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Title: The Parisians, Book 5.
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7741]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B5, LYTTON ***
Produced by David Widger
THE PARISIANS
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
The next day at noon M. Louvier was closeted in his study with M.
Gandrin.
"Yes," cried Louvier, "I have behaved very handsomely to the _beau
Marquis_. No one can say to the contrary."
"True," answered Gandrin. "Besides the easy terms for the transfer of
the mortgages, that free bonus of one thousand louis is a generous and
noble act of munificence."
"Is it not! and my youngster has already begun to do with it as I meant
and expected. He has taken a fine apartment; he has bought a coupe and
horses; he has placed himself in the hands of the Chevalier de
Finisterre; he is entered at the Jockey Club. Parbleu, the one thousand
louis will be soon gone."
"And then?"
"And then! why, he will have tasted the sweets of Parisian life; he will
think with disgust of the _vieux manoir_. He can borrow no more. I must
remain sole mortgagee, and I shall behave as handsomely in buying his
estates as I have behaved in increasing his income."
Here a clerk entered and said that a monsieur wished to see M. Louvier
for a few minutes in private, on urgent business.
"Tell him to send in his card."
"He has declined to do so, but states that he has already the honour of
your acquaintance."
"A writer in the press, perhaps; or is he an artist?"
"I have not seen him before, Monsieur, but he has the air _tres comme il
faut_."
"Well, you may admit him. I will not detain you longer, my dear Gandrin.
My homages to Madame. Bonjour."
Louvier bowed out M. Gandrin, and then rubbed his hands complacently. He
was in high spirits. "Aha, my dear Marquis, thou art in my trap now.
Would it were thy father instead," he muttered chucklingly, and then took
his stand on the hearth, with his back to the fireless grate. There
entered a gentleman exceedingly well dressed,--dressed according to the
fashion, but still as became one of ripe middle age, not desiring to pass
for younger than he was.
He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his air and his movements; not
slight of frame, but spare enough to disguise the strength and endurance
which belong to sinews and thews of steel, freed from all superfluous
flesh, broad across the shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had
in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl; it was now clipped short,
and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of
its colour and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore neither beard nor
mustache, and the darkness of his hair was contrasted by a clear fairness
of complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, and eyes of that rare
gray tint which has in it no shade of blue,--peculiar eyes, which give a
very distinct character to the face. The man must have been singularly
handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in his forty-
seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind of
comeliness. The form of the features and the contour of the face were
those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty
would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier
days; but the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care and sorrow
between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed lengthened,
and the features had become more salient.
Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had seen him
before, and could not remember where or when; but at all events he
recognized at the first glance a man of rank and of the great world.
"Pray be seated, Monsieur," he said, resuming his own easy-chair.
The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend of his head,
drew his chair near to the financier's, stretched his limbs with the ease
of a man making himself at home, and fixing his calm bright eyes quietly
on Louvier, said, with a bland smile,--
"My dear old friend, do you not remember me? You are less altered than I
am."
Louvier stared hard and long; his lip fell, his cheek paled, and at last
he faltered out, "Ciel! is it possible! Victor, the Vicomte de Mauleon?"
"At your service, my dear Louvier."
There was a pause; the financier was evidently confused and embarrassed,
and not less evidently the visit of the "dear old friend" was unwelcome.
"Vicomte," he said at last, "this is indeed a surprise; I thought you had
long since quitted Paris for good."
"'L'homme propose,' etc. I have returned, and mean to enjoy the rest of
my days in the metropolis of the Graces and the Pleasures. What though
we are not so young as we were, Louvier,--we have more vigour in us than
the new generation; and though it may no longer befit us to renew the gay
carousals of old, life has still excitements as vivid for the social
temperament and ambitious mind. Yes, the _roi des viveurs_ returns to
Paris for a more solid throne than he filled before."
"Are you serious?"
"As serious as the French gayety will permit one to be."
"Alas, Monsieur le Vicomte! can you flatter yourself that you will regain
the society you have quitted, and the name you have--"
Louvier stopped short; something in the Vicomte's eye daunted him.
"The name I have laid aside for convenience of travel. Princes travel
incognito, and so may a simple _gentilhomme_. 'Regain my place in
society,' say you? Yes; it is not that which troubles me."
"What does?"
"The consideration whether on a very modest income I can be sufficiently
esteemed for myself to render that society more pleasant than ever. Ah,
_mon cher_! why recoil? why so frightened? Do you think I am going to
ask you for money? Have I ever done so since we parted; and did I ever
do so before without repaying you? Bah! you _roturiers_ are worse than
the Bourbons. You never learn or unlearn. 'Fors non mutat genus.'"
The magnificent _millionaire_, accustomed to the homage of grandees from
the Faubourg and _lions_ from the Chaussee d'Antin, rose to his feet in
superb wrath, less at the taunting words than at the haughtiness of mien
with which they were uttered.
"Monsieur, I cannot permit you to address me in that tone. Do you mean
to insult me?"
"Certainly not. Tranquillize your nerves, reseat yourself, and listen,--
reseat yourself, I say."
Louvier dropped into his chair.
"No," resumed the Vicomte, politely, "I do not come here to insult you,
neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I
ask Monsieur Louvier what has become of Louise Duval?"
"Louise Duval! I know nothing about her."
"Possibly not now; but you did know her well enough, when we two parted,
to be a candidate for her hand. You did know her enough to solicit my
good offices in promotion of your suit; and you did, at my advice, quit
Paris to seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle."
"What! have you, Monsieur de Mauleon, not heard news of her since that
day?"
"I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine. You went to
Aix-la-Chapelle; you saw Louise Duval, at my urgent request she
condescended to accept your hand."
"No, Monsieur de Mauleon, she did not accept my hand. I did not even see
her. The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it,--not
alone,--left it with her lover."
"Her lover! You do not mean the miserable Englishman who--"
"No Englishman," interrupted Louvier, fiercely. "Enough that the step
she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself. I have never
even sought to hear of her since that day. Vicomte, that woman was the
one love of my life. I loved her, as you must have known, to folly, to
madness. And how was my love requited? Ah! you open a very deep wound,
Monsieur le Vicomte."
"Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen and
so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters
belonging to a past life so remote from the present. For whom did Louise
forsake you?"
"It matters not; he is dead."
"I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you."
"I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass."
"Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer? So proud as she was, I
can scarcely believe it."
"Oh, it was not with a _roturier_ she fled; her pride would not have
allowed that."
"He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue to live with him?"
"That question, at least, I can answer; for though I lost all trace of
her life, his life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very
few months after she fled he was enchained to another. Let us talk of
her no more."
"Ay, ay," muttered De Mauleon, "some disgraces are not to be redeemed,
and therefore not to be discussed. To me, though a relation, Louise
Duval was but little known, and after what you tell me, I cannot dispute
your right to say, 'Talk of her no more.' You loved her, and she wronged
you. My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed afresh."
These words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness; they softened
Louvier towards the speaker.
After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his brow, as if to
dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive thought; then with a
changed expression of countenance,--an expression frank and winning,--
with voice and with manner in which no vestige remained of the irony or
the haughtiness with which he had resented the frigidity of his
reception, he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier's, and resumed: "Our
situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we two became friends.
I then could say, 'Open sesame' to whatever recesses, forbidden to vulgar
footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by the hand might wish to explore.
In those days my heart was warm; I liked you, Louvier,--honestly liked
you. I think our personal acquaintance commenced in some gay gathering
of young viveurs, whose behaviour to you offended my sense of good
breeding?"
Louvier coloured and muttered inaudibly. De Mauleon continued: "I felt it
due to you to rebuke their incivilities, the more so as you evinced on
that occasion your own superiority in sense and temper, permit me to add,
with no lack of becoming spirit."
Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified.
"From that day we became familiar. If any obligation to me were
incurred, you would not have been slow to return it. On more than one
occasion when I was rapidly wasting money--and money was plentiful with
you--you generously offered me your purse. On more than one occasion I
accepted the offer; and you would never have asked repayment if I had not
insisted on repaying. I was no less grateful for your aid." Louvier
made a movement as if to extend his hand, but he checked the impulse.
"There was another attraction which drew me towards you. I recognized in
your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I
imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the
_freluquets_ and _lions_ who were my more habitual associates. Do you
not remember some hours of serious talk we have had together when we
lounged in the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the garden of the
Palais Royal?--hours when we forgot that those were the haunts of idlers,
and thought of the stormy actions affecting the history of the world of
which they had been the scene; hours when I confided to you, as I
confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my
follies in the present, alas! were hourly tending to frustrate."
"Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the
Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,--it was on the Pont de la Concorde,
on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you
said, pointing towards the walls of the _Corps Legislatif_, 'Paul, when I
once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First
Minister of France?'"
"Did I say so?--possibly; but I was too young then for admission to the
Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle
loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass over these circumstances. You
became in love with Louise. I told you her troubled history; it did not
diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out
for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards; then fell the thunderbolt
which shattered my existence, and we have never met again till this hour.
You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier."
"But," said Louvier, falteringly, "but since you refer to that
thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that--that--"
"I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who have known me as
well as you did to assist me now to refute."
"If it be really a calumny."
"Heavens, man! could you ever doubt that?" cried De Mauleon, with heat;
"ever doubt that I would rather have blown out my brains than allowed
them even to conceive the idea of a crime so base?"
"Pardon me," answered Louvier, meekly, "but I did not return to Paris for
months after you had disappeared. My mind was unsettled by the news that
awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it by travel,--visited Holland
and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard of your
story was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own account.
You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse de ------'s
jewels; and your friend M. de ----- never sold them to one jeweller and
obtained their substitutes in paste from another?"
The Vicomte made a perceptible effort to repress an impulse of rage;
then reseating himself in his chair, and with that slight shrug of the
shoulder by which a Frenchman implies to himself that rage would be out
of place, replied calmly, "M. de N. did as you say, but of course not
employed by me, nor with my knowledge. Listen; the truth is this,--the
time has come to tell it. Before you left Paris for Aix I found myself
on the brink of ruin. I had glided towards it with my characteristic
recklessness, with that scorn of money for itself, that sanguine
confidence in the favour of fortune, which are vices common to every _roi
des viveurs_. Poor mock Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in youth!
we divide all we have among others, and when asked by some prudent
friend, 'What have you left for your own share?' answer, 'Hope.' I knew,
of course, that my patrimony was rapidly vanishing; but then my horses
were matchless. I had enough to last me for years on their chance of
winning--of course they would win. But you may recollect when we parted
that I was troubled,--creditors' bills before me--usurers' bills too,--
and you, my dear Louvier, pressed on me your purse, were angry when I
refused it. How could I accept? All my chance of repayment was in the
speed of a horse. I believed in that chance for myself; but for a
trustful friend, no. Ask your own heart now,--nay, I will not say
heart,--ask your own common-sense, whether a man who then put aside your
purse--spendthrift, _vaurien_, though he might be--was likely to steal or
accept a woman's jewels. Va, mon pauvre Louvier, again I say, 'Fors non
mutat genus.'"
Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, such
reminiscences of his visitor's motley character--irregular, turbulent,
the reverse of severe, but, in its own loose way, grandly generous and
grandly brave--struck both on the common-sense and the heart of the
listener; and the Frenchman recognized the Frenchman. Louvier doubted
De Mauleon's word no more, bowed his head, and said, "Victor de Mauleon,
I have wronged you; go on."
"On the day after you left for Aix came that horse-race on which my all
depended: it was lost. The loss absorbed the whole of my remaining
fortune; it absorbed about twenty thousand francs in excess, a debt of
honour to De N., whom you called my friend. Friend he was not; imitator,
follower, flatterer, yes. Still I deemed him enough my friend to say to
him, 'Give me a little time to pay the money; I must sell my stud, or
write to my only living relation from whom I have expectations.' You
remember that relation,--Jacques de Mauleon, old and unmarried. By De
N.'s advice I did write to my kinsman. No answer came; but what did come
were fresh bills from creditors. I then calmly calculated my assets.
The sale of my stud and effects might suffice to pay every sou that I
owed, including my debt to De N.; but that was not quite certain. At all
events, when the debts were paid I should be beggared. Well, you know,
Louvier, what we Frenchmen are: how Nature has denied to us the quality
of patience; how involuntarily suicide presents itself to us when hope is
lost; and suicide seemed to me here due to honour, namely, to the certain
discharge of my liabilities,--for the stud and effects of Victor de
Mauleon, _roi des viveurs_, would command much higher prices if he died
like Cato than if he ran away from his fate like Pompey. Doubtless De N.
guessed my intention from my words or my manner; but on the very day in
which I had made all preparations for quitting the world from which
sunshine had vanished, I received in a blank envelope bank-notes
amounting to seventy thousand francs, and the post-mark on the envelope
was that of the town of Fontainebleau, near to which lived my rich
kinsman Jacques. I took it for granted that the sum came from him.
Displeased as he might have been with my wild career, still I was his
natural heir. The sum sufficed to pay my debt to De N., to all
creditors, and leave a surplus. My sanguine spirits returned. I would
sell my stud; I would retrench, reform, go to my kinsman as the penitent
son. The fatted calf would be killed, and I should wear purple yet. You
understand that, Louvier?"
"Yes, yes; so like you. Go on."
"Now, then, came the thunderbolt! Ah! in those sunny days you used to
envy me for being so spoilt by women. The Duchesse de ------ had
conceived for me one of those romantic fancies which women without
children and with ample leisure for the waste of affection do sometimes
conceive for very ordinary men younger than themselves, but in whom they
imagine they discover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt. I had been
honoured by some notes from the Duchesse in which this sort of romance
was owned. I had not replied to them encouragingly. In truth, my heart
was then devoted to another,--the English girl whom I had wooed as my
wife; who, despite her parents' retraction of their consent to our union
when they learned how dilapidated were my fortunes, pledged herself to
remain faithful to me, and wait for better days." Again De Mauleon
paused in suppressed emotion, and then went on hurriedly: "No, the
Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me
with an affectionate respect. I felt that she was by nature meant to be
a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that moment wholly
misled from her right place amongst women by an illusion of mere
imagination about a man who happened then to be very much talked about,
and perhaps resembled some Lothario in the novels which she was always
reading. We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house."
"Yes, I remember. I remember how you once took me to a great ball given
by the Duchesse; how handsome I thought her, though no longer young; and
you say right--how I did envy you, that night!"
"From that night, however, the Duc, not unnaturally, became jealous. He
reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable manner towards a _mauvais
sujet_ like myself, and forbade her in future to receive my visits. It
was then that these notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me
by her maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies.
