Madame de Valfonds’ Story Madame de Valfonds’ Story“ZOSINE D’ACIERS DE L’ORVILLE was the daughter of my father’s sister. Zosine, as you know, was the name of King Tigranes’ queen, whom Pompey made walk in his triumphal procession into Rome. My father’s sister had acted her part in a tragedy at Court, and had had such a success in it that she named her infant daughter after her role. My cousin and I were much like each other. We played with the same dolls, and we were brought up in the same convent. I had been married for two years, and Zosine was engaged to be married, at the time when the Revolution broke out in Paris, and drove many people into exile, and Zosine’s future husband was among them. He came to Joliet, where she was then staying, on his way to England, and our own priest married them in the drawing-room. Before they went away, my cousin promised me, with tears, that when the terrible times were over, she would come back to Joliet. Do you not think now, my Zosine, that it would be a reasonable and sweet thing if, here at Joliet, you should render my last years as happy as your grandmother rendered my childhood and youth?”
It was Madame de Valfonds who talked in this way to Zosine in the young girl’s room at Joliet. Zosine had slept for a few hours, but had again got up and had dressed. She now sat, very pale, by the window, and listened to the old lady in the armchair opposite to her.
“I cannot remain at Joliet,” she said after a long pause. “It must not be a girl from Joliet who is examined by the judge at Lunel, and at whom the people of Peyriac point their fingers. You must let me go away from here.”
“There is no finger in the province,” said Madame de Valfonds, “that will be pointed at a girl from Joliet.”
“No,” said Zosine, “none but her own.” Once more the two women were silent for a long time.
“Do you know,” said Madame de Valfonds with difficulty, “that my grandson has confided to me that if he does not get the girl he loves, you yourself, for his wife, he will never marry? Do you want a name, which for many centuries has been written in the history of France, to be wiped out of it?”
“I cannot see him again,” said Zosine. “At the time when we knew each other, I was innocent and happy. The horror, which kills me, had not then got into my life. It is better that he should remember me as I was then. You must give me your permission to go away from here.”
“My grandson,” said Madame de Valfonds in strong agitation of mind, “in his heart blames me, because you have kept away from him, and because you see each other no more. He has always loved me. He is the apple of my eye, an angel. Will you allow a child of Joliet to hate his grandmother? Oh, Zosine, I have suffered agony all this time for your sake. Now I implore a young girl from another country to remain long enough at Joliet for my grandchild to speak to her. Will you refuse my prayer?”
“I cannot remain at Joliet,” said Zosine. “I would see him and talk with him if it were possible. But it cannot be. I have not been at Joliet for even twenty-four hours. But I believe that in this short space I have understood things more clearly than ever before in my life. I feel that here live good people, who are kind and helpful to one another, that here nobody hates or lies, but that all work together to the same purpose, and that it is this that has made Joliet a righteous and happy place. The furniture, even, in the rooms, and the trees which I see from my window, have told me so. I will not bring the consciousness of evil and falsehood into this house. The looking-glasses of Joliet shall not reflect a face which has been as pale and dark with hatred as mine. I have lived too long at Sainte-Barbe. Madame! Grandmama! you must let me go away.”
The old lady sat for a long time without a word. Zosine looked at her, and with surprise noticed that a deep and delicate blush mounted into her face, sank back again, and left it as pale and clear as alabaster.
“Zosine,” Madame de Valfonds asked, “do you not think that a woman may sin in a more dreadful way than by hating?
“I will tell you a story,” she said after a while.
“Zosine,” she said again, “you know, I suppose, the tradition in our family, which does not allow any de Valfonds to leave his province. I myself have not left it for fifty years. My son never till he died set his feet outside Languedoc’s ground. My grandson, too, has kept the tradition faithfully. Now I will make you a promise, which never in my life I have dreamed of making anybody. If you marry my son, I will give up this tradition, and you and he may go together to see all the beauty of the world.
“But in order that you may realize what it costs me to make you such a promise, and in order to show you the trust I have in the granddaughter of my Zosine, aye, in order to make you belong to Joliet, I will now tell you how this tradition first came about. I myself, till now, have only told this tale to a single person, to Father Vadier, twelve years ago, on the day of my grandson’s first communion. When I speak to you here, it seems to me that I am going back to the days of my girlhood and talking to my young cousin Zosine.
“There was a lady of our name,” she began, “who was married to a gallant and generous husband, many years older than herself. They had a son. Her husband, the lord of Joliet, was a true nobleman, the squire of his land, and the father of his peasants. He knew every oak tree in his woods, every brook in his meadows, and every child in his villages, and he had the welfare of each of his tenants more at heart than his own. He was loyal to his King, he had never told a lie, and he did not believe that other people could lie to him.
