Chapter 2
I. THE COMTE DE L’ESTORADE TO MONSIEUR MARIE-GASTON
[See “The Memoirs of Two Young Married Women.”]
Dear Monsieur,--In accordance with your desire I have seen the prefect of police, in order to ascertain if the pious intention of which you wrote me in your letter, dated from Carrara, would meet with opposition from the authorities.
The prefect informed me that the imperial decree of the 23rd Prairial, year XII., by which the whole system of burials is still regulated, establishes, in the most unequivocal manner, the right of all persons to be interred on their own property. You have only to obtain a permit from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise, and then, without further formality, you can remove the remains of Madame Marie-Gaston to the mausoleum you propose to erect in your park at Ville d’Avray.
But I shall venture myself to offer an objection. Are you quite sure that you will not expose yourself to certain difficulties made by the Chaulieus, with whom you are not on the best of terms?
Will they not, to a certain extent, be justified in complaining that the removal from a public cemetery to private grounds of the body of one who is dear to them as well as to you, would make their visits to her grave entirely dependent on your good will and pleasure? For of course, and this is evident, you will always have the right to forbid their entrance to your property.
I know that, legally, the body of the wife, living or dead, belongs to the husband, to the exclusion of her relations, even the nearest; but, under the influence of the ill-will of which they have already given you proof, the relations of Madame Marie-Gaston might have the distressing idea of carrying the matter into court, and if so, how painful to you! You would gain the suit, no doubt, for the Duc de Chaulieu’s influence is not what it was under the Restoration; but have you reflected on the venom which the speech of a lawyer might shed upon such a question? and remember that he will speak as the echo of honorable affections--those of a father, mother, and two brothers asking not to be deprived of the sad happiness of praying at the grave of their lost one.
If you will let me express my thought, it is not without keen regret that I see you engaged in creating fresh nourishment for your grief, already so long inconsolable. We had hoped that, after passing two years in Italy, you would return to us more resigned, and able to take up an active life which might distract your mind. Evidently, this species of temple which you propose, in the fervor of your recollections, to erect in a spot where they are, alas! already too numerous, can only serve to perpetuate their bitterness; and I cannot approve the revival you are proposing to make of them.
Nevertheless, as we should always serve a friend according to his wishes, not our own, I have done your commission relating to Monsieur Dorlange, the sculptor, but I must tell you frankly that he showed no eagerness to enter into your wishes. His first remark, when I announced myself as coming from you, was that he did not know you; and this reply, singular as it may seem to you, was made so naturally that at first I thought there must be some mistake, the result, possibly, of confusion of name. However, before long your oblivious friend was willing to agree that he studied with you at the college of Tours and also that hew as the same Monsieur Dorlange who, in 1831 and under quite exceptional circumstances, carried off the grand prize for sculpture. No doubt remained in my mind as to his identity. I attributed his want of memory to the long interruption (of which you yourself told me) in your intercourse. I think that that interruption wounded him more than you are aware, and when he seemed to have forgotten your very name, it was simply a revenge he could not help taking when the occasion offered.
But that was not the real obstacle. Remembering the fraternal intimacy that once existed between Monsieur Dorlange and yourself, I could not suppose his wounded feelings inexorable. So, after explaining to him the nature of the work you wanted him to do, I was about to say a few words as to the grievance he might have against you, when I suddenly found myself face to face with an obstacle of a most unexpected nature.
“Monsieur,” he said to me, “the importance of the order you wish to give me, the assurance that no expense should be spared for the grandeur and perfection of the work, the invitation you convey to me to go to Carrara and choose the marble and see it excavated, all that is truly a great piece of good fortune for an artist, and at any other time I should gladly have accepted it. But at the present moment, without having actually decided to abandon the career of Art, I am on the point of entering that of politics. My friends urge me to present myself at the coming elections, and you will easily see that, if elected, my parliamentary duties and my initiation into an absolutely new life would, for a long time at least, preclude my entering with sufficient absorption of mind into the work you propose to me.” And then, after a pause, he added; “I should have to satisfy a great grief which seeks consolation from this projected mausoleum. Such grief would, naturally, be impatient; whereas I should be slow, preoccupied in mind, and probably hindered. It is therefore better that the proposal should be made elsewhere; but this will not prevent me from feeling, as I ought, both gratified and honored by the confidence shown in me.”
I thought for a moment of asking him whether, in case his election failed, I could then renew the proposal, but on the whole I contented myself with expressing regret and saying that I would inform you of the result of my mission. It is useless to add that I shall know in a few days the upshot of this sudden parliamentary ambition which has, so inopportunely, started up in your way.
I think myself that this candidacy may be only a blind. Had you not better write yourself to Monsieur Dorlange? for his whole manner, though perfectly polite and proper, seemed to show a keen remembrance of the wrong you did him in renouncing his friendship, with that of your other friends, at the time of your marriage. I know it may cost you some pain to explain the really exceptional circumstances of your marriage; but after what I have seen in the mind of your old friend, I think, if you really wish for the assistance of his great talent, you should personally take some steps to obtain it.
But if you feel that any such action is more than you have strength for, I suggest another means. In all matters in which my wife has taken part I have found her a most able negotiator; and in this particular case I should feel the utmost confidence in her intervention. She herself suffered from the exclusiveness of Madame Marie-Gaston’s love for you. No one can explain to him better than she the absorbing conjugal life which drew its folds so closely around you. And it seems to me that the magnanimity and comprehension which she always showed to her “dear lost treasure,” as she calls her, might be conveyed by her to your friend.
You have plenty of time to think over this suggestion, for Madame de l’Estorade is, just now, still suffering from a serious illness, brought on by maternal terror. A week ago our little Nais came near being crushed to death before her eyes; and without the courageous assistance of a stranger who sprang to the horses’ heads and stopped them short, God knows what dreadful misfortune would have overtaken us. This cruel emotion produced in Madame de l’Estorade a nervous condition which seriously alarmed us for a time. Though she is now much better, it will be several days before she could see Monsieur Dorlange in case her feminine mediation may seem to you desirable.
But once more, in closing, my dear Monsieur Gaston, would it not be better to abandon your idea? A vast expense, a painful quarrel with the Chaulieus, and, for you, a renewal of your bitter sorrow--this is what I fear. Nevertheless, I am, at all times and for all things, entirely at your orders, as indeed my sentiments of esteem and gratitude command.
II. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, February, 1839.
Dear Madame de Camps,--Of all the proofs of sympathy which the accident to my dear child has brought me, not one has touched me so much as your excellent letter.
In reply to your affectionate solicitude I must tell you that in that terrible moment Nais was marvellously calm and self-possessed. It could not, I think, be possible to see death nearer; yet neither before nor after the accident did my valiant little daughter even blench; her whole behavior showed the utmost resolution, and, thank God! her health has not suffered for a moment.
As for me, in consequence of such terror, I was seized with convulsive spasms, and for several days, as I now hear, the doctors were very uneasy, and even feared for my reason. But thanks to the strength of my constitution, I am now almost myself again, and nothing would remain of this cruel agitation if, by a singular fatality, it were not connected with another unpleasant circumstance which has lately seen fit to fasten upon my life.
Before receiving from your letter these fresh assurances of your regard, I had thought of invoking the help of your friendship and advice; and to-day, when you tell me that it would make you happy and proud to take the place of my poor Louise de Chaulieu, the precious friend of whom death has deprived me, can I hesitate for a moment?
I take you at your word, and that delightful cleverness with which you foiled the fools who commented on your marriage to Monsieur de Camps [see “Madame Firmiani”], that singular tact with which we saw you steer your way through circumstances that were full of embarrassment and danger, in short the wonderful art which enabled you to keep both your secret and your dignity, I now ask you to put to the service of assisting me in the dilemma I mentioned just now.
Unfortunately in consulting a physician we naturally want to see him and tell him our symptoms _viva voce_, and it is here that Monsieur de Camps with his industrial genius seems to me most aggravating. Thanks to those villanous iron-works which he has taken it into his head to purchase, you are almost lost to Paris and to society! Formerly when we had you here, at hand, in ten minutes talk, without embarrassment, without preparation, I could have told you everything; but now I am obliged to think over what I have to say, to gather myself together, and pass into the solemnity of a written statement.
But after all, perhaps it is better to plunge boldly in, and since, in spite of circumlocutions and preambles, I shall have sooner or later to come to the point, why not say at once that my trouble concerns the stranger who saved my daughter’s life.
Stranger! yes, a stranger to Monsieur de l’Estorade and to all who have told you about the accident, but not a stranger to me, whom, for the last three months, this man has condescended to honor with the most obstinate attention. That the mother of three children, one of them a big boy of fifteen, should at thirty-three years of age become the object of an ardent passion will seem to you, as it does to me, an impossible fact; and that is the ridiculous misfortune about which I want to consult you.
When I say that this stranger is known to me, I must correct myself; for I know neither his name, nor his abode, nor anything about him. I have never met him in society, and I may add that, although he wears the ribbon of the Legion of honor, there is nothing in his air and manner--which are totally devoid of elegance--to make me suppose I ever shall meet him in our world.
It was at Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, where, as you know, I go to hear mass, that this annoying obsession began. I used almost daily to take my children to walk in the Tuileries, as the house we have hired here has no garden. This habit being noticed by my persecutor, I found him repeatedly there and wherever else I might be met outside of my own home. Perfectly discreet, although so audacious, this singular follower never accompanied me to my own door; he kept at a sufficient distance to give me the comfort of feeling that his foolish assiduity would not be observed by others.
Heaven only knows the sacrifices and annoyances I have borne to be rid of him. I never go to church now except on Sundays; I often keep my dear children at home to the injury of their health; or else I make excuses not to accompany them, and against all the principles of my education and prudence, I leave them to the care of the servants. Visits, shopping I do only in a carriage, which did not prevent my _shadow_ from being at hand when the accident happened to Nais, and saving her life, an act that was brave and providential.
But it is precisely this great obligation I am now under which makes--does it not, I appeal to you?--a most deplorable complication.
In the first place, about thanking him. If I do that, I encourage him, and he would certainly take advantage of it to change the character of our present intercourse. But if I pass him without notice--think of it! a mother--a mother who owes him the life of her daughter, to pretend not to see him! to pass him without a single word of gratitude!
That, however, is the intolerable alternative in which I find myself placed, and you can now see how much I need the counsels of your experience. What can I do to break the unpleasant habit this man has taken of being my shadow? How shall I thank him without encouraging him? or not thank him without incurring self-reproach?
Those are the problems submitted to your wisdom. If you will do me the kindness to solve them--and I know no one so capable--I shall add gratitude to all the other affectionate sentiments which, as you know, I have so long felt for you.
III. THE COMTE DE L’ESTORADE TO MONSIEUR MARIE-GASTON
Paris, February, 1839.
Perhaps, my dear Monsieur Gaston, the public journals will have told you before this letter can arrive of the duel fought yesterday between your friend Monsieur Dorlange and the Duc de Rhetore. But the papers, while announcing the fact as a piece of news, are debarred by custom and propriety from inferring the motives of a quarrel, and therefore they will only excite your curiosity without satisfying it.
I have, fortunately, heard from a very good source, all the details of the affair, and I hasten to transmit them to you; they are, I think, of a nature to interest you to the highest degree.
Three days ago, that is to say on the very evening of the day when I paid my visit to Monsieur Dorlange, the Duc de Rhetore occupied a stall at the Opera-house. Next to him sat Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who has recently returned from a diplomatic mission which kept him out of France for several years. During the entr’acte these gentlemen did not leave their seats to walk about the foyer; but, as is often done, they stood up, with their backs to the stage, facing the audience and consequently Monsieur Dorlange, who was seated directly behind them, seeming to be absorbed in an evening newspaper. There had been that day a very scandalous, or what is called a very interesting, session of the Chamber of deputies.
The conversation between the duke and the marquis having naturally turned on the events of Parisian society which had taken place during Monsieur de Ronquerolles’ absence, the latter made the following remark which was of a nature to rouse the attention of Monsieur Dorlange.
“Your poor sister Madame de Macumer! what a sad end, after her singular marriage!”
“Ah! you know,” replied Monsieur de Rhetore, in that high-pitched tone of his, “my sister had too much imagination not to be romantic and visionary. She loved her first husband, Monsieur de Macumer, passionately, but after a time one gets tired of everything, even widowhood. This Marie-Gaston crossed her path. He is agreeable in person; my sister was rich; he was deeply in debt and behaved with corresponding eagerness and devotion. The result was that the scoundrel not only succeeded Monsieur de Macumer and killed his wife with jealousy, but he got out of her every penny the law allowed the poor foolish woman to dispose of. My sister’s property amounted to at least twelve hundred thousand francs, not counting a delightful villa splendidly furnished which she built at Ville d’Avray. Half of this that man obtained, the other half went to the Duc and Duchesse de Chaulieu, my father and mother, who were entitled to it by law as heirs ascendant. As for my brother Lenoncourt and myself, we were simply disinherited.”
As soon as your name, my dear Monsieur Gaston, was uttered, Monsieur Dorlange laid aside his newspaper, and then, as Monsieur de Rhetore ended his remarks, he rose and said:--
“Pardon me, Monsieur le duc, if I venture to correct your statement; but, as a matter of conscience, I ought to inform you that you are totally misinformed.”
“What is that you say?” returned the duke, blinking his eyes and speaking in that contemptuous tone we can all imagine.
“I say, Monsieur le duc, that Marie-Gaston is my friend from childhood; he has never been thought a _scoundrel_; on the contrary, the world knows him as a man of honor and talent. So far from killing his wife with jealousy, he made her perfectly happy during the three years their marriage lasted. As for the property--”
“Have you considered, monsieur,” said the Duc de Rhetore, interrupting him, “the result of such language?”
“Thoroughly, monsieur; and I repeat that the property left to Marie-Gaston by the will of his wife is so little desired by him that, to my knowledge, he is about to spend a sum of two or three hundred thousand francs in building a mausoleum for a wife whom he has never ceased to mourn.”
“After all, monsieur, who are you?” said the Duc de Rhetore, again interrupting him with ill-restrained impatience.
“Presently,” replied Monsieur Dorlange, “I shall have the honor to tell you; you must now permit me to add that the property of which you say you have been disinherited Madame Marie-Gaston had the right to dispose of without any remorse of conscience. It came from her first husband, the Baron de Macumer; and she had, previously to that marriage, given up her own property in order to constitute a fortune for your brother, the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, who, as younger son, had not, like you, Monsieur le Duc, the advantages of an entail.”
So saying, Monsieur Dorlange felt in his pocket for his card-case.
“I have no cards with me,” he said at last, “but my name is Dorlange, a theatrical name, easy to remember, and I live at No. 42 rue de l’Ouest.”
“Not a very central quarter,” remarked Monsieur de Rhetore, ironically. Then turning to Monsieur de Ronquerolles, whom he thus constituted one of his seconds, “I beg your pardon, my dear fellow,” he said, “for the voyage of discovery you will have to undertake for me to-morrow morning.” And then almost immediately he added: “Come to the foyer; we can talk there with greater _safety_.”
By his manner of accenting the last word it was impossible to mistake the insulting meaning he intended to attach to it.
The two gentlemen having left their seats, without this scene attracting any notice, in consequence of the stalls being empty for the most part during the entr’acte, Monsieur Dorlange saw at some distance the celebrated sculptor Stidmann, and went up to him.
“Have you a note-book of any kind in your pocket?” he said.
“Yes, I always carry one.”
“Will you lend it to me and let me tear out a page? I have an idea in my mind which I don’t want to lose. If I do not see you again after the play to make restitution, I will send it to you to-morrow morning without fail.”
Returning to his place, Monsieur Dorlange sketched something rapidly, and when the curtain rose and the two gentlemen returned to their seats, he touched the Duc de Rhetore lightly on the shoulder and said, giving him the drawing:--
“My card, which I have the honor to present to you.”
This “card” was a charming sketch of an architectural design placed in a landscape. Beneath it was written “Plan for a mausoleum to be erected to the memory of Madame Marie-Gaston, _nee_ Chaulieu, by her husband; from the designs of Charles Dorlange, sculptor, 42 rue de l’Ouest.”
It was impossible to let Monsieur de Rhetore know more delicately that he had to do with a suitable adversary; and you will remark, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that Monsieur Dorlange made this drawing the means of enforcing his denial and giving proof of your disinterestedness and the sincerity of your grief.
After the play was over, Monsieur de Rhetore parted from Monsieur de Ronquerolles, and the latter went up to Monsieur Dorlange and endeavored, very courteously, to bring about a reconciliation, remarking to him that, while he was right in the subject-matter, his method of proceeding was unusual and offensive; Monsieur de Rhetore, on the other hand, had shown great moderation, and would now be satisfied with a mere expression of regret; in short, Monsieur de Ronquerolles said all that can be said on such an occasion.
Monsieur Dorlange would not listen to anything which seemed a submission on his part, and the next day he received a visit from Monsieur de Ronquerolles and General Montriveau on behalf of the Duc de Rhetore. Again an effort was made to induce Monsieur Dorlange to give another turn to his words. But your friend would not depart from this ultimatum:--
“Will Monsieur de Rhetore withdraw the words I felt bound to notice; if so, I will withdraw mine.”
“But that is impossible,” they said to him. “Monsieur de Rhetore has been personally insulted; you, on the contrary, have not been. Right or wrong, he has the conviction that Monsieur Marie-Gaston has done him an injury. We must always make certain allowances for wounded self-interests; you can never get absolute justice from them.”
“It comes to this, then,” replied Monsieur Dorlange, “that Monsieur de Rhetore may continue to calumniate my friend at his ease; in the first place, because he is in Italy; and secondly, because Marie-Gaston would always feel extreme repugnance to come to certain extremities with the brother of his wife. It is precisely that powerlessness, relatively speaking, to defend himself, which constitutes my right--I will say more--my duty to interfere. It was not without a special permission of Providence that I was enabled to catch a few of the malicious words that were said of him, and, as Monsieur de Rhetore declines to modify any of them, we must, if it please you, continue this matter to the end.”
The duel then became inevitable; the terms were arranged in the course of the day, and the meeting, with pistols, was appointed for the day after. On the ground Monsieur Dorlange was perfectly cool. When the first fire was exchanged without result, the seconds proposed to put an end to the affair.
“No, one more shot!” he said gaily, as if he were shooting in a pistol-gallery.
This time he was shot in the fleshy part of the thigh, not a dangerous wound, but one which caused him to lose a great deal of blood. As they carried him to the carriage which brought him, Monsieur de Rhetore, who hastened to assist them, being close beside him, he said, aloud:--
“This does not prevent Marie-Gaston from being a man of honor and a heart of gold.”
Then he fainted.
This duel, as you can well believe, has made a great commotion; Monsieur Dorlange has been the hero of the hour for the last two days; it is impossible to enter a single salon without finding him the one topic of conversation. I heard more, perhaps, in the salon of Madame de Montcornet than elsewhere. She receives, as you know, many artists and men of letters, and to give you an idea of the manner in which your friend is considered, I need only stenograph a conversation at which I was present in the countess’s salon last evening.
The chief talkers were Emile Blondet of the “Debats,” and Monsieur Bixiou, the caricaturist, one of the best-informed _ferrets_ of Paris. They are both, I think, acquaintances of yours, but, at any rate, I am certain of your intimacy with Joseph Bridau, our great painter, who shared in the talk, for I well remember that he and Daniel d’Arthez were the witnesses of your marriage.
“The first appearance of Dorlange in art,” Joseph Bridau was saying, when I joined them, “was fine; the makings of a master were already so apparent in the work he did for his examinations that the Academy, under pressure of opinion, decided to crown him--though he laughed a good deal at its programme.”
“True,” said Bixiou, “and that ‘Pandora’ he exhibited in 1837, after his return from Rome, is also a very remarkable figure. But as she won him, at once, the cross and any number of commissions from the government and the municipality, together with scores of flourishing articles in the newspapers, I don’t see how he can rise any higher after all that success.”
“That,” said Blondet, “is a regular Bixiou opinion.”
“No doubt; and well-founded it is. Do you know the man?”
“No; he is never seen anywhere.”
“Exactly; he is a bear, but a premeditated bear; a reflecting and determined bear.”
“I don’t see,” said Joseph Bridau, “why this savage inclination for solitude should be so bad for an artist. What does a sculptor gain by frequenting salons where gentlemen and ladies have taken to a habit of wearing clothes?”
“Well, in the first place, a sculptor can amuse himself in a salon; and that will keep him from taking up a mania, or becoming a visionary; besides, he sees the world as it is, and learns that 1839 is not the fifteenth nor the sixteenth century.”
“Has Dorlange any such delusions?” asked Emile Blondet.
“He? he will talk to you by the hour of returning to the life of the great artists of the middle ages with the universality of their studies and their knowledge, and that frightfully laborious life of theirs; which may help us to understand the habits and ways of a semi-barbarous society, but can never exist in ours. He does not see, the innocent dreamer, that civilization, by strangely complicating all social conditions, absorbs for business, for interests, for pleasures, thrice as much time as a less advanced society required for the same purposes. Look at the savage in his hut; he hasn’t anything to do. Whereas we, with the Bourse, the opera, the newspapers, parliamentary discussions, salons, elections, railways, the Cafe de Paris and the National Guard--what time have we, if you please, to go to work?”
“Beautiful theory of a do-nothing!” cried Emile Blondet, laughing.
“No, my dear fellow, I am talking truth. The curfew no longer rings at nine o’clock. Only last night my concierge Ravenouillet gave a party; and I think I made a great mistake in not accepting the indirect invitation he gave me to be present.”
“Nevertheless,” said Joseph Bridau, “it is certain that if a man doesn’t mingle in the business, the interests, and the pleasures of our epoch, he can make out of the time he thus saves a pretty capital. Independently of his orders, Dorlange has, I think, a little competence; so that nothing hinders him from arranging his life to suit himself.”
“But you see he goes to the opera; for it was there he found his duel. Besides, you are all wrong in representing him as isolated from this contemporaneous life, for I happen to know that he is just about to harness himself to it by the most rattling and compelling chains of the social system--I mean political interests.”
“Does he want to be a statesman?” asked Emile Blondet, sarcastically.
“Yes, no doubt that’s in his famous programme of universality; and you ought to see the consistency and perseverance he puts into that idea! Only last year two hundred and fifty thousand francs dropped into his mouth as if from the skies, and he instantly bought a hovel in the rue Saint-Martin to make himself eligible for the Chamber. Then--another pretty speculation--with the rest of the money he bought stock in the ‘National,’ where I meet him every time I want to have a laugh over the republican Utopia. He has his flatterers on the staff of that estimable newspaper; they have persuaded him that he’s a born orator and can cut the finest figure in the Chamber. They even talk of getting up a candidacy for him; and on some of their enthusiastic days they go so far as to assert that he bears a distant likeness to Danton.”
“But this is getting burlesque,” said Emile Blondet.
I don’t know if you have ever remarked, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that in men of real talent there is always great leniency of judgment. In this, Joseph Bridau is pre-eminent.
“I think with you,” he said, “that if Dorlange takes this step, and enters politics, he will be lost to art. But, after all, why should he not succeed in the Chamber? He expresses himself with great facility, and seems to me to have ideas at his command. Look at Canalis when he was made deputy! ‘What! a poet!’ everybody cried out,--which didn’t prevent him from making himself a fine reputation as orator, and becoming a minister.”
“But the first question is how to get into the Chamber,” said Emile Blondet. “Where does Dorlange propose to stand?”
“Why, naturally, for one of the rotten boroughs of the ‘National.’ I don’t know if it has yet been chosen.”
“General rule,” said the writer for the “Debats.” “To obtain your election, even though you may have the support of an active and ardent party, you must also have a somewhat extended political notoriety, or, at any rate, some provincial backing of family or fortune. Has Dorlange any of those elements of success?”
“As for the backing of a family, that element is particularly lacking,” replied Bixiou; “in fact, in his case, it is conspicuously absent.”
“Really?” said Emile Blondet. “Is he a natural child?”
“Nothing could be more natural,--father and mother unknown. But I believe, myself, that he can be elected. It is the ins and outs of his political ideas that will be the wonder.”
“He is a republican, I suppose, if he is a friend of those ‘National’ gentlemen, and resembles Danton?”
“Yes, of course; but he despises his co-religionists, declaring they are only good for carrying a point, and for violence and bullying. Provisionally, he is satisfied with a monarchy hedged in by republican institutions; but he insists that our civic royalty will infallibly be lost through the abuse of influence, which he roughly calls corruption. This will lead him towards the little Church of the Left-centre; but there again--for there’s always a but--he finds only a collection of ambitious minds and eunuchs unconsciously smoothing the way to a revolution, which he, for his part, sees looming on the horizon with great regret, because, he says, the masses are too little prepared, and too little intelligent, not to let it slip through their fingers. Legitimacy he simply laughs at; he doesn’t admit it to be a principle in any way. To him it is simply the most fixed and consistent form of monarchical heredity; he sees no other superiority in it than that of old wine over new. But while he is neither legitimist, nor conservative, nor Left-centre, and is republican without wanting a republic, he proclaims himself a Catholic, and sits astride the hobby of that party, namely,--liberty of education. But this man, who wants free education for every one, is afraid of the Jesuits; and he is still, as in 1829, uneasy about the encroachments of the clergy and the Congregation. Can any of you guess the great party which he proposes to create in the Chamber, and of which he intends to be the leader? That of the righteous man, the impartial man, the honest man! as if any such thing could live and breathe in the parliamentary cook-shops; and as if, moreover, all opinions, to hide their ugly nothingness, had not, from time immemorial, wrapped themselves in that banner.”
