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Title: The Thirteen

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage

Release Date: Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7416]
Posting Date: March 7, 2010
Last Updated: November 23, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRTEEN ***




Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala, and Dagny





THE THIRTEEN


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage




     DEDICATION

     To Hector Berlioz.




INTRODUCTION

The _Histoire des Treize_ consists--or rather is built up--of three
stories: _Ferragus_ or the _Rue Soly_, _La Duchesse de Langeais_ or _Ne
touchez-paz a la hache_, and _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_.


To tell the truth, there is more power than taste throughout the
_Histoire des Treize_, and perhaps not very much less unreality than
power. Balzac is very much better than Eugene Sue, though Eugene Sue
also is better than it is the fashion to think him just now. But he is
here, to a certain extent competing with Sue on the latter’s own ground.
The notion of the “Devorants”--of a secret society of men devoted to
each other’s interests, entirely free from any moral or legal scruple,
possessed of considerable means in wealth, ability, and position, all
working together, by fair means or foul, for good ends or bad--is,
no doubt, rather seducing to the imagination at all times; and it so
happened that it was particularly seducing to the imagination of
that time. And its example has been powerful since; it gave us Mr.
Stevenson’s _New Arabian Nights_ only, as it were, the other day.

But there is something a little schoolboyish in it; and I do not know
that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating this something. The
pathos of the death, under persecution, of the innocent Clemence does
not entirely make up for the unreasonableness of the whole situation.
Nobody can say that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour--who is a
hopeless “cad”--is too much punished, though an Englishman may think
that Dr. Johnson’s receipt of three or four footmen with cudgels,
applied repeatedly and unsparingly, would have been better than
elaborately prepared accidents and duels, which were too honorable for a
Peeping Tom of this kind; and poisonings, which reduced the avengers to
the level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid; these
fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere stage properties,
and should never be fetched out of the theatrical lumber-room by
literature.

_La Duchesse de Langeais_ is, I think, a better story, with more
romantic attraction, free from the objections just made to _Ferragus_,
and furnished with a powerful, if slightly theatrical catastrophe. It
is as good as anything that its author has done of the kind, subject
to those general considerations of probability and otherwise which
have been already hinted at. For those who are not troubled by any such
critical reflections, both, no doubt, will be highly satisfactory.

The third of the series, _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_, in some respects one
of Balzac’s most brilliant effects, has been looked at askance by many
of his English readers. At one time he had the audacity to think of
calling it _La Femme aux Yeux Rouges_. To those who consider the story
morbid or, one may say, _bizarre_, one word of justification, hardly of
apology, may be offered. It was in the scheme of the _Comedie Humaine_
to survey social life in its entirety by a minute analysis of its most
diverse constituents. It included all the pursuits and passions, was
large and patient, and unafraid. And the patience, the curiosity, of the
artist which made Cesar Birotteau and his bankrupt ledgers matters of
high import to us, which did not shrink from creating a Vautrin and a
Lucien de Rubempre, would have been incomplete had it stopped short of a
Marquise de San-Real, of a Paquita Valdes. And in the great mass of the
_Comedie Humaine_, with its largeness and reality of life, as in life
itself; the figure of Paquita justifies its presence.

Considering the _Histoire des Treize_ as a whole, it is of engrossing
interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who,
beginning Balzac with this series, failed to go rather mad over it. I
know there was a time when I used to like it best of all, and thought
not merely _Eugenie Grandet_, but _Le Pere Goriot_ (though not the _Peau
de Chagrin_), dull in comparison. Some attention, however, must be paid
to two remarkable characters, on whom it is quite clear that Balzac
expended a great deal of pains, and one of whom he seems to have
“caressed,” as the French say, with a curious admixture of dislike and
admiration.

The first, Bourignard or Ferragus, is, of course, another, though a
somewhat minor example--Collin or Vautrin being the chief--of that
strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals, which seems to
be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds, and which laid an
extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac’s time. I must
confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that I have never
been able to fully appreciate the attractions of crime and criminals,
fictitious or real. Certain pleasant and profitable things, no doubt,
retain their pleasure and their profit, to some extent, when they are
done in the manner which is technically called criminal; but they seem
to me to acquire no additional interest by being so. As the criminal of
fact is, in the vast majority of cases, an exceedingly commonplace and
dull person, the criminal of fiction seems to me only, or usually, to
escape these curses by being absolutely improbable and unreal. But I
know this is a terrible heresy.

Henri de Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more interesting
figure. In him are combined the attractions of criminality, beauty,
brains, success, and, last of all, dandyism. It is a well-known and
delightful fact that the most Anglophobe Frenchmen--and Balzac might
fairly be classed among them--have always regarded the English dandy
with half-jealous, half-awful admiration. Indeed, our novelist, it will
be seen, found it necessary to give Marsay English blood. But there is
a tradition that this young Don Juan--not such a good fellow as Byron’s,
nor such a _grand seigneur_ as Moliere’s--was partly intended to
represent Charles de Remusat, who is best known to this generation
by very sober and serious philosophical works, and by his part in
his mother’s correspondence. I do not know that there ever were any
imputation on M. de Remusat’s morals; but in memoirs of the time, he
is, I think, accused of a certain selfishness and _hauteur_, and he
certainly made his way, partly by journalism, partly by society, to
power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay would certainly not have
written _Abelard_ and the rest, or have returned to Ministerial rank in
our own time. Marsay, in fact, more fortunate than Rubempre, and of a
higher stamp and flight than Rastignac, makes with them Balzac’s trinity
of sketches of the kind of personage whose part, in his day and since,
every young Frenchman has aspired to play, and some have played. It
cannot be said that “a moral man is Marsay”; it cannot be said that he
has the element of good-nature which redeems Rastignac. But he bears
a blame and a burden for which we Britons are responsible in part--the
Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to cross and blacken the old
French model of unscrupulous good humor. It is not a very pretty mixture
or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so sure that it is not still a
pretty common one.

The association of the three stories forming the _Histoire des Treize_
is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the
four volumes of _Etudes des Moeurs_ published in 1834-35, and themselves
forming part of the first collection of _Scenes de la Vie Parisienne_.
But _Ferragus_ had appeared in parts (with titles to each) in the
_Revue de Paris_ for March and April 1833, and part of _La Duchesse de
Langeais_ in the _Echo de la Jeune France_ almost contemporaneously.
There are divisions in this also. _Ferragus_ and _La Duchesse_ also
appeared without _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_ in 1839, published in one
volume by Charpentier, before their absorption at the usual time in the
_Comedie_.

George Saintsbury




AUTHOR’S PREFACE

In the Paris of the Empire there were found Thirteen men equally
impressed with the same idea, equally endowed with energy enough to keep
them true to it, while among themselves they were loyal enough to keep
faith even when their interests seemed to clash. They were strong
enough to set themselves above all laws; bold enough to shrink from no
enterprise; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they
undertook. So profoundly politic were they, that they could dissemble
the tie which bound them together. They ran the greatest risks, and
kept their failures to themselves. Fear never entered into their
calculations; not one of them had trembled before princes, before the
executioner’s axe, before innocence. They had taken each other as they
were, regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they doubtless were,
yet none the less were they all remarkable for some one of the virtues
which go to the making of great men, and their numbers were filled up
only from among picked recruits. Finally, that nothing should be lacking
to complete the dark, mysterious romance of their history, nobody to
this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realized all the wildest
ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of a Manfred, a
Faust, or a Melmoth; and to-day the band is broken up or, at any rate,
dispersed. Its members have quietly returned beneath the yoke of the
Civil Code; much as Morgan, the Achilles of piracy, gave up buccaneering
to be a peaceable planter; and, untroubled by qualms of conscience, sat
himself down by the fireside to dispose of blood-stained booty acquired
by the red light of blazing towns.

After Napoleon’s death, the band was dissolved by a chance event which
the author is bound for the present to pass over in silence, and its
mysterious existence, as curious, it may be, as the darkest novel by
Mrs. Radcliffe, came to an end.

It was only lately that the present writer, detecting, as he fancied,
a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous heroes to whom
the whole band once owed an occult allegiance, received the somewhat
singular permission to make public certain of the adventures which
befell that band, provided that, while telling the story in his own
fashion, he observed certain limits.

The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man with fair hair
and blue eyes, and a soft, thin voice which might seem to indicate a
feminine temperament. His face was pale, his ways mysterious. He chatted
pleasantly, and told me that he was only just turned of forty. He might
have belonged to any one of the upper classes. The name which he gave
was probably assumed, and no one answering to his description was known
in society. Who is he, do you ask? No one knows.

Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the present
writer, he wished to see them in some sort reproduced; to enjoy the
effect of the sensation on the multitude; to feel as Macpherson might
have felt when the name of Ossian, his creation, passed into all
languages. And, in truth, that Scottish advocate knew one of the
keenest, or, at any rate, one of the rarest sensations in human
experience. What was this but the incognito of genius? To write an
_Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_ is to take one’s share in the glory
of a century, but to give a Homer to one’s country--this surely is a
usurpation of the rights of God.

The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be
unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but,
at the same time, he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to feel
confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by the
programme. Tragedies dripping with gore, comedies piled up with horrors,
tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him. If any
reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the public
for some time past, he has only to express his wish; the author is in
a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets of a
gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen those
pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by purer
scenes, where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the brighter
for the darkness. And, to the honor of the Thirteen, such episodes as
these are not wanting. Some day perhaps it may be thought worth while
to give their whole history to the world; in which case it might form a
pendant to the history of the buccaneers--that race apart so curiously
energetic, so attractive in spite of their crimes.

When a writer has a true story to tell, he should scorn to turn it into
a sort of puzzle toy, after the manner of those novelists who take
their reader for a walk through one cavern after another to show him a
dried-up corpse at the end of the fourth volume, and inform him, by way
of conclusion, that he has been frightened all along by a door hidden
somewhere or other behind some tapestry; or a dead body, left by
inadvertence, under the floor. So the present chronicler, in spite of
his objection to prefaces, felt bound to introduce his fragment by a few
remarks.

_Ferragus_, the first episode, is connected by invisible links with the
history of the Thirteen, for the power which they acquired in a natural
manner provides the apparently supernatural machinery.

Again, although a certain literary coquetry may be permissible to
retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is bound to forego
such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many
ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore the present
writer gives the following succinct statement of the reasons which
induced him to adopt the unlikely sounding title and sub-title.

In accordance with old-established custom, _Ferragus_ is a name taken by
the head of a guild of _Devorants_, _id est Devoirants_ or journeymen.
Every chief on the day of his election chooses a pseudonym and continues
a dynasty of _Devorants_ precisely as a pope changes his name on his
accession to the triple tiara; and as the Church has its Clement XIV.,
Gregory XII., Julius II., or Alexander VI., so the workmen have their
Trempe-la-Soupe IX., Ferragus XXII., Tutanus XIII., or Masche-Fer IV.
Who are the _Devorants_, do you ask?

The _Devorants_ are one among many tribes of _compagnons_ whose origin
can be traced to a great mystical association formed among the
workmen of Christendom for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem.
_Compagnonnage_ is still a popular institution in France. Its traditions
still exert a power over little enlightened minds, over men so
uneducated that they have not learned to break their oaths; and the
various organizations might be turned to formidable account even yet
if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to make use of them, for his
instruments would be, for the most part, almost blind.

Wherever journeymen travel, they find a hostel for _compagnons_ which
has been in existence in the town from time immemorial. The _obade_,
as they call it, is a kind of lodge with a “Mother” in charge, an old,
half-gypsy wife who has nothing to lose. She hears all that goes on in
the countryside; and, either from fear or from long habit, is devoted to
the interests of the tribe boarded and lodged by her. And as a result,
this shifting population, subject as it is to an unalterable law of
custom, has eyes in every place, and will carry out an order anywhere
without asking questions; for the oldest journeyman is still at an age
when a man has some beliefs left. What is more, the whole fraternity
professes doctrines which, if unfolded never so little, are both
true enough and mysterious enough to electrify all the adepts with
patriotism; and the _compagnons_ are so attached to their rules, that
there have been bloody battles between different fraternities on a
question of principle. Fortunately, however, for peace and public order;
if a _Devorant_ is ambitious, he takes to building houses, makes a
fortune, and leaves the guild.

A great many curious things might be told of their rivals, the
_Compagnons du Devior_, of all the different sects of workmen, their
manners and customs and brotherhoods, and of the resemblances between
them and the Freemasons; but there, these particulars would be out
of place. The author will merely add, that before the Revolution a
Trempe-la-Soupe had been known in the King’s service, which is to say,
that he had the tenure of a place in His Majesty’s galleys for one
hundred and one years; but even thence he ruled his guild, and was
religiously consulted on all matters, and if he escaped from the hulks
he met with help, succor, and respect wherever he went. To have a
chief in the hulks is one of those misfortunes for which Providence is
responsible; but a faithful lodge of _devorants_ is bound, as before, to
obey a power created by and set above themselves. Their lawful sovereign
is in exile for the time being, but none the less is he their king.
And now any romantic mystery hanging about the words _Ferragus_ and the
_devorants_ is completely dispelled.

As for the Thirteen, the author feels that, on the strength of the
details of this almost fantastic story, he can afford to give away yet
another prerogative, though it is one of the greatest on record, and
would possibly fetch a high price if brought into a literary auction
mart; for the owner might inflict as many volumes on the public as La
Contemporaine.[*]

   [*] A long series of so-called Memoirs, which appeared about 1830.

The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron’s friend
Trelawney, the original (so it is said) of _The Corsair_. All of them
were fatalists, men of spirit and poetic temperament; all of them were
tired of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted towards
Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly awakened
and long dormant forces. One of these, chancing to take up _Venice
Preserved_ for the second time, admired the sublime friendship between
Pierre and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the
loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and the immense power that
a few men can wield if they bring their whole minds to bear upon the
carrying out of a single will. It struck him that the individual man
rose higher than men. Then he began to think that if a few picked men
should band themselves together; and if, to natural wit, and education,
and money, they could join a fanaticism hot enough to fuse, as it were,
all those separate forces into a single one, then the whole world would
be at their feet. From that time forth, with a tremendous power of
concentration, they could wield an occult power against which the
organization of society would be helpless; a power which would push
obstacles aside and defeat the will of others; and the diabolical power
of all would be at the service of each. A hostile world apart within the
world, admitting none of the ideas, recognizing none of the laws of the
world; submitting only to the sense of necessity, obedient only from
devotion; acting all as one man in the interests of the comrade who
should claim the aid of the rest; a band of buccaneers with carriages
and yellow kid gloves; a close confederacy of men of extraordinary
power, of amused and cool spectators of an artificial and petty world
which they cursed with smiling lips; conscious as they were that they
could make all things bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of
revenge, and live with the life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing
of the unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden
misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, and could
retire into themselves with one idea which the most remarkable men had
not,--all this constituted a religion of pleasure and egoism which
made fanatics of the Thirteen. The history of the Society of Jesus was
repeated for the Devil’s benefit. It was hideous and sublime.

The pact was made; and it lasted, precisely because it seemed
impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris there was a fraternity
of thirteen men, each one bound, body and soul, to the rest, and all
of them strangers to each other in the sight of the world. But evening
found them gathered together like conspirators, and then they had no
thoughts apart; riches, like the wealth of the Old Man of the Mountain,
they possessed in common; they had their feet in every salon, their
hands in every strong box, their elbows in the streets, their heads upon
all pillows, they did not scruple to help themselves at their pleasure.
No chief commanded them, nobody was strong enough. The liveliest
passion, the most urgent need took precedence--that was all. They were
thirteen unknown kings; unknown, but with all the power and more than
the power of kings; for they were both judges and executioners, they had
taken wings that they might traverse the heights and depths of society,
scorning to take any place in it, since all was theirs. If the author
learns the reason of their abdication, he will communicate it.

And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of the
Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or the
strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.

Paris





THE THIRTEEN




I. FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS



CHAPTER I. MADAME JULES

Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young streets
on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also
cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers,
estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working,
laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris
have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their
physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There
are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not
be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your
abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, have a charming head,
and end in a fish’s tail. The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine
street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come
to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly
lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome.

If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reason
of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude
of the spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great deserted
mansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Venice
of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it is
never fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it is
Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue
Traversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at the
wretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime,
and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where the
sun never comes more than three or four times a year, are the cut-throat
streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the present
day do not meddle with them; but in former times the Parliament might
perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and reprimanded him for
the state of things; and it would, at least, have issued some decree
against such streets, as it once did against the wigs of the Chapter of
Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston de Chateauneuf has proved that
the mortality of these streets is double that of others! To sum up such
theories by a single example: is not the rue Fromentin both murderous
and profligate!

These observations, incomprehensible out of Paris, will doubtless be
understood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure, who
know, while rambling about Paris, how to harvest the mass of floating
interests which may be gathered at all hours within her walls; to them
Paris is the most delightful and varied of monsters: here, a pretty
woman; farther on, a haggard pauper; here, new as the coinage of a new
reign; there, in this corner, elegant as a fashionable woman. A monster,
moreover, complete! Its garrets, as it were, a head full of knowledge
and genius; its first storeys stomachs repleted; its shops, actual feet,
where the busy ambulating crowds are moving. Ah! what an ever-active
life the monster leads! Hardly has the last vibration of the last
carriage coming from a ball ceased at its heart before its arms are
moving at the barriers and it shakes itself slowly into motion. Doors
open; turning on their hinges like the membrane of some huge lobster,
invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each
individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a
workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but
must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion
communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the
chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws
begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not admired
your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of light, your deep and
silent _cul-de-sacs_, who has not listened to your murmurings between
midnight and two in the morning, knows nothing as yet of your true
poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts.

There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly; who savor
their Paris, so to speak; who know its physiognomy so well that they
see every wart, and pimple, and redness. To others, Paris is always that
monstrous marvel, that amazing assemblage of activities, of schemes,
of thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the head of the
universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly or beautiful,
living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction
of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan
whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well. These men
are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at such or such a corner of
a street, certain that they can see the face of a clock; they tell a
friend whose tobacco-pouch is empty, “Go down that passage and turn
to the left; there’s a tobacconist next door to a confectioner, where
there’s a pretty girl.” Rambling about Paris is, to these poets, a
costly luxury. How can they help spending precious minutes before
the dramas, disasters, faces, and picturesque events which meet us
everywhere amid this heaving queen of cities, clothed in posters,--who
has, nevertheless, not a single clean corner, so complying is she to the
vices of the French nation! Who has not chanced to leave his home early
in the morning, intending to go to some extremity of Paris, and found
himself unable to get away from the centre of it by the dinner-hour?
Such a man will know how to excuse this vagabondizing start upon our
tale; which, however, we here sum up in an observation both useful and
novel, as far as any observation can be novel in Paris, where there is
nothing new,--not even the statue erected yesterday, on which some young
gamin has already scribbled his name.

Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses,
unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a
woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very wounding
things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has a
carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one
of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her
reputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine in
the evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to make
upon her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman is
young and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the
house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end
of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that
gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless
fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty
women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her
acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than
one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama,
a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of the modern school.

Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended by
only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to
a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter
himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown--‘tis the
saying of women and of authors.

At half-past eight o’clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days
when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word, and
was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most impassable
street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of the most
deserted street),--at the beginning of the month of February about
thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which come but
once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the rue des
Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man, who lived
himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw in a woman near whom he had been
unconsciously walking, a vague resemblance to the prettiest woman in
Paris; a chaste and delightful person, with whom he was secretly and
passionately in love,--a love without hope; she was married. In a moment
his heart leaped, an intolerable heat surged from his centre and flowed
through all his veins; his back turned cold, the skin of his head crept.
He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his knowledge did not permit
him to be ignorant of all there was of possible infamy in an elegant,
rich, young, and beautiful woman walking there, alone, with a furtively
criminal step. _She_ in that mud! at that hour!

The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic, and
all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. If he had
been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely; but, as
an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that French arm which
demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanity from its
amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion of this
officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble.
He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her
modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his
hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those
platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the
history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden principle of all the
actions of a young man’s life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when
blue; a love without hope and to which men bind themselves because
it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of unchecked enjoyment,
especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the imagination keen, and
the eyes of a man see very clearly.

Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night in Paris.
Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effects have
any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At times the
creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems to you
light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make you fancy that
the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure though wrapped in a shawl,
or concealed by a pelisse, defines itself gracefully and seductively
among the shadows; anon, the uncertain gleam thrown from a shop-window
or a street lamp bestows a fleeting lustre, nearly always deceptive, on
the unknown woman, and fires the imagination, carrying it far beyond
the truth. The senses then bestir themselves; everything takes color and
animation; the woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person
becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren,
who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house,
where the worthy _bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and
the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at
you.

A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker,
suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who was
before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swaying figure;
she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocently set into
relief the many beauties of that attractive form. Yes, that was the
shawl, and that the velvet bonnet which she wore in the mornings. On
her gray silk stockings not a spot, on her shoes not a splash. The shawl
held tightly round the bust disclosed, vaguely, its charming lines; and
the young man, who had often seen those shoulders at a ball, knew well
the treasures that the shawl concealed. By the way a Parisian woman
wraps a shawl around her, and the way she lifts her feet in the street,
a man of intelligence in such studies can divine the secret of her
mysterious errand. There is something, I know not what, of quivering
buoyancy in the person, in the gait; the woman seems to weigh less; she
steps, or rather, she glides like a star, and floats onward led by a
thought which exhales from the folds and motion of her dress. The young
man hastened his step, passed the woman, and then turned back to look
at her. Pst! she had disappeared into a passage-way, the grated door of
which and its bell still rattled and sounded. The young man walked back
to the alley and saw the woman reach the farther end, where she began
to mount--not without receiving the obsequious bow of an old portress--a
winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly lighted; she
went up buoyantly, eagerly, as though impatient.

“Impatient for what?” said the young man to himself, drawing back to
lean against a wooden railing on the other side of the street. He
gazed, unhappy man, at the different storeys of the house, with the keen
attention of a detective searching for a conspirator.

It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris,
ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three
windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed.
Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell
on the second floor. As if in answer to it, a light began to move in a
room with two windows strongly illuminated, which presently lit up the
third window, evidently that of a first room, either the salon or the
dining-room of the apartment. Instantly the outline of a woman’s bonnet
showed vaguely on the window, and a door between the two rooms must
have closed, for the first was dark again, while the two other windows
resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment a voice said, “Hi, there!” and
the young man was conscious of a blow on his shoulder.

“Why don’t you pay attention?” said the rough voice of a workman,
carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of
Providence saying to the watcher: “What are you meddling with? Think of
your own duty; and leave these Parisians to their own affairs.”

The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one beheld him, he suffered
tears of rage to flow down his cheeks unchecked. At last the sight of
the shadows moving behind the lighted windows gave him such pain that he
looked elsewhere and noticed a hackney-coach, standing against a wall
in the upper part of the rue des Vieux-Augustins, at a place where there
was neither the door of a house, nor the light of a shop-window.

Was it she? Was it not she? Life or death to a lover! This lover waited.
He stood there during a century of twenty minutes. After that the woman
came down, and he then recognized her as the one whom he secretly loved.
Nevertheless, he wanted still to doubt. She went to the hackney-coach,
and got into it.

“The house will always be there and I can search it later,” thought the
young man, following the carriage at a run, to solve his last doubts;
and soon he did so.

The carriage stopped in the rue de Richelieu before a shop for
artificial flowers, close to the rue de Menars. The lady got out,
entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman, and presently
left the shop herself, on foot, after buying a bunch of marabouts.
Marabouts for her black hair! The officer beheld her, through the
window-panes, placing the feathers to her head to see the effect, and
he fancied he could hear the conversation between herself and the
shop-woman.

“Oh! madame, nothing is more suitable for brunettes: brunettes have
something a little too strongly marked in their lines, and marabouts
give them just that _flow_ which they lack. Madame la Duchesse de
Langeais says they give a woman something vague, Ossianic, and very
high-bred.”

“Very good; send them to me at once.”

Then the lady turned quickly toward the rue de Menars, and entered her
own house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having lost
his hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked through the
streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own room
without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-chair,
put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his boots
until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those moments in
human life when the character is moulded, and the future conduct of the
best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his first action.
Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.

This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
all men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather had bought
the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where he afterwards
became president. His sons, each provided with a handsome fortune,
entered the army, and through their marriages became attached to the
court. The Revolution swept the family away; but one old dowager, too
obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison, threatened with
death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor and recovered her property.
When the proper time came, about the year 1804, she recalled her
grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, the only scion of the
Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the good dowager with the
triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and an obstinate dowager. When
the Restoration came, the young man, then eighteen years of age, entered
the Maison-Rouge, followed the princes to Ghent, was made an officer in
the body-guard, left it to serve in the line, but was recalled later to
the Royal Guard, where, at twenty-three years of age, he found
himself major of a cavalry regiment,--a splendid position, due to his
grandmother, who had played her cards well to obtain it, in spite of his
youth. This double biography is a compendium of the general and special
history, barring variations, of all the noble families who emigrated
having debts and property, dowagers and tact.

Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de
Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of
those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing
can weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain
secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the
time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the text
of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine,--a work
about which young men talk and judge without having read it.

Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germain
through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back
two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to
go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in
appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel for
a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though he wore
in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, as you
perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the most
excusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch.
It came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration,
between the old traditions of the court and the conscientious education
of the _bourgeoisie_; between religion and fancy-balls; between two
political faiths, between Louis XVIII., who saw only the present, and
Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to
accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking
it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted
as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in
their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their
retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old
doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of the Restoration, still speak of
slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a victim to the ideas which
weighed in those days upon French youth, and we must here explain why.

The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man of
honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most detestable
opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_ honor! _their_
feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with them, he
believed in them, the ci-devant “monstre”; he never contradicted them,
and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of
the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to deceive women, and
to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the occupation of those
young men who were so misguided as to wish to meddle in the affairs of
the State. It is sad to have to sketch so hackneyed a portrait, for has
it not figured everywhere and become, literally, as threadbare as
that of a grenadier of the Empire? But the vidame had an influence
on Monsieur de Maulincour’s destiny which obliges us to preserve his
portrait; he lectured the young man after his fashion, and did his best
to convert him to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry.

The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God and her
vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with that well-bred
persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed to preserve for
her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had therefore brought
him up in the highest principles; she instilled into him her own
delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, a timid man, if
not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were
not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that
he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached
no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to
conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the
while scoffing with others at the things he reverenced.

It came to pass that he was deceived; because, in accordance with a not
uncommon whim of destiny, he, a man of gentle melancholy, and spiritual
in love, encountered in the object of his first passion a woman who
held in horror all German sentimentalism. The young man, in consequence,
distrusted himself, became dreamy, absorbed in his griefs, complaining
of not being understood. Then, as we desire all the more violently the
things we find difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with
that ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy the secret of which
belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the
monopoly of it. In point of fact, though women of the world complain
of the way men love them, they have little liking themselves for those
whose soul is half feminine. Their own superiority consists in making
men believe they are their inferiors in love; therefore they will
readily leave a lover if he is inexperienced enough to rob them of those
fears with which they seek to deck themselves, those delightful tortures
of feigned jealousy, those troubles of hope betrayed, those futile
expectations,--in short, the whole procession of their feminine
miseries. They hold Sir Charles Grandison in horror. What can be more
contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect love? They want
emotions; happiness without storms is not happiness to them. Women with
souls that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic
exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men.
Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of
such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible
irritations, as in all things petty and perishable.

Amid the hidden disasters of his heart, and while he was still seeking
the woman who could comprehend him (a search which, let us remark in
passing, is one of the amorous follies of our epoch), Auguste met, in
the rank of society that was farthest from his own, in the secondary
sphere of money, where banking holds the first place, a perfect being,
one of those women who have I know not what about them that is saintly
and sacred,--women who inspire such reverence that love has need of the
help of a long familiarity to declare itself.

Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and
most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. Innumerable
repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague yet so
profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely knows to what
we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds, or rays of the
sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that shines for a moment
and disappears, that springs to life and dies, leaving in the heart long
echoes of emotion. When the soul is young enough to nurture melancholy
and far-off hope, to find in woman more than a woman, is it not the
greatest happiness that can befall a man when he loves enough to feel
more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a lock of hair, in listening to
a word, in casting a single look, than in all the ardor of possession
given by happy love? Thus it is that rejected persons, those rebuffed by
fate, the ugly and unfortunate, lovers unrevealed, women and timid men,
alone know the treasures contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking
their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations
of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into
communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above
all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is
often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender
voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What
freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows
it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel,
and poets who express; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted
all these early joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning
organ that the most artful woman of the world could have desired in
order to deceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft
to the ear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles,
caresses and subjugates.

And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!
and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just destroyed the
grandest of passions! The vidame’s logic triumphed.

“If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves,” said
Auguste.

There was still faith in that “if”. The philosophic doubt of Descartes
is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o’clock
sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was going to
a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went
there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistress of the
house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:--

“You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come.”

“Good evening, dear,” said a voice.

Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived,
dressed in white, looking simple and noble, wearing in her hair the
marabouts the young baron had seen her choose in the flower-shop. That
voice of love now pierced his heart. Had he won the slightest right to
be jealous of her he would have petrified her then and there by saying
the words, “Rue Soly!” But if he, an alien to her life, had said those
words in her ear a thousand times, Madame Jules would have asked him in
astonishment what he meant. He looked at her stupidly.

For those sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a great
amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is
a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that
pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom
the sight is saddening; and many of those who laugh in public, when
withdrawn into themselves and alone with their conscience, curse the
world while they despise the woman. Such was the case with Auguste de
Maulincour, as he stood there in presence of Madame Jules. Singular
situation! There was no other relation between them than that which
social life establishes between persons who exchange a few words seven
or eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling her
to account on behalf of a happiness unknown to her; he was judging her,
without letting her know of his accusation.

Many young men find themselves thus in despair at having broken forever
with a woman adored in secret, condemned and despised in secret. There
are many hidden monologues told to the walls of some solitary lodging;
storms roused and calmed without ever leaving the depths of hearts;
amazing scenes of the moral world, for which a painter is wanted. Madame
Jules sat down, leaving her husband to make a turn around the salon.
After she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her
neighbor, she kept a furtive eye on Monsieur Jules Desmarets, her
husband, a broker chiefly employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The
following is the history of their home life.

Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker’s
office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he
was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and he
followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for its
nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an
obstacle and wear out everybody’s patience with their own beetle-like
perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of
poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure.
He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an agreeable
exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive
face, his simple manners,--all revealed in him a laborious and resigned
existence, that lofty personal dignity which is imposing to others,
and the secret nobility of heart which can meet all events. His modesty
inspired a sort of respect in those who knew him. Solitary in the midst
of Paris, he knew the social world only by glimpses during the brief
moments which he spent in his patron’s salon on holidays.

There were passions in this young man, as in most of the men who live
in that way, of amazing profundity,--passions too vast to be drawn into
petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead an ascetic
life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After paling all day
over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinately to acquire
that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days to every man who
wants to make his mark, whether in society, or in commerce, at the bar,
or in politics or literature. The only peril these fine souls have to
fear comes from their own uprightness. They see some poor girl; they
love her; they marry her, and wear out their lives in a struggle between
poverty and love. The noblest ambition is quenched perforce by the
household account-book. Jules Desmarets went headlong into this peril.

He met one evening at his patron’s house a girl of the rarest beauty.
Unfortunate men who are deprived of affection, and who consume the
finest hours of youth in work and study, alone know the rapid ravages
that passion makes in their lonely, misconceived hearts. They are so
certain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quickly on
the object of their love, that they receive, while beside her, the most
delightful sensations, when, as often happens, they inspire none at
all. Nothing is more flattering to a woman’s egotism than to divine this
passion, apparently immovable, and these emotions so deep that they have
needed a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor
men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all the enjoyments of
anchorites; and may sometimes succumb to temptations. But, more often
deceived, betrayed, and misunderstood, they are rarely able to gather
the sweet fruits of a love which, to them, is like a flower dropped from
heaven.

One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice sufficed to
make Jules Desmarets conceive a passion which was boundless. Happily,
the concentrated fire of that secret passion revealed itself artlessly
to the woman who inspired it. These two beings then loved each other
religiously. To express all in a word, they clasped hands without shame
before the eyes of the world and went their way like two children,
brother and sister, passing serenely through a crowd where all made way
for them and admired them.

The young girl was in one of those unfortunate positions which human
selfishness entails upon children. She had no civil status; her name of
“Clemence” and her age were recorded only by a notary public. As for
her fortune, that was small indeed. Jules Desmarets was a happy man
on hearing these particulars. If Clemence had belonged to an opulent
family, he might have despaired of obtaining her; but she was only the
poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterous passion; and
they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets a series of fortunate
events. Every one envied his happiness; and henceforth talked only of
his luck, without recalling either his virtues or his courage.

Some days after their marriage, the mother of Clemence, who passed in
society for her godmother, told Jules Desmarets to buy the office and
good-will of a broker, promising to provide him with the necessary
capital. In those days, such offices could still be bought at a modest
price. That evening, in the salon as it happened of his patron, a
wealthy capitalist proposed, on the recommendation of the mother, a very
advantageous transaction for Jules Desmarets, and the next day the happy
clerk was able to buy out his patron. In four years Desmarets became one
of the most prosperous men in his business; new clients increased the
number his predecessor had left to him; he inspired confidence in all;
and it was impossible for him not to feel, by the way business came
to him, that some hidden influence, due to his mother-in-law, or to
Providence, was secretly protecting him.

At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that time
Monsieur Jules (so called to distinguish him from an elder brother, whom
he had set up as a notary in Paris) possessed an income from invested
property of two hundred thousand francs. There was not in all Paris
another instance of the domestic happiness enjoyed by this couple.
For five years their exceptional love had been troubled by only one
event,--a calumny for which Monsieur Jules exacted vengeance. One of his
former comrades attributed to Madame Jules the fortune of her husband,
explaining that it came from a high protection dearly paid for. The man
who uttered the calumny was killed in the duel that followed it.

The profound passion of this couple, which survived marriage, obtained
a great success in society, though some women were annoyed by it. The
charming household was respected; everybody feted it. Monsieur and
Madame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothing more
delightful to see than happy people; but they never stayed long at any
festivity. They slipped away early, as impatient to regain their nest
as wandering pigeons. This nest was a large and beautiful mansion in the
rue de Menars, where a true feeling for art tempered the luxury which
the financial world continues, traditionally, to display. Here the happy
pair received their society magnificently, although the obligations of
social life suited them but little.

Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowing
that, sooner or later, a family has need of it; but he and his wife felt
themselves, in its midst, like green-house plants in a tempest. With a
delicacy that was very natural, Jules had concealed from his wife the
calumny and the death of the calumniator. Madame Jules, herself, was
inclined, through her sensitive and artistic nature, to desire luxury.
In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, some imprudent women
whispered to each other that Madame Jules must sometimes be pressed for
money. They often found her more elegantly dressed in her own home than
when she went into society. She loved to adorn herself to please her
husband, wishing to show him that to her he was more than any social
life. A true love, a pure love, above all, a happy love! Jules, always a
lover, and more in love as time went by, was happy in all things beside
his wife, even in her caprices; in fact, he would have been uneasy if
she had none, thinking it a symptom of some illness.

Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running against
this passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery.
Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he was
not ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and of
military manners and customs. And yet his face wore constantly, even
though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that
air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which belongs,
though for other reasons, to _blases_ men,--men dissatisfied with hollow
lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in
these days, a social position. The enterprise of winning the heart of
a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a love rashly conceived
for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had sufficient reason to be
grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity of her power; the height of her
elevation protects her. But a pious _bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or
an oyster, in its rough wrappings.

At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress,
who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame
Jules was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in
existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss
is human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked
alternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were the
reflections he made! He recomposed the “Night Thoughts” of Young in a
second. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light was
pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker’s ball,--one of those
insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold endeavored
to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg Saint-Germain
met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the
Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The conspirators were now
dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of
the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron de Nucingen were gay with that
peculiar animation that the world of Paris, apparently joyous at any
rate, gives to its fetes. There, men of talent communicate their wit to
fools, and fools communicate that air of enjoyment that characterizes
them. By means of this exchange all is liveliness. But a ball in Paris
always resembles fireworks to a certain extent; wit, coquetry, and
pleasure sparkle and go out like rockets. The next day all present have
forgotten their wit, their coquetry, their pleasure.

“Ah!” thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, “women are what the vidame
says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are less irreproachable
actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet Madame Jules went to
the rue Soly!”

The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his
heart.

“Madame, do you ever dance?” he said to her.

“This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter,”
 she answered, smiling.

“But perhaps you have never answered it.”

“That is true.”

“I knew very well that you were false, like other women.”

Madame Jules continued to smile.

“Listen, monsieur,” she said; “if I told you the real reason, you would
think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain from telling
things that the world would laugh at.”

“All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am no
doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do
you think me capable of jesting on noble things?”

“Yes,” she said, “you, like all the rest, laugh at our purest
sentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have the
right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I say so,--I
am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that I dance only
with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart.”

“Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but your
husband?”

“Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have never
felt the touch of another man.”

“Has your physician never felt your pulse?”

“Now you are laughing at me.”

“No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a man
hear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you--in short, you permit our
eyes to admire you--”

“Ah!” she said, interrupting him, “that is one of my griefs. Yes, I wish
it were possible for a married woman to live secluded with her husband,
as a mistress lives with her lover, for then--”

“Then why were you, two hours ago, on foot, disguised, in the rue Soly?”

“The rue Soly, where is that?”

And her pure voice gave no sign of any emotion; no feature of her face
quivered; she did not blush; she remained calm.

“What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house in the rue
des Vieux-Augustins at the corner of the rue Soly? You did not have
a hackney-coach waiting near by? You did not return in it to the
flower-shop in the rue Richelieu, where you bought the feathers that are
now in your hair?”

“I did not leave my house this evening.”

As she uttered that lie she was smiling and imperturbable; she played
with her fan; but if any one had passed a hand down her back they would,
perhaps, have found it moist. At that instant Auguste remembered the
instructions of the vidame.

“Then it was some one who strangely resembled you,” he said, with a
credulous air.

“Monsieur,” she replied, “if you are capable of following a woman and
detecting her secrets, you will allow me to say that it is a wrong, a
very wrong thing, and I do you the honor to say that I disbelieve you.”

The baron turned away, placed himself before the fireplace and seemed
thoughtful. He bent his head; but his eyes were covertly fixed on Madame
Jules, who, not remembering the reflections in the mirror, cast two or
three glances at him that were full of terror. Presently she made a sign
to her husband and rising took his arm to walk about the salon. As she
passed before Monsieur de Maulincour, who at that moment was speaking
to a friend, he said in a loud voice, as if in reply to a remark:
“That woman will certainly not sleep quietly this night.” Madame
Jules stopped, gave him an imposing look which expressed contempt,
and continued her way, unaware that another look, if surprised by her
husband, might endanger not only her happiness but the lives of two men.
Auguste, frantic with anger, which he tried to smother in the depths of
his soul, presently left the house, swearing to penetrate to the heart
of the mystery. Before leaving, he sought Madame Jules, to look at her
again; but she had disappeared.

What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like all
who have not known love in the wide extent which they give to it. He
adored Madame Jules under a new aspect; he loved her now with the fury
of jealousy and the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to her husband,
the woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up to the
joys of successful love, and his imagination opened to him a career
of pleasures. Yes, he had lost the angel, but he had found the most
delightful of demons. He went to bed, building castles in the air,
excusing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he did not
believe. He resolved to devote himself wholly, from that day forth, to
a search for the causes, motives, and keynote of this mystery. It was a
tale to read, or better still, a drama to be played, in which he had a
part.




CHAPTER II. FERRAGUS

A fine thing is the task of a spy, when performed for one’s own benefit
and in the interests of a passion. Is it not giving ourselves the
pleasure of a thief and a rascal while continuing honest men? But there
is another side to it; we must resign ourselves to boil with anger, to
roar with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to be numbed, and
roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faith of a mere
indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise
to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idiotically before
inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over old apple-women and
their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guard beneath a window,
make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it is a chase, a hunt; a
hunt in Paris, a hunt with all its chances, minus dogs and guns and
the tally-ho! Nothing compares with it but the life of gamblers. But
it needs a heart big with love and vengeance to ambush itself in Paris,
like a tiger waiting to spring upon its prey, and to enjoy the chances
and contingencies of Paris, by adding one special interest to the many
that abound there. But for this we need a many-sided soul--for must we
not live in a thousand passions, a thousand sentiments?

Auguste de Maulincour flung himself into this ardent existence
passionately, for he felt all its pleasures and all its misery. He went
disguised about Paris, watching at the corners of the rue Pagevin and
the rue des Vieux-Augustins. He hurried like a hunter from the rue de
Menars to the rue Soly, and back from the rue Soly to the rue de Menars,
without obtaining either the vengeance or the knowledge which would
punish or reward such cares, such efforts, such wiles. But he had not
yet reached that impatience which wrings our very entrails and makes us
sweat; he roamed in hope, believing that Madame Jules would only refrain
for a few days from revisiting the place where she knew she had been
detected. He devoted the first days therefore, to a careful study of
the secrets of the street. A novice at such work, he dared not question
either the porter or the shoemaker of the house to which Madame Jules
had gone; but he managed to obtain a post of observation in a house
directly opposite to the mysterious apartment. He studied the ground,
trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of prudence, impatience,
love, and secrecy.

Early in the month of March, while busy with plans by which he expected
to strike a decisive blow, he left his post about four in the afternoon,
after one of those patient watches from which he had learned nothing.
He was on his way to his own house whither a matter relating to
his military service called him, when he was overtaken in the rue
Coquilliere by one of those heavy showers which instantly flood the
gutters, while each drop of rain rings loudly in the puddles of the
roadway. A pedestrian under these circumstances is forced to stop short
and take refuge in a shop or cafe if he is rich enough to pay for
the forced hospitality, or, if in poorer circumstances, under a
_porte-cochere_, that haven of paupers or shabbily dressed persons. Why
have none of our painters ever attempted to reproduce the physiognomies
of a swarm of Parisians, grouped, under stress of weather, in the damp
_porte-cochere_ of a building? First, there’s the musing philosophical
pedestrian, who observes with interest all he sees,--whether it be the
stripes made by the rain on the gray background of the atmosphere (a
species of chasing not unlike the capricious threads of spun glass), or
the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous
dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes,
sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and
studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter’s broom which
pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there’s the talkative
refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on
his broom like a grenadier on his musket; or the pauper wayfarer, curled
against the wall indifferent to the condition of his rags, long used,
alas, to contact with the streets; or the learned pedestrian who
studies, spells, and reads the posters on the walls without finishing
them; or the smiling pedestrian who makes fun of others to whom some
street fatality has happened, who laughs at the muddy women, and makes
grimaces at those of either sex who are looking from the windows; and
the silent being who gazes from floor to floor; and the working-man,
armed with a satchel or a paper bundle, who is estimating the rain as a
profit or loss; and the good-natured fugitive, who arrives like a shot
exclaiming, “Ah! what weather, messieurs, what weather!” and bows
to every one; and, finally, the true _bourgeois_ of Paris, with his
unfailing umbrella, an expert in showers, who foresaw this particular
one, but would come out in spite of his wife; this one takes a seat in
the porter’s chair. According to individual character, each member of
this fortuitous society contemplates the skies, and departs, skipping
to avoid the mud,--because he is in a hurry, or because he sees other
citizens walking along in spite of wind and slush, or because, the
archway being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed’s edge, as the
proverb says, is better than the sheets. Each one has his motive. No one
is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he sets forth,
makes sure of a scrap of blue sky through the rifting clouds.

Monsieur de Maulincour took refuge, as we have said, with a whole family
of fugitives, under the porch of an old house, the court-yard of
which looked like the flue of a chimney. The sides of its plastered,
nitrified, and mouldy walls were so covered with pipes and conduits from
all the many floors of its four elevations, that it might have been
said to resemble at that moment the _cascatelles_ of Saint-Cloud. Water
flowed everywhere; it boiled, it leaped, it murmured; it was black,
white, blue, and green; it shrieked, it bubbled under the broom of the
portress, a toothless old woman used to storms, who seemed to bless them
as she swept into the street a mass of scraps an intelligent inventory
of which would have revealed the lives and habits of every dweller
in the house,--bits of printed cottons, tea-leaves, artificial
flower-petals faded and worthless, vegetable parings, papers, scraps of
metal. At every sweep of her broom the old woman bared the soul of the
gutter, that black fissure on which a porter’s mind is ever bent. The
poor lover examined this scene, like a thousand others which our heaving
Paris presents daily; but he examined it mechanically, as a man absorbed
in thought, when, happening to look up, he found himself all but nose to
nose with a man who had just entered the gateway.

In appearance this man was a beggar, but not the Parisian beggar,--that
creation without a name in human language; no, this man formed another
type, while presenting on the outside all the ideas suggested by
the word “beggar.” He was not marked by those original Parisian
characteristics which strike us so forcibly in the paupers whom Charlet
was fond of representing, with his rare luck in observation,--coarse
faces reeking of mud, hoarse voices, reddened and bulbous noses, mouths
devoid of teeth but menacing; humble yet terrible beings, in whom a
profound intelligence shining in their eyes seems like a contradiction.
Some of these bold vagabonds have blotched, cracked, veiny skins; their
foreheads are covered with wrinkles, their hair scanty and dirty, like
a wig thrown on a dust-heap. All are gay in their degradation, and
degraded in their joys; all are marked with the stamp of debauchery,
casting their silence as a reproach; their very attitude revealing
fearful thoughts. Placed between crime and beggary they have no
compunctions, and circle prudently around the scaffold without mounting
it, innocent in the midst of crime, and vicious in their innocence. They
often cause a laugh, but they always cause reflection. One represents
to you civilization stunted, repressed; he comprehends everything, the
honor of the galleys, patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime,
or the fine astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a
perfect mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and
work, but they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes
no inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls,
and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of Paris;
a people eminently good and eminently evil--like all the masses who
suffer--accustomed to endure unspeakable woes, and whom a fatal power
holds ever down to the level of the mire. They all have a dream, a hope,
a happiness,--cards, lottery, or wine.

There was nothing of all this in the personage who now leaned carelessly
against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, like some fantastic
idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas the front of which is
turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whose leaden visage expressed
some deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of those
who looked at him by the scowling look and the sarcastic attitude which
announced an intention of treating every man as an equal. His face was
of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague
resemblance to a block of granite. A few gray locks on either side
of his head fell straight to the collar of his greasy coat, which was
buttoned to the chin. He resembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote;
he was, apparently, scoffing but melancholy, full of disdain and
philosophy, but half-crazy. He seemed to have no shirt. His beard was
long. A rusty black cravat, much worn and ragged, exposed a protuberant
neck deeply furrowed, with veins as thick as cords. A large brown circle
like a bruise was strongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at
least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were
trodden down at the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers,
mended in various places, were covered with a species of fluff which
made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes
exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the “poor
smell” which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies,
and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which
no words can give the least idea, or whether some other reason affected
them, those in the vicinity of this man immediately moved away and
left him alone. He cast upon them and also upon the officer a calm,
expressionless look, the celebrated look of Monsieur de Talleyrand,
a dull, wan glance, without warmth, a species of impenetrable veil,
beneath which a strong soul hides profound emotions and close estimation
of men and things and events. Not a fold of his face quivered. His mouth
and forehead were impassible; but his eyes moved and lowered themselves
with a noble, almost tragic slowness. There was, in fact, a whole drama
in the motion of those withered eyelids.

The aspect of this stoical figure gave rise in Monsieur de Maulincour
to one of those vagabond reveries which begin with a common question and
end by comprising a world of thought. The storm was past. Monsieur de
Maulincour presently saw no more of the man than the tail of his coat
as it brushed the gate-post, but as he turned to leave his own place
he noticed at his feet a letter which must have fallen from the unknown
beggar when he took, as the baron had seen him take, a handkerchief from
his pocket. The young man picked it up, and read, involuntarily, the
address: “To Monsieur Ferragusse, Rue des Grands-Augustains, corner of
rue Soly.”

The letter bore no postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur de
Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are few
passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. The baron
had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall. He
determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to enter
the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not doubting that
he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faint gleams of daylight,
made him fancy relations between this man and Madame Jules. A jealous
lover supposes everything; and it is by supposing everything and
selecting the most probable of their conjectures that judges, spies,
lovers, and observers get at the truth they are looking for.

“Is the letter for him? Is it from Madame Jules?”

His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him;
but when he read the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it
is, textually, in all the simplicity of its artless phrases and its
miserable orthography,--a letter to which it would be impossible to add
anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letter itself.
But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the original
there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of
exclamation,--a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes
and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great
disasters of all the passions:--


  Henry,--Among the manny sacrifisis I imposed upon myself for your
  sake was that of not giving you anny news of me; but an
  iresistible voise now compells me to let you know the wrong you
  have done me. I know beforehand that your soul hardened in vise
  will not pitty me. Your heart is deaf to feeling. Is it deaf to
  the cries of nature? But what matter? I must tell you to what a
  dredful point you are gilty, and the horror of the position to
  which you have brought me. Henry, you knew what I sufered from my
  first wrong-doing, and yet you plunged me into the same misery,
  and then abbandoned me to my dispair and sufering. Yes, I will say
  it, the belif I had that you loved me and esteemed me gave me
  corage to bare my fate. But now, what have I left? Have you not
  made me loose all that was dear to me, all that held me to life;
  parents, frends, onor, reputation,--all, I have sacrifised all to
  you, and nothing is left me but shame, oprobrum, and--I say this
  without blushing--poverty. Nothing was wanting to my misfortunes
  but the sertainty of your contempt and hatred; and now I have them
  I find the corage that my project requires. My decision is made;
  the onor of my famly commands it. I must put an end to my
  suferins. Make no remarks upon my conduct, Henry; it is orful, I
  know, but my condition obliges me. Without help, without suport,
  without one frend to comfort me, can I live? No. Fate has desided
  for me. So in two days, Henry, two days, Ida will have seased to
  be worthy of your regard. Oh, Henry! oh, my frend! for I can never
  change to you, promise me to forgive me for what I am going to do.
  Do not forget that you have driven me to it; it is your work, and
  you must judge it. May heven not punish you for all your crimes. I
  ask your pardon on my knees, for I feel nothing is wanting to my
  misery but the sorow of knowing you unhappy. In spite of the
  poverty I am in I shall refuse all help from you. If you had loved
  me I would have taken all from your friendship; but a benfit given
  by pitty _my soul refussis_. I would be baser to take it than he
  who offered it. I have one favor to ask of you. I don’t know how
  long I must stay at Madame Meynardie’s; be genrous enough not to
  come there. Your last two vissits did me a harm I cannot get ofer.
  I cannot enter into particlers about that conduct of yours. You
  hate me,--you said so; that word is writen on my heart, and
  freeses it with fear. Alas! it is now, when I need all my corage,
  all my strength, that my faculties abandon me. Henry, my frend,
  before I put a barrier forever between us, give me a last pruf of
  your esteem. Write me, answer me, say you respect me still, though
  you have seased to love me. My eyes are worthy still to look into
  yours, but I do not ask an interfew; I fear my weakness and my
  love. But for pitty’s sake write me a line at once; it will give
  me the corage I need to meet my trubbles. Farewell, orther of all
  my woes, but the only frend my heart has chosen and will never
  forget.

Ida.


This life of a young girl, with its love betrayed, its fatal joys, its
pangs, its miseries, and its horrible resignation, summed up in a few
words, this humble poem, essentially Parisian, written on dirty paper,
influenced for a passing moment Monsieur de Maulincour. He asked himself
whether this Ida might not be some poor relation of Madame Jules, and
that strange rendezvous, which he had witnessed by chance, the mere
necessity of a charitable effort. But could that old pauper have seduced
this Ida? There was something impossible in the very idea. Wandering in
this labyrinth of reflections, which crossed, recrossed, and obliterated
one another, the baron reached the rue Pagevin, and saw a hackney-coach
standing at the end of the rue des Vieux-Augustins where it enters the
rue Montmartre. All waiting hackney-coaches now had an interest for him.

“Can she be there?” he thought to himself, and his heart beat fast with
a hot and feverish throbbing.

He pushed the little door with the bell, but he lowered his head as he
did so, obeying a sense of shame, for a voice said to him secretly:--

“Why are you putting your foot into this mystery?”

He went up a few steps, and found himself face to face with the old
portress.

“Monsieur Ferragus?” he said.

“Don’t know him.”

“Doesn’t Monsieur Ferragus live here?”

“Haven’t such a name in the house.”

“But, my good woman--”

“I’m not your good woman, monsieur, I’m the portress.”

“But, madame,” persisted the baron, “I have a letter for Monsieur
Ferragus.”

“Ah! if monsieur has a letter,” she said, changing her tone, “that’s
another matter. Will you let me see it--that letter?”

Auguste showed the folded letter. The old woman shook her head with a
doubtful air, hesitated, seemed to wish to leave the lodge and inform
the mysterious Ferragus of his unexpected visitor, but finally said:--

“Very good; go up, monsieur. I suppose you know the way?”

Without replying to this remark, which he thought might be a trap, the
young officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the door
of the second floor. His lover’s instinct told him, “She is there.”

The beggar of the porch, Ferragus, the “orther” of Ida’s woes, opened
the door himself. He appeared in a flowered dressing-gown, white flannel
trousers, his feet in embroidered slippers, and his face washed clean of
stains. Madame Jules, whose head projected beyond the casing of the door
in the next room, turned pale and dropped into a chair.

“What is the matter, madame?” cried the officer, springing toward her.

But Ferragus stretched forth an arm and flung the intruder back with so
sharp a thrust that Auguste fancied he had received a blow with an iron
bar full on his chest.

“Back! monsieur,” said the man. “What do you want there? For five or six
days you have been roaming about the neighborhood. Are you a spy?”

“Are you Monsieur Ferragus?” said the baron.

“No, monsieur.”

“Nevertheless,” continued Auguste, “it is to you that I must return this
paper which you dropped in the gateway beneath which we both took refuge
from the rain.”

While speaking and offering the letter to the man, Auguste did not
refrain from casting an eye around the room where Ferragus received him.
It was very well arranged, though simply. A fire burned on the hearth;
and near it was a table with food upon it, which was served more
sumptuously than agreed with the apparent conditions of the man and the
poorness of his lodging. On a sofa in the next room, which he could
see through the doorway, lay a heap of gold, and he heard a sound which
could be no other than that of a woman weeping.

“The paper belongs to me; I am much obliged to you,” said the mysterious
man, turning away as if to make the baron understand that he must go.

Too curious himself to take much note of the deep examination of which
he was himself the object, Auguste did not see the half-magnetic glance
with which this strange being seemed to pierce him; had he encountered
that basilisk eye he might have felt the danger that encompassed him.
Too passionately excited to think of himself, Auguste bowed, went
down the stairs, and returned home, striving to find a meaning in the
connection of these three persons,--Ida, Ferragus, and Madame Jules;
an occupation equivalent to that of trying to arrange the many-cornered
bits of a Chinese puzzle without possessing the key to the game. But
Madame Jules had seen him, Madame Jules went there, Madame Jules had
lied to him. Maulincour determined to go and see her the next day. She
could not refuse his visit, for he was now her accomplice; he was hands
and feet in the mysterious affair, and she knew it. Already he
felt himself a sultan, and thought of demanding from Madame Jules,
imperiously, all her secrets.

In those days Paris was seized with a building-fever. If Paris is
a monster, it is certainly a most mania-ridden monster. It becomes
enamored of a thousand fancies: sometimes it has a mania for building,
like a great seigneur who loves a trowel; soon it abandons the trowel
and becomes all military; it arrays itself from head to foot as a
national guard, and drills and smokes; suddenly, it abandons military
manoeuvres and flings away cigars; it is commercial, care-worn, falls
into bankruptcy, sells its furniture on the place de Chatelet, files its
schedule; but a few days later, lo! it has arranged its affairs and is
giving fetes and dances. One day it eats barley-sugar by the mouthful,
by the handful; yesterday it bought “papier Weymen”; to-day the
monster’s teeth ache, and it applies to its walls an alexipharmatic
to mitigate their dampness; to-morrow it will lay in a provision of
pectoral paste. It has its manias for the month, for the season, for the
year, like its manias of a day.

So, at the moment of which we speak, all the world was building or
pulling down something,--people hardly knew what as yet. There were very
few streets in which high scaffoldings on long poles could not be seen,
fastened from floor to floor with transverse blocks inserted into holes
in the walls on which the planks were laid,--a frail construction,
shaken by the brick-layers, but held together by ropes, white with
plaster, and insecurely protected from the wheels of carriages by the
breastwork of planks which the law requires round all such buildings.
There is something maritime in these masts, and ladders, and cordage,
even in the shouts of the masons. About a dozen yards from the hotel
Maulincour, one of these ephemeral barriers was erected before a house
which was then being built of blocks of free-stone. The day after the
event we have just related, at the moment when the Baron de Maulincour
was passing this scaffolding in his cabriolet on his way to see Madame
Jules, a stone, two feet square, which was being raised to the upper
storey of this building, got loose from the ropes and fell, crushing the
baron’s servant who was behind the cabriolet. A cry of horror shook both
the scaffold and the masons; one of them, apparently unable to keep his
grasp on a pole, was in danger of death, and seemed to have been touched
by the stone as it passed him.

A crowd collected rapidly; the masons came down the ladders swearing
and insisting that Monsieur de Maulincour’s cabriolet had been driven
against the boarding and so had shaken their crane. Two inches more and
the stone would have fallen on the baron’s head. The groom was dead,
the carriage shattered. ‘Twas an event for the whole neighborhood, the
newspapers told of it. Monsieur de Maulincour, certain that he had not
touched the boarding, complained; the case went to court. Inquiry being
made, it was shown that a small boy, armed with a lath, had mounted
guard and called to all foot-passengers to keep away. The affair ended
there. Monsieur de Maulincour obtained no redress. He had lost his
servant, and was confined to his bed for some days, for the back of the
carriage when shattered had bruised him severely, and the nervous shock
of the sudden surprise gave him a fever. He did not, therefore, go to
see Madame Jules.

Ten days after this event, he left the house for the first time, in his
repaired cabriolet, when, as he drove down the rue de Bourgogne and was
close to the sewer opposite to the Chamber of Deputies, the axle-tree
broke in two, and the baron was driving so rapidly that the breakage
would have caused the two wheels to come together with force enough to
break his head, had it not been for the resistance of the leather hood.
Nevertheless, he was badly wounded in the side. For the second time in
ten days he was carried home in a fainting condition to his terrified
grandmother. This second accident gave him a feeling of distrust; he
thought, though vaguely, of Ferragus and Madame Jules. To throw light on
these suspicions he had the broken axle brought to his room and sent
for his carriage-maker. The man examined the axle and the fracture,
and proved two things: First, the axle was not made in his workshop; he
furnished none that did not bear the initials of his name on the iron.
But he could not explain by what means this axle had been substituted
for the other. Secondly, the breakage of the suspicious axle was caused
by a hollow space having been blown in it and a straw very cleverly
inserted.

“Eh! Monsieur le baron, whoever did that was malicious!” he said; “any
one would swear, to look at it, that the axle was sound.”

Monsieur de Maulincour begged the carriage-maker to say nothing of the
affair; but he felt himself warned. These two attempts at murder were
planned with an ability which denoted the enmity of intelligent minds.

“It is war to the death,” he said to himself, as he tossed in his
bed,--“a war of savages, skulking in ambush, of trickery and treachery,
declared in the name of Madame Jules. What sort of man is this to whom
she belongs? What species of power does this Ferragus wield?”

Monsieur de Maulincour, though a soldier and brave man, could not
repress a shudder. In the midst of many thoughts that now assailed him,
there was one against which he felt he had neither defence nor courage:
might not poison be employed ere long by his secret enemies? Under the
influence of fears, which his momentary weakness and fever and low diet
increased, he sent for an old woman long attached to the service of his
grandmother, whose affection for himself was one of those semi-maternal
sentiments which are the sublime of the commonplace. Without confiding
in her wholly, he charged her to buy secretly and daily, in different
localities, the food he needed; telling her to keep it under lock and
key and bring it to him herself, not allowing any one, no matter who, to
approach her while preparing it. He took the most minute precautions to
protect himself against that form of death. He was ill in his bed
and alone, and he had therefore the leisure to think of his own
security,--the one necessity clear-sighted enough to enable human
egotism to forget nothing!

But the unfortunate man had poisoned his own life by this dread, and,
in spite of himself, suspicion dyed all his hours with its gloomy tints.
These two lessons of attempted assassination did teach him, however, the
value of one of the virtues most necessary to a public man; he saw the
wise dissimulation that must be practised in dealing with the great
interests of life. To be silent about our own secret is nothing; but to
be silent from the start, to forget a fact as Ali Pacha did for thirty
years in order to be sure of a vengeance waited for for thirty years,
is a fine study in a land where there are few men who can keep their
own counsel for thirty days. Monsieur de Maulincour literally lived only
through Madame Jules. He was perpetually absorbed in a sober examination
into the means he ought to employ to triumph in this mysterious struggle
with these mysterious persons. His secret passion for that woman grew
by reason of all these obstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in
the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by
her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had made
her his idol.

At last, anxious to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, he thought
he might without danger initiate the vidame into the secrets of his
situation. The old commander loved Auguste as a father loves his wife’s
children; he was shrewd, dexterous, and very diplomatic. He listened to
the baron, shook his head, and they both held counsel. The worthy vidame
did not share his young friend’s confidence when Auguste declared that
in the time in which they now lived, the police and the government were
able to lay bare all mysteries, and that if it were absolutely necessary
to have recourse to those powers, he should find them most powerful
auxiliaries.

The old man replied, gravely: “The police, my dear boy, is the most
incompetent thing on this earth, and government the feeblest in all
matters concerning individuals. Neither the police nor the government
can read hearts. What we might reasonably ask of them is to search
for the causes of an act. But the police and the government are both
eminently unfitted for that; they lack, essentially, the personal
interest which reveals all to him who wants to know all. No human power
can prevent an assassin or a poisoner from reaching the heart of a
prince or the stomach of an honest man. Passions are the best police.”

The vidame strongly advised the baron to go to Italy, and from Italy
to Greece, from Greece to Syria, from Syria to Asia, and not to return
until his secret enemies were convinced of his repentance, and would so
make tacit peace with him. But if he did not take that course, then the
vidame advised him to stay in the house, and even in his own room, where
he would be safe from the attempts of this man Ferragus, and not to
leave it until he could be certain of crushing him.

“We should never touch an enemy until we can be sure of taking his head
off,” he said, gravely.