“But his young wife was bored at Joliet. She dreamed of travels and of romance; to her the daily life here seemed too monotonous and simple. She was a brilliant and passionate young woman, in her idleness she began to read the new philosophers and to play with the mighty and dangerous ideas of the day. Soon she did not believe in the Divine Right of Kings, and hardly in the grace of God itself. She called King Louis weak, and his family depraved. When the Revolution raised its head in Paris, she read about it with enthusiasm, and became infatuated with its great men and its coryphaei. Her husband at first smiled at her folly, but little by little, as times grew darker, and she herself more obstinate, it alarmed him. He took care that, in case of his own death, the guardianship of his only son would be withdrawn from his wife and entrusted to his cousin, who was an ecclesiastic of high rank. The young mother loved her child; she was broken-hearted and indignant at her husband’s decision. Husband and wife became estranged and the child became an apple of discord between them.
“At that time a young man came to Joliet on his flight from Paris. He was a Prince of the Royal House, but his name I cannot tell you, for I have vowed that it should never pass my lips. For three weeks the lord of Joliet hid this young man in a pavilion in the garden, and waited upon him there himself, so as not to expose any of his servants to danger. His wife at first would not join him in the task, but later on she consented to do so out of curiosity, and because the time was so full of great events that she felt she must play her part in some of them. She carried the fugitive’s meals down to the pavilion and entertained him there.
“As now the young Prince had got nothing else to do, in the midst of his danger and misfortune he resolved to seduce his benefactor’s wife. She was not much more than a child, and without knowledge of the great world. When he told her of his everlasting and unconquerable love, she believed him. At last she granted him admittance to her bedroom on a night when her husband was away at one of his farms.
“On that same night Baptiste Labarre, of Sainte-Barbe, betrayed the fugitive to the commissary of the Convention, who stayed there, and the soldiers of the Revolution came to Joliet to look for him. Baron de Valfonds was arrested on the road, and brought back to his own house. The commissary had the doors of the pavilion broken open, and they found it empty, but they also discovered that somebody had been living there, and they now set about to search the chateau itself.
“In the end they came to the room of the mistress of the castle. But as she was known to be an adherent of the ideas of the Revolution, they did not break into it, as into the other rooms, but their officer knocked at her door. She opened it to him, in her nightdress, and her hair loose, and she saw that the soldiers in the corridor held her husband between them. They only put a few questions to her, and took but a swift survey of the room.
“Still, they decided that they had sufficient proof against her husband to judge him, and informed him that he must go back with them to Sainte-Barbe.
“The lord of Joliet then asked them to draw back a little, while he spoke a few words with his wife, and this demand was granted him. He said to her, ‘I have seen that the portrait of my mother in your bedroom is hanging askew on its hook. I understand that, at the risk of your own life, you have fetched our guest from the pavilion up to your bedroom, and have hidden him in the secret closet behind the picture. I beg you to forgive me that I have ever doubted your loyalty to me or to the good cause. We have now but little time left. In the drawer of my writing-table you will find the letter which deprives you of the guardianship of our child. Take it and tear it up before the eyes of these people.’ For his own hands, Zosine, were tied with a rope. ‘It will be the best thing,’ he further instructed her, ‘if early tomorrow you make our guest dress in your own clothes and drive away in your own calèche. Let down the hood, and let the carriage drive slowly through the avenue. For these people may come back here to look for him. Tell him that I am proud and happy to die for him.’ The soldiers laughed and the commissary of the Convention applauded when the young woman did as her husband bid her, and tore the paper up. ‘And now, my wife,’ said Baron de Valfonds, ‘I beg you to govern Joliet, and to bring up my son in the same spirit as that in which you have acted tonight. For it answers well to the name of Valfonds. Last of all I humbly beg you, as a token of your forgiveness, to bend to me, and give me a kiss of farewell. We two are not to meet again.’ Immediately after, the soldiers carried him away.
“The lady of Joliet, after her husband had left her, sat for a long time in front of the picture in her room. She thought, ‘I will not open the door, but leave the prisoner to die from starvation and thirst behind it.’ But in the course of the night she remembered her husband’s words, and took out the key of the secret closet.
“Seven times she put the key into the keyhole, and seven times she took it out and laid it back. She thought: ‘How am I to meet the light of day tomorrow, and of the mornings to follow? What face will the looking-glasses of Joliet show me?’ But when it began to grow light, she made up her mind to live as her husband had told her, for the sake of Joliet. ‘None of my descendants,’ she said to herself, ‘from this time shall leave our province, to be corrupted by the outside world. We will dig down our hearts in the soil of Joliet until death.’
“At sunrise I opened the door to the closet. Yes, Zosine, I myself was this woman, and the man, whom they brought away to Sainte-Barbe, his hands tied with a rope, was my husband. At sunrise I handed my guest the silk frock, the petticoats and the fichu, which I had taken out for him, and I said to him: ‘Here are clothes suitable for Your Royal Highness. For as you see, these are women’s clothes. For your sake a man has been shot tonight!’
“He was in danger; he was in a hurry. All the same, when he was dressed, he said to me: ‘I am not going to leave Joliet without a kiss.’ For till then I had never kissed him.
“ ‘I have,’ I said, ‘upon my lips the kiss of Baron de Valfonds, whose last words were, that he was proud and happy to die for you. It would ill befit your royal honor and dignity, should that kiss be wiped out by any other kiss in the world.’ ”