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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1305 ***
+
+THE BALL AT SCEAUX
+
+
+BY HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translated By Clara Bell
+
+
+
+              To Henri de Balzac, his brother Honore.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BALL AT SCEAUX
+
+
+The Comte de Fontaine, head of one of the oldest families in Poitou, had
+served the Bourbon cause with intelligence and bravery during the war
+in La Vendee against the Republic. After having escaped all the dangers
+which threatened the royalist leaders during this stormy period of
+modern history, he was wont to say in jest, “I am one of the men who
+gave themselves to be killed on the steps of the throne.” And the
+pleasantry had some truth in it, as spoken by a man left for dead at the
+bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though ruined by confiscation, the
+staunch Vendeen steadily refused the lucrative posts offered to him
+by the Emperor Napoleon. Immovable in his aristocratic faith, he had
+blindly obeyed its precepts when he thought it fitting to choose
+a companion for life. In spite of the blandishments of a rich but
+revolutionary parvenu, who valued the alliance at a high figure, he
+married Mademoiselle de Kergarouet, without a fortune, but belonging to
+one of the oldest families in Brittany.
+
+When the second revolution burst on Monsieur de Fontaine he was
+encumbered with a large family. Though it was no part of the noble
+gentlemen’s views to solicit favors, he yielded to his wife’s wish, left
+his country estate, of which the income barely sufficed to maintain his
+children, and came to Paris. Saddened by seeing the greediness of his
+former comrades in the rush for places and dignities under the new
+Constitution, he was about to return to his property when he received a
+ministerial despatch, in which a well-known magnate announced to him his
+nomination as marechal de camp, or brigadier-general, under a rule
+which allowed the officers of the Catholic armies to count the twenty
+submerged years of Louis XVIII.’s reign as years of service. Some days
+later he further received, without any solicitation, ex officio, the
+crosses of the Legion of Honor and of Saint-Louis.
+
+Shaken in his determination by these successive favors, due, as he
+supposed, to the monarch’s remembrance, he was no longer satisfied with
+taking his family, as he had piously done every Sunday, to cry “Vive le
+Roi” in the hall of the Tuileries when the royal family passed through
+on their way to chapel; he craved the favor of a private audience.
+The audience, at once granted, was in no sense private. The royal
+drawing-room was full of old adherents, whose powdered heads, seen from
+above, suggested a carpet of snow. There the Count met some old friends,
+who received him somewhat coldly; but the princes he thought ADORABLE,
+an enthusiastic expression which escaped him when the most gracious of
+his masters, to whom the Count had supposed himself to be known only
+by name, came to shake hands with him, and spoke of him as the most
+thorough Vendeen of them all. Notwithstanding this ovation, none of
+these august persons thought of inquiring as to the sum of his losses,
+or of the money he had poured so generously into the chests of the
+Catholic regiments. He discovered, a little late, that he had made war
+at his own cost. Towards the end of the evening he thought he might
+venture on a witty allusion to the state of his affairs, similar, as
+it was, to that of many other gentlemen. His Majesty laughed heartily
+enough; any speech that bore the hall-mark of wit was certain to please
+him; but he nevertheless replied with one of those royal pleasantries
+whose sweetness is more formidable than the anger of a rebuke. One of
+the King’s most intimate advisers took an opportunity of going up to the
+fortune-seeking Vendeen, and made him understand by a keen and polite
+hint that the time had not yet come for settling accounts with the
+sovereign; that there were bills of much longer standing than his on the
+books, and there, no doubt, they would remain, as part of the history of
+the Revolution. The Count prudently withdrew from the venerable group,
+which formed a respectful semi-circle before the august family; then,
+having extricated his sword, not without some difficulty, from among the
+lean legs which had got mixed up with it, he crossed the courtyard of
+the Tuileries and got into the hackney cab he had left on the quay. With
+the restive spirit, which is peculiar to the nobility of the old school,
+in whom still survives the memory of the League and the day of the
+Barricades (in 1588), he bewailed himself in his cab, loudly enough
+to compromise him, over the change that had come over the Court.
+“Formerly,” he said to himself, “every one could speak freely to the
+King of his own little affairs; the nobles could ask him a favor, or for
+money, when it suited them, and nowadays one cannot recover the money
+advanced for his service without raising a scandal! By Heaven! the cross
+of Saint-Louis and the rank of brigadier-general will not make good the
+three hundred thousand livres I have spent, out and out, on the royal
+cause. I must speak to the King, face to face, in his own room.”
+
+This scene cooled Monsieur de Fontaine’s ardor all the more effectually
+because his requests for an interview were never answered. And,
+indeed, he saw the upstarts of the Empire obtaining some of the offices
+reserved, under the old monarchy, for the highest families.
+
+“All is lost!” he exclaimed one morning. “The King has certainly never
+been other than a revolutionary. But for Monsieur, who never derogates,
+and is some comfort to his faithful adherents, I do not know what hands
+the crown of France might not fall into if things are to go on
+like this. Their cursed constitutional system is the worst possible
+government, and can never suit France. Louis XVIII. and Monsieur Beugnot
+spoiled everything at Saint Ouen.”
+
+The Count, in despair, was preparing to retire to his estate,
+abandoning, with dignity, all claims to repayment. At this moment
+the events of the 20th March (1815) gave warning of a fresh storm,
+threatening to overwhelm the legitimate monarch and his defenders.
+Monsieur de Fontaine, like one of those generous souls who do not
+dismiss a servant in a torrent of rain; borrowed on his lands to
+follow the routed monarchy, without knowing whether this complicity in
+emigration would prove more propitious to him than his past devotion.
+But when he perceived that the companions of the King’s exile were
+in higher favor than the brave men who had protested, sword in hand,
+against the establishment of the republic, he may perhaps have hoped to
+derive greater profit from this journey into a foreign land than from
+active and dangerous service in the heart of his own country. Nor was
+his courtier-like calculation one of these rash speculations which
+promise splendid results on paper, and are ruinous in effect. He was--to
+quote the wittiest and most successful of our diplomates--one of the
+faithful five hundred who shared the exile of the Court at Ghent,
+and one of the fifty thousand who returned with it. During the short
+banishment of royalty, Monsieur de Fontaine was so happy as to be
+employed by Louis XVIII., and found more than one opportunity of giving
+him proofs of great political honesty and sincere attachment. One
+evening, when the King had nothing better to do, he recalled Monsieur de
+Fontaine’s witticism at the Tuileries. The old Vendeen did not let such
+a happy chance slip; he told his history with so much vivacity that
+a king, who never forgot anything, might remember it at a convenient
+season. The royal amateur of literature also observed the elegant style
+given to some notes which the discreet gentleman had been invited to
+recast. This little success stamped Monsieur de Fontaine on the King’s
+memory as one of the loyal servants of the Crown.
+
+At the second restoration the Count was one of those special envoys who
+were sent throughout the departments charged with absolute jurisdiction
+over the leaders of revolt; but he used his terrible powers with
+moderation. As soon as the temporary commission was ended, the High
+Provost found a seat in the Privy Council, became a deputy, spoke
+little, listened much, and changed his opinions very considerably.
+Certain circumstances, unknown to historians, brought him into such
+intimate relations with the Sovereign, that one day, as he came in, the
+shrewd monarch addressed him thus: “My friend Fontaine, I shall take
+care never to appoint you to be director-general, or minister. Neither
+you nor I, as employees, could keep our place on account of our opinions.
+Representative government has this advantage; it saves Us the trouble We
+used to have, of dismissing Our Secretaries of State. Our Council is
+a perfect inn-parlor, whither public opinion sometimes sends strange
+travelers; however, We can always find a place for Our faithful
+adherents.”
+
+This ironical speech was introductory to a rescript giving Monsieur de
+Fontaine an appointment as administrator in the office of Crown lands.
+As a consequence of the intelligent attention with which he listened to
+his royal Friend’s sarcasms, his name always rose to His Majesty’s
+lips when a commission was to be appointed of which the members were
+to receive a handsome salary. He had the good sense to hold his tongue
+about the favor with which he was honored, and knew how to entertain the
+monarch in those familiar chats in which Louis XVIII. delighted as
+much as in a well-written note, by his brilliant manner of
+repeating political anecdotes, and the political or parliamentary
+tittle-tattle--if the expression may pass--which at that time was rife.
+It is well known that he was immensely amused by every detail of his
+Gouvernementabilite--a word adopted by his facetious Majesty.
+
+Thanks to the Comte de Fontaine’s good sense, wit, and tact, every
+member of his numerous family, however young, ended, as he jestingly
+told his Sovereign, in attaching himself like a silkworm to the leaves
+of the Pay-List. Thus, by the King’s intervention, his eldest son
+found a high and fixed position as a lawyer. The second, before the
+restoration a mere captain, was appointed to the command of a legion on
+the return from Ghent; then, thanks to the confusion of 1815, when the
+regulations were evaded, he passed into the bodyguard, returned to a
+line regiment, and found himself after the affair of the Trocadero
+a lieutenant-general with a commission in the Guards. The youngest,
+appointed sous-prefet, ere long became a legal official and director of
+a municipal board of the city of Paris, where he was safe from changes
+in Legislature. These bounties, bestowed without parade, and as secret
+as the favor enjoyed by the Count, fell unperceived. Though the father
+and his three sons each had sinecures enough to enjoy an income in
+salaries almost equal to that of a chief of department, their political
+good fortune excited no envy. In those early days of the constitutional
+system, few persons had very precise ideas of the peaceful domain of the
+civil service, where astute favorites managed to find an equivalent for
+the demolished abbeys. Monsieur le Comte de Fontaine, who till lately
+boasted that he had not read the Charter, and displayed such indignation
+at the greed of courtiers, had, before long, proved to his august
+master that he understood, as well as the King himself, the spirit
+and resources of the representative system. At the same time,
+notwithstanding the established careers open to his three sons, and the
+pecuniary advantages derived from four official appointments,
+Monsieur de Fontaine was the head of too large a family to be able to
+re-establish his fortune easily and rapidly.
+
+His three sons were rich in prospects, in favor, and in talent; but
+he had three daughters, and was afraid of wearying the monarch’s
+benevolence. It occurred to him to mention only one by one, these
+virgins eager to light their torches. The King had too much good
+taste to leave his work incomplete. The marriage of the eldest with a
+Receiver-General, Planat de Baudry, was arranged by one of those royal
+speeches which cost nothing and are worth millions. One evening, when
+the Sovereign was out of spirits, he smiled on hearing of the existence
+of another Demoiselle de Fontaine, for whom he found a husband in the
+person of a young magistrate, of inferior birth, no doubt, but wealthy,
+and whom he created Baron. When, the year after, the Vendeen spoke of
+Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, the King replied in his thin sharp
+tones, “Amicus Plato sed magis amica Natio.” Then, a few days later, he
+treated his “friend Fontaine” to a quatrain, harmless enough, which
+he styled an epigram, in which he made fun of these three daughters so
+skilfully introduced, under the form of a trinity. Nay, if report is to
+be believed, the monarch had found the point of the jest in the Unity of
+the three Divine Persons.
+
+“If your Majesty would only condescend to turn the epigram into an
+epithalamium?” said the Count, trying to turn the sally to good account.
+
+“Though I see the rhyme of it, I fail to see the reason,” retorted the
+King, who did not relish any pleasantry, however mild, on the subject of
+his poetry.
+
+From that day his intercourse with Monsieur de Fontaine showed less
+amenity. Kings enjoy contradicting more than people think. Like most
+youngest children, Emilie de Fontaine was a Benjamin spoilt by almost
+everybody. The King’s coolness, therefore, caused the Count all the more
+regret, because no marriage was ever so difficult to arrange as that of
+this darling daughter. To understand all the obstacles we must make our
+way into the fine residence where the official was housed at the expense
+of the nation. Emilie had spent her childhood on the family estate,
+enjoying the abundance which suffices for the joys of early youth; her
+lightest wishes had been law to her sisters, her brothers, her mother,
+and even her father. All her relations doted on her. Having come to
+years of discretion just when her family was loaded with the favors of
+fortune, the enchantment of life continued. The luxury of Paris seemed
+to her just as natural as a wealth of flowers or fruit, or as the
+rural plenty which had been the joy of her first years. Just as in her
+childhood she had never been thwarted in the satisfaction of her playful
+desires, so now, at fourteen, she was still obeyed when she rushed into
+the whirl of fashion.
+
+Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, elegance of
+dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, became as necessary
+to her as the compliments of flattery, sincere or false, and the
+festivities and vanities of court life. Like most spoiled children,
+she tyrannized over those who loved her, and kept her blandishments for
+those who were indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and her
+parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous education.
