The Project Gutenberg EBook The Parisians, by E. B. Lytton, Book 3.
#166 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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Title: The Parisians, Book 3.
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7739]
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[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B3, LYTTON ***
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THE PARISIANS
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
The next day the guests at the Morleys' had assembled when Vane entered.
His apology for unpunctuality was cut short by the lively hostess. "Your
pardon is granted without the humiliation of asking for it; we know that
the characteristic of the English is always to be a little behindhand."
She then proceeded to introduce him to the American Minister, to a
distinguished American poet, with a countenance striking for mingled
sweetness and power, and one or two other of her countrymen sojourning at
Paris; and this ceremony over, dinner was announced, and she bade Graham
offer his arm to Mademoiselle Cicogna.
"Have you ever visited the United States, Mademoiselle?" asked Vane, as
they seated themselves at the table.
"No."
"It is a voyage you are sure to make soon."
"Why so?"
"Because report says you will create a great sensation at the very
commencement of your career; and the New World is ever eager to welcome
each celebrity that is achieved in the Old,--more especially that which
belongs to your enchanting art."
"True, sir," said an American senator, solemnly striking into the
conversation; "we are an appreciative people; and if that lady be as fine
a singer as I am told, she might command any amount of dollars."
Isaura coloured, and turning to Graham, asked him in a low voice if he
were fond of music.
"I ought of course to say 'yes,' answered Graham, in the same tone; "but
I doubt if that 'yes' would be an honest one. In some moods, music--if a
kind of music I like--affects me very deeply; in other moods, not at all.
And I cannot bear much at a time. A concert wearies me shamefully; even
an opera always seems to me a great deal too long. But I ought to add
that I am no judge of music; that music was never admitted into my
education; and, between ourselves, I doubt if there be one Englishman in
five hundred who would care for opera or concert if it were not the
fashion to say he did. Does my frankness revolt you?"
"On the contrary, I sometimes doubt, especially of late, if I am fond of
music myself."
"Signorina,--pardon me,--it is impossible that you should not be. Genius
can never be untrue to itself, and must love that in which it excels,
that by which it communicates joy, and," he added, with a half-suppressed
sigh, "attains to glory."
"Genius is a divine word, and not to be applied to a singer," said
Isaura, with a humility in which there was an earnest sadness.
Graham was touched and startled; but before he could answer, the American
Minister appealed to him across the table, asking if he had quoted
accurately a passage in a speech by Graham's distinguished father, in
regard to the share which England ought to take in the political affairs
of Europe.
The conversation now became general, very political and very serious.
Graham was drawn into it, and grew animated and eloquent.
Isaura listened to him with admiration. She was struck by what seemed to
her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated his theme above the level of
commonplace polemics. She was pleased to notice, in the attentive
silence of his intelligent listeners, that they shared the effect
produced on herself. In fact, Graham Vane was a born orator, and his
studies had been those of a political thinker. In common talk he was but
the accomplished man of the world, easy and frank and genial, with a
touch of good-natured sarcasm; but when the subject started drew him
upward to those heights in which politics become the science of humanity,
he seemed a changed being. His cheek glowed, his eye brightened, his
voice mellowed into richer tones, his language be came unconsciously
adorned. In such moments there might scarcely be an audience, even
differing from him in opinion, which would not have acknowledged his
spell.
When the party adjourned to the salon, Isaura said softly to Graham, "I
understand why you did not cultivate music; and I think, too, that I can
now understand what effects the human voice can produce on human minds
without recurring to the art of song."
"Ah," said Graham, with a pleased smile, "do not make me ashamed of my
former rudeness by the revenge of compliment; and, above all, do not
disparage your own art by supposing that any prose effect of voice in its
utterance of mind can interpret that which music alone can express, even
to listeners so uncultured as myself. Am I not told truly by musical
composers, when I ask them to explain in words what they say in their
music, that such explanation is impossible, that music has a language of
its own untranslatable by words?"
"Yes," said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but brightening eyes, "you are
told truly. It was only the other day that I was pondering over that
truth."
"But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, this untranslatable
language penetrates and brightens up! How incomplete the grand nature of
man--though man the grandest--would be, if you struck out of his reason
the comprehension of poetry, music, and religion! In each are reached
and are sounded deeps in his reason otherwise concealed from himself.
History, knowledge, science, stop at the point in which mystery begins.
There they meet with the world of shadow. Not an inch of that world can
they penetrate without the aid of poetry and religion, two necessities of
intellectual man much more nearly allied than the votaries of the
practical and the positive suppose. To the aid and elevation of both
those necessities comes in music, and there has never existed a religion
in the world which has not demanded music as its ally. If, as I said
frankly, it is only in certain moods of my mind that I enjoy music, it is
only because in certain moods of my mind I am capable of quitting the
guidance of prosaic reason for the world of shadow; that I am so
susceptible as at every hour, were my nature perfect, I should be to the
mysterious influences of poetry and religion. Do you understand what I
wish to express?"
"Yes, I do, and clearly."
"Then, Signorina, you are forbidden to undervalue the gift of song. You
must feel its power over the heart, when you enter the opera-house; over
the soul, when you kneel in a cathedral."
"Oh," cried Isaura, with enthusiasm, a rich glow mantling over her lovely
face, "how I thank you! Is it you who say you do not love music? How
much better you understand it than I did till this moment!"
Here Mrs. Morley, joined by the American poet, came to the corner in
which the Englishman and the singer had niched themselves. The poet
began to talk, the other guests gathered round, and every one listened
reverentially till the party broke up. Colonel Morley handed Isaura to
her carriage; the she-mountebank again fell to the lot of Graham.
"Signor," said she, as he respectfully placed her shawl round her
scarlet-and-gilt jacket, "are we so far from Paris that you cannot spare
the time to call? My child does not sing in public, but at home you can
hear her. It is not every woman's voice that is sweetest at home."
Graham bowed, and said he would call on the morrow. Isaura mused in
silent delight over the words which had so extolled the art of the
singer. Alas, poor child! she could not guess that in those words,
reconciling her to the profession of the stage, the speaker was pleading
against his own heart.
There was in Graham's nature, as I think it commonly is in that of most
true orators, a wonderful degree of intellectual conscience which
impelled him to acknowledge the benignant influences of song, and to set
before the young singer the noblest incentives to the profession to which
he deemed her assuredly destined; but in so doing he must have felt that
he was widening the gulf between her life and his own. Perhaps he wished
to widen it in proportion as he dreaded to listen to any voice in his
heart which asked if the gulf might not be overleapt.
CHAPTER II.
ON the morrow Graham called at the villa at A------. The two ladies
received him in Isaura's chosen sitting-room.
Somehow or other, conversation at first languished. Graham was reserved
and distant, Isaura shy and embarrassed. The Venosta had the frais of
making talk to herself. Probably at another time Graham would have been
amused and interested in the observation of a character new to him, and
thoroughly southern,--lovable not more from its naive simplicity of
kindliness than from various little foibles and vanities, all of which
were harmless, and some of them endearing as those of a child whom it is
easy to make happy, and whom it seems so cruel to pain; and with all the
Venosta's deviations from the polished and tranquil good taste of the
beau monde, she had that indescribable grace which rarely deserts a
Florentine, so that you might call her odd but not vulgar; while, though
uneducated, except in the way of her old profession, and never having
troubled herself to read anything but a libretto and the pious books
commended to her by her confessor, the artless babble of her talk every
now and then flashed out with a quaint humour, lighting up terse
fragments of the old Italian wisdom which had mysteriously embedded
themselves in the groundwork of her mind.
But Graham was not at this time disposed to judge the poor Venosta kindly
or fairly. Isaura had taken high rank in his thoughts. He felt an
impatient resentment mingled with anxiety and compassionate tenderness at
a companionship which seemed to him derogatory to the position he would
have assigned to a creature so gifted, and unsafe as a guide amidst the
perils and trials to which the youth, the beauty, and the destined
profession of Isaura were exposed. Like most Englishmen--especially
Englishmen wise in the knowledge of life--he held in fastidious regard
the proprieties and conventions by which the dignity of woman is fenced
round; and of those proprieties and conventions the Venosta naturally
appeared to him a very unsatisfactory guardian and representative.
Happily unconscious of these hostile prepossessions, the elder Signora
chatted on very gayly to the visitor. She was in excellent spirits;
people had been very civil to her both at Colonel Morley's and M.
Louvier's. The American Minister had praised the scarlet jacket. She
was convinced she had made a sensation two nights running. When the
_amour propre_ is pleased, the tongue is freed.
The Venosta ran on in praise of Paris and the Parisians; of Louvier and
his soiree and the pistachio ice; of the Americans, and a certain _creme
de maraschino_ which she hoped the Signor Inglese had not failed to
taste,--the _creme de maraschino_ led her thoughts back to Italy. Then
she grew mournful. How she missed the native _beau ciel_! Paris was
pleasant, but how absurd to call it "le Paradis des Femmes,"--as if les
Femmes could find Paradise in a _brouillard_!
"But," she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticulation, "the
Signor does not come to hear the parrot talk; he is engaged to come that
he may hear the nightingale sing. A drop of honey attracts the fly more
than a bottle of vinegar."
Graham could not help smiling at this adage. "I submit," said he, "to
your comparison as regards myself; but certainly anything less like a
bottle of vinegar than your amiable conversation I cannot well conceive.
However, the metaphor apart, I scarcely know how I dare ask Mademoiselle
to sing after the confession I made to her last night."
"What confession?" asked the Venosta.
"That I know nothing of music and doubt if I can honestly say that I am
fond of it."
"Not fond of music! Impossible! You slander yourself. He who loves not
music would have a dull time of it in heaven. But you are English, and
perhaps have only heard the music of your own country. Bad, very bad--a
heretic's music! Now listen."
