A Daughter of Eve

by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Madame la Comtesse Bolognini, nee Vimercati.

If you remember, madame, the pleasure your conversation gave to a
traveller by recalling Paris to his memory in Milan, you will not

be surprised to find him testifying his gratitude for many
pleasant evenings passed beside you by laying one of his works at

your feet, and begging you to protect it with your name, as in
former days that name protected the tales of an ancient writer

dear to the Milanese.
You have an Eugenie, already beautiful, whose intelligent smile

gives promise that she has inherited from you the most precious
gifts of womanhood, and who will certainly enjoy during her

childhood and youth all those happinesses which a rigid mother
denied to the Eugenie of these pages. Though Frenchmen are taxed

with inconstancy, you will find me Italian in faithfulness and
memory. While writing the name of "Eugenie," my thoughts have

often led me back to that cool stuccoed salon and little garden in
the Vicolo dei Cappucini, which echoed to the laughter of that

dear child, to our sportive quarrels and our chatter. But you have
left the Corso for the Tre Monasteri, and I know not how you are

placed there; consequently, I am forced to think of you, not among
the charming things with which no doubt you have surrounded

yourself, but like one of those fine figures due to Raffaelle,
Titian, Correggio, Allori, which seem abstractions, so distant are

they from our daily lives.
If this book should wing its way across the Alps, it will prove to

you the livelygratitude and respectful friendship of
Your devoted servant,

De Balzac.
A DAUGHTER OF EVE

CHAPTER I
THE TWO MARIES

In one of the finest houses of the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, at half-
past eleven at night, two young women were sitting before the

fireplace of a boudoir hung with blue velvet of that tender shade,
with shimmering reflections, which French industry has lately learned

to fabricate. Over the doors and windows were draped soft folds of
blue cashmere, the tint of the hangings, the work of one of those

upholsterers who have just missed being artists. A silver lamp studded
with turquoise, and suspended by chains of beautiful workmanship, hung

from the centre of the ceiling. The same system of decoration was
followed in the smallest details, and even to the ceiling of fluted

blue silk, with long bands of white cashmere falling at equal
distances on the hangings, where they were caught back by ropes of

pearl. A warm Belgian carpet, thick as turf, of a gray ground with
blue posies, covered the floor. The furniture, of carved ebony, after

a fine model of the old school, gave substance and richness to the
rather too decorative quality, as a painter might call it, of the rest

of the room. On either side of a large window, two etageres displayed
a hundred precious trifles, flowers of mechanical art brought into

bloom by the fire of thought. On a chimney-piece of slate-blue marble
were figures in old Dresden, shepherds in bridal garb, with delicate

bouquets in their hands, German fantasticalities surrounding a
platinum clock, inlaid with arabesques. Above it sparkled the

brilliant facets of a Venice mirror framed in ebony, with figures
carved in relief, evidently obtained from some former royal residence.

Two jardinieres were filled with the exotic product of a hot-house,
pale, but divine flowers, the treasures of botany.

In this cold, orderly boudoir, where all things were in place as if
for sale, no sign existed of the gay and capricious disorder of a

happy home. At the present moment, the two young women were weeping.
Pain seemed to predominate. The name of the owner, Ferdinand du

Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, is enough to explain the
luxury of the whole house, of which this boudoir is but a sample.

Though without either rank or station, having pushed himself forward,
heaven knows how, du Tillet had married, in 1831, the daughter of the

Comte de Granville, one of the greatest names in the French
magistracy,--a man who became peer of France after the revolution of

July. This marriage of ambition on du Tillet's part was brought about
by his agreeing to sign an acknowledgment in the marriage contract of

a dowry not received, equal to that of her elder sister, who was
married to Comte Felix de Vandenesse. On the other hand, the

Granvilles obtained the alliance with de Vandenesse by the largeness
of the "dot." Thus the bank repaired the breach made in the pocket of

the magistracy by rank. Could the Comte de Vandenesse have seen
himself, three years later, the brother-in-law of a Sieur Ferdinand DU

Tillet, so-called, he might not have married his wife; but what man of
rank in 1828 foresaw the strange upheavals which the year 1830 was

destined to produce in the political condition, the fortunes, and the
customs of France? Had any one predicted to Comte Felix de Vandenesse

that his head would lose the coronet of a peer, and that of his
father-in-law acquire one, he would have thought his informant a

lunatic.
Bending forward on one of those low chairs then called "chaffeuses,"

in the attitude of a listener, Madame du Tillet was pressing to her
bosom with maternaltenderness, and occasionally kissing, the hand of

her sister, Madame Felix de Vandenesse. Society added the baptismal
name to the surname, in order to distinguish the countess from her

sister-in-law, the Marquise Charles de Vandenesse, wife of the former
ambassador, who had married the widow of the Comte de Kergarouet,

Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine.
Half lying on a sofa, her handkerchief in the other hand, her

breathing choked by repressed sobs, and with tearful eyes, the
countess had been making confidences such as are made only from sister

to sister when two sisters love each other; and these two sisters did
love each other tenderly. We live in days when sisters married into

such antagonist spheres can very well not love each other, and
therefore the historian is bound to relate the reasons of this tender

affection, preserved without spot or jar in spite of their husbands'
contempt for each other and their own social disunion. A rapid glance

at their childhood will explain the situation.
Brought up in a gloomy house in the Marais, by a woman of narrow mind,

a "devote" who, being sustained by a sense of duty (sacred phrase!),
had fulfilled her tasks as a mother religiously, Marie-Angelique and

Marie Eugenie de Granville reached the period of their marriage--the
first at eighteen, the second at twenty years of age--without ever

leaving the domestic zone where the rigid maternal eye controlled
them. Up to that time they had never been to a play; the churches of

Paris were their theatre. Their education in their mother's house had
been as rigorous as it would have been in a convent. From infancy they

had slept in a room adjoining that of the Comtesse de Granville, the
door of which stood always open. The time not occupied by the care of

their persons, their religious duties and the studies considered
necessary for well-bred young ladies, was spent in needlework done for

the poor, or in walks like those an Englishwoman allows herself on
Sunday, saying, apparently, "Not so fast, or we shall seem to be

amusing ourselves."
Their education did not go beyond the limits imposed by confessors,

who were chosen by their mother from the strictest and least tolerant
of the Jansenist priests. Never were girls delivered over to their

husbands more absolutely pure and virgin than they; their mother
seemed to consider that point, essential as indeed it is, the

accomplishment of all her duties toward earth and heaven. These two
poor creatures had never, before their marriage, read a tale, or heard

of a romance; their very drawings were of figures whose anatomy would
have been masterpieces of the impossible to Cuvier, designed to

feminize the Farnese Hercules himself. An old maid taught them
drawing. A worthypriest instructed them in grammar, the French

language, history, geography, and the very little arithmetic it was
thought necessary in their rank for women to know. Their reading,

selected from authorized books, such as the "Lettres Edifiantes," and