Part One: The Age of Revolution
Part One: The Age of Revolution
In the Copenhagen merchant Waller’s home the arrival in the city of the French legation, and the reception into his family of these envoys along with other Frenchmen, was epoch-making. Waller1 is a republican; his brother, Counsellor of Justice W., ‘whom the hard times have made prematurely hard to please’,2 is a royalist; his son Ferdinand W. is a republican; and for Supreme Court lawyer Dalund, a daily guest in the house, it is impossible to keep his neutral position as observer of these world-historical events, because each of the heatedly contending parties grasps his separate utterances with fervour and wrongly represents him as an advocate of his own party line. But while attention is directed in this way towards the great events and the Waller house is frequent witness to political disputes, concealed beneath all this is a secret understanding between Madame W.3 and the lawyer Dalund. What the arbour and pastoral tranquillity do for the birth of innocent, or at least of forgivably errant, love, the distraction of great events does for the persistence of the forbidden love.
Finally, also visiting the Waller home is a young girl, Claudine, daughter of the merchant’s sister. And among the Frenchmen there is one, Charles Lusard, in whom the young girl, brought up in virtual oppression by her aunt Malfred, soon finds an object for her now unfettered adoration. A banquet at the merchant’s provides the high point of the political celebrations in the Waller home, and the beginning of an intimate understanding between Claudine and Lusard.
Although Part One of the novel is entitled ‘The Age of Revolution’, attention is now decisively focused on Claudine, so that the main motif seems forgotten unless it is remembered that C. precisely falls victim to the Idea of her age (p. 79), but is also restored in that Claudine is the one who better than any remained true to that Idea (p. 159). Thus the intriguing and yet so modestly chosen subject comes to light, ‘the revolutionary age’s life reflected in domestic life’ – yes, the age of revolution reflected in a poor, abandoned woman’s hidden seclusion deep in the country.
Lusard gets into a duel; wounded, he is brought in a fishing boat to the Waller country house where, in the most agonizing suspense, Claudine has suffered and continues to suffer all the terrors of a secret love affair, but is also maturing in the special inwardness of enamourment. L. stays on at the Waller country house, where he recovers; but, also, there in the rural quiet the understanding between him and Claudine reaches its climax, favoured by the situation and guided, as it were, by Ferdinand W.’s report of an illicit relationship between Madame W. and Dalund, as well as by his amplifications on the age’s frivolous views about marriage.
Lusard goes off to the army leaving Claudine behind in the situation prophetically foretold by Ferdinand: ‘that the memory of this should be enough to fill the life of a woman who knew how to love and appreciate what is glorious’ (p.20), a prophecy which in general may be untrue of any or, if true, only of the uncommon girl.
Already isolated in her sole possession of the knowledge of her relation to Lusard, Claudine becomes increasingly alone. Ferdinand W. writes a small collection of poems (Primula veris) containing revolutionary ideas, to his father’s distress and concern, whereupon Ferdinand goes abroad. Waller goes to Amsterdam on business, accompanied by his wife. The venture succeeds but a mishap delays the merchant’s return. Claudine’s position becomes more and more desperate. She has no one in whom to confide in her misery, and finally decides to write to Madame Waller and reveal everything to her. The letter is sent off but arrives too late, for news is now received that Madame W. is dead. Dalund decides in his grief to go abroad; he informs Claudine of this in a note and hints despairingly at suicide. Driven to extremity, Claudine resolves in despair to end her own life. She is saved by the old housekeeper Susanne, and with the latter’s help finds sanctuary with the old widow of a sea-captain. With no other resort in the world, Claudine now belongs wholly to her infant baby, with such a quiet dedication and sacredly genuine motherliness that ‘the mother in her faithfulness had to succeed in atoning for the irresponsible mistake of the maiden’ (p. 99), the warmth of her devotion having a kind of retroactive power to re-illuminate her lapse in a conjugal light.
Sure enough, Waller has received Claudine’s letter to his deceased wife, opened it and learned everything. He demands that Claudine leave his house. An offer of marriage from Germany is negotiated by the aunt and refused. Under the pretence of travelling to Germany, Claudine leaves the city, alone with the infant, and moves to the country, to her new hiding place where under the name of Madame Johansen she lives unrecognized, forgetting the world and forgotten. She hears nothing from Lusard – due as much to the cover-up itself as to accidental circumstances, although some information about Lusard does reach Waller.
Held in thrall in her faithfulness to herself and her child to the memory of Lusard, whether dead or unfaithful, Claudine lives for nine years in idyllically protected remembrance, only troubled and touchingly embarrassed whenever she is led to explain how she happened to become a widow so young, whether to a simple farm woman who asks in all innocence, or to a baron out of erotic interest, or to little Charles in his childish naïveté. A baron whose former dissoluteness bends to the power of love proposes to her and opens up for her the prospect of a splendid future, which can also provide a cover for her lapse. He unnerves her with his passion but gets a refusal; although dishonoured, Claudine chooses to remain ‘true to her husband and her honour’.
Claudine is recognized by an outside party who is visiting the baron, and recognized again by someone she is happy to see: Ferdinand W., who in the meantime has married and become a partner in a big company in Switzerland, and on returning has learned from Susanne of her whereabouts. He brings news that Lusard is living in Jutland as the Duc de Montalbert, on an estate inherited from his uncle, a zealous royalist, with whom at the time, in Claudine’s interests, he had vainly sought to be reconciled. Ferdinand W. brings news in turn to Lusard, who believes C. unfaithful and to be married and living in Germany. F. conveys his news as delicately as possible, so that the reunion be not a poor, reluctant admission but an enthusiastic repetition; not as the French song puts it about spring, a time … ‘qui ne revient plus pour les amants, comme il revient pour la nature’.4
Lusard and Claudine are reunited.