Elective Affinities (23 page)

There was now a search for copperplates of famous paintings. The first to be chosen was the Belisarius of Van Dyck. A tall well-built gentleman of mature years was to represent the seated blind general and the architect the sorrowing warrior standing before him (whom he did in fact somewhat resemble). Luciane had, with a sort of modesty, selected for herself the role of the young woman in the background counting out a generous alms from a bag on to the flat of her hand, while an older woman seems to be dissuading her and telling her she is giving too much. Another female character actually giving alms had not been forgotten.

They occupied themselves very seriously with this and other pictures. The Count gave the architect a few hints about how the tableaux ought to be mounted and the architect at once erected a stage for them and looked after the lighting that would be needed. They were already deeply involved in the arrangements before they realized that such an undertaking would demand considerable expenditure and that very many of their requirements were not to be had in the country in the middle of winter. But, so that things should not be delayed, Luciane allowed virtually her entire wardrobe to be cut up to provide material for the costumes which the artists had, arbitrarily enough, assigned to their characters.

The evening arrived and the performance was given before a large audience and to universal approbation. Solemn music heightened the sense of expectancy. The Belisarius inaugurated the proceedings. The figures corresponded so well to their originals, the colours were so happily chosen, the lighting so artistic, you thought you had been transported to another world, the only disturbing factor being a sort of anxiety produced by the presence of real figures instead of painted ones.

The curtain fell but the audience insisted it be raised again several times. They were then entertained by a musical interlude while a picture of a more elevated description was prepared. It was Poussin’s famous representation of Esther before Ahasuerus. This time Luciane had given herself a better role. In the figure of the unconscious swooning queen she was able to display all her attractions, and she had prudently selected for the maidens surrounding and supporting her only girls who, while pretty and shapely enough, could not for a moment endure comparison with her. To represent the king, a very Zeus on his golden throne, she had chosen the handsomest and most robust-looking man in the company, so that this tableau really did attain an incomparable perfection.

As the third they had selected the so-called
Instruction paternelle
of Gerald Terborch, and who does not know Wille’s wonderful copperplate of this painting? A noble knightly father sits with one leg over the other and seems to be admonishing the daughter standing before him. His daughter, a magnificent figure in a white satin dress which hangs in abundant folds, is seen only from behind, but her whole attitude seems to indicate that she is restraining herself. That the admonition is not violent or shaming can be seen from the father’s expression and bearing, and as for the mother, she seems to be concealing a slight embarrassment by looking down into a glass of wine which she is in the act of drinking.

This picture was to be the occasion for Luciane to exhibit herself at her very best. Her braids and the shape of her head and neck were lovely beyond conception, and her figure, of which little was discernible under the mock classical dress worn by modern women, was wonderfully slim and dainty and light, and was shown to the greatest advantage in the older costume; and the architect had taken care to lay the many folds of white satin in the most artistic way, so that this living copy was beyond question inordinately superior to the original picture and provoked universal rapture. The encores were unending, and the wholly natural desire also to see the face of so lovely a creature when you had seen enough of her back view gained the upper hand of the audience to such an extent that, when one impatient wag shouted out the words you sometimes write at the end of a page –
‘Tournez s’il vous plaît
’ – he excited universal applause and approval. But the performers knew too well where their advantage lay, and had grasped the sense of these artistic representations too thoroughly, to yield to this general demand. The shamed-seeming daughter remained motionless without granting the audience a sight of her facial expression, the father remained seated in his admonitory posture, and the mother kept her eyes and nose riveted to the transparent glass, in which, although she appeared to be drinking, the wine never grew less. – A number of little pieces followed, depicting Dutch inn scenes and market scenes, but they need not detain us.

The Count and the Baroness departed, promising to return in the first happy weeks of their approaching marriage, and now, after two weary months, Charlotte hoped to be likewise rid of the remaining company. She was assured of her daughter’s happiness once she had put behind her the giddiness of adolescence, for her husband-to-be considered himself the happiest man in the world. Despite his great wealth and the moderation of his temperament, he seemed to be in a strange way flattered by the prospect of possessing the additional
advantage of a wife everyone was bound to like. He was so much inclined to relate everything to her, and to himself only through her, that it disturbed him if a newcomer did not at once devote all his attention to her but neglected her and concerned himself with him, which older people especially often did. The architect’s future was soon settled: in the New Year he was to follow the Baron and spend the carnival season with him in the city, where Luciane promised herself the greatest delight from a repetition of the beautiful tableaux and from a hundred other things, a delight which seemed all the more certain in that her aunt and her future husband appeared to begrudge none of the expenditure her pleasures demanded.

Now it was time to separate, but it stood to reason that this could not be done in a normal manner. There was on one occasion some rather loud joking to the effect that Charlotte’s supplies for the winter would soon be exhausted, whereat the gentleman who had played the role of Belisarius but was himself not exactly poor, carried away by Luciane’s attractions, to which he had been paying homage for so long, cried out impulsively: ‘Let us all go Dutch! Come to my place and eat me out of house and home too, then let’s go on to someone else’s place and then to someone else’s!’ No sooner said than done. Luciane agreed, and the next day they collected their goods together and the whole pack pounced on another estate. There was sufficient room there but fewer comforts and amenities, which gave rise to many improprieties that Luciane found wholly delightful. Their existence grew ever more turbulent and disorderly.
Battue
expeditions in the deep snow and whatever other uncomfortable excursions they could think of were organized, the women were no more permitted to exclude themselves than the men were, and so they went, hunting and riding, sleighing and rioting, from one house to another, until at last they came to the Residenz, where the reports and stories they
heard of the entertainments to be found at court and in the city turned their fantasy in that direction and, the aunt having already gone on ahead, drew Luciane and her whole entourage irresistibly out of their old way of life into a new.