Seating herself at the piano, she began an air from the "Lucia," crying
out to Isaura to come and sing to her accompaniment.
"Do you really wish it?" asked Isaura of Graham, fixing on him
questioning, timid eyes.
"I cannot say how much I wish to hear you."
Isaura moved to the instrument, and Graham stood behind her. Perhaps he
felt that he should judge more impartially of her voice if not subjected
to the charm of her face.
But the first note of the voice held him spell-bound. In itself the
organ was of the rarest order, mellow and rich, but so soft that its
power was lost in its sweetness, and so exquisitely fresh in every note.
But the singer's charm was less in voice than in feeling; she conveyed to
the listener so much more than was said by the words, or even implied by
the music. Her song in this caught the art of the painter who impresses
the mind with the consciousness of a something which the eye cannot
detect on the canvas.
She seemed to breathe out from the depths of her heart the intense pathos
of the original romance, so far exceeding that of the opera,-the human
tenderness, the mystic terror of a tragic love-tale more solemn in its
sweetness than that of Verona.
When her voice died away no applause came,--not even a murmur. Isaura
bashfully turned round to steal a glance at her silent listener, and
beheld moistened eyes and quivering lips. At that moment she was
reconciled to her art. Graham rose abruptly and walked to the window.
"Do you doubt now if you are fond of music?" cried the Venosta.
"This is more than music," answered Graham, still with averted face.
Then, after a short pause, he approached Isaura, and said, with a
melancholy half-smile,--
"I do not think, Mademoiselle, that I could dare to hear you often; it
would take me too far from the hard real world: and he who would not be
left behindhand on the road that he must journey cannot indulge frequent
excursions into fairyland."
"Yet," said Isaura, in a tone yet sadder, "I was told in my childhood, by
one whose genius gives authority to her words, that beside the real world
lies the ideal. The real world then seemed rough to me. 'Escape,' said
my counsellor, 'is granted from that stony thoroughfare into the fields
beyond its formal hedgerows. The ideal world has its sorrows, but it
never admits despair.' That counsel then, methought, decided my choice
of life. I know not now if it has done so."
"Fate," answered Graham, slowly and thoughtfully, "Fate, which is not
the ruler but the servant of Providence, decides our choice of life, and
rarely from outward circumstances. Usually the motive power is within.
We apply the word 'genius' to the minds of the gifted few; but in all of
us there is a genius that is inborn, a pervading something which
distinguishes our very identity, and dictates to the conscience that
which we are best fitted to do and to be. In so dictating it compels
our choice of life; or if we resist the dictate, we find at the close
that we have gone astray. My choice of life thus compelled is on the
stony thoroughfares, yours in the green fields."
As he thus said, his face became clouded and mournful. The Venosta,
quickly tired of a conversation in which she had no part, and having
various little household matters to attend to, had during this dialogue
slipped unobserved from the room; yet neither Isaura nor Graham felt the
sudden consciousness that they were alone which belongs to lovers.
"Why," asked Isaura, with that magic smile reflected in countless dimples
which, even when her words were those of a man's reasoning, made them
seem gentle with a woman's sentiment,--"why must your road through the
world be so exclusively the stony one? It is not from necessity, it can.
not be from taste; and whatever definition you give to genius, surely it
is not your own inborn genius that dictates to you a constant exclusive
adherence to the commonplace of life."
"Ah, Mademoiselle, do not misrepresent me. I did not say that I could
not sometimes quit the real world for fairyland,--I said that I could not
do so often. My vocation is not that of a poet or artist."
"It is that of an orator, I know," said Isaura, kindling; "so they tell
me, and I believe them. But is not the orator somewhat akin to the poet?
Is not oratory an art?"
"Let us dismiss the word orator; as applied to English public life, it is
a very deceptive expression. The Englishman who wishes to influence his
countrymen by force of words spoken must mix with them in their beaten
thoroughfares; must make himself master of their practical views and
interests; must be conversant with their prosaic occupations and
business; must understand how to adjust their loftiest aspirations to
their material welfare; must avoid as the fault most dangerous to himself
and to others that kind of eloquence which is called oratory in France,
and which has helped to make the French the worst politicians in Europe.
Alas! Mademoiselle, I fear that an English statesman would appear to you
a very dull orator."
"I see that I spoke foolishly,--yes, you show me that the world of the
statesman lies apart from that of the artist. Yet--"
"Yet what?"
"May not the ambition of both be the same?"
"How so?"
"To refine the rude, to exalt the mean; to identify their own fame with
some new beauty, some new glory, added to the treasure-house of all."
Graham bowed his head reverently, and then raised it with the flush of
enthusiasm on his cheek and brow.
"Oh, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "what a sure guide and what a noble
inspirer to a true Englishman's ambition nature has fitted you to be,
were it not--" He paused abruptly.
This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise. She had been accustomed
to the language of compliment till it had begun to pall, but a compliment
of this kind was the first that had ever reached her ear. She had no
words in answer to it; involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart as
if to still its beatings. But the unfinished exclamation, "Were it not,"
troubled her more than the preceding words had flattered, and
mechanically she murmured, "Were it not--what?"
"Oh," answered Graham, affecting a tone of gayety, "I felt too ashamed of
my selfishness as man to finish my sentence."
"Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might wound me as woman."
"Not so; on the contrary, had I gone on it would have been to say that a
woman of your genius, and more especially of such mastery in the most
popular and fascinating of all arts, could not be contented if she
inspired nobler thoughts in a single breast,--she must belong to the
public, or rather the public must belong to her; it is but a corner of
her heart that an individual can occupy, and even that individual must
merge his existence in hers, must be contented to reflect a ray of the
light she sheds on admiring thousands. Who could dare to say to you,
'Renounce your career; confine your genius, your art, to the petty circle
of home'? To an actress, a singer, with whose fame the world rings, home
would be a prison. Pardon me, pardon--"
Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears that would force their way;
but she held out her hand to him with a childlike frankness, and said
softly, "I am not offended." Graham did not trust himself to continue
the same strain of conversation. Breaking into a new subject, he said,
after a constrained pause, "Will you think it very impertinent in so new
an acquaintance, if I ask how it is that you, an Italian, know our
language as a native; and is it by Italian teachers that you have been
trained to think and to feel?"
"Mr. Selby, my second father, was an Englishman, and did not speak any
other language with comfort to himself. He was very fond of me; and had
he been really my father I could not have loved him more. We were
constant companions till--till I lost him."
"And no mother left to console you!"
Isaura shook her head mournfully, and the Venosta here re-entered.
Graham felt conscious that he had already stayed too long, and took
leave.
They knew that they were to meet that evening at the Savarins'.
To Graham that thought was not one of unmixed pleasure; the more he knew
of Isaura, the more he felt self-reproach that he had allowed himself to
know her at all.
But after he had left, Isaura sang low to herself the song which had so
affected her listener; then she fell into abstracted revery, but she felt
a strange and new sort of happiness. In dressing for M. Savarin's
dinner, and twining the classic ivy wreath in her dark locks, her Italian
servant exclaimed, "How beautiful the Signorina looks to-night!"
CHAPTER III.
M. Savarin was one of the most brilliant of that galaxy of literary men
which shed lustre on the reign of Louis Philippe.
His was an intellect peculiarly French in its lightness and grace.
Neither England nor Germany nor America has produced any resemblance to
it. Ireland has, in Thomas Moore; but then in Irish genius there is so
much that is French.
M. Savarin was free from the ostentatious extravagance which had come
into vogue with the Empire. His house and establishment were modestly
maintained within the limit of an income chiefly, perhaps entirely,
derived from literary profits.
Though he gave frequent dinners, it was but to few at a time, and without
show or pretence. Yet the dinners, though simple, were perfect of their
kind; and the host so contrived to infuse his own playful gayety into the
temper of his guests, that the feasts at his house were considered the
pleasantest at Paris. On this occasion the party extended to ten, the
largest number his table admitted.
All the French guests belonged to the Liberal party, though in changing
tints of the tricolor. _Place aux dames_! first to be named were the
Countess de Craon and Madame Vertot, both without husbands. The Countess
had buried the Count, Madame Vertot had separated from Monsieur. The
Countess was very handsome, but she was sixty; Madame Vertot was twenty
years younger, but she was very plain. She had quarrelled with the
distinguished author for whose sake she had separated from Monsieur, and
no man had since presumed to think that he could console a lady so plain
for the loss of an author so distinguished.
Both these ladies were very clever. The Countess had written lyrical
poems entitled "Cries of Liberty," and a drama of which Danton was the
hero, and the moral too revolutionary for admission to the stage; but at
heart the Countess was not at all a revolutionist,--the last person in
the world to do or desire anything that could bring a washerwoman an inch
nearer to a countess. She was one of those persons who play with fire in
order to appear enlightened.
Madame Vertot was of severer mould. She had knelt at the feet of M.
Thiers, and went into the historico-political line. She had written a
remarkable book upon the modern Carthage (meaning England), and more
recently a work that had excited much attention upon the Balance of
Power, in which she proved it to be the interest of civilization and the
necessity of Europe that Belgium should be added to France, and Prussia
circumscribed to the bounds of its original margraviate. She showed how
easily these two objects could have been effected by a constitutional
monarch instead of an egotistical Emperor. Madame Vertot was a decided
Orleanist.
