Chapter 27

La Palferine started when he heard the name.

“You are to be madly in love with her, and, not to rouse suspicion, drink heavily, wines, liqueurs! I’ll tell Aurelie to place you beside Nathan at dinner. One thing more, my boy: you and I must meet every night, on the boulevard de la Madeleine at one in the morning,--you to give me an account of progress, I to give you instructions.”

“I shall be there, my master,” said the young count, bowing.

“Why do you make us dine with that queer fellow dressed like the head-waiter of a restaurant?” whispered Maxime to Madame Schontz, with a sign toward Fabien du Ronceret.

“Have you never met the Heir? Du Ronceret of Alencon.”

“Monsieur,” said Maxime to Fabien, “I think you must know my friend d’Esgrignon?”

“Victurnien has ceased to know me for some time,” replied Fabien, “but we used to be very intimate in our youth.”

The dinner was one of those which are given nowhere but in Paris by these great female spendthrifts, for the choiceness of their preparations often surprise the most fastidious of guests. It was at just such a supper, at the house of a courtesan as handsome and rich as Madame Schontz, that Paganini declared he had never eaten such fare at the table of any sovereign, nor drunk such wines with any prince, nor heard such witty conversation, nor seen the glitter of such coquettish luxury.

Maxime and Madame Schontz were the first to re-enter the salon, about ten o’clock, leaving the other guests, who had ceased to tell anecdotes and were now boasting of their various good qualities, with their viscous lips glued to the glasses which they could not drain.

“Well, my dear,” said Maxime, “you are not mistaken; yes, I have come for your _beaux yeux_ and for help in a great affair. You must leave Arthur; but I pledge myself to make him give you two hundred thousand francs.”

“Why should I leave the poor fellow?”

“To marry that idiot, who seems to have been sent from Alencon expressly for the purpose. He has been a judge, and I’ll have him made chief-justice in place of Emile Blondet’s father, who is getting to be eighty years old. Now, if you know how to sail your boat, your husband can be elected deputy. You will both be personages, and you can then look down on Madame la Comtesse du Bruel.”

“Never!” said Madame Schontz; “she’s a countess.”

“Hasn’t he condition enough to be made a count?”

“By the bye, he bears arms,” cried Aurelie, hunting for a letter in an elegant bag hanging at the corner of the fireplace, and giving it to Maxime. “What do they mean? Here are combs.”

“He bears: per fesse argent and azure; on the first, three combs gules, two and one, crossed by three bunches grapes purpure, leaved vert, one and two; on the second, four feathers or, placed fretwise, with _Servir_ for motto, and a squire’s helmet. It is not much; it seems they were ennobled under Louis XIV.; some mercer was doubtless their grandfather, and the maternal line must have made its money in wines; the du Ronceret whom the king ennobled was probably an usher. But if you get rid of Arthur and marry du Ronceret, I promise you he shall be a baron at the very least. But you see, my dear, you’ll have to soak yourself for five or six years in the provinces if you want to bury La Schontz in a baroness. That queer creature has been casting looks at you, the meaning of which is perfectly clear. You’ve got him.”

“No,” replied Aurelie, “when my hand was offered to him he remained, like the brandies I read of to-day in the market reports, _dull_.”

“I will undertake to decide him--if he is drunk. Go and see where they all are.”

“It is not worth while to go; I hear no one but Bixiou, who is making jokes to which nobody listens. But I know my Arthur; he feels bound to be polite, and he is probably looking at Bixiou with his eyes shut.”

“Let us go back, then.”

“_Ah ca!_” said Madame Schontz, suddenly stopping short, “in whose interest shall I be working?”

“In that of Madame de Rochefide,” replied Maxime, promptly. “It is impossible to reconcile her with Rochefide as long as you hold him. Her object is to recover her place as head of his household and the enjoyment of four hundred thousand francs a year.”

“And she offers me only two hundred thousand! I want three hundred thousand, since the affair concerns her. What! haven’t I taken care of her brat and her husband? I have filled her place in every way--and does she think to bargain with me? With that, my dear Maxime, I shall have a million; and if you’ll promise me the chief-justiceship at Alencon, I can hold my own as Madame du Ronceret.”