"But to proceed. In the flush of my high spirits, and in the insolence
of magnificent ease with which I paid De N------ the trifle I owed him,
something he said made my heart stand still."
"I told him that the money received had come from Jacques de Mauleon, and
that I was going down to his house that day to thank him. He replied,
'Don't go; it did not come from him.' 'It must; see the post-mark of the
envelope,--Fontainebleau.' 'I posted it at Fontainebleau.' 'You sent me
the money, you!' 'Nay, that is beyond my means. Where it came from,'
said this _miserable_, 'much more may yet come;' and then be narrated,
with that cynicism so in vogue at Paris, how he had told the Duchesse
(who knew him as my intimate associate) of my stress of circumstance,
of his fear that I meditated something desperate; how she gave him the
jewels to sell and to substitute; how, in order to baffle my suspicion
and frustrate my scruples, he had gone to Fontainebleau and there posted
the envelope containing the bank-notes, out of which he secured for
himself the payment he deemed otherwise imperilled. De N. having made
this confession, hurried down the stairs swiftly enough to save himself a
descent by the window. Do you believe me still?"
"Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so considerate of self,
I believe you implicitly."
"Of course I did what any man would do; I wrote a hasty letter to the
Duchesse, stating all my gratitude for an act of pure friendship so
noble; urging also the reasons that rendered it impossible for a man of
honour to profit by such an act. Unhappily, what had been sent was paid
away ere I knew the facts; but I could not bear the thought of life till
my debt to her was acquitted; in short, Louvier, conceive for yourself
the sort of letter which I--which any honest man--would write, under
circumstances so cruel."
"H'm!" grunted Louvier.
"Something, however, in my letter, conjoined with what De N. had told her
as to my state of mind, alarmed this poor woman, who had deigned to take
in me an interest so little deserved. Her reply, very agitated and
incoherent, was brought to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, and
by whom, as I before said, our correspondence had been of late carried
on. In her reply she implored me to decide, to reflect on nothing till I
had seen her; stated how the rest of her day was pre-engaged; and since
to visit her openly had been made impossible by the Due's interdict,
enclosed the key to the private entrance to her rooms, by which I could
gain an interview with her at ten o'clock that night, an hour at which
the Duc had informed her he should be out till late at his club. Now,
however great the indiscretion which the Duchesse here committed, it is
due to her memory to say that I am convinced that her dominant idea was
that I meditated self-destruction; that no time was to be lost to save me
from it; and for the rest she trusted to the influence which a woman's
tears and adjurations and reasonings have over even the strongest and
hardest men. It is only one of those coxcombs in whom the world of
fashion abounds who could have admitted a thought that would have done
wrong to the impulsive, generous, imprudent eagerness of a woman to be in
time to save from death by his own hand a fellow-being for whom she had
conceived an interest. I so construed her note. At the hour she named I
admitted myself into the rooms by the key she sent. You know the rest: I
was discovered by the Duc and by the agents of police in the cabinet in
which the Duchesse's jewels were kept. The key that admitted me into the
cabinet was found in my possession."
De Mauleon's voice here faltered, and he covered his face with a
convulsive hand. Almost in the same breath he recovered from visible
sign of emotion, and went on with a half laugh.
"Ah! you envied me, did you, for being spoiled by the women? Enviable
position indeed was mine that night! The Duc obeyed the first impulse of
his wrath. He imagined that I had dishonoured him; he would dishonour me
in return. Easier to his pride, too, a charge against the robber of
jewels than against a favoured lover of his wife. But when I, obeying
the first necessary obligation of honour, invented on the spur of the
moment the story by which the Duchesse's reputation was cleared from
suspicion, accused myself of a frantic passion and the trickery of a
fabricated key, the Due's true nature of gentilhomme came back. He
retracted the charge which he could scarcely even at the first blush have
felt to be well-founded; and as the sole charge left was simply that
which men _comme il faut_ do not refer to criminal courts and police
investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested and retreat to my
own rooms, awaiting there such communciations as the Duc might deem it
right to convey to me on the morrow.
"But on the morrow the Duc, with his wife and personal suite, quitted
Paris en route for Spain; the bulk of his retinue, including the
offending Abigail, was discharged; and, whether through these servants or
through the police, the story before evening was in the mouth of every
gossip in club or cafe,--exaggerated, distorted, to my ignominy and
shame. My detection in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the
substitution of paste by De N., who was known to be my servile imitator
and reputed to be my abject tool, all my losses on the turf, my debts,--
all these scattered fibres of flax were twisted together in a rope that
would have hanged a dog with a much better name than mine. If some
disbelieved that I could be a thief, few of those who should have known
me best held me guiltless of a baseness almost equal to that of theft,--
the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish woman."
"But you could have told your own tale, shown the letters you had
received from the Duchesse, and cleared away every stain on your honour."
"How?--shown her letters, ruined her character, even stated that she had
caused her jewels to be sold for the uses of a young roue! Ah, no,
Louvier! I would rather have gone to the galleys."
"H'm!" grunted Louvier again.
"The Duc generously gave me better means of righting myself. Three days
after he quitted Paris I received a letter from him, very politely
written, expressing his great regret that any words implying the
suspicion too monstrous and absurd to need refutation should have escaped
him in the surprise of the moment; but stating that since the offence I
had owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under the necessity
of asking the only reparation I could make. That if it 'deranged' me to
quit Paris, he would return to it for the purpose required; but that if I
would give him the additional satisfaction of suiting his convenience, he
should prefer to await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was detained by
the indisposition of the Duchesse."
"You have still that letter?" asked Louvier, quickly. "Yes; with other
more important documents constituting what I may call my pieces
justificatives.
"I need not say that I replied stating the time at which I should arrive
at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should await the Duc's command.
Accordingly I set out that same day, gained the hotel named, despatched
to the Duc the announcement of my arrival, and was considering how I
should obtain a second in some officer quartered in the town--for my
soreness and resentment at the marked coldness of my former acquaintances
at Paris had forbidden me to seek a second among any of that faithless
number--when the Due himself entered my room. Judge of my amaze at
seeing him in person; judge how much greater the amaze became when he
advanced with a grave but cordial smile, offering me his hand!
"'Monsieur de Mauleon,' said he, 'since I wrote to you, facts have become
known to me which would induce me rather to ask your friendship than call
on you to defend your life. Madame la Duchesse has been seriously ill
since we left Paris, and I refrained from all explanations likely to add
to the hysterical excitement under which she was suffering. It is only
this day that her mind became collected, and she herself then gave me her
entire confidence. Monsieur, she insisted on my reading the letters that
you addressed to her. Those letters, Monsieur, suffice to prove your
innocence of any design against my peace. The Duchesse has so candidly
avowed her own indiscretion, has so clearly established the distinction
between indiscretion and guilt, that I have granted her my pardon with a
lightened heart and a firm belief that we shall be happier together than
we have been yet.'
"The Due continued his journey the next day, but he subsequently honoured
me with two or three letters written as friend to friend, and in which
you will find repeated the substance of what I have stated him to say by
word of mouth."
"But why not then have returned to Paris? Such letters, at least, you
might have shown, and in braving your calumniators you would have soon
lived them down."
"You forget that I was a ruined man. When, by the sale of my horses,
etc., my debts, including what was owed to the Duchesse, and which I
remitted to the Duc, were discharged, the balance left to me would not
have maintained me a week at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so
indignant. Paris and the Parisians had become to me so hateful. And to
crown all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose
fidelity I had so counted--well, I received a letter from her, gently but
coldly bidding me farewell forever. I do not think she believed me
guilty of theft; but doubtless the offence I had confessed, in order to
save the honour of the Duchesse, could but seem to her all sufficient!
Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very core, still self-
destruction was no longer to be thought of. I would not die till I could
once more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon."
"What then became of you, my poor Victor?"
"Ah! that is a tale too long for recital. I have played so many parts
that I am puzzled to recognize my own identity with the Victor de Mauleon
whose name I abandoned. I have been a soldier in Algeria, and won my
cross on the field of battle,--that cross and my colonel's letter are
among my _pieces justificatives_; I have been a gold-digger in
California, a speculator in New York, of late in callings obscure and
humble. But in all my adventures, under whatever name, I have earned
testimonials of probity, could manifestations of so vulgar a virtue be
held of account by the enlightened people of Paris. I come now to a
close. The Vicomte de Mauleon is about to re-appear in Paris, and the
first to whom he announces that sublime avatar is Paul Louvier. When
settled in some modest apartment, I shall place in your hands my _pieces
justificatives_. I shall ask you to summon my surviving relations or
connections, among which are the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De
Passy, and the Marquis de Rochebriant, with any friends of your own who
sway the opinions of the Great World. You will place my justification
before them, expressing your own opinion that it suffices; in a word, you
will give me the sanction of your countenance. For the rest, I trust to
myself to propitiate the kindly and to silence the calumnious. I have
spoken; what say you?"
"You overrate my power in society. Why not appeal yourself to your high-
born relations?"
"No, Louvier; I have too well considered the case to alter my decision.
It is through you, and you alone, that I shall approach my relations.
My vindicator must be a man of whom the vulgar cannot say, 'Oh, he is a
relation,--a fellow-noble; those aristocrats whitewash each other.' It
must be an authority with the public at large,--a bourgeois, a
millionaire, a _roi de la Bourse_. I choose you, and that ends the
discussion."
Louvier could not help laughing good-humouredly at the _sang froid_ of
the Vicomte. He was once more under the domination of a man who had for
a time dominated all with whom he lived.
De Mauleon continued: "Your task will be easy enough. Society changes
rapidly at Paris. Few persons now exist who have more than a vague
recollection of the circumstances which can be so easily explained to my
complete vindication when the vindication comes from a man of your solid
respectability and social influence. Besides, I have political objects
in view. You are a Liberal; the Vandemars and Rochebriants are
Legitimists. I prefer a godfather on the Liberal side. _Pardieu, mon
ami_, why such coquettish hesitation? Said and done. Your hand on it."
"There is my hand then. I will do all I can to help you."
"I know you will, old friend; and you do both kindly and wisely." Here
De Mauleon cordially pressed the hand he held, and departed.
On gaining the street, the Vicomte glided into a neighbouring courtyard,
in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the coachman drive towards the
Boulevard Sebastopol. On the way, he took from a small bag that he had
left in the carriage the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which distinguished
M. Lebeau, and mantled his elegant habiliments in an immense cloak, which
he had also left in the fiacre. Arrived at the Boulevard Sebastopol, he
drew up the collar of the cloak so as to conceal much of his face,
stopped the driver, paid him quickly, and, bag in hand, hurried on to
another stand of fiacres at a little distance, entered one, drove to the
Faubourg Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle at the mouth of a street not
far from M. Lebeau's office, and gained on foot the private side-door of
the house, let himself in with his latchkey, entered the private room on
the inner side of his office, locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to
exchange the brilliant appearance which the Vicomte de Mauleon had borne
on his visit to the millionaire for the sober raiment and bourgeois air
of M. Lebeau, the letter-writer.
Then after locking up his former costume in a drawer of his secretaire,
he sat himself down and wrote the following lines:--
DEAR MONSIEUR GEORGES,--I advise you strongly, from information that
has just reached me, to lose no time in pressing M. Savarin to repay
the sum I recommended you to lend him, and for which you hold his
bill due this day. The scandal of legal measures against a writer
so distinguished should be avoided if possible. He will avoid it
and get the money somehow; but he must be urgently pressed. If you
neglect this warning, my responsibility is past. _Agreez mes
sentimens les plus sinceres_.
J. L.
CHAPTER II.
The Marquis de Rochebriant is no longer domiciled in an attic in the
gloomy Faubourg. See him now in a charming _appartement de garcon an
premier_ in the Rue du Helder, close by the promenades and haunts of the
mode. It had been furnished and inhabited by a brilliant young
provincial from Bordeaux, who, coming into an inheritance of one hundred
thousand francs, had rushed up to Paris to enjoy himself, and make his
million at the Bourse. He had enjoyed himself thoroughly,--he had been a
darling of the _demi monde_; he had been a successful and an inconstant
gallant. Zelie had listened to his vows of eternal love, and his offers
of unlimited _cachemires_; Desiree, succeeding Zelie, had assigned to him
her whole heart--or all that was left of it--in gratitude for the ardour
of his passion, and the diamonds and coupe which accompanied and attested
the ardour; the superb Hortense, supplanting Desiree, received his visits
in the charming apartment he furnished for her, and entertained him and
his friends at the most delicate little suppers, for the moderate sum of
four thousand francs a month. Yes, he had enjoyed himself thoroughly,
but he had not made a million at the Bourse. Before the year was out,
the one hundred thousand francs were gone. Compelled to return to his
province, and by his hard-hearted relations ordained, on penalty of
starvation, to marry the daughter of an _avoue_, for the sake of her dot
and a share in the hated drudgery of the _avoue's_ business,--his
apartment was to be had for a tenth part of the original cost of its
furniture. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, to whom Louvier had
introduced the Marquis as a useful fellow who knew Paris, and would save
him from being cheated, had secured this bijou of an apartment for Alain,
and concluded the bargain for the bagatelle of L500. The Chevalier took
the same advantageous occasion to purchase the English well-bred hack and
the neat coupe and horses which the Bordelais was also necessitated to
dispose of. These purchases made, the Marquis had some five thousand
francs (L200) left out of Louvier's premium of L1,000. The Marquis,
however, did not seem alarmed or dejected by the sudden diminution of
capital so expeditiously effected. The easy life thus commenced seemed
to him too natural to be fraught with danger; and easy though it was, it
was a very simple and modest sort of life compared with that of many
other men of his age to whom Enguerrand had introduced him, though most
of them had an income less than his, and few, indeed, of them were his
equals in dignity of birth. Could a Marquis de Rochebriant, if he lived
at Paris at all, give less than three thousand francs a year for his
apartment, or mount a more humble establishment than that confined to a
valet and a tiger, two horses for his _coupe_ and one for the saddle?
"Impossible," said the Chevalier de Finisterre, decidedly; and the
Marquis bowed to so high an authority. He thought within himself, "If I
find in a few months that I am exceeding my means, I can but dispose of
my rooms and my horses, and return to Rochebriant a richer man by far
than I left it."
To say truth, the brilliant seductions of Paris had already produced
their effect, not only on the habits, but on the character and cast of
thought, which the young noble had brought with him from the feudal and
melancholy Bretagne.
