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The Love of Long Ago
Guy de Maupassant
The old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded knoll in the midst of tall trees
with dark-green foliage; the park extended to a great distance, in one direction
to the edge of the forest, in another to the distant country. A few yards from the
front of the house was a huge stone basin with marble ladies taking a bath;
other, basins were seen at intervals down to the foot of the slope, and a stream
of water fell in cascades from one basin to another.
From the manor house, which preserved the grace of a superannuated coquette, down to the
grottos incrusted with shell-work, where slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in
this antique demesne had retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to
speak still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of former gallantries, and of the
elegant trivialities so dear to our grandmothers.
In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with shepherds paying court
to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in hoop-skirts, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old
woman, who seemed dead as soon as she ceased to move, was almost lying down in a large
easy-chair, at each side of which hung a thin, mummy-like hand.
Her dim eyes were gazing dreamily toward the distant horizon as if they sought to follow
through the park the visions of her youth. Through the open window every now and then
came a breath of air laden with the odor of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her
white locks flutter around her wrinkled forehead and old memories float through her brain.
Beside her, on a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair hanging in braids down
her back, was embroidering an altar-cloth. There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and
it was easy to see that she was dreaming, while her agile fingers flew over her work.
But the old lady turned round her head, and said:
"Berthe, read me something out of the newspapers, that I may still know sometimes what is
going on in the world."
The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.
"There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; shall I pass that over?"
"Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead in France, that they no
longer talk about abductions or adventures as they did formerly?"
The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.
"Here is one," she said. "It is entitled 'A Love Drama!'"
The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. "Read that for me," she said.
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And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol throwing. A wife, in order to avenge herself
on her husband's mistress, had burned her face and eyes. She had left the Court of Assizes
acquitted, declared to be innocent, amid the applause of the crowd.
The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:
"This is horrible--why, it is perfectly horrible!
See whether you can find anything else to read to me, darling."
Berthe again made a search; and farther down among the reports of criminal cases, she read:
"'Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led astray by a young
man. Then, to avenge herself on her lover, whose heart proved fickle, she shot him with a
revolver. The unhappy man is maimed for life. The jury, all men of moral character,
condoning the illicit love of the murderess, honorably acquitted her.'"
This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a trembling voice, she said:
"Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given you love, the
only enchantment in life. Man has added to this gallantry the only distraction of our dull
hours, and here you are mixing up with it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud
into a flagon of Spanish wine."
Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.
"But, grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married, and her
husband deceived her."
The grandmother gave a start.
"What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of today?"
Berthe replied:
"But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."
The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of gallantry, gave a sudden
leap.
"It is love that is sacred," she said. "Listen, child, to an old woman who has seen three
generations, and who has had a long, long experience of men and women. Marriage and
love have nothing in common. We marry to found a family, and we form families in order
to constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society is a chain, each
family is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always seek metals of the
same order. When we marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine
fortunes, unite similar races and aim at the common interest, which is riches and children.
We marry only once my child, because the world requires us to do so, but we may love
twenty times in one lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is law,
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and love is an instinct which impels us, sometimes along a straight, and sometimes along a
devious path. The world has made laws to combat our instincts--it was necessary to make
them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too much,
because they come from God; while the laws only come from men. If we did not perfume
life with love, as much love as possible, darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children,
nobody would care to take it just as it is."
Berthe opened her eyes wide in astonishment. She murmured:
"Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once."
The grandmother raised her trembling hands toward Heaven, as if again to invoke the
defunct god of gallantries. She exclaimed indignantly:
"You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the Revolution, it is
impossible any longer to recognize society. You have attached big words to every action,
and wearisome duties to every corner of existence; you believe in equality and eternal
passion. People have written poetry telling you that people have died of love. In my time
poetry was written to teach men to love every woman. And we! when we liked a gentleman,
my child, we sent him a page. And when a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not
slow in getting rid of the last Lover--unless we kept both of them."
The old woman smiled a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery twinkled in her gray eye, the
intellectual, skeptical roguery of those people who did not believe that they were made of
the same clay as the rest, and who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not
intended.
The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:
"So, then, women have no honor?"
The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of Voltaire's irony, she
had also a little of Jean Jacques's glowing philosophy: "No honor! because we loved, and
dared to say so, and even boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest
ladies in France, had lived without a lover, she would have had the entire court laughing at
her. Those who wished to live differently had only to enter a convent. And you imagine,
perhaps, that your husbands will love but you alone, all their lives. As if, indeed, this could
be the case. I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that society should exist,
but it is not in the nature of our race, do you understand? There is only one good thing in
life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as
something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress."
The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own.
"Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!"
And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to bestow on her a great
passion, one sole, eternal passion in accordance with the dream of modern poets, while the
grandmother, kissing her on the forehead, quite imbued still with that charming, healthy
reason with which gallant philosophers tinctured the thought of the eighteenth century,
murmured:
"Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly as that, you will be very unhappy."
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