La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 6,  the shortest of all the chapters, Henri d’Estouteville becomes a regular visitor to Mme d’Aubemer’s salon.

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER 6

Regrets and Hopes

“When are we leaving, Lionel?” said Mme de Saveuse before finishing her letter to her mother.

“I can’t really say.  My affairs are well in hand…but they require my presence.”

He smiled indulgently to himself at the fatuity of his words.  Mme de Saveuse sighed and finished her letter without naming the date¹ that she wished for with all her might.

In the account she had given the Maréchale of the previous night’s ball, she had not omitted to speak of the goodness with which M d’Estouteville had come to her aid in the moment of her greatest isolation and shared out the expressions of her gratitude between him and Mme de Rieux.  Though less struck by Henri’s generosity in looking after such a lovely person, Mme d’Aubemer was grateful to him for his conduct towards her favourite at a moment when he had evidently been useful, and when he appeared at her evening party, she welcomed him benevolently and reproached him for having neglected her.  He hadn’t known, he said, that her door was open to the vulgar herd.  Mme d’Aubemer joked about that expression being applied to the marvellous Henri d’Estouteville; he defended himself wittily, and the conversation was gay and animated when Mme de Saveuse entered.  She thanked M d’Estouteville simply and openly for the assistance he had given her.  He seemed a little embarrassed by this frankness and withdrew almost immediately.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 5,  we meet the amoral Marquis d’Estouteville and his son Henri. 

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER FIVE

A Courtier

The Marquis d’Estouteville, a grand but fiscally embarrassed lord, and a very skillful courtier, concealed a profound immorality behind exquisite good breeding, and dissimulated his egoism behind the appearance of obligingness and flightiness.  He seemed to have ruined himself carelessly and to provide pleasure to others, but he kept a better reckoning than one would have imagined and made no sacrifices except for his vices.  He had sometimes been able to exploit those of princes and people in power in a way that was quite useful to himself, but with such a skillful, light hand and from such a lofty distance that one would have had to be privy to the details of his life to attribute to him the contempt that his conduct merited.  Otherwise, his manners were charming, and of the sort of breeziness, due to his indifference to everything, that made him eminently sociable.  He showed great regard for his wife, whose angelic virtues he vaunted to the world, but which he himself did not appreciate.

As long as she lived, she remained exclusively in charge of the education of their only son, and though Henri was only seventeen at the time of the Marquise d’Estouteville’s death, she had already succeeded in planting and germinating the seeds of all the best and most noble sentiments in his heart.  For his part, M d’Estouteville had never tried to counteract her in this pious duty.  He had grasped that he would encounter an invincible resistance and had no intention of hazarding his peace of mind.  She was useful to him and it cost him very little to keep her.  Never a word nor even a smile from his father could ever have led Henri to suppose that his father did not share the maxims of high morality professed by his mother, and if his love for her was more tender, more exclusive, his regard for the Marquis was equally great.  Mme d’Estouteville refrained from disturbing this regard, and limited herself to fighting those influences that could have operated to seduce him at the time of his entry into society.  Fate, however, decided otherwise, and a violent fever carried the Marquise off so rapidly that Henri, then with his regiment, was not able to arrive in time to receive her last words.  Perhaps at this supreme moment she would have warned him against the fallacious doctrines of the Marquis.  They were only too well known to her, for, before posing as an admirer of her virtues, he had tried to make her an accomplice to his intrigues.  However, death did not accord her an instant, and his cruel work was completed several hours before the devastated Henri arrived.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 4, the Maréchale d’Aubemer’s niece attends her first ball in Paris. 

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER FOUR

A Ball

The end of Carnival brought the day destined for the English ambassadress’s ball.  It was to be the last as well as the most splendid one of the season, and the ladies set to work so as to be able to shine at it.

First thing in the morning, a young woman from Mademoiselle Augustine, the renowned couturiere, had brought an exquisite ball gown to Mme de Saveuse’s, wishing to be informed at what hour she should come back to dress her.  Mademoiselle herself would personally put the finishing touches on Madame la Comtesse’s ensemble.  The latter would gladly have declined these services had she not recognized in them her aunt’s solicitude.  She thus accepted, indicating an hour that very much surprised Mlle Augustine’s young woman, who was accustomed to seeing ladies wearing such elegant gowns not arrive at a ball until such time as their entrance would create the greatest sensation.  Mme de Saveuse, however, intended to go and wait at the Hôtel d’Aubemer until Mme de Montford came to take her to the English ambassador’s residence, not thinking of the danger of mussing her dress.  The Duchesse had fixed a time that was rather earlier than the Maréchale would have liked, for despite having a great store of good sense, she was too much a woman of the world not to wish for what she called “a brilliant debut” for her niece.  She knew that to obtain one it was necessary to display some slight nuance of originality, and, to this end, she desired that with Mlle Augustine’s dress, executed in the purest taste of the fashion of the day and adjusted by that inimitable person herself so as to defy any feminine criticism, the Comtesse Lionel should keep her customary hair style in order to be more beautiful and also to attract attention.   This hair style, consisting of loose plaits and large ringlets, which could not be imitated without such magnificent hair as her niece’s, would have to be nearly unique to Mme de Saveuse and would assure a lasting impact.  The difficulty, which the Maréchale felt keenly, was in getting her niece to enlist in the plan, and she manoeuvred with requisite skill.  She had managed to recount in front of her niece several instances of the tardiness of the hairdressers of Paris, and when the latter came in the morning to thank her for her charming gown, Mme d’Aubemer said to her with an air of indifference, “I thought, my child, that since she’s having the goodness to escort you, it wouldn’t be polite to keep Mme de Montford waiting because of some hairdresser’s lateness of the kind we’ve been talking about recently, and in the event that yours doesn’t turn up, there would be no inconvenience in putting up your hair the way you do it every day, only, in order to look sufficiently dressed up, you would replace your tortoise-shell comb with this one; that way, you would look very presentable.”  She handed Mme de Saveuse a superb diamond hair-comb and said no more about her hair-do.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 3, the Maréchale d’Aubemer sees an apparition from her sickbed…