Warmed by the kindness with which, once introduced by his popular
kinsmen, he was everywhere received, the reserve or shyness which is the
compromise between the haughtiness of self-esteem and the painful doubt
of appreciation by others rapidly melted away. He caught insensibly the
polished tone, at once so light and so cordial, of his new-made friends.
With all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and
fraternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity are
most to be found. All _gentilshommes_ in the best society are equals;
and whether they embrace or fight each other, they embrace or fight as
brothers of the same family. But with the tone of manners Alain de
Rochebriant imbibed still more insensibly the lore of that philosophy
which young idlers in pursuit of pleasure teach to each other. Probably
in all civilized and luxurious capitals that philosophy is very much the
same among the same class of idlers at the same age; probably it
flourishes in Pekin not less than at Paris. If Paris has the credit, or
discredit, of it more than any other capital, it is because in Paris more
than in any other capital it charms the eye by grace and amuses the ear
by wit. A philosophy which takes the things of this life very easily;
which has a smile and a shrug of the shoulders for any pretender to the
Heroic; which subdivides the wealth of passion into the pocket-money of
caprices, is always in or out of love ankle-deep, never venturing a
plunge; which, light of heart as of tongue, turns "the solemn
plausibilities" of earth into subjects for epigrams and bons mots,--
jests at loyalty to kings and turns up its nose at enthusiasm for
commonwealths, abjures all grave studies and shuns all profound emotions.
We have crowds of such philosophers in London; but there they are less
noticed, because the agreeable attributes of the sect are there dimmed
and obfuscated. It is not a philosophy that flowers richly in the reek
of fogs and in the teeth of east winds; it wants for full development the
light atmosphere of Paris. Now this philosophy began rapidly to exercise
its charms upon Alain de Rochebriant. Even in the society of professed
Legitimists, he felt that faith had deserted the Legitimist creed or
taken refuge only as a companion of religion in the hearts of high-born
women and a small minority of priests. His chivalrous loyalty still
struggled to keep its ground, but its roots were very much loosened. He
saw--for his natural intellect was keen--that the cause of the Bourbon
was hopeless, at least for the present, because it had ceased, at least
for the present, to be a cause. His political creed thus shaken, with it
was shaken also that adherence to the past which had stifled his ambition
of a future. That ambition began to breathe and to stir, though he owned
it not to others, though, as yet, he scarce distinguished its whispers,
much less directed its movements towards any definite object. Meanwhile,
all that he knew of his ambition was the new-born desire for social
success.
We see him, then, under the quick operation of this change in sentiments
and habits, reclined on the _fauteuil_ before his fireside, and listening
to his college friend, of whom we have so long lost sight, Frederic
Lemercier. Frederic had breakfasted with Alain,--a breakfast such as
might have contented the author of the "Almanach des Gourmands," and
provided from the cafe Anglais. Frederic has just thrown aside his
regalia.
"Pardieu! my dear Alain. If Louvier has no sinister object in the
generosity of his dealings with you, he will have raised himself
prodigiously in my estimation. I shall forsake, in his favour, my
allegiance to Duplessis, though that clever fellow has just made a
wondrous coup in the Egyptians, and I gain forty thousand francs by
having followed his advice. But if Duplessis has a head as long as
Louvier's, he certainly has not an equal greatness of soul. Still, my
dear friend, will you pardon me if I speak frankly, and in the way of a
warning homily?"
"Speak; you cannot oblige me more."
"Well, then, I know that you can no more live at Paris in the way you are
doing, or mean to do, without some fresh addition to your income, than a
lion could live in the Jardin des Plantes upon an allowance of two mice a
week."
"I don't see that. Deducting what I pay to my aunt,--and I cannot get
her to take more than six thousand francs a year,--I have seven hundred
napoleons left, net and clear. My rooms and stables are equipped, and I
have twenty-five hundred francs in hand. On seven hundred napoleons a
year, I calculate that I can very easily live as I do; and if I fail--
well, I must return to Pochebriant. Seven hundred napoleons a year will
be a magnificent rental there."
Frederic shook his head. "You do not know how one expense leads to
another. Above all, you do not calculate the chief part of one's
expenditure,--the unforeseen. You will play at the Jockey Club, and lose
half your income in a night."
"I shall never touch a card."
"So you say now, innocent as a lamb of the force of example. At all
events, _beau seigneur_, I presume you are not going to resuscitate the
part of the Ermite de la Chaussee d'Antin; and the fair Parisiennes are
demons of extravagance."
"Demons whom I shall not court."
"Did I say you would? They will court you. Before another month has
flown you will be inundated with billets-doux."
"It is not a shower that will devastate my humble harvest. But, mon
cher, we are falling upon very gloomy topics. _Laissez-moi tranquille_
in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you cannot conceive what a
new life opens to the man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of his
youth in privation and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and
hope. If it lasts only a year, it will be something to say 'Vixi.'"
"Alain," said Frederic; very earnestly, "believe me, I should not have
assumed the ungracious and inappropriate task of Mentor, if it were only
a year's experience at stake, or if you were in the position of men like
myself,--free from the encumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged
lands. Should you fail to pay regularly the interest due to Louvier, he
has the power to put up at public auction, and there to buy in for
himself, your chateau and domain."
"I am aware that in strict law he would have such power, though I doubt
if he would use it. Louvier is certainly a much better and more generous
fellow than I could have expected; and if I believe De Finisterre, he has
taken a sincere liking to me on account of affection to my poor father.
But why should not the interest be paid regularly? The revenues from
Rochebriant are not likely to decrease, and the charge on them is
lightened by the contract with Louvier. And I will confide to you a hope
I entertain of a very large addition to my rental."
"How?"
"A chief part of my rental is derived from forests, and De Finisterre has
heard of a capitalist who is disposed to make a contract for their sale
at the fall this year, and may probably extend it to future years, at a
price far exceeding that which I have hitherto obtained."
"Pray be cautious. De Finisterre is not a man I should implicitly trust
in such matters."
"Why? Do you know anything against him? He is in the best society,--
perfect gentilhomme,--and, as his name may tell you, a fellow-Breton.
You yourself allow, and so does Enguerrand, that the purchases he made
for me--in this apartment, my horses, etc.--are singularly advantageous."
"Quite true; the Chevalier is reputed sharp and clever, is said to be
very amusing, and a first-rate piquet-player. I don't know him
personally,--I am not in his set. I have no valid reason to disparage
his character, nor do I conjecture any motive he could have to injure or
mislead you. Still, I say, be cautious how far you trust to his advice
or recommendation."
"Again I ask why?"
"He is unlucky to his friends. He attaches himself much to men younger
than himself; and somehow or other I have observed that most of them have
come to grief. Besides, a person in whose sagacity I have great
confidence warned me against making the Chevalier's acquaintance, and
said to me, in his blunt way, 'De Finisterre came to Paris with nothing;
he has succeeded to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profession by
which anything can be made. But evidently now he has picked up a good
deal; and in proportion as any young associate of his becomes poorer, De
Finisterre seems mysteriously to become richer. Shun that sort of
acquaintance.'"
"Who is your sagacious adviser!"
"Duplessis."
"Ah, I thought so. That bird of prey fancies every other bird looking
out for pigeons. I fancy that Duplessis is, like all those money-
getters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finisterre has not returned his
bow."
"My dear Alain, I am to blame; nothing is so irritating as a dispute
about the worth of the men we like. I began it, now let it be dropped;
only make me one promise,--that if you should be in arrear, or if need
presses, you will come at once to me. It was very well to be absurdly
proud in an attic, but that pride will be out of place in your
_appartement au premier_."
"You are the best fellow in the world, Frederic, and I make you the
promise you ask," said Alain, cheerfully, but yet with a secret emotion
of tenderness and gratitude. "And now, _mon cher_, what day will you
dine with me to meet Raoul and Enguerrand, and some others whom you would
like to know?"
"Thanks, and hearty ones, but we move now in different spheres, and I
shall not trespass on yours. _Je suis trop bourgeois_ to incur the
ridicule of _le bourgeois gentilhomme_."
"Frederic, how dare you speak thus? My dear fellow, my friends shall
honour you as I do."
"But that will be on your account, not mine. No; honestly that kind of
society neither tempts nor suits me. I am a sort of king in my own walk;
and I prefer my Bohemian royalty to vassalage in higher regions. Say no
more of it. It will flatter my vanity enough if you will now and then
descend to my coteries, and allow me to parade a Rochebriant as my
familiar crony, slap him on the shoulder, and call him Alain."
"Fie! you who stopped me and the English aristocrat in the Champs
Elysees, to humble us with your boast of having fascinated _une grande
dame_,--I think you said a duchesse."
"Oh," said Lemercier, conceitedly, and passing his hand through his
scented locks, "women are different; love levels all ranks. I don't
blame Ruy Blas for accepting the love of a queen, but I do blame him for
passing himself off as a noble,--a plagiarism, by the by, from an English
play. I do not love the English enough to copy them. _A propos_, what
has become of _ce beau_ Grarm Varn? I have not seen him of late."
"Neither have I."
"Nor the belle Italienne?"
"Nor her," said Alain, slightly blushing.
At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the room. Alain stopped Lemercier
to introduce him to his kinsman. "Enguerrand, I present to you M.
Lemercier, my earliest and one of my dearest friends."
The young noble held out his hand with the bright and joyous grace which
accompanied all his movements, and expressed in cordial words his delight
to make M. Lemercier's acquaintance. Bold and assured as Frederic was in
his own circles, he was more discomposed than set at ease by the gracious
accost of a lion, whom he felt at once to be of a breed superior to his
own. He muttered some confused phrases, in which _ravi_ and _flatte_
were alone audible, and evanished.
"I know M. Lemercier by sight very well," said Enguerrand, seating
himself. "One sees him very often in the Bois; and I have met him in the
Coulisses and the _Bal Mabille_. I think, too, that he plays at the
Bourse, and is _lie_ with M. Duplessis, who bids fair to rival Louvier
one of these days. Is Duplessis also one of your dearest friends?"
"No, indeed. I once met him, and was not prepossessed in his favour."
"Nevertheless, he is a man much to be admired and respected."
"Why so?"
"Because he understands so well the art of making what we all covet,--
money. I will introduce you to him."
"I have been already introduced."
"Then I will re-introduce you. He is much courted in a society which I
have recently been permitted by my father to frequent,--the society, of
the Imperial Court."
"You frequent that society, and the Count permits it?"
"Yes; better the Imperialists than the Republicans; and my father begins
to own that truth, though he is too old or too indolent to act on it."
"And Raoul?"
"Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophical Raoul, has no ambition of
any kind, so long as--thanks somewhat to me--his purse is always
replenished for the wants of his stately existence, among the foremost of
which wants are the means to supply the wants of others. That is the
true reason why he consents to our glove-shop. Raoul belongs, with some
other young men of the Faubourg, to a society enrolled under the name of
Saint Francois de Sales, for the relief of the poor. He visits their
houses, and is at home by their sickbeds as at their stinted boards. Nor
does he confine his visitations to the limits of our Faubourg; he extends
his travels to Montmartre and Belleville. As to our upper world, he does
not concern himself much with its changes. He says that we have
destroyed too much ever to rebuild solidly; and that whatever we do build
could be upset any day by a Paris mob, which he declares to be the only
institution we have left. A wonderful fellow is Raoul,--full of mind,
though he does little with it; full of heart, which he devotes to
suffering humanity, and to a poetic, knightly reverence (not to be
confounded with earthly love, and not to be degraded into that sickly
sentiment called Platonic affection) for the Comtesse di Rimini, who is
six years older than himself, and who is very faithfully attached to her
husband, Raoul's intimate friend, whose honour he would guard as his own.
It is an episode in the drama of Parisian life, and one not so uncommon
as the malignant may suppose. Di Rimini knows and approves of his
veneration; my mother, the best of women, sanctions it, and deems truly
that it preserves Raoul safe from all the temptations to which ignobler
youth is exposed. I mention this lest you should imagine there was
anything in Raoul's worship of his star less pure than it is. For the
rest, Raoul, to the grief and amazement of that disciple of Voltaire, my
respected father, is one of the very few men I know in our circles who is
sincerely religious,--an orthodox Catholic,--and the only man I know who
practises the religion he professes; charitable, chaste, benevolent; and
no bigot, no intolerant ascetic. His only weakness is his entire
submission to the worldly common-sense of his good-for-nothing, covetous,
ambitious brother Enguerrand. I cannot say how I love him for that. If
he had not such a weakness, his excellence would gall me, and I believe I
should hate him."
Alain bowed his head at this eulogium. Such had been the character that
a few months ago he would have sought as example and model. He seemed to
gaze upon a flattered portrait of himself as he had been.
"But," said Enguerrand, "I have not come here to indulge in the overflow
of brotherly affection. I come to take you to your relation, the
Duchesse of Tarascon. I have pledged myself to her to bring you, and she
is at home on purpose to receive you."
"In that case I cannot be such a churl as to refuse. And, indeed, I no
longer feel quite the same prejudices against her and the Imperialists as
I brought from Bretagne. Shall I order my carriage?"
"No; mine is at the door. Yours can meet you where you will, later.
_Allons_."
CHAPTER III.
The Duchesse de Tarascon occupied a vast apartment in the Rue Royale,
close to the Tuileries. She held a high post among the ladies who graced
the brilliant court of the Empress. She had survived her second husband
the duke, who left no issue, and the title died with him.
Alain and Enguerrand were ushered up the grand staircase, lined with
tiers of costly exotics as if for a fete; but in that and in all kinds of
female luxury, the Duchesse lived in a state of _fete perpetuelle_. The
doors on the landing-place were screened by heavy portieres of Genoa
velvet, richly embroidered in gold with the ducal crown and cipher. The
two salons through which the visitors passed to the private cabinet or
boudoir were decorated with Gobelin tapestries, fresh, with a mixture of
roseate hues, and depicting incidents in the career of the first emperor;
while the effigies of the late duke's father--the gallant founder of a
short-lived race figured modestly in the background. On a table of
Russian malachite within the recess of the central window lay, preserved
in glass cases, the baton and the sword, the epaulettes and the
decorations of the brave Marshal. On the consoles and the mantelpieces
stood clocks and vases of Sevres that could scarcely be eclipsed by those
in the Imperial palaces. Entering the cabinet, they found the Duchesse
seated at her writing-table, with a small Skye terrier, hideous in the
beauty of the purest breed, nestled at her feet. This room was an
exquisite combination of costliness and comfort,--Luxury at home. The
hangings were of geranium-coloured silk, with double curtains of white
satin; near to the writing-table a conservatory, with a white marble
fountain at play in the centre, and a trellised aviary at the back. The
walls were covered with small pictures,--chiefly portraits and miniatures
of the members of the imperial family, of the late Duc, of his father the
Marshal and Madame la Marechale, of the present Duchesse herself, and of
some of the principal ladies of the court.