The old man, however, promised his favorite to employ all the astuteness
with which Heaven had provided him (without compromising any one)
in reconnoitring the enemy’s ground, and laying his plans for future
victory. The Commander had in his service a retired Figaro, the wiliest
monkey that ever walked in human form; in earlier days as clever as a
devil, working his body like a galley-slave, alert as a thief, sly as a
woman, but now fallen into the decadence of genius for want of practice
since the new constitution of Parisian society, which has reformed even
the valets of comedy. This Scapin emeritus was attached to his master
as to a superior being; but the shrewd old vidame added a good round
sum yearly to the wages of his former provost of gallantry,
which strengthened the ties of natural affection by the bonds of
self-interest, and obtained for the old gentleman as much care as the
most loving mistress could bestow on a sick friend. It was this pearl
of the old-fashioned comedy-valets, relic of the last century, auxiliary
incorruptible from lack of passions to satisfy, on whom the old vidame
and Monsieur de Maulincour now relied.

“Monsieur le baron will spoil all,” said the great man in livery, when
called into counsel. “Monsieur should eat, drink, and sleep in peace. I
take the whole matter upon myself.”

Accordingly, eight days after the conference, when Monsieur de
Maulincour, perfectly restored to health, was breakfasting with his
grandmother and the vidame, Justin entered to make his report. As soon
as the dowager had returned to her own apartments he said, with that
mock modesty which men of talent are so apt to affect:--

“Ferragus is not the name of the enemy who is pursuing Monsieur le
baron. This man--this devil, rather--is called Gratien, Henri, Victor,
Jean-Joseph Bourignard. The Sieur Gratien Bourignard is a former
ship-builder, once very rich, and, above all, one of the handsomest
men of his day in Paris,--a Lovelace, capable of seducing Grandison.
My information stops short there. He has been a simple workman; and the
Companions of the Order of the Devorants did, at one time, elect him as
their chief, under the title of Ferragus XXIII. The police ought to know
that, if the police were instituted to know anything. The man has moved
from the rue des Vieux-Augustins, and now roosts rue Joquelet, where
Madame Jules Desmarets goes frequently to see him; sometimes her
husband, on his way to the Bourse, drives her as far as the rue
Vivienne, or she drives her husband to the Bourse. Monsieur le vidame
knows about these things too well to want me to tell him if it is the
husband who takes the wife, or the wife who takes the husband; but
Madame Jules is so pretty, I’d bet on her. All that I have told you is
positive. Bourignard often plays at number 129. Saving your presence,
monsieur, he’s a rogue who loves women, and he has his little ways
like a man of condition. As for the rest, he wins sometimes, disguises
himself like an actor, paints his face to look like anything he chooses,
and lives, I may say, the most original life in the world. I don’t doubt
he has a good many lodgings, for most of the time he manages to evade
what Monsieur le vidame calls ‘parliamentary investigations.’ If
monsieur wishes, he could be disposed of honorably, seeing what his
habits are. It is always easy to get rid of a man who loves women.
However, this capitalist talks about moving again. Have Monsieur le
vidame and Monsieur le baron any other commands to give me?”

“Justin, I am satisfied with you; don’t go any farther in the matter
without my orders, but keep a close watch here, so that Monsieur le
baron may have nothing to fear.”

“My dear boy,” continued the vidame, when they were alone, “go back to
your old life, and forget Madame Jules.”

“No, no,” said Auguste; “I will never yield to Gratien Bourignard. I
will have him bound hand and foot, and Madame Jules also.”

That evening the Baron Auguste de Maulincour, recently promoted to
higher rank in the company of the Body-Guard of the king, went to a
ball given by Madame la Duchesse de Berry at the Elysee-Bourbon. There,
certainly, no danger could lurk for him; and yet, before he left the
palace, he had an affair of honor on his hands,--an affair it was
impossible to settle except by a duel.

His adversary, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, considered that he had
strong reasons to complain of Monsieur de Maulincour, who had given some
ground for it during his former intimacy with Monsieur de Ronquerolles’
sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. That lady, the one who detested German
sentimentality, was all the more exacting in the matter of prudery. By
one of those inexplicable fatalities, Auguste now uttered a harmless
jest which Madame de Serizy took amiss, and her brother resented it. The
discussion took place in the corner of a room, in a low voice. In good
society, adversaries never raise their voices. The next day the faubourg
Saint-Germain and the Chateau talked over the affair. Madame de Serizy
was warmly defended, and all the blame was laid on Maulincour. August
personages interfered. Seconds of the highest distinction were imposed
on Messieurs de Maulincour and de Ronquerolles and every precaution was
taken on the ground that no one should be killed.

When Auguste found himself face to face with his antagonist, a man of
pleasure, to whom no one could possibly deny sentiments of the highest
honor, he felt it was impossible to believe him the instrument of
Ferragus, chief of the Devorants; and yet he was compelled, as it were,
by an inexplicable presentiment, to question the marquis.

“Messieurs,” he said to the seconds, “I certainly do not refuse to
meet the fire of Monsieur de Ronquerolles; but before doing so, I here
declare that I was to blame, and I offer him whatever excuses he may
desire, and publicly if he wishes it; because when the matter concerns a
woman, nothing, I think, can degrade a man of honor. I therefore appeal
to his generosity and good sense; is there not something rather silly in
fighting without a cause?”

Monsieur de Ronquerolles would not allow of this way of ending the
affair, and then the baron, his suspicions revived, walked up to him.

“Well, then! Monsieur le marquis,” he said, “pledge me, in presence of
these gentlemen, your word as a gentleman that you have no other reason
for vengeance than that you have chosen to put forward.”

“Monsieur, that is a question you have no right to ask.”

So saying, Monsieur de Ronquerolles took his place. It was agreed, in
advance, that the adversaries were to be satisfied with one exchange
of shots. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, in spite of the great distance
determined by the seconds, which seemed to make the death of either
party problematical, if not impossible, brought down the baron. The ball
went through the latter’s body just below the heart, but fortunately
without doing vital injury.

“You aimed too well, monsieur,” said the baron, “to be avenging only a
paltry quarrel.”

And he fainted. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who believed him to be a dead
man, smiled sardonically as he heard those words.

After a fortnight, during which time the dowager and the vidame gave
him those cares of old age the secret of which is in the hands of long
experience only, the baron began to return to life. But one morning his
grandmother dealt him a crushing blow, by revealing anxieties to which,
in her last days, she was now subjected. She showed him a letter signed
F, in which the history of her grandson’s secret espionage was recounted
step by step. The letter accused Monsieur de Maulincour of actions that
were unworthy of a man of honor. He had, it said, placed an old woman
at the stand of hackney-coaches in the rue de Menars; an old spy, who
pretended to sell water from her cask to the coachmen, but who was
really there to watch the actions of Madame Jules Desmarets. He had
spied upon the daily life of a most inoffensive man, in order to detect
his secrets,--secrets on which depended the lives of three persons. He
had brought upon himself a relentless struggle, in which, although he
had escaped with life three times, he must inevitably succumb, because
his death had been sworn and would be compassed if all human means were
employed upon it. Monsieur de Maulincour could no longer escape his fate
by even promising to respect the mysterious life of these three persons,
because it was impossible to believe the word of a gentleman who had
fallen to the level of a police-spy; and for what reason? Merely to
trouble the respectable life of an innocent woman and a harmless old
man.

The letter itself was nothing to Auguste in comparison to the tender
reproaches of his grandmother. To lack respect to a woman! to spy upon
her actions without a right to do so! Ought a man ever to spy upon
a woman whom he loved?--in short, she poured out a torrent of those
excellent reasons which prove nothing; and they put the young baron,
for the first time in his life, into one of those great human furies in
which are born, and from which issue the most vital actions of a man’s
life.

“Since it is war to the knife,” he said in conclusion, “I shall kill my
enemy by any means that I can lay hold of.”

The vidame went immediately, at Auguste’s request, to the chief of the
private police of Paris, and without bringing Madame Jules’ name or
person into the narrative, although they were really the gist of it, he
made the official aware of the fears of the family of Maulincour about
this mysterious person who was bold enough to swear the death of an
officer of the Guards, in defiance of the law and the police. The chief
pushed up his green spectacles in amazement, blew his nose several
times, and offered snuff to the vidame, who, to save his dignity,
pretended not to use tobacco, although his own nose was discolored with
it. Then the chief took notes and promised, Vidocq and his spies aiding,
to send in a report within a few days to the Maulincour family, assuring
them meantime that there were no secrets for the police of Paris.

A few days after this the police official called to see the vidame at
the Hotel de Maulincour, where he found the young baron quite recovered
from his last wound. He gave them in bureaucratic style his thanks for
the indications they had afforded him, and told them that Bourignard was
a convict, condemned to twenty years’ hard labor, who had miraculously
escaped from a gang which was being transported from Bicetre to Toulon.
For thirteen years the police had been endeavoring to recapture him,
knowing that he had boldly returned to Paris; but so far this convict
had escaped the most active search, although he was known to be mixed up
in many nefarious deeds. However, the man, whose life was full of very
curious incidents, would certainly be captured now in one or other of
his several domiciles and delivered up to justice. The bureaucrat ended
his report by saying to Monsieur de Maulincour that if he attached
enough importance to the matter to wish to witness the capture of
Bourignard, he might come the next day at eight in the morning to a
house in the rue Sainte-Foi, of which he gave him the number. Monsieur
de Maulincour excused himself from going personally in search of
certainty,--trusting, with the sacred respect inspired by the police of
Paris, in the capability of the authorities.

Three days later, hearing nothing, and seeing nothing in the newspapers
about the projected arrest, which was certainly of enough importance to
have furnished an article, Monsieur de Maulincour was beginning to feel
anxieties which were presently allayed by the following letter:--


  Monsieur le Baron,--I have the honor to announce to you that you
  need have no further uneasiness touching the affair in question.
  The man named Gratien Bourignard, otherwise called Ferragus, died
  yesterday, at his lodgings, rue Joquelet No. 7. The suspicions we
  naturally conceived as to the identity of the dead body have been
  completely set at rest by the facts. The physician of the
  Prefecture of police was despatched by us to assist the physician
  of the arrondissement, and the chief of the detective police made
  all the necessary verifications to obtain absolute certainty.
  Moreover, the character of the persons who signed the certificate
  of death, and the affidavits of those who took care of the said
  Bourignard in his last illness, among others that of the worthy
  vicar of the church of the Bonne-Nouvelle (to whom he made his
  last confession, for he died a Christian), do not permit us to
  entertain any sort of doubt.

  Accept, Monsieur le baron, etc., etc.


Monsieur de Maulincour, the dowager, and the vidame breathed again with
joy unspeakable. The good old woman kissed her grandson leaving a tear
upon his cheek, and went away to thank God in prayer. The dear soul,
who was making a novena for Auguste’s safety, believed her prayers were
answered.

“Well,” said the vidame, “now you had better show yourself at the ball
you were speaking of. I oppose no further objections.”




CHAPTER III. THE WIFE ACCUSED

Monsieur de Maulincour was all the more anxious to go to this ball
because he knew that Madame Jules would be present. The fete was given
by the Prefect of the Seine, in whose salons the two social worlds of
Paris met as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the rooms without
finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate.
He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting
players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most
contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer
by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper
of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly,
the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the police, and the dead man of
the day before.

“Monsieur, not a sound, not a word,” said Bourignard, whose voice he
recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the
Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. “Monsieur,” he continued, and
his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, “you increase my efforts
against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur;
it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved
by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful life, and blacken her
virtue?”

Some one entered the card-room. Ferragus rose to go.

“Do you know this man?” asked Monsieur de Maulincour of the new-comer,
seizing Ferragus by the collar. But Ferragus quickly disengaged himself,
took Monsieur de Maulincour by the hair, and shook his head rapidly.

“Must you have lead in it to make it steady?” he said.

“I do not know him personally,” replied Henri de Marsay, the spectator
of this scene, “but I know that he is Monsieur de Funcal, a rich
Portuguese.”

Monsieur de Funcal had disappeared. The baron followed but without
being able to overtake him until he reached the peristyle, where he
saw Ferragus, who looked at him with a jeering laugh from a brilliant
equipage which was driven away at high speed.

“Monsieur,” said Auguste, re-entering the salon and addressing de
Marsay, whom he knew, “I entreat you to tell me where Monsieur de Funcal
lives.”

“I do not know; but some one here can no doubt tell you.”

The baron, having questioned the prefect, ascertained that the Comte de
Funcal lived at the Portuguese embassy. At this moment, while he still
felt the icy fingers of that strange man in his hair, he saw Madame
Jules in all her dazzling beauty, fresh, gracious, artless, resplendent
with the sanctity of womanhood which had won his love. This creature,
now infernal to him, excited no emotion in his soul but that of hatred;
and this hatred shone in a savage, terrible look from his eyes. He
watched for a moment when he could speak to her unheard, and then he
said:--

“Madame, your _bravi_ have missed me three times.”

“What do you mean, monsieur?” she said, flushing. “I know that you
have had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatly
regretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?”

“You knew that _bravi_ were employed against me by that man of the rue
Soly?”

“Monsieur!”

“Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but for
my blood--”

At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them.

“What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?”

“Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious,” said
Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almost fainting
condition.

There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least in
their lives, _a propos_ of some undeniable fact, confronted with
a direct, sharp, uncompromising question,--one of those questions
pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives
a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a
dagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, “All women
lie.” Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood,
horrible falsehood,--but always the necessity to lie. This necessity
admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it
admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception! Besides,
women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true
in lying,--they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order
to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not
resist,--that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as the
cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomes to
them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if
they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to individual
character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep; others are
grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning indifference
to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end by lying to
themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority to everything
at the very moment when they are trembling for the secret treasures of
their love? Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their
freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments of life? In them, nothing
is put on. Deception comes as the snow from heaven. And then, with what
art they discover the truth in others! With what shrewdness they employ
a direct logic in answer to some passionate question which has revealed
to them the secret of the heart of a man who was guileless enough to
proceed by questioning! To question a woman! why, that is delivering
one’s self up to her; does she not learn in that way all that we seek to
hide from her? Does she not know also how to be dumb, through speaking?
What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman?--a woman
who knows how to hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: “You are
very inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you
are jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?”--in short, a
woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying _No_,
and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not a treatise on
the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic,
and moral work, still waiting to be written? But to accomplish this
work, which we may also call diabolic, isn’t an androgynous genius
necessary? For that reason, probably, it will never be attempted. And
besides, of all unpublished works isn’t it the best known and the best
practised among women? Have you studied the behavior, the pose, the
_disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it.

Madame Desmarets was seated in the right-hand corner of her carriage,
her husband in the left. Having forced herself to recover from her
emotion in the ballroom, she now affected a calm demeanor. Her husband
had then said nothing to her, and he still said nothing. Jules looked
out of the carriage window at the black walls of the silent houses
before which they passed; but suddenly, as if driven by a determining
thought, when turning the corner of a street he examined his wife, who
appeared to be cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was
wrapped. He thought she seemed pensive, and perhaps she really was
so. Of all communicable things, reflection and gravity are the most
contagious.

“What could Monsieur de Maulincour have said to affect you so keenly?”
 said Jules; “and why does he wish me to go to his house and find out?”

“He can tell you nothing in his house that I cannot tell you here,” she
replied.

Then, with that feminine craft which always slightly degrades virtue,
Madame Jules waited for another question. Her husband turned his face
back to the houses, and continued his study of their walls. Another
question would imply suspicion, distrust. To suspect a woman is a crime
in love. Jules had already killed a man for doubting his wife. Clemence
did not know all there was of true passion, of loyal reflection, in her
husband’s silence; just as Jules was ignorant of the generous drama that
was wringing the heart of his Clemence.

The carriage rolled on through a silent Paris, bearing the couple,--two
lovers who adored each other, and who, gently leaning on the same
silken cushion, were being parted by an abyss. In these elegant coupes
returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how
many curious and singular scenes must pass,--meaning those coupes with
lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, those with their
windows unshaded; in short, legitimate coupes, in which couples can
quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil
code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage
or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How many secrets must be revealed in
this way to nocturnal pedestrians,--to those young fellows who have gone
to a ball in a carriage, but are obliged, for whatever cause it may be,
to return on foot. It was the first time that Jules and Clemence had
been together thus,--each in a corner; usually the husband pressed close
to his wife.

“It is very cold,” remarked Madame Jules.

But her husband did not hear her; he was studying the signs above the
shop windows.

“Clemence,” he said at last, “forgive me the question I am about to ask
you.”

He came closer, took her by the waist, and drew her to him.

“My God, it is coming!” thought the poor woman. “Well,” she said aloud,
anticipating the question, “you want to know what Monsieur de Maulincour
said to me. I will tell you, Jules; but not without fear. Good God! how
is it possible that you and I should have secrets from one another? For
the last few moments I have seen you struggling between a conviction of
our love and vague fears. But that conviction is clear within us, is
it not? And these doubts and fears, do they not seem to you dark and
unnatural? Why not stay in that clear light of love you cannot doubt?
When I have told you all, you will still desire to know more; and yet I
myself do not know what the extraordinary words of that man meant. What
I fear is that this may lead to some fatal affair between you. I would
rather that we both forget this unpleasant moment. But, in any case,
swear to me that you will let this singular adventure explain itself
naturally. Here are the facts. Monsieur de Maulincour declared to me
that the three accidents you have heard mentioned--the falling of a
stone on his servant, the breaking down of his cabriolet, and his duel
about Madame de Serizy--were the result of some plot I had laid against
him. He also threatened to reveal to you the cause of my desire to
destroy him. Can you imagine what all this means? My emotion came from
the sight of his face convulsed with madness, his haggard eyes, and also
his words, broken by some violent inward emotion. I thought him mad.
That is all that took place. Now, I should be less than a woman if I had
not perceived that for over a year I have become, as they call it, the
passion of Monsieur de Maulincour. He has never seen me except at a
ball; and our intercourse has been most insignificant,--merely that
which every one shares at a ball. Perhaps he wants to disunite us, so
that he may find me at some future time alone and unprotected. There,
see! already you are frowning! Oh, how cordially I hate society! We were
so happy without him; why take any notice of him? Jules, I entreat you,
forget all this! To-morrow we shall, no doubt, hear that Monsieur de
Maulincour has gone mad.”

“What a singular affair!” thought Jules, as the carriage stopped under
the peristyle of their house. He gave his arm to his wife and together
they went up to their apartments.

To develop this history in all its truth of detail, and to follow its
course through many windings, it is necessary here to divulge some of
love’s secrets, to glide beneath the ceilings of a marriage chamber, not
shamelessly, but like Trilby, frightening neither Dougal nor Jeannie,
alarming no one,--being as chaste as our noble French language requires,
and as bold as the pencil of Gerard in his picture of Daphnis and Chloe.

The bedroom of Madame Jules was a sacred plot. Herself, her husband,
and her maid alone entered it. Opulence has glorious privileges, and the
most enviable are those which enable the development of sentiments to
their fullest extent,--fertilizing them by the accomplishment of even
their caprices, and surrounding them with a brilliancy that enlarges
them, with refinements that purify them, with a thousand delicacies that
make them still more alluring. If you hate dinners on the grass, and
meals ill-served, if you feel a pleasure in seeing a damask cloth that
is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service, and porcelain of
exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles, where miracles of
cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats of arms, you must,
to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of the houses, and the
grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and
overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets; and you must
also comprehend Love to be a principle which develops in all its grace
only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath the opal gleams of an alabaster
lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers
deadened to all outward sounds by shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors
must be there to show the play of form and repeat the woman we would
multiply as love itself multiplies and magnifies her; next low
divans, and a bed which, like a secret, is divined, not shown. In this
coquettish chamber are fur-lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles
under glass with muslin draperies, by which to read at all hours of the
night, and flowers, not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the
fineness of which might have satisfied Anne of Austria.

Madame Jules had realized this charming programme, but that was nothing.
All women of taste can do as much, though there is always in the
arrangement of these details a stamp of personality which gives to this
decoration or that detail a character that cannot be imitated. To-day,
more than ever, reigns the fanaticism of individuality. The more our
laws tend to an impossible equality, the more we shall get away from it
in our manners and customs. Thus, rich people are beginning, in France,
to become more exclusive in their tastes and their belongings, than they
have been for the last thirty years. Madame Jules knew very well how
to carry out this programme; and everything about her was arranged in
harmony with a luxury that suits so well with love. Love in a cottage,
or “Fifteen hundred francs and my Sophy,” is the dream of starvelings to
whom black bread suffices in their present state; but when love
really comes, they grow fastidious and end by craving the luxuries of
gastronomy. Love holds toil and poverty in horror. It would rather die
than merely live on from hand to mouth.

Many women, returning from a ball, impatient for their beds, throw off
their gowns, their faded flowers, their bouquets, the fragrance of which
has now departed. They leave their little shoes beneath a chair, the
white strings trailing; they take out their combs and let their hair
roll down as it will. Little they care if their husbands see the puffs,
the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices
of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more
mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration
for him. The corset--half the time it is a corset of a reparative
kind--lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away
with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the
sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false woman
is there, scattered about in open sight. _Disjecta membra poetae_, the
artificial poesy, so much admired by those for whom it is conceived and
elaborated, the fragments of a pretty woman, litter every corner of the
room. To the love of a yawning husband, the actual presents herself,
also yawning, in a dishabille without elegance, and a tumbled night-cap,
that of last night and that of to-morrow night also,--“For really,
monsieur, if you want a pretty cap to rumple every night, increase my
pin-money.”

There’s life as it is! A woman makes herself old and unpleasing to her
husband; but dainty and elegant and adorned for others, for the rival of
all husbands,--for that world which calumniates and tears to shreds her
sex.

Inspired by true love, for Love has, like other creations, its instinct
of preservation, Madame Jules did very differently; she found in the
constant blessing of her love the necessary impulse to fulfil all those
minute personal cares which ought never to be relaxed, because they
perpetuate love. Besides, such personal cares and duties proceed from a
personal dignity which becomes all women, and are among the sweetest of
flatteries, for is it not respecting in themselves the man they love?

So Madame Jules denied to her husband all access to her dressing-room,
where she left the accessories of her toilet, and whence she issued
mysteriously adorned for the mysterious fetes of her heart. Entering
their chamber, which was always graceful and elegant, Jules found a
woman coquettishly wrapped in a charming _peignoir_, her hair simply
wound in heavy coils around her head; a woman always more simple, more
beautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshed in
water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than her muslins,
sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving
and therefore always loved. This admirable understanding of a wife’s
business was the secret of Josephine’s charm for Napoleon, as in former
times it was that of Caesonia for Caius Caligula, of Diane de Poitiers
for Henri II. If it was largely productive to women of seven or eight
lustres what a weapon is it in the hands of young women! A husband
gathers with delight the rewards of his fidelity.

Returning home after the conversation which had chilled her with fear,
and still gave her the keenest anxiety, Madame Jules took particular
pains with her toilet for the night. She wanted to make herself, and she
did make herself enchanting. She belted the cambric of her dressing-gown
round her waist, defining the lines of her bust; she allowed her hair to
fall upon her beautifully modelled shoulders. A perfumed bath had given
her a delightful fragrance, and her little bare feet were in velvet
slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantages she came in stepping
softly, and put her hands over her husband’s eyes. She thought him
pensive; he was standing in his dressing-gown before the fire, his elbow
on the mantel and one foot on the fender. She said in his ear, warming
it with her breath, and nibbling the tip of it with her teeth:--

“What are you thinking about, monsieur?”

Then she pressed him in her arms as if to tear him away from all evil
thoughts. The woman who loves has a full knowledge of her power; the
more virtuous she is, the more effectual her coquetry.

“About you,” he answered.

“Only about me?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! that’s a very doubtful ‘yes.’”

They went to bed. As she fell asleep, Madame Jules said to herself:--

“Monsieur de Maulincour will certainly cause some evil. Jules’ mind is
preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he does not tell me.”

It was three in the morning when Madame Jules was awakened by a
presentiment which struck her heart as she slept. She had a sense both
physical and moral of her husband’s absence. She did not feel the
arm Jules passed beneath her head,--that arm in which she had slept,
peacefully and happy, for five years; an arm she had never wearied. A
voice said to her, “Jules suffers, Jules is weeping.” She raised her
head, and then sat up; felt that her husband’s place was cold, and saw
him sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, his head resting
against the back of an arm-chair. Tears were on his cheeks. The poor
woman threw herself hastily from her bed and sprang at a bound to her
husband’s knees.

“Jules! what is it? Are you ill? Speak, tell me! Speak to me, if you
love me!” and she poured out a hundred words expressing the deepest
tenderness.

Jules knelt at her feet, kissed her hands and knees, and answered with
fresh tears:--

“Dear Clemence, I am most unhappy! It is not loving to distrust the
one we love. I adore you and suspect you. The words that man said to me
to-night have struck to my heart; they stay there in spite of myself,
and confound me. There is some mystery here. In short, and I blush to
say it, your explanations do not satisfy me. My reason casts gleams
into my soul which my love rejects. It is an awful combat. Could I
stay there, holding your head, and suspecting thoughts within it to me
unknown? Oh! I believe in you, I believe in you!” he cried, seeing her
smile sadly and open her mouth as if to speak. “Say nothing; do not
reproach me. Besides, could you say anything I have not said myself for
the last three hours? Yes, for three hours, I have been here, watching
you as you slept, so beautiful! admiring that pure, peaceful brow. Yes,
yes! you have always told me your thoughts, have you not? I alone am in
that soul. While I look at you, while my eyes can plunge into yours I
see all plainly. Your life is as pure as your glance is clear. No, there
is no secret behind those transparent eyes.” He rose and kissed their
lids. “Let me avow to you, dearest soul,” he said, “that for the last
five years each day has increased my happiness, through the knowledge
that you are all mine, and that no natural affection even can take any
of your love. Having no sister, no father, no mother, no companion, I
am neither above nor below any living being in your heart; I am alone
there. Clemence, repeat to me those sweet things of the spirit you have
so often said to me; do not blame me; comfort me, I am so unhappy. I
have an odious suspicion on my conscience, and you have nothing in your
heart to sear it. My beloved, tell me, could I stay there beside you?
Could two heads united as ours have been lie on the same pillow when
one was suffering and the other tranquil? What are you thinking of?”
 he cried abruptly, observing that Clemence was anxious, confused, and
seemed unable to restrain her tears.

“I am thinking of my mother,” she answered, in a grave voice. “You
will never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother’s dying
farewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling the
solemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me with
those assurances of your precious love.”

She raised her husband, strained him to her with a nervous force greater
than that of men, and kissed his hair, covering it with tears.

“Ah! I would be hacked in pieces for you! Tell me that I make you happy;
that I am to you the most beautiful of women--a thousand women to you.
Oh! you are loved as no other man ever was or will be. I don’t know the
meaning of those words ‘duty,’ ‘virtue.’ Jules, I love you for yourself;
I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more to my dying
day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to have one sole
emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is dreadful, I know--but
I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for any. I feel I am more wife
than mother. Well, then, can you fear? Listen to me, my own beloved,
promise to forget, not this hour of mingled tenderness and doubt, but
the words of that madman. Jules, you _must_. Promise me not to see him,
not to go to him. I have a deep conviction that if you set one foot in
that maze we shall both roll down a precipice where I shall perish--but
with your name upon my lips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high
in that heart and yet so low in reality? What! you who give credit to so
many as to money, can you not give me the charity of faith? And on the
first occasion in our lives when you might prove to me your boundless
trust, do you cast me from my throne in your heart? Between a madman
and me, it is the madman whom you choose to believe? oh, Jules!” She
stopped, threw back the hair that fell about her brow and neck, and
then, in a heart-rending tone, she added: “I have said too much; one
word should suffice. If your soul and your forehead still keep this
cloud, however light it be, I tell you now that I shall die of it.”

She could not repress a shudder, and turned pale.

“Oh! I will kill that man,” thought Jules, as he lifted his wife in his
arms and carried her to her bed.

“Let us sleep in peace, my angel,” he said. “I have forgotten all, I
swear it!”

Clemence fell asleep to the music of those sweet words, softly repeated.
Jules, as he watched her sleeping, said in his heart:--

“She is right; when love is so pure, suspicion blights it. To that young
soul, that tender flower, a blight--yes, a blight means death.”

When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for each
other and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though it
may disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Either
love gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still
echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible
to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or
diminish.

At breakfast, Monsieur and Madame Jules showed to each other those
particular attentions in which there is always something of affectation.
There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed the efforts of persons
endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules had involuntary doubts, his
wife had positive fears. Still, sure of each other, they had slept. Was
this strained condition the effect of a want of faith, or was it only a
memory of their nocturnal scene? They did not know themselves. But they
loved each other so purely that the impression of that scene, both cruel
and beneficent, could not fail to leave its traces in their souls; both
were eager to make those traces disappear, each striving to be the first
to return to the other, and thus they could not fail to think of the
cause of their first variance. To loving souls, this is not grief; pain
is still far-off; but it is a sort of mourning, which is difficult to
depict. If there are, indeed, relations between colors and the emotions
of the soul, if, as Locke’s blind man said, scarlet produces on the
sight the effect produced upon the hearing by a blast of trumpets, it is
permissible to compare this reaction of melancholy to mourning tones of
gray.

But even so, love saddened, love in which remains a true sentiment
of its happiness, momentarily troubled though it be, gives enjoyments
derived from pain and pleasure both, which are all novel. Jules studied
his wife’s voice; he watched her glances with the freshness of feeling
that inspired him in the earliest days of his passion for her. The
memory of five absolutely happy years, her beauty, the candor of her
love, quickly effaced in her husband’s mind the last vestiges of an
intolerable pain.

The day was Sunday,--a day on which there was no Bourse and no business
to be done. The reunited pair passed the whole day together, getting
farther into each other’s hearts than they ever yet had done, like two
children who in a moment of fear, hold each other closely and cling
together, united by an instinct. There are in this life of two-in-one
completely happy days, the gift of chance, ephemeral flowers, born
neither of yesterday nor belonging to the morrow. Jules and Clemence
now enjoyed this day as though they forboded it to be the last of their
loving life. What name shall we give to that mysterious power which
hastens the steps of travellers before the storm is visible; which makes
the life and beauty of the dying so resplendent, and fills the parting
soul with joyous projects for days before death comes; which tells the
midnight student to fill his lamp when it shines brightest; and makes
the mother fear the thoughtful look cast upon her infant by an observing
man? We all are affected by this influence in the great catastrophes of
life; but it has never yet been named or studied; it is something more
than presentiment, but not as yet clear vision.

All went well till the following day. On Monday, Jules Desmarets,
obliged to go to the Bourse on his usual business, asked his wife, as
usual, if she would take advantage of his carriage and let him drive her
anywhere.

“No,” she said, “the day is too unpleasant to go out.”

It was raining in torrents. At half-past two o’clock Monsieur Desmarets
reached the Treasury. At four o’clock, as he left the Bourse, he came
face to face with Monsieur de Maulincour, who was waiting for him with
the nervous pertinacity of hatred and vengeance.

“Monsieur,” he said, taking Monsieur Desmarets by the arm, “I have
important information to give you. Listen to me. I am too loyal a man to
have recourse to anonymous letters with which to trouble your peace of
mind; I prefer to speak to you in person. Believe me, if my very life
were not concerned, I should not meddle with the private affairs of any
household, even if I thought I had the right to do so.”

“If what you have to say to me concerns Madame Desmarets,” replied
Jules, “I request you to be silent, monsieur.”

“If I am silent, monsieur, you may before long see Madame Jules on the
prisoner’s bench at the court of assizes beside a convict. Now, do you
wish me to be silent?”

Jules turned pale; but his noble face instantly resumed its calmness,
though it was now a false calmness. Drawing the baron under one of the
temporary sheds of the Bourse, near which they were standing, he said to
him in a voice which concealed his intense inward emotion:--

“Monsieur, I will listen to you; but there will be a duel to the death
between us if--”

“Oh, to that I consent!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour. “I have the
greatest esteem for your character. You speak of death. You are unaware
that your wife may have assisted in poisoning me last Saturday night.
Yes, monsieur, since then some extraordinary evil has developed in me.
My hair appears to distil an inward fever and a deadly languor through
my skull; I know who clutched my hair at that ball.”

Monsieur de Maulincour then related, without omitting a single fact, his
platonic love for Madame Jules, and the details of the affair in the rue
Soly which began this narrative. Any one would have listened to him with
attention; but Madame Jules’ husband had good reason to be more amazed
than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he
was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an
adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the
inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life
than of his wife’s life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to
some far-off voice that cried to him, “Clemence cannot lie! Why should
she betray you?”

“Monsieur,” said the baron, as he ended, “being absolutely certain
of having recognized in Monsieur de Funcal the same Ferragus whom the
police declared dead, I have put upon his traces an intelligent man. As
I returned that night I remembered, by a fortunate chance, the name of
Madame Meynardie, mentioned in that letter of Ida, the presumed mistress
of my persecutor. Supplied with this clue, my emissary will soon get to
the bottom of this horrible affair; for he is far more able to discover
the truth than the police themselves.”

“Monsieur,” replied Desmarets, “I know not how to thank you for this
confidence. You say that you can obtain proofs and witnesses; I shall
await them. I shall seek the truth of this strange affair courageously;
but you must permit me to doubt everything until the evidence of
the facts you state is proved to me. In any case you shall have
satisfaction, for, as you will certainly understand, we both require
it.”

Jules returned home.

“What is the matter, Jules?” asked his wife, when she saw him. “You look
so pale you frighten me!”

“The day is cold,” he answered, walking with slow steps across the room
where all things spoke to him of love and happiness,--that room so calm
and peaceful where a deadly storm was gathering.

“Did you go out to-day?” he asked, as though mechanically.

He was impelled to ask the question by the last of a myriad of thoughts
which had gathered themselves together into a lucid meditation, though
jealousy was actively prompting them.

“No,” she answered, in a tone that was falsely candid.

At that instant Jules saw through the open door of the dressing-room the
velvet bonnet which his wife wore in the mornings; on it were drops of
rain. Jules was a passionate man, but he was also full of delicacy. It
was repugnant to him to bring his wife face to face with a lie. When
such a situation occurs, all has come to an end forever between certain
beings. And yet those drops of rain were like a flash tearing through
his brain.

He left the room, went down to the porter’s lodge, and said to the
porter, after making sure that they were alone:--

“Fouguereau, a hundred crowns if you tell me the truth; dismissal if you
deceive me; and nothing at all if you ever speak of my question and your
answer.”

He stopped to examine the man’s face, leading him under the window. Then
he continued:--

“Did madame go out this morning?”

“Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw her come in
about half an hour ago.”

“That is true, upon your honor?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“You will have the money; but if you speak of this, remember, you will
lose all.”

Jules returned to his wife.

“Clemence,” he said, “I find I must put my accounts in order. Do not be
offended at the inquiry I am going to make. Have I not given you forty
thousand francs since the beginning of the year?”

“More,” she said,--“forty-seven.”

“Have you spent them?”

“Nearly,” she replied. “In the first place, I had to pay several of our
last year’s bills--”

“I shall never find out anything in this way,” thought Jules. “I am not
taking the best course.”

At this moment Jules’ own valet entered the room with a letter for his
master, who opened it indifferently, but as soon as his eyes had lighted
on the signature he read it eagerly. The letter was as follows:--


  Monsieur,--For the sake of your peace of mind as well as ours, I
  take the course of writing you this letter without possessing the
  advantage of being known to you; but my position, my age, and the
  fear of some misfortune compel me to entreat you to show
  indulgence in the trying circumstances under which our afflicted
  family is placed. Monsieur Auguste de Maulincour has for the last
  few days shown signs of mental derangement, and we fear that he
  may trouble your happiness by fancies which he confided to
  Monsieur le Vidame de Pamiers and myself during his first attack
  of frenzy. We think it right, therefore, to warn you of his
  malady, which is, we hope, curable; but it will have such serious
  and important effects on the honor of our family and the career of
  my grandson that we must rely, monsieur, on your entire
  discretion.

  If Monsieur le Vidame or I could have gone to see you we would not
  have written. But I make no doubt that you will regard this prayer
  of a mother, who begs you to destroy this letter.

  Accept the assurance of my perfect consideration.

Baronne de Maulincour, _nee_ de Rieux.


“Oh! what torture!” cried Jules.

“What is it? what is in your mind?” asked his wife, exhibiting the
deepest anxiety.

“I have come,” he answered, slowly, as he threw her the letter, “to
ask myself whether it can be you who have sent me that to avert my
suspicions. Judge, therefore, what I suffer.”

“Unhappy man!” said Madame Jules, letting fall the paper. “I pity him;
though he has done me great harm.”

“Are you aware that he has spoken to me?”

“Oh! have you been to see him, in spite of your promise?” she cried in
terror.

“Clemence, our love is in danger of perishing; we stand outside of the
ordinary rules of life; let us lay aside all petty considerations
in presence of this great peril. Explain to me why you went out this
morning. Women think they have the right to tell us little falsehoods.
Sometimes they like to hide a pleasure they are preparing for us. Just
now you said a word to me, by mistake, no doubt, a no for a yes.”

He went into the dressing-room and brought out the bonnet.

“See,” he said, “your bonnet has betrayed you; these spots are
raindrops. You must, therefore, have gone out in a street cab, and these
drops fell upon it as you went to find one, or as you entered or left
the house where you went. But a woman can leave her own home for many
innocent purposes, even after she has told her husband that she did
not mean to go out. There are so many reasons for changing our plans!
Caprices, whims, are they not your right? Women are not required to be
consistent with themselves. You had forgotten something,--a service
to render, a visit, some kind action. But nothing hinders a woman from
telling her husband what she does. Can we ever blush on the breast of a
friend? It is not a jealous husband who speaks to you, my Clemence; it
is your lover, your friend, your brother.” He flung himself passionately
at her feet. “Speak, not to justify yourself, but to calm my horrible
sufferings. I know that you went out. Well--what did you do? where did
you go?”

“Yes, I went out, Jules,” she answered in a strained voice, though her
face was calm. “But ask me nothing more. Wait; have confidence; without
which you will lay up for yourself terrible remorse. Jules, my Jules,
trust is the virtue of love. I owe to you that I am at this moment too
troubled to answer you: but I am not a false woman; I love you, and you
know it.”

“In the midst of all that can shake the faith of man and rouse his
jealousy, for I see I am not first in your heart, I am no longer thine
own self--well, Clemence, even so, I prefer to believe you, to believe
that voice, to believe those eyes. If you deceive me, you deserve--”

“Ten thousand deaths!” she cried, interrupting him.

“I have never hidden a thought from you, but you--”

“Hush!” she said, “our happiness depends upon our mutual silence.”

“Ha! I _will_ know all!” he exclaimed, with sudden violence.

At that moment the cries of a woman were heard,--the yelping of a shrill
little voice came from the antechamber.

“I tell you I will go in!” it cried. “Yes, I shall go in; I will see
her! I shall see her!”

Jules and Clemence both ran to the salon as the door from the
antechamber was violently burst open. A young woman entered hastily,
followed by two servants, who said to their master:--

“Monsieur, this person would come in in spite of us. We told her that
madame was not at home. She answered that she knew very well madame had
been out, but she saw her come in. She threatened to stay at the door of
the house till she could speak to madame.”

“You can go,” said Monsieur Desmarets to the two men. “What do you want,
mademoiselle?” he added, turning to the strange woman.

This “demoiselle” was the type of a woman who is never to be met with
except in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like the pavement,
like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Paris before human
industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glass decanters and
sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. She is therefore a
being who is truly original. Depicted scores of times by the painter’s
brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal of the etcher, she
still escapes analysis, because she cannot be caught and rendered in all
her moods, like Nature, like this fantastic Paris itself. She holds to
vice by one thread only, and she breaks away from it at a thousand other
points of the social circumference. Besides, she lets only one trait
of her character be known, and that the only one which renders her
blamable; her noble virtues are hidden; she prefers to glory in her
naive libertinism. Most incompletely rendered in dramas and tales where
she is put upon the scene with all her poesy, she is nowhere really
true but in her garret; elsewhere she is invariably calumniated or
over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates; poor, she is misunderstood. She
has too many vices, and too many good qualities; she is too near to
pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolute laugh; too beautiful and too
hideous. She personifies Paris, to which, in the long run, she supplies
the toothless portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, beggars,
occasionally insolent countesses, admired actresses, applauded singers;
she has even given, in the olden time, two quasi-queens to the monarchy.
Who can grasp such a Proteus? She is all woman, less than woman, more
than woman. From this vast portrait the painter of manners and morals
can take but a feature here and there; the _ensemble_ is infinite.

She was a grisette of Paris; a grisette in all her glory; a grisette
in a hackney-coach,--happy, young, handsome, fresh, but a grisette; a
grisette with claws, scissors, impudent as a Spanish woman, snarling as
a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as
a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect
_lionne_ in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she
had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet
furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the
sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks
(under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,--in
short, all the domestic joys of a grisette’s life; and in addition,
the woman-of-all-work (a former grisette herself, now the owner of a
moustache), theatre-parties, unlimited bonbons, silk dresses, bonnets to
spoil,--in fact, all the felicities coveted by the grisette heart except
a carriage, which only enters her imagination as a marshal’s baton into
the dreams of a soldier. Yes, this grisette had all these things in
return for a true affection, or in spite of a true affection, as some
others obtain it for an hour a day,--a sort of tax carelessly paid under
the claws of an old man.

The young woman who now entered the presence of Monsieur and Madame
Jules had a pair of feet so little covered by her shoes that only a slim
black line was visible between the carpet and her white stockings. This
peculiar foot-gear, which Parisian caricaturists have well-rendered,
is a special attribute of the grisette of Paris; but she is even more
distinctive to the eyes of an observer by the care with which her
garments are made to adhere to her form, which they clearly define.
On this occasion she was trigly dressed in a green gown, with a white
chemisette, which allowed the beauty of her bust to be seen; her shawl,
of Ternaux cashmere, had fallen from her shoulders, and was held by its
two corners, which were twisted round her wrists. She had a delicate
face, rosy cheeks, a white skin, sparkling gray eyes, a round, very
promising forehead, hair carefully smoothed beneath her little bonnet,
and heavy curls upon her neck.

“My name is Ida,” she said, “and if that’s Madame Jules to whom I have
the advantage of speaking, I’ve come to tell her all I have in my
heart against her. It is very wrong, when a woman is set up and in her
furniture, as you are here, to come and take from a poor girl a man
with whom I’m as good as married, morally, and who did talk of making it
right by marrying me before the municipality. There’s plenty of handsome
young men in the world--ain’t there, monsieur?--to take your fancy,
without going after a man of middle age, who makes my happiness. Yah! I
haven’t got a fine hotel like this, but I’ve got my love, I have. I hate
handsome men and money; I’m all heart, and--”

Madame Jules turned to her husband.

“You will allow me, monsieur, to hear no more of all this,” she said,
retreating to her bedroom.

“If the lady lives with you, I’ve made a mess of it; but I can’t help
that,” resumed Ida. “Why does she come after Monsieur Ferragus every
day?”

“You are mistaken, mademoiselle,” said Jules, stupefied; “my wife is
incapable--”

“Ha! so you’re married, you two,” said the grisette showing some
surprise. “Then it’s very wrong, monsieur,--isn’t it?--for a woman who
has the happiness of being married in legal marriage to have relations
with a man like Henri--”

“Henri! who is Henri?” said Jules, taking Ida by the arm and pulling her
into an adjoining room that his wife might hear no more.

“Why, Monsieur Ferragus.”

“But he is dead,” said Jules.

“Nonsense; I went to Franconi’s with him last night, and he brought me
home--as he ought. Besides, your wife can tell you about him; didn’t
she go there this very afternoon at three o’clock? I know she did, for
I waited in the street, and saw her,--all because that good-natured
fellow, Monsieur Justin, whom you know perhaps,--a little old man with
jewelry who wears corsets,--told me that Madame Jules was my rival. That
name, monsieur, sounds mighty like a feigned one; but if it is yours,
excuse me. But this I say, if Madame Jules was a court duchess, Henri is
rich enough to satisfy all her fancies, and it is my business to protect
my property; I’ve a right to, for I love him, that I do. He is my
_first_ inclination; my happiness and all my future fate depends on
it. I fear nothing, monsieur; I am honest; I never lied, or stole the
property of any living soul, no matter who. If an empress was my rival,
I’d go straight to her, empress as she was; because all pretty women are
equals, monsieur--”

“Enough! enough!” said Jules. “Where do you live?”

“Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14, monsieur,--Ida Gruget,
corset-maker, at your service,--for we make lots of corsets for men.”

“Where does the man whom you call Ferragus live?”

“Monsieur,” she said, pursing up her lips, “in the first place, he’s not
a man; he is a rich monsieur, much richer, perhaps, than you are. But
why do you ask me his address when your wife knows it? He told me not
to give it. Am I obliged to answer you? I’m not, thank God, in a
confessional or a police-court; I’m responsible only to myself.”

“If I were to offer you ten thousand francs to tell me where Monsieur
Ferragus lives, how then?”

“Ha! n, o, _no_, my little friend, and that ends the matter,” she said,
emphasizing this singular reply with a popular gesture. “There’s no
sum in the world could make me tell you. I have the honor to bid you
good-day. How do I get out of here?”

Jules, horror-struck, allowed her to go without further notice. The
whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the
heavens were falling with a crash.

“Monsieur is served,” said his valet.

The valet and the footman waited in the dining-room a quarter of an hour
without seeing master or mistress.

“Madame will not dine to-day,” said the waiting-maid, coming in.

“What’s the matter, Josephine?” asked the valet.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Madame is crying, and is going to bed.
Monsieur has no doubt got some love-affair on hand, and it has been
discovered at a very bad time. I wouldn’t answer for madame’s life. Men
are so clumsy; they’ll make you scenes without any precaution.”

“That’s not so,” said the valet, in a low voice. “On the contrary,
madame is the one who--you understand? What times does monsieur have to
go after pleasures, he, who hasn’t slept out of madame’s room for five
years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it till breakfast,
at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereas madame goes out
nearly every day at three o’clock, Heaven knows where.”

“And monsieur too,” said the maid, taking her mistress’s part.

“Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times that
dinner was ready,” continued the valet, after a pause. “You might as
well talk to a post.”

Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room.

“Where is madame?” he said.

“Madame is going to bed; her head aches,” replied the maid, assuming an
air of importance.

Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: “You can take away;
I shall go and sit with madame.”

He went to his wife’s room and found her weeping, but endeavoring to
smother her sobs with her handkerchief.

“Why do you weep?” said Jules; “you need expect no violence and no
reproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been
faithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it.”

“Not worthy?” The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent in
which they were said would have moved any other man than Jules.

“To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you,” he
continued. “But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill
myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--”

He did not end his sentence.

“Kill yourself!” she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping
them.

But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging
her in so doing toward the bed.

“Let me alone,” he said.

“No, no, Jules!” she cried. “If you love me no longer I shall die. Do
you wish to know all?”

“Yes.”

He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the bed,
holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautiful face now
red as fire and furrowed with tears,--

“Speak,” he said.

Her sobs began again.

“No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I--No, I cannot.
Have mercy, Jules!”

“You have betrayed me--”

“Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all.”

“But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched by
crime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him--”

“Oh, Jules!”

“Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor?--the man to whom we owe our
fortune, as persons have said already?”

“Who said that?”

“A man whom I killed in a duel.”

“Oh, God! one death already!”

“If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it
is you, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he your
brother?”

“What if he were?” she said.

Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms.

“Why should that have been concealed from me?” he said. “Then you and
your mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see her
brother every day, or nearly every day?”

His wife had fainted at his feet.

“Dead,” he said. “And suppose I am mistaken?”

He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence to the
bed.

“I shall die of this,” said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness.

“Josephine,” cried Monsieur Desmarets. “Send for Monsieur Desplein; send
also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately.”

“Why your brother?” asked Clemence.

But Jules had already left the room.




CHAPTER IV. WHERE GO TO DIE?

For the first time in five years Madame Jules slept alone in her bed,
and was compelled to admit a physician into that sacred chamber. These
in themselves were two keen pangs. Desplein found Madame Jules very
ill. Never was a violent emotion more untimely. He would say nothing
definite, and postponed till the morrow giving any opinion, after
leaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of the
heart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten.

When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbed
in the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours between
the brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word which could
betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears. Monsieur
Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness of the night,
and the singular activity of the senses given by powerful emotion,
enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen and the
involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those who are
habitually up at night, and who observe the different acoustic effects
produced in absolute silence, know that a slight echo can be readily
perceived in the very places where louder but more equable and continued
murmurs are not distinct. At four o’clock the sound ceased. Clemence
rose, anxious and trembling. Then, with bare feet and without a wrapper,
forgetting her illness and her moist condition, the poor woman opened
the door softly without noise and looked into the next room. She saw her
husband sitting, with a pen in his hand, asleep in his arm-chair. The
candles had burned to the sockets. She slowly advanced and read on an
envelope, already sealed, the words, “This is my will.”

She knelt down as if before an open grave and kissed her husband’s hand.
He woke instantly.

“Jules, my friend, they grant some days to criminals condemned to
death,” she said, looking at him with eyes that blazed with fever and
with love. “Your innocent wife asks only two. Leave me free for two
days, and--wait! After that, I shall die happy--at least, you will
regret me.”

“Clemence, I grant them.”

Then, as she kissed her husband’s hands in the tender transport of her
heart, Jules, under the spell of that cry of innocence, took her in his
arms and kissed her forehead, though ashamed to feel himself still under
subjection to the power of that noble beauty.

On the morrow, after taking a few hours’ rest, Jules entered his wife’s
room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the
house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light
passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the
face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead
and the freshness of her lips. A lover’s eye could not fail to notice
the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor in place of
the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whiteness of the
skin,--two points at which the sentiments of her noble soul were
artlessly wont to show themselves.

“She suffers,” thought Jules. “Poor Clemence! May God protect us!”

He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband,
and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes filling
with tears.

“I am innocent,” she said, ending her dream.

“You will not go out to-day, will you?” asked Jules.

“No, I feel too weak to leave my bed.”

“If you should change your mind, wait till I return,” said Jules.

Then he went down to the porter’s lodge.

“Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know
exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it.”

Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the hotel
de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.

“Monsieur is ill,” they told him.

Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the
baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time
in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told
him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.

“I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me
the honor to write, and I beg you to believe--”

“A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!” cried the dowager,
interrupting him. “I have written you no letter. What was I made to say
in that letter, monsieur?”

“Madame,” replied Jules, “intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour
to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its
injunction to destroy it. There it is.”

Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast her
eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.

“Monsieur,” she said, “my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if the
matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandson is
ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment been affected. We
are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons; and yet I cannot
imagine the object of a trick like this. You shall see my grandson,
monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he is perfectly sound in
mind.”

She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receive
Monsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer.
Jules went to the baron’s room, where he found him in an arm-chair near
the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowed his head
with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sitting with him.

“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, “I have something to say which makes it
desirable that I should see you alone.”

“Monsieur,” replied Auguste, “Monsieur le vidame knows about this
affair; you can speak fearlessly before him.”

“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, in a grave voice, “you have troubled
and well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to do so.
Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us should demand, or
grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me in following
the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. I have now
come to ascertain from you the present residence of the extraordinary
being who exercises such a baneful effect on your life and mine. On my
return home yesterday, after listening to your avowals, I received that
letter.”

Jules gave him the forged letter.

“This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is a
demon!” cried Maulincour, after having read it. “Oh, what a frightful
maze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am I going?
I did wrong, monsieur,” he continued, looking at Jules; “but death is
the greatest of all expiations, and my death is now approaching. You can
ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders.”

“Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I must
know it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. In
presence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious.”

“Justin shall tell you all,” replied the baron.

At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang the bell.

“Justin is not in the house!” cried the vidame, in a hasty manner that
told much.

“Well, then,” said Auguste, excitedly, “the other servants must know
where he is; send a man on horseback to fetch him. Your valet is in
Paris, isn’t he? He can be found.”

The vidame was visibly distressed.

“Justin can’t come, my dear boy,” said the old man; “he is dead. I
wanted to conceal the accident from you, but--”

“Dead!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour,--“dead! When and how?”

“Last night. He had been supping with some old friends, and, I dare say,
was drunk; his friends--no doubt they were drunk, too--left him lying in
the street, and a heavy vehicle ran over him.”

“The convict did not miss _him_; at the first stroke he killed,” said
Auguste. “He has had less luck with me; it has taken four blows to put
me out of the way.”

Jules was gloomy and thoughtful.

“Am I to know nothing, then?” he cried, after a long pause. “Your valet
seems to have been justly punished. Did he not exceed your orders in
calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whose jealousy he
roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?”

“Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules,” said
Auguste.

“Monsieur!” cried the husband, keenly irritated.

“Oh, monsieur!” replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, “I am
prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience has
not already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of all
professors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destined
to intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow my brains
out.”

“You talk like a child!” cried the vidame, horrified by the coolness
with which the baron said these words. “Your grandmother would die of
grief.”

“Then, monsieur,” said Jules, “am I to understand that there exist
no means of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary man
resides?”

“I think, monsieur,” said the old vidame, “from what I have heard poor
Justin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese or
the Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging to
both those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your
persecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would be
well to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way of
confounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dear
monsieur. Had Monsieur de Maulincour followed my advice, nothing of all
this would have happened.”

Jules coldly but politely withdrew. He was now at a total loss to know
how to reach Ferragus. As he passed into his own house, the porter told
him that Madame had just been out to throw a letter into the post box
at the head of the rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by this proof of
the insight with which the porter espoused his cause, and the cleverness
by which he guessed the way to serve him. The eagerness of servants, and
their shrewdness in compromising masters who compromised themselves,
was known to him, and he fully appreciated the danger of having them as
accomplices, no matter for what purpose. But he could not think of his
personal dignity until the moment when he found himself thus suddenly
degraded. What a triumph for the slave who could not raise himself to
his master, to compel his master to come down to his level! Jules was
harsh and hard to him. Another fault. But he suffered so deeply! His
life till then so upright, so pure, was becoming crafty; he was to
scheme and lie. Clemence was scheming and lying. This to him was a
moment of horrible disgust. Lost in a flood of bitter feelings, Jules
stood motionless at the door of his house. Yielding to despair, he
thought of fleeing, of leaving France forever, carrying with him the
illusions of uncertainty. Then, again, not doubting that the letter
Clemence had just posted was addressed to Ferragus, his mind searched
for a means of obtaining the answer that mysterious being was certain
to send. Then his thoughts began to analyze the singular good fortune
of his life since his marriage, and he asked himself whether the calumny
for which he had taken such signal vengeance was not a truth. Finally,
reverting to the coming answer, he said to himself:--

“But this man, so profoundly capable, so logical in his every act, who
sees and foresees, who calculates, and even divines, our very thoughts,
is he likely to make an answer? Will he not employ some other means more
in keeping with his power? He may send his answer by some beggar; or in
a carton brought by an honest man, who does not suspect what he brings;
or in some parcel of shoes, which a shop-girl may innocently deliver to
my wife. If Clemence and he have agreed upon such means--”

He distrusted all things; his mind ran over vast tracts and shoreless
oceans of conjecture. Then, after floating for a time among a thousand
contradictory ideas, he felt he was strongest in his own house, and he
resolved to watch it as the ant-lion watches his sandy labyrinth.

“Fouguereau,” he said to the porter, “I am not at home to any one who
comes to see me. If any one calls to see madame, or brings her anything,
ring twice. Bring all letters addressed here to me, no matter for whom
they are intended.”

“Thus,” thought he, as he entered his study, which was in the entresol,
“I forestall the schemes of this Ferragus. If he sends some one to ask
for me so as to find out if Clemence is alone, at least I shall not be
tricked like a fool.”

He stood by the window of his study, which looked upon the street,
and then a final scheme, inspired by jealousy, came into his mind. He
resolved to send his head-clerk in his own carriage to the Bourse with
a letter to another broker, explaining his sales and purchases and
requesting him to do his business for that day. He postponed his more
delicate transactions till the morrow, indifferent to the fall or
rise of stocks or the debts of all Europe. High privilege of love!--it
crushes all things, all interests fall before it: altar, throne,
consols!

At half-past three, just the hour at which the Bourse is in full blast
of reports, monthly settlements, premiums, etc., Fouguereau entered the
study, quite radiant with his news.

“Monsieur, an old woman has come, but very cautiously; I think she’s a
sly one. She asked for monsieur, and seemed much annoyed when I told her
he was out; then she gave me a letter for madame, and here it is.”

Fevered with anxiety, Jules opened the letter; then he dropped into a
chair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and needed a
key. It was virtually in cipher.

“Go away, Fouguereau.” The porter left him. “It is a mystery deeper than
the sea below the plummet line! Ah! it must be love; love only is so
sagacious, so inventive as this. Ah! I shall kill her.”

At this moment an idea flashed through his brain with such force that
he felt almost physically illuminated by it. In the days of his toilsome
poverty before his marriage, Jules had made for himself a true friend.
The extreme delicacy with which he had managed the susceptibilities of a
man both poor and modest; the respect with which he had surrounded him;
the ingenious cleverness he had employed to nobly compel him to share
his opulence without permitting it to make him blush, increased their
friendship. Jacquet continued faithful to Desmarets in spite of his
wealth.

Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had
slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both
honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of Foreign
Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its archives.
Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon
those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying despatches.
Ranking higher than a mere _bourgeois_, his position at the ministry was
superior to that of the other subalterns. He lived obscurely, glad
to feel that such obscurity sheltered him from reverses and
disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in the lowest coin
his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much
ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in
actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at
the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going
king,--an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his
wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a
philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in
all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from
his position,--that of having for his intimate friend a broker, and of
knowing every morning all the secrets of the State. This man, sublime
after the manner of that nameless soldier who died in saving Napoleon by
a “qui vive,” lived at the ministry.

In ten minutes Jules was in his friend’s office. Jacquet gave him a
chair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed his
hands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till his
shoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said:--

“What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?”

“Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret,--a secret of life and death.”

“It doesn’t concern politics?”

“If it did, I shouldn’t come to you for information,” said Jules.
“No, it is a family matter, about which I require you to be absolutely
silent.”

“Claude-Joseph Jacquet, dumb by profession. Don’t you know me by this
time?” he said, laughing. “Discretion is my lot.”

Jules showed him the letter.

“You must read me this letter, addressed to my wife.”

“The deuce! the deuce! a bad business!” said Jacquet, examining the
letter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. “Ha! that’s a
gridiron letter! Wait a minute.”

He left Jules alone for a moment, but returned immediately.

“Easy enough to read, my friend! It is written on the gridiron plan,
used by the Portuguese minister under Monsieur de Choiseul, at the time
of the dismissal of the Jesuits. Here, see!”

Jacquet placed upon the writing a piece of paper cut out in regular
squares, like the paper laces which confectioners wrap round their
sugarplums; and Jules then read with perfect ease the words that were
visible in the interstices. They were as follows:--

  “Don’t be uneasy, my dear Clemence; our happiness cannot again be
  troubled; and your husband will soon lay aside his suspicions.
  However ill you may be, you must have the courage to come here
  to-morrow; find strength in your love for me. Mine for you has
  induced me to submit to a cruel operation, and I cannot leave my
  bed. I have had the actual cautery applied to my back, and it was
  necessary to burn it in a long time; you understand me? But I
  thought of you, and I did not suffer.

  “To baffle Maulincour (who will not persecute us much longer), I
  have left the protecting roof of the embassy, and am now safe from
  all inquiry in the rue des Enfants-Rouges, number 12, with an old
  woman, Madame Etienne Gruget, mother of that Ida, who shall pay
  dear for her folly. Come to-morrow, at nine in the morning. I am
  in a room which is reached only by an interior staircase. Ask for
  Monsieur Camuset. Adieu; I kiss your forehead, my darling.”

Jacquet looked at Jules with a sort of honest terror, the sign of a
true compassion, as he made his favorite exclamation in two separate and
distinct tones,--

“The deuce! the deuce!”

“That seems clear to you, doesn’t it?” said Jules. “Well, in the depths
of my heart there is a voice that pleads for my wife, and makes itself
heard above the pangs of jealousy. I must endure the worst of all agony
until to-morrow; but to-morrow, between nine and ten I shall know all; I
shall be happy or wretched for all my life. Think of me then, Jacquet.”

“I shall be at your house to-morrow at eight o’clock. We will go
together; I’ll wait for you, if you like, in the street. You may run
some danger, and you ought to have near you some devoted person who’ll
understand a mere sign, and whom you can safely trust. Count on me.”

“Even to help me in killing some one?”

“The deuce! the deuce!” said Jacquet, repeating, as it were, the same
musical note. “I have two children and a wife.”

Jules pressed his friend’s hand and went away; but returned immediately.

“I forgot the letter,” he said. “But that’s not all, I must reseal it.”

“The deuce! the deuce! you opened it without saving the seal; however,
it is still possible to restore it. Leave it with me and I’ll bring it
to you _secundum scripturam_.”

“At what time?”

“Half-past five.”

“If I am not yet in, give it to the porter and tell him to send it up to
madame.”

“Do you want me to-morrow?”

“No. Adieu.”

Jules drove at once to the place de la Rotonde du Temple, where he left
his cabriolet and went on foot to the rue des Enfants-Rouges. He found
the house of Madame Etienne Gruget and examined it. There, the mystery
on which depended the fate of so many persons would be cleared up;
there, at this moment, was Ferragus, and to Ferragus all the threads of
this strange plot led. The Gordian knot of the drama, already so bloody,
was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, her husband, and that man;
and a blade able to cut the closest of such knots would not be wanting.

The house was one of those which belong to the class called
_cabajoutis_. This significant name is given by the populace of Paris
to houses which are built, as it were, piecemeal. They are nearly
always composed of buildings originally separate but afterwards united
according to the fancy of the various proprietors who successively
enlarge them; or else they are houses begun, left unfinished, again
built upon, and completed,--unfortunate structures which have passed,
like certain peoples, under many dynasties of capricious masters.
Neither the floors nor the windows have an _ensemble_,--to borrow one of
the most picturesque terms of the art of painting; all is discord, even
the external decoration. The _cabajoutis_ is to Parisian architecture
what the _capharnaum_ is to the apartment,--a poke-hole, where the most
heterogeneous articles are flung pell-mell.

“Madame Etienne?” asked Jules of the portress.

This portress had her lodge under the main entrance, in a sort of
chicken coop, or wooden house on rollers, not unlike those sentry-boxes
which the police have lately set up by the stands of hackney-coaches.

“Hein?” said the portress, without laying down the stocking she was
knitting.

In Paris the various component parts which make up the physiognomy of
any given portion of the monstrous city, are admirably in keeping with
its general character. Thus porter, concierge, or Suisse, whatever name
may be given to that essential muscle of the Parisian monster, is always
in conformity with the neighborhood of which he is a part; in fact,
he is often an epitome of it. The lazy porter of the faubourg
Saint-Germain, with lace on every seam of his coat, dabbles in stocks;
he of the Chaussee d’Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles
in the newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourg
Montmartre. The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly a
prostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and full of
crotchets.

On seeing Monsieur Jules this particular portress, holding her knitting
in one hand, took a knife and stirred the half-extinguished peat in her
foot-warmer; then she said:--

“You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame Etienne Gruget?”

