des Panoramas, where the products of the Indies abound, where industry’s freshest creations flourish, to the cape of the Madeleine; in those lands least sullied by the bourgeoisie, between the 30th and 150th house on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. In the winter, she sojourns on the Terrasse des Feuillants, in the Jardin des Tuileries, and not on the asphalt sidewalk that adjoins it. When the weather is fine, she glides along the allée des Champs-Élysées, within the bounds of place Louis XV on the east, avenue de Marigny on the west, the roadway on the south, and the gardens of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré on the north. Never will you encounter such a fine feminine specimen in the hyperborean regions of rue Saint-Denis, nor in the Kamchatkas of muddy, small, or commercial streets; never anywhere at all in bad weather. These flowers of Paris bloom when the weather is Oriental; they perfume the promenades, and then, after five o’clock, close up like morning glories. Those you will see later in the evening, vaguely similar in their air, doing their best to mimic them, are mere creatures of passion; only the beautiful stranger, your Beatrice for a day, is the true creature of fashion. A foreigner, my dear count, may well find it difficult to spot the details by which seasoned observers distinguish the one from the other, for women are gifted actresses indeed. To a Parisian, however, those differences fairly cry out aloud: ill-concealed clasps, dingy laces showing through a gaping slit, frayed shoes, re-dyed hat ribbons, a billowing gown, an over-starched bustle. You will observe a sort of effort in the calculated droop of her eyelid. There is something conventional in her manner. A bourgeoise, on the other hand, could never be confused with a creature of fashion: She sets her off wonderfully, she explains the spell that your stranger has cast on you. The bourgeoise has things to do, goes out in all weather, scurries, comes, goes, looks, wonders whether to enter a shop or go on. Where the creature of fashion knows precisely what she wants and what she is doing, the bourgeoise dithers, hitches up her skirts to step over a gutter, drags a child beside her, keeping a vigilant eye out for oncoming coaches; she is a mother in public and chats with her daughter; she has money in her shopping bag and openwork stockings on her legs; in the winter she wears a boa over a fur cape, in the summer a shawl and a scarf; the bourgeoise has a remarkable talent for vestimentary redundancy. As for your beautiful stranger, you will see her again at the Théâtre des Italiens, at the Opéra, at a ball, where she will show herself in such a different form that you will swear the two incarnations have nothing in common. She has emerged from her mysterious garments, as the butterfly from its silken cocoon. Like some delicacy, she serves up before your enchanted eyes the forms that her bodice only hinted at that morning. At the theater she is never encountered beyond the mezzanine, save at the Italiens. Here you will have the leisure to study the trained indolence of her movements. That adorable tricksteress exploits all of womankind’s little ploys with an innocence that forbids any suspicion of guile or premeditation. If she has a regally beautiful hand, even the shrewdest observer will believe it was vitally important that she twirl, plump, or push back the ringlet or curl she is caressing. If she has something splendid in her profile, you will feel sure she is offering her neighbor remarks full of irony or grace as she turns her head to produce that magical three-quarters-profile effect, so dear to the great painters, which lets the light fall over the cheek, clearly delineates the nose, illuminates the pink of the nostrils, cuts cleanly across the forehead, preserves the gaze’s bright spark while directing it into space, and dots the white roundness of the chin with a point of light. If she has a pretty foot, she will throw herself down on a divan with all the coquetry of a cat in the sun, her legs outstretched before her, and in her pose you will see nothing other than the most delicious model of weariness ever offered up to the art of statuary. No one is at ease in fine clothes like the creature of fashion; nothing troubles her poise. Never will you catch her, as you will a bourgeoise, tugging up a recalcitrant shoulder strap, tugging down an insubordinate whalebone, verifying that the fichu is discharging its mission as the faithless guardian of two dazzling white treasures, nor glancing at herself in mirrors to be sure that her coiffure is obeying its confinement to quarters. Her appearance is ever in harmony with her character; she’s had the time to examine herself, to choose only what best becomes her, having long since determined what does not become her at all. You will not see her later in the throngs pouring out of the theater; she vanishes before the curtain comes down. If by chance she appears, calm and noble, on the red steps of the staircase, she is then in the throes of the deepest emotion. She is there on command, she has a furtive glance to give, a promise to receive. It may well be to flatter the vanity of a slave whom she sometimes obeys that she is slowly making her way down those stairs. Should you encounter her at a ball or a party, you will drink in the honey, artificial or natural, of her lilting voice; you will be delighted by her empty words—empty but endowed with the force of deep thought by an inimitable artifice.”

“Does a creature of fashion not need a fine mind?” asked the Polish count.

“More than anything else, she must have very fine taste,” answered Madame d’Espard.

“And in France, to have taste is to have something more than a fine mind,” said the Russian.

“This woman’s conversation is the triumph of a very plastic art,” Blondet went on. “You won’t know what she said, but you will be enchanted. She will have nodded her head, or sweetly raised her white shoulders, she will have gilded an insignificant sentence with the smile of a charming little pout, or she will have expressed an entire Voltairean epigram in one
ah!
, one
hmm?
, one
well!
A cock of the head will be her most vigorous interrogation; she will impart meaning to the movement by which she tosses a vinaigrette attached to her finger by a ring. With her all is artificial grandeur, wrought by magnificent trifles; she nobly lets her hand droop, hanging over the arm of a chair, like dewdrops on the rim of a flower, and with this everything has been said, she has pronounced an unappealable judgment, eloquent enough for the most insensitive soul. She has heard you out, she has afforded you the opportunity to sparkle, and—I appeal to your modesty—such moments are all too rare.”

The young Pole’s wide-eyed stare sent all the tablemates into gales of laughter.

“With a bourgeoise, you haven’t been chatting half an hour before she ushers in her husband, in one form or another,” Blondet went on, grave as ever. “But even if you know your creature of fashion to be married, she will have the delicacy to conceal her husband so utterly that it will require a labor worthy of Columbus to discover him. Often you can’t manage it single-handed. If you’ve found no one to question, at the end of the evening you’ll see her staring significantly at a bemedalled middle-aged man, who will nod and go out. She’s asked for her coach, and now she goes on her way. You’re not her one and only, but you’ve been near her, and you go to bed beneath the gilded paneling of a delicious dream that will perhaps continue when Sleep, with her mighty finger, opens the ivory gates to the temple of fantasies. At home, no creature of fashion can be seen before four o’clock, when she receives visitors. She is no fool: She will always keep you waiting. You will find the signs of good taste all around you; luxury is her constant companion, replaced as necessary. You will see nothing under glass domes, nor the shapeless mass of a wrap hung on the wall like a feedbag. The stairway will be warm. Everywhere flowers will gladden your gaze—flowers, the only gift she accepts, and from only a few people. Bouquets live for just a day, give pleasure, and must then be changed; for her they are, as in the Orient, a symbol, a promise. You will see a display of costly and fashionable bagatelles, but nothing of the museum or the curiosity shop. You will discover her by the fireside, on her love seat, and she will greet you without rising. Her conversation will no longer be that of the ball. There she was your creditor; at home, her wit owes you a debt of pleasure. Creatures of fashion master these nuances wonderfully. She loves in you a man who will broaden her social circle, the sole object of care and concern that creatures of fashion permit themselves today. Thus, to keep you in her drawing room, she will prove a delightful flirt. In this, above all else, you sense the terrible isolation of women today, you understand why they want a little world of their own, for which they serve as a constellation. Without generalities, no conversation is possible.”