The Duchesse de Langeais

by Honore de Balzac
THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS

I
In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands

a convent of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, where the rule
instituted by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first

rigour of the reformation brought about by that illustrious
woman. Extraordinary as this may seem, it is none the less true.

Almost every religious house in the Peninsula, or in Europe for
that matter, was either destroyed or disorganised by the outbreak

of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars; but as this
island was protected through those times by the English fleet,

its wealthyconvent and peaceable inhabitants were secure from
the general trouble and spoliation. The storms of many kinds

which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century
spent their force before they reached those cliffs at so short a

distance from the coast of Andalusia.
If the rumour of the Emperor's name so much as reached the shore

of the island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in
the cloisters grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of

glory, or the majesty that blazed in flame across kingdom after
kingdom during his meteor life.

In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the convent stood out
pre-eminent for a stern discipline which nothing had changed; the

purity of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest
parts of Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after

the long suicideaccomplished in the breast of God. No convent,
indeed, was so well fitted for that complete detachment of the

soul from all earthly things, which is demanded by the religious
life, albeit on the continent of Europe there are many convents

magnificently adapted to the purpose of their existence. Buried
away in the loneliest valleys, hanging in mid-air on the steepest

mountainsides, set down on the brink of precipices, in every
place man has sought for the poetry of the Infinite, the solemn

awe of Silence; in every place man has striven to draw closer to
God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below the

crags, at the cliff's edge; and everywhere man has found God.
But nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of

rock could you find so many different harmonies, combining so to
raise the soul, that the sharpest pain comes to be like other

memories; the strongest impressions are dulled, till the sorrows
of life are laid to rest in the depths.

The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the
uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the

rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises
up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the

stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made impossible by
the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the

sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only
from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent built

conformably to the minute rules laid down as to the shape,
height, doors, and windows of monastic buildings. From the side

of the town, the church completely hides the solid structure of
the cloisters and their roofs, covered with broad slabs of stone

impervious to sun or storm or gales of wind.
The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish family,

is the crowning edifice of the town. Its fine, bold front gives
an imposing and picturesque look to the little city in the sea.

The sight of such a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged
for the most part amphitheatre-wise above a picturesque harbour,

and crowned by a gloriouscathedral front with triple-arched
Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and filigree spires, is a

spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on earth. Religion
towering above daily life, to put men continually in mind of the

End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish conception.
But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a burning

sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted evergreen
trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers

and foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its
white fringes of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then

turn to the city, with its galleries and terraces whither the
townsfolk come to take the air among their flowers of an evening,

above the houses and the tops of the trees in their little
gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and lastly, in the

stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music, the
chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing

out over the open sea. There is sound and silence everywhere;
oftener still there is silence over all.

The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and
narrow aisles. For some reason, probably because the winds are

so high, the architect was unable to build the flying buttresses
and intervening chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor

are there openings of any kind in the walls which support the
weight of the roof. Outside there is simply the heavy wall

structure, a solid mass of grey stone further strengthened by
huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the nave and its little

side galleries are lighted entirely by the great stained-glass
rose-window suspended by a miracle of art above the centre

doorway; for upon that side the exposure permits of the display
of lacework in stone and of other beauties peculiar to the style

improperly called Gothic.
The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the

townsfolk, who came and went and heard mass there. The choir was
shut off from the rest of the church by a grating and thick folds

of brown curtain, left slightly apart in the middle in such a way
that nothing of the choir could be seen from the church except

the high altar and the officiating priest. The grating itself
was divided up by the pillars which supported the organ loft; and

this part of the structure, with its carved wooden columns,
completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by the

shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive person, therefore, had
been bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the

gallery to look down into the choir, he could have seen nothing
but the tall eight-sided windows of stained glass beyond the high

altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish

Ferdinand VII once more on the throne, a French general came to
the island after the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the

recognition of the King's Government, really to see the convent
and to find some means of entering it. The undertaking was

certainly a delicate one; but a man of passionate" target="_blank" title="a.易动情的；易怒的">passionatetemper, whose
life had been, as it were, but one series of poems in action, a

man who all his life long had lived romances instead of writing
them, a man pre-eminently a Doer, was sure to be tempted by a

deed which seemed to be impossible.
To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means! The

metropolitan or the Pope would scarcely have permitted it! And
as for force or strategem--might not any indiscretion cost him

his position, his whole career as a soldier, and the end in view
to boot? The Duc d'Angouleme was still in Spain; and of all the

crimes which a man in favour with the Commander-in-Chief might
commit, this one alone was certain to find him inexorable. The

General had asked for the mission to gratify private motives of
curiosity, though never was curiosity more hopeless. This final

attempt was a matter of conscience. The Carmelite convent on the
island was the only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his

search.
As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour's distance, he

felt a presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled; and
afterwards, when as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but

its walls, and of the nuns not so much as their robes; while he
had merely heard the chanting of the service, there were dim

auguries under the walls and in the sound of the voices to
justify his frail hope. And, indeed, however faint those so

unaccountable presentiments might be, never was human passion
more vehemently excited than the General's curiosity at that