The Jealousies of a Country Town quotes

with charming appropriateness. Till his dying day no one ever suspected that while these avalanches of nonsense lasted, the Chevalier in his own mind was rehearsing the warmest passages of an old romance, of which the Princess Goritza was the heroine.

Has anyone ever given a thought to the social uses of extinct sentiment?⁠—or guessed in how many indirect ways love benefits humanity?

Possibly this listener’s faculty sufficiently explains the Chevalier’s popularity; he was always the spoiled child of the town, although he never quitted a drawing-room without carrying off about five livres in his pocket.

to anecdotes of the undercooked egg at breakfast, or the sour cream in the coffee; to small grotesque details of physical ailments; to tales of dreams and visitations and wakings with a start.

The Chevalier was an exquisite listener.

He had a languishing glance, a stock attitude to denote compassion; he put in his “Ohs” and “Poohs” and “What-did-you-dos?” with charming appropriateness.

Surely in no known country of the globe did parasite appear in such a benignant shape.

Never did selfishness in its most concentrated form show itself so inoffensive, so full of good offices as in this gentleman; the Chevalier’s egoism was as good as another man’s devoted friendship.

If any person went to ask M.

A born confidant of the little intrigues of the laundry, he never passed the door—which almost always stood ajar—without bringing something for his pets—chocolate, bonbons, ribbons, laces, a gilt cross, and the jokes that grisettes love. Wherefore the little girls adored the Chevalier.

Women can tell by instinct whether a man is attracted to anything that wears a petticoat

; they know at once the kind of man who enjoys the mere sense of their presence, who never thinks of making blundering demands of repayment for his gallantry. In this respect womankind has a canine faculty;

we should like to help France to find her own money in these gentlemen’s pockets. Eh! eh! my dear little devil’s lamb, all this is not bad. The neighbors will cry out upon you a little at first perhaps, but success will make everything right.

The real crime, my child, is poverty; and you and I both suffer for it.

As we are not lacking in intelligence, we thought we might turn our dear little reputation to account to take in an old bachelor, but the old bachelor, sweetheart, knows the alpha and omega of woman’s wiles;

“For myself, to be sure!” du Bousquier answered brutally.

“Old monster! you shall never be a father!”

said Suzanne, with a ring in her voice which turned the words to a prophecy and a curse.

Granson. Wherefore Suzanne determined that whether or no she made a farthing out of the Maternity Fund, she would entangle du Bousquier in the inextricable undergrowth of the gossip of a country town.

There is something of a monkey’s love of mischief in every grisette.

Suzanne composed her countenance dolorously and betook herself accordingly to Mme. Granson.

Her chin developed a triple fold, which reduced the apparent length of her throat, and made it no easy matter to turn her head.

She had no wrinkles, she had creases.

Wags used to assert that she powdered herself, as nurses powder babies, to prevent chafing of the skin. To a young man, consumed, like Athanase, with suppressed desires, this excessive corpulence offered just the kind of physical charm which could not fail to attract youth.

She would come out with odd remarks at such times. Once she revived, with some success, a discussion on the ubiquity of the apostles (of which she understood not a syllable) by the unexpected observation that

“You cannot be in two places at once unless you are a bird.”

With such conversational cues as these, the lady had earned the title of “dear, good Mlle.

Altogether she was on a par with the English country gentleman, and member of the House of Commons, who made the famous speech in which he said,

“I am always hearing of Posterity; I should very much like to know what Posterity has done for the country.”

On such occasions, the heroic Chevalier de Valois came to the rescue, bringing up all the resources of his wit and tact at the sight of the smiles exchanged by pitiless smatterers. He loved to give to woman, did this elderly noble;

How is it that nobody has seen that these generous creatures, confined by their principles to strict conjugal fidelity, must naturally desire a mate of great practical experience?

A reformed rake makes the best husband.

And so it came to pass that the poor spinster must sigh over the chosen vessel, offered her as it were in two pieces. Heaven alone could weld the Chevalier de Valois and du Bousquier in one.