“Does he mean to renounce sculpture absolutely?” asked Joseph Bridau.
“Not yet; he is just finishing the statue of some saint, I don’t know which; but he lets no one see it, and says he does not intend to send it to the Exhibition this year--he has ideas about it.”
“What ideas?” asked Emile Blondet.
“Oh! that religious works ought not to be delivered over to the judgment of critics, or to the gaze of a public rotten with scepticism; they ought, he thinks, to go, without passing through the uproar of the world, piously and modestly to the niches for which they are intended.”
“_Ah ca_!” exclaimed Emile Blondet, “and it is this fervent Catholic who fights a duel!”
“Better or worse than that. This Catholic lives with a woman whom he brought back from Italy,--a species of Goddess of Liberty, who serves him as model and housekeeper.”
“What a tongue that Bixiou has; he keeps a regular intelligence office,” said some of the little group as it broke up at the offer of tea from Madame de Montcornet.
You see from this, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that the political aspirations of Monsieur Dorlange are not regarded seriously by his friends. I do not doubt that you will write to him soon to thank him for the warmth with which he defended you from calumny. That courageous devotion has given me a true sympathy for him, and I shall hope that you will use the influence of early friendship to turn his mind from the deplorable path he seems about to enter. I make no judgment on the other peculiarities attributed to him by Monsieur Bixiou, who has a cutting and a flippant tongue; I am more inclined to think, with Joseph Bridau, that such mistakes are venial. But a fault to be forever regretted, according to my ideas, will be that of abandoning his present career to fling himself into the maelstrom of politics. You are yourself interested in turning him from this idea, if you strongly desire to entrust that work to his hands. Preach to him as strongly as you can the wisdom of abiding by his art.
On the subject of the explanation I advised you to have with him, I must tell you that your task is greatly simplified. You need not enter into any of the details which would be to you so painful. Madame de l’Estorade, to whom I spoke of the role of mediator which I wanted her to play, accepted the part very willingly. She feels confident of being able, after half an hour’s conversation, to remove the painful feeling from your friend’s mind, and drive away the clouds between you.
While writing this long letter, I have sent for news of his condition. He is going on favorably, and the physicians say that, barring all unforeseen accidents, his friends need have no anxiety as to his state. It seems he is an object of general interest, for, to use the expression of my valet, people are “making cue” to leave their names at his door. It must be added that the Duke de Rhetore is not liked, which may partly account for this sympathy. The duke is stiff and haughty, but there is little in him. What a contrast the brother is to her who lives in our tenderest memory. She was simple and kind, yet she never derogated from her dignity; nothing equalled the lovable qualities of her heart but the charms of her mind.
IV. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORAADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, February, 1839.
Nothing could be more judicious than what you have written me, my dear friend. It was certainly to have been expected that my “bore” would have approached me on the occasion of our next meeting. His heroism gave him the right to do so, and politeness made it a duty. Under pain of being thought unmannerly he was bound to make inquiries as to the results of the accident on my health and that of Nais. But if, contrary to all these expectations, he did not descend from his cloud, my resolution, under your judicious advice, was taken. If the mountain did not come to me, I should go to the mountain; like Hippolyte in the tale of Theramene, I would rush upon the monster and discharge my gratitude upon him at short range. I have come to think with you that the really dangerous side of this foolish obsession on his part is its duration and the inevitable gossip in which, sooner or later, it would involve me.
Therefore, I not only accepted the necessity of speaking to my shadow first, but under pretence that my husband wished to call upon him and thank him in person, I determined to ask him his name and address, and if I found him a suitable person I intended to ask him to dinner on the following day; believing that if he had but a shadow of common-sense, he would, when he saw the manner in which I live with my husband, my frantic passion, as you call it, for my children, in short, the whole atmosphere of my well-ordered home, he would, as I say, certainly see the folly of persisting in his present course. At any rate half the danger of his pursuit was over if it were carried on openly. If I was still to be persecuted, it would be in my own home, where we are all, more or less, exposed to such annoyances, which an honest woman possessing some resources of mind can always escape with honor.
Well, all these fine schemes and all your excellent advice have come to nothing. Since the accident, or rather since the day when my physician first allowed me to go out, nothing, absolutely nothing have I seen of my unknown lover. But, strange to say, although his presence was intolerably annoying, I am conscious that he still exercises a sort of magnetism over me. Without seeing him, I feel him near me; his eyes weigh upon me, though I do not meet them. He is ugly, but his ugliness has something energetic and powerfully marked, which makes one remember him as a man of strong and energetic faculties. In fact, it is impossible not to think about him; and now that he appears to have relieved me of his presence, I an conscious of a void--that sort of void the ear feels when a sharp and piercing noise which has long annoyed it ceases. What I am going to add may seem to you great foolishness; but are we always mistress of such mirages of the imagination?
I have often told you of my arguments with Louise de Chaulieu in relation to the manner in which women ought to look at life. I used to tell her that the passion with which she never ceased to pursue the ideal was ill-regulated and fatal to happiness. To this she answered: “You have never loved, my dearest; love has this rare phenomenon about it: we may live all our lives without ever meeting the being to whom nature has assigned the power of making us happy. But if the day of splendor comes when that being unexpectedly awakes your heart from sleep, what will you do then?” [See “Memoirs of Two Young Married Women.”]
The words of those about to die are often prophetic. What if this man were to be the tardy serpent with whom Louise threatened me? That he could ever be really dangerous to me; that he could make me fail in my duty, that is certainly not what I fear; I am strong against all such extremes. But I did not, like you, my dear Madame de Camps, marry a man whom my heart had chosen. It was only by dint of patience, determination, and reason that I was able to build up the solid and serious attachment which binds me to Monsieur de l’Estorade. Ought I not, therefore, to be doubly cautious lest anything distract me from that sentiment, be it only the diversion of my thoughts in this annoying manner, to another man?
I shall say to you, as, MONSIEUR, Louis XIV.’s brother, said to his wife, to whom he was in the habit of showing what he had written and asking her to decipher it: See into my heart and mind, dear friend, disperse the mists, quiet the worries, and the flux and reflux of will which this affair stirs up in me. My poor Louise was mistaken, was she not? I am not a woman, am I, on whom the passion of love could gain a foothold? The man who, on some glorious day, will render me happy is my Armand, my Rene, my Nais, three angels for whom I have hitherto lived--there can never be for me, I feel it deeply, another passion!
V. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, March, 1839.
About the year 1820 in the course of the same week two _news_ (to use the schoolboy phrase of my son Armand) entered the college of Tours. One had a charming face, the other would have been thought ugly if health, frankness, and intelligence beaming on his features had not compensated for their irregularity and inelegance.
Here you will stop me, and ask whether I have come to the end of my own adventure, that I should now be writing this feuilleton-story. No, this tale is really a continuation of that adventure, though it seems little like it; so, give it your best attention and do not interrupt me again.
One of these lads, the handsome one, was dreamy, contemplative, and a trifle _elegaic_; the other, ardent, impetuous, and always in action. They were two natures which completed each other; a priceless blessing to every friendship that is destined to last. Both had the same bar-sinister on them at their birth. The dreamer was the natural son of the unfortunate Lady Brandon. His name was Marie-Gaston; which, indeed, seems hardly an actual name. The other, born of wholly unknown parents, was named Dorlange, which is certainly no name at all. Dorlange, Valmon, Volmar, Melcourt, are heard upon the stage and nowhere else; already they belong to a past style, and will soon rejoin Alceste, Arnolphe, Clitandre, Damis, Eraste, Philinte, and Arsinoe.
Another reason why the poor ill-born lads should cling together was the cruel abandonment to which they were consigned. For the seven years their studies lasted there was not a day, even during the holidays, when the door of their prison opened. Now and then Marie-Gaston received a visit from an old woman who had served his mother; through her the quarterly payment for his schooling was regularly made. That of Dorlange was also made with great punctuality through a banker in Tours. A point to be remarked is that the price paid for the schooling of the latter was the highest which the rules of the establishment allowed; hence the conclusion that his unknown parents were persons in easy circumstances. Among his comrades, Dorlange attained to a certain respect which, had it been withheld, he would very well have known how to enforce with his fists. But under their breaths, his comrades remarked that he was never sent for to see friends in the parlor, and that outside the college walls no one appeared to take an interest in him.
The two lads, who were both destined to become distinguished men, were poor scholars; though each had his own way of studying. By the time he was fifteen Marie-Gaston had written a volume of verses, satires, elegies, meditations, not to speak of two tragedies. The favorite studies of Dorlange led him to steal logs of wood, out of which, with his knife, he carved madonnas, grotesque figures, fencing-masters, saints, grenadiers of the Old Guard, and, but this was secretly, Napoleons.
In 1827, their school-days ended, the two friends left college together and were sent to Paris. A place had been chosen for Dorlange in the atelier of the sculptor Bosio, and from that moment a rather fantastic course was pursued by an unseen protection that hovered over him. When he reached the house in Paris to which the head-master of the school had sent him, he found a dainty little apartment prepared for his reception. Under the glass shade of the clock was a large envelope addressed to him, so placed as to strike his eye the moment that he entered the room. In that envelope was a note, written in pencil, containing these words:--
The day after your arrival in Paris go at eight in the morning punctually to the garden of the Luxembourg, Allee de l’Observatoire, fourth bench to the right, starting from the gate. This order is strict. Do not fail to obey it.
Punctual to the minute, Dorlange was not long at the place of rendezvous before he was met by a very small man, whose enormous head, bearing an immense shock of hair, together with a pointed nose, chin, and crooked legs made him seem like a being escaped from one of Hoffman’s tales. Without saying a word, for to his other physical advantages this weird messenger added that of being deaf and dumb, he placed in the young man’s hand a letter and a purse. The letter said that the family of Dorlange were glad to see that he wished to devote himself to art. They urged him to work bravely and to profit by the instructions of the great master under whose direction he was placed. They hoped he would live virtuously; and, in any case, an eye would be kept upon his conduct. There was no desire, the letter went on to say, that he should be deprived of the respectable amusements of his age. For his needs and for his pleasures, he might count upon the sum of six hundred and fifty francs every three months, which would be given to him in the same place by the same man; but he was expressly forbidden to follow the messenger after he had fulfilled his commission; if this injunction were directly or indirectly disobeyed, the punishment would be severe; it would be nothing less than the withdrawal of the stipend and, possibly, total abandonment.
Do you remember, my dear Madame de Camps, that in 1831 you and I went together to the Beaux-Arts to see the exhibition of works which were competing for the Grand Prix in sculpture? The subject given out for competition was Niobe weeping for her children. Do you also remember my indignation at one of the competing works around which the crowd was so compact that we could scarcely approach it? The insolent youth had dared to turn that sacred subject into jest! His Niobe was infinitely touching in her beauty and grief, but to represent her children, as he did, by monkeys squirming on the ground in the most varied and grotesque attitudes, what a deplorable abuse of talent--!
You tried in vain to make me see that the monkeys were enchantingly graceful and clever, and that a mother’s blind idolatry could not be more ingeniously ridiculed; I held to the opinion that the conception was monstrous, and the indignation of the old academicians who demanded the expulsion of this intolerable work, seemed to me most justifiable. But the Academy, instigated by the public and by the newspapers, which talked of opening a subscription to send the young sculptor to Rome, were not of my opinion and that of their older members. The extreme beauty of the Niobe atoned for all the rest and the defamer of mothers saw his work crowned, in spite of an admonition given to him by the venerable secretary on the day of the distribution of the prizes. But, poor fellow! I excuse him, for I now learn that he never knew his mother. It was Dorlange, the poor abandoned child at Tours, the friend of Marie-Gaston.
From 1827 to 1831 the two friends were inseparable. Dorlange, regularly supplied with means, was a sort of Marquis d’Aligre; Gaston, on the contrary, was reduced to his own resources for a living, and would have lived a life of extreme poverty had it not been for his friend. But where friends love each other--and the situation is more rare than people imagine--all on one side and nothing on the other is a determining cause for association. So, without any reckoning between them, our two pigeons held in common their purse, their earnings, their pains, pleasures, hopes, in fact, they held all things in common, and lived but one life between the two. This state of things lasted till Dorlange had won the Grand Prix, and started for Rome. Henceforth community of interests was no longer possible. But Dorlange, still receiving an ample income through his mysterious dwarf, bethought himself of making over to Gaston the fifteen hundred francs paid to him by the government for the “prix de Rome.” But a good heart in receiving is more rare than the good heart that gives. His mind being ulcerated by constant misfortune Marie-Gaston refused, peremptorily, what pride insisted on calling _alms_. Work, he said, had been provided for him by Daniel d’Arthez, one of our greatest writers, and the payment for that, added to his own small means, sufficed him. This proud rejection, not properly understood by Dorlange, produced a slight coolness between the two friends; nevertheless, until the year 1833, their intimacy was maintained by a constant exchange of letters. But here, on Marie-Gaston’s side, perfect confidence ceased, after a time, to exist. He was hiding something; his proud determination to depend wholly on himself was a sad mistake. Each day brought him nearer to penury. At last, staking all upon one throw, he imprudently involved himself in journalism. Assuming all the risks of an enterprise which amounted to thirty thousand francs, a stroke of ill-fortune left him nothing to look forward to but a debtor’s prison, which yawned before him.
It was at this moment that his meeting with Louise de Chaulieu took place. During the nine months that preceded their marriage, Marie-Gaston’s letters to his friend became fewer and far-between. Dorlange ought surely to have been the first to know of this change in the life of his friend, but not one word of it was confided to him. This was exacted by the high and mighty lady of Gaston’s love, Louise de Chaulieu, Baronne de Macumer.
When the time for the marriage came, Madame de Macumer pushed this mania for secrecy to extremes. I, her nearest and dearest friend, was scarcely informed of the event, and no one was admitted to the ceremony except the witnesses required by law. Dorlange was still absent. The correspondence between them ceased, and if Marie-Gaston had entered the convent of La Trappe, he could not have been more completely lost to his friend.
When Dorlange returned from Rome in 1836, the sequestration of Marie-Gaston’s person and affection was more than ever close and inexorable. Dorlange had too much self-respect to endeavor to pass the barriers thus opposed to him, and the old friends not only never saw each other, but no communication passed between them.
But when the news of Madame Marie-Gaston’s death reached him Dorlange forgot all and hastened to Ville d’Avray to comfort his friend. Useless eagerness! Two hours after that sad funeral was over, Marie-Gaston, without a thought for his friends or for a sister-in-law and two nephews who were dependent on him, flung himself into a post-chaise and started for Italy. Dorlange felt that this egotism of sorrow filled the measure of the wrong already done to him; and he endeavored to efface from his heart even the recollection of a friendship which sympathy under misfortune could not recall.
My husband and I loved Louise de Chaulieu too tenderly not to continue our affection for the man who had been so much to her. Before leaving France, Marie-Gaston had requested Monsieur de l’Estorade to take charge of his affairs, and later he sent him a power-of-attorney to enable him to do so properly.
Some weeks ago his grief, still living and active, suggested to him a singular idea. In the midst of the beautiful park at Ville d’Avray is a little lake, with an island upon it which Louise dearly loved. To that island, a shady calm retreat, Marie-Gaston wished to remove the body of his wife, after building a mausoleum of Carrara marble to receive it. He wrote to us to communicate this idea, and, remembering Dorlange in this connection, he requested my husband to see him and ask him to undertake the work. At first Dorlange feigned not to remember even the name of Marie-Gaston, and he made some civil pretext to decline the commission. But see and admire the consistency of such determinations when people love each other! That very evening, being at the opera, he heard the Duc de Rhetore speak insultingly of his former friend, and he vehemently resented the duke’s words. A duel followed in which he was wounded; the news of this affair has probably already reached you. So here is a man facing death at night for a friend whose very name he pretended not to know in the morning!
You will ask, my dear Madame de Camps, what this long tale has to do with my own ridiculous adventure. That is what I would tell you now if my letter were not so immoderately long. I told you my tale would prove to be a feuilleton-story, and I think the moment has come to make the customary break in it. I hope I have not sufficiently exalted your curiosity to have the right not to satisfy it. To be concluded, therefore, whether you like it or not, in the following number.
VI. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, March, 1839.
The elements of the long biographical dissertation I lately sent you, my dear friend, were taken chiefly from a recent letter from Monsieur Marie-Gaston. On leaning of the brave devotion shown in his defence his first impulse was to rush to Paris and press the hand of the friend who avenged himself thus nobly for neglect and forgetfulness. Unfortunately the evening before his departure he met with a dangerous fall at Savarezza, one of the outlying quarries of Carrara, and dislocated his ankle. Being obliged to postpone his journey, he wrote to Monsieur Dorlange to express his gratitude; and, by the same courier, he sent me a voluminous letter, relating the whole past of their lifelong friendship and asking me to see Monsieur Dorlange and be the mediator between them. He was not satisfied with the expression of his warm gratitude, he wanted also to show him that in spite of contrary appearances, he had never ceased to deserve the affection of his early friend.
On receiving Monsieur Gaston’s letter, my first idea was to write to the sculptor and ask him to come and see me, but finding that he was not entirely recovered from his wound, I went, accompanied by my husband and Nais, to the artist’s studio, which we found in a pleasant little house in the rue de l’Ouest, behind the garden of the Luxembourg, one of the most retired quarters of Paris. We were received in the vestibule by a woman about whom Monsieur de l’Estorade had already said a word to me. It appears that the _laureat_ of Rome did not leave Italy without bringing away with him an agreeable souvenir in the form of a bourgeoise Galatea, half housekeeper, half model; about whom certain indiscreet rumors are current. But let me hasten to say that there was absolutely nothing in her appearance or manner to lead me to credit them. In fact, there was something cold and proud and almost savage about her, which is, they tell me, a strong characteristic of the Transteverine peasant-women. When she announced our names Monsieur Dorlange was standing in a rather picturesque working costume with his back to us, and I noticed that he hastily drew an ample curtain before the statue on which he was engaged.
At the moment when he turned round, and before I had time to look at him, imagine my astonishment when Nais ran forward and, with the artlessness of a child, flung her arms about his neck crying out:--
“Are! here is my monsieur who saved me!”
What! the monsieur who saved her? Then Monsieur Dorlange must be the famous Unknown?--Yes, my dear friend, I now recognized him. Chance, that cleverest of romance-makers, willed that Monsieur Dorlange and my bore were one. Happily, my husband had launched into the expression of his feelings as a grateful father; I thus had time to recover myself, and before it became my turn to say a word, I had installed upon my face what you are pleased to call my grand l’Estorade air; under which, as you know, I mark twenty-five degrees below zero, and can freeze the words on the lips of any presuming person.
As for Monsieur Dorlange, he seemed to me less troubled than surprised by the meeting. Then, as if he thought we kept him too long on the topic of our gratitude, he abruptly changed the subject.
“Madame,” he said to me, “since we are, as it seems, more acquainted than we thought, may I dare to gratify my curiosity?”--
I fancied I saw the claw of a cat preparing to play with its mouse, so I answered, coldly:--
“Artists, I am told, are often indiscreet in their curiosity.”
I put a well-marked stiffness into my manner which completed the meaning of the words. I could not see that it baffled him.
“I hope,” he replied, “that my question is not of that kind. I only desire to ask if you have a sister.”
“No, monsieur,” I replied, “I have no sister--none, at least, that I know of,” I added, jestingly.
“I thought it not unlikely, however,” continued Monsieur Dorlange, in the most natural manner possible; “for the family in which I have met a lady bearing the strongest resemblance to you is surrounded by a certain mysterious atmosphere which renders all suppositions possible.”
“Is there any indiscretion in asking the name of that family?”
“Not the least; they are people whom you must have known in Paris in 1829-1830. They lived in great state and gave fine parties. I myself met them in Italy.”
“But their name?” I said.
“De Lanty,” he replied, without embarrassment or hesitation.
And, in fact, my dear Madame de Camps, a family of that name did live in Paris about that time, and you probably remember, as I do, that many strange stories were told about them. As Monsieur Dorlange answered my question he turned back towards his veiled statue.
“The sister whom you have not, madame,” he said to me abruptly, “I shall permit myself to give you, and I venture to hope that you will see a certain family likeness in her.”
So saying, he removed the cloth that concealed his work, and there _I_ stood, under the form of a saint, with a halo round my head. Could I be angry at the liberty thus taken?
My husband and Nais gave a cry of admiration at the wonderful likeness they had before their eyes. As for Monsieur Dorlange, he at once explained the cause of his scenic effect.
“This statue,” he said, “is a Saint-Ursula, ordered by a convent in the provinces. Under circumstances which it would take too long to relate, the type of this saint, the person whom I mentioned just now, was firmly fixed in my memory. I should vainly have attempted to create by my imagination another type for that saint, it could not have been so completely the expression of my thought. I therefore began to model this figure which you see from memory, then one day, madame, at Saint-Thomas d’Aquin, I saw you, and I had the superstition to believe that you were sent to me by Providence. After that, I worked from you only, and as I did not feel at liberty to ask you to come to my studio, the best I could do was to study you when we met, and I multiplied my chances of doing so. I carefully avoided knowing your name and social position, for I feared to bring you down from the ideal and materialize you.”
“Oh! I have often seen you following us,” said Nais, with her clever little air.
How little we know children, and their turn for observation! As for my husband, it seemed to me that he ought to have pricked up his ears at this tale of the daring manner in which his wife had been used as a model. Monsieur de l’Estorade is certainly no fool; in all social matters he has the highest sense of conventional propriety, and as for jealousy, I think if I gave him the slightest occasion he would show himself ridiculously jealous. But now, the sight of his “beautiful Renee,” as he calls me, done into white marble in the form of a saint, had evidently cast him into a state of admiring ecstasy. He, with Nais, were taking an inventory to prove the fidelity of the likeness--yes, it was really my attitude, really my eyes, really my mouth, really those two little dimples in my cheeks!
I felt it my duty to take up the role that Monsieur de l’Estorade laid aside, so I said, very gravely, to the presuming artist:--
“Do you not think, monsieur, that to appropriate without permission, or--not to mince my words--steal a person’s likeness, may seem a very strange proceeding?”
“For that reason, madame,” he replied, in a respectful tone, “I was fully determined to abide by your wishes in the matter. Although my statue is fated to be buried in the oratory of a distant convent, I should not have sent it to its destination without obtaining your permission to do so. I could have known your name whenever I wished; I already knew your address; and I intended, when the time came, to confess the liberty I had taken, and ask you to visit my studio. I should then have said what I say now: if the likeness displeases you I can, with a few strokes of my chisel, so change it as to make it unrecognizable.”
My husband, who apparently thought the likeness not sufficiently close, turned, at this moment, to Monsieur Dorlange, and said, with a delighted air:--
“Do you not think, monsieur, that Madame de l’Estorade’s nose is rather more delicate than you have made it?”
All this _unexpectedness_ so upset me that I felt unfitted to intervene on behalf of Monsieur Marie-Gaston, and I should, I believe, have pleaded his cause very ill if Monsieur Dorlange had not stopped me at the first words I said about it.
“I know, madame,” he said, “all that you can possibly tell me about my unfaithful friend. I do not forgive, but I forget my wrong. Things having so come about that I have nearly lost my life for his sake, it would certainly be very illogical to keep a grudge against him. Still, as regards that mausoleum at Ville d’Avray, nothing would induce me to undertake it. I have already mentioned to Monsieur de l’Estorade one hindrance that is daily growing more imperative; but besides that, I think it a great pity that Marie-Gaston should thus ruminate on his grief; and I have written to tell him so. He ought to be more of a man, and find in study and in work the consolations we can always find there.”
The object of our visit being thus disposed of, I saw no hope of getting to the bottom of the other mystery it had opened, so I rose to take leave, and as I did so Monsieur Dorlange said to me:--
“May I hope that you will not exact the injury I spoke of to my statue?”
“It is for my husband and not for me to reply to that question,” I said; “however, we can talk of it later, for Monsieur de l’Estorade hopes that you will give us the honor of a visit.”
Monsieur bowed in respectful acquiescence, and we came away,--I, in great ill-humor; I was angry with Nais, and also with my husband, and felt much inclined to make him a scene, which he would certainly not have understood.
Now what do you think of all this? Is the man a clever swindler, who invented that fable for some purpose, or is he really an artist, who took me in all simplicity of soul for the living realization of his idea? That is what I intend to find out in the course of a few days, for now I am committed to your programme, and to-morrow Monsieur and Madame de l’Estorade will have the honor of inviting Monsieur Dorlange to dinner.
VII. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, March, 1839.
My dear friend,--Monsieur Dorlange dined with us yesterday. My intention was to invite him alone to a formal family dinner, so as to have him more completely under my eye, and put him to the question at my ease. But Monsieur de l’Estorade, to whom I had not explained my charitable motives, showed me that such an invitation might wound the sensibilities of our guest; it might seem to him that the Comte de l’Estorade thought the sculptor Dorlange unfitted for the society of his friends.
“We can’t,” said my husband gaily, “treat him like the sons of our farmers who come here with the epaulet of a lieutenant on their shoulder, and whom we invite with closed doors because we can’t send them to the servants’ hall.”
We therefore invited to meet him Monsieur Joseph Bridau, the painter, the Chevalier d’Espard, Monsieur and Madame de la Bastie (formerly, you remember, Mademoiselle Modeste Mignon) and the Marquis de Ronquerolles. When my husband invited the latter, he asked him if he had any objection to meeting the adversary of the Duc de Rhetore.
“So far from objecting,” replied Monsieur de Ronquerolles, “I am glad of the opportunity to meet a man of talent, who in the affair you speak of behaved admirably.” And he added, after my husband had told him of our great obligation to Monsieur Dorlange, “Then he is a true hero, your sculptor! if he goes on this way, we can’t hold a candle to him.”
In his studio, with a bare throat leaving his head, which is rather too large for his body, free, and dressed in a sort of Oriental costume, Monsieur Dorlange looked to me a great deal better than he does in regular evening dress. Though I must say that when he grows animated in speaking his face lights up, a sort of a magnetic essence flows from his eyes which I had already noticed in our preceding encounters. Madame de la Bastie was as much struck as I was by this peculiarity.
I don’t know if I told you that the ambition of Monsieur Dorlange is to be returned to the Chamber at the coming elections. This was the reason he gave for declining Monsieur Gaston’s commission. What Monsieur de l’Estorade and I thought, at first, to be a mere excuse was an actual reason. At table when Monsieur Joseph Bridau asked him point-blank what belief was to be given to the report of his parliamentary intentions, Monsieur Dorlange formally announced them; from that moment, throughout the dinner, the talk was exclusively on politics.
When it comes to topics foreign to his studies, I expected to find our artist, if not a novice, at least very slightly informed. Not at all. On men, on things, on the past as on the future of parties, he had very clear and really novel views, which were evidently not borrowed from the newspapers; and he put them forth in lively, easy, and elegant language; so that after his departure Monsieur de Ronquerolles and Monsieur de l’Estorade declared themselves positively surprised at the strong and powerful political attitude he had taken. This admission was all the more remarkable because, as you know, the two gentlemen are zealous conservatives, whereas Monsieur Dorlange inclines in a marked degree to democratic principles.
This unexpected superiority in my problematical follower reassured me not a little; still, I was resolved to get to the bottom of the situation, and therefore, after dinner I drew him into one of those tete-a-tetes which the mistress of a house can always bring about.
After talking awhile about Monsieur Marie-Gaston, our mutual friend, the enthusiasms of my dear Louise and my efforts to moderate them, I asked him how soon he intended to send his Saint-Ursula to her destination.
“Everything is ready for her departure,” he replied, “but I want your _exeat_, madame; will you kindly tell me if you desire me to change her expression?”
“One question in the first place,” I replied: “Will your work suffer by such a change, supposing that I desire it?”
“Probably. If you cut the wings of a bird you hinder its flight.”
“Another question: Is it I, or the _other person_ whom the statue best represents?”
“You, madame; that goes without saying, for you are the present, she the past.”
“But, to desert the past for the present is a bad thing and goes by a bad name, monsieur; and yet you proclaim it with a very easy air.”
“True,” said Monsieur Dorlange, laughing, “but art is ferocious; wherever it sees material for its creations, it pounces upon it desperately.”
“Art,” I replied, “is a great word under which a multitude of things shelter themselves. The other day you told me that circumstances, too long to relate at that moment, had contributed to fix the image of which I was the reflection in your mind, where it has left a vivid memory; was not that enough to excite my curiosity?”
“It was true, madame, that time did not allow of my making an explanation of those circumstances; but, in any case, having the honor of speaking to you for the first time, it would have been strange, would it not, had I ventured to make you any confidences?”
“Well, but now?” I said, boldly.
“Now, unless I receive more express encouragement, I am still unable to suppose that anything in my past can interest you.”
“Why not? Some acquaintances ripen fast. Your devotion to my Nais has advanced our friendship rapidly. Besides,” I added, with affected levity, “I am passionately fond of stories.”
“But mine has no conclusion to it; it is an enigma even to myself.”
“All the better; perhaps between us we might find the key to it.”
Monsieur Dorlange appeared to take counsel with himself; then, after a short pause he said:--
“It is true that women are admirably fitted to seize the lighter shades of meaning in acts and sentiments which we men are unable to decipher. But this confidence does not concern myself alone; I should have to request that it remain absolutely between ourselves, not even excepting Monsieur de l’Estorade from this restriction. A secret is never safe beyond the person who confides it, and the person who hears it.”
I was much puzzled, as you can well suppose, about what might follow; still, continuing my explorations, I replied:--
“Monsieur de l’Estorade is so little in the habit of hearing everything from me, that he never even read a line of my correspondence with Madame Marie-Gaston.”
Until then, Monsieur Dorlange had stood before the fireplace, at one corner of which I was seated; but he now took a chair beside me and said, by way of preamble:--
“I mentioned to you, madame, the family of Lanty--”
At that instant--provoking as rain in the midst of a picnic--Madame de la Bastie came up to ask me if I had been to see Nathan’s last drama. Monsieur Dorlange was forced to give up his seat beside me, and no further opportunity for renewing the conversation occurred during the evening.
I have really, as you see now, no light upon the matter, and yet when I recall the whole manner and behavior of Monsieur Dorlange, whom I studied carefully, my opinion inclines to his perfect innocence. Nothing proves that the love I suspected plays any part in this curious affair; and I will allow you to think that I and my terrors, with which I tormented you, were terribly absurd,--in short, that I have played the part of Belise in the _Femmes Savantes_, who fancies that every man she sees is fatally in love with her.
I therefore cheerfully abandon that stupid conclusion. Lover or not, Monsieur Dorlange is a man of high character, with rare distinction of mind; and if, as I believe now, he has no misplaced pretensions, it is an honor and pleasure to count him among our friends. Nais is enchanted with her preserver. After he left us that evening, she said to me, with an amusing little air of approbation,--
“Mamma, how well Monsieur Dorlange talks.”
Apropos of Nais, here is one of her remarks:--
“When he stopped the horses, mamma, and you did not seem to notice him, I thought he was only a man.”
“How do you mean,--only a man?”
“Well, yes! one of those persons to whom one pays no attention. But, oh! I was so glad when I found out he was a monsieur. Didn’t you hear me cry out, ‘Ah! you are the monsieur who saved me’?”
Though her innocence is perfect, there was such pride and vanity in this little speech that I gave her, as you may well suppose, a lecture upon it. This distinction of man and monsieur is dreadful; but, after all, the child told the truth. She only said, with her blunt simplicity, what our democratic customs still allow us to put in practice, though they forbid us to put it into words. The Revolution of ‘89 has at least introduced that virtuous hypocrisy into our social system.
But I refrain from politics.
VIII. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
April, 1839.
For the last two weeks we have heard nothing more of Monsieur Dorlange. Not only has he not seen fit to renew the conversation so provokingly interrupted by Madame de la Bastie, but he has not even remembered that it was proper to leave his card at the house after a dinner.
While we were breakfasting yesterday morning, I happened to make this remark (though without any sharpness), and just then our Lucas, who, as an old servant, sometimes allows himself a little familiarity, had the door swung triumphantly open to admit him, bearing _something_, I knew not what, wrapped in tissue paper, which he deposited with great care on the table, giving a note to Monsieur de l’Estorade at the same time.
“What is that?” I said to Lucas, on whose face I detected the signs of a “surprise,” at the same time putting out my hand to uncover the mysterious article.
“Oh! madame must be careful!” cried Lucas; “it is fragile.”
During this time my husband had read the note, which he now passed to me, saying:--
“Read it. Monsieur Dorlange sends us an excuse.”
The note said:--
Monsieur le Comte,--I think I observed that Madame la comtesse granted me rather reluctantly her permission to profit by the audacious larceny I committed at her expense. I have, therefore, taken upon myself to change the character of my statue, and, at the present moment, the _two sisters_ no longer resemble each other. Nevertheless, as I did not wish that _all_ should be lost to the world, I modelled the head of Saint-Ursula before retouching it. From that model I have now made a reduction, which I place upon the charming shoulders of a countess not yet canonized, thank God! The mould was broken as soon as the one cast, which I have now the honor of sending you, was made. This fact may, perhaps, give some little additional value to the bust in your eyes.
Accept, Monsieur le comte, etc., etc.
While I was reading the note, my husband, Lucas, Rene, and Nais had eagerly extracted me from my swathings, and then, in truth, I appeared no longer a saint, but a woman of the world. I really thought my husband and children would go out of their minds with admiration and pleasure. The news of this masterpiece spread about the house, and all our servants, whom we rather spoil, came flocking, one after another, as if sent for, crying out, “Oh, it is madame’s own self!” I alone did not share in the general enthusiasm. As for Monsieur de l’Estorade, after working for an hour to find a place in his study where the bust could be seen in its best light, he came in to say to me:--
“On my way to the Treasury to-day I shall go and see Monsieur Dorlange, and if he is at liberty this evening I shall ask him to dine with us. To-day is Armand’s half-holiday, and I would like him to see the boy. The assembled family can then thank him for his gift.”
Monsieur Dorlange accepted the invitation. At dinner Monsieur de l’Estorade inquired further about his candidacy, giving it however, no approval. This led straight to politics. Armand, whose mind is naturally grave and reflective and who reads the newspapers, mingled in the conversation. Against the practice of youths of the present day, he thinks like his father; that is, he is very conservative; though perhaps less just and wise, as might well be expected in a lad of fifteen. He was consequently led to contradict Monsieur Dorlange, whose inclination as I told you, is somewhat jacobin. And I must say I thought the arguments of my little man neither bad nor ill-expressed. Without ceasing to be polite, Monsieur Dorlange had an air of disdaining a discussion with the poor boy, so much so that I saw Armand on the point of losing patience and replying sharply. However, as he has been well brought up, I had only to make him a sign and he controlled himself; but seeing him turn scarlet and shut himself up in gloomy silence, I felt that his pride had received a blow, and I thought it little generous in Monsieur Dorlange to crush a young lad in that way.
I know very well that children in these days make the mistake of wishing to be personages before their time, and that it often does them good to suppress such conceit. But really, Armand has an intellectual development and a power of reasoning beyond his age. Do you want a proof of it? Until last year, I had never consented to part with him, and it was only as a day scholar that he followed his course of study at the College Henri IV. Well, he himself, for the sake of his studies, which were hindered by going and coming to and fro, asked to be placed in the regular manner in the school; and he employed more entreaties and arguments with me to put him under that discipline than an ordinary boy would have used to escape it. Therefore this manly air and manner, which in most schoolboys would, of course, be intolerably ridiculous, seems in him the result of his natural precocity; and this precocity ought to be forgiven him, inasmuch as it comes to him from God.
In consequence of his unfortunate birth Monsieur Dorlange is less fitted than most men to judge of children in their homes, and he therefore, necessarily, shows a want of indulgence. But he had better take care; if he wishes to pay court to me merely as a friend he has chosen a very bad method of doing so.
Of course an evening in the midst of the family did not allow of his returning to the subject of his private history; but I thought he did not show any particular desire to do so. In fact, he occupied himself much more with Nais than with me, cutting out silhouettes in black paper for her during nearly the whole evening. I must also mention that Madame de Rastignac came in and I, on my side, was obliged to give my company to her. While we were conversing near the fire, Monsieur Dorlange at the other end of the room was posing the two children Nais and Rene, who presently brought me their likenesses snipped out with scissors, Nais whispering triumphantly in my ear:--
“You don’t know; but Monsieur Dorlange is going to make my bust in marble.”
Since this family dinner, civil war has been declared among my children. Nais extols to the skies her “dear preserver,” as she calls him, and is supported in her opinion by Rene, who is delivered over to the sculptor body and soul in return for a superb lancer on horseback which Monsieur Dorlange cut out for him. Armand, on the contrary, thinks him ugly, which is undeniable; he says he resembles the portraits of Danton which he has seen in the illustrated histories of the Revolution, in which remark there is some truth. He says also that Monsieur Dorlange has given me in my bust the air of a grisette, which is not true at all. Hence, disputes among my darlings which are endless.
IX. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
Paris, April, 1839.
Why do I desert my art, and what do I intend to do in this cursed galley of politics? This shows what it is, my dear romantic friend, to shut one’s self up for years in a conjugal convent. During that time the world has progressed. To friends forgotten at the gate life brings new combinations; and the more they are ignored, the more disposed the forgetter is to cast the blame upon those forgotten; it is so easy to preach to others!
Learn, then, my dear inquisitor, that I do not enter politics of my own volition. In pushing myself in this unexpected manner into the electoral breach, I merely follow an inspiration that has been made to me. A ray of light has come into my darkness; a father has partly revealed himself, and, if I may believe appearances, he holds a place in the world which ought to satisfy the most exacting ambition. This revelation, considering the very ordinary course of my life, has come to me surrounded by fantastic and romantic circumstances which served to be related to you in some detail.
As you have lived in Italy, I think it useless to explain to you the Cafe Greco, the usual rendezvous of the pupils of the Academy and the artists of all countries who flock to Rome. In Paris, rue de Coq-Saint-Honore, we have a distant counterpart of that institution in a cafe long known as that of the Cafe des Arts. Two or three times a week I spend an evening there, where I meet several of my contemporaries in the French Academy in Rome. They have introduced me to a number of journalists and men of letters, all of them amiable and distinguished men, with whom there is both profit and pleasure in exchanging ideas.
In a certain corner, where we gather, many questions of a nature to interest serious minds are debated; but the most eager interest, namely politics, takes the lead in our discussions. In this little club the prevailing opinion is democratic; it is represented under all its aspects, the phalansterian Utopia not excepted. That’s enough to tell you that before this tribunal the ways of the government are often judged with severity, and that the utmost liberty of language reigns in our discussions. The consequence is that about a year ago the waiter who serves us habitually took me aside one day to give me, as he said, a timely warning.
“Monsieur,” he said, “you are watched by the police; and you would do well not to talk like Saint Paul, open-mouthed.”
“The police! my good friend,” I replied, “why the devil should the police watch me? What I say, and a good deal else, is printed every morning in the newspapers.”
“No matter for that, they _are_ watching you. I have seen it. There is a little old man, who takes a great deal of snuff, who is always within hearing distance of you; when you speak he seems to pay more attention to your words than to those of the others; and once I saw him write something down in a note-book in marks that were not writing.”
“Well, the next time he comes, point him out to me.”
The next time proved to be the next day. The person shown to me was a short man with gray hair, a rather neglected person and a face deeply pitted with the small-pox, which seemed to make him about fifty years of age. He frequently dipped in a large snuffbox; and seemed to be giving to my remarks an attention I might consider either flattering or inquisitive, as I pleased; but a certain air of gentleness and integrity in this supposed police-spy inclined me to the kinder interpretation. I said so to the waiter, who had plumed himself on discovering a spy.
“_Parbleu_!” he replied, “they always put on that honeyed manner to hide their game.”
Two days later, on a Sunday, at the hour of vespers, in one of my rambles about old Paris--for which, as you know, I always had a taste--I happened to enter the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, the parish church of the remote quarter of the city which bears that name. This church is a building of very little interest, no matter what historians and certain “Guides to Paris” may say. I should therefore have passed rapidly through it if the remarkable talent of the organist who was performing part of the service had not induced me to remain.
To say that the playing of that man realized my ideal is giving it high praise, for I dare say you will remember that I always distinguished between organ-players and organists, a superior order of nobility the title of which is not to be given unwittingly.
The service over, I had a curiosity to see the face of so eminent an artist buried in that out-of-the-way place. Accordingly I posted myself near the door of the organ loft, to see him as he left the church--a thing I certainly would not have done for a crowned head; but great artists, after all, are they not kings by divine right?
Imagine my amazement when, after waiting a few minutes, instead of seeing a totally unknown face I saw that of a man in whom I recognized my listener at the Cafe des Arts. But that is not all: behind him came the semblance of a human being in whose crooked legs and bushy tangled hair I recognized by old tri-monthly providence, my banker, my _money-bringer_,--in a word my worthy friend, the mysterious dwarf.
I did not escape, myself, his vigilant eye, and I saw him point me out to the organist with an eager gesture. The latter turned hastily to look at me and then, without further demonstration, continued his way. Meanwhile the bandy-legged creature went up familiarly to the giver of holy-water and offered him a pinch of snuff; then without paying any further attention to me, he limped to a low door at the side of the church and disappeared. The evident pains this deformed being had taken to fix the organist’s attention upon me seemed to me a revelation. Evidently, the _maestro_ knew of the singular manner by which my quarterly stipend had reached me; which stipend, I should tell you, had been regularly continued until my orders for work so increased as to put me beyond all necessity. It was not improbable therefore that this man, who listened to me at the Cafe des Arts, was the repository of other secrets relating to my early life; and I became most eager to obtain an explanation from him; all the more because, as I was now living on my own resources, my curiosity could not be punished, as formerly threatened, by the withdrawal of my subsidy.
Making my decision quickly, I followed the organist at once; but by the time I reached the door of the church he was out of sight. However, my luck prompted me to follow the direction he had taken, and as I reached the quai de Bethune I saw him to my great joy rapping at the door of a house. Entering resolutely after him, I asked the porter for the organist of Saint-Louis-de-l’Ile.
“Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau?”
“Yes; Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau; he lives here I believe.”
“Fourth floor above the entresol, door to the left. He has just come in, and you can overtake him on the stairs.”
Rapidly as I ran up, my man had the key of his door already in the lock when I reached him.
“Have I the honor of speaking to Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau?” I asked.
“Don’t know any such person,” he replied with effrontery, unlocking his door.
“Perhaps I pronounce the name incorrectly; I mean the organist of Saint-Louis-de-l’Ile.”
“I have never heard of any organist in this house.”
“Pardon me, monsieur, there is one, for the concierge has just told me so. Besides I saw you leave the organ loft of that church followed by an individual who--”
Before I could finish my sentence this singular individual cut short our interview by entering his apartment and locking the door behind him. For a moment I thought that I must have been mistaken; but on reflection I saw that a mistake was impossible. I had to do with a man who, for years, had proved his unremitting discretion. No, he was obstinately bent on avoiding me; I was not mistaken in recognizing him.
I then began to pull the bell vigorously, being quite resolved to get some answer at least to my demand. For some little time the besieged took the racket I made patiently; then, all of a sudden, I noticed that the bell had ceased to ring. Evidently, the wire was disconnected; the besieged was secure, unless I kicked in the door; but that of course, was not altogether the thing to do.
I returned to the porter and, without giving the reasons for my discomfiture, I told him about it. In that way I won his confidence and so obtained some little information about the impenetrable Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau. Though readily given, this information did not enlighten me at all as to the actual situation. Bricheteau was said to be a quiet lodger, civil, but not communicative; though punctual in paying his rent, his means seemed small; he kept no servant and took his meals out of the house. Going out every morning before ten o’clock, he seldom came in before night; the inference was that he was either a clerk in some office, or that he gave music lessons in private houses.
One detail alone in the midst of this vague and useless information was of interest. For the last few months Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau had received a voluminous number of letters the postage on which indicated that they came from foreign parts; but, in spite of his desires, the worthy concierge had never, he said, been able to decipher the post-mark. Thus this detail, which might have been very useful to me became for the moment absolutely worthless.
I returned home, persuading myself that a pathetic letter addressed to the refractory Bricheteau would induce him to receive me. Mingling with my entreaties the touch of a threat, I let him know that I was firmly resolved at all costs to get to the bottom of the mystery which weighed upon my life; the secret of which he evidently knew. The next morning, before nine o’clock, I went to his house, only to learn that after paying the rent to the end of his term, he had packed up his furniture and left the house in the early morning, without the porter being able to discover from the men who removed his property (well-paid to keep silence, no doubt) where they were ordered to carry it. These men being strangers in the quarter, it was quite impossible to discover them later.
I felt, however, that I still had a clue to him, through the organ at Saint-Louis, and the following Sunday after high mass I posted myself as before at the door of the organ loft, determined not to let go of the sphinx until I had made him speak. But here again, disappointment! Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau’s place was taken by a pupil. The same thing happened on the three following Sundays. On the fourth, I accosted the pupil and asked him if the master were ill.
“No, monsieur,” he replied. “Monsieur Bricheteau has asked for leave of absence. He will be absent for some time; I believe on business.”
“Where, then, can I write to him?”
“I don’t rightly know; but I think you had better address your letter to his house; not far from here, quai de Bethune.”
“But he has moved; didn’t you know it?”
“No, indeed; where does he live now?”
This was poor luck; to ask information of a man who asked it of me when I questioned him. As if to put be quite beside myself while I was making these inquiries, I saw that damned dwarf in the distance evidently laughing at me.
Happily for my patience and my curiosity, which, under the pressure of all this opposition was growing terrible, a certain amount of light was given me. A few days after my last discomfiture, a letter reached me bearing the post-mark Stockholm, Sweden; which address did not surprise me because, while in Rome, I had been honored by the friendship of Thorwaldsen, the great Swedish sculptor, and I had often met in his studio many of his compatriots. Probably, therefore, this letter conveyed an order from one of them, sent through Thorwaldsen. But, on opening the letter what was my amazement, and my emotion, in presence of its opening words:--
Monsieur my Son,--
The letter was long. I had no patience to read it until I knew the name I bore. I turned to the signature; again my disappointment was complete--there was no name!
Monsieur my Son,
said my anonymous father,--
I do not regret that by your passionate insistence on knowing the secret of your birth, you have forced the person who has watched over you from childhood to come here to confer with me as to the course your vehement and dangerous curiosity requires us to pursue.
For some time past, I have entertained a thought which I bring to maturity to-day; the execution of which could have been more satisfactorily settled by word of mouth than it can now be by correspondence.
Immediately after your birth, which cost your mother’s life, being forced to expatriate myself, I made in a foreign country a noble fortune, and I occupy in the ministry of that country an eminent position. I foresee the moment when, free to restore to you my name, I shall also be able to secure to you the inheritance of my titles and the position to which I have attained.
But, to reach that height, the reputation you have, I am told, acquired in art is not a sufficient recommendation. It is my wish that you should enter political life; and in that career, under the present institutions of France, there are not two ways of becoming a man of distinction: you must begin by being made a deputy. I know that you are not yet of the legal age, and also that you do not possess the property qualification. But, in another year you will be thirty years old, and that is just the necessary time required by law to be a land-owner before becoming a candidate for election.
To-morrow, therefore, you can present yourself to Mongenod Bros., bankers, rue de la Victoire. A sum of two hundred and fifty thousand francs will be paid to you; this you must immediately employ in the purchase of real estate, applying part of the surplus to obtain an interest in some newspaper which, when the right time comes, will support your candidacy, and the rest in another expense I shall presently explain to you.
Your political aptitude is guaranteed to me by the person who, with a disinterested zeal for which I shall ever be grateful, has watched over you since you were abandoned. For some time past he has secretly followed you and listened to you, and he is certain that you will make yourself a dignified position in the Chamber. Your opinions of ardent yet moderate liberalism please me; without being aware of it, you have very cleverly played into my game. I cannot as yet tell you the place of your probable election. The secret power which is preparing for that event is all the more certain to succeed because its plans are pursued quietly and for the present in the shade. But success will be greatly assisted by the execution of a work which I shall now propose to you, requesting you to accept its apparent strangeness without surprise or comment.
For the time being you must continue to be a sculptor, and with the talents of which you have already given proofs, I wish you to make a statue of Saint-Ursula. That is a subject which does not lack either interest or poesy. Saint-Ursula, virgin and martyr, was, as is generally believed, a daughter of prince of Great Britain. Becoming the abbess of a convent of unmarried women, who were called with popular naivete the Eleven Thousand Virgins, she was martyred by the Huns in the fifth century; later, she was patroness of the order of the Ursulines, to which she gave its name, and she was also patroness of the famous house of Sorbonne. An able artist like yourself could, it seems to me, make much of these details.
Without knowing the locality of which you will be made the representative, it is expedient that you should from the present moment, make known your political opinions and your intention of becoming a candidate for election. But I cannot too strongly insist on your keeping secret the communication now made to you; at any rate as much as your patience will allow. Leave my agent in peace, and await the slow and quiet development of the brilliant future to which you are destined, without yielding to a curiosity which might, I warn you, lead to great disasters.
If you refuse to enter my plans, you will take from yourself all chance of ever penetrating a mystery which you have shown yourself so eager to understand. But I do not admit even the supposition of your resistance, and I prefer to believe in your deference to the wishes of a father who will regard it as the finest day of his life when at last it be granted to him to reveal himself to his son.
P.S. Your statue, which is intended for a convent of Ursuline nuns, must be in white marble. Height: one metre seven hundred and six millimetres; in other words, five feet three inches. As it will not be placed in a niche, you must carefully finish all sides of it. The costs of the work are to be taken out of the two hundred and fifty thousand francs mentioned above.
This letter chilled and pained me. In the first place, it took from me a hope long cherished,--that of recovering a mother as loving as yours, of whose adorable tenderness, dear friend, you have so often told me. After all, it was a half-light thrown upon the fogs of my life without even allowing me to know whether I was or was not the child of a legitimate marriage. It also seemed to me that such paternal intimations addressed to a man of my age were much too despotic and imperious. Was it not a strange proceeding to change my whole life as if I were a boy just leaving school! At first I employed to myself all the arguments against this political vocation which you and my other friends have since addressed to me. Nevertheless curiosity impelled me to go the Mongenods’; and finding there, sure enough, in actual, living money, the two hundred and fifty thousand francs announced to me, I was led to reason in another way.