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER: A NOVELLA OF THE 18TH CENTURY

CHAPTER THREE

An Apparition

Almost two weeks after the day of the ball, Madame d’Aubemer, who had been nearly at death’s door and in a state of constant delirium, opened her eyes after a heavy sleep procured by opium and gave a little sigh.  Mlle Julie, who had been watching over her day and night, leaned towards her.  The Maréchale recognized her, smiled wanly, and tried to turn her head.  She thought she saw an angelic figure standing behind her faithful maid and heard a silvery voice say, “Let’s take advantage of this moment.  It’s time for her medicine.”  She felt herself being gently lifted.  Mlle Julie fed her a spoonful of some bitter drug, and she was carefully settled back onto her freshly plumped pillows.  It was not long before she fell back into a fairly calm sleep.  Without realizing quite what had happened, she had a confused notion of having seen her guardian angel, who was calling her back to health.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 2, we go back in time to learn how the Maréchale d’Aubemer and her sister became estranged.  

La Maréchale d’Aubemer

Chapter 2

A Retrospective Chapter

It’s no doubt tedious to go backwards, but the writer and the reader must have the fortitude to bear a few retrospective pages in order to explain and understand Mme d’Aubemer’s past, which is already rather a long one for the heroine of a novel.  For we do not wish to take anyone by surprise, and we admit, at the risk of the reader throwing these pages aside with disdain, that the Maréchale is indeed the object of our attentions.

Her father, the Baron d’Élancourt, a widower retired from military service, lived on his lands far away from the capital.  He believed he had committed an act of high wisdom in appointing a man of business, whose integrity he never doubted, as guardian of his two daughters.  Charging Monsieur Duparc with the administration of their fortune and the settling of their futures, he stipulated that they should remain at their convent¹ until the day of their marriage.   The Mesdemoiselles² d’Élancourt had been orphaned for five years and the elder had reached the nineteenth year of her age when M Duparc presented a Monsieur Dermonville to her as a suitor.  The boredom of life in the convent brooked no hesitation, and she accepted her guardian’s offer with satisfaction.  A few weeks later she married M Dermonville, to the great dissatisfaction of her family, who had not been consulted.  The public in general decried this marriage.  It was thought that Mlle d’Élancourt, a young woman of quality, allied to the greatest houses of France, having thirty thousand livres in income, and being quite a remarkable beauty, should not have married a 45-year-old man whose only distinction was a large fortune.  One could have added good sense and a happy disposition, but these are the sort of advantages that count for little in the world, and the rumour spread that M Duparc had sold the charming young Émilie d’Élancourt to the highest bidder.  M Dermonville enveloped his wife in great luxury, setting up her household on a very elegant footing, and she became an arbiter of fashion, the kind of importance which is absorbing at the beginning of life and leaves no time for regrets to take shape. Émilie therefore seemed quite satisfied in the bonds of a union so disproportionate in age and birth.

La Maréchale d’Aubemer, Nouvelle du XVIIIème Siècle, or The Widow of Field Marshal d’Aubemer: A Novella of the 18th Century, posthumously published in 1867, is a novel by the author and memoirist Madame de Boigne, born Adélaïde d’Osmond (1781-1866).   Mine is the first English translation, available here for the first time anywhere.

In Chapter 1, the Maréchale d’Aubemer, a wealthy, worldly-wise widow of a certain age, weary of the social round, gives a ball and receives an unexpected letter.  

THE WIDOW OF FIELD MARSHAL D’AUBEMER

CHAPTER ONE 

The Pleasures of Being a Hostess

“My God, this noise is annoying!” said the Maréchale¹ d’Aubemer rising out of the armchair in which she’d been reading, rather inattentively, the latest speech given at the Academy. She placed it on a gold-ornamented Boulle etagere, the various shelves of which were already filled with a history book, a new novel, several pamphlets, needlework, and a voluminous knitted vest.

“Who is making all this racket?” she asked one of the servants who answered her bell. “I’ve been deafened for an hour already.”

“It’s the workmen taking up the carpet of the big salon, Madame la Maréchale, and taking down the doors that open into the gallery.”

“Will they be finished soon?”

“I don’t think so, Madame la Maréchale, they’ve only just started.”

The Maréchale sank back into her armchair with an air of melancholy resignation.