“Yes,” said Jules, assuming a vexed air.

“Who makes trimmings?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, monsieur,” she said, issuing from her cage, and laying her
hand on Jules’ arm and leading him to the end of a long passage-way,
vaulted like a cellar, “go up the second staircase at the end of the
court-yard--where you will see the windows with the pots of pinks;
that’s where Madame Etienne lives.”

“Thank you, madame. Do you think she is alone?”

“Why shouldn’t she be alone? she’s a widow.”

Jules hastened up a dark stairway, the steps of which were knobby with
hardened mud left by the feet of those who came and went. On the second
floor he saw three doors but no signs of pinks. Fortunately, on one of
the doors, the oiliest and darkest of the three, he read these words,
chalked on a panel: “Ida will come to-night at nine o’clock.”

“This is the place,” thought Jules.

He pulled an old bellrope, black with age, and heard the smothered sound
of a cracked bell and the barking of an asthmatic little dog. By the
way the sounds echoed from the interior he knew that the rooms were
encumbered with articles which left no space for reverberation,--a
characteristic feature of the homes of workmen and humble households,
where space and air are always lacking.

Jules looked out mechanically for the pinks, and found them on the
outer sill of a sash window between two filthy drain-pipes. So here were
flowers; here, a garden, two yards long and six inches wide; here,
a wheat-ear; here, a whole life epitomized; but here, too, all the
miseries of that life. A ray of light falling from heaven as if by
special favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear brought
out in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color,
peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spotted
the damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointed window-casings,
and the door originally red. Presently the cough of an old woman, and a
heavy female step, shuffling painfully in list slippers, announced the
coming of the mother of Ida Gruget. The creature opened the door and
came out upon the landing, looked up, and said:--

“Ah! is this Monsieur Bocquillon? Why, no? But perhaps you’re his
brother. What can I do for you? Come in, monsieur.”

Jules followed her into the first room, where he saw, huddled together,
cages, household utensils, ovens, furniture, little earthenware
dishes full of food or water for the dog and the cats, a wooden clock,
bed-quilts, engravings of Eisen, heaps of old iron, all these things
mingled and massed together in a way that produced a most grotesque
effect,--a true Parisian dusthole, in which were not lacking a few old
numbers of the “Constitutionel.”

Jules, impelled by a sense of prudence, paid no attention to the widow’s
invitation when she said civilly, showing him an inner room:--

“Come in here, monsieur, and warm yourself.”

Fearing to be overheard by Ferragus, Jules asked himself whether it were
not wisest to conclude the arrangement he had come to make with the old
woman in the crowded antechamber. A hen, which descended cackling from
a loft, roused him from this inward meditation. He came to a resolution,
and followed Ida’s mother into the inner room, whither they were
accompanied by the wheezy pug, a personage otherwise mute, who jumped
upon a stool. Madame Gruget showed the assumption of semi-pauperism
when she invited her visitor to warm himself. Her fire-pot contained, or
rather concealed two bits of sticks, which lay apart: the grating was
on the ground, its handle in the ashes. The mantel-shelf, adorned with
a little wax Jesus under a shade of squares of glass held together with
blue paper, was piled with wools, bobbins, and tools used in the making
of gimps and trimmings. Jules examined everything in the room with a
curiosity that was full of interest, and showed, in spite of himself, an
inward satisfaction.

“Well, monsieur, tell me, do you want to buy any of my things?” said the
old woman, seating herself in a cane arm-chair, which appeared to be
her headquarters. In it she kept her handkerchief, snuffbox, knitting,
half-peeled vegetables, spectacles, calendar, a bit of livery gold lace
just begun, a greasy pack of cards, and two volumes of novels, all stuck
into the hollow of the back. This article of furniture, in which the
old creature was floating down the river of life, was not unlike the
encyclopedic bag which a woman carries with her when she travels; in
which may be found a compendium of her household belongings, from the
portrait of her husband to _eau de Melisse_ for faintness, sugarplums
for the children, and English court-plaster in case of cuts.

Jules studied all. He looked attentively at Madame Gruget’s yellow
visage, at her gray eyes without either brows or lashes, her toothless
mouth, her wrinkles marked in black, her rusty cap, her still more rusty
ruffles, her cotton petticoat full of holes, her worn-out slippers, her
disabled fire-pot, her table heaped with dishes and silks and work begun
or finished, in wool or cotton, in the midst of which stood a bottle of
wine. Then he said to himself: “This old woman has some passion, some
strong liking or vice; I can make her do my will.”

“Madame,” he said aloud, with a private sign of intelligence, “I have
come to order some livery trimmings.” Then he lowered his voice. “I
know,” he continued, “that you have a lodger who has taken the name of
Camuset.” The old woman looked at him suddenly, but without any sign of
astonishment. “Now, tell me, can we come to an understanding? This is a
question which means fortune for you.”

“Monsieur,” she replied, “speak out, and don’t be afraid. There’s no one
here. But if I had any one above, it would be impossible for him to hear
you.”

“Ha! the sly old creature, she answers like a Norman,” thought Jules,
“We shall agree. Do not give yourself the trouble to tell falsehoods,
madame,” he resumed, “In the first place, let me tell you that I mean no
harm either to you or to your lodger who is suffering from cautery, or
to your daughter Ida, a stay-maker, the friend of Ferragus. You see, I
know all your affairs. Do not be uneasy; I am not a detective policeman,
nor do I desire anything that can hurt your conscience. A young lady
will come here to-morrow-morning at half-past nine o’clock, to talk with
this lover of your daughter. I want to be where I can see all and hear
all, without being seen or heard by them. If you will furnish me with
the means of doing so, I will reward that service with the gift of two
thousand francs and a yearly stipend of six hundred. My notary shall
prepare a deed before you this evening, and I will give him the money to
hold; he will pay the two thousand to you to-morrow after the conference
at which I desire to be present, as you will then have given proofs of
your good faith.”

“Will it injure my daughter, my good monsieur?” she asked, casting a
cat-like glance of doubt and uneasiness upon him.

“In no way, madame. But, in any case, it seems to me that your daughter
does not treat you well. A girl who is loved by so rich a man as
Ferragus ought to make you more comfortable than you seem to be.”

“Ah, my dear monsieur, just think, not so much as one poor ticket to
the Ambigu, or the Gaiete, where she can go as much as she likes. It’s
shameful! A girl for whom I sold my silver forks and spoons! and now
I eat, at my age, with German metal,--and all to pay for her
apprenticeship, and give her a trade, where she could coin money if she
chose. As for that, she’s like me, clever as a witch; I must do her that
justice. But, I will say, she might give me her old silk gowns,--I,
who am so fond of wearing silk. But no! Monsieur, she dines at the
Cadran-Bleu at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriage as if she
were a princess, and despises her mother for a Colin-Lampon. Heavens and
earth! what heedless young ones we’ve brought into the world; we have
nothing to boast of there. A mother, monsieur, can’t be anything else
but a good mother; and I’ve concealed that girl’s ways, and kept her in
my bosom, to take the bread out of my mouth and cram everything into her
own. Well, well! and now she comes and fondles one a little, and says,
‘How d’ye do, mother?’ And that’s all the duty she thinks of paying. But
she’ll have children one of these days, and then she’ll find out what it
is to have such baggage,--which one can’t help loving all the same.”

“Do you mean that she does nothing for you?”

“Ah, nothing? No, monsieur, I didn’t say that; if she did nothing, that
would be a little too much. She gives me my rent and thirty-six francs a
month. But, monsieur, at my age,--and I’m fifty-two years old, with
eyes that feel the strain at night,--ought I to be working in this way?
Besides, why won’t she have me to live with her? I should shame her,
should I? Then let her say so. Faith, one ought to be buried out of the
way of such dogs of children, who forget you before they’ve even shut
the door.”

She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, and with it a lottery
ticket that dropped on the floor; but she hastily picked it up, saying,
“Hi! that’s the receipt for my taxes.”

Jules at once perceived the reason of the sagacious parsimony of which
the mother complained; and he was the more certain that the widow Gruget
would agree to the proposed bargain.

“Well, then, madame,” he said, “accept what I offer you.”

“Did you say two thousand francs in ready money, and six hundred
annuity, monsieur?”

“Madame, I’ve changed my mind; I will promise you only three hundred
annuity. This way seems more to my own interests. But I will give you
five thousand francs in ready money. Wouldn’t you like that as well?”

“Bless me, yes, monsieur!”

“You’ll get more comfort out of it; and you can go to the Ambigu and
Franconi’s at your ease in a coach.”

“As for Franconi, I don’t like that, for they don’t talk there.
Monsieur, if I accept, it is because it will be very advantageous for
my child. I sha’n’t be a drag on her any longer. Poor little thing!
I’m glad she has her pleasures, after all. Ah, monsieur, youth must be
amused! And so, if you assure me that no harm will come to anybody--”

“Not to anybody,” replied Jules. “But now, how will you manage it?”

“Well, monsieur, if I give Monsieur Ferragus a little tea made of
poppy-heads to-night, he’ll sleep sound, the dear man; and he needs it,
too, because of his sufferings, for he does suffer, I can tell you, and
more’s the pity. But I’d like to know what a healthy man like him wants
to burn his back for, just to get rid of a tic douleureux which troubles
him once in two years. However, to come back to our business. I have my
neighbor’s key; her lodging is just above mine, and in it there’s a
room adjoining the one where Monsieur Ferragus is, with only a
partition between them. My neighbor is away in the country for ten days.
Therefore, if I make a hole to-night while Monsieur Ferragus is sound
asleep, you can see and hear them to-morrow at your ease. I’m on good
terms with a locksmith,--a very friendly man, who talks like an angel,
and he’ll do the work for me and say nothing about it.”

“Then here’s a hundred francs for him. Come to-night to Monsieur
Desmaret’s office; he’s a notary, and here’s his address. At nine
o’clock the deed will be ready, but--silence!”

“Enough, monsieur; as you say--silence! Au revoir, monsieur.”

Jules went home, almost calmed by the certainty that he should know the
truth on the morrow. As he entered the house, the porter gave him the
letter properly resealed.

“How do you feel now?” he said to his wife, in spite of the coldness
that separated them.

“Pretty well, Jules,” she answered in a coaxing voice, “do come and dine
beside me.”

“Very good,” he said, giving her the letter. “Here is something
Fouguereau gave me for you.”

Clemence, who was very pale, colored high when she saw the letter, and
that sudden redness was a fresh blow to her husband.

“Is that joy,” he said, laughing, “or the effect of expectation?”

“Oh, of many things!” she said, examining the seal.

“I leave you now for a few moments.”

He went down to his study, and wrote to his brother, giving him
directions about the payment to the widow Gruget. When he returned, he
found his dinner served on a little table by his wife’s bedside, and
Josephine ready to wait on him.

“If I were up how I should like to serve you myself,” said Clemence,
when Josephine had left them. “Oh, yes, on my knees!” she added, passing
her white hands through her husband’s hair. “Dear, noble heart, you were
very kind and gracious to me just now. You did me more good by showing
me such confidence than all the doctors on earth could do me with their
prescriptions. That feminine delicacy of yours--for you do know how
to love like a woman--well, it has shed a balm into my heart which has
almost cured me. There’s truce between us, Jules; lower your head, that
I may kiss it.”

Jules could not deny himself the pleasure of that embrace. But it was
not without a feeling of remorse in his heart; he felt himself small
before this woman whom he was still tempted to think innocent. A sort
of melancholy joy possessed him. A tender hope shone on her features
in spite of their grieved expression. They both were equally unhappy
in deceiving each other; another caress, and, unable to resist their
suffering, all would then have been avowed.

“To-morrow evening, Clemence.”

“No, no; to-morrow morning, by twelve o’clock, you will know all, and
you’ll kneel down before your wife--Oh, no! you shall not be humiliated;
you are all forgiven now; you have done no wrong. Listen, Jules;
yesterday you did crush me--harshly; but perhaps my life would not have
been complete without that agony; it may be a shadow that will make our
coming days celestial.”

“You lay a spell upon me,” cried Jules; “you fill me with remorse.”

“Poor love! destiny is stronger than we, and I am not the accomplice of
mine. I shall go out to-morrow.”

“At what hour?” asked Jules.

“At half-past nine.”

“Clemence,” he said, “take every precaution; consult Doctor Desplein and
old Haudry.”

“I shall consult nothing but my heart and my courage.”

“I shall leave you free; you will not see me till twelve o’clock.”

“Won’t you keep me company this evening? I feel so much better.”

After attending to some business, Jules returned to his wife,--recalled
by her invincible attraction. His passion was stronger than his anguish.

The next day, at nine o’clock Jules left home, hurried to the rue des
Enfants-Rouges, went upstairs, and rang the bell of the widow Gruget’s
lodgings.

“Ah! you’ve kept your word, as true as the dawn. Come in, monsieur,”
 said the old woman when she saw him. “I’ve made you a cup of coffee with
cream,” she added, when the door was closed. “Oh! real cream; I saw it
milked myself at the dairy we have in this very street.”

“Thank you, no, madame, nothing. Take me at once--”

“Very good, monsieur. Follow me, this way.”

She led him up into the room above her own, where she showed him,
triumphantly, an opening about the size of a two-franc piece, made
during the night, in a place, which, in each room, was above a wardrobe.
In order to look through it, Jules was forced to maintain himself in
rather a fatiguing attitude, by standing on a step-ladder which the
widow had been careful to place there.

“There’s a gentleman with him,” she whispered, as she retired.

Jules then beheld a man employed in dressing a number of wounds on the
shoulders of Ferragus, whose head he recognized from the description
given to him by Monsieur de Maulincour.

“When do you think those wounds will heal?” asked Ferragus.

“I don’t know,” said the other man. “The doctors say those wounds will
require seven or eight more dressings.”

“Well, then, good-bye until to-night,” said Ferragus, holding out his
hand to the man, who had just replaced the bandage.

“Yes, to-night,” said the other, pressing his hand cordially. “I wish I
could see you past your sufferings.”

“To-morrow Monsieur de Funcal’s papers will be delivered to us, and
Henri Bourignard will be dead forever,” said Ferragus. “Those fatal
marks which have cost us so dear no longer exist. I shall become once
more a social being, a man among men, and more of a man than the sailor
whom the fishes are eating. God knows it is not for my own sake I have
made myself a Portuguese count!”

“Poor Gratien!--you, the wisest of us all, our beloved brother, the
Benjamin of the band; as you very well know.”

“Adieu; keep an eye on Maulincour.”

“You can rest easy on that score.”

“Ho! stay, marquis,” cried the convict.

“What is it?”

“Ida is capable of everything after the scene of last night. If she
should throw herself into the river, I would not fish her out. She knows
the secret of my name, and she’ll keep it better there. But still, look
after her; for she is, in her way, a good girl.”

“Very well.”

The stranger departed. Ten minutes later Jules heard, with a feverish
shudder, the rustle of a silk gown, and almost recognized by their sound
the steps of his wife.

“Well, father,” said Clemence, “my poor father, are you better? What
courage you have shown!”

“Come here, my child,” replied Ferragus, holding out his hand to her.

Clemence held her forehead to him and he kissed it.

“Now tell me, what is the matter, my little girl? What are these new
troubles?”

“Troubles, father! it concerns the life or death of the daughter you
have loved so much. Indeed you must, as I wrote you yesterday, you
_must_ find a way to see my poor Jules to-day. If you knew how good he
has been to me, in spite of all suspicions apparently so legitimate.
Father, my love is my very life. Would you see me die? Ah! I have
suffered so much that my life, I feel it! is in danger.”

“And all because of the curiosity of that miserable Parisian?” cried
Ferragus. “I’d burn Paris down if I lost you, my daughter. Ha! you may
know what a lover is, but you don’t yet know what a father can do.”

“Father, you frighten me when you look at me in that way. Don’t weigh
such different feelings in the same scales. I had a husband before I
knew that my father was living--”

“If your husband was the first to lay kisses on your forehead, I was
the first to drop tears upon it,” replied Ferragus. “But don’t feel
frightened, Clemence, speak to me frankly. I love you enough to rejoice
in the knowledge that you are happy, though I, your father, may have
little place in your heart, while you fill the whole of mine.”

“Ah! what good such words do me! You make me love you more and more,
though I seem to rob something from my Jules. But, my kind father, think
what his sufferings are. What may I tell him to-day?”

“My child, do you think I waited for your letter to save you from this
threatened danger? Do you know what will become of those who venture to
touch your happiness, or come between us? Have you never been aware
that a second providence was guarding your life? Twelve men of power and
intellect form a phalanx round your love and your existence,--ready to
do all things to protect you. Think of your father, who has risked death
to meet you in the public promenades, or see you asleep in your little
bed in your mother’s home, during the night-time. Could such a father,
to whom your innocent caresses give strength to live when a man of honor
ought to have died to escape his infamy, could _I_, in short, I who
breathe through your lips, and see with your eyes, and feel with your
heart, could I fail to defend with the claws of a lion and the soul of a
father, my only blessing, my life, my daughter? Since the death of that
angel, your mother, I have dreamed but of one thing,--the happiness of
pressing you to my heart in the face of the whole earth, of burying
the convict,--” He paused a moment, and then added: “--of giving you a
father, a father who could press without shame your husband’s hand, who
could live without fear in both your hearts, who could say to all the
world, ‘This is my daughter,’--in short, to be a happy father.”

“Oh, father! father!”

“After infinite difficulty, after searching the whole globe,” continued
Ferragus, “my friends have found me the skin of a dead man in which to
take my place once more in social life. A few days hence, I shall be
Monsieur de Funcal, a Portuguese count. Ah! my dear child, there are few
men of my age who would have had the patience to learn Portuguese and
English, which were spoken fluently by that devil of a sailor, who was
drowned at sea.”

“But, my dear father--”

“All has been foreseen, and prepared. A few days hence, his Majesty John
VI., King of Portugal will be my accomplice. My child, you must have a
little patience where your father has had so much. But ah! what would
I not do to reward your devotion for the last three years,--coming
religiously to comfort your old father, at the risk of your own peace!”

“Father!” cried Clemence, taking his hands and kissing them.

“Come, my child, have courage still; keep my fatal secret a few days
longer, till the end is reached. Jules is not an ordinary man, I know;
but are we sure that his lofty character and his noble love may not
impel him to dislike the daughter of a--”

“Oh!” cried Clemence, “you have read my heart; I have no other fear than
that. The very thought turns me to ice,” she added, in a heart-rending
tone. “But, father, think that I have promised him the truth in two
hours.”

“If so, my daughter, tell him to go to the Portuguese embassy and see
the Comte de Funcal, your father. I will be there.”

“But Monsieur de Maulincour has told him of Ferragus. Oh, father, what
torture, to deceive, deceive, deceive!”

“Need you say that to me? But only a few days more, and no living man
will be able to expose me. Besides, Monsieur de Maulincour is beyond
the faculty of remembering. Come, dry your tears, my silly child, and
think--”

At this instant a terrible cry rang from the room in which Jules
Desmarets was stationed.

The clamor was heard by Madame Jules and Ferragus through the opening of
the wall, and struck them with terror.

“Go and see what it means, Clemence,” said her father.

Clemence ran rapidly down the little staircase, found the door into
Madame Gruget’s apartment wide open, heard the cries which echoed from
the upper floor, went up the stairs, guided by the noise of sobs, and
caught these words before she entered the fatal chamber:--

“You, monsieur, you, with your horrid inventions,--you are the cause of
her death!”

“Hush, miserable woman!” replied Jules, putting his handkerchief on the
mouth of the old woman, who began at once to cry out, “Murder! help!”

At this instant Clemence entered, saw her husband, uttered a cry, and
fled away.

“Who will save my child?” cried the widow Gruget. “You have murdered
her.”

“How?” asked Jules, mechanically, for he was horror-struck at being seen
by his wife.

“Read that,” said the old woman, giving him a letter. “Can money or
annuities console me for that?”


  Farewell, mother! I bequeeth you what I have. I beg your pardon
  for my forlts, and the last greef to which I put you by ending my
  life in the river. Henry, who I love more than myself, says I have
  made his misfortune, and as he has drifen me away, and I have lost
  all my hops of merrying him, I am going to droun myself. I shall
  go abov Neuilly, so that they can’t put me in the Morg. If Henry
  does not hate me anny more after I am ded, ask him to berry a pore
  girl whose hart beet for him only, and to forgif me, for I did
  rong to meddle in what didn’t consern me. Tak care of his wounds.
  How much he sufered, pore fellow! I shall have as much corage to
  kill myself as he had to burn his bak. Carry home the corsets I
  have finished. And pray God for your daughter.

Ida.


“Take this letter to Monsieur de Funcal, who is upstairs,” said Jules.
“He alone can save your daughter, if there is still time.”

So saying he disappeared, running like a man who has committed a crime.
His legs trembled. The hot blood poured into his swelling heart in
torrents greater than at any other moment of his life, and left it again
with untold violence. Conflicting thoughts struggled in his mind, and
yet one thought predominated,--he had not been loyal to the being he
loved most. It was impossible for him to argue with his conscience,
whose voice, rising high with conviction, came like an echo of those
inward cries of his love during the cruel hours of doubt he had lately
lived through.

He spent the greater part of the day wandering about Paris, for he dared
not go home. This man of integrity and honor feared to meet the spotless
brow of the woman he had misjudged. We estimate wrongdoing in proportion
to the purity of our conscience; the deed which is scarcely a fault
in some hearts, takes the proportions of a crime in certain unsullied
souls. The slightest stain on the white garment of a virgin makes it a
thing ignoble as the rags of a mendicant. Between the two the difference
lies in the misfortune of the one, the wrong-doing of the other. God
never measures repentance; he never apportions it. As much is needed
to efface a spot as to obliterate the crimes of a lifetime. These
reflections fell with all their weight on Jules; passions, like human
laws, will not pardon, and their reasoning is more just; for are they
not based upon a conscience of their own as infallible as an instinct?

Jules finally came home pale, despondent, crushed beneath a sense of his
wrong-doing, and yet expressing in spite of himself the joy his wife’s
innocence had given him. He entered her room all throbbing with emotion;
she was in bed with a high fever. He took her hand, kissed it, and
covered it with tears.

“Dear angel,” he said, when they were alone, “it is repentance.”

“And for what?” she answered.

As she made that reply, she laid her head back upon the pillow, closed
her eyes, and remained motionless, keeping the secret of her sufferings
that she might not frighten her husband,--the tenderness of a mother,
the delicacy of an angel! All the woman was in her answer.

The silence lasted long. Jules, thinking her asleep, went to question
Josephine as to her mistress’s condition.

“Madame came home half-dead, monsieur. We sent at once for Monsieur
Haudry.”

“Did he come? What did he say?”

“He said nothing, monsieur. He did not seem satisfied; gave orders that
no one should go near madame except the nurse, and said he should come
back this evening.”

Jules returned softly to his wife’s room and sat down in a chair before
the bed. There he remained, motionless, with his eyes fixed on those
of Clemence. When she raised her eyelids she saw him, and through those
lids passed a tender glance, full of passionate love, free from reproach
and bitterness,--a look which fell like a flame of fire upon the heart
of that husband, nobly absolved and forever loved by the being whom he
had killed. The presentiment of death struck both their minds with equal
force. Their looks were blended in one anguish, as their hearts had long
been blended in one love, felt equally by both, and shared equally. No
questions were uttered; a horrible certainty was there,--in the wife
an absolute generosity; in the husband an awful remorse; then, in both
souls the same vision of the end, the same conviction of fatality.

There came a moment when, thinking his wife asleep, Jules kissed her
softly on the forehead; then after long contemplation of that cherished
face, he said:--

“Oh God! leave me this angel still a little while that I may blot out my
wrong by love and adoration. As a daughter, she is sublime; as a wife,
what word can express her?”

Clemence raised her eyes; they were full of tears.

“You pain me,” she said, in a feeble voice.

It was getting late; Doctor Haudry came, and requested the husband to
withdraw during his visit. When the doctor left the sick-room Jules
asked him no question; one gesture was enough.

“Call in consultation any physician in whom you place confidence; I may
be wrong.”

“Doctor, tell me the truth. I am a man, and I can bear it. Besides,
I have the deepest interest in knowing it; I have certain affairs to
settle.”

“Madame Jules is dying,” said the physician. “There is some moral malady
which has made great progress, and it has complicated her physical
condition, which was already dangerous, and made still more so by her
great imprudence. To walk about barefooted at night! to go out when I
forbade it! on foot yesterday in the rain, to-day in a carriage! She
must have meant to kill herself. But still, my judgment is not final;
she has youth, and a most amazing nervous strength. It may be best to
risk all to win all by employing some violent reagent. But I will not
take upon myself to order it; nor will I advise it; in consultation I
shall oppose it.”

Jules returned to his wife. For eleven days and eleven nights he
remained beside her bed, taking no sleep during the day when he laid his
head upon the foot of the bed. No man ever pushed the jealousy of care
and the craving for devotion to such an extreme as he. He could not
endure that the slightest service should be done by others for his wife.
There were days of uncertainty, false hopes, now a little better, then
a crisis,--in short, all the horrible mutations of death as it wavers,
hesitates, and finally strikes. Madame Jules always found strength to
smile at her husband. She pitied him, knowing that soon he would be
alone. It was a double death,--that of life, that of love; but life grew
feebler, and love grew mightier. One frightful night there was, when
Clemence passed through that delirium which precedes the death of youth.
She talked of her happy love, she talked of her father; she related her
mother’s revelations on her death-bed, and the obligations that mother
had laid upon her. She struggled, not for life, but for her love which
she could not leave.

“Grant, O God!” she said, “that he may not know I want him to die with
me.”

Jules, unable to bear the scene, was at that moment in the adjoining
room, and did not hear the prayer, which he would doubtless have
fulfilled.

When this crisis was over, Madame Jules recovered some strength. The
next day she was beautiful and tranquil; hope seemed to come to her; she
adorned herself, as the dying often do. Then she asked to be alone all
day, and sent away her husband with one of those entreaties made so
earnestly that they are granted as we grant the prayer of a little
child.

Jules, indeed, had need of this day. He went to Monsieur de Maulincour
to demand the satisfaction agreed upon between them. It was not without
great difficulty that he succeeded in reaching the presence of the
author of these misfortunes; but the vidame, when he learned that the
visit related to an affair of honor, obeyed the precepts of his whole
life, and himself took Jules into the baron’s chamber.

Monsieur Desmarets looked about him in search of his antagonist.

“Yes! that is really he,” said the vidame, motioning to a man who was
sitting in an arm-chair beside the fire.

“Who is it? Jules?” said the dying man in a broken voice.

Auguste had lost the only faculty that makes us live--memory. Jules
Desmarets recoiled with horror at this sight. He could not even
recognize the elegant young man in that thing without--as Bossuet
said--a name in any language. It was, in truth, a corpse with whitened
hair, its bones scarce covered with a wrinkled, blighted, withered
skin,--a corpse with white eyes motionless, mouth hideously gaping,
like those of idiots or vicious men killed by excesses. No trace of
intelligence remained upon that brow, nor in any feature; nor was
there in that flabby flesh either color or the faintest appearance of
circulating blood. Here was a shrunken, withered creature brought to
the state of those monsters we see preserved in museums, floating in
alchohol. Jules fancied that he saw above that face the terrible head
of Ferragus, and his own anger was silenced by such a vengeance. The
husband found pity in his heart for the vacant wreck of what was once a
man.

“The duel has taken place,” said the vidame.

“But he has killed many,” answered Jules, sorrowfully.

“And many dear ones,” added the old man. “His grandmother is dying; and
I shall follow her soon into the grave.”

On the morrow of this day, Madame Jules grew worse from hour to hour.
She used a moment’s strength to take a letter from beneath her pillow,
and gave it eagerly to her husband with a sign that was easy to
understand,--she wished to give him, in a kiss, her last breath. He
took it, and she died. Jules fell half-dead himself and was taken to his
brother’s house. There, as he deplored in tears his absence of the day
before, his brother told him that this separation was eagerly desired
by Clemence, who wished to spare him the sight of the religious
paraphernalia, so terrible to tender imaginations, which the Church
displays when conferring the last sacraments upon the dying.

“You could not have borne it,” said his brother. “I could hardly bear
the sight myself, and all the servants wept. Clemence was like a saint.
She gathered strength to bid us all good-bye, and that voice, heard for
the last time, rent our hearts. When she asked pardon for the pain she
might unwillingly have caused her servants, there were cries and sobs
and--”

“Enough! enough!” said Jules.

He wanted to be alone, that he might read the last words of the woman
whom all had loved, and who had passed away like a flower.


  “My beloved, this is my last will. Why should we not make wills
  for the treasures of our hearts, as for our worldly property? Was
  not my love my property, my all? I mean here to dispose of my
  love: it was the only fortune of your Clemence, and it is all that
  she can leave you in dying. Jules, you love me still, and I die
  happy. The doctors may explain my death as they think best; I
  alone know the true cause. I shall tell it to you, whatever pain
  it may cause you. I cannot carry with me, in a heart all yours, a
  secret which you do not share, although I die the victim of an
  enforced silence.

  “Jules, I was nurtured and brought up in the deepest solitude, far
  from the vices and the falsehoods of the world, by the loving
  woman whom you knew. Society did justice to her conventional
  charm, for that is what pleases society; but I knew secretly her
  precious soul, I could cherish the mother who made my childhood a
  joy without bitterness, and I knew why I cherished her. Was not
  that to love doubly? Yes, I loved her, I feared her, I respected
  her; yet nothing oppressed my heart, neither fear nor respect. I
  was all in all to her; she was all in all to me. For nineteen
  happy years, without a care, my soul, solitary amid the world
  which muttered round me, reflected only her pure image; my heart
  beat for her and through her. I was scrupulously pious; I found
  pleasure in being innocent before God. My mother cultivated all
  noble and self-respecting sentiments in me. Ah! it gives me
  happiness to tell you, Jules, that I now know I was indeed a young
  girl, and that I came to you virgin in heart.

  “When I left that absolute solitude, when, for the first time, I
  braided my hair and crowned it with almond blossoms, when I added,
  with delight, a few satin knots to my white dress, thinking of the
  world I was to see, and which I was curious to see--Jules, that
  innocent and modest coquetry was done for you! Yes, as I entered
  the world, I saw _you_ first of all. Your face, I remarked it; it
  stood out from the rest; your person pleased me; your voice, your
  manners all inspired me with pleasant presentiments. When you came
  up, when you spoke to me, the color on your forehead, the tremble
  in your voice,--that moment gave me memories with which I throb as
  I now write to you, as I now, for the last time, think of them.
  Our love was at first the keenest of sympathies, but it was soon
  discovered by each of us and then, as speedily, shared; just as,
  in after times, we have both equally felt and shared innumerable
  happinesses. From that moment my mother was only second in my
  heart. Next, I was yours, all yours. There is my life, and all my
  life, dear husband.

  “And here is what remains for me to tell you. One evening, a few
  days before my mother’s death, she revealed to me the secret of
  her life,--not without burning tears. I have loved you better
  since the day I learned from the priest as he absolved my mother
  that there are passions condemned by the world and by the Church.
  But surely God will not be severe when they are the sins of souls
  as tender as that of my mother; only, that dear woman could never
  bring herself to repent. She loved much, Jules; she was all love.
  So I have prayed daily for her, but never judged her.

  “That night I learned the cause of her deep maternal tenderness;
  then I also learned that there was in Paris a man whose life and
  whose love centred on me; that your fortune was his doing, and
  that he loved you. I learned also that he was exiled from society
  and bore a tarnished name; but that he was more unhappy for me,
  for us, than for himself. My mother was all his comfort; she was
  dying, and I promised to take her place. With all the ardor of a
  soul whose feelings had never been perverted, I saw only the
  happiness of softening the bitterness of my mother’s last moments,
  and I pledged myself to continue her work of secret charity,--the
  charity of the heart. The first time that I saw my father was
  beside the bed where my mother had just expired. When he raised
  his tearful eyes, it was to see in me a revival of his dead hopes.
  I had sworn, not to tell a lie, but to keep silence; and that
  silence what woman could have broken it?

  “There is my fault, Jules,--a fault which I expiate by death. I
  doubted you. But fear is so natural to a woman; above all, a woman
  who knows what it is that she may lose. I trembled for our love.
  My father’s secret seemed to me the death of my happiness; and the
  more I loved, the more I feared. I dared not avow this feeling to
  my father; it would have wounded him, and in his situation a wound
  was agony. But, without a word from me, he shared my fears. That
  fatherly heart trembled for my happiness as much as I trembled for
  myself; but it dared not speak, obeying the same delicacy that
  kept me mute. Yes, Jules, I believed that you could not love the
  daughter of Gratien Bourignard as you loved your Clemence. Without
  that terror could I have kept back anything from you,--you who
  live in every fold of my heart?

  “The day when that odious, unfortunate young officer spoke to you,
  I was forced to lie. That day, for the second time in my life, I
  knew what pain was; that pain has steadily increased until this
  moment, when I speak with you for the last time. What matters now
  my father’s position? You know all. I could, by the help of my
  love, have conquered my illness and borne its sufferings; but I
  cannot stifle the voice of doubt. Is it not probable that my
  origin would affect the purity of your love and weaken it,
  diminish it? That fear nothing has been able to quench in me.
  There, Jules, is the cause of my death. I cannot live fearing a
  word, a look,--a word you may never say, a look you may never
  give; but, I cannot help it, I fear them. I die beloved; there is
  my consolation.

  “I have known, for the last three years, that my father and his
  friends have well-nigh moved the world to deceive the world. That
  I might have a station in life, they have bought a dead man, a
  reputation, a fortune, so that a living man might live again,
  restored; and all this for you, for us. We were never to have
  known of it. Well, my death will save my father from that
  falsehood, for he will not survive me.

  “Farewell, Jules, my heart is all here. To show you my love in its
  agony of fear, is not that bequeathing my whole soul to you? I
  could never have the strength to speak to you; I have only enough
  to write. I have just confessed to God the sins of my life. I have
  promised to fill my mind with the King of Heaven only; but I must
  confess to him who is, for me, the whole of earth. Alas! shall I
  not be pardoned for this last sigh between the life that was and
  the life that shall be? Farewell, my Jules, my loved one! I go to
  God, with whom is Love without a cloud, to whom you will follow
  me. There, before his throne, united forever, we may love each
  other throughout the ages. This hope alone can comfort me. If I am
  worthy of being there at once, I will follow you through life. My
  soul shall bear your company; it will wrap you about, for _you_
  must stay here still,--ah! here below. Lead a holy life that you
  may the more surely come to me. You can do such good upon this
  earth! Is it not an angel’s mission for the suffering soul to shed
  happiness about him,--to give to others that which he has not? I
  bequeath you to the Unhappy. Their smiles, their tears, are the
  only ones of which I cannot be jealous. We shall find a charm in
  sweet beneficence. Can we not live together still if you would
  join my name--your Clemence--in these good works?

  “After loving as we have loved, there is naught but God, Jules.
  God does not lie; God never betrays. Adore him only, I charge you!
  Lead those who suffer up to him; comfort the sorrowing members of
  his Church. Farewell, dear soul that I have filled! I know you;
  you will never love again. I may die happy in the thought that
  makes all women happy. Yes, my grave will be your heart. After
  this childhood I have just related, has not my life flowed on
  within that heart? Dead, you will never drive me forth. I am proud
  of that rare life! You will know me only in the flower of my
  youth; I leave you regrets without disillusions. Jules, it is a
  happy death.

  “You, who have so fully understood me, may I ask one thing more of
  you,--superfluous request, perhaps, the fulfilment of a woman’s
  fancy, the prayer of a jealousy we all must feel,--I pray you to
  burn all that especially belonged to _us_, destroy our chamber,
  annihilate all that is a memory of our happiness.

  “Once more, farewell,--the last farewell! It is all love, and so
  will be my parting thought, my parting breath.”


When Jules had read that letter there came into his heart one of those
wild frenzies of which it is impossible to describe the awful anguish.
All sorrows are individual; their effects are not subjected to any fixed
rule. Certain men will stop their ears to hear nothing; some women close
their eyes hoping never to see again; great and splendid souls are met
with who fling themselves into sorrow as into an abyss. In the matter of
despair, all is true.




CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION


Jules escaped from his brother’s house and returned home, wishing
to pass the night beside his wife, and see till the last moment that
celestial creature. As he walked along with an indifference to life
known only to those who have reached the last degree of wretchedness,
he thought of how, in India, the law ordained that widows should die; he
longed to die. He was not yet crushed; the fever of his grief was still
upon him. He reached his home and went up into the sacred chamber; he
saw his Clemence on the bed of death, beautiful, like a saint, her hair
smoothly laid upon her forehead, her hands joined, her body wrapped
already in its shroud. Tapers were lighted, a priest was praying,
Josephine kneeling in a corner, wept, and, near the bed, were two men.
One was Ferragus. He stood erect, motionless, gazing at his daughter
with dry eyes; his head you might have taken for bronze: he did not see
Jules.

The other man was Jacquet,--Jacquet, to whom Madame Jules had been ever
kind. Jacquet felt for her one of those respectful friendships which
rejoice the untroubled heart; a gentle passion; love without its desires
and its storms. He had come to pay his debt of tears, to bid a long
adieu to the wife of his friend, to kiss, for the first time, the icy
brow of the woman he had tacitly made his sister.

All was silence. Here death was neither terrible as in the churches, nor
pompous as it makes its way along the streets; no, it was death in the
home, a tender death; here were pomps of the heart, tears drawn from the
eyes of all. Jules sat down beside Jacquet and pressed his hand; then,
without uttering a word, all these persons remained as they were till
morning.

When daylight paled the tapers, Jacquet, foreseeing the painful scenes
which would then take place, drew Jules away into another room. At this
moment the husband looked at the father, and Ferragus looked at
Jules. The two sorrows arraigned each other, measured each other, and
comprehended each other in that look. A flash of fury shone for an
instant in the eyes of Ferragus.

“You killed her,” thought he.

“Why was I distrusted?” seemed the answer of the husband.

The scene was one that might have passed between two tigers recognizing
the futility of a struggle and, after a moment’s hesitation, turning
away, without even a roar.

“Jacquet,” said Jules, “have you attended to everything?”

“Yes, to everything,” replied his friend, “but a man had forestalled me
who had ordered and paid for all.”

“He tears his daughter from me!” cried the husband, with the violence of
despair.

Jules rushed back to his wife’s room; but the father was there no
longer. Clemence had now been placed in a leaden coffin, and workmen
were employed in soldering the cover. Jules returned, horrified by the
sight; the sound of the hammers the men were using made him mechanically
burst into tears.

“Jacquet,” he said, “out of this dreadful night one idea has come to
me, only one, but one I must make a reality at any price. I cannot let
Clemence stay in any cemetery in Paris. I wish to burn her,--to gather
her ashes and keep her with me. Say nothing of this, but manage on my
behalf to have it done. I am going to _her_ chamber, where I shall stay
until the time has come to go. You alone may come in there to tell me
what you have done. Go, and spare nothing.”

During the morning, Madame Jules, after lying in a mortuary chapel at
the door of her house, was taken to Saint-Roch. The church was hung with
black throughout. The sort of luxury thus displayed had drawn a crowd;
for in Paris all things are sights, even true grief. There are people
who stand at their windows to see how a son deplores a mother as he
follows her body; there are others who hire commodious seats to see how
a head is made to fall. No people in the world have such insatiate eyes
as the Parisians. On this occasion, inquisitive minds were particularly
surprised to see the six lateral chapels at Saint-Roch also hung in
black. Two men in mourning were listening to a mortuary mass said in
each chapel. In the chancel no other persons but Monsieur Desmarets,
the notary, and Jacquet were present; the servants of the household were
outside the screen. To church loungers there was something inexplicable
in so much pomp and so few mourners. But Jules had been determined that
no indifferent persons should be present at the ceremony.

High mass was celebrated with the sombre magnificence of funeral
services. Beside the ministers in ordinary of Saint-Roch, thirteen
priests from other parishes were present. Perhaps never did the _Dies
irae_ produce upon Christians, assembled by chance, by curiosity, and
thirsting for emotions, an effect so profound, so nervously glacial as
that now caused by this hymn when the eight voices of the precentors,
accompanied by the voices of the priests and the choir-boys, intoned it
alternately. From the six lateral chapels twelve other childish voices
rose shrilly in grief, mingling with the choir voices lamentably. From
all parts of the church this mourning issued; cries of anguish responded
to the cries of fear. That terrible music was the voice of sorrows
hidden from the world, of secret friendships weeping for the dead.
Never, in any human religion, have the terrors of the soul, violently
torn from the body and stormily shaken in presence of the fulminating
majesty of God, been rendered with such force. Before that clamor of
clamors all artists and their most passionate compositions must bow
humiliated. No, nothing can stand beside that hymn, which sums all human
passions, gives them a galvanic life beyond the coffin, and leaves them,
palpitating still, before the living and avenging God. These cries of
childhood, mingling with the tones of older voices, including thus in
the Song of Death all human life and its developments, recalling the
sufferings of the cradle, swelling to the griefs of other ages in
the stronger male voices and the quavering of the priests,--all this
strident harmony, big with lightning and thunderbolts, does it not speak
with equal force to the daring imagination, the coldest heart, nay, to
philosophers themselves? As we hear it, we think God speaks; the vaulted
arches of no church are mere material; they have a voice, they tremble,
they scatter fear by the might of their echoes. We think we see
unnumbered dead arising and holding out their hands. It is no more a
father, a wife, a child,--humanity itself is rising from its dust.

It is impossible to judge of the catholic, apostolic, and Roman faith,
unless the soul has known that deepest grief of mourning for a loved one
lying beneath the pall; unless it has felt the emotions that fill the
heart, uttered by that Hymn of Despair, by those cries that crush the
mind, by that sacred fear augmenting strophe by strophe, ascending
heavenward, which terrifies, belittles, and elevates the soul, and
leaves within our minds, as the last sound ceases, a consciousness
of immortality. We have met and struggled with the vast idea of the
Infinite. After that, all is silent in the church. No word is said;
sceptics themselves _know not what they are feeling_. Spanish genius
alone was able to bring this untold majesty to untold griefs.

When the solemn ceremony was over, twelve men came from the six chapels
and stood around the coffin to hear the song of hope which the Church
intones for the Christian soul before the human form is buried. Then,
each man entered alone a mourning-coach; Jacquet and Monsieur Desmarets
took the thirteenth; the servants followed on foot. An hour later, they
were at the summit of that cemetery popularly called Pere-Lachaise. The
unknown twelve men stood in a circle round the grave, where the coffin
had been laid in presence of a crowd of loiterers gathered from all
parts of this public garden. After a few short prayers the priest threw
a handful of earth on the remains of this woman, and the grave-diggers,
having asked for their fee, made haste to fill the grave in order to dig
another.

Here this history seems to end; but perhaps it would be incomplete if,
after giving a rapid sketch of Parisian life, and following certain of
its capricious undulations, the effects of death were omitted. Death in
Paris is unlike death in any other capital; few persons know the trials
of true grief in its struggle with civilization, and the government of
Paris. Perhaps, also, Monsieur Jules and Ferragus XXIII. may have proved
sufficiently interesting to make a few words on their after life not
entirely out of place. Besides, some persons like to be told all, and
wish, as one of our cleverest critics has remarked, to know by what
chemical process oil was made to burn in Aladdin’s lamp.

Jacquet, being a government employee, naturally applied to the
authorities for permission to exhume the body of Madame Jules and burn
it. He went to see the prefect of police, under whose protection the
dead sleep. That functionary demanded a petition. The blank was brought
that gives to sorrow its proper administrative form; it was necessary to
employ the bureaucratic jargon to express the wishes of a man so crushed
that words, perhaps, were lacking to him, and it was also necessary to
coldly and briefly repeat on the margin the nature of the request,
which was done in these words: “The petitioner respectfully asks for the
incineration of his wife.”

When the official charged with making the report to the Councillor of
State and prefect of police read that marginal note, explaining the
object of the petition, and couched, as requested, in the plainest
terms, he said:--

“This is a serious matter! my report cannot be ready under eight days.”

Jules, to whom Jacquet was obliged to speak of this delay, comprehended
the words that Ferragus had said in his hearing, “I’ll burn Paris!”
 Nothing seemed to him now more natural than to annihilate that
receptacle of monstrous things.

“But,” he said to Jacquet, “you must go to the minister of the Interior,
and get your minister to speak to him.”

Jacquet went to the minister of the Interior, and asked an audience; it
was granted, but the time appointed was two weeks later. Jacquet was a
persistent man. He travelled from bureau to bureau, and finally reached
the private secretary of the minister of the Interior, to whom he had
made the private secretary of his own minister say a word. These high
protectors aiding, he obtained for the morrow a second interview, in
which, being armed with a line from the autocrat of Foreign affairs to
the pacha of the Interior, Jacquet hoped to carry the matter by assault.
He was ready with reasons, and answers to peremptory questions,--in
short, he was armed at all points; but he failed.

“This matter does not concern me,” said the minister; “it belongs to the
prefect of police. Besides, there is no law giving a husband any legal
right to the body of his wife, nor to fathers those of their children.
The matter is serious. There are questions of public utility involved
which will have to be examined. The interests of the city of Paris might
suffer. Therefore if the matter depended on me, which it does not, I
could not decide _hic et nunc_; I should require a report.”

A _report_ is to the present system of administration what limbo
or hades is to Christianity. Jacquet knew very well the mania for
“reports”; he had not waited until this occasion to groan at that
bureaucratic absurdity. He knew that since the invasion into public
business of the _Report_ (an administrative revolution consummated
in 1804) there was never known a single minister who would take upon
himself to have an opinion or to decide the slightest matter, unless
that opinion or matter had been winnowed, sifted, and plucked to bits
by the paper-spoilers, quill-drivers, and splendid intellects of his
particular bureau. Jacquet--he was one of those who are worthy of
Plutarch as biographer--saw that he had made a mistake in his management
of the affair, and had, in fact, rendered it impossible by trying to
proceed legally. The thing he should have done was to have taken Madame
Jules to one of Desmaret’s estates in the country; and there, under
the good-natured authority of some village mayor to have gratified the
sorrowful longing of his friend. Law, constitutional and administrative,
begets nothing; it is a barren monster for peoples, for kings, and for
private interests. But the peoples decipher no principles but those that
are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it
flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty,
returned home reflecting on the benefits of arbitrary power.

When he went with his report to Jules, he found it necessary to deceive
him, for the unhappy man was in a high fever, unable to leave his bed.
The minister of the Interior mentioned, at a ministerial dinner that
same evening, the singular fancy of a Parisian in wishing to burn his
wife after the manner of the Romans. The clubs of Paris took up the
subject, and talked for a while of the burials of antiquity. Ancient
things were just then becoming a fashion, and some persons declared that
it would be a fine thing to re-establish, for distinguished persons, the
funeral pyre. This opinion had its defenders and its detractors. Some
said that there were too many such personages, and the price of wood
would be enormously increased by such a custom; moreover, it would
be absurd to see our ancestors in their urns in the procession at
Longchamps. And if the urns were valuable, they were likely some day
to be sold at auction, full of respectable ashes, or seized by
creditors,--a race of men who respected nothing. The other side made
answer that our ancestors were much safer in urns than at Pere-Lachaise,
for before very long the city of Paris would be compelled to order a
Saint-Bartholomew against its dead, who were invading the neighboring
country, and threatening to invade the territory of Brie. It was, in
short, one of those futile but witty discussions which sometimes cause
deep and painful wounds. Happily for Jules, he knew nothing of the
conversations, the witty speeches, and arguments which his sorrow had
furnished to the tongues of Paris.

The prefect of police was indignant that Monsieur Jacquet had appealed
to a minister to avoid the wise delays of the commissioners of the
public highways; for the exhumation of Madame Jules was a question
belonging to that department. The police bureau was doing its best to
reply promptly to the petition; one appeal was quite sufficient to set
the office in motion, and once in motion matters would go far. But as
for the administration, that might take the case before the Council of
state,--a machine very difficult indeed to move.

After the second day Jacquet was obliged to tell his friend that he must
renounce his desire, because, in a city where the number of tears shed
on black draperies is tariffed, where the laws recognize seven classes
of funerals, where the scrap of ground to hold the dead is sold at its
weight in silver, where grief is worked for what it is worth, where the
prayers of the Church are costly, and the vestry claim payment for extra
voices in the _Dies irae_,--all attempt to get out of the rut prescribed
by the authorities for sorrow is useless and impossible.

“It would have been to me,” said Jules, “a comfort in my misery. I meant
to have died away from here, and I hoped to hold her in my arms in a
distant grave. I did not know that bureaucracy could send its claws into
our very coffins.”

He now wished to see if room had been left for him beside his wife. The
two friends went to the cemetery. When they reached it they found (as
at the doors of museums, galleries, and coach-offices) _ciceroni_, who
proposed to guide them through the labyrinth of Pere-Lachaise. Neither
Jules nor Jacquet could have found the spot where Clemence lay. Ah,
frightful anguish! They went to the lodge to consult the porter of the
cemetery. The dead have a porter, and there are hours when the dead are
“not receiving.” It is necessary to upset all the rules and regulations
of the upper and lower police to obtain permission to weep at night, in
silence and solitude, over the grave where a loved one lies. There’s a
rule for summer and a rule for winter about this.

Certainly, of all the porters in Paris, the porter of Pere-Lachaise is
the luckiest. In the first place, he has no gate-cord to pull; then,
instead of a lodge, he has a house,--an establishment which is not
quite ministerial, although a vast number of persons come under his
administration, and a good many employees. And this governor of the
dead has a salary, with emoluments, and acts under powers of which
none complain; he plays despot at his ease. His lodge is not a place of
business, though it has departments where the book-keeping of receipts,
expenses, and profits, is carried on. The man is not a _suisse_, nor a
concierge, nor actually a porter. The gate which admits the dead stands
wide open; and though there are monuments and buildings to be cared
for, he is not a care-taker. In short, he is an indefinable anomaly, an
authority which participates in all, and yet is nothing,--an authority
placed, like the dead on whom it is based, outside of all. Nevertheless,
this exceptional man grows out of the city of Paris,--that chimerical
creation like the ship which is its emblem, that creature of reason
moving on a thousand paws which are seldom unanimous in motion.

This guardian of the cemetery may be called a concierge who has reached
the condition of a functionary, not soluble by dissolution! His place
is far from being a sinecure. He does not allow any one to be buried
without a permit; he must count his dead. He points out to you in this
vast field the six feet square of earth where you will one day put all
you love, or all you hate, a mistress, or a cousin. Yes, remember
this: all the feelings and emotions of Paris come to end here, at
this porter’s lodge, where they are administrationized. This man has
registers in which his dead are booked; they are in their graves, and
also on his records. He has under him keepers, gardeners, grave-diggers,
and their assistants. He is a personage. Mourning hearts do not speak to
him at first. He does not appear at all except in serious cases, such as
one corpse mistaken for another, a murdered body, an exhumation, a
dead man coming to life. The bust of the reigning king is in his hall;
possibly he keeps the late royal, imperial, and quasi-royal busts
in some cupboard,--a sort of little Pere-Lachaise all ready for
revolutions. In short, he is a public man, an excellent man, good
husband and good father,--epitaph apart. But so many diverse sentiments
have passed before him on biers; he has seen so many tears, true and
false; he has beheld sorrow under so many aspects and on so many faces;
he has heard such endless thousands of eternal woes,--that to him sorrow
has come to be nothing more than a stone an inch thick, four feet long,
and twenty-four inches wide. As for regrets, they are the annoyances of
his office; he neither breakfasts nor dines without first wiping off
the rain of an inconsolable affliction. He is kind and tender to other
feelings; he will weep over a stage-hero, over Monsieur Germeuil in the
“Auberge des Adrets,” the man with the butter-colored breeches, murdered
by Macaire; but his heart is ossified in the matter of real dead men.
Dead men are ciphers, numbers, to him; it is his business to organize
death. Yet he does meet, three times in a century, perhaps, with an
occasion when his part becomes sublime, and then he _is_ sublime through
every hour of his day,--in times of pestilence.

When Jacquet approached him this absolute monarch was evidently out of
temper.

“I told you,” he was saying, “to water the flowers from the rue Massena
to the place Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely. You paid no attention
to me! _Sac-a-papier_! suppose the relations should take it into their
heads to come here to-day because the weather is fine, what would they
say to me? They’d shriek as if they were burned; they’d say horrid
things of us, and calumniate us--”

“Monsieur,” said Jacquet, “we want to know where Madame Jules is
buried.”

“Madame Jules _who_?” he asked. “We’ve had three Madame Jules within the
last week. Ah,” he said, interrupting himself, “here comes the funeral
of Monsieur le Baron de Maulincour! A fine procession, that! He has soon
followed his grandmother. Some families, when they begin to go, rattle
down like a wager. Lots of bad blood in Parisians.”

“Monsieur,” said Jacquet, touching him on the arm, “the person I spoke
of is Madame Jules Desmarets, the wife of the broker of that name.”

“Ah, I know!” he replied, looking at Jacquet. “Wasn’t it a funeral with
thirteen mourning coaches, and only one mourner in the twelve first? It
was so droll we all noticed it--”

“Monsieur, take care, Monsieur Desmarets is with me; he might hear you,
and what you say is not seemly.”

“I beg pardon, monsieur! you are quite right. Excuse me, I took you for
heirs. Monsieur,” he continued, after consulting a plan of the cemetery,
“Madame Jules is in the rue Marechal Lefebre, alley No. 4, between
Mademoiselle Raucourt, of the Comedie-Francaise, and Monsieur
Moreau-Malvin, a butcher, for whom a handsome tomb in white marble has
been ordered, which will be one of the finest in the cemetery--”

“Monsieur,” said Jacquet, interrupting him, “that does not help us.”

“True,” said the official, looking round him. “Jean,” he cried, to a man
whom he saw at a little distance, “conduct these gentlemen to the
grave of Madame Jules Desmarets, the broker’s wife. You know where it
is,--near to Mademoiselle Raucourt, the tomb where there’s a bust.”

The two friends followed the guide; but they did not reach the steep
path which leads to the upper part of the cemetery without having
to pass through a score of proposals and requests, made, with honied
softness, by the touts of marble-workers, iron-founders, and monumental
sculptors.

“If monsieur would like to order _something_, we would do it on the most
reasonable terms.”

Jacquet was fortunate enough to be able to spare his friend the hearing
of these proposals so agonizing to bleeding hearts; and presently they
reached the resting-place. When Jules beheld the earth so recently dug,
into which the masons had stuck stakes to mark the place for the stone
posts required to support the iron railing, he turned, and leaned upon
Jacquet’s shoulder, raising himself now and again to cast long glances
at the clay mound where he was forced to leave the remains of the being
in and by whom he still lived.

“How miserably she lies there!” he said.

“But she is not there,” said Jacquet, “she is in your memory. Come, let
us go; let us leave this odious cemetery, where the dead are adorned
like women for a ball.”

“Suppose we take her away?”

“Can it be done?”

“All things can be done!” cried Jules. “So, I shall lie there,” he
added, after a pause. “There is room enough.”

Jacquet finally succeeded in getting him to leave the great enclosure,
divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments, in
which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as cold
as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved their
regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there engraved in black
letters, epigrams reproving the curious, _concetti_, wittily turned
farewells, rendezvous given at which only one side appears, pretentious
biographies, glitter, rubbish and tinsel. Here the floriated thyrsus,
there a lance-head, farther on Egyptian urns, now and then a few
cannon; on all sides the emblems of professions, and every style of
art,--Moorish, Greek, Gothic,--friezes, ovules, paintings, vases,
guardian-angels, temples, together with innumerable _immortelles_, and
dead rose-bushes. It is a forlorn comedy! It is another Paris, with its
streets, its signs, its industries, and its lodgings; but a Paris seen
through the diminishing end of an opera-glass, a microscopic Paris
reduced to the littleness of shadows, spectres, dead men, a human race
which no longer has anything great about it, except its vanity. There
Jules saw at his feet, in the long valley of the Seine, between the
slopes of Vaugirard and Meudon and those of Belleville and Montmartre,
the real Paris, wrapped in a misty blue veil produced by smoke, which
the sunlight tendered at that moment diaphanous. He glanced with a
constrained eye at those forty thousand houses, and said, pointing to
the space comprised between the column of the Place Vendome and the
gilded cupola of the Invalides:--

“She was wrenched from me there by the fatal curiosity of that world
which excites itself and meddles solely for excitement and occupation.”

Twelve miles from where they were, on the banks of the Seine, in a
modest village lying on the slope of a hill of that long hilly basin the
middle of which great Paris stirs like a child in its cradle, a death
scene was taking place, far indeed removed from Parisian pomps, with no
accompaniment of torches or tapers or mourning-coaches, without prayers
of the Church, in short, a death in all simplicity. Here are the facts:
The body of a young girl was found early in the morning, stranded on the
river-bank in the slime and reeds of the Seine. Men employed in dredging
sand saw it as they were getting into their frail boat on their way to
their work.

“_Tiens_! fifty francs earned!” said one of them.

“True,” said the other.

They approached the body.

“A handsome girl! We had better go and make our statement.”

And the two dredgers, after covering the body with their jackets, went
to the house of the village mayor, who was much embarrassed at having to
make out the legal papers necessitated by this discovery.

The news of this event spread with the telegraphic rapidity peculiar to
regions where social communications have no distractions, where gossip,
scandal, calumny, in short, the social tale which feasts the world
has no break of continuity from one boundary to another. Before
long, persons arriving at the mayor’s office released him from all
embarrassment. They were able to convert the _proces-verbal_ into a mere
certificate of death, by recognizing the body as that of the Demoiselle
Ida Gruget, corset-maker, living rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number
14. The judiciary police of Paris arrived, and the mother, bearing her
daughter’s last letter. Amid the mother’s moans, a doctor certified
to death by asphyxia, through the injection of black blood into the
pulmonary system,--which settled the matter. The inquest over, and the
certificates signed, by six o’clock the same evening authority was given
to bury the grisette. The rector of the parish, however, refused to
receive her into the church or to pray for her. Ida Gruget was
therefore wrapped in a shroud by an old peasant-woman, put into a common
pine-coffin, and carried to the village cemetery by four men, followed
by a few inquisitive peasant-women, who talked about the death with
wonder mingled with some pity.

The widow Gruget was charitably taken in by an old lady who prevented
her from following the sad procession of her daughter’s funeral. A man
of triple functions, the bell-ringer, beadle, and grave-digger of the
parish, had dug a grave in the half-acre cemetery behind the church,--a
church well known, a classic church, with a square tower and pointed
roof covered with slate, supported on the outside by strong corner
buttresses. Behind the apse of the chancel, lay the cemetery, enclosed
with a dilapidated wall,--a little field full of hillocks; no marble
monuments, no visitors, but surely in every furrow, tears and true
regrets, which were lacking to Ida Gruget. She was cast into a corner
full of tall grass and brambles. After the coffin had been laid in
this field, so poetic in its simplicity, the grave-digger found himself
alone, for night was coming on. While filling the grave, he stopped now
and then to gaze over the wall along the road. He was standing thus,
resting on his spade, and looking at the Seine, which had brought him
the body.

“Poor girl!” cried the voice of a man who suddenly appeared.

“How you made me jump, monsieur,” said the grave-digger.

“Was any service held over the body you are burying?”

“No, monsieur. Monsieur le cure wasn’t willing. This is the first person
buried here who didn’t belong to the parish. Everybody knows everybody
else in this place. Does monsieur--Why, he’s gone!”

Some days had elapsed when a man dressed in black called at the house
of Monsieur Jules Desmarets, and without asking to see him carried up to
the chamber of his wife a large porphyry vase, on which were inscribed
the words:--


                     INVITA LEGE
                   CONJUGI MOERENTI
                   FILIOLAE CINERES
                      RESTITUIT
                AMICIS XII. JUVANTIBUS
                  MORIBUNDUS PATER.


“What a man!” cried Jules, bursting into tears.

Eight days sufficed the husband to obey all the wishes of his wife, and
to arrange his own affairs. He sold his practice to a brother of Martin
Falleix, and left Paris while the authorities were still discussing
whether it was lawful for a citizen to dispose of the body of his wife.

              *     *     *     *     *

Who has not encountered on the boulevards of Paris, at the turn of a
street, or beneath the arcades of the Palais-Royal, or in any part of
the world where chance may offer him the sight, a being, man or woman,
at whose aspect a thousand confused thoughts spring into his mind?
At that sight we are suddenly interested, either by features of some
fantastic conformation which reveal an agitated life, or by a singular
effect of the whole person, produced by gestures, air, gait, clothes; or
by some deep, intense look; or by other inexpressible signs which seize
our minds suddenly and forcibly without our being able to explain even
to ourselves the cause of our emotion. The next day other thoughts and
other images have carried out of sight that passing dream. But if we
meet the same personage again, either passing at some fixed hour, like
the clerk of a mayor’s office, or wandering about the public promenades,
like those individuals who seem to be a sort of furniture of the streets
of Paris, and who are always to be found in public places, at first
representations or noted restaurants,--then this being fastens himself
or herself on our memory, and remains there like the first volume of a
novel the end of which is lost. We are tempted to question this unknown
person, and say, “Who are you?” “Why are you lounging here?” “By what
right do you wear that pleated ruffle, that faded waistcoat, and carry
that cane with an ivory top; why those blue spectacles; for what reason
do you cling to that cravat of a dead and gone fashion?” Among these
wandering creations some belong to the species of the Greek Hermae;
they say nothing to the soul; _they are there_, and that is all. Why? is
known to none. Such figure are a type of those used by sculptors for
the four Seasons, for Commerce, for Plenty, etc. Some others--former
lawyers, old merchants, elderly generals--move and walk, and yet seem
stationary. Like old trees that are half uprooted by the current of a
river, they seem never to take part in the torrent of Paris, with its
youthful, active crowd. It is impossible to know if their friends
have forgotten to bury them, or whether they have escaped out of their
coffins. At any rate, they have reached the condition of semi-fossils.

One of these Parisian Melmoths had come within a few days into a
neighborhood of sober, quiet people, who, when the weather is fine,
are invariably to be found in the space which lies between the
south entrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the
Observatoire,--a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris.
There, Paris is no longer; and there, Paris still lingers. The spot is
a mingling of street, square, boulevard, fortification, garden, avenue,
high-road, province, and metropolis; certainly, all of that is to be
found there, and yet the place is nothing of all that,--it is a desert.
Around this spot without a name stand the Foundling hospital,
the Bourbe, the Cochin hospital, the Capucines, the hospital
La Rochefoucauld, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the hospital of the
Val-de-Grace; in short, all the vices and all the misfortunes of
Paris find their asylum there. And (that nothing may lack in this
philanthropic centre) Science there studies the tides and longitudes,
Monsieur de Chateaubriand has erected the Marie-Therese Infirmary, and
the Carmelites have founded a convent. The great events of life are
represented by bells which ring incessantly through this desert,--for
the mother giving birth, for the babe that is born, for the vice that
succumbs, for the toiler who dies, for the virgin who prays, for the old
man shaking with cold, for genius self-deluded. And a few steps off
is the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, where, hour after hour, the sorry
funerals of the faubourg Saint-Marceau wend their way. This esplanade,
which commands a view of Paris, has been taken possession of by
bowl-players; it is, in fact, a sort of bowling green frequented by old
gray faces, belonging to kindly, worthy men, who seem to continue the
race of our ancestors, whose countenances must only be compared with
those of their surroundings.