Both these ladies condescended to put aside authorship in general
society. Next amongst our guests let me place the Count de Passy and
_Madame son espouse_. The Count was seventy-one, and, it is needless to
add, a type of Frenchman rapidly vanishing, and not likely to find itself
renewed. How shall I describe him so as to make my English reader
understand? Let me try by analogy. Suppose a man of great birth and
fortune, who in his youth had been an enthusiastic friend of Lord Byron
and a jocund companion of George IV.; who had in him an immense degree of
lofty romantic sentiment with an equal degree of well-bred worldly
cynicism, but who, on account of that admixture, which is so rare, kept a
high rank in either of the two societies into which, speaking broadly,
civilized life divides itself,--the romantic and the cynical. The Count
de Passy had been the most ardent among the young disciples of
Chateaubriand, the most brilliant among the young courtiers of Charles X.
Need I add that he had been a terrible lady-killer?
But in spite of his admiration of Chateaubriand and his allegiance to
Charles X., the Count had been always true to those caprices of the
French noblesse from which he descended,--caprices which destroyed them
in the old Revolution; caprices belonging to the splendid ignorance of
their nation in general and their order in particular. Speaking without
regard to partial exceptions, the French _gentilhomme_ is essentially a
Parisian; a Parisian is essentially impressionable to the impulse or
fashion of the moment. Is it _a la mode_ for the moment to be Liberal or
anti-Liberal? Parisians embrace and kiss each other, and swear through
life and death to adhere forever to the mode of the moment. The Three
Days were the mode of the moment,--the Count de Passy became an
enthusiastic Orleanist. Louis Philippe was very gracious to him. He was
decorated; he was named _prefet_ of his department; he was created
senator; he was about to be sent Minister to a German Court when Louis
Philippe fell. The Republic was proclaimed. The Count caught the
popular contagion, and after exchanging tears and kisses with patriots
whom a week before he had called _canaille_, he swore eternal fidelity to
the Republic. The fashion of the moment suddenly became Napoleonic, and
with the _coup d'etat_ the Republic was metamorphosed into an Empire.
The Count wept on the bosoms of all the _Vieilles Moustaches_ he could
find, and rejoiced that the sun of Austerlitz had re-arisen. But after
the affair of Mexico the sun of Austerlitz waxed very sickly.
Imperialism was fast going out of fashion. The Count transferred his
affection to Jules Favre, and joined the ranks of the advanced Liberals.
During all these political changes, the Count had remained very much the
same man in private life; agreeable, good-natured, witty, and, above all,
a devotee of the fair sex. When he had reached the age of sixty-eight he
was still _fort bel homme_, unmarried, with a grand presence and charming
manner. At that age he said, "Je me range," and married a young lady of
eighteen. She adored her husband, and was wildly jealous of him; while
the Count did not seem at all jealous of her, and submitted to her
adoration with a gentle shrug of the shoulders.
The three other guests who, with Graham and the two Italian ladies, made
up the complement of ten, were the German Count von Rudesheim, a
celebrated French physician named Bacourt, and a young author whom
Savarin had admitted into his clique and declared to be of rare promise.
This author, whose real name was Gustave Rameau, but who, to prove, I
suppose, the sincerity of that scorn for ancestry which he professed,
published his verses under the patrician designation of Alphonse de
Valcour, was about twenty-four, and might have passed at the first glance
for younger; but, looking at him closely, the signs of old age were
already stamped on his visage.
He was undersized, and of a feeble slender frame. In the eyes of women
and artists the defects of his frame were redeemed by the extraordinary
beauty of the face. His black hair, carefully parted in the centre, and
worn long and flowing, contrasted the whiteness of a high though narrow
forehead, and the delicate pallor of his cheeks. His feature, were very
regular, his eyes singularly bright; but the expression of the face spoke
of fatigue and exhaustion; the silky locks were already thin, and
interspersed with threads of silver; the bright eyes shone out from
sunken orbits; the lines round the mouth were marked as they are in the
middle age of one who has lived too fast.
It was a countenance that might have excited a compassionate and tender
interest but for something arrogant and supercilious in the expression,-
something that demanded not tender pity but enthusiastic admiration. Yet
that expression was displeasing rather to men than to women; and one
could well conceive that, among the latter, the enthusiastic admiration
it challenged would be largely conceded.
The conversation at dinner was in complete contrast to that at the
Americans' the day before. There the talk, though animated, had been
chiefly earnest and serious; here it was all touch and go, sally and
repartee. The subjects were the light on lots and lively anecdotes of
the day, not free from literature and politics, but both treated as
matters of persiflage, hovered round with a jest and quitted with an
epigram. The two French lady authors, the Count de Passy, the physician,
and the host far outspoke all the other guests. Now and then, however,
the German Count struck in with an ironical remark condensing a great
deal of grave wisdom, and the young author with ruder and more biting
sarcasm. If the sarcasm told, he showed his triumph by a low-pitched
laugh; if it failed, he evinced his displeasure by a contemptuous sneer
or a grim scowl.
Isaura and Graham were not seated near each other, and were for the most
part contented to be listeners.
On adjourning to the salon after dinner, Graham, however, was approaching
the chair in which Isaura had placed herself, when the young author,
forestalling him, dropped into the seat next to her, and began a
conversation in a voice so low that it might have passed for a whisper.
The Englishman drew back and observed them. He soon perceived, with a
pang of jealousy not unmingled with scorn, that the author's talk
appeared to interest Isaura. She listened with evident attention; and
when she spoke in return, though Graham did not hear her words, he could
observe on her expressive countenance an increased gentleness of aspect.
"I hope," said the physician, joining Graham, as most of the other guests
gathered round Savarin, who was in his liveliest vein of anecdote and
wit,--"I hope that the fair Italian will not allow that ink-bottle imp to
persuade her that she has fallen in love with him."
"Do young ladies generally find him so seductive?" asked Graham, with a
forced smile.
"Probably enough. He has the reputation of being very clever and very
wicked, and that is a sort of character which has the serpent's
fascination for the daughters of Eve."
"Is the reputation merited?"
"As to the cleverness, I am not a fair judge. I dislike that sort of
writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, and in which young Rameau
excels. He has the knack of finding very exaggerated phrases by which to
express commonplace thoughts. He writes verses about love in words so
stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon Semele; but
when you examine his words, as a sober pathologist like myself is
disposed to do, your fear for the peace of households vanishes,--they are
Fox et proeterea nihil; no man really in love would use them. He writes
prose about the wrongs of humanity. You feel for humanity; you say,
'Grant the wrongs, now for the remedy,'--and you find nothing but
balderdash. Still I am bound to say that both in verse and prose Gustave
Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste of the day, and therefore he is
coming into vogue. So much as to his writings; as to his wickedness, you
have only to look at him to feel sure that he is not a hundredth part so
wicked as he wishes to seem. In a word, then, M. Gustave Rameau is a
type of that somewhat numerous class among the youth of Paris, which I
call 'the lost Tribe of Absinthe.' There is a set of men who begin to
live full gallop while they are still boys. As a general rule, they are
originally of the sickly frames which can scarcely even trot, much less
gallop without the spur of stimulants, and no stimulant so fascinates
their peculiar nervous system as absinthe. The number of patients in
this set who at the age of thirty are more worn out than septuagenarians
increases so rapidly as to make one dread to think what will be the next
race of Frenchmen. To the predilection for absinthe young Rameau and the
writers of his set add the imitation of Heine, after, indeed, the manner
of caricaturists, who effect a likeness striking in proportion as it is
ugly. It is not easy to imitate the pathos and the wit of Heine; but it
is easy to imitate his defiance of the Deity, his mockery of right and
wrong, his relentless war on that heroic standard of thought and action
which the writers who exalt their nation intuitively preserve. Rameau
cannot be a Heine, but he can be to Heine what a misshapen snarling dwarf
is to a mangled blaspheming Titan. Yet he interests the women in
general, and he evidently interests the fair Signorina in especial."
Just as Bacourt finished that last sentence, Isaura lifted the head which
had hitherto bent in an earnest listening attitude that seemed to justify
the Doctor's remarks, and looked round. Her eyes met Graham's with the
fearless candour which made half the charm of their bright yet soft
intelligence; but she dropped them suddenly with a half-start and a
change of colour, for the expression of Graham's face was unlike that
which she had hitherto seen on it,--it was hard, stern, and somewhat
disdainful. A minute or so afterwards she rose, and in passing across
the room towards the group round the host, paused at a table covered with
books and prints near to which Graham was standing alone. The Doctor had
departed in company with the German Count.
Isaura took up one of the prints.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "Sorrento, my Sorrento. Have you ever visited
Sorrento, Mr. Vane?"
Her question and her movement were evidently in conciliation. Was the
conciliation prompted by coquetry, or by a sentiment more innocent and
artless?
Graham doubted, and replied coldly, as he bent over the print,--
"I once stayed there a few days, but my recollection of it is not
sufficiently lively to enable me to recognize its features in this
design."
"That is the house, at least so they say, of Tasso's father; of course
you visited that?"
"Yes, it was a hotel in my time; I lodged there."
"And I too. There I first read 'The Gerusalemine.'" The last words were
said in Italian, with a low measured tone, inwardly and dreamily.
A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking in French here struck in and
prevented Graham's rejoinder: "Quel joli dessin! What is it,
Mademoiselle?"
Graham recoiled; the speaker was Gustave Rameau, who had, unobserved,
first watched Isaura, then rejoined her side.
"A view of Sorrento, Monsieur, but it does not do justice to the place.
I was pointing out the house which belonged to Tasso's father."
"Tasso! Hein! and which is the fair Eleonora's?"
"Monsieur," answered Isaura, rather startled at that question, from a
professed _homme de lettres_, "Eleonora did not live at Sorrento."
"Tant pis pour Sorrente," said the homme de lettres, carelessly. "No one
would care for Tasso if it were not for Eleonora."
"I should rather have thought," said Graham, "that no one would have
cared for Eleonora if it were not for Tasso."