+At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been pleased to
+make a choice from among the many young men whom her father’s politics
+brought to his entertainments. Though so young, she asserted in society
+all the freedom of mind that a married woman can enjoy. Her beauty was
+so remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room was to be its queen;
+but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though she was everywhere the
+object of attentions to which a finer nature than hers might perhaps
+have succumbed. Not a man, not even an old man, had it in him to
+contradict the opinions of a young girl whose lightest look could
+rekindle love in the coldest heart.
+
+She had been educated with a care which her sisters had not enjoyed;
+painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, and played the piano
+brilliantly; her voice, trained by the best masters, had a ring in it
+which made her singing irresistibly charming. Clever, and intimate with
+every branch of literature, she might have made folks believe that,
+as Mascarille says, people of quality come into the world knowing
+everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish painting, on
+the Middle Ages or the Renaissance; pronounced at haphazard on books new
+or old, and could expose the defects of a work with a cruelly graceful
+wit. The simplest thing she said was accepted by an admiring crowd as a
+fetfah of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus dazzled shallow persons; as
+to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled her to discern them, and for
+them she put forth so much fascination that, under cover of her charms,
+she escaped their scrutiny. This enchanting veneer covered a careless
+heart; the opinion--common to many young girls--that no one else dwelt
+in a sphere so lofty as to be able to understand the merits of her
+soul; and a pride based no less on her birth than on her beauty. In
+the absence of the overwhelming sentiment which, sooner or later, works
+havoc in a woman’s heart, she spent her young ardor in an immoderate
+love of distinctions, and expressed the deepest contempt for persons of
+inferior birth. Supremely impertinent to all newly-created nobility, she
+made every effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most
+illustrious families of the Saint-Germain quarter.
+
+These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of Monsieur de
+Fontaine, who more than once, when his two elder girls were married, had
+smarted under Emilie’s sarcasm. Logical readers will be surprised to see
+the old Royalist bestowing his eldest daughter on a Receiver-General,
+possessed, indeed, of some old hereditary estates, but whose name
+was not preceded by the little word to which the throne owed so many
+partisans, and his second to a magistrate too lately Baronified to
+obscure the fact that his father had sold firewood. This noteworthy
+change in the ideas of a noble on the verge of his sixtieth year--an age
+when men rarely renounce their convictions--was due not merely to his
+unfortunate residence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or later,
+country folks all get their corners rubbed down; the Comte de Fontaine’s
+new political conscience was also a result of the King’s advice and
+friendship. The philosophical prince had taken pleasure in converting
+the Vendeen to the ideas required by the advance of the nineteenth
+century, and the new aspect of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII. aimed at
+fusing parties as Napoleon had fused things and men. The legitimate
+King, who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted in a
+contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bourbon was just as
+eager to satisfy the third estate and the creations of the Empire, by
+curbing the clergy, as the first of the Napoleons had been to attract
+the grand old nobility, or to endow the Church. The Privy Councillor,
+being in the secret of these royal projects, had insensibly become one
+of the most prudent and influential leaders of that moderate party which
+most desired a fusion of opinion in the interests of the nation. He
+preached the expensive doctrines of constitutional government, and lent
+all his weight to encourage the political see-saw which enabled his
+master to rule France in the midst of storms. Perhaps Monsieur de
+Fontaine hoped that one of the sudden gusts of legislation, whose
+unexpected efforts then startled the oldest politicians, might carry
+him up to the rank of peer. One of his most rigid principles was to
+recognize no nobility in France but that of the peerage--the only
+families that might enjoy any privileges.
+
+“A nobility bereft of privileges,” he would say, “is a tool without a
+handle.”
+
+As far from Lafayette’s party as he was from La Bourdonnaye’s, he
+ardently engaged in the task of general reconciliation, which was to
+result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He strove to
+convince the families who frequented his drawing-room, or those whom
+he visited, how few favorable openings would henceforth be offered by a
+civil or military career. He urged mothers to give their boys a start in
+independent and industrial professions, explaining that military posts
+and high Government appointments must at last pertain, in a quite
+constitutional order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage.
+According to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share
+in practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments to
+law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would always,
+as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished men of the
+third estate.
+
+These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent matches
+for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong resistance
+in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine remained faithful
+to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown, who, through her
+mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for a while opposed
+the happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest girls, she yielded
+to those private considerations which husband and wife confide to each
+other when their heads are resting on the same pillow. Monsieur de
+Fontaine calmly pointed out to his wife, by exact arithmetic that their
+residence in Paris, the necessity for entertaining, the magnificence of
+the house which made up to them now for the privations so bravely shared
+in La Vendee, and the expenses of their sons, swallowed up the chief
+part of their income from salaries. They must therefore seize, as a boon
+from heaven, the opportunities which offered for settling their girls
+with such wealth. Would they not some day enjoy sixty--eighty--a hundred
+thousand francs a year? Such advantageous matches were not to be met
+with every day for girls without a portion. Again, it was time that they
+should begin to think of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine,
+and re-establish the old territorial fortune of the family. The Countess
+yielded to such cogent arguments, as every mother would have done in her
+place, though perhaps with a better grace; but she declared that Emilie,
+at any rate, should marry in such a way as to satisfy the pride she had
+unfortunately contributed to foster in the girl’s young soul.
+
+Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the family, had
+introduced a small leaven of discord. The Receiver-General and the young
+lawyer were the objects of a ceremonious formality which the Countess
+and Emilie contrived to create. This etiquette soon found even ampler
+opportunity for the display of domestic tyranny; for Lieutenant-General
+de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, the daughter of a rich
+banker; the President very sensibly found a wife in a young lady whose
+father, twice or thrice a millionaire, had traded in salt; and the
+third brother, faithful to his plebeian doctrines, married Mademoiselle
+Grossetete, the only daughter of the Receiver-General at Bourges. The
+three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-law found the high
+sphere of political bigwigs, and the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg
+Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal advantages, that they
+united in forming a little court round the overbearing Emilie. This
+treaty between interest and pride was not, however, so firmly cemented
+but that the young despot was, not unfrequently, the cause of revolts
+in her little realm. Scenes, which the highest circles would not have
+disowned, kept up a sarcastic temper among all the members of this
+powerful family; and this, without seriously diminishing the regard they
+professed in public, degenerated sometimes in private into sentiments
+far from charitable. Thus the Lieutenant-General’s wife, having become
+a Baronne, thought herself quite as noble as a Kergarouet, and imagined
+that her good hundred thousand francs a year gave her the right to be as
+impertinent as her sister-in-law Emilie, whom she would sometimes wish
+to see happily married, as she announced that the daughter of some peer
+of France had married Monsieur So-and-So with no title to his name. The
+Vicomtesse de Fontaine amused herself by eclipsing Emilie in the taste
+and magnificence that were conspicuous in her dress, her furniture, and
+her carriages. The satirical spirit in which her brothers and sisters
+sometimes received the claims avowed by Mademoiselle de Fontaine roused
+her to wrath that a perfect hailstorm of sharp sayings could hardly
+mitigate. So when the head of the family felt a slight chill in the
+King’s tacit and precarious friendship, he trembled all the more
+because, as a result of her sisters’ defiant mockery, his favorite
+daughter had never looked so high.
+
+In the midst of these circumstances, and at a moment when this petty
+domestic warfare had become serious, the monarch, whose favor Monsieur
+de Fontaine still hoped to regain, was attacked by the malady of which
+he was to die. The great political chief, who knew so well how to steer
+his bark in the midst of tempests, soon succumbed. Certain then of
+favors to come, the Comte de Fontaine made every effort to collect the
+elite of marrying men about his youngest daughter. Those who may
+have tried to solve the difficult problem of settling a haughty and
+capricious girl, will understand the trouble taken by the unlucky
+father. Such an affair, carried out to the liking of his beloved child,
+would worthily crown the career the Count had followed for these ten
+years at Paris. From the way in which his family claimed salaries under
+every department, it might be compared with the House of Austria, which,
+by intermarriage, threatens to pervade Europe. The old Vendeen was
+not to be discouraged in bringing forward suitors, so much had he his
+daughter’s happiness at heart, but nothing could be more absurd than
+the way in which the impertinent young thing pronounced her verdicts and
+judged the merits of her adorers. It might have been supposed that, like
+a princess in the Arabian Nights, Emilie was rich enough and beautiful
+enough to choose from among all the princes in the world. Her objections
+were each more preposterous than the last: one had too thick knees and
+was bow-legged, another was short-sighted, this one’s name was Durand,
+that one limped, and almost all were too fat. Livelier, more attractive,
+and gayer than ever after dismissing two or three suitors, she rushed
+into the festivities of the winter season, and to balls, where her keen
+eyes criticised the celebrities of the day, delighted in encouraging
+proposals which she invariably rejected.
+
+Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed for playing the
+part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie de Fontaine could assume a
+dignified or a frolicsome mien at her will. Her neck was rather long,
+allowing her to affect beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence.
+She had cultivated a large variety of those turns of the head and
+feminine gestures, which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint of
+a smile. Fine black hair, thick and strongly-arched eyebrows, lent her
+countenance an expression of pride, to which her coquettish instincts
+and her mirror had taught her to add terror by a stare, or gentleness by
+the softness of her gaze, by the set of the gracious curve of her lips,
+by the coldness or the sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant to
+conquer a heart, her pure voice did not lack melody; but she could
+also give it a sort of curt clearness when she was minded to paralyze a
+partner’s indiscreet tongue. Her colorless face and alabaster brow were
+like the limpid surface of a lake, which by turns is rippled by the
+impulse of a breeze and recovers its glad serenity when the air is
+still. More than one young man, a victim to her scorn, accused her of
+acting a part; but she justified herself by inspiring her detractors
+with the desire to please her, and then subjecting them to all her most
+contemptuous caprice. Among the young girls of fashion, not one knew
+better than she how to assume an air of reserve when a man of talent
+was introduced to her, or how to display the insulting politeness which
+treats an equal as an inferior, and to pour out her impertinence on all
+who tried to hold their heads on a level with hers. Wherever she went
+she seemed to be accepting homage rather than compliments, and even in
+a princess her airs and manner would have transformed the chair on which
+she sat into an imperial throne.
+
+Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the education of
+the daughter he loved had been ruined by the tender devotion of the
+whole family. The admiration which the world is at first ready to bestow
+on a young girl, but for which, sooner or later, it takes its revenge,
+had added to Emilie’s pride, and increased her self-confidence.
+Universal subservience had developed in her the selfishness natural to
+spoilt children, who, like kings, make a plaything of everything that
+comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth and the charms of talent hid
+these faults from every eye; faults all the more odious in a woman,
+since she can only please by self-sacrifice and unselfishness; but
+nothing escapes the eye of a good father, and Monsieur de Fontaine
+often tried to explain to his daughter the more important pages of the
+mysterious book of life. Vain effort! He had to lament his daughter’s
+capricious indocility and ironical shrewdness too often to persevere
+in a task so difficult as that of correcting an ill-disposed nature. He
+contented himself with giving her from time to time some gentle and kind
+advice; but he had the sorrow of seeing his tenderest words slide from
+his daughter’s heart as if it were of marble. A father’s eyes are slow
+to be unsealed, and it needed more than one experience before the old
+Royalist perceived that his daughter’s rare caresses were bestowed on
+him with an air of condescension. She was like young children, who seem
+to say to their mother, “Make haste to kiss me, that I may go to play.”
+ In short, Emilie vouchsafed to be fond of her parents. But often, by
+those sudden whims, which seem inexplicable in young girls, she kept
+aloof and scarcely ever appeared; she complained of having to share her
+father’s and mother’s heart with too many people; she was jealous of
+every one, even of her brothers and sisters. Then, after creating a
+desert about her, the strange girl accused all nature of her unreal
+solitude and her wilful griefs. Strong in the experience of her twenty
+years, she blamed fate, because, not knowing that the mainspring of
+happiness is in ourselves, she demanded it of the circumstances of life.
+She would have fled to the ends of the earth to escape a marriage such
+as those of her two sisters, and nevertheless her heart was full of
+horrible jealousy at seeing them married, rich, and happy. In short, she
+sometimes led her mother--who was as much a victim to her vagaries as
+Monsieur de Fontaine--to suspect that she had a touch of madness.