His eyes were fixed on that enormous bust, which maintained the absolute repose characteristic of great masses. Desire wrought a kind of intoxication in him. The old maid’s thin, shrill voice became low music for his ears; her platitudes were fraught with ideas.

Love is an utterer of false coin; he is always at work transforming common copper into gold louis; sometimes, also, he makes his seeming halfpence of fine gold.

“Well, Athanase, will you promise me?”

“Well, then, cousin, since one must put dots on all the i’s, it is quite out of the question that Suzanne should love du Bousquier. And when the heart counts for nothing in such an affair—”

“Why, really, cousin, how should people love if not with their hearts?”

At this Mme. Granson thought within herself, as the Chevalier had thought:

“Why, yes, dear, for the Holy Virgin—”

“But, my dear, good girl, du Bousquier is not the Holy Ghost.”

“That is true,” returned the spinster; “he is a man—a man dangerous enough for his friends to recommend him strongly to marry.”

And the event which was to surprise her there and hasten on her marriage was unseen as yet by Mme. Granson, or du Bousquier, or M. de Valois, or by Mlle. Cormon herself.

Chance is the greatest artist of all.

On the morrow of mademoiselle’s arrival at the Prébaudet, she was very harmlessly engaged in taking her eight o’clock breakfast, while she listened to the reports of her bailiff and gardener, when Jacquelin, in a great flurry, burst into the dining-room.

“And here is uncle telling me nothing, knowing nothing, and wanting to know nothing! Oh, so like uncle! He would forget his nose if it was not fastened to his face.”

Have you not noticed how mature spinsters, under these circumstances, grow as intelligent, fierce, bold, and full of promises as a Richard III?

To them, as to clerics in liquor, nothing is sacred.

“She is all of a lather, and she has not been fed.”

“Eh! and if she dies, let her die!⁠—” cried Mlle. Cormon⁠—“so long as I am married,” she added in her own mind.

Josette stood stockstill a moment in amazement, such a remark was tantamount to murder; then, at a sign from her mistress, she dashed headlong down the steps into the yard.

The reasoning seemed profound, stupid though it was, in so far as it prevented the district from securing a monopoly of money from outside.

In the political economy of the provinces the wealth of nations consists not so much in a brisk circulation of money as in hoards of unproductive coin.

At length the old maid’s fatal wish was fulfilled. Penelope sank under the attack of pleurisy contracted forty days before the wedding. Nothing could save her. Mme. Granson, Mariette, Mme. du Coudrai, Mme.

One or two women among Mme. Granson’s few friends went to prepare the poor widow with all possible care to receive the dreadful yield of the river. The news of the suicide, as might be expected, produced a tremendous sensation.

Only last evening the poverty-stricken man of genius had not a single friend; the morning after his death scores of voices cried, “I would so willingly have helped him!” So easy is it to play a charitable part when no outlay is involved.

The Chevalier de Valois, in the spirit of revenge, explained the suicide. It was a boyish, sincere, and noble passion for Mlle. Cormon that drove Athanase to take his own life. And when the Chevalier had opened Mme.

she saw company which she did not like; she who had been free to spend as she pleased, and had never spent at all, had lost the control of the money which she loved.

Impose limits, and who does not wish to go beyond them? Is there any sharper suffering than that which comes of thwarted will?

But these beginnings were the roses of life. Every concession was counseled by poor Rose’s love for her husband, and at first du Bousquier behaved admirably to his wife. He was very good to her; he brought forward sufficient reasons for every encroachment.

Did du Bousquier go on a journey? She fidgeted over his traveling cloak and his linen; she took the most minute precautions for his material comfort. If he was going over to the Prébaudet, she began to consult the weather glass twenty-four hours beforehand.

A sleeping dog has eyes and ears for his master, and so it was with Mme. du Bousquier; she used to watch the expression of her husband’s face to read his wishes.

And if that burly personage, vanquished by duty-prescribed love, caught her by the waist and kissed her on the forehead, exclaiming, “You are a good woman!” tears of joy filled the poor creature’s eyes.