The man who had become, during the last few days, an inhabitant of this
desert region, proved an assiduous attendant at these games of bowls;
and must, undoubtedly, be considered the most striking creature of these
various groups, who (if it is permissible to liken Parisians to
the different orders of zoology) belonged to the genus mollusk. The
new-comer kept sympathetic step with the _cochonnet_,--the little
bowl which serves as a goal and on which the interest of the game must
centre. He leaned against a tree when the _cochonnet_ stopped; then,
with the same attention that a dog gives to his master’s gestures, he
looked at the other bowls flying through the air, or rolling along the
ground. You might have taken him for the weird and watchful genii of the
_cochonnet_. He said nothing; and the bowl-players--the most fanatic
men that can be encountered among the sectarians of any faith--had never
asked the reason of his dogged silence; in fact, the most observing of
them thought him deaf and dumb.

When it happened that the distances between the bowls and the
_cochonnet_ had to be measured, the cane of this silent being was used
as a measure, the players coming up and taking it from the icy hands
of the old man and returning it without a word or even a sign of
friendliness. The loan of his cane seemed a servitude to which he
had negatively consented. When a shower fell, he stayed near the
_cochonnet_, the slave of the bowls, and the guardian of the unfinished
game. Rain affected him no more than the fine weather did; he was, like
the players themselves, an intermediary species between a Parisian
who has the lowest intellect of his kind and an animal which has the
highest.

In other respects, pallid and shrunken, indifferent to his own person,
vacant in mind, he often came bareheaded, showing his sparse white
hair, and his square, yellow, bald skull, like the knee of a beggar seen
through his tattered trousers. His mouth was half-open, no ideas were
in his glance, no precise object appeared in his movements; he never
smiled; he never raised his eyes to heaven, but kept them habitually on
the ground, where he seemed to be looking for something. At four o’clock
an old woman arrived, to take him Heaven knows where; which she did by
towing him along by the arm, as a young girl drags a wilful goat which
still wants to browse by the wayside. This old man was a horrible thing
to see.

In the afternoon of the day when Jules Desmarets left Paris, his
travelling-carriage, in which he was alone, passed rapidly through the
rue de l’Est, and came out upon the esplanade of the Observatoire at the
moment when the old man, leaning against a tree, had allowed his cane
to be taken from his hand amid the noisy vociferations of the players,
pacifically irritated. Jules, thinking that he recognized that face,
felt an impulse to stop, and at the same instant the carriage came to a
standstill; for the postilion, hemmed in by some handcarts, had too much
respect for the game to call upon the players to make way for him.

“It is he!” said Jules, beholding in that human wreck, Ferragus XXIII.,
chief of the Devorants. Then, after a pause, he added, “How he loved
her!--Go on, postilion.”




ADDENDUM

  Note: Ferragus is the first part of a trilogy. Part two is
  entitled The Duchesse de Langeais and part three is The Girl with
  the Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all three stories
  are usually combined under the title The Thirteen.

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph  The Girl with the Golden Eyes

Desmartes, Jules  Cesar Birotteau

Desmartes, Madame Jules  Cesar Birotteau

Desplein  The Atheist’s Mass
  Cousin Pons
  Lost Illusions
  The Government Clerks
  Pierrette
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  The Seamy Side of History
  Modeste Mignon
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  Honorine

Gruget, Madame Etienne  The Government Clerks
  A Bachelor’s Establishment

Haudry (doctor)  Cesar Birotteau
  A Bachelor’s Establishment
  The Seamy Side of History
  Cousin Pons

Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de  Father Goriot
  The Duchesse of Langeais

Marsay, Henri de  The Duchesse of Langeais
  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
  The Unconscious Humorists
  Another Study of Woman
  The Lily of the Valley
  Father Goriot
  Jealousies of a Country Town
  Ursule Mirouet
  A Marriage Settlement
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  Letters of Two Brides
  The Ball at Sceaux
  Modeste Mignon
  The Secrets of a Princess
  The Gondreville Mystery
  A Daughter of Eve

Maulincour, Baronne de  A Marriage Settlement

Meynardie, Madame  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Nucingen, Baronne Delphine de  Father Goriot
  Eugenie Grandet
  Cesar Birotteau
  Melmoth Reconciled
  Lost Illusions
  A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
  The Commission in Lunacy
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  Modeste Mignon
  The Firm of Nucingen
  Another Study of Woman
  A Daughter of Eve
  The Member for Arcis

Pamiers, Vidame de  The Duchesse of Langeais
  Jealousies of a Country Town

Ronquerolles, Marquis de  The Imaginary Mistress
  The Duchess of Langeais
  The Girl with the Golden Eyes
  The Peasantry
  Ursule Mirouet
  A Woman of Thirty
  Another Study of Woman
  The Member for Arcis

Serizy, Comtesse de  A Start in Life
  The Duchesse of Langeais
  Ursule Mirouet
  A Woman of Thirty
  Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
  Another Study of Woman
  The Imaginary Mistress





II. THE DUCHESSE OF LANGEAIS



Translated by Ellen Marriage



         To Franz Liszt



In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands a
convent of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, where the rule instituted
by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first rigor of the
reformation brought about by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as
this may seem, it is none the less true. Almost every religious house
in the Peninsula, or in Europe for that matter, was either destroyed or
disorganized by the outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic
wars; but as this island was protected through those times by the
English fleet, its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants were secure
from the general trouble and spoliation. The storms of many kinds which
shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century spent their
force before they reached those cliffs at so short a distance from the
coast of Andalusia.

If the rumour of the Emperor’s name so much as reached the shore of the
island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in the cloisters
grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of glory, or the majesty
that blazed in flame across kingdom after kingdom during his meteor
life.

In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the convent stood out
pre-eminent for a stern discipline which nothing had changed; the purity
of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest parts of
Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after the long suicide
accomplished in the breast of God. No convent, indeed, was so well
fitted for that complete detachment of the soul from all earthly things,
which is demanded by the religious life, albeit on the continent of
Europe there are many convents magnificently adapted to the purpose
of their existence. Buried away in the loneliest valleys, hanging
in mid-air on the steepest mountainsides, set down on the brink
of precipices, in every place man has sought for the poetry of the
Infinite, the solemn awe of Silence; in every place man has striven to
draw closer to God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below
the crags, at the cliff’s edge; and everywhere man has found God. But
nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of rock could
you find so many different harmonies, combining so to raise the soul,
that the sharpest pain comes to be like other memories; the strongest
impressions are dulled, till the sorrows of life are laid to rest in the
depths.

The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the uttermost
end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent
sheer away in some globe-cataclysm; it rises up a straight wall from
the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high-water mark. Any
assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out
to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them.
So, only from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent
built conformably to the minute rules laid down as to the shape, height,
doors, and windows of monastic buildings. From the side of the town, the
church completely hides the solid structure of the cloisters and their
roofs, covered with broad slabs of stone impervious to sun or storm or
gales of wind.

The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish family, is the
crowning edifice of the town. Its fine, bold front gives an imposing
and picturesque look to the little city in the sea. The sight of such
a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged for the most part
amphitheatre-wise above a picturesque harbour, and crowned by a glorious
cathedral front with triple-arched Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and
filigree spires, is a spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on
earth. Religion towering above daily life, to put men continually
in mind of the End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish
conception. But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a
burning sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted evergreen
trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers and
foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its white fringes
of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then turn to the city, with
its galleries and terraces whither the townsfolk come to take the air
among their flowers of an evening, above the houses and the tops of the
trees in their little gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and
lastly, in the stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music,
the chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing out
over the open sea. There is sound and silence everywhere; oftener still
there is silence over all.

The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and narrow
aisles. For some reason, probably because the winds are so high, the
architect was unable to build the flying buttresses and intervening
chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor are there openings of any
kind in the walls which support the weight of the roof. Outside there
is simply the heavy wall structure, a solid mass of grey stone further
strengthened by huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the nave and its
little side galleries are lighted entirely by the great stained-glass
rose-window suspended by a miracle of art above the centre doorway; for
upon that side the exposure permits of the display of lacework in stone
and of other beauties peculiar to the style improperly called Gothic.

The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the townsfolk, who
came and went and heard mass there. The choir was shut off from the
rest of the church by a grating and thick folds of brown curtain, left
slightly apart in the middle in such a way that nothing of the choir
could be seen from the church except the high altar and the officiating
priest. The grating itself was divided up by the pillars which supported
the organ loft; and this part of the structure, with its carved wooden
columns, completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by
the shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive person, therefore, had been
bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the gallery to look
down into the choir, he could have seen nothing but the tall eight-sided
windows of stained glass beyond the high altar.

At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish Ferdinand
VII once more on the throne, a French general came to the island after
the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the recognition of the King’s
Government, really to see the convent and to find some means of
entering it. The undertaking was certainly a delicate one; but a man of
passionate temper, whose life had been, as it were, but one series of
poems in action, a man who all his life long had lived romances instead
of writing them, a man pre-eminently a Doer, was sure to be tempted by a
deed which seemed to be impossible.

To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means! The metropolitan
or the Pope would scarcely have permitted it! And as for force or
stratagem--might not any indiscretion cost him his position, his whole
career as a soldier, and the end in view to boot? The Duc d’Angouleme
was still in Spain; and of all the crimes which a man in favour with the
Commander-in-Chief might commit, this one alone was certain to find him
inexorable. The General had asked for the mission to gratify private
motives of curiosity, though never was curiosity more hopeless. This
final attempt was a matter of conscience. The Carmelite convent on the
island was the only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his search.

As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour’s distance, he felt a
presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled; and afterwards, when
as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, and of the nuns
not so much as their robes; while he had merely heard the chanting of
the service, there were dim auguries under the walls and in the sound of
the voices to justify his frail hope. And, indeed, however faint those
so unaccountable presentiments might be, never was human passion more
vehemently excited than the General’s curiosity at that moment. There
are no small events for the heart; the heart exaggerates everything; the
heart weighs the fall of a fourteen-year-old Empire and the dropping of
a woman’s glove in the same scales, and the glove is nearly always
the heavier of the two. So here are the facts in all their prosaic
simplicity. The facts first, the emotions will follow.

An hour after the General landed on the island, the royal authority was
re-established there. Some few Constitutional Spaniards who had found
their way thither after the fall of Cadiz were allowed to charter
a vessel and sail for London. So there was neither resistance nor
reaction. But the change of government could not be effected in the
little town without a mass, at which the two divisions under the
General’s command were obliged to be present. Now, it was upon this mass
that the General had built his hopes of gaining some information as
to the sisters in the convent; he was quite unaware how absolutely the
Carmelites were cut off from the world; but he knew that there might be
among them one whom he held dearer than life, dearer than honour.

His hopes were cruelly dashed at once. Mass, it is true, was celebrated
in state. In honour of such a solemnity, the curtains which always hid
the choir were drawn back to display its riches, its valuable paintings
and shrines so bright with gems that they eclipsed the glories of
the ex-votos of gold and silver hung up by sailors of the port on
the columns in the nave. But all the nuns had taken refuge in the
organ-loft. And yet, in spite of this first check, during this very mass
of thanksgiving, the most intimately thrilling drama that ever set a
man’s heart beating opened out widely before him.

The sister who played the organ aroused such intense enthusiasm, that
not a single man regretted that he had come to the service. Even the men
in the ranks were delighted, and the officers were in ecstasy. As for
the General, he was seemingly calm and indifferent. The sensations
stirred in him as the sister played one piece after another belong to
the small number of things which it is not lawful to utter; words are
powerless to express them; like death, God, eternity, they can only be
realised through their one point of contact with humanity. Strangely
enough, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of Rossini, the
musician who brings most human passion into his art.

Some day his works, by their number and extent, will receive the
reverence due to the Homer of music. From among all the scores that we
owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen _Moses in Egypt_
for special study, doubtless because the spirit of sacred music finds
therein its supreme expression. Perhaps the soul of the great musician,
so gloriously known to Europe, and the soul of this unknown executant
had met in the intuitive apprehension of the same poetry. So at least
thought two dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart
in Spain.

At last in the _Te Deum_ no one could fail to discern a French soul in
the sudden change that came over the music. Joy for the victory of the
Most Christian King evidently stirred this nun’s heart to the depths.
She was a Frenchwoman beyond mistake. Soon the love of country shone
out, breaking forth like shafts of light from the fugue, as the sister
introduced variations with all a Parisienne’s fastidious taste, and
blended vague suggestions of our grandest national airs with her music.
A Spaniard’s fingers would not have brought this warmth into a
graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms of France. The musician’s
nationality was revealed.

“We find France everywhere, it seems,” said one of the men.

The General had left the church during the _Te Deum_; he could not
listen any longer. The nun’s music had been a revelation of a woman
loved to frenzy; a woman so carefully hidden from the world’s eyes,
so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that hitherto the most
ingenious and persistent efforts made by men who brought great influence
and unusual powers to bear upon the search had failed to find her. The
suspicion aroused in the General’s heart became all but a certainty with
the vague reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, the air of _Fleuve
du Tage_. The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in
a boudoir in Paris, how often! and now this nun had chosen the song
to express an exile’s longing, amid the joy of those that triumphed.
Terrible sensation! To hope for the resurrection of a lost love, to find
her only to know that she was lost, to catch a mysterious glimpse of her
after five years--five years, in which the pent-up passion, chafing
in an empty life, had grown the mightier for every fruitless effort to
satisfy it!

Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose some
precious thing; and after hunting through his papers, ransacking his
memory, and turning his house upside down; after one or two days spent
in vain search, and hope, and despair; after a prodigious expenditure
of the liveliest irritation of soul, who has not known the ineffable
pleasure of finding that all-important nothing which had come to be a
king of monomania? Very good. Now, spread that fury of search over five
years; put a woman, put a heart, put love in the place of the trifle;
transpose the monomania into the key of high passion; and, furthermore,
let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a lion’s heart and a
leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe and fear in those who come
in contact with him--realise this, and you may, perhaps, understand why
the General walked abruptly out of the church when the first notes of
a ballad, which he used to hear with a rapture of delight in a
gilt-paneled boudoir, began to vibrate along the aisles of the church in
the sea.

The General walked away down the steep street which led to the port, and
only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of the organ. Unable
to think of anything but the love which broke out in volcanic eruption,
filling his heart with fire, he only knew that the _Te Deum_ was over
when the Spanish congregation came pouring out of the church. Feeling
that his behaviour and attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to
head the procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling
suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air. Casting about for a plea
for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to make the most of
this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment. He declined, on a plea of
increasing indisposition, to preside at the banquet given by the town
to the French officers, betook himself to his bed, and sent a message to
the Major-General, to the effect that temporary illness obliged him
to leave the Colonel in command of the troops for the time being.
This commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all
responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans. The
General, nothing if not “catholic and monarchical,” took occasion to
inform himself of the hours of the services, and manifested the greatest
zeal for the performance of his religious duties, piety which caused no
remark in Spain.

The very next day, while the division was marching out of the town, the
General went to the convent to be present at vespers. He found an empty
church. The townsfolk, devout though they were, had all gone down to the
quay to watch the embarkation of the troops. He felt glad to be the only
man there. He tramped noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the
vaulted roof rang with the sound; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself
to let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know
that if the troops were gone, one Frenchman was left behind. Was this
singular warning heard and understood? He thought so. It seemed to him
that in the _Magnificat_ the organ made response which was borne to him
on the vibrating air. The nun’s spirit found wings in music and fled
towards him, throbbing with the rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in
all its might, the music burst forth and filled the church with warmth.
The Song of Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity
to express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory of
the ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost terrified by
its gladness in the presence of the glory of a mortal love; a love that
yet lived, a love that had risen to trouble her even beyond the grave in
which the nun is laid, that she may rise again as the bride of Christ.

The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most
magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius. It is a whole
orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response to a skilled
touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on which the soul poises for
a flight forth into space, essaying on her course to draw picture after
picture in an endless series, to paint human life, to cross the Infinite
that separates heaven from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens to
those giant harmonies, the better he realizes that nothing save this
hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between kneeling
men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the Sanctuary. The music
is the one interpreter strong enough to bear up the prayers of humanity
to heaven, prayer in its omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the
melancholy of many different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy,
upspringing with the impulse of repentance--blended with the myriad
fancies of every creed. Yes. In those long vaulted aisles the melodies
inspired by the sense of things divine are blended with a grandeur
unknown before, are decked with new glory and might. Out of the dim
daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the choir in
response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven for God, and the
brightness of His attributes shines through it.

And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a grain of
incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath the eternal throne
of a jealous and avenging God. Indeed, in the joy of the nun there
was little of that awe and gravity which should harmonize with the
solemnities of the _Magnificat_. She had enriched the music with
graceful variations, earthly gladness throbbing through the rhythm of
each. In such brilliant quivering notes some great singer might strive
to find a voice for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters
about her mate. There were moments when she seemed to leap back into
the past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears. Her changing
moods, as it were, ran riot. She was like a woman excited and happy over
her lover’s return.

But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the
marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept over the
soul that thus found utterance for itself. With a swift transition from
the major to the minor, the organist told her hearer of her present lot.
She gave the story of long melancholy broodings, of the slow course
of her moral malady. How day by day she deadened the senses, how every
night cut off one more thought, how her heart was slowly reduced
to ashes. The sadness deepened shade after shade through languid
modulations, and in a little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent
of grief. Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of
angels singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover
that their spirits now could only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope! Then
followed the _Amen_. No more joy, no more tears in the air, no sadness,
no regrets. The _Amen_ was the return to God. The final chord was deep,
solemn, even terrible; for the last rumblings of the bass sent a shiver
through the audience that raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook
out her veiling of crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from
which she had risen for a moment. Slowly the reverberations died away;
it seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned to
thick darkness.

The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this
strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight from
beginning to end. He understood to the fullest extent the imagery of
that burning symphony; for him the chords reached deep and far. For
him, as for the sister, the poem meant future, present, and past. Is
not music, and even opera music, a sort of text, which a susceptible
or poetic temper, or a sore and stricken heart, may expand as memories
shall determine? If a musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must
not the listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that
lies in great music? Religion, love, and music--what are they but a
threefold expression of the same fact, of that craving for expansion
which stirs in every noble soul. And these three forms of poetry ascend
to God, in whom all passion on earth finds its end. Wherefore the holy
human trinity finds a place amid the infinite glories of God; of God,
whom we always represent surrounded with the fires of love and seistrons
of gold--music and light and harmony. Is not He the Cause and the End of
all our strivings?

The French General guessed rightly that here in the desert, on this bare
rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an outpouring of the
passion that still consumed her. Was this her manner of offering up her
love as a sacrifice to God? Or was it Love exultant in triumph over God?
The questions were hard to answer. But one thing at least the General
could not mistake--in this heart, dead to the world, the fire of passion
burned as fiercely as in his own.

Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde with whom he was staying.
In the all-absorbing joy which comes in such full measure when a
satisfaction sought long and painfully is attained at last, he could see
nothing beyond this--he was still loved! In her heart love had grown
in loneliness, even as his love had grown stronger as he surmounted one
barrier after another which this woman had set between them! The glow of
soul came to its natural end. There followed a longing to see her again,
to contend with God for her, to snatch her away--a rash scheme, which
appealed to a daring nature. He went to bed, when the meal was over, to
avoid questions; to be alone and think at his ease; and he lay absorbed
by deep thought till day broke.

He rose only to go to mass. He went to the church and knelt close to
the screen, with his forehead touching the curtain; he would have torn
a hole in it if he had been alone, but his host had come with him out of
politeness, and the least imprudence might compromise the whole future
of his love, and ruin the new hopes.

The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the nun of the
last two days whose hands touched the keys. It was all colorless and
cold for the General. Was the woman he loved prostrated by emotion which
well-nigh overcame a strong man’s heart? Had she so fully realised and
shared an unchanged, longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed
in her cell? While innumerable thoughts of this kind perplexed his mind,
the voice of the woman he worshipped rang out close beside him; he knew
its clear resonant soprano. It was her voice, with that faint tremor in
it which gave it all the charm that shyness and diffidence gives to a
young girl; her voice, distinct from the mass of singing as a _prima
donna’s_ in the chorus of a finale. It was like a golden or silver
thread in dark frieze.

It was she! There could be no mistake. Parisienne now as ever, she had
not laid coquetry aside when she threw off worldly adornments for the
veil and the Carmelite’s coarse serge. She who had affirmed her love
last evening in the praise sent up to God, seemed now to say to her
lover, “Yes, it is I. I am here. My love is unchanged, but I am beyond
the reach of love. You will hear my voice, my soul shall enfold you,
and I shall abide here under the brown shroud in the choir from which no
power on earth can tear me. You shall never see me more!”

“It is she indeed!” the General said to himself, raising his head. He
had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to bear the intolerable
emotion that surged like a whirlpool in his heart, when that well-known
voice vibrated under the arcading, with the sound of the sea for
accompaniment.

Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary. Still that rich voice
poured out all its caressing notes; it fell like balm on the lover’s
burning heart; it blossomed upon the air--the air that a man would fain
breathe more deeply to receive the effluence of a soul breathed forth
with love in the words of the prayer. The alcalde coming to join
his guest found him in tears during the elevation, while the nun was
singing, and brought him back to his house. Surprised to find so much
piety in a French military man, the worthy magistrate invited the
confessor of the convent to meet his guest. Never had news given the
General more pleasure; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention
at supper, and confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they had
formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect.

He inquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the convent, and
asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues, as if from
courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse on the subject most
interesting to him. He informed himself as to the manner of life led by
the holy women. Were they allowed to go out of the convent, or to see
visitors?

“Senor,” replied the venerable churchman, “the rule is strict. A woman
cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno without a special
permission from His Holiness, and the rule here is equally stringent.
No man may enter a convent of Barefoot Carmelites unless he is a priest
specially attached to the services of the house by the Archbishop. None
of the nuns may leave the convent; though the great Saint, St. Theresa,
often left her cell. The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone give
permission, subject to an authorization from the Archbishop, for a nun
to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of illness. Now we are
one of the principal houses, and consequently we have a Mother Superior
here. Among other foreign sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister
Theresa; she it is who directs the music in the chapel.”

“Oh!” said the General, with feigned surprise. “She must have rejoiced
over the victory of the House of Bourbon.”

“I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a little bit
inquisitive.”

“But Sister Theresa may have interests in France. Perhaps she would like
to send some message or to hear news.”

“I do not think so. She would have come to ask me.”

“As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,” said the
General. “If it is possible, if the Lady Superior consents, if----”

“Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother’s presence, an interview
would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever; but, strict as the
Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and the throne of his
Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for a moment,” said the
confessor, blinking. “I will speak about it.”

“How old is Sister Theresa?” inquired the lover. He dared not ask any
questions of the priest as to the nun’s beauty.

“She does not reckon years now,” the good man answered, with a
simplicity that made the General shudder.

Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French General
that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive him at the
grating in the parlour before vespers. The General spent the siesta in
pacing to and fro along the quay in the noonday heat. Thither the priest
came to find him, and brought him to the convent by way of the gallery
round the cemetery. Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading
maintained a cool freshness in keeping with the place.

At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way into a
large room divided in two by a grating covered with a brown curtain. In
the first, and in some sort of public half of the apartment, where the
confessor left the newcomer, a wooden bench ran round the wall, and two
or three chairs, also of wood, were placed near the grating. The ceiling
consisted of bare unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex wood. As
the two windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark
surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place was so
dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix, the portrait
of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which adorned the grey
parlour walls. Tumultuous as the General’s feelings were, they took
something of the melancholy of the place. He grew calm in that homely
quiet. A sense of something vast as the tomb took possession of him
beneath the chill unceiled roof. Here, as in the grave, was there not
eternal silence, deep peace--the sense of the Infinite? And besides this
there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister--a thought
which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in the dim dusk
of the room; an all-pervasive thought nowhere definitely expressed, and
looming the larger in the imagination; for in the cloister the great
saying, “Peace in the Lord,” enters the least religious soul as a living
force.

The monk’s life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems confessed a
weakling in a monastery; he was born to act, to live out a life of work;
he is evading a man’s destiny in his cell. But what man’s strength,
blended with pathetic weakness, is implied by a woman’s choice of the
convent life! A man may have any number of motives for burying himself
in a monastery; for him it is the leap over the precipice. A woman
has but one motive--she is a woman still; she betrothes herself to a
Heavenly Bridegroom. Of the monk you may ask, “Why did you not fight
your battle?” But if a woman immures herself in the cloister, is there
not always a sublime battle fought first?

At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the lonely
convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him. Love seldom attains
to solemnity; yet surely a love still faithful in the breast of God was
something solemn, something more than a man had a right to look for
as things are in this nineteenth century? The infinite grandeur of the
situation might well produce an effect upon the General’s mind; he had
precisely enough elevation of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain,
and society in Paris, and to rise to the height of this lofty climax.
And what in truth could be more tragic? How much must pass in the souls
of these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on
a ledge of granite in the sea; yet held apart by an intangible,
unsurmountable barrier! Try to imagine the man saying within himself,
“Shall I triumph over God in her heart?” when a faint rustling sound
made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.

Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by the veil
that drooped from the folds upon her head; she was dressed according
to the rule of the order in a gown of the colour become proverbial. Her
bare feet were hidden; if the General could have seen them, he would
have known how appallingly thin she had grown; and yet in spite of the
thick folds of her coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he
could guess how tears, and prayer, and passion, and loneliness had
wasted the woman before him.

An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior, held back
the curtain. The General gave the enforced witness of their interview a
searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable gaze of an aged recluse.
The Mother might have been a century old, but the bright, youthful eyes
belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.

“Mme la Duchesse,” he began, his voice shaken with emotion, “does your
companion understand French?” The veiled figure bowed her head at the
sound of his voice.

“There is no duchess here,” she replied. “It is Sister Theresa whom you
see before you. She whom you call my companion is my mother in God, my
superior here on earth.”

The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in other years
amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the voice of a queen of
fashion in Paris. Such words from the lips that once spoke so lightly
and flippantly struck the General dumb with amazement.

“The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish,” she added.

“I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to her.”

The light fell full upon the nun’s figure; a thrill of deep emotion
betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she heard her name
softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in the past.

“My brother,” she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil, perhaps to
brush tears away, “I am Sister Theresa.”

Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish; the General knew
enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly well;
possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.

“Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and begs you
to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he knows neither of the
languages which you speak----”

The aged nun bent her head slowly, with an expression of angelic
sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the consciousness of her power
and dignity.

“Do you know this gentleman?” she asked, with a keen glance.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Go back to your cell, my daughter!” said the Mother imperiously.

The General slipped aside behind the curtain lest the dreadful tumult
within him should appear in his face; even in the shadow it seemed to
him that he could still see the Superior’s piercing eyes. He was afraid
of her; she held his little, frail, hardly-won happiness in her hands;
and he, who had never quailed under a triple row of guns, now trembled
before this nun. The Duchess went towards the door, but she turned back.

“Mother,” she said, with dreadful calmness, “the Frenchman is one of my
brothers.”

“Then stay, my daughter,” said the Superior, after a pause.

The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret, that a man
less strongly constituted might have broken down under the keen delight
in the midst of a great and, for him, an entirely novel peril. Oh! how
precious words, looks, and gestures became when love must baffle lynx
eyes and tiger’s claws! Sister Theresa came back.

“You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to speak to you for
a moment of your salvation and of the prayers that my soul puts up for
your soul daily. I am committing mortal sin. I have told a lie. How many
days of penance must expiate that lie! But I shall endure it for your
sake. My brother, you do not know what happiness it is to love in
heaven; to feel that you can confess love purified by religion, love
transported into the highest heights of all, so that we are permitted
to lose sight of all but the soul. If the doctrine and the spirit of
the Saint to whom we owe this refuge had not raised me above earth’s
anguish, and caught me up and set me, far indeed beneath the Sphere
wherein she dwells, yet truly above this world, I should not have
seen you again. But now I can see you, and hear your voice, and remain
calm----”

The General broke in, “But, Antoinette, let me see you, you whom I love
passionately, desperately, as you could have wished me to love you.”

“Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you. Memories of the past hurt me.
You must see no one here but Sister Theresa, a creature who trusts in
the Divine mercy.” She paused for a little, and then added, “You must
control yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us without pity
if there is any worldly passion in your face, or if you allow the tears
to fall from your eyes.”

The General bowed his head to regain self-control; when he looked up
again he saw her face beyond the grating--the thin, white, but still
impassioned face of the nun. All the magic charm of youth that once
bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet whiteness and the colour
of the Bengal rose, had given place to a burning glow, as of a porcelain
jar with a faint light shining through it. The wonderful hair in which
she took such pride had been shaven; there was a bandage round her
forehead and about her face. An ascetic life had left dark traces about
the eyes, which still sometimes shot out fevered glances; their ordinary
calm expression was but a veil. In a few words, she was but the ghost of
her former self.

“Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this tomb!
You were mine; you had no right to give yourself, even to God. Did you
not promise me to give up all at the least command from me? You may
perhaps think me worthy of that promise now when you hear what I have
done for you. I have sought you all through the world. You have been in
my thoughts at every moment for five years; my life has been given to
you. My friends, very powerful friends, as you know, have helped with
all their might to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily,
and America. Love burned more brightly for every vain search. Again and
again I made long journeys with a false hope; I have wasted my life and
the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under many a dark convent
wall. I am not speaking of a faithfulness that knows no bounds, for what
is it?--nothing compared with the infinite longings of my love. If your
remorse long ago was sincere, you ought not to hesitate to follow me
today.”

“You forget that I am not free.”

“The Duke is dead,” he answered quickly.

Sister Theresa flushed red.

“May heaven be open to him!” she cried with a quick rush of feeling. “He
was generous to me.--But I did not mean such ties; it was one of my sins
that I was ready to break them all without scruple--for you.”

“Are you speaking of your vows?” the General asked, frowning. “I did not
think that anything weighed heavier with your heart than love. But do
not think twice of it, Antoinette; the Holy Father himself shall absolve
you of your oath. I will surely go to Rome, I will entreat all the
powers of earth; if God could come down from heaven, I would----”

“Do not blaspheme.”

“So do not fear the anger of God. Ah! I would far rather hear that
you would leave your prison for me; that this very night you would let
yourself down into a boat at the foot of the cliffs. And we would go
away to be happy somewhere at the world’s end, I know not where. And
with me at your side, you should come back to life and health under the
wings of love.”

“You must not talk like this,” said Sister Theresa; “you do not know
what you are to me now. I love you far better than I ever loved you
before. Every day I pray for you; I see you with other eyes. Armand, if
you but knew the happiness of giving yourself up, without shame, to a
pure friendship which God watches over! You do not know what joy it is
to me to pray for heaven’s blessing on you. I never pray for myself: God
will do with me according to His will; but, at the price of my soul, I
wish I could be sure that you are happy here on earth, and that you
will be happy hereafter throughout all ages. My eternal life is all that
trouble has left me to offer up to you. I am old now with weeping; I am
neither young nor fair; and in any case, you could not respect the
nun who became a wife; no love, not even motherhood, could give me
absolution.... What can you say to outweigh the uncounted thoughts that
have gathered in my heart during the past five years, thoughts that have
changed, and worn, and blighted it? I ought to have given a heart less
sorrowful to God.”

“What can I say? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love you; that
affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in another heart that
is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a thing and so hard to
find, that I doubted you, and put you to sharp proof; but now, today, I
love you, Antoinette, with all my soul’s strength.... If you will follow
me into solitude, I will hear no voice but yours, I will see no other
face.”

“Hush, Armand! You are shortening the little time that we may be
together here on earth.”

“Antoinette, will you come with me?”

“I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not through the
selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or enjoyment; pale and
withered as I am, I live here for you, in the breast of God. As God is
just, you shall be happy----”

“Words, words all of it! Pale and withered? How if I want you? How if I
cannot be happy without you? Do you still think of nothing but duty with
your lover before you? Is he never to come first and above all things
else in your heart? In time past you put social success, yourself,
heaven knows what, before him; now it is God, it is the welfare of my
soul! In Sister Theresa I find the Duchess over again, ignorant of
the happiness of love, insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of
sensibility. You do not love me; you have never loved me----”

“Oh, my brother----!”

“You do not wish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, do you say?
Very well, through you it will be lost forever. I shall make away with
myself----”

“Mother!” Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, “I have lied to you;
this man is my lover!”

The curtain fell at once. The General, in his stupor, scarcely heard the
doors within as they clanged.

“Ah! she loves me still!” he cried, understanding all the sublimity of
that cry of hers. “She loves me still. She must be carried off....”



The General left the island, returned to headquarters, pleaded
ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his departure
for France.

And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in this Scene
into their present relation to each other.



The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain is neither a
Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything else that admits
of a precise definition. There are great houses in the Place Royale, the
Faubourg Saint-Honore, and the Chaussee d’Antin, in any one of which you
may breathe the same atmosphere of Faubourg Saint-Germain. So, to begin
with, the whole Faubourg is not within the Faubourg. There are men and
women born far enough away from its influences who respond to them and
take their place in the circle; and again there are others, born within
its limits, who may yet be driven forth forever. For the last forty
years the manners, and customs, and speech, in a word, the tradition of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has been to Paris what the Court used to be
in other times; it is what the Hotel Saint-Paul was to the fourteenth
century; the Louvre to the fifteenth; the Palais, the Hotel Rambouillet,
and the Place Royale to the sixteenth; and lastly, as Versailles was to
the seventeenth and the eighteenth.

Just as the ordinary workaday Paris will always centre about some point;
so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the nobles and
the upper classes converges towards some particular spot. It is a
periodically recurrent phenomenon which presents ample matter for
reflection to those who are fain to observe or describe the various
social zones; and possibly an enquiry into the causes that bring about
this centralization may do more than merely justify the probability of
this episode; it may be of service to serious interests which some
day will be more deeply rooted in the commonwealth, unless, indeed,
experience is as meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.

In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the great
nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded streets. When
the Duc d’Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue Montmartre in
the reign of Louis XIV, and set the fountain at his gates--for which
beneficent action, to say nothing of his other virtues, he was held in
such veneration that the whole quarter turned out in a body to follow
his funeral--when the Duke, I say, chose this site for his house, he
did so because that part of Paris was almost deserted in those days. But
when the fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond
the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the d’Uzes
family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was occupied by a
banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find themselves out of their
element among shopkeepers, left the Place Royale and the centre of
Paris for good, and crossed the river to breathe freely in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, where palaces were reared already about the great
hotel built by Louis XIV for the Duc de Maine--the Benjamin among his
legitimated offspring. And indeed, for people accustomed to a stately
life, can there be more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud,
the street cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous
quarter? The very habits of life in a mercantile or manufacturing
district are completely at variance with the lives of nobles. The
shopkeeper and artisan are just going to bed when the great world is
thinking of dinner; and the noisy stir of life begins among the former
when the latter have gone to rest. Their day’s calculations never
coincide; the one class represents the expenditure, the other the
receipts. Consequently their manners and customs are diametrically
opposed.

Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement. An aristocracy is in
a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and
the proletariat may be said to be its organizing and working power. It
naturally follows that these forces are differently situated; and of
their antagonism there is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the
performance of different functions, all of them, however, existing for
one common end.

Such social dissonances are so inevitably the outcome of any charter
of the constitution, that however much a Liberal may be disposed to
complain of them, as of treason against those sublime ideas with which
the ambitious plebeian is apt to cover his designs, he would none the
less think it a preposterous notion that M. le Prince de Montmorency,
for instance, should continue to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the
corner of the street which bears that nobleman’s name; or that M. le Duc
de Fitz-James, descendant of the royal house of Scotland, should have
his hotel at the angle of the Rue Marie Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil.
_Sint ut sunt, aut non sint_, the grand words of the Jesuit, might be
taken as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences
are patent in all ages; the fact is always accepted by the people; its
“reasons of state” are self-evident; it is at once cause and effect, a
principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them
until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own; that common
sense is based on the verities of social order; and the social order is
the same everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta.
Given a certain number of families of unequal fortune in any given
space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes; there will
be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other ranks below them.
Equality may be a _right_, but no power on earth can convert it into
_fact_. It would be a good thing for France if this idea could be
popularized. The benefits of political harmony are obvious to the least
intelligent classes. Harmony is, as it were, the poetry of order, and
order is a matter of vital importance to the working population. And
what is order, reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement
of things among themselves--unity, in short? Architecture, music, and
poetry, everything in France, and in France more than in any other
country, is based upon this principle; it is written upon the very
foundations of her clear accurate language, and a language must always
be the most infallible index of national character. In the same way
you may note that the French popular airs are those most calculated to
strike the imagination, the best-modulated melodies are taken over by
the people; clearness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea
attracts them; they like the incisive sayings that hold the greatest
number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little
phrase may bring about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have
risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement.
No nation has a clearer conception of that idea of unity which should
permeate the life of an aristocracy; possibly no other nation has so
intelligent a comprehension of a political necessity; history will never
find her behind the time. France has been led astray many a time, but
she is deluded, woman-like, by generous ideas, by a glow of enthusiasm
which at first outstrips sober reason.

So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the Faubourg
is the splendour of its great mansions, its great gardens, and a
surrounding quiet in keeping with princely revenues drawn from great
estates. And what is this distance set between a class and a whole
metropolis but visible and outward expression of the widely different
attitude of mind which must inevitably keep them apart? The position of
the head is well defined in every organism. If by any chance a nation
allows its head to fall at its feet, it is pretty sure sooner or later
to discover that this is a suicidal measure; and since nations have no
desire to perish, they set to work at once to grow a new head. If they
lack the strength for this, they perish as Rome perished, and Venice,
and so many other states.

This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social activity,
emphasized by differences in their manner of living, necessarily
implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real worth and some
distinguishing merit. In any state, no matter what form of “government”
 is affected, so soon as the patrician class fails to maintain that
complete superiority which is the condition of its existence, it ceases
to be a force, and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people
always wish to see money, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands,
hearts, and heads; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the
intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women, love
strength in those who rule them; they cannot give love without respect;
they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand in awe.
An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a _roi faineant_, a husband in
petticoats; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be.

And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked
distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general custom
of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real power, and their
destruction so soon as that power is lost. The Faubourg Saint-Germain
failed to recognise the conditions of its being, while it would still
have been easy to perpetuate its existence, and therefore was brought
low for a time. The Faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the
face, as the English aristocracy did before them; they should have seen
that every institution has its climacteric periods, when words lose
their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new guise, and the whole
conditions of politics wear a changed aspect, while the underlying
realities undergo no essential alteration.

These ideas demand further development which form an essential part of
this episode; they are given here both as a succinct statement of the
causes, and an explanation of the things which happen in the course of
the story.

The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles dwell; the
luxury of the details; the constantly maintained sumptuousness of the
furniture; the “atmosphere” in which the fortunate owner of landed
estates (a rich man before he was born) lives and moves easily and
without friction; the habit of mind which never descends to calculate
the petty workaday gains of existence; the leisure; the higher education
attainable at a much earlier age; and lastly, the aristocratic tradition
that makes of him a social force, for which his opponents, by dint
of study and a strong will and tenacity of vocation, are scarcely a
match-all these things should contribute to form a lofty spirit in a
man, possessed of such privileges from his youth up; they should
stamp his character with that high self-respect, of which the least
consequence is a nobleness of heart in harmony with the noble name that
he bears. And in some few families all this is realised. There are
noble characters here and there in the Faubourg, but they are marked
exceptions to a general rule of egoism which has been the ruin of this
world within a world. The privileges above enumerated are the birthright
of the French noblesse, as of every patrician efflorescence ever formed
on the surface of a nation; and will continue to be theirs so long as
their existence is based upon real estate, or money; _domaine-sol_ and
_domaine-argent_ alike, the only solid bases of an organized society;
but such privileges are held upon the understanding that the patricians
must continue to justify their existence. There is a sort of moral
_fief_ held on a tenure of service rendered to the sovereign, and here
in France the people are undoubtedly the sovereigns nowadays. The times
are changed, and so are the weapons. The knight-banneret of old wore
a coat of chain armor and a hauberk; he could handle a lance well and
display his pennon, and no more was required of him; today he is bound
to give proof of his intelligence. A stout heart was enough in the days
of old; in our days he is required to have a capacious brain-pan. Skill
and knowledge and capital--these three points mark out a social triangle
on which the scutcheon of power is blazoned; our modern aristocracy must
take its stand on these.

A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Rothschilds, the Fuggers
of the nineteenth century, are princes _de facto_. A great artist is in
reality an oligarch; he represents a whole century, and almost always he
is a law to others. And the art of words, the high pressure machinery
of the writer, the poet’s genius, the merchant’s steady endurance,
the strong will of the statesman who concentrates a thousand dazzling
qualities in himself, the general’s sword--all these victories, in
short, which a single individual will win, that he may tower above the
rest of the world, the patrician class is now bound to win and keep
exclusively. They must head the new forces as they once headed the
material forces; how should they keep the position unless they are
worthy of it? How, unless they are the soul and brain of a nation,
shall they set its hands moving? How lead a people without the power of
command? And what is the marshal’s baton without the innate power of
the captain in the man who wields it? The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to
playing with batons, and fancied that all the power was in its hands.
It inverted the terms of the proposition which called it into existence.
And instead of flinging away the insignia which offended the people,
and quietly grasping the power, it allowed the bourgeoisie to seize the
authority, clung with fatal obstinacy to its shadow, and over and over
again forgot the laws which a minority must observe if it would live.
When an aristocracy is scarce a thousandth part of the body social, it
is bound today, as of old, to multiply its points of action, so as to
counterbalance the weight of the masses in a great crisis. And in our
days those means of action must be living forces, and not historical
memories.

In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up with the
notion of their vanished power, that it was difficult to contend against
a kind of innate presumption in themselves. Perhaps this is a national
defect. The Frenchman is less given than anyone else to undervalue
himself; it comes natural to him to go from his degree to the one above
it; and while it is a rare thing for him to pity the unfortunates
over whose heads he rises, he always groans in spirit to see so many
fortunate people above him. He is very far from heartless, but too
often he prefers to listen to his intellect. The national instinct which
brings the Frenchman to the front, the vanity that wastes his substance,
is as much a dominant passion as thrift in the Dutch. For three
centuries it swayed the noblesse, who, in this respect, were certainly
pre-eminently French. The scion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, beholding
his material superiority, was fully persuaded of his intellectual
superiority. And everything contributed to confirm him in his belief;
for ever since the Faubourg Saint-Germain existed at all--which is
to say, ever since Versailles ceased to be the royal residence--the
Faubourg, with some few gaps in continuity, was always backed up by the
central power, which in France seldom fails to support that side. Thence
its downfall in 1830.

At that time the party of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was rather like
an army without a base of operation. It had utterly failed to take
advantage of the peace to plant itself in the heart of the nation.
It sinned for want of learning its lesson, and through an utter
incapability of regarding its interests as a whole. A future certainty
was sacrificed to a doubtful present gain. This blunder in policy may
perhaps be attributed to the following cause.

The class-isolation so strenuously kept up by the noblesse brought about
fatal results during the last forty years; even caste-patriotism was
extinguished by it, and rivalry fostered among themselves. When the
French noblesse of other times were rich and powerful, the nobles
(_gentilhommes_) could choose their chiefs and obey them in the hour
of danger. As their power diminished, they grew less amenable to
discipline; and as in the last days of the Byzantine Empire, everyone
wished to be emperor. They mistook their uniform weakness for uniform
strength.

Each family ruined by the Revolution and the abolition of the law of
primogeniture thought only of itself, and not at all of the great family
of the noblesse. It seemed to them that as each individual grew rich,
the party as a whole would gain in strength. And herein lay their
mistake. Money, likewise, is only the outward and visible sign of
power. All these families were made up of persons who preserved a high
tradition of courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined speech,
with a family pride, and a squeamish sense of _noblesse oblige_ which
suited well with the kind of life they led; a life wholly filled with
occupations which become contemptible so soon as they cease to be
accessories and take the chief place in existence. There was a certain
intrinsic merit in all these people, but the merit was on the surface,
and none of them were worth their face-value.

Not a single one among those families had courage to ask itself the
question, “Are we strong enough for the responsibility of power?” They
were cast on the top, like the lawyers of 1830; and instead of taking
the patron’s place, like a great man, the Faubourg Saint-Germain showed
itself greedy as an upstart. The most intelligent nation in the world
perceived clearly that the restored nobles were organizing everything
for their own particular benefit. From that day the noblesse was doomed.
The Faubourg Saint-Germain tried to be an aristocracy when it could
only be an oligarchy--two very different systems, as any man may see
for himself if he gives an intelligent perusal to the list of the
patronymics of the House of Peers.

The King’s Government certainly meant well; but the maxim that the
people must be made to _will_ everything, even their own welfare, was
pretty constantly forgotten, nor did they bear in mind that La France is
a woman and capricious, and must be happy or chastised at her own good
pleasure. If there had been many dukes like the Duc de Laval, whose
modesty made him worthy of the name he bore, the elder branch would have
been as securely seated on the throne as the House of Hanover at this
day.

In 1814 the noblesse of France were called upon to assert their
superiority over the most aristocratic bourgeoisie in the most feminine
of all countries, to take the lead in the most highly educated epoch the
world had yet seen. And this was even more notably the case in 1820. The
Faubourg Saint-Germain might very easily have led and amused the middle
classes in days when people’s heads were turned with distinctions, and
art and science were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of
a time of great intellectual progress all of them detested art and
science. They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive
colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais,
Montalembert, and other writers were putting new life and elevation into
men’s ideas of religion, and gilding it with poetry, these bunglers in
the Government chose to make the harshness of their creed felt all over
the country. Never was nation in a more tractable humour; La France,
like a tired woman, was ready to agree to anything; never was
mismanagement so clumsy; and La France, like a woman, would have
forgiven wrongs more easily than bungling.

If the noblesse meant to reinstate themselves, the better to found a
strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and diligently searched
their Houses for men of the stamp that Napoleon used; they should
have turned themselves inside out to see if peradventure there was a
Constitutionalist Richelieu lurking in the entrails of the Faubourg; and
if that genius was not forthcoming from among them, they should have set
out to find him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen to
be perishing of cold; they should have assimilated him, as the English
House of Lords continually assimilates aristocrats made by chance; and
finally ordered him to be ruthless, to lop away the old wood, and cut
the tree down to the living shoots. But, in the first place, the great
system of English Toryism was far too large for narrow minds; the
importation required time, and in France a tardy success is no better
than a fiasco. So far, moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption,
and looking for new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk
took a dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst; and,
lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg Saint-Germain grew
positively older.

Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might have been
maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but as it was,
there was a daily wrangle over precedence; it ceased to be a matter of
art or court ceremonial, it became a question of power. And if from
the outset the Crown lacked an adviser equal to so great a crisis, the
aristocracy was still more lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an
instinct which might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about
M. de Talleyrand’s marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the one man among
them with the steel-encompassed brains that can forge a new political
system and begin a new career of glory for a nation. The Faubourg
scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and produced no one of
gentle birth that was fit to be a minister. There were plenty of nobles
fitted to serve their country by raising the dignity of justices of
the peace, by improving the land, by opening out roads and canals, and
taking an active and leading part as country gentlemen; but these had
sold their estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Again the Faubourg
might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and opened
their ranks to the ambition which was undermining authority; they
preferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed, for of all that
they once possessed there was nothing left but tradition. For their
misfortune there was just precisely enough of their former wealth left
them as a class to keep up their bitter pride. They were content with
their past. Not one of them seriously thought of bidding the son of the
house take up arms from the pile of weapons which the nineteenth century
flings down in the market-place. Young men, shut out from office, were
dancing at Madame’s balls, while they should have been doing the
work done under the Republic and the Empire by young, conscientious,
harmlessly employed energies. It was their place to carry out at Paris
the programme which their seniors should have been following in the
country. The heads of houses might have won back recognition of their
titles by unremitting attention to local interests, by falling in with
the spirit of the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of the
times.

But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where the spirit of
the ancient court and traditions of bygone feuds between the nobles and
the Crown still lingered on, the aristocracy was not whole-hearted in
its allegiance to the Tuileries, and so much the more easily defeated
because it was concentrated in the Chamber of Peers, and badly organized
even there. If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network over
the country, they could have held their own; but cooped up in their
Faubourg, with their backs against the Chateau, or spread at full length
over the Budget, a single blow cut the thread of a fast-expiring life,
and a petty, smug-faced lawyer came forward with the axe. In spite of M.
Royer-Collard’s admirable discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of
entail fell before the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he had
adroitly argued some few heads out of the executioner’s clutches, and
now forsooth must clumsily proceed to the slaying of old institutions.

There are examples and lessons for the future in all this. For if there
were not still a future before the French aristocracy, there would be
no need to do more than find a suitable sarcophagus; it were something
pitilessly cruel to burn the dead body of it with fire of Tophet. But
though the surgeon’s scalpel is ruthless, it sometimes gives back life
to a dying man; and the Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax more powerful
under persecution than in its day of triumph, if it but chooses to
organize itself under a leader.

And now it is easy to give a summary of this semi-political survey. The
wish to re-establish a large fortune was uppermost in everyone’s mind;
a lack of broad views, and a mass of small defects, a real need of
religion as a political factor, combined with a thirst for pleasure
which damaged the cause of religion and necessitated a good deal of
hypocrisy; a certain attitude of protest on the part of loftier and
clearer-sighted men who set their faces against Court jealousies; and
the disaffection of the provincial families, who often came of
purer descent than the nobles of the Court which alienated them from
itself--all these things combined to bring about a most discordant state
of things in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was neither compact in its
organisation, nor consequent in its action; neither completely moral,
nor frankly dissolute; it did not corrupt, nor was it corrupted; it
would neither wholly abandon the disputed points which damaged its
cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have saved it. In short,
however effete individuals might be, the party as a whole was none
the less armed with all the great principles which lie at the roots of
national existence. What was there in the Faubourg that it should perish
in its strength?

It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates; the Faubourg
had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there was nothing very
glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.

In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier feeling;
but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the country there was
nothing discernible but self-interest. A few famous men of letters, a
few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers, M. de Talleyrand’s attitude
in the Congress, the taking of Algiers, and not a few names that found
their way from the battlefield into the pages of history--all these
things were so many examples set before the French noblesse to show that
it was still open to them to take their part in the national existence,
and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could
condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of bringing
the whole into harmony within itself is always going on. If a man is
indolent, the indolence shows itself in everything that he does; and,
in the same manner, the general spirit of a class is pretty plainly
manifested in the face it turns on the world, and the soul informs the
body.

The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud disregard
of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden time in their
wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the tardy virtues by which
they expiated their sins and shed so bright a glory about their names.
There was nothing either very frivolous or very serious about the woman
of the Restoration. She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and
compounded, so to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led
the domestic life of the Duchesse d’Orleans, whose connubial couch was
exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or three kept
up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer women with something
like disgust. The great lady of the new school exercised no influence at
all over the manners of the time; and yet she might have done much.
She might, at worst, have presented as dignified a spectacle as
English-women of the same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old
precedents, became a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed
nothing of herself to appear, not even her better qualities.

Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to create a
salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take lessons in taste and
elegance. Their voices, which once laid down the law to literature, that
living expression of a time, now counted absolutely for nought. Now
when a literature lacks a general system, it fails to shape a body for
itself, and dies out with its period.

When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus constituted,
the historian is pretty certain to find some representative figure,
some central personage who embodies the qualities and the defects of the
whole party to which he belongs; there is Coligny, for instance, among
the Huguenots, the Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de
Richelieu under Louis XV, Danton during the Terror. It is in the nature
of things that the man should be identified with the company in which
history finds him. How is it possible to lead a party without conforming
to its ideas? or to shine in any epoch unless a man represents the ideas
of his time? The wise and prudent head of a party is continually obliged
to bow to the prejudices and follies of its rear; and this is the
cause of actions for which he is afterwards criticised by this or that
historian sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular explosions,
coolly judging the passion and ferment without which the great struggles
of the world could not be carried on at all. And if this is true of
the Historical Comedy of the Centuries, it is equally true in a more
restricted sphere in the detached scenes of the national drama known as
the _Manners of the Age_.



At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg
Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any truth in
the above reflections, they failed to give stability, the most perfect
type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness and strength, its
greatness and littleness, might have been found for a brief space in a
young married woman who belonged to it. This was a woman artificially
educated, but in reality ignorant; a woman whose instincts and feelings
were lofty while the thought which should have controlled them was
wanting. She squandered the wealth of her nature in obedience to social
conventions; she was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her
scruples degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force
of character, impressionable rather than enthusiastic, gifted with more
brain than heart; she was supremely a woman, supremely a coquette,
and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant life and gaiety,
reflecting never, or too late; imprudent to the verge of poetry, and
humble in the depths of her heart, in spite of her charming insolence.
Like some straight-growing reed, she made a show of independence; yet,
like the reed, she was ready to bend to a strong hand. She talked much
of religion, and had it not at heart, though she was prepared to find in
it a solution of her life. How explain a creature so complex? Capable
of heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a
spiteful word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart as
aged by the maxims of those about her; versed in a selfish philosophy in
which she was all unpractised, she had all the vices of a courtier, all
the nobleness of developing womanhood. She trusted nothing and no one,
yet there were times when she quitted her sceptical attitude for a
submissive credulity.

How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in whom the
play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to produce a poetic
confusion? For in her there shone a divine brightness, a radiance of
youth that blended all her bewildering characteristics in a certain
completeness and unity informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The
passion or semi-passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual
pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all
spontaneous and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position
as of the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
wholly self-contained; she put herself proudly above the world and
beneath the shelter of her name. There was something of the egoism of
Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy that lay a-dying,
and would not so much as raise itself or stretch out a hand to any
political physician; so well aware of its feebleness, or so conscious
that it was already dust, that it refused to touch or be touched.

The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had been married for
about four years when the Restoration was finally consummated, which is
to say, in 1816. By that time the revolution of the Hundred Days had let
in the light on the mind of Louis XVIII. In spite of his surroundings,
he comprehended the situation and the age in which he was living; and it
was only later, when this Louis XI, without the axe, lay stricken down
by disease, that those about him got the upper hand. The Duchesse de
Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which had made
a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis XIV.
Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a _tabouret_ at
Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the age of eighteen, came out of
the profound solitude in which her girlhood had been spent to marry the
Duc de Langeais’ eldest son. The two families at that time were living
quite out of the world; but after the invasion of France, the return
of the Bourbons seemed to every Royalist mind the only possible way of
putting an end to the miseries of the war.

The Ducs de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful throughout to
the exiled Princes, nobly resisting all the temptations of glory under
the Empire. Under the circumstances they naturally followed out the old
family policy; and Mlle Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl,
was married to M. le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the
death of the Duke his father.

After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their rank,
offices, and dignity at Court; once more they entered public life, from
which hitherto they held aloof, and took their place high on the sunlit
summits of the new political world. In that time of general baseness and
sham political conversions, the public conscience was glad to recognise
the unstained loyalty of the two houses, and a consistency in political
and private life for which all parties involuntarily respected them.
But, unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the
most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and wise
principles would have gained the confidence of the French nation and led
them to believe in the generosity of a novel and spirited policy--these
men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs, and public business was
allowed to fall into the hands of others, who found it to their interest
to push principles to their extreme consequences by way of proving their
devotion.

The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about the Court,
condemned to perform the duties required by Court ceremonial amid the
reproaches and sneers of the Liberal party. They were accused of gorging
themselves with riches and honours, and all the while their family
estates were no larger than before, and liberal allowances from the
civil list were wholly expended in keeping up the state necessary for
any European government, even if it be a Republic.

In 1818, M. le Duc de Langeais commanded a division of the army, and the
Duchess held a post about one of the Princesses, in virtue of which she
was free to live in Paris and apart from her husband without scandal.
The Duke, moreover, besides his military duties, had a place at Court,
to which he came during his term of waiting, leaving his major-general
in command. The Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the
world none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared the fate
of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more antipathetic
dispositions could not well have been found; they were brought together;
they jarred upon each other; there was soreness on either side; then
they were divided once for all. Then they went their separate ways,
with a due regard for appearances. The Duc de Langeais, by nature
as methodical as the Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up
methodically to his own tastes and amusements, and left his wife at
liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character.
He recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a
profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a youthful
loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the light of a prudish
and bigoted Court turned full upon the Duchess, his honour was safe.

So the Duke calmly did as the _grands seigneurs_ of the eighteenth
century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty to her
own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her nature there
was one appalling characteristic--she would never forgive an offence
when woman’s vanity and self-love, with all that was best in her nature
perhaps, had been slighted, wounded in secret. Insult and injury in the
face of the world a woman loves to forget; there is a way open to her of
showing herself great; she is a woman in her forgiveness; but a secret
offence women never pardon; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues
and hidden love, they have no kindness.

This was Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ real position, unknown to the
world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time of the
rejoicings over the Duc de Berri’s marriage. The Court and the Faubourg
roused itself from its listlessness and reserve. This was the real
beginning of that unheard-of splendour which the Government of the
Restoration carried too far. At that time the Duchess, whether for
reasons of her own, or from vanity, never appeared in public without a
following of women equally distinguished by name and fortune. As queen
of fashion she had her _dames d’atours_, her ladies, who modeled their
manner and their wit on hers. They had been cleverly chosen. None of her
satellites belonged to the inmost Court circle, nor to the highest
level of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but they had set their minds upon
admission to those inner sanctuaries. Being as yet simple denominations,
they wished to rise to the neighbourhood of the throne, and mingle with
the seraphic powers in the high sphere known as _le petit chateau_. Thus
surrounded, the Duchess’s position was stronger and more commanding and
secure. Her “ladies” defended her character and helped her to play her
detestable part of a woman of fashion. She could laugh at men at her
ease, play with fire, receive the homage on which the feminine nature is
nourished, and remain mistress of herself.

At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman still; she
lives on incense, adulation, and honours. No beauty, however undoubted,
no face, however fair, is anything without admiration. Flattery and
a lover are proofs of power. And what is power without recognition?
Nothing. If the prettiest of women were left alone in a corner of a
drawing-room, she would droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of
social grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts--often
because it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and
manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest creatures
extant--the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit;
it was for such as these that women threw themselves away. The gilded
wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less,
had neither the antecedents of the _petits maitres_ of the time of the
Fronde, nor the rough sterling worth of Napoleon’s heroes, not the wit
and fine manners of their grandsires; but something of all three they
meant to be without any trouble to themselves. Brave they were, like
all young Frenchmen; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had had
a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by the old
worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings. It was a day of
small things, a cold prosaic era. Perhaps it takes a long time for a
Restoration to become a Monarchy.

For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been leading
this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits, objectless
triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and die in an evening’s
space. All eyes were turned on her when she entered a room; she reaped
her harvest of flatteries and some few words of warmer admiration, which
she encouraged by a gesture or a glance, but never suffered to penetrate
deeper than the skin. Her tone and bearing and everything else about her
imposed her will upon others. Her life was a sort of fever of vanity
and perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head. She was daring enough in
conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting the surface, as
it were, of her heart. Yet when she returned home, she often blushed at
the story that had made her laugh; at the scandalous tale that supplied
the details, on the strength of which she analyzed the love that she had
never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not
with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how
to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each
other than corrupted by men.

There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is loved
will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit. What does a
husband prove? Simply that a girl or woman was endowed with wealth, or
well brought up; that her mother managed cleverly that in some way she
satisfied a man’s ambitions. A lover constantly bears witness to her
personal perfections. Then followed the discovery still in Mme de
Langeais’ early womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without
committing herself, without permission, without vouchsafing any
satisfaction beyond the most meagre dues. There was more than one demure
feminine hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such dangerous
comedies.

So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and
courtiers guaranteed her virtue. She was amiable and fascinating; she
flirted till the ball or the evening’s gaiety was at an end. Then the
curtain dropped. She was cold, indifferent, self-contained again till
the next day brought its renewed sensations, superficial as before. Two
or three men were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest.
She laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. “I am loved!” she told
herself. “He loves me!” The certainty sufficed her. It is enough for the
miser to know that his every whim might be fulfilled if he chose; so it
was with the Duchess, and perhaps she did not even go so far as to form
a wish.

One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend Mme la
Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who cordially detested
her, and went with her everywhere. In a “friendship” of this sort both
sides are on their guard, and never lay their armor aside; confidences
are ingeniously indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous. Mme de
Langeais had distributed her little patronizing, friendly, or freezing
bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her smiles,
when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Something in the man’s large
gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a feeling almost like dread,
she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse with, “Who is the newcomer, dear?”

“Someone that you have heard of, no doubt. The Marquis de Montriveau.”

“Oh! is it he?”

She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent scrutiny,
as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances, not to return
them.

“Do introduce him; he ought to be interesting.”

“Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear. But he is the fashion.”

M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly the object of
general curiosity, better deserved attention than any of the idols that
Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief space, for the city is
vexed by periodical fits of craving, a passion for _engouement_ and sham
enthusiasm, which must be satisfied. The Marquis was the only son of
General de Montriveau, one of the _ci-devants_ who served the Republic
nobly, and fell by Joubert’s side at Novi. Bonaparte had placed his son
at the school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who fell
on the battlefield, leaving their children under the protection of the
Republic. Armand de Montriveau left school with his way to make, entered
the artillery, and had only reached a major’s rank at the time of the
Fontainebleau disaster. In his section of the service the chances of
advancement were not many. There are fewer officers, in the first place,
among the gunners than in any other corps; and in the second place, the
feeling in the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican;
and the Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly educated
men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion grudgingly in
the service. In the artillery, accordingly, the general rule of the
army did not apply; the commanding officers were not invariably the most
remarkable men in their department, because there was less to be feared
from mediocrities. The artillery was a separate corps in those days, and
only came under Napoleon in action.

Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent in Armand de
Montriveau’s character, were sufficient in themselves to account for his
tardy promotion. He was alone in the world. He had been thrown at
the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men directed by Napoleon; his
interests were bounded by himself, any day he might lose his life; it
became a habit of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and
the consciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was
habitually silent; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity;
it was a kind of modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity
intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in
action; nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his
chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck upon
occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but his expression was haughty
and stern, and his face gained him this character. In everything he was
rigorous as arithmetic; he never permitted the slightest deviation from
duty on any plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact.
He would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked
anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of many
great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to despise it;
living without attaching themselves to life, because they have not found
their opportunity of developing to the full their power to do and feel.

