Chapter 4

"It was a case of robbers, anyhow, then," said Renée.

"One might write a play on the subject," put in Denoisel, "and it would be quite a new plot--the reduction of a bill leading to a marriage. What a good title, too, 'The Romance of an Awkward Moment, _à la_ Rabelais!'"

"Mme. de Bonnières is a very nice woman," continued Mme. Mauperin. "I like her face. Do you know her, M. Barousse?" she asked, turning to Renée's godfather.

"Yes, she is very pleasant."

"Oh! why, god-papa, she's like a satyr!" exclaimed Renée.

When the word was out some of the guests smiled, and the young girl, turning red, hastened to add: "I only mean she has a face like one."

"That's what I call mending matters!" said Denoisel.

"Did you stay long in Italy, monsieur?" asked M. Mauperin, by way of changing the subject.

"Six months."

"And what did you think of it?"

"It's very interesting, but one has so much discomfort there. I never could get used to drinking coffee out of glasses."

"Italy is the most wretched place to go to; it is the least practical of all places," said Henri Mauperin. "What a state agriculture is in there--and trade, too! One day in Florence at a masked ball I asked the waiter at a restaurant if they would be open all night. 'Oh, no, sir,' he said, 'we should have too many people here.' That's a fact, I heard it myself, and that shows you what the country is. When one thinks of England, of that wonderful initiative power of individuals and of the whole nation, too; when one has seen the business genius of the London citizen and the produce of a Yorkshire farm--Oh, a fine nation that!"

"I agree with Henri," said Mme. Davarande, "there is something so distinguished about England. I like the politeness of the English people, and I approve of their way of always introducing people. Then, too, they wrap your change up in paper--and some of their dress materials have quite a style of their own. My husband bought me a poplin dress at the Exposition--Oh, mamma, I have quite decided about my cloak. I was at Alberic's--it's most amusing. He lets one of the girls put a cloak over your shoulders and then he walks round you and just marks with an ebony ruler the places where it does not fit; he scarcely touches you with it, but just gives little taps--like that--and the girl marks each tap with chalk. Oh, he certainly has a lot of character, that Alberic! And then he's the only one--there isn't another place--he has such good style for cloaks. I recognised two of his yesterday at the races. He is very expensive though."

"Oh, those people get what they like to ask," said Reverchon. "My tailor, Edouard, has just retired--he's made over a hundred thousand pounds."

"Oh, well, quite right," remarked M. Barousse. "I'm always very glad when I see things like that. The workers get the money nowadays--that's just what it is. It's the greatest revolution since the beginning of the world."

"Yes," said Denoisel, "a revolution that makes one think of the words of Chapon, the celebrated thief: 'Robbery, Monsieur le Président, is the principal trade of the world!'"

"Were the races good?" asked Renée.

"Well, there were plenty of people," answered Mme. Davarande.

"Very good, mademoiselle," said Reverchon. "The Diana prize especially was very well run. Plume de coq, that they reckoned at thirty-five, was beaten by Basilicate by two lengths. It was very exciting. The hacks was a very good race, too, although the ground was rather hard."

"Who is the Russian lady who drives four-in-hand, M. Reverchon?" asked Mme. Davarande.

"Mme. de Rissleff. She has some splendid horses, some thoroughbred Orloffs."

"You ought to join the Jockey Club, Jules, for the races," said Mme. Davarande, turning to her husband. "I think it is so common to be with everybody. Really if one has any respect for one's self--a woman I mean--there is no place but the jockey stand."

"Ah, a mushroom patty!" exclaimed M. Barousse. "Your cook is surpassing herself, she really is a veritable _cordon-bleu_. I shall have to pay her my compliments before leaving."

"I thought you never eat that dish," said Mme. Mauperin.

"I did not eat it in 1848--and I did not eat it up to the second of December. Do you think the police had time then to inspect mushrooms? But now that there is order again."

"Henriette," said Mme. Mauperin to Mme. Davarande, "I must scold your husband. He neglects us. We have not seen you for three weeks, M. Davarande."

