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The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan-Part1_Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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sacrifices for him. She hired a stable and coach-house, above which he

lived in a little entresol with three rooms looking on the street, and



charmingly furnished; she had even borne several privations to keep a

saddle-horse, a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For



herself, she had only her own maid, and as cook, a former kitchen-

maid. The duke's groom had, therefore, rather a hard place. Toby,



formerly tiger to the "late" Beaudenord (such was the jesting term

applied by the gay world to that ruined gentleman),--Toby, who at



twenty-five years of age was still considered only fourteen, was

expected to groom the horses, clean the cabriolet, or the tilbury, and



the harnesses, accompany his master, take care of the apartments, and

be in the princess's antechamber to announce a visitor, if, by chance,



she happened to receive one.

When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had



been under the Restoration,--one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling

queen, whose luxuriousexistence equalled that of the richest women of



fashion in London,--there was something touching in the sight of her

in that humble little abode in the rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away



from her splendid mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled her

to keep, and which the hammer of speculators has since demolished. The



woman who thought she was scarcely well served by thirty servants, who

possessed the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris, and the



loveliest little private apartments, and who made them the scene of

such delightful fetes, now lived in a small apartment of five rooms,--



an antechamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a dressing-

room, with two women-servants only.



"Ah! she is devoted to her son," said that clever creature, Madame

d'Espard, "and devoted without ostentation; she is happy. Who would



ever have believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such persistent

resolution! Our good archbishop has, consequently, greatly encouraged



her; he is most kind to her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de

Cinq-Cygne to pay her a visit."



Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to know how to abdicate, and

to descend with dignity from a lofty position which is never wholly



lost. Those only who have an inner consciousness of being nothing in

themselves, show regrets in falling, or struggle, murmuring, to return



to a past which can never return,--a fact of which they themselves are

well aware. Compelled to do without the choice exotics in the midst of



which she had lived, and which set off so charmingly her whole being

(for it is impossible not to compare her to a flower), the princess



had wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there she enjoyed a pretty

little garden which belonged to it,--a garden full of shrubs, and an



always verdant turf, which brightened her peacefulretreat. She had

about twelve thousand francs a year; but that modestincome was partly



made up of an annual stipend sent her by the old Duchesse de

Navarreins, paternal aunt of the young duke, and another stipend given



by her mother, the Duchesse d'Uxelles, who was living on her estate in

the country, where she economized as old duchesses alone know how to



economize; for Harpagon is a mere novice compared to them. The

princess still retained some of her past relations with the exiled



royal family; and it was in her house that the marshal to whom we owe

the conquest of Africa had conferences, at the time of "Madame's"



attempt in La Vendee, with the principal leaders of legitimist

opinion,--so great was the obscurity in which the princess lived, and



so little distrust did the government feel for her in her present

distress.



Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth year, the bankruptcy

of love, beyond which there is so little for a woman as woman, the



princess had flung herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to

reading, she who for sixteen years had felt a cordialhorror for



serious things. Literature and politics are to-day what piety and

devotion once were to her sex,--the last refuge of their feminine






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