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Title: The Parisians, Book 6.
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #
]
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Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B6, LYTTON ***
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THE PARISIANS
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
BOOK VI.
CHAPTER I.
A few weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a gay party of men
were assembled at supper in one of the private salons of the Maison
Doree. The supper was given by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were,
though in various ways, more or less distinguished. Rank and fashion
were not unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand de
Vandemar, by whose supremacy as "lion" Frederic still felt rather
humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring them familiarly together.
Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their representatives in Henri
Bernard, a rising young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honoured with
his patronage, the Vicomte de Braze, and M. Savarin. Science was not
altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in the
person of the eminent physician to whom we have been before introduced,
--Dr. Bacourt. Doctors in Paris are not so serious as they mostly are in
London; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school of Aristippus,
was no unfrequent nor ungenial guest at any banquet in which the Graces
relaxed their zones. Martial glory was also represented at that social
gathering by a warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately arrived from
Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved many laurels and the rank of
Colonel. Finance contributed Duplessis. Well it might; for Duplessis
had just assisted the host to a splendid coup at the Bourse.
"Ah, _cher_ Monsieur Savarin," says Enguerrand de Vandemar, whose
patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that he is always
instinctively polite, "what a masterpiece in its way is that little paper
of yours in the 'Sens Commun,' upon the connection between the national
character and the national diet! so genuinely witty!--for wit is but
truth made amusing."
"You flatter me," replied Savarin, modestly; "but I own I do think there
is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle. Perhaps, however, the
character of a people depends more on its drinks than its food. The
wines of Italy, heady, irritable, ruinous to the digestion, contribute to
the character which belongs to active brains and disordered livers. The
Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them. The English
common-people drink beer, and the beerish character is stolid, rude, but
stubborn and enduring. The English middle-class imbibe port and sherry;
and with these strong potations their ideas become obfuscated. Their
character has no liveliness; amusement is not one of their wants; they
sit at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of their beverage in the
dulness of domesticity. If the English aristocracy are more vivacious
and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines of France, which it is the
mode with them to prefer; but still, like all plagiarists, they are
imitators, not inventors; they borrow our wines and copy our manners.
The Germans--"
"Insolent barbarians!" growled the French Colonel, twirling his mustache;
"if the Emperor were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would ere this have
cost them their Rhine."
"The Germans," resumed Savarin, unheeding the interruption, "drink acrid
wines, varied with beer, to which last their commonalty owes a quasi
resemblance in stupidity and endurance to the English masses. Acrid
wines rot the teeth Germans are afflicted with toothache from infancy.
All people subject to toothache are sentimental. Goethe was a martyr
to toothache. 'Werther' was written in one of those paroxysms which
predispose genius to suicide. But the German character is not all
toothache; beer and tobacco step in to the relief of Rhenish acridities,
blend philosophy with sentiment, and give that patience in detail which
distinguishes their professors and their generals. Besides, the German
wines in themselves have other qualities than that of acridity. Taken
with sourkrout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes of self-conceit.
A German has little of French vanity; he has German self-esteem. He
extends the esteem of self to those around him; his home, his village,
his city, his country,--all belong to him. It is a duty he owes to
himself to defend them. Give him his pipe and his sabre, and, Monsieur
le Colonel, believe me, you will never take the Rhine from him."
"P-r-r," cried the Colonel; "but we have had the Rhine."
"We did not keep it. And I should not say I had a francpiece if I
borrowed it from your purse and had to give it back the next day."
Here there arose a very general hubbub of voices, all raised against M.
Savarin. Enguerrand, like a man of good ton, hastened to change the
conversation.
"Let us leave these poor wretches to their sour wines and toothaches. We
drinkers of the champagne, all our own, have only pity for the rest of
the human race. This new journal 'Le Sens Commun' has a strange title,
Monsieur Savarin."
"Yes; 'Le Sens Commun' is not common in Paris, where we all have too much
genius for a thing so vulgar."
"Pray," said the young painter, "tell me what you mean by the title 'Le
Sens Commun.' It is mysterious."
"True," said Savarin; "it may mean the _Sensus communis_ of the Latins,
or the Good Sense of the English. The Latin phrase signifies the sense
of the common interest; the English phrase, the sense which persons of
understanding have in common. I suppose the inventor of our title meant
the latter signification."
"And who was the inventor?" asked Bacourt.
"That is a secret which I do not know myself," answered Savarin.
"I guess," said Enguerrand, "that it must be the same person who writes
the political leaders. They are most remarkable; for they are so unlike
the articles in other journals, whether those journals be the best or the
worst. For my own part, I trouble my head very little about politics,
and shrug my shoulders at essays which reduce the government of flesh and
blood into mathematical problems. But these articles seem to be written
by a man of the world, and as a man of the world myself, I read them."
"But," said the Vicomte de Breze, who piqued himself on the polish of his
style, "they are certainly not the composition of any eminent writer. No
eloquence, no sentiment; though I ought not to speak disparagingly of a
fellow-contributor."
"All that may be very true;" said Savarin; "but M. Enguerrand is right.
The papers are evidently the work of a man of the world, and it is for
that reason that they have startled the public, and established the
success of 'Le Sens Commun.' But wait a week or two longer, Messieurs,
and then tell me what you think of a new _roman_ by a new writer, which
we shall announce in our impression to-morrow. I shall be disappointed,
indeed, if that does not charm you. No lack of eloquence and sentiment
there."
"I am rather tired of eloquence and sentiment," said Enguerrand. "Your
editor, Gustave Rameau, sickens me of them with his 'Starlit Meditations
in the Streets of Paris,' morbid imitations of Heine's enigmatical
'Evening Songs.' Your journal would be perfect if you could suppress the
editor."
"Suppress Gustave Rameau!" cried Bernard, the painter; "I adore his
poems, full of heart for poor suffering humanity."
"Suffering humanity so far as it is packed up in himself," said the
physician, dryly,--"and a great deal of the suffering is bile. But
_a propos_ of your new journal, Savarin, there is a paragraph in it
to-day which excites my curiosity. It says that the Vicomte de Mauleon
has arrived in Paris, after many years of foreign travel; and then,
referring modestly enough to the reputation for talent which he had
acquired in early youth, proceeds to indulge in a prophecy of the future
political career of a man who, if he have a grain of _sens common_, must
think that the less said about him the better. I remember him well; a
terrible _mauvais sujet_, but superbly handsome. There was a shocking
story about the jewels of a foreign duchess, which obliged him to leave
Paris."
"But," said Savarin, "the paragraph you refer to hints that that story is
a groundless calumny, and that the true reason for De Mauleon's voluntary
self-exile was a very common one among young Parisians,--he had lavished
away his fortune. He returns, when, either by heritage or his own
exertions, he has secured elsewhere a competence."
"Nevertheless I cannot think that society will receive him," said
Bacourt. "When he left Paris, there was one joyous sigh of relief among
all men who wished to avoid duels, and keep their wives out of
temptation. Society may welcome back a lost sheep, but not a
reinvigorated wolf."
"I beg your pardon, _mon cher_," said Enguerrand; "society has already
opened its fold to this poor ill-treated wolf. Two days ago Louvier
summoned to his house the surviving relations or connections of De
Mauleon--among whom are the Marquis de Rochebriant, the Counts de Passy,
De Beauvilliers, De Chavigny, my father, and of course his two sons--and
submitted to us the proofs which completely clear the Vicomte de Mauleon
of even a suspicion of fraud or dishonour in the affair of the jewels.
The proofs include the written attestation of the Duke himself, and
letters from that nobleman after De Mauleon's disappearance from Paris,
expressive of great esteem, and indeed, of great admiration, for the
Vicomte's sense of honour and generosity of character. The result of
this family council was that we all went in a body to call on De Mauleon;
and he dined with my father that same day. You know enough of the Comte
de Vandemar, and, I may add, of my mother, to be sure that they are both,
in their several ways, too regardful of social conventions to lend their
countenance even to a relation without well weighing the pros and cons.
And as for Raoul, Bayard himself could not be a greater stickler on the
point of honour."
This declaration was followed by a silence that had the character of
stupor.
At last Duplessis said, "But what has Louvier to do in this galere?
Louvier is no relation of that well-born _vaurien_; why should he summon
your family council?"
"Louvier excused his interference on the ground of early and intimate
friendship with De Mauleon, who, he said, came to consult him on arriving
at Paris, and who felt too proud or too timid to address relations with
whom he had long dropped all intercourse. An intermediary was required,
and Louvier volunteered to take that part on himself; nothing more
natural nor more simple. By the way, Alain, you dine with Louvier
to-morrow, do you not?--a dinner in honour of our rehabilitated kinsman.
I and Raoul go."
"Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a man who, whatever might be his
errors in youth, on which," added Alain, slightly colouring, "it
certainly does not become me to be severe, must have suffered the most
poignant anguish a man of honour can undergo,--namely, honour suspected;
and who now, whether by years or sorrow, is so changed that I cannot
recognize a likeness to the character I have just heard given to him as
_mauvais sujet_ and _vaurien_."
"Bravo!" cried Enguerrand; "all honour to courage!--and at Paris it
requires great courage to defend the absent."
"Nay," answered Alain, in a low voice. "The _gentilhomme_ who will not
defend another _gentilhomme_ traduced, would, as a soldier, betray a
citadel and desert a flag."
"You say M. de Mauleon is changed," said De Breze; "yes, he must be
growing old. No trace left of his good looks?"
"Pardon me," said Enguerrand; "he is _bien conserve_, and has still a
very handsome head and an imposing presence. But one cannot help
doubting whether he deserved the formidable reputation he acquired in
youth; his manner is so singularly mild and gentle, his conversation so
winningly modest, so void of pretence, and his mode of life is as simple
as that of a Spanish hidalgo."
"He does not, then, affect the role of Monte Cristo," said Duplessis,
"and buy himself into notice like that hero of romance?"
"Certainly not: he says very frankly that he has but a very small income,
but more than enough for his wants,--richer than in his youth, for he has
learned content. We may dismiss the hint in 'Le Sens Commun' about his
future political career,--at least he evinces no such ambition."
"How could he as a Legitimist?" said Alain, bitterly. "What department
would elect him?"
"But is he a Legitimist?" asked De Breze.
"I take it for granted that he must be that," answered Alain, haughtily,
"for he is a De Mauleon."
"His father was as good a De Mauleon as himself, I presume," rejoined De
Breze, dryly; "and he enjoyed a place at the Court of Louis Philippe,
which a Legitimist could scarcely accept. Victor did not, I fancy,
trouble his head about politics at all, at the time I remember him; but
to judge by his chief associates, and the notice he received from the
Princes of the House of Orleans, I should guess that he had no
predilections in favour of Henri V."
"I should regret to think so," said Alain, yet more haughtily, "since the
De Mauleons acknowledge the head of their house in the representative of
the Rochebriants."
"At all events," said Duplessis, "M. de Mauleon appears to be a
philosopher of rare stamp. A Parisian who has known riches and is
contented to be poor is a phenomenon I should like to study."
"You have that chance to-morrow evening, Monsieur Duplessis," said
Enguerrand.
"What! at M. Louvier's dinner? Nay, I have no other acquaintance with
M. Louvier than that of the Bourse, and the acquaintance is not cordial."
"I did not mean at M. Louvier's dinner, but at the Duchesse de Tarascon's
ball. You, as one of her special favourites, will doubtless honour her
_reunion_."
"Yes; I have promised my daughter to go to the ball. But the Duchesse is
Imperialist. M. de Mauleon seems to be either a Legitimist, according to
Monsieur le Marquis, or an Orleanist, according to our friend De Breze."
"What of that? Can there be a more loyal Bourbonite than De
Rochebriant?--and he goes to the ball. It is given out of the season,
in celebration of a family marriage. And the Duchesse de Tarascon is
connected with Alain, and therefore with De Mauleon, though but
distantly."
"Ah! excuse my ignorance of genealogy."
"As if the genealogy of noble names were not the history of France,"
muttered Alain, indignantly.
