A Mesalliance Page #2

"A Mesalliance" is a short story by Guy de Maupassant that explores themes of class disparity and social conventions through the lens of a romantic entanglement. The narrative follows the encounter between a wealthy young woman and a lower-class man, highlighting the tensions and misunderstandings that arise from their disparate backgrounds. As their relationship unfolds, Maupassant delves into the complexities of love, attraction, and societal expectations, ultimately revealing the constraints that social class imposes on personal desires. The story is marked by Maupassant's characteristic irony and keen psychological insight, making it a poignant commentary on the nature of relationships in a stratified society.

• Short story

								

which she told him that she gave him back his promise, as she had not
found her ideal in him. Fanny then signed a deed, by which she formerly
renounced all claims to her father's property, in favor of her sister,
and left her home and her father's house with the Count under cover of
the night, in order to accompany him to Poland, where the marriage was
to take place in his castle.

Of course malicious tongues declared that the hussar had abducted Fanny,
but her parents smiled at such reports, for they knew better, and the
moment when their daughter would return as Countess W---- would amply
recompense them for everything.

Meanwhile, the Polish Count and the romantic German girl were being
carried by the train through the dreary plains of Masovia.[7] They
stopped in a large town to make some purchases, and the Count, who was
very wealthy and liberal, provided his future wife with everything that
befits a Countess, and which a girl could fancy, and then they continued
their journey. The country grew more picturesque, but more melancholy,
as they went further East; the somber Carpathians rose from the
snow-covered plains and villages, surrounded by white glistening walls,
and stunted willows stood by the side of the roads, ravens sailed
through the white sky, and here and there a small peasant's sledge shot
by, drawn by two thin horses.

[Footnote 7: A division of Poland, of which Warsaw is the
Capital.--TRANSLATOR.]

At last they reached the station, where the Count's steward was waiting
for them with a carriage and four, which brought them to their
destination almost as swiftly as the iron steed.

The numerous servants were drawn up in the yard of the ancient castle to
receive their master and mistress, and they gave loud cheers for her,
for which she thanked them smilingly. When she went into the dim, arched
passages, and the large rooms, for a moment she felt a strange feeling
of fear, but she quickly checked it, for was not her most ardent wish to
be fulfilled in a couple of hours?

She put on her bridal attire, in which a half comical, half
sinister-looking old woman with a toothless mouth and a nose like an
owl's, assisted her, and just as she was fixing the myrtle wreath onto
her dark curls, the bell began to ring, which summoned her to her
wedding. The Count himself, in full uniform, led her to the chapel of
the castle, where the priest, with the steward and the castellan as
witnesses, and the footmen in grand liveries, were awaiting the handsome
young couple.

After the wedding, the marriage certificate was signed in the vestry,
and a groom was sent to the station, where he dispatched a telegram to
her parents, to the effect that the hussar had kept his word, and that
Fanny Löwenfuss had become Countess Faniska W----.

Then the newly-married couple sat down to a beautiful little dinner in
company of the chaplain, the steward and the castellan; the champagne
made them all very cheerful, and at last the Count knelt down before his
young and beautiful wife, boldly took her white satin slipper off her
foot, filled it with wine, and emptied it to her health.

At length night came, a thorough, Polish wedding night, and Faniska had
just finished dressing and was looking at herself with proud
satisfaction in the great mirror that was fastened into the wall, from
top to bottom. A white satin train flowed down behind her like rays from
the moon, a half-open jacket of bright green velvet, trimmed with
valuable ermine, covered her voluptuous, virgin bust and her classic
arms, only to show them all the more seductively at the slightest
motion, while the wealth of her dark hair, in which diamonds hung here
and there like glittering dew-drops, fell down her neck and mingled with
the white fur. The Count came in a red velvet dressing gown trimmed with
sable; at a sign from him, the old woman who was waiting on his wife's
divinity left the room, and the next moment he was lying like a slave at
the feet of his lovely young wife, who raised him up, and was pressing
him to her heaving bosom, when a noise which she had never heard before,
a wild howling, startled the loving woman in the midst of her highest
bliss.

"What was that?" she asked, trembling.

The Count went to the window without speaking, and she followed him,
with her arms round him, and looked half timidly, half curiously out
into the darkness, where large bright spots were moving about in pairs,
in the park at her feet.

"Are they will-o'-the-wisps?" she whispered.

"No, my child, they are wolves," the Count replied, fetching his
double-barreled gun, which he loaded, and went out on the snow-covered
balcony, while she drew the fur more closely over her bosom, and
followed him.

"Will you shoot?" the Count asked her in a whisper, and when she nodded,
he said: "Aim straight at the first pair of bright spots that you see;
they are the eyes of those amiable brutes."

Then he handed her the gun and pointed it for her.

"That is the way--are you pointing straight?"

"Yes."

"Then fire."

A flash, a report, which the echo from the hills repeats four times, and
two of the unpleasant-looking lights had vanished.

Then the Count fired, and by that time their people were all awake; they
drove away the wolves with torches and shouts, and laid the two large
animals, the spoils of a Polish wedding night, at the feet of their
young mistress.

And the days that followed resembled that night. The Count showed
himself the most attentive husband, as his wife's knight and slave, and
she felt quite at home in that dull castle; she rode, drove, smoked,
read French novels and beat her servants as well as any Polish Countess
could have done. In the course of a few years, she presented the Count
with two children, and although he appeared very happy at that, yet,
like most husbands, he grew continually cooler, more indolent, and
neglectful of her. From time to time he left the castle, to see after
his affairs in the capital, and the intervals between those journeys
became continually shorter. Faniska felt that her husband was tired of
her, and much as it grieved her, she did not let him notice it; she was
always the same.

But at last the Count remained away altogether; at first he used to
write, but at last the poor, weeping woman did not even receive letters
to comfort her in her unhappy solitude, and his lawyer sent the money
that she and her children required.

She conjectured, hoped and doubted, suffered and wept for more than a
year; then she suddenly went to the capital and appeared unexpectedly in
his apartments. Painful explanations followed, until at last the Count
told her that he no longer loved her, and could not live with her for
the future, and when she wished to make him do so by legal means, and
entrusted her case to a celebrated lawyer, the Count denied that she
was his wife. She produced her marriage certificate, when the most
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes