Prefectures,those miniature empires,could only be filled by men of great names,or chamberlains of H.M.the emperor and king.Already the prefects were a species of vizier.The myrmidons of the great man scoffed at Diard's pretensions to a prefecture,whereupon he lowered his demand to a sub-prefecture.There was,of course,a ridiculous discrepancy between this latter demand and the magnitude of his fortune.To frequent the imperial salons and live with insolent luxury,and then to abandon that millionaire life and bury himself as sub-prefect at Issoudun or Savenay was certainly holding himself below his position.Juana,too late aware of our laws and habits and administrative customs,did not enlighten her husband soon enough.
Diard,desperate,petitioned successively all the ministerial powers;repulsed everywhere,he found nothing open to him;and society then judged him as the government judged him and as he judged himself.
Diard,grievously wounded on the battlefield,was nevertheless not decorated;the quartermaster,rich as he was,was allowed no place in public life,and society logically refused him that to which he pretended in its midst.
Finally,to cap all,the luckless man felt in his own home the superiority of his wife.Though she used great tact--we might say velvet softness if the term were admissible--to disguise from her husband this supremacy,which surprised and humiliated herself,Diard ended by being affected by it.
At a game of life like this men are either unmanned,or they grow the stronger,or they give themselves to evil.The courage or the ardor of this man lessened under the reiterated blows which his own faults dealt to his self-appreciation,and fault after fault he committed.In the first place he had to struggle against his own habits and character.A passionate Provencal,frank in his vices as in his virtues,this man whose fibres vibrated like the strings of a harp,was all heart to his former friends.He succored the shabby and spattered man as readily as the needy of rank;in short,he accepted everybody,and gave his hand in his gilded salons to many a poor devil.Observing this on one occasion,a general of the empire,a variety of the human species of which no type will presently remain,refused his hand to Diard,and called him,insolently,"my good fellow"when he met him.The few persons of really good society whom Diard knew,treated him with that elegant,polished contempt against which a new-made man has seldom any weapons.The manners,the semi-Italian gesticulations,the speech of Diard,his style of dress,--all contributed to repulse the respect which careful observation of matters of good taste and dignity might otherwise obtain for vulgar persons;the yoke of such conventionalities can only be cast off by great and unthinkable powers.So goes the world.
These details but faintly picture the many tortures to which Juana was subjected;they came upon her one by one;each social nature pricked her with its own particular pin;and to a soul which preferred the thrust of a dagger,there could be no worse suffering than this struggle in which Diard received insults he did not feel and Juana felt those she did not receive.A moment came,an awful moment,when she gained a clear and lucid perception of society,and felt in one instant all the sorrows which were gathering themselves together to fall upon her head.She judged her husband incapable of rising to the honored ranks of the social order,and she felt that he would one day descend to where his instincts led him.Henceforth Juana felt pity for him.
The future was very gloomy for this young woman.She lived in constant apprehension of some disaster.This presentiment was in her soul as a contagion is in the air,but she had strength of mind and will to disguise her anguish beneath a smile.Juana had ceased to think of herself.She used her influence to make Diard resign his various pretensions and to show him,as a haven,the peaceful and consoling life of home.Evils came from society--why not banish it?In his home Diard found peace and respect;he reigned there.She felt herself strong to accept the trying task of making him happy,--he,a man dissatisfied with himself.Her energy increased with the difficulties of life;she had all the secret heroism necessary to her position;religion inspired her with those desires which support the angel appointed to protect a Christian soul--occult poesy,allegorical image of our two natures!
Diard abandoned his projects,closed his house to the world,and lived in his home.But here he found another reef.The poor soldier had one of those eccentric souls which need perpetual motion.Diard was one of the men who are instinctively compelled to start again the moment they arrive,and whose vital object seems to be to come and go incessantly,like the wheels mentioned in Holy Writ.Perhaps he felt the need of flying from himself.Without wearying of Juana,without blaming Juana,his passion for her,rendered tranquil by time,allowed his natural character to assert itself.Henceforth his days of gloom were more frequent,and he often gave way to southern excitement.The more virtuous a woman is and the more irreproachable,the more a man likes to find fault with her,if only to assert by that act his legal superiority.But if by chance she seems really imposing to him,he feels the need of foisting faults upon her.After that,between man and wife,trifles increase and grow till they swell to Alps.