CHAPTER II.
Yes, the "Sens Commun" was a success: it had made a sensation at
starting; the sensation was on the increase. It is difficult for an
Englishman to comprehend the full influence of a successful journal at
Paris; the station--political, literary, social--which it confers on the
contributors who effect the success. M. Lebeau had shown much more
sagacity in selecting Gustave Rameau for the nominal editor than Savarin
supposed or my reader might detect. In the first place, Gustave himself,
with all his defects of information and solidity of intellect, was not
without real genius,--and a sort of genius that when kept in restraint,
and its field confined to sentiment or sarcasm, was in unison with the
temper of the day; in the second place, it was only through Gustave that
Lebeau could have got at Savarin, and the names which that brilliant
writer had secured at the outset would have sufficed to draw attention to
the earliest numbers of the "Sens Commun," despite a title which did not
seem alluring. But these names alone could not have sufficed to
circulate the new journal to the extent it had already reached. This was
due to the curiosity excited by leading articles of a style new to the
Parisian public, and of which the authorship defied conjecture. They
were signed Pierre Firmin,--supposed to be a _nom de plume_, as, that
name was utterly unknown in the world of letters. They affected the tone
of an impartial observer; they neither espoused nor attacked any
particular party; they laid down no abstract doctrines of government.
But somehow or other, in language terse yet familiar, sometimes careless
yet never vulgar, they expressed a prevailing sentiment of uneasy
discontent, a foreboding of some destined change in things established,
without defining the nature of such change, without saying whether it
would be for good or for evil. In his criticisms upon individuals, the
writer was guarded and moderate--the keenest-eyed censor of the press
could not have found a pretext for interference with expression of
opinions so polite. Of the Emperor these articles spoke little, but that
little was not disrespectful; yet, day after day, the articles
contributed to sap the Empire. All malcontents of every shade
comprehended, as by a secret of freemasonry, that in this journal they
had an ally. Against religion not a word was uttered, yet the enemies of
religion bought that journal; still, the friends of religion bought it
too, for those articles treated with irony the philosophers on paper who
thought that their contradictory crotchets could fuse themselves into any
single Utopia, or that any social edifice, hurriedly run up by the crazy
few, could become a permanent habitation for the turbulent many, without
the clamps of a creed.
The tone of these articles always corresponded with the title of the
journal,--"Common-sense." It was to common-sense that it appealed,--
appealed in the utterance of a man who disdained the subtle theories,
the vehement declamation, the credulous beliefs, or the inflated bombast,
which constitute so large a portion of the Parisian press. The articles
rather resembled certain organs of the English press, which profess to be
blinded by no enthusiasm for anybody or anything, which find their sale
in that sympathy with ill-nature to which Huet ascribes the popularity of
Tacitus, and, always quietly undermining institutions with a covert
sneer, never pretend to a spirit of imagination so at variance with
common-sense as a conjecture how the institutions should be rebuilt or
replaced.
Well, somehow or other the journal, as I was saying, hit the taste of the
Parisian public. It intimated, with the easy grace of an unpremeditated
agreeable talker, that French society in all its classes was rotten; and
each class was willing to believe that all the others were rotten, and
agreed that unless the others were reformed, there was something very
unsound in itself.
The ball at the Duchesse de Tarascon's was a brilliant event. The summer
was far advanced; many of the Parisian holiday-makers had returned to the
capital, but the season had not commenced, and a ball at that time of
year was a very unwonted event. But there was a special occasion for
this fete,--a marriage between a niece of the Duchesse and the son of a
great official in high favour at the Imperial Court.
The dinner at Louvier's broke up early, and the music for the second
waltz was sounding when Enguerrand, Alain, and the Vicomte de Mauleon
ascended the stairs. Raoul did not accompany them; he went very rarely
to any balls,--never to one given by an Imperialist, however nearly
related to him the Imperialist might be. But in the sweet indulgence of
his good-nature, he had no blame for those who did go,--not for
Enguerrand, still less, of course, for Alain.
Something too might well here be said as to his feeling towards Victor de
Mauleon. He had joined in the family acquittal of that kinsman as to the
grave charge of the jewels; the proofs of innocence thereon seemed to him
unequivocal and decisive, therefore he had called on the Vicomte and
acquiesced in all formal civilities shown to him. But such acts of
justice to a fellow-gentilhomme and a kinsman duly performed, he desired
to see as little as possible of the Vicomte de Mauleon. He reasoned
thus: "Of every charge which society made against this man he is
guiltless; but of all the claims to admiration which society accorded to
him before it erroneously condemned, there are none which make me covet
his friendship, or suffice to dispel doubts as to what he may be when
society once more receives him. And the man is so captivating that I
should dread his influence over myself did I see much of him."
Raoul kept his reasonings to himself, for he had that sort of charity
which indisposes an amiable man to be severe on bygone offences. In the
eyes of Enguerrand and Alain, and such young votaries of the mode as they
could influence, Victor de Mauleon assumed almost heroic proportions. In
the affair which had inflicted on him a calumny so odious, it was clear
that he had acted with chivalrous delicacy of honour. And the turbulence
and recklessness of his earlier years, redeemed as they were, in the
traditions of his contemporaries, by courage and generosity, were not
offences to which young Frenchmen are inclined to be harsh. All question
as to the mode in which his life might have been passed during his long
absence from the capital was merged in the respect due to the only facts
known, and these were clearly proved in his pieces justificatives: First,
that he had served under another name in the ranks of the army in
Algiers; had distinguished himself there for signal valour, and received,
with promotion, the decoration of the cross. His real name was known
only to his colonel, and on quitting the service, the colonel placed in
his hands a letter of warm eulogy on his conduct, and identifying him as
Victor de Mauleon. Secondly, that in California he had saved a wealthy
family from midnight murder, fighting single-handed against and
overmastering three ruffians, and declining all other reward from those
he had preserved than a written attestation of their gratitude. In all
countries, valour ranks high in the list of virtues; in no country does
it so absolve from vices as it does in France.
But as yet Victor de Mauleon's vindication was only known by a few, and
those belonging to the gayer circles of life. How he might be judged by
the sober middle class, which constitutes the most important section of
public opinion to a candidate for political trusts and distinctions, was
another question.
The Duchesse stood at the door to receive her visitors. Duplessis was
seated near the entrance, by the side of a distinguished member of the
Imperial Government, with whom he was carrying on a whispered
conversation. The eye of the financier, however, turned towards the
doorway as Alain and Enguerrand entered, and passing over their familiar
faces, fixed itself attentively on that of a mach older man whom
Enguerrand was presenting to the Duchesse, and in whom Duplessis rightly
divined the Vicomte de Mauleon. Certainly if no one could have
recognized M. Lebeau in the stately personage who had visited Louvier,
still less could one who had heard of the wild feats of the _roi des
viveurs_ in his youth reconcile belief in such tales with the quiet
modesty of mien which distinguished the cavalier now replying, with
bended head and subdued accents, to the courteous welcome of the
brilliant hostess. But for such difference in attributes between the
past and the present De Mauleon, Duplessis had been prepared by the
conversation at the Maison Doree. And now, as the Vicomte, yielding his
place by the Duchesse to some new-comer, glided on, and, leaning against
a column, contemplated the gay scene before him with that expression of
countenance, half sarcastic, half mournful, with which men regard, after
long estrangement, the scenes of departed joys, Duplessis felt that no
change in that man had impaired the force of character which had made him
the hero of reckless coevals. Though wearing no beard, not even a
mustache, there was something emphatically masculine in the contour of
the close-shaven cheek and resolute jaw; in a forehead broad at the
temples, and protuberant in those organs over the eyebrows which are said
to be significant of quick perception and ready action; in the lips, when
in repose compressed, perhaps somewhat stern in their expression, but
pliant and mobile when speaking, and wonderfully fascinating when they
smiled. Altogether, about this Victor de Mauleon there was a nameless
distinction, apart from that of conventional elegance. You would have
said, "That is a man of some marked individuality, an eminence of some
kind in himself." You would not be surprised to hear that he was a
party-leader, a skilled diplomatist, a daring soldier, an adventurous
traveller; but you would not guess him to be a student, an author, an
artist.
While Duplessis thus observed the Vicomte de Mauleon, all the while
seeming to lend an attentive ear to the whispered voice of the Minister
by his side, Alain passed on into the ball-room. He was fresh enough to
feel the exhilaration of the dance. Enguerrand (who had survived that
excitement, and who habitually deserted any assembly at an early hour for
the cigar and whist of his club) had made his way to De Mauleon, and
there stationed himself. The lion of one generation has always a mixed
feeling of curiosity and respect for the lion of a generation before him,
and the young Vandemar had conceived a strong and almost an affectionate
interest in this discrowned king of that realm in fashion which, once
lost, is never to be regained; for it is only Youth that can hold its
sceptre and command its subjects.
"In this crowd, Vicomte," said Enguerrand, "there must be many old
acquaintances of yours?"
"Perhaps so, but as yet I have only seen new faces."
As he thus spoke, a middle-aged man, decorated with the grand cross of
the Legion and half-a-dozen foreign orders, lending his arm to a lady of
the same age radiant in diamonds, passed by towards the ball-room, and in
some sudden swerve of his person, occasioned by a pause of his companion
to adjust her train, he accidentally brushed against De Mauleon, whom he
had not before noticed. Turning round to apologize for his awkwardness,
he encountered the full gaze of the Vicomte, started, changed
countenance, and hurried on his companion.
"Do you not recognize his Excellency?" said Enguerrand, smiling. "His
cannot be a new face to you."
"Is it the Baron de Lacy?" asked De Mauleon.
"The Baron de Lacy, now Comte d'Epinay, ambassador at the Court of -----,
and, if report speak true, likely soon to exchange that post for the
_porte feuille_ of Minister."
"He has got on in life since I saw him last, the little Baron. He was
then my devoted imitator, and I was not proud of the imitation."
"He has got on by always clinging to the skirts of some one stronger than
himself,--to yours, I dare say, when, being a _parvenu_ despite his
usurped title of baron, he aspired to the entree into clubs and salons.
The entree thus obtained, the rest followed easily; he became a
millionaire through a wife's dot, and an ambassador through the wife's
lover, who is a power in the State."
"But he must have substance in himself. Empty bags can not be made to
stand upright. Ah! unless I mistake, I see some one I knew better. Yon
pale, thin man, also with the grand cross--surely that is Alfred
Hennequin. Is he too a decorated Imperialist? I left him a socialistic
Republican."
"But, I presume, even then an eloquent avocat. He got into the Chamber,
spoke well, defended the _coup-d'etat_. He has just been made _Prefet_
of the great department of the a popular appointment. He bears a high
character. Pray renew your acquaintance with him; he is coming this
way."
"Will so grave a dignitary renew acquaintance with me? I doubt it."
But as De Mauleon said this, he moved from the column, and advanced
towards the Prefet. Enguerrand followed him, and saw the Vicomte extend
his hand to his old acquaintance.
The Prefet stared, and said, with frigid courtesy, "Pardon me,--some
mistake."
"Allow me, Monsieur Hennequin," said Enguerrand, interposing, and wishing
good-naturedly to save De Mauleon the awkwardness of introducing
himself,--"allow me to reintroduce you to my kinsman, whom the lapse of
years may well excuse you for forgetting, the Vicomte de Mauleon."
Still the Prefet did not accept the hand. He bowed with formal ceremony,
said, "I was not aware that Monsieur le Vicomte had returned to Paris,"
and moving to the doorway, made his salutation to the hostess and
disappeared.
"The insolent!" muttered Enguerrand.
"Hush!" said De Mauleon, quietly, "I can fight no more duels,--especially
with a Prefet. But I own I am weak enough to feel hurt at such a
reception from Hennequin, for he owed me some obligations,--small,
perhaps, but still they were such as might have made me select him,
rather than Louvier, as the vindicator of my name, had I known him to be
so high placed. But a man who has raised himself into an authority may
well be excused for forgetting a friend whose character needs defence.
I forgive him."