+
+But such aberrations are quite inexplicable; nothing is commoner than
+this unconfessed pride developed in the heart of young girls belonging
+to families high in the social scale, and gifted by nature with great
+beauty. They are almost all convinced that their mothers, now forty or
+fifty years of age, can neither sympathize with their young souls, nor
+conceive of their imaginings. They fancy that most mothers, jealous of
+their girls, want to dress them in their own way with the premeditated
+purpose of eclipsing them or robbing them of admiration. Hence, often,
+secret tears and dumb revolt against supposed tyranny. In the midst of
+these woes, which become very real though built on an imaginary basis,
+they have also a mania for composing a scheme of life, while casting for
+themselves a brilliant horoscope; their magic consists in taking their
+dreams for reality; secretly, in their long meditations, they resolve
+to give their heart and hand to none but the man possessing this or the
+other qualification; and they paint in fancy a model to which, whether
+or no, the future lover must correspond. After some little experience
+of life, and the serious reflections that come with years, by dint of
+seeing the world and its prosaic round, by dint of observing unhappy
+examples, the brilliant hues of their ideal are extinguished. Then, one
+fine day, in the course of events, they are quite astonished to find
+themselves happy without the nuptial poetry of their day-dreams. It was
+on the strength of that poetry that Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine,
+in her slender wisdom, had drawn up a programme to which a suitor must
+conform to be excepted. Hence her disdain and sarcasm.
+
+“Though young and of an ancient family, he must be a peer of France,”
+ said she to herself. “I could not bear not to see my coat-of-arms on the
+panels of my carriage among the folds of azure mantling, not to drive
+like the princes down the broad walk of the Champs-Elysees on the days
+of Longchamps in Holy Week. Besides, my father says that it will someday
+be the highest dignity in France. He must be a soldier--but I reserve
+the right of making him retire; and he must bear an Order, that the
+sentries may present arms to us.”
+
+And these rare qualifications would count for nothing if this creature
+of fancy had not the most amiable temper, a fine figure, intelligence,
+and, above all, if he were not slender. To be lean, a personal grace
+which is but fugitive, especially under a representative government,
+was an indispensable condition. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had an ideal
+standard which was to be the model. A young man who at the first glance
+did not fulfil the requisite conditions did not even get a second look.
+
+“Good Heavens! see how fat he is!” was with her the utmost expression of
+contempt.
+
+To hear her, people of respectable corpulence were incapable of
+sentiment, bad husbands, and unfit for civilized society. Though it is
+esteemed a beauty in the East, to be fat seemed to her a misfortune
+for a woman; but in a man it was a crime. These paradoxical views were
+amusing, thanks to a certain liveliness of rhetoric. The Count felt
+nevertheless that by-and-by his daughter’s affections, of which the
+absurdity would be evident to some women who were not less clear-sighted
+than merciless, would inevitably become a subject of constant ridicule.
+He feared lest her eccentric notions should deviate into bad style. He
+trembled to think that the pitiless world might already be laughing at
+a young woman who remained so long on the stage without arriving at
+any conclusion of the drama she was playing. More than one actor in it,
+disgusted by a refusal, seemed to be waiting for the slightest turn
+of ill-luck to take his revenge. The indifferent, the lookers-on were
+beginning to weary of it; admiration is always exhausting to human
+beings. The old Vendeen knew better than any one that if there is an
+art in choosing the right moment for coming forward on the boards of the
+world, on those of the Court, in a drawing-room or on the stage, it is
+still more difficult to quit them in the nick of time. So during
+the first winter after the accession of Charles X., he redoubled his
+efforts, seconded by his three sons and his sons-in-law, to assemble in
+the rooms of his official residence the best matches which Paris and the
+various deputations from departments could offer. The splendor of his
+entertainments, the luxury of his dining-room, and his dinners, fragrant
+with truffles, rivaled the famous banquets by which the ministers of
+that time secured the vote of their parliamentary recruits.
+
+The Honorable Deputy was consequently pointed at as a most influential
+corrupter of the legislative honesty of the illustrious Chamber that was
+dying as it would seem of indigestion. A whimsical result! his efforts
+to get his daughter married secured him a splendid popularity. He
+perhaps found some covert advantage in selling his truffles twice over.
+This accusation, started by certain mocking Liberals, who made up by
+their flow of words for their small following in the Chamber, was not
+a success. The Poitevin gentleman had always been so noble and so
+honorable, that he was not once the object of those epigrams which the
+malicious journalism of the day hurled at the three hundred votes of the
+centre, at the Ministers, the cooks, the Directors-General, the princely
+Amphitryons, and the official supporters of the Villele Ministry.
+
+At the close of this campaign, during which Monsieur de Fontaine had on
+several occasions brought out all his forces, he believed that this time
+the procession of suitors would not be a mere dissolving view in his
+daughter’s eyes; that it was time she should make up her mind. He felt
+a certain inward satisfaction at having well fulfilled his duty as a
+father. And having left no stone unturned, he hoped that, among so many
+hearts laid at Emilie’s feet, there might be one to which her caprice
+might give a preference. Incapable of repeating such an effort, and
+tired, too, of his daughter’s conduct, one morning, towards the end
+of Lent, when the business at the Chamber did not demand his vote, he
+determined to ask what her views were. While his valet was artistically
+decorating his bald yellow head with the delta of powder which, with
+the hanging “ailes de pigeon,” completed his venerable style of
+hairdressing, Emilie’s father, not without some secret misgivings, told
+his old servant to go and desire the haughty damsel to appear in the
+presence of the head of the family.
+
+“Joseph,” he added, when his hair was dressed, “take away that towel,
+draw back the curtains, put those chairs square, shake the rug, and
+lay it quite straight. Dust everything.--Now, air the room a little by
+opening the window.”
+
+The Count multiplied his orders, putting Joseph out of breath, and the
+old servant, understanding his master’s intentions, aired and tidied the
+room, of course the least cared for of any in the house, and succeeded
+in giving a look of harmony to the files of bills, the letter-boxes, the
+books and furniture of this sanctum, where the interests of the royal
+demesnes were debated over. When Joseph had reduced this chaos to some
+sort of order, and brought to the front such things as might be most
+pleasing to the eye, as if it were a shop front, or such as by their
+color might give the effect of a kind of official poetry, he stood for a
+minute in the midst of the labyrinth of papers piled in some places even
+on the floor, admired his handiwork, jerked his head, and went.
+
+The anxious sinecure-holder did not share his retainer’s favorable
+opinion. Before seating himself in his deep chair, whose rounded back
+screened him from draughts, he looked round him doubtfully, examined
+his dressing-gown with a hostile expression, shook off a few grains of
+snuff, carefully wiped his nose, arranged the tongs and shovel, made the
+fire, pulled up the heels of his slippers, pulled out his little
+queue of hair which had lodged horizontally between the collar of
+his waistcoat and that of his dressing-gown restoring it to its
+perpendicular position; then he swept up the ashes of the hearth, which
+bore witness to a persistent catarrh. Finally, the old man did not
+settle himself till he had once more looked all over the room, hoping
+that nothing could give occasion to the saucy and impertinent remarks
+with which his daughter was apt to answer his good advice. On this
+occasion he was anxious not to compromise his dignity as a father. He
+daintily took a pinch of snuff, cleared his throat two or three times,
+as if he were about to demand a count out of the House; then he heard
+his daughter’s light step, and she came in humming an air from Il
+Barbiere.
+
+“Good-morning, papa. What do you want with me so early?” Having sung
+these words, as though they were the refrain of the melody, she kissed
+the Count, not with the familiar tenderness which makes a daughter’s
+love so sweet a thing, but with the light carelessness of a mistress
+confident of pleasing, whatever she may do.
+
+“My dear child,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, gravely, “I sent for you to
+talk to you very seriously about your future prospects. You are at this
+moment under the necessity of making such a choice of a husband as may
+secure your durable happiness----”
+
+“My good father,” replied Emilie, assuming her most coaxing tone of
+voice to interrupt him, “it strikes me that the armistice on which we
+agreed as to my suitors is not yet expired.”
+
+“Emilie, we must to-day forbear from jesting on so important a matter.
+For some time past the efforts of those who most truly love you, my dear
+child, have been concentrated on the endeavor to settle you suitably;
+and you would be guilty of ingratitude in meeting with levity those
+proofs of kindness which I am not alone in lavishing on you.”
+
+As she heard these words, after flashing a mischievously inquisitive
+look at the furniture of her father’s study, the young girl brought
+forward the armchair which looked as if it had been least used by
+petitioners, set it at the side of the fireplace so as to sit facing
+her father, and settled herself in so solemn an attitude that it was
+impossible not to read in it a mocking intention, crossing her arms over
+the dainty trimmings of a pelerine a la neige, and ruthlessly crushing
+its endless frills of white tulle. After a laughing side glance at her
+old father’s troubled face, she broke silence.
+
+“I never heard you say, my dear father, that the Government issued its
+instructions in its dressing-gown. However,” and she smiled, “that does
+not matter; the mob are probably not particular. Now, what are your
+proposals for legislation, and your official introductions?”
+
+“I shall not always be able to make them, headstrong girl!--Listen,
+Emilie. It is my intention no longer to compromise my reputation, which
+is part of my children’s fortune, by recruiting the regiment of dancers
+which, spring after spring, you put to rout. You have already been the
+cause of many dangerous misunderstandings with certain families. I hope
+to make you perceive more truly the difficulties of your position and of
+ours. You are two-and-twenty, my dear child, and you ought to have been
+married nearly three years since. Your brothers and your two sisters are
+richly and happily provided for. But, my dear, the expenses occasioned
+by these marriages, and the style of housekeeping you require of your
+mother, have made such inroads on our income that I can hardly promise
+you a hundred thousand francs as a marriage portion. From this day
+forth I shall think only of providing for your mother, who must not be
+sacrificed to her children. Emilie, if I were to be taken from my family
+Madame de Fontaine could not be left at anybody’s mercy, and ought to
+enjoy the affluence which I have given her too late as the reward of her
+devotion in my misfortunes. You see, my child, that the amount of your
+fortune bears no relation to your notions of grandeur. Even that
+would be such a sacrifice as I have not hitherto made for either of my
+children; but they have generously agreed not to expect in the future
+any compensation for the advantage thus given to a too favored child.”
+
+“In their position!” said Emilie, with an ironical toss of her head.
+
+“My dear, do not so depreciate those who love you. Only the poor are
+generous as a rule; the rich have always excellent reasons for not
+handing over twenty thousand francs to a relation. Come, my child, do
+not pout, let us talk rationally.--Among the young marrying men have you
+noticed Monsieur de Manerville?”
+
+“Oh, he minces his words--he says Zules instead of Jules; he is always
+looking at his feet, because he thinks them small, and he gazes at
+himself in the glass! Besides, he is fair. I don’t like fair men.”
+
+“Well, then, Monsieur de Beaudenord?”
+
+“He is not noble! he is ill made and stout. He is dark, it is true.--If
+the two gentlemen could agree to combine their fortunes, and the first
+would give his name and his figure to the second, who should keep his
+dark hair, then--perhaps----”
+
+“What can you say against Monsieur de Rastignac?”
+
+“Madame de Nucingen has made a banker of him,” she said with meaning.
+
+“And our cousin, the Vicomte de Portenduere?”
+
+“A mere boy, who dances badly; besides, he has no fortune. And, after
+all, papa, none of these people have titles. I want, at least, to be a
+countess like my mother.”
+
+“Have you seen no one, then, this winter----”
+
+“No, papa.”
+
+“What then do you want?”
+
+“The son of a peer of France.
+
+“My dear girl, you are mad!” said Monsieur de Fontaine, rising.
+
+But he suddenly lifted his eyes to heaven, and seemed to find a fresh
+fount of resignation in some religious thought; then, with a look of
+fatherly pity at his daughter, who herself was moved, he took her
+hand, pressed it, and said with deep feeling: “God is my witness, poor
+mistaken child, I have conscientiously discharged my duty to you as a
+father--conscientiously, do I say? Most lovingly, my Emilie. Yes, God
+knows! This winter I have brought before you more than one good man,
+whose character, whose habits, and whose temper were known to me, and
+all seemed worthy of you. My child, my task is done. From this day forth
+you are the arbiter of your fate, and I consider myself both happy
+and unhappy at finding myself relieved of the heaviest of paternal
+functions. I know not whether you will for any long time, now, hear a
+voice which, to you, has never been stern; but remember that conjugal
+happiness does not rest so much on brilliant qualities and ample fortune
+as on reciprocal esteem. This happiness is, in its nature, modest, and
+devoid of show. So now, my dear, my consent is given beforehand, whoever
+the son-in-law may be whom you introduce to me; but if you should be
+unhappy, remember you will have no right to accuse your father. I shall
+not refuse to take proper steps and help you, only your choice must be
+serious and final. I will never twice compromise the respect due to my
+white hairs.”
+
+The affection thus expressed by her father, the solemn tones of his
+urgent address, deeply touched Mademoiselle de Fontaine; but she
+concealed her emotion, seated herself on her father’s knees--for he had
+dropped all tremulous into his chair again--caressed him fondly, and
+coaxed him so engagingly that the old man’s brow cleared. As soon as
+Emilie thought that her father had got over his painful agitation,
+she said in a gentle voice: “I have to thank you for your graceful
+attention, my dear father. You have had your room set in order to
+receive your beloved daughter. You did not perhaps know that you would
+find her so foolish and so headstrong. But, papa, is it so difficult
+to get married to a peer of France? You declared that they were
+manufactured by dozens. At least, you will not refuse to advise me.”