"Oh, my dear mother, if you only knew all I have had to do! You know I am on very good terms with Georges. His father has his time taken up at the Chamber and the business falls on Georges as principal. There are hundreds of things that he can only trust to people in whom he has confidence--friends, in fact. There was that big affair--that _début_ at the Opéra. There was no end of interviews and parleyings and journeys backward and forward. It would not have done to have had any strife between the two ministries. Oh, we have been very busy lately. He is so considerate that I could not----"

"So considerate?" put in Denoisel. "He might pay your cab-fares at least. It's more than two years since he promised you a sub-prefectship."

"My dear Denoisel, it's more difficult than you imagine. And then, too, when one does not care about going too far from Paris. Besides, between ourselves, I can tell you that it's almost arranged. In about a month from now I have every reason to believe----"

"What _début_ were you speaking of?" asked Barousse.

"Bradizzi's," answered Davarande.

"Ah, Bradizzi! Isn't she astounding!" said Reverchon. "She has some runs that are wonderfully light. The other day I was in the manager's box on the stage and we couldn't hear her touch the ground when she was dancing."

"We expected to see you yesterday evening, Henri," said Mme. Davarande to her brother.

"Yesterday I was at my lecture," he answered.

"Henri has been appointed reporter," said Mme. Mauperin proudly.

"Ah," put in Denoisel, "the d'Aguesseau lecture? That's still going on then, your speechifying affair? How many are there in it?"

"Two hundred."

"And all statesmen? It's quite alarming. What were you to report on?"

"A law that was proposed with reference to the National Guard."

"You go in for everything," said Denoisel.

"I am sure you do not belong to the National Guard, Denoisel?" observed M. Barousse.

"No, indeed!"

"And yet it is an institution."

"The drums affirm that it is that, M. Barousse."

"And you do not vote either, I would wager?"

"I would not vote under any pretext."

"Denoisel, I am sorry to say so, but you are a bad citizen. You were born as you are, I am not blaming you, but the fact remains----"

"A bad citizen--what do you mean?"

"Well, you are always in opposition to the laws."

"I am?"

"Yes, you are. Without going any farther back, take for instance the money you came into from your Uncle Frédéric. You handed it over to his illegitimate children----"

"What of that?"

"Well, that is what I call an illegal action, most deplorable and blameworthy. What does the law mean? It is quite clear--the law means that children not born in wedlock should not be able to inherit their father's money. You were not ignorant of this, for I told you that it was so; your lawyer told you and the code told you. What did you do? Why, you let the children have the money. You ignored the code, the spirit of the law, everything. To give up your uncle's fortune in that way, Denoisel, was rendering homage to low morals. It was simply encouraging----"

"I know your principles in the matter, M. Barousse. But what was I to do? When I saw those three poor lads I said to myself that I should never enjoy the cigars I smoked with their bread-money. No one is perfect----"

"All that is not law. When there is a law there is some reason for it, is there not? The law is against immorality. Suppose others imitated you----"

"You need not fear that, Barousse," said M. Mauperin, smiling.

"We ought never to set a bad example," answered Barousse, sententiously. "Do not misunderstand me," he continued, turning to Denoisel. "I do not respect you any the less for it, on the contrary, I appreciate your disinterestedness, but as to saying that you were right--no, I cannot say that. It's the same with your way of living--that is not as it should be. You ought to have your time occupied--hang it all! You ought to do something, go in for something, take up some work, pay your debt to your country. If you had begun in good time, with your intelligence, you would perhaps have had a post bringing you in a thousand or more----"

"I have had a better thing than that offered me, M. Barousse."

"More money?" asked Barousse.

"More money," answered Denoisel tranquilly.

Barousse looked at him in astonishment.

