style="font-size:15px;"> They cannot marry: they cannot even meet. Yet he is the audience before whom she enacts her life, and she holds him by his vulnerable point of vanity. That this girl, who might soon be acknowledged in Europe as one of the brilliant women of her time – she who wrote ‘better than Voltaire’ – should declare herself his pupil in the art of living, meant more to this dilettante than all his conquests. Untamed, Belle flattered his pride more subtly than if she had lowered her worth by a complete surrender. But what could be the future of such a friendship?
It was as a solution to this problem that Hermenches proposed to marry Mademoiselle de Tuyll to his best friend, the Marquis de Bellegarde. Hermenches was a constant visitor on his friend’s estates; the separation would thus be less complete. If Hermenches had any arrière pensée in making this proposal, Belle is too generous to suspect it. ‘What you are doing seems to me a fine, a noble, and a difficult thing. A person who knew nothing of love might say – “She cannot be yours; it is therefore no sacrifice to give her to your friend.” I judge you very differently: I am too much aware that to add, by your own act, new separations to old, to place a lasting and invincible obstacle in the way of your desires, demands a courageous and sublime generosity. It is a very different thing to marry the woman you love to your closest friend, than to acquiesce in her union with another man.’
That ‘favourite virtue of frankness’ in Mademoiselle de Tuyll will be much in evidence in her dealings with the Marquis; but once more she finds herself in a crooked situation. Bellegarde was a Catholic, the Tuylls were Protestant: pride and conviction were both involved in the question of faith, and the obstacle of religion was likely to prove an insuperable one in the eyes of Belle’s parents. It was necessary, therefore, to go gently. Monsieur de Bellegarde was neither very ardent nor very adroit; he went too gently; he could hardly be said to go at all. Every stage of his suit had to be planned and carried through by the two conspirators. Belle confesses a scruple – ‘not for the project itself, which still seems a good one, but for the means to be employed. Sometimes I hate this roundabout path, this sense of plot. I feel that I am guilty towards my father, that I am deceiving him, that you yourself will think I am acting against my honesty and my frankness – the virtue I hold to most and would make the ransom of all my faults. You, Hermenches, must be my casuist; you who know women so well, and how they are judged, must prevent my doing anything unworthy. I would not be despised by the man whose wife I desire to become; above all I would not have him think me false, for that I am not.’
The casuist was well chosen, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll, with her qualms sufficiently at rest, set to work with her accustomed energy. The suitable moment at last arrived for approaching the parents, and the inert Marquis entrusted Hermenches with the task of pleading his suit. But characteristically, it was Belle herself who composed the letter of proposal. She informed Hermenches that her father should be addressed in the following terms: ‘You are, Sir, no less aware than I that the talents which heaven has showered upon your daughter – talents which a distinguished education has refined and united with every virtue
– are precious gifts, more desirable in themselves than any alliance however advantageous, yet capable also of proving an obstacle to such a union. There are few men in whom those talents do not inspire fear; fewer still who may hope to find favour with their possessor, who knows and can appreciate their worth. My friend has intelligence enough to desire that his wife may have it in abundance. It is your daughter, gifted as she is, who charms him, whom he loves and desires, who is necessary to his happiness.’ Then followed arguments calculated to allay the prejudice of religion, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll concluded, ‘If you think well to add a few words as to the eagerness and passion evinced by the Marquis’ (the Marquis, it may be observed, was far from evincing these inducements), ‘you must do that for yourself. I have already suffered enough in this ridiculous self-praise.’
It may be supposed that such expressions as these could not fail to gratify the paternal pride of Monsieur de Tuyll; the reception of the letter was, nevertheless, icy. Silence reigned at Zuylen. The unfortunate family, always formal, became rigid with constraint. Monsieur de Tuyll pronounced that the religious obstacle was, for him, insuperable; that his daughter would be of age in two years and might then choose for herself without regard to her parents’ judgment, which must remain adverse. Belle at once replied that she could not desire, or obtain, her happiness at the expense of theirs. There were long conferences up and down the quiet corridor, long letters written from her locked room, and agitated pour-parlers in the garden. Belle shows herself at her best in this diplomacy; she abounded in admirable arguments, daughterly duty, and ingenious appeals to the ideal of tolerance which Monsieur de Tuyll, like so many unbending persons, believed to be his rule of life. But her efforts were unavailing: the frontal attack had failed, and the two conspirators fell back upon the strategy of attrition.
Bellegarde was urged to bestir himself, to move the Vatican for the necessary dispensations, and to put a little more passion into his suit. Alas, he has reached the middle time of life ‘when he can no longer flatter himself with the hope of evoking the ardour of love’; ‘the solid sentiments to which I aspire,’ he writes, ‘lead me to look for a better happiness than can be procured by such transitory intoxication – (cette agréable ivresse toujours passagère)’; he trusts to these ‘substantial feelings’ to replace ‘those of a Corydon.’ He also trusts that her dowry will be sufficient to pay his debts.
It is on record that Belle read this letter three or four times with great pleasure. The fact is she was entirely free from vanity, and readily admired in others the frankness which she claimed for herself. Nevertheless the feelings which Mademoiselle de Tuyll proposed to herself were not precisely the ‘substantial’ ones of the Marquis. She was entirely explicit on this point. She despatched to Hermenches an immense dissertation – a very masterpiece of frankness – on the exact gradation of ardour which her husband must maintain in order to enjoy a reasonable hope of her fidelity. Nothing could be more just, or more businesslike than her observations. The romantic movement was not yet astir, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll’s self-knowledge was veiled in no misty half-lights. There is a quality of truth and goodwill in this honest letter which is of finer style than all the draperies of sentiment.
Monsieur de Bellegarde, on his part, was far less exercised as to his bride’s eventual fidelity than upon the score of her formidable intellect. ‘Those talents which heaven has showered upon your daughter’ were far from giving the satisfaction attributed to him by Belle in her draft of proposal; her sense of fact alarmed, her subtleties distressed him; he was in mortal terror of marrying a blue-stocking; he wished she would not write him such long letters. ‘Shorter letters, above all, shorter!’ is the anxious advice of Hermenches. ‘If I have too much wit by half for the Marquis,’ is Belle’s rather crestfallen reply, ‘let him marry a woman with half my wit. If I am neither to see nor to write to Monsieur de Bellegarde, why does he not take an heiress out of Africa, and leave me to make a marriage by proxy with the Grand Mogul?’
But here, too, she can be sympathetic with the alarm of her suitor. ‘I find it entirely fitting that the Marquis cannot endure me in the ro? le of prodigy. Nothing in the world is more detestable. My intellectual pretensions were a kind of childhood which I have left behind. I have no longer any desire to exhibit a quality which, if it exists, is sure to show itself sufficiently, and loses half its charm in being advertised. I do not spend ten minutes a month in speculating on what I do not understand, and have come to rest in a very humble and quite contented scepticism. If I am on excellent terms with my own wits, it is because I find they serve so well for every day use, because they can discover amusement in anything and amuse everybody, because they make the happiness of those around me. The Marquis will have no complaints to make on this score. I am laughed at every day, and do not mind anything so long as I am allowed to go my own way with my studies and my writings. But I would not for a throne renounce the occupations of my own room. If I ceased to learn I should die of boredom in the midst of every pleasure and grandeur in the world. If the Marquis cares to read aloud I will learn history while I embroider his waistcoats.’ ‘If I bewilder him he has only to tell me to hold my tongue.