The Duchesse was still in the prime of life. She had passed her fortieth
year, but was so well "conserved" that you might have guessed her to be
ten years younger. She was tall; not large, but with rounded figure
inclined to _en bon point_; with dark hair and eyes, but fair complexion,
injured in effect rather than improved by pearl-powder, and that
atrocious barbarism of a dark stain on the eyelids which has of late
years been a baneful fashion; dressed,--I am a man, and cannot describe
her dress; all I know is that she had the acknowledged fame of the best-
dressed subject of France. As she rose from her seat there was in her
look and air the unmistakable evidence of grande dame,--a family likeness
in feature to Alain himself, a stronger likeness to the picture of her
first cousin (his mother) which was preserved at Rochebriant. Her
descent was indeed from ancient and noble houses. But to the distinction
of race she added that of fashion, crowning both with a tranquil
consciousness of lofty position and unblemished reputation.
"Unnatural cousin!" she said to Alain, offering her hand to him, with a
gracious smile,--"all this age in Paris, and I see you for the first
time. But there is joy on earth as in heaven over sinners who truly
repent. You repent truly--n'est ce pas?"
It is impossible to describe the caressing charm which the Duchesse threw
into her words, voice, and look. Alain was fascinated and subdued.
"Ah, Madame la Duchesse," said he, bowing over the fait hand he lightly
held, "it was not sin, unless modesty be a sin, which made a rustic
hesitate long before he dared to offer his homage to the queen of the
graces."
"Not badly said for a rustic," cried Enguerrand; "eh, Madame?"
"My cousin, you are pardoned," said the Duchesse. "Compliment is the
perfume of _gentilhommerie_; and if you brought enough of that perfume
from the flowers of Rochebriant to distribute among the ladies at court,
you will be terribly the mode there. Seducer!"--here she gave the
Marquis a playful tap on the cheek, not in a coquettish but in a mother-
like familiarity, and looking at him attentively, said: "Why, you are
even handsomer than your father. I shall be proud to present to their
Imperial Majesties so becoming a cousin. But seat yourselves here,
Messieurs, close to my arm-chair, _caussons_."
The Duchesse then took up the ball of the conversation. She talked
without any apparent artifice, but with admirable tact; put just the
questions about Rochebriant most calculated to please Alain, shunning all
that might have pained him; asking him for descriptions of the
surrounding scenery, the Breton legends; hoping that the old castle would
never be spoiled by modernizing restorations; inquiring tenderly after
his aunt, whom she had in her childhood once seen, and still remembered
with her sweet, grave face; paused little for replies; then turned to
Enguerrand with sprightly small-talk on the topics of the day, and every
now and then bringing Alain into the pale of the talk, leading on
insensibly until she got Enguerrand himself to introduce the subject of
the emperor, and the political troubles which were darkening a reign
heretofore so prosperous and splendid.
Her countenance then changed; it became serious, and even grave in its
expression.
"It is true," she said, "that the times grow menacing, menacing not only
to the throne, but to order and property and France. One by one they are
removing all the breakwaters which the empire had constructed between the
executive and the most fickle and impulsive population that ever shouted
'long live' one day to the man whom they would send to the guillotine the
next. They are denouncing what they call personal government. Grant
that it has its evils; but what would they substitute,--a constitutional
monarchy like the English? That is impossible with universal suffrage
and without an hereditary chamber. The nearest approach to it was the
monarchy of Louis Philippe,--we know how sick they became of that. A
republic?--mon Dieu! composed of Republicans terrified out of their wits
at each other. The moderate men, mimics of the Girondins, with the Reds
and the Socialists and the Communists, ready to tear them to pieces. And
then--What then?--the commercialists, the agriculturists, the middle
class combining to elect some dictator who will cannonade the mob and
become a mimic Napoleon, grafted on a mimic Necker or a mimic Danton.
Oh, Messieurs, I am French to the core. You inheritors of such names
must be as French as I am; and yet you men insist on remaining more
useless to France in the midst of her need than I am,--I, a woman who can
but talk and weep."
The Duchesse spoke with a warmth of emotion which startled and profoundly
affected Alain. He remained silent, leaving it to Enguerrand to answer.
"Dear Madame," said the latter, "I do not see how either myself or our
kinsman can merit your reproach. We are not legislators. I doubt if
there is a single department in France that would elect us, if we offered
ourselves. It is not our fault if the various floods of revolution leave
men of our birth and opinions stranded wrecks of a perished world. The
emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are bad ones, his Majesty
certainly will not ask Alain and me to replace them."
"You do not answer--you evade me," said the Duchesse; with a mournful
smile. "You are too skilled a man of the world, Monsieur Enguerrand, not
to know that it is not only legislators and ministers that are necessary
to the support of a throne, and the safeguard of a nation. Do you not
see how great a help it is to both throne and nation when that section of
public opinion which is represented by names illustrious in history,
identified with records of chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion, rallies
round the order established? Let that section of public opinion stand
aloof, soured and discontented, excluded from active life, lending no
counter-balance to the perilous oscillations of democratic passion, and
tell me if it is not an enemy to itself as well as a traitor to the
principles it embodies?"
"The principles it embodies, Madame," said Alain, "are those of fidelity
to a race of kings unjustly set aside, less for the vices than the
virtues of ancestors. Louis XV. was the worst of the Bourbons,--he was
the _bien aime_: he escapes. Louis XVI. was in moral attributes the best
of the Bourbons,--he dies the death of a felon. Louis XVIII., against
whom much may be said, restored to the throne by foreign bayonets,
reigning as a disciple of Voltaire might reign, secretly scoffing alike
at the royalty and the religion which were crowned in his person, dies
peacefully in his bed. Charles X., redeeming the errors of his youth by
a reign untarnished by a vice, by a religion earnest and sincere, is sent
into exile for defending established order from the very inroads which
you lament. He leaves an heir against whom calumny cannot invent a tale,
and that heir remains an outlaw simply because he descends from Henry
IV., and has a right to reign. Madame, you appeal to us as among the
representatives of the chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion which
characterized the old nobility of France. Should we deserve that
character if we forsook the unfortunate, and gained wealth and honour in
forsaking?"
"Your words endear you to me. I am proud to call you cousin," said the
Duchesse. "But do you, or does any man in his senses believe that if you
upset the Empire you could get back the Bourbons; that you would not be
in imminent danger of a Government infinitely more opposed to the
theories on which rests the creed of Legitimists than that of Louis
Napoleon? After all, what is there in the loyalty of you Bourbonites
that has in it the solid worth of an argument which can appeal to the
comprehension of mankind, except it be the principle of a hereditary
monarchy? Nobody nowadays can maintain the right divine of a single
regal family to impose itself upon a nation. That dogma has ceased to be
a living principle; it is only a dead reminiscence. But the institution
of monarchy is a principle strong and vital, and appealing to the
practical interests of vast sections of society. Would you sacrifice the
principle which concerns the welfare of millions, because you cannot
embody it in the person of an individual utterly insignificant in
himself? In a word, if you prefer monarchy to the hazard of
republicanism for such a country as France, accept the monarchy you find,
since it is quite clear you cannot rebuild the monarchy you would prefer.
Does it not embrace all the great objects for which you call yourself
Legitimist? Under it religion is honoured, a national Church secured, in
reality if not in name; under it you have united the votes of millions to
the establishment of the throne; under it all the material interests of
the country, commercial, agricultural, have advanced with an unequalled
rapidity of progress; under it Paris has become the wonder of the world
for riches, for splendour, for grace and beauty; under it the old
traditional enemies of France have been humbled and rendered impotent.
The policy of Richelieu has been achieved in the abasement of Austria;
the policy of Napoleon I. has been consummated in the salvation of Europe
from the semi-barbarous ambition of Russia. England no longer casts her
trident in the opposition scale of the balance of European power.
Satisfied with the honour of our alliance, she has lost every other ally;
and her forces neglected, her spirit enervated, her statesmen dreaming
believers in the safety of their island, provided they withdraw from the
affairs of Europe, may sometimes scold us, but will certainly not dare to
fight. With France she is but an inferior satellite; without France she
is--nothing. Add to all this a court more brilliant than that of Louis
XIV., a sovereign not indeed without faults and errors, but singularly
mild in his nature, warm-hearted to friends, forgiving to foes, whom
personally no one could familiarly know and not be charmed with a _bonte_
of character, lovable as that of Henri IV.,--and tell me what more than
all this could you expect from the reign of a Bourbon?"
"With such results," said Alain, "from the monarchy you so eloquently
praise, I fail to discover what the emperor's throne could possibly gain
by a few powerless converts from an unpopular, and you say, no doubt
truly, from a hopeless cause."
"I say monarchy gains much by the loyal adhesion of any man of courage,
ability, and honour. Every new monarchy gains much by conversions from
the ranks by which the older monarchies were strengthened and adorned.
But I do not here invoke your aid merely to this monarchy, my cousin; I
demand your devotion to the interests of France; I demand that you should
not rest an outlaw from her service. Ah, you think that France is in no
danger, that you may desert or oppose the Empire as you list, and that
society will remain safe! You are mistaken. Ask Enguerrand."
"Madame," said Enguerrand, "you overrate my political knowledge in that
appeal; but, honestly speaking, I subscribe to your reasonings. I agree
with you that the empire sorely needs the support of men of honour; it
has one cause of rot which now undermines it,--dishonest jobbery in its
administrative departments; even in that of the army, which apparently is
so heeded and cared for. I agree with you that France is in danger, and
may need the swords of all her better sons, whether against the foreigner
or against her worst enemies,--the mobs of her great towns. I myself
received a military education, and but for my reluctance to separate
myself from my father and Raoul, I should be a candidate for employments
more congenial to me than those of the Bourse and my trade in the glove-
shop. But Alain is happily free from all family ties, and Alain knows
that my advice to him is not hostile to your exhortations."
"I am glad to think he is under so salutary an influence," said the
Duchesse; and seeing that Alain remained silent and thoughtful, she
wisely changed the subject, and shortly afterwards the two friends took
leave.
CHAPTER IV.
Three days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Lebeau. The letter-writer
did not show himself at the cafe, and was not to be found at his office,
the ordinary business of which was transacted by his clerk, saying that
his master was much engaged on important matters that took him from home.
Graham naturally thought that these matters concerned the discovery of
Louise Duval, and was reconciled to suspense. At the cafe, awaiting
Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaintance with the ouvrier Armand
Monnier, whose face and talk had before excited his interest. Indeed,
the acquaintance had been commenced by the _ouvrier_, who seated himself
at a table near to Graham's, and, after looking at him earnestly for some
minutes, said, "You are waiting for your antagonist at dominos,
M. Lebeau,--a very remarkable man."
"So he seems. I know, however, but little of him. You, perhaps, have
known him longer?"
"Several months. Many of your countrymen frequent this cafe, but you do
not seem to care to associate with the blouses."
"It is not that; but we islanders are shy, and don't make acquaintance
with each other readily. By the way, since you so courteously accost me,
I may take the liberty of saying that I overheard you defend the other
night, against one of my countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great
nonsense, the existence of le bon Dieu. You had much the best of it.
I rather gathered from your argument that you went somewhat further, and
were not too enlightened to admit of Christianity."
Armand Monnier looked pleased. He liked praise; and he liked to hear
himself talk, and he plunged at once into a very complicated sort of
Christianity,--partly Arian, partly Saint Simonian, with a little of
Rousseau and a great deal of Armand Monnier. Into this we need not
follow him; but, in sum, it was a sort of Christianity, the main heads
of which consisted in the removal of your neighbour's landmarks, in the
right of the poor to appropriate the property of the rich, in the right
of love to dispense with marriage, and the duty of the State to provide
for any children that might result from such union,--the parents being
incapacitated to do so, as whatever they might leave was due to the
treasury in common. Graham listened to these doctrines with melancholy
not unmixed with contempt. "Are these opinions of yours," he asked,
"derived from reading or your own reflection?"
"Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that induced me to read
and reflect. I am one of the many victims of the tyrannical law of
marriage. When very young I married a woman who made me miserable, and
then forsook me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wife; legally, she is.
I then met with another woman who suits me, who loves me. She lives with
me; I cannot marry her; she has to submit to humiliations, to be called
contemptuously an _ouvrier's_ mistress. Then, though before I was only a
Republican, I felt there was something wrong in society which needed a
greater change than that of a merely political government; and then, too,
when I was all troubled and sore, I chanced to read one of Madame de
Grantmesnil's books. A glorious genius that woman's!"
"She has genius, certainly," said Graham, with a keen pang at his heart,
--Madame de Grantmesnil, the dearest friend of Isaura! "But," he added,
"though I believe that eloquent author has indirectly assailed certain
social institutions, including that of marriage, I am perfectly persuaded
that she never designed to effect such complete overthrow of the system
which all civilized communities have hitherto held in reverence as your
doctrines would attempt; and, after all, she but expresses her ideas
through the medium of fabulous incidents and characters. And men of your
sense should not look for a creed in the fictions of poets and romance-
writers."
"Ah," said Monnier, "I dare say neither Madame de Grantmesnil nor even
Rousseau ever even guessed the ideas they awoke in their readers; but one
idea leads on to another. And genuine poetry and romance touch the heart
so much more than dry treatises. In a word, Madame de Grantmesnil's book
set me thinking; and then I read other books, and talked with clever men,
and educated myself. And so I became the man I am." Here, with a self-
satisfied air, Monnier bowed to the Englishman, and joined a group at the
other end of the room.
The next evening, just before dusk, Graham Vane was seated musingly in
his own apartment in the Faubourg Montmartre, when there came a slight
knock at his door. He was so wrapped in thought that he did not hear the
sound, though twice repeated. The door opened gently, and M. Lebeau
appeared on the threshold. The room was lighted only by the gas-lamp
from the street without.
Lebeau advanced through the gloom, and quietly seated himself in the
corner of the fireplace opposite to Graham before he spoke. "A thousand
pardons for disturbing your slumbers, Monsieur Lamb."
Startled then by the voice so near him, Graham raised his head, looked
round, and beheld very indistinctly the person seated so near him.
"Monsieur Lebeau?"