I reflected that a will which began by making such an outlay must have something serious in it. And inasmuch as this mysterious father knew all and I nothing, it seemed to me that to enter on a struggle with him was neither reasonable nor opportune. In fact, had I any real repugnance to the career suggested to me? No. Political interests have always roused me to a certain degree; and if my electoral attempt should come to nothing, I could always return to my art without being more ridiculous than the other still-born ambitions which each new legislature produces.
Accordingly, I have bought the necessary piece of property, and made myself a shareholder in the “National.” I have also made the Saint-Ursula, and am now awaiting instructions, which seem to me rather long in coming, as to her actual destination. Moreover, I have made known my parliamentary ambition, and the fact that I intend to stand in the coming elections.
I need not ask you to preserve the utmost secrecy about my present confidence. Discretion is a virtue which you practise, to my knowledge, in too signal a manner to need any exhorting thereto from me. But I am wrong, dear friend, in making these unkind allusions to the past, for at this moment I am, more perhaps than you know, the obliged party. Partly out of interest in me, but more because of the general aversion your brother-in-law’s extreme haughtiness inspires, the democratic party has flocked to my door to make inquiries about my wound, and the talk and excitement about this duel have served me well; there is no doubt that my candidacy has gained much ground. Therefore, I say, a truce to your gratitude; do you not see how much I owe to you?
X. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
Paris, April, 1839.
Dear Friend,--For better or for worse, I continue my candidacy without a constituency to elect me. This surprises my friends and worries me, for it is only a few weeks now to the general election; and if it happens that all this mysterious “preparation” comes to nought, a pretty figure I shall cut in the caricatures of Monsieur Bixiou, of whose malicious remarks on the subject you lately wrote me.
One thing reassures me: it does not seem likely that any one would have sown two hundred and fifty thousand francs in my electoral furrow without feeling pretty sure of gathering a harvest. Perhaps, to take a cheerful view of the matter, this very slowness may be considered as showing great confidence of success.
However that may be, I am kept by this long delay in a state of inaction which weighs upon me. Astride as it were of two existences,--one in which I have not set foot, the other in which my foot still lingers,--I have no heart to undertake real work; I am like a traveller who, having arrived before the hour when the diligence starts, does not know what to do with his person nor how to spend his time. You will not complain, I think, that I turn this enforced _far niente_ to the profit of our correspondence; and now that I am thus at leisure, I shall take up two points in your last letter which did not seem to me of sufficient importance to pay much attention to at the time: I refer to your warning that my parliamentary pretensions did not meet the approval of Monsieur Bixiou; and to your suggestion that I might expose myself to falling in love with Madame de l’Estorade--if I were not in love with her already. Let us discuss, in the first instance, Monsieur Bixiou’s grand disapprobation--just as we used to talk in the olden time of the grand treachery of Monsieur de Mirabeau.
I’ll describe that man to you in a single word. Envy. In Monsieur Bixiou there is, unquestionably, the makings of a great artist; but in the economy of his existence the belly has annihilated the heart and the head, and he is now and forever under the dominion of sensual appetites; he is riveted to the condition of a _caricaturist_,--that is to say, to the condition of a man who from day to day discounts himself in petty products, regular galley-slave pot-boilers, which, to be sure, give him a lively living, but in themselves are worthless and have no future. With talents misused and now impotent, he has in his mind, as he has on his face, that everlasting and despairing _grin_ which human thought instinctively attributes to fallen angels. Just as the Spirit of darkness attacks, in preference, great saints because they recall to him most bitterly the angelic nature from which he has fallen, so Monsieur Bixiou delights to slaver the talents and characters of those who he sees have courageously refused to squander their strength, sap, and aims as he has done.
But the thing which ought to reassure you somewhat as to the danger of his calumny and his slander (for he employs both forms of backbiting) is that at the very time when he believes he is making a burlesque autopsy of me he is actually an obedient puppet whose wire I hold in my hands, and whom I am making talk as I please. Being convinced that a certain amount of noisy discussion would advance my political career, I looked about me for what I may call a public crier. Among these circus trumpets, if I could have found one with a sharper tone, a more deafening blare than Bixiou’s, I would have chosen it. As it was, I have profited by the malevolent curiosity which induces that amiable lepidopter to insinuate himself into all studios. I confided the whole affair to him; even to the two hundred and fifty thousand francs (which I attributed to a lucky stroke at the Bourse), I told him all my plans of parliamentary conduct, down to the number of the house I have bought to conform to the requirements of the electoral law. It is all jotted down in his notebook.
That statement, I think, would somewhat reduce the admiration of his hearers in the salon Montcornet did they know of it. As for the political horoscope which he has been so kind as to draw for me, I cannot honestly say that his astrology is at fault. It is very certain that with my intention of following no set of fixed opinions, I must reach the situation so admirably summed up by the lawyer of Monsieur de la Palisse, when he exclaimed with burlesque emphasis: “What do you do, gentlemen, when you place a man in solitude? You isolate him.”
Isolation will certainly be my lot, and the artist-life, in which a man lives alone and draws from himself like the Great Creator whose work he toils to imitate, has predisposed me to welcome the situation. But although, in the beginning especially, it will deprive me of all influence in the lobbies, it may serve me well in the tribune, where I shall be able to speak with strength and _freedom_. Being bound by no promises and by no party trammels, nothing will prevent me from being the man I am, and expressing, in all their sacred crudity, the ideas which I think sound and just. I know very well that before an audience plain, honest truth may fail to be contagious or even welcome. But have you never remarked that, by using our opportunities wisely, we finally meet with days which may be called the festivals of morality and intelligence, days on which, naturally and almost without effort, the thought of good triumphs?
I do not, however, conceal from myself that, although I may reach to some reputation as an orator, such a course will never lead to a ministry, and that it does not bestow that reputation of being a practical man to which it is now the fashion to sacrifice so much. But if at arm’s length in the tribune I have but little influence, I shall make my mark at a greater distance. I shall speak as it were from a window, beyond the close and narrow sphere of parliamentary discussion, and above the level of its petty passions and its petty interests. This species of success appears to meet the views of the mysterious paternal intentions toward me. What they seem to require is that I shall sound and resound. From that point of view, i’ faith, politics have a poetic side which is not out of keeping with my past life.
Now, to take up your other warning: that of my passion born or to be born for Madame de l’Estorade. I quote your most judicious deductions for the purpose of answering them fully.
In 1837, when you left for Italy, Madame de l’Estorade was, you say, in the flower of her beauty; and the queer, audacious persistence which I have shown in deriving inspiration from her shows that it has not faded. Hence, if the evil be not already done, you warn me to be on my guard; from the admiration of an artist to the adoration of the man there is but a step, and the history of the late Pygmalion is commended to my study.
In the first place, learned doctor and mythologian, allow me this remark. Being on the spot and therefore much better placed than you to judge of the dangers of the situation, I can assure you that the principal person concerned does not appear to feel the least anxiety. Monsieur de l’Estorade quarrels with me for one thing only: he thinks my visits too few, and my reserve misanthropy.
_Parbleu_! I hear you say, a husband is always the last to know that his wife is being courted. So be it. But the high renown of Madame de l’Estorade’s virtue, her cold and rather calculating good sense, which often served to balance the ardent and passionate impetuosity of one you knew well,--what of that? And will you not grant that motherhood as it appears in that lady--pushed to a degree of fervor which I might almost call fanaticism--would be to her an infallible preservative?
So much for her. But it is not, I see, for her tranquillity, it is mine for which your friendship is concerned; if Pygmalion had not succeeded in giving life to his statue, a pretty life his love would have made him!
To your charitable solicitude I must answer, (1) by asserting my principles (though the word and the thing are utterly out of date); (2) by a certain stupid respect that I feel for conjugal loyalty; (3) by the natural preoccupation which the serious public enterprise I am about to undertake must necessarily give to my mind and imagination. I must also tell you that I belong, if not by spiritual height, at least by all the tendencies of my mind and character, to that strong and serious school of artists of another age who, finding that art is long and life is short--_ars longa et vita brevis_--did not commit the mistake of wasting their time and lessening their powers of creation by silly and insipid intrigues.
But I have a better reason still to offer you. As Monsieur de l’Estorade has told you of the really romantic incidents of my first meeting with his wife, you know already that a _memory_ was the cause of my studying her as a model. Well, that memory, while it attracted me to the beautiful countess, is the strongest of all reasons to keep me from her. This appears to you, I am sure, sufficiently enigmatical and far-fetched; but wait till I explain it.
If you had not thought proper to break the thread of our intercourse, I should not to-day be obliged to take up the arrears of our confidence; as it is, my dear boy, you must now take your part in my past history and listen to me bravely.
In 1835, the last year of my stay in Rome, I became quite intimate with a comrade in the Academy named Desroziers. He was a musician and a man of distinguished and very observing mind, who would probably have gone far in his art if malarial fever had not put an end to him the following year. Suddenly the idea took possession of us to go to Sicily, one of the excursions permitted by the rules of the school; but as we were radically “dry,” as they say, we walked about Rome for some time endeavoring to find some means of recruiting our finances. On one of these occasions we happened to pass before the Palazzo Braschi. Its wide-open doors gave access to the passing and repassing of a crowd of persons of all sorts.
“_Parbleu_!” exclaimed Desroziers, “here’s the very thing for us.”
And without explaining his words or where he was taking me, he made me follow the crowd and enter the palace.
After mounting a magnificent marble staircase and crossing a very long suite of apartments rather poorly furnished,--which is customary in Italian palaces, all their luxury being put into ceilings, statues, paintings, and other objects of art,--we reached a room that was wholly hung with black and lighted by quantities of tapers. It was, of course, a _chambre-ardente_. In the middle of it on a raised platform surmounted by a baldaquin, lay a _thing_, the most hideous and grotesque thing you can possibly conceive. Imagine a little old man whose hands and face had reached such a stage of emaciation that a mummy would have seemed to you in comparison plump and comely.
Clothed in black satin breeches, a violet velvet coat cut _a la Francaise_, a white waistcoat embroidered in gold, from which issued an enormous shirt-frill of point d’Angleterre, this skeleton had cheeks covered with a thick layer of rouge which heightened still further the parchment tones of the rest of his skin. Upon his head was a blond wig frizzed into innumerable little curls, surmounted by an immense plumed hat jauntily perched to one side in a manner which irresistibly provoked the laughter of even the most respectful visitors.
After one glance given to this ridiculous and lamentable exhibition,--an obligatory part of all funerals, according to the etiquette of the Roman aristocracy,--Desroziers exclaimed: “There’s the end; now come and see the beginning.”
Not replying to any of my questions, because he was arranging a dramatic effect, he took me to the Albani gallery and placed me before a statue representing Adonis stretched on a lion’s skin.
“What do you think of that?” he said.
“What?” I replied at a first glance; “why, it is as fine as an antique.”
“Antique as much as I am!” replied Desroziers. “It is a portrait in youth of that wizened old being we have just seen dead.”
“Antique or not, it is a masterpiece,” I said. “But how is all this beauty, or its hideous caricature, to get us to Sicily? That is the question.”
“I’ll tell you,” replied Desroziers. “I know the family of that old scarecrow. His niece married the Comte de Lanty, and they have long wanted to buy this statue which the Albani museum won’t give up at any price. They have tried to have it copied, but they never got anything satisfactory. Now, you know the director of the museum well. Get him to let you make a copy of it. I give music-lessons to the Comte de Lanty’s daughter, Mademoiselle Marianina, and I’ll talk of your copy. If you succeed, as of course you will, the count will buy it and pay you forty times the cost of a trip to Sicily.”
Two days later I began the work, and, as it suited my taste, I worked so hotly at it that by the end of three weeks the Lanty family, escorted by Desroziers, came to see my copy. The count, who seemed to me a good connoisseur, declared himself satisfied with the work and bought it. Mademoiselle Marianina, who was the heiress and favorite of her grand-uncle, was particularly delighted with it. Marianina was then about twenty-one years old, and I shall not make you her portrait because you know Madame de l’Estorade, to whom her likeness is extraordinary. Already an accomplished musician, this charming girl had a remarkable inclination for all the arts. Coming from time to time to my studio to watch the completion of the statue, a taste for sculpture seized her, as it did the Princesse Marie d’Orleans, and until the departure of the family, which took place a few months before I myself left Rome, Mademoiselle de Lanty took lessons from me in modelling.
I never dreamed of being another Saint-Preux or Abelard, but I must own that I found rare happiness in imparting my knowledge. Marianina was so gay and happy, her judgment of art so sound, her voice, when she sang, so stirred my heart, that had it not been for her vast fortune, which kept me at a distance, I should have run great danger to my peace of mind. Admitted into the household on the footing of a certain familiarity, I could see that my beautiful pupil took pleasure in our intercourse, and when the family returned to Paris she expressed the utmost regret at leaving Rome; I even fancied, God forgive me, that I saw something like a tear in her eye when we parted.
On my return to Paris, some months later, my first visit was to the hotel de Lanty. Marianina was too well bred and too kind at heart to be discourteous to any one, but I felt at once that a cold restrained manner was substituted for the gracious friendliness of the past. It seemed to me probable that her evident liking, I will not say for me personally, but for my conversation and acquirements, had been noticed by her parents, who had doubtless taught her a lesson; in fact, the stiff and forbidding manner of Monsieur and Madame de Lanty left me no other supposition.
Naturally, I did not call again; but a few months later, when I exhibited my Pandora in the salon of 1837, I one day saw the whole Lanty family approach it. The mother was on the arm of Comte Maxime de Trailles, a well-known lion. _Nil admirari_ is the natural instinct of all men of the world; so, after a very cursory glance at my work, Monsieur de Trailles began to find shocking faults in it, and in so high and clear a voice that not a word was lost within a certain range. Marianina shrugged her shoulders as she listened to this profound discourse, and when it was ended she said,--
“How fortunate you came with us! Without your enlightened knowledge I might, with the rest of the good public, have thought this statue admirable. It is a pity the sculptor is not here to learn his business from you.”
“He _is_ here, behind you,” said a stout woman, who had once been my landlady, and was standing near, laughing heartily. Involuntarily Marianina turned; when she saw me a vivid color came into her cheeks, and I slipped away into the crowd. A girl who took my part so warmly, and then showed such emotion on being detected in doing so, could not be absolutely indifferent to me; and as on my first visit I had only, after all, been coldly received, I decided, after my great success at the Exhibition, in consequence of which I was made a chevalier of the Legion of honor, to call again upon the Lantys; perhaps my new distinctions would procure me a better reception.
Monsieur de Lanty received me without rising, and with the following astounding apostrophe:--
“I think you very courageous, monsieur, to venture to present yourself here.”
“I have never been received in a manner that seemed to require courage on my part.”
“You have come, no doubt,” continued Monsieur de Lanty, “in search of your property which you were careless enough to leave in our hands. I shall return you that article of gallantry.”
So saying, he rose and took from a drawer in his secretary an elegant little portfolio, which he gave to me.
As I looked at it in a sort of stupefaction, he added:
“Yes; I know the letters are not there; I presume you will allow me to keep them.”
“This portfolio, the letters you mention--all this is an enigma to me, monsieur.”
At this moment Madame de Lanty entered the room.
“What do you want?” said her husband, roughly.
“I knew monsieur was here, and as I feared some painful explanation, I came to do my duty as a woman, and interpose.”
“You need fear nothing, madame,” I said; “evidently what is taking place is the result of some misunderstanding.”
“Ah! this is too much!” cried Monsieur de Lanty, reopening the drawer from which he had taken the portfolio, and taking out a packet of letters tied with a rose-colored ribbon. “I think these will put an end to your _misunderstanding_.”
I looked at the letters; they were not postmarked, and simply bore my name, Monsieur Dorlange, in a woman’s handwriting, which was unknown to me.
“Monsieur,” I said, “you know more than I do; you have in your possession letters that seem to belong to me, but which I have never received.”
“Upon my word,” cried Monsieur de Lanty, “you are an admirable comedian; I never saw innocence better played.”
“But, monsieur,” I said, “who wrote those letters, and why are they addressed to me?”
“It is useless to deny them, monsieur,” said Madame de Lanty; “Marianina has confessed all.”
“Mademoiselle Marianina!” I exclaimed. “Then the matter is very simple; have the goodness to bring us together; let me hear from her lips the explanation of this singular affair.”
“The evasion is clever,” replied Monsieur de Lanty; “but my daughter is no longer here: she is in a convent, forever sheltered from your intrigues and the dangers of her own ridiculous passion. If that is what you came to know, all is said. Let us part, for my patience and moderation have a limit, if your insolence has none.”
“Monsieur!” I began, angrily; but Madame de Lanty, who was standing behind her husband, made me a gesture as if she would fall upon her knees; and reflecting that perhaps Marianina’s future depended on the attitude I now took, I controlled myself and left the room without further words.
The next morning, before I was out of bed, the Abbe Fontanon was announced to me. When he entered he proved to be a tall old man with a bilious skin and a sombre, stern expression, which he tried to soften by a specious manner and a show of gentle but icy obsequiousness.
“Monsieur,” he said, “Madame la Comtesse de Lanty, whose confessor I have the honor to be, requests me to give you a few explanations, to which you have an incontestable right, as to the scene that took place last evening between her husband and yourself.”
“I am ready to listen to you, monsieur,” I replied.
“Monsieur de Lanty,” continued the abbe, “is a bad sleeper; and one night last summer he was awakened by the sound of cautious steps. He opened his door, and called out to know who was there. He was not mistaken; some one was there, but did not answer, and disappeared before Monsieur de Lanty could obtain a light. At first it was thought to be an attempt at robbery; but on further inquiry it appeared that a _gentleman_ had taken a room in the neighborhood, and had frequently been seen in company with Mademoiselle Marianina,--in short, the matter concerned a love affair and not a robbery. Monsieur de Lanty has long watched his daughter, whose ardent inclinations have given him much anxiety; you yourself, monsieur, caused him some uneasiness in Rome--”
“Very needless, Monsieur l’abbe,” I said, interrupting him.
“Yes. I know that your relations to Mademoiselle de Lanty have always been perfectly proper and becoming. But since their return to Paris another individual has occupied her mind,--a bold and enterprising man, capable of risking everything to compromise and thus win an heiress. Being taxed with having encouraged this man and allowed these nocturnal interviews, Mademoiselle de Lanty at first denied everything. Then, evidently fearing that her father, a violent man, would take some steps against her lover, she threw herself at his feet and admitted the visits, but denied that the visitor was the man her father named to her. At first she refused obstinately to substitute another name for the one she disavowed. After some days passed in this struggle, she finally confessed to her mother, under a pledge of secrecy, that her father was right in his suspicions, but she dreaded the results to the family if she acknowledged the truth to him. The man in question was a noted duellist, and her father and brother would surely bring him to account for his conduct. It was then, monsieur, that the idea occurred to this imprudent girl to substitute another name for that of her real lover.”
“Ah! I understand,” I said; “the name of a nobody, an artist, a sculptor, or some insignificant individual of that kind.”
“You do Mademoiselle de Lanty injustice by that remark,” replied the abbe. “What decided her to make your name a refuge against the dangers she foresaw was the fact that Monsieur de Lanty had formerly had suspicions about you, and she thought that circumstance gave color to her statement.”
“But, Monsieur l’abbe,” I said, “how do you explain those letters, that portfolio, which her father produced yesterday?”
“That again was an invention of Marianina; and I may add that this duplicity assures me that had she remained in the world her future might have been terrible.”
“Am I to suppose that this tale has been told you by Madame de Lanty?”
“Confided to me, monsieur, yes. You yourself saw Madame de Lanty’s desire to stop your explanations yesterday, lest the truth might appear to her husband. I am requested by her to thank you for your connivance--passive, of course--in this pious falsehood. She felt that she could only show her profound gratitude by telling you the whole truth and relying upon your discretion.”
“Where is Mademoiselle Marianina?”
“As Monsieur de Lanty told you, in a convent in Italy. To avoid scandal, it was thought best to send her to some safe retreat. Her own conduct will decide her future.”
Now what do you think of that history? Does it not seem to you very improbable? Here are two explanations which have each come into my mind with the force of a conviction. First, Marianina’s brother has just married into a grand-ducal family of Germany. Immense sacrifices must have been required of the de Lanty family to make such an alliance. Was Marianina’s _dot_, and the fortune she inherited from that old grand-uncle, required to pay the costs of that princely union? Secondly, did Marianina really feel an attachment for me? And did she, in a girlish way, express it on those letters which she never sent? To punish her, had her parents sent her to a convent? And to disgust me, and throw me off the track, had the mother invented this history of another love in which she seemed to make me play so mortifying a part?
I may add that the intervention of the Abbe Fontanon authorizes such an interpretation. I have made inquiries about him, and I find he is one of those mischievous priests who worm themselves into the confidence of families for their own ends; he has already destroyed the harmony of one home,--that of Monsieur de Granville, attorney-general of the royal court of Paris under the Restoration.
As to the truth or falsehood of these suppositions I know nothing, and, in all probability, shall continue to know nothing. But, as you can easily understand, the thought of Marianina is a luminous point to which my eye is forever attached. Shall I love her? Shall I hate her and despise her? That is the question perpetually in my mind. Uncertainty of that kind is far more certain to fix a woman in a man’s soul than to dislodge her.
Well, to sum up in two brief sentences my reply to your warnings: As for the opinion of Monsieur Bixiou, I care as little for it as for last year’s roses; and as for that other danger which you fear, I cannot tell you whether I love Marianina or not, but this I know, I do _not_ love Madame de l’Estorade. That, I think, is giving you a plain and honest answer. And now, let us leave our master the Future to do what he likes.
XI. THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS
Paris, May, 1839.
Monsieur Dorlange came last evening to take leave of us. He starts to-day for Arcis-sur-Aube, where the ceremony of inaugurating _his_ statue takes place. That is also the place selected by the Opposition journals for his candidacy. Monsieur de l’Estorade declares that the locality could not have been worse chosen, and that it leaves his election without a chance.
Monsieur Dorlange paid his visit early. I was alone. Monsieur de l’Estorade was dining with the Minister of the Interior, and the children were in bed. The conversation interrupted by Madame de la Bastie could now be renewed, as I was about to ask him to continue the history, of which he had only told me the last words, when our old Lucas brought me a letter. It was from my Armand, to let me know that he had been ill since morning, and was then in the infirmary.
“Order the carriage,” I said to Lucas, in a state of agitation you can easily conceive.
“But, madame,” replied Lucas, “monsieur has ordered the carriage to fetch him at half-past nine o’clock, and Tony has already started.”
“Then send for a cab.”
“I don’t know that I can find one,” said our old servant, who is a man of difficulties; “it is beginning to rain.”
Without noticing that remark and without thinking of Monsieur Dorlange, I went hastily to my room to put on my bonnet and shawl. That done, I returned to the salon, where my visitor still remained.
“You must excuse me, monsieur,” I said to him, “for leaving you so abruptly. I must hasten to the Henri IV. College. I could not possibly pass a night in the dreadful anxiety my son’s letter has caused me; he tells me he has been ill since morning in the infirmary.”
“But,” replied Monsieur Dorlange, “surely you are not going alone in a hired carriage to that lonely quarter?”
“Lucas will go with me.”
At that moment Lucas returned; his prediction was realized; there was not a coach on the stand; it was raining in torrents. Time was passing; already it was almost too late to enter the school, where masters and pupils go to bed at nine o’clock.
“Put on thick shoes,” I said to Lucas, “and come with me on foot.”
Instantly I saw his face lengthen. He is no longer young and loves his ease; moreover, he complains every winter of rheumatism. He made various objections,--that it was very late; that we should “revolutionize” the school; I should take cold; Monsieur Armand could not be very ill if he wrote himself; in short, it was clear that my plan of campaign did not suit my old retainer.
Monsieur Dorlange very obligingly offered to go himself in my place and bring me word about Armand; but that did not suit me at all; I felt that I _must_ see for myself. Having thanked him, I said to Lucas in a tone of authority:--
“Get ready at once, for one thing is true in your remarks: it is getting late.”
Seeing himself driven into a corner, Lucas raised the standard of revolt.
“It is not possible that madame should go out in such weather; and I don’t want monsieur to scold me for giving in to such a singular idea.”
“Then you do not intend to obey me?”
“Madame knows very well that for anything reasonable I would do what she told me if I had to go through fire to obey her.”
“Heat is good for rheumatism, but rain is not,” I said; then, turning to Monsieur Dorlange, I added: “As you were so kind as to offer to do this errand alone, may I ask you to give me your arm and come with me?”
“I am like Lucas,” he said, “I do not think this excursion absolutely necessary; but as I am not afraid of being scolded by Monsieur de l’Estorade, I shall have the honor to accompany you.”