“That’s settled,” said Maxime.

“Oh! won’t it be dull to live in that little town!” cried Aurelie, philosophically. “I have heard so much of that province from d’Esgrignon and the Val-Noble that I seem to have lived there already.”

“Suppose I promise you the support of the nobility?”

“Ah! Maxime, you don’t mean that?--but the pigeon won’t fly.”

“And he is very ugly with his purple skin and bristles for whiskers; he looks like a wild boar with the eyes of a bird of prey. But he’ll make the finest chief-justice of a provincial court. Now don’t be uneasy! in ten minutes he shall be singing to you Isabelle’s air in the fourth act of Robert le Diable: ‘At thy feet I kneel’--you promise, don’t you? to send Arthur back to Beatrix?”

“It will be difficult; but perseverance wins.”

About half-past ten o’clock the guests returned to the salon for coffee. Under the circumstances in which Madame Schontz, Couture, and du Ronceret were placed, it is easy to imagine the effect produced upon the Heir by the following conversation which Maxime held with Couture in a corner and in a low voice, but so placed that Fabien could listen to them.

“My dear Couture, if you want to lead a steady life you had better accept a receiver-generalship which Madame de Rochefide will obtain for you. Aurelie’s million will furnish the security, and you’ll share the property in marrying her. You can be made deputy, if you know how to trim your sails; and the premium I want for thus saving you is your vote in the chamber.”

“I shall always be proud to be a follower of yours.”

“Ah! my dear fellow, you have had quite an escape. Just imagine! Aurelie took a fancy for that Norman from Alencon; she asked to have him made a baron, and chief-justice in his native town, and officer of the Legion of honor! The fool never guessed her value, and you will owe your fortune to her disappointment. You had better not leave that clever creature time for reflection. As for me, I am already putting the irons in the fire.”

And Maxime left Couture at the summit of happiness, saying to La Palferine, “Shall I drive you home, my boy?”

By eleven o’clock Aurelie was alone with Couture, Fabien, and Rochefide. Arthur was asleep on a sofa. Couture and Fabien each tried to outstay the other, without success; and Madame Schontz finally terminated the struggle by saying to Couture,--

“Good-night, I shall see you to-morrow.”

A dismissal which he took in good part.

“Mademoiselle,” said Fabien, in a low voice, “because you saw me thoughtful at the offer which you indirectly made to me, do not think there was the slightest hesitation on my part. But you do not know my mother; she would never consent to my happiness.”

“You have reached an age for respectful summons,” retorted Aurelie, insolently. “But if you are afraid of mamma you won’t do for me.”

“Josephine!” said the Heir, tenderly, passing his arm audaciously round Madame Schontz’ waist, “I thought you loved me!”

“Well?”

“Perhaps I could appease my mother, and obtain her consent.”

“How?”

“If you would employ your influence--”

“To have you made baron, officer of the Legion of honor, and chief-justice at Alencon,--is that it, my friend? Listen to me: I have done so many things in my life that I am capable of virtue. I can be an honest woman and a loyal wife; and I can push my husband very high. But I wish to be loved by him without one look or one thought being turned away from me. Does that suit you? Don’t bind yourself imprudently; it concerns your whole life, my little man.”

“With a woman like you I can do it blind,” cried Fabien, intoxicated by the glance she gave him as much as by the liqueurs des Iles.

“You shall never repent that word, my dear; you shall be peer of France. As for that poor old fellow,” she continued, looking at Rochefide, who was sound asleep, “after to-day I have d-o-n-e with him.”

Fabien caught Madame Schontz around the waist and kissed her with an impulse of fury and joy, in which the double intoxication of wine and love was secondary to ambition.

“Remember, my dear child,” she said, “the respect you ought to show to your wife; don’t play the lover; leave me free to retire from my mud-hole in a proper manner. Poor Couture, who thought himself sure of wealth and a receiver-generalship!”

“I have a horror of that man,” said Fabien; “I wish I might never see him again.”

“I will not receive him any more,” replied Madame Schontz, with a prudish little air. “Now that we have come to an understanding, my Fabien, you must go; it is one o’clock.”