+
+“No, my poor child, no;--and more than once I may have occasion to cry,
+‘Beware!’ Remember that the making of peers is so recent a force in our
+government machinery that they have no great fortunes. Those who are
+rich look to becoming richer. The wealthiest member of our peerage has
+not half the income of the least rich lord in the English Upper Chamber.
+Thus all the French peers are on the lookout for great heiresses for
+their sons, wherever they may meet with them. The necessity in which
+they find themselves of marrying for money will certainly exist for at
+least two centuries.
+
+“Pending such a fortunate accident as you long for--and this
+fastidiousness may cost you the best years of your life--your
+attractions might work a miracle, for men often marry for love in these
+days. When experience lurks behind so sweet a face as yours it
+may achieve wonders. In the first place, have you not the gift of
+recognizing virtue in the greater or smaller dimensions of a man’s body?
+This is no small matter! To so wise a young person as you are, I need
+not enlarge on all the difficulties of the enterprise. I am sure that
+you would never attribute good sense to a stranger because he had a
+handsome face, or all the virtues because he had a fine figure. And I am
+quite of your mind in thinking that the sons of peers ought to have an
+air peculiar to themselves, and perfectly distinctive manners. Though
+nowadays no external sign stamps a man of rank, those young men will
+have, perhaps, to you the indefinable something that will reveal it.
+Then, again, you have your heart well in hand, like a good horseman who
+is sure his steed cannot bolt. Luck be with you, my dear!”
+
+“You are making game of me, papa. Well, I assure you that I would rather
+die in Mademoiselle de Conde’s convent than not be the wife of a peer of
+France.”
+
+She slipped out of her father’s arms, and proud of being her own
+mistress, went off singing the air of Cara non dubitare, in the
+“Matrimonio Segreto.”
+
+As it happened, the family were that day keeping the anniversary of
+a family fete. At dessert Madame Planat, the Receiver-General’s wife,
+spoke with some enthusiasm of a young American owning an immense
+fortune, who had fallen passionately in love with her sister, and made
+through her the most splendid proposals.
+
+“A banker, I rather think,” observed Emilie carelessly. “I do not like
+money dealers.”
+
+“But, Emilie,” replied the Baron de Villaine, the husband of the Count’s
+second daughter, “you do not like lawyers either; so that if you refuse
+men of wealth who have not titles, I do not quite see in what class you
+are to choose a husband.”
+
+“Especially, Emilie, with your standard of slimness,” added the
+Lieutenant-General.
+
+“I know what I want,” replied the young lady.
+
+“My sister wants a fine name, a fine young man, fine prospects, and a
+hundred thousand francs a year,” said the Baronne de Fontaine. “Monsieur
+de Marsay, for instance.”
+
+“I know, my dear,” retorted Emilie, “that I do not mean to make such a
+foolish marriage as some I have seen. Moreover, to put an end to these
+matrimonial discussions, I hereby declare that I shall look on anyone
+who talks to me of marriage as a foe to my peace of mind.”
+
+An uncle of Emilie’s, a vice-admiral, whose fortune had just been
+increased by twenty thousand francs a year in consequence of the Act of
+Indemnity, and a man of seventy, feeling himself privileged to say hard
+things to his grand-niece, on whom he doted, in order to mollify the
+bitter tone of the discussion now exclaimed:
+
+“Do not tease my poor little Emilie; don’t you see she is waiting till
+the Duc de Bordeaux comes of age!”
+
+The old man’s pleasantry was received with general laughter.
+
+“Take care I don’t marry you, old fool!” replied the young girl, whose
+last words were happily drowned in the noise.
+
+“My dear children,” said Madame de Fontaine, to soften this saucy
+retort, “Emilie, like you, will take no advice but her mother’s.”
+
+“Bless me! I shall take no advice but my own in a matter which concerns
+no one but myself,” said Mademoiselle de Fontaine very distinctly.
+
+At this all eyes were turned to the head of the family. Every one seemed
+anxious as to what he would do to assert his dignity. The venerable
+gentleman enjoyed much consideration, not only in the world; happier
+than many fathers, he was also appreciated by his family, all its
+members having a just esteem for the solid qualities by which he had
+been able to make their fortunes. Hence he was treated with the deep
+respect which is shown by English families, and some aristocratic houses
+on the continent, to the living representatives of an ancient pedigree.
+Deep silence had fallen; and the guests looked alternately from the
+spoilt girl’s proud and sulky pout to the severe faces of Monsieur and
+Madame de Fontaine.
+
+“I have made my daughter Emilie mistress of her own fate,” was the reply
+spoken by the Count in a deep voice.
+
+Relations and guests gazed at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with mingled
+curiosity and pity. The words seemed to declare that fatherly affection
+was weary of the contest with a character that the whole family knew to
+be incorrigible. The sons-in-law muttered, and the brothers glanced at
+their wives with mocking smiles. From that moment every one ceased to
+take any interest in the haughty girl’s prospects of marriage. Her old
+uncle was the only person who, as an old sailor, ventured to stand on
+her tack, and take her broadsides, without ever troubling himself to
+return her fire.
+
+When the fine weather was settled, and after the budget was voted, the
+whole family--a perfect example of the parliamentary families on the
+northern side of the Channel who have a footing in every government
+department, and ten votes in the House of Commons--flew away like a
+brood of young birds to the charming neighborhoods of Aulnay, Antony,
+and Chatenay. The wealthy Receiver-General had lately purchased in this
+part of the world a country-house for his wife, who remained in Paris
+only during the session. Though the fair Emilie despised the commonalty,
+her feeling was not carried so far as to scorn the advantages of a
+fortune acquired in a profession; so she accompanied her sister to the
+sumptuous villa, less out of affection for the members of her family who
+were visiting there, than because fashion has ordained that every woman
+who has any self-respect must leave Paris in the summer. The green
+seclusion of Sceaux answered to perfection the requirements of good
+style and of the duties of an official position.
+
+As it is extremely doubtful that the fame of the “Bal de Sceaux” should
+ever have extended beyond the borders of the Department of the Seine, it
+will be necessary to give some account of this weekly festivity, which
+at that time was important enough to threaten to become an institution.
+The environs of the little town of Sceaux enjoy a reputation due to the
+scenery, which is considered enchanting. Perhaps it is quite ordinary,
+and owes its fame only to the stupidity of the Paris townsfolk, who,
+emerging from the stony abyss in which they are buried, would find
+something to admire in the flats of La Beauce. However, as the poetic
+shades of Aulnay, the hillsides of Antony, and the valley of the Bieve
+are peopled with artists who have traveled far, by foreigners who are
+very hard to please, and by a great many pretty women not devoid of
+taste, it is to be supposed that the Parisians are right. But Sceaux
+possesses another attraction not less powerful to the Parisian. In the
+midst of a garden whence there are delightful views, stands a large
+rotunda open on all sides, with a light, spreading roof supported on
+elegant pillars. This rural baldachino shelters a dancing-floor. The
+most stuck-up landowners of the neighborhood rarely fail to make an
+excursion thither once or twice during the season, arriving at this
+rustic palace of Terpsichore either in dashing parties on horseback,
+or in the light and elegant carriages which powder the philosophical
+pedestrian with dust. The hope of meeting some women of fashion, and
+of being seen by them--and the hope, less often disappointed, of seeing
+young peasant girls, as wily as judges--crowds the ballroom at
+Sceaux with numerous swarms of lawyers’ clerks, of the disciples of
+Aesculapius, and other youths whose complexions are kept pale and moist
+by the damp atmosphere of Paris back-shops. And a good many bourgeois
+marriages have had their beginning to the sound of the band occupying
+the centre of this circular ballroom. If that roof could speak, what
+love-stories could it not tell!
+
+This interesting medley gave the Sceaux balls at that time a spice of
+more amusement than those of two or three places of the same kind near
+Paris; and it had incontestable advantages in its rotunda, and the
+beauty of its situation and its gardens. Emilie was the first to
+express a wish to play at being COMMON FOLK at this gleeful suburban
+entertainment, and promised herself immense pleasure in mingling with
+the crowd. Everybody wondered at her desire to wander through such a
+mob; but is there not a keen pleasure to grand people in an incognito?
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine amused herself with imagining all these
+town-bred figures; she fancied herself leaving the memory of a
+bewitching glance and smile stamped on more than one shopkeeper’s heart,
+laughed beforehand at the damsels’ airs, and sharpened her pencils for
+the scenes she proposed to sketch in her satirical album. Sunday could
+not come soon enough to satisfy her impatience.
+
+The party from the Villa Planat set out on foot, so as not to betray
+the rank of the personages who were about to honor the ball with
+their presence. They dined early. And the month of May humored this
+aristocratic escapade by one of its finest evenings. Mademoiselle de
+Fontaine was quite surprised to find in the rotunda some quadrilles made
+up of persons who seemed to belong to the upper classes. Here and there,
+indeed, were some young men who look as though they must have saved for
+a month to shine for a day; and she perceived several couples whose
+too hearty glee suggested nothing conjugal; still, she could only glean
+instead of gathering a harvest. She was amused to see that pleasure in
+a cotton dress was so very like pleasure robed in satin, and that the
+girls of the middle class danced quite as well as ladies--nay, sometimes
+better. Most of the women were simply and suitably dressed. Those who
+in this assembly represented the ruling power, that is to say,
+the country-folk, kept apart with wonderful politeness. In fact,
+Mademoiselle Emilie had to study the various elements that composed the
+mixture before she could find any subject for pleasantry. But she had
+not time to give herself up to malicious criticism, or opportunity for
+hearing many of the startling speeches which caricaturists so gladly
+pick up. The haughty young lady suddenly found a flower in this wide
+field--the metaphor is reasonable--whose splendor and coloring worked
+on her imagination with all the fascination of novelty. It often happens
+that we look at a dress, a hanging, a blank sheet of paper, with so
+little heed that we do not at first detect a stain or a bright spot
+which afterwards strikes the eye as though it had come there at the
+very instant when we see it; and by a sort of moral phenomenon somewhat
+resembling this, Mademoiselle de Fontaine discovered in a young man the
+external perfection of which she had so long dreamed.
+
+Seated on one of the clumsy chairs which marked the boundary line of the
+circular floor, she had placed herself at the end of the row formed by
+the family party, so as to be able to stand up or push forward as her
+fancy moved her, treating the living pictures and groups in the hall as
+if she were in a picture gallery; impertinently turning her eye-glass
+on persons not two yards away, and making her remarks as though she
+were criticising or praising a study of a head, a painting of genre. Her
+eyes, after wandering over the vast moving picture, were suddenly caught
+by this figure, which seemed to have been placed on purpose in one
+corner of the canvas, and in the best light, like a person out of all
+proportion with the rest.
+
+The stranger, alone and absorbed in thought, leaned lightly against one
+of the columns that supported the roof; his arms were folded, and he
+leaned slightly on one side as though he had placed himself there to
+have his portrait taken by a painter. His attitude, though full of
+elegance and dignity, was devoid of affectation. Nothing suggested that
+he had half turned his head, and bent it a little to the right like
+Alexander, or Lord Byron, and some other great men, for the sole purpose
+of attracting attention. His fixed gaze followed a girl who was dancing,
+and betrayed some strong feeling. His slender, easy frame recalled the
+noble proportions of the Apollo. Fine black hair curled naturally over
+a high forehead. At a glance Mademoiselle de Fontaine observed that his
+linen was fine, his gloves fresh, and evidently bought of a good maker,
+and his feet were small and well shod in boots of Irish kid. He had none
+of the vulgar trinkets displayed by the dandies of the National Guard
+or the Lovelaces of the counting-house. A black ribbon, to which an
+eye-glass was attached, hung over a waistcoat of the most fashionable
+cut. Never had the fastidious Emilie seen a man’s eyes shaded by such
+long, curled lashes. Melancholy and passion were expressed in this face,
+and the complexion was of a manly olive hue. His mouth seemed ready
+to smile, unbending the corners of eloquent lips; but this, far from
+hinting at gaiety, revealed on the contrary a sort of pathetic grace.
+There was too much promise in that head, too much distinction in his
+whole person, to allow of one’s saying, “What a handsome man!” or “What
+a fine man!” One wanted to know him. The most clear-sighted observer, on
+seeing this stranger, could not have helped taking him for a clever man
+attracted to this rural festivity by some powerful motive.