After the pressure was removed, there followed that sudden revival of class divisions which did so much harm to the country.

The most national of all sentiments in France is vanity.

The wounded vanity of the many induced a thirst for Equality; though, as the most ardent innovator will some day discover, Equality is an impossibility.

but at every election du Croisier was regularly thrown out by the Royalists. The leaders of that party, taking their tone from the Marquis d’Esgrignon, had pretty thoroughly fathomed and gauged their man; and with each defeat, du Croisier and his party waxed more bitter.

Nothing so effectually stirs up strife as the failure of some snare set with elaborate pains.

In 1822 there seemed to be a lull in hostilities which had been kept up with great spirit during the first four years of the Restoration.

George, he was a paladin on horseback. In short, he gratified the pride which parents take in their children’s appearance; a pride founded, for that matter, on a just idea of the enormous influence exercised by physical beauty.

Personal beauty has this in common with noble birth: it cannot be acquired afterwards; it is everywhere recognized, and often is more valued than either brains or money; beauty has only to appear and triumph; nobody asks more of beauty than that it should simply exist.

Fate had endowed Victurnien, over and above the privileges of good looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a wonderful aptitude of comprehension, and a good memory. His education, therefore, had been complete.

no one inquires whether a man can afford to make the figure he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries as to ways and means.

A man ought to renew his wealth perpetually, and as Nature does⁠—below the surface and out of sight.

People talk if somebody comes to grief; they joke about a newcomer’s fortune till their minds are set at rest, and at this they draw the line.

she had been suspected, it is true, of equivocal conduct; but suspicion, while it is still suspicion and not proof, marks a woman out with the kind of distinction which slander gives to a man.

Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are left in peace.

This woman was, in fact, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, a daughter of the d’Uxelles; her father-in-law was still alive; she was not to be the Princesse de Cadignan for some years to come.

For a pair of lovers, the rest of their species are about as much alive as figures on the tapestry. The Duchess, flattery apart, was avowedly and admittedly one of the ten handsomest women in society.

“The loveliest woman in Paris” is, as you know, as often met with in the world of lovemaking as “the finest book that has appeared in this generation,” in the world of letters.

The converse which Victurnien held with the Duchess can be kept up at his age without too great a strain.

Certain persons, detractors of the Duchess, maintain that she was the first dupe of her own white magic. A wicked slander.

The Duchess believed in nothing but herself.

By the end of the year 1823 the Kellers had supplied Victurnien with two hundred thousand francs, and neither Chesnel nor Mlle. Armande knew anything about it.

she saw nothing wrong in a married woman’s love for Victurnien; any other woman she would have judged harshly; but in this case, not to have loved her nephew would have been the unpardonable sin.

Aunts, mothers, and sisters have a code of their own for nephews and sons and brothers.

Mlle. Armande was in Venice; she saw the lines of fairy palaces that stand on either side of the Grand Canal; she was sitting in Victurnien’s gondola;

“Is that all?” said she, smiling at him.

“Money matters can always be arranged somehow or other; nothing is irretrievable except disasters in love.”

Victurnien’s mind being set at rest by this swift comprehension of his position, he unrolled the bright-colored web of his life for the last two years and a half;

It was a storm of epigrams.

Her speeches, like bullets, came hissing past his ears.

Every word that Diane hurled at him was triple-barbed; she humiliated, stung, and wounded him with an art that was all her own, as half a score of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.

… of exchange, which had been stirred up again for some days past in the form of orders to pay, brought by the officers of the court with accompaniments in the shape of bailiffs, men in possession, magistrates, commissaries, policemen, and other representatives of social order.

Like most guilty creatures, Victurnien had forgotten everything but his crime.

“It is all over with me,” he cried.

“The young man is paying a high rate of interest on his loans. We will lock him up down here. I will go yonder myself and bring those curs to terms.”

Chesnel, honest Chesnel, upright, worthy Chesnel, called his darling Comte Victurnien’s creditors “curs.”

Meanwhile his successor was making his way along the Rue du Bercail just as Mlle. Armande’s traveling carriage turned into it.