There was something pathetic in the Vicomte's tone which touched
Enguerrand's warm if light heart. But De Mauleon did not allow him time
to answer. He went on quickly through an opening in the gay crowd, which
immediately closed behind him, and Enguerrand saw him no more that
evening.
Duplessis ere this had quitted his seat by the Minister, drawn thence by
a young and very pretty girl resigned to his charge by a cavalier with
whom she had been dancing. She was the only daughter of Duplessis, and
he valued her even more than the millions he had made at the Bourse.
"The Princess," she said, "has been swept off in the train of some German
Royalty; so, _petit pere_, I must impose myself on thee."
The Princess, a Russian of high rank, was the _chaperon_ that evening of
Mademoiselle Valerie Duplessis.
"And I suppose I must take thee back into the ballroom," said the
financier, smiling proudly, "and find thee partners."
"I don't want your aid for that, Monsieur; except this quadrille, my list
is pretty well filled up."
"And I hope the partners will be pleasant. Let me know who they are," he
whispered, as they threaded their way into the ball-room.
The girl glanced at her tablet.
"Well, the first on the list is milord somebody, with an unpronounceable
English name."
"Beau cavalier?"
"No; ugly, old too; thirty at least."
Duplessis felt relieved. He did not wish his daughter to fall in love
with an Englishman.
"And the next?"
"The next?" she said hesitatingly, and he observed that a soft blush
accompanied the hesitation.
"Yes, the next. Not English too?"
"Oh, no; the Marquis de Rochebriant."
"Ah! who presented him to thee?"
"Thy friend, _petit pere_, M. de Braze."
Duplessis again glanced at his daughter's face; it was bent over her
bouquet.
"Is he ugly also?"
"Ugly!" exclaimed the girl, indignantly; "why, he is--" she checked
herself and turned away her head.
Duplessis became thoughtful. He was glad that he had accompanied his
child into the ball-room; he would stay there, and keep watch on her and
Rochebriant also.
Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to Rochebriant. That young
noble's too obvious pride of race had nettled him, not the less that the
financier himself was vain of his ancestry. Perhaps he still disliked
Alain, but the dislike was now accompanied with a certain, not hostile,
interest; and if he became connected with the race, the pride in it might
grow contagious.
They had not been long in the ball-room before Alain came up to claim his
promised partner. In saluting Duplessis, his manner was the same as
usual, not more cordial, not less ceremoniously distant. A man so able
as the financier cannot be without quick knowledge of the human heart.
"If disposed to fall in love with Valerie," thought Duplessis, "he would
have taken more pains to please her father. Well, thank heaven, there
are better matches to be found for her than a noble without fortune and a
Legitimist without career."
In fact, Alain felt no more for Valerie than for any other pretty girl in
the room. In talking with the Vicomte de Braze in the intervals of the
dance, he had made some passing remark on her beauty. De Braze had said,
"Yes, she is charming; I will present you," and hastened to do so before
Rochebriant even learned her name. So introduced, he could but invite
her to give him her first disengaged dance, and when that was fixed, he
had retired, without entering into conversation.
Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, he felt that effort of
speech had become a duty, if not a pleasure; and of course, he began with
the first commonplace which presented itself to his mind.
"Do you not think it a very pleasant ball, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes," dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie's rosy lips.
"And not over-crowded, as most balls are?"
Valerie's lips again moved, but this time quite inaudibly. The
obligations of the figure now caused a pause. Alain racked his brains
and began,
"They tell me the last season was more than usually gay; of that I cannot
judge, for it was well-nigh over when I came to Paris for the first
time."
Valerie looked up with a more animated expression than her childlike face
had yet shown, and said, this time distinctly, "This is my first ball,
Monsieur le Marquis."
"One has only to look at Mademoiselle to divine that fact," replied
Alain, gallantly.
Again the conversation was interrupted by the dance; but the ice between
the two was now broken; and when the quadrille was concluded, and
Rochebriant led the fair Valerie back to her father's side, she felt as
if she had been listening to the music of the spheres, and that the music
had now suddenly stopped. Alain, alas for her! was under no such
pleasing illusion. Her talk had seemed to him artless indeed, but very
insipid, compared with the brilliant conversation of the wedded
Parisiennes with whom he more habitually danced; and it was with rather a
sensation of relief that he made his parting bow, and receded into the
crowd of bystanders.
Meanwhile De Mauleon had quitted the assemblage, walking slowly through
the deserted streets towards his apartment. The civilities he had met at
Louvier's dinner-party, and the marked distinction paid to him by kinsmen
of rank and position so unequivocal as Alain and Enguerrand, had softened
his mood and cheered his spirits. He had begun to question himself
whether a fair opening to his political ambition was really forbidden to
him under the existent order of things, whether it necessitated the
employment of such dangerous tools as those to which anger and despair
had reconciled his intellect. But the pointed way in which he had been
shunned or slighted by the two men who belonged to political life--two
men who in youth had looked up to himself, and whose dazzling career of
honours was identified with the Imperial system--reanimated his fiercer
passions and his more perilous designs. The frigid accost of Hennequin
more especially galled him; it wounded not only his pride but his heart;
it had the venom of ingratitude, and it is the peculiar privilege of
ingratitude to wound hearts that have learned to harden themselves to the
hate or contempt of men to whom no services have been rendered. In some
private affair concerning his property, De Mauleon had had occasion to
consult Hennequin, then a rising young avocat. Out of that consultation
a friendship had sprung up, despite the differing habits and social
grades of the two men. One day, calling on Hennequin, he found him in a
state of great nervous excitement. The avocat had received a public
insult in the salon of a noble, to whom De Mauleon had introduced him,
from a man who pretended to the hand of a young lady to whom Hennequin
was attached, and indeed almost affianced. The man was a notorious
_spadassin_,--a duellist little less renowned for skill in all weapons
than De Mauleon himself. The affair had been such that Hennequin's
friends assured him he had no choice but to challenge this bravo.
Hennequin, brave enough at the bar, was no hero before sword-point or
pistol. He was utterly ignorant of the use of either weapon; his death
in the encounter with an antagonist so formidable seemed to him certain,
and life was so precious,--an honourable and distinguished career opening
before him, marriage with the woman he loved. Still he had the
Frenchman's point of honour. He had been told that he must fight; well,
then, he must. He asked De Mauleon to be one of his seconds, and in
asking him, sank in his chair, covered his face with his hands, and burst
into tears.
"Wait till to-morrow," said De Mauleon; "take no step till then.
Meanwhile, you are in my hands, and I answer for your honour."
On leaving Hennequin, Victor sought the _spadassin_ at the club of which
they were both members, and contrived, without reference to Hennequin, to
pick a quarrel with him. A challenge ensued; a duel with swords took
place the next morning. De Mauleon disarmed and wounded his antagonist,
not gravely, but sufficiently to terminate the encounter. He assisted to
convey the wounded man to his apartment, and planted himself by his
bedside, as if he were a friend.
"Why on earth did you fasten a quarrel on me?" asked the spadassin; "and
why, having done so, did you spare my life; for your sword was at my
heart when you shifted its point, and pierced my shoulder?"
"I will tell you, and in so doing, beg you to accept my friendship
hereafter, on one condition. In the course of the day, write or dictate
a few civil words of apology to M. Hennequin. Ma foi! every one will
praise you for a generosity so becoming in a man who has given such
proofs of courage and skill to an avocat who has never handled a sword
nor fired a pistol."
That same day De Mauleon remitted to Hennequin an apology for heated
words freely retracted, which satisfied all his friends. For the service
thus rendered by De Mauleon, Hennequin declared himself everlastingly
indebted. In fact, he entirely owed to that friend his life, his
marriage, his honour, his career.
"And now," thought De Mauleon, "now, when he could so easily requite me,
--now he will not even take my hand. Is human nature itself at war with
me?"
CHAPTER III.
Nothing could be simpler than the apartment of the Vicomte de Mauleon, in
the second story of a quiet old-fashioned street. It had been furnished
at small cost out of his savings. Yet, on the whole, it evinced the good
taste of a man who had once been among the exquisites of the polite
world. You felt that you were in the apartment of a gentleman, and a
gentleman of somewhat severe tastes, and of sober matured years. He was
sitting the next morning in the room which he used as a private study.
Along the walls were arranged dwarf bookcases, as yet occupied by few
books, most of them books of reference, others cheap editions of the
French classics in prose--no poets, no romance-writers, with a few Latin
authors also in prose,--Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus. He was engaged at his
desk writing,--a book with its leaves open before him, "Paul Louis
Courier," that model of political irony and masculine style of
composition. There was a ring at his door-bell. The Vicomte kept no
servant. He rose and answered the summons. He recoiled a few paces on
recognizing his visitor in M. Hennequin.
The _Prefet_ this time did not withdraw his hand; he extended it, but it
was with a certain awkwardness and timidity. "I thought it my duty to
call on you, Vicomte, thus early, having already seen M. Enguerrand de
Vandemar. He has shown me the copies of the _pieces_ which were
inspected by your distinguished kinsmen, and which completely clear you
of the charge that--grant me your pardon when I say--seemed to me still
to remain unanswered when I had the honour to meet you last night."
"It appears to me, Monsieur Hennequin, that you, as an _avocat_ so
eminent, might have convinced yourself very readily of that fact."
"Monsieur le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with my wife at the time of
the unfortunate affair in which you were involved."
"But when you returned to Paris, you might perhaps have deigned to make
inquiries so affecting the honour of one you had called a friend, and for
whom you had professed"--De Mauleon paused; he disdained to add--"an
eternal gratitude."
Hennequin coloured slightly, but replied with self-possession.
"I certainly did inquire. I did hear that the charge against you with
regard to the abstraction of the jewels was withdrawn, that you were
therefore acquitted by law; but I heard also that society did not acquit
you, and that, finding this, you had quitted France. Pardon me again, no
one would listen to me when I attempted to speak on your behalf but now
that so many years have elapsed, that the story is imperfectly
remembered, that relations so high-placed receive you so cordially,--now
I rejoice to think that you will have no difficulty in regaining a social
position never really lost, but for a time resigned."
"I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you express. I was reading the
other day in a lively author some pleasant remarks on the effects of
_medisance_ or calumny upon our impressionable Parisian public. 'If,'
says the writer, 'I found myself accused of having put the two towers of
Notre Dame into my waistcoat-pocket I should not dream of defending
myself; I should take to flight. And,' adds the writer, 'if my best
friend were under the same accusation, I should be so afraid of being
considered his accomplice that I should put my best friend outside the
door.' Perhaps, Monsieur Hennequin, I was seized with the first alarm.
Why should I blame you if seized with the second? Happily, this good
city of Paris has its reactions. And you can now offer me your hand.
Paris has by this time discovered that the two towers of Notre Dame are
not in my pocket."
There was a pause. De Mauleon had resettled himself at his desk, bending
over his papers, and his manner seemed to imply that he considered the
conversation at an end.
But a pang of shame, of remorse, of tender remembrance, shot across the
heart of the decorous, worldly, self-seeking man, who owed all that he
now was to the _ci-devant vaurien_ before him. Again he stretched forth
his hand, and this time grasped De Mauleon's warmly. "Forgive me," he
said, feelingly and hoarsely; "forgive me, I was to blame. By character,
and perhaps by the necessities of my career, I am over-timid to public
opinion, public scandal. Forgive me. Say if in anything now I can
requite, though but slightly, the service I owe you."
De Mauleon looked steadily at the Prefet, and said slowly, "Would you
serve me in turn? Are you sincere?"
The Prefet hesitated a moment, then answered firmly, "Yes."
"Well, then, what I ask of you is a frank opinion,--not as lawyer, not as
Prefet, but as a man who knows the present state of French society. Give
that opinion without respect to my feelings one way or other. Let it
emanate solely from your practised judgment."