+
+All these observations cost Emilie only a minute’s attention, during
+which the privileged gentleman under her severe scrutiny became the
+object of her secret admiration. She did not say to herself, “He must
+be a peer of France!” but “Oh, if only he is noble, and he surely must
+be----” Without finishing her thought, she suddenly rose, and followed
+by her brother the General, she made her way towards the column,
+affecting to watch the merry quadrille; but by a stratagem of the eye,
+familiar to women, she lost not a gesture of the young man as she went
+towards him. The stranger politely moved to make way for the newcomers,
+and went to lean against another pillar. Emilie, as much nettled by his
+politeness as she might have been by an impertinence, began talking to
+her brother in a louder voice than good taste enjoined; she turned and
+tossed her head, gesticulated eagerly, and laughed for no particular
+reason, less to amuse her brother than to attract the attention of the
+imperturbable stranger. None of her little arts succeeded. Mademoiselle
+de Fontaine then followed the direction in which his eyes were fixed,
+and discovered the cause of his indifference.
+
+In the midst of the quadrille, close in front of them, a pale girl
+was dancing; her face was like one of the divinities which Girodet has
+introduced into his immense composition of French Warriors received by
+Ossian. Emilie fancied that she recognized her as a distinguished milady
+who for some months had been living on a neighboring estate. Her partner
+was a lad of about fifteen, with red hands, and dressed in nankeen
+trousers, a blue coat, and white shoes, which showed that the damsel’s
+love of dancing made her easy to please in the matter of partners.
+Her movements did not betray her apparent delicacy, but a faint flush
+already tinged her white cheeks, and her complexion was gaining color.
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine went nearer, to be able to examine the young
+lady at the moment when she returned to her place, while the side
+couples in their turn danced the figure. But the stranger went up to the
+pretty dancer, and leaning over, said in a gentle but commanding tone:
+
+“Clara, my child, do not dance any more.”
+
+Clara made a little pouting face, bent her head, and finally smiled.
+When the dance was over, the young man wrapped her in a cashmere shawl
+with a lover’s care, and seated her in a place sheltered from the wind.
+Very soon Mademoiselle de Fontaine, seeing them rise and walk round
+the place as if preparing to leave, found means to follow them under
+pretence of admiring the views from the garden. Her brother lent himself
+with malicious good-humor to the divagations of her rather eccentric
+wanderings. Emilie then saw the attractive couple get into an elegant
+tilbury, by which stood a mounted groom in livery. At the moment when,
+from his high seat, the young man was drawing the reins even, she caught
+a glance from his eye such as a man casts aimlessly at the crowd; and
+then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction of seeing him turn his head to
+look at her. The young lady did the same. Was it from jealousy?
+
+“I imagine you have now seen enough of the garden,” said her brother.
+“We may go back to the dancing.”
+
+“I am ready,” said she. “Do you think the girl can be a relation of Lady
+Dudley’s?”
+
+“Lady Dudley may have some male relation staying with her,” said the
+Baron de Fontaine; “but a young girl!--No!”
+
+Next day Mademoiselle de Fontaine expressed a wish to take a ride. Then
+she gradually accustomed her old uncle and her brothers to escorting her
+in very early rides, excellent, she declared for her health. She had a
+particular fancy for the environs of the hamlet where Lady Dudley was
+living. Notwithstanding her cavalry manoeuvres, she did not meet the
+stranger so soon as the eager search she pursued might have allowed her
+to hope. She went several times to the “Bal de Sceaux” without seeing
+the young Englishman who had dropped from the skies to pervade and
+beautify her dreams. Though nothing spurs on a young girl’s infant
+passion so effectually as an obstacle, there was a time when
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine was on the point of giving up her strange and
+secret search, almost despairing of the success of an enterprise whose
+singularity may give some idea of the boldness of her temper. In point
+of fact, she might have wandered long about the village of Chatenay
+without meeting her Unknown. The fair Clara--since that was the name
+Emilie had overheard--was not English, and the stranger who escorted her
+did not dwell among the flowery and fragrant bowers of Chatenay.
+
+One evening Emilie, out riding with her uncle, who, during the fine
+weather, had gained a fairly long truce from the gout, met Lady Dudley.
+The distinguished foreigner had with her in her open carriage Monsieur
+Vandenesse. Emilie recognized the handsome couple, and her suppositions
+were at once dissipated like a dream. Annoyed, as any woman must be
+whose expectations are frustrated, she touched up her horse so suddenly
+that her uncle had the greatest difficulty in following her, she had set
+off at such a pace.
+
+“I am too old, it would seem, to understand these youthful spirits,”
+ said the old sailor to himself as he put his horse to a canter; “or
+perhaps young people are not what they used to be. But what ails my
+niece? Now she is walking at a foot-pace like a gendarme on patrol in
+the Paris streets. One might fancy she wanted to outflank that worthy
+man, who looks to me like an author dreaming over his poetry, for he
+has, I think, a notebook in his hand. My word, I am a great simpleton!
+Is not that the very young man we are in search of!”
+
+At this idea the old admiral moderated his horse’s pace so as to follow
+his niece without making any noise. He had played too many pranks in the
+years 1771 and soon after, a time of our history when gallantry was held
+in honor, not to guess at once that by the merest chance Emilie had met
+the Unknown of the Sceaux gardens. In spite of the film which age had
+drawn over his gray eyes, the Comte de Kergarouet could recognize the
+signs of extreme agitation in his niece, under the unmoved expression
+she tried to give to her features. The girl’s piercing eyes were fixed
+in a sort of dull amazement on the stranger, who quietly walked on in
+front of her.
+
+“Ay, that’s it,” thought the sailor. “She is following him as a pirate
+follows a merchantman. Then, when she has lost sight of him, she will be
+in despair at not knowing who it is she is in love with, and whether he
+is a marquis or a shopkeeper. Really these young heads need an old fogy
+like me always by their side...”
+
+He unexpectedly spurred his horse in such a way as to make his niece’s
+bolt, and rode so hastily between her and the young man on foot that
+he obliged him to fall back on to the grassy bank which rose from the
+roadside. Then, abruptly drawing up, the Count exclaimed:
+
+“Couldn’t you get out of the way?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, monsieur. But I did not know that it lay with me to
+apologize to you because you almost rode me down.”
+
+“There, enough of that, my good fellow!” replied the sailor harshly, in
+a sneering tone that was nothing less than insulting. At the same time
+the Count raised his hunting-crop as if to strike his horse, and touched
+the young fellow’s shoulder, saying, “A liberal citizen is a reasoner;
+every reasoner should be prudent.”
+
+The young man went up the bankside as he heard the sarcasm; then he
+crossed his arms, and said in an excited tone of voice, “I cannot
+suppose, monsieur, as I look at your white hairs, that you still amuse
+yourself by provoking duels----”
+
+“White hairs!” cried the sailor, interrupting him. “You lie in your
+throat. They are only gray.”
+
+A quarrel thus begun had in a few seconds become so fierce that the
+younger man forgot the moderation he had tried to preserve. Just as the
+Comte de Kergarouet saw his niece coming back to them with every sign
+of the greatest uneasiness, he told his antagonist his name, bidding him
+keep silence before the young lady entrusted to his care. The stranger
+could not help smiling as he gave a visiting card to the old man,
+desiring him to observe that he was living at a country-house at
+Chevreuse; and, after pointing this out to him, he hurried away.
+
+“You very nearly damaged that poor young counter-jumper, my dear,” said
+the Count, advancing hastily to meet Emilie. “Do you not know how to
+hold your horse in?--And there you leave me to compromise my dignity in
+order to screen your folly; whereas if you had but stopped, one of your
+looks, or one of your pretty speeches--one of those you can make so
+prettily when you are not pert--would have set everything right, even if
+you had broken his arm.”
+
+“But, my dear uncle, it was your horse, not mine, that caused the
+accident. I really think you can no longer ride; you are not so good a
+horseman as you were last year.--But instead of talking nonsense----”
+
+“Nonsense, by Gad! Is it nothing to be so impertinent to your uncle?”
+
+“Ought we not to go on and inquire if the young man is hurt? He is
+limping, uncle, only look!”
+
+“No, he is running; I rated him soundly.”
+
+“Oh, yes, uncle; I know you there!”
+
+“Stop,” said the Count, pulling Emilie’s horse by the bridle, “I do not
+see the necessity of making advances to some shopkeeper who is only
+too lucky to have been thrown down by a charming young lady, or the
+commander of La Belle-Poule.”
+
+“Why do you think he is anything so common, my dear uncle? He seems to
+me to have very fine manners.”
+
+“Every one has manners nowadays, my dear.”
+
+“No, uncle, not every one has the air and style which come of the habit
+of frequenting drawing-rooms, and I am ready to lay a bet with you that
+the young man is of noble birth.”
+
+“You had not long to study him.”
+
+“No, but it is not the first time I have seen him.”
+
+“Nor is it the first time you have looked for him,” replied the admiral
+with a laugh.
+
+Emilie colored. Her uncle amused himself for some time with her
+embarrassment; then he said: “Emilie, you know that I love you as my own
+child, precisely because you are the only member of the family who has
+the legitimate pride of high birth. Devil take it, child, who could have
+believed that sound principles would become so rare? Well, I will be
+your confidant. My dear child, I see that his young gentleman is not
+indifferent to you. Hush! All the family would laugh at us if we sailed
+under the wrong flag. You know what that means. We two will keep our
+secret, and I promise to bring him straight into the drawing-room.”
+
+“When, uncle?”
+
+“To-morrow.”
+
+“But, my dear uncle, I am not committed to anything?”
+
+“Nothing whatever, and you may bombard him, set fire to him, and leave
+him to founder like an old hulk if you choose. He won’t be the first, I
+fancy?”
+
+“You ARE kind, uncle!”
+
+As soon as the Count got home he put on his glasses, quietly took
+the card out of his pocket, and read, “Maximilien Longueville, Rue de
+Sentier.”
+
+“Make yourself happy, my dear niece,” he said to Emilie, “you may
+hook him with any easy conscience; he belongs to one of our historical
+families, and if he is not a peer of France, he infallibly will be.”
+
+“How do you know so much?”
+
+“That is my secret.”
+
+“Then do you know his name?”
+
+The old man bowed his gray head, which was not unlike a gnarled
+oak-stump, with a few leaves fluttering about it, withered by autumnal
+frosts; and his niece immediately began to try the ever-new power of her
+coquettish arts. Long familiar with the secret of cajoling the old man,
+she lavished on him the most childlike caresses, the tenderest names;
+she even went so far as to kiss him to induce him to divulge so
+important a secret. The old man, who spent his life in playing off these
+scenes on his niece, often paying for them with a present of jewelry,
+or by giving her his box at the opera, this time amused himself with
+her entreaties, and, above all, her caresses. But as he spun out this
+pleasure too long, Emilie grew angry, passed from coaxing to sarcasm and
+sulks; then, urged by curiosity, she recovered herself. The diplomatic
+admiral extracted a solemn promise from his niece that she would for
+the future be gentler, less noisy, and less wilful, that she would spend
+less, and, above all, tell him everything. The treaty being concluded,
+and signed by a kiss impressed on Emilie’s white brow, he led her into
+a corner of the room, drew her on to his knee, held the card under the
+thumbs so as to hide it, and then uncovered the letters one by one,
+spelling the name of Longueville; but he firmly refused to show her
+anything more.
+
+This incident added to the intensity of Mademoiselle de Fontaine’s
+secret sentiment, and during chief part of the night she evolved the
+most brilliant pictures from the dreams with which she had fed her
+hopes. At last, thanks to chance, to which she had so often
+appealed, Emilie could now see something very unlike a chimera at the
+fountain-head of the imaginary wealth with which she gilded her married
+life. Ignorant, as all young girls are, of the perils of love and
+marriage, she was passionately captivated by the externals of marriage
+and love. Is not this as much as to say that her feeling had birth like
+all the feelings of extreme youth--sweet but cruel mistakes, which exert
+a fatal influence on the lives of young girls so inexperienced as to
+trust their own judgment to take care of their future happiness?
+
+Next morning, before Emilie was awake, her uncle had hastened to
+Chevreuse. On recognizing, in the courtyard of an elegant little villa,
+the young man he had so determinedly insulted the day before, he went up
+to him with the pressing politeness of men of the old court.
+
+“Why, my dear sir, who could have guessed that I should have a brush,
+at the age of seventy-three, with the son, or the grandson, of one of my
+best friends. I am a vice-admiral, monsieur; is not that as much as to
+say that I think no more of fighting a duel than of smoking a cigar?
+Why, in my time, no two young men could be intimate till they had seen
+the color of their blood! But ‘sdeath, sir, last evening, sailor-like,
+I had taken a drop too much grog on board, and I ran you down. Shake
+hands; I would rather take a hundred rebuffs from a Longueville than
+cause his family the smallest regret.”