We started. The weather was frightful; we had hardly gone fifty steps before we were soaked in spite of Lucas’s huge umbrella, with which Monsieur Dorlange sheltered me at his own expense. Luckily a coach happened to pass; Monsieur Dorlange hailed the driver; it was empty. Of course I could not tell my companion that he was not to get in; such distrust was extremely unbecoming and not for me to show. But you know, my dear friend, that showers of rain have helped lovers from the days of Dido down. However, Monsieur Dorlange said nothing: he saw my anxiety and he had the good taste not to attempt conversation, breaking the silence only from time to time with casual remarks. When we reached the school, after getting out of the carriage to give me his hand he saw for himself that he must not enter the house and he therefore got back into the carriage to await my return.
Well, I found Monsieur Armand had hoaxed me. His illness reduced itself to a headache, which departed soon after he had written me. The doctor, for the sake of ordering something, had told him to take an infusion of linden-leaves, telling him that the next day he could go back to his studies. I had taken a club to kill a flea, and committed all sorts of enormities to get there at an hour when the entire establishment were going to bed, only to find my young gentleman perfectly well and playing chess with one of the nurses.
On leaving the school I found the rain had ceased and the moon was shining brightly. My heart was full; the reaction from my great anxiety had set in and I felt a need of breathing the fresh air. I therefore proposed to Monsieur Dorlange to dismiss the coach and return on foot.
Here was an opportunity for him to make me that long-delayed explanation; but Monsieur Dorlange seemed so little inclined to take advantage of it that, using Monsieur Armand’s freak as a text, he read me a lecture on the danger of spoiling children: a subject which was not at all agreeable to me, as he must have perceived from the rather stiff manner with which I listened to him. Come, thought I, I must and will get to the bottom of this history; it is like the tale of Sancho’s herdsman, which had the faculty of never getting told. So, cutting short my companion’s theories of education, I said distinctly:--
“This is a very good time, I think, to continue the confidence you were about to make to me. Here we are sure of no interruption.”
“I am afraid I shall prove a poor story-teller,” replied Monsieur Dorlange. “I have spent all my fire this very day in telling that tale to Marie-Gaston.”
“That,” I answered laughing, “is against your own theory of secrecy, in which a third party is one too many.”
“Oh, Marie-Gaston and I count for one only. Besides, I had to reply to his odd ideas about you and me.”
“What about me?”
“Well, he imagined that in looking at the sun I should be dazzled by its rays.”
“Which means, speaking less metaphorically--?”
“That, in view of the singularities which accompanied my first knowledge of you and led me to the honor of your acquaintance, I might expose myself to the danger, madame, of not retaining my reason and self-possession.”
“And your history refutes this fear in the mind of Monsieur Marie-Gaston?”
“You shall judge.”
And then, without further preamble, he told me a long tale which I need not repeat here; the gist of it is, however, that Monsieur Dorlange is in love with a woman who posed in his imagination for Saint-Ursula; but as this woman appears to be forever lost to him it did not seem to me impossible that in the long run he might transfer his sentiments for her memory to me. When he had finished his tale he asked if I did not think it a victorious answer to the ridiculous fears of our friend.
“Modesty,” I replied, “obliges me to share your security; but they say that in the army shots frequently ricochet and kill their victims.”
“Then you think me capable of the impertinence Marie-Gaston is good enough to suspect in me?”
“I don’t know about its being an impertinence,” I said stiffly, “but if such a fancy came into your mind, I should think you very much to be pitied.”
His answer was vehement.
“Madame,” he said, “you will not have to pity me. In my opinion, first love is a vaccination which protects us from a second.”
The conversation stopped there. We had now reached my own door, and I invited Monsieur Dorlange to come in. He accepted my politeness, remarking that Monsieur de l’Estorade had probably returned and he could thus take leave of him.
My husband was at home. I don’t know whether Lucas, forestalling the rebuke I intended to give him, had made out a story to excuse himself, or whether Monsieur de l’Estorade for the first time in his life, felt, in view of my maternal escapade, a movement of jealousy. It is certain, however, that his manner of receiving me was curt; he called it an unheard-of thing to go out at such an hour, in such weather, to see a boy who proved, by announcing his own illness, that it was nothing serious. After letting him talk in this discourteous way for some little time, I thought it was time to put an end to the scene, so I said in a rather peremptory tone:--
“As I wanted to sleep at night, I went to the school in a pelting rain; I came back by moonlight; and I beg you to remark that monsieur, who was so good as to escort me, has come upstairs to bid you good-bye, because he leaves Paris to-morrow morning.”
I have habitually enough power over Monsieur de l’Estorade to make this call to order effective; but I saw that my husband was displeased, and that instead of having made Monsieur Dorlange an easy diversion, I had called down upon his head the ill-humor of my ogre, who instantly turned upon him.
After telling him that much had been said about his candidacy during dinner at the ministry, Monsieur de l’Estorade began to show him all the reasons why he might expect an overwhelming defeat; namely, that Arcis-sur-Aube was one of the boroughs where the administration felt itself most secure; that a man of extraordinary political ability had already been sent there to manipulate the election, and had made a first report giving triumphant news of his success. These were only generalities, to which Monsieur Dorlange replied with modesty, but also with the air of a man who had resolved who take his chances against all risks to which his election might be exposed. Monsieur de l’Estorade then produced a final shaft which, under the circumstances, was calculated to have a marvellous effect, because it attacked both the candidate and his private life.
“Listen to me, my dear monsieur,” said my husband, “when a man starts on an electoral career he must remember that he stakes everything; his public life and also his private life. Your adversaries will ransack your present and your past with a pitiless hand, and sorrow to him who has any dark spots to hide. Now I ought not to conceal from you that to-night, at the ministers’, much was said about a little scandal which, while it may be venial in the life of an artist, takes proportions altogether more serious in that of the people’s representative. You understand me, of course. I refer to that handsome Italian woman whom you have in your house. Take care; some puritanical elector whose own morality may be more or less problematical, is likely to call you to account for her presence.”
The reply made by Monsieur Dorlange was very dignified.
“To those,” he said, “who may arraign me on that detail of my private life I wish but one thing--that they may have nothing worse upon their consciences. If I had not already wearied madame on our way from the school with an interminable story, I would tell you the facts relating to my handsome Italian, and you would see, Monsieur le comte, that her presence in my house reflects in no way upon me.
“But,” returned Monsieur de l’Estorade, softening his tone, “you take my observation rather too seriously. As I said just now, an artist may have a handsome model in his house--that may be natural enough--but she is not a usual piece of furniture in that of a legislator.”
“No, what seems more to their liking,” replied Monsieur Dorlange, with some heat, “is the good they can get for themselves out of a calumny accepted eagerly and without examination. However, far from dreading inquiry on the subject you mention, I desire it, and the ministry will do me a great service if it will employ the extremely able political personage you say they have put upon my path to bring that delicate question before the electors.”
“Do you really start to-morrow?” asked Monsieur de l’Estorade, finding that he had started a subject which not only did not confound Monsieur Dorlange, but, on the contrary, gave him the opportunity to reply with a certain hauteur of tone and speech.
“Yes, and very early too; so that I must now take leave of you, having certain preparations still to make.”
So saying, Monsieur Dorlange rose, and after making me a rather ceremonious bow and not bestowing his hand on Monsieur de l’Estorade, who, in turn, did not hold out his own, he left the room.
“What was the matter with Armand?” asked my husband, as if to avoid any other explanation.
“Never mind Armand,” I said, “it is far more interesting to know what is the matter with you; for never did I see you so out of tune, so sharp and uncivil.”
“What! because I told a ridiculous candidate that he would have to go into mourning for his reputation?”
“In the first place, that was not complimentary; and in any case the moment was ill-chosen with a man on whom my maternal anxiety had just imposed a disagreeable service.”
“I don’t like meddlers,” retorted Monsieur de l’Estorade, raising his voice more than I had ever known him do to me. “And after all, if he had not been here to give you his arm you would not have gone.”
“You are mistaken; I should have gone alone; for your servant, being master here, refused to accompany me.”
“But you must certainly admit that if any acquaintance had met you at half-past nine o’clock walking arm-in-arm with Monsieur Dorlange the thing would have seemed to them, to say the least, singular.”
Pretending to discover what I had known for the last hour, I exclaimed:--
“Is it possible that after sixteen years of married life you do me the honor to be jealous. Now I see why, in spite of your respect for proprieties, you spoke to Monsieur Dorlange in my presence of that Italian woman whom people think his mistress; that was a nice little perfidy by which you meant to ruin him in my estimation.”
Thus exposed to the light, my poor husband talked at random for a time, and finally had no resource but to ring for Lucas and lecture him severely. That ended the explanation.
What do you think of this conjugal proceeding, by which my husband, wishing to do a man some harm in my estimation, gave him the opportunity to appear to the utmost advantage? For--there was no mistaking it--the sort of emotion with which Monsieur Dorlange repelled the charge was the cry of a conscience at peace with itself, and which knows itself able to confound a calumny.
XII. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
Paris, May, 1839.
On my return this evening from the Estorades, on whom I had paid my parting call, I found your letter, my dear friend, in which you announce your coming arrival. I shall await you to-morrow during the day, but in the evening I must, without further delay, start for Arcis-sur-Aube, where, in the course of the next week my political matters will come to a head. What particular hold I may have on that town, which, as it appears, I have the ambition to represent, and on what co-operation and assistance I may rely,--in a word, _who_ is making my electoral bed,--all that I know as little about as I did last year when I was told for the first time that I must enter political life.
A few days ago I received a second letter from my father, postmarked Paris this time, and not Stockholm. Judging by the style of the document, it would not surprise me if the “eminent services” rendered in a Northern court by the mysterious author of my days turned out to be those of a Prussian corporal. It would be impossible to issue orders in a more imperative tone, or to dwell more minutely on trifling particulars.
The note or memorandum was headed thus: _What my son is to do_.
On receipt of these instructions I am to send to its destination the Saint-Ursula; to superintend the packing and boxing of it myself, and to despatch it by the fastest carrier, to Mother Marie-des-Anges, superior of the convent of the Ursulines at Arcis-sur-Aube.
The order went on to say that I was to follow the statue in a few days, so as to arrive at the said Arcis-sur-Aube not later than the 3rd of May. Even the inn at which I was to put up was dictated. I would find myself expected at the Hotel de la Poste; so that if I happen to prefer any of the others I must resign that fancy. I am also enjoined to publish in the newspapers on the day of my departure the fact that I present myself as candidate in the electoral arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube; avoiding, however, to make any profession of political faith, which would be both useless and premature. The document ended with an injunction which, while it humiliated me somewhat, gave me a certain faith in what was happening. The Mongenod Brothers, and draw for another sum of two hundred and fifty thousand francs, which _is to be_ deposited in my name, “taking the utmost care,” continued my instructions, “when transporting this money from Paris to Arcis-sur-Aube that it be not lost or stolen.”
What do you think of that last clause, dear friend? That sum _is to be_ deposited; then it is not already there; and suppose it is not there?--Besides, what am I to do with it in Arcis? Am I to stand my election on English principles? if so, a profession of political faith would certainly be useless and premature. As to the advice not to lose or allow to be stolen the money in my possession, do you not think that that is making me rather juvenile? I feel an inclination to suck my thumb and cry for a rattle. However, I shall let myself go with the current that is bearing me along, and, notwithstanding the news of your coming arrival, after paying a visit to the Brothers Mongenod, I shall valiantly start, imagining the stupefaction of the good people of Arcis on seeing another candidate pop up in their midst like a Jack-in-the-box.
In Paris I have already fired my gun. The “National” has announced my candidacy in the warmest terms; and it seems that this evening, in the house of the Minister of the Interior, where Monsieur de l’Estorade was dining, I was discussed at some length. I ought to add that, according to Monsieur de l’Estorade, the general impression is that I shall certainly fail of election. The ministry might possibly fear a candidate from the Left centre; but as for the democratic party to which I am supposed to belong, they do not even allow that it exists. The Left centre candidate has, however, been disposed of by a ministerial envoy of the ablest and most active description, and at this moment, when I set off my small balloon, the election of the Conservative candidate is pretty well assured.
Among the elements of my inevitable defeat, Monsieur de l’Estorade condescended to mention a matter about which, dear friend, I am rather surprised that you have not already lectured me. It is one of those agreeable calumnies put in circulation in the salon Montcornet by the honored and honorable Monsieur Bixiou. The scandal concerns a handsome Italian woman whom I brought back from Italy and with whom I am said to be living in a manner not canonical. Come, tell me, what hindered you from asking me to explain this important matter? Did you think the charge so shameful that you feared to offend me by alluding to it? Or have you such confidence in my morality that you felt no need of being strengthened therein? I did not have time to enter upon the necessary explanations to Monsieur de l’Estorade, neither have I the leisure to write them to you now. If I speak of the incident it is for the purpose of telling you of an observation I think I have made, into the truth of which I want you to examine after you get here. It is this:--
I have an idea that it would not be agreeable to Monsieur de l’Estorade to see me successful in my electoral campaign. He never gave much approbation to the plan; in fact he tried to dissuade me, but always from the point of view of my own interests. But to-day, when he finds that the plan has taken shape, and is actually discussed in the ministerial salon, my gentleman turns bitter, and he seems to feel a malignant pleasure in prophesying my defeat and in producing this charming little infamy under which he expects to bury our friendship.
Why so! I will tell you: while feeling some gratitude for the service I did him, the worthy man also felt from the height of his social position a superiority over me of which my entrance to the Chamber will now dispossess him; and it is not agreeable to him to renounce that sense of superiority. After all, what is an artist, even though he may be a man of genius, compared to a peer of France, a personage who puts his hand to the tiller and steers the great political and social system; a man who has access to kings and ministers, and who would have the right if, by impossibility, such audacity should seize upon his mind, of depositing a black ball against the budget. Well, this privileged being does not like that I, and others like me, should assume the importance and authority of that insolent elective Chamber.
But that is not all. Hereditary statesmen have a foolish pretension: that of being initiated by long study into a certain science represented as arduous, which they call the science of public affairs and which they (like physicians with medical science) alone have the right to practise. They are not willing that an underling, a journalist for instance, or lower than that, an artist, a cutter of images, should presume to slip into their domain and speak out beside them. A poet, an artist, a writer may be endowed with eminent faculties, they will agree to that; the profession of such men presupposes it; but statesmen they cannot be. Chateaubriand himself, though better placed than the rest of us to make himself a niche in the Governmental Olympus, was turned out of doors one morning by a concise little note, signed Joseph de Villele, dismissing him, as was proper, to Rene, Atala, and other futilities.
I know that time and that tall posthumous daughter of ours whom we call Posterity will some day do good justice and plead the right thing in the right place. Towards the end of 2039, the world, if it deigns to last till then, will know what Canalis, Joseph Bridau, Daniel d’Arthez, Stidmann, and Leon de Lora were in 1839; whereas an infinitely small number of persons will know that during the same period Monsieur le Comte de l’Estorade was peer of France, and president of the Cour des comptes; Monsieur le Comte de Rastignac minister of Public Works; and his brother-in-law, Monsieur le Baron Martial de la Roche-Hugon was a diplomat and Councillor of State employed on more or less extraordinary services.
But while awaiting this tardy classification and distant reform, I think it well to let our great governing class know from time to time that unless their names are Richelieu or Colbert they are liable to competition and are forced to accept it. So, with this aggravating intention I begin to take pleasure in my enterprise; and if I am elected, I shall, unless you assure me that I have mistaken de l’Estorade’s meaning, find occasion to let him and others of his kind know that one can, if so disposed, climb over the walls of their little parks and strut as their equals.
But how is it, my dear friend, that I rattle on about myself and say no word about the sad emotions which must attend your return to France? How can you bear them? And instead of endeavoring to lay them aside, I fear you are willingly nursing them and taking a melancholy pleasure in their revival. Dear friend, I say to you of these great sorrows what I said just now of our governing class--we should consider them from the point of view of time and space, by the action of which they become after a while imperceptible.
Do me a favor! On arriving in Paris without having a house prepared to receive you, it would be very friendly--you would seem like the man of old times--if you would take up your quarters with me, instead of going to Ville d’Avray, which, indeed, I think dangerous and even bad for you. Stay with me, and you can thus judge of my handsome housekeeper, and you will see how much she has been calumniated and misunderstood. You will also be near to the l’Estorades in whom I expect you to find consolations; and besides, this act would be a charming expiation for all the involuntary wrongs you have done me. At any rate, I have given my orders, and your room is ready for you.
P.S. You have not yet arrived, dear friend, and I must close this letter, which will be given to you by my housekeeper when you come by my house, for I am certain that your first visit will be to me.
I went this morning to the Mongenods’; the two hundred and fifty thousand francs were there, but with the accompaniment of a most extraordinary circumstance; the money was in the name of the Comte de Sallenauve, otherwise Dorlange, sculptor, 42 rue de l’Ouest. In spite of an appellation which has never been mine, the money was mine, and was paid to me without the slightest hesitation. I had enough presence of mind not to seem stupefied by my new name and title before the cashier; but I saw Monsieur Mongenod the elder in private, a man who enjoys the highest reputation at the Bank, and to him I expressed my astonishment, asking for whatever explanations he was able to give me. He could give none; the money came to him through a Dutch banker, his correspondent at Rotterdam, and he knew nothing beyond that. _Ah ca_! what does it all mean? Am I to be a noble? Has the moment come for my father to acknowledge me? I start in a state of agitation and of anxiety which you can well understand. Until I hear from you, I shall address my letters to you here. If you decide not to stay in my house, let me know your address at once. Say nothing of what I have now told you to the l’Estorades; let it remain secret between us.
XIII. DORLANGE TO MARIE-GASTON
Arcis-sur-Aube, May 3, 1839.
Dear friend,--Last evening, before Maitre Achille Pigoult, notary of this place, the burial of Charles Dorlange took place,--that individual issuing to the world, like a butterfly from a grub, under the name and estate of Charles de Sallenauve, son of Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve. Here follows the tale of certain facts which preceded this brilliant transformation.
Leaving Paris on the evening of May 1st, I arrived at Arcis, according to my father’s directions, on the following day. You can believe my surprise when I saw in the street where the diligence stopped the elusive Jacques Bricheteau, whom I had not seen since our singular meeting on the Ile Saint-Louis. This time I beheld him, instead of behaving like the dog of Jean de Nivelle, come towards me with a smile upon his lips, holding out his hand and saying:--
“At last, my dear monsieur, we are almost at the end of all our mysteries, and soon, I hope, you will see that you have no cause to complain of me. Have you brought the money?”
“Yes,” I replied, “neither lost nor stolen.” And I drew from my pocket a wallet containing the two hundred and fifty thousand francs in bank notes.
“Very good!” said Jacques Bricheteau. “Now let us go to the Hotel de la Poste; no doubt you know who awaits you there.”
“No, indeed I do not,” I replied.
“You must have remarked the name and title under which that money was paid to you?”
“Certainly; that strange circumstance struck me forcibly, and has, I must own, stirred my imagination.”
“Well, we shall now completely lift the veil, one corner of which we were careful to raise at first, so that you might not come too abruptly to the great and fortunate event that is now before you.”
“Am I to see my father?”
“Yes,” replied Jacques Bricheteau; “your father is awaiting you; but I must warn you against a probable cloud on his manner of receiving you. The marquis has suffered much; the court life which he has always led has trained him to show no outward emotions; besides, he has a horror of everything bourgeois. You must not be surprised, therefore, at the cold and dignified reception he will probably give you; at heart, he is good and kind, and you will appreciate him better when you know him.”
“Here,” thought I, “are very comforting assurances, and as I myself am not very ardently disposed, I foresee that this interview will be at some degrees below zero.”
On going into the room where the Marquis awaited me, I saw a very tall, very thin, very bald man, seated at a table on which he was arranging papers. On hearing the door open, he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, rested his hands on the arms of his chair, and looking round at us he waited.
“Monsieur le Comte de Sallenauve,” said Jacques Bricheteau, announcing me with the solemnity of an usher of ambassadors or a groom of the Chambers.
But in the presence of the man to whom I owed my life the ice in me was instantly melted; I stepped forward with an eager impulse, feeling the tears rise to my eyes. He did not move. There was not the faintest trace of agitation in his face, which had that peculiar look of high dignity that used to be called “the grand air”; he merely held out his hand, limply grasped mine, and then said:
“Be seated, monsieur--for I have not yet the right to call you my son.”
When Jacques Bricheteau and I had taken chairs--
“Then you have no objection,” said this strange kind of father, “to assuming the political position we are trying to secure for you?”
“None at all,” said I. “The notion startled me at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it; and to ensure success, I have punctually carried out all the instructions that were conveyed to me.”
“Excellent,” said the Marquis, taking up from the table a gold snuff-box which he twirled in his fingers.
Then, after a short silence, he added:
“Now I owe you certain explanations. Our good friend Jacques Bricheteau, if he will have the kindness, will lay them before you.”
This was equivalent to the royal formula of the old regime: “My chamberlain will tell you the rest.”
“To go back to the origin of everything,” said Jacques Bricheteau, accepting the duty thus put upon him, “I must first tell you that you are not a legitimate Sallenauve. When Monsieur le marquis, here present, returned after the emigration, in the year 1808, he made the acquaintance of your mother, and in 1809 you were born as the fruit of their intercourse. Your birth, as you already know, cost your mother her life, and as misfortunes never come singly, Monsieur de Sallenauve was compromised in a conspiracy against the imperial power and compelled to fly the country. Brought up in Arcis with me, the marquis, wishing to give me a proof of his friendship, confided to me, on his departure to this new expatriation, the care of your childhood. I accepted that charge, I will not say with alacrity, but certainly with gratitude.”
At these words the marquis held out his hand to Jacques Bricheteau, who was seated near him, and after a silent pressure, which did not seem to me remarkably warm, Jacques Bricheteau continued:--
“The mysterious precautions I was forced to take in carrying out my trust are explained by Monsieur le marquis’s position towards the various governments which have succeeded each other in France since the period of your birth. Under the Empire, I feared that a government little indulgent to attacks upon itself might send you to share your father’s exile; it was then that the idea of giving you a sort of anonymous existence first occurred to me. Under the Restoration I feared for you another class of enemies; the Sallenauve family, which has no other representatives at the present day than Monsieur le marquis, was then powerful. In some way it got wind of your existence, and also of the fact that the marquis had taken the precaution not to recognize you, in order to retain the right to leave you his whole fortune, which, as a natural child, the law would in part have deprived you. The obscurity in which I kept you seemed to me the best security, against the schemes of greedy relations, and certain mysterious steps taken by them from time to time proved the wisdom of these precautions. Under the government of July, on the other hand, it was I myself who I feared might endanger you. I had seen the establishment of the new order of things with the deepest regret, and not believing in its duration, I took part in certain active hostilities against it, which brought me under the ban of the police.”
Here the recollection that Jacques Bricheteau had been pointed out by the waiter of the Cafe des Arts as a member of the police made me smile, whereupon the speaker stopped and said with a very serious air:--
“Do these explanations which I have the honor to give you seem improbable?”
I explained the meaning of my smile.
“That waiter,” said Jacques Bricheteau, “was not altogether mistaken; for I have long been employed at the prefecture of police in the health department; but I have nothing to do with police espial; on the contrary, I have more than once come near being the victim of it.”
Here a rather ridiculous noise struck our ears, nothing less than a loud snore from my father, who thus gave us to know that he did not take a very keen interest in the explanations furnished in his name with a certain prolixity. I don’t know whether Jacques Bricheteau’s vanity being touched put him slightly out of temper, but he rose impatiently and shook the arm of the sleeper, crying out:--
“Hey! marquis, if you sleep like this at the Council of state, upon my soul, your country must be well governed!”
Monsieur de Sallenauve opened his eyes, shook himself, and then said, turning to me:--
“Pardon me, Monsieur le comte, but for the last ten nights I have travelled, without stopping, to meet you here; and though I spent the last night in a bed, I am still much fatigued.”
So saying he rose, took a large pinch of snuff, and began to walk up and down the room, while Jacques Bricheteau continued:--
“It is a little more than a year since I received a letter from your father explaining his long silence, the plans he had made for you, and the necessity he was under of keeping his incognito for a few years longer. It was at that very time that you made your attempt to penetrate a secret the existence of which had become apparent to you.”
“You made haste to escape me,” I said laughing. “It was then you went to Stockholm.”
“No, I went to your father’s residence; I put the letter that he gave me for you into the post at Stockholm.”
“I do not seize your--”
“Nothing is easier to understand,” interrupted the marquis. “I do not reside in Sweden, and we wished to throw you off the track.”
“Will you continue the explanation yourself?” asked Jacques Bricheteau, who spoke, as you may have observed, my dear friend, with elegance and fluency.
“No, no, go on,” said the marquis; “you are giving it admirably.”
“Feeling certain that your equivocal position as to family would injure the political career your father desired you to enter, I made that remark to him in one of my letters. He agreed with me, and resolved to hasten the period of your legal recognition, which, indeed, the extinction of the family in its other branch rendered desirable. But the recognition of a natural son is a serious act which the law surrounds with many precautions. Deeds must be signed before a notary, and to do this by power of attorney would involve both in a publicity which he is anxious for the present to avoid, he being married, and, as it were, naturalized in the country of his adoption. Hence, he decided to come here himself, obtaining leave of absence for a few weeks, in order to sign in person all papers necessary to secure to you his name and property in this country. Now let me put to you a final question. Do you consent to take the name of de Sallenauve and be recognized as his son?”
“I am not a lawyer,” I answered; “but it seems to me that, supposing I do not feel honored by this recognition, it does not wholly depend on me to decline it.”
