she is in torture. Vain at first by nature, her vanity has become boundless; knowledge and scorn of mankind soon perfected that quality. Yet this vanity is excessive even to her own taste. She already thinks that fame is worth nothing at the cost of happiness, and yet she would make many an effort for fame…
‘Would you like to know if Zélide is beautiful, or pretty, or merely passablê I cannot tell; it all depends on whether one loves her, or on whether she wishes to make herself beloved. She has a beautiful neck, and displays it at some sacrifice of modesty. Her hands are not white; she knows that also, and makes a jest of it; but she would rather not have this occasion for jest.
‘Excessively emotional, and not less fastidious, she cannot be happy either with or without love. Perceiving herself too sensitive to be happy, she has almost ceased to aspire to happiness and has devoted herself to goodness; she thus escapes repentance and seeks only for diversion.
‘Can you not guess her secret? Zélide is somewhat sensuous. Emotions too vivid and too intense for her organism, an exaggerated activity without any satisfying object, these are the source of all her misfortunes. With less sensibility Zélide would have had the mind of a great man; with less intelligence she would have been only a weak woman.’
Her tongue was French, and her intelligence; not so her nature. She was averse from all those conventions of gallantry which are founded on pretence. ‘No doubt a French platitude becomes a hundred times flatter in a Dutch mouth, but, believe me, without the French, a woman with no desire to be loved would not talk so much of the passion of a man who, in fact, does not love her; it would not occur to us to be witty for half an hour on an equivocation; and those light themes, without head, tail, or sense, would never have entered our thick heads.’ She preferred the English form of sociability, where men who have nothing to say, say nothing. Her own brilliance was always employed to light up a firm sobriety of thought: pose and paradox, mere wit, mere romanticism, she detested in literature as in talk. Frankness was ‘her favourite virtue’; her passion was for reality of intercourse.
To Mademoiselle de Tuyll’s engaging quality of frankness we owe our intimate knowledge of this lady’s chief occupation during the long years at Zuylen and Utrecht. This occupation was not the true prose of Versailles; it was not Newton, not the harpsichord, nor ‘all that can be known in our time of physics’; it was, briefly – getting married.
The theme is one for an epic poet rather than an essayist, the canvas is so crowded, the action so varied and prolonged, the energy displayed so heroic. Penelope had not more trouble with her Homeric suitors, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll was far from being a Penelope. Her suitors, too, were very different from Penelope’s: they had a way of taking flight. Yes, the prologue of Belle’s marriage is epic, decidedly; but the climax was comedy; and the end, tragedy.
Some twelve suitors are known to history as candidates (or probable candidates) for the hand of Mademoiselle de Tuyll. No doubt there were others. Her vicissitudes with regard to these twelve were confided to a thirteenth who, being married, was not a suitor. This was Constant d’Hermenches, baron de Rebecque, a dashing Swiss noble in the service of the Dutch Republic. It was said of Hermenches that he wished to be, at one and the same moment, courtier and man of letters, soldier and farmer, scholar and dévot. Ambition and vanity were clearly marked on his dark and rather effeminate features; a love of pleasure, also, and an extreme assurance in procuring it. His career was military, his talents were histrionic, his triumphs principally amorous. He was a friend of Voltaire’s, with whom he played Orosmane, and of ces dames, for whom he played Don Juan. The advent of this brilliant cavalier at the Hague aroused some misgiving and a lively curiosity. Belle marked him down at once; it happened, she reminds him, ‘four years ago, at the duke’s ball…Monsieur, vous ne dansez pas?’ She was not one to be shy of taking the initiative. ‘With our first words we quarrelled; with our second we were friends for life.’
Well, hardly for life; but for twelve years, at least, these two kept up a correspondence of the most singular intimacy. ‘You are the man in whom, of all the world, I have the completest and most instinctive confidence,’ she writes, ‘for you I have no prudence, no reserve, no prudery: nay, what is more remarkable, no vanity either. I am always ready to tell you of every folly which lowers me in my own esteem. If we lived together I would have no secrets from you.’ It is natural, therefore, that she should write again, ‘Monsieur, in God’s name burn my letters!’ But the letters were a great deal too good to burn. And, later, when, before her marriage, Belle made repeated and desperate appeals for the return of the dossier, Hermenches turned a deaf ear on her entreaties. Vanity or a fine taste in literature may have been the motive of his refusal; the result in any case is that a hundred and seventy-eight of these intimate documents repose at this date, duly catalogued, in the public library of Geneva. So fortunate are the consequences of the most inexcusable actions!
If Mademoiselle de Tuyll took the first step in this unconventional friendship, it was she, no less, who dictated the terms of it. ‘I hear it said on all sides, and even by your admirers, that you are the most dangerous of men and that no caution is too great in dealing with you…The friend I want to keep would not have your eagerness nor your ways of expression. I cannot take all you say as the mere language of politeness: I think, Monsieur, that you are or that you feign to be something more than a friend, and I would wish neither to permit a folly nor be the dupe of a deceit. How can you expect me to look upon you as a man whose advice I can trust?…You are for me one of those rare and precious possessions which one is mad enough to wish to obtain and to keep at any price, though one can put them to no use when acquired. I have too much sought your notice and then your esteem, since in the end we have gained so little that we can neither see each other nor write openly.’
The situation was characteristic. Belle had capitulated from the start, frankly and without a trace of conventional amour propre: ‘j’étais éprise de l’empire que vous exerciez sur moi.’ Hermenches, on the other hand, who might seem to have made in her one of the easiest of his conquests, found himself confronted with a will as strong as his own. This masterful woman was always seeking a master: she could never accept one. She could never surrender her reason, and her cold sense of fact perpetually nipped the bud of romance. No one, in that age of gallantry, ever had less use for the comedies of flirtation or wasted less time with the business of coqueterie. She states things exactly as they are: neither more nor less. ‘It would be easy for me to use all the commonplaces of modesty, to tell you that in seeing me more often you would cease to love me. That would not be true. On the contrary, I think that, whatever small degree of feeling you may have for me at present, you would love me much more in the future. Allow me, Hermenches, the pride of believing that no woman will ever take in your heart precisely the place that I might hold in it. But as for love – all, I mean, that is necessary to enable you to be with me without agitation – you will feel that perhaps, any day, for some more beautiful woman. You will see a thousand whose charms, coupled with a sufficiency of sense, will restore you to all the peace of mind you may desire in regard to me. Since we have known each other, I have never failed to keep your esteem and your predilection; but how many times has your heart been otherwise occupied?…It is absolutely necessary that we should write less often, that we should think of each other less. Ah! Dieu, si jamais, comptant sur vos doigts les femmes qui vous ont trop aimé, je me trouvais entre la Martin et quelque autre de son espèce!’
Hermenches had to content himself, therefore, with the rôle of confidant. He writes to her on the tone of worldly wisdom; his letters are a blend of philosophy and gallantry; but, play-actor though he essentially is, his feeling takes by reflection the sincerity of hers. There is a true affection between the pair, and beneath this affection the instinctive war of two consummate egoists. It was, upon the whole, a drawn battle. Belle may seem to impose herself at every point: she chooses her antagonist; she defines the rules of the action; she makes herself the principal figure in the piece. The subject of every letter is herself: it is of her character, her doings, her needs, her aspirations that she writes. But, after all, it is to Hermenches she confides them: his male assurance is satisfied with
