The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [29]
And the servants who behaved as though they had sworn undying love, loyalty and obedience to their masters? And the modistes who always greeted her with smiles and could remember the smallest details of her toilettes, who knew all about her triumphs in society? And the noble horses, whose flight a swallow might envy, and the clever dogs, just as attached as people, and the gardens where human hands had raised hills, poured streams, fashioned trees? … Was all this to vanish?
These thoughts gave Izabela’s face another expression — one of tranquil sorrow, which made her still more lovely. People said she had quite grown up now.
Understanding quite well that the great world is a superior world, Izabela slowly learned that people could only attain these heights and remain there with the help of two wings — those of birth and wealth. And birth and wealth were associated with certain chosen families, like the flower and fruit of the orange tree. It was also very likely that the good God, seeing two souls with celebrated names linked in the bonds of holy matrimony, would increase their income and also send them a little angel to look after, who would in due course carry on the eminence of the family by his virtues, good manners and beauty. Hence the duty of making sensible marriages, of which old ladies and gentlemen were the best informed. A proper choice of name and fortune meant everything. For love — not the wild love poets dream of, but genuine Christian love — appears only after the Sacrament, and it is quite enough if the wife knows how to behave prettily at home, and if the husband accompanies her ceremonially into society.
Thus it had been in the past and it had been good, according to all the matrons. But today this principle had been forgotten, and things were bad: misalliances were increasing, and the great families were in decline.
‘And there is no happiness in marriage,’ Izabela added quietly, for young ladies had imparted not a few of their domestic secrets to her.
As a result of these tales, she had acquired a great horror of marriage, and a slight contempt for men.
For a husband in his dressing-gown, yawning in his wife’s presence, kissing her with a mouth still tainted with cigar smoke, often exclaiming ‘Oh, let me be …’ or even ‘You’re a fool!’, who makes a scene at home over a new hat but will spend his money away from home on carriages for an actress — this is not at all an attractive creature. What was worse, every one of these men before his marriage had been a warm admirer of his lady, had wasted away if unable to see her, had blushed when they met and more than one had even threatened to shoot himself for love of her.
So, at the age of eighteen, Izabela knew how to tyrannise men with her coldness. When Victor Emmanuel kissed her hand one day, she told her father she wished to leave Rome at once. In Paris, a wealthy French duke had proposed marriage; she replied that she was Polish, and would not marry a foreigner. She rejected a Podolian magnate with the remark that she would only yield her hand to a man she loved, and that he had not yet appeared, while she rejected the proposals of an American millionaire with a burst of laughter.
Within a few years, this behaviour had created a desert around Izabela. She was admired and adored, but from a distance; no one wanted to risk a mocking refusal.
When her first distaste had passed, Izabela realized that marriage must be accepted as it is. She was already determined to marry, but on condition that she liked her future husband, that he had a good name and appropriate fortune. And she often met handsome men, wealthy and titled;