People were afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was not
very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise above them, but to
decline to descend as low as they can do is the one unpardonable sin.
In their feeling towards loftier natures, there is a trace of hate and
fear. Too much honour with them implies censure of themselves, a thing
forgiven neither to the living nor to the dead.

After the Emperor’s farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble though
he was, was put on half-pay. Perhaps the heads of the War Office took
fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of antiquity, or perhaps it
was known that he felt bound by his oath to the Imperial Eagle. During
the Hundred Days he was made a Colonel of the Guard, and left on the
field of Waterloo. His wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present
at the disbanding of the Army of the Loire, but the King’s government
declined to recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand
de Montriveau left France.

An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied by
the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition through Upper
Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his enthusiasm to a project of
great importance, he turned his attention to that unexplored Central
Africa which occupies the learned of today. The scientific expedition
was long and unfortunate. He had made a valuable collection of notes
bearing on various geographical and commercial problems, of which
solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after surmounting
many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the continent, when he was
betrayed into the hands of a hostile native tribe. Then, stripped of all
that he had, for two years he led a wandering life in the desert,
the slave of savages, threatened with death at every moment, and more
cruelly treated than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children.
Physical strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to
survive the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape
well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French colony at
Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his memories of his
former life were dim and shapeless. The great sacrifices made in his
travels were all forgotten like his studies of African dialects, his
discoveries, and observations. One story will give an idea of all that
he passed through. Once for several days the children of the sheikh of
the tribe amused themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging
horses’ knuckle-bones at his head.

Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man. He had no interest,
and wished for none. He would have died twenty times over sooner than
ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press the recognition of his
claims. Adversity and hardship had developed his energy even in trifles,
while the habit of preserving his self-respect before that spiritual
self which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most
apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures became known,
however, through his acquaintances, among the principal men of science
in Paris, and some few well-read military men. The incidents of his
slavery and subsequent escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence,
and coolness which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that
transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though the artist that
fain would keep it must make untold efforts.

Montriveau’s position suddenly changed towards the end of that year. He
had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at any rate, he had
all the advantages of wealth. The King’s government, trying to attach
capable men to itself and to strengthen the army, made concessions
about that time to Napoleon’s old officers if their known loyalty and
character offered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau’s name once
more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he received his
arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All these favours, one
after another, came to seek the Marquis de Montriveau; he had asked
for nothing however small. Friends had taken the steps for him which he
would have refused to take for himself.

After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his
custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere he met
with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found some end
in life; but everything passed within the man, there were no external
signs; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved
face. His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in
such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls
of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. Terse
of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be
haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something
strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten
with this original person because he was not to be caught by their
flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent
the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian’s
grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to
the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very
promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his
adventures and his life; but for the men who cried him up behind his
back; but for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman
who was to fill his thoughts.

For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais’ curiosity was no less lively
than natural. Chance had so ordered it that her interest in the man
before her had been aroused only the day before, when she heard the
story of one of M. de Montriveau’s adventures, a story calculated to
make the strongest impression upon a woman’s ever-changing fancy.

During M. de Montriveau’s voyage of discovery to the sources of the
Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely the most
extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The district that he
wished to explore could only be reached on foot across a tract of
desert. Only one of his guides knew the way; no traveller had penetrated
before into that part of the country, where the undaunted officer hoped
to find a solution of several scientific problems. In spite of the
representations made to him by the guide and the older men of the place,
he started upon the formidable journey. Summoning up courage, already
highly strung by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in
the morning.

The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step; and when, at the
end of a long day’s march, he lay down to sleep on the ground, he had
never been so tired in his life. He knew, however, that he must be up
and on his way before dawn next day, and his guide assured him that they
should reach the end of their journey towards noon. That promise kept
up his courage and gave him new strength. In spite of his sufferings,
he continued his march, with some blasphemings against science; he was
ashamed to complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself. After
marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing, his feet
were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place soon. “In an
hour’s time,” said the guide. Armand braced himself for another hour’s
march, and they went on.

The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky the
palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of the journey
near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as the circle of the
open sea.

He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the guide--he
had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and weariness flowed over
his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with fatigue upon fatigue, his
throat seemed to be glued by the desert thirst. The guide meanwhile
stood motionless, listening to these complaints with an ironical
expression, studying the while, with the apparent indifference of an
Oriental, the scarcely perceptible indications in the lie of the sands,
which looked almost black, like burnished gold.

“I have made a mistake,” he remarked coolly. “I could not make out the
track, it is so long since I came this way; we are surely on it now, but
we must push on for two hours.”

“The man is right,” thought M. de Montriveau.

So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. It seemed
as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like the invisible tie
between the condemned man and the headsman. But the two hours went by,
Montriveau had spent his last drops of energy, and the skyline was a
blank, there were no palm-trees, no hills. He could neither cry out
nor groan, he lay down on the sand to die, but his eyes would have
frightened the boldest; something in his face seemed to say that he
would not die alone. His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool
glance like a man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept
at a safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim. At last M.
Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse. The guide came
nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said, “Was it not your own
will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all? You say that I
have lied to you. If I had not, you would not be even here. Do you want
the truth? Here it is. _We have still another five hours’ march before
us, and we cannot go back_. Sound yourself; if you have not courage
enough, here is my dagger.”

Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength, M.
de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh stock of
courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet, and followed
his guide. The five hours were at an end, and still M. de Montriveau
saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his guide; but the Nubian
hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed him a wide pool of water with
greenness all about it, and a noble forest lighted up by the sunset. It
lay only a hundred paces away; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious
landscape. It seemed to Armand that he had taken a new lease of life.
His guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work of
devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely discernible
track on the granite. Behind him lay the hell of burning sand, before
him the earthly paradise of the most beautiful oasis in the desert.

The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this romantic
figure, was even more impressed when she learned that this was that
Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed during the night. She had
been with him among the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of
her nightmare wanderings; for such a woman was not this a delightful
presage of a new interest in her life? And never was a man’s exterior
a better exponent of his character; never were curious glances so well
justified. The principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head
was the thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him
a strikingly close resemblance to General Kleber; and the likeness still
held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his face, the
quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery vehemence expressed
by strongly marked features. He was short, deep-chested, and muscular
as a lion. There was something of the despot about him, and an
indescribable suggestion of the security of strength in his gait,
bearing, and slightest movements. He seemed to know that his will was
irresistible, perhaps because he wished for nothing unjust. And yet,
like all really strong men, he was mild of speech, simple in his
manners, and kindly natured; although it seemed as if, in the stress of
a great crisis, all these finer qualities must disappear, and the man
would show himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in
action. There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips
which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.

The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting glory was to be
won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in Armand de
Montriveau during the brief interval before the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
brought him to be introduced. She would prefer him above the others; she
would attach him to herself, display all her powers of coquetry for him.
It was a fancy, such a merest Duchess’s whim as furnished a Lope or a
Calderon with the plot of the _Dog in the Manger_. She would not suffer
another woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of
being his.

Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of
coquette, and education had perfected her. Women envied her, and men
fell in love with her, not without reason. Nothing that can inspire
love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting in her. Her
style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing, all combined to
give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to be the consciousness
of power. Her shape was graceful; perhaps there was a trace of
self-consciousness in her changes of movement, the one affectation that
could be laid to her charge; but everything about her was a part of her
personality, from her least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her
phrases, the demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady’s grace, her
most striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination in her
swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if she surely would
be a most delicious mistress when her corset and the encumbering costume
of her part were laid aside. All the rapture of love surely was latent
in the freedom of her expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the
charm of her words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within
her, vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.

You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and
melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed
spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or confiding
at will. Her apparent good nature was real; she had no temptation to
descend to malignity. But at each moment her mood changed; she was full
of confidence or craft; her moving tenderness would give place to a
heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she
was, without bringing together all the extremes of feminine nature? In
a word, the Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem.
Her face was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain
thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages.
Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred,
as it were, by an excess of delicacy.

M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the Duchesse
de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose sensitive taste
leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from overwhelming him with
questions and compliments. She received him with a gracious deference
which could not fail to flatter a man of more than ordinary powers,
for the fact that a man rises above the ordinary level implies that
he possesses something of that tact which makes women quick to read
feeling. If the Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances;
her compliments were conveyed in her manner; there was a winning grace
displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to please which
she of all women knew the art of manifesting. Yet her whole conversation
was but, in a manner, the body of the letter; the postscript with the
principal thought in it was still to come. After half an hour spent in
ordinary talk, in which the words gained all their value from her tone
and smiles, M. de Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the
Duchess stopped him with an expressive gesture.

“I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which I have
had the pleasure of talking to you proved so sufficiently attractive,
that I may venture to ask you to call upon me; I am afraid that it may
be very selfish of me to wish to have you all to myself. If I should
be so fortunate as to find that my house is agreeable to you, you will
always find me at home in the evening until ten o’clock.”

The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de
Montriveau could not refuse to accept it. When he fell back again among
the groups of men gathered at a distance from the women, his
friends congratulated him, half laughingly, half in earnest, on the
extraordinary reception vouchsafed him by the Duchesse de Langeais. The
difficult and brilliant conquest had been made beyond a doubt, and the
glory of it was reserved for the Artillery of the Guard. It is easy to
imagine the jests, good and bad, when this topic had once been started;
the world of Paris salons is so eager for amusement, and a joke lasts
for such a short time, that everyone is eager to make the most of it
while it is fresh.

All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense. From his
place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn again and again
to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections. He could not help
admitting to himself that of all the women whose beauty had captivated
his eyes, not one had seemed to be a more exquisite embodiment of faults
and fair qualities blended in a completeness that might realise the
dreams of earliest manhood. Is there a man in any rank of life that has
not felt indefinable rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled
out (if only in his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and
social aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?
And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument
for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the
sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent, as the eighteenth century
moralist remarked, were it not for vanity. And it is certainly true
that for everyone, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in
the superiority of the beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a
contemptuous glance can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to
surround herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of
kings, of finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so
ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into confusion?
beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a small thing to know
that your self-love will never suffer through her? A man makes these
reflections in the twinkling of an eye. And how if, in the future opened
out by early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the changeful
delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, the perils
of love’s voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of coquetry? Is not
this enough to move the coldest man’s heart?

This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau’s position with regard to woman;
his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary fact. He
had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the hurricane of
Napoleon’s wars; his life had been spent on fields of battle. Of women
he knew just so much as a traveller knows of a country when he travels
across it in haste from one inn to another. The verdict which Voltaire
passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, have been applied
by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not
thirty-seven follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was
as much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively reading
_Faublas_. Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he knew nothing;
and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang from this virginity of
feeling.

There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work demanded of
them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de Montriveau by war
and a life of adventure--these know what it is to be in this unusual
position if they very seldom confess to it. Every man in Paris is
supposed to have been in love. No woman in Paris cares to take what
other women have passed over. The dread of being taken for a fool is the
source of the coxcomb’s bragging so common in France; for in France to
have the reputation of a fool is to be a foreigner in one’s own country.
Vehement desire seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered
strength from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart
unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.

A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery over
himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired within
himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that thought lay
the only way to love for him. Desire became a solemn compact made with
himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived;
for among them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny a man’s
whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his
own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one end.

A younger man would have said to himself, “I should very much like to
have the Duchess for my mistress!” or, “If the Duchesse de Langeais
cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!” But the General said,
“I will have Mme de Langeais for my mistress.” And if a man takes such
an idea into his head when his heart has never been touched before, and
love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a
hell he has set his foot.

Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the first hot
fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a man has kept all
his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and impetuosity into middle
age, his first impulse is, as it were, to stretch out a hand to take the
thing that he desires; a little later he realizes that there is a gulf
set between them, and that it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort
of childish impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more,
and trembles or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage
made the heavier by his love.

The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become
a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his world, his life,
from this time forth. The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he
had yet known grew colorless before the bare recollection of the least
sensation stirred in him by her. The swiftest revolutions in a man’s
outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete
revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, rather than
by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine
rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete
revolution. In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau
wiped out his whole past life.

A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, “Shall I go, or shall I
not?” and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais
towards eight o’clock that evening, and was admitted. He was to see the
woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had seen yesterday, among
lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling.
He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of
firing the first shot on a field of battle.

Poor novice! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown cashmere
dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly stretched out upon
a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir. Mme de Langeais did not so much as
rise, nothing was visible of her but her face, her hair was loose but
confined by a scarf. A hand indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white
as marble to Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at
the further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said:

“If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I could
dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I felt but slight
interest, I should have closed my door. I am exceedingly unwell.”

“I will go,” Armand said to himself.

“But I do not know how it is,” she continued (and the simple warrior
attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), “perhaps it was a
presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more sensible of the
prompt attention than I), but the vapors have left my head.”

“Then may I stay?”

“Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go. I told myself this
morning that it was impossible that I should have made the slightest
impression on your mind, and that in all probability you took my request
for one of the commonplaces of which Parisians are lavish on every
occasion. And I forgave your ingratitude in advance. An explorer
from the deserts is not supposed to know how exclusive we are in our
friendships in the Faubourg.”

The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they had
been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them to her
lips. The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her headache, and
her speculation was fully successful. The General, poor man, was really
distressed by the lady’s simulated distress. Like Crillon listening to
the story of the Crucifixion, he was ready to draw his sword against the
vapors. How could a man dare to speak just then to this suffering woman
of the love that she inspired? Armand had already felt that it would be
absurd to fire off a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above
other women. With a single thought came understanding of the delicacies
of feeling, of the soul’s requirements. To love: what was that but to
know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait? And as for the love that
he felt, must he not prove it? His tongue was mute, it was frozen by the
conventions of the noble Faubourg, the majesty of a sick headache, the
bashfulness of love. But no power on earth could veil his glances; the
heat and the Infinite of the desert blazed in eyes calm as a panther’s,
beneath the lids that fell so seldom. The Duchess enjoyed the steady
gaze that enveloped her in light and warmth.

“Mme la Duchesse,” he answered, “I am afraid I express my gratitude for
your goodness very badly. At this moment I have but one desire--I wish
it were in my power to cure the pain.”

“Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now,” she said, gracefully
tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.

“Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand sequins.

“A traveler’s compliment!” smiled she.

It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a labyrinth
of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in which he manoeuvred,
in military language, as Prince Charles might have done at close
quarters with Napoleon. She took a mischievous amusement in
reconnoitring the extent of his infatuation by the number of foolish
speeches extracted from a novice whom she led step by step into a
hopeless maze, meaning to leave him there in confusion. She began by
laughing at him, but nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how
time went.

The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but Armand was
innocent of any such intent. The famous explorer spent an hour in chat
on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that he meant to say, and was
feeling that he was only an instrument on whom this woman played, when
she rose, sat upright, drew the scarf from her hair, and wrapped it
about her throat, leant her elbow on the cushions, did him the honour
of a complete cure, and rang for lights. The most graceful movement
succeeded to complete repose. She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom
she had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her deeply,
and said:

“You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that you
have never loved. It is a man’s great pretension with us. And we always
believe it! Out of pure politeness. Do we not know what to expect
from it for ourselves? Where is the man that has found but a single
opportunity of losing his heart? But you love to deceive us, and we
submit to be deceived, poor foolish creatures that we are; for your
hypocrisy is, after all, a homage paid to the superiority of our
sentiments, which are all purity.”

The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the novice
in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep, while the
Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular heaven.

“Confound it!” thought Armand de Montriveau, “how am I to tell this wild
thing that I love her?”

He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess had
a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion in this
unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an interest in her
empty life. So she prepared with no little dexterity to raise a certain
number of redoubts for him to carry by storm before he should gain an
entrance into her heart. Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after
another; he should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect
teased by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in
spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its mischievous
tormentor. And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible happiness to see
that this strong man had told her the truth. Armand had never loved, as
he had said. He was about to go, in a bad humour with himself, and still
more out of humour with her; but it delighted her to see a sullenness
that she could conjure away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.

“Will you come tomorrow evening?” she asked. “I am going to a ball, but
I shall stay at home for you until ten o’clock.”

Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate
quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the hours
till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais. To anyone who had
known the magnificent worth of the man, it would have been grievous to
see him grown so small, so distrustful of himself; the mind that might
have shed light over undiscovered worlds shrunk to the proportions of
a she-coxcomb’s boudoir. Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low
already in his happiness that to save his life he could not have told
his love to one of his closest friends. Is there not always a trace
of shame in the lover’s bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain
exultation over diminished masculine stature? Indeed, but for a host of
motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly always the first
to betray the secret?--a secret of which, perhaps, they soon weary.

“Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur,” said the man; “she is
dressing, she begs you to wait for her here.”

Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in the
least details. He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the objects of her
choosing; they revealed her life before he could grasp her personality
and ideas. About an hour later the Duchess came noiselessly out of her
chamber. Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room,
and trembled. She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise’s enquiry, “How
do I look?” She was sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, “I am
adorned to please you.”

No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in
disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty throat, so
that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam through the gleaming
folds. The Duchess was dazzling. The pale blue colour of her gown,
repeated in the flowers in her hair, appeared by the richness of its hue
to lend substance to a fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as
she glided towards Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about
her, putting that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies
that hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem to
mingle and blend.

“I have kept you waiting,” she said, with the tone that a woman can
always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to please.

“I would wait patiently through an eternity,” said he, “if I were sure
of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment to speak of your
beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch you. Suffer me only to
kiss your scarf.”

“Oh, fie!” she said, with a commanding gesture, “I esteem you enough to
give you my hand.”

She held it out for his kiss. A woman’s hand, still moist from the
scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that sends a
tingling thrill from the lips to the soul. And if a man is attracted to
a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel pleasure as his heart is
full of love, such a kiss, though chaste in appearance, may conjure up a
terrific storm.

“Will you always give it me like this?” the General asked humbly when he
had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to his lips.

“Yes, but there we must stop,” she said, smiling. She sat down,
and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to slip the
unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she watched M.
de Montriveau; and he was lost in admiration of the Duchess and those
repeated graceful movements of hers.

“Ah! you were punctual,” she said; “that is right. I like punctuality.
It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says; but to my thinking, from
you men it is the most respectful flattery of all. Now, is it not? Just
tell me.”

Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious friendship,
for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness through such nothings
as these! Oh, the Duchess understood _son metier de femme_--the art
and mystery of being a woman--most marvelously well; she knew, to
admiration, how to raise a man in his own esteem as he humbled himself
to her; how to reward every step of the descent to sentimental folly
with hollow flatteries.

“You will never forget to come at nine o’clock.”

“No; but are you going to a ball every night?”

“Do I know?” she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the
shoulders; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if not
capricious, and that a lover must take her as she was.--“Besides,” she
added, “what is that to you? You shall be my escort.”

“That would be difficult tonight,” he objected; “I am not properly
dressed.”

“It seems to me,” she returned loftily, “that if anyone has a right
to complain of your costume, it is I. Know, therefore, _monsieur le
voyageur_, that if I accept a man’s arm, he is forthwith above the laws
of fashion, nobody would venture to criticise him. You do not know the
world, I see; I like you the better for it.”

And even as she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of that world by
the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman of fashion.

“If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a simpleton to
prevent her,” said Armand to himself. “She has a liking for me beyond a
doubt; and as for the world, she cannot despise it more than I do. So,
now for the ball if she likes.”

The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her and
appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would hesitate
to believe that he was violently in love with her. And the General was
well pleased that the queen of fashion should think of compromising
herself for him; hope gave him wit. He had gained confidence, he brought
out his thoughts and views; he felt nothing of the restraint that
weighed on his spirits yesterday. His talk was interesting and animated,
and full of those first confidences so sweet to make and to receive.

Was Mme de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she
devised this charming piece of coquetry? At any rate, she looked up
mischievously as the clock struck twelve.

“Ah! you have made me too late for the ball!” she exclaimed, surprised
and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.

The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a smile that
made Armand’s heart give a sudden leap.

“I certainly promised Mme de Beauseant,” she added. “They are all
expecting me.”

“Very well--go.”

“No--go on. I will stay. Your Eastern adventures fascinate me. Tell
me the whole story of your life. I love to share in a brave man’s
hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do!”

She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to
pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of inward
dissatisfaction and deep reflection.

“_We_ are fit for nothing,” she went on. “Ah! we are contemptible,
selfish, frivolous creatures. We can bore ourselves with amusements,
and that is all we can do. Not one of us that understands that she has
a part to play in life. In old days in France, women were beneficent
lights; they lived to comfort those that mourned, to encourage high
virtues, to reward artists and stir new life with noble thoughts. If the
world has grown so petty, ours is the fault. You make me loathe the ball
and this world in which I live. No, I am not giving up much for you.”

She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a flower,
pulling away all the petals one by one; and now she crushed it into a
ball, and flung it away. She could show her swan’s neck.

She rang the bell. “I shall not go out tonight,” she told the footman.
Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; and by the look of
misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take the order for a
confession, for a first and great favour. There was a pause, filled with
many thoughts, before she spoke with that tenderness which is often in
women’s voices, and not so often in their hearts. “You have had a hard
life,” she said.

“No,” returned Armand. “Until today I did not know what happiness was.”

“Then you know it now?” she asked, looking at him with a demure, keen
glance.

“What is happiness for me henceforth but this--to see you, to hear
you?... Until now I have only known privation; now I know that I can be
unhappy----”

“That will do, that will do,” she said. “You must go; it is past
midnight. Let us regard appearances. People must not talk about us. I
do not know quite what I shall say; but the headache is a good-natured
friend, and tells no tales.”

“Is there to be a ball tomorrow night?”

“You would grow accustomed to the life, I think. Very well. Yes, we will
go again tomorrow night.”

There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went out
from her. Every evening he came to Mme de Langeais’ at the hour kept for
him by a tacit understanding.

It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a redundance
of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were superfluous to follow
the story step by step--the progress of a romance growing in those hours
spent together, a romance controlled entirely by a woman’s will. If
sentiment went too fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when
words flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings. Perhaps
the only way of following such Penelope’s progress is by marking its
outward and visible signs.

As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, the
assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady’s
insatiable hands. Wherever Mme de Langeais went, M. de Montriveau
was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called him “Her Grace’s
orderly.” And already he had made enemies; others were jealous, and
envied him his position. Mme de Langeais had attained her end. The
Marquis de Montriveau was among her numerous train of adorers, and a
means of humiliating those who boasted of their progress in her good
graces, for she publicly gave him preference over them all.

“Decidedly, M. de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess shows a
preference,” pronounced Mme de Serizy.

And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman “shows a
preference?” All went on therefore according to prescribed rule. The
anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate concerning the General
put that warrior in so formidable a light, that the more adroit quietly
dropped their pretensions to the Duchess, and remained in her train
merely to turn the position to account, and to use her name and
personality to make better terms for themselves with certain stars of
the second magnitude. And those lesser powers were delighted to take a
lover away from Mme de Langeais. The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to
see these desertions and treaties with the enemy; and her pride would
not suffer her to be the dupe of them. As M. de Talleyrand, one of her
great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition of revenge,
laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the pairs in these
“morganatic” unions. Her mocking disdain contributed not a little to
increase her reputation as an extremely clever woman and a person to
be feared. Her character for virtue was consolidated while she amused
herself with other people’s secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet,
after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the
depths of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the
subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg Saint-Germain;
he was taking a Parisienne’s coquetry in earnest.

“You will not tame _him_, dear Duchess,” the old Vidame de Pamiers had
said. “‘Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he will carry you off to his
eyrie if you do not take care.”

Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid. The shrewd old noble’s words sounded
like a prophecy. The next day she tried to turn love to hate. She was
harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau disarmed her with
angelic sweetness. She so little knew the great generosity of a large
nature, that the kindly jests with which her first complaints were met
went to her heart. She sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection.
She persisted.

“When a man idolizes you, how can he have vexed you?” asked Armand.

“You do not vex me,” she answered, suddenly grown gentle and submissive.
“But why do you wish to compromise me? For me you ought to be nothing
but a _friend_. Do you not know it? I wish I could see that you had the
instincts, the delicacy of real friendship, so that I might lose neither
your respect nor the pleasure that your presence gives me.”

“Nothing but your _friend_!” he cried out. The terrible word sent an
electric shock through his brain. “On the faith of these happy hours
that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your heart. And now today, for no
reason, you are pleased to destroy all the secret hopes by which I live.
You have required promises of such constancy in me, you have said so
much of your horror of women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do
you wish me to understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have
passions, and know nothing of love? If so, why did you ask my life of
me? why did you accept it?”

“I was wrong, my friend. Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to such
intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return.”

“I understand. You have merely been coquetting with me, and----”

“Coquetting?” she repeated. “I detest coquetry. A coquette Armand, makes
promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a woman who keeps such
promises is a libertine. This much I believed I had grasped of our code.
But to be melancholy with humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic
with ambitious souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance
of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with
philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each one his
little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as much a matter of
necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or flowers in one’s hair. Such
talk is the moral counterpart of the toilette. You take it up and lay it
aside with the plumed head-dress. Do you call this coquetry? Why, I have
never treated you as I treat everyone else. With you, my friend, I am
sincere. Have I not always shared your views, and when you convinced me
after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad? In short, I love
you, but only as a devout and pure woman may love. I have thought it
over. I am a married woman, Armand. My way of life with M. de Langeais
gives me liberty to bestow my heart; but law and custom leave me no
right to dispose of my person. If a woman loses her honour, she is
an outcast in any rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single
example of a man that realizes all that our sacrifices demand of him in
such a case. Quite otherwise. Anyone can foresee the rupture between Mme
de Beauseant and M. d’Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de Rochefide,
it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that these very
sacrifices on the woman’s part are almost always the cause of the man’s
desertion. If you had loved me sincerely, you would have kept away for a
time.--Now, I will lay aside all vanity for you; is not that something?
What will not people say of a woman to whom no man attaches himself?
Oh, she is heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid
of charm! Coquettes will not spare me. They will rob me of the very
qualities that mortify them. So long as my reputation is safe, what do I
care if my rivals deny my merits? They certainly will not inherit them.
Come, my friend; give up something for her who sacrifices so much for
you. Do not come quite so often; I shall love you none the less.”

“Ah!” said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart in his
words and tone. “Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds on illusions.
Nothing could be truer, I see; I am expected to imagine that I am loved.
But, there!--there are some thoughts like wounds, from which there is no
recovery. My belief in you was one of the last left to me, and now I see
that there is nothing left to believe in this earth.”

She began to smile.

“Yes,” Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, “this Catholic faith to
which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for themselves; hope
is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a lie between us and our
fellows; and pity, and prudence, and terror are cunning lies. And now
my happiness is to be one more lying delusion; I am expected to delude
myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the end. If you
can so easily dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither
as your friend nor your lover, you do not care for me! And I, poor fool
that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!”

“But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion!”

“I flying into a passion?”

“Yes. You think that the whole question is opened because I ask you to
be careful.”

In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that leapt out
in her lover’s eyes. Even as she tortured him, she was criticising
him, watching every slightest change that passed over his face. If
the General had been so unluckily inspired as to show himself generous
without discussion (as happens occasionally with some artless souls),
he would have been a banished man forever, accused and convicted of not
knowing how to love. Most women are not displeased to have their code of
right and wrong broken through. Do they not flatter themselves that they
never yield except to force? But Armand was not learned enough in this
kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the Duchess.
So much of the child was there in the strong man in love.

“If all you want is to preserve appearances,” he began in his
simplicity, “I am willing to----”

“Simply to preserve appearances!” the lady broke in; “why, what idea can
you have of me? Have I given you the slightest reason to suppose that I
can be yours?”

“Why, what else are we talking about?” demanded Montriveau.

“Monsieur, you frighten me!... No, pardon me. Thank you,” she added,
coldly; “thank you, Armand. You have given me timely warning of
imprudence; committed quite unconsciously, believe it, my friend. You
know how to endure, you say. I also know how to endure. We will not
see each other for a time; and then, when both of us have contrived to
recover calmness to some extent, we will think about arrangements for
a happiness sanctioned by the world. I am young, Armand; a man with no
delicacy might tempt a woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild
things for his sake. But _you_! You will be my friend, promise me that
you will?”

“The woman of four-and-twenty,” returned he, “knows what she is about.”

He sat down on the sofa in the boudoir, and leant his head on his hands.

“Do you love me, madame?” he asked at length, raising his head, and
turning a face full of resolution upon her. “Say it straight out; Yes or
No!”

His direct question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of suicide
could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth century is not to
be frightened by that stale stratagem, the sword has ceased to be part
of the masculine costume. But in the effect of eyelids and lashes, in
the contraction of the gaze, in the twitching of the lips, is there not
some influence that communicates the terror which they express with such
vivid magnetic power?

“Ah, if I were free, if----”

“Oh! is it only your husband that stands in the way?” the General
exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the boudoir. “Dear
Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power than the Autocrat of all the
Russias. I have a compact with Fate; I can advance or retard destiny,
so far as men are concerned, at my fancy, as you alter the hands of a
watch. If you can direct the course of fate in our political machinery,
it simply means (does it not?) that you understand the ins and outs of
it. You shall be free before very long, and then you must remember your
promise.”

“Armand!” she cried. “What do you mean? Great heavens! Can you imagine
that I am to be the prize of a crime? Do you want to kill me? Why! you
cannot have any religion in you! For my own part, I fear God. M. de
Langeais may have given me reason to hate him, but I wish him no manner
of harm.”

M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble chimney-piece, and only
looked composedly at the lady.

“Dear,” continued she, “respect him. He does not love me, he is not kind
to me, but I have duties to fulfil with regard to him. What would I not
do to avert the calamities with which you threaten him?--Listen,” she
continued after a pause, “I will not say another word about separation;
you shall come here as in the past, and I will still give you my
forehead to kiss. If I refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry,
indeed it was. But let us understand each other,” she added as he came
closer. “You will permit me to add to the number of my satellites; to
receive even more visitors in the morning than heretofore; I mean to be
twice as frivolous; I mean to use you to all appearance very badly;
to feign a rupture; you must come not quite so often, and then,
afterwards----”

While she spoke, she had allowed him to put an arm about her waist,
Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she seemed to feel the
exceeding pleasure that women usually feel in that close contact, an
earnest of the bliss of a closer union. And then, doubtless she meant to
elicit some confidence, for she raised herself on tiptoe, and laid her
forehead against Armand’s burning lips.

“And then,” Montriveau finished her sentence for her, “you shall not
speak to me of your husband. You ought not to think of him again.”

Mme de Langeais was silent awhile.

“At least,” she said, after a significant pause, “at least you will do
all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be naughty; tell me so,
my friend? You wanted to frighten me, did you not? Come, now, confess
it?... You are too good ever to think of crimes. But is it possible that
you can have secrets that I do not know? How can you control Fate?”

“Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you have already given
me, I am far too happy to know exactly how to answer you. I can trust
you, Antoinette; I shall have no suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of
you. But if accident should set you free, we shall be one----”

“Accident, Armand?” (With that little dainty turn of the head that seems
to say so many things, a gesture that such women as the Duchess can use
on light occasions, as a great singer can act with her voice.) “Pure
accident,” she repeated. “Mind that. If anything should happen to M. de
Langeais by your fault, I should never be yours.”

And so they parted, mutually content. The Duchess had made a pact
that left her free to prove to the world by words and deeds that M. de
Montriveau was no lover of hers. And as for him, the wily Duchess
vowed to tire him out. He should have nothing of her beyond the little
concessions snatched in the course of contests that she could stop
at her pleasure. She had so pretty an art of revoking the grant
of yesterday, she was so much in earnest in her purpose to remain
technically virtuous, that she felt that there was not the slightest
danger for her in preliminaries fraught with peril for a woman less sure
of her self-command. After all, the Duchess was practically separated
from her husband; a marriage long since annulled was no great sacrifice
to make to her love.

Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest promise, glad
once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of conjugal fidelity, her
stock of excuses for refusing herself to his love. He had gained ground
a little, and congratulated himself. And so for a time he took unfair
advantage of the rights so hardly won. More a boy than he had ever been
in his life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first
love the flower of life. He was a child again as he poured out all
his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him, upon her
hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to his eyes; upon
her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips were pressed. And the
Duchess, on whom his love was poured like a flood, was vanquished by
the magnetic influence of her lover’s warmth; she hesitated to begin
the quarrel that must part them forever. She was more a woman than she
thought, this slight creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands
of religion with the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of
pleasure which turns a Parisienne’s head. Every Sunday she went to Mass;
she never missed a service; then, when evening came, she was steeped in
the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire. Armand and Mme de Langeais,
like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward of their continence in the
temptations to which it gave rise. Possibly, the Duchess had ended by
resolving love into fraternal caresses, harmless enough, as it might
have seemed to the rest of the world, while they borrowed extremes
of degradation from the license of her thoughts. How else explain the
incomprehensible mystery of her continual fluctuations? Every morning
she proposed to herself to shut her door on the Marquis de Montriveau;
every evening, at the appointed hour, she fell under the charm of his
presence. There was a languid defence; then she grew less unkind. Her
words were sweet and soothing. They were lovers--lovers only could have
been thus. For him the Duchess would display her most sparkling wit, her
most captivating wiles; and when at last she had wrought upon his senses
and his soul, she might submit herself passively to his fierce caresses,
but she had her _nec plus ultra_ of passion; and when once it was
reached, she grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and made
as though he would pass beyond. No woman on earth can brave the
consequences of refusal without some motive; nothing is more natural
than to yield to love; wherefore Mme de Langeais promptly raised a
second line of fortification, a stronghold less easy to carry than
the first. She evoked the terrors of religion. Never did Father of
the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of God better than the
Duchess. Never was the wrath of the Most High better justified than
by her voice. She used no preacher’s commonplaces, no rhetorical
amplifications. No. She had a “pulpit-tremor” of her own. To Armand’s
most passionate entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture
in which a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression. She stopped
his mouth with an appeal for mercy. She would not hear another word; if
she did, she must succumb; and better death than criminal happiness.

“Is it nothing to disobey God?” she asked him, recovering a voice grown
faint in the crises of inward struggles, through which the fair
actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her self-control. “I would
sacrifice society, I would give up the whole world for you, gladly; but
it is very selfish of you to ask my whole after-life of me for a moment
of pleasure. Come, now! are you not happy?” she added, holding out her
hand; and certainly in her careless toilette the sight of her afforded
consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.

Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent passion
gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness, she suffered
him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in feigned terror, she
flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa so soon as the sofa became
dangerous ground.

“Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are paid for by
penitence and remorse,” she cried.

And Montriveau, now at two chairs’ distance from that aristocratic
petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed against Providence.
The Duchess grew angry at such times.

“My friend,” she said drily, “I do not understand why you decline to
believe in God, for it is impossible to believe in man. Hush, do not
talk like that. You have too great a nature to take up their Liberal
nonsense with its pretension to abolish God.”

Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche on
Montriveau; he calmed down; he could not return to love when the Duchess
stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting him down a thousand miles away
from the boudoir, discussing theories of absolute monarchy, which she
defended to admiration. Few women venture to be democrats; the attitude
of democratic champion is scarcely compatible with tyrannous feminine
sway. But often, on the other hand, the General shook out his mane,
dropped politics with a leonine growling and lashing of the flanks, and
sprang upon his prey; he was no longer capable of carrying a heart and
brain at such variance for very far; he came back, terrible with love,
to his mistress. And she, if she felt the prick of fancy stimulated to
a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave her boudoir; she came
out of the atmosphere surcharged with desires that she drew in with
her breath, sat down to the piano, and sang the most exquisite songs
of modern music, and so baffled the physical attraction which at times
showed her no mercy, though she was strong enough to fight it down.

At such times she was something sublime in Armand’s eyes; she was not
acting, she was genuine; the unhappy lover was convinced that she loved
him. Her egoistic resistance deluded him into a belief that she was a
pure and sainted woman; he resigned himself; he talked of Platonic love,
did this artillery officer!

When Mme de Langeais had played with religion sufficiently to suit her
own purposes, she played with it again for Armand’s benefit. She wanted
to bring him back to a Christian frame of mind; she brought out her
edition of _Le Genie du Christianisme_, adapted for the use of military
men. Montriveau chafed; his yoke was heavy. Oh! at that, possessed by
the spirit of contradiction, she dinned religion into his ears, to see
whether God might not rid her of this suitor, for the man’s persistence
was beginning to frighten her. And in any case she was glad to prolong
any quarrel, if it bade fair to keep the dispute on moral grounds for
an indefinite period; the material struggle which followed it was more
dangerous.

But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage law
might be said to be the _epoque civile_ of this sentimental warfare, the
ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the _epoque religieuse_
had also its crisis and consequent decline of severity.

Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M. l’Abbe
Gondrand, the Duchess’s spiritual director, established in an armchair
by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director might be expected to
look while digesting his dinner and the charming sins of his penitent.
In the ecclesiastic’s bearing there was a stateliness befitting a
dignitary of the Church; and the episcopal violet hue already appeared
in his dress. At sight of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, smooth
forehead, and ascetic’s mouth, Montriveau’s countenance grew uncommonly
dark; he said not a word under the malicious scrutiny of the other’s
gaze, and greeted neither the lady nor the priest. The lover apart,
Montriveau was not wanting in tact; so a few glances exchanged with the
bishop-designate told him that here was the real forger of the Duchess’s
armory of scruples.

That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a man of
Montriveau’s temper, and by underhand ways! The thought burst in a
furious tide over his face, clenched his fists, and set him chafing and
pacing to and fro; but when he came back to his place intending to make
a scene, a single look from the Duchess was enough. He was quiet.

Any other woman would have been put out by her lover’s gloomy silence;
it was quite otherwise with Mme de Langeais. She continued her
conversation with M. de Gondrand on the necessity of re-establishing the
Church in its ancient splendour. And she talked brilliantly.

The Church, she maintained, ought to be a temporal as well as a
spiritual power, stating her case better than the Abbe had done, and
regretting that the Chamber of Peers, unlike the English House of Lords,
had no bench of bishops. Nevertheless, the Abbe rose, yielded his place
to the General, and took his leave, knowing that in Lent he could play a
return game. As for the Duchess, Montriveau’s behaviour had excited
her curiosity to such a pitch that she scarcely rose to return her
director’s low bow.

“What is the matter with you, my friend?”

“Why, I cannot stomach that Abbe of yours.”

“Why did you not take a book?” she asked, careless whether the Abbe,
then closing the door, heard her or no.

The General paused, for the gesture which accompanied the Duchess’s
speech further increased the exceeding insolence of her words.

“My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love precedence of the Church;
but, for pity’s sake, allow me to ask one question.”

“Oh! you are questioning me! I am quite willing. You are my friend, are
you not? I certainly can open the bottom of my heart to you; you will
see only one image there.”

“Do you talk about our love to that man?”

“He is my confessor.”

“Does he know that I love you?”

“M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the secrets
of the confessional?”

“Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for you?”

“That man, monsieur; say God!”

“God again! _I_ ought to be alone in your heart. But leave God alone
where He is, for the love of God and me. Madame, you _shall not_ go to
confession again, or----”

“Or?” she repeated sweetly.

“Or I will never come back here.”

“Then go, Armand. Good-bye, good-bye forever.”

She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at Armand,
as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair. How long he stood
there motionless he himself never knew. The soul within has the
mysterious power of expanding as of contracting space.

He opened the door of the boudoir. It was dark within. A faint voice was
raised to say sharply:

“I did not ring. What made you come in without orders? Go away,
Suzette.”

“Then you are ill,” exclaimed Montriveau.

“Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any rate,”
 she said, ringing the bell.

“Mme la Duchesse rang for lights?” said the footman, coming in with the
candles. When the lovers were alone together, Mme de Langeais still lay
on her couch; she was just as silent and motionless as if Montriveau had
not been there.

“Dear, I was wrong,” he began, a note of pain and a sublime kindness in
his voice. “Indeed, I would not have you without religion----”

“It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a conscience,”
 she said in a hard voice, without looking at him. “I thank you in God’s
name.”

The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed as
if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He made one
despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her forever without
another word. He was wretched; and the Duchess was laughing within
herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial
torture. But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any
sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity
of things to say; so long as she has not delivered herself of them,
she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of
something incomplete. Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her
mind. She took up her parable and said:

“We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to think. It
would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a religion which
permits us to love beyond the grave. I set Christian sentiments aside;
you cannot understand them. Let me simply speak to you of expediency.
Would you forbid a woman at court the table of the Lord when it is
customary to take the sacrament at Easter? People must certainly do
something for their party. The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do,
will never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be
a political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a nation of
logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted ideologists.
If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must give them something
to feel. So let us accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its
consequences. And if we would have France go to mass, ought we not to
begin by going ourselves? Religion, you see, Armand, is a bond uniting
all the conservative principles which enable the rich to live in
tranquillity. Religion and the rights of property are intimately
connected. It is certainly a finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of
morality than by fear of the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror--the
one method by which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience.
The priest and the king--that means you, and me, and the Princess
my neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people
personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to your
party, you that might be its Scylla if you had the slightest ambition
that way. I know nothing about politics myself; I argue from my own
feelings; but still I know enough to guess that society would
be overturned if people were always calling its foundations in
question----”

“If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry for
you,” broke in Montriveau. “The Restoration, madam, ought to say, like
Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle of Dreux was lost,
‘Very well; now we will go to the meeting-house.’ Now 1815 was your
battle of Dreux. Like the royal power of those days, you won in
fact, while you lost in right. Political Protestantism has gained an
ascendancy over people’s minds. If you have no mind to issue your Edict
of Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if you
should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the Charter,
which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests established
under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise again, terrible in her
strength, and strike but a single blow. It will not be the Revolution
that will go into exile; she is the very soil of France. Men die, but
people’s interests do not die. ... Eh, great Heavens! what are France
and the crown and rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to
us? Idle words compared with my happiness. Let them reign or be hurled
from the throne, little do I care. Where am I now?”

“In the Duchesse de Langeais’ boudoir, my friend.”

“No, no. No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with my dear
Antoinette.”

“Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are,” she said, laughing
and pushing him back, gently however.

“So you have never loved me,” he retorted, and anger flashed in
lightning from his eyes.

“No, dear”; but the “No” was equivalent to “Yes.”

“I am a great ass,” he said, kissing her hands. The terrible queen was a
woman once more.--“Antoinette,” he went on, laying his head on her feet,
“you are too chastely tender to speak of our happiness to anyone in this
world.”

“Oh!” she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful spring,
“you are a great simpleton.” And without another word she fled into the
drawing-room.

“What is it now?” wondered the General, little knowing that the touch of
his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill through her from
foot to head.

In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear divinely
sweet chords. The Duchess was at the piano. If the man of science or the
poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing his intelligence to bear
upon his enjoyment without loss of delight, he is conscious that the
alphabet and phraseology of music are but cunning instruments for
the composer, like the wood and copper wire under the hands of the
executant. For the poet and the man of science there is a music existing
apart, underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit
and senses. _Andiamo mio ben_ can draw tears of joy or pitying laughter
at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here and there in
the world, some girl unable to live and bear the heavy burden of an
unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates with the throb of passion,
may take up a musical theme, and lo! heaven is opened for them, or they
find a language for themselves in some sublime melody, some song lost to
the world.

The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music unknown
to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying
alone in a virgin forest.

“Great Heavens! what are you playing there?” he asked in an unsteady
voice.

“The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, _Fleuve du Tage_.”

“I did not know that there was such music in a piano,” he returned.

“Ah!” she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a woman
looks at the man she loves, “nor do you know, my friend, that I love
you, and that you cause me horrible suffering; and that I feel that I
must utter my cry of pain without putting it too plainly into words. If
I did not, I should yield----But you see nothing.”

“And you will not make me happy!”

“Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day.”

The General turned abruptly from her and went. But out in the street he
brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.

The religious phase lasted for three months. At the end of that time the
Duchess grew weary of vain repetitions; the Deity, bound hand and foot,
was delivered up to her lover. Possibly she may have feared that by
sheer dint of talking of eternity she might perpetuate his love in this
world and the next. For her own sake, it must be believed that no man
had touched her heart, or her conduct would be inexcusable. She was
young; the time when men and women feel that they cannot afford to lose
time or to quibble over their joys was still far off. She, no doubt, was
on the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the bliss
of love. And from inexperience, for want of the painful lessons which
would have taught her to value the treasure poured out at her feet, she
was playing with it. Knowing nothing of the glory and rapture of the
light, she was fain to stay in the shadow.

Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation; he put
his hope in the first word spoken by nature. Every evening, as he came
away from Mme de Langeais’, he told himself that no woman would accept
the tenderest, most delicate proofs of a man’s love during seven months,
nor yield passively to the slighter demands of passion, only to cheat
love at the last. He was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power,
not doubting but that he should receive the earliest fruits. The married
woman’s hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well
understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the
Duchess’s heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have had her
otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising obstacles; was he not
gradually triumphing over them? Did not every victory won swell the
meagre sum of lovers’ intimacies long denied, and at last conceded with
every sign of love? Still, he had had such leisure to taste the full
sweetness of every small successive conquest on which a lover feeds
his love, that these had come to be matters of use and wont. So far as
obstacles went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing
else left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed
him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to demand more, to
demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot dare to believe
that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for a long time. He passed
through the experience of terrible reactions within himself. A set
purpose was annihilated by a word, and definite resolves died within him
on the threshold. He despised himself for his weakness, and still his
desire remained unuttered. Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting
in gloomy melancholy, he brought out a fierce demand for his illegally
legitimate rights. The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave’s
request to guess his desire. When was a man’s desire a secret? And have
not women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain changes of
countenance?

“What! you wish to be my friend no longer?” she broke in at the first
words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the transparent
skin, lent brightness to her eyes. “As a reward for my generosity, you
would dishonor me? Just reflect a little. I myself have thought much
over this; and I think always for us _both_. There is such a thing as
a woman’s loyalty, and we can no more fail in it than you can fail in
honour. _I_ cannot blind myself. If I am yours, how, in any sense, can
I be M. de Langeais’ wife? Can you require the sacrifice of my position,
my rank, my whole life in return for a doubtful love that could not wait
patiently for seven months? What! already you would rob me of my right
to dispose of myself? No, no; you must not talk like this again. No, not
another word. I will not, I cannot listen to you.”

Mme de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push back the tufted
curls from her hot forehead; she seemed very much excited.

“You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely planned out. You
say--‘For a certain length of time she will talk to me of her husband,
then of God, and then of the inevitable consequences. But I will use
and abuse the ascendancy I shall gain over her; I will make myself
indispensable; all the bonds of habit, all the misconstructions of
outsiders, will make for me; and at length, when our _liaison_ is taken
for granted by all the world, I shall be this woman’s master.’--Now, be
frank; these are your thoughts! Oh! you calculate, and you say that you
love. Shame on you! You are enamoured? Ah! that I well believe! You
wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all! Very well
then, No! The _Duchesse de Langeais_ will not descend so far. Simple
_bourgeoises_ may be the victims of your treachery--I, never! Nothing
gives me assurance of your love. You speak of my beauty; I may lose
every trace of it in six months, like the dear Princess, my neighbour.
You are captivated by my wit, my grace. Great Heavens! you would soon
grow used to them and to the pleasures of possession. Have not the
little concessions that I was weak enough to make come to be a matter of
course in the last few months? Some day, when ruin comes, you will give
me no reason for the change in you beyond a curt, ‘I have ceased to
care for you.’--Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that was the
Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one disappointed hope.
I shall have children to bear witness to my shame, and----” With an
involuntary gesture she interrupted herself, and continued: “But I am
too good-natured to explain all this to you when you know it better than
I. Come! let us stay as we are. I am only too fortunate in that I can
still break these bonds which you think so strong. Is there anything so
very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an evening
with a woman whose prattle amuses you?--a woman whom you take for a
plaything? Why, half a dozen young coxcombs come here just as regularly
every afternoon between three and five. They, too, are very generous, I
am to suppose? I make fun of them; they stand my petulance and insolence
pretty quietly, and make me laugh; but as for you, I give all the
treasures of my soul to you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my
patience in endless ways. Hush, that will do, that will do,” she
continued, seeing that he was about to speak, “you have no heart,
no soul, no delicacy. I know what you want to tell me. Very well,
then--yes. I would rather you should take me for a cold, insensible
woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart even, than be
taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be condemned to your
so-called pleasures, of which you would most certainly tire, and to
everlasting punishment for it afterwards. Your selfish love is not worth
so many sacrifices....”

The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which the
Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a bird-organ. Nor,
truly, was there anything to prevent her from talking on for some time
to come, for poor Armand’s only reply to the torrent of flute notes was
a silence filled with cruelly painful thoughts. He was just beginning to
see that this woman was playing with him; he divined instinctively
that a devoted love, a responsive love, does not reason and count
the consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her reproach him with
detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he remembered that
unconsciously he had made those very calculations. With angelic honesty
of purpose, he looked within, and self-examination found nothing but
selfishness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he
framed and could not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair
he longed to fling himself from the window. The egoism of it was
intolerable.

What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love?--Let me
prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.

The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the example
of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists and denied
movement. Montriveau was not equal to this feat. With all his audacity,
he lacked this precise kind which never deserts an adept in the formulas
of feminine algebra. If so many women, and even the best of women, fall
a prey to a kind of expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is
perhaps because the said experts are great _provers_, and love, in spite
of its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more geometry
than people are wont to think.

Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both
equally unversed in love lore. The lady’s knowledge of theory was but
scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt nothing, and
reflected over everything. Montriveau had had but little experience, was
absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt too much to reflect at all. Both
therefore were enduring the consequences of the singular situation.
At that supreme moment the myriad thoughts in his mind might have
been reduced to the formula--“Submit to be mine----” words which seem
horribly selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no
ideas. Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more, though her
barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the short phrases that
she discharged at him one by one were very keen and sharp and cold, he
must control himself lest he should lose all by an outbreak of anger.

“Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented no way
for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of
her person. The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches
me that I cannot attach less importance to it. If you have given me
your inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest
matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let
us say no more about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels
humiliated at being taken for a spaniel.”

The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have
frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has allowed
herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set herself above all
other mortals, no power on earth can be so haughty.

“M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented
some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the
manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves
when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by
accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? The very
love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your
love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be
a second edition of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that
keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of
an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring
devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others
for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of
man’s heart.”

There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.

“After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling at the
question, ‘Will this love last always?’ Hard though my words may be,
the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth. Oh, me! it is not I
who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how should anyone so mad as I be
reasonable? In truth, I am nothing of the sort.”

The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into the
most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance for ingenuous
love. To listen to her words was to pass in a moment from martyrdom to
heaven. Montriveau grew pale; and for the first time in his life, he
fell on his knees before a woman. He kissed the Duchess’s skirt hem, her
knees, her feet; but for the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is
necessary to respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain
to take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love in
return.

The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to be
adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her complete
surrender of the position.

“Dear Antoinette,” he cried. “Yes, you are right; I will not have you
doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this moment--lest the angel of
my life should leave me; I wish I could invent some tie that might bind
us to each other irrevocably.”

“Ah!” she said, under her breath, “so I was right, you see.”

“Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your fears with
a word. Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve to die a thousand
deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you the right to kill me if I
am false. I myself will write a letter explaining certain reasons for
taking my own life; I will make my final arrangements, in short. You
shall have the letter in your keeping; in the eye of the law it will be
a sufficient explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear
nothing from God or men.”

“What good would the letter be to me? What would life be if I had lost
your love? If I wished to kill you, should I not be ready to follow? No;
thank you for the thought, but I do not want the letter. Should I not
begin to dread that you were faithful to me through fear? And if a man
knows that he must risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not
seem more tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing
to do.”

“Then what is it that you wish?”

“Your obedience and my liberty.”

“Ah, God!” cried he, “I am a child.”

“A wayward, much spoilt child,” she said, stroking the thick hair,
for his head still lay on her knee. “Ah! and loved far more than he
believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not stay as we are? Why
not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt me? Why not take what I can
give, when it is all that I can honestly grant? Are you not happy?”

“Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette, doubt in
love is a kind of death, is it not?”

In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the
influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And the
Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her conscience
by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand’s love gave her a
thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made as necessary to her as
society, or the Opera. To feel that she was adored by this man, who rose
above other men, whose character frightened her; to treat him like a
child; to play with him as Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like
the wives of King Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with
all the blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she surrendered
the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close pressure
of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness she could not
mistake; even as she herself played with his dark, thick locks, in that
boudoir where she reigned a queen, the Duchess would say to herself:

“This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I am
playing with him.”

Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o’clock in the morning.
From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a
Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear
to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever
played by a Parisienne to what the world calls “a slip”; in spite of all
her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw
all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so
many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;
that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her divine
loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple and girlish
mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him; and he went away
quite happy in that at last he had brought her to give him such pledges
of love, that it seemed to him impossible but that he should be but her
husband henceforth in secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.

Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with the
impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the responsibilities that
love lays on him while he tastes the sweetness of its joys. He went
along the Quais to see the widest possible space of sky; his heart had
grown in him; he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of
earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.
In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love
this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find
absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet
stirrings of life when life is at the full! The man that is strong
enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite
joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no
diminution of passion to the end; even so it is permitted to certain
mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. Love would be naught
without the belief that it would last forever; love grows great
through constancy. It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness,
Montriveau understood passion.

“We belong to each other forever!”

The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life. He
did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might
not last. No, for he had faith. Without that virtue there is no future
for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society.
A conception of life as feeling occurred to him for the first time;
hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human
energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.

Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house not far from the
Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he went thither as if to his
own home. The General’s companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt
a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses. This was the
Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris
boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous; he set
the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his
success and experience were equally matters of envy; and neither fortune
nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre
in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.

“Where are you going?” asked M. de Ronquerolles.

“To Mme de Langeais’.”

“Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you. You are
wasting your affections on her when they might be much better employed
elsewhere. I could have told you of half a score of women in the
financial world, any one of them a thousand times better worth your
while than that titled courtesan, who does with her brains what less
artificial women do with----”

“What is this, my dear fellow?” Armand broke in. “The Duchess is an
angel of innocence.”

Ronquerolles began to laugh.

“Things being thus, dear boy,” said he, “it is my duty to enlighten you.
Just a word; there is no harm in it between ourselves. Has the Duchess
surrendered? If so, I have nothing more to say. Come, give me your
confidence. There is no occasion to waste your time in grafting
your great nature on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and
cultivation will come to nothing.”

Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,
enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly won.
Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless, that it would
have cost any other man his life. But from their manner of speaking and
looking at each other during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner
almost as remote from intrusion as the desert itself, it was easy to
imagine the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that no
power on earth could estrange them.

“My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle
to you? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought
your flirtation properly through. You must know, to begin with, that the
women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in
love; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed. They have
made a sort of compromise with human nature. The code of their parish
gives them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression. The
sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial sins
to be washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you had the
impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which naturally
you are sure to attach the highest importance, you would see the deep
disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be
incontinently shut upon you. The tender Antoinette would dismiss
everything from her memory; you would be less than a cipher for her.
She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she
would perform her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks as
she washes off rouge. We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred
Parisienne. Have you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street?
Her face is as good as a picture. A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,
a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected. Is not this true
to the life? Well, that is the Parisienne. She knows that her face is
all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity
to her head. The Duchess is the same; the head is everything with her.
She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her brain,
she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice. We call
that kind of poor creature a Lais of the intellect. You have been taken
in like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight, this
morning, this instant. Go up to her, try the demand as an experiment,
insist peremptorily if it is refused. You might set about it like the
late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for your pains.”

Armand was dumb with amazement.

“Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?”

“I want her at any cost!” Montriveau cried out despairingly.

“Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is herself. Try to
humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do _not_ try to move her heart,
nor her soul, but the woman’s nerves and temperament, for she is both
nervous and lymphatic. If you can once awaken desire in her, you are
safe. But you must drop these romantic boyish notions of yours. If when
once you have her in your eagle’s talons you yield a point or draw back,
if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her
ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and
you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more
charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep
on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of
hard stuff, my dear Armand; there is a sort of feminine nature that is
only softened by repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in
women of that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod.
Do you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves and
softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and yielding; when
a shriveled heart has learned to expand and contract and to beat under
this discipline; when the brain has capitulated--then, perhaps, passion
may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears
and affectations and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a
most magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney takes
fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like iron in the
forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other, and the glow of it
may possibly turn to love.

“Still,” he continued, “I have my doubts. And, after all, is it worth
while to take so much trouble with the Duchess? Between ourselves a man
of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in; I would
make a charming woman of her; she is a thoroughbred; whereas, you two
left to yourselves will never get beyond the A B C. But you are in love
with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views on this
subject----. A pleasant time to you, my children,” added Ronquerolles,
after a pause. Then with a laugh: “I have decided myself for facile
beauties; they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in
their love without any of your social seasonings. A woman that haggles
over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love! Well, have
her like an extra horse--for show. The match between the sofa and
confessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious scruples
and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of chess. And if a man knows
the game, let him be never so little of a rake, he wins in three moves.
Now, if I undertook a woman of that sort, I should start with the
deliberate purpose of----” His voice sank to a whisper over the last
words in Armand’s ear, and he went before there was time to reply.

As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of the
Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to the
Duchess’s bedroom.

“This is an unheard-of thing,” she said, hastily wrapping her
dressing-gown about her. “Armand! this is abominable of you! Come, leave
the room, I beg. Just go out of the room, and go at once. Wait for me in
the drawing-room.--Come now!”

“Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?”

“But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted lover or
a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife.”

He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her tightly to
him.

“Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are fermenting in
my heart.”

“_Doubts_? Fie!--Oh, fie on you!”

“Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you make this quarrel?
Would you not be glad to see me? Would you not have felt a something
stir in your heart? For I, that am not a woman, feel a thrill in my
inmost self at the mere sound of your voice. Often in a ballroom a
longing has come upon me to spring to your side and put my arms about
your neck.”

“Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to spring to
your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all my life long, I
suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child compared with you!”

“Ah!” he cried despairingly, “you have no love for me----”

“Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable.”

“Then I have still to find favour in your sight?”

“Oh, I should think so. Come,” added she, “with a little imperious air,
go out of the room, leave me. I am not like you; I wish always to find
favour in your eyes.”

Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into insolence,
and does not the charm double the effect? is it not enough to infuriate
the coolest of men? There was a sort of untrammeled freedom about Mme
de Langeais; a something in her eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is
never seen in a woman who loves when she stands face to face with him at
the mere sight of whom her heart must needs begin to beat. The Marquis
de Ronquerolles’ counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and further,
there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition which passion will
develop at moments in the least wise among mortals, while a great man
at such a time possesses it to the full. He guessed the terrible truth
revealed by the Duchess’s nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the
storm like a lake rising in flood.

“If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,” he
cried; “you shall----”

“In the first place,” said she composedly, thrusting him back as he
came nearer--“in the first place, you are not to compromise me. My woman
might overhear you. Respect me, I beg of you. Your familiarity is all
very well in my boudoir in an evening; here it is quite different.
Besides, what may your ‘you shall’ mean? ‘You shall.’ No one as yet
has ever used that word to me. It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me,
absolutely ridiculous.

“Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?”

“Oh! do you call a woman’s right to dispose of herself a ‘point?’ A
capital point indeed; you will permit me to be entirely my own mistress
on that ‘point.’”

“And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should absolutely
require it?”

“Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible mistake when
I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg you to leave me in
peace.”

The General’s face grew white; he was about to spring to her side, when
Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and, smiling with a
mocking grace, the Duchess added, “Be so good as to return when I am
visible.”

Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as a steel
blade; she was crushing in her scorn. In one moment she had snapped
the bonds which held firm only for her lover. She had read Armand’s
intention in his face, and held that the moment had come for teaching
the Imperial soldier his lesson. He was to be made to feel that though
duchesses may lend themselves to love, they do not give themselves, and
that the conquest of one of them would prove a harder matter than the
conquest of Europe.

“Madame,” returned Armand, “I have not time to wait. I am a spoilt
child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously resolve to have that of
which we have been speaking, I shall have it.”

“You will have it?” queried she, and there was a trace of surprise in
her loftiness.

“I shall have it.”

“Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by ‘resolving’ to have it. For
curiosity’s sake, I should be delighted to know how you would set about
it----”

“I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,” interrupted
Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the Duchess. “Will you
permit me to take you to the ball tonight?”

“A thousand thanks. M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you. I gave
him my promise.”

Montriveau bowed gravely and went.

“So Ronquerolles was right,” thought he, “and now for a game of chess.”

Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. No man is
strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height of
happiness to the depths of wretchedness. So he had caught a glimpse of
happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his previous existence?
There was a terrible storm within him; but he had learned to endure,
and bore the shock of tumultuous thoughts as a granite cliff stands out
against the surge of an angry sea.

“I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert me. She does not
know how vile and contemptible she is. Nobody has ventured to bring her
face to face with herself. She has played with many a man, no doubt; I
will avenge them all.”

For the first time, it may be, in a man’s heart, revenge and love were
blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know whether love
or revenge would carry all before it. That very evening he went to the
ball at which he was sure of seeing the Duchesse de Langeais, and almost
despaired of reaching her heart. He inclined to think that there was
something diabolical about this woman, who was gracious to him and
radiant with charming smiles; probably because she had no wish to
allow the world to think that she had compromised herself with M. de
Montriveau. Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as
the Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and
morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing? Onlookers know
the rejected lover by various signs and tokens; they never mistake the
genuine symptoms for a coolness such as some women command their adorers
to feign, in the hope of concealing their love. Everyone laughed at
Montriveau; and he, having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted
and ill at ease. M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him
compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness by
passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau came away
from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then scarcely ready to
believe in such complete depravity.

“If there is no executioner for such crimes,” he said, as he looked up
at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most enchanting women
in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting, “I will take you by the
nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and make you feel something that
bites more deeply than the knife in the Place de la Greve. Steel against
steel; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper mark.”

For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de Montriveau
again; but he contented himself with sending his card every morning to
the Hotel de Langeais. The Duchess could not help shuddering each time
that the card was brought in, and a dim foreboding crossed her mind, but
the thought was vague as a presentiment of disaster. When her eyes fell
on the name, it seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable
man’s strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a
prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect invented in
the most shocking forms. She had studied him too well not to dread him.
Would he murder her, she wondered? Would that bull-necked man dash out
her vitals by flinging her over his head? Would he trample her body
under his feet? When, where, and how would he get her into his power?
Would he make her suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he
inflict? She repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he had
come, she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.

Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau’s face; every night it
wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his bitter smile, sometimes
the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his leonine look, or some
disdainful movement of the shoulders made him terrible for her. Next day
the card seemed stained with blood. The name of Montriveau stirred her
now as the presence of the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never
done. Her apprehensions gathered strength in the silence. She was
forced, without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel
of which she could not speak. Her proud hard nature was more responsive
to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the caresses of love. Ah! if
the General could but have seen her, as she sat with her forehead
drawn into folds between her brows; immersed in bitter thoughts in that
boudoir where he had enjoyed such happy moments, he might perhaps
have conceived high hopes. Of all human passions, is not pride alone
incapable of engendering anything base? Mme de Langeais kept her
thoughts to herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de
Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her? And has not a man gained
ground immensely when a woman thinks about him? He is bound to make
progress with her either one way or the other afterwards.

Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or other
fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and look for death;
but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not utterly slay her,
she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what not, and will speak of him
quite at her ease. The Duchess felt that she was under the lion’s paws;
she quaked, but she did not hate him.

The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each other met
three times in society during the course of that week. Each time,
in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the Duchess received a
respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such savage irony, that all her
apprehensions over the card in the morning were revived at night.
Our lives are simply such as our feelings shape them for us; and the
feelings of these two had hollowed out a great gulf between them.

The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles’ sister, gave a
great ball at the beginning of the following week, and Mme de Langeais
was sure to go to it. Armand was the first person whom the Duchess saw
when she came into the room, and this time Armand was looking out for
her, or so she thought at least. The two exchanged a look, and suddenly
the woman felt a cold perspiration break from every pore. She had
thought all along that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in
some unheard-of way proportioned to their condition, and now the revenge
had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling. Lightnings
flashed from the foiled lover’s eyes, his face was radiant with exultant
vengeance. And the Duchess? Her eyes were haggard in spite of her
resolution to be cool and insolent. She went to take her place beside
the Comtesse de Serizy, who could not help exclaiming, “Dear Antoinette!
what is the matter with you? You are enough to frighten one.”

“I shall be all right after a quadrille,” she answered, giving a hand to
a young man who came up at that moment.

Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement and
transport which redoubled Montriveau’s lowering looks. He stood in front
of the line of spectators, who were amusing themselves by looking on.
Every time that _she_ came past him, his eyes darted down upon her
eddying face; he might have been a tiger with the prey in his grasp. The
waltz came to an end, Mme de Langeais went back to her place beside the
Countess, and Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the
while with a stranger.

“One of the things that struck me most on the journey,” he was saying
(and the Duchess listened with all her ears), “was the remark which the
man makes at Westminster when you are shown the axe with which a man in
a mask cut off Charles the First’s head, so they tell you. The King made
it first of all to some inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in
memory of him.”

“What does the man say?” asked Mme de Serizy.

“‘Do not touch the axe!’” replied Montriveau, and there was menace in
the sound of his voice.

“Really, my Lord Marquis,” said Mme de Langeais, “you tell this old
story that everybody knows if they have been to London, and look at my
neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to me to have an axe in
your hand.”

The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as she
spoke the last words.

“But circumstances give the story a quite new application,” returned he.

“How so; pray tell me, for pity’s sake?”

“In this way, madame--you have touched the axe,” said Montriveau,
lowering his voice.

“What an enchanting prophecy!” returned she, smiling with assumed grace.
“And when is my head to fall?”

“I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I only fear
some great misfortune for you. If your head were clipped close, would
you feel no regrets for the dainty golden hair that you turn to such
good account?”

“There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a sacrifice;
even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man who cannot make
allowances for an outbreak of temper.”

“Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a sudden
by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen for us, were to
be a hundred years old?”

“Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur,” she
interrupted. “After it is over we find out those who love us sincerely.”

“Would you not regret the lovely face that?”

“Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake of
someone else whose delight it might have been. And, after all, if I were
loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would my beauty matter to
me?--What do you say, Clara?”

“It is a dangerous speculation,” replied Mme de Serizy.

“Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when I made
the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to London as
yet?----”

“_Not so_,” he answered in English, with a burst of ironical laughter.

“And when will the punishment begin?”

At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the hour
with a truly appalling air of conviction.

“A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out.”

“I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a child
ignorant of danger,” said the Duchess. “I shall dance now without fear
on the edge of the precipice.”

“I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of character,” he
answered, as he watched her go to take her place in a square dance.

But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand’s dark
prophecies, was really frightened. Her late lover’s presence weighed
upon her morally and physically with a sense of oppression that scarcely
ceased when he left the ballroom. And yet when she had drawn freer
breath, and enjoyed the relief for a moment, she found herself
regretting the sensation of dread, so greedy of extreme sensations is
the feminine nature. The regret was not love, but it was certainly akin
to other feelings which prepare the way for love. And then--as if the
impression which Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived--she
recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and in a
sudden spasm of dread she went out.

By this time it was about midnight. One of her servants, waiting with
her pelisse, went down to order her carriage. On her way home she fell
naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau’s prediction. Arrived
in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she entered a vestibule almost
like that of her own hotel, and suddenly saw that the staircase was
different. She was in a strange house. Turning to call her servants, she
was attacked by several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her
mouth, bound her hand and foot, and carried her off. She shrieked aloud.

“Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream,” a voice said in her
ear.

So great was the Duchess’s terror, that she could never recollect how
nor by whom she was transported. When she came to herself, she was lying
on a couch in a bachelor’s lodging, her hands and feet tied with silken
cords. In spite of herself, she shrieked aloud as she looked round and
met Armand de Montriveau’s eyes. He was sitting in his dressing-gown,
quietly smoking a cigar in his armchair.

“Do not cry out, Mme la Duchesse,” he said, coolly taking the cigar out
of his mouth; “I have a headache. Besides, I will untie you. But listen
attentively to what I have the honour to say to you.”

Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.

“What would be the use of calling out? Nobody can hear your cries.
You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss. If you do not stay
quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I shall tie your
hands and feet again. All things considered, I think that you have
self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as if you were lying on your
own at home; cold as ever, if you will. You have made me shed many tears
on this couch, tears that I hid from all other eyes.”

While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her; it was
a woman’s glance, a stolen look that saw all things and seemed to see
nothing. She was much pleased with the room. It was rather like a
monk’s cell. The man’s character and thoughts seemed to pervade it. No
decoration of any kind broke the grey painted surface of the walls.
A green carpet covered the floor. A black sofa, a table littered with
papers, two big easy-chairs, a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by
way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it--a
red cloth with a black key border--all these things made part of a
whole that told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple
candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled the
vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau’s long wanderings; a huge
sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the bed-foot;
and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and scarlet border was
suspended by large rings from a spear handle above a door near one
corner of the room. The other door by which the band had entered was
likewise curtained, but the drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod.
As the Duchess finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she
saw that the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light
from the room beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally, the
ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could distinguish
strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not occur to her at the
time that danger could come from that quarter, she tried to gratify a
more ardent curiosity.

“Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to do with
me?” The insolence and irony of the tone stung through the words. The
Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant love in Montriveau’s
speech. He had carried her off; was not that in itself an acknowledgment
of her power?

“Nothing whatever, madame,” he returned, gracefully puffing the last
whiff of cigar smoke. “You will remain here for a short time. First
of all, I should like to explain to you what you are, and what I am. I
cannot put my thoughts into words whilst you are twisting on the sofa
in your boudoir; and besides, in your own house you take offence at the
slightest hint, you ring the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover
out at the door as if he were the basest of wretches. Here my mind is
unfettered. Here nobody can turn me out. Here you shall be my victim for
a few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to listen
to me. You need fear nothing. I did not carry you off to insult you, nor
yet to take by force what you refused to grant of your own will to my
unworthiness. I could not stoop so low. You possibly think of outrage;
for myself, I have no such thoughts.”

He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.

“The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?” he said, and rising
at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt perfumes, and
purified the air. The Duchess’s astonishment was only equaled by her
humiliation. She was in this man’s power; and he would not abuse his
power. The eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet
and steady as stars. She trembled. Her dread of Armand was increased by
a nightmare sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she
felt as if she were turned to stone. She lay passive in the grip of
fear. She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze,
as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of
flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly
flashed out; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she
took it for an optical delusion.

“Madame,” Armand continued with cold contempt, “one minute, just one
minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it afterwards at every
moment throughout your lifetime, the one eternity over which I have
power. I am not God. Listen carefully to me,” he continued, pausing to
add solemnity to his words. “Love will always come at your call. You
have boundless power over men: but remember that once you called love,
and love came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth,
and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman’s, as a
mother’s love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the bounds of
reason. You played with it, and you committed a crime. Every woman has a
right to refuse herself to love which she feels she cannot share; and
if a man loves and cannot win love in return, he is not to be pitied,
he has no right to complain. But with a semblance of love to attract
an unfortunate creature cut off from all affection; to teach him to
understand happiness to the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him
of his future of felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today,
but as long as his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every
thought--this I call a fearful crime!”

“Monsieur----”

“I cannot allow you to answer me yet. So listen to me still. In any case
I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise one--the right of
the judge over the criminal, so that I may arouse your conscience. If
you had no conscience left, I should not reproach you at all; but you
are so young! You must feel some life still in your heart; or so I like
to believe. While I think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which
the law does not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot
comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume.”

As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of bellows.
Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were blowing up the
fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the curtain. But Montriveau’s
lurid face was turned upon her; she could not choose but wait with a
fast-beating heart and eyes fixed in a stare. However curious she felt,
the heat in Armand’s words interested her even more than the crackling
of the mysterious flames.

“Madame,” he went on after a pause, “if some poor wretch commits a
murder in Paris, it is the executioner’s duty, you know, to lay hands on
him and stretch him on the plank, where murderers pay for their crimes
with their heads. Then the newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so
that the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter
are warned that they must be on the watch if they would live. Well, you
that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses said
for such a man’s soul. You both belong to the same family, but yours is
the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy high places in peace
and live happily and without cares. Want or anger may drive your brother
the convict to take a man’s life; you have taken more, you have taken
the joy out of a man’s life, you have killed all that was best in his
life--his dearest beliefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his
victim, and killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but
_you_ ...! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against
strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the better
to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing
undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, longing for the bliss of
love. You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, only to refuse to make
any in return. He should see the light indeed before you put out his
eyes! It is wonderful how you found the heart to do it! Such villainies
demand a display of resource quite above the comprehension of those
bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive;
they know how to love and suffer. The grandeur of their devotion dwarfs
us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as much mud as at
the lower end; but with this difference, at the upper end it is hard and
gilded over.

“Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble bringing
up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot fall lower than
the lowest unless you are set high above the rest of the world.--I
express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt me are too painful as
yet, but do not think that I complain. My words are not the expression
of any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them. Know
this, madame, for a certainty--I forgive you. My forgiveness is so
complete that you need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither
to find it against your will.... But you might take advantage of other
hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish.
So you have inspired the thought of justice. Expiate your sin here
on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that He may, but He is
inexorable, and will strike.”

The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes filled
with tears.

“Why do you cry? Be true to your nature. You could look on indifferently
at the torture of a heart as you broke it. That will do, madame, do not
cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other men will tell you that you have
given them life; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have
given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that
I am bound to live for my friends, that from this time forth I must
endure the cold chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it
possible that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the
desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?”

The Duchess burst out sobbing.

“Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all, it would
merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your artifices? or is it
not? You have used so many with me; how can one think that there is any
truth in you? Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me.
That is all I have to say.”

Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and humility in
her bearing.

“You are right to treat me very hardly,” she said, holding out a hand to
the man who did not take it; “you have not spoken hardly enough; and I
deserve this punishment.”

“_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must he not?
From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I
might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the
sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of
any kind. The cruelest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when
it is in our power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your
pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you gracefully
wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out the criminal, you
may perforce learn something of the convict’s sense of honour. And then,
you will love!”

The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no
coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a silence.

“Armand,” she began, “it seems to me that when I resisted love, I was
obeying all the instincts of woman’s modesty; I should not have looked
for such reproaches from _you_. I was weak; you have turned all my
weaknesses against me, and made so many crimes of them. How could you
fail to understand that the curiosity of love might have carried me
further than I ought to go; and that next morning I might be angry
with myself, and wretched because I had gone too far? Alas! I sinned in
ignorance. I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as in
my remorse. There was far more love for you in my severity than in my
concessions. And besides, of what do you complain? I gave you my heart;
that was not enough; you demanded, brutally, that I should give my
person----”

“Brutally?” repeated Montriveau. But to himself he said, “If I once
allow her to dispute over words, I am lost.”

“Yes. You came to me as if I were one of those women. You showed none
of the respect, none of the attentions of love. Had I not reason to
reflect? Very well, I reflected. The unseemliness of your conduct is not
inexcusable; love lay at the source of it; let me think so, and
justify you to myself.--Well, Armand, this evening, even while you were
prophesying evil, I felt convinced that there was happiness in store for
us both. Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested
and proved.” She bent lower. “And I was yours wholly,” she murmured in
his ear. “I felt a longing that I cannot express to give happiness to a
man so violently tried by adversity. If I must have a master, my master
should be a great man. As I felt conscious of my height, the less I
cared to descend. I felt I could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of
love, while you were pointing to death.... Strength and kindness always
go together. My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind to
a helpless woman who loves you. If I was wrong, is there no way of
obtaining forgiveness? No way of making reparation? Repentance is the
charm of love; I should like to be very charming for you. How could I,
alone among women, fail to know a woman’s doubts and fears, the timidity
that it is so natural to feel when you bind yourself for life, and
know how easily a man snaps such ties? The bourgeoises, with whom you
compared me just now, give themselves, but they struggle first. Very
well--I struggled; but here I am!--Ah! God, he does not hear me!” she
broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out “But I love you! I am
yours!” and fell at Armand’s feet.

“Yours! yours! my one and only master!”

Armand tried to raise her.

“Madame, it is too late! Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de
Langeais. I cannot believe in either. Today you may give yourself;
tomorrow, you may refuse. No power in earth or heaven can insure me the
sweet constancy of love. All love’s pledges lay in the past; and now
nothing of that past exists.”

The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the Duchess
could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly saw the three
masked figures.

“Armand,” she said, “I would not wish to think ill of you. Why are those
men there? What are you going to do to me?”

“Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the thing which
is about to be done. Think of them simply as my hands and my heart. One
of them is a surgeon----”

“A surgeon! Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense is the hardest
to bear. Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I will give it to
you, you shall not take it----”

“Then you did not understand me? Did I not speak just now of justice?
To put an end to your misapprehensions,” continued he, taking up a small
steel object from the table, “I will now explain what I have decided
with regard to you.”

He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.

“Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another cross, made
on this pattern, red-hot. We are going to stamp it upon your forehead,
here between the eyes, so that there will be no possibility of hiding
the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding people’s questions. In short,
you shall bear on your forehead the brand of infamy which your brothers
the convicts wear on their shoulders. The pain is a mere trifle, but I
feared a nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance----”

“Resistance?” she cried, clapping her hands for joy. “Oh no, no! I would
have the whole world here to see. Ah, my Armand, brand her quickly,
this creature of yours; brand her with your mark as a poor little trifle
belonging to you. You asked for pledges of my love; here they are all in
one. Ah! for me there is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal
happiness in this revenge of yours. When you have marked this woman with
your mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul,
you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for evermore?
When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself responsible for my
happiness, or you prove yourself base; and I know that you are noble and
great! Why, when a woman loves, the brand of love is burnt into her
soul by her own will.--Come in, gentlemen! come in and brand her,
this Duchesse de Langeais. She is M. de Montriveau’s forever! Ah! come
quickly, all of you, my forehead burns hotter than your fire!”

Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the Duchess
kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart. He said some word,
and his three friends vanished.

The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another. The
Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand’s heart, was
all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror, brushed away two
tears as they fell. Her whole future lay in those two tears. When he
turned round again to help her to rise, she was standing before him,
sure of love. Her pulses must have throbbed fast when he spoke with the
firmness she had known so well how to use of old while she played with
him.

“I spare you, madame. All that has taken place shall be as if it had
never been, you may believe me. But now, let us bid each other goodbye.
I like to think that you were sincere in your coquetries on your sofa,
sincere again in this outpouring of your heart. Good-bye. I feel that
there is no faith in you left in me. You would torment me again; you
would always be the Duchess, and----But there, good-bye, we shall never
understand each other.

“Now, what do you wish?” he continued, taking the tone of a master of
the ceremonies--“to return home, or to go back to Mme de Serizy’s
ball? I have done all in my power to prevent any scandal. Neither your
servants nor anyone else can possibly know what has passed between us
in the last quarter of an hour. Your servants have no idea that you have
left the ballroom; your carriage never left Mme de Serizy’s courtyard;
your brougham may likewise be found in the court of your own hotel.
Where do you wish to be?”

“What do you counsel, Armand?”

“There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse. We are strangers to each
other.”

“Then take me to the ball,” she said, still curious to put Armand’s
power to the test. “Thrust a soul that suffered in the world, and must
always suffer there, if there is no happiness for her now, down into
hell again. And yet, oh my friend, I love you as your bourgeoises love;
I love you so that I could come to you and fling my arms about your neck
before all the world if you asked it off me. The hateful world has not
corrupted me. I am young at least, and I have grown younger still. I am
a child, yes, your child, your new creature. Ah! do not drive me forth
out of my Eden!”

Armand shook his head.

“Ah! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing to wear
tonight on my heart,” she said, taking possession of Armand’s glove,
which she twisted into her handkerchief.

“No, I am _not_ like all those depraved women. You do not know the
world, and so you cannot know my worth. You shall know it now! There are
women who sell themselves for money; there are others to be gained by
gifts, it is a vile world! Oh, I wish I were a simple bourgeoise, a
working girl, if you would rather have a woman beneath you than a woman
whose devotion is accompanied by high rank, as men count it. Oh, my
Armand, there are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us;
and then they are lovely indeed. I would have all nobleness that I might
offer it all up to you. Misfortune willed that I should be a duchess;
I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might be complete. I
would be a grisette for you, and a queen for everyone besides.”

He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.

“You will let me know when you wish to go,” he said.

“But I should like to stay----”

“That is another matter!”

“Stay, that was badly rolled,” she cried, seizing on a cigar and
devouring all that Armand’s lips had touched.

“Do you smoke?”

“Oh, what would I not do to please you?”

“Very well. Go, madame.”

“I will obey you,” she answered, with tears in her eyes.

“You must be blindfolded; you must not see a glimpse of the way.”

“I am ready, Armand,” she said, bandaging her eyes.

“Can you see?”

“No.”

Noiselessly he knelt before her.

“Ah! I can hear you!” she cried, with a little fond gesture, thinking
that the pretence of harshness was over.

He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.

“You can see, madame.”

“I am just a little bit curious.”

“So you always deceive me?”

“Ah! take off this handkerchief, sir,” she cried out, with the passion
of a great generosity repelled with scorn, “lead me; I will not open my
eyes.”

Armand felt sure of her after that cry. He led the way; the Duchess
nobly true to her word, was blind. But while Montriveau held her hand
as a father might, and led her up and down flights of stairs, he was
studying the throbbing pulses of this woman’s heart so suddenly invaded
by Love. Mme de Langeais, rejoicing in this power of speech, was glad to
let him know all; but he was inflexible; his hand was passive in reply
to the questionings of her hand.

At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go forward;
the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she felt that his hand
protected her dress. His care touched her; it was a revelation surely
that there was a little love still left; yet it was in some sort a
farewell, for Montriveau left her without a word. The air was warm; the
Duchess, feeling the heat, opened her eyes, and found herself standing
by the fire in the Comtesse de Serizy’s boudoir.

She was alone. Her first thought was for her disordered toilette; in a
moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her picturesque coiffure.

“Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you everywhere.” It was
the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she opened the door.

“I came here to breathe,” said the Duchess; “it is unbearably hot in the
rooms.”

“People thought that you had gone; but my brother Ronquerolles told me
that your servants were waiting for you.”

“I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,” and the
Duchess sat down on the sofa.

“Why, what is the matter with you? You are shaking from head to foot!”

The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.

“Mme la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have happened. I
have just come across your coachman, the man is as tipsy as all the
Swiss in Switzerland.”

The Duchess made no answer; she was looking round the room, at the
chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an opening.
Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected that she was again
in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom after that terrific scene
which had changed the whole course of her life. She began to shiver
violently.

“M. de Montriveau’s prophecy has shaken my nerves,” she said. “It was
a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London will haunt me
even in my sleep. So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M. le Marquis.”

As she went through the rooms she was beset with inquiries and regrets.
Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its queen, had fallen so
low, was so diminished. And what, moreover, were these men compared with
him whom she loved with all her heart; with the man grown great by all
that she had lost in stature? The giant had regained the height that he
had lost for a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure. She
looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her to the
ball. He was fast asleep.

“Have you been here all the time?” she asked.

“Yes, madame.”

As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her coachman
was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would have been afraid;
but after a great crisis in life, fear loses its appetite for common
food. She reached home, at any rate, without accident; but even there
she felt a change in herself, a new feeling that she could not shake
off. For her, there was now but one man in the world; which is to say
that henceforth she cared to shine for his sake alone.

While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out natural
laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem before him if
he attempts to consider love in all its developments due to social
conditions. Still, in spite of the heresies of the endless sects that
divide the church of Love, there is one broad and trenchant line of
difference in doctrine, a line that all the discussion in the world can
never deflect. A rigid application of this line explains the nature
of the crisis through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass.
Passion she knew, but she did not love as yet.

Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men of the
world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound. Love implies
a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing can change; it
means so close a clinging of the heart, and an exchange of happiness so
constant, that there is no room left for jealousy. Then possession is a
means and not an end; unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not
less close; the soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but
happy at every moment; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading
from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in the
selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven. But Passion
is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to which all
suffering souls aspire. Passion is a hope that may be cheated. Passion
means both suffering and transition. Passion dies out when hope is
dead. Men and women may pass through this experience many times without
dishonor, for it is so natural to spring towards happiness; but there is
only one love in a lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever
conducted on paper or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by
two questions--“Is it passion? Is it love?” So, since love comes into
existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss which gives
it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of passion as yet; and
as she knew the fierce tumult, the unconscious calculations, the fevered
cravings, and all that is meant by that word _passion_--she suffered.
Through all the trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest,
raised by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these
forms of egoism make common cause together.

She had said to this man, “I love you; I am yours!” Was it possible that
the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those words--in vain? She
must either be loved now or play her part of queen no longer. And then
she felt the loneliness of the luxurious couch where pleasure had never
yet set his glowing feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and
writhed there, she said, “I want to be loved.”

But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of success.
The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might be humiliated;
but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness, and imagination,
avenging the time lost for nature, took a delight in kindling the
inextinguishable fire in her veins. She all but attained to the
sensations of love; for amid her poignant doubt whether she was loved in
return, she felt glad at heart to say to herself, “I love him!” As for
her scruples, religion, and the world she could trample them under foot!
Montriveau was her religion now. She spent the next day in a state
of moral torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could
express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a thousand
impossible fancies.

When M. de Montriveau’s usual hour arrived, she tried to think that he
would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her whole life was
concentrated in the single sense of hearing. Sometimes she shut her
eyes, straining her ears to listen through space, wishing that she
could annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so
establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In
her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful
to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of
midnight sounded from the drawing-room.

“Ah, God!” she cried, “to see him here would be happiness. And yet, it
is not so very long since he came here, brought by desire, and the tones
of his voice filled this boudoir. And now there is nothing.”

She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with him, and
how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the despairing tears
flowed for long.

Her woman came at length with, “Mme la Duchesse does not know, perhaps,
that it is two o’clock in the morning; I thought that madame was not
feeling well.”

“Yes, I am going to bed,” said the Duchess, drying her eyes. “But
remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I tell you
this for the last time.”

For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a hope
of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to her usual habits, she came
early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the card-tables. Her
experiments were fruitless. She did not succeed in getting a glimpse of
Armand. She did not dare to utter his name now. One evening, however, in
a fit of despair, she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as
she could, “You must have quarreled with M. de Montriveau? He is not to
be seen at your house now.”

The Countess laughed. “So he does not come here either?” she returned.
“He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter. He is interested in
some woman, no doubt.”

“I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his
friends----” the Duchess began sweetly.

“I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with him.”

Mme de Langeais did not reply. Mme de Serizy concluded from the
Duchess’s silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity to a
discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of soul, for a
long time past.

“So you miss that melancholy personage, do you? I have heard most
extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings, he never comes back,
he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps you in chains. To
everything that I said of him, one of those that praise him sky-high
would always answer, ‘He knows how to love!’ People are always telling
me that Montriveau would give up all for his friend; that his is a great
nature. Pooh! society does not want such tremendous natures. Men of that
stamp are all very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our
pleasant littlenesses. What do you say, Antoinette?”

Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated, yet she
replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair friend:

“I am sorry to miss him. I took a great interest in him, and promised
to myself to be his sincere friend. I like great natures, dear friend,
ridiculous though you may think it. To give oneself to a fool is a clear
confession, is it not, that one is governed wholly by one’s senses?”

Mme de Serizy’s “preferences” had always been for commonplace men; her
lover at the moment, the Marquis d’Aiglemont, was a fine, tall man.

After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure Mme
de Langeais saw hope in Armand’s withdrawal from the world; she wrote to
him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely it would bring him
if he loved her still. She sent her footman with it next day. On the
servant’s return, she asked whether he had given the letter to M. de
Montriveau himself, and could not restrain the movement of joy at the
affirmative answer. Armand was in Paris! He stayed alone in his house;
he did not go out into society! So she was loved! All day long she
waited for an answer that never came. Again and again, when impatience
grew unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay. Armand felt
embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and she could
not deceive herself any longer. It was a dreadful day, a day of pain
grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day when the heart squanders
the very forces of life in riot.

Next day she sent for an answer.

“M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme la Duchesse,”
 reported Julien.

She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung
herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.

“He is coming!”

The thought rent her soul. And, in truth, woe unto those for whom
suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it increases
and multiplies the sweetest joys; for they have nothing in them of
that flame which quickens the images of things, giving to them a second
existence, so that we cling as closely to the pure essence as to its
outward and visible manifestation. What is suspense in love but a
constant drawing upon an unfailing hope?--a submission to the terrible
scourging of passion, while passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment
of reality has not set in. The constant putting forth of strength and
longing, called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance
to the flower that breathes it forth. We soon leave the brilliant,
unsatisfying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again and
again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or volkameria-flowers
compared separately, each in its own land, to a betrothed bride, full of
love, made fair by the past and future.

The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through the
rapture with which she received the scourgings of love. As this change
wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a better
meaning in the things of life. As she hurried to her dressing-room, she
understood what studied adornment and the most minute attention to
her toilet mean when these are undertaken for love’s sake and not for
vanity. Even now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of
waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she
passed through nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which
sets the whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease,
though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and waiting
at two o clock in the afternoon. At half-past eleven that night M.
de Montriveau had not arrived. To try to give an idea of the anguish
endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child of
civilization, would be to attempt to say how many imaginings the heart
can condense into one thought. As well endeavour to measure the forces
expended by the soul in a sigh whenever the bell rang; to estimate the
drain of life when a carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her
prostrate.

“Can he be playing with me?” she said, as the clocks struck midnight.

She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands together and
leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as she did so how often
he had come thither without a summons. But she resigned herself. Had she
not seen him grow pale, and start up under the stinging barbs of irony?
Then Mme de Langeais felt the horror of the woman’s appointed lot; a
man’s is the active part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If
a woman goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can
forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this
piece of angelic flattery. But Armand’s was a great nature; he surely
must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding love by love
that lasts forever.

“Well, I will make the advance,” she told herself, as she tossed on her
bed and found no sleep there; “I will go to him. I will not weary myself
with holding out a hand to him, but I will hold it out. A man of a
thousand will see a promise of love and constancy in every step that a
woman takes towards him. Yes, the angels must come down from heaven to
reach men; and I wish to be an angel for him.”

Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the intellects
of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number particularly
excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought up by Mme la
Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written that delicious note; no
other woman could complain without lowering herself; could spread wings
in such a flight without draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise
gracefully in revolt; scold without giving offence; and pardon without
compromising her personal dignity.

Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim of
love’s marches and countermarches.

“What did M. de Montriveau reply?” she asked, as indifferently as she
could, when the man came back to report himself.

“M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was all
right.”

Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her heart
stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to utter a
sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the countless miseries of
the rich!

More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and again,
and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out that she was
ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the Princess and from
social duties. She was only at home to her father the Duc de Navarreins,
her aunt the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers
(her maternal great-uncle), and to her husband’s uncle, the Duc de
Grandlieu. These persons found no difficulty in believing that the
Duchess was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more
dejected every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded
pride, the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her,
the yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual
longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the forces
of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was paying the arrears
of her life of make-believe.

She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to be there. For
the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the Royal Family,
it was one of those festival days that are long remembered. She looked
supremely beautiful in her languor; she was greeted with admiration in
all eyes. It was Montriveau’s presence that made her so fair.

Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to her
feet in all the glory of that soldier’s uniform, which produces an
effect upon the feminine imagination to which the most prudish will
confess. When a woman is very much in love, and has not seen her lover
for two months, such a swift moment must be something like the phase of
a dream when the eyes embrace a world that stretches away forever.
Only women or young men can imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the
Duchess’s eyes. As for older men, if during the paroxysms of early
passion in youth they had experience of such phenomena of nervous power;
at a later day it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very
existence of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to
these wonderful intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration of a
soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in amorous ecstasy
all the forces of soul and body are embraced and blended in one. If
a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous frenzy before which Mme de
Langeais was forced to bend, she will take one decisive resolution
after another so swiftly that it is impossible to give account of them.
Thought after thought rises and flits across her brain, as clouds are
whirled by the wind across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun.
Thenceforth the facts reveal all. And the facts are these.

The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and liveried
servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau’s door from eight o’clock
in the morning till three in the afternoon. Armand lived in the Rue de
Tournon, a few steps away from the Chamber of Peers, and that very
day the House was sitting; but long before the peers returned to their
palaces, several people had recognised the Duchess’s carriage and
liveries. The first of these was the Baron de Maulincour. That young
officer had met with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception
from Mme de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,
and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.

In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through all the
coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the Tuileries and the
Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the day, the matter of all the
talk from noon till night. Almost everywhere the women denied the facts,
but in such a manner that the report was confirmed; the men one and
all believed it, and manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de
Langeais. Some among them threw the blame on Armand.

“That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze,” said they; “he
insisted on making this scandal, no doubt.”

“Very well, then,” others replied, “Mme de Langeais has been guilty of
a most generous piece of imprudence. To renounce the world and rank, and
fortune, and consideration for her lover’s sake, and that in the face
of all Paris, is as fine a _coup d’etat_ for a woman as that barber’s
knife-thrust, which so affected Canning in a court of assize. Not one
of the women who blame the Duchess would make a declaration worthy of
ancient times. It is heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so
frankly. Now there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau. There
must be something great about a woman if she says, ‘I will have but one
passion.’”

“But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice in this
way without respect for virtue?” asked the Comtesse de Granville, the
attorney-general’s wife.

While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d’Antin were
discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited young men
rushed about on horseback to make sure that the carriage was standing in
the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in consequence was beyond a doubt in
M. de Montriveau’s rooms, Mme de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses,
was lying hidden away in her boudoir. And Armand?--he had been out all
night, and at that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens
of the Tuileries. The elder members, of Mme de Langeais’ family were
engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a homily
and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a stop to the
scandal.

At three o’clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame de
Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de Grandlieu
were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ drawing-room. To them, as
to all curious inquirers, the servants said that their mistress was not
at home; the Duchess had made no exceptions to her orders. But these
four personages shone conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the
revolutions and hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by
year in the _Almanach de Gotha_, wherefore without some slight sketch of
each of them this picture of society were incomplete.

The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a most
poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In her beautiful prime, so it
was said, she had done her part to win for that monarch his appellation
of _le Bien-aime_. Of her past charms of feature, little remained save
a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now
the principal ornament of a countenance that put you in mind of an old
white glove. Add a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap
with upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for
_ombre_. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that she
appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her
ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her cheeks with Martin’s
classic rouge. An appalling amiability in her wrinkles, a prodigious
brightness in the old lady’s eyes, a profound dignity in her whole
person, together with the triple barbed wit of her tongue, and an
infallible memory in her head, made of her a real power in the land. The
whole Cabinet des Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment
of her brain. She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in
Europe--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the last
descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line. No usurpation of title
could escape the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry.

Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and young
married women paid her assiduous homage. Her salon set the tone of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain. The words of this Talleyrand in petticoats
were taken as final decrees. People came to consult her on questions of
etiquette or usages, or to take lessons in good taste. And, in truth,
no other old woman could put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the
Princess could; while there was a precision and a grace about the
movements of her skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which
drove the finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice
had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she could
not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a
peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and fifty thousand
livres of her great fortune, for Napoleon had generously returned her
woods to her; so that personally and in the matter of possessions she
was a woman of no little consequence.

This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was
chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The Vidame was
a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old school, and had been
a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck had always been so tightly
compressed by a strangulation stock, that his cheeks pouched over it a
little, and he held his head high; to many people this would have given
an air of self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a
Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see everything, and as
a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether,
his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and
slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or
rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake.

The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the Duc de
Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale;
both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned
men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But
for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease
of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial
observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake
would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard
them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they feared,
vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors
whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to
humiliate with an unexpected phrase.

Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that determined to
perish rather than submit to any change. It was a noblesse that deserved
praise and blame in equal measure; a noblesse that will never be judged
impartially until some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles
obeyed the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu’s axe, and how
deeply they scorned the guillotine of ‘89 as a foul revenge.

Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that agreed
peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among themselves, at any
rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. None of them betrayed
any sign of annoyance over the Duchess’s escapade, but all of them had
learned at Court to hide their feelings.

And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the opening of
the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind the reader that
Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords,
renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political
consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation
by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read
it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out
laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the
upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible
when washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank of
society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious observer finds
folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish.
Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and
boeotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher regions they
must perforce talk more, but to make up for it they think the less.
Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the rich like their lives to flow by
easily and without effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of
jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer
of France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de
Talleyrand’s maxim, “The manner is everything”; an elegant rendering of
the legal axiom, “The form is of more consequence than the matter.” In
the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for
they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their
thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility
of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance
felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small
change.

The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him, and
remarked to his neighbour:

“So you have sold Tornthon?”

“No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I should be
uncommonly sorry. He is a very good hunter. Do you know how the Duchesse
de Marigny is?”

“No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to call when
you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yesterday she was very ill
indeed; they had given her up, she took the sacrament.”

“Her death will make a change in your cousin’s position.”

“Not at all. She gave away her property in her lifetime, only keeping
an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate to her niece, Mme de
Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge.”

“It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman. Her family
will miss her; her experience and advice carried weight. Her son Marigny
is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit, he can talk. He is pleasant, very
pleasant. Pleasant? oh, that no one can deny, but--ill regulated to
the last degree. Well, and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is
very acute. He was dining at the club the other day with that moneyed
Chaussee-d’Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for his game
of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if he was a
member. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I don’t go into society now; I am living among
the bankers.’--You know why?” added the Marquis, with a meaning smile.

“No,” said the Duke.

“He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville’s daughter; she
is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they say, in that set.”

“Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it seems,”
 remarked the Vidame.

“My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a singular
pastime,” replied the Princess, as she returned her snuff-box to her
pocket.

“Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed,” said the Duke, stopping short in his
walk. “Nobody but one of Bonaparte’s men could ask such an indecorous
thing of a woman of fashion. Between ourselves, Antoinette might have
made a better choice.”

“The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected, my
dear,” replied the Princess; “they are related to all the noblest houses
of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should
come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus would succeed to the Arschoot
title and estates. They inherit through their great-grandfather.

“Are you sure?”

“I know it better than this Montriveau’s father did. I told him about
it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of several orders
though he was, he only laughed; he was an encyclopaedist. But his
brother turned the relationship to good account during the emigration.
I have heard it said that his northern kinsfolk were most kind in every
way----”

“Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St. Petersburg,”
 said the Vidame. “I met him there. He was a big man with an incredible
passion for oysters.”

“However many did he eat?” asked the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Ten dozen every day.”

“And did they not disagree with him?”

“Not the least bit in the world.”

“Why, that is extraordinary! Had he neither the stone nor gout, nor any
other complaint, in consequence?”

“No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an accident.”

“By accident! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably he
required them; for up to a certain point our predominant tastes are
conditions of our existence.”

“I am of your opinion,” said the Princess, with a smile.

“Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,” returned
the Marquis.

“I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a wrong
impression on a young woman’s mind,” said she, and interrupted herself
to exclaim, “But this niece, this niece of mine!”

“Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to M. de
Montriveau,” said the Duc de Navarreins.

“Bah!” returned the Princess.

“What do you think, Vidame?” asked the Marquis.

“If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think that----”

“But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,” retorted
the Princess. “Really, my poor Vidame, you must be getting older.”

“After all, what is to be done?” asked the Duke.

“If my dear niece is wise,” said the Princess, “she will go to Court
this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception day--and you
must see that we all rally round her and give the lie to this absurd
rumour. There are hundreds of ways of explaining things; and if the
Marquis de Montriveau is a gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We
will bring these children to listen to reason----”

“But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the truth to
his face. He is one of Bonaparte’s pupils, and he has a position. Why,
he is one of the great men of the day; he is high up in the Guards, and
very useful there. He has not a spark of ambition. He is just the man to
say, ‘Here is my commission, leave me in peace,’ if the King should say
a word that he did not like.”

“Then, pray, what are his opinions?”

“Very unsound.”

“Really,” sighed the Princess, “the King is, as he always has been, a
Jacobin under the Lilies of France.”

“Oh! not quite so bad,” said the Vidame.

“Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that pointed out the
Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state dinner in public
with, ‘These are our people,’ could only be a black-hearted scoundrel.
I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother
who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was
sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk.
This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger
brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little
mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor
is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in
abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he lay dying, ‘He will not
reign very long----’”

“Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his service----”

“But does your post take away your right of free speech, my dear? You
come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. If the Guises had shown a
little more resolution, His Majesty would be a nobody at this day. It is
time I went out of this world, the noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all
over with you, my children,” she continued, looking as she spoke at the
Vidame. “What has my niece done that the whole town should be talking
about her? She is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless
scandal is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want
of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know that----”

Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir. She had
recognised her aunt’s voice and heard the name of Montriveau. She
was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in, M.
de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his niece’s
carriage driving back along the street. The Duke took his daughter’s
face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.

“So, dear girl,” he said, “you do not know what is going on?”

“Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?”

“Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau.”

“My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you not?”
 said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess kissed with
affectionate respect.

“Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And,” she added, as she
turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, “I wished that all Paris
should think that I was with M. de Montriveau.”

The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and folded
his arms.

“Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?” he asked at
last.

But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking steadily
at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes fell. Mme de
Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, “My little angel, let me kiss
you!”

She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and continued
smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.

“We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have compromised your
husband and your position. Still, we will arrange to make everything
right.”

“But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It is my wish
that all Paris should say that I was with M. de Montriveau this morning.
If you destroy that belief, however ill grounded it may be, you will do
me a singular disservice.”

“Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your family?”

“My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable
misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You may,
perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will certainly feel
for me.”

“After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters
suitably!” muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.

The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. “My dear
little girl,” she said, “be happy, if you can. We are not talking of
troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with social usages. We
all of us here assembled know that marriage is a defective institution
tempered by love. But when you take a lover, is there any need to make
your bed in the Place du Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable,
and hear what we have to say.”

“I am listening.”

“Mme la Duchesse,” began the Duc de Grandlieu, “if it were any part of
an uncle’s duty to look after his nieces, he ought to have a position;
society would owe him honours and rewards and a salary, exactly as if
he were in the King’s service. So I am not here to talk about my nephew,
but of your own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in
making a scandal--I have seen the animal before, and I own that I have
no great liking for him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care
a rap for anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick
to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a
nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just
inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his
mistresses’ amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law;
you will have to say _Amen_ to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de
Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a
passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman while she is young
and pretty; still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate,
even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all but
impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that
he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your
husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a
woman’s parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I
am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving
unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This
being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are
they to be? Montriveaus? Very well; they certainly will not succeed to
their father’s whole fortune. You will want to give them all that you
have; he will wish to do the same. Nothing more natural, dear me!
And you will find the law against you. How many times have we
seen heirs-at-law bringing a law-suit to recover the property from
illegitimate children? Every court of law rings with such actions all
over the world. You will create a _fidei commissum_ perhaps; and if the
trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy against
him; and they are ruined. So choose carefully. You see the perplexities
of the position. In every possible way your children will be sacrificed
of necessity to the fancies of your heart; they will have no recognised
status. While they are little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day
they will reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves. We
old gentlemen know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and men
are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not hear young de
Horn say, after supper, ‘If my mother had been an honest woman, I should
be prince-regnant!’ _If_?’ We have spent our lives in hearing plebeians
say _if_. _If_ brought about the Revolution. When a man cannot lay the
blame on his father or mother, he holds God responsible for his hard
lot. In short, dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I will say all
I have to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate: A woman
ought never to put her husband in the right.”

“Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I looked at
interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel.”

“But, my dear little girl,” remonstrated the Vidame, “life is simply a
complication of interests and feelings; to be happy, more particularly
in your position, one must try to reconcile one’s feelings with
one’s interests. A grisette may love according to her fancy, that is
intelligible enough, but you have a pretty fortune, a family, a name and
a place at Court, and you ought not to fling them out of the window.
And what have we been asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre
carefully instead of falling foul of social conventions. Lord! I shall
very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any regime,
a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for the love of this
lucky young man.”

The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could have
seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.

“It would be very effective on the stage,” remarked the Duc de
Grandlieu, “but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and
position and independence is concerned. You are not grateful, my dear
niece. You will not find many families where the relatives have courage
enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and to make rash young
heads listen to reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if it
pleases you to damn yourself; well and good; but reflect well beforehand
when it comes to renouncing your income. I know of no confessor who
remits the pains of poverty. I have a right, I think, to speak in this
way to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer you
a refuge. I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have a right to
put him in the wrong.”

The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.

“Since you speak of feeling, my child,” he said, “let me remind you that
a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do
not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the
Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre’s that are doing all they
can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do
without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your
dishonor----”

“Come, come!” said the Princess. “Dishonor? Do not make such a fuss
about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and leave me alone
with Antoinette. All three of you come and dine with me. I will
undertake to arrange matters suitably. You men understand nothing;
you are beginning to talk sourly already, and I have no wish to see a
quarrel between you and my dear child. Do me the pleasure to go.”

The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess’s intentions; they
took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on the forehead
with, “Come, be good, dear child. It is not too late yet if you choose.”

“Couldn’t we find some good fellow in the family to pick a quarrel with
this Montriveau?” said the Vidame, as they went downstairs.

When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to a
little low chair by her side.

“My pearl,” said she, “in this world below, I know nothing worse
calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I look back over
my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the
proprieties underfoot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers
brought the reign of Louis XV into disrepute. Do not believe them. The
du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more
agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity
among her gallantries. Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the
beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists--the nobodies whom we
admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense of decency than
to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one and all, and to
rail against the age by way of a return for our kindness. The people are
not in a position to judge of anything whatsoever; they looked at the
facts, not at the form. But the men and women of those times, my heart,
were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one
of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called, never
a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that disguise the
poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling
hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up
in the dressing-room of the Regent’s daughter at the risk of his life.
Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell
eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun,
to keep up his mistress’s courage while she was lying in of her child.
There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt’s little finger than in
your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better themselves
elsewhere! Just tell me where to find the page that would be cut in
pieces and buried under the floorboards for one kiss on the Konigsmark’s
gloved finger!

“Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and women
are expected to show their devotion for men. These modern gentlemen are
worth less, and think more of themselves. Believe me, my dear, all these
adventures that have been made public, and now are turned against our
good Louis XV, were kept quite secret at first. If it had not been for
a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our
waiting-women, and took down their slanders, our epoch would have
appeared in literature as a well-conducted age. I am justifying the
century and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were
lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the gazettes
after a battle when they count up the losses of the beaten side. And in
any case I do not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach
us; they were coarse, dull, licentious times. Faugh! it is revolting.
Those are the brothels of French history.

“This preamble, my dear child,” she continued after a pause, “brings
me to the thing that I have to say. If you care for Montriveau, you are
quite at liberty to love him at your ease, and as much as you can. I
know by experience that, unless you are locked up (but locking people
up is out of fashion now), you will do as you please; I should have done
the same at your age. Only, sweetheart, I should not have given up my
right to be the mother of future Ducs de Langeais. So mind appearances.
The Vidame is right. No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices
which we are foolish enough to make for their love. Put yourself in
such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais’ wife, in case you
should have the misfortune to repent. When you are an old woman, you
will be very glad to hear mass said at Court, and not in some provincial
convent. Therein lies the whole question. A single imprudence means an
allowance and a wandering life; it means that you are at the mercy of
your lover; it means that you must put up with insolence from women
that are not so honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly
sharp-witted. It would be a hundred times better to go to Montriveau’s
at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending your carriage in
broad daylight. You are a little fool, my dear child! Your carriage
flattered his vanity; your person would have ensnared his heart. All
this that I have said is just and true; but, for my own part, I do not
blame you. You are two centuries behind the times with your false ideas
of greatness. There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that
Montriveau made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to
compromise you----”

The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring. “In Heaven’s name, aunt, do
not slander him!”

The old Princess’s eyes flashed.

“Dear child,” she said, “I should have liked to spare such of your
illusions as were not fatal. But there must be an end of all illusions
now. You would soften me if I were not so old. Come, now, do not vex
him, or us, or anyone else. I will undertake to satisfy everybody; but
promise me not to permit yourself a single step henceforth until you
have consulted me. Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right
again.”

“Aunt, I promise----”

“To tell me everything?”

“Yes, everything. Everything that can be told.”

“But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I want
to know. Let us understand each other thoroughly. Come, let me put my
withered old lips on your beautiful forehead. No; let me do as I wish. I
forbid you to kiss my bones. Old people have a courtesy of their own....
There, take me down to my carriage,” she added, when she had kissed her
niece.

“Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt?”

“Why--yes. The story can always be denied,” said the old Princess.

This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in the
sermon. When Mme de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her carriage,
Mme de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up to her room. She
was quite happy again.

“My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man cannot
surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to offer herself.”

That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de
Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse
triumphantly refuted the scandals that were circulating with regard to
the Duchesse de Langeais. So many officers and other persons had seen
Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning, that the silly story
was set down to chance, which takes all that is offered. And so,
in spite of the fact that the Duchess’s carriage had waited before
Montriveau’s door, her character became as clear and as spotless as
Membrino’s sword after Sancho had polished it up.

But, at two o’clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a deserted
alley, and said with a smile, “She is coming on, is your Duchess. Go on,
keep it up!” he added, and gave a significant cut of the riding whip to
his mare, who sped off like a bullet down the avenue.

Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M. de
Montriveau. That letter, like the preceding ones, remained unanswered.
This time she took her own measures, and bribed M. de Montriveau’s man,
Auguste. And so at eight o’clock that evening she was introduced into
Armand’s apartment. It was not the room in which that secret scene had
passed; it was entirely different. The Duchess was told that the General
would not be at home that night. Had he two houses? The man would give
no answer. Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not the
man’s whole loyalty.

When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an
old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened. He had not
read them. She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she lost
consciousness. When she came to herself, Auguste was holding vinegar for
her to inhale.

“A carriage; quick!” she ordered.

The carriage came. She hastened downstairs with convulsive speed, and
left orders that no one was to be admitted. For twenty-four hours she
lay in bed, and would have no one near her but her woman, who brought
her a cup of orange-flower water from time to time. Suzette heard
her mistress moan once or twice, and caught a glimpse of tears in the
brilliant eyes, now circled with dark shadows.

The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her
resolution. Her man of business came for an interview, and no doubt
received instructions of some kind. Afterwards she sent for the
Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a letter to M.
de Montriveau. The Vidame punctually came towards two o’clock that
afternoon, to find his young cousin looking white and worn, but
resigned; never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in
the languor of her agony.

“You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear cousin,” she
said. “Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an unhappy woman has reached
the lowest depths of wretchedness. You are a gentleman, and after the
adventures of your youth you must feel some indulgence for women.”

“None whatever,” said he.

“Indeed!”

“Everything is in their favour.”

“Ah! Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you will be
the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall press, so I can
ask your good offices. Will you, dear Vidame, do me a service which I
could not ask of my own father, nor of my uncle Grandlieu, nor of any
woman? You cannot fail to understand. I beg of you to do my bidding, and
then to forget what you have done, whatever may come of it. It is this:
Will you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau? will you see him
yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask things
between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between man and man
which you do not use with us, and a different way of regarding things
between yourselves--ask him if he will read this letter? Not in
your presence. Certain feelings men hide from each other. I give you
authority to say, if you think it necessary to bring him, that it is a
question of life or death for me. If he deigns----”

“_Deigns_!” repeated the Vidame.

“If he deigns to read it,” the Duchess continued with dignity, “say one
thing more. You will go to see him about five o’clock, for I know that
he will dine at home today at that time. Very good. By way of answer he
must come to see me. If, three hours afterwards, by eight o’clock, he
does not leave his house, all will be over. The Duchesse de Langeais
will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, dear friend, no,
but no human power will ever find me again on this earth. Come and dine
with me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony.
Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever happens to
me, I pass through an ordeal by fire. There! not a word. I will hear
nothing of the nature of comment or advice----Let us chat and laugh
together,” she added, holding out a hand, which he kissed. “We will be
like two grey-headed philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to
the last moment. I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for
you. You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de
Langeais.”

The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word. At five
o’clock he returned. His cousin had studied to please him, and she
looked lovely indeed. The room was gay with flowers as if for a
festivity; the dinner was exquisite. For the grey-headed Vidame the
Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of her wit; she was more charming
than she had ever been before. At first the Vidame tried to look on
all these preparations as a young woman’s jest; but now and again the
attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin’s charm was
broken. He detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and
once she seemed to listen during a pause.

“What is the matter?” he asked.

“Hush!” she said.

At seven o’clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes. When she came
back again she was dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey.
She asked her guest to be her escort, took his arm, sprang into a
hackney coach, and by a quarter to eight they stood outside M. de
Montriveau’s door.

Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--


“MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your
knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away. This cannot
be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show itself quite
differently. If you love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will
kill me, and afterwards, learning how much you were loved, you might be
in despair. If I have not rightly understood you, if you have no feeling
towards me but aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then
I give up all hope. A man never recovers from those feelings. You will
have no regrets. Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me
in my long sorrow. Regrets? Oh, my Armand, may I never know of them; if
I thought that I had caused you a single regret----But, no, I will not
tell you what desolation I should feel. I should be living still, and I
could not be your wife; it would be too late!

“Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom else
should I give myself?--to God. The eyes that you loved for a little
while shall never look on another man’s face; and may the glory of God
blind them to all besides. I shall never hear human voices more since I
heard yours--so gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday; for it seems
to me that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance. And now
may the will of God consume me. Between His wrath and yours, my friend,
there will be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and
prayers.

“Perhaps you wonder why I write to you? Ah! do not think ill of me if I
keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy life before I take
leave of it forever. I am in a hideous position. I feel all the inward
serenity that comes when a great resolution has been taken, even while I
hear the last growlings of the storm. When you went out on that terrible
adventure which so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to
the oasis with a good guide to show you the way. Well, I am going out of
the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me. And yet
you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is to look back
for the last time on happiness--to you, and you only, I can make moan
without a blush. If you grant my entreaty, I shall be happy; if you are
inexorable, I shall expiate the wrong that I have done. After all, it is
natural, is it not, that a woman should wish to live, invested with all
noble feelings, in her friend’s memory? Oh! my one and only love, let
her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief that she
is great in your eyes. Your harshness led me to reflect; and now that I
love you so, it seems to me that I am less guilty than you think. Listen
to my justification, I owe it to you; and you that are all the world to
me, owe me at least a moment’s justice.

“I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by my
coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love. _You_ know
what the torture is, and you mete it out to me! During those first eight
months that you gave me you never roused any feeling of love in me. Do
you ask why this was so, my friend? I can no more explain it than I can
tell you why I love you now. Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I
should be the subject of your passionate talk, and receive those burning
glances of yours; but you left me cold. No, I was not a woman; I had
no conception of womanly devotion and happiness. Who was to blame? You
would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without
the impulse of passion? Perhaps it is the highest height to which we
can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps there is no merit in
yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen and ardently desired. Alas,
my friend, I can say this now; these thoughts came to me when I played
with you; and you seemed to me so great even then that I would not have
you owe the gift to pity----What is this that I have written?

“I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one on the
fire; they are burning. You will never know what they confessed--all the
love and the passion and the madness----

“I will say no more, Armand; I will stop. I will not say another word of
my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours,
I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity. It is my
wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to
be left without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be
burnt. If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three
hours, to be henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for
me; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands,
the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my
end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit
I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder
of the woman who, in three hours’ time, will live only to overwhelm
you with her tenderness; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and
faithful--not to memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.

“The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power;
but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a
power for you still. Yes, you will regret me. I see clearly that I was
not of this world, and I thank you for making it clear to me.

“Farewell; you will never touch _my_ axe. Yours was the executioner’s
axe, mine is God’s; yours kills, mine saves. Your love was but mortal,
it could not endure disdain or ridicule; mine can endure all things
without growing weaker, it will last eternally. Ah! I feel a sombre joy
in crushing you that believe yourself so great; in humbling you with the
calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels that lie at
the feet of God, for to them is given the right and the power to protect
and watch over men in His name. You have but felt fleeting desires,
while the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent
prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath the
wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.

“I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall be--in
heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear Armand; the
strong and the weak are bound to suffer. This thought soothes the
anguish of my final ordeal. So calm am I that I should fear that I had
ceased to love you if I were not about to leave the world for your sake.

                                                “ANTOINETTE.”


“Dear Vidame,” said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau’s house, “do
me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at home.” The Vidame,
obedient after the manner of the eighteenth century to a woman’s wish,
got out, and came back to bring his cousin an affirmative answer that
sent a shudder through her. She grasped his hand tightly in hers,
suffered him to kiss her on either cheek, and begged him to go at once.
He must not watch her movements nor try to protect her. “But the people
passing in the street,” he objected.

“No one can fail in respect to me,” she said. It was the last word
spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.

The Vidame went. Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her cloak,
and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight. The last stroke
died away. The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen minutes; to the last
she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the delay, then her faith ebbed.
She turned to leave the fatal threshold.

“Oh, God!” the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was the first
word spoken by the Carmelite.



Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together. He tried to
hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and by the time he
started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess was hurrying on foot
through the streets of Paris, goaded by the dull rage in her heart. She
reached the Boulevard d’Enfer, and looked out for the last time through
falling tears on the noisy, smoky city that lay below in a red mist,
lighted up by its own lamps. Then she hailed a cab, and drove away,
never to return. When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de
Langeais, and found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had
been duped. He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that worthy
gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered dressing-gown, thinking
the while of his fair cousin’s happiness.

Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the effect
of an electric shock on men and women alike.

“Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax,
monsieur?” Montriveau exclaimed. “I have just come from Mme de Langeais’
house; the servants say that she is out.”

“Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt,” returned the Vidame,
“and through your fault. I left the Duchess at your door----”

“When?”

“At a quarter to eight.”

“Good evening,” returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask the
porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep that evening.

“Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much put out.
She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a sound, and stood
as upright as a post. Then at last she went, and my wife and I that were
watching her while she could not see us, heard her say, ‘Oh, God!’ so
that it went to our hearts, asking your pardon, to hear her say it.”

Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those few
words. He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the message at
once, and went up to his rooms. Ronquerolles came just about midnight.

Armand gave him the Duchess’s letter to read.

“Well?” asked Ronquerolles.

“She was here at my door at eight o’clock; at a quarter-past eight she
had gone. I have lost her, and I love her. Oh! if my life were my own, I
could blow my brains out.”

“Pooh, pooh! Keep cool,” said Ronquerolles. “Duchesses do not fly off
like wagtails. She cannot travel faster than three leagues an hour, and
tomorrow we will ride six.--Confound it! Mme de Langeais is no ordinary
woman,” he continued. “Tomorrow we will all of us mount and ride.
The police will put us on her track during the day. She must have a
carriage; angels of that sort have no wings. We shall find her whether
she is on the road or hidden in Paris. There is the semaphore. We can
stop her. You shall be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a
blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty. They judge
others by themselves, and do not know the point when human nature gives
way if you strain the cords too tightly. Why did you not say a word
to me sooner? I would have told you to be punctual. Good-bye till
tomorrow,” he added, as Montriveau said nothing. “Sleep if you can,” he
added, with a grasp of the hand.

But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the disposal
of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human power, in fact,
were all exhausted in vain. Neither Montriveau nor his friends could
find any trace of the Duchess. It was clear that she had entered a
convent. Montriveau determined to search, or to institute a search, for
her through every convent in the world. He must have her, even at the
cost of all the lives in a town. And in justice to this extraordinary
man, it must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same
ardour daily and lasted through five years. Only in 1829 did the Duc de
Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to Spain as
Lady Julia Hopwood’s maid, that she had left her service at Cadiz, and
that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline was the illustrious
duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the minds of the highest
society of Paris.



The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side of the
grating in the Carmelite convent should now be comprehended to the full,
and the violence of the passion awakened in either soul will doubtless
explain the catastrophe of the story.

In 1823 the Duc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free. Antoinette
de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge of rock in
the Mediterranean; but it was in the Pope’s power to dissolve Sister
Theresa’s vows. The happiness bought by so much love might yet bloom
for the two lovers. These thoughts sent Montriveau flying from Cadiz to
Marseilles, and from Marseilles to Paris.

A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted out and
munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of Marseilles for
Spain. The vessel had been chartered by several distinguished men, most
of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a romantic passion for the East,
wished to make a journey to those lands. Montriveau’s familiar knowledge
of Eastern customs made him an invaluable travelling companion, and at
the entreaty of the rest he had joined the expedition; the Minister
of War appointed him lieutenant-general, and put him on the Artillery
Commission to facilitate his departure.

Twenty-fours hours later the brig lay to off the north-west shore of an
island within sight of the Spanish coast. She had been specially chosen
for her shallow keel and light mastage, so that she might lie at anchor
in safety half a league away from the reefs that secure the island from
approach in this direction. If fishing vessels or the people on the
island caught sight of the brig, they were scarcely likely to feel
suspicious of her at once; and besides, it was easy to give a reason for
her presence without delay. Montriveau hoisted the flag of the United
States before they came in sight of the island, and the crew of the
vessel were all American sailors, who spoke nothing but English. One
of M. de Montriveau’s companions took the men ashore in the ship’s
longboat, and made them so drunk at an inn in the little town that
they could not talk. Then he gave out that the brig was manned by
treasure-seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was well known in the United
States; indeed, some Spanish writer had written a history of them. The
presence of the brig among the reefs was now sufficiently explained.
The owners of the vessel, according to the self-styled boatswain’s mate,
were looking for the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabouts in
1778 with a cargo of treasure from Mexico. The people at the inn and the
authorities asked no more questions.

Armand, and the devoted friends who were helping him in his difficult
enterprise, were all from the first of the opinion that there was no
hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister Theresa by force or stratagem
from the side of the little town. Wherefore these bold spirits, with one
accord, determined to take the bull by the horns. They would make a way
to the convent at the most seemingly inaccessible point; like General
Lamarque, at the storming of Capri, they would conquer Nature. The cliff
at the end of the island, a sheer block of granite, afforded even less
hold than the rock of Capri. So it seemed at least to Montriveau, who
had taken part in that incredible exploit, while the nuns in his eyes
were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson Lowe. To raise a hubbub over
carrying off the Duchess would cover them with confusion. They might as
well set siege to the town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a
single soul to tell of their victory. So for them their expedition wore
but two aspects. There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms
that should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained
unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent which
should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid them a visit.
They had decided upon the latter course in the secret council held
before they left Paris, and subsequently everything had been done to
insure the success of an expedition which promised some real excitement
to jaded spirits weary of Paris and its pleasures.

An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan model,
enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from out of the
water. Then two cables of iron wire were fastened several feet apart
between one rock and another. These wire ropes slanted upwards and
downwards in opposite directions, so that baskets of iron wire could
travel to and fro along them; and in this manner the rocks were covered
with a system of baskets and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments
which a certain species of spider weaves about a tree. The Chinese, an
essentially imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the
work of instinct. Fragile as these bridges were, they were always ready
for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not throw them
out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to
present to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, the
immortal creator of the harbour at Cherbourg. Against this cunningly
devised line the angry surge is powerless; the law of that curve was
a secret wrested from Nature by that faculty of observation in which
nearly all human genius consists.

M. de Montriveau’s companions were alone on board the vessel, and out of
sight of every human eye. No one from the deck of a passing vessel could
have discovered either the brig hidden among the reefs, or the men at
work among the rocks; they lay below the ordinary range of the most
powerful telescope. Eleven days were spent in preparation, before the
Thirteen, with all their infernal power, could reach the foot of the
cliffs. The body of the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height
of thirty fathoms. Any attempt to climb the sheer wall of granite seemed
impossible; a mouse might as well try to creep up the slippery sides of
a plain china vase. Still there was a cleft, a straight line of fissure
so fortunately placed that large blocks of wood could be wedged firmly
into it at a distance of about a foot apart. Into these blocks the
daring workers drove iron cramps, specially made for the purpose, with
a broad iron bracket at the outer end, through which a hole had been
drilled. Each bracket carried a light deal board which corresponded with
a notch made in a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was
firmly planted in the beach at their feet. With ingenuity worthy of
these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, a skilled
mathematician, had calculated the angle from which the steps must start;
so that from the middle they rose gradually, like the sticks of a fan,
to the top of the cliff, and descended in the same fashion to its
base. That miraculously light, yet perfectly firm, staircase cost them
twenty-two days of toil. A little tinder and the surf of the sea would
destroy all trace of it forever in a single night. A betrayal of the
secret was impossible; and all search for the violators of the convent
was doomed to failure.

At the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer precipice on all
sides. The Thirteen, reconnoitring the ground with their glasses from
the masthead, made certain that though the ascent was steep and rough,
there would be no difficulty in gaining the convent garden, where the
trees were thick enough for a hiding-place. After such great efforts
they would not risk the success of their enterprise, and were compelled
to wait till the moon passed out of her last quarter.

For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out on the rock
platform. The singing at vespers and matins filled him with unutterable
joy. He stood under the wall to hear the music of the organ, listening
intently for one voice among the rest. But in spite of the silence, the
confused effect of music was all that reached his ears. In those sweet
harmonies defects of execution are lost; the pure spirit of art comes
into direct communication with the spirit of the hearer, making
no demand on the attention, no strain on the power of listening.
Intolerable memories awoke. All the love within him seemed to break into
blossom again at the breath of that music; he tried to find auguries of
happiness in the air. During the last night he sat with his eyes fixed
upon an ungrated window, for bars were not needed on the side of the
precipice. A light shone there all through the hours; and that instinct
of the heart, which is sometimes true, and as often false, cried within
him, “She is there!”

“She is certainly there! Tomorrow she will be mine,” he said to himself,
and joy blended with the slow tinkling of a bell that began to ring.