“Pardon me,” replied Jacques Bricheteau; “under the circumstances you could, if you chose, legally contest the paternity. I will also add,--and in doing so I am sure that I express the intentions of your father,--if you think that a man who has already spent half a million on furthering your career is not a desirable father, we leave you free to follow your own course, and shall not insist in any way.”
“Precisely, precisely,” said Monsieur de Sallenauve, uttering that affirmation with the curt intonation and shrill voice peculiar to the relics of the old aristocracy.
Politeness, to say the least, forced me to accept the paternity thus offered to me. To the few words I uttered to that effect, Jacques Bricheteau replied gaily:--
“We certainly do not intend to make you buy a father in a poke. Monsieur le marquis is desirous of laying before you all title-deeds and documents of every kind of which he is the present holder. Moreover, as he has been so long absent from this country, he intends to prove his identity by several of his contemporaries who are still living. For instance, among the honorable personages who have already recognized him I may mention the worthy superior of the Ursuline convent, Mother Marie-des-Anges, for whom, by the bye, you have done a masterpiece.”
“Faith, yes,” said the marquis, “a pretty thing, and if you turn out as well in politics--”
“Well, marquis,” interrupted Jacques Bricheteau, who seemed to me inclined to manage the affair, “are you ready to proceed with our young friend to the verification of the documents?”
“That is unnecessary,” I remarked, and did not think that by this refusal I pledged my faith too much; for, after all, what signify papers in the hands of a man who might have forged them or stolen them? But my father would not consent; and for more than two hours they spread before me parchments, genealogical trees, contracts, patents, documents of all kinds, from which it appeared that the family of Sallenauve is, after that of Cinq-Cygne, the most ancient family in the department of the Aube. I ought to add that the exhibition of these archives was accompanied by an infinite number of spoken details which seemed to make the identity of the Marquis de Sallenauve indisputable. On all other subjects my father is laconic; his mental capacity does not seem to me remarkable, and he willingly allowed his _mouthpiece_ to talk for him. But here, in the matter of his parchments, he was loquaciously full of anecdotes, recollections, heraldic knowledge; in short, he was exactly the old noble, ignorant and superficial in all things, but possessed of Benedictine erudition where the genealogy of his family was concerned.
The _session_ would, I believe, be still going on, if Jacques Bricheteau had not intervened. As the marquis was preparing to read a voluminous memorandum refuting a chapter in Tallemant des Reaux’ “Historiettes” which did not redound to the credit of the great house of Sallenauve, the wise organist remarked that it was time we dined, if we intended to keep an appointment already made for seven o’clock at the office of Maitre Achille Pigoult the notary.
We dined, not at the table-d’hote, but in private, and the dinner seemed very long on account of the silent preoccupation of the marquis, and the slowness with which, owing to his loss of teeth, he swallowed his food.
At seven o’clock we went to the notary’s office; but as it is now two o’clock in the morning, and I am heavy with sleep, I shall put off till to-morrow an account of what happened there.
May 4, 5 A.M.
I reckoned on peaceful slumbers, embellished by dreams. On the contrary, I did not sleep an hour, and I have waked up stung to the heart by an odious thought. But before I transmit that thought to you, I must tell you what happened at the notary’s.
Maitre Achille Pigoult, a puny little man, horribly pitted with the small-pox, and afflicted with green spectacles, above which he darts glances of vivacious intelligence, asked us if we felt warm enough, the room having no fire. Politeness required us to say yes, although he had already given signs of incendiarism by striking a match, when, from a distant and dark corner of the room, a broken, feeble voice, the owner of which we had not as yet perceived, interposed to prevent the prodigality.
“No, Achille, no, don’t make a fire,” said an old man. “There are five in the room, and the lamp gives out a good heat; before long the room would be too hot to bear.”
Hearing these words, the marquis exclaimed:--
“Ah! this is the good Monsieur Pigoult, formerly justice of the peace.”
Thus recognized, the old man rose and went up to my father, into whose face he peered.
“_Parbleu_!” he cried, “I recognize you for a Champagnard of the _vieille roche_. Achille did not deceive me in declaring that I should see two of my former acquaintances. You,” he said, addressing the organist, “you are little Bricheteau, the nephew of our good abbess, Mother Marie-des-Anges; but as for that tall skeleton, looking like a duke and peer, I can’t recall his name. However, I don’t blame my memory; after eighty-six years’ service it may well be rusty.”
“Come, grandfather,” said Achille Pigoult, “brush up your memory; and you, gentlemen, not a word, not a gesture. I want to be clear in my own mind. I have not the honor to know the client for whom I am asked to draw certain deeds, and I must, as a matter of legal regularity, have him identified.”
While his son spoke, the old man was evidently straining his memory. My father, fortunately, has a nervous twitching of the face, which increased under the fixed gaze his _certifier_ fastened upon him.
“Hey! _parbleu_! I have it!” he cried. “Monsieur is the Marquise de Sallenauve, whom we used to call the ‘Grimacer,’ and who would now be the owner of the Chateau d’Arcis if, instead of wandering off, like the other fools, into emigration, he had stayed at home and married his pretty cousin.”
“You are still _sans-culotte_, it seems,” said the marquis, laughing.
“Messieurs,” said the notary, gravely, “the proof I had arranged for myself is conclusive. This proof, together with the title-deeds and documents Monsieur le marquis has shown to me, and which he deposits in my hands, together with the certificate of identity sent to me by Mother Marie-des-Anges, who cannot, under the rules of her Order, come to my office, are sufficient for the execution of the deeds which I have here--already prepared. The presence of two witnesses is required for one of them. Monsieur Bricheteau will, of course, be the witness on your side and on the other my father, if agreeable to you; it is an honor that, as I think, belongs to him of right, for, as one may say, this matter has revived his memory.”
“Very good, messieurs, let us proceed,” said Jacques Bricheteau, heartily.
The notary sat down at his desk; the rest of us sat in a circle around him, and the reading of the first document began. Its purport was to establish, authentically, the recognition made by Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, of me, his son. But in the course of the reading a difficulty came up. Notarial deeds must, under pain of being null and void, state the domicile of all contracting parties. Now, where was my father’s domicile? This part had been left in blank by the notary, who now insisted on filling it before proceeding farther.
“As for this domicile,” said Achille Pigoult, “Monsieur le marquis appears to have none in France, as he does not reside in this country, and has owned no property here for a long time.”
“It is true,” said the marquis, seeming to put more meaning into his words than they naturally carried, “I am a mere vagabond in France.”
“Ah!” said Jacques Bricheteau, “vagabonds like you, who can present their sons with the necessary sums to buy estates, are not to be pitied. Still, the remark is a just one, not only as to France, but as to your residence in foreign countries. With your eternal mania for roving, it is really very difficult to assign you a domicile.”
“Well,” said Achille Pigoult, “it does not seem worth while to let so small a matter stop us. Monsieur,” he continued, motioning to me, “is now the owner of the Chateau d’Arcis, for an engagement to sell is as good as the sale itself. What more natural, therefore, than that the father’s domicile should be stated as being on his son’s estate, especially as this is really the family property now returned into the hands of the family, being purchased by the father for the son, particularly as that father is known and recognized by some of the oldest and most important inhabitants of the place?”
“Yes, that is true,” said old Pigoult, adopting his son’s opinion without hesitation.
“In short,” said Jacques Bricheteau, “you think the matter can go on.”
“You see that my father, a man of great experience, did not hesitate to agree with me. We say, therefore,” continued the notary, taking up his pen, “Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, domiciled with Monsieur Charles de Sallenauve, his natural son, by him legally recognized, in the house known as the Chateau d’Arcis, arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube, department of the Aube.”
The rest of the deed was read and executed without comment.
Then followed a rather ridiculous scene.
“Now, Monsieur le comte,” said Jacques Bricheteau, “embrace your father.”
The marquis opened his arms rather indifferently, and I coldly fell into them, vexed with myself for not being deeply moved and for not hearing in my heart the voice of kindred. Was this barrenness of emotion the result of my sudden accession to wealth? A moment later a second deed made me possessor, on payment of one hundred and eighty thousand francs in ready money, of the Chateau d’Arcis,--a grand edifice which had caught my eye, on my first arrival in the town, by its lordly and feudal air.
“You may congratulate yourselves,” said Achille Pigoult, “that you have got that estate for a song.”
“Come, come!” said Jacques Bricheteau, “how long have you had it on your hands to sell? Your client would have let it go for one hundred and fifty thousand to others, but, as family property, you thought you could get more from us. We shall have to spend twenty thousand to make the house habitable; the land doesn’t return a rental of more than four thousand; so that our money, all expenses deducted, won’t return us more than two and a half per cent.”
“What are you complaining about?” returned Achille Pigoult. “You have employment to give and money to pay in the neighborhood, and what can be better for a candidate?”
“Ah! that electoral business,” said Jacques Bricheteau; “we will talk about that to-morrow when we bring you the purchase-money and your fees.”
Thereupon we took leave, and returned to the Hotel de la Poste, where I bade good-night to my father and came to my room to write to you.
Now I must tell you the terrible idea that drove sleep from my brain and put the pen once more in my hand,--although I am somewhat distracted from it by writing the foregoing two pages, and I do not see quite as much evidence for my notion as I did before I renewed this letter.
One thing is certain: during the last year many romantic incidents have happened to me. You may say that adventure seems to be the logical way of life for one in my position; that my birth, the chances that brought you (whose fate is so like mine) and me together, my relations with Marianina and my handsome housekeeper, and perhaps I might say with Madame de l’Estorade, all point to the possession of a fickle star, and that my present affair is only one of its caprices.
True; but what if, at the present moment under the influence of that star, I were implicated without my knowledge in some infernal plot of which I was made the passive instrument?
To put some order into my ideas, I begin by this half-million spent for an interest which you must agree is very nebulous,--that of fitting me to succeed my father in the ministry of some imaginary country, the name of which is carefully concealed from me.
Next: who is spending these fabulous sums on me? Is it a father tenderly attached to a child of love? No, it is a father who shows me the utmost coldness, who goes to sleep when deeds which concern our mutual existence are being drawn, and for whom I, on my side, am conscious of no feeling; in fact, not to mince my words, I should think him a great booby of an _emigre_ if it were not for the filial respect and duty I force myself to feel for him.
_But_--suppose this man were not my father, not even the Marquis de Sallenauve, as he asserts himself to be; suppose, like that unfortunate Lucien de Rubempre, whose history has made so much noise, I were caught in the toils of a serpent like that false abbe Don Carlos Herrera, and had made myself liable to the same awful awakening. You may say to me that you see no such likelihood; that Carlos Herrera had an object in fascinating Lucien and making him his double; but that I, an older man with solid principles and no love of luxury, who have lived a life of thought and toil, should fear such influence, is nonsense.
So be it. But why should the man who recognizes me as his son conceal the very country in which he lives, and the name by which he is known in that equally nameless Northern land which it is intimated that he governs? Why make such sacrifices for my benefit and show so little confidence? And see the mystery with which Jacques Bricheteau has surrounded my life! Do you think that that long-winded explanation of his explained it?
All this, my dear friend, rolling in my head and clashing with that half-million already paid to me, has given substance to a strange idea, at which you may perhaps laugh, but which, nevertheless, is not without precedent in criminal annals.
I told you just now that this thought invaded me as it were suddenly; it came like an instinct upon me. Assuredly, if I had had the faintest inkling of it last evening, I would have cut off my right hand sooner than sign that deed by which I have henceforth bound my fate to that of an unknown man whose past and future may be as gloomy as a canto of Dante’s Hell, and who may drag me down with him into utter darkness.
In short, this idea--round which I am making you circle because I cannot bring myself to let you enter it--here it is, in all its crudity; I am afraid of being, without my knowledge, the agent, the tool of those associations of false coiners who are known in criminal records to concoct schemes as complicated and mysterious as the one I am now involved in, in order to put into circulation the money they coin. In all such cases you will find great coming and going of accomplices; cheques drawn from a distance on the bankers in great commercial centres like Paris, Stockholm, Rotterdam. Often one hears of poor dupes compromised. In short, do you not see in the mysterious ways of this Bricheteau something like an imitation, a reflection of the manoeuvres to which these criminal workers are forced to have recourse, arranging them with a talent and a richness of imagination to which a novelist can scarcely attain?
One thing is certain: there is about me a thick unwholesome atmosphere, in which I feel that air is lacking and I cannot breathe. However, assure me, if you can, persuade me, I ask no better, that this is all an empty dream. But in any case I am determined to have a full explanation with these two men to-morrow, and to obtain, although so late, more light than they have yet doled out to me....
Another and yet stranger fact! As I wrote those last words, a noise of horses’ hoofs came from the street. Distrustful now of everything, I opened my window, and in the dawning light I saw a travelling carriage before the door of the inn, the postilion in the saddle, and Jacques Bricheteau talking to some one who was seated in the vehicle. Deciding quickly on my action, I ran rapidly downstairs; but before I reached the bottom I heard the roll of wheels and the cracking of the postilion’s whip. At the foot of the staircase I came face to face with Jacques Bricheteau. Without seeming embarrassed, in fact with the most natural air in the world, he said to me,--
“What! my dear ward already up?”
“Of course; the least I could do was to say farewell to my excellent father.”
“He did not wish it,” replied that damned musician, with an imperturbability and phlegm that deserved a thrashing; “he feared the emotions of parting.”
“Is he so dreadfully hurried that he could not even give a day to his new and ardent paternity?”
“The truth is, he is an original; what he came to do, he has done; after that, to his mind, there is nothing to stay for.”
“Ah! I understand; he hastens to those high functions he performs at that Northern court!”
Jacques Bricheteau could no longer mistake the ironical tone in which these words were said.
“Until now,” he said, “you have shown more faith.”
“Yes; but I confess that faith begins to stagger under the weight of the mysteries with which it is loaded down without relief.”
“Seeing you at this decisive moment in your career giving way to doubts which our whole conduct pursued to you through many years ought to refute, I should be almost in despair,” replied Jacques Bricheteau, “if I had none but personal denials and asseverations to offer you. But, as you will remember, old Pigoult spoke of an aunt of mine, living in this neighborhood, where you will soon, I hope, find her position a most honorable one. I had arranged that you should see her in the course of the day; but now, if you will grant me the time to shave, I will take you at once, early as it is, to the convent of the Ursulines. There you shall question Mother Marie-des-Anges, who has the reputation of a saint throughout this whole department, and I think that at the close of your interview with her no doubt can remain upon your mind.”
While that devil of a man was speaking, his countenance had so perfect a look of integrity and benevolence, his speech, always calm, elegant, and self-possessed, so impressed the mind of his hearer, that I felt the tide of my anger going down and my sense of security rising.
In fact, his answer _is_ irresistible. The convent of the Ursuline sisters--heavens and earth! that can’t be the rendezvous of makers of false coin; and if the Mother Marie-des-Anges guarantees my father to me, as it appears she has already done to the notary, I should be foolish indeed to persist in my doubts.
“Very good,” I said to Jacques Bricheteau, “I will go up and get my hat and walk up and down the bank of the river until you are ready.”
“That’s right; and be sure you watch the door of the hotel to see that I do not give you the slip as I did once upon a time on the Quai de Bethune.”
Impossible to be more intelligent than that man; he seems to divine one’s thoughts. I was ashamed of this last doubt of mine, and told him that, on the whole, I would go and finish a letter while awaiting him. It was this letter, dear friend, which I must now close if I wish it to go by to-day’s post. I will write you soon of my visit to the convent.
XIV. MARIE-GASTON TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE
Arcis-sur-Aube, May 6, 1839.
Madame,--In any case I should gladly have profited by the request you were so good as to make that I should write to you during my stay in this town; but in granting me this favor you could not really know the full extent of your charity. Without you, madame, and the consolation of writing to you sometimes, what would become of me under the habitual weight of my sad thoughts in a town which has neither society, nor commerce, nor curiosities, nor environs; and where all intellectual activity spends itself on the making of pickled pork, soap-grease, stockings, and cotton night-caps. Dorlange, whom I shall not long call by that name (you shall presently know why) is so absorbed in steering his electoral frigate that I scarcely see him.
I told you, madame, that I resolved to come down here and join our mutual friend in consequence of a certain trouble of mind apparent in one of his letters, which informed me of a great revolution taking place in his life. I am able to-day to be more explicit. Dorlange at last knows his father. He is the natural son of the Marquis de Sallenauve, the last living scion of one of the best families in Champagne. Without explaining the reasons which have hitherto induced him to keep his son’s birth secret, the marquis has now recognized him legally. He has also bought and presented to him an estate formerly belonging to the Sallenauve family. This estate is situated in Arcis itself, and its possession will assist the project of our friend’s election. That project dates much farther back than we thought; and it did not take its rise in the fancy of Dorlange.
A year ago, the marquis began to prepare for it by sending his son a sum of money for the purchase of real estate in conformity with electoral laws; and it is also for the furtherance of this purpose that he has now made him doubly a landowner. The real object of all these sacrifices not seeming plain to Charles de Sallenauve, doubts have arisen in his mind, and it was to assist in dispelling them that my friendship for the poor fellow brought me here.
The marquis appears to be as odd and whimsical as he is opulent; for, instead of remaining in Arcis, where his presence and his name would contribute to the success of the election he desires, the very day after legal formalities attending the recognition of his son had been complied with, he departed furtively for foreign countries, where he says he has important interests, without so much as taking leave of his son. This coldness has poisoned the happiness Charles would otherwise feel in these events; but one must take fathers as they are, for Dorlange and I are living proofs that all cannot have them as they want them.
Another eccentricity of the marquis is the choice he has made, as chief assistant in his son’s election, of an old Ursuline nun, with whom he seems to have made a bargain, in which, strange to say, you have unconsciously played a part. Yes, madame, the Saint-Ursula for which, unknown to yourself, you were posing, will have, to all appearances, a considerable influence on the election of our friend. The case is this:
For many years Mother Marie-des-Anges, superior of the Ursuline convent at Arcis-sur-Aube, has desired to install in the chapel of her convent an image of its patron saint. But this abbess, who is a woman of taste and intelligence, would not listen to the idea of one of those stock figures which can be bought ready-made from the venders of church decorations. On the other hand, she thought it was robbing her poor to spend on this purpose the large sum necessary to procure a work of art. The nephew of this excellent woman is an organist in Paris to whom the Marquis de Sallenauve, then in emigration, had confided the care of his son. When it became a question of making Charles a deputy, the marquis naturally thought of Arcis, a place where his family had left so many memories. The organist also recollected his aunt’s desire; he knew how influential she was in that region because of her saintliness, and having in his nature a touch of that intrigue which likes to undertake things difficult and arduous, he went to see her, with the approval of the Marquis de Sallenauve, and let her know that one of the most skilful sculptors in Paris was ready to make her the statue of Saint-Ursula if she, on her side, would promise to secure the artist’s election as deputy from the arrondissement of Arcis.
The old nun did not think the undertaking beyond her powers. She now possesses the object of her pious longings; the statue arrived some days ago, and is already in the chapel of the convent, where she proposes to give it, before long, a solemn inauguration. It now remains to be seen whether the good nun will perform her part of the contract.
Well, madame, strange to say, after hearing and inquiring into the whole matter I shall not be surprised if this remarkable woman should carry the day. From the description our friend gives of her, Mother Marie-des-Anges is a small woman, short and thick-set, whose face is prepossessing and agreeable beneath its wrinkles and the mask of saffron-tinted pallor which time and the austerities of a cloister have placed upon it. Carrying very lightly the weight of her corpulence and also that of her seventy-six years, she is lively, alert, and frisky to a degree that shames the youngest of us. For fifty years she has governed in a masterly manner her community, which has always been the most regular, the best organized, and also the richest society in the diocese of Troyes. Admirably fitted for the training of youth, she has long conducted a school for girls, which is famous throughout the department of the Aube and adjacent regions. Having thus superintended the education of nearly all the daughters of the best houses in the province, it is easy to imagine the influence she has acquired among the aristocracy,--an influence she probably intends to use in the electoral struggle she has promised to take part in.
On the other hand, it appears that this really extraordinary woman is the sovereign disposer of the votes of the democratic party in the arrondissement of Arcis. Until now, the existence of that party in Arcis has been considered problematical; but it is actually, by its nature, active and stirring, and our candidate proposes to present himself under its banner. Evidently, therefore, the support the good mother has promised will be useful and important.
I am sure you will admire with me the--as one might say--bicephalous ability of this old nun, who has managed to keep well with the nobility and the secular clergy on the one hand, and on the other to lead with her wand the radical party, their sworn enemy. Admirable for her charity and her lucid intellect, respected throughout the region as a saint, exposed during the Revolution to a dreadful persecution, which she bore with rare courage, one can easily understand her close relations with the upper and conservative classes; but why she should be equally welcome to democrats and to the subverters of order would seem, at first, to pass all belief.
The power which she undoubtedly wields over the revolutionary party took its rise, madame, in a struggle which they formerly had together. In 1793 that amiable party were bent on cutting her throat. Driven from her convent, and convicted of harboring a “refractory” priest, she was incarcerated, arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. The matter was reported to Danton, a native of Arcis, and then a member of the National Convention. Danton had known Mother Marie-des-Anges; he thought her the most virtuous and enlightened woman he had ever met. Hearing of her condemnation, he was furiously angry, and wrote, as they said in those days, a high-horse letter to the Revolutionary tribunal, and, with an authority no human being in Arcis would have dared to contest, he ordered a reprieve.
The same day he mounted the tribune, and after speaking in general terms of the “bloody boobies” who by their foolish fury compromised the future of the Revolution, he told who and what Mother Marie-des-Anges really was; he dwelt on her marvellous aptitude for the training of youth, and he presented a scheme in which she was placed at the head of a “grand national gynaecium,” the organization of which was to be made the subject of another decree. Robespierre, who would have thought the intellect of an Ursuline nun only a more imperative reason for bringing her under the revolutionary axe, was absent that day from the session, and the motion was voted with enthusiasm. The head of Mother Marie-des-Anges being indispensably necessary to the carrying out of this decree of the sovereign people, she kept it on her shoulders, and the headsman put aside his machine.
Though the other decree, organising the Grand National Gynaecium, was lost sight of in the many other duties that devolved upon the Convention, the excellent nun carried it out after her fashion. Instead of something grand and Greek and national, she started in Arcis a secular girl’s-school, and as soon as a little quiet was restored to the minds of the community, pupils flocked in from all quarters. Under the Empire Mother Marie-des-Anges was able to reconstitute her Ursuline sisterhood, and the first act of her restored authority was a recognition of gratitude. She decreed that on every year on the 5th of April, the anniversary of Danton’s death, a service should be held in the chapel of the convent for the repose of his soul. To those who objected to this edict she answered: “Do you know many for whom it is more necessary to implore God’s mercy?”
Under the Restoration, the celebration of this service became a sort of scandal; but Mother Marie-des-Anges would never hear of suppressing it, and the great veneration which has always surrounded her obliged these cavillers to hold their tongues. This courageous obstinacy had its reward, under the government of July. To-day Mother Marie-des-Anges is high in court favor, and there is nothing she cannot obtain in the most august regions of power; but it is only just to add that she asks nothing,--not even for her charities, for she provides the means to do them nobly by the wise manner in which she administers the property of her convent.
Her gratitude, thus openly shown to the memory of the great revolutionist, has been of course to the revolutionary party a potent recommendation, but not the only one.
In Arcis the leader of the advanced Left is a rich miller named Laurent Goussard, who possesses two or three mills on the river Aube. This man, formerly a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis and the intimate friend of Danton, was the one who wrote to the latter telling him that the axe was suspended over the throat of the ex-superior of the Ursulines. This, however, did not prevent the worthy _sans-culotte_ from buying up the greater part of the convent property when it was sold under the name of national domain.
At the period when Mother Marie-des-Anges was authorized to reconstitute her community, Laurent Goussard, who had not made much by his purchase, went to see the good abbess, and proposed to her to buy back the former property of her convent. Very shrewd in business, Laurent Goussard, whose niece Mother Marie-des-Anges had educated gratuitously, seemed to pique himself on the great liberality of his offer, the terms of which were that the sisterhood should reimburse him the amount of his purchase-money. The dear man was not however making a bad bargain, for the difference in the value of assignats with which he had paid and the good sound money he would receive made a pretty profit. But Mother Marie-des-Anges, remembering that without his warning Danton could not have saved her, did better still for her first helper. At the time when Laurent Goussard made his offer the community of the Ursulines was, financially speaking, in an excellent position. Having since its restoration received many liberal gifts, it was also enriched by the savings of its superior, made from the proceeds of her secular school, which she generously made over to the common fund. Laurent Goussard must therefore have been thunderstruck when he read the following letter:--
Your proposal does not suit me. My conscience will not allow me to buy property below its proper value. Before the Revolution the property of our abbey was estimated at--[so much]. That is the price I choose to give, and not that to which it has fallen since the great depreciation of all property called national. In a word, my friend, I wish to pay you more than you ask; let me know if that suits you.
