The Confessions

  The day came at last, more dreaded than desired. I promised all and did not break my word. My heart fulfilled my pledges without any desire for the reward. I gained it nevertheless, and found myself for the first time in the arms of a woman, and of a woman I adored. Was I happy? No; I tasted the pleasure, but I knew not what invincible sadness poisoned its charm. I felt as if 1 had committed incest and, two or three times, as I clasped her rapturously in my arms I wet her bosom with my tears. As for her, she was neither sad nor excited; she was tranquil and caressing. As she was not at all sensual and had not sought for gratification, she neither received sexual pleasure nor knew the remorse that follows.

  All her faults, I repeat, came from her lack of judgement, never from her passions. She was of gentle birth, her heart was pure, she loved decency, her inclinations were upright and virtuous, her taste was refined; she was born for an elegant way of life which she always loved but never followed, because instead of listening to her heart, which gave her good counsel, she listened to her reason which gave her bad. When false principles led her astray, her true feelings always gave them the lie. But unfortunately she prided herself on her philosophy, and the morality she invented for herself corrupted that which her heart dictated.

  M. de Tavel, her first lover, was her master in philosophy, and the principles which he taught her were those he required in order to seduce her. Finding her attached to her husband and her duties, and always cold, intellectual, and unassailable through her senses, he attacked her by means of sophistries and succeeded in proving to her that the duties to which she was so attached were so much nonsense, on a level with the catechism, fit only to amuse children. Sexual union, he argued, was an act most unimportant in itself; marital fidelity need merely be kept up in appearance, its moral importance being confined to its effect on public opinion; a wife’s sole duty was to preserve her husband’s peace of mind; consequently infidelities concealed did not exist for the offended partner, and were non-existent, therefore, to the conscience. He succeeded in persuading her that adultery in itself was nothing, and was only called into existence by scandal, and that every woman who appeared virtuous by that mere fact became so. Thus the wretch achieved his purpose by corrupting the mind of a child whose heart he could not corrupt. He was punished by the most devouring jealousy, for he believed that she was treating him as he had taught her to treat her husband. I do not know whether he was mistaken on this point. The minister Perret was supposed to have been his successor. All I know is that this young woman’s coldness, which should have protected her from that way of life, was just what prevented her afterwards from giving it up. She could not imagine that so much importance could be attached to something which had none for her; and never dignified with the name of virtue an abstinence which cost her so little.

  She would have been loath to take advantage of this false philosophy for her own ends; but she did so for others, and this by virtue of a rule almost equally false but more consonant with the kindness of her heart. She always believed that nothing attaches a man to a woman so much as possession; and though her feeling for her men friends was one of pure’ friendship, it was of such a tender friendship that she used every means in her power to attach them more closely to herself. The extraordinary thing is that she almost always succeeded. She was so genuinely lovable that the greater the intimacy in which one lived with her, the more fresh reasons one found for loving her. Another point worth noting is that after her first weakness she only bestowed her favours on the unfortunate. Persons of distinction all wasted their labours on her. But men for whom she began to feel sympathy would have to be very unlikeable if she did not end by loving them. When she chose men who were unworthy of her, it was certainly not out of low tastes, for such were foreign to her noble heart. It was simply because of her too generous nature, because of her too humane, sympathetic, and sensitive disposition, which she did not always control with sufficient discernment.

  If some false principles led her astray, how many admirable ones did she not possess from which she never departed? By how many virtues did she redeem her weaknesses, if one should give that name to errors in which her senses played so little part! That same man who deceived her in one respect gave her excellent instruction in a thousand others. And since her passions were never impetuous and always permitted her to follow her lights, she took the right path when her sophistries did not mislead her. Her motives were praiseworthy even in her errors; when mistaken, she could act badly but she could never desire what was wrong. She loathed duplicity and lying; she was just, equitable, humane, disinterested, true to her word, her friends, and what she recognized as her duties, incapable of hatred or vengeance, and not even imagining that there was the slightest merit in forgiveness. Finally, to return to her less excusable qualities, though she did not rate her favours at their true worth, she never made a common trade in them; she conferred them lavishly but she did not sell them, though continually reduced to expedients in order to live; and I would venture to say that if Socrates could esteem Aspasia, he would have respected Mme de Warens.

  By ascribing to her a sensitive character and a cold nature, I know in advance that I shall be accused, as usual, of being contradictory, and with no more reason than usual. It is possible that Nature was at fault, and that such a combination should not have existed; I only know that it did exist. Everyone who knew Mme de Warens – and very many of them are still alive – will be aware that such was her character. I will even venture to add that she knew only one true pleasure in the world, and that was to give pleasure to those she loved. Nevertheless anyone is at liberty to argue the matter as he will, and prove learnedly that I am wrong. My function is to tell the truth, not to make people believe it.