+
+However coldly the young man tried to behave to the Comte de Kergarouet,
+he could not resist the frank cordiality of his manner, and presently
+gave him his hand.
+
+“You were going out riding,” said the Count. “Do not let me detain you.
+But, unless you have other plans, I beg you will come to dinner to-day
+at the Villa Planat. My nephew, the Comte de Fontaine, is a man it is
+essential that you should know. Ah, ha! And I propose to make up to you
+for my clumsiness by introducing you to five of the prettiest women
+in Paris. So, so, young man, your brow is clearing! I am fond of young
+people, and I like to see them happy. Their happiness reminds me of the
+good times of my youth, when adventures were not lacking, any more
+than duels. We were gay dogs then! Nowadays you think and worry over
+everything, as though there had never been a fifteenth and a sixteenth
+century.”
+
+“But, monsieur, are we not in the right? The sixteenth century only gave
+religious liberty to Europe, and the nineteenth will give it political
+lib----”
+
+“Oh, we will not talk politics. I am a perfect old woman--ultra you see.
+But I do not hinder young men from being revolutionary, so long as they
+leave the King at liberty to disperse their assemblies.”
+
+When they had gone a little way, and the Count and his companion were in
+the heart of the woods, the old sailor pointed out a slender young
+birch sapling, pulled up his horse, took out one of his pistols, and the
+bullet was lodged in the heart of the tree, fifteen paces away.
+
+“You see, my dear fellow, that I am not afraid of a duel,” he said with
+comical gravity, as he looked at Monsieur Longueville.
+
+“Nor am I,” replied the young man, promptly cocking his pistol; he aimed
+at the hole made by the Comte’s bullet, and sent his own close to it.
+
+“That is what I call a well-educated man,” cried the admiral with
+enthusiasm.
+
+During this ride with the youth, whom he already regarded as his nephew,
+he found endless opportunities of catechizing him on all the trifles of
+which a perfect knowledge constituted, according to his private code, an
+accomplished gentleman.
+
+“Have you any debts?” he at last asked of his companion, after many
+other inquiries.
+
+“No, monsieur.”
+
+“What, you pay for all you have?”
+
+“Punctually; otherwise we should lose our credit, and every sort of
+respect.”
+
+“But at least you have more than one mistress? Ah, you blush, comrade!
+Well, manners have changed. All these notions of lawful order, Kantism,
+and liberty have spoilt the young men. You have no Guimard now, no
+Duthe, no creditors--and you know nothing of heraldry; why, my dear
+young friend, you are not fully fledged. The man who does not sow his
+wild oats in the spring sows them in the winter. If I have but eighty
+thousand francs a year at the age of seventy, it is because I ran
+through the capital at thirty. Oh! with my wife--in decency and honor.
+However, your imperfections will not interfere with my introducing you
+at the Pavillon Planat. Remember, you have promised to come, and I shall
+expect you.”
+
+“What an odd little old man!” said Longueville to himself. “He is so
+jolly and hale; but though he wishes to seem a good fellow, I will not
+trust him too far.”
+
+Next day, at about four o’clock, when the house party were dispersed
+in the drawing-rooms and billiard-room, a servant announced to the
+inhabitants of the Villa Planat, “Monsieur DE Longueville.” On hearing
+the name of the old admiral’s protege, every one, down to the player who
+was about to miss his stroke, rushed in, as much to study Mademoiselle
+de Fontaine’s countenance as to judge of this phoenix of men, who had
+earned honorable mention to the detriment of so many rivals. A simple
+but elegant style of dress, an air of perfect ease, polite manners, a
+pleasant voice with a ring in it which found a response in the hearer’s
+heart-strings, won the good-will of the family for Monsieur Longueville.
+He did not seem unaccustomed to the luxury of the Receiver-General’s
+ostentatious mansion. Though his conversation was that of a man of the
+world, it was easy to discern that he had had a brilliant education, and
+that his knowledge was as thorough as it was extensive. He knew so well
+the right thing to say in a discussion on naval architecture, trivial,
+it is true, started by the old admiral, that one of the ladies remarked
+that he must have passed through the Ecole Polytechnique.
+
+“And I think, madame,” he replied, “that I may regard it as an honor to
+have got in.”
+
+In spite of urgent pressing, he refused politely but firmly to be kept
+to dinner, and put an end to the persistency of the ladies by saying
+that he was the Hippocrates of his young sister, whose delicate health
+required great care.
+
+“Monsieur is perhaps a medical man?” asked one of Emilie’s
+sisters-in-law with ironical meaning.
+
+“Monsieur has left the Ecole Polytechnique,” Mademoiselle de Fontaine
+kindly put in; her face had flushed with richer color, as she learned
+that the young lady of the ball was Monsieur Longueville’s sister.
+
+“But, my dear, he may be a doctor and yet have been to the Ecole
+Polytechnique--is it not so, monsieur?”
+
+“There is nothing to prevent it, madame,” replied the young man.
+
+Every eye was on Emilie, who was gazing with uneasy curiosity at the
+fascinating stranger. She breathed more freely when he added, not
+without a smile, “I have not the honor of belonging to the medical
+profession; and I even gave up going into the Engineers in order to
+preserve my independence.”
+
+“And you did well,” said the Count. “But how can you regard it as an
+honor to be a doctor?” added the Breton nobleman. “Ah, my young friend,
+such a man as you----”
+
+“Monsieur le Comte, I respect every profession that has a useful
+purpose.”
+
+“Well, in that we agree. You respect those professions, I imagine, as a
+young man respects a dowager.”
+
+Monsieur Longueville made his visit neither too long nor too short. He
+left at the moment when he saw that he had pleased everybody, and that
+each one’s curiosity about him had been roused.
+
+“He is a cunning rascal!” said the Count, coming into the drawing-room
+after seeing him to the door.
+
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine, who had been in the secret of this call, had
+dressed with some care to attract the young man’s eye; but she had the
+little disappointment of finding that he did not bestow on her so much
+attention as she thought she deserved. The family were a good deal
+surprised at the silence into which she had retired. Emilie generally
+displayed all her arts for the benefit of newcomers, her witty prattle,
+and the inexhaustible eloquence of her eyes and attitudes. Whether
+it was that the young man’s pleasing voice and attractive manners had
+charmed her, that she was seriously in love, and that this feeling had
+worked a change in her, her demeanor had lost all its affectations.
+Being simple and natural, she must, no doubt, have seemed more
+beautiful. Some of her sisters, and an old lady, a friend of the family,
+saw in this behavior a refinement of art. They supposed that Emilie,
+judging the man worthy of her, intended to delay revealing her merits,
+so as to dazzle him suddenly when she found that she pleased him. Every
+member of the family was curious to know what this capricious creature
+thought of the stranger; but when, during dinner, every one chose to
+endow Monsieur Longueville with some fresh quality which no one else
+had discovered, Mademoiselle de Fontaine sat for some time in silence. A
+sarcastic remark of her uncle’s suddenly roused her from her apathy;
+she said, somewhat epigrammatically, that such heavenly perfection
+must cover some great defect, and that she would take good care how she
+judged so gifted a man at first sight.
+
+“Those who please everybody, please nobody,” she added; “and the worst
+of all faults is to have none.”
+
+Like all girls who are in love, Emilie cherished the hope of being
+able to hide her feelings at the bottom of her heart by putting the
+Argus-eyes that watched on the wrong tack; but by the end of a fortnight
+there was not a member of the large family party who was not in this
+little domestic secret. When Monsieur Longueville called for the third
+time, Emilie believed it was chiefly for her sake. This discovery gave
+her such intoxicating pleasure that she was startled as she reflected on
+it. There was something in it very painful to her pride. Accustomed as
+she was to be the centre of her world, she was obliged to recognize a
+force that attracted her outside herself; she tried to resist, but she
+could not chase from her heart the fascinating image of the young man.
+
+Then came some anxiety. Two of Monsieur Longueville’s qualities,
+very adverse to general curiosity, and especially to Mademoiselle de
+Fontaine’s, were unexpected modesty and discretion. He never spoke of
+himself, of his pursuits, or of his family. The hints Emilie threw out
+in conversation, and the traps she laid to extract from the young fellow
+some facts concerning himself, he could evade with the adroitness of a
+diplomatist concealing a secret. If she talked of painting, he responded
+as a connoisseur; if she sat down to play, he showed without conceit
+that he was a very good pianist; one evening he delighted all the
+party by joining his delightful voice to Emilie’s in one of Cimarosa’s
+charming duets. But when they tried to find out whether he were a
+professional singer, he baffled them so pleasantly that he did not
+afford these women, practised as they were in the art of reading
+feelings, the least chance of discovering to what social sphere he
+belonged. However boldly the old uncle cast the boarding-hooks over the
+vessel, Longueville slipped away cleverly, so as to preserve the charm
+of mystery; and it was easy to him to remain the “handsome Stranger”
+ at the Villa, because curiosity never overstepped the bounds of good
+breeding.
+
+Emilie, distracted by this reserve, hoped to get more out of the sister
+than the brother, in the form of confidences. Aided by her uncle, who
+was as skilful in such manoeuvres as in handling a ship, she endeavored
+to bring upon the scene the hitherto unseen figure of Mademoiselle Clara
+Longueville. The family party at the Villa Planat soon expressed the
+greatest desire to make the acquaintance of so amiable a young lady, and
+to give her some amusement. An informal dance was proposed and accepted.
+The ladies did not despair of making a young girl of sixteen talk.
+
+Notwithstanding the little clouds piled up by suspicion and created by
+curiosity, a light of joy shone in Emilie’s soul, for she found life
+delicious when thus intimately connected with another than herself. She
+began to understand the relations of life. Whether it is that happiness
+makes us better, or that she was too fully occupied to torment other
+people, she became less caustic, more gentle, and indulgent. This change
+in her temper enchanted and amazed her family. Perhaps, at last, her
+selfishness was being transformed to love. It was a deep delight to her
+to look for the arrival of her bashful and unconfessed adorer. Though
+they had not uttered a word of passion, she knew that she was loved, and
+with what art did she not lead the stranger to unlock the stores of his
+information, which proved to be varied! She perceived that she, too,
+was being studied, and that made her endeavor to remedy the defects her
+education had encouraged. Was not this her first homage to love, and
+a bitter reproach to herself? She desired to please, and she was
+enchanting; she loved, and she was idolized. Her family, knowing that
+her pride would sufficiently protect her, gave her enough freedom to
+enjoy the little childish delights which give to first love its charm
+and its violence. More than once the young man and Mademoiselle de
+Fontaine walked, tete-a-tete, in the avenues of the garden, where nature
+was dressed like a woman going to a ball. More than once they had those
+conversations, aimless and meaningless, in which the emptiest phrases
+are those which cover the deepest feelings. They often admired together
+the setting sun and its gorgeous coloring. They gathered daisies to pull
+the petals off, and sang the most impassioned duets, using the notes set
+down by Pergolesi or Rossini as faithful interpreters to express their
+secrets.
+
+The day of the dance came. Clara Longueville and her brother, whom the
+servants persisted in honoring with the noble DE, were the principle
+guests. For the first time in her life Mademoiselle de Fontaine felt
+pleasure in a young girl’s triumph. She lavished on Clara in all
+sincerity the gracious petting and little attentions which women
+generally give each other only to excite the jealousy of men. Emilie,
+had, indeed, an object in view; she wanted to discover some secrets.
+But, being a girl, Mademoiselle Longueville showed even more mother-wit
+than her brother, for she did not even look as if she were hiding a
+secret, and kept the conversation to subjects unconnected with personal
+interests, while, at the same time, she gave it so much charm that
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine was almost envious, and called her “the Siren.”
+ Though Emilie had intended to make Clara talk, it was Clara, in fact,
+who questioned Emilie; she had meant to judge her, and she was judged by
+her; she was constantly provoked to find that she had betrayed her own
+character in some reply which Clara had extracted from her, while her
+modest and candid manner prohibited any suspicion of perfidy. There was
+a moment when Mademoiselle de Fontaine seemed sorry for an ill-judged
+sally against the commonalty to which Clara had led her.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said the sweet child, “I have heard so much of you from
+Maximilien that I had the keenest desire to know you, out of affection
+for him; but is not a wish to know you a wish to love you?”
+
+“My dear Clara, I feared I might have displeased you by speaking thus of
+people who are not of noble birth.”
+
+“Oh, be quite easy. That sort of discussion is pointless in these days.
+As for me, it does not affect me. I am beside the question.”
