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The Duchesse de Langeais-Part6_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of

bringing the whole into harmony within itself is always going on.



If a man is indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything

that he does; and, in the same manner, the general spirit of a



class is pretty plainly manifested in the face it turns on the

world, and the soul informs the body.



The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud

disregard of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden



time in their wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the

tardy virtues by which they expiated their sins and shed so



bright a glory about their names. There was nothing either very

frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restoration.



She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and compounded, so

to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led the domestic



life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was

exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or



three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer

women with something like disgust. The great lady of the new



school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the

time; and yet she might have done much. She might, at worst,



have presented as dignified a spectacle as English-women of the

same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old precedents, became



a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed nothing of herself

to appear, not even her better qualities.



Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to

create a salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take



lessons in taste and elegance. Their voices, which once laid

down the law to literature, that living expression of a time, now



counted absolutely for nought. Now when a literature lacks a

general system, it fails to shape a body for itself, and dies out



with its period.

When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus



constituted, the historian is pretty certain to find some

representative figure, some central personage who embodies the



qualities and the defects of the whole party to which he belongs;

there is Coligny, for instance, among the Huguenots, the



Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de Richelieu

under Louis XV, Danton during the Terror. It is in the nature of



things that the man should be identified with the company in

which history finds him. How is it possible to lead a party



without conforming to its ideas? or to shine in any epoch unless

a man represents the ideas of his time? The wise and prudent



head of a party is continually obliged to bow to the prejudices

and follies of its rear; and this is the cause of actions for



which he is afterwards criticised by this or that historian

sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular explosions,



coolly judging the passion and ferment without which the great

struggles of the world could not be carried on at all. And if



this is true of the Historical Comedy of the Centuries, it is

equally true in a more restricted sphere in the detached scenes



of the national drama known as the Manners of the Age.

At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg



Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any

truth in the above reflections, they failed to give stability,



the most perfect type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness

and strength, its greatness and littleness, might have been found



for a brief space in a young married woman who belonged to it.

This was a woman artificially educated, but in reality ignorant;



a woman whose instincts and feelings were lofty while the thought

which should have controlled them was wanting. She squandered



the wealth of her nature in obedience to social conventions; she

was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her scruples



degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force

of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted



with more brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely




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