"Be it so," said Hennequin, wondering what was to come. De Mauleon
resumed, "As you may remember, during my former career I had no political
ambition. I did not meddle with politics. In the troubled times that
immediately succeeded the fall of Louis Philippe I was but an epicurean
looker-on. Grant that, so far as admission to the salons is concerned,
I shall encounter no difficulty in regaining position; but as regards the
Chamber, public life, a political career, can I have my fair opening
under the Empire? You pause. Answer as you have promised, frankly."
"The difficulties in the way of a political career would be very great."
"Insuperable?"
"I fear so. Of course, in my capacity of _Prefet_, I have no small
influence in my department in support of a Government candidate. But I
do not think that the Imperial Government could, at this time especially,
in which it must be very cautious in selecting its candidates, be induced
to recommend you. The affair of the jewels would be raked up; your
vindication disputed, denied; the fact that for so many years you have
acquiesced in that charge without taking steps to refute it; your
antecedents, even apart from that charge; your present want of property
(M. Enguerrand tells me your income is but moderate); the absence of all
previous repute in public life. No; relinquish the idea of political
contest,--it would expose you to inevitable mortifications, to a failure
that would even jeopardize the admission to the salons which you are now
gaining. You could not be a Government candidate."
"Granted. I may have no desire to be one; but an opposition candidate,
one of the Liberal party?"
"As an Imperialist," said Hennequin, smiling gravely, "and holding the
office I do, it would not become me to encourage a candidate against the
Emperor's Government. But speaking with the frankness you solicit, I
should say that your chances there are infinitely worse. The Opposition
are in a pitiful minority,--the most eminent of the Liberals can scarcely
gain seats for themselves; great local popularity or property, high
established repute for established patriotism, or proved talents of
oratory and statesmanship, are essential qualifications for a seat in the
Opposition; and even these do not suffice for a third of the persons who
possess them. Be again what you were before,--the hero of salons remote
from the turbulent vulgarity of politics."
"I am answered. Thank you once more. The service I rendered you once is
requited now."
"No, indeed,--no; but will you dine with me quietly today, and allow me
to present to you my wife and two children, born since we parted? I say
to-day, for to-morrow I return to my _Prefecture_."
"I am infinitely obliged by your invitation, but to-day I dine with the
Comte de Beauvilliers to meet some of the _Corps Diplomatique_. I must
make good my place in the salons, since you so clearly show me that I
have no chance of one in the Legislature--unless--"
"Unless what?"
"Unless there happen one of those revolutions in which the scum comes
uppermost."
"No fear of that. The subterranean barracks and railway have ended
forever the rise of the scum, the reign of the _canaille_ and its
barricades."
"Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful _hommages a Madame_."
After that day the writing of Pierre Firmin in "Le Sens Commun," though
still keeping within the pale of the law, became more decidedly hostile
to the Imperial system, still without committing their author to any
definite programme of the sort of government that should succeed it.
CHAPTER IV.
The weeks glided on. Isaura's manuscript bad passed into print; it came
out in the French fashion of _feuilletons_,--a small detachment at a
time. A previous flourish of trumpets by Savarin and the clique at his
command insured it attention, if not from the general public, at least
from critical and literary coteries. Before the fourth instalment
appeared it had outgrown the patronage of the coteries; it seized hold of
the public. It was not in the last school in fashion; incidents were not
crowded and violent,--they were few and simple, rather appertaining to an
elder school, in which poetry of sentiment and grace of diction
prevailed. That very resemblance to old favourites gave it the
attraction of novelty. In a word, it excited a pleased admiration, and
great curiosity was felt as to the authorship. When it oozed out that it
was by the young lady whose future success in the musical world had been
so sanguinely predicted by all who had heard her sing, the interest
wonderfully increased. Petitions to be introduced to her acquaintance
were showered upon Savarin. Before she scarcely realized her dawning
fame, she was drawn from her quiet home and retired habits; she was
_fetee_ and courted in the literary circle of which Savarin was a chief.
That circle touched, on one side, Bohemia; on the other, that realm of
politer fashion which, in every intellectual metropolis, but especially
in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed light from luminaries in art and
letters. But the very admiration she obtained somewhat depressed,
somewhat troubled her; after all, it did not differ from that which was
at her command as a singer.
On the one hand, she shrank instinctively from the caresses of female
authors and the familiar greetings of male authors, who frankly lived in
philosophical disdain of the conventions respected by sober, decorous
mortals. On the other hand, in the civilities of those who, while they
courted a rising celebrity, still held their habitual existence apart
from the artistic world, there was a certain air of condescension, of
patronage, towards the young stranger with no other protector but Signora
Venosta, the _ci-devant_ public singer, and who had made her _debut_ in a
journal edited by M. Gustave Rameau, which, however disguised by
exaggerated terms of praise, wounded her pride of woman in flattering her
vanity as author. Among this latter set were wealthy, high-born men, who
addressed her as woman--as woman beautiful and young--with words of
gallantry that implied love, but certainly no thought of marriage,--many
of the most ardent were indeed married already. But once launched into
the thick of Parisian hospitalities, it was difficult to draw back. The
Venosta wept at the thought of missing some lively soiree, and Savarin
laughed at her shrinking fastidiousness as that of a child's ignorance of
the world. But still she had her mornings to herself; and in those
mornings, devoted to the continuance of her work (for the commencement
was in print before a third was completed), she forgot the commonplace
world that received her in the evenings. Insensibly to herself the tone
of this work had changed as it proceeded. It had begun seriously indeed,
but in the seriousness there was a certain latent joy. It might be the
joy of having found vent of utterance; it might be rather a joy still
more latent, inspired by the remembrance of Graham's words and looks, and
by the thought that she had renounced all idea of the professional career
which he had evidently disapproved. Life then seemed to her a bright
possession. We have seen that she had begun her _roman_ without planning
how it should end. She had, however, then meant it to end, somehow or
other, happily. Now the lustre had gone from life; the tone of the work
was saddened; it foreboded a tragic close. But for the general reader it
became, with every chapter, still more interesting; the poor child had a
singularly musical gift of style,--a music which lent itself naturally to
pathos. Every very young writer knows how his work, if one of feeling,
will colour itself from the views of some truth in his innermost self;
and in proportion as it does so, how his absorption in the work
increases, till it becomes part and parcel of his own mind and heart.
The presence of a hidden sorrow may change the fate of the beings he has
created, and guide to the grave those whom, in a happier vein, he would
have united at the altar. It is not till a later stage of experience and
art that the writer escapes from the influence of his individual
personality, and lives in existences that take no colourings from his
own. Genius usually must pass through the subjective process before it
gains the objective. Even a Shakspeare represents himself in the Sonnets
before no trace of himself is visible in a Falstaff or a Lear.
No news of the Englishman,--not a word. Isaura could not but feel that
in his words, his looks, that day in her own garden, and those yet
happier days at Enghien, there had been more than friendship; there had
been love,--love enough to justify her own pride in whispering to
herself, "And I love too." But then that last parting! how changed he
was! how cold! She conjectured that jealousy of Rameau might, in some
degree, account for the coldness when he first entered the room, but
surely not when he left; surely not when she had overpassed the reserve
of her sex, and implied by signs rarely misconstrued by those who love
that he had no cause for jealousy of another. Yet he had gone,--parted
with her pointedly as a friend, a mere friend. How foolish she had been
to think this rich ambitious foreigner could ever have meant to be more!
In the occupation of her work she thought to banish his image; but in
that work the image was never absent; there were passages in which she
pleadingly addressed it, and then would cease abruptly, stifled by
passionate tears. Still she fancied that the work would reunite them;
that in its pages he would hear her voice and comprehend her heart. And
thus all praise of the work became very, very dear to her.
At last, after many weeks, Savarin heard from Graham. The letter was
dated Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the Englishman said he might yet be some
time detained. In the letter Graham spoke chiefly of the new journal:
in polite compliment of Savarin's own effusions; in mixed praise and
condemnation of the political and social articles signed Pierre Firmin,--
praise of their intellectual power, condemnation of their moral cynicism.
"The writer," he said, "reminds me of a passage in which Montesquieu
compares the heathen philosophers to those plants which the earth
produces in places that have never seen the heavens. The soil of
his experience does not grow a single belief; and as no community
can exist without a belief of some kind, so a politician without
belief can but help to destroy; he cannot reconstruct. Such writers
corrupt a society; they do not reform a system."
He closed his letter with a reference to Isaura:
"Do, in your reply, my dear Savarin, tell me something about your
friends Signora Venosta and the Signorina, whose work, so far as yet
published, I have read with admiring astonishment at the power of a
female writer so young to rival the veteran practitioners of fiction
in the creation of interest in imaginary characters, and in
sentiments which, if they appear somewhat over-romantic and
exaggerated, still touch very fine chords in human nature not
awakened in our trite every-day existence. I presume that the
beauty of the _roman_ has been duly appreciated by a public so
refined as the Parisian, and that the name of the author is
generally known. No doubt she is now much the rage of the literary
circles, and her career as a writer may be considered fixed. Pray
present my congratulations to the Signorina when you see her."
Savarin had been in receipt of this letter some days before he called on
Isaura, and carelessly showed it to her. She took it to the window to
read, in order to conceal the trembling of her hands. In a few minutes
she returned it silently.
"Those Englishmen," said Savarin, "have not the heart of compliment.
I am by no means flattered by what he says of my trifles, and I dare say
you are still less pleased with this chilly praise of your charming tale;
but the man means to be civil."
"Certainly," said Isaura, smiling faintly.
"Only think of Rameau!" resumed Savarin. "On the strength of his salary
in the 'Sens Commun,' and on the _chateaux en Espagne_ which he
constructs thereon, he has already furnished an apartment in the Chaussee
d'Antin, and talks of setting up a coupe in order to maintain the dignity
of letters when he goes to dine with the duchesses who are some day or
other to invite him. Yet I admire his self-confidence, though I laugh at
it. A man gets on by a spring in his own mechanism, and he should always
keep it wound up. Rameau will make a figure. I used to pity him;
I begin to respect. Nothing succeeds like success. But I see I am
spoiling your morning. Au revoir, mon enfant."
Left alone, Isaura brooded in a sort of mournful wonderment over the
words referring to herself in Graham's letter. Read though but once, she
knew them by heart. What! did he consider those characters she had
represented as wholly imaginary? In one--the most prominent, the most
attractive--could he detect no likeness to himself? What! did he
consider so "over-romantic and exaggerated" sentiments which couched
appeals from her heart to his? Alas! in matters of sentiment it is the
misfortune of us men that even the most refined of us often grate upon
some sentiment in a woman, though she may not be romantic,--not romantic
at all, as people go,--some sentiment which she thought must be so
obvious if we cared a straw about her, and which, though we prize her
above the Indies, is by our dim, horn-eyed, masculine vision
undiscernible. It may be something in itself the airiest of trifles: the
anniversary of a day in which the first kiss was interchanged, nay, of a
violet gathered, a misunderstanding cleared up; and of that anniversary
we remember no more than we do of our bells and coral. But she--she
remembers it; it is no bells and coral to her. Of course, much is to be
said in excuse of man, brute though he be. Consider the multiplicity of
his occupations, the practical nature of his cares. But granting the
validity of all such excuse, there is in man an original obtuseness of
fibre as regards sentiment in comparison with the delicacy of woman's.
It comes, perhaps, from the same hardness of constitution which forbids
us the luxury of ready tears. Thus it is very difficult for the wisest
man to understand thoroughly a woman. Goethe says somewhere that the
highest genius in man must have much of the woman in it. If this be
true, the highest genius alone in man can comprehend and explain the
nature of woman, because it is not remote from him, but an integral part
of his masculine self. I am not sure, however, that it necessitates the
highest genius, but rather a special idiosyncrasy in genius which the
highest may or may not have. I think Sophocles a higher genius than
Euripides; but Euripides has that idiosyncrasy, and Sophocles not. I
doubt whether women would accept Goethe as their interpreter with the
same readiness with which they would accept Schiller. Shakspeare, no
doubt, excels all poets in the comprehension of women, in his sympathy
with them in the woman-part of his nature which Goethe ascribes to the
highest genius; but, putting aside that "monster," I do not remember any
English poet whom we should consider conspicuously eminent in that lore,
unless it be the prose poet, nowadays generally underrated and little
read, who wrote the letters of Clarissa Harlowe. I say all this in
vindication of Graham Vane, if, though a very clever man in his way, and
by no means uninstructed in human nature, he had utterly failed in
comprehending the mysteries which to this poor woman-child seemed to need
no key for one who really loved her. But we have said somewhere before
in this book that music speaks in a language which cannot explain itself
except in music. So speaks, in the human heart, much which is akin to
music. Fiction (that is, poetry, whether in form of rhyme or prose)
speaks thus pretty often. A reader must be more commonplace than, I
trust, my gentle readers are, if he suppose that when Isaura symbolized
the real hero of her thoughts in the fabled hero of her romance, she
depicted him as one of whom the world could say, "That is Graham Vane."