Laurent Goussard thought at first that either she had misunderstood him or he her. But when it became clear to him that owing to these pretended scruples of Mother Marie-des-Anges, he was the gainer of fifty thousand francs, he would not do violence to so tender a conscience, and he pocketed this profit (which came to him literally from heaven), but he went about relating everywhere the marvellous proceeding, which, as you can well imagine, put Mother Marie-des-Anges on a pinnacle of respect (especially from the holders of other national property) which leaves her nothing to fear from any future revolution. Personally Laurent Goussard has become her slave, her henchman. He does no business, he takes no step, he never moves a sack of flour without going to her for advice; and, as she said in joke the other day, if she took a fancy to make a John the Baptist of the sub-prefect, Laurent Goussard would bring her his head on a charger. That is proof enough that he will also bring his vote and that of his friends to any candidate she may favor.
Among the clergy Mother Marie-des-Anges has, naturally, many affiliations,--as much on account of her high reputation for goodness as for the habit of her order, but she particularly counts among the number of her most zealous servitors Monseigneur Troubert, bishop of the diocese, who, though formerly a familiar of the Congregation [see “The Vicar of Tours”], has nevertheless managed to secure from the dynasty of July an archbishopric which will lead to a cardinalship.
When you have the clergy you have, or you are very near having, the legitimist party with you,--a party which, while passionately desirous of free education and filled with hatred for the July throne, is not averse, when occasion offers, to yielding to a monstrous union with the radical party. Now the head of the legitimists in Arcis and its neighborhood is, of course, the family of Cinq-Cygne. Never does the old marquise, whose haughty nature and powerful will you, madame, know well [see “An Historical Mystery”],--never does she drive into Arcis from her chateau of Cinq-Cygne, without paying a visit to Mother Marie-des-Anges, who in former days educated her daughter Berthe, now the Duchesse Georges de Maufrigneuse.
But now we come to the most opposing and resisting side,--that of the conservatives, which must not be confounded with the party of the administration. Here we find as its leader the Comte de Gondreville, your husband’s colleague in the Chamber of peers. Closely allied to the count is a very influential man, his old friend Grevin, formerly mayor and notary of Arcis, who, in turn, draws after him another elector of considerable influence, Maitre Achille Pigoult, to whom, on retiring from active life, he sold his practice as notary.
But Mother Marie-des-Anges has a powerful means of access to the Comte de Gondreville through his daughter, the Marechale de Carigliano. That great lady, who, as you know, has taken to devotion, goes into retreat every year at the Ursuline convent. More than that, the good Mother, without giving any explanation, intimates that she has a lever of some kind on the Comte de Gondreville known to herself only; in fact, the life of that old regicide--turned senator, then count of the Empire, then peer of France under two dynasties--has wormed itself through too many tortuous underground ways not to allow us to suppose the existence of secrets he might not care to have unmasked.
Now Gondreville is Grevin,--his confidant, and, as they say, his tool, his catspaw for the last fifty years. But even supposing that by an utter impossibility their close union should, under present circumstances, be sundered, we are certainly sure of Achille Pigoult, Grevin’s successor, on whom, when the purchase of the chateau d’Arcis was made in his office by the Marquis de Sallenauve, a fee was bestowed of such an unusual amount that to accept it was virtually to pledge himself.
As for the ruck of the electors, our friend cannot fail to make recruits there, by the work he is about to give in repairing the chateau, which, fortunately for him, is falling into ruin in several places. We must also count on the manifesto which Charles de Sallenauve has just issued, in which he openly declares that he will accept neither favors nor employment from the government. So that, really, taking into consideration his own oratorical talent, the support of the Opposition journals both here and in Paris, the insults and calumnies which the ministerial journals are already beginning to fire upon him, I feel great hopes of his success.
Forgive me for presenting to you in glowing colors the parliamentary future of a man of whom, you said to me the other day, you felt you could not safely make a friend, because of the lofty and rather impertinent assumption of his personality. To tell the truth, madame, whatever political success may be in store for Charles de Sallenauve, I fear he may one day regret the calmer fame of which he was already assured in the world of art. But neither he nor I was born under an easy and accommodating star. Birth has been a costly thing to us; it is therefore doubly cruel not to like us. You have been kind to me because you fancy that a lingering fragrance of our dear Louise still clings to me; give something, I beseech you, of the same kindness to him whom I have not hesitated in this letter to call our friend.
XV. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE
Arcis-sur-Aube, May 13, 1839.
Madame,--I see that the electoral fever is upon you, as you are good enough to send me from Monsieur de l’Estorade so many _discouragements_ which certainly deserve consideration.
We knew already of the mission given to Comte Maxime de Trailles,--a mission he endeavored at first to conceal under some irrigating project. We even know what you, madame, seem not to know,--that this able ministerial agent has found means to combine with the cares of electoral politics those of his own private policy. Monsieur Maxime de Trailles, if we are rightly informed, was on the point of succumbing to the chronic malady with which he has been so long afflicted; I mean _debt_. Not debts, for we say “the debt of Monsieur de Trailles,” as we say “the debt of England.” In this extremity the patient, resolved on heroic remedies, adopted that of marriage, which might perhaps be called marriage _in extremis_.
To cut a long story short, Monsieur de Trailles was sent to Arcis to put an end to the candidacy of an upstart of the Left centre, a certain Simon Giguet; and having brought forward the mayor of the town as the ministerial candidate, he finds the said mayor, named Beauvisage, possessed of an only daughter, rather pretty, and able to bring her husband five hundred thousand francs amassed in the honorable manufacture of cotton night-caps. Now you see, I am sure, the mechanism of the affair.
As for our own claims, we certainly do not make cotton night-caps, but we make statues,--statues for which we are decorated with the Legion of honor; religious statues, inaugurated with great pomp by Monseigneur the bishop of the diocese and all the constituted authorities; statues, or rather _a_ statue, which the whole population of the town has flocked to the Ursuline convent to behold, where Mesdames the nuns, not a little puffed up with this magnificent addition to their bijou of a chapel, have kept their house and their oratory open to all comers for this whole day. Is not that likely to popularize our candidacy?
This evening, to crown the ceremony of inaugurating our Saint-Ursula, we give in our chateau of Arcis a banquet to fifty guests, among whom we have had the malice to invite (with the chief inhabitants of the place) all the ministerial functionaries and, above all, the ministerial candidate. But, in view of our own declared candidacy, we feel pretty well assured that the latter will not respond to the invitation. So much the better! more room for others; and the missing guests, whose names will be made known on the morrow, will be convicted of a _servilism_ which will, we think, injure their influence with the population.
Yesterday we paid a visit at the chateau de Cinq-Cygne, where d’Arthez presented us, in the first place, to the Princesse de Cadignan, who is wonderfully well preserved. Both she and the old Marquise de Cinq-Cygne received Dorlange--I should say, Sallenauve--in the warmest manner. It was from them that we learned the history of Monsieur Maxime de Trailles’ mission and its present results. It seems that on his arrival the ministerial agent received some attentions at Cinq-Cygne,--mere floating sticks, to discover the set of his current. He evidently flattered himself that he should find support at Cinq-Cygne for his electioneering intrigue; which is so far from being the case that Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, to whom, as a Jockey Club comrade, he told all his projects, gave us the information about them which I have now given to you, and which, if you will be so kind, I should like you to make over to Monsieur de l’Estorade.
May 12th.
The dinner has taken place, madame; it was magnificently served, and Arcis will talk about it for some time to come. Sallenauve has in that great organist (who, by the bye, showed his talent on the organ admirably during the ceremony of inauguration) a sort of steward and factotum who leaves all the Vatels of the world far behind him; he would never have fallen on his sword for lack of a fish! Colored lamps, garlands, draperies, decorated the dining-room; even fireworks were provided; nothing was wanting to the fete, which lasted to a late hour in the gardens of the chateau, where the populace danced and drank to its heart’s content.
Nearly all the invited guests came except those we desired to compromise. The invitations having been sent at short notice, it was amusing to read the notes and letters of excuse, which Sallenauve ordered to be brought to him in the salon as they arrived. As he opened each he took care to say: “This is from Monsieur the sub-prefect; this from the _procureur-du-roi_; this from Monsieur Vinet the substitute, expressing regret that they cannot accept the invitation.” All these concerted refusals were received with smiles and whispers by the company; but when a letter arrived from Beauvisage, and Sallenauve read aloud the “impossibility in which he found himself to _correspond_ to his politeness,” the hilarity grew noisy and general, and was only stopped by the entrance of Monsieur Martener, examining judge, who performed an act of courage in coming to the dinner which his colleagues declined. We must remark, however, than an examining-judge has two sides to him. On that of the judge he is irremovable; he can only be deprived of the slight increase of salary he receives as an examiner and of the privilege of signing warrants and questioning thieves,--splendid rights of which the chancellor can mulct him by a stroke of his pen. But allowing that Monsieur Martener was only semi-brave, he was greeted on this occasion as a full moon.
The Duc de Maufrigneuse, d’Arthez, and Monseigneur the bishop, who was staying at Cinq-Cygne for a few days, were all present, and this made more noticeable the absence of one man, namely, Grevin, whose excuse, sent earlier in the day, was not read to the company. The non-appearance of the Comte de Gondreville was explained by the recent death of his grandson, Charles Keller; and in sending the invitation Sallenauve had been careful to let him know he should understand a refusal. But that Grevin, the count’s right arm, should absent himself, seemed to show that he and his patron were convinced of the probable election of Beauvisage, and would have no intercourse with the new candidate.
The dinner being given in honor of Saint-Ursula’s installation, which could not be celebrated by a banquet in the convent, Sallenauve had a fine opportunity for the following toast:--
“To the Mother of the poor; the noble and saintly spirit which, for fifty years, has shone on Champagne, and to which we owe the vast number of distinguished and accomplished women who adorn this beautiful region of our country.”
If you know, as I do, madame, what a forlorn, beggarly region Champagne is, you would say, or something like it, that Sallenauve is a rascally fellow, and that the passion to enter the legislature makes a man capable of shocking deceit. Was it worth while, in fact, for a man who usually respects himself to boldly tell a lie of criminal dimensions, when a moment later a little unforeseen circumstance occurred which did more than all the speeches ever uttered to commend him to the sympathy of the electors?
You told me, madame, that your son Armand found a strong likeness to the portraits of Danton in our friend Sallenauve; and it seems that the boy’s remark was true, for several persons present who had known the great revolutionist during his lifetime made the same observation. Laurent Goussard, who, as I told you in a former letter, was Danton’s friend, was also, in a way, his brother-in-law; for Danton, who was something of a gallant, had been on close terms for several years with the miller’s sister. Well, the likeness must be striking, for after dinner, while we were taking our coffee, the worthy Goussard, whose head was a little warmed by the fumes of wine, came up to Sallenauve and asked him whether he was certain he had made no mistake about his father, and could honestly declare that Danton had nothing to do with his making.
Sallenauve took the matter gaily, and answered arithmetically,--
“Danton died April 5, 1794. To be his son, I must have been born no later than January, 1795, which would make me forty-four years old to-day. But the register of my birth, and I somewhat hope my face, make me out exactly thirty.”
“Yes, you are right,” said Laurent Goussard; “figures demolish my idea; but no matter,--we’ll vote for you all the same.”
I think the man is right; this chance resemblance is likely to have great weight in the election. You must remember, madame, that, in spite of the fatal facts which cling about his memory, Danton is not an object of horror and execration in Arcis, where he was born and brought up. In the first place time has purged him; his grand character and powerful intellect remain, and the people are proud of their compatriot. In Arcis they talk of Danton as in Marseilles they talk of Cannebiere. Fortunate, therefore, is our candidate’s likeness to this demigod, the worship of whom is not confined to the town, but extends to the surrounding country.
These voters _extra muros_ are sometimes curiously simple-minded, and obvious contradictions trouble them not at all. Some agents sent into the adjacent districts have used this fancied resemblance; and as in a rural propaganda the object is less to strike fair than to strike hard, Laurent Goussard’s version, apocryphal as it is, is hawked about the country villages with a coolness that admits of no contradiction.
While this pretended revolutionary origin is advancing our friend’s prospects in one direction, in another the tale put forth to the worthy voters whom it is desirable to entice is different, but truer and not less striking to the minds of the country-people. This is the gentlemen, they are told, who has bought the chateau of Arcis; and as the chateau of Arcis stands high above the town and is known to all the country round, it is to these simple folk a species of symbol. They are always ready to return to memories of the past, which is much less dead and buried than people suppose; “Ah! he’s the _seigneur_ of the chateau,” they say.
This, madame, is how the electoral kitchen is carried on and the way in which a deputy is cooked.
XVI. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE
Arcis-sur-Aube, May 15, 1839.
Madame,--You do me the honor to say that my letters amuse you, and you tell me not to fear that I send too many.
We are no longer at the Hotel de la Poste, having left it for the chateau; but thanks to the rivalry existing between the two inns, the Poste and the Mulet, in the latter of which Monsieur de Trailles has established his headquarters, we are kept informed of what is going on in the town and among our enemies. Since our departure, as our late landlord informs us, a Parisian journalist has arrived at his hotel. This individual, whose name I do not know, at once announced himself as Jack-the-giant-killer, sent down to reinforce with his Parisian vim and vigor the polemic which the local press, subsidized by the “bureau of public spirit,” has directed against us.
In that there is nothing very grave or very gay; since the world was a world, governments have always found pens for sale, and never have they failed to buy them; but the comedy of this affair begins with the co-arrival and the co-presence in the hotel of a young lady of very problematical virtue. The name of this young lady as it appears on her passport is Mademoiselle Chocardelle; but the journalist in speaking of her calls her Antonia, or, when he wants to treat her with more respect, Mademoiselle Antonia.
Now, what can bring Mademoiselle Chocardelle to Arcis? A pleasure trip, you will say, offered to her by the journalist, who combines with that object our daily defamation and his consequent earnings from the secret-service fund of the government. Not at all; Mademoiselle Chocardelle has come to Arcis on business of her own,--namely, to enforce a claim.
It seems that Charles Keller before his departure for Africa, where he met a glorious death, drew a note of hand, payable to Mademoiselle Antonia on order, for ten thousand francs, “value received in furniture,” a charming ambiguity, the furniture having been received by, and not from, Mademoiselle Chocardelle, who estimated at ten thousand francs the sacrifice she made in accepting it.
A few days after Charles Keller’s death, the note being almost due, Mademoiselle Antonia went to the counting-room of the Keller Brothers to inquire about its payment. The cashier, who is crabbed, like all cashiers, replied that he did not see how Mademoiselle Antonia had the face to present such a note; at any rate, the heads of the house were at Gondreville, where the whole family had met after receiving the fatal news, and he should pay no such note without referring the matter to them.
“Very good, then I’ll refer it to them myself,” replied Mademoiselle Antonia. Thereupon she was meditating a departure alone to Arcis, when the government felt the need of insulting us with more wit and point than provincial journalism can muster, and so confided that employment to a middle-aged journalist to whom Mademoiselle Antonia had, during the absence of Charles Keller, shown some kindness. “I am going to Arcis,” seems to have been said at the same instant by writer and lady. The most commonplace lives encounter similar coincidences.
Now, madame, admire the manner in which things link together. Setting forth on a purely selfish financial enterprise, behold Mademoiselle Chocardelle suddenly brought to the point of wielding an immense electoral influence! And observe also that her influence is of a nature to compensate for all the witty pin-pricks of her gallant companion.
Mademoiselle’s affair, it appears, hung fire. Twice she went to Gondreville, and was not admitted. The journalist was busy,--partly with his articles, and partly with certain commissions given to him by Monsieur de Trailles, under whose orders he was told to place himself. Mademoiselle Antonia was therefore much alone; and in the ennui of such solitude, she was led to create for herself a really desperate amusement.
A few steps from the Hotel de la Poste is a bridge across the Aube; a path leads down beside it, by a steep incline, to the water’s edge, which, being hidden from the roadway above and little frequented, offers peace and solitude to whoever may like to dream there to the sound of the rippling current. Mademoiselle Antonia at first took a book with her; but books not being, as she says, in her line, she looked about for other ways of killing her time, and bethought herself of fishing, for which amusement the landlord of the inn supplied her with a rod. Much pleased with her first successes, the pretty exile devoted herself to an occupation which must be attractive,--witness the fanatics that it makes; and the few persons who crossed the bridge could admire at all hours a charming naiad in a flounced gown and a broad-brimmed straw hat, engaged in fishing with the conscientious gravity of a _gamin de Paris_.
Up to this time Mademoiselle Antonia and her fishing have had nothing to do with our election; but if you will recall, madame, in the history of Don Quixote (which I have heard you admire for its common-sense and jovial reasoning) the rather disagreeable adventures of Rosinante and the muleteers, you will have a foretaste of the good luck which the development of Mademoiselle Antonia’s new passion brought to us.
Our rival, Beauvisage, is not only a successful stocking-maker and an exemplary mayor, but he is also a model husband, having never tripped in loyalty to his wife, whom he respects and admires. Every evening, by her orders, he goes to bed before ten o’clock, while Madame Beauvisage and her daughter go into what Arcis is pleased to call society. But there is no more treacherous water, they say, than still water, just as there was nothing less proper and well-behaved than the calm and peaceable Rosinante on the occasion referred to.
At any rate, while making the tour of his town according to his laudable official habit, Beauvisage from the top of the bridge chanced to catch sight of the fair Parisian who with outstretched arms and gracefully bent body was pursuing her favorite pastime. A slight movement, the charming impatience with which the pretty fisher twitched her line from the water when the fish had not bitten, was perhaps the electric shock which struck upon the heart of the magistrate, hitherto irreproachable. No one can say, perhaps, how the thing really came about. But I ought to remark that during the interregnum that occurred between the making of socks and night-caps and the assumption of municipal duties, Beauvisage himself had practised the art of fishing with a line with distinguished success. Probably it occurred to him that the poor young lady, having more ardor than science, was not going the right way to work, and the thought of improving her method may have been the real cause of his apparent degeneracy. However that may be, it is certain that, crossing the bridge in company with her mother, Mademoiselle Beauvisage suddenly cried out, like a true _enfant terrible_,--
“Goodness! there’s papa talking with that Parisian woman!”
To assure herself at a glance of the monstrous fact, to rush down the bank and reach her husband (whom she found with laughing lips and the happy air of a browsing sheep), to blast him with a stern “What are you doing here?” to order his retreat to Arcis with the air of a queen, while Mademoiselle Chocardelle, first astonished and then enlightened as to what it all meant, went off into fits of laughter, took scarcely the time I have taken to tell it. Such, madame, was the proceeding by which Madame Beauvisage, _nee_ Grevin, rescued her husband; and though that proceeding may be called justifiable, it was certainly injudicious, for before night the whole town had heard of the catastrophe, and Beauvisage, arraigned and convicted by common consent of deplorable immorality, saw fresh desertions taking place in the already winnowed phalanx of his partisans.
However, the Gondreville and Grevin side still held firm, and--would you believe it, madame?--it was again Mademoiselle Antonia to whom we owe the overthrow of their last rampart.
Here is the tale of that phenomenon: Mother Marie-des-Anges wanted an interview with the Comte de Gondreville; but how to get it she did not know, because to ask for it was not, as she thought, proper. Having, it appears, unpleasant things to say to him, she did not wish to bring the old man to the convent expressly to hear them; such a proceeding seemed to her uncharitable. Besides, things comminatory delivered point-blank will often provoke their recipient instead of alarming him; whereas the same things slipped in sweetly never fail of their effect. Still, time was passing; the election, as you know, takes place to-morrow, Sunday, and the preparatory meeting of all the candidates and the electors, to-night. The poor dear saintly woman did not know what course to take, when a little matter occurred, most flattering to her vanity, which solved her doubts. A pretty sinner, she was told, who had come to Arcis to “do” Monsieur Keller the financier, then at Gondreville, out of some money, had heard of the virtues and the inexhaustible kindness of Mother Marie-des-Anges--in short, she regarded her, after Danton, as the most interesting object of the place, and deeply regretted that she dared not ask to be admitted to her presence.
An hour later the following note was left at the Hotel de la Poste:--
Mademoiselle,--I am told that you desire to see me, but that you do not know how to accomplish it. Nothing is easier. Ring the door-bell of my quiet house, ask to see me, and do not be alarmed at my black robe and aged face. I am not one of those who force their advice upon pretty young women who do not ask for it, and who may become in time greater saints than I. That is the whole mystery of obtaining an interview with Mother Marie-des-Anges, who salutes you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. [Picture of small cross.]
An invitation so graciously given was not to be resisted; and Mademoiselle Antonia, after putting on the soberest costume she could get together, went to the convent.
I wish I could give you the details of that interview, which must have been curious; but no one was present, and nothing was known except what the lost sheep, who returned in tears, told of it. When the journalist tried to joke her on this conversion, Mademoiselle Antonia turned upon him.
“Hold your tongue,” she said; “you never in your life wrote a sentence like what she said to me.”
“What did she say to you?”
“‘Go, my child,’ said that old woman, ‘the ways of God are beautiful, and little known; there is often more of a saint in a Magdalen than in a nun.’”
The journalist laughed, but scenting danger he said,--
“When are you going again to Gondreville to see that Keller? If he doesn’t pay the money soon, I’ll hit him a blow in some article, in spite of all Maxime may say.”
“I don’t play dirty tricks myself,” replied Antonia, with dignity.
“Don’t you? Do you mean you are not going to present that note again?”
“Not now,” replied the admirer and probably the echo of Mother Marie-des-Anges, but using her own language; “I don’t blackmail a family in affliction. I should remember it on my death-bed, and doubt God’s mercy.”
“Why don’t you make yourself an Ursuline, now that we are here?”
“Ha, if I only had the courage! I might be happier if I did. But, in any case, I am not going to Gondreville; Mother Marie-des-Anges has undertaken to arrange that matter for me.”
“Foolish girl! Have you given her that note?”
“I wanted to tear it up, but she prevented me, and told me to give it to her and she would arrange it honestly for my interests.”
“Very fine! You were a creditor, and now you are a beggar.”
“No, for I have given the money in alms. I told madame to keep it for her poor.”
“Oh! if you add the vice of patronizing convents to your other vice of fishing in rivers, you will be a pleasant girl to frequent.”
“You won’t frequent me much longer, for I go to-night, and leave you to your dirty work.”
“Bless me! so you retire to the Carmelites?”
“The Carmelites!” replied Antonia, wittily; “no, my old fellow, we don’t retire to the Carmelites unless we leave a king.”
Such women, even the most ignorant, all know the story of La Valliere, whom they would assuredly have made their patroness if Sister Louise-of-the-Sacred-Mercy had been canonized.
I don’t know how Mother Marie-des-Anges managed it, but early this morning the carriage of the old Comte de Gondreville stopped before the gate of the convent; and when the count again entered it he was driven to the office of his friend Grevin; and later in the day the latter said to several friends that certainly his son-in-law was too much of a fool, he had compromised himself with that Parisian woman, and would undoubtedly lose his election.
I am told that the rectors of the two parishes in Arcis have each received a thousand crowns for their poor from Mother Marie-des-Anges, who informed them that it came from a benefactor who did not wish his name known. Sallenauve is furious because our partisans are going about saying that the money came from him. But when you are running before the wind you can’t mathematically measure each sail, and you sometimes get more of a breeze than you really want.
Monsieur Maxime de Trailles makes no sign, but there is every reason to suppose that this failure of his candidate, which he must see is now inevitable, will bury both him and his marriage. But, at any rate, he is a clever fellow, who will manage to get his revenge.
What a curious man, madame, this organist is! His name is that of one of our greatest physicians,--though they are not related to each other,--Bricheteau. No one ever showed more activity, more presence of mind, more devotion, more intelligence; and there are not two men in all Europe who can play the organ as he does. You say you do not want Nais to be a mere piano _strummer_; then I advise you to let this Bricheteau teach her. He is a man who would show her what music really is; he will not give himself airs, for I assure you he is as modest as he is gifted. To Sallenauve he is like a little terrier; as watchful, as faithful, and I may add as ugly,--if so good and frank a countenance as his can ever be thought anything but handsome!
XVII. MARIE-GASTON TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE
Arcis-sur-Aube, May 16, 1839.
Madame,--Last evening the preparatory meeting took place,--a ridiculous ceremony, very annoying to the candidates, which cannot, however, be avoided.
Perhaps it is natural that before pledging themselves to a man who is to represent them for four or five years, voters should want to question him, and discover, if possible, what he really is. Is he a man of intelligence? Does he really sustain the ideas put forth about him? Will he be cordial and affable to the various interests which may claim his support? Is he firm in character? Can he defend his ideas--if he has any? In a word, will the constituency be worthily, faithfully, and honestly represented? That is the serious and respectable aspect of this institution, which, not being a part of the law, must, in order to be so firmly fixed in our customs, have a sound reason for its existence.
But every medal has its reverse; as may be seen in these meetings of candidates with electors puffed up by their own self-importance, eager to exercise for a moment the sovereignty they are about to delegate to their deputy, and selling it as dearly as they can to him. Considering the impertinence of certain questions addressed to a candidate, it would really seem as if the latter were a serf over whom each elector had rights of life and death. Not a corner of his private life where the unhappy man is safe from prying curiosity. All things are possible in the line of preposterous questioning; for instance: Why does the candidate prefer the wine of Champagne to the wine of Bordeaux? At Bordeaux, where wine is a religion, this preference implies an idea of non-patriotism and may seriously affect the election. Many voters go to these meetings solely to enjoy the embarrassment of the candidates. Holding them as it were in the pillory, they play with them like a child with a beetle, an old judge with the criminal he examines, or a young surgeon at an autopsy.