"Seriously," continued Denoisel, "I had the most brilliant prospects--just for five minutes. It was on the twenty-fourth of February, 1848. I did not know what to do with myself, for when one has done the Tuileries in the morning it rather unsettles one for the rest of the day. It occurred to me that I would go and call on one of my friends who has a Government appointment--a Government appointment, you know, on the other side of the water. I arrived, and there was no one there. I went upstairs into the minister's office where my friend worked--no friend there. I lighted a cigarette, intending to wait for him. A gentleman came in while I was smoking, and seeing me seated, imagined I belonged to the place. He had no hat on, so that I thought he also did. He asked me very politely to show him the way about the house. I took him round and then we came back. He gave me something to write down, just telling me the sense of it. I took my friend's pen and wrote. He then read it and was delighted. We talked; he admired my orthography. He shook hands with me and found I had gloves on. To cut it short, at the end of a quarter of an hour he was pressing me to be his secretary. It was the new minister."

"And you did not accept?"

"My friend arrived and I accepted for him. He is at present quite a high functionary in the Council of State. It was lucky for him to be supernumerary only half a day."

They were having dessert, and M. Mauperin had pulled one of the dishes nearer and was just helping himself in an absent-minded way.

"M. Mauperin!" exclaimed his wife, looking steadily at him.

"I beg pardon, my dear--symmetry--you are quite right. I wasn't thinking," and he pushed the dish back to its place.

"You always do disarrange things----"

"I'm sorry, my dear, I'm very sorry. My wife is an excellent woman, you know, gentlemen, but if you disarrange her symmetry for her--It's quite a religion with my wife--symmetry is."

"How ridiculous you are, M. Mauperin!" said Mme. Mauperin, blushing at being convicted of the most flagrant provincialism; and then, turning upon her daughter, she exclaimed, "Oh, dear, Renée, how you stoop! Do sit up, my child----"

"That's always the way," murmured the young girl, speaking to herself. "Mamma avenges herself on me."

"Gentlemen," said M. Mauperin, when they had returned to the drawing-room, "you can smoke here, you know. We owe that liberty to my son. He has been lucky enough to obtain his mother's----"

"Coffee, god-papa?" asked Renée.

"No," answered M. Barousse, "I shouldn't be able to go to sleep----"

"Here," put in Renée, finishing his sentence for him.

"M. Reverchon?"

"I never take it, thank you very much."

She went backward and forward, the steam from the cup of hot coffee she was carrying rising to her face and flushing it.

"Is every one served?" she asked, and without waiting for any reply she sat down to the piano and struck the first notes of a polka.

"Are we going to dance?" she asked, breaking off. "Let us dance--oh, do let us dance!"

"Let us smoke in peace!" said M. Mauperin.

"Yes, daddy," and going on with her polka she danced it herself on her music-stool, only touching the floor with her tip-toes. She played without looking at her notes, her face turned towards the drawing-room, smiling and animated, her eyes lighted up and her cheeks flushed with the excitement of the dance; like a little girl playing dance music for other people and moving about herself as she watches them. She swung her shoulders, her form swayed as though she were being guided along, while her whole body marked the rhythm and her attitude seemed to indicate the step she was dancing. Then she turned towards the piano again and her eyes followed her hands over the black and white keys. Bending over the music she was playing, she seemed to be striking the notes, then caressing them, speaking to them, scolding them or smiling on them, and then lulling them to sleep. She would sustain the loud parts, then linger over the melody; there were movements that she would play with tenderness and others with little bursts of passion. She bent over the piano, then rose again, the light playing on the top of her tortoise-shell comb one moment, while the next moment it could scarcely be seen in her black hair. The two candles on the piano flickered to the noise, throwing a light over her profile or sending their flame over her forehead, her cheeks, and her chin. The shadow from her ear-rings--two coral balls--trembled all the time on the delicate skin of her throat, and her fingers ran so quickly over the keyboard that one could only see something pink flying backward and forward.

"And it's her own composition," said M. Mauperin to Reverchon.

"She has had lessons from Quidant," added Mme. Mauperin.

"There--I've finished!" exclaimed Renée, suddenly leaving the piano and planting herself in front of Denoisel. "Tell me a story now, Denoisel, to amuse me--anything you like."

