What sort of a husband
has she chosen? Is she happy? Has she a baby? Oh, shameful thought!"
Do you remember, dear reader, how Balzac, when he had come to the last
page of "Massimilla Doni," declares that he dare not tell you the end
of this adventure. One word, he says, will suffice for the worshippers
of the ideal: "Massimilla Doni was expecting." Then in a passage that
is pleasanter to think about than to read--for Balzac when he spoke
about art was something of a sciolist, and I am not sure that the
passage is altogether grammatical--he tells how the ideas of all the
great artists, painters, and sculptors--the ideas they have wrought on
panels and in stone--escaped from their niches and their frames--all
these disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed and wept. It
would be as disgraceful for Doris to be "expecting" as it was for
Massimilla Doni, and I like to think of all the peris, the nymphs, the
sylphs, the fairies of ancient legend, all her kinsfolk gathering
about her bed, deploring her condition, regarding her as lost to
them--were such a thing to happen I should certainly kneel there in
spirit with them. And feeling just as Balzac did about Massimilla
Doni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be "expecting" or even
married, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had suddenly
resolved to break silence; I sent her a little note, only a few words,
that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time; but
though we had been estranged she had not been forgotten; a little
commonplace note, relieved perhaps by a touch of wistfulness, of
regret.
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