I doubt if even a male poet would so vulgarize any woman whom he
thoroughly reverenced and loved. She is too sacred to him to be thus
unveiled to the public stare; as the sweetest of all ancient love-poets
says well--
"Qui sapit in tacito gaudeat ille sinu."
But a girl, a girl in her first untold timid love, to let the world know,
"that is the man I love and would die for!"--if such a girl be, she has
no touch of the true woman-genius, and certainly she and Isaura have
nothing in common. Well, then, in Isaura's invented hero, though she saw
the archetypal form of Graham Vane,--saw him as in her young, vague,
romantic dreams idealized, beautified, transfigured,--he would have been
the vainest of men if he had seen therein the reflection of himself. On
the contrary he said, in the spirit of that jealousy to which he was too
prone, "Alas! this, then, is some ideal, already seen perhaps, compared
to which how commonplace am I!" and thus persuading himself, no wonder
that the sentiments surrounding this unrecognized archetype appeared to
him over-romantic. His taste acknowledged the beauty of form which
clothed them; his heart envied the ideal that inspired them. But they
seemed so remote from him; they put the dreamland of the writer farther
and farther from his workday real life.
In this frame of mind, then, he had written to Savarin, and the answer he
received hardened it still more. Savarin had replied, as was his
laudable wont in correspondence, the very day he received Graham's
letter, and therefore before he had even seen Isaura. In his reply, he
spoke much of the success her work had obtained; of the invitations
showered upon her, and the sensation she caused in the salons; of her
future career, with hope that she might even rival Madame de Grantmesnil
some day, when her ideas became emboldened by maturer experience, and
a closer study of that model of eloquent style,--saying that the young
editor was evidently becoming enamoured of his fair contributor; and that
Madame Savarin had ventured the prediction that the Signorina's _roman_
would end in the death of the heroine, and the marriage of the writer.
CHAPTER V.
And still the weeks glided on: autumn succeeded to summer, the winter to
autumn; the season of Paris was at its height. The wondrous capital
seemed to repay its Imperial embellisher by the splendour and the joy of
its _fetes_. But the smiles on the face of Paris were hypocritical and
hollow. The Empire itself had passed out of fashion. Grave men and
impartial observers felt anxious. Napoleon had renounced _les ideas
Napoleoniennes_. He was passing into the category of constitutional
sovereigns, and reigning, not by his old undivided prestige, but by the
grace of party. The press was free to circulate complaints as to the
past and demands as to the future, beneath which the present reeled,
ominous of earthquake. People asked themselves if it were possible that
the Empire could co-exist with forms of government not imperial, yet not
genuinely constitutional, with a majority daily yielding to a minority.
The basis of universal suffrage was sapped. About this time the articles
in the "Sens Commun" signed Pierre Firmin were creating not only
considerable sensation, but marked effect on opinion; and the sale
of the journal was immense.
Necessarily the repute and the position of Gustave Rameau, as the avowed
editor of this potent journal, rose with its success. Nor only his
repute and position; bank-notes of considerable value were transmitted to
him by the publisher, with the brief statement that they were sent by the
sole proprietor of the paper as the editor's fair share of profit. The
proprietor was never named, but Rameau took it for granted that it was M.
Lebeau. M. Lebeau he had never seen since the day he had brought him the
list of contributors, and was then referred to the publisher, whom he
supposed M. Lebeau had secured, and received the first quarter of his
salary in advance. The salary was a trifle compared to the extra profits
thus generously volunteered. He called at Lebeau's office, and saw only
the clerk, who said that his chef was abroad.
Prosperity produced a marked change for the better, if not in the
substance of Rameau's character, at least in his manners and social
converse. He no longer exhibited that restless envy of rivals, which
is the most repulsive symptom of vanity diseased. He pardoned Isaura her
success; nay, he was even pleased at it. The nature of her work did not
clash with his own kind of writing. It was so thoroughly woman like that
one could not compare it to a man's. Moreover, that success had
contributed largely to the profits by which he had benefited, and to his
renown as editor of the journal which accorded place to this new-found
genius. But there was a deeper and more potent cause for sympathy with
the success of his fair young contributor. He had imperceptibly glided
into love with her,--a love very different from that with which poor
Julie Caumartin flattered herself she had inspired the young poet.
Isaura was one of those women for whom, even in natures the least
chivalric, love, however ardent, cannot fail to be accompanied with a
certain reverence,--the reverence with which the ancient knighthood, in
its love for women, honoured the ideal purity of womanhood itself. Till
then Rameau had never revered any one.
On her side, brought so frequently into communication with the young
conductor of the journal in which she wrote, Isaura entertained for him a
friendly, almost sister-like affection.
I do not think that, even if she had never known the Englishman, she
would have really become in love with Rameau, despite the picturesque
beauty of his countenance and the congeniality of literary pursuits; but
perhaps she might have fancied herself in love with him. And till one,
whether man or woman, has known real love, fancy is readily mistaken for
it. But little as she had seen of Graham, and that little not in itself
wholly favourable to him, she knew in her heart of hearts that his image
would never be replaced by one equally dear. Perhaps in those qualities
that placed him in opposition to her she felt his attractions. The
poetical in woman exaggerates the worth of the practical in man. Still
for Rameau her exquisitely kind and sympathizing nature conceived one of
those sentiments which in woman are almost angel-like. We have seen in
her letters to Madame de Grantmesnil that from the first he inspired her
with a compassionate interest; then the compassion was checked by her
perception of his more unamiable and envious attributes. But now those
attributes, if still existent, had ceased to be apparent to her, and the
compassion became unalloyed. Indeed, it was thus so far increased that
it was impossible for any friendly observer to look at the beautiful face
of this youth, prematurely wasted and worn, without the kindliness of
pity. His prosperity had brightened and sweetened the expression of that
face, but it had not effaced the vestiges of decay; rather perhaps
deepened them, for the duties of his post necessitated a regular labour,
to which he had been unaccustomed, and the regular labour necessitated,
or seemed to him to necessitate, an increase of fatal stimulants. He
imbibed absinthe with everything he drank, and to absinthe he united
opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of his
_liaison_ with the "Ondine" of his muse; she saw only the increasing
delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and
liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her. Intellectually,
too, she felt for him compassion. She recognized and respected in him
the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the
arrogance of youth, it promised to its ambition. She saw, too, those
struggles between a higher and a lower self, to which a weak degree of
genius united with a strong degree of arrogance is so often subjected.
Perhaps she overestimated the degree of genius, and what, if rightly
guided, it could do; but she did, in the desire of her own heavenlier
instinct, aspire to guide it heavenward. And as if she were twenty years
older than himself, she obeyed that desire in remonstrating and warning
and urging, and the young man took all these "preachments" with a pleased
submissive patience. Such, as the new year dawned upon the grave of the,
old one, was the position between these two. And nothing more was heard
from Graham Vane.
CHAPTER VI.
It has now become due to Graham Vane, and to his place in the estimation
of my readers, to explain somewhat more distinctly the nature of the
quest in prosecution of which he had sought the aid of the Parisian
police, and under an assumed name made the acquaintance of M. Lebeau.
The best way of discharging this duty will perhaps be to place before the
reader the contents of the letter which passed under Graham's eyes on the
day in which the heart of the writer ceased to beat.
(Confidential. To be opened immediately after my death, and before the
perusal of my will.--Richard King.)
TO GRAHAM VANE, Esq.
My DEAR GRAHAM,--By the direction on the envelope of this letter,
"Before the perusal of my will," I have wished to save you from the
disappointment you would naturally experience if you learned my bequest
without being prevised of the conditions which I am about to impose upon
your honour. You will see ere you conclude this letter that you are the
only man living to whom I could intrust the secret it contains and the
task it enjoins.
You are aware that I was not born to the fortune that passed to me by the
death of a distant relation, who had, in my earlier youth, children of
his own. I was an only son, left an orphan at the age of sixteen with
a very slender pittance. My guardians designed me for the medical
profession. I began my studies at Edinburgh, and was sent to Paris to
complete them, It so chanced that there I lodged in the same house with
an artist named Auguste Duval, who, failing to gain his livelihood as a
painter, in what--for his style was ambitious--is termed the Historical
School, had accepted the humbler calling of a drawing-master. He had
practised in that branch of the profession for several years at Tours,
having a good clientele among English families settled there. This
clientele, as he frankly confessed, he had lost from some irregularities
of conduct. He was not a bad man, but of convivial temper, and easily
led into temptation. He had removed to Paris a few months before I made
his acquaintance. He obtained a few pupils, and often lost them as soon
as gained. He was unpunctual and addicted to drink. But he had a small
pension, accorded to him, he was wont to say mysteriously, by some high-
born kinsfolk, too proud to own connection with a drawing-master, and on
the condition that he should never name them. He never did name them to
me, and I do not know to this day whether the story of this noble
relationship was true or false. A pension, however, he did receive
quarterly from some person or other, and it was an unhappy provision for
him. It tended to make him an idler in his proper calling; and whenever
he received the payment he spent it in debauch, to the neglect, while it
lasted, of his pupils. This man had residing with him a young daughter,
singularly beautiful. You may divine the rest. I fell in love with
her,--a love deepened by the compassion with which she inspired me. Her
father left her so frequently that, living on the same floor, we saw much
of each other. Parent and child were often in great need,--lacking even
fuel or food. Of course I assisted them to the utmost of my scanty means
Much as I was fascinated by Louise Duval, I was not blind to great
defects in her character. She was capricious, vain, aware of her beauty,
and sighing for the pleasures or the gauds beyond her reach. I knew that
she did not love me,--there was little, indeed, to captivate her fancy
in a poor, thread-bare medical student,--and yet I fondly imagined that
my own persevering devotion would at length win her affections, I spoke
to her father more than once of my hope some day to make Louise my wife.
This hope, I must frankly acknowledge, he never encouraged. On the
contrary, he treated it with scorn,--"His child with her beauty would
look much higher;" but be continued all the same to accept my assistance,
and to sanction my visits. At length my slender purse was pretty well
exhausted, and the luckless drawing-master was so harassed with petty
debts that further credit became impossible. At this time I happened to
hear from a fellow-student that his sister, who was the principal of a
lady's school in Cheltenham, bad commissioned him to look out for a
first-rate teacher of drawing with whom her elder pupils could converse
in French, but who should be sufficiently acquainted with English to make
his instructions intelligible to the young. The salary was liberal, the
school large and of high repute, and his appointment to it would open to
an able teacher no inconsiderable connection among private families. I
communicated this intelligence to Duval. He caught at it eagerly. He
had learned at Tours to speak English fluently; and as his professional
skill was of high order, and he was popular with several eminent artists,
he obtained certificates as to his talents, which my fellow-student
forwarded to England with specimens of Duval's drawings. In a few days
the offer of an engagement arrived, was accepted, and Duval and his
daughter set out for Cheltenham. At the eve of their departure, Louise,
profoundly dejected at the prospect of banishment to a foreign country,
and placing no trust in her father's reform to steady habits, evinced a
tenderness for me hitherto new; she wept bitterly; she allowed me to
believe that her tears flowed at the thought of parting with me, and even
besought me to accompany them to Cheltenham, if only for a few days. You
may suppose how delightedly I complied with the request. Duval had been
about a week at the watering place, and was discharging the duties he had
undertaken with such unwonted steadiness and regularity that I began
sorrowfully to feel I had no longer an excuse for not returning to my
studies at Paris, when the poor teacher was seized with a fit of
paralysis. He lost the power of movement, and his mind was affected.