+
+Ambitious as the answer might seem, it filled Mademoiselle de Fontaine
+with the deepest joy; for, like all infatuated people, she explained it,
+as oracles are explained, in the sense that harmonized with her wishes;
+she began dancing again in higher spirits than ever, as she watched
+Longueville, whose figure and grace almost surpassed those of her
+imaginary ideal. She felt added satisfaction in believing him to be well
+born, her black eyes sparkled, and she danced with all the pleasure that
+comes of dancing in the presence of the being we love. The couple had
+never understood each other as well as at this moment; more than once
+they felt their finger tips thrill and tremble as they were married in
+the figures of the dance.
+
+The early autumn had come to the handsome pair, in the midst of country
+festivities and pleasures; they had abandoned themselves softly to the
+tide of the sweetest sentiment in life, strengthening it by a thousand
+little incidents which any one can imagine; for love is in some respects
+always the same. They studied each other through it all, as much as
+lovers can.
+
+“Well, well; a flirtation never turned so quickly into a love match,”
+ said the old uncle, who kept an eye on the two young people as a
+naturalist watches an insect in the microscope.
+
+The speech alarmed Monsieur and Madame Fontaine. The old Vendeen had
+ceased to be so indifferent to his daughter’s prospects as he had
+promised to be. He went to Paris to seek information, and found none.
+Uneasy at this mystery, and not yet knowing what might be the outcome
+of the inquiry which he had begged a Paris friend to institute with
+reference to the family of Longueville, he thought it his duty to warn
+his daughter to behave prudently. The fatherly admonition was received
+with mock submission spiced with irony.
+
+“At least, my dear Emilie, if you love him, do not own it to him.”
+
+“My dear father, I certainly do love him; but I will await your
+permission before I tell him so.”
+
+“But remember, Emilie, you know nothing of his family or his pursuits.”
+
+“I may be ignorant, but I am content to be. But, father, you wished to
+see me married; you left me at liberty to make my choice; my choice is
+irrevocably made--what more is needful?”
+
+“It is needful to ascertain, my dear, whether the man of your choice
+is the son of a peer of France,” the venerable gentleman retorted
+sarcastically.
+
+Emilie was silent for a moment. She presently raised her head, looked at
+her father, and said somewhat anxiously, “Are not the Longuevilles----?”
+
+“They became extinct in the person of the old Duc de Rostein-Limbourg,
+who perished on the scaffold in 1793. He was the last representative of
+the last and younger branch.”
+
+“But, papa, there are some very good families descended from bastards.
+The history of France swarms with princes bearing the bar sinister on
+their shields.”
+
+“Your ideas are much changed,” said the old man, with a smile.
+
+The following day was the last that the Fontaine family were to spend at
+the Pavillon Planat. Emilie, greatly disturbed by her father’s warning,
+awaited with extreme impatience the hour at which young Longueville was
+in the habit of coming, to wring some explanation from him. She went out
+after dinner, and walked alone across the shrubbery towards an arbor fit
+for lovers, where she knew that the eager youth would seek her; and
+as she hastened thither she considered of the best way to discover so
+important a matter without compromising herself--a rather difficult
+thing! Hitherto no direct avowal had sanctioned the feelings which bound
+her to this stranger. Like Maximilien, she had secretly enjoyed the
+sweetness of first love; but both were equally proud, and each feared to
+confess that love.
+
+Maximilien Longueville, to whom Clara had communicated her not unfounded
+suspicions as to Emilie’s character, was by turns carried away by the
+violence of a young man’s passion, and held back by a wish to know and
+test the woman to whom he would be entrusting his happiness. His love
+had not hindered him from perceiving in Emilie the prejudices which
+marred her young nature; but before attempting to counteract them, he
+wished to be sure that she loved him, for he would no sooner risk the
+fate of his love than of his life. He had, therefore, persistently kept
+a silence to which his looks, his behavior, and his smallest actions
+gave the lie.
+
+On her side, the self-respect natural to a young girl, augmented in
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine by the monstrous vanity founded on her birth
+and beauty, kept her from meeting the declaration half-way, which her
+growing passion sometimes urged her to invite. Thus the lovers had
+instinctively understood the situation without explaining to each
+other their secret motives. There are times in life when such vagueness
+pleases youthful minds. Just because each had postponed speaking too
+long, they seemed to be playing a cruel game of suspense. He was trying
+to discover whether he was beloved, by the effort any confession would
+cost his haughty mistress; she every minute hoped that he would break a
+too respectful silence.
+
+Emilie, seated on a rustic bench, was reflecting on all that had
+happened in these three months full of enchantment. Her father’s
+suspicions were the last that could appeal to her; she even disposed
+of them at once by two or three of those reflections natural to an
+inexperienced girl, which, to her, seemed conclusive. Above all, she was
+convinced that it was impossible that she should deceive herself. All
+the summer through she had not been able to detect in Maximilien a
+single gesture, or a single word, which could indicate a vulgar origin
+or vulgar occupations; nay more, his manner of discussing things
+revealed a man devoted to the highest interests of the nation.
+“Besides,” she reflected, “an office clerk, a banker, or a merchant,
+would not be at leisure to spend a whole season in paying his addresses
+to me in the midst of woods and fields; wasting his time as freely as a
+nobleman who has life before him free of all care.”
+
+She had given herself up to meditations far more interesting to her
+than these preliminary thoughts, when a slight rustling in the leaves
+announced to her than Maximilien had been watching her for a minute, not
+probably without admiration.
+
+“Do you know that it is very wrong to take a young girl thus unawares?”
+ she asked him, smiling.
+
+“Especially when they are busy with their secrets,” replied Maximilien
+archly.
+
+“Why should I not have my secrets? You certainly have yours.”
+
+“Then you really were thinking of your secrets?” he went on, laughing.
+
+“No, I was thinking of yours. My own, I know.”
+
+“But perhaps my secrets are yours, and yours mine,” cried the young man,
+softly seizing Mademoiselle de Fontaine’s hand and drawing it through
+his arm.
+
+After walking a few steps they found themselves under a clump of trees
+which the hues of the sinking sun wrapped in a haze of red and brown.
+This touch of natural magic lent a certain solemnity to the moment. The
+young man’s free and eager action, and, above all, the throbbing of his
+surging heart, whose hurried beating spoke to Emilie’s arm, stirred her
+to an emotion that was all the more disturbing because it was produced
+by the simplest and most innocent circumstances. The restraint under
+which the young girls of the upper class live gives incredible force to
+any explosion of feeling, and to meet an impassioned lover is one of
+the greatest dangers they can encounter. Never had Emilie and Maximilien
+allowed their eyes to say so much that they dared never speak. Carried
+a way by this intoxication, they easily forgot the petty stipulations
+of pride, and the cold hesitancies of suspicion. At first, indeed, they
+could only express themselves by a pressure of hands which interpreted
+their happy thoughts.
+
+After slowing pacing a few steps in long silence, Mademoiselle de
+Fontaine spoke. “Monsieur, I have a question to ask you,” she said
+trembling, and in an agitated voice. “But, remember, I beg, that it is
+in a manner compulsory on me, from the rather singular position I am in
+with regard to my family.”
+
+A pause, terrible to Emilie, followed these sentences, which she had
+almost stammered out. During the minute while it lasted, the girl,
+haughty as she was, dared not meet the flashing eye of the man she
+loved, for she was secretly conscious of the meanness of the next words
+she added: “Are you of noble birth?”
+
+As soon as the words were spoken she wished herself at the bottom of a
+lake.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” Longueville gravely replied, and his face assumed a sort
+of stern dignity, “I promise to answer you truly as soon as you shall
+have answered in all sincerity a question I will put to you!”--He
+released her arm, and the girl suddenly felt alone in the world, as he
+said: “What is your object in questioning me as to my birth?”
+
+She stood motionless, cold, and speechless.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” Maximilien went on, “let us go no further if we do not
+understand each other. I love you,” he said, in a voice of deep emotion.
+“Well, then,” he added, as he heard the joyful exclamation she could not
+suppress, “why ask me if I am of noble birth?”
+
+“Could he speak so if he were not?” cried a voice within her, which
+Emilie believed came from the depths of her heart. She gracefully raised
+her head, seemed to find new life in the young man’s gaze, and held out
+her hand as if to renew the alliance.
+
+“You thought I cared very much for dignities?” said she with keen
+archness.
+
+“I have no titles to offer my wife,” he replied, in a half-sportive,
+half-serious tone. “But if I choose one of high rank, and among women
+whom a wealthy home has accustomed to the luxury and pleasures of a
+fine fortune, I know what such a choice requires of me. Love gives
+everything,” he added lightly, “but only to lovers. Once married,
+they need something more than the vault of heaven and the carpet of a
+meadow.”
+
+“He is rich,” she reflected. “As to titles, perhaps he only wants to try
+me. He has been told that I am mad about titles, and bent on marrying
+none but a peer’s son. My priggish sisters have played me that
+trick.”--“I assure you, monsieur,” she said aloud, “that I have had
+very extravagant ideas about life and the world; but now,” she added
+pointedly, looking at him in a perfectly distracting way, “I know where
+true riches are to be found for a wife.”
+
+“I must believe that you are speaking from the depths of your heart,”
+ he said, with gentle gravity. “But this winter, my dear Emilie, in less
+than two months perhaps, I may be proud of what I shall have to offer
+you if you care for the pleasures of wealth. This is the only secret I
+shall keep locked here,” and he laid his hand on his heart, “for on its
+success my happiness depends. I dare not say ours.”
+
+“Yes, yes, ours!”
+
+Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their way back to
+rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had never found her lover
+more amiable or wittier: his light figure, his engaging manners, seemed
+to her more charming than ever, since the conversation which had made
+her to some extent the possessor of a heart worthy to be the envy of
+every woman. They sang an Italian duet with so much expression that the
+audience applauded enthusiastically. Their adieux were in a conventional
+tone, which concealed their happiness. In short, this day had been to
+Emilie like a chain binding her more closely than ever to the Stranger’s
+fate. The strength and dignity he had displayed in the scene when they
+had confessed their feelings had perhaps impressed Mademoiselle de
+Fontaine with the respect without which there is no true love.
+
+When she was left alone in the drawing-room with her father, the old man
+went up to her affectionately, held her hands, and asked her whether she
+had gained any light at to Monsieur Longueville’s family and fortune.
+
+“Yes, my dear father,” she replied, “and I am happier than I could have
+hoped. In short, Monsieur de Longueville is the only man I could ever
+marry.”
+
+“Very well, Emilie,” said the Count, “then I know what remains for me to
+do.”
+
+“Do you know of any impediment?” she asked, in sincere alarm.
+
+“My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to me; but unless he
+is not a man of honor, so long as you love him, he is as dear to me as a
+son.”
+
+“Not a man of honor!” exclaimed Emilie. “As to that, I am quite easy.
+My uncle, who introduced him to us, will answer for him. Say, my dear
+uncle, has he been a filibuster, an outlaw, a pirate?”
+
+“I knew I should find myself in this fix!” cried the old sailor,
+waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece had vanished “like
+Saint-Elmo’s fires,” to use his favorite expression.
+
+“Well, uncle,” Monsieur de Fontaine went on, “how could you hide from
+us all you knew about this young man? You must have seen how anxious we
+have been. Is Monsieur de Longueville a man of family?”
+
+“I don’t know him from Adam or Eve,” said the Comte de Kergarouet.
+“Trusting to that crazy child’s tact, I got him here by a method of my
+own. I know that the boy shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well,
+plays wonderfully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles
+the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
+He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is as good an
+arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The devil’s in
+it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect gentleman, find me
+a bourgeois who knows all this, or any man who lives more nobly than he
+does. Does he do anything, I ask you? Does he compromise his dignity
+by hanging about an office, bowing down before the upstarts you call
+Directors-General? He walks upright. He is a man.--However, I have
+just found in my waistcoat pocket the card he gave me when he fancied
+I wanted to cut his throat, poor innocent. Young men are very
+simple-minded nowadays! Here it is.”
+
+“Rue du Sentier, No. 5,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall
+among all the information he had received, something which might concern
+the stranger. “What the devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust &
+Co., wholesale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods,
+live there.--Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has an interest in
+their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longueville has but one son
+of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like our man, and to whom he gave
+fifty thousand francs a year that he might marry a minister’s daughter;
+he wants to be made a peer like the rest of ‘em.--I never heard him
+mention this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this girl Clara?
+Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call himself Longueville.
+But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust & Co. half ruined by some
+speculation in Mexico or the Indies? I will clear all this up.”
+
+“You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and seem to account
+me a cipher,” said the old admiral suddenly. “Don’t you know that if he
+is a gentleman, I have more than one bag in my hold that will stop any
+leak in his fortune?”
+
+“As to that, if he is a son of Longueville’s, he will want nothing;
+but,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head from side to side,
+“his father has not even washed off the stains of his origin. Before the
+Revolution he was an attorney, and the DE he has since assumed no more
+belongs to him than half of his fortune.”