From Ottilie’s Journal

In the world everyone is accepted as he is, but he has to be something. The troublesome are endured more willingly than the insignificant are suffered.

You can do anything in society except anything that has consequences.

We do not get to know people when they come to us; we have to go to them to learn what they are like.

I find it almost an instinct with us to find fault with visitors and judge them unkindly as soon as they have gone: for we have as it were a right to assess them according to our own standards. Even fair and sensible people can hardly abstain from sharp comment on such occasions.

On the other hand, when we visit other people and see them in their habitual surroundings, in the circumstances of life which are necessary and unavoidable to them, and how they influence or accommodate themselves to their environment, then it requires ill-will and want of understanding to find that ridiculous which ought to seem to us in more than one sense worthy of respect.

The object of what we call deportment and good manners is to attain that which can otherwise be attained only by force or not even by force.

Association with women is the element of good manners.

How can character, the individuality of a human being, be reconciled with good breeding?

It is good breeding which ought first to bring out and emphasize what is individual. Everyone desires significant qualities but no one wants them to be uncomfortable and troublesome.

The greatest advantages, in society as in life in general, are possessed by a cultivated soldier.

Uncultivated warriors are at least faithful to their character and, since good naturedness usually lies concealed behind their violence, you can also get along with them if you have to.

No one is more burdensome than an uncultivated civilian. Since he does not have to do with anything coarse, you have a right to expect refinement of him.

If we live with someone who is sensitive about propriety we are anxious for his sake when anything improper occurs. Thus I always feel for and with Charlotte if anyone rocks back and forth in his chair, because she finds that unendurable.

No one would come into a private room wearing spectacles if he realized that we women at once lose all desire to look at or talk with him.

Familiarity where there should be respect is always ridiculous. No one would throw down his hat when he has hardly taken it off in greeting if he realized how funny that looks.

There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.

Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone exhibits his image.

There is a politeness of the heart; it is related to love. It gives rise to the most comfortable politeness of outward behaviour.

Voluntary dependence is the best position to be in, and how would that be possible without love?

We are never further from our desires than when we imagine we possess what we desire.

No one is more a slave than he who thinks he is free without being so.

You have only to declare yourself free to feel at that moment dependent. If you venture to declare yourself dependent, you feel free.

When another person is vastly superior to you there is no remedy but to love him.

There is something terrible about a superior man of whom fools are proud.

No man, they say, is a hero to his valet. But that is merely because it takes a hero to appreciate a hero. A valet would presumably know how to appreciate a valet.

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity than that genius is not immortal.

The greatest human beings are always linked to their century by some weakness.

People are usually considered more dangerous than they really are.

Fools and clever people are both harmless. It is the half-crazy and the half-wise who are dangerous.

You cannot escape from the world more certainly than through art, and you cannot bind yourself to it more certainly than through art.

Even in the moment of our greatest happiness and that of our greatest misery we need the artist.

Art is concerned with the difficult and the good.

To see the difficult dealt with easily gives us an intuition of the impossible.

The difficulties increase the closer we approach the goal.

Sowing is not so hard as reaping.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE
great upheaval Charlotte had endured during this visit was compensated for by the fact that she had now come fully to understand her daughter. Her knowledge of the world had been of great assistance to her in encompassing this understanding. It was not the first time she had encountered so unusual a personality, although she had never encountered one at this level of intensity. Yet experience had taught her that such people, disciplined by life, by manifold experience, by family tradition, are capable of attaining a very pleasant and amiable maturity once their egoism has been softened and their erratic energies have been harnessed to some definite purpose. As a mother Charlotte was all the more ready to put up with exhibitions that others might perhaps find unpleasant, since it is right and proper for parents to look for signs of hope where strangers will look only for enjoyment or have no reason to look at all.

Yet even after her daughter’s departure another blow, characteristic but unexpected, had still to fall on her. It originated in the bad reputation Luciane had left behind her, arising this time not from what was blameworthy in her behaviour but from what might have been thought praiseworthy. She seemed to have made it a rule to be, not only cheerful with the cheerful, but also sad with the sad and, faithful to the spirit of contradiction, sometimes to annoy the cheerful and cheer the sad. Whenever she visited a family she asked about the sick and infirm who were unable to join the company. She visited them in their room, played the doctor and pressed upon them the powerful physic she kept in the travelling medicine-chest which accompanied her
everywhere; whether such a cure failed or succeeded was, as might be imagined, a matter of chance.

In this sort of philanthropy she was altogether inhuman and it was quite impossible to dissuade her from it, since she was firmly convinced she was acting splendidly. But one experiment she made in moral regeneration went seriously wrong and it was this which later gave Charlotte a great deal of trouble, because it had consequences and everybody talked about it. She heard of it only after Luciane had gone; Ottilie, who had been present, was obliged to give her a circumstantial account.

One of the daughters of a respected house had had the misfortune to be responsible for the death of one of her younger brothers and was unable to get over it. She lived in her room quietly and busily occupied and she could bear the sight even of her own family only if they came one by one, for whenever several were there together she at once suspected they were discussing her and her condition. But she would act rationally to each individually and would talk with him for hours.