Free The Blessing by Nancy Mitford Page A

as well as I do where your duty lies in this matter.’
    ‘But,’ she thought to herself, ‘there are other things I must have out with her before they go back to Paris.’
    ‘I suppose Charles-Edouard must seem very English to you, dear child,’ she began, next time she found herself alone with Grace.
    ‘English?’ Grace was amused and surprised. For her Charles-Edouard was the forty kings of France rolled into one, the French race in person walking and breathing.
    ‘Indeed at first sight he is very English. His clothes, his figure, that enormous breakfast of ham and eggs, his aptitude for business. But you know him very little, dearest, as yet. You have been married (if one can call it a marriage) for seven years and yet here you are, strangers, on a honeymoon, with a big child. It’s a very odd situation, and not the least curious and wonderful part is that you are both so happy. But I repeat that so far you have only seen the English side of your husband. He is getting restless here (I know him so well) and very soon, probably at a day’s notice, he will take you off to Paris. When you are there you will begin to see how truly French he is.’
    ‘But he seems so French to me already. How can he seem even more so in Paris? In what way?’
    ‘I am giving you a word of warning, just one. In Paris you and he will be back in his own world of little friends all brought up together. I advise you to be very, very sensible. Behave as if you were a thousand years old, like me.’
    ‘You think I shall be jealous. Tante Régine thinks so too, I can see. But I never am. It’s not part of my nature. I’m not insensitive, it isn’t that, I can mind things quite terribly, but jealous I am not.’
    ‘Alas, my dear child, you are in love, and there is no love in this world without jealousy.’
    ‘And I may not have known Charles-Edouard for long, but I do know him very well. He loves me.’
    ‘Yes, yes, indeed he does. That is quite plain. And so do we all, dear child, and that is why I am talking to you like this, in spite of everything. I tell you too that if you are very sensible he will love you for ever, and in time everything will be regulated in your lives and you will be a truly happy couple, for ever.’
    ‘That’s what Charles-Edouard tells me. All right, I am very sensible, so he will love me for ever. Don’t I look sensible?’
    ‘Alas, I know these practical, English looks and how they are deceptive. So reassuringly calm on the surface, and underneath what a turmoil. And then the world reflected in distorting glasses. Latin women see things so clearly as they are; above all they understand men.’
    ‘I never know quite what it means, to understand men.’
    ‘Don’t you, dear? It’s very simple, it can be said in a few words. Put them first. A woman who puts her husband first seldom loses him.’
    ‘Well I daresay,’ said Grace with some indignation, ‘that a woman who lets her husband do exactly as he likes, who shuts her eyes to every infidelity, and lets him walk over her, in fact, would never lose him.’
    ‘Just so,’ said Madame de Valhubert, placidly.
    ‘And do you really advise that?’
    ‘Oh I don’t advise, the old must never advise. All I do say is remember that Charles-Edouard is a Frenchman – not an Englishman with a French veneer, but a deeply French Frenchman. If you want this to become a real marriage, a lifelong union (I don’t speak of a sacrament), you must follow the rules of our civilization. A little life of your own, if you wish it, will never be held against you, so long as you always put your husband first.’
    Grace was thoroughly shocked. ‘I could have understood it if Tante Régine had spoken like that – would have expected it in fact, but your grandmother!’ she said to Charles-Edouard.
    ‘My grandmother is an extremely practical person,’ he said, ‘you can see it by the way she runs this house. You can always tell by that, with women.’
    The next day