Strange unaccountable workings of the heart! The nun, wasted by yearning
love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and vigils; the woman of
nine-and-twenty, who had passed through heavy trials, was loved more
passionately than the lighthearted girl, the woman of four-and-twenty,
the sylphide, had ever been. But is there not, for men of vigorous
character, something attractive in the sublime expression engraven on
women’s faces by the impetuous stirrings of thought and misfortunes of
no ignoble kind? Is there not a beauty of suffering which is the most
interesting of all beauty to those men who feel that within them there
is an inexhaustible wealth of tenderness and consoling pity for a
creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love? It is the
ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth, pink-and-white
beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness. In some faces love awakens
amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the ruin made by melancholy;
Montriveau could not but feel drawn to these. For cannot a lover,
with the voice of a great longing, call forth a wholly new creature? a
creature athrob with the life but just begun breaks forth for him alone,
from the outward form that is fair for him, and faded for all the world
besides. Does he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her,
is pale and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart
knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is adorned
in all her glory only for love’s high festivals.

The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had heard
voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness sounding
faintly from the cell. When he came down to the foot of the cliffs where
his friends were waiting, he told them that never in his life had
he felt such enthralling bliss, and in the few words there was that
unmistakable thrill of repressed strong feeling, that magnificent
utterance which all men respect.



That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent in the
darkness. Each man carried a poniard, a provision of chocolate, and
a set of house-breaking tools. They climbed the outer walls with
scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery of the convent. Montriveau
recognised the long, vaulted gallery through which he went to the
parlour, and remembered the windows of the room. His plans were made and
adopted in a moment. They would effect an entrance through one of the
windows in the Carmelite’s half of the parlour, find their way along
the corridors, ascertain whether the sister’s names were written on the
doors, find Sister Theresa’s cell, surprise her as she slept, and carry
her off, bound and gagged. The programme presented no difficulties to
men who combined boldness and a convict’s dexterity with the knowledge
peculiar to men of the world, especially as they would not scruple to
give a stab to ensure silence.

In two hours the bars were sawn through. Three men stood on guard
outside, and two inside the parlour. The rest, barefooted, took up their
posts along the corridor. Young Henri de Marsay, the most dexterous
man among them, disguised by way of precaution in a Carmelite’s robe,
exactly like the costume of the convent, led the way, and Montriveau
came immediately behind him. The clock struck three just as the two men
reached the dormitory cells. They soon saw the position. Everything was
perfectly quiet. With the help of a dark lantern they read the names
luckily written on every door, together with the picture of a saint or
saints and the mystical words which every nun takes as a kind of
motto for the beginning of her new life and the revelation of her
last thought. Montriveau reached Sister Theresa’s door and read the
inscription, _Sub invocatione sanctae matris Theresae_, and her motto,
_Adoremus in aeternum_. Suddenly his companion laid a hand on his
shoulder. A bright light was streaming through the chinks of the door.
M. de Ronquerolles came up at that moment.

“All the nuns are in the church,” he said; “they are beginning the
Office for the Dead.”

“I will stay here,” said Montriveau. “Go back into the parlour, and shut
the door at the end of the passage.”

He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his disguised
companion, who let down the veil over his face.

There before them lay the dead Duchess; her plank bed had been laid on
the floor of the outer room of her cell, between two lighted candles.
Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay spoke a word or uttered a cry; but they
looked into each other’s faces. The General’s dumb gesture tried to say,
“Let us carry her away!”

“Quickly” shouted Ronquerolles, “the procession of nuns is leaving the
church. You will be caught!”

With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense desire, the
dead woman was carried into the convent parlour, passed through the
window, and lowered from the walls before the Abbess, followed by the
nuns, returned to take up Sister Theresa’s body. The sister left in
charge had imprudently left her post; there were secrets that she longed
to know; and so busy was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard
nothing, and was horrified when she came back to find that the body was
gone. Before the women, in their blank amazement, could think of making
a search, the Duchess had been lowered by a cord to the foot of the
crags, and Montriveau’s companions had destroyed all traces of their
work. By nine o’clock that morning there was not a sign to show that
either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed, and Sister Theresa’s
body had been taken on board. The brig came into the port to ship her
crew, and sailed that day.

Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoinette
de Navarreins. For some hours it seemed as if her dead face was
transfigured for him by that unearthly beauty which the calm of death
gives to the body before it perishes.

“Look here,” said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reappeared on deck,
“_that_ was a woman once, now it is nothing. Let us tie a cannon ball
to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if ever you think of her
again, think of her as of some book that you read as a boy.”

“Yes,” assented Montriveau, “it is nothing now but a dream.”

“That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions; but as for
love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is only a woman’s
last love that can satisfy a man’s first love.”




ADDENDUM

  Note: The Duchesse de Langeais is the second part of a trilogy.
  Part one is entitled Ferragus and part three is The Girl with
  the Golden Eyes. In other addendum references all three stories
  are usually combined under the title The Thirteen.

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

     Blamont-Chauvry, Princesse de
       Madame Firmiani
       The Lily of the Valley

     Grandlieu, Duc Ferdinand de
       The Gondreville Mystery
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       Modeste Mignon
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

     Granville, Comtesse Angelique de
       A Second Home
       A Daughter of Eve

     Keller, Madame Francois
       Domestic Peace
       The Member for Arcis

     Langeais, Duc de
       An Episode under the Terror

     Langeais, Duchesse Antoinette de
       Father Goriot
       Ferragus

     Marsay, Henri de
       Ferragus
       The Girl with the Golden Eyes
       The Unconscious Humorists
       Another Study of Woman
       The Lily of the Valley
       Father Goriot
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Marriage Settlement
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Ball at Sceaux
       Modeste Mignon
       The Secrets of a Princess
       The Gondreville Mystery
       A Daughter of Eve

     Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de
       Father Goriot
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Another Study of Woman
       Pierrette
       The Member for Arcis

     Navarreins, Duc de
       A Bachelor’s Establishment
       Colonel Chabert
       The Muse of the Department
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       The Peasantry
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       The Country Parson
       The Magic Skin
       The Gondreville Mystery
       The Secrets of a Princess
       Cousin Betty

     Pamiers, Vidame de
       Ferragus
       Jealousies of a Country Town

     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
       The Imaginary Mistress
       The Peasantry
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Woman of Thirty
       Another Study of Woman
       Ferragus
       The Girl with the Golden Eyes
       The Member for Arcis

     Serizy, Comtesse de
       A Start in Life
       Ferragus
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Woman of Thirty
       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
       Another Study of Woman
       The Imaginary Mistress

     Soulanges, Comtesse Hortense de
       Domestic Peace
       The Peasantry

     Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles-Maurice de
       The Chouans
       The Gondreville Mystery
       Letters of Two Brides
       Gaudissart II





III. THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES



Translated by Ellen Marriage



                             DEDICATION

                    To Eugene Delacroix, Painter


One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is,
surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace--a people fearful
to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny. Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual
turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop
of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to
be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces
give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with
which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of
weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of
hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs of
a panting cupidity? What is it they want? Gold or pleasure? A few
observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its
cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages--youth and decay: youth,
wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young. In looking at
this excavated people, foreigners, who are not prone to reflection,
experience at first a movement of disgust towards the capital, that
vast workshop of delights, from which, in a short time, they cannot even
extricate themselves, and where they stay willingly to be corrupted. A
few words will suffice to justify physiologically the almost infernal
hue of Parisian faces, for it is not in mere sport that Paris has been
called a hell. Take the phrase for truth. There all is smoke and fire,
everything gleams, crackles, flames, evaporates, dies out, then lights
up again, with shooting sparks, and is consumed. In no other country has
life ever been more ardent or acute. The social nature, even in fusion,
seems to say after each completed work: “Pass on to another!” just as
Nature says herself. Like Nature herself, this social nature is busied
with insects and flowers of a day--ephemeral trifles; and so, too,
it throws up fire and flame from its eternal crater. Perhaps, before
analyzing the causes which lend a special physiognomy to each tribe of
this intelligent and mobile nation, the general cause should be pointed
out which bleaches and discolors, tints with blue or brown individuals
in more or less degree.

By dint of taking interest in everything, the Parisian ends by being
interested in nothing. No emotion dominating his face, which friction
has rubbed away, it turns gray like the faces of those houses upon which
all kinds of dust and smoke have blown. In effect, the Parisian, with
his indifference on the day for what the morrow will bring forth,
lives like a child, whatever may be his age. He grumbles at everything,
consoles himself for everything, jests at everything, forgets,
desires, and tastes everything, seizes all with passion, quits all with
indifference--his kings, his conquests, his glory, his idols of bronze
or glass--as he throws away his stockings, his hats, and his fortune. In
Paris no sentiment can withstand the drift of things, and their current
compels a struggle in which the passions are relaxed: there love is
a desire, and hatred a whim; there’s no true kinsman but the
thousand-franc note, no better friend than the pawnbroker. This
universal toleration bears its fruits, and in the salon, as in the
street, there is no one _de trop_, there is no one absolutely useful,
or absolutely harmful--knaves or fools, men of wit or integrity. There
everything is tolerated: the government and the guillotine, religion and
the cholera. You are always acceptable to this world, you will never
be missed by it. What, then, is the dominating impulse in this country
without morals, without faith, without any sentiment, wherein, however,
every sentiment, belief, and moral has its origin and end? It is gold
and pleasure. Take those two words for a lantern, and explore that great
stucco cage, that hive with its black gutters, and follow the windings
of that thought which agitates, sustains, and occupies it! Consider!
And, in the first place, examine the world which possesses nothing.

The artisan, the man of the proletariat, who uses his hands, his tongue,
his back, his right arm, his five fingers, to live--well, this very man,
who should be the first to economize his vital principle, outruns his
strength, yokes his wife to some machine, wears out his child, and ties
him to the wheel. The manufacturer--or I know not what secondary thread
which sets in motion all these folk who with their foul hands mould
and gild porcelain, sew coats and dresses, beat out iron, turn wood and
steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal, imitate flowers, work woolen things,
break in horses, dress harness, carve in copper, paint carriages, blow
glass, corrode the diamond, polish metals, turn marble into leaves,
labor on pebbles, deck out thought, tinge, bleach, or blacken
everything--well, this middleman has come to that world of sweat and
good-will, of study and patience, with promises of lavish wages, either
in the name of the town’s caprices or with the voice of the monster
dubbed speculation. Thus, these _quadrumanes_ set themselves to watch,
work, and suffer, to fast, sweat, and bestir them. Then, careless of the
future, greedy of pleasure, counting on their right arm as the painter
on his palette, lords for one day, they throw their money on Mondays
to the _cabarets_ which gird the town like a belt of mud, haunts of the
most shameless of the daughters of Venus, in which the periodical money
of this people, as ferocious in their pleasures as they are calm at
work, is squandered as it had been at play. For five days, then, there
is no repose for this laborious portion of Paris! It is given up to
actions which make it warped and rough, lean and pale, gush forth with a
thousand fits of creative energy. And then its pleasure, its repose,
are an exhausting debauch, swarthy and black with blows, white with
intoxication, or yellow with indigestion. It lasts but two days, but it
steals to-morrow’s bread, the week’s soup, the wife’s dress, the child’s
wretched rags. Men, born doubtless to be beautiful--for all creatures
have a relative beauty--are enrolled from their childhood beneath the
yoke of force, beneath the rule of the hammer, the chisel, the loom, and
have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his hideousness and
his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous nation--sublime
in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, and once in a
century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe with brandy for
the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine, to take fire at
a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold and Pleasure! If
we comprise in it all those who hold out their hands for an alms, for
lawful wages, or the five francs that are granted to every kind of
Parisian prostitution, in short, for all the money well or ill earned,
this people numbers three hundred thousand individuals. Were it not for
the _cabarets_, would not the Government be overturned every Tuesday?
Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off its pleasure, is
penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread, stimulated by a need
of material procreation, which has become a habit to it. None the
less, this people has its phenomenal virtues, its complete men, unknown
Napoleons, who are the type of its strength carried to its highest
expression, and sum up its social capacity in an existence wherein
thought and movement combine less to bring joy into it than to
neutralize the action of sorrow.

Chance has made an artisan economical, chance has favored him with
forethought, he has been able to look forward, has met with a wife and
found himself a father, and, after some years of hard privation, he
embarks in some little draper’s business, hires a shop. If neither
sickness nor vice blocks his way--if he has prospered--there is the
sketch of this normal life.

And, in the first place, hail to that king of Parisian activity, to whom
time and space give way. Yes, hail to that being, composed of saltpetre
and gas, who makes children for France during his laborious nights,
and in the day multiplies his personality for the service, glory,
and pleasure of his fellow-citizens. This man solves the problem
of sufficing at once to his amiable wife, to his hearth, to the
_Constitutionnel_, to his office, to the National Guard, to the opera,
and to God; but, only in order that the _Constitutionnel_, his office,
the National Guard, the opera, his wife, and God may be changed into
coin. In fine, hail to an irreproachable pluralist. Up every day at five
o’clock, he traverses like a bird the space which separates his dwelling
from the Rue Montmartre. Let it blow or thunder, rain or snow, he is at
the _Constitutionnel_, and waits there for the load of newspapers which
he has undertaken to distribute. He receives this political bread with
eagerness, takes it, bears it away. At nine o’clock he is in the bosom
of his family, flings a jest to his wife, snatches a loud kiss from her,
gulps down a cup of coffee, or scolds his children. At a quarter to ten
he puts in an appearance at the _Mairie_. There, stuck upon a stool,
like a parrot on its perch, warmed by Paris town, he registers until
four o’clock, with never a tear or a smile, the deaths and births of an
entire district. The sorrow, the happiness, of the parish flow beneath
his pen--as the essence of the _Constitutionnel_ traveled before upon
his shoulders. Nothing weighs upon him! He goes always straight before
him, takes his patriotism ready made from the newspaper, contradicts no
one, shouts or applauds with the world, and lives like a bird. Two yards
from his parish, in the event of an important ceremony, he can yield
his place to an assistant, and betake himself to chant a requiem from
a stall in the church of which on Sundays he is the fairest ornament,
where his is the most imposing voice, where he distorts his huge mouth
with energy to thunder out a joyous _Amen_. So is he chorister. At four
o’clock, freed from his official servitude, he reappears to shed joy and
gaiety upon the most famous shop in the city. Happy is his wife, he has
no time to be jealous: he is a man of action rather than of sentiment.
His mere arrival spurs the young ladies at the counter; their bright
eyes storm the customers; he expands in the midst of all the finery, the
lace and muslin kerchiefs, that their cunning hands have wrought. Or,
again, more often still, before his dinner he waits on a client, copies
the page of a newspaper, or carries to the doorkeeper some goods that
have been delayed. Every other day, at six, he is faithful to his
post. A permanent bass for the chorus, he betakes himself to the opera,
prepared to become a soldier or an arab, prisoner, savage, peasant,
spirit, camel’s leg or lion, a devil or a genie, a slave or a
eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy or sorrow, pity or
astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to hold his tongue, to
hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always at heart--a huckster still.

At midnight he returns--a man, the good husband, the tender father;
he slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the
illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit
of conjugal love the world’s depravities, the voluptuous curves of
Taglioni’s leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and hurries
through his slumber as he does his life.

This man sums up all things--history, literature, politics, government,
religion, military science. Is he not a living encyclopaedia, a
grotesque Atlas; ceaselessly in motion, like Paris itself, and knowing
not repose? He is all legs. No physiognomy could preserve its purity
amid such toils. Perhaps the artisan who dies at thirty, an old man, his
stomach tanned by repeated doses of brandy, will be held, according to
certain leisured philosophers, to be happier than the huckster is.
The one perishes in a breath, and the other by degrees. From his eight
industries, from the labor of his shoulders, his throat, his hands,
from his wife and his business, the one derives--as from so many
farms--children, some thousands of francs, and the most laborious
happiness that has ever diverted the heart of man. This fortune and
these children, or the children who sum up everything for him, become
the prey of the world above, to which he brings his ducats and his
daughter or his son, reared at college, who, with more education than
his father, raises higher his ambitious gaze. Often the son of a retail
tradesman would fain be something in the State.

Ambition of that sort carries on our thought to the second Parisian
sphere. Go up one story, then, and descend to the _entresol_: or climb
down from the attic and remain on the fourth floor; in fine, penetrate
into the world which has possessions: the same result! Wholesale
merchants, and their men--people with small banking accounts and much
integrity--rogues and catspaws, clerks old and young, sheriffs’ clerks,
barristers’ clerks, solicitors’ clerks; in fine, all the working,
thinking, and speculating members of that lower middle class which
honeycombs the interests of Paris and watches over its granary,
accumulates the coin, stores the products that the proletariat have
made, preserves the fruits of the South, the fishes, the wine from every
sun-favored hill; which stretches its hands over the Orient, and takes
from it the shawls that the Russ and the Turk despise; which harvests
even from the Indies; crouches down in expectation of a sale, greedy
of profit; which discounts bills, turns over and collects all kinds of
securities, holds all Paris in its hand, watches over the fantasies
of children, spies out the caprices and the vices of mature age,
sucks money out of disease. Even so, if they drink no brandy, like the
artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse their
strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are
burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In
their case the physical distortion is accomplished beneath the whip of
interests, beneath the scourge of ambitions which torture the educated
portion of this monstrous city, just as in the case of the proletariat
it is brought about by the cruel see-saw of the material elaborations
perpetually required from the despotism of the aristocratic “_I will_.”
 Here, too, then, in order to obey that universal master, pleasure or
gold, they must devour time, hasten time, find more than four-and-twenty
hours in the day and night, waste themselves, slay themselves, and
purchase two years of unhealthy repose with thirty years of old age.
Only, the working-man dies in hospital when the last term of his stunted
growth expires; whereas the man of the middle class is set upon living,
and lives on, but in a state of idiocy. You will meet him, with his
worn, flat old face, with no light in his eyes, with no strength in his
limbs, dragging himself with a dazed air along the boulevard--the belt
of his Venus, of his beloved city. What was his want? The sabre of the
National Guard, a permanent stock-pot, a decent plot in Pere Lachaise,
and, for his old age, a little gold honestly earned. _HIS_ Monday is on
Sunday, his rest a drive in a hired carriage--a country excursion during
which his wife and children glut themselves merrily with dust or bask
in the sun; his dissipation is at the restaurateur’s, whose poisonous
dinner has won renown, or at some family ball, where he suffocates till
midnight. Some fools are surprised at the phantasmagoria of the monads
which they see with the aid of the microscope in a drop of water;
but what would Rabelais’ Gargantua,--that misunderstood figure of
an audacity so sublime,--what would that giant say, fallen from the
celestial spheres, if he amused himself by contemplating the motions of
this secondary life of Paris, of which here is one of the formulae? Have
you seen one of those little constructions--cold in summer, and with
no other warmth than a small stove in winter--placed beneath the vast
copper dome which crowns the Halle-auble? Madame is there by morning.
She is engaged at the markets, and makes by this occupation twelve
thousand francs a year, people say. Monsieur, when Madame is up, passes
into a gloomy office, where he lends money till the week-end to the
tradesmen of his district. By nine o’clock he is at the passport office,
of which he is one of the minor officials. By evening he is at the
box-office of the Theatre Italien, or of any other theatre you like. The
children are put out to nurse, and only return to be sent to college or
to boarding-school. Monsieur and Madame live on the third floor, have
but one cook, give dances in a salon twelve foot by eight, lit by
argand lamps; but they give a hundred and fifty thousand francs to their
daughter, and retire at the age of fifty, an age when they begin to show
themselves on the balcony of the opera, in a _fiacre_ at Longchamps; or,
on sunny days, in faded clothes on the boulevards--the fruit of all this
sowing. Respected by their neighbors, in good odor with the government,
connected with the upper middle classes, Monsieur obtains at sixty-five
the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and his daughter’s father-in-law, a
parochial mayor, invites him to his evenings. These life-long labors,
then, are for the good of the children, whom these lower middle classes
are inevitably driven to exalt. Thus each sphere directs all its efforts
towards the sphere above it. The son of the rich grocer becomes a
notary, the son of the timber merchant becomes a magistrate. No link
is wanting in the chain, and everything stimulates the upward march of
money.

Thus we are brought to the third circle of this hell, which, perhaps,
will some day find its Dante. In this third social circle, a sort of
Parisian belly, in which the interests of the town are digested, and
where they are condensed into the form known as _business_, there moves
and agitates, as by some acrid and bitter intestinal process, the crowd
of lawyers, doctors, notaries, councillors, business men, bankers, big
merchants, speculators, and magistrates. Here are to be found even
more causes of moral and physical destruction than elsewhere. These
people--almost all of them--live in unhealthy offices, in fetid
ante-chambers, in little barred dens, and spend their days bowed down
beneath the weight of affairs; they rise at dawn to be in time, not to
be left behind, to gain all or not to lose, to overreach a man or his
money, to open or wind up some business, to take advantage of some
fleeting opportunity, to get a man hanged or set him free. They infect
their horses, they overdrive and age and break them, like their own
legs, before their time. Time is their tyrant: it fails them, it escapes
them; they can neither expand it nor cut it short. What soul can remain
great, pure, moral, and generous, and, consequently, what face retain
its beauty in this depraving practice of a calling which compels one to
bear the weight of the public sorrows, to analyze them, to weigh them,
estimate them, and mark them out by rule? Where do these folk put aside
their hearts?... I do not know; but they leave them somewhere or other,
when they have any, before they descend each morning into the abyss of
the misery which puts families on the rack. For them there is no such
thing as mystery; they see the reverse side of society, whose confessors
they are, and despise it. Then, whatever they do, owing to their contact
with corruption, they either are horrified at it and grow gloomy, or
else, out of lassitude, or some secret compromise, espouse it. In fine,
they necessarily become callous to every sentiment, since man, his laws
and his institutions, make them steal, like jackals, from corpses that
are still warm. At all hours the financier is trampling on the living,
the attorney on the dead, the pleader on the conscience. Forced to be
speaking without a rest, they all substitute words for ideas, phrases
for feelings, and their soul becomes a larynx. Neither the great
merchant, nor the judge, nor the pleader preserves his sense of right;
they feel no more, they apply set rules that leave cases out of count.
Borne along by their headlong course, they are neither husbands nor
fathers nor lovers; they glide on sledges over the facts of life, and
live at all times at the high pressure conduced by business and the vast
city. When they return to their homes they are required to go to a ball,
to the opera, into society, where they can make clients, acquaintances,
protectors. They all eat to excess, play and keep vigil, and their faces
become bloated, flushed, and emaciated.

To this terrific expenditure of intellectual strength, to such multifold
moral contradictions, they oppose--not, indeed pleasure, it would be too
pale a contrast--but debauchery, a debauchery both secret and alarming,
for they have all means at their disposal, and fix the morality of
society. Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They
know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside
it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are
crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in
reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments.
Almost all conveniently adopt social, literary, or political prejudices,
to do away with the need of having opinions, just as they adapt their
conscience to the standard of the Code or the Tribunal of Commerce.
Having started early to become men of note, they turn into mediocrities,
and crawl over the high places of the world. So, too, their faces
present the harsh pallor, the deceitful coloring, those dull, tarnished
eyes, and garrulous, sensual mouths, in which the observer recognizes
the symptoms of the degeneracy of the thought and its rotation in the
circle of a special idea which destroys the creative faculties of the
brain and the gift of seeing in large, of generalizing and deducing. No
man who has allowed himself to be caught in the revolutions of the gear
of these huge machines can ever become great. If he is a doctor, either
he has practised little or he is an exception--a Bichat who dies young.
If a great merchant, something remains--he is almost Jacques Coeur. Did
Robespierre practise? Danton was an idler who waited. But who, moreover
has ever felt envious of the figures of Danton and Robespierre, however
lofty they were? These men of affairs, _par excellence_, attract money
to them, and hoard it in order to ally themselves with aristocratic
families. If the ambition of the working-man is that of the small
tradesman, here, too, are the same passions. The type of this class
might be either an ambitious bourgeois, who, after a life of privation
and continual scheming, passes into the Council of State as an ant
passes through a chink; or some newspaper editor, jaded with intrigue,
whom the king makes a peer of France--perhaps to revenge himself on the
nobility; or some notary become mayor of his parish: all people crushed
with business, who, if they attain their end, are literally _killed_ in
its attainment. In France the usage is to glorify wigs. Napoleon, Louis
XVI., the great rulers, alone have always wished for young men to fulfil
their projects.

Above this sphere the artist world exists. But here, too, the faces
stamped with the seal of originality are worn, nobly indeed, but worn,
fatigued, nervous. Harassed by a need of production, outrun by their
costly fantasies, worn out by devouring genius, hungry for pleasure, the
artists of Paris would all regain by excessive labor what they have lost
by idleness, and vainly seek to reconcile the world and glory, money
and art. To begin with, the artist is ceaselessly panting under his
creditors; his necessities beget his debts, and his debts require of
him his nights. After his labor, his pleasure. The comedian plays till
midnight, studies in the morning, rehearses at noon; the sculptor is
bent before his statue; the journalist is a marching thought, like the
soldier when at war; the painter who is the fashion is crushed with
work, the painter with no occupation, if he feels himself to be a man of
genius, gnaws his entrails. Competition, rivalry, calumny assail talent.
Some, in desperation, plunge into the abyss of vice, others die young
and unknown because they have discounted their future too soon. Few of
these figures, originally sublime, remain beautiful. On the other hand,
the flagrant beauty of their heads is not understood. An artist’s face
is always exorbitant, it is always above or below the conventional lines
of what fools call the _beau-ideal_. What power is it that destroys
them? Passion. Every passion in Paris resolves into two terms: gold and
pleasure. Now, do you not breathe again? Do you not feel air and space
purified? Here is neither labor nor suffering. The soaring arch of
gold has reached the summit. From the lowest gutters, where its
stream commences, from the little shops where it is stopped by puny
coffer-dams, from the heart of the counting-houses and great workshops,
where its volume is that of ingots--gold, in the shape of dowries and
inheritances, guided by the hands of young girls or the bony fingers of
age, courses towards the aristocracy, where it will become a blazing,
expansive stream. But, before leaving the four territories upon which
the utmost wealth of Paris is based, it is fitting, having cited the
moral causes, to deduce those which are physical, and to call attention
to a pestilence, latent, as it were, which incessantly acts upon the
faces of the porter, the artisan, the small shopkeeper; to point out
a deleterious influence the corruption of which equals that of the
Parisian administrators who allow it so complacently to exist!

If the air of the houses in which the greater proportion of the middle
classes live is noxious, if the atmosphere of the streets belches out
cruel miasmas into stuffy back-kitchens where there is little air,
realize that, apart from this pestilence, the forty thousand houses of
this great city have their foundations in filth, which the powers that
be have not yet seriously attempted to enclose with mortar walls solid
enough to prevent even the most fetid mud from filtering through the
soil, poisoning the wells, and maintaining subterraneously to Lutetia
the tradition of her celebrated name. Half of Paris sleeps amidst the
putrid exhalations of courts and streets and sewers. But let us turn
to the vast saloons, gilded and airy; the hotels in their gardens,
the rich, indolent, happy moneyed world. There the faces are lined and
scarred with vanity. There nothing is real. To seek for pleasure is it
not to find _ennui_? People in society have at an early age warped their
nature. Having no occupation other than to wallow in pleasure, they
have speedily misused their sense, as the artisan has misused brandy.
Pleasure is of the nature of certain medical substances: in order to
obtain constantly the same effects the doses must be doubled, and death
or degradation is contained in the last. All the lower classes are on
their knees before the wealthy, and watch their tastes in order to turn
them into vices and exploit them. Thus you see in these folk at an early
age tastes instead of passions, romantic fantasies and lukewarm loves.
There impotence reigns; there ideas have ceased--they have evaporated
together with energy amongst the affectations of the boudoir and the
cajolements of women. There are fledglings of forty, old doctors
of sixty years. The wealthy obtain in Paris ready-made wit and
science--formulated opinions which save them the need of having wit,
science, or opinion of their own. The irrationality of this world is
equaled by its weakness and its licentiousness. It is greedy of time
to the point of wasting it. Seek in it for affection as little as
for ideas. Its kisses conceal a profound indifference, its urbanity
a perpetual contempt. It has no other fashion of love. Flashes of wit
without profundity, a wealth of indiscretion, scandal, and above all,
commonplace. Such is the sum of its speech; but these happy fortunates
pretend that they do not meet to make and repeat maxims in the manner of
La Rochefoucauld as though there did not exist a mean, invented by the
eighteenth century, between a superfluity and absolute blank. If a few
men of character indulge in witticism, at once subtle and refined, they
are misunderstood; soon, tired of giving without receiving, they remain
at home, and leave fools to reign over their territory. This hollow
life, this perpetual expectation of a pleasure which never comes, this
permanent _ennui_ and emptiness of soul, heart, and mind, the lassitude
of the upper Parisian world, is reproduced on its features, and stamps
its parchment faces, its premature wrinkles, that physiognomy of the
wealthy upon which impotence has set its grimace, in which gold is
mirrored, and whence intelligence has fled.

Such a view of moral Paris proves that physical Paris could not be other
than it is. This coroneted town is like a queen, who, being always
with child, has desires of irresistible fury. Paris is the crown of the
world, a brain which perishes of genius and leads human civilization;
it is a great man, a perpetually creative artist, a politician with
second-sight who must of necessity have wrinkles on his forehead, the
vices of a great man, the fantasies of the artist, and the politician’s
disillusions. Its physiognomy suggests the evolution of good and evil,
battle and victory; the moral combat of ‘89, the clarion calls of which
still re-echo in every corner of the world; and also the downfall of
1814. Thus this city can no more be moral, or cordial, or clean, than
the engines which impel those proud leviathans which you admire
when they cleave the waves! Is not Paris a sublime vessel laden with
intelligence? Yes, her arms are one of those oracles which fatality
sometimes allows. The _City of Paris_ has her great mast, all of bronze,
carved with victories, and for watchman--Napoleon. The barque may roll
and pitch, but she cleaves the world, illuminates it through the hundred
mouths of her tribunes, ploughs the seas of science, rides with
full sail, cries from the height of her tops, with the voice of her
scientists and artists: “Onward, advance! Follow me!” She carries a
huge crew, which delights in adorning her with fresh streamers. Boys
and urchins laughing in the rigging; ballast of heavy _bourgeoisie_;
working-men and sailor-men touched with tar; in her cabins the lucky
passengers; elegant midshipmen smoke their cigars leaning over the
bulwarks; then, on the deck, her soldiers, innovators or ambitious,
would accost every fresh shore, and shooting out their bright lights
upon it, ask for glory which is pleasure, or for love which needs gold.

Thus the exorbitant movement of the proletariat, the corrupting
influence of the interests which consume the two middle classes, the
cruelties of the artist’s thought, and the excessive pleasure which is
sought for incessantly by the great, explain the normal ugliness of
the Parisian physiognomy. It is only in the Orient that the human race
presents a magnificent figure, but that is an effect of the constant
calm affected by those profound philosophers with their long pipes,
their short legs, their square contour, who despise and hold activity
in horror, whilst in Paris the little and the great and the mediocre run
and leap and drive, whipped on by an inexorable goddess, Necessity--the
necessity for money, glory, and amusement. Thus, any face which is fresh
and graceful and reposeful, any really young face, is in Paris the most
extraordinary of exceptions; it is met with rarely. Should you see one
there, be sure it belongs either to a young and ardent ecclesiastic or
to some good abbe of forty with three chins; to a young girl of pure
life such as is brought up in certain middle-class families; to a mother
of twenty, still full of illusions, as she suckles her first-born; to a
young man newly embarked from the provinces, and intrusted to the care
of some devout dowager who keeps him without a sou; or, perhaps, to some
shop assistant who goes to bed at midnight wearied out with folding
and unfolding calico, and rises at seven o’clock to arrange the window;
often again to some man of science or poetry, who lives monastically in
the embrace of a fine idea, who remains sober, patient, and chaste;
else to some self-contented fool, feeding himself on folly, reeking of
health, in a perpetual state of absorption with his own smile; or to the
soft and happy race of loungers, the only folk really happy in Paris,
which unfolds for them hour by hour its moving poetry.

Nevertheless, there is in Paris a proportion of privileged beings to
whom this excessive movement of industries, interests, affairs, arts,
and gold is profitable. These beings are women. Although they also have
a thousand secret causes which, here more than elsewhere, destroy their
physiognomy, there are to be found in the feminine world little happy
colonies, who live in Oriental fashion and can preserve their beauty;
but these women rarely show themselves on foot in the streets, they lie
hid like rare plants who only unfold their petals at certain hours, and
constitute veritable exotic exceptions. However, Paris is essentially
the country of contrasts. If true sentiments are rare there, there also
are to be found, as elsewhere, noble friendships and unlimited devotion.
On this battlefield of interests and passions, just as in the midst
of those marching societies where egoism triumphs, where every one
is obliged to defend himself, and which we call _armies_, it seems as
though sentiments liked to be complete when they showed themselves,
and are sublime by juxtaposition. So it is with faces. In Paris one
sometimes sees in the aristocracy, set like stars, the ravishing faces
of young people, the fruit of quite exceptional manners and education.
To the youthful beauty of the English stock they unite the firmness
of Southern traits. The fire of their eyes, a delicious bloom on their
lips, the lustrous black of their soft locks, a white complexion, a
distinguished caste of features, render them the flowers of the human
race, magnificent to behold against the mass of other faces, worn, old,
wrinkled, and grimacing. So women, too, admire such young people with
that eager pleasure which men take in watching a pretty girl, elegant,
gracious, and embellished with all the virginal charms with which our
imagination pleases to adorn the perfect woman. If this hurried glance
at the population of Paris has enabled us to conceive the rarity of a
Raphaelesque face, and the passionate admiration which such an one must
inspire at the first sight, the prime interest of our history will have
been justified. _Quod erat demonstrandum_--if one may be permitted to
apply scholastic formulae to the science of manners.

Upon one of those fine spring mornings, when the leaves, although
unfolded, are not yet green, when the sun begins to gild the roofs, and
the sky is blue, when the population of Paris issues from its cells to
swarm along the boulevards, glides like a serpent of a thousand coils
through the Rue de la Paix towards the Tuileries, saluting the hymeneal
magnificence which the country puts on; on one of these joyous days,
then, a young man as beautiful as the day itself, dressed with taste,
easy of manner--to let out the secret he was a love-child, the natural
son of Lord Dudley and the famous Marquise de Vordac--was walking in the
great avenue of the Tuileries. This Adonis, by name Henri de Marsay,
was born in France, when Lord Dudley had just married the young lady,
already Henri’s mother, to an old gentleman called M. de Marsay. This
faded and almost extinguished butterfly recognized the child as his own
in consideration of the life interest in a fund of a hundred thousand
francs definitively assigned to his putative son; a generosity which
did not cost Lord Dudley too dear. French funds were worth at that time
seventeen francs, fifty centimes. The old gentleman died without having
ever known his wife. Madame de Marsay subsequently married the Marquis
de Vordac, but before becoming a marquise she showed very little anxiety
as to her son and Lord Dudley. To begin with, the declaration of war
between France and England had separated the two lovers, and fidelity
at all costs was not, and never will be, the fashion of Paris. Then the
successes of the woman, elegant, pretty, universally adored, crushed in
the Parisienne the maternal sentiment. Lord Dudley was no more troubled
about his offspring than was the mother,--the speedy infidelity of a
young girl he had ardently loved gave him, perhaps, a sort of aversion
for all that issued from her. Moreover, fathers can, perhaps, only love
the children with whom they are fully acquainted, a social belief of the
utmost importance for the peace of families, which should be held by all
the celibate, proving as it does that paternity is a sentiment nourished
artificially by woman, custom, and the law.

Poor Henri de Marsay knew no other father than that one of the two who
was not compelled to be one. The paternity of M. de Marsay was naturally
most incomplete. In the natural order, it is but for a few fleeting
instants that children have a father, and M. de Marsay imitated nature.
The worthy man would not have sold his name had he been free from
vices. Thus he squandered without remorse in gambling hells, and drank
elsewhere, the few dividends which the National Treasury paid to
its bondholders. Then he handed over the child to an aged sister, a
Demoiselle de Marsay, who took much care of him, and provided him, out
of the meagre sum allowed by her brother, with a tutor, an abbe without
a farthing, who took the measure of the youth’s future, and determined
to pay himself out of the hundred thousand livres for the care given to
his pupil, for whom he conceived an affection. As chance had it, this
tutor was a true priest, one of those ecclesiastics cut out to become
cardinals in France, or Borgias beneath the tiara. He taught the child
in three years what he might have learned at college in ten. Then the
great man, by name the Abbe de Maronis, completed the education of
his pupil by making him study civilization under all its aspects: he
nourished him on his experience, led him little into churches, which
at that time were closed; introduced him sometimes behind the scenes of
theatres, more often into the houses of courtesans; he exhibited human
emotions to him one by one; taught him politics in the drawing-rooms,
where they simmered at the time, explained to him the machinery of
government, and endeavored out of attraction towards a fine nature,
deserted, yet rich in promise, virilely to replace a mother: is not the
Church the mother of orphans? The pupil was responsive to so much care.
The worthy priest died in 1812, a bishop, with the satisfaction of
having left in this world a child whose heart and mind were so well
moulded that he could outwit a man of forty. Who would have expected to
have found a heart of bronze, a brain of steel, beneath external traits
as seductive as ever the old painters, those naive artists, had given to
the serpent in the terrestrial paradise? Nor was that all. In addition,
the good-natured prelate had procured for the child of his choice
certain acquaintances in the best Parisian society, which might equal
in value, in the young man’s hand, another hundred thousand invested
livres. In fine, this priest, vicious but politic, sceptical yet
learned, treacherous yet amiable, weak in appearance yet as vigorous
physically as intellectually, was so genuinely useful to his pupil, so
complacent to his vices, so fine a calculator of all kinds of strength,
so profound when it was needful to make some human reckoning, so
youthful at table, at Frascati, at--I know not where, that the grateful
Henri de Marsay was hardly moved at aught in 1814, except when he looked
at the portrait of his beloved bishop, the only personal possession
which the prelate had been able to bequeath him (admirable type of
the men whose genius will preserve the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman
Church, compromised for the moment by the feebleness of its recruits and
the decrepit age of its pontiffs; but if the church likes!).

The continental war prevented young De Marsay from knowing his real
father. It is doubtful whether he was aware of his name. A deserted
child, he was equally ignorant of Madame de Marsay. Naturally, he had
little regret for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay,
his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere
Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this
old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her
die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on
his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil’s tears,
bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most offensively,
and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he ought to return
thanks for her death. The bishop had emancipated his pupil in 1811.
Then, when the mother of M. de Marsay remarried, the priest chose, in a
family council, one of those honest dullards, picked out by him through
the windows of his confessional, and charged him with the administration
of the fortune, the revenues of which he was willing to apply to the
needs of the community, but of which he wished to preserve the capital.

Towards the end of 1814, then, Henri de Marsay had no sentiment of
obligation in the world, and was as free as an unmated bird. Although he
had lived twenty-two years he appeared to be barely seventeen. As a rule
the most fastidious of his rivals considered him to be the prettiest
youth in Paris. From his father, Lord Dudley, he had derived a pair of
the most amorously deceiving blue eyes; from his mother the bushiest of
black hair, from both pure blood, the skin of a young girl, a gentle
and modest expression, a refined and aristocratic figure, and beautiful
hands. For a woman, to see him was to lose her head for him; do you
understand? to conceive one of those desires which eat the heart, which
are forgotten because of the impossibility of satisfying them, because
women in Paris are commonly without tenacity. Few of them say to
themselves, after the fashion of men, the “_Je Maintiendrai_,” of the
House of Orange.

Underneath this fresh young life, and in spite of the limpid springs in
his eyes, Henri had a lion’s courage, a monkey’s agility. He could cut a
ball in half at ten paces on the blade of a knife; he rode his horse
in a way that made you realize the fable of the Centaur; drove a
four-in-hand with grace; was as light as a cherub and quiet as a lamb,
but knew how to beat a townsman at the terrible game of _savate_ or
cudgels; moreover, he played the piano in a fashion which would have
enabled him to become an artist should he fall on calamity, and owned
a voice which would have been worth to Barbaja fifty thousand francs a
season. Alas, that all these fine qualities, these pretty faults, were
tarnished by one abominable vice: he believed neither in man nor woman,
God nor Devil. Capricious nature had commenced by endowing him, a priest
had completed the work.

To render this adventure comprehensible, it is necessary to add here
that Lord Dudley naturally found many women disposed to reproduce
samples of such a delicious pattern. His second masterpiece of this
kind was a young girl named Euphemie, born of a Spanish lady, reared in
Havana, and brought to Madrid with a young Creole woman of the Antilles,
and with all the ruinous tastes of the Colonies, but fortunately married
to an old and extremely rich Spanish noble, Don Hijos, Marquis de
San-Real, who, since the occupation of Spain by French troops, had taken
up his abode in Paris, and lived in the Rue St. Lazare. As much from
indifference as from any respect for the innocence of youth, Lord Dudley
was not in the habit of keeping his children informed of the relations
he created for them in all parts. That is a slightly inconvenient form
of civilization; it has so many advantages that we must overlook its
drawbacks in consideration of its benefits. Lord Dudley, to make no more
words of it, came to Paris in 1816 to take refuge from the pursuit of
English justice, which protects nothing Oriental except commerce. The
exiled lord, when he saw Henri, asked who that handsome young man might
be. Then, upon hearing the name, “Ah, it is my son.... What a pity!” he
said.

Such was the story of the young man who, about the middle of the month
of April, 1815, was walking indolently up the broad avenue of the
Tuileries, after the fashion of all those animals who, knowing their
strength, pass along in majesty and peace. Middle-class matrons turned
back naively to look at him again; other women, without turning round,
waited for him to pass again, and engraved him in their minds that they
might remember in due season that fragrant face, which would not have
disadorned the body of the fairest among themselves.

“What are you doing here on Sunday?” said the Marquis de Ronquerolles to
Henri, as he passed.

“There’s a fish in the net,” answered the young man.

This exchange of thoughts was accomplished by means of two significant
glances, without it appearing that either De Ronquerolles or De Marsay
had any knowledge of the other. The young man was taking note of the
passers-by with that promptitude of eye and ear which is peculiar to the
Parisian who seems, at first, to see and hear nothing, but who sees and
hears all.

At that moment a young man came up to him and took him familiarly by the
arm, saying to him: “How are you, my dear De Marsay?”

“Extremely well,” De Marsay answered, with that air of apparent
affection which amongst the young men of Paris proves nothing, either
for the present or the future.

In effect, the youth of Paris resemble the youth of no other town. They
may be divided into two classes: the young man who has something, and
the young man who has nothing; or the young man who thinks and he who
spends. But, be it well understood this applies only to those natives of
the soil who maintain in Paris the delicious course of the elegant life.
There exist, as well, plenty of other young men, but they are children
who are late in conceiving Parisian life, and who remain its dupes. They
do not speculate, they study; they _fag_, as the others say. Finally
there are to be found, besides, certain young people, rich or poor, who
embrace careers and follow them with a single heart; they are somewhat
like the Emile of Rousseau, of the flesh of citizens, and they never
appear in society. The diplomatic impolitely dub them fools. Be they
that or no, they augment the number of those mediocrities beneath the
yoke of which France is bowed down. They are always there, always ready
to bungle public or private concerns with the dull trowel of their
mediocrity, bragging of their impotence, which they count for
conduct and integrity. This sort of social _prizemen_ infests the
administration, the army, the magistracy, the chambers, the courts. They
diminish and level down the country and constitute, in some manner, in
the body politic, a lymph which infects it and renders it flabby. These
honest folk call men of talent immoral or rogues. If such rogues require
to be paid for their services, at least their services are there;
whereas the other sort do harm and are respected by the mob; but,
happily for France, elegant youth stigmatizes them ceaselessly under the
name of louts.

At the first glance, then, it is natural to consider as very distinct
the two sorts of young men who lead the life of elegance, the amiable
corporation to which Henri de Marsay belonged. But the observer, who
goes beyond the superficial aspect of things, is soon convinced that
the difference is purely moral, and that nothing is so deceptive as this
pretty outside. Nevertheless, all alike take precedence over everybody
else; speak rightly or wrongly of things, of men, literature, and the
fine arts; have ever in their mouth the Pitt and Coburg of each year;
interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into ridicule science and the
_savant_; despise all things which they do not know or which they fear;
set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme
judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed
crocodile tears upon their mothers’ breasts; but generally they believe
in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led
by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They are all equally eaten
to the bone with calculation, with depravity, with a brutal lust to
succeed, and if you plumbed for their hearts you would find in all a
stone. In their normal state they have the prettiest exterior, stake
their friendship at every turn, are captivating alike. The same badinage
dominates their ever-changing jargon; they seek for oddity in their
toilette, glory in repeating the stupidities of such and such actor who
is in fashion, and commence operations, it matters not with whom, with
contempt and impertinence, in order to have, as it were, the first move
in the game; but, woe betide him who does not know how to take a blow
on one cheek for the sake of rendering two. They resemble, in fine, that
pretty white spray which crests the stormy waves. They dress and dance,
dine and take their pleasure, on the day of Waterloo, in the time of
cholera or revolution. Finally, their expenses are all the same, but
here the contrast comes in. Of this fluctuating fortune, so agreeably
flung away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they
have the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay.
Next, if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without
retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good.
If the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand
everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to
those who are in need; the latter study secretly others’ thoughts and
place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one
class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like
a mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others
economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first,
to be flinging them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope,
devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and tide
against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the first
goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound it, and
see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial integrity,
an element of success. Where the young man of possessions makes a pun or
an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who has nothing makes
a public calculation or a secret reservation, and obtains everything by
giving a handshake to his friends. The one deny every faculty to others,
look upon all their ideas as new, as though the world had been made
yesterday, they have unlimited confidence in themselves, and no crueler
enemy than those same selves. But the others are armed with an incessant
distrust of men, whom they estimate at their value, and are sufficiently
profound to have one thought beyond their friends, whom they exploit;
then of evenings, when they lay their heads on their pillows, they weigh
men as a miser weighs his gold pieces. The one are vexed at an aimless
impertinence, and allow themselves to be ridiculed by the diplomatic,
who make them dance for them by pulling what is the main string of these
puppets--their vanity. Thus, a day comes when those who had nothing have
something, and those who had something have nothing. The latter look
at their comrades who have achieved positions as cunning fellows; their
hearts may be bad, but their heads are strong. “He is very strong!” is
the supreme praise accorded to those who have attained _quibuscumque
viis_, political rank, a woman, or a fortune. Amongst them are to be
found certain young men who play this _role_ by commencing with having
debts. Naturally, these are more dangerous than those who play it
without a farthing.

The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a
rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men then
in fashion were teaching the art of running through an inheritance;
but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in the shape of a
secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had passed without any
transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a month to the entire
paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit enough to perceive that he
was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious to stop short at two-thirds
of his capital. He had learned at Paris, for a consideration of some
thousands of francs, the exact value of harness, the art of not being
too respectful to his gloves, learned to make skilful meditations upon
the right wages to give people, and to seek out what bargain was the
best to close with them. He set store on his capacity to speak in good
terms of his horses, of his Pyrenean hound; to tell by her dress, her
walk, her shoes, to what class a woman belonged; to study _ecarte_,
remember a few fashionable catchwords, and win by his sojourn in
Parisian society the necessary authority to import later into his
province a taste for tea and silver of an English fashion, and to obtain
the right of despising everything around him for the rest of his days.

De Marsay had admitted him to his society in order to make use of him in
the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. The
friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position for Paul
de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in exploiting,
after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the reflecting
lustre of his friend, walked constantly under his umbrella, wore his
boots, gilded himself with his rays. When he posed in Henri’s company or
walked at his side, he had the air of saying: “Don’t insult us, we are
real dogs.” He often permitted himself to remark fatuously: “If I were
to ask Henri for such and such a thing, he is a good enough friend of
mine to do it.” But he was careful never to ask anything of him. He
feared him, and his fear, although imperceptible, reacted upon the
others, and was of use to De Marsay.

“De Marsay is a man of a thousand,” said Paul. “Ah, you will see, he
will be what he likes. I should not be surprised to find him one of
these days Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nothing can withstand him.”

He made of De Marsay what Corporal Trim made of his cap, a perpetual
instance.

“Ask De Marsay and you will see!”

Or again:

“The other day we were hunting, De Marsay and I, He would not believe
me, but I jumped a hedge without moving on my horse!”

Or again:

“We were with some women, De Marsay and I, and upon my word of honor, I
was----” etc.

Thus Paul de Manerville could not be classed amongst the great,
illustrious, and powerful family of fools who succeed. He would one day
be a deputy. For the time he was not even a young man. His friend, De
Marsay, defined him thus: “You ask me what is Paul? Paul? Why, Paul de
Manerville!”

“I am surprised, my dear fellow,” he said to De Marsay, “to see you here
on a Sunday.”

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

“Is it an intrigue?”

“An intrigue.”

“Bah!”

“I can mention it to you without compromising my passion. Besides,
a woman who comes to the Tuileries on Sundays is of no account,
aristocratically speaking.”

“Ah! ah!”

“Hold your tongue then, or I shall tell you nothing. Your laugh is too
loud, you will make people think that we have lunched too well. Last
Thursday, here on the Terrasse des Feuillants, I was walking along,
thinking of nothing at all, but when I got to the gate of the Rue de
Castiglione, by which I intended to leave, I came face to face with a
woman, or rather a young girl; who, if she did not throw herself at my
head, stopped short, less I think, from human respect, than from one of
those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep down
the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet, to nail
you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this nature, a sort
of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful when the
relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this was not
stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her face
seemed to say: ‘What, is it you, my ideal! The creation of my thoughts,
of my morning and evening dreams! What, are you there? Why this morning?
Why not yesterday? Take me, I am thine, _et cetera_!’ Good, I said to
myself, another one! Then I scrutinize her. Ah, my dear fellow, speaking
physically, my incognita is the most adorable feminine person whom I
ever met. She belongs to that feminine variety which the Romans call
_fulva, flava_--the woman of fire. And in chief, what struck me the
most, what I am still taken with, are her two yellow eyes, like a
tiger’s, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, gold which thinks,
gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge in your pocket.”

“My dear fellow, we are full of her!” cried Paul. “She comes here
sometimes--_the girl with the golden eyes_! That is the name we have
given her. She is a young creature--not more than twenty-two, and I
have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who was
worth a hundred thousand of her.”

“Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she
is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with
ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy
threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks
a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and
loses itself on her neck.”

“Ah, the other, my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never
wept, but which burn; black eyebrows which meet and give her an air of
hardness contradicted by the compact curve of her lips, on which the
kisses do not stay, lips burning and fresh; a Moorish color that warms a
man like the sun. But--upon my word of honor, she is like you!”

“You flatter her!”

“A firm figure, the tapering figure of a corvette built for speed, which
rushes down upon the merchant vessel with French impetuosity, which
grapples with her and sinks her at the same time.”

“After all, my dear fellow,” answered De Marsay, “what has that got
to do with me, since I have never seen her? Ever since I have studied
women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal bosom, whose
ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of
my dreams--of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture
called _La Femme Caressant sa Chimere_, the warmest, the most infernal
inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by those
who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of bourgeois
who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it on their
watch-chains--whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of pleasure into
which one plunges and finds no end; whereas, it is the ideal woman, to
be seen sometimes in reality in Spain or Italy, almost never in France.
Well, I have again seen this girl of the gold eyes, this woman caressing
her chimera. I saw her on Friday. I had a presentiment that on the
following day she would be here at the same hour; I was not mistaken.
I have taken a pleasure in following her without being observed, in
studying her indolent walk, the walk of the woman without occupation,
but in the movements of which one devines all the pleasure that lies
asleep. Well, she turned back again, she saw me, once more she adored
me, once more trembled, shivered. It was then I noticed the genuine
Spanish duenna who looked after her, a hyena upon whom some jealous
man has put a dress, a she-devil well paid, no doubt, to guard this
delicious creature.... Ah, then the duenna made me deeper in love. I
grew curious. On Saturday, nobody. And here I am to-day waiting for
this girl whose chimera I am, asking nothing better than to pose as the
monster in the fresco.”

“There she is,” said Paul. “Every one is turning round to look at her.”

The unknown blushed, her eyes shone; she saw Henri, she shut them and
passed by.

“You say that she notices you?” cried Paul, facetiously.

The duenna looked fixedly and attentively at the two young men. When the
unknown and Henri passed each other again, the young girl touched him,
and with her hand pressed the hand of the young man. Then she turned her
head and smiled with passion, but the duenna led her away very quickly
to the gate of the Rue de Castiglione.

The two friends followed the young girl, admiring the magnificent grace
of the neck which met her head in a harmony of vigorous lines, and upon
which a few coils of hair were tightly wound. The girl with the golden
eyes had that well-knitted, arched, slender foot which presents so
many attractions to the dainty imagination. Moreover, she was shod with
elegance, and wore a short skirt. During her course she turned from
time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the old woman
regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she
could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was
perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let
down the step of a tasteful _coupe_ emblazoned with armorial bearings.
The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat
at the side where she could be best seen when the carriage turned,
put her hand on the door, and waved her handkerchief in the duennna’s
despite. In contempt of what might be said by the curious, her
handkerchief cried to Henri openly: “Follow me!”

“Have you ever seen a handkerchief better thrown?” said Henri to Paul de
Manerville.

Then, observing a fiacre on the point of departure, having just set down
a fare, he made a sign to the driver to wait.

“Follow that carriage, notice the house and the street where it
stops--you shall have ten francs.... Paul, adieu.”

The cab followed the _coupe_. The _coupe_ stopped in the Rue Saint
Lazare before one of the finest houses of the neighborhood.

De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his
impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized so
fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry
of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had
told his coachman to continue along the Rue Saint Lazare and carry him
back to his house. The next day, his confidential valet, Laurent by
name, as cunning a fellow as the Frontin of the old comedy, waited in
the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which
letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and
hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police
officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of
an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the
postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare that morning, passed
by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a
person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted the postman.
Deceived at first by appearances, this personage, so picturesque in the
midst of Parisian civilization, informed him that the house in which
the girl with the golden eyes dwelt belonged to Don Hijos, Marquis de
San-Real, grandee of Spain. Naturally, it was not with the Marquis that
the Auvergnat was concerned.

“My parcel,” he said, “is for the marquise.”

“She is away,” replied the postman. “Her letters are forwarded to
London.”

“Then the marquise is not a young girl who...?”

“Ah!” said the postman, interrupting the _valet de chambre_ and
observing him attentively, “you are as much a porter as I’m...”

Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began to
smile.

“Come, here’s the name of your quarry,” he said, taking from his leather
wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the address, “To
Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, Rue Saint Lazare, Hotel San-Real, Paris,”
 was written in long, fine characters, which spoke of a woman’s hand.

“Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a
_filet saute_ with mushrooms to follow it?” said Laurent, who wished to
win the postman’s valuable friendship.

“At half-past nine, when my round is finished---- Where?”

“At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin and the Rue
Neuve-des-Mathurins, at the _Puits sans Vin_,” said Laurent.

“Hark ye, my friend,” said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an
hour after this encounter, “if your master is in love with the girl, he
is in for a famous task. I doubt you’ll not succeed in seeing her. In
the ten years that I’ve been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty of
different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being
called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
mysterious as M. de San-Real’s. No one can get into the house without
the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication with
other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a word
of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they are not
thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons--could get
the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall, which is shut
by a glazed door, you would run across a butler surrounded by lackeys,
an old joker more savage and surly even than the porter. If any one
gets past the porter’s lodge, my butler comes out, waits for you at the
entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That
has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in
disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don’t
hope to get aught out of them; I think they are mutes, no one in the
neighborhood knows the color of their speech; I don’t know what wages
they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, they
are not to be got at, whether because they are afraid of being shot, or
that they have some enormous sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion.
If your master is fond enough of Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes to surmount
all these obstacles, he certainly won’t triumph over Dona Concha
Marialva, the duenna who accompanies her and would put her under her
petticoats sooner than leave her. The two women look as if they were
sewn to one another.”

“All that you say, worthy postman,” went on Laurent, after having drunk
off his wine, “confirms me in what I have learned before. Upon my word,
I thought they were making fun of me! The fruiterer opposite told me
that of nights they let loose dogs whose food is hung up on stakes just
out of their reach. These cursed animals think, therefore, that any one
likely to come in has designs on their victuals, and would tear one to
pieces. You will tell me one might throw them down pieces, but it seems
they have been trained to touch nothing except from the hand of the
porter.”

“The porter of the Baron de Nucingen, whose garden joins at the top that
of the Hotel San-Real, told me the same thing,” replied the postman.

“Good! my master knows him,” said Laurent, to himself. “Do you know,”
 he went on, leering at the postman, “I serve a master who is a rare
man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the sole of the foot of an
empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, which
is what I wish for you, for he is generous, could one count on you?”

“Lord, Monsieur Laurent, my name is Moinot. My name is written exactly
like _Moineau_, magpie: M-o-i-n-o-t, Moinot.”

“Exactly,” said Laurent.

“I live at No. 11, Rue des Trois Freres, on the fifth floor,” went on
Moinot; “I have a wife and four children. If what you want of me doesn’t
transgress the limits of my conscience and my official duties, you
understand! I am your man.”

“You are an honest fellow,” said Laurent, shaking his hand....

“Paquita Valdes is, no doubt, the mistress of the Marquis de San-Real,
the friend of King Ferdinand. Only an old Spanish mummy of eighty years
is capable of taking such precautions,” said Henri, when his _valet de
chambre_ had related the result of his researches.

“Monsieur,” said Laurent, “unless he takes a balloon no one can get into
that hotel.”

“You are a fool! Is it necessary to get into the hotel to have Paquita,
when Paquita can get out of it?”

“But, sir, the duenna?”

“We will shut her up for a day or two, your duenna.”

“So, we shall have Paquita!” said Laurent, rubbing his hands.

“Rascal!” answered Henri, “I shall condemn you to the Concha, if you
carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has
become mine.... Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out.”

Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections. Let us say it
to the praise of women, he obtained all those whom he deigned to desire.
And what could one think of a woman, having no lover, who should
have known how to resist a young man armed with beauty which is the
intelligence of the body, with intelligence which is a grace of the
soul, armed with moral force and fortune, which are the only two real
powers? Yet, in triumphing with such ease, De Marsay was bound to grow
weary of his triumphs; thus, for about two years he had grown very weary
indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures he brought back more
grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, to implore of
Chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which should ask the
employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. Although Paquita
Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration of perfections which
he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost
_nil_ with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment
of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer
anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which,
once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young
people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul
blossom, it nourishes by its solar power the finest inspirations and
their great thoughts; the first fruits in all things have a delicious
savor. Amongst men love becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse.
Amongst old men it turns to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was
at once an old man, a man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of
a real love, he needed like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without
the magic lustre of that unattainable pearl he could only have either
passions rendered acute by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations
with himself to bring such and such a woman to such and such a point of
corruption, or else adventures which stimulated his curiosity.

The report of Laurent, his _valet de chambre_ had just given an enormous
value to the girl with the golden eyes. It was a question of doing
battle with some secret enemy who seemed as dangerous as he was cunning;
and to carry off the victory, all the forces which Henri could dispose
of would be useful. He was about to play in that eternal old comedy
which will be always fresh, and the characters in which are an old man,
a young girl, and a lover: Don Hijos, Paquita, De Marsay. If Laurent was
the equal of Figaro, the duenna seemed incorruptible. Thus, the living
play was supplied by Chance with a stronger plot than it had ever been
by dramatic author! But then is not Chance too, a man of genius?

“It must be a cautious game,” said Henri, to himself.

“Well,” said Paul de Manerville, as he entered the room. “How are we
getting on? I have come to breakfast with you.”

“So be it,” said Henri. “You won’t be shocked if I make my toilette
before you?”

“How absurd!”

“We take so many things from the English just now that we might well
become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves,” said Henri.

Laurent had set before his master such a quantity of utensils, so many
different articles of such elegance, that Paul could not refrain from
saying:

“But you will take a couple of hours over that?”

“No!” said Henri, “two hours and a half.”

“Well, then, since we are by ourselves, and can say what we like,
explain to me why a man as superior as yourself--for you are
superior--should affect to exaggerate a foppery which cannot be
natural. Why spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is
sufficient to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair
in two minutes, and to dress! There, tell me your system.”

“I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high
thoughts to you,” said the young man, who was at that moment having his
feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.

“Have I not the most devoted attachment to you,” replied Paul de
Manerville, “and do I not like you because I know your superiority?...”

“You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing any
moral fact, that women love fops,” went on De Marsay, without replying
in any way to Paul’s declaration except by a look. “Do you know why
women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take care of
themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it not imply
that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another? The man who
does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom women are keen.
Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that excess of niceness
to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any woman who has had a
passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable man? If such a fact
has occurred, we must put it to the account of those morbid affections
of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float through the minds of
everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most remarkable people left in
the lurch because of their carelessness. A fop, who is concerned about
his person, is concerned with folly, with petty things. And what is a
woman? A petty thing, a bundle of follies. With two words said to the
winds, can you not make her busy for four hours? She is sure that the
fop will be occupied with her, seeing that he has no mind for great
things. She will never be neglected for glory, ambition, politics,
art--those prostitutes who for her are rivals. Then fops have the
courage to cover themselves with ridicule in order to please a woman,
and her heart is full of gratitude towards the man who is ridiculous for
love. In fine, a fop can be no fop unless he is right in being one. It
is women who bestow that rank. The fop is love’s colonel; he has his
victories, his regiment of women at his command. My dear fellow, in
Paris everything is known, and a man cannot be a fop there _gratis_.
You, who have only one woman, and who, perhaps, are right to have but
one, try to act the fop!... You will not even become ridiculous, you
will be dead. You will become a foregone conclusion, one of those men
condemned inevitably to do one and the same thing. You will come to
signify _folly_ as inseparably as M. de La Fayette signifies _America_;
M. de Talleyrand, _diplomacy_; Desaugiers, _song_; M. de Segur,
_romance_. If they once forsake their own line people no longer attach
any value to what they do. So, foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of
an incontestable power over the female folk. A man who is loved by many
women passes for having superior qualities, and then, poor fellow, it
is a question who shall have him! But do you think it is nothing to have
the right of going into a drawing-room, of looking down at people from
over your cravat, or through your eye-glass, and of despising the most
superior of men should he wear an old-fashioned waistcoat?... Laurent,
you are hurting me! After breakfast, Paul, we will go to the Tuileries
and see the adorable girl with the golden eyes.”

When, after making an excellent meal, the two young men had traversed
the Terrasse de Feuillants and the broad walk of the Tuileries, they
nowhere discovered the sublime Paquita Valdes, on whose account some
fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris where to be seen, all
scented, with their high scarfs, spurred and booted, riding, walking,
talking, laughing, and damning themselves mightily.

“It’s a white Mass,” said Henri; “but I have the most excellent idea in
the world. This girl receives letters from London. The postman must be
bought or made drunk, a letter opened, read of course, and a love-letter
slipped in before it is sealed up again. The old tyrant, _crudel
tirano_, is certain to know the person who writes the letters from
London, and has ceased to be suspicious of them.”