  I learned all that I have just said little by little during the conversation that followed our union, and which alone made it delightful. She had been right in hoping that her complaisance would be useful to me; in the matter of education, I derived great advantage from it. Up to that time she talked to me about myself alone, as if to a child. Now she began to treat me as a man and to speak of herself. Everything she told me so interested me and I was so touched by it that, when I retired within myself, I derived greater profit from these confidences than ever I had done from her instructions. When we really feel that a heart is speaking, ours opens to receive its confidences; and all the moralizing of a pedagogue will never be as good as the affectionate and tender chatter of an intelligent woman for whom we feel an affection.

  The intimacy in which I lived with her gave her the opportunity of forming a more favourable opinion of me than she had done before. She concluded that despite my awkward manner I deserved to be trained for the world, and that if I one day showed myself there on a certain footing, I should be in the position to make my way. With this in view, she devoted herself not only to forming my mind but also my outward appearance and my manners, so that I might be equally attractive and estimable; and if one can really combine worldly success with virtue – which, for my part, I do not believe – I am at least certain that there is no other way but-the one she had taken herself and wished to teach me. For Mme de Warens knew mankind and was highly skilled in the art of dealing with men, without lying and without indiscretion, without deception, and without offence. But this art was natural to her, she could not teach it; she was better able to put it into practice than to explain it, and of all men in the world I was the least capable of learning it. So all her efforts to this end were more or less wasted, as were all the pains she took to provide me with dancing – and fencing-masters. Although agile and well made, I could not learn to dance a minuet. I was so much in the habit of walking on my heels because of my corns that Roche could not break me of it; and never in spite of my nimble appearance should I have been able to jump an ordinary ditch. It was even worse at the fencing-school. After three months of lessons I was still confined to parrying and incapable of delivering an attack. I never had a supple enough wrist or a firm enough arm to keep my
foil if the master chose to knock it out of my hand. What is more, I had a mortal aversion for that exercise and for the master who endeavoured to teach it to me. I should never have believed that anyone could take such pride in the art of killing a man. In order to put his vast genius within my reach, he expressed himself only in comparisons drawn from music, of which he had no knowledge. He found striking analogies between a thrust in tierce and carte and the musical intervals of thirds and fourths. When he intended to make a feint, he told me to look out for a sharp because a sharp was formerly called a ‘feint’; when he had knocked my foil out of my hand he would say with a grin: ‘Now here’s a rest.’ Never in all my life, indeed, have I met a more unbearable pedant than this poor fellow with his foils and his leather pad.

  I made slight progress in these exercises, therefore, and soon abandoned them out of pure disgust. But I succeeded better in a more useful art, that of being content with my lot and of not desiring a more brilliant one, for which I was beginning to feel I was not born. Being entirely given over to the desire of making Mamma’s life happy, I was always most content when in her company; and when I had to leave her and hurry into the town, despite my passion for music I began to feel my lessons as a restraint.

  I do not know whether Claude Anet perceived the intimacy of our relations. I have reason to think that it was not concealed from him. He was a very clear-sighted fellow, but a very discreet one, who never said the opposite of his thoughts but did not always reveal them. Without giving me the least sign of being informed, he appeared by his conduct to be so; and that conduct was certainly not due to any baseness of soul, but to the fact that, having subscribed to his mistress’s principles, he could not disapprove of her acting in accordance with them. Although no older than she, he was so mature and grave that he almost looked on us as two children who deserved indulgence, and we both looked on him as a man worthy of respect, whose esteem we must cultivate. It was only after she had been unfaithful to him that I really knew what an affection she had for him. Since she knew that I did not think, feel, or breathe except through her, she showed me the extent of her love for him so that I might love him equally; and she laid less stress upon the friendship than on the respect that she felt for him, since that was the feeling that I could most fully share. How many times did she melt our hearts and cause us to embrace in tears, by telling us that we were both necessary for her life’s happiness! And let not any woman who reads this give a malicious smile! With a temperament such as hers, there was nothing dubious about this need; it was simply that of her heart.

  Thus between the three of us was established a bond perhaps unique on this earth. Our every wish and care and affection was held in common, none of them extending outside our own little circle. Our habit of living together, to the exclusion of the outer world, became so strong that if one of the three was missing from a meal or a fourth person joined us, everything was spoiled; and in spite of our private relationships even our tête-à-têtes were less delightful than our being all three together. All constraint between us was banished by our complete mutual confidence, all boredom by the fact that we were all extremely busy. Mamma, with her perpetual plans and activities, hardly ever left either of us men idle, and we each had sufficient affairs of our own to fill our time. Lack of occupation is, in my opinion, as much a scourge of society as solitude. Nothing so narrows the mind, nothing engenders more nonsense – tales and mischief, gossiping and lies – than for people to be eternally confined in one another’s company, in one room, reduced, for lack of anything to do, to the necessity of incessant chatter. When everyone is busy, no one speaks unless he has something to say. But when one is doing nothing it is imperative to talk all the time; and that is the most wearisome and the most dangerous of all forms of constraint. I will even go further and maintain that to make any society really pleasant, not only must everyone be doing something, but something that requires a certain amount of attention. Crochet is as bad as doing nothing; it takes as much to amuse a woman who is crocheting as one who is sitting with folded hands. But if she is embroidering, that is different; she is sufficiently occupied to fill the intervals of silence. What is both shocking and absurd is to see a dozen gawky fellows, at those moments, get up, sit down, walk backwards and forwards, turn on their heels, move the china figures up and down on the mantelpiece, and rack their brains to maintain an inexhaustible flow of words. What an occupation! When I was at Motiers I used to go to my women neighbours to make laces; and if ever I went back into society I should carry a cup-and-ball in my pocket, and play with it all day long to excuse myself from speaking when I had nothing to say. If everyone were to do the same men would become less malicious, and society would become safer and, I think, more agreeable. In fact, let wits laugh if they will, but I maintain that the only morality within the reach of the present century is the morality of the cup-and-ball.

