Title: The Thirteen
Author: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850
Language: English
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                             THE THIRTEEN

                                  BY

                           HONORE DE BALZAC



                             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



                             THE THIRTEEN



                           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

                                  BY

                           HONORE DE BALZAC



                            Translated by
                     Katharine Prescott Wormeley



                              DEDICATION

                          To Hector Berlioz.

                              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

                                 BY

                          HONORE DE BALZAC



                           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

                                 BY

                          HONORE DE BALZAC



                           Translated by
                           Ellen Marriage



                             DEDICATION

                    To Eugene Delacroix, Painter.



                   THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN EYES



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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