She was standing before him, her arms crossed and her head slightly thrown back, the weight of her body supported on one leg, and a mischievous, daring look on her face which lent additional grace to her slightly masculine dress. She was wearing a high collar of piqué with a cravat of black ribbon, and the revers of her white front turned back over her jacket bodice of cloth. There were pockets on the front of her skirt.

"When shall you cut your wisdom teeth, Renée?" asked Denoisel.

"Never!" she answered, laughing. "Well, what about my story?"

Denoisel looked round to see that no one was listening, and then lowering his voice began:

"Once upon a time a papa and a mamma had a little daughter. The papa and mamma wished her to marry, and they sent for some very nice-looking gentlemen; but the little daughter, who was very nice-looking, too----"

"Oh, how stupid you are!--I'll get my work, there--" and taking her work out of a basket on the table she went and sat down by her mother.

"Are we not going to have any whist to-night?" asked M. Mauperin.

"Yes, of course, my dear," answered Mme. Mauperin. "The table is ready--you see there are only the candles to light."

"Going, going, gone!" called out Denoisel in M. Barousse's ear.

The old gentleman was just beginning to doze in a corner by the chimney-piece and his head was nodding like a passenger's in a stage-coach. M. Barousse started up and Denoisel handed him a card:

"The King of Spades! _before the letter!_ You are wanted at whist."

"You are not over-tired this evening, mademoiselle?" asked Reverchon, approaching Renée.

"I? I could dance all night. That's how I feel."

"You are making something--very pretty----"

"This?--oh, yes, very pretty! It is a stocking--I am knitting for my little poor children. It's warm, that's all it is. I am not very clever with my needle, you know. With embroidery and wool-work you have to think about what you are doing, but with this, you see, your fingers go; it just makes itself when once you start, and you can think about anything--the Grand Turk if you like----"

"I say, Renée," observed M. Mauperin, "it's odd; it's no good my losing, I can't catch up again."

"Oh, that's clever--I shall remember that for my collection," answered Renée. "Denoisel, come here," she called out, suddenly, "come here a minute--nearer--nearer still. Will you come here at once--there now--kneel down----"

"Are you mad, child?" exclaimed Mme. Mauperin.

"Renée," said Denoisel, "I believe you have made up your mind to prevent my getting married."

"Come, come, Renée!" said M. Mauperin paternally from the card-table.

"Well--what is it?" asked Renée threatening Denoisel playfully with a pair of scissors. "Now if you move! Denoisel's head always looks untidy--his hair is badly cut--he always has a great, ugly lock that falls over his forehead. It makes people squint when they look at him. I want to cut that lock. There--he's afraid. Why, I cut hair very well--you ask papa," and forthwith she gave two or three clips with her scissors, and then crossing over to the fireplace, shook the hair into the grate. "If you fancy it was for the sake of getting a lock of your hair--" she said, turning round as she spoke.

She had paid no attention to the nudge her brother had given her as she passed. Her mother, who an instant before was perfectly crimson, was now pale, but Renée had not noticed that. Her father left the whist-table and came across to her with an embarrassed expression, looking as though he were vexed with her. She took the cigarette which he had lighted from him, put it between her own lips, and drawing a puff of smoke, blew it away again quickly, turning her head away, coughing and blinking. "Ugh!--how horrid it is!"

"Well, really, Renée!" exclaimed Mme. Mauperin severely, and evidently in great distress, "I really don't know--I have never seen you like this----"

"Bring the tea in," said M. Mauperin to a servant who had entered in answer to his peal at the bell.

IV

"A quarter past ten already!" said Mme. Davarande. "We shall only just have time to get to the station. Renée, tell them to bring me my hat."

Every one rose. Barousse woke up from his nap with the noise, and the little band of guests from Paris set out for Saint-Denis.

"I'll come with you," said Denoisel. "I should like a breath of air."

Barousse was in front, arm-in-arm with Reverchon. The Davarandes followed, and Henri Mauperin and Denoisel brought up the rear.

