beauty.”
This declaration, which was caused by observing the phenomenon that formerly made Veronique so beautiful on her return from the holy table, made a great noise in Limoges, where for a time the young deputy, to whom the place of the procureur-general was said to be promised, played a leading part. In all provincial towns a man who rises a trifle above others becomes, for a period more or less protracted, the object of a liking which resembles enthusiasm, and which usually deceives the object of this ephemeral worship. It is to this social caprice that we owe so many local geniuses, soon ignored and their false reputations mortified. The men whom women make the fashion in this way are oftener strangers than compatriots.
In this particular case the admirers of the Vicomte de Grandville were not mistaken; he was in truth a superior man. Madame Graslin was the only woman he found in Limoges with whom he could exchange ideas and keep up a varied conversation. A few months after his arrival, attracted by the increasing charm of Veronique’s manners and conversation, he proposed to the Abbe Dutheil, and a few other of the remarkable men in Limoges, to meet in the evenings at Madame Graslin’s house and play whist. At this time Madame Graslin was at home five evenings in the week to visitors, reserving two free days, as she said, for herself.
When Madame Graslin had thus gathered about her the distinguished men we have mentioned, others were not sorry to give themselves the reputation of cleverness by seeking to join the same society. Veronique also received three or four of the distinguished officers of the garrison and staff; but the freedom of mind displayed by her guests, and the tacit discretion enjoined by the manners of the best society, made her extremely cautious as to the admission of those who now vied with each other to obtain her invitations.
The other women in this provincial society were not without jealousy in seeing Madame Graslin surrounded by the most agreeable and distinguished men in the town; but by this time Veronique’s social power was all the stronger because it was exclusive; she accepted the intimacy of four or five women only, and these were strangers in Limoges who had come from Paris with their husbands, and who held in horror the petty gossip of provincial life. If any one outside of this little clique of superior persons came in to make a visit, the conversation immediately changed, and the habitues of the house talked commonplace.
The hotel Graslin thus became an oasis where intelligent minds found relaxation and relief from the dulness of provincial life; where persons connected with the government could express themselves freely on politics without fear of having their words taken down and repeated; where all could satirize that which provoked satire, and where each individual abandoned his professional trammels and yielded himself up to his natural self.
So, after being the most obscure young girl in all Limoges, considered ugly, dull, and vacant, Madame Graslin, at the beginning of the year 1828, was regarded as one of the leading personages in the town, and the most noted woman in society. No one went to see her in the mornings, for all knew her habits of benevolence and the regularity of her religious observances. She always went to early mass so as not to delay her husband’s breakfast, for which, however, there was no fixed hour, though she never failed to be present and to serve it herself. Graslin had trained his wife to this little ceremony. He continued to praise her on all occasions; he thought her perfect; she never asked him for anything; he could pile up louis upon louis, and spread his investments over a wide field of enterprise through his relations with the Brezacs; he sailed with a fair wind and well freighted over the ocean of commerce—his intense business interest keeping him in the still, though half-intoxicated, frenzy of gamblers watching events on the green table of speculation.
During this happy period, and until the beginning of the year 1829, Madame Graslin attained, in the eyes of her friends, to a degree of beauty that was really extraordinary, the reasons of which they were unable to explain. The blue of the iris expanded like a flower, diminishing the dark circle of the pupil, and seeming to float in a liquid and languishing light that was full of love. Her forehead, illumined by thoughts and memories of happiness, was seen to whiten like the zenith before the dawn, and its lines were purified by an inward fire. Her face lost those heated brown tones which betoken a disturbance of the liver—that malady of vigorous constitutions, or of persons whose soul is distressed and whose affections are thwarted. Her temples became adorably fresh and pure; gleams of the celestial face of a Raffaelle showed themselves now and then in hers—a face hitherto obscured by the malady of grief, as the canvas of the great master is encrusted by time. Her hands seemed whiter; her shoulders took on an exquisite fulness; her graceful, animated movements gave to her supple figure its utmost charm.
The Limoges women accused her of being in love with Monsieur de Grandville, who certainly paid her assiduous attention, to which Veronique opposed all the barriers of a conscientious resistance. The viscount professed for her one of those respectful attachments which did not blind the habitual visitors of her salon. The priests and men of sense saw plainly that this affection, which was love on the part of the young man, did not go beyond the permissible line in Madame Graslin. Weary at last of a resistance based on religious principle, the Vicomte de Grandville consoled himself (to the knowledge of his intimates) with other and easier friendships; which did not, however, lessen his constant admiration and worship of the beautiful Madame Graslin—such was the term by which she was designated in 1829.
The most clear-sighted among those who surrounded her attributed the change which rendered Veronique increasingly charming to her friends to the secret delight which all women, even the most religious, feel when they see themselves courted; and to the satisfaction of living at last in a circle congenial to her mind, where the pleasure of exchanging ideas and the happiness of being surrounded by intelligent and well-informed men and true friends, whose attachment deepened day by day, had dispersed forever the weary dulness of her life.
Perhaps, however, closer, more perceptive or sceptical observers were needed than those who frequented the hotel Graslin, to detect the barbaric grandeur, the plebeian force of the People which lay deep-hidden in her soul. If sometimes her friends surprised her in a torpor of meditation either gloomy or merely pensive, they knew she bore upon her heart the miseries of others, and had doubtless that morning been initiated in some fresh sorrow, or had penetrated to some haunt where vices terrify the soul with their candor.
The viscount, now promoted to be procureur-general, would occasionally blame her for certain unintelligent acts of charity by which, as he knew from his secret police-reports, she had given encouragement to criminal schemes.
“If you ever want money for any of your paupers, let me be a sharer in your good deeds,” said old Grossetete, taking Veronique’s hand.
“Ah!” she replied with a sigh, “it is impossible to make everybody rich.”
At the beginning of this year an event occurred which was destined to change the whole interior life of this woman and to transform the splendid expression of her countenance into something far more interesting in the eyes of painters.
Becoming uneasy about his health, Graslin, to his wife’s despair, no longer desired to live on the ground-floor. He returned to the conjugal chamber and allowed himself to be nursed. The news soon spread throughout Limoges that Madame Graslin was pregnant. Her sadness, mingled with joy, struck the minds of her friends, who then for the first time perceived that in spite of her virtues she had been happy in the fact of living separate from her husband. Perhaps she had hoped for some better fate ever since the time when, as it was known, the attorney-general had declined to marry the richest heiress in the place, in order to keep his loyalty to her.
From this suggestion there grew up in the minds of the profound politicians who played their whist at the hotel Graslin a belief that the viscount and the young wife had based certain hopes on the ill-health of the banker which were now frustrated. The great agitations which marked this period of Veronique’s life, the anxieties which a first childbirth causes in every woman, and which, it is said, threatens