The day after, De Marsay came again to walk on the Terrasse des
Feuillants, and saw Paquita Valdes; already passion had embellished her
for him. Seriously, he was wild for those eyes, whose rays seemed akin
to those which the sun emits, and whose ardor set the seal upon that
of her perfect body, in which all was delight. De Marsay was on fire to
brush the dress of this enchanting girl as they passed one another in
their walk; but his attempts were always vain. But at one moment, when
he had repassed Paquita and the duenna, in order to find himself on the
same side as the girl of the golden eyes, when he returned, Paquita,
no less impatient, came forward hurriedly, and De Marsay felt his
hand pressed by her in a fashion at once so swift and so passionately
significant that it was as though he had received the emotions surged up
in his heart. When the two lovers glanced at one another, Paquita seemed
ashamed, she dropped her eyes lest she should meet the eyes of Henri,
but her gaze sank lower to fasten on the feet and form of him whom
women, before the Revolution, called _their conqueror_.

“I am determined to make this girl my mistress,” said Henri to himself.

As he followed her along the terrace, in the direction of the Place
Louis XV., he caught sight of the aged Marquis de San-Real, who was
walking on the arm of his valet, stepping with all the precautions due
to gout and decrepitude. Dona Concha, who distrusted Henri, made Paquita
pass between herself and the old man.

“Oh, for you,” said De Marsay to himself, casting a glance of disdain
upon the duenna, “if one cannot make you capitulate, with a little opium
one can make you sleep. We know mythology and the fable of Argus.”

Before entering the carriage, the golden-eyed girl exchanged certain
glances with her lover, of which the meaning was unmistakable and which
enchanted Henri, but one of them was surprised by the duenna; she said
a few rapid words to Paquita, who threw herself into the _coupe_ with
an air of desperation. For some days Paquita did not appear in the
Tuileries. Laurent, who by his master’s orders was on watch by the
hotel, learned from the neighbors that neither the two women nor the
aged marquis had been abroad since the day upon which the duenna had
surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge and Henri. The
bond, so flimsy withal, which united the two lovers was already severed.

Some days later, none knew by what means, De Marsay had attained his
end; he had a seal and wax, exactly resembling the seal and wax affixed
to the letters sent to Mademoiselle Valdes from London; paper similar
to that which her correspondent used; moreover, all the implements and
stamps necessary to affix the French and English postmarks.

He wrote the following letter, to which he gave all the appearances of a
letter sent from London:--


  “MY DEAR PAQUITA,--I shall not try to paint to you in words the
  passion with which you have inspired me. If, to my happiness, you
  reciprocate it, understand that I have found a means of
  corresponding with you. My name is Adolphe de Gouges, and I live
  at No. 54 Rue de l’Universite. If you are too closely watched to
  be able to write to me, if you have neither pen nor paper, I shall
  understand it by your silence. If then, to-morrow, you have not,
  between eight o’clock in the morning and ten o’clock in the
  evening, thrown a letter over the wall of your garden into that of
  the Baron de Nucingen, where it will be waited for during the
  whole of the day, a man, who is entirely devoted to me, will let
  down two flasks by a string over your wall at ten o’clock the next
  morning. Be walking there at that hour. One of the two flasks will
  contain opium to send your Argus to sleep; it will be sufficient
  to employ six drops; the other will contain ink. The flask of ink
  is of cut glass; the other is plain. Both are of such a size as
  can easily be concealed within your bosom. All that I have already
  done, in order to be able to correspond with you, should tell you
  how greatly I love you. Should you have any doubt of it, I will
  confess to you, that to obtain an interview of one hour with you I
  would give my life.”


“At least they believe that, poor creatures!” said De Marsay; “but they
are right. What should we think of a woman who refused to be beguiled by
a love-letter accompanied by such convincing accessories?”

This letter was delivered by Master Moinot, postman, on the following
day, about eight o’clock in the morning, to the porter of the Hotel
San-Real.

In order to be nearer to the field of action, De Marsay went and
breakfasted with Paul, who lived in the Rue de la Pepiniere. At
two o’clock, just as the two friends were laughingly discussing the
discomfiture of a young man who had attempted to lead the life of
fashion without a settled income, and were devising an end for him,
Henri’s coachman came to seek his master at Paul’s house, and presented
to him a mysterious personage who insisted on speaking himself with his
master.

This individual was a mulatto, who would assuredly have given Talma a
model for the part of Othello, if he had come across him. Never did any
African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready suspicion,
the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moor,
and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of
the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a vulture’s, by
a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had
something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the yoke of some
single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong to him.

He was followed by a man whom the imaginations of all folk, from those
who shiver in Greenland to those who sweat in the tropics, would paint
in the single phrase: _He was an unfortunate man_. From this phrase,
everybody will conceive him according to the special ideas of each
country. But who can best imagine his face--white and wrinkled, red at
the extremities, and his long beard. Who will see his lean and yellow
scarf, his greasy shirt-collar, his battered hat, his green frock coat,
his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold
pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who
will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the
unfortunate man _in toto_, for he has still enough mirth to know the
extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis
XI. leading a man to the gallows.

“Who has hunted us out these two extraordinary creatures?” said Henri.

“Faith! there is one of them who makes me shudder,” replied Paul.

“Who are you--you fellow who look the most like a Christian of the two?”
 said Henri, looking at the unfortunate man.

The mulatto stood with his eyes fixed upon the two young men, like a man
who understood nothing, and who sought no less to divine something from
the gestures and movements of the lips.

“I am a public scribe and interpreter; I live at the Palais de Justice,
and am named Poincet.”

“Good!... and this one?” said Henri to Poincet, looking towards the
mulatto.

“I do not know; he only speaks a sort of Spanish _patois_, and he has
brought me here to make himself understood by you.”

The mulatto drew from his pocket the letter which Henri had written to
Paquita and handed it to him. Henri threw it in the fire.

“Ah--so--the game is beginning,” said Henri to himself. “Paul, leave us
alone for a moment.”

“I translated this letter for him,” went on the interpreter, when they
were alone. “When it was translated, he was in some place which I don’t
remember. Then he came back to look for me, and promised me two _louis_
to fetch him here.”

“What have you to say to me, nigger?” asked Henri.

“I did not translate _nigger_,” said the interpreter, waiting for the
mulatto’s reply....

“He said, sir,” went on the interpreter, after having listened to the
unknown, “that you must be at half-past ten to-morrow night on the
boulevard Montmartre, near the cafe. You will see a carriage there, in
which you must take your place, saying to the man, who will wait to
open the door for you, the word _cortejo_--a Spanish word, which means
_lover_,” added Poincet, casting a glance of congratulation upon Henri.

“Good.”

The mulatto was about to bestow the two _louis_, but De Marsay would not
permit it, and himself rewarded the interpreter. As he was paying him,
the mulatto began to speak.

“What is he saying?”

“He is warning me,” replied the unfortunate, “that if I commit a single
indiscretion he will strangle me. He speaks fair and he looks remarkably
as if he were capable of carrying out his threat.”

“I am sure of it,” answered Henri; “he would keep his word.”

“He says, as well,” replied the interpreter, “that the person from whom
he is sent implores you, for your sake and for hers, to act with the
greatest prudence, because the daggers which are raised above your
head would strike your heart before any human power could save you from
them.”

“He said that? So much the better, it will be more amusing. You can come
in now, Paul,” he cried to his friend.

The mulatto, who had not ceased to gaze at the lover of Paquita Valdes
with magnetic attention, went away, followed by the interpreter.

“Well, at last I have an adventure which is entirely romantic,” said
Henri, when Paul returned. “After having shared in a certain number I
have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious
accidents, by grave perils. The deuce! what courage danger gives a
woman! To torment a woman, to try and contradict her--doesn’t it give
her the right and the courage to scale in one moment obstacles which it
would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump then!
To die? Poor child! Daggers? Oh, imagination of women! They cannot help
trying to find authority for their little jests. Besides, can one think
of it, Paquita? Can one think of it, my child? The devil take me, now
that I know this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of nature, is mine,
the adventure has lost its charm.”

For all his light words, the youth in Henri had reappeared. In order
to live until the morrow without too much pain, he had recourse to
exorbitant pleasure; he played, dined, supped with his friends; he drank
like a fish, ate like a German, and won ten or twelve thousand francs.
He left the Rocher de Cancale at two o’clock in the morning, slept like
a child, awoke the next morning fresh and rosy, and dressed to go to
the Tuileries, with the intention of taking a ride, after having seen
Paquita, in order to get himself an appetite and dine the better, and so
kill the time.

At the hour mentioned Henri was on the boulevard, saw the carriage,
and gave the counter-word to a man who looked to him like the mulatto.
Hearing the word, the man opened the door and quickly let down the step.
Henri was so rapidly carried through Paris, and his thoughts left him so
little capacity to pay attention to the streets through which he passed,
that he did not know where the carriage stopped. The mulatto let him
into a house, the staircase of which was quite close to the entrance.
This staircase was dark, as was also the landing upon which Henri
was obliged to wait while the mulatto was opening the door of a damp
apartment, fetid and unlit, the chambers of which, barely illuminated
by the candle which his guide found in the ante-chamber, seemed to him
empty and ill furnished, like those of a house the inhabitants of which
are away. He recognized the sensation which he had experienced from the
perusal of one of those romances of Anne Radcliffe, in which the hero
traverses the cold, sombre, and uninhabited saloons of some sad and
desert spot.

At last the mulatto opened the door of a _salon_. The condition of
the old furniture and the dilapidated curtains with which the room was
adorned gave it the air of the reception-room of a house of ill fame.
There was the same pretension to elegance, and the same collection of
things in bad taste, of dust and dirt. Upon a sofa covered with red
Utrecht velvet, by the side of a smoking hearth, the fire of which was
buried in ashes, sat an old, poorly dressed woman, her head capped by
one of those turbans which English women of a certain age have invented
and which would have a mighty success in China, where the artist’s ideal
is the monstrous.

The room, the old woman, the cold hearth, all would have chilled love to
death had not Paquita been there, upon an ottoman, in a loose voluptuous
wrapper, free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free to show her
arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first interview
was what every _rendezvous_ must be between persons of passionate
disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire
each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other. It
is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant
notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until the moment when two
souls find themselves in unison.

If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint aside,
the mistress, under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great may be
her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly, and face to face
with the necessity of giving herself, which to many women is equivalent
to a fall into an abyss, at the bottom of which they know not what they
shall find. The involuntary coldness of the woman contrasts with her
confessed passion, and necessarily reacts upon the most passionate
lover. Thus ideas, which often float around souls like vapors, determine
in them a sort of temporary malady. In the sweet journey which two
beings undertake through the fair domains of love, this moment is like
a waste land to be traversed, a land without a tree, alternatively damp
and warm, full of scorching sand, traversed by marshes, which leads to
smiling groves clad with roses, where Love and his retinue of pleasures
disport themselves on carpets of soft verdure. Often the witty man
finds himself afflicted with a foolish laugh which is his only answer to
everything; his wit is, as it were, suffocated beneath the icy pressure
of his desires. It would not be impossible for two beings of equal
beauty, intelligence, and passion to utter at first nothing but the
most silly commonplaces, until chance, a word, the tremor of a certain
glance, the communication of a spark, should have brought them to the
happy transition which leads to that flowery way in which one does not
walk, but where one sways and at the same time does not lapse.

Such a state of mind is always in proportion with the violence of the
feeling. Two creatures who love one another weakly feel nothing similar.
The effect of this crisis can even be compared with that which is
produced by the glow of a clear sky. Nature, at the first view, appears
to be covered with a gauze veil, the azure of the firmament seems black,
the intensity of light is like darkness. With Henri, as with the Spanish
girl, there was an equal intensity of feeling; and that law of statics,
in virtue of which two identical forces cancel each other, might have
been true also in the moral order. And the embarrassment of the moment
was singularly increased by the presence of the old hag. Love takes
pleasure or fright at all, all has meaning for it, everything is an omen
of happiness or sorrow for it.

This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe, and
represented the horrid fish’s tail with which the allegorical geniuses
of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures, like
all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive.

Although Henri was not a free-thinker--the phrase is always a
mockery--but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can
be without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest
men are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most
superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of
the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the
result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own.

The Spanish girl profited by this moment of stupefaction to let herself
fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes the heart
of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of
an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all
happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the charm, and
fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she had dreamed
long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri, that all this
phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery and of the green
mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red tiles, all this sick
and dilapidated luxury, disappeared.

The room seemed lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could
see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes
betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by
some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who
brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the
cold glitter of a caged tiger, knowing his impotence and being compelled
to swallow his rage of destruction.

“Who is that woman?” said Henri to Paquita.

But Paquita did not answer. She made a sign that she understood no
French, and asked Henri if he spoke English.

De Marsay repeated his question in English.

“She is the only woman in whom I can confide, although she has sold me
already,” said Paquita, tranquilly. “My dear Adolphe, she is my mother,
a slave bought in Georgia for her rare beauty, little enough of which
remains to-day. She only speaks her native tongue.”

The attitude of this woman and her eagerness to guess from the gestures
of her daughter and Henri what was passing between them, were suddenly
explained to the young man; and this explanation put him at his ease.

“Paquita,” he said, “are we never to be free then?”

“Never,” she said, with an air of sadness. “Even now we have but a few
days before us.”

She lowered her eyes, looked at and counted with her right hand on the
fingers of her left, revealing so the most beautiful hands which Henri
had ever seen.

“One, two, three----”

She counted up to twelve.

“Yes,” she said, “we have twelve days.”

“And after?”

“After,” she said, showing the absorption of a weak woman before the
executioner’s axe, and slain in advance, as it were, by a fear which
stripped her of that magnificent energy which Nature seemed to have
bestowed upon her only to aggrandize pleasure and convert the most
vulgar delights into endless poems. “After----” she repeated. Her eyes
took a fixed stare; she seemed to contemplate a threatening object far
away.

“I do not know,” she said.

“This girl is mad,” said Henri to himself, falling into strange
reflections.

Paquita appeared to him occupied by something which was not himself,
like a woman constrained equally by remorse and passion. Perhaps she had
in her heart another love which she alternately remembered and forgot.
In a moment Henri was assailed by a thousand contradictory thoughts.
This girl became a mystery for him; but as he contemplated her with the
scientific attention of the _blase_ man, famished for new pleasures,
like that Eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be created
for him,--a horrible thirst with which great souls are seized,--Henri
recognized in Paquita the richest organization that Nature had ever
deigned to compose for love. The presumptive play of this machinery,
setting aside the soul, would have frightened any other man than Henri;
but he was fascinated by that rich harvest of promised pleasures, by
that constant variety in happiness, the dream of every man, and the
desire of every loving woman too. He was infuriated by the infinite
rendered palpable, and transported into the most excessive raptures
of which the creature is capable. All that he saw in this girl more
distinctly than he had yet seen it, for she let herself be viewed
complacently, happy to be admired. The admiration of De Marsay became
a secret fury, and he unveiled her completely, throwing a glance at her
which the Spaniard understood as though she had been used to receive
such.

“If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you!” he cried.

Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands, and cried
naively:

“Holy Virgin! What have I brought upon myself?”

She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in
the rags which covered the bosom of her mother, and wept there. The
old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of
immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the
highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a
statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her
daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood--good and
evil; and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze passed
slowly from her daughter’s beautiful hair, which covered her like a
mantle, to the face of Henri, which she considered with an indescribable
curiosity.

She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice
Nature had made so seductive a man.

“These women are making sport of me,” said Henri to himself.

At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks
which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that
he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.

“My Paquita! Be mine!”

“Wouldst thou kill me?” she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but
drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.

“Kill thee--I!” he said, smiling.

Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman, who
authoritatively seized Henri’s hand and that of her daughter. She gazed
at them for a long time, and then released them, wagging her head in a
fashion horribly significant.

“Be mine--this evening, this moment; follow me, do not leave me! It must
be, Paquita! Dost thou love me? Come!”

In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the
rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same
sound in a thousand different forms.

“It is the same voice!” said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which
De Marsay could not overhear, “and the same ardor,” she added. “So be
it--yes,” she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can
describe. “Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I gave too little
opium to La Concha. She might wake up, and I should be lost. At this
moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. In two
days be at the same spot, say the same word to the same man. That man is
my foster-father. Cristemio worships me, and would die in torments for
me before they could extract one word against me from him. Farewell,”
 she said seizing Henri by the waist and twining round him like a
serpent.

She pressed him on every side at once, lifted her head to his, and
offered him her lips, then snatched a kiss which filled them both with
such a dizziness that it seemed to Henri as though the earth opened; and
Paquita cried: “Enough, depart!” in a voice which told how little
she was mistress of herself. But she clung to him still, still crying
“Depart!” and brought him slowly to the staircase. There the mulatto,
whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from the
hands of his idol, and conducted Henri to the street. He left the light
under the arch, opened the door, put Henri into the carriage, and set
him down on the Boulevard des Italiens with marvelous rapidity. It was
as though the horses had hell-fire in their veins.

The scene was like a dream to De Marsay, but one of those dreams
which, even when they fade away, leave a feeling of supernatural
voluptuousness, which a man runs after for the remainder of his life.
A single kiss had been enough. Never had _rendezvous_ been spent in a
manner more decorous or chaste, or, perhaps, more coldly, in a spot of
which the surroundings were more gruesome, in presence of a more hideous
divinity; for the mother had remained in Henri’s imagination like some
infernal, cowering thing, cadaverous, monstrous, savagely ferocious,
which the imagination of poets and painters had not yet conceived. In
effect, no _rendezvous_ had ever irritated his senses more, revealed
more audacious pleasures, or better aroused love from its centre to
shed itself round him like an atmosphere. There was something sombre,
mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained, and expansive, an intermingling
of the awful and the celestial, of paradise and hell, which made De
Marsay like a drunken man.

He was no longer himself, and he was, withal, great enough to be able to
resist the intoxication of pleasure.

In order to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this
story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age
when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with
women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a
concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast and
unsuspected power.

This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of
modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by the
laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental despot.
But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by brutish men,
was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European intelligence,
with French wit--the most subtle, the keenest of all intellectual
instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest of his
pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social world
had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without emphasis and
deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis XIV. could
have of himself, but that which the proudest of the Caliphs, the
Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine origin, had
of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled themselves from their
subjects under the pretext that their looks dealt forth death. Thus,
without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, De
Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously
offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict
was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune similar to that which a
thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a smiling Parisienne in some
hackney coach, instead of crushing the old coachman who is driving
her to a _rendezvous_. Thus the bitter and profound sarcasm which
distinguished the young man’s conversation usually tended to frighten
people; no one was anxious to put him out. Women are prodigiously fond
of those persons who call themselves pashas, and who are, as it were
accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk in a panoply of
terror. The result, in the case of such men, is a security of action,
a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a leonine consciousness, which
makes women realize the type of strength of which they all dream. Such
was De Marsay.

Happy, for the moment, with his future, he grew young and pliable, and
thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl
with the golden eyes, as the young and passionate can dream. His dreams
were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances--full of light,
revealing invisible worlds, yet in a manner always incomplete, for an
intervening veil changes the conditions of vision.

For the next and succeeding day Henri disappeared and no one knew
what had become of him. His power only belonged to him under certain
conditions, and, happily for him, during those two days he was a private
soldier in the service of the demon to whom he owed his talismanic
existence. But at the appointed time, in the evening, he was
waiting--and he had not long to wait--for the carriage. The mulatto
approached Henri, in order to repeat to him in French a phrase which he
seemed to have learned by heart.

“If you wish to come, she told me, you must consent to have your eyes
bandaged.”

And Cristemio produced a white silk handkerchief.

“No!” said Henri, whose omnipotence revolted suddenly.

He tried to leap in. The mulatto made a sign, and the carriage drove
off.

“Yes!” cried De Marsay, furious at the thought of losing a piece of good
fortune which had been promised him.

He saw, moreover, the impossibility of making terms with a slave
whose obedience was as blind as the hangman’s. Nor was it this passive
instrument upon whom his anger could fall.

The mulatto whistled, the carriage returned. Henri got in hastily.
Already a few curious onlookers had assembled like sheep on the
boulevard. Henri was strong; he tried to play the mulatto. When the
carriage started at a gallop he seized his hands, in order to master
him, and retain, by subduing his attendant, the possession of his
faculties, so that he might know whither he was going. It was a vain
attempt. The eyes of the mulatto flashed from the darkness. The fellow
uttered a cry which his fury stifled in his throat, released himself,
threw back De Marsay with a hand like iron, and nailed him, so to
speak, to the bottom of the carriage; then with his free hand, he drew
a triangular dagger, and whistled. The coachman heard the whistle and
stopped. Henri was unarmed, he was forced to yield. He moved his head
towards the handkerchief. The gesture of submission calmed Cristemio,
and he bound his eyes with a respect and care which manifested a sort
of veneration for the person of the man whom his idol loved. But, before
taking this course, he had placed his dagger distrustfully in his side
pocket, and buttoned himself up to the chin.

“That nigger would have killed me!” said De Marsay to himself.

Once more the carriage moved on rapidly. There was one resource still
open to a young man who knew Paris as well as Henri. To know whither
he was going, he had but to collect himself and count, by the number of
gutters crossed, the streets leading from the boulevards by which the
carriage passed, so long as it continued straight along. He could thus
discover into which lateral street it would turn, either towards the
Seine or towards the heights of Montmartre, and guess the name or
position of the street in which his guide should bring him to a halt.
But the violent emotion which his struggle had caused him, the rage into
which his compromised dignity had thrown him, the ideas of vengeance
to which he abandoned himself, the suppositions suggested to him by the
circumstantial care which this girl had taken in order to bring him
to her, all hindered him from the attention, which the blind have,
necessary for the concentration of his intelligence and the perfect
lucidity of his recollection. The journey lasted half an hour. When the
carriage stopped, it was no longer on the street. The mulatto and the
coachman took Henri in their arms, lifted him out, and, putting him
into a sort of litter, conveyed him across a garden. He could smell its
flowers and the perfume peculiar to trees and grass.

The silence which reigned there was so profound that he could
distinguish the noise made by the drops of water falling from the moist
leaves. The two men took him to a staircase, set him on his feet, led
him by his hands through several apartments, and left him in a room
whose atmosphere was perfumed, and the thick carpet of which he could
feel beneath his feet.

A woman’s hand pushed him on to a divan, and untied the handkerchief for
him. Henri saw Paquita before him, but Paquita in all her womanly
and voluptuous glory. The section of the boudoir in which Henri found
himself described a circular line, softly gracious, which was faced
opposite by the other perfectly square half, in the midst of which a
chimney-piece shone of gold and white marble. He had entered by a door
on one side, hidden by a rich tapestried screen, opposite which was a
window. The semicircular portion was adorned with a real Turkish divan,
that is to say, a mattress thrown on the ground, but a mattress as broad
as a bed, a divan fifty feet in circumference, made of white cashmere,
relieved by bows of black and scarlet silk, arranged in panels. The top
of this huge bed was raised several inches by numerous cushions, which
further enriched it by their tasteful comfort. The boudoir was lined
with some red stuff, over which an Indian muslin was stretched, fluted
after the fashion of Corinthian columns, in plaits going in and out, and
bound at the top and bottom by bands of poppy-colored stuff, on which
were designs in black arabesque.

Below the muslin the poppy turned to rose, that amorous color, which
was matched by window-curtains, which were of Indian muslin lined with
rose-colored taffeta, and set off with a fringe of poppy-color and
black. Six silver-gilt arms, each supporting two candles, were attached
to the tapestry at an equal distance, to illuminate the divan. The
ceiling, from the middle of which a lustre of unpolished silver hung,
was of a brilliant whiteness, and the cornice was gilded. The carpet was
like an Oriental shawl; it had the designs and recalled the poetry of
Persia, where the hands of slaves had worked on it. The furniture
was covered in white cashmere, relieved by black and poppy-colored
ornaments. The clock, the candelabra, all were in white marble and gold.
The only table there had a cloth of cashmere. Elegant flower-pots held
roses of every kind, flowers white or red. In fine, the least detail
seemed to have been the object of loving thought. Never had richness
hidden itself more coquettishly to become elegance, to express grace,
to inspire pleasure. Everything there would have warmed the coldest
of beings. The caresses of the tapestry, of which the color changed
according to the direction of one’s gaze, becoming either all white
or all rose, harmonized with the effects of the light shed upon the
diaphanous tissues of the muslin, which produced an appearance of
mistiness. The soul has I know not what attraction towards white, love
delights in red, and the passions are flattered by gold, which has the
power of realizing their caprices. Thus all that man possesses within
him of vague and mysterious, all his inexplicable affinities, were
caressed in their involuntary sympathies. There was in this perfect
harmony a concert of color to which the soul responded with vague and
voluptuous and fluctuating ideas.

It was out of a misty atmosphere, laden with exquisite perfumes, that
Paquita, clad in a white wrapper, her feet bare, orange blossoms in her
black hair, appeared to Henri, knelt before him, adoring him as the god
of this temple, whither he had deigned to come. Although De Marsay
was accustomed to seeing the utmost efforts of Parisian luxury, he was
surprised at the aspect of this shell, like that from which Venus rose
out of the sea. Whether from an effect of contrast between the darkness
from which he issued and the light which bathed his soul, whether from
a comparison which he swiftly made between this scene and that of their
first interview, he experienced one of those delicate sensations which
true poetry gives. Perceiving in the midst of this retreat, which
had been opened to him as by a fairy’s magic wand, the masterpiece of
creation, this girl, whose warmly colored tints, whose soft skin--soft,
but slightly gilded by the shadows, by I know not what vaporous effusion
of love--gleamed as though it reflected the rays of color and light, his
anger, his desire for vengeance, his wounded vanity, all were lost.

Like an eagle darting on his prey, he took her utterly to him, set her
on his knees, and felt with an indescribable intoxication the voluptuous
pressure of this girl, whose richly developed beauties softly enveloped
him.

“Come to me, Paquita!” he said, in a low voice.

“Speak, speak without fear!” she said. “This retreat was built for
love. No sound can escape from it, so greatly was it desired to guard
avariciously the accents and music of the beloved voice. However loud
should be the cries, they would not be heard without these walls. A
person might be murdered, and his moans would be as vain as if he were
in the midst of the great desert.”

“Who has understood jealousy and its needs so well?”

“Never question me as to that,” she answered, untying with a gesture of
wonderful sweetness the young man’s scarf, doubtless in order the better
to behold his neck.

“Yes, there is the neck I love so well!” she said. “Wouldst thou please
me?”

This interrogation, rendered by the accent almost lascivious, drew
De Marsay from the reverie in which he had been plunged by Paquita’s
authoritative refusal to allow him any research as to the unknown being
who hovered like a shadow about them.

“And if I wished to know who reigns here?”

Paquita looked at him trembling.

“It is not I, then?” he said, rising and freeing himself from the girl,
whose head fell backwards. “Where I am, I would be alone.”

“Strike, strike!...” said the poor slave, a prey to terror.

“For what do you take me, then?... Will you answer?”

Paquita got up gently, her eyes full of tears, took a poniard from one
of the two ebony pieces of furniture, and presented it to Henri with a
gesture of submission which would have moved a tiger.

“Give me a feast such as men give when they love,” she said, “and whilst
I sleep, slay me, for I know not how to answer thee. Hearken! I am bound
like some poor beast to a stake; I am amazed that I have been able to
throw a bridge over the abyss which divides us. Intoxicate me, then kill
me! Ah, no, no!” she cried, joining her hands, “do not kill me! I love
life! Life is fair to me! If I am a slave, I am a queen too. I could
beguile you with words, tell you that I love you alone, prove it to you,
profit by my momentary empire to say to you: ‘Take me as one tastes the
perfume of a flower when one passes it in a king’s garden.’ Then, after
having used the cunning eloquence of woman and soared on the wings of
pleasure, after having quenched my thirst, I could have you cast into a
pit, where none could find you, which has been made to gratify vengeance
without having to fear that of the law, a pit full of lime which would
kindle and consume you, until no particle of you were left. You would
stay in my heart, mine forever.”

Henri looked at the girl without trembling, and this fearless gaze
filled her with joy.

“No, I shall not do it! You have fallen into no trap here, but upon the
heart of a woman who adores you, and it is I who will be cast into the
pit.”

“All this appears to me prodigiously strange,” said De Marsay,
considering her. “But you seem to me a good girl, a strange nature; you
are, upon my word of honor, a living riddle, the answer to which is very
difficult to find.”

Paquita understood nothing of what the young man said; she looked at
him gently, opening wide eyes which could never be stupid, so much was
pleasure written in them.

“Come, then, my love,” she said, returning to her first idea, “wouldst
thou please me?”

“I would do all that thou wouldst, and even that thou wouldst not,”
 answered De Marsay, with a laugh. He had recovered his foppish ease, as
he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good fortune,
looking neither before nor after. Perhaps he counted, moreover, on his
power and his capacity of a man used to adventures, to dominate this
girl a few hours later and learn all her secrets.

“Well,” said she, “let me arrange you as I would like.”

Paquita went joyously and took from one of the two chests a robe of red
velvet, in which she dressed De Marsay, then adorned his head with a
woman’s bonnet and wrapped a shawl round him. Abandoning herself to
these follies with a child’s innocence, she laughed a convulsive laugh,
and resembled some bird flapping its wings; but he saw nothing beyond.

If it be impossible to paint the unheard-of delights which these two
creatures--made by heaven in a joyous moment--found, it is perhaps
necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost
fantastic impressions of the young man. That which persons in the social
position of De Marsay, living as he lived, are best able to recognize is
a girl’s innocence. But, strange phenomenon! The girl of the golden eyes
might be virgin, but innocent she was certainly not. The fantastic
union of the mysterious and the real, of darkness and light, horror and
beauty, pleasure and danger, paradise and hell, which had already been
met with in this adventure, was resumed in the capricious and sublime
being with which De Marsay dallied. All the utmost science or the most
refined pleasure, all that Henri could know of that poetry of the senses
which is called love, was excelled by the treasures poured forth by this
girl, whose radiant eyes gave the lie to none of the promises which they
made.

She was an Oriental poem, in which shone the sun that Saadi, that Hafiz,
have set in their pulsing strophes. Only, neither the rhythm of Saadi,
nor that of Pindar, could have expressed the ecstasy--full of confusion
and stupefaction--which seized the delicious girl when the error in
which an iron hand had caused her to live was at an end.

“Dead!” she said, “I am dead, Adolphe! Take me away to the world’s
end, to an island where no one knows us. Let there be no traces of our
flight! We should be followed to the gates of hell. God! here is the
day! Escape! Shall I ever see you again? Yes, to-morrow I will see
you, if I have to deal death to all my warders to have that joy. Till
to-morrow.”

She pressed him in her arms with an embrace in which the terror of death
mingled. Then she touched a spring, which must have been in connection
with a bell, and implored De Marsay to permit his eyes to be bandaged.

“And if I would not--and if I wished to stay here?”

“You would be the death of me more speedily,” she said, “for now I know
I am certain to die on your account.”

Henri submitted. In the man who had just gorged himself with pleasure
there occurs a propensity to forgetfulness, I know not what ingratitude,
a desire for liberty, a whim to go elsewhere, a tinge of contempt and,
perhaps, of disgust for his idol; in fine, indescribable sentiments
which render him ignoble and ashamed. The certainty of this confused,
but real, feeling in souls who are not illuminated by that celestial
light, nor perfumed with that holy essence from which the performance
of sentiment springs, doubtless suggested to Rousseau the adventures of
Lord Edward, which conclude the letters of the _Nouvelle Heloise_. If
Rousseau is obviously inspired by the work of Richardson, he departs
from it in a thousand details, which leave his achievement magnificently
original; he has recommended it to posterity by great ideas which it is
difficult to liberate by analysis, when, in one’s youth, one reads this
work with the object of finding in it the lurid representation of the
most physical of our feelings, whereas serious and philosophical writers
never employ its images except as the consequence or the corollary of
a vast thought; and the adventures of Lord Edward are one of the most
Europeanly delicate ideas of the whole work.

Henri, therefore, found himself beneath the domination of that confused
sentiment which is unknown to true love. There was needful, in
some sort, the persuasive grip of comparisons, and the irresistible
attraction of memories to lead him back to a woman. True love rules
above all through recollection. A woman who is not engraven upon the
soul by excess of pleasure or by strength of emotion, how can she ever
be loved? In Henri’s case, Paquita had established herself by both of
these reasons. But at this moment, seized as he was by the satiety of
his happiness, that delicious melancholy of the body, he could hardly
analyze his heart, even by recalling to his lips the taste of the
liveliest gratifications that he had ever grasped.

He found himself on the Boulevard Montmartre at the break of day,
gazed stupidly at the retreating carriage, produced two cigars from his
pocket, lit one from the lantern of a good woman who sold brandy and
coffee to workmen and street arabs and chestnut venders--to all the
Parisian populace which begins its work before daybreak; then he went
off, smoking his cigar, and putting his hands in his trousers’ pockets
with a devil-may-care air which did him small honor.

“What a good thing a cigar is! That’s one thing a man will never tire
of,” he said to himself.

Of the girl with the golden eyes, over whom at that time all the elegant
youth of Paris was mad, he hardly thought. The idea of death, expressed
in the midst of their pleasure, and the fear of which had more than once
darkened the brow of that beautiful creature, who held to the houris of
Asia by her mother, to Europe by her education, to the tropics by her
birth, seemed to him merely one of those deceptions by which women seek
to make themselves interesting.

“She is from Havana--the most Spanish region to be found in the New
World. So she preferred to feign terror rather than cast in my teeth
indisposition or difficulty, coquetry or duty, like a Parisian woman. By
her golden eyes, how glad I shall be to sleep.”

He saw a hackney coach standing at the corner of Frascati’s waiting for
some gambler; he awoke the driver, was driven home, went to bed, and
slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason--of which
no rhymer has yet taken advantage--is as profound as that of innocence.
Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom, _extremes meet_.

About noon De Marsay awoke and stretched himself; he felt the grip of
that sort of voracious hunger which old soldiers can remember having
experienced on the morrow of victory. He was delighted, therefore, to
see Paul de Manerville standing in front of him, for at such a time
nothing is more agreeable than to eat in company.

“Well,” his friend remarked, “we all imagined that you had been shut up
for the last ten days with the girl of the golden eyes.”

“The girl of the golden eyes! I have forgotten her. Faith! I have other
fish to fry!”

“Ah! you are playing at discretion.”

“Why not?” asked De Marsay, with a laugh. “My dear fellow, discretion
is the best form of calculation. Listen--however, no! I will not say
a word. You never teach me anything; I am not disposed to make you a
gratuitous present of the treasures of my policy. Life is a river which
is of use for the promotion of commerce. In the name of all that is most
sacred in life--of cigars! I am no professor of social economy for the
instruction of fools. Let us breakfast! It costs less to give you a
tunny omelette than to lavish the resources of my brain on you.”

“Do you bargain with your friends?”

“My dear fellow,” said Henri, who rarely denied himself a sarcasm,
“since all the same, you may some day need, like anybody else, to use
discretion, and since I have much love for you--yes, I like you! Upon my
word, if you only wanted a thousand-franc note to keep you from blowing
your brains out, you would find it here, for we haven’t yet done any
business of that sort, eh, Paul? If you had to fight to-morrow, I would
measure the ground and load the pistols, so that you might be killed
according to rule. In short, if anybody besides myself took it into his
head to say ill of you in your absence, he would have to deal with the
somewhat nasty gentleman who walks in my shoes--there’s what I call a
friendship beyond question. Well, my good fellow, if you should
ever have need of discretion, understand that there are two sorts of
discretion--the active and the negative. Negative discretion is that
of fools who make use of silence, negation, an air of refusal, the
discretion of locked doors--mere impotence! Active discretion proceeds
by affirmation. Suppose at the club this evening I were to say: ‘Upon my
word of honor the golden-eyed was not worth all she cost me!’ Everybody
would exclaim when I was gone: ‘Did you hear that fop De Marsay, who
tried to make us believe that he has already had the girl of the golden
eyes? It’s his way of trying to disembarrass himself of his rivals: he’s
no simpleton.’ But such a ruse is vulgar and dangerous. However gross a
folly one utters, there are always idiots to be found who will believe
it. The best form of discretion is that of women when they want to take
the change out of their husbands. It consists in compromising a woman
with whom we are not concerned, or whom we do not love, in order to save
the honor of the one whom we love well enough to respect. It is what is
called the _woman-screen_.... Ah! here is Laurent. What have you got for
us?”

“Some Ostend oysters, Monsieur le Comte.”

“You will know some day, Paul, how amusing it is to make a fool of the
world by depriving it of the secret of one’s affections. I derive an
immense pleasure in escaping from the stupid jurisdiction of the crowd,
which knows neither what it wants, nor what one wants of it, which takes
the means for the end, and by turns curses and adores, elevates and
destroys! What a delight to impose emotions on it and receive none from
it, to tame it, never to obey it. If one may ever be proud of anything,
is it not a self-acquired power, of which one is at once the cause and
effect, the principle and the result? Well, no man knows what I love,
nor what I wish. Perhaps what I have loved, or what I may have wished
will be known, as a drama which is accomplished is known; but to let
my game be seen--weakness, mistake! I know nothing more despicable than
strength outwitted by cunning. Can I initiate myself with a laugh into
the ambassador’s part, if indeed diplomacy is as difficult as life? I
doubt it. Have you any ambition? Would you like to become something?”

“But, Henri, you are laughing at me--as though I were not sufficiently
mediocre to arrive at anything.”

“Good Paul! If you go on laughing at yourself, you will soon be able to
laugh at everybody else.”

At breakfast, by the time he had started his cigars, De Marsay began to
see the events of the night in a singular light. Like many men of great
intelligence, his perspicuity was not spontaneous, as it did not at once
penetrate to the heart of things. As with all natures endowed with the
faculty of living greatly in the present, of extracting, so to speak,
the essence of it and assimilating it, his second-sight had need of a
sort of slumber before it could identify itself with causes. Cardinal
de Richelieu was so constituted, and it did not debar in him the gift of
foresight necessary to the conception of great designs.

De Marsay’s conditions were alike, but at first he only used his weapons
for the benefit of his pleasures, and only became one of the most
profound politicians of his day when he had saturated himself with
those pleasures to which a young man’s thoughts--when he has money and
power--are primarily directed. Man hardens himself thus: he uses woman
in order that she may not make use of him.

At this moment, then, De Marsay perceived that he had been fooled by
the girl of the golden eyes, seeing, as he did, in perspective, all that
night of which the delights had been poured upon him by degrees until
they had ended by flooding him in torrents. He could read, at last,
that page in effect so brilliant, divine its hidden meaning. The purely
physical innocence of Paquita, the bewilderment of her joy, certain
words, obscure at first, but now clear, which had escaped her in the
midst of that joy, all proved to him that he had posed for another
person. As no social corruption was unknown to him, as he professed a
complete indifference towards all perversities, and believed them to be
justified on the simple ground that they were capable of satisfaction,
he was not startled at vice, he knew it as one knows a friend, but he
was wounded at having served as sustenance for it. If his presumption
was right, he had been outraged in the most sensitive part of him. The
mere suspicion filled him with fury, he broke out with the roar of a
tiger who has been the sport of a deer, the cry of a tiger which united
a brute’s strength with the intelligence of the demon.

“I say, what is the matter with you?” asked Paul.

“Nothing!”

“I should be sorry, if you were to be asked whether you had anything
against me and were to reply with a _nothing_ like that! It would be a
sure case of fighting the next day.”

“I fight no more duels,” said De Marsay.

“That seems to me even more tragical. Do you assassinate, then?”

“You travesty words. I execute.”

“My dear friend,” said Paul, “your jokes are of a very sombre color this
morning.”

“What would you have? Pleasure ends in cruelty. Why? I don’t know, and
am not sufficiently curious to try and find out.... These cigars are
excellent. Give your friend some tea. Do you know, Paul, I live a
brute’s life? It should be time to choose oneself a destiny, to employ
one’s powers on something which makes life worth living. Life is a
singular comedy. I am frightened, I laugh at the inconsequence of our
social order. The Government cuts off the heads of poor devils who
may have killed a man and licenses creatures who despatch, medically
speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless
against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can
punish.--Another cup!--Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing
upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the _Liaisons
Dangereuses_, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but
there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is
always open and will never be shut, the great book of the world; not to
mention another book, a thousand times more dangerous, which is composed
of all that men whisper into each other’s ears, or women murmur behind
their fans, of an evening in society.”

“Henri, there is certainly something extraordinary the matter with you;
that is obvious in spite of your active discretion.”

“Yes!... Come, I must kill the time until this evening. Let’s to the
tables.... Perhaps I shall have the good luck to lose.”

De Marsay rose, took a handful of banknotes and folded them into his
cigar-case, dressed himself, and took advantage of Paul’s carriage to
repair to the Salon des Etrangers, where until dinner he consumed the
time in those exciting alternations of loss and gain which are the last
resource of powerful organizations when they are compelled to exercise
themselves in the void. In the evening he repaired to the trysting-place
and submitted complacently to having his eyes bandaged. Then, with
that firm will which only really strong men have the faculty of
concentrating, he devoted his attention and applied his intelligence to
the task of divining through what streets the carriage passed. He had
a sort of certitude of being taken to the Rue Saint-Lazare, and
being brought to a halt at the little gate in the garden of the Hotel
San-Real. When he passed, as on the first occasion, through this gate,
and was put in a litter, carried, doubtless by the mulatto and the
coachman, he understood, as he heard the gravel grate beneath their
feet, why they took such minute precautions. He would have been able,
had he been free, or if he had walked, to pluck a twig of laurel,
to observe the nature of the soil which clung to his boots; whereas,
transported, so to speak, ethereally into an inaccessible mansion, his
good fortune must remain what it had been hitherto, a dream. But it is
man’s despair that all his work, whether for good or evil, is imperfect.
All his labors, physical or intellectual, are sealed with the mark
of destruction. There had been a gentle rain, the earth was moist. At
night-time certain vegetable perfumes are far stronger than during the
day; Henri could smell, therefore, the scent of the mignonette which
lined the avenue along which he was conveyed. This indication was enough
to light him in the researches which he promised himself to make in
order to recognize the hotel which contained Paquita’s boudoir. He
studied in the same way the turnings which his bearers took within the
house, and believed himself able to recall them.

As on the previous night, he found himself on the ottoman before
Paquita, who was undoing his bandage; but he saw her pale and altered.
She had wept. On her knees like an angel in prayer, but like an angel
profoundly sad and melancholy, the poor girl no longer resembled the
curious, impatient, and impetuous creature who had carried De Marsay
on her wings to transport him to the seventh heaven of love. There was
something so true in this despair veiled by pleasure, that the terrible
De Marsay felt within him an admiration for this new masterpiece
of nature, and forgot, for the moment, the chief interest of his
assignation.

“What is the matter with thee, my Paquita?”

“My friend,” she said, “carry me away this very night. Bear me to some
place where no one can answer: ‘There is a girl with a golden gaze here,
who has long hair.’ Yonder I will give thee as many pleasures as thou
wouldst have of me. Then when you love me no longer, you shall leave me,
I shall not complain, I shall say nothing; and your desertion need cause
you no remorse, for one day passed with you, only one day, in which I
have had you before my eyes, will be worth all my life to me. But if I
stay here, I am lost.”

“I cannot leave Paris, little one!” replied Henri. “I do not belong to
myself, I am bound by a vow to the fortune of several persons who stand
to me, as I do to them. But I can place you in a refuge in Paris, where
no human power can reach you.”

“No,” she said, “you forget the power of woman.”

Never did phrase uttered by human voice express terror more absolutely.

“What could reach you, then, if I put myself between you and the world?”

“Poison!” she said. “Dona Concha suspects you already... and,” she
resumed, letting the tears fall and glisten on her cheeks, “it is easy
enough to see I am no longer the same. Well, if you abandon me to the
fury of the monster who will destroy me, your holy will be done! But
come, let there be all the pleasures of life in our love. Besides, I
will implore, I will weep and cry out and defend myself; perhaps I shall
be saved.”

“Whom will your implore?” he asked.

“Silence!” said Paquita. “If I obtain mercy it will perhaps be on
account of my discretion.”

“Give me my robe,” said Henri, insidiously.

“No, no!” she answered quickly, “be what you are, one of those angels
whom I have been taught to hate, and in whom I only saw ogres, whilst
you are what is fairest under the skies,” she said, caressing Henri’s
hair. “You do not know how silly I am. I have learned nothing. Since I
was twelve years old I have been shut up without ever seeing any one. I
can neither read nor write, I can only speak English and Spanish.”

“How is it, then, that you receive letters from London?”

“My letters?... See, here they are!” she said, proceeding to take some
papers out of a tall Japanese vase.

She offered De Marsay some letters, in which the young man saw, with
surprise, strange figures, similar to those of a rebus, traced in blood,
and illustrating phrases full of passion.

“But,” he cried, marveling at these hieroglyphics created by the
alertness of jealousy, “you are in the power of an infernal genius?”

“Infernal,” she repeated.

“But how, then, were you able to get out?”

“Ah!” she said, “that was my ruin. I drove Dona Concha to choose between
the fear of immediate death and anger to be. I had the curiosity of
a demon, I wished to break the bronze circle which they had described
between creation and me, I wished to see what young people were like,
for I knew nothing of man except the Marquis and Cristemio. Our coachman
and the lackey who accompanies us are old men....”

“But you were not always thus shut up? Your health...?”

“Ah,” she answered, “we used to walk, but it was at night and in the
country, by the side of the Seine, away from people.”

“Are you not proud of being loved like that?”

“No,” she said, “no longer. However full it be, this hidden life is but
darkness in comparison with the light.”

“What do you call the light?”

“Thee, my lovely Adolphe! Thee, for whom I would give my life. All the
passionate things that have been told me, and that I have inspired, I
feel for thee! For a certain time I understood nothing of existence, but
now I know what love is, and hitherto I have been the loved one only;
for myself, I did not love. I would give up everything for you, take me
away. If you like, take me as a toy, but let me be near you until you
break me.”

“You will have no regrets?”

“Not one”! she said, letting him read her eyes, whose golden tint was
pure and clear.

“Am I the favored one?” said Henri to himself. If he suspected the
truth, he was ready at that time to pardon the offence in view of a love
so single minded. “I shall soon see,” he thought.

If Paquita owed him no account of the past, yet the least recollection
of it became in his eyes a crime. He had therefore the sombre strength
to withhold a portion of his thought, to study her, even while
abandoning himself to the most enticing pleasures that ever peri
descended from the skies had devised for her beloved.

Paquita seemed to have been created for love by a particular effort of
nature. In a night her feminine genius had made the most rapid progress.
Whatever might be the power of this young man, and his indifference in
the matter of pleasures, in spite of his satiety of the previous night,
he found in the girl with the golden eyes that seraglio which a loving
woman knows how to create and which a man never refuses. Paquita
responded to that passion which is felt by all really great men for the
infinite--that mysterious passion so dramatically expressed in Faust, so
poetically translated in Manfred, and which urged Don Juan to search
the heart of women, in his hope to find there that limitless thought in
pursuit of which so many hunters after spectres have started, which wise
men think to discover in science, and which mystics find in God alone.
The hope of possessing at last the ideal being with whom the struggle
could be constant and tireless ravished De Marsay, who, for the first
time for long, opened his heart. His nerves expanded, his coldness was
dissipated in the atmosphere of that ardent soul, his hard and fast
theories melted away, and happiness colored his existence to the tint of
the rose and white boudoir. Experiencing the sting of a higher pleasure,
he was carried beyond the limits within which he had hitherto confined
passion. He would not be surpassed by this girl, whom a somewhat
artificial love had formed all ready for the needs of his soul, and then
he found in that vanity which urges a man to be in all things a victor,
strength enough to tame the girl; but, at the same time, urged beyond
that line where the soul is mistress over herself, he lost himself
in these delicious limboes, which the vulgar call so foolishly “the
imaginary regions.” He was tender, kind, and confidential. He affected
Paquita almost to madness.

“Why should we not go to Sorrento, to Nice, to Chiavari, and pass all
our life so? Will you?” he asked of Paquita, in a penetrating voice.

“Was there need to say to me: ‘Will you’?” she cried. “Have I a will? I
am nothing apart from you, except in so far as I am a pleasure for you.
If you would choose a retreat worthy of us, Asia is the only country
where love can unfold his wings....”

“You are right,” answered Henri. “Let us go to the Indies, there where
spring is eternal, where the earth grows only flowers, where man can
display the magnificence of kings and none shall say him nay, as in the
foolish lands where they would realize the dull chimera of equality. Let
us go to the country where one lives in the midst of a nation of slaves,
where the sun shines ever on a palace which is always white, where the
air sheds perfumes, the birds sing of love and where, when one can love
no more, one dies....”

“And where one dies together!” said Paquita. “But do not let us start
to-morrow, let us start this moment... take Cristemio.”

“Faith! pleasure is the fairest climax of life. Let us go to Asia; but
to start, my child, one needs much gold, and to have gold one must set
one’s affairs in order.”

She understood no part of these ideas.

“Gold! There is a pile of it here--as high as that,” she said holding up
her hand.

“It is not mine.”

“What does that matter?” she went on; “if we have need of it let us take
it.”

“It does not belong to you.”

“Belong!” she repeated. “Have you not taken me? When we have taken it,
it will belong to us.”

He gave a laugh.

“Poor innocent! You know nothing of the world.”

“Nay, but this is what I know,” she cried, clasping Henri to her.

At the very moment when De Marsay was forgetting all, and conceiving the
desire to appropriate this creature forever, he received in the midst of
his joy a dagger-thrust, which Paquita, who had lifted him vigorously in
the air, as though to contemplate him, exclaimed: “Oh, Margarita!”

“Margarita!” cried the young man, with a roar; “now I know all that I
still tried to disbelieve.”

He leaped upon the cabinet in which the long poniard was kept. Happily
for Paquita and for himself, the cupboard was shut. His fury waxed at
this impediment, but he recovered his tranquillity, went and found his
cravat, and advanced towards her with an air of such ferocious meaning
that, without knowing of what crime she had been guilty, Paquita
understood, none the less, that her life was in question. With one bound
she rushed to the other end of the room to escape the fatal knot which
De Marsay tried to pass round her neck. There was a struggle. On either
side there was an equality of strength, agility, and suppleness. To end
the combat Paquita threw between the legs of her lover a cushion which
made him fall, and profited by the respite which this advantage gave
to her, to push the button of the spring which caused the bell to ring.
Promptly the mulatto arrived. In a second Cristemio leaped on De Marsay
and held him down with one foot on his chest, his heel turned towards
the throat. De Marsay realized that, if he struggled, at a single sign
from Paquita he would be instantly crushed.

“Why did you want to kill me, my beloved?” she said. De Marsay made no
reply.

“In what have I angered you?” she asked. “Speak, let us understand each
other.”

Henri maintained the phlegmatic attitude of a strong man who feels
himself vanquished; his countenance, cold, silent, entirely English,
revealed the consciousness of his dignity in a momentary resignation.
Moreover, he had already thought, in spite of the vehemence of his
anger, that it was scarcely prudent to compromise himself with the law
by killing this girl on the spur of the moment, before he had arranged
the murder in such a manner as should insure his impunity.

“My beloved,” went on Paquita, “speak to me; do not leave me without one
loving farewell! I would not keep in my heart the terror which you have
just inspired in it.... Will you speak?” she said, stamping her foot
with anger.

De Marsay, for all reply, gave her a glance, which signified so plainly,
“_You must die!_” that Paquita threw herself upon him.

“Ah, well, you want to kill me!... If my death can give you any
pleasure--kill me!”

She made a sign to Cristemio, who withdrew his foot from the body of the
young man, and retired without letting his face show that he had formed
any opinion, good or bad, with regard to Paquita.

“That is a man,” said De Marsay, pointing to the mulatto, with a
sombre gesture. “There is no devotion like the devotion which obeys in
friendship, and does not stop to weigh motives. In that man you possess
a true friend.”

“I will give him you, if you like,” she answered; “he will serve you
with the same devotion that he has for me, if I so instruct him.”

She waited for a word of recognition, and went on with an accent replete
with tenderness:

“Adolphe, give me then one kind word!... It is nearly day.”

Henri did not answer. The young man had one sorry quality, for one
considers as something great everything which resembles strength, and
often men invent extravagances. Henri knew not how to pardon. That
_returning upon itself_ which is one of the soul’s graces, was a
non-existent sense for him. The ferocity of the Northern man, with which
the English blood is deeply tainted, had been transmitted to him by his
father. He was inexorable both in his good and evil impulses. Paquita’s
exclamation had been all the more horrible to him, in that it had
dethroned him from the sweetest triumph which had ever flattered his
man’s vanity. Hope, love, and every emotion had been exalted with him,
all had lit up within his heart and his intelligence, then these torches
illuminating his life had been extinguished by a cold wind. Paquita, in
her stupefaction of grief, had only strength enough to give the signal
for departure.

“What is the use of that!” she said, throwing away the bandage. “If he
does not love me, if he hates me, it is all over.”

She waited for one look, did not obtain it, and fell, half dead. The
mulatto cast a glance at Henri, so horribly significant, that, for the
first time in his life, the young man, to whom no one denied the gift of
rare courage, trembled. “_If you do not love her well, if you give her
the least pain, I will kill you_.” such was the sense of that brief
gaze. De Marsay was escorted, with a care almost obsequious, along the
dimly lit corridor, at the end of which he issued by a secret door into
the garden of the Hotel San-Real. The mulatto made him walk cautiously
through an avenue of lime trees, which led to a little gate opening upon
a street which was at that hour deserted. De Marsay took a keen notice
of everything. The carriage awaited him. This time the mulatto did not
accompany him, and at the moment when Henri put his head out of the
window to look once more at the gardens of the hotel, he encountered the
white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he exchanged a glance. On either side
there was a provocation, a challenge, the declaration of a savage
war, of a duel in which ordinary laws were invalid, where treason and
treachery were admitted means. Cristemio knew that Henri had sworn
Paquita’s death. Henri knew that Cristemio would like to kill him before
he killed Paquita. Both understood each other to perfection.

“The adventure is growing complicated in a most interesting way,” said
Henri.

“Where is the gentleman going to?” asked the coachman.

De Marsay was driven to the house of Paul de Manerville. For more than a
week Henri was away from home, and no one could discover either what he
did during this period, nor where he stayed. This retreat saved him from
the fury of the mulatto and caused the ruin of the charming creature who
had placed all her hope in him whom she loved as never human heart had
loved on this earth before. On the last day of the week, about eleven
o’clock at night, Henri drove up in a carriage to the little gate in the
garden of the Hotel San-Real. Four men accompanied him. The driver was
evidently one of his friends, for he stood up on his box, like a man who
was to listen, an attentive sentinel, for the least sound. One of the
other three took his stand outside the gate in the street; the second
waited in the garden, leaning against the wall; the last, who carried in
his hand a bunch of keys, accompanied De Marsay.

“Henri,” said his companion to him, “we are betrayed.”

“By whom, my good Ferragus?”

“They are not all asleep,” replied the chief of the Devourers; “it is
absolutely certain that some one in the house has neither eaten nor
drunk.... Look! see that light!”

“We have a plan of the house; from where does it come?”

“I need no plan to know,” replied Ferragus; “it comes from the room of
the Marquise.”

“Ah,” cried De Marsay, “no doubt she arrived from London to-day. The
woman has robbed me even of my revenge! But if she has anticipated me,
my good Gratien, we will give her up to the law.”

“Listen, listen!... The thing is settled,” said Ferragus to Henri.

The two friends listened intently, and heard some feeble cries which
might have aroused pity in the breast of a tiger.

“Your marquise did not think the sound would escape by the chimney,”
 said the chief of the Devourers, with the laugh of a critic, enchanted
to detect a fault in a work of merit.

“We alone, we know how to provide for every contingency,” said Henri.
“Wait for me. I want to see what is going on upstairs--I want to know
how their domestic quarrels are managed. By God! I believe she is
roasting her at a slow fire.”

De Marsay lightly scaled the stairs, with which he was familiar, and
recognized the passage leading to the boudoir. When he opened the door
he experienced the involuntary shudder which the sight of bloodshed
gives to the most determined of men. The spectacle which was offered to
his view was, moreover, in more than one respect astonishing to him.
The Marquise was a woman; she had calculated her vengeance with that
perfection of perfidy which distinguishes the weaker animals. She had
dissimulated her anger in order to assure herself of the crime before
she punished it.

“Too late, my beloved!” said Paquita, in her death agony, casting her
pale eyes upon De Marsay.

The girl of the golden eyes expired in a bath of blood. The great
illumination of candles, a delicate perfume which was perceptible,
a certain disorder, in which the eye of a man accustomed to amorous
adventures could not but discern the madness which is common to all
the passions, revealed how cunningly the Marquise had interrogated the
guilty one. The white room, where the blood showed so well, betrayed a
long struggle. The prints of Paquita’s hands were on the cushions. Here
she had clung to her life, here she had defended herself, here she
had been struck. Long strips of the tapestry had been torn down by her
bleeding hands, which, without a doubt, had struggled long. Paquita must
have tried to reach the window; her bare feet had left their imprints
on the edge of the divan, along which she must have run. Her body,
mutilated by the dagger-thrusts of her executioner, told of the fury
with which she had disputed a life which Henri had made precious to her.
She lay stretched on the floor, and in her death-throes had bitten the
ankles of Madame de San-Real, who still held in her hand her dagger,
dripping blood. The hair of the Marquise had been torn out, she was
covered with bites, many of which were bleeding, and her torn dress
revealed her in a state of semi-nudity, with the scratches on her
breasts. She was sublime so. Her head, eager and maddened, exhaled the
odor of blood. Her panting mouth was open, and her nostrils were not
sufficient for her breath. There are certain animals who fall upon their
enemy in their rage, do it to death, and seem in the tranquillity of
victory to have forgotten it. There are others who prowl around their
victim, who guard it in fear lest it should be taken away from them, and
who, like the Achilles of Homer, drag their enemy by the feet nine times
round the walls of Troy. The Marquise was like that. She did not see
Henri. In the first place, she was too secure of her solitude to be
afraid of witnesses; and, secondly, she was too intoxicated with warm
blood, too excited with the fray, too exalted, to take notice of the
whole of Paris, if Paris had formed a circle round her. A thunderbolt
would not have disturbed her. She had not even heard Paquita’s last
sigh, and believed that the dead girl could still hear her.

“Die without confessing!” she said. “Go down to hell, monster of
ingratitude; belong to no one but the fiend. For the blood you gave him
you owe me all your own! Die, die, suffer a thousand deaths! I have
been too kind--I was only a moment killing you. I should have made you
experience all the tortures that you have bequeathed to me. I--I shall
live! I shall live in misery. I have no one left to love but God!”

She gazed at her.

“She is dead!” she said to herself, after a pause, in a violent
reaction. “Dead! Oh, I shall die of grief!”

The Marquise was throwing herself upon the divan, stricken with a
despair which deprived her of speech, when this movement brought her in
view of Henri de Marsay.

“Who are you?” she asked, rushing at him with her dagger raised.

Henri caught her arm, and thus they could contemplate each other face
to face. A horrible surprise froze the blood in their veins, and their
limbs quivered like those of frightened horses. In effect, the two
Menoechmi had not been more alike. With one accord they uttered the same
phrase:

“Lord Dudley must have been your father!”

The head of each was drooped in affirmation.

“She was true to the blood,” said Henri, pointing to Paquita.

“She was as little guilty as it is possible to be,” replied Margarita
Euphemia Porraberil, and she threw herself upon the body of Paquita,
giving vent to a cry of despair. “Poor child! Oh, if I could bring thee
to life again! I was wrong--forgive me, Paquita! Dead! and I live! I--I
am the most unhappy.”

At that moment the horrible face of the mother of Paquita appeared.

“You are come to tell me that you never sold her to me to kill,” cried
the Marquise. “I know why you have left your lair. I will pay you twice
over. Hold your peace.”

She took a bag of gold from the ebony cabinet, and threw it
contemptuously at the old woman’s feet. The chink of the gold was potent
enough to excite a smile on the Georgian’s impassive face.

“I come at the right moment for you, my sister,” said Henri. “The law
will ask of you----”

“Nothing,” replied the Marquise. “One person alone might ask for a
reckoning for the death of this girl. Cristemio is dead.”

“And the mother,” said Henri, pointing to the old woman. “Will you not
always be in her power?”

“She comes from a country where women are not beings, but
things--chattels, with which one does as one wills, which one buys,
sells, and slays; in short, which one uses for one’s caprices as you,
here, use a piece of furniture. Besides, she has one passion which
dominates all the others, and which would have stifled her maternal
love, even if she had loved her daughter, a passion----”

“What?” Henri asked quickly, interrupting his sister.

“Play! God keep you from it,” answered the Marquise.

“But whom have you,” said Henri, looking at the girl of the golden eyes,
“who will help you to remove the traces of this fantasy which the law
would not overlook?”

“I have her mother,” replied the Marquise, designating the Georgian, to
whom she made a sign to remain.

“We shall meet again,” said Henri, who was thinking anxiously of his
friends and felt that it was time to leave.

“No, brother,” she said, “we shall not meet again. I am going back to
Spain to enter the Convent of _los Dolores_.”

“You are too young yet, too lovely,” said Henri, taking her in his arms
and giving her a kiss.

“Good-bye,” she said; “there is no consolation when you have lost that
which has seemed to you the infinite.”

A week later Paul de Manerville met De Marsay in the Tuileries, on the
Terrasse de Feuillants.

“Well, what has become of our beautiful girl of the golden eyes, you
rascal?”

“She is dead.”

“What of?”

“Consumption.”


PARIS, March 1834-April 1835.




ADDENDUM

  Note: The Girl with the Golden Eyes is the third part of a trilogy.
  Part one is entitled Ferragus and part two is The Duchesse de
  Langeais. In other addendum references all three stories are usually
  combined under the title The Thirteen.

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

     Bourignard, Gratien-Henri-Victor-Jean-Joseph
       Ferragus

     Dudley, Lord
       The Lily of the Valley
       A Man of Business
       Another Study of Woman
       A Daughter of Eve

     Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
       The Ball at Sceaux
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       A Marriage Settlement

     Marsay, Henri de
       Ferragus
       The Duchesse of Langeais
       The Unconscious Humorists
       Another Study of Woman
       The Lily of the Valley
       Father Goriot
       Jealousies of a Country Town
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Marriage Settlement
       Lost Illusions
       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
       Letters of Two Brides
       The Ball at Sceaux
       Modeste Mignon
       The Secrets of a Princess
       The Gondreville Mystery
       A Daughter of Eve

     Ronquerolles, Marquis de
       The Imaginary Mistress
       The Peasantry
       Ursule Mirouet
       A Woman of Thirty
       Another Study of Woman
       Ferragus
       The Duchesse of Langeais
       The Member for Arcis






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