  Nevertheless, we were seldom left with the task of avoiding tedium for ourselves. Tiresome people afforded us too much boredom by their visits to leave us any over for when we were alone. The impatience they had caused me in the old days had not diminished; all the difference was that now I had less time to indulge in my feelings. Poor Mamma had not lost her old addiction for enterprises and schemes. On the contrary, the more urgent her domestic embarrassments, the more she resorted to her visionary means of solving them; the smaller her present resources, the more she invented for the future. Advancing years only increased this folly of hers; and as she gradually lost her taste for the pleasures of the world and of youth, she replaced it by a mania for plans and secrets. The house was never free from quacks, manufacturers, alchemists, and promoters of all kinds, who dealt in fortunes by the million but ended in need of a crown piece. No one left her house empty-handed, and what most amazes me is that she was able to squander money for so long without ever exhausting her means or tiring out her creditors.

  The scheme upon which she was most occupied at the time I am speaking of, and which was not the most unreasonable she had devised, was to establish a royal botanical garden at Chambéry, with a paid curator; and it is easy to guess for whom this post was intended. The town’s situation, in the midst of the Alps, was most favourable for botanical purposes; and Mamma, who always backed up one scheme with another, had added that of a college of pharmacy, which really seemed likely to be most useful in that poor country where apothecaries are almost the only doctors. The retirement to Chambéry of Grossi, the physician-in-ordinary, after the death of King Victor, seemed to her to facilitate her plan. Perhaps, in fact, it was his arrival that suggested it. However that may be, she began to cajole Grossi, who was not very cajolable. He was indeed the most caustic and brutal fellow I have ever met, as will be clear from two or three tales which I will quote as specimens.

  One day he was in consultation with some other doctors, among them one who had been sent for from Annecy and who was the patient’s usual attendant. This young man, who was still rather tactless for a doctor, ventured to disagree with the physician-in-ordinary. Whereupon Grossi, by way of reply, asked him when he was going back, what towns he was passing through, and what coach he was taking. The young doctor answered his questions, and then inquired in his turn if he could be of any service to him. ‘None, none at all,’ replied Grossi, ‘except that I should like to sit at the window as you go by, so as to have the pleasure of seeing an ass riding on horseback.’ Grossi was as mean as he was rich and hard. One of his friends, one day, wanted to borrow some money from him on good security. ‘My friend,’ he answered, squeezing the fellow’s arm and gritting his teeth, ‘if Saint Peter came down from Heaven to borrow a hundred francs from me and offered me the Trinity as a surety I should not lend.’ One day he was invited to dinner by the Count Picon, Governor of Savoy and a very pious man. He arrived early and his Excellency, whom he found telling his beads, proposed that he should amuse himself in the same way. Not knowing quite how to reply, Grossi made the most dreadful face and fell on his knees; but after reciting
two Aves he could stand it no longer. He got up brusquely, took his stick and went out without a word. Whereupon Count Picon ran after him, crying: ‘Monsieur Grossi! Monsieur Grossi! Stay, if you please. There’s an excellent red partridge roasting for you on the spit.’ ‘My dear Count,’ replied Grossi turning back, ‘if you were to offer me a roast angel I should not stay.’ Such was Grossi, the physician-in-ordinary, whom Mamma took in hand and succeeded in taming. Although extremely busy, he got into the habit of paying her frequent visits, conceived a friendship for Anet, showed that he appreciated his knowledge and spoke of him with respect. Moreover, though one would not have expected it from such a bear, he treated him with deliberate consideration, in order to obliterate the impressions of the past. For although Anet was no longer in the position of a servant it was well known that he had been one, and it needed nothing less than the example and authority of the physician-in-ordinary to make people show him a consideration that they would have accorded to no one else. Claude Anet, with his black coat and his well-combed wig, with his grave and sober appearance, and his wise and circumspect manner, with his considerable knowledge of drugs and of botany and with the favour of the head of the faculty, might reasonably have hoped successfully to fill the post of Royal Curator of Plants, if the projected establishment had been set up; and, in fact, Grossi had approved the plan, taken it up and intended to present it to the Court as soon as peace should permit them to consider useful projects, and leave them command over enough money to see them through.