The medical attendant called in said that he might linger thus for some
time, but that, even if he recovered his intellect, which was more than
doubtful, he would never be able to resume his profession. I could not
leave Louise in circumstances so distressing,--I remained. The little
money Duval had brought from Paris was now exhausted; and when the day on
which he had been in the habit of receiving his quarter's pension came
round, Louise was unable even to conjecture how it was to be applied for.
It seems he had always gone for it in perscn; but to whom he went was a
secret which he bad never divulged, and at this critical juncture his
mind was too enfeebled even to comprehend us when we inquired. I had
already drawn from the small capital on the interest of which I had
maintained myself; I now drew out most of the remainder. But this was a
resource that could not last long. Nor could I, without seriously
compromising Louise's character, be constantly in the house with a girl
so young, and whose sole legitimate protector was thus afflicted. There
seemed but one alternative to that of abandoning her altogether,--namely,
to make her my wife, to conclude the studies necessary to obtain my
diploma, and purchase some partnership in a small country practice with
the scanty surplus that might be left of my capital. I placed this
option before Louise timidly, for I could not bear the thought of forcing
her inclinations. She seemed much moved by what she called my
generosity: she consented; we were married. I was, as you may conceive,
wholly ignorant of French law. We were married according to the English
ceremony and the Protestant ritual. Shortly after our marriage we all
three returned to Paris, taking an apartment in a quarter remote from
that in which we had before lodged, in order to avoid any, harassment to
which such small creditors as Duval had left behind him might subject us.
I resumed my studies with redoubled energy, and Louise was necessarily
left much alone with her poor father in the daytime. The defects in her
character became more and more visible. She reproached me for the
solitude to which I condemned her; our poverty galled her; she had no
kind greeting for me when I returned at evening, wearied out. Before
marriage she had not loved me; after marriage, alas! I fear she hated.
We had been returned to Paris some months when poor Duval died; he had
never recovered his faculties, nor had we ever learned from whom his
pension had been received. Very soon after her father's death I observed
a singular change in the humour and manner of Louise. She was no longer
peevish, irascible, reproachful; but taciturn and thoughtful. She seemed
to me under the influence of some suppressed excitement, her cheeks
flushed and her eye abstracted. At length, one evening when I returned
I found her gone. She did not come back that night nor the next day.
It was impossible for me to conjecture what had become of her. She had
no friends, so far as I knew; no one had visited at our squalid
apartment. The poor house in which we lodged had no concierge whom I
could question; but the ground-floor was occupied by a small
tobacconist's shop, and the woman at the counter told me that for some
days before my wife's disappearance, she had observed her pass the shop-
window in going out in the afternoon and returning towards the evening.
Two terrible conjectures beset me either in her walk she had met some
admirer, with whom she had fled; or, unable to bear the companionship and
poverty of a union which she had begun to loathe, she had gone forth to
drown herself in the Seine. On the third day from her flight I received
the letter I enclose. Possibly the handwriting may serve you as a guide
in the mission I intrust to you.
MONSIEUR,--You have deceived me vilely,--taken advantage of my
inexperienced youth and friendless position to decoy me into an
illegal marriage. My only consolation under my calamity and
disgrace is, that I am at least free from a detested bond. You will
not see me again,--it is idle to attempt to do so. I have obtained
refuge with relations whom I have been fortunate enough to discover,
and to whom I intrust my fate; and even if you could learn the
shelter I have sought, and have the audacity to molest me, you would
but subject yourself to the chastisement you so richly deserve.
Louise DUVAL.
At the perusal of this cold-hearted, ungrateful letter, the love I had
felt for this woman--already much shaken by her wayward and perverse
temper--vanished from my heart, never to return. But as an honest man,
my conscience was terribly stung. Could it be possible that I had
unknowingly deceived her,--that our marriage was not legal? When I
recovered from the stun which was the first effect of her letter, I
sought the opinion of an _avoue_ in the neighbourbood, named Sartiges,
and to my dismay, I learned that while I, marrying according to the
customs of my own country, was legally bound to Louise in England, and
could not marry another, the marriage was in all ways illegal for her,--
being without the consent of her relations while she was under age;
without the ceremonials of the Roman Catholic Church,--to which, though I
never heard any profession of religious belief from her or her father, it
might fairly be presumed that she belonged; and, above all, without the
form of civil contract which is indispensable to the legal marriage of a
French subject.
The _avoue_ said that the marriage, therefore, in itself was null, and
that Louise could, without incurring legal penalties for bigamy, marry
again in France according to the French laws; but that under the
circumstances it was probable that her next of kin would apply on her
behalf to the proper court for the formal annulment of the marriage,
which would be the most effectual mode of saving her from any molestation
on my part, and remove all possible questions hereafter as to her single
state and absolute right to remarry. I had better remain quiet, and wait
for intimation of further proceedings. I knew not what else to do, and
necessarily submitted.
From this wretched listlessness of mind, alternated now by vehement
resentment against Louise, now by the reproach of my own sense of honour
in leaving that honour in so questionable a point of view, I was aroused
by a letter from the distant kinsman by whom hitherto I had been so
neglected. In the previous year he had lost one of his two children; the
other was just dead. No nearer relation now surviving stood between me
and my chance of inheritance from him. He wrote word of his domestic
affliction with a manly sorrow which touched me, said that his health was
failing, and begged me, as soon as possible, to come and visit him in
Scotland. I went, and continued to reside with him till his death, some
months afterwards. By his will I succeeded to his ample fortune on
condition of taking his name.
As soon as the affairs connected with this inheritance permitted, I
returned to Paris, and again saw M. Sartiges. I had never heard from
Louise, nor from any one connected with her since the letter you have
read. No steps had been taken to annul the marriage, and sufficient time
had elapsed to render it improbable that such steps would be taken now;
but if no such steps were taken, however free from the marriage-bond
Louise might be, it clearly remained binding on myself.
At my request, M. Sartiges took the most vigorous measures that occurred
to him to ascertain where Louise was, and what and who was the relation
with whom she asserted she had found refuge. The police were employed;
advertisements were issued, concealing names, but sufficiently clear to
be intelligible to Louise if they came under her eye, and to the effect
that if any informality in our marriage existed, she was implored for her
own sake to remove it by a second ceremonial--answer to be addressed to
the _avoue_. No answer came; the police had hitherto failed of
discovering her, but were sanguine of success, when a few weeks after
these advertisements a packet reached M. Sartiges, enclosing the
certificates annexed to this letter, of the death of Louise Duval at
Munich. The certificates, as you will see, are to appearance.
officially attested and unquestionably genuine. So they were considered
by M. Sartiges as well as by myself. Here, then, all inquiry ceased; the
police were dismissed. I was free. By little and little I overcame the
painful impressions which my ill-starred union and the announcement of
Louise's early death bequeathed. Rich, and of active mind, I learned to
dismiss the trials of my youth as a gloomy dream. I entered into public
life; I made myself a creditable position; became acquainted with your
aunt; we were wedded, and the beauty of her nature embellished mine.
Alas, alas! two years after our marriage--nearly five years after I had
received the certificates of Louise's death--I and your aunt made a
summer excursion into the country of the Rhine; on our return we rested
at Aix-la-Chapelle. One day while there I was walking alone in the
environs of the town, when, on the road, a little girl, seemingly about
five years old, in chase of a butterfly, stumbled and fell just before my
feet; I took her up, and as she was crying more from the shock of the
fall than any actual hurt, I was still trying my best to comfort her,
when a lady some paces behind her came up, and in taking the child from
my arms as I was bending over her, thanked me in a voice that made my
heart stand still. I looked up, and beheld Louise.
It was not till I had convulsively clasped her hand and uttered her name
that she recognized me. I was, no doubt, the more altered of the two,--
prosperity and happiness had left little trace of the needy, care worn,
threadbare student. But if she were the last to recognize, she was the
first to recover self-possession. The expression of her face became hard
and set. I cannot pretend to repeat with any verbal accuracy the brief
converse that took place between us, as she placed the child on the grass
bank beside the path, bade her stay there quietly, and walked on with me
some paces as if she did not wish the child to hear what was said.
The purport of what passed was to this effect: She refused to explain the
certificates of her death further than that, becoming aware of what she
called the "persecution" of the advertisements issued and inquiries
instituted, she had caused those documents to be sent to the address
given in the advertisement, in order to terminate all further
molestation. But how they could have been obtained, or by what art
so ingeniously forged as to deceive the acuteness of a practised lawyer,
I know not to this day. She declared, indeed, that she was now happy, in
easy circumstances, and that if I wished to make some reparation for the
wrong I had done her, it would be to leave her in peace; and in case--
which was not likely--we ever met again, to regard and treat her as a
stranger; that she, on her part, never would molest me, and that the
certified death of Louise Duval left me as free to marry again as she
considered herself to be.
My mind was so confused, so bewildered, while she thus talked, that I did
not attempt to interrupt her. The blow had so crushed me that I scarcely
struggled under it; only, as she turned to leave me, I suddenly
recollected that the child, when taken from my arms, had called her
"Maman," and, judging by the apparent age of the child, it must have been
born but a few months after Louise had left me,--that it must be mine.
And so, in my dreary woe, I faltered out, "But what of your infant?
Surely that has on me a claim that you relinquish for yourself. You were
not unfaithful to me while you deemed you were my wife?"
"Heavens! can you insult me by such a doubt? No!" she cried out,
impulsively and haughtily. "But as I was not legally your wife, the
child is not legally yours; it is mine, and only mine. Nevertheless,
if you wish to claim it"--here she paused as in doubt. I saw at once
that she was prepared to resign to me the child if I had urged her to do
so. I must own, with a pang of remorse, that I recoiled from such a
proposal. What could I do with the child? How explain to my wife
the cause of my interest in it? If only a natural child of mine, I
should have shrunk from owning to Janet a youthful error. But as it
was,--the child by a former marriage, the former wife still living!--
my blood ran cold with dread. And if I did take the child, invent what
story I might as to its parentage, should I not expose myself, expose
Janet, to terrible constant danger? The mother's natural affection might
urge her at any time to seek tidings of the child, and in so doing she
might easily discover my new name, and, perhaps years hence, establish on
me her own claim.
No, I could not risk such perils. I replied sullenly, "You say rightly;
the child is yours,--only yours." I was about to add an offer of
pecuniary provision for it, but Louise had already turned scornfully
towards the bank on which she bad left the infant. I saw her snatch from
the child's hand some wild flowers the poor thing had been gathering; and
how often have I thought of the rude way in which she did it,--not as a
mother who loves her child. Just then other passengers appeared on the
road; two of them I knew,--an English couple very intimate with Lady
Janet and myself. They stopped to accost me, while Louise passed by with
the infant towards the town. I turned in the opposite direction, and
strove to collect my thoughts. Terrible as was the discovery thus
suddenly made, it was evident that Louise had as strong an interest as
myself to conceal it. There was little chance that it would ever be
divulged. Her dress and that of the child were those of persons in the
richer classes of life. After all, doubtless, the child needed not
pecuniary assistance from me, and was surely best off under the mother's
care. Thus I sought to comfort and to delude myself.
The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Chapelle and returned to England.