Rameau glanced at the Englishman superciliously. "Pardon, Monsieur, in
every age a love-story keeps its interest; but who cares nowadays for le
clinquant du Tasse?"
"Le clinquant du Tasse!" exclaimed Isaura, indignantly.
"The expression is Boileau's, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of the 'Sot de
qualite,' who prefers--
"'Le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile.'
"But for my part I have as little faith in the last as the first."
"I do not know Latin, and have therefore not read Virgil," said Isaura.
"Possibly," remarked Graham, "Monsieur does not know Italian, and has
therefore not read Tasso."
"If that be meant in sarcasm," retorted Rameau, "I construe it as a
compliment. A Frenchman who is contented to study the masterpieces of
modern literature need learn no language and read no authors but his
own."
Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh. "I should admire the
frankness of that boast, Monsieur, if in our talk just now you had not
spoken as contemptuously of what we are accustomed to consider French
masterpieces as you have done of Virgil and Tasso."
"Ah, Mademoiselle! it is not my fault if you have had teachers of taste
so _rococo_ as to bid you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted
tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Poetry of a court, not of a people,
one simple novel, one simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of
the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state,
denounces the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth
a library of the rubbish which pedagogues call 'the classics.' We agree,
at least, in one thing, Mademoiselle; we both do homage to the genius of
your friend Madame de Grantmesnil."
"Your friend, Signorina!" cried Graham, incredulously; "is Madame de
Grantmesnil your friend?"
"The dearest I have in the world."
Graham's face darkened; he turned away in silence, and in another minute
vanished from the room, persuading himself that he felt not one pang of
jealousy in leaving Gustave Rameau by the side of Isaura. "Her dearest
friend Madame de Grantmesnil!" he muttered.
A word now on Isaura's chief correspondent. Madame de Grantmesnil was a
woman of noble birth and ample fortune. She had separated from her
husband in the second year after marriage. She was a singularly eloquent
writer, surpassed among contemporaries of her sex in popularity and
renown only by Georges Sand.
At least as fearless as that great novelist in the frank exposition of
her views, she had commenced her career in letters by a work of
astonishing power and pathos, directed against the institution of
marriage as regulated in Roman Catholic communities. I do not know that
it said more on this delicate subject than the English Milton has said;
but then Milton did not write for a Roman Catholic community, nor adopt a
style likely to captivate the working classes. Madame de Grantmesnil's
first book was deemed an attack on the religion of the country, and
captivated those among the working classes who had already abjured that
religion. This work was followed up by others more or less in defiance
of "received opinions,"--some with political, some with social
revolutionary aim and tendency, but always with a singular purity of
style. Search all her books, and however you might revolt from her
doctrine, you could not find a hazardous expression. The novels of
English young ladies are naughty in comparison. Of late years, whatever
might be hard or audacious in her political or social doctrines softened
itself into charm amid the golden haze of romance. Her writings had
grown more and more purely artistic,--poetizing what is good and
beautiful in the realities of life rather than creating a false ideal out
of what is vicious and deformed. Such a woman, separated young from her
husband, could not enunciate such opinions and lead a life so independent
and uncontrolled as Madame de Grantmesnil had done, without scandal,
without calumny. Nothing, however, in her actual life had ever been so
proved against her as to lower the high position she occupied in right of
birth, fortune, renown. Wherever she went she was _fetee_, as in England
foreign princes, and in America foreign authors, are _fetes_. Those who
knew her well concurred in praise of her lofty, generous, lovable
qualities. Madame de Grantmesnil had known Mr. Selby; and when, at his
death, Isaura, in the innocent age between childhood and youth, had been
left the most sorrowful and most lonely creature on the face of the
earth, this famous woman, worshipped by the rich for her intellect,
adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to the orphan's friendless
side, breathing love once more into her pining heart, and waking for the
first time the desires of genius, the aspirations of art, in the dim
self-consciousness of a soul between sleep and waking.
But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in Graham's place, and suppose that
you were beginning to fall in love with a girl whom for many good reasons
you ought not to marry; suppose that in the same hour in which you were
angrily conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom it wounds your
self-esteem to consider a rival, the girl tells you that her dearest
friend is a woman who is famed for her hostility to the institution of
marriage!
CHAPTER IV.
On the same day in which Graham dined with the Savarins, M. Louvier
assembled round his table the elite of the young Parisians who
constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he had invited his new
friend the Marquis de Rochebriant. Most of them belonged to the
Legitimist party, the noblesse of the faubourg; those who did not,
belonged to no political party at all,--indifferent to the cares of
mortal States as the gods of Epicurus. Foremost among this _Jeunesse
doree_ were Alain's kinsmen, Raoul and Enguerrand de Vandemar. To these
Louvier introduced him with a burly parental bonhomie, as if he were the
head of the family. "I need not bid you, young folks, to make friends
with each other. A Vandemar and a Rochebriant are not made friends,--
they are born friends." So saying he turned to his other guests.
Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint melt away in the cordial
warmth with which his cousins greeted him. These young men had a
striking family likeness to each other, and yet in feature, colouring,
and expression, in all save that strange family likeness, they were
contrasts. Raoul was tall, and, though inclined to be slender, with
sufficient breadth of shoulder to indicate no inconsiderable strength of
frame. His hair worn short and his silky beard worn long were dark; so
were his eyes, shaded by curved drooping lashes; his complexion was pale,
but clear and healthful. In repose the expression of his face was that
of a somewhat melancholy indolence, but in speaking it became singularly
sweet, with a smile of the exquisite urbanity which no artificial
politeness can bestow; it must emanate from that native high breeding
which has its source in goodness of heart.
Enguerrand was fair, with curly locks of a golden chestnut. He wore no
beard, only a small mustache rather darker than his hair. His complexion
might in itself be called effeminate, its bloom was so fresh and
delicate; but there was so much of boldness and energy in the play of his
countenance, the hardy outline of the lips, and the open breadth of the
forehead, that "effeminate" was an epithet no one ever assigned to his
aspect. He was somewhat under the middle height, but beautifully
proportioned, carried himself well, and somehow or other did not look
short even by the side of tall men. Altogether he seemed formed to be a
mother's darling, and spoiled by women, yet to hold his own among men
with a strength of will more evident in his look and his bearing than it
was in those of his graver and statelier brother.
Both were considered by their young co-equals models in dress, but in
Raoul there was no sign that care or thought upon dress had been
bestowed; the simplicity of his costume was absolute and severe. On his
plain shirt-front there gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled
not a ring. Enguerrand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in
his attire; the broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of
the Fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist-
buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rental of
Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing. He was one of those
happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make constant presents. All about him
was so bright that the atmosphere around seemed gayer for his presence.
In one respect at least the brothers closely resembled each other,--in
that exquisite graciousness of manner for which the genuine French noble
is traditionally renowned; a graciousness that did not desert them even
when they came reluctantly into contact with _roturiers_ or republicans;
but the graciousness became _egalite, fraternite_, towards one of their
caste and kindred.
"We must do our best to make Paris pleasant to you," said Raoul, still
retaining in his grasp the hand he had taken.
"_Vilain cousin_," said the livelier Enguerrand, "to have been in Paris
twenty-four hours, and without letting us know."
"Has not your father told you that I called upon him?"
"Our father," answered Raoul, "was not so savage as to conceal that fact;
but he said you were only here on business for a day or two, had declined
his invitation, and would not give your address. _Pauvre pere_! we
scolded him well for letting you escape from us thus. My mother has not
forgiven him yet; we must present you to her to-morrow. I answer for
your liking her almost as much as she will like you."
Before Alain could answer dinner was announced. Alain's place at dinner
was between his cousins. How pleasant they made themselves! It was the
first time in which Alain had been brought into such familiar
conversation with countrymen of his own rank as well as his own age. His
heart warmed to them. The general talk of the other guests was strange
to his ear; it ran much upon horses and races, upon the opera and the
ballet; it was enlivened with satirical anecdotes of persons whose names
were unknown to the Provincial; not a word was said that showed the
smallest interest in politics or the slightest acquaintance with
literature. The world of these well-born guests seemed one from which
all that concerned the great mass of mankind was excluded, yet the talk
was that which could only be found in a very polished society. In it
there was not much wit, but there was a prevalent vein of gayety, and the
gayety was never violent, the laughter was never loud; the scandals
circulated might imply cynicism the most absolute, but in language the
most refined. The Jockey Club of Paris has its perfume.
Raoul did not mix in the general conversation; he devoted himself
pointedly to the amusement of his cousin, explaining to him the point of
the anecdotes circulated, or hitting off in terse sentences the
characters of the talkers.
Enguerrand was evidently of temper more vivacious than his brother, and
contributed freely to the current play of light gossip and mirthful
sally.
Louvier, seated between a duke and a Russian prince, said little except
to recommend a wine or an entree, but kept his eye constantly on the
Vandemars and Alain.
Immediately after coffee the guests departed. Before they did so,
however, Raoul introduced his cousin to those of the party most
distinguished by hereditary rank or social position. With these the name
of Rochebriant was too historically famous not to insure respect of its
owner; they welcomed him among them as if he were their brother.
The French duke claimed him as a connection by an alliance in the
fourteenth century; the Russian prince had known the late Marquis, and
trusted that the son would allow him to improve into friendship the
acquaintance he had formed with the father.
Those ceremonials over, Raoul linked his arm in Alain's and said: "I am
not going to release you so soon after we have caught you. You must come
with me to a house in which I at least spend an hour or two every
evening. I am at home there. Bah! I take no refusal. Do not suppose I
carry you off to Bohemia,--a country which, I am sorry to say, Enguerrand
now and then visits, but which is to me as unknown as the mountains of
the moon. The house I speak of is _comme il faut_ to the utmost. It is
that of the Contessa di Rimini,--a charming Italian by marriage, but by
birth and in character _on ne peut plus Francaise_. My mother adores
her."
