Chapter 9 - Polar Violets

Summary

Around that time, Rodolphe was very much in love with his cousin Angele even though she couldn't stand him. Meanwhile, Chevalier's thermometer had plunged to twelve below zero.

Mlle Angele was the daughter of M. Monetti, the stove maker we encountered earlier. Mlle. Angele was eighteen years old and had come from the Bourgogne region where she’d spent five years with a female relative who was expected to leave everything to her when she died. The relative was an elderly woman who had never been young or beautiful, but who had always been unpleasant although (or perhaps because) she was very religious. When Angele left to live with her, she’d been a charming child and her adolescence was already bringing her the promise of a charming youth. When she returned after five years she’d become a beauty but also cold, hard and unfeeling. Her life of rural seclusion, her excessive religious observance and an education based on narrow-minded principles had filled her with coarse and ridiculous prejudices, shrunk her imagination and made her heart into an organ that was satisfied with merely carrying out its function like a pendulum. In other words, Angele had holy water running in her veins instead of blood. She welcomed her cousin with icy reserve when she returned and he was wasting his time whenever he tried to play on the tender strings of memory, recalling the time when they were in the early stages of a love like Paul and Virginie, a love that traditionally arises between a male and female cousin.2 Still, Rodolphe was very much in love with this cousin who couldn't stand him and when he learned one day that the young woman was to attend a wedding party for one of her friends, he found the courage to promise Angele a bouquet of violets for the occasion. After asking her father for his permission, Angele accepted her cousin's gallant offer, on the condition that the violets must be white.

Delighted with his cousin's kind acceptance, Rodolphe danced and sang all the way back to Mont Saint Bernard, the place he called home. We will soon see why. As he crossed the Palais-Royal and passed the shop of Mme. Provost, the famous florist, he saw white violets in the shop window.