This little scene gave birth in the household of Arthur and Aurelie (so completely happy until now) to a phase of domestic warfare produced in the bosom of all homes by some secret and alien interest in one of the partners. The next day when Arthur awoke he found Madame Schontz as frigid as that class of woman knows how to make herself.

“What happened last night?” he said, as he breakfasted, looking at Aurelie.

“What often happens in Paris,” she replied, “one goes to bed in damp weather and the next morning the pavements are dry and frozen so hard that they are dusty. Do you want a brush?”

“What’s the matter with you, dearest?”

“Go and find your great scarecrow of a wife!”

“My wife!” exclaimed the poor marquis.

“Don’t I know why you brought Maxime here? You mean to make up with Madame de Rochefide, who wants you perhaps for some indiscreet brat. And I, whom you call so clever, I advised you to give back her fortune! Oh! I see your scheme. At the end of five years Monsieur is tired of me. I’m getting fat, Beatrix is all bones--it will be a change for you! You are not the first I’ve known to like skeletons. Your Beatrix knows how to dress herself, that’s true; and you are man who likes figure-heads. Besides, you want to send Monsieur du Guenic to the right-about. It will be a triumph! You’ll cut quite an appearance in the world! How people will talk of it! Why! you’ll be a hero!”

Madame Schontz did not make an end of her sarcasms for two hours after mid-day, in spite of Arthur’s protestations. She then said she was invited out to dinner, and advised her “faithless one” to go without her to the Opera, for she herself was going to the Ambigu-Comique to meet Madame de la Baudraye, a charming woman, a friend of Lousteau. Arthur proposed, as proof of his eternal attachment to his little Aurelie and his detestation of his wife, to start the next day for Italy, and live as a married couple in Rome, Naples, Florence,--in short, wherever she liked, offering her a gift of sixty thousand francs.

“All that is nonsense,” she said. “It won’t prevent you from making up with your wife, and you’ll do a wise thing.”

Arthur and Aurelie parted on this formidable dialogue, he to play cards and dine at the club, she to dress and spend the evening _tete-a-tete_ with Fabien.

Monsieur de Rochefide found Maxime at the club, and complained to him like a man who feels that his happiness is being torn from his heart by the roots, every fibre of which clung to it. Maxime listened to his moans, as persons of social politeness are accustomed to listen, while thinking of other things.

“I’m a man of good counsel in such matters, my dear fellow,” he answered. “Well, let me tell you, you are on the wrong road in letting Aurelie see how dear she is to you. Allow me to present you to Madame Antonia. There’s a heart to let. You’ll soon see La Schontz with other eyes. She is thirty-seven years old, that Schontz of yours, and Madame Antonia is only twenty-six! And what a woman! I may say she is my pupil. If Madame Schontz persists in keeping on the hind heels of her pride, don’t you know what that means?”

“Faith, no!”

“That she wants to marry, and if that’s the case, nothing can hinder her from leaving you. After a lease of six years a woman has a right to do so. Now, if you will only listen to me, you can do a better thing for yourself. Your wife is to-day worth more than all the Schontzes and Antonias of the quartier Saint-Georges. I admit the conquest is difficult, but it is not impossible; and after all that has happened she will make you as happy as an Orgon. In any case, you mustn’t look like a fool; come and sup to-night with Antonia.”

“No, I love Aurelie too well; I won’t give her any reason to complain of me.”

“Ah! my dear fellow, what a future you are preparing for yourself!” cried Maxime.

“It is eleven o’clock; she must have returned from the Ambigu,” said Rochefide, leaving the club.

And he called out his coachman to drive at top speed to the rue de la Bruyere.

Madame Schontz had given precise directions; monsieur could enter as master with the fullest understanding of madame; but, warned by the noise of monsieur’s arrival, madame had so arranged that the sound of her dressing-door closing as women’s doors do close when they are surprised, was to reach monsieur’s ears. Then, at a corner of the piano, Fabien’s hat, forgotten intentionally, was removed very awkwardly by a maid the moment after monsieur had entered the room.