Others have not such elevated tastes; they come merely to enjoy the racket, the confusion of tongues which is certain to take place on such occasions. Some see their opportunity to exhibit a choice talent; for (as they say in the reports of the Chamber) when “the tumult is at its height,” a cock is heard to crow or a dog to howl as if his paw were trodden upon,--noises that are imitated with marvellous accuracy. But truly, are not fools and stupid beings a majority in the world, and ought they not to have their representative?
The meeting took place in a large dance-hall, the loft for the orchestra forming a sort of private box to which non-voters were admitted, I among the number. Some ladies had already taken the front seats; Madame Marion, aunt of Simon Giguet, the Left centre candidate; Madame and Mademoiselle Mollot, wife and daughter of the clerk of the court, and some others whose names and position I did not catch. Madame and Mademoiselle Beauvisage shone conspicuously, like Brutus and Cassius, by their absence.
Before the candidacy of Monsieur Beauvisage was brought forward on the ministerial side after the death of Charles Keller, that of Monsieur Simon Giguet was thought to be certain of success. Now, in consequence of that of our friend Sallenauve, who has in turn distanced Beauvisage, Giguet has fallen a step lower still. His father, a former colonel of the Empire, is greatly respected throughout this region. As an expression of regret for not electing his son (according to all probabilities), the electors made him, by acclamation, chairman of the meeting.
The first candidate who was called upon to speak was Simon Giguet; he made a long-winded address, full of commonplaces. Few questions were asked him which deserve a place in the present report. The audience felt that the tug of war was elsewhere.
Monsieur Beauvisage was then summoned; whereupon Maitre Achille Pigoult the notary rose, and asked leave to make a statement.
“Monsieur le maire,” he said, “has, since yesterday, been attacked by--”
“Ha! ha!” derisive laughter on the part of the electors.
Colonel Giguet rang his bell repeatedly, without being able to enforce silence. At the first lull Maitre Pigoult resumed,--
“I have the honor to inform you, gentlemen, that, attacked by an indisposition which, not serious in itself--”
Fresh interruption, noisier than the first.
Like all military men, Colonel Giguet is not patient nor parliamentary; he therefore rose and called out vehemently,--
“Messieurs, we are not at a circus. I request you to behave in a more seemly manner; if not, I leave the chair.”
It is to be supposed that men in masses like to be handled roughly; for this lesson was greeted with merry applause, after which silence appeared to be firmly re-established.
“I regret to inform you,” began Maitre Achille Pigoult, varying his formula for the third time, “that, attacked by an indisposition happily not serious, which may confine him to his chamber--”
“Throat trouble,” suggested a voice.
“--our venerable and excellent mayor,” continued Achille Pigoult, taking no notice of the interruption, “is unable to be present at this meeting. Madame Beauvisage, with whom I have just had the honor of an interview, requests me to inform you that, _for the present_, Monsieur Beauvisage renounces the honor of receiving your suffrages, and requests those of you who have given him your intelligent sympathy to transfer your votes to Monsieur Simon Giguet.”
This Achille Pigoult is a malicious fellow, who intentionally brought in the name of Madame Beauvisage to exhibit her conjugal sovereignty. But the assembly was really too provincial to catch the meaning of that little bit of treachery. Besides, in the provinces, women take part in the most virile affairs of the men. The well-known saying of the vicar’s old housekeeper, “We don’t say masses at that price,” would pass without comment in Champagne.
At last came Sallenauve. I was struck with the ease and quiet dignity of his manner. That is a very reassuring pledge, madame, of his conduct under more trying circumstances; for when a man rises to speak it makes but little difference who and what his audience are. To an orator goaded by fear, great lords and porters are precisely the same thing. They are eyes that look at you, ears that hear you. Individuals are not there, only one huge being,--an assembly, felt as a mass, without analyzing the elements.
After enumerating briefly the ties which connected him with this region, slipping in as he did so an adroit and dignified allusion to his birth which “was not like that of others,” Sallenauve stated clearly his political ideas. A Republic he thought the finest of all governments; but he did not believe it possible to establish one in France; consequently, he did not desire it. He thought that a truly parliamentary government, in which court influence should be so vigorously muzzled that nothing need be feared from its tendency to interference and caballing would best conduce to the dignity and the welfare of the nation. Liberty and equality, the two great principles that triumphed in ‘89, would obtain from such a government the strongest guarantees. As to the manoeuvring of the royal power against those principles, it was not for institutions to check it, but for men,--customs, public opinion, rather than laws; and for himself, Sallenauve, he should ever stand in the breach as a living obstacle. He declared himself a warm partisan of free education; believed that greater economy might be exercised in the budget; that too many functionaries were attached to the government; and, above all, that the court was too largely represented in the Chamber. To maintain his independence he was firmly resolved to accept no post and no favors from the government. Neither ought those who might elect him to expect that he would ever take steps on their behalf which were not warranted by reason and by justice. It was said that the word _impossible_ was not French. Yet there was an impossibility by which he took pride in being stopped--that of injustice, and that of disloyalty, even the faintest, to the Right. [Loud applause.]
Silence being once more restored,--
“Monsieur,” said one of the electors, after obtaining the floor from the chairman, “you say that you will accept no post under government. Does not that imply reproach to public functionaries? My name is Godivet; I am registrar of the archives, but I do not consider that a reason why I should incur the contempt of my fellow-citizens.”
Sallenauve replied,--
“I am happy, monsieur, to learn that the government has invested a man like you with functions which you fulfil, I am sure, with perfect uprightness and great ability; but I venture to ask if you rose to your present position at one jump?”
“Certainly not, monsieur; I began by being a supernumerary for three years; after that I passed through all the grades; and I can show that favor had nothing to do with my promotion.”
“Then, monsieur, what would you say if with my rank as deputy (supposing that I obtain the suffrages of this arrondissement) I, who have never been a supernumerary and never passed through any grades, and whose only claim upon the administration is that of having voted for it,--what would you say if I were suddenly appointed over your head as the director-general of your department?”
“I should say--I should say, monsieur, that the choice was a good one, because the king himself would have made it.”
“No, monsieur, you would not say it, or if you said it aloud, which I scarcely think possible, you would think in your heart that the choice was ridiculous and unjust. ‘How the devil,’ you would say to yourself, ‘could this man, this sculptor, know anything about the intricate business of registering archives?’ And you would be right in condemning such royal caprice; for what becomes of long and honorable services, justly acquired rights, and steady promotion under such a system of arbitrary choice? It is that I may not be the accomplice of this crying abuse, because I think it neither just nor honest nor useful to obtain in this way important public functions, that I denounce the system and bind myself to accept no office. Is this, monsieur, pouring contempt on public functions? Is it not rather lifting them to higher honor?”
Monsieur Godivet declared himself satisfied, and said no more.
“_Ah ca_! monsieur,” cried another elector, after demanding the floor in the rather tipsy voice, “you say you will ask no favors for your constituents; then what good will you be to us?”
“My friend, I did not say I would ask nothing for my constituents. I said I would ask nothing but what was just; but that, I may add, I shall ask with energy and perseverance, for that is how justice should be followed up.”
“But,” persisted the voter, “there are various ways of doing justice; witness the suit I was made to lose against Jean Remy, with whom I had trouble about a boundary--”
Colonel Giguet, interrupting,--
“Come, come, you are not going, I hope to talk about your private affairs, and speak disrespectfully of magistrates?”
The voter resumed,--
“Magistrates, colonel, I respect, for I was one myself for six months in ‘93, and I know the law. But, returning to my point, I ask monsieur, who is here to answer questions, to me as well as to others, what he thinks about tobacco licenses.”
“My opinion on tobacco licenses! That is rather difficult to formulate; I can, however, say that, if my information is correct, they are usually very well distributed.”
“Hey! hey! you’re a man, you!” cried the inebriate elector, “and I’ll vote for you, for they can’t fool you,--no! But they do give those licenses all wrong! Look at that daughter of Jean Remy. Bad neighbor. Never owned anything but his cart, and fights every day with his wife--”
“But, my good fellow,” said the chairman, interposing, “you are abusing the patience of this assembly.”
“No, no! let him talk!” cried voices from all parts of the room.
The voter was amusing, and Sallenauve himself seemed to let the chairman know he would like to see what the man was driving at.
The elector, being allowed to continue, went on:--
“I was going to say, with due respect to you, colonel, about that daughter of Jean Remy’s,--a man I’ll pursue to hell, for my bounds were in their right place, and them experts was all wrong. Well! what did that slut do? Left her father and mother and went to Paris! What did she do there? I didn’t go to see, but I’m told she made acquaintance with a deputy, and has got the tobacco license for the rue Mouffetard, the longest street in Paris. But I’d like to see my wife, widow of an honest man, doubled up with rheumatism for having slept in the woods during that terror in 1815,--I’d like to see my poor widow get a license!”
“But you are not dead yet,” they shouted to him from all parts of the room. The colonel, meantime, to put an end to the burlesque scene, nodded to a little confectioner who was waiting for the floor, a well-known Republican. The new questioner, in a falsetto voice, put the following insidious question to the candidate,--a question which might, by the way, be called national in Arcis,--
“What does Monsieur think of Danton?”
“Monsieur Dauphin,” said the chairman, “I have the honor to remind you that Danton belongs to history.”
“To the Pantheon of history, monsieur; that is the proper expression.”
“Well, history, or the Pantheon of history, as you please; but Danton is irrelevant here.”
“Permit me, Mr. Chairman,” said Sallenauve, “though the question does not seem to have much purpose on the bearing of this meeting, I cannot forego the opportunity thus given me to give proof of the impartiality and independence with which I can judge that great memory, the fame of which still echoes in this town.”
“Hear! hear!” cried the assembly, almost unanimously.
“I am firmly convinced,” resumed Sallenauve, “that if Danton had been born in a calm and peaceful epoch like our own, he would have shown himself, what in fact he was, a good father, a good husband, a warm and faithful friend, a man of kindly temper, who, by the force of his great talents, would have risen to some eminent place in the State and in society.”
“Yes, yes! bravo! very good!”
“Born, on the contrary, in troublesome times, and amid the storm of unchained passions, Danton was better constituted than others to kindle the flame of that atmosphere of fire. Danton was the torch that fired; his scarlet glare lent itself only too readily to scenes of blood and horror which I must not recall. But, they said, the national independence was at stake, traitors and dissemblers must be awed,--in a word, a cruel and awful sacrifice was necessary for the public weal. Messieurs, I do not accept that theory. To kill, without the necessity demonstrated a score of times of legitimate defence, to kill women, children, prisoners, unarmed men, was a crime,--a crime, look at it how you will, that was execrable; those who ordered it, those who consented to it, those who executed it are, to my mind, deserving of the same reprobation.”
I wish I could give you an idea, madame, of the tone and expression of Sallenauve as he uttered this anathema. You know how his face is transfigured when an ardent thought comes into his mind. The assemblage was mute and gloomy. Evidently he had wounded their sensibilities; but, under the curb of his powerful hand, it dared not throw up its head.
“But,” he continued, “to all consummated and irreparable crimes there are two issues,--repentance and expiation. His repentance Danton did not utter,--he was too proud a man,--but he _acted_ it. He was the first, to the sound of that axe falling without pity and without respite,--the first, at the risk of his own head being the next victim,--to call for a ‘committee of mercy.’ It was the sure, the infallible means of bringing him to expiation; and you all know whether, when that day of expiation came, he quailed before it. Passing through death,--won by his courageous effort to stop the effusion of blood,--it may be truly said that the face and the memory of Danton have washed off the bloody stain which September put upon them. Committed, at the age of thirty-five, to the judgment of posterity, Danton has left us the memory of a great intellect, a strong and powerful character, noble private qualities, more than one generous action,--all derived from his own being; whereas the bloody errors he committed were the contagion of his epoch. In a word, with men of his quality, unjust would be the justice which does not temper itself with mercy. And here, messieurs, you have in your midst--better than you, better than I, better than all orators and historians--a woman who has weighed and understood Danton, and who says to the pitiless, with the impulse of her charity, ‘He has gone to God; let us pray for him.’”
The trap thus avoided by this happy allusion to Mother Marie-des-Anges, and the assembly evidently satisfied, it might be supposed that the candidate had come to the end of his baiting. The colonel was even preparing to pass to the vote, when several electors sprang up, declaring that two important explanations were still required from the candidate. He had said that he should ever be found an obstacle to all attempts of the royal power to subvert our institutions. What did he mean by such resistance? Was it armed resistance, the resistance of riots and barricades?
“Barricades,” replied Sallenauve, “have nearly always seemed to me machines which turned of themselves and crushed the men who raised them. We must believe that in the nature of riots there is something which serves the interests of the government, for I have invariably heard the police accused of inciting them. My resistance, that which I spoke of, will ever be a legal resistance, pursued by legal means, by the press, by the tribune, and with patience,--that great force granted to the oppressed and to the vanquished.”
If you knew Latin, madame, I should say to you, _In cauda venenum_; which means, “In the tail of the serpent is its venom,”--a remark of antiquity which modern science does not admit. Monsieur de l’Estorade was not mistaken; Sallenauve’s private life was destined to be ransacked, and, no doubt under the inspiration of the virtuous Maxime de Trailles, the second question put to our friend was about the handsome Italian woman said to be _hidden_ by him in his house in Paris.
Sallenauve showed no embarrassment at being thus interpellated. He merely asked whether the assembly would think proper to spend its time in listening to a romantic story in which there was no scandal.
But here comes Sallenauve himself; he tells me that the electoral college is formed in a manner that leaves little doubt of his election. I leave my pen to him, to tell you the romantic tale, already, I believe, interrupted on several occasions. He will close this letter.
XVIII. CHARLES DE SALLENAUVE TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE
7 P.M.
Madame,--The rather abrupt manner in which I parted from you and Monsieur de l’Estorade the evening of our visit to Armand’s school, has been explained to you by the preoccupations of all sorts to which at that moment I was a victim. Marie-Gaston tells me that he has kept you informed of the subsequent events.
I acknowledge that in the restless and agitated state of mind in which I then was, the sort of belief which Monsieur de l’Estorade appeared to give to the scandal which he mentioned caused me great displeasure and some surprise. How, thought I, is it possible that a man of Monsieur de l’Estorade’s morality and intellect can _a priori_ suppose me capable of such disorder, when he sees me anxious to give to my life all the weight and consideration which the respect of others alone can bestow? Only a few moments before this painful conversation I had been on the point of making you a confidence which would, I presume, have protected me against the unfortunate impression which Monsieur de l’Estorade conveyed to your mind. As for Monsieur de l’Estorade himself, I was, I confess, so annoyed at seeing the careless manner in which he made himself the echo of a calumny against which I felt he ought rather to have defended me that I did not _deign_ to make any explanation to him. I now withdraw that word, but it was then the true expression of a displeasure keenly felt.
In the course of my electoral contest, I have been obliged to make public the justification I did not make to you; and I have had the satisfaction of finding that men in masses are more capable than individuals of understanding generous impulses and of distinguishing the honest language of truth. Here are the facts which I related, but more briefly and with less detail, to my electors.
A few months before my departure from Rome, I was in a cafe frequented by the pupils of the Academy, when an Italian musician, named Benedetto, came in, as he usually did every evening. Nominally he was a musician and a tolerable one; but we had been warned that he was also a spy of the Roman police. However that might be, he was very amusing; and as we cared nothing for the police, we not only endured but we encouraged his visits,--which was not hard to do in view of his passion for _poncio spongato_ and _spuma di latte_.
On his entrance one evening, a member of our party asked him who was the woman with whom he had met him that morning.
“My wife, signore,” answered the Italian.
“Yours, Benedetto!--you the husband of such a beauty!”
“Si, signore.”
“Nonsense! you are ugly and drunken, and people say you are police spy; but she, on the contrary, is as handsome as Diana the huntress.”
“I charmed her with my talent; she adores me.”
“Well, if she is your wife, make her pose to our friend here, Dorlange, who wants a model for his Pandora. He can’t get a finer one.”
“That can be managed,” replied the Italian.
The next day I was in my studio in company with several young painters and sculptors when Benedetto came in accompanied by a woman of rare beauty, whom I need not describe, for you have seen her, madame, at my house. A joyous hurrah greeted the Italian, who said to me,--
“_Ecco la Pandora_! Hey! what do you think of her?”
“Marvellously beautiful; but would she pose?”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Benedetto, with an air which seemed to say: “I’d like to see her refuse.”
“But,” I remarked, “she would cost too much, a model of her beauty.”
“No; you need only make my bust--just a plaster cast--and give it to her.”
“Very good,” I said. Then I told my friends to go and leave us alone together.
Nobody minded me. Judging the wife by the husband, the eager young fellows pressed round her; while she, wounded and angered by the audacity of their eyes, looked like a caged panther irritated by peasants at a fair.
Going up to her and pulling her aside, Benedetto told her in Italian that I wanted to copy her from head to foot, and she must then and there take off her clothes. The woman gave him one withering look, and made for the door. Benedetto rushed forward to prevent her; while my comrades, for the honor of the studio, endeavored to bar his way.
Then began an argument between the wife and the husband; but, as I saw that Benedetto sustained his part of it with great brutality, I was angry, and, having a pretty vigorous arm, I pushed him aside, and took the wife, who was trembling all over, to the door. She said, in Italian, a few words of thanks, and disappeared instantly.
Returning to Benedetto, who was gesticulating furiously, I told him to leave the studio, that his conduct was infamous, and if I heard of his ill-treating his wife I would have him punished.
“_Debole_!” (idiot!) he replied, shrugging his shoulders, and departing amid derisive cheers.
Several days passed, and no signs of Benedetto. By the end of a week he was forgotten. Three days before my departure from Rome his wife entered my studio.
“You are leaving Rome,” she said, “and I want you to take me with you.”
“Take you with me!--but your husband?”
“Dead,” she answered tranquilly.
A thought crossed my mind.
“Did you kill him?” I said.
She made an affirmative sign, adding, “But I meant to die too.”
“How was it?” I asked.
“After he offered me that affront,” she replied, “he came home and beat me, as he often did; then he went out and was gone all day. At night he returned with a pistol and threatened to shoot me; but I got the pistol away from him, for he was drunk. I threw him--the _briccone_!--on his bed, and he fell asleep. Then I stuffed up the doors and windows, and lighted the charcoal brazier. My head ached horribly, and I knew nothing more till the next day, when I woke up in the hands of my neighbors. They had smelt the charcoal, and burst in the door,--but he was dead.”
“And the law?”
“I told the judge everything. Besides, _he_ had tried to sell me to an Englishman,--that’s why he wanted to disgrace me here with you; he thought I would resist less. The judge told me I might go, I had done right; then I confessed to a priest, and he gave me absolution.”
“But, _cara mia_, what can you do in France? Better stay in Italy; besides, I am not rich.”
She smiled disdainfully.
“I shall not cost you much,” she said; “on the contrary, I can save you money.”
“How so?”
“I can be the model for your statues if I choose. Besides which, I am a capital housekeeper. If Benedetto had behaved properly, we should have had a good home,--_per che_, I know how to make one; and I’ve another great talent too!”
She ran to a guitar, which was hanging on the wall, and began to sing a bravura air, accompanying herself with singular energy.
“In France,” she said, when she had finished, “I could take lessons and go upon the stage, where I know I should succeed; that was Benedetto’s idea.”
“But why not do that in Italy?”
“I am hiding from that Englishman,” she replied; “he wants to carry me off. I am determined to go to France; I have learned to speak French. If I stay here, I shall throw myself into the Tiber.”
By abandoning such a nature, more terrible than seductive, to itself, Monsieur de l’Estorade will, I think, agree that I was likely to cause some misfortune. I consented, therefore, that Signora Luigia should accompany me to Paris. Since then she has managed my household with discretion and economy. She even offered to pose for my Pandora; but the memory of that scene with her husband has, as you may well believe, kept me from accepting her offer. I have given her a singing-master, and she is now almost prepared to make her appearance on the stage. But in spite of her theatrical projects, she, pious like all Italians, has joined the sisterhood of the Virgin in Saint-Sulpice, my parish church, and during the month of May, which began a few days ago, the letter of chairs counts on her beautiful voice for part of her receipts. She is assiduous at the services, confesses, and takes the sacrament regularly. Her confessor, a most respectable old man, came to see me lately to request that she might not be required to pose for any more of my statues, saying that she would not listen to him on that point, believing herself bound in honor to me.
My own intention, if I am elected, which now seems probable, is to separate from this woman. In a position which will place me more before the public, she would become an object of remark as injurious to her reputation and future prospects as to mine. I have talked with Marie-Gaston about the difficulty I foresee in making this separation. Until now, my house has been the whole of Paris to this poor woman; and the thought of flinging her alone into the gulf, of which she knows nothing, horrifies me.
Marie-Gaston thinks that the help and advice of a person of her own sex, with a high reputation for virtue and good judgment, would be in such a case most efficacious; and he declares that he and I both know a lady who, at our earnest entreaty, might take this duty upon herself. The person to whom Marie-Gaston makes allusion is but a recent acquaintance of mine, and I could hardly ask even an old friend to take such a care upon her shoulders. I know, however, that you once did me the honor to say that “certain relations ripen rapidly.” Marie-Gaston insists that this lady, being kind and pious and most charitable, will be attracted by the idea of helping and advising a poor lonely woman. On our return to Paris, madame, we shall venture to consult you, and you will tell us whether we may ask for this precious assistance.
In any case, I will ask you to be my intermediary with Monsieur de l’Estorade; tell him the facts I have now told you, and say that I hope the little cloud between us may be effectually removed. If I am elected, we shall be, I know, in opposite camps; but as my intention is not to take a tone of systematic opposition in all the questions which may arise between our parties, I do not think there _need_ be any break between us.
By this time to-morrow, madame, I may have received a checkmate which will send me back forever to my studio, or I shall have a foot in a new career. Shall I tell you that the thought of the latter result distresses me?--doubtless from a fear of the Unknown.
I was almost forgetting to give you another piece of news. I have consulted Mother Marie-des-Anges (whose history Marie-Gaston tells me he has related to you) on the subject of my doubts and fears as to the violence done to Mademoiselle de Lanty, and she has promised that in course of time she will discover the convent in which Marianina is a prisoner. The worthy Mother, if she takes this into her head, is almost certain to succeed in finding the original of her Saint-Ursula.
I am not feeling at all easy in mind about Marie-Gaston. He seems to me in a state of feverish agitation, partly created by the immense interest he takes in my success. But I greatly fear that his efforts will result in a serious reaction. His own grief, which at this moment he is repressing, has not in reality lost its sting. Have you not been struck by the rather flighty and mocking tone of his letters, some of which he has shown to me? That is not in his nature, for in his happiest days he was never turbulently gay; and I am sadly afraid that when this fictitious excitement about my election is over he may fall into utter prostration. He has, however, consented to come and live with me, and not to go to Ville d’Avray unless I am with him. Even this act of prudence, which I asked without hoping to obtain it, makes me uneasy. Evidently he is afraid of the memories that await him there. Have I the power to lessen the shock? Old Philippe, who was left in charge of the place when he went to Italy, had orders not to move or change anything whatever in the house. Our friend is therefore likely to find himself, in presence of those speaking objects, on the morrow as it were of his wife’s death. Another alarming thing! he has only spoken of her once, and will not suffer me to approach the subject. I hope, however, that this may be a crisis; once passed, I trust we may, by all uniting, succeed in composing his mind.
Victor or vanquished, I trust to meet you soon, madame, and always as your most respectful and devoted servant,
Charles de Sallenauve.
XIX. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE
Arcis-sur-Aube, May 17, 1839.
That stupid riot in Paris, the incredible particulars of which we heard this morning by telegraph, came near causing us to lose the election.
The sub-prefect instantly placarded all over the town the news of this attempt at insurrection--no doubt instigated by the government to affect the elections. “What! elect a democrat!” was repeated everywhere in Arcis, and doubtless elsewhere, “so that his speeches in the Chamber may be made the ammunition of insurgents!”
That argument threw our phalanx into disorder and hesitation. But the idea occurred to Jacques Bricheteau to turn the danger itself to good account, and he hastily printed on a sheet of paper and distributed all over the town in enormous quantities the following notice:--
A bloody riot took place yesterday in Paris. Questioned as to the employment of such guilty and desperate means of opposition, one of our candidates, Monsieur de Sallenauve, answered thus: “Riots will always be found to serve the interests of the government; for this reason the police are invariably accused of inciting them. True resistance, that which I stand for, will always be legal resistance, pursued by legal means, by the press, by the tribune, and with Patience--that great force granted to the oppressed and to the vanquished.”
These words, you will remember, madame, were those in which Sallenauve answered his questioners at the preparatory meeting. Then followed in large letters:--
THE RIOT HAS BEEN SUPPRESSED. WHO WILL PROFIT BY IT?
That sheet of paper did marvels; it completely foiled the efforts of Monsieur de Trailles, who, throwing off the mask, had spent his day in perorating, in white gloves, on the market-place and from the steps of the electoral college.
This evening the result is known; namely, two hundred and one votes cast: two for Beauvisage; twenty-nine for Simon Giguet; one hundred and seventy for Sallenauve.
Consequently, Monsieur Charles de Sallenauve is proclaimed Deputy.