"At your service. I promise to give an answer to your question; accept
my apologies that it has been deferred so long. I shall not this evening
go to our cafe. I took the liberty of calling--"
"Monsieur Lebeau, you are a brick."
"A what, Monsieur!--a brique?"
"I forgot; you are not up to our fashionable London idioms. A brick
means a jolly fellow, and it is very kind in you to call. What is your
decision?"
"Monsieur, I can give you some information, but it is so slight that I
offer it gratis, and forego all thought of undertaking further inquiries.
They could only be prosecuted in another country, and it would not be
worth my while to leave Paris on the chance of gaining so trifling a
reward as you propose. Judge for yourself. In the year 1849, and in the
month of July, Louise Duval left Paris for Aix-la-Chapelle. There she
remained some weeks, and then left it. I can learn no further traces of
her movements."
"Aix-la-Chapelle! What could she do there?"
"It is a Spa in great request; crowded during the summer season with
visitors from all countries. She might have gone there for health or for
pleasure."
"Do you think that one could learn more at the Spa itself if one went
there?"
"Possibly. But it is so long,--twenty years ago."
"She might have revisited the place."
"Certainly; but I know no more."
"Was she there under the same name,--Duval?"
"I am sure of that."
"Do you think she left it alone or with others? You tell me she was
awfully belle; she might have attracted admirers."
"If," answered Lebeau, reluctantly, "I could believe the report of my
informant, Louise Duval left Aix not alone, but with some gallant; not an
Englishman. They are said to have parted soon, and the man is now dead.
But, speaking frankly, I do not think Mademoiselle Duval would have thus
compromised her honour and sacrificed her future. I believe she would
have scorned all proposals that were not those of marriage. But all I
can say for certainty is that nothing is known to me of her fate since
she quitted Aix-la-Chapelle."
"In 1849? She had then a child living."
"A child? I never heard that she had any child; and I do not believe she
could have had any child in 1849."
Graham mused. Somewhat less than five years after 1849 Louise Duval had
been seen at Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly she found some attraction at that
place, and might yet be discovered there. "Monsieur Lebeau," said
Graham, "you know this lady by sight; you would recognize her in spite of
the lapse of years. Will you go to Aix and find out there what you can?
Of course, expenses will be paid, and the reward will be given if you
succeed."
"I cannot oblige you. My interest in this poor lady is not very strong,
though I should be willing to serve her, and glad to know that she were
alive. I have now business on hand which interests me much more, and
which will take me from Paris, but not in the direction of Aix."
"If I wrote to my employer, and got him to raise the reward to some
higher amount, that might make it worth your while?"
"I should still answer that my affairs will not permit such a journey.
But if there be any chance of tracing Louise Duval at Aix,--and there may
be,--you would succeed quite as well as I should. You must judge for
yourself if it be worth your trouble to attempt such a task; and if you
do attempt it, and do succeed, pray let me know.--A line to my office
will reach me for some little time, even if I am absent from Paris.
Adieu, Monsieur Lamb."
Here M. Lebeau Lose and departed.
Graham relapsed into thought; but a train of thought much more active,
much more concentred than before. "No," thus ran his meditations,--"no,
it would not be safe to employ that man further. The reasons that forbid
me to offer any very high reward for the discovery of this woman operate
still more strongly against tendering to her own relation a sum that
might indeed secure his aid, but would unquestionably arouse his
suspicions, and perhaps drag into light all that must be concealed. Oh,
this cruel mission! I am, indeed, an impostor to myself till it be
fulfilled. I will go to Aix, and take Renard with me. I am impatient
till I set out, but I cannot quit Paris without once more seeing Isaura.
She consents to relinquish the stage; surely I could wean her too from
intimate friendship with a woman whose genius has so fatal an effect upon
enthusiastic minds. And then--and then?"
He fell into a delightful revery; and contemplating Isaura as his future
wife, he surrounded her sweet image with all those attributes of dignity
and respect with which an Englishman is accustomed to invest the destined
bearer of his name, the gentle sovereign of his household, the sacred
mother of his children. In this picture the more brilliant qualities of
Isaura found, perhaps, but faint presentation. Her glow of sentiment,
her play of fancy, her artistic yearnings for truths remote, for the
invisible fairyland of beautiful romance, receded into the background of
the picture. It was all these, no doubt, that had so strengthened and
enriched the love at first sight, which had shaken the equilibrium of his
positive existence; and yet he now viewed all these as subordinate to the
one image of mild decorous matronage into which wedlock was to transform
the child of genius, longing for angel wings and unlimited space.
CHAPTER V.
On quitting the sorry apartment of the false M. Lamb, Lebeau walked on
with slow steps and bended head, like a man absorbed in thought. He
threaded a labyrinth of obscure streets, no longer in the Faubourg
Montmartre, and dived at last into one of the few courts which preserve
the cachet of the moyen age untouched by the ruthless spirit of
improvement which during the second empire has so altered the face of
Paris. At the bottom of the court stood a large house, much dilapidated,
but bearing the trace of former grandeur in pilasters and fretwork in the
style of the Renaissance, and a defaced coat of arms, surmounted with a
ducal coronet, over the doorway. The house had the aspect of desertion:
many of the windows were broken; others were jealously closed with
mouldering shutters. The door stood ajar; Lebeau pushed it open, and the
action set in movement a bell within a porter's lodge. The house, then,
was not uninhabited; it retained the dignity of a concierge. A man with
a large grizzled beard cut square, and holding a journal in his hand,
emerged from the lodge, and moved his cap with a certain bluff and surly
reverence on recognizing Lebeau.
"What! so early, citizen?"
"Is it too early?" said Lebeau, glancing at his watch. "So it is; I was
not aware of the time. But I am tired with waiting; let me into the
salon. I will wait for the rest; I shall not be sorry for a little
repose."
"Bon," said the porter, sententiously; "while man reposes men advance."
"A profound truth, citizen Le Roux; though if they advance on a reposing
foe, they have blundering leaders unless they march through unguarded
by-paths and with noiseless tread."
Following the porter up a dingy broad staircase, Lebeau was admitted into
a large room, void of all other furniture than a table, two benches at
its sides, and a fauteuil at its head. On the mantelpiece there was a
huge clock, and some iron sconces were fixed on the panelled walls.
Lebeau flung himself, with a wearied air, into the fauteuil. The porter
looked at him with a kindly expression. He had a liking to Lebeau, whom
he had served in his proper profession of messenger or commissionnaire
before being placed by that courteous employer in the easy post he now
held. Lebeau, indeed, had the art, when he pleased, of charming
inferiors; his knowledge of mankind allowed him to distinguish
peculiarities in each individual, and flatter the amour propre by
deference to such eccentricities. Marc le Roux, the roughest of "red
caps," had a wife of whom he was very proud. He would have called the
empress Citoyenne Eugenie, but he always spoke of his wife as Madame.
Lebeau won his heart by always asking after Madame.
"You look tired, citizen," said the porter; "let me bring you a glass of
wine."
"Thank you, mon ami, no. Perhaps later, if I have time, after we break
up, to pay my respects to Madame."
The porter smiled, bowed, and retired muttering, "Nom d'un petit
bonhomme; il n'y a rien de tel que les belles manieres."
Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on the table, resting his chin on his
hand, and gazing into the dim space,--for it was now, indeed, night, and
little light came through the grimy panes of the one window left unclosed
by shutters. He was musing deeply. This man was, in much, an enigma to
himself. Was he seeking to unriddle it? A strange compound of
contradictory elements. In his stormy youth there had been lightning-
like flashes of good instincts, of irregular honour, of inconsistent
generosity,--a puissant wild nature, with strong passions of love and of
hate, without fear, but not without shame. In other forms of society
that love of applause which had made him seek and exult in the notoriety
which he mistook for fame might have settled down into some solid and
useful ambition. He might have become great in the world's eye, for at
the service of his desires there were no ordinary talents. Though too
true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, on the whole, he had
acquired much general information, partly from books, partly from varied
commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both by tongue and by pen, of
expressing himself with force and warmth; time and necessity had improved
that gift. Coveting, during his brief career of fashion, the
distinctions which necessitate lavish expenditure, he had been the most
reckless of spendthrifts; but the neediness which follows waste had never
destroyed his original sense of personal honour. Certainly Victor de
Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom the thought of
accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him
could have occurred as a possible question of casuistry between honour
and temptation. Nor could that sort of question have, throughout the
sternest trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been
subjected, forced admission into his brain. He was one of those men,
perhaps the most terrible though unconscious criminals, who are the
offsprings produced by intellectual power and egotistical ambition. If
you had offered to Victor de Mauleon the crown of the Caesars, on
condition of his doing one of those base things which "a gentleman"
cannot do, pick a pocket, cheat at cards,--Victor de Mauleon would have
refused the crown. He would not have refused on account of any laws of
morality affecting the foundations of the social system, but from the
pride of his own personality. "I, Victor de Mauleon! I pick a pocket!
I cheat at cards! I!" But when something incalculably worse for the
interests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards was
concerned; when for the sake either of private ambition or political
experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very doubtful, the peace and
order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the
most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre,
then this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous as any
English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough might elect as its
representative. The system of the empire was in the way of Victor de
Mauleon,--in the way of his private ambition, in the way of his political
dogmas; and therefore it must be destroyed, no matter what nor whom it
crushed beneath its ruins. He was one of those plotters of revolutions
not uncommon in democracies, ancient and modern, who invoke popular
agencies with the less scruple because they have a supreme contempt for
the populace. A man with mental powers equal to De Mauleon's, and who
sincerely loves the people and respects the grandeur of aspiration with
which, in the great upheaving of their masses, they so often contrast the
irrational credulities of their ignorance and the blind fury of their
wrath, is always exceedingly loath to pass the terrible gulf that divides
reform from revolution. He knows how rarely it happens that genuine
liberty is not disarmed in the passage, and what sufferings must be
undergone by those who live by their labour during the dismal intervals
between the sudden destruction of one form of society and the gradual
settlement of another. Such a man, however, has no type in a Victor de
Mauleon. The circumstances of his life had placed this strong nature at
war with society, and corrupted into misanthropy affections that had once
been ardent. That misanthropy made his ambition more intense, because it
increased his scorn for the human instruments it employed.
Victor de Mauleon knew that however innocent of the charges that had so
long darkened his name, and however--thanks to his rank, his manners, his
savoir vivre, the aid of Louvier's countenance and the support of his own
high-born connections--he might restore himself to his rightful grade in
private life, the higher prizes in public life would scarcely be within
reach, to a man of his antecedents and stinted means, in the existent
form and conditions of established political order. Perforce, the
aristocrat must make himself democrat if he would become a political
chief. Could he assist in turning upside down the actual state of
things, he trusted to his individual force of character to find himself
among the uppermost in the general _bouleversement_. And in the first
stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater darling than the noble
who deserts his order, though in the second stage it may guillotine him
at the denunciation of his cobbler. A mind so sanguine and so audacious
as that of Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second step if it sees a
way to the first.
CHAPTER VI.
The room was in complete darkness, save where a ray from a gas-lamp at
the mouth of the court came aslant through the window, when citizen Le
Roux re-entered, closed the window, lighted two of the sconces, and drew
forth from a drawer in the table implements of writing, which he placed
thereon noiselessly, as if he feared to disturb M. Lebeau, whose head,
buried in his hands, rested on the table. He seemed in a profound sleep.
At last the porter gently touched the arm of the slumberer, and whispered
in his ear, "It is on the stroke of ten, citizen; they will be here in a
minute or so." Lebeau lifted his head drowsily.
"Eh," said he--"what?"
"You have been asleep."
"I suppose so, for I have been dreaming. Ha! I hear the door-bell.
I am wide awake now."
The porter left him, and in a few minutes conducted into the salon two
men wrapped in cloaks, despite the warmth of the summer night. Lebeau
shook hands with them silently, and not less silently they laid aside
their cloaks and seated themselves. Both these men appeared to belong to
the upper section of the middle class. One, strongly built, with a keen
expression of countenance, was a surgeon considered able in his
profession, but with limited practice, owing to a current suspicion
against his honour in connection with a forged will. The other, tall,
meagre, with long grizzled hair and a wild unsettled look about the eyes,
was a man of science; had written works well esteemed upon mathematics
and electricity, also against the existence of any other creative power
than that which he called "nebulosity," and defined to be the combination
of heat and moisture. The surgeon was about the age of forty, the
atheist a few years older. In another minute or so, a knock was heard
against the wall. One of the men rose and touched a spring in the panel,
which then flew back, and showed an opening upon a narrow stair, by
which, one after the other, entered three other members of the society.
Evidently there was more than one mode of ingress and exit.
The three new-comers were not Frenchmen,--one might see that at a glance;
probably they had reasons for greater precaution than those who entered
by the front door. One, a tall, powerfully-built man, with fair hair and
beard, dressed with a certain pretension to elegance,--faded threadbare
elegance,--exhibiting no appearance of linen, was a Pole. One, a slight
bald man, very dark and sallow, was an Italian. The third, who seemed
like an _ouvrier_ in his holiday clothes, was a Belgian.
Lebeau greeted them all with an equal courtesy, and each with an equal
silence took his seat at the table.
Lebeau glanced at the clock. "Confreres," he said, "our number as fixed
for this seance still needs two to be complete, and doubtless they will
arrive in a few minutes. Till they come, we can but talk upon trifles.
Permit me to offer you my cigar-case." And so saying, he who professed
to be no smoker handed his next neighbour, who was the Pole, a large
cigar-case amply furnished; and the Pole, helping himself to two cigars,
handed the case to the man next him,--two only declining the luxury, the
Italian and the Belgian. But the Pole was the only man who took two
cigars.
Steps were now heard on the stairs, the door opened, and citizen Le Toux
ushered in, one after the other, two men, this time unmistakably French,
--to an experienced eye unmistakably Parisians: the one, a young
beardless man, who seemed almost boyish, with a beautiful face, and a
stinted, meagre frame; the other, a stalwart man of about eight-and
twenty, dressed partly as an _ouvrier_, not in his Sunday clothes, rather
affecting the blouse,--not that he wore that antique garment, but that he
was in rough costume unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes and coarse
stockings, and a workman's cap. But of all who gathered round the table
at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distinguished exterior,--
a virile honest exterior, a massive open forehead, intelligent eyes, a
handsome clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw. The expression of
the face was stern, but not mean,--an expression which might have become
an ancient baron as well as a modern workman; in it plenty of haughtiness
and of will, and still more of self-esteem.