That dinner at M. Louvier's had already effected a great change in the
mood and temper of Alain de Rochebriant; he felt, as if by magic, the
sense of youth, of rank, of station, which had been so suddenly checked
and stifled, warmed to life within his veins. He should have deemed
himself a boor had he refused the invitation so frankly tendered.
But on reaching the _coupe_ which the brothers kept in common, and seeing
it only held two, he drew back.
"Nay, enter, mon cher," said Raoul, divining the cause of his hesitation;
"Enguerrand has gone on to his club."
CHAPTER V.
"Tell me," said Raoul, when they were in the carriage, "how you came to
know M. Louvier."
"He is my chief mortgagee."
"H'm! that explains it. But you might be in worse hands; the man has a
character for liberality."
"Did your father mention to you my circumstances, and the reason that
brings me to Paris?"
"Since you put the question point-blank, my dear cousin, he did."
"He told you how poor I am, and how keen must be my lifelong struggle to
keep Rochebriant as the home of my race?"
"He told us all that could make us still more respect the Marquis de
Rochebriant, and still more eagerly long to know our cousin and the head
of our house," answered Raoul, with a certain nobleness of tone and
manner.
Alain pressed his kinsman's hand with grateful emotion. "Yet," he said
falteringly, "your father agreed with me that my circumstances would not
allow me to--"
"Bah!" interrupted Raoul, with a gentle laugh; "my father is a very
clever man, doubtless, but he knows only the world of his own day,
nothing of the world of ours. I and Enguerrand will call on you
to-morrow, to take you to my mother, and before doing so, to consult as
to affairs in general. On this last matter Enguerrand is an oracle.
Here we are at the Contessa's."
CHAPTER VI.
The Contessa di Rimini received her visitors in a boudoir furnished with
much apparent simplicity, but a simplicity by no means inexpensive. The
draperies were but of chintz, and the walls covered with the same
material,--a lively pattern, in which the prevalents were rose-colour and
white; but the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the
cabinets or arranged on the shelves, the small knickknacks scattered on
the tables, were costly rarities of art.
The Contessa herself was a woman who had somewhat passed her thirtieth
year,--not strikingly handsome, but exquisitely pretty. "There is," said
a great French writer, "only one way in which a woman can be handsome,
but a hundred thousand ways in which she can be pretty;" and it would be
impossible to reckon up the number of ways in which Adeline di Rimini
carried off the prize in prettiness.
Yet it would be unjust to the personal attractions of the Contessa to
class them all under the word "prettiness." When regarded more
attentively, there was an expression in her countenance that might almost
be called divine, it spoke so unmistakably of a sweet nature and an
untroubled soul. An English poet once described her by repeating the old
lines,
"Her face is like the milky way I' the sky,
--A meeting of gentle lights without a name."
She was not alone; an elderly lady sat on an armchair by the fire,
engaged in knitting; and a man, also elderly, and whose dress proclaimed
him an ecclesiastic, sat at the opposite corner, with a large Angora cat
on his lap.
"I present to you, Madame," said Raoul, "my new-found cousin, the
seventeenth Marquis de Rochebriant, whom I am proud to consider on the
male side the head of our house, representing its eldest branch. Welcome
him for my sake,--in future he will be welcome for his own."
The Contessa replied very graciously to this introduction, and made room
for Alain on the divan from which she had risen.
The old lady looked up from her knitting; the ecclesiastic removed the
cat from his lap. Said the old lady, "I announce myself to M. le
Marquis. I knew his mother well enough to be invited to his christening;
otherwise I have no pretension to the acquaintance of a cavalier _si
beau_, being old, rather deaf, very stupid, exceedingly poor--"
"And," interrupted Raoul, "the woman in all Paris the most adored for
_bonte_, and consulted for _savoir vivre_ by the young cavaliers whom she
deigns to receive. Alain, I present you to Madame de Maury, the widow of
a distinguished author and academician, and the daughter of the brave
Henri de Gerval, who fought for the good cause in La Vendee. I present
you also to the Abbe Vertpre, who has passed his life in the vain
endeavour to make other men as good as himself."
"Base flatterer!" said the Abbe, pinching Raoul's ear with one hand,
while he extended the other to Alain. "Do not let your cousin frighten
you from knowing me, Monsieur le Marquis; when he was my pupil, he so
convinced me of the incorrigibility of perverse human nature, that I now
chiefly address myself to the moral improvement of the brute creation.
Ask the Contessa if I have not achieved a _beau succes_ with her Angora
cat. Three months ago that creature had the two worst propensities of
man,--he was at once savage and mean; he bit, he stole. Does he ever
bite now? No. Does he ever steal? No. Why? I have awakened in that
cat the dormant conscience, and that done, the conscience regulates his
actions; once made aware of the difference between wrong and right, the
cat maintains it unswervingly, as if it were a law of nature. But if,
with prodigious labour, one does awaken conscience in a human sinner, it
has no steady effect on his conduct,--he continues to sin all the same.
Mankind at Paris, Monsieur le Marquis, is divided between two classes,-
one bites and the other steals. Shun both; devote yourself to cats."
The Abbe delivered this oration with a gravity of mien and tone which
made it difficult to guess whether he spoke in sport or in earnest, in
simple playfulness or with latent sarcasm.
But on the brow and in the eye of the priest there was a general
expression of quiet benevolence, which made Alain incline to the belief
that he was only speaking as a pleasant humourist; and the Marquis
replied gayly,--
"Monsieur L'Abbe, admitting the superior virtue of cats when taught by so
intelligent a preceptor, still the business of human life is not
transacted by cats; and since men must deal with men, permit me, as a
preliminary caution, to inquire in which class I must rank yourself. Do
you bite or do you steal?"
This sally, which showed that the Marquis was already shaking off his
provincial reserve, met with great success. Raoul and the Contessa
laughed merrily; Madame de Maury clapped her hands, and cried "Bien!"
The Abbe replied, with unmoved gravity, "Both. I am a priest; it is my
duty to bite the bad and steal from the good, as you will see, Monsieur
le Marquis, if you will glance at this paper."
Here he handed to Alain a memorial on behalf of an afflicted family who
had been burnt out of their home, and reduced from comparative ease to
absolute want. There was a list appended of some twenty subscribers, the
last being the Contessa, fifty francs, and Madame de Maury, five.
"Allow me, Marquis," said the Abbe, "to steal from you. Bless you two-
fold, _mon fils_!" (taking the napoleon Alain extended to him) "first for
your charity; secondly, for the effect of its example upon the heart of
your cousin. Raoul de Vandemar, stand and deliver. Bah! what! only ten
francs."
Raoul made a sign to the Abbe, unperceived by the rest, as he answered,
"Abbe, I should excel your expectations of my career if I always continue
worth half as much as my cousin."
Alain felt to the bottom of his heart the delicate tact of his richer
kinsman in giving less than himself, and the Abbe replied, "Niggard, you
are pardoned. Humility is a more difficult virtue to produce than
charity, and in your case an instance of it is so rare that it merits
encouragement."
The "tea equipage" was now served in what at Paris is called the English
fashion; the Contessa presided over it, the guests gathered round the
table, and the evening passed away in the innocent gayety of a domestic
circle. The talk, if not especially intellectual, was at least not
fashionable. Books were not discussed, neither were scandals; yet
somehow or other it was cheery and animated, like that of a happy family
in a country-house. Alain thought still the better of Raoul that,
Parisian though he was, he could appreciate the charm of an evening so
innocently spent.
On taking leave, the Contessa gave Alain a general invitation to drop in
whenever he was not better engaged.
"I except only the opera nights," said she. "My husband has gone to
Milan on his affairs, and during his absence I do not go to parties; the
opera I cannot resist."
Raoul set Alain down at his lodgings. "Au revoir; tomorrow at one
o'clock expect Enguerrand and myself."
CHAPTER VII.
Raul and Enguerrand called on Alain at the hour fixed. "In the first
place," said Raoul, "I must beg you to accept my mother's regrets that
she cannot receive you to-day. She and the Contessa belong to a society
of ladies formed for visiting the poor, and this is their day; but to-
morrow you must dine with us _en famille_. Now to business. Allow me to
light my cigar while you confide the whole state of affairs to
Enguerrand. Whatever he counsels, I am sure to approve."
Alain, as briefly as he could, stated his circumstances, his mortgages,
and the hopes which his avow had encouraged him to place in the friendly
disposition of M. Louvier. When he had concluded, Enguerrand mused for a
few moments before replying. At last he said, "Will you trust me to call
on Louvier on your behalf? I shall but inquire if he is inclined to take
on himself the other mortgages; and if so, on what terms. Our
relationship gives me the excuse for my interference; and to say truth, I
have had much familiar intercourse with the man. I too am a speculator,
and have often profited by Louvier's advice. You may ask what can be his
object in serving me; he can gain nothing by it. To this I answer, the
key to his good offices is in his character. Audacious though he be as a
speculator, he is wonderfully prudent as a politician. This belle France
of ours is like a stage tumbler; one can never be sure whether it will
stand on its head or its feet. Louvier very wisely wishes to feel
himself safe whatever party comes uppermost. He has no faith in the
duration of the Empire; and as, at all events, the Empire will not
confiscate his millions, he takes no trouble in conciliating
Imperialists. But on the principle which induces certain savages to
worship the devil and neglect the _bon Dieu_, because the devil is
spiteful and the bon Dieu is too beneficent to injure them, Louvier, at
heart detesting as well as dreading a republic, lays himself out to
secure friends with the Republicans of all classes, and pretends to
espouse their cause; next to them, he is very conciliatory to the
Orleanists; lastly, though he thinks the Legitimists have no chance, he
desires to keep well with the nobles of that party, because they exercise
a considerable influence over that sphere of opinion which belongs to
fashion,--for fashion is never powerless in Paris. Raoul and myself are
no mean authorities in salons and clubs, and a good word from us is worth
having.