"Why don't you stay all night? You could go back to Paris to-morrow," Denoisel began.

"No," answered Henri, "I won't do that. I have some work to do to-morrow morning. I should get to Paris late and my day would be wasted."

They were silent, and every now and then a few words from Barousse to Reverchon in praise of Renée came to them through the silence of the night.

"I say, Denoisel, I'm afraid it is all up with that, don't you think so?"

"Yes, I think it is."

"Oh, dear! Will you tell me, my dear fellow, what made you humour Renée in all the nonsense that came into her head this evening? You have a great deal of influence over her and----"

"My dear boy," answered Denoisel, puffing at his cigar, "you must let me give you a social, philosophical, and historical parenthesis. We have quite finished, have we not, and when I say we, I mean the majority of the French people, with the pretty little young ladies who used to talk like mechanical dolls. They could say 'papa' and 'mamma,' and when they went to a dance they never lost sight of their parents. The little childlike young lady who was always so timid and bashful and who used to blush and stammer, brought up to be ignorant of everything, neither knowing how to stand up on her legs nor how to sit down on a chair--all that sort of thing's done with, old-fashioned, worn out. That was the marriageable young lady of the days of the Gymnase Theatre. There is nothing of that kind nowadays. The process of culture has changed; it used to be a case of the fruit-wall, but at present the young person grows in the open. We ask a girl now about her impressions and we expect her to say what she thinks naturally and originally. She is allowed to talk, and indeed is expected to talk, about everything, as that is the accepted thing now. She need no longer act sweet simplicity, but native intelligence. If only she can shine in society her parents are delighted. Her mother takes her to classes. If she should have any talent it is encouraged and cultivated. Instead of ordinary governesses she must have good masters, professors from the Conservatoire, or artists whose pictures have been hung. She goes in for being an artist and every one is delighted. Come, now, isn't that the way girls are being educated now in middle-class society?'

"And the result?"

"Now, then," continued Denoisel without answering the question, "in the midst of this education, which I am not criticising, remember--in the midst of all this, let us imagine a father who is an excellent sort of man, goodness and kindness personified, encouraging his daughter in her new freedom by his weakness and his worship of her. Let us suppose, for instance, that this father has countenanced all the daring and all the mischievousness of a boy in a woman, that he has allowed his daughter little by little to cultivate manly accomplishments, which he sees with pride and which are after his own heart----"

"And you, my dear fellow, who know my sister so well and the way she has been brought up, the style she has gone in for, authorized as she considers herself (thanks to father's indulgence), you, knowing how difficult it is to get her married, allowed her to do all kinds of unseemly things this evening when you might have stopped her short with just a few words such as you always find to say and which you alone can say to her?"

* * * * *

The friend to whom Henri Mauperin was speaking, Denoisel, was the son of a compatriot, and old school friend and brother-in-arms of M. Mauperin. The two men had been in the same battles, they had shed their blood in the same places, and during the retreat from Russia they had eaten the same horse-flesh.

A year after his return to France, M. Mauperin had lost this friend, who on his death-bed had left him guardian to his son. The boy had found a second father in his guardian. When at college, he had spent all his holidays at Morimond, and he looked upon the Mauperins as his own family.

When M. Mauperin's children came it seemed to the young man that a brother and sister had been just what he had wanted; he felt as though he were their elder brother, and he became a child again in order to be one with them.

His favourite was, of course, Renée, who when quite little began to adore him. She was very lively and self-willed and he alone could make her listen to reason and obey. As she grew up he had been the moulder of her character, the confessor of her intellect, and the director of her tastes. His influence over the young girl had increased day by day as they grew more and more familiar. A room was always kept ready for Denoisel in the house, his place was always kept for him at table, and he came whenever he liked to spend a week with the Mauperins.

* * * * *

"There are days," continued Henri, "when Renée's nonsense does not matter, but this evening--before that man. It will be all off with that marriage, I'm sure! It would have been an excellent match--he has such good prospects. He's just the man in every respect--charming, too, and distinguished."