"Confreres," said Lebeau, rising, and every eye turned to him, "our
number for the present seance is complete. To business. Since we last
met, our cause has advanced with rapid and not with noiseless stride. I
need not tell you that Louis Bonaparte has virtually abnegated _Les idees
Napoleoniennes,--a fatal mistake for him, a glorious advance for us. The
liberty of the press must very shortly be achieved, and with it personal
government must end. When the autocrat once is compelled to go by the
advice of his ministers, look for sudden changes. His ministers will be
but weathercocks, turned hither and thither according as the wind chops
at Paris; and Paris is the temple of the winds. The new revolution is
almost at hand. [Murmurs of applause.] It would move the laughter of
the Tuileries and its ministers, of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of
every dainty salon of this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits,
if they were told that here within this mouldering baraque, eight men, so
little blessed by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, met to
concert the fall of an empire. The Government would not deem us
important enough to notice our existence."
"I know not that," interrupted the Pole.
"Ah, pardon," resumed the orator; "I should have confined my remark to
the five of us who are French. I did injustice to the illustrious
antecedents of our foreign allies. I know that you, Thaddeus Loubisky,
that you, Leonardo Raselli, have been too eminent for hands hostile to
tyrants not to be marked with a black cross in the books of the police; I
know that you, Jan Vanderstegen, if hitherto unscarred by those wounds in
defence of freedom which despots and cowards would fain miscall the
brands of the felon, still owe it to your special fraternity to keep your
movements rigidly concealed. The tyrant would suppress the International
Society, and forbids it the liberty of congress. To you three is granted
the secret entrance to our council-hall. But we Frenchmen are as yet
safe in our supposed insignificance. Confreres, permit me to impress on
you the causes why, insignificant as we seem, we are really formidable.
In the first place, we are few: the great mistake in most secret
associations has been to admit many councillors; and disunion enters
whereever many tongues can wrangle. In the next place, though so few in
council, we are legion when the time comes for action; because we are
representative men, each of his own section, and each section is capable
of an indefinite expansion.
"You, valiant Pole, you, politic Italian, enjoy the confidence of
thousands now latent in unwatched homes and harmless callings, but who,
when you lift a finger, will, like the buried dragon's teeth, spring up
into armed men. You, Jan Vanderstegen, the trusted delegate from
Verviers, that swarming camp of wronged labour in its revolt from the
iniquities of capital,--you, when the hour arrives, can touch the wire
that flashes the telegram 'Arise' through all the lands in which workmen
combine against their oppressors.
"Of us five Frenchmen, let me speak more modestly. You, sage and
scholar, Felix Ruvigny, honoured alike for the profundity of your science
and the probity of your manners, induced to join us by your abhorrence of
priestcraft and superstition,--you made a wide connection among all the
enlightened reasoners who would emancipate the mind of man from the
trammels of Church-born fable, and when the hour arrives in which it is
safe to say, 'Delenda est Roma,' you know where to find the pens that are
more victorious than swords against a Church and a Creed. You" (turning
to the surgeon)--"you, Gaspard le Noy, whom a vile calumny has robbed of
the throne in your profession so justly due to your skill, you, nobly
scorning the rich and great, have devoted yourself to tend and heal the
humble and the penniless, so that you have won the popular title of the
'Medecin des Pauvres,' when the time comes wherein soldiers shall fly
before the sansculottes, and the mob shall begin the work which they who
move mobs will complete, the clients of Gaspard le Noy will be the
avengers of his wrongs.
"You, Armand Monnier, simple ouvrier, but of illustrious parentage, for
your grandsire was the beloved friend of the virtuous Robespierre, your
father perished a hero and a martyr in the massacre of the _coup d'etat_;
you, cultured in the eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the
persuasive philosophy of Robespierre's teacher, Rousseau; you, the
idolized orator of the Red Republicans,--you will be indeed a chief of
dauntless bands when the trumpet sounds for battle. Young publicist and
poet, Gustave Rameau,--I care not which you are at present, I know what
you will be soon, you need nothing for the development of your powers
over the many but an organ for their manifestation. Of that anon. I now
descend into the bathos of egotism. I am compelled lastly to speak of
myself. It was at Marseilles and Lyons, as you already know, that I
first conceived the plan of this representative association. For years
before I had been in familiar intercourse with the friends of freedom,--
that is, with the foes of the Empire. They are not all poor; some few
are rich and generous. I do not say these rich and few concur in the
ultimate objects of the poor and many; 'but they concur in the first
object, the demolition of that which exists,--the Empire. In the course
of my special calling of negotiator or agent in the towns of the Midi, I
formed friendships with some of these prosperous malcontents; and out of
these friendships I conceived the idea which is embodied in this council.
"According to that conception, while the council may communicate as it
will with all societies, secret or open, having revolution for their
object, the council refuses to merge itself in any other confederation;
it stands aloof and independent; it declines to admit into its code any
special articles of faith in a future beyond the bounds to which it
limits its design and its force. That design unites us; to go beyond
would divide. We all agree to destroy the Napoleonic dynasty; none of us
might agree as to what we should place in its stead. All of us here
present might say, 'A republic.' Ay, but of what kind? Vanderstegen
would have it socialistic; Monnier goes further, and would have it
communistic, on the principles of Fourier; Le Noy adheres to the policy
of Danton, and would commence the republic by a reign of terror; our
Italian ally abhors the notion of general massacre, and advocates
individual assassination. Ruvigny would annihilate the worship of a
Deity; Monnier holds with Voltaire and Robespierre, that, 'if there were
no Deity, it would be necessary to man to create one.' Bref, we could
not agree upon any plan for the new edifice, and therefore we refuse to
discuss one till the ploughshare has gone over the ruins of the old. But
I have another and more practical reason for keeping our council distinct
from all societies with professed objects beyond that of demolition. We
need a certain command of money. It is I who bring to you that, and--
how? Not from my own resources,--they but suffice to support myself; not
by contributions from _ouvriers_ who, as you well know, will subscribe
only for their own ends in the victory of workmen over masters. I bring
money to you from the coffers of the rich malcontents. Their politics
are not those of most present; their politics are what they term
moderate. Some are indeed for a republic, but for a republic strong in
defence of order, in support of property; others--and they are more
numerous and the more rich--for a constitutional monarchy, and, if
possible, for the abridgment of universal suffrage, which in their eyes
tends only to anarchy in the towns and arbitrary rule under priestly
influence in the rural districts. They would not subscribe a sou if they
thought it went to further the designs whether of Ruvigny the atheist, or
of Monnier, who would enlist the Deity of Rousseau on the side of the
drapeau rouge; not a sou if they knew I had the honour to boast such
confreres as I see around me. They subscribe, as we concert, for the
fall of Bonaparte. The policy I adopt I borrow from the policy of the
English Liberals. In England, potent millionnaires, high-born dukes,
devoted Churchmen, belonging to the Liberal party, accept the services of
men who look forward to measures which would ruin capital, eradicate
aristocracy, and destroy the Church, provided these men combine with them
in some immediate step onward against the Tories. They have a proverb
which I thus adapt to French localities: if a train passes Fontainebleau
on its way to Marseilles, why should I not take it to Fontainebleau
because other passengers are going on to Marseilles?
"Confreres, it seems to me the moment has come when we may venture some
of the fund placed at my disposal to other purposes than those to which
it has been hitherto devoted. I propose, therefore, to set up a journal
under the auspices of Gustave Rameau as editor-in-chief,--a journal
which, if he listen to my advice, will create no small sensation. It
will begin with a tone of impartiality; it will refrain from all violence
of invective; it will have wit, it will have sentiment, and eloquence; it
will win its way into the salons and cafes of educated men; and then, and
then, when it does change from polished satire into fierce denunciation
and sides with the blouses, its effect will be startling and terrific.
Of this I will say more to citizen Rameau in private. To you I need not
enlarge upon the fact that, at Paris, a combination of men, though
immeasurably superior to us in status or influence, without a journal at
command is nowhere; with such a journal, written not to alarm but to
seduce fluctuating opinions, a combination of men immeasurably inferior
to us may be anywhere.
"Confreres, this affair settled, I proceed to distribute amongst you sums
of which each who receives will render me an account, except our valued
confrere the Pole. All that we can subscribe to the cause of humanity a
representative of Poland requires for himself." (A suppressed laugh
among all but the Pole, who looked round with a grave, imposing air, as
much as to say, "What is there to laugh at?--a simple truth.")
M. Lebeau then presented to each of his confreres a sealed envelope,
containing no doubt a bank-note, and perhaps also private instructions as
to its disposal. It was one of his rules to make the amount of any sum
granted to an individual member of the society from the fund at his
disposal a confidential secret between himself and the recipient. Thus
jealousy was avoided if the sums were unequal; and unequal they generally
were. In the present instance the two largest sums were given to the
"Medecin des Pauvres" and to the delegate from Verviers. Both were no
doubt to be distributed among "the poor," at the discretion of the
trustee appointed.
Whatever rules with regard to the distribution of money M. Lebeau laid
down were acquiesced in without demur, for the money was found
exclusively by himself, and furnished without the pale of the Secret
Council, of which he had made himself founder and dictator. Some other
business was then discussed, sealed reports from each member were handed
to the president, who placed them unopened in his pocket, and resumed,
"Confreres, our seance is now concluded. The period for our next meeting
must remain indefinite, for I myself shall leave Paris as soon as I have
set on foot the journal, on the details of which I will confer with
citizen Rameau. I am not satisfied with the progress made by the two
travelling missionaries who complete our Council of Ten; and though I do
not question their zeal, I think my experience may guide it if I take a
journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Marseilles, where they now are. But
should circumstances demanding concert or action arise, you may be sure
that I will either summon a meeting or transmit instructions to such of
our members as may be most usefully employed. For the present,
confreres, you are relieved. Remain only you, dear young author."
CHAPTER VII.
Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council
remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no
longer moody and overcast,--his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph;
there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him
curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable,
excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,--especially when it
nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a
secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which
this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for
impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian
Rock than to the Capitol, while yet those crazed combinations might, in
some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of practical
ambition. Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions in his
intoxicated vision,--vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before
it floated the realized image of his aspirations,--a journal of which he
was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his prose, should
occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his name, hitherto
scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound in salon and club
and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of fashion. And he
owed this to the man seated there,--a prodigious man.
"Cher poete," said Lebeau, breaking silence, "it gives me no mean
pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him for
those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity shall
read. Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made
celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to
inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All
confirmed my first impression,--that you were exactly the writer I wish
to secure to our cause. I therefore sought you in your rooms,
unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of your
compositions. _Bref_, we soon became friends; and after comparing minds,
I admitted you, at your request, into this Secret Council. Now, in
proposing to you the conduct of the journal I would establish, for which
I am prepared to find all necessary funds, I am compelled to make
imperative conditions. Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that
station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune;
if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not speak of failure; I must
have it succeed. Our interest, then, is the same. Before that interest
all puerile vanities fade away. Nominally, I say, you are editor-in-
chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be done by
others."
"Ah!" exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned. Lebeau resumed,
"To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth;
it needs the tact and experience of mature years."
Rameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his pale lips.
Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he had thought.
"A certain portion of the journal," continued Lebeau, "will be
exclusively appropriated to your pen."
Rameau's lip lost the sneer.
"But your pen must be therein restricted to compositions of pure fancy,
disporting in a world that does not exist; or, if on graver themes
connected with the beings of the world that does exist, the subjects will
be dictated to you and revised. Yet even in the higher departments of a
journal intended to make way at its first start, we need the aid, not
indeed of men who write better than you, but of men whose fame is
established,--whose writings, good or bad, the public run to read, and
will find good even if they are bad. You must consign one column to the
playful comments and witticisms of Savarin."
"Savarin? But he has a journal of his own. He will not, as an author,
condescend to write in one just set up by me; and as a politician, he as
certainly will not aid in an ultrademocratic revolution. If he care for
politics at all, he is a constitutionalist, an Orleanist."
"Enfant! as an author Savarin will condescend to contribute to your
journal, first, because it in no way attempts to interfere with his own;
secondly,--I can tell you a secret, Savarin's journal no longer suffices
for his existence. He has sold more than two-thirds of its property; he
is in debt, and his creditor is urgent; and to-morrow you will offer
Savarin thirty thousand francs for one column from his pen, and signed by
his name, for two months from the day the journal starts. He will
accept, partly because the sum will clear off the debt that hampers him,
partly because he will take care that the amount becomes known; and that
will help him to command higher terms for the sale of the remaining
shares in the journal he now edits, for the new book which you told me he
intended to write, and for the new journal which he will be sure to set
up as soon as he has disposed of the old one. You say that, as a
politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid in an ultra-democratic
revolution. Who asks him to do so? Did I not imply at the meeting that
we commence our journal with politics the mildest? Though revolutions
are not made with rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their
roots. The polite cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the
surface of society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its deeps.
Had there been no Voltaire, there would have been no Camille Desmoulins;
had there been no Diderot, there would have been no Marat. We start as
polite cynics. Of all cynics Savarin is the politest. But when I bid
high for him, it is his clique that I bid for. Without his clique he is
but a wit; with his clique, a power. Partly out of that clique, partly
out of a circle beyond it, which Savarin can more or less influence, I
select ten. Here is the list of them; study it. _Entre nous_, I esteem
their writings as little as I do artificial flies; but they are the
artificial flies at which, in this particular season of the year, the
public rise. You must procure at least five of the ten; and I leave you
carte blanche as to the terms. Savarin gained, the best of them will be
proud of being his associates. Observe, none of these messieurs of
brilliant imagination are to write political articles; those will be
furnished to you anonymously, and inserted without erasure or omission.
When you have secured Savarin, and five at least of the collaborateurs in
the list, write to me at my office. I give you four days to do this; and
the day the journal starts you enter into the income of fifteen thousand
francs a year, with a rise in salary proportioned to profits. Are you
contented with the terms?"
"Of course I am; but supposing I do not gain the aid of Savarin, or five
at least of the list you give, which I see at a glance contains names the
most _a la mode_ in this kind of writing, more than one of them of high
social rank, whom it is difficult for me even to approach,--if, I say, I
fail?"
"What! with a carte blanche of terms? fie! Are you a Parisian? Well, to
answer you frankly, if you fail in so easy a task, you are not the man to
edit our journal, and I shall find another. _Allez, courage_! Take my
advice; see Savarin the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course, my
name and calling you will keep a profound secret from him, as from all.