"Besides, Louvier himself in his youth set up for a dandy; and that
deposed ruler of dandies, our unfortunate kinsman, Victor de Mauleon,
shed some of his own radiance on the money-lender's son. But when
Victor's star was eclipsed, Louvier ceased to gleam. The dandies cut
him. In his heart he exults that the dandies now throng to his
_soirees_.
"Bref, the millionaire is especially civil to me,--the more so as I know
intimately two or three eminent journalists; and Louvier takes pains to
plant garrisons in the press. I trust I have explained the grounds on
which I may be a better diplomatist to employ than your _avoue_; and with
your leave I will go to Louvier at once."
"Let him go," said Raoul. "Enguerrand never fails in anything he
undertakes; especially," he added, with a smile half sad, half tender,
"when one wishes to replenish one's purse."
"I too gratefully grant such an ambassador all powers to treat," said
Alain. "I am only ashamed to consign to him a post so much beneath his
genius," and "his birth" he was about to add, but wisely checked himself.
Enguerrand said, shrugging his shoulders, "You can't do me a greater
kindness than by setting my wits at work. I fall a martyr to _ennui_
when I am not in action;" he said, and was gone.
"It makes me very melancholy at times," said Raoul, flinging away the end
of his cigar, "to think that a man so clever and so energetic as
Enguerrand should be as much excluded from the service of his country as
if he were an Iroquois Indian. He would have made a great diplomatist."
"Alas!" replied Alain, with a sigh, "I begin to doubt whether we
Legitimists are justified in maintaining a useless loyalty to a sovereign
who renders us morally exiles in the land of our birth."
"I have no doubt on the subject," said Raoul. "We are not justified on
the score of policy, but we have no option at present on the score of
honour. We should gain so much for ourselves if we adopted the State
livery and took the State wages that no man would esteem us as patriots;
we should only be despised as apostates. So long as Henry V. lives, and
does not resign his claim, we cannot be active citizens; we must be
mournful lookers-on. But what matters it? We nobles of the old race are
becoming rapidly extinct. Under any form of government likely to be
established in France we are equally doomed. The French people, aiming
at an impossible equality, will never again tolerate a race of
gentilshommes. They cannot prevent, without destroying commerce and
capital altogether, a quick succession of men of the day, who form
nominal aristocracies much more opposed to equality than any hereditary
class of nobles; but they refuse these fleeting substitutes of born
patricians all permanent stake in the country, since whatever estate they
buy must be subdivided at their death my poor Alain, you are making it
the one ambition of your life to preserve to your posterity the home and
lands of your forefathers. How is that possible, even supposing you
could redeem the mortgages? You marry some day; you have children, and
Rochebriant must then be sold to pay for their separate portions. How
this condition of things, while rendering us so ineffective to perform
the normal functions of a noblesse in public life, affects us in private
life, may be easily conceived.
"Condemned to a career of pleasure and frivolity, we can scarcely escape
from the contagion of extravagant luxury which forms the vice of the
time. With grand names to keep up, and small fortunes whereon to keep
them, we readily incur embarrassment and debt. Then neediness conquers
pride. We cannot be great merchants, but we can be small gamblers on the
Bourse, or, thanks to the Credit Mobilier, imitate a cabinet minister,
and keep a shop under another name. Perhaps you have heard that
Enguerrand and I keep a shop. Pray, buy your gloves there. Strange fate
for men whose ancestors fought in the first Crusade--_mais que voulez-
vous_?"
"I was told of the shop," said Alain; "but the moment I knew you I
disbelieved the story."
"Quite true. Shall I confide to you why we resorted to that means of
finding ourselves in pocket-money? My father gives us rooms in his
hotel; the use of his table, which we do not much profit by; and an
allowance, on which we could not live as young men of our class live at
Paris. Enguerrand had his means of spending pocket-money, I mine; but it
came to the same thing,--the pockets were emptied. We incurred debts.
Two years ago my father straitened himself to pay them, saying, 'The next
time you come to me with debts, however small, you must pay them
yourselves, or you must marry, and leave it to me to find you wives.'
This threat appalled us both. A month afterwards, Enguerrand made a
lucky hit at the Bourse, and proposed to invest the proceeds in a shop.
I resisted as long as I could; but Enguerrand triumphed over me, as he
always does. He found an excellent deputy in a _bonne_ who had nursed us
in childhood, and married a journeyman perfumer who understands the
business. It answers well; we are not in debt, and we have preserved our
freedom."
After these confessions Raoul went away, and Alain fell into a mournful
revery, from which he was roused by a loud ring at his bell. He opened
the door, and beheld M. Louvier. The burly financier was much out of
breath after making so steep an ascent. It was in gasps that he
muttered, "Bon jour; excuse me if I derange you." Then entering and
seating himself on a chair, he took some minutes to recover speech,
rolling his eyes staringly round the meagre, unluxurious room, and then
concentrating their gaze upon its occupier.
"_Peste_, my dear Marquis!" he said at last, "I hope the next time I
visit you the ascent may be less arduous. One would think you were in
training to ascend the Himalaya."
The haughty noble writhed under this jest, and the spirit inborn in his
order spoke in his answer.
"I am accustomed to dwell on heights, Monsieur Louvier; the castle of
Rochebriant is not on a level with the town." An angry gleam shot out
from the eyes of the millionaire, but there was no other sign of
displeasure in his answer. "_Bien dit, mon cher_; how you remind me of
your father! Now, give me leave to speak on affairs. I have seen your
cousin Enguerrand de Vandemar. _Homme de moyens_, though _joli garcon_.
He proposed that you should call on me. I said 'no' to the _cher petit_
Enguerrand,--a visit from me was due to you. To cut matters short, M.
Gandrin has allowed me to look into your papers. I was disposed to serve
you from the first; I am still more disposed to serve you now. I
undertake to pay off all your other mortgages, and become sole mortgagee,
and on terms that I have jotted down on this paper, and which I hope will
content you."
He placed a paper in Alain's hand, and took out a box, from which he
extracted a jujube, placed it in his mouth, folded his hands, and
reclined back in his chair, with his eyes half closed, as if exhausted
alike by his ascent and his generosity.
In effect, the terms were unexpectedly liberal. The reduced interest on
the mortgages would leave the Marquis an income of L1,000 a year instead
of L400. Louvier proposed to take on himself the legal cost of transfer,
and to pay to the Marquis 25,000 francs, on the completion of the deed,
as a bonus. The mortgage did not exempt the building-land, as Hebert
desired. In all else it was singularly advantageous, and Alain could but
feel a thrill of grateful delight at an offer by which his stinted income
was raised to comparative affluence.
"Well, Marquis," said Louvier, "what does the castle say to the town?"
"Monsieur Louvier," answered Alain, extending his hand with cordial
eagerness, "accept my sincere apologies for the indiscretion of my
metaphor. Poverty is proverbially sensitive to jests on it. I owe it to
you if I cannot hereafter make that excuse for any words of mine that may
displease you. The terms you propose are most liberal, and I close with
them at once."
"_Bon_," said Louvier, shaking vehemently the hand offered to him; "I
will take the paper to Gandrin, and instruct him accordingly. And now,
may I attach a condition to the agreement which is not put down on
paper? It may have surprised you perhaps that I should propose a
gratuity of 25,000 francs on completion of the contract. It is a droll
thing to do, and not in the ordinary way of business, therefore I must
explain. Marquis, pardon the liberty I take, but you have inspired me
with an interest in your future. With your birth, connections, and
figure you should push your way in the world far and fast. But you
can't do so in a province. You must find your opening at Paris. I wish
you to spend a year in the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a
nouveau riche, but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting
you all the social advantages that belong to it. These 25,000 francs,
in addition to your improved income, will enable you to gratify my wish
in this respect. Spend the money in Paris; you will want every sou of
it in the course of the year. It will be money well spent. Take my
advice, _cher Marquis. Au plaisir_."
The financier bowed himself out. The young Marquis forgot all the
mournful reflections with which Raoul's conversation had inspired him.
He gave a new touch to his toilette, and sallied forth with the air of a
man on whose morning of life a sun heretofore clouded has burst forth and
bathed the landscape in its light.
CHAPTER VIII.
Since the evening spent at the Savarins', Graham had seen no more of
Isaura. He had avoided all chance of seeing her; in fact, the jealousy
with which he had viewed her manner towards Rameau, and the angry amaze
with which he had heard her proclaim her friendship for Madame de
Grantmesnil, served to strengthen the grave and secret reasons which made
him desire to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet unpledged. But
alas! the heart was enslaved already. It was under the most fatal of all
spells,--first love conceived at first sight. He was wretched; and in
his wretchedness his resolves became involuntarily weakened. He found
himself making excuses for the beloved. What cause had he, after all,
for that jealousy of the young poet which had so offended him; and if in
her youth and inexperience Isaura had made her dearest friend of a great
writer by whose genius she might be dazzled, and of whose opinions she
might scarcely be aware, was it a crime that necessitated her eternal
banishment from the reverence which belongs to all manly love? Certainly
he found no satisfactory answers to such self-questionings. And then
those grave reasons known only to himself, and never to be confided to
another--why he should yet reserve his hand unpledged--were not so
imperative as to admit of no compromise. They might entail a sacrifice,
and not a small one to a man of Graham's views and ambition. But what is
love if it can think any sacrifice, short of duty and honour, too great
to offer up unknown uncomprehended, to the one beloved? Still, while
thus softened in his feelings towards Isaura, he became, perhaps in
consequence of such softening, more and more restlessly impatient to
fulfil the object for which he had come to Paris, the great step towards
which was the discovery of the undiscoverable Louise Duval.