“Did you go to the Ambigu, my little girl?”

“No, I changed my mind, and stayed at home to play music.”

“Who came to see you?” asked the marquis, good-humoredly, seeing the hat carried off by the maid.

“No one.”

At that audacious falsehood Arthur bowed his head; he passed beneath the Caudine forks of submission. A real love descends at times to these sublime meannesses. Arthur behaved with Madame Schontz as Sabine with Calyste, and Calyste with Beatrix.

Within a week the transition from larva to butterfly took place in the young, handsome, and clever Charles-Edouard, Comte Rusticoli de la Palferine. Until this moment of his life he had lived miserably, covering his deficits with an audacity equal to that of Danton. But he now paid his debts; he now, by advice of Maxime, had a little carriage; he was admitted to the Jockey Club and to the club of the rue de Gramont; he became supremely elegant, and he published in the “Journal des Debats” a novelette which won him in a few days a reputation which authors by profession obtain after years of toil and successes only; for there is nothing so usurping in Paris as that which ought to be ephemeral. Nathan, very certain that the count would never publish anything else, lauded the graceful and presuming young man so highly to Beatrix that she, spurred by the praise of the poet, expressed a strong desire to see this king of the vagabonds of good society.

“He will be all the more delighted to come here,” replied Nathan, “because, as I happen to know, he has fallen in love with you to the point of committing all sorts of follies.”

“But I am told he has already committed them.”

“No, not all; he has not yet committed that of falling in love with a virtuous woman.”

Some ten days after the scheme plotted on the boulevard between Maxime and his henchman, the seductive Charles-Edouard, the latter, to whom Nature had given, no doubt sarcastically, a face of charming melancholy, made his first irruption into the nest of the dove of the rue de Chartres, who took for his reception an evening when Calyste was obliged to go to a party with his wife.

If you should ever meet La Palferine you will understand perfectly the success obtained in a single evening by that sparkling mind, that animated fancy, especially if you take into consideration the admirable adroitness of the showman who consented to superintend this debut. Nathan was a good comrade, and he made the young count shine, as a jeweller showing off an ornament in hopes to sell it, makes the diamonds glitter. La Palferine was, discreetly, the first to withdraw; he left Nathan and the marquise together, relying on the collaboration of the celebrated author, which was admirable. Seeing that Beatrix was quite astounded, Raoul put fire into her heart by pretended reticences which stirred the fibres of a curiosity she did not know she possessed. Nathan hinted that La Palferine’s wit was not so much the cause of his success with women as his superiority in the art of love; a statement which magnified the count immensely.

This is the place to record a new effect of that great law of contraries, which produces so many crises in the human heart and accounts for such varied eccentricities that we are forced to remember it sometimes as well as its counterpart, the law of similitudes. All courtesans preserve in the depths of their heart a perennial desire to recover their liberty; to this they would sacrifice everything. They feel this antithetical need with such intensity that it is rare to meet with one of these women who has not aspired several times to a return to virtue through love. They are not discouraged by the most cruel deceptions. On the other hand, women restrained by their education, by the station they occupy, chained by the rank of their families, living in the midst of opulence, and wearing a halo of virtue, are drawn at times, secretly be it understood, toward the tropical regions of love. These two natures of woman, so opposed to each other, have at the bottom of their hearts, the one that faint desire for virtue, the other that faint desire for libertinism which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first to have the courage to diagnose. In one, it is a last reflexion of the ray divine that is not extinct; in the other, it is the last remains of our primitive clay.

This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled by Nathan with extreme cleverness. The marquise began to ask herself seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her head, and whether her education was complete. Vice--what is it? Possibly only the desire to know everything.

XXVI. DISILLUSIONS--IN ALL BUT LA FONTAINE’S FABLES

The next day Calyste seemed to Beatrix just what he was: a perfect and loyal gentleman without imagination or cleverness. In Paris, a man called clever must have spontaneous brilliancy, as the fountains have water; men of the world and Parisians in general are in that way very clever. But Calyste loved too deeply, he was too much absorbed in his own sentiments to perceive the change in Beatrix, and to satisfy her need by displaying new resources. To her, he seemed pale indeed, after the brilliancy of the night before, and he caused not the faintest emotion to the hungry Beatrix. A great love is a credit opened to a power so voracious that bankruptcy is sure to come sooner or later.