Say as mysteriously as you can that parties you are forbidden to name
instruct you to treat with M. Savarin, and offer him the terms I have
specified, the thirty thousand francs paid to him in advance the moment
he signs the simple memorandum of agreement. The more mysterious you
are, the more you will impose,--that is, wherever you offer money and
don't ask for it."
Here Lebeau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of adieu, lightly
descended the gloomy stairs.
CHAPTER VIII.
At night, after this final interview with Lebeau, Graham took leave for
good of his lodgings in Montmartre, and returned to his apartment in the
Rue d'Anjou. He spent several hours of the next morning in answering
numerous letters accumulated during his absence. Late in the afternoon
he had an interview with M. Renard, who, as at that season of the year he
was not over-busied with other affairs, engaged to obtain leave to place
his services at Graham's command during the time requisite for inquiries
at Aix, and to be in readiness to start the next day. Graham then went
forth to pay one or two farewell visits; and these over, bent his way
through the Champs Elysees towards Isaura's villa, when he suddenly
encountered Rochebriant on horseback. The Marquis courteously
dismounted, committing his horse to the care of the groom, and linking
his arm in Graham's, expressed his pleasure at seeing him again; then,
with some visible hesitation and embarrassment, he turned the
conversation towards the political aspects of France.
"There was," he said, "much in certain words of yours, when we last
walked together in this very path, that sank deeply into my mind at the
time, and over which I have of late still more earnestly reflected. You
spoke of the duties a Frenchman owed to France, and the 'impolicy' of
remaining aloof from all public employment on the part of those attached
to the Legitimist cause."
"True; it cannot be the policy of any party to forget that between the
irrevocable past and the uncertain future there intervenes the action of
the present time."
"Should you, as an impartial bystander, consider it dishonourable in me
if I entered the military service under the ruling sovereign?"
"Certainly not, if your country needed you."
"And it may, may it not? I hear vague rumours of coming war in almost
every salon I frequent. There has been gunpowder in the atmosphere we
breathe ever since the battle of Sadowa. What think you of German
arrogance and ambition? Will they suffer the swords of France to rust in
their scabbards?"
"My dear Marquis, I should incline to put the question otherwise. Will
the jealous _amour propre_ of France permit the swords of Germany to
remain sheathed? But in either case, no politician can see without grave
apprehension two nations so warlike, close to each other, divided by a
borderland that one covets and the other will not yield, each armed to
the teeth,--the one resolved to brook no rival, the other equally
determined to resist all aggression. And therefore, as you say, war is
in the atmosphere; and we may also hear, in the clouds that give no sign
of dispersion, the growl of the gathering thunder. War may come any day;
and if France be not at once the victor--"
"France not at once the victor?" interrupted Alain, passionately; "and
against a Prussian! Permit me to say no Frenchman can believe that."
"Let no man despise a foe," said Graham, smiling half sadly. "However, I
must not incur the danger of wounding your national susceptibilities. To
return to the point you raise. If France needed the aid of her best and
bravest, a true descendant of Henri Quatre ought to blush for his ancient
noblesse were a Rochebriant to say, 'But I don't like the colour of the
flag.'"
"Thank you," said Alain, simply; "that is enough." There was a pause,
the young men walking on slowly, arm in arm. And then there flashed
across Graham's mind the recollection of talk on another subject in that
very path. Here he had spoken to Alain in deprecation of any possible
alliance with Isaura Cicogna, the destined actress and public; singer.
His cheek flushed; his heart smote him. What! had he spoken slightingly
of her--of her? What if she became his own wife? What! had he himself
failed in the respect which he would demand as her right from the
loftiest of his high-born kindred? What, too, would this man, of fairer
youth than himself, think of that disparaging counsel, when be heard that
the monitor had won the prize from which he had warned another? Would it
not seem that he had but spoken in the mean cunning dictated by the fear
of a worthier rival? Stung by these thoughts, he arrested his steps,
and, looking the Marquis full in the face, said, "You remind me of one
subject in our talk many weeks since; it is my duty to remind you of
another. At that time you, and, speaking frankly, I myself, acknowledged
the charm in the face of a young Italian lady. I told you then that, on
learning she was intended for the stage, the charm for me had vanished.
I said bluntly that it should vanish perhaps still more utterly for a
noble of your illustrious name; you remember?"
"Yes," answered Alain, hesitatingly, and with a look of surprise.
"I wish now to retract all I said thereon. Mademoiselle Cicogna is not
bent on the profession for which she was educated. She would willingly
renounce all idea of entering it. The only counterweight which, viewed
whether by my reason or my prejudices, could be placed in the opposite
scale to that of the excellences which might make any man proud to win
her, is withdrawn. I have become acquainted with her since the date of
our conversation. Hers is a mind which harmonizes with the loveliness of
her face. In one word, Marquis, I should deem myself honoured, as well
as blest, by such a bride. It was due to her that I should say this; it
was due also to you, in case you should retain the impression I sought in
ignorance to efface. And I am bound, as a gentleman, to obey this
twofold duty, even though in so doing I bring upon myself the affliction
of a candidate for the hand to which I would fain myself aspire,--a
candidate with pretensions in every way far superior to my own."
An older or a more cynical man than Alain de Rochebriant might well have
found something suspicious in a confession thus singularly volunteered;
but the Marquis was himself so loyal that he had no doubt of the loyalty
of Graham.
"I reply to you," he said, "with a frankness which finds an example in
your own. The first fair face which attracted my fancy since my arrival
at Paris was that of the Italian demoiselle of whom you speak in terms of
such respect. I do think if I had then been thrown into her society, and
found her to be such as you no doubt truthfully describe, that fancy
might have become a very grave emotion. I was then so poor, so
friendless, so despondent! Your words of warning impressed me at the
time, but less durably than you might suppose; for that very night as I
sat in my solitary attic I said to myself, 'Why should I shrink, with an
obsolete old-world prejudice, from what my forefathers would have termed
a mesalliance? What is the value of my birthright now? None,--worse
than none. It excludes me from all careers; my name is but a load that
weighs me down. Why should I make that name a curse as well as a burden?
Nothing is left to me but that which is permitted to all men,--wedded and
holy love. Could I win to my heart the smile of a woman who brings me
that dower, the home of my fathers would lose its gloom.' And therefore,
if at that time I had become familiarly acquainted with her who had thus
attracted my eye and engaged my thoughts, she might have become my
destiny; but now!"
"But now?"
"Things have changed. I am no longer poor, friendless, solitary. I have
entered the world of my equals as a Rochebriant; I have made myself
responsible for the dignity of my name. I could not give that name to
one, however peerless in herself, of whom the world would say, 'But for
her marriage she would have been a singer on the stage!' I will own
more: the fancy I conceived for the first fair face, other fair faces
have dispelled. At this moment, however, I have no thought of marriage;
and having known the anguish of struggle, the privations of poverty, I
would ask no woman to share the hazard of my return to them. You might
present me, then, safely to this beautiful Italian,--certain, indeed,
that I should be her admirer; equally certain that I could not become
your rival."
There was something in this speech that jarred upon Graham's sensitive
pride; but on the whole, he felt relieved, both in honour and in heart.
After a few more words, the two young men shook hands and parted. Alain
remounted his horse. The day was now declining. Graham hailed a vacant
fiacre, and directed the driver to Isaura's villa.
CHAPTER IX.
ISAURA.
The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sat at her window, gazing dreamily
on the rose-hued clouds that made the western borderland between earth
and heaven. On the table before her lay a few sheets of manuscript
hastily written, not yet reperused. That restless mind of hers had left
its trace on the manuscript.
It is characteristic perhaps of the different genius of the sexes, that
woman takes to written composition more impulsively, more intuitively,
than man,--letter-writing, to him a task-work, is to her a recreation.
Between the age of sixteen and the date of marriage, six well-educated
clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten
thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an
author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks in
poetry or romance a confessional,--an outpouring of thought and
sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words,
and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could
not, utter orally to a living ear.
During the last few days, the desire to create in the realm of fable
beings constructed by her own breath, spiritualized by her own soul, had
grown irresistibly upon this fair child of song. In fact, when Graham's
words had decided the renunciation of her destined career, her
instinctive yearnings for the utterance of those sentiments or thoughts
which can only find expression in some form of art, denied the one vent,
irresistibly impelled her to the other. And in this impulse she was
confirmed by the thought that here at least there was nothing which her
English friend could disapprove,--none of the perils that beset the
actress. Here it seemed as if, could she but succeed, her fame would be
grateful to the pride of all who loved her. Here was a career ennobled
by many a woman, and side by side in rivalry with renowned men. To her
it seemed that, could she in this achieve an honoured name, that name
took its place at once amid the higher ranks of the social world, and in
itself brought a priceless dowry and a starry crown. It was, however,
not till after the visit to Enghien that this ambition took practical
life and form. One evening after her return to Paris, by an effort so
involuntary that it seemed to her no effort, she had commenced a tale,--
without plan, without method, without knowing in one page what would fill
the next. Her slight fingers hurried on as if, like the pretended spirit
manifestations, impelled by an invisible agency without the pale of the
world. She was intoxicated by the mere joy of inventing ideal images.
In her own special art an elaborate artist, here she had no thought of
art; if art was in her work, it sprang unconsciously from the harmony
between herself and her subject,--as it is, perhaps, with the early
soarings of the genuine lyric poets, in contrast to the dramatic. For
the true lyric poet is intensely personal, intensely subjective. It is
himself that he expresses, that he represents; and he almost ceases to be
lyrical when he seeks to go out of his own existence into that of others
with whom he has no sympathy, no rapport. This tale was vivid with
genius as yet untutored,--genius in its morning freshness, full of
beauties, full of faults. Isaura distinguished not the faults from the
beauties. She felt only a vague persuasion that there was a something
higher and brighter--a something more true to her own idiosyncrasy--than
could be achieved by the art that "sings other people's words to other
people's music." From the work thus commenced she had now paused; and it
seemed to her fancies that between her inner self and the scene without,
whether in the skies and air and sunset, or in the abodes of men
stretching far and near till lost amid the roofs and domes of the great
city, she had fixed and riveted the link of a sympathy hitherto
fluctuating, unsubstantial, evanescent, undefined. Absorbed in her
revery, she did not notice the deepening of the short twilight, till the
servant entering drew the curtains between her and the world without, and
placed the lamp on the table beside her. Then she turned away with a
restless sigh; her eyes fell on the manuscript, but the charm of it was
gone. A sentiment of distrust in its worth had crept into her thoughts,
unconsciously to herself, and the page open before her at an uncompleted
sentence seemed unwelcome and wearisome as a copy-book is to a child
condemned to relinquish a fairy tale half told, and apply himself to a
task half done. She fell again into a revery, when, starting as from a
dream, she heard herself addressed by name, and turning round saw Savarin
and Gustave Rameau in the room.
"We are come, Signorina," said Savarin, "to announce to you a piece of
news, and to hazard a petition. The news is this: my young friend here
has found a Maecenas who has the good taste so to admire his lucubrations
under the _nom de plume_ of Alphonse de Valcour as to volunteer the
expenses for starting a new journal, of which Gustave Rameau is to be
editor-in-chief; and I have promised to assist him as contributor for the
first two months. I have given him notes of introduction to certain
other _feuilletonistes_ and critics whom he has on his list. But all put
together would not serve to float the journal like a short _roman_ from
Madame de Grantmesnil. Knowing your intimacy with that eminent artist, I
venture to back Rameau's supplication that you would exert your influence
on his, behalf. As to the _honoraires_, she has but to name them."
"Carte blanche," cried Rameau, eagerly.
"You know Eulalie too well, Monsieur Savarin," answered Isaura, with a
smile half reproachful, "to suppose that she is a mercenary in letters,
and sells her services to the best bidder."
"Bah, belle enfant!" said Savarin, with his gay light laugh. "Business
is business, and books as well as razors are made to sell. But, of
course, a proper prospectus of the journal must accompany your request to
write in it. Meanwhile Rameau will explain to you, as he has done to me,
that the journal in question is designed for circulation among readers of
_haute classe_ it is to be pleasant and airy, full of _bons mots_ and
anecdote; witty, but not ill-natured. Politics to be Liberal, of course,
but of elegant admixture,--champagne and seltzer-water. In fact,
however, I suspect that the politics will be a very inconsiderable
feature in this organ of fine arts and manners; some amateur scribbler in
the _beau monde_ will supply them. For the rest, if my introductory
letters are successful, Madame de Grantmesnil will not be in bad
company."
"You will write to Madame de Grantmesnil?" asked Rameau, pleadingly.
"Certainly I will, as soon--"
"As soon as you have the prospectus, and the names of the
collaborateurs," interrupted Rameau. "I hope to send you these in a very
few days."
While Rameau was thus speaking, Savarin had seated himself by the table,
and his eye mechanically resting on the open manuscript lighted by chance
upon a sentence--an aphorism--embodying a very delicate sentiment in very
felicitous diction,--one of those choice condensations of thought,
suggesting so much more than is said, which are never found in mediocre
writers, and, rare even in the best, come upon us like truths seized by
surprise.
"Parbleu!" exclaimed Savarin, in the impulse of genuine admiration, "but
this is beautiful; what is more, it is original,"--and he read the words
aloud. Blushing with shame and resentment, Isaura turned and hastily
placed her hand on the manuscript.
"Pardon," said Savarin, humbly; "I confess my sin, but it was so
unpremeditated that it does not merit a severe penance. Do not look at
me so reproachfully. We all know that young ladies keep commonplace
books in which they enter passages that strike them in the works they
read; and you have but shown an exquisite taste in selecting this gem.
Do tell me where you found it. Is it somewhere in Lamartine?"
"No," answered Isaura, half inaudibly, and with an effort to withdraw the
paper. Savarin gently detained her hand, and looking earnestly into her
tell-tale face, divined her secret.
"It is your own, Signorina! Accept the congratulations of a very
practised and somewhat fastidious critic. If the rest of what you write
resembles this sentence, contribute to Rameau's journal, and I answer for
its success."
Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious.
"My dear child," resumed Savarin, drawing away the manuscript from
Isaura's coy, reluctant clasp, "do permit me to cast a glance over these
papers. For what I yet know, there may be here more promise of fame than
even you could gain as a singer."
The electric chord in Isaura's heart was touched. Who cannot conceive
what the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when
hearing the first cheery note of praise from the lips of a writer of
established fame?
"Nay, this cannot be worth your reading," said Isaura, falteringly; "I
have never written anything of the kind before, and this is a riddle to
me. I know not," she added, with a sweet low laugh, "why I began, nor
how I should end it."