He had written more than once to M. Renard since the interview with that
functionary already recorded, demanding whether Renard had not made some
progress in the research on which he was employed, and had received short
unsatisfactory replies preaching patience and implying hope.
The plain truth, however, was that M. Renard had taken no further pains
in the matter. He considered it utter waste of time and thought to
attempt a discovery to which the traces were so faint and so obsolete.
If the discovery were effected, it must be by one of those chances which
occur without labour or forethought of our own. He trusted only to such
a chance in continuing the charge he had undertaken. But during the last
day or two Graham had become yet more impatient than before, and
peremptorily requested another visit from this dilatory confidant.
In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and though naturally
willing, if possible, to retain a client unusually generous, yet being on
the whole an honest member of his profession, and feeling it to be
somewhat unfair to accept large remuneration for doing nothing, M. Renard
said frankly, "Monsieur, this affair is beyond me; the keenest agent of
our police could make nothing of it. Unless you can tell me more than
you have done, I am utterly without a clew. I resign, therefore, the
task with which you honoured me, willing to resume it again if you can
give me information that could render me of use."
"What sort of information?"
"At least the names of some of the lady's relations who may yet be
living."
"But it strikes me that, if I could get at that piece of knowledge, I
should not require the services of the police. The relations would tell
me what had become of Louise Duval quite as readily as they would tell a
police agent."
"Quite true, Monsieur. It would really be picking your pockets if I did
not at once retire from your service. Nay, Monsieur, pardon me, no
further payments; I have already accepted too much. Your most obedient
servant."
Graham, left alone, fell into a very gloomy revery. He could not but be
sensible of the difficulties in the way of the object which had brought
him to Paris, with somewhat sanguine expectations of success founded on a
belief in the omniscience of the Parisian police, which is only to be
justified when they have to deal with a murderess or a political
incendiary. But the name of Louise Duval is about as common in France as
that of Mary Smith in England; and the English reader may judge what
would be the likely result of inquiring through the ablest of our
detectives after some Mary Smith of whom you could give little more
information than that she was the daughter of a drawing-master who had
died twenty years ago, that it was about fifteen years since anything had
been heard of her, that you could not say if through marriage or for
other causes she had changed her name or not, and you had reasons for
declining resort to public advertisements. In the course of inquiry so
instituted, the probability would be that you might hear of a great many
Mary Smiths, in the pursuit of whom your employee would lose all sight
and scent of the one Mary Smith for whom the chase was instituted.
In the midst of Graham's despairing reflections his laquais announced M.
Frederic Lemercier.
"_Cher_ Grarm-Varn. A thousand pardons if I disturb you at this late
hour of the evening; but you remember the request you made me when you
first arrived in Paris this season?"
"Of course I do,--in case you should ever chance in your wide round of
acquaintance to fall in with a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval of about the
age of forty, or a year or so less, to let me know; and you did fall in
with two ladies of that name, but they were not the right one, not the
person whom my friend begged me to discover; both much too young."
"_Eh bien, mon cher_. If you will come with me to the _bal champetre_ in
the Champs Elysees to-night, I can show you a third Madame Duval,--her
Christian name is Louise, too, of the age you mention,--though she does
her best to look younger, and is still very handsome. You said your
Duval was handsome. It was only last evening that I met this lady at a
_soiree_ given by Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, _coryphee distinguee_, in
love with young Rameau."
"In love with young Rameau? I am very glad to hear it. He returns the
love?"
"I suppose so. He seems very proud of it. But apropos of Madame Duval,
she has been long absent from Paris, just returned, and looking out for
conquests. She says she has a great penchant for the English; promises
me to be at this ball. Come."
"Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier. I am at your service."
CHAPTER IX.
The _bal champetre_ was gay and brilliant, as such festal scenes are at
Paris. A lovely night in the midst of May, lamps below and stars above;
the society mixed, of course. Evidently, when Graham has singled out
Frederic Lemercier from all his acquaintances at Paris to conjoin with
the official aid of M. Renard in search of the mysterious lady, he had
conjectured the probability that she might be found in the Bohemian world
so familiar to Frederic; if not as an inhabitant, at least as an
explorer. Bohemia was largely represented at the _bal champetre_, but
not without a fair sprinkling of what we call the "respectable classes,"
especially English and Americans, who brought their wives there to take
care of them. Frenchmen, not needing such care, prudently left their
wives at home. Among the Frenchmen of station were the Comte de Passy
and the Vicomte de Breze.
On first entering the gardens, Graham's eye was attracted and dazzled by
a brilliant form. It was standing under a festoon of flowers extended
from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite shone full upon the face,--the
face of a girl in all the freshness of youth. If the freshness owed
anything to art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature.
The beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant; and yet
one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of deep mournfulness.
She was surrounded by a group of young men, and the ring of her laugh
jarred upon Graham's ear. He pressed Frederic's arm, and directing his
attention to the girl, asked who she was.
"Who? Don't you know? That is Julie Caumartin. A little while ago her
equipage was the most admired in the Bois, and great ladies condescended
to copy her dress or her coiffure; but she has lost her splendour, and
dismissed the rich admirer who supplied the fuel for its blaze, since
she fell in love with Gustave Rameau. Doubtless she is expecting him
to-night. You ought to know her; shall I present you?"
"No," answered Graham, with a compassionate expression in his manly face.
"So young; seemingly so gay. How I pity her!"
"What! for throwing herself away on Rameau? True. There is a great deal
of good in that girl's nature, if she had been properly trained. Rameau
wrote a pretty poem on her which turned her head and won her heart, in
which she is styled the 'Ondine of Paris,'--a nymph-like type of Paris
itself."
"Vanishing type, like her namesake; born of the spray, and vanishing soon
into the deep," said Graham. "Pray go and look for the Duval; you will
find me seated yonder."
Graham passed into a retired alley, and threw himself on a solitary
bench, while Lemercier went in search of Madame Duval. In a few minutes
the Frenchman reappeared. By his side was a lady well dressed, and as
she passed under the lamps Graham perceived that, though of a certain
age, she was undeniably handsome. His heart beat more quickly. Surely
this was the Louise Duval he sought.
He rose from his seat, and was presented in due form to the lady, with
whom Frederic then discreetly left him. "M. Lemercier tells me that you
think that we were once acquainted with each other."
"Nay, Madame; I should not fail to recognize you were that the case. A
friend of mine had the honour of knowing a lady of your name; and should
I be fortunate enough to meet that lady, I am charged with a commission
that may not be unwelcome to her. M. Lemercier tells me your nom de
bapteme is Louise."
"Louise Corinne, Monsieur."
"And I presume that Duval is the name you take from your parents?"
"No; my father's name was Bernard. I married, when I was a mere child,
M. Duval, in the wine trade at Bordeaux."
"Ah, indeed!" said Graham, much disappointed, but looking at her with a
keen, searching eye, which she met with a decided frankness. Evidently,
in his judgment, she was speaking the truth.
"You know English, I think, Madame," he resumed, addressing her in that
language.
"A leetle; speak un peu."
"Only a little?"
Madame Duval looked puzzled, and replied in French, with a laugh, "Is it
that you were told that I spoke English by your countryman, Milord Sare
Boulby? _Petit scelerat_, I hope he is well. He sends you a commission
for me,--so he ought; he behaved to me like a monster."
"Alas! I know nothing of Milord Sir Boulby. Were you never in England
yourself?"
"Never," with a coquettish side-glance; "I should like so much to go. I
have a foible for the English in spite of that _vilain petit Boulby_.
Who is it gave you the commission for me? Ha! I guess, le Capitaine
Nelton."
"No. What year, Madame, if not impertinent, were you at Aix-la-
Chapelle?"
"You mean Baden? I was there seven years ago, when I met le Capitaine
Nelton, _bel homme aux cheveux rouges_."
"But you have been at Aix?"
"Never."
"I have, then, been mistaken, Madame, and have only to offer my most
humble apologies."
"But perhaps you will favour me with a visit, and we may on further
conversation find that you are not mistaken. I can't stay now, for I am
engaged to dance with the Belgian of whom, no doubt, M. Lemercier has
told you."
"No, Madame, he has not."
"Well, then, he will tell you. The Belgian is very jealous; but I am
always at home between three and four; this is my card."
Graham eagerly took the card, and exclaimed, "Is this you're your own
handwriting, Madame?"
"Yes, indeed."
"_Tres belle ecriture_," said Graham, and receded with a ceremonious bow.
"Anything so unlike her handwriting! Another disappointment," muttered
the Englishman as the lady went back to the ball.
A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, who was talking with De
Passy and De Breze.
"Well," said Lemercier, when his eye rested on Graham, "I hit the right
nail on the head this time, eh?"
Graham shook his head.
"What! is she not the right Louise Duval?"
"Certainly not."
The Count de Passy overheard the name, and turned. "Louise Duval," he
said; "does Monsieur Vane know a Louise Duval?"
"No; but a friend asked me to inquire after a lady of that name whom he
had met many years ago at Paris." The Count mused a moment, and said,
"Is it possible that your friend knew the family De Mauleon?"
"I really can't say. What then?"
"The old Vicomte de Mauleon was one of my most intimate associates. In
fact, our houses are connected. And he was extremely grieved, poor man,
when his daughter Louise married her drawing-master, Auguste Duval."
