The Deserted Woman | Page 5

into his
dough.
The sum-total contained by all heads put together consists of a certain
quantity of antiquated notions; a few new inflections brewed in
company of an evening being added from time to time to the common
stock. Like sea-water in a little creek, the phrases which represent these
ideas surge up daily, punctually obeying the tidal laws of conversation
in their flow and ebb; you hear the hollow echo of yesterday, to-day,
to-morrow, a year hence, and for evermore. On all things here below
they pass immutable judgments, which go to make up a body of
tradition into which no power of mortal man can infuse one drop of wit
or sense. The lives of these persons revolve with the regularity of
clockwork in an orbit of use and wont which admits of no more
deviation or change than their opinions on matters religious, political,
moral, or literary.
If a stranger is admitted to the /cenacle/, every member of it in turn will
say (not without a trace of irony), "You will not find the brilliancy of

your Parisian society here," and proceed forthwith to criticise the life
led by his neighbors, as if he himself were an exception who had
striven, and vainly striven, to enlighten the rest. But any stranger so ill
advised as to concur in any of their freely expressed criticism of each
other, is pronounced at once to be an ill- natured person, a heathen, an
outlaw, a reprobate Parisian "as Parisians mostly are."
Before Gaston de Nueil made his appearance in this little world of
strictly observed etiquette, where every detail of life is an integrant part
of a whole, and everything is known; where the values of personalty
and real estate is quoted like stocks on the vast sheet of the
newspaper--before his arrival he had been weighed in the unerring
scales of Bayeusaine judgment.
His cousin, Mme. de Sainte-Severe, had already given out the amount
of his fortune, and the sum of his expectations, had produced the family
tree, and expatiated on the talents, breeding, and modesty of this
particular branch. So he received the precise amount of attentions to
which he was entitled; he was accepted as a worthy scion of a good
stock; and, for he was but twenty-three, was made welcome without
ceremony, though certain young ladies and mothers of daughters
looked not unkindly upon him.
He had an income of eighteen thousand livres from land in the valley of
the Auge; and sooner or later his father, as in duty bound, would leave
him the chateau of Manerville, with the lands thereunto belonging. As
for his education, political career, personal qualities, and
qualifications--no one so much as thought of raising the questions. His
land was undeniable, his rentals steady; excellent plantations had been
made; the tenants paid for repairs, rates, and taxes; the apple-trees were
thirty-eight years old; and, to crown all, his father was in treaty for two
hundred acres of woodland just outside the paternal park, which he
intended to enclose with walls. No hopes of a political career, no fame
on earth, can compare with such advantages as these.
Whether out of malice or design, Mme. de Sainte-Severe omitted to
mention that Gaston had an elder brother; nor did Gaston himself say a
word about him. But, at the same time, it is true that the brother was
consumptive, and to all appearance would shortly be laid in earth,
lamented and forgotten.
At first Gaston de Nueil amused himself at the expense of the circle. He

drew, as it were, for his mental album, a series of portraits of these folk,
with their angular, wrinkled faces, and hooked noses, their crotchets
and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits which possessed all the
racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their "Normanisms," in the
primitive quaintness of their ideas and characters. For a short time he
flung himself into their squirrel's life of busy gyrations in a cage. Then
he began to feel the want of variety, and grew tired of it. It was like the
life of the cloister, cut short before it had well begun. He drifted on till
he reached a crisis, which is neither spleen nor disgust, but combines
all the symptoms of both. When a human being is transplanted into an
uncongenial soil, to lead a starved, stunted existence, there is always a
little discomfort over the transition. Then, gradually, if nothing
removes him from his surroundings, he grows accustomed to them, and
adapts himself to the vacuity which grows upon him and renders him
powerless. Even now, Gaston's lungs were accustomed to the air; and
he was willing to discern a kind of vegetable happiness in days that
brought no mental exertion and no responsibilities. The constant
stirring of the sap