In spite of the fatigue of this day (the day when a woman is bored by a lover) Beatrix trembled with fear at the thought of a possible meeting between La Palferine and Calyste, a man of courage without assertion. She hesitated to see the count again; but the knot of her hesitation was cut by a decisive event.

Beatrix had taken the third of a box at the Opera, obscurely situated on the lower tier for the purpose of not being much in sight. For the last few days Calyste, grown bolder, had escorted the marquise to her box, placing himself behind her, and timing their arrival at a late hour so as to meet no one in the corridors. Beatrix, on these occasions, left the box alone before the end of the last act, and Calyste followed at a distance to watch over her, although old Antoine was always there to attend his mistress. Maxime and La Palferine had studied this strategy, which was prompted by respect for the proprieties, also by that desire for concealment which characterizes the idolators of the little god, and also, again, by the fear which oppresses all women who have been constellations in the world and whom love has caused to fall from their zodiacal eminence. Public humiliation is dreaded as an agony more cruel than death itself. But, by a manoeuvre of Maxime’s, that blow to her pride, that outrage which women secure of their rank in Olympus cast upon others who have fallen from their midst, was now to descend on Beatrix.

At a performance of “Lucia,” which ends, as every one knows, with one of the finest triumphs of Rubini, Madame de Rochefide, whom Antoine had not yet come to fetch, reached the peristyle of the opera-house by the lower corridor just as the staircase was crowded by fashionable women ranged on the stairs or standing in groups below it, awaiting the announcement of their carriages. Beatrix was instantly recognized; whispers which soon became a murmur arose in every group. In a moment the crowd dispersed; the marquise was left alone like a leper. Calyste dared not, seeing his wife on the staircase, advance to accompany her, though twice she vainly cast him a tearful glance, a prayer, that he would come to her. At that moment, La Palferine, elegant, superb, charming, left two ladies with whom he had been talking, and came down to the marquise.

“Take my arm,” he said, bowing, “and walk proudly out. I will find your carriage.”

“Will you come home with me and finish the evening?” she answered, getting into her carriage and making room for him.

La Palferine said to his groom, “Follow the carriage of madame,” and then he jumped into it beside her to the utter stupefaction of Calyste, who stood for a moment planted on his two legs as if they were lead. It was the sight of him standing thus, pale and livid, that caused Beatrix to make the sign to La Palferine to enter her carriage. Doves can be Robespierres in spite of their white wings. Three carriages reached the rue de Chartres with thundering rapidity,--that of Calyste, that of the marquise, and that of La Palferine.

“Oh! you here?” said Beatrix, entering her salon on the arm of the young count, and finding Calyste, whose horse had outstripped those of the other carriages.

“Then you know monsieur?” said Calyste, furiously.

“Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was presented to me ten days ago by Nathan,” she replied; “but you, monsieur, _you_ have known me four years!--”

“And I am ready, madame,” said Charles-Edouard, “to make the Marquise d’Espard repent to her third generation for being the first to turn away from you.”

“Ah! it was _she_, was it?” cried Beatrix; “I will make her rue it.”

“To revenge yourself thoroughly,” said the young man in her ear, “you ought to recover your husband; and I am capable of bringing him back to you.”

The conversation, thus begun, went on till two in the morning, without allowing Calyste, whose anger was again and again repressed by a look from Beatrix, to say one word to her in private. La Palferine, though he did not like Beatrix, showed a superiority of grace, good taste, and cleverness equal to the evident inferiority of Calyste, who wriggled in his chair like a worm cut in two, and actually rose three times as if to box the ears of La Palferine. The third time that he made a dart forward, the young count said to him, “Are you in pain, monsieur?” in a manner which sent Calyste back to his chair, where he sat as rigid as a mile-stone.

The marquise conversed with the ease of a Celimene, pretending to ignore that Calyste was there. La Palferine had the cleverness to depart after a brilliant witticism, leaving the two lovers to a quarrel.