"Her drawing-master, Auguste Duval? Pray say on. I think the Louise
Duval my friend knew must have been her daughter. She was the only child
of a drawing-master or artist named Auguste Duval, and probably enough
her Christian name would have been derived from her mother. A
Mademoiselle de Mauleon, then, married M. Auguste Duval?"
"Yes; the old Vicomte had espoused _en premieres noces_ Mademoiselle
Camille de Chavigny, a lady of birth equal to his own; had by her one
daughter, Louise. I recollect her well,--a plain girl, with a high nose
and a sour expression. She was just of age when the first Vicomtesse
died, and by the marriage settlement she succeeded at once to her
mother's fortune, which was not large. The Vicomte was, however, so poor
that the loss of that income was no trifle to him. Though much past
fifty, he was still very handsome. Men of that generation did not age
soon, Monsieur," said the Count, expanding his fine chest and laughing
exultingly.
"He married, _en secondes noces_, a lady of still higher birth than the
first, and with a much larger _dot_. Louise was indignant at this, hated
her stepmother; and when a son was born by the second marriage she left
the paternal roof, went to reside with an old female relative near the
Luxembourg, and there married this drawing-master. Her father and the
family did all they could to prevent it; but in these democratic days a
woman who has attained her majority can, if she persist in her
determination, marry to please herself and disgrace her ancestors. After
that _mesalliance_ her father never would see her again. I tried in vain
to soften him. All his parental affections settled on his handsome
Victor.
"Ah! you are too young to have known Victor de Mauleon during his short
reign at Paris, as _roi des viveurs_."
"Yes, he was before my time; but I have heard of him as a young man of
great fashion; said to be very clever, a duellist, and a sort of Don
Juan."
"Exactly."
"And then I remember vaguely to have heard that he committed, or was said
to have committed, some villanous action connected with a great lady's
jewels, and to have left Paris in consequence."
"Ah, yes; a sad scrape. At that time there was a political crisis; we
were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed. But I am
sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny. However, it
is quite true that he left Paris, and I don't know what has become of him
since." Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not been
listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter with
Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance.
"De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear Victor de
Mauleon?--you knew him."
"Knew him? I should think so. Who could be in the great world and not
know _le beau_ Victor? No; after he vanished I never heard more of him;
doubtless long since dead. A good-hearted fellow in spite of all his
sins."
"My dear Monsieur de Breze, did you know his half-sister?" asked Graham,
--"a Madame Duval?"
"No. I never heard he had a half-sister. Halt there; I recollect that I
met Victor once, in the garden at Versailles, walking arm-in-arm with the
most beautiful girl I ever saw; and when I complimented him afterwards at
the Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied very gravely that the
young lady was his niece. 'Niece!' said I; 'why, there can't be more
than five or six years between you.' 'About that, I suppose,' said he;
'my half-sister, her mother, was more than twenty years older than I at
the time of my birth.' I doubted the truth of his story at the time; but
since you say he really had a sister, my doubt wronged him."
"Have you never seen that same young lady since?"
"Never."
"How many years ago was this?"
"Let me see, about twenty or twenty-one years ago. How time flies!"
Graham still continued to question, but could learn no further
particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking
up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that
German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one
laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted
joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound
of which had then saddened him. Looking towards the quarter from which
it came, he again saw the "Ondine of Paris." She was not now the centre
of a group. She had just found Gustave Rameau, and was clinging to his
arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a
child's; and so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary lamplit
alley, till lost to the Englishman's lingering gaze.
CHAPTER X.
The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard. "Well," he cried, when
that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him, "chance has favoured
me."
"I always counted on chance, Monsieur. Chance has more wit in its little
finger than the Paris police in its whole body."
"I have ascertained the relations, on the mother's side, of Louise Duval,
and the only question is how to get at them." Here Graham related what
he had heard, and ended by saying, "This Victor de Mauleon is therefore
my Louise Duval's uncle. He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in the
year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight of her in
Paris; and surely he must know what became of her afterwards."
"Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the discovery of Victor
de Mauleon. You seem not to know the particulars of that story about the
jewels which brought him into some connection with the police, and
resulted in his disappearance from Paris."
"No; tell me the particulars."
"Victor de Mauleon was heir to some 60,000 or 70,000 francs a year,
chiefly on the mother's side; for his father, though the representative
of one of the most ancient houses in Normandy, was very poor, having
little of his own except the emoluments of an appointment in the Court of
Louis Philippe.
"But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into that
inheritance, he very largely forestalled it. His tastes were
magnificent. He took to 'sport,' kept a famous stud, was a great
favourite with the English, and spoke their language fluently. Indeed he
was considered very accomplished, and of considerable intellectual
powers. It was generally said that some day or other, when he had sown
his wild oats, he would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man.
Altogether he was a very strong creature. That was a very strong age
under Louis Philippe. The _viveurs_ of Paris were fine types for the
heroes of Dumas and Sue,--full of animal life and spirits. Victor de
Mauleon was a romance of Dumas, incarnated."
"Monsieur Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to your
taste in polite literature."
"Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to my humble
eminence if he be not something else than a professional. He must study
mankind wherever they are described, even in _les romans_. To return to
Victor de Mauleon. Though he was a 'sportman,' a gambler, a Don Juan, a
duel list, nothing was ever said against his honour. On the contrary, on
matters of honour he was a received oracle; and even though he had fought
several duels (that was the age of duels), and was reported without a
superior, almost without an equal, in either weapon, the sword or the
pistol, he is said never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to
have so used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely
to wound, an antagonist.
"I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect; for it was
much talked of at the time. One of your countrymen, who had never
handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something
M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and
called him out. Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his
pistol, not in the air--that might have been an affront--but so as to be
wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot at, and when missed,
said, 'Excuse the susceptibility of a Frenchman loath to believe that his
countryman can be beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one
gentleman can make to another for having forgotten the respect due to one
of the most renowned of your national heroes.' The Englishman's name was
Vane. Could it have been your father?"
"Very probably; just like my father to call out any man who insulted the
honour of his country, as represented by its men. I hope the two
combatants became friends?"
"That I never heard; the duel was over; there my story ends."
"Pray go on."
"One day--it was in the midst of political events which would have
silenced most subjects of private gossip--the _beau monde_ was startled
by the news that the Vicomte (he was then, by his father's death,
Vicomte) de Mauleon had been given into the custody of the police on the
charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a
distinguished foreigner). It seems that some days before this event, the
Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had
resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of
setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her
birthday. He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron
safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more
valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace. Imagine his
dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it
recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had
some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a
Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at that
time in delicate health; and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell on
the servants, especially on the _femme de chambre_, who was in great
favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to
put the servants on their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the
matter in the hands of the famous --------, who was then the pride and
ornament of the Parisian police. And the very night afterwards the
Vicomte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the
jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at
least a duplicate key, found in his possession. I should observe that
M. de Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper
rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite. As soon as
this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next
morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before
scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the medium
of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which
he was accused. We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most
startling reactions of feeling. The men we adore one day we execrate the
next. The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one bestows
on a hero to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty
larcener. Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into
its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan. However, one
compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society for
the grave injuries he had done it. Society would attend his trial,
witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his face
when he was sentenced to the, galleys. But, Monsieur, this wretch
completed the measure of his iniquities. He was not tried at all. The
Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his
lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's
complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had
confessed."
"What did the Vicomte confess? You omitted to state that."
"The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane
passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it,
met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the
same house to admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her dressing-room
by means of a key which he had procured, made from an impression of the
key-hole taken in wax.
"No evidence in support of any other charge against the Vicomte was
forthcoming,--nothing, in short, beyond the _infraction du domicile_
caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no
prosecution. The law, therefore, could have little to say against him.
But society was more rigid; and exceedingly angry to find that a man who
had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted
on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the meaner, though not
perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the
two offences. I presume that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a
dilemma from which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he
left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared. The sale of his stud
and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for I will do him the
justice to say that they were paid."
"But though the Vicomte de Mauleon has disappeared, he must have left
relations at Paris, who would perhaps know what has become of him and of
his niece."
"I doubt it. He had no very near relations. The nearest was an old
_celibataire_ of the same name, from whom he had some expectations, but
who died shortly after this esclandre, and did not name the Vicomte in
his will. M. Victor had numerous connections among the highest families,
the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Passys, Beauvilliers; but they
are not likely to have retained any connection with a ruined _vaurien_,
and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a drawing-master.
But now you have given me a clew, I will try to follow it up. We must
find the Vicomte, and I am not without hope of doing so. Pardon me if I
decline to say more at present. I would not raise false expectations;
but in a week or two I will have the honour to call again upon Monsieur."
"Wait one instant. You have really a hope of discovering M. de Mauleon?"
"Yes. I cannot say more at present."
M. Renard departed. Still that hope, however faint it might prove,
served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load
had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the
thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the
commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring
Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning desire to see
more of her, to understand her better. Faded into thin air was the vague
jealousy of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreasonably conceived; he
felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the "Ondine of Paris"
claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope to win an Isaura. He even
forgot the friendship with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond,
which a little while ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offence. He
remembered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent; only
the sweet voice, which had for the first time breathed music into his own
soul; only the gentle hand, whose touch had for the first time sent
through his veins the thrill which distinguishes from all her sex the
woman whom we love. He went forth elated and joyous, and took his way to
Isaura's villa. As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he
passed seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own
delight. Perhaps it was rather the reverse: his own silent delight
sympathized with all delight in awakening Nature. The lover seeking
reconciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle has unreasonably
estranged him, in a cloudless day of May,--if he be not happy enough to
feel a brotherhood in all things happy,--a leaf in bloom, a bird in
song,--then indeed he may call himself lover, but he does not know what
is love.
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