Scott on Zélide: Portrait of Zélide by Geoffrey Scott. Richard Holmes
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dévot. Ambition and vanity were clearly marked on his dark and rather effeminate features; a love of pleasure, also, and an extreme assurance in procuring it. His career was military, his talents were histrionic, his triumphs principally amorous. He was a friend of Voltaire’s, with whom he played Orosmane, and of ces dames, for whom he played Don Juan. The advent of this brilliant cavalier at the Hague aroused some misgiving and a lively curiosity. Belle marked him down at once; it happened, she reminds him, ‘four years ago, at the duke’s ball…Monsieur, vous ne dansez pas?’ She was not one to be shy of taking the initiative. ‘With our first words we quarrelled; with our second we were friends for life.’
Well, hardly for life; but for twelve years, at least, these two kept up a correspondence of the most singular intimacy. ‘You are the man in whom, of all the world, I have the completest and most instinctive confidence,’ she writes, ‘for you I have no prudence, no reserve, no prudery: nay, what is more remarkable, no vanity either. I am always ready to tell you of every folly which lowers me in my own esteem. If we lived together I would have no secrets from you.’ It is natural, therefore, that she should write again, ‘Monsieur, in God’s name burn my letters!’ But the letters were a great deal too good to burn. And, later, when, before her marriage, Belle made repeated and desperate appeals for the return of the dossier, Hermenches turned a deaf ear on her entreaties. Vanity or a fine taste in literature may have been the motive of his refusal; the result in any case is that a hundred and seventy-eight of these intimate documents repose at this date, duly catalogued, in the public library of Geneva. So fortunate are the consequences of the most inexcusable actions!
If Mademoiselle de Tuyll took the first step in this unconventional friendship, it was she, no less, who dictated the terms of it. ‘I hear it said on all sides, and even by your admirers, that you are the most dangerous of men and that no caution is too great in dealing with you…The friend I want to keep would not have your eagerness nor your ways of expression. I cannot take all you say as the mere language of politeness: I think, Monsieur, that you are or that you feign to be something more than a friend, and I would wish neither to permit a folly nor be the dupe of a deceit. How can you expect me to look upon you as a man whose advice I can trust?…You are for me one of those rare and precious possessions which one is mad enough to wish to obtain and to keep at any price, though one can put them to no use when acquired. I have too much sought your notice and then your esteem, since in the end we have gained so little that we can neither see each other nor write openly.’
The situation was characteristic. Belle had capitulated from the start, frankly and without a trace of conventional amour propre: ‘j’étais éprise de l’empire que vous exerciez sur moi.’ Hermenches, on the other hand, who might seem to have made in her one of the easiest of his conquests, found himself confronted with a will as strong as his own. This masterful woman was always seeking a master: she could never accept one. She could never surrender her reason, and her cold sense of fact perpetually nipped the bud of romance. No one, in that age of gallantry, ever had less use for the comedies of flirtation or wasted less time with the business of coqueterie. She states things exactly as they are: neither more nor less. ‘It would be easy for me to use all the commonplaces of modesty, to tell you that in seeing me more often you would cease to love me. That would not be true. On the contrary, I think that, whatever small degree of feeling you may have for me at present, you would love me much more in the future. Allow me, Hermenches, the pride of believing that no woman will ever take in your heart precisely the place that I might hold in it. But as for love – all, I mean, that is necessary to enable you to be with me without agitation – you will feel that perhaps, any day, for some more beautiful woman. You will see a thousand whose charms, coupled with a sufficiency of sense, will restore you to all the peace of mind you may desire in regard to me. Since we have known each other, I have never failed to keep your esteem and your predilection; but how many times has your heart been otherwise occupied?…It is absolutely necessary that we should write less often, that we should think of each other less. Ah! Dieu, si jamais, comptant sur vos doigts les femmes qui vous ont trop aimé, je me trouvais entre la Martin et quelque autre de son espèce!’
Hermenches had to content himself, therefore, with the rôle of confidant. He writes to her on the tone of worldly wisdom; his letters are a blend of philosophy and gallantry; but, play-actor though he essentially is, his feeling takes by reflection the sincerity of hers. There is a true affection between the pair, and beneath this affection the instinctive war of two consummate egoists. It was, upon the whole, a drawn battle. Belle may seem to impose herself at every point: she chooses her antagonist; she defines the rules of the action; she makes herself the principal figure in the piece. The subject of every letter is herself: it is of her character, her doings, her needs, her aspirations that she writes. But, after all, it is to Hermenches she confides them: his male assurance is satisfied with that; and she, in turn, is dominated by his assurance. ‘I was in love with the empire you assumed.’
They cannot marry: they cannot even meet. Yet he is the audience before whom she enacts her life, and she holds him by his vulnerable point of vanity. That this girl, who might soon be acknowledged in Europe as one of the brilliant women of her time – she who wrote ‘better than Voltaire’ – should declare herself his pupil in the art of living, meant more to this dilettante than all his conquests. Untamed, Belle flattered his pride more subtly than if she had lowered her worth by a complete surrender. But what could be the future of such a friendship?
It was as a solution to this problem that Hermenches proposed to marry Mademoiselle de Tuyll to his best friend, the Marquis de Bellegarde. Hermenches was a constant visitor on his friend’s estates; the separation would thus be less complete. If Hermenches had any arrière pensée in making this proposal, Belle is too generous to suspect it. ‘What you are doing seems to me a fine, a noble, and a difficult thing. A person who knew nothing of love might say – “She cannot be yours; it is therefore no sacrifice to give her to your friend.” I judge you very differently: I am too much aware that to add, by your own act, new separations to old, to place a lasting and invincible obstacle in the way of your desires, demands a courageous and sublime generosity. It is a very different thing to marry the woman you love to your closest friend, than to acquiesce in her union with another man.’
That ‘favourite virtue of frankness’ in Mademoiselle de Tuyll will be much in evidence in her dealings with the Marquis; but once more she finds herself in a crooked situation. Bellegarde was a Catholic, the Tuylls were Protestant: pride and conviction were both involved in the question of faith, and the obstacle of religion was likely to prove an insuperable one in the eyes of Belle’s parents. It was necessary, therefore, to go gently. Monsieur de Bellegarde was neither very ardent nor very adroit; he went too gently; he could hardly be said to go at all. Every stage of his suit had to be planned and carried through by the two conspirators. Belle confesses a scruple – ‘not for the project itself, which still seems a good one, but for the means to be employed. Sometimes I hate this roundabout path, this sense of plot. I feel that I am guilty towards my father, that I am deceiving him, that you yourself will think I am acting against my honesty and my frankness – the virtue I hold to most and would make the ransom of all my faults. You, Hermenches, must be my casuist; you who know women so well, and how they are judged, must prevent my doing anything unworthy. I would not be despised by the man whose wife I desire to become; above all I would not have him think me false, for that I am not.’
The casuist was well chosen, and Mademoiselle de Tuyll, with her qualms sufficiently at rest, set to work with her accustomed energy. The suitable moment at last arrived for approaching the parents, and the inert Marquis entrusted Hermenches with the task of pleading his suit. But characteristically, it was Belle herself who composed the letter of proposal. She informed Hermenches that her father should be addressed in the following terms: ‘You are, Sir, no less aware than I that the talents which heaven has showered upon your daughter – talents which a distinguished education has refined and united with every virtue
– are precious gifts, more desirable in themselves than any alliance however advantageous, yet capable also of proving an obstacle to such a union. There are few men in whom those talents do not inspire fear; fewer still who may hope to find favour with their possessor, who knows and can appreciate their worth. My friend has intelligence enough to desire that his wife may have