But it was impossible for me to banish the dreadful thought that Janet
was not legally my wife; that could she even guess the secret lodged in
my breast she would be lost to me forever, even though she died of the
separation (you know well how tenderly she loved me). My nature
underwent a silent revolution. I had previously cherished the ambition
common to most men in public life,--the ambition for fame, for place, for
power. That ambition left me; I shrank from the thought of becoming too
well known, lest Louise or her connections, as yet ignorant of my new
name, might more easily learn what the world knew; namely that I had
previously borne another name,--the name of her husband,--and finding me
wealthy and honoured, might hereafter be tempted to claim for herself or
her daughter the ties she adjured for both while she deemed me poor and
despised. But partly my conscience, partly the influence of the angel by
my side, compelled me to seek whatever means of doing good to others
position and circumstances placed at my disposal. I was alarmed when
even such quiet exercise of mind and fortune acquired a sort of
celebrity. How pain fully I shrank from it! The world attributed my
dread of publicity to unaffected modesty. The world praised me, and I
knew myself an impostor. But the years stole on. I heard no more of
Louise or her child, and my fears gradually subsided. Yet I was consoled
when the two children born to me by Janet died in their infancy. Had
they lived, who can tell whether something might not have transpired to
prove them illegitimate.
I must hasten on. At last came the great and crushing calamity of my
life,--I lost the woman who was my all in all. At least she was spared
the discovery that would have deprived me of the right of tending her
deathbed, and leaving within her tomb a place vacant for myself.
But after the first agonies that followed her loss, the conscience I had
so long sought to tranquillize became terribly reproachful. Louise had
forfeited all right to my consideration, but my guiltless child had not
done so. Did it live still? If so, was it not the heir to my fortunes,
--the only child left to me? True, I have the absolute right to dispose
of my wealth: it is not in land; it is not entailed: but was not the
daughter I had forsaken morally the first claimant; was no reparation due
to her? You remember that my physician ordered me, some little time
after your aunt's death, to seek a temporary change of scene. I obeyed,
and went away no one knew whither. Well, I repaired to Paris; there
I sought M. Sartiges, the _avoue_. I found he had been long dead. I
discovered his executors, and inquired if any papers or correspondence
between Richard Macdonald and himself many years ago were in existence.
All such documents, with others not returned to correspondents at his
decease, had been burned by his desire. No possible clew to the
whereabouts of Louise, should any have been gained since I last saw her,
was left. What then to do I knew not. I did not dare to make inquiries
through strangers, which, if discovering my child, might also bring to
light a marriage that would have dishonoured the memory of my lost saint.
I returned to England, feeling that my days were numbered. It is to you
that I transmit the task of those researches which I could not institute.
I bequeath to you, with the exception of trifling legacies and donations
to public charities, the whole of my fortune; but you will understand by
this letter that it is to be held on a trust which I cannot specify in my
will. I could not, without dishonouring the venerated name of your aunt,
indicate as the heiress of my wealth a child by a wife living at the time
I married Janet. I cannot form any words for such a devise which would
not arouse gossip and suspicion, and furnish ultimately a clew to the
discovery I would shun. I calculate that, after all deductions, the sum
that will devolve to you will be about L220,000. That which I mean to be
absolutely and at once yours is the comparatively trifling legacy of
L20,000. If Louise's child be not living, or if you find full reason to
suppose that despite appearances the child is not mine, the whole of my
fortune lapses to you; but should Louise be surviving and need pecuniary
aid, you will contrive that she may have such an annuity as you may deem
fitting, without learning whence it come. You perceive that it is your
object, if possible, even more than mine, to preserve free from slur the
name and memory of her who was to you a second mother. All ends we
desire would be accomplished could you, on discovering my lost child,
feel that, without constraining your inclinations, you could make her
your wife. She would then naturally share with you my fortune, and all
claims of justice and duty would be quietly appeased. She would now be
of age suitable to yours. When I saw her at Aix she gave promise of
inheriting no small share of her mother's beauty. If Louise's assurance
of her easy circumstances were true, her daughter has possibly been
educated and reared with tenderness and care. You have already assured
me that you have no prior attachment. But if, on discovering this child,
you find her already married, or one whom you could not love nor esteem,
I leave it implicitly to your honour and judgment to determine what share
of the L200,000 left in your hands should be consigned to her. She may
have been corrupted by her mother's principles. She may--Heaven forbid!
--have fallen into evil courses, and wealth would be misspent in her
hands. In that case a competence sufficing to save her from further
degradation, from the temptations of poverty, would be all that I desire
you to devote from my wealth. On the contrary, you may find in her one
who, in all respects, ought to be my chief inheritor. All this I leave
in full confidence to you, as being, of all the men I know, the one who
unites the highest sense of honour with the largest share of practical
sense and knowledge of life. The main difficulty, whatever this lost
girl may derive from my substance, will be in devising some means to
convey it to her so that neither she nor those around her may trace the
bequest to me. She can never be acknowledged as my child,--never! Your
reverence for the beloved dead forbids that. This difficulty your clear
strong sense must overcome; mine is blinded by the shades of death. You
too will deliberately consider how to institute the inquiries after
mother and child so as not to betray our secret. This will require great
caution. You will probably commence at Paris, through the agency of the
police, to whom you will be very guarded in your communications. It is
most unfortunate that I have no miniature of Louise, and that any
description of her must be so vague that it may not serve to discover
her; but such as it is, it may prevent your mistaking for her some other
of her name. Louise was above the common height, and looked taller than
she was, with the peculiar combination of very dark hair, very fair
complexion, and light-gray eyes. She would now be somewhat under the age
of forty. She was not without accomplishments, derived from the
companionship with her father. She spoke English fluently; she drew with
taste, and even with talent. You will see the prudence of confining
research at first to Louise, rather than to the child who is the
principal object of it; for it is not till you can ascertain what has
become of her that you can trust the accuracy of any information
respecting the daughter, whom I assume, perhaps after all erroneously, to
be mine. Though Louise talked with such levity of holding herself free
to marry, the birth of her child might be sufficient injury to her
reputation to become a serious obstacle to such second nuptials, not
having taken formal steps to annul her marriage with myself. If not thus
remarried, there would be no reason why she should not resume her maiden
name of Duval, as she did in the signature of her letter to me: finding
that I had ceased to molest her by the inquiries, to elude which she had
invented the false statement of her death. It seems probable, therefore,
that she is residing somewhere in Paris, and in the name of Duval. Of
course the burden of uncertainty as to your future cannot be left to
oppress you for an indefinite length of time. If at the end, say, of two
years, your researches have wholly failed, consider three-fourths of my
whole fortune to have passed to you, and put by the fourth to accumulate,
should the child afterwards be discovered, and satisfy your judgment as
to her claims on me as her father. Should she not, it will be a reserve
fund for your own children. But oh, if my child could be found in time!
and oh, if she be all that could win your heart, and be the wife you
would select from free choice! I can say no more. Pity me, and judge
leniently of Janet's husband.
R. K.
The key to Graham's conduct is now given,--the deep sorrow that took him
to the tomb of the aunt he so revered, and whose honoured memory was
subjected to so great a risk; the slightness of change in his expenditure
and mode of life, after an inheritance supposed to be so ample; the
abnegation of his political ambition; the subject of his inquiries, and
the cautious reserve imposed upon them; above all, the position towards
Isaura in which he was so cruelly placed.
Certainly, his first thought in revolving the conditions of his trust had
been that of marriage with this lost child of Richard King's, should she
be discovered single, disengaged, and not repulsive to his inclinations.
Tacitly he subscribed to the reasons for this course alleged by the
deceased. It was the simplest and readiest plan of uniting justice to
the rightful inheritor with care for a secret so important to the honour
of his aunt, of Richard King himself,--his benefactor,--of the
illustrious house from which Lady Janet had sprung. Perhaps, too, the
consideration that by this course a fortune so useful to his career was
secured was not without influence on the mind of a man naturally
ambitious. But on that consideration he forbade himself to dwell. He
put it away from him as a sin. Yet, to marriage with any one else, until
his mission was fulfilled, and the uncertainty as to the extent of his
fortune was dispelled, there interposed grave practical obstacles. How
could he honestly present himself to a girl and to her parents in the
light of a rich man, when in reality he might be but a poor man? How
could he refer to any lawyer the conditions which rendered impossible any
settlement that touched a shilling of the large sum which at any day he
might have to transfer to another? Still, when once fully conspicuous
how deep was the love with which Isaura had inspired him, the idea of
wedlock with the daughter of Richard King, if she yet lived and was
single, became inadmissible. The orphan condition of the young Italian
smoothed away the obstacles to proposals of marriage which would have
embarrassed his addresses to girls of his own rank, and with parents who
would have demanded settlements. And if he had found Isaura alone on
that day on which he had seen her last, he would doubtless have yielded
to the voice of his heart, avowed his love, wooed her own, and committed
both to the tie of betrothal. We have seen how rudely such yearnings of
his heart were repelled on that last interview. His English prejudices
were so deeply rooted, that, even if he had been wholly free from the
trust bequeathed to him, he would have recoiled from marriage with a girl
who, in the ardour for notoriety, could link herself with such associates
as Gustave Rameau, by habits a Bohemian, and by principles a Socialist.
In flying from Paris, he embraced the resolve to banish all thought of
wedding Isaura, and to devote himself sternly to the task which had so
sacred a claim upon him. Not that he could endure the idea of marrying
another, even if the lost heiress should be all that his heart could have
worshipped, had that heart been his own to give; but he was impatient of
the burden heaped on him,--of the fortune which might not be his, of the
uncertainty which paralyzed all his ambitious schemes for the future.
Yet, strive as he would--and no man could strive more resolutely--he
could not succeed in banishing the image of Isaura. It was with him
always; and with it a sense of irreparable loss, of a terrible void,
of a pining anguish.
And the success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, while sufficient to
detain him in the place, was so slight, and advanced by such slow
degrees, that it furnished no continued occupation to his restless mind.
M. Renard was acute and painstaking. But it was no easy matter to obtain
any trace of a Parisian visitor to so popular a Spa so many years ago.
The name Duval, too, was so common, that at Aix, as we have seen at
Paris, time was wasted in the chase of a Duval who proved not to be the
lost Louise. At last M. Renard chanced on a house in which, in the year
1849, two ladies from Paris had lodged for three weeks. One was named
Madame Duval, the other Madame Marigny. They were both young, both very
handsome, and much of the same height and colouring. But Madame Marigny
was the handsomer of the two. Madame Duval frequented the gaming-tables
and was apparently of very lively temper. Madame Marigny lived very
quietly, rarely or never stirred out, and seemed in delicate health.
She, however, quitted the apartment somewhat abruptly, and, to the best
of the lodging-house-keeper's recollection, took rooms in the country
near Aix--she could not remember where. About two months after the
departure of Madame Marigny, Madame Duval also left Aix, and in company
with a French gentleman who had visited her much of late,--a handsome man
of striking appearance. The lodging house-keeper did not know what or
who he was. She remembered that he used to be announced to Madame Duval
by the name of M. Achille. Madame Duval had never been seen again by the
lodging-house-keeper after she had left. But Madame Marigny she had once
seen, nearly five years after she had quitted the lodgings,--seen her by
chance at the railway station, recognized her at once, and accosted her,
offering her the old apartment. Madame Marigny had, however, briefly
replied that she was only at Aix for a few hours, and should quit it the
same day.
The inquiry now turned towards Madame Marigny. The date on which the
lodging-house-keeper had last seen her coincided with the year in which
Richard King had met Louise. Possibly, therefore, she might have
accompanied the latter to Aix at that time, and could, if found, give
information as to her subsequent history and present whereabouts.
After a tedious search throughout all the environs of Aix, Graham himself
came, by the merest accident, upon the vestiges of Louise's friend. He
had been wandering alone in the country round Aix, when a violent
thunderstorm drove him to ask shelter in the house of a small farmer,
situated in a field, a little off the byway which he had taken. While
waiting for the cessation of the storm, and drying his clothes by the
fire in a room that adjoined the kitchen, he entered into conversation
with the farmer's wife, a pleasant, well-mannered person, and made some
complimentary observation on a small sketch of the house in water-colours
that hung upon the wall. "Ah," said the farmer's wife, "that was done by
a French lady who lodged here many years ago. She drew very prettily,
poor thing."
"A lady who lodged here many years ago,--how many?"
"Well, I guess somewhere about twenty."
"Ah, indeed! Was it a Madame Marigny?"
"Bon Dieu! That was indeed her name. Did you know her? I should be so
glad to hear she is well and--I hope--happy."