"So much the better," said Savarin; and he took the manuscript, withdrew
to a recess by the farther window, and seated himself there, reading
silently and quickly, but now and then with a brief pause of reflection.
Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the divan, and began talking with
her earnestly,--earnestly, for it was about himself and his aspiring
hopes. Isaura, on the other hand, more woman-like than author-like,
ashamed even to seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her back
turned, in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her
manuscript,--Isaura listened and sought to interest herself solely in the
young fellow-author. Seeking to do so she succeeded genuinely, for ready
sympathy was a prevalent characteristic of her nature.
"Oh," said Rameau, "I am at the turning-point of my life. Ever since
boyhood I have been haunted with the words of Andre Chenier on the
morning he was led to the scaffold 'And yet there was something here,'
striking his forehead. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong
in the chase of a name; I, underrated, uncomprehended, indebted even for
a hearing to the patronage of an amiable trifler like Savarin, ranked by
petty rivals in a grade below themselves,--I now see before me, suddenly,
abruptly presented, the expanding gates into fame and fortune. Assist
me, you!"
"But how?" said Isaura, already forgetting her manuscript; and certainly
Rameau did not refer to that.
"How!" echoed Rameau; "how! But do you not see--or at least, do you not
conjecture--this journal of which Savarin speaks contains my present and
my future? Present independence, opening to fortune and renown. Ay,--
and who shall say? renown beyond that of the mere writer. Behind the
gaudy scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new social edifice
unperceived arises; and in that edifice the halls of State shall be given
to the men who help obscurely to build it,--to men like me." Here,
drawing her hand into his own, fixing on her the most imploring gaze of
his dark persuasive eyes, and utterly unconscious of bathos in his
adjuration, he added: "Plead for me with your whole mind and heart; use
your uttermost influence with the illustrious writer whose pen can assure
the fates of my journal."
Here the door suddenly opened, and following the servant, who announced
unintelligibly his name, there entered Graham Vane.
CHAPTER X.
The Englishman halted at the threshold. His eye, passing rapidly over
the figure of Savarin reading in the window-niche, rested upon Rameau and
Isaura seated on the same divan, he with her hand clasped in both his
own, and bending his face towards hers so closely that a loose tress of
her hair seemed to touch his forehead.
The Englishman halted, and no revolution which changes the habitudes and
forms of States was ever so sudden as that which passed without a word in
the depths of his unconjectured heart. The heart has no history which
philosophers can recognize. An ordinary political observer,
contemplating the condition of a nation, may very safely tell us what
effects must follow the causes patent to his eyes; but the wisest and
most far-seeing sage, looking at a man at one o'clock, cannot tell us
what revulsions of his whole being may be made ere the clock strike two.
As Isaura rose to greet her visitor, Savarin came from the window-niche,
the manuscript in his hand.
"Son of perfidious Albion," said Savarin, gayly, "we feared you had
deserted the French alliance. Welcome back to Paris, and the _entente
cordiale_."
"Would I could stay to enjoy such welcome! but I must again quit Paris."
"Soon to return, _n'est ce pas_? Paris is an irresistible magnet to _les
beaux esprits_. _A propos_ of _beaux esprits_, be sure to leave orders
with your bookseller, if you have one, to enter your name as subscriber
to a new journal."
"Certainly, if Monsieur Savarin recommends it."
"He recommends it as a matter of course; he writes in it," said Rameau.
"A sufficient guarantee for its excellence. What is the name of the
journal?"
"Not yet thought of," answered Savarin. "Babes must be born before they
are christened; but it will be instruction enough to your bookseller to
order the new journal to be edited by Gustave Rameau."
Bowing ceremoniously to the editor in prospect, Graham said, half
ironically, "May I hope that in the department of criticism you will not
be too hard upon poor Tasso?"
"Never fear; the Signorina, who adores Tasso, will take him under her
special protection," said Savarin, interrupting Rameau's sullen and
embarrassed reply.
Graham's brow slightly contracted. "Mademoiselle," he said, "is then to
be united in the conduct of this journal with M. Gustave Rameau?"
"No, indeed!" exclaimed Isaura, somewhat frightened at the idea.
"But I hope," said Savarin, "that the Signorina may become a contributor
too important for an editor to offend by insulting her favourites, Tasso
included. Rameau and I came hither to entreat her influence with her
intimate and illustrious friend, Madame de Grantmesnil, to insure the
success of our undertaking by sanctioning the announcement of her name as
a contributor."
"Upon social questions,--such as the laws of marriage?" said Graham, with
a sarcastic smile, which concealed the quiver of his lip and the pain in
his voice.
"Nay," answered Savarin, "our journal will be too sportive, I hope, for
matters so profound. We would rather have Madame de Grantmesnil's aid in
some short _roman_, which will charm the fancy of all and offend the
opinions of none. But since I came into the room, I care less for the
Signorina's influence with the great authoress," and he glanced
significantly at the manuscript.
"How so?" asked Graham, his eye following the glance.
"If the writer of this manuscript will conclude what she has begun, we
shall be independent of Madame de Grantmesnil."
"Fie!" cried Isaura, impulsively, her face and neck bathed in blushes,--
"fie! such words are a mockery."
Graham gazed at her intently, and then turned his eyes on Savarin. He
guessed aright the truth. "Mademoiselle then is an author? In the style
of her friend Madame de Grantmesnil?"
"Bah!" said Savarin, "I should indeed be guilty of mockery if I paid the
Signorina so false a compliment as to say that in a first effort she
attained to the style of one of the most finished sovereigns of language
that has ever swayed the literature of France. When I say, 'Give us this
tale completed, and I shall be consoled if the journal does not gain the
aid of Madame de Grantmesnil,' I mean that in these pages there is that
nameless charm of freshness and novelty which compensates for many faults
never committed by a practised pen like Madame de Grantmesnil's. My dear
young lady, go on with this story,--finish it; when finished, do not
disdain any suggestions I may offer in the way of correction,--and I will
venture to predict to you so brilliant a career as author, that you will
not regret should you resign for that career the bravoes you could
command as actress and singer."
The Englishman pressed his hand convulsively to his heart, as if smitten
by a sudden spasm. But as his eyes rested on Isaura's face, which had
become radiant with the enthusiastic delight of genius when the path it
would select opens before it as if by a flash from heaven, whatever of
jealous irritation, whatever of selfish pain he might before have felt;
was gone, merged in a sentiment of unutterable sadness and compassion.
Practical man as he was, he knew so well all the dangers, all the snares,
all the sorrows, all the scandals menacing name and fame, that in the
world of Paris must beset the fatherless girl who, not less in authorship
than on the stage, leaves the safeguard of private life forever behind
her, who becomes a prey to the tongues of the public. At Paris, how
slender is the line that divides the authoress from the _Bohemienne_!
He sank into his chair silently, and passed his hand over his eyes,
as if to shut out a vision of the future.
Isaura in her excitement did not notice the effect on her English
visitor. She could not have divined such an effect as possible. On the
contrary, even subordinate to her joy at the thought that she had not
mistaken the instincts which led her to a nobler vocation than that of
the singer, that the cage-bar was opened, and space bathed in sunshine
was inviting the new-felt wings,--subordinate even to that joy was a joy
more wholly, more simply woman's. "If," thought she, in this joy, "if
this be true, my proud ambition is realized; all disparities of worth and
fortune are annulled between me and him to whom I would bring no shame of
mesalliance!" Poor dreamer, poor child!
"You will let me see what you have written," said Rameau, somewhat
imperiously, in the sharp voice habitual to him, and which pierced
Graham's ear like a splinter of glass.
"No, not now; when finished."
"You will finish it?"
"Oh, yes; how can I help it after such encouragement?" She held out her
hand to Savarin, who kissed it gallantly; then her eyes intuitively
sought Graham's. By that time he had recovered his self-possession. He
met her look tranquilly, and with a smile; but the smile chilled her, she
knew not why.
The conversation then passed upon books and authors of the day, and was
chiefly supported by the satirical pleasantries of Savarin, who was in
high good-spirits.
Graham, who, as we know, had come with the hope of seeing Isaura alone,
and with the intention of uttering words which, however guarded, might
yet in absence serve as links of union, now no longer coveted that
interview, no longer meditated those words. He soon rose to depart.
"Will you dine with me to-morrow?" asked Savarin. "Perhaps I may induce
the Signorina and Rameau to offer you the temptation of meeting them."
"By to-morrow I shall be leagues away."
Isaura's heart sank. This time the manuscript was fairly forgotten.
"You never said you were going so soon," cried Savarin. "When do you
come back, vile deserter?"
"I cannot even guess. Monsieur Rameau, count me among your subscribers.
Mademoiselle, my best regards to Signora Venosta. When I see you again,
no doubt you will have become famous."
Isaura here could not control herself. She rose impulsively, and
approached him, holding out her hand, and attempting a smile.
"But not famous in the way that you warned me from," she said in
whispered tones. "You are friends with me still?" It was like the
piteous wail of a child seeking to make it up with one who wants to
quarrel, the child knows not why. Graham was moved, but what could he
say? Could he have the right to warn her from this profession also;
forbid all desires, all roads of fame to this brilliant aspirant? Even a
declared and accepted lover might well have deemed that that would be to
ask too much. He replied, "Yes, always a friend, if you could ever need
one." Her hand slid from his, and she turned away wounded to the quick.
"Have you your _coupe_ at the door?" asked Savarin.
"Simply a _fiacre_."
"And are going back at once to Paris?"
"Yes."
"Will you kindly drop me in the Rue de Rivoli?"
"Charmed to be of use."
CHAPTER XI.
As the _fiacre_ bore to Paris Savarin and Graham, the former said, "I
cannot conceive what rich simpleton could entertain so high an opinion of
Gustave Rameau as to select a man so young, and of reputation though
promising so undecided, for an enterprise which requires such a degree of
tact and judgment as the conduct of a new journal,--and a journal, too,
which is to address itself to the beau monde. However, it is not for me
to criticise a selection which brings a god-send to myself."
"To yourself? You jest; you have a journal of your own. It can only be
through an excess of good-nature that you lend your name and pen to the
service of M. Gustave Rameau."
"My good-nature does not go to that extent. It is Rameau who confers a
service upon me. _Peste! mon cher_, we French authors have not the rents
of you rich English milords. And though I am the most economical of our
tribe, yet that journal of mine has failed me of late; and this morning I
did not exactly see how I was to repay a sum I had been obliged to borrow
of a money-lender,--for I am too proud to borrow of friends, and too
sagacious to borrow of publishers,--when in walks _ce cher petit_ Gustave
with an offer, for a few trifles towards starting this new-born journal,
which makes a new man of me. Now I am in the undertaking, my _amour
propre_ and my reputation are concerned in its success; and I shall take
care that collaborateurs of whose company I am not ashamed are in the
same boat. But that charming girl, Isaura! What an enigma the gift of
the pen is! No one can ever guess who has it until tried."
"The young lady's manuscript, then, really merits the praise you bestowed
on it?"
"Much more praise, though a great deal of blame, which I did not bestow,
--for in a first work faults insure success as much as beauties.
Anything better than tame correctness. Yes, her first work, to judge by
what is written, must make a hit,--a great hit. And that will decide her
career. A singer, an actress, may retire,--often does when she marries
an author; but once an author always an author."
"Ah! is it so? If you had a beloved daughter, Savarin, would you
encourage her to be an author?"
"Frankly, no: principally because in that case the chances are that she
would marry an author; and French authors, at least in the imaginative
school, make very uncomfortable husbands."
"Ah! you think the Signorina will marry one of those uncomfortable
husbands,--M. Rameau, perhaps?"
"Rameau! Hein! nothing more likely. That beautiful face of his has
its fascination. And to tell you the truth, my wife, who is a striking
illustration of the truth that what woman wills heaven wills, is bent
upon that improvement in Gustave's moral life which she thinks a union
with Mademoiselle Cicogna would achieve. At all events, the fair Italian
would have in Rameau a husband who would not suffer her to bury her
talents under a bushel. If she succeeds as a writer (by succeeding I
mean making money), he will see that her ink-bottle is never empty; and
if she don't succeed as a writer, he will take care that the world shall
gain an actress or a singer. For Gustave Rameau has a great taste for
luxury and show; and whatever his wife can make, I will venture to say
that he will manage to spend."
"I thought you had an esteem and regard for Mademoiselle Cicogna. It is
Madame your wife, I suppose, who has a grudge against her?"
"On the contrary, my wife idolizes her."
"Savages sacrifice to their idols the things they deem of value;
civilized Parisians sacrifice their idols themselves, and to a thing that
is worthless."
"Rameau is not worthless; he has beauty and youth and talent. My wife
thinks more highly of him than I do; but I must respect a man who has
found admirers so sincere as to set him up in a journal, and give him
_carte blanche_ for terms to contributors. I know of no man in Paris
more valuable to me. His worth to me this morning is thirty thousand
francs. I own I do not think him likely to be a very safe husband; but
then French female authors and artists seldom take any husbands except
upon short leases. There are no vulgar connubial prejudices in the pure
atmosphere of art. Women of genius, like Madame de Grantmesnil, and
perhaps like our charming young friend, resemble canary-birds,--to sing
their best you must separate them from their mates."
The Englishman suppressed a groan, and turned the conversation.
When he had set down his lively companion, Vane dismissed his _fiacre_,
and walked to his lodgings musingly.
"No," he said inly; "I must wrench myself from the very memory of that
haunting face,--the friend and pupil of Madame de Grantmesnil, the
associate of Gustave Rameau, the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant
to that pure atmosphere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial
prejudices! Could I--whether I be rich or poor--see in her the ideal of
an English wife? As it is--as it is--with this mystery which oppresses
me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insoluble,--as it is, how
fortunate that I did not find her alone; did not utter the words that
would fain have leaped from my heart; did not say, 'I may not be the rich
man I seem, but in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because
struggle and labour are the sinews of ambition! Should I be rich, will
you adorn my station? Should I be poor, will you enrich poverty with
your smile? And can you, in either case, forego--really, painlessly
forego, as you led me to hope--the pride in your own art?' My ambition
were killed did I marry an actress, a singer. Better that than the
hungerer after excitements which are never allayed, the struggler in a
career which admits of no retirement,--the woman to whom marriage is no
goal, who remains to the last the property of the public, and glories to
dwell in a house of glass into which every bystander has a right to peer.
Is this the ideal of an Englishman's wife and home? No, no!--woe is me,
no!"
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