"I do not know where she is now, and am making inquiries to ascertain.
Pray help me. How long did Madame Marigny lodge with you?"
"I think pretty well two months; yes, two months. She left a month after
her confinement."
"She was confined here?"
"Yes. When she first came, I had no idea that she was _enceinte_. She
had a pretty figure, and no one would have guessed it, in the way she
wore her shawl. Indeed I only began to suspect it a few days before it
happened; and that was so suddenly, that all was happily over before we
could send for the _accoucheur_."
"And the child lived?--a girl or a boy?"
"A girl,--the prettiest baby."
"Did she take the child with her when she went?"
"No; it was put out to nurse with a niece of my husband who was confined
about the same time. Madame paid liberally in advance, and continued to
send money half-yearly, till she came herself and took away the little
girl."
"When was that,--a little less than five years after she had left it?"
"Why, you know all about it, Monsieur; yes, not quite five years after.
She did not come to see me, which I thought unkind, but she sent me,
through my niece-in-law, a real gold watch and a shawl. Poor dear lady--
for lady she was all over,--with proud ways, and would not bear to be
questioned. But I am sure she was none of your French light ones, but an
honest wife like myself, though she never said so."
"And have you no idea where she was all the five years she was away, or
where she went after reclaiming her child?"
"No, indeed, Monsieur."
"But her remittances for the infant must have been made by letters, and
the letters would have had post-marks?"
"Well, I dare say; I am no scholar myself. But suppose you see Marie
Hubert, that is my niece-in-law, perhaps she has kept the envelopes."
"''Where does Madame Hubert live?"
"It is just a league off by the short path; you can't miss the way. Her
husband has a bit of land of his own, but he is also a carrier--'Max
Hubert, carrier,'--written over the door, just opposite the first church
you get to. The rain has ceased, but it may be too far for you to-day."
"Not a bit of it. Many thanks."
"But if you find out the dear lady and see her, do tell her how pleased I
should be to hear good news of her and the little one."
Graham strode on under the clearing skies to the house indicated. He
found Madame Hubert at home, and ready to answer all questions; but,
alas! she had not the envelopes. Madame Marigny, on removing the child,
had asked for all the envelopes or letters, and carried them away with
her. Madame Hubert, who was as little of a scholar as her aunt-in-law
was, had never paid much attention to the post-marks on the envelopes;
and the only one that she did remember was the first, that contained a
bank-note, and that post-mark was "Vienna."
"But did not Madame Marigny's letters ever give you an address to which
to write with news of her child?"
"I don't think she cared much for her child, Monsieur. She kissed it
very coldly when she came to take it away. I told the poor infant that
that was her own mamma; and Madame said, 'Yes, you may call me maman,' in
a tone of voice--well, not at all like that of a mother. She brought
with her a little bag which contained some fine clothes for the child,
and was very impatient till the child had got them on."
"Are you quite sure it was the same lady who left the child?"
"Oh, there is no doubt of that. She was certainly _tres belle_, but
I did not fancy her as aunt did. She carried her head very high, and
looked rather scornful. However, I must say she behaved very
generously."
"Still you have not answered my question whether her letters contained no
address."
She never wrote more than two letters. One enclosing the first
remittance was but a few lines, saying that if the child was well and
thriving, I need not write; but if it died or became dangerously ill, I
might at any time write a line to Madame -----, Poste Restante, Vienna.
She was travelling about, but the letter would be sure to reach her
sooner or later. The only other letter I had was to apprise me that she
was coming to remove the child, and might be expected in three days after
the receipt of her letter."
"And all the other communications from her were merely remittances in
blank envelopes?"
"Exactly so."
Graham, finding he could learn no more, took his departure. On his way
home, meditating the new idea that his adventure that day suggested, he
resolved to proceed at once, accompanied by M. Renard, to Munich, and
there learn what particulars could be yet ascertained respecting those
certificates of the death of Louise Duval, to which (sharing Richard
King's very natural belief that they had been skilfully forged) he had
hitherto attached no importance.
CHAPTER VII.
No satisfactory result attended the inquiries made at Munich save indeed
this certainty,--the certificates attesting the decease of some person
calling herself Louise Duval had not been forged. They were indubitably
genuine. A lady bearing that name had arrived at one of the principal
hotels late in the evening, and had there taken handsome rooms. She was
attended by no servant, but accompanied by a gentleman, who, however,
left the hotel as soon as he had seen her lodged to her satisfaction.
The books of the hotel still retained the entry of her name,--Madame
Duval, _Francaise rentiere_. On comparing the handwriting of this entry
with the letter from Richard King's first wife, Graham found it to
differ; but then it was not certain, though probable, that the entry had
been written by the alleged Madame Duval herself. She was visited the
next day by the same gentleman who had accompanied her on arriving. He
dined and spent the evening with her. But no one at the hotel could
remember what was the gentleman's name, nor even if he were announced by
any name. He never called again. Two days afterwards, Madame Duval was
taken ill; a doctor was sent for, and attended her till her death. This
doctor was easily found. He remembered the case perfectly,--congestion
of the lungs, apparently caused by cold caught on her journey. Fatal
symptoms rapidly manifested themselves, and she died on the third day
from the seizure. She was a young and handsome woman. He had asked her
during her short illness if he should not write to her friends; if there
were no one she would wish to be sent for. She replied that there was
only one friend, to whom she had already written, and who would arrive in
a day or two; and on inquiring, it appeared that she had written such a
letter, and taken it herself to the post on the morning of the day she
was taken ill.
She had in her purse not a large sum, but money enough to cover all her
expenses, including those of her funeral, which, according to the law in
force at the place, followed very quickly on her decease. The arrival of
the friend to whom she had written being expected, her effects were, in
the meanwhile, sealed up. The day after her death a letter arrived for
her, which was opened. It was evidently written by a man, and apparently
by a lover. It expressed an impassioned regret that the writer was
unavoidably prevented returning to Munich so soon as he had hoped, but
trusted to see his dear _bouton de rose_ in the course of the following
week; it was only signed Achille, and gave no address. Two or three days
after, a lady, also young and handsome, arrived at the hotel, and
inquired for Madame Duval. She was greatly shocked at hearing of her
decease. When sufficiently recovered to bear being questioned as to
Madame Duval's relations and position, she appeared confused; said, after
much pressing, that she was no relation to the deceased; that she
believed Madame Duval had no relations with whom she was on friendly
terms,--at least she had never heard her speak of any; and that her own
acquaintance with the deceased, though cordial, was very recent. She
could or would not give any clew to the writer of the letter signed
Achille, and she herself quitted Munich that evening, leaving the
impression that Madame Duval had been one of those ladies who, in
adopting a course of life at variance with conventional regulations,
are repudiated by their relations, and probably drop even their rightful
names.
Achille never appeared; but a few days after, a lawyer at Munich received
a letter from another at Vienna, requesting, in compliance with a
client's instructions, the formal certificates of Louise Duval's death.
These were sent as directed, and nothing more about the ill-fated woman
was heard of. After the expiration of the time required by law, the
seals were removed from the effects, which consisted of two _malles_ and
a dressing-case. But they only contained the articles appertaining to a
lady's wardrobe or toilet,--no letters, not even another note from
Achille,--no clew, in short, to the family or antecedents of the
deceased. What then had become of these effects, no one at the hotel
could give a clear or satisfactory account. It was said by the mistress
of the hotel, rather sullenly, that they had, she supposed, been sold by
her predecessor, and by order of the authorities, for the benefit of the
poor.
If the lady who had represented herself as Louise Duval's acquaintance
had given her own name, which doubtless she did, no one recollected it.
It was not entered in the books of the hotel, for she had not lodged
there; nor did it appear that she had allowed time for formal examination
by the civil authorities. In fact, it was clear that poor Louise Duval
had been considered as an adventuress by the hotel-keeper and the medical
attendant at Munich; and her death had excited so little interest, that
it was strange that even so many particulars respecting it could be
gleaned.
After a prolonged but fruitless stay at Munich, Graham and M. Renard
repaired to Vienna; there, at least, Madame Marigny had given an address,
and there she might be heard of.
At Vienna, however, no research availed to discover a trace of any such
person; and in despair Graham returned to England in the January of 1870,
and left the further prosecution of his inquiries to M. Renard, who,
though obliged to transfer himself to Paris for a time, promised that he
would leave no stone unturned for the discovery of Madame Marigny; and
Graham trusted to that assurance when M. Renard, rejecting half of the
large gratuity offered him, added, "Je suis Francais; this with me has
ceased to be an affair of money; it has become an affair that involves my
_amour propre_."
CHAPTER VIII.
If Graham Vane had been before caressed and courted for himself, he was
more than ever appreciated by polite society, now that he added the
positive repute of wealth to that of a promising intellect. Fine ladies
said that Graham Vane was a match for any girl. Eminent politicians
listened to him with a more attentive respect, and invited him to
selecter dinner-parties. His cousin the Duke urged him to announce his
candidature for the county, and purchase back, at least, the old Stamm-
schloss. But Graham obstinately refused to entertain either proposal,
continued to live as economically as before in his old apartments, and
bore with an astonishing meekness of resignation the unsolicited load of
fashion heaped upon his shoulders. At heart he was restless and
unhappy. The mission bequeathed to him by Richard King haunted his
thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised. Was his whole life to be
passed in the weary sustainment of an imposture which in itself was gall
and wormwood to a nature constitutionally frank and open? Was he forever
to appear a rich man and live as a poor one? Was he till his deathbed to
be deemed a sordid miser whenever he refused a just claim on his supposed
wealth, and to feel his ambition excluded from the objects it earnestly
coveted, and which he was forced to appear too much of an Epicurean
philosopher to prize?
More torturing than all else to the man's innermost heart was the
consciousness that he had not conquered, could not conquer, the yearning
love with which Isaura had inspired him, and yet that against such love
all his reasonings, all his prejudices, more stubbornly than ever were
combined. In the French newspapers which he had glanced over while
engaged in his researches in Germany-nay, in German critical journals
themselves--he had seen so many notices of the young author,--highly
eulogistic, it is true, but which to his peculiar notions were more
offensive than if they had been sufficiently condemnatory of her work to
discourage her from its repetition; notices which seemed to him the
supreme impertinences which no man likes exhibited towards the woman to
whom he would render the chivalrous homage of respect. Evidently this
girl had become as much public property as if she had gone on the stage.
Minute details of her personal appearance,--of the dimples on her cheek,
of the whiteness of her arms, of her peculiar way of dressing her hair;
anecdotes of her from childhood (of course invented, but how could Graham
know that?); of the reasons why she had adopted the profession of author
instead of that of the singer; of the sensation she had created in
certain salons (to Graham, who knew Paris so well, _salons_ in which he
would not have liked his wife to appear); of the compliments paid to her
by _grands seigneurs_ noted for their _liaisons_ with ballet-dancers, or
by authors whose genius soared far beyond the _flammantia maenia_ of a
world confined by respect for one's neighbours' land-marks,--all this,
which belongs to ground of personal gossip untouched by English critics
of female writers, ground especially favoured by Continental, and, I am
grieved to say, by American journalists,--all this was to the sensitive
Englishman much what the minute inventory of Egeria's charms would have
been to Numa Pompilius. The nymph, hallowed to him by secret devotion,
was vulgarized by the noisy hands of the mob, and by the popular voices,
which said, "We know more about Egeria than you do." And when he
returned to England, and met with old friends familiar to Parisian life,
who said, "of course you have read the Cicogna's _roman_. What do you
think of it? Very fine writing, I dare say, but above me. I go in for
'Les Mysteres de Paris' or 'Monte Cristo;' but I even find Georges Sand a
bore," then as a critic Graham Vane fired up, extolled the _roman_ he
would have given his ears for Isaura never to have written; but retired
from the contest muttering inly, "How can I--I, Graham Vane--how can I be
such an idiot; how can I in every hour of the twenty-four sigh to myself,
'What are other women to me? Isaura, Isaura!'"
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