+
+“Pooh! pooh! happy those whose fathers were hanged!” cried the admiral
+gaily.
+
+
+
+Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of those fine
+mornings in the month of November, which show the boulevards cleaned by
+the sharp cold of an early frost, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a
+new style of fur cape, of which she wished to set the fashion, went out
+with two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to discharge
+her most cutting remarks. The three women were tempted to the drive,
+less by their desire to try a very elegant carriage, and wear gowns
+which were to set the fashion for the winter, than by their wish to see
+a cape which a friend had observed in a handsome lace and linen shop at
+the corner of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were in the shop the
+Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and pointed out to her
+Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk, and engaged in paying out
+the change for a gold piece to one of the workwomen with whom he seemed
+to be in consultation. The “handsome stranger” held in his hand a parcel
+of patterns, which left no doubt as to his honorable profession.
+
+Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. Thanks to the
+good breeding of the best society, she completely concealed the rage in
+her heart, and answered her sister-in-law with the words, “I knew it,”
+ with a fulness of intonation and inimitable decision which the most
+famous actress of the time might have envied her. She went straight up
+to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the patterns in his pocket
+with distracting coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and came
+forward, looking at her keenly.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” he said to the shopgirl, who followed him, looking very
+much disturbed, “I will send to settle that account; my house deals
+in that way. But here,” he whispered into her ear, as he gave her a
+thousand-franc note, “take this--it is between ourselves.--You will
+forgive me, I trust, mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Emilie. “You
+will kindly excuse the tyranny of business matters.”
+
+“Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern of mine,”
+ replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him with a bold expression
+of sarcastic indifference which might have made any one believe that she
+now saw him for the first time.
+
+“Do you really mean it?” asked Maximilien in a broken voice.
+
+Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. These words,
+spoken in an undertone, had escaped the ears of her two sisters-in-law.
+When, after buying the cape, the three ladies got into the carriage
+again, Emilie, seated with her back to the horses, could not resist one
+last comprehensive glance into the depths of the odious shop, where she
+saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, in the attitude of a man
+superior to the disaster that has so suddenly fallen on him. Their eyes
+met and flashed implacable looks. Each hoped to inflict a cruel wound
+on the heart of a lover. In one instant they were as far apart as if one
+had been in China and the other in Greenland.
+
+Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Mademoiselle de
+Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that can torture the heart
+of a young girl, reaped the richest harvest of anguish that prejudice
+and narrow-mindedness ever sowed in a human soul. Her face, but just now
+fresh and velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red patches; the
+paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn green. Hoping
+to hide her despair from her sisters, she would laugh as she pointed out
+some ridiculous dress or passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She
+was more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by any satirical
+comments for which she might have revenged herself. She exhausted her
+wit in trying to engage them in a conversation, in which she tried to
+expend her fury in senseless paradoxes, heaping on all men engaged in
+trade the bitterest insults and witticisms in the worst taste.
+
+On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at first assumed
+a somewhat serious character. By the end of a month the care of her
+parents and of the physician restored her to her family.
+
+Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough to subdue
+Emilie’s nature; but she insensibly fell into her old habits and threw
+herself again into the world of fashion. She declared that there was no
+disgrace in making a mistake. If she, like her father, had a vote in the
+Chamber, she would move for an edict, she said, by which all merchants,
+and especially dealers in calico, should be branded on the forehead,
+like Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She wished that none but
+nobles should have the right to wear the antique French costume, which
+was so becoming to the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear her, it was a
+misfortune for France, perhaps, that there was no outward and visible
+difference between a merchant and a peer of France. And a hundred more
+such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were rapidly poured out when any
+accident brought up the subject.
+
+But those who loved Emilie could see through all her banter a tinge of
+melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longueville still reigned over
+that inexorable heart. Sometimes she would be as gentle as she had been
+during the brief summer that had seen the birth of her love; sometimes,
+again, she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her inequality of
+temper, which had its source in sufferings at once secret and known to
+all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some influence over her, thanks to his
+increased prodigality, a kind of consolation which rarely fails of its
+effect on a Parisian girl.
+
+The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared was at the
+Neapolitan ambassador’s. As she took her place in the first quadrille
+she saw, a few yards away from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded
+slightly to her partner.
+
+“Is that young man a friend of yours?” she asked, with a scornful air.
+
+“Only my brother,” he replied.
+
+Emilie could not help starting. “Ah!” he continued, “and he is the
+noblest soul living----”
+
+“Do you know my name?” asked Emilie, eagerly interrupting him.
+
+“No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to remember a name
+which is on every lip--I ought to say in every heart. But I have a valid
+excuse. I have but just arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who is in
+Paris on leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his amiable
+wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner.”
+
+“A perfect tragic mask!” said Emilie, after looking at the ambassadress.
+
+“And yet that is her ballroom face!” said the young man, laughing.
+“I shall have to dance with her! So I thought I might have some
+compensation.” Mademoiselle de Fontaine courtesied. “I was very much
+surprised,” the voluble young secretary went on, “to find my brother
+here. On arriving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in bed;
+and I counted on seeing him before coming to this ball; but good policy
+will always allow us to indulge family affection. The Padrona della case
+would not give me time to call on my poor Maximilien.”
+
+“Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplomatic
+employment.”
+
+“No,” said the attache, with a sigh, “the poor fellow sacrificed himself
+for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced their share of my father’s
+fortune to make an eldest son of me. My father dreams of a peerage, like
+all who vote for the ministry. Indeed, it is promised him,” he added
+in an undertone. “After saving up a little capital my brother joined a
+banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a speculation in Brazil
+which may make him a millionaire. You see me in the highest spirits at
+having been able, by my diplomatic connections, to contribute to his
+success. I am impatiently expecting a dispatch from the Brazilian
+Legation, which will help to lift the cloud from his brow. What do you
+think of him?”
+
+“Well, your brother’s face does not look to me like that of a man busied
+with money matters.”
+
+The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the apparently calm face
+of his partner.
+
+“What!” he exclaimed, with a smile, “can young ladies read the thoughts
+of love behind the silent brow?”
+
+“Your brother is in love, then?” she asked, betrayed into a movement of
+curiosity.
+
+“Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a mother, wrote to
+me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but I
+have had no further news of the affair. Would you believe that the poor
+boy used to get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle his
+business that he might be back by four o’clock in the country where the
+lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I had just
+given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just come home
+from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I have been
+weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such a degree
+that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the chimeras on
+a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve unbecoming
+in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it not you who
+pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become inexhaustible. I
+should like to proclaim to all the world how good and generous he is. He
+gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a year, the income from
+the Longueville property.”
+
+If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these important
+revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which she continued to
+question her confiding partner from the moment when she found that he
+was the brother of her scorned lover.
+
+“And could you, without being grieved, see your brother selling muslin
+and calico?” asked Emilie, at the end of the third figure of the
+quadrille.
+
+“How do you know that?” asked the attache. “Thank God, though I pour out
+a flood of words, I have already acquired the art of not telling more
+than I intend, like all the other diplomatic apprentices I know.”
+
+“You told me, I assure you.”
+
+Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with a
+surprise that was full of perspicacity. A suspicion flashed upon him. He
+glanced inquiringly from his brother to his partner, guessed everything,
+clasped his hands, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and began to laugh,
+saying, “I am an idiot! You are the handsomest person here; my brother
+keeps stealing glances at you; he is dancing in spite of his illness,
+and you pretend not to see him. Make him happy,” he added, as he led
+her back to her old uncle. “I shall not be jealous, but I shall always
+shiver a little at calling you my sister----”
+
+The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to each other as they
+were to themselves. At about two in the morning, refreshments were
+served in an immense corridor, where, to leave persons of the same
+coterie free to meet each other, the tables were arranged as in a
+restaurant. By one of those accidents which always happen to lovers,
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine found herself at a table next to that at which
+the more important guests were seated. Maximilien was of the group.
+Emilie, who lent an attentive ear to her neighbors’ conversation,
+overheard one of those dialogues into which a young woman so easily
+falls with a young man who has the grace and style of Maximilien
+Longueville. The lady talking to the young banker was a Neapolitan
+duchess, whose eyes shot lightning flashes, and whose skin had the sheen
+of satin. The intimate terms on which Longueville affected to be with
+her stung Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more because she had just
+given her lover back twenty times as much tenderness as she had ever
+felt for him before.
+
+“Yes, monsieur, in my country true love can make every kind of
+sacrifice,” the Duchess was saying, in a simper.
+
+“You have more passion than Frenchwomen,” said Maximilien, whose burning
+gaze fell on Emilie. “They are all vanity.”
+
+“Monsieur,” Emilie eagerly interposed, “is it not very wrong to
+calumniate your own country? Devotion is to be found in every nation.”
+
+“Do you imagine, mademoiselle,” retorted the Italian, with a sardonic
+smile, “that a Parisian would be capable of following her lover all over
+the world?”
+
+“Oh, madame, let us understand each other. She would follow him to a
+desert and live in a tent but not to sit in a shop.”
+
+A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under the influence of
+her disastrous education, Emile for the second time killed her budding
+happiness, and destroyed its prospects of life. Maximilien’s apparent
+indifference, and a woman’s smile, had wrung from her one of those
+sarcasms whose treacherous zest always let her astray.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Longueville, in a low voice, under cover of the
+noise made by the ladies as they rose from the table, “no one will ever
+more ardently desire your happiness than I; permit me to assure you
+of this, as I am taking leave of you. I am starting for Italy in a few
+days.”
+
+“With a Duchess, no doubt?”
+
+“No, but perhaps with a mortal blow.”
+
+“Is not that pure fancy?” asked Emilie, with an anxious glance.
+
+“No,” he replied. “There are wounds which never heal.”
+
+“You are not to go,” said the girl, imperiously, and she smiled.
+
+“I shall go,” replied Maximilien, gravely.
+
+“You will find me married on your return, I warn you,” she said
+coquettishly.
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+“Impertinent wretch!” she exclaimed. “How cruel a revenge!”
+
+A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara for the warm
+and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving Mademoiselle de Fontaine
+a prey to the most vehement regret. The young Secretary to the Embassy
+took up his brother’s quarrel, and contrived to take signal vengeance on
+Emilie’s disdain by making known the occasion of the lovers’ separation.
+He repaid his fair partner with interest all the sarcasm with which
+she had formerly attacked Maximilien, and often made more than one
+Excellency smile by describing the fair foe of the counting-house, the
+amazon who preached a crusade against bankers, the young girl whose
+love had evaporated before a bale of muslin. The Comte de Fontaine was
+obliged to use his influence to procure an appointment to Russia for
+Auguste Longueville in order to protect his daughter from the ridicule
+heaped upon her by this dangerous young persecutor.
+
+Not long after, the Ministry being compelled to raise a levy of peers to
+support the aristocratic party, trembling in the Upper Chamber under the
+lash of an illustrious writer, gave Monsieur Guiraudin de Longueville a
+peerage, with the title of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine also obtained
+a peerage, the reward due as much to his fidelity in evil days as to his
+name, which claimed a place in the hereditary Chamber.
+
+About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, some serious
+reflections on life, for her tone and manners changed perceptibly.
+Instead of amusing herself by saying spiteful things to her uncle, she
+lavished on him the most affectionate attentions; she brought him his
+stick with a persevering devotion that made the cynical smile, she
+gave him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his
+drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco, and
+read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in the midst of clouds of
+smoke, which the malicious old sailor intentionally blew over her;
+she learned piquet to be a match for the old count; and this fantastic
+damsel even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives of
+the battles of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de Paris, M.
+de Suffren’s first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir.
+
+Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longitude and
+latitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a young corvette,
+one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms heard the news of the marriage of
+Mademoiselle de Fontaine to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young Countess
+gave splendid entertainments to drown thought; but she, no doubt,
+found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool; luxury was ineffectual to
+disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrowing soul; for the most
+part, in spite of the flashes of assumed gaiety, her beautiful face
+expressed unspoken melancholy. Emilie appeared, however, full of
+attentions and consideration for her old husband, who, on retiring to
+his rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively band, would often say, “I
+do not know myself. Was I to wait till the age of seventy-two to embark
+as pilot on board the Belle Emilie after twenty years of matrimonial
+galleys?”
+
+The conduct of the young Countess was marked by such strictness that the
+most clear-sighted criticism had no fault to find with her. Lookers on
+chose to think that the vice-admiral had reserved the right of disposing
+of his fortune to keep his wife more tightly in hand; but this was a
+notion as insulting to the uncle as to the niece. Their conduct was
+indeed so delicately judicious that the men who were most interested in
+guessing the secrets of the couple could never decide whether the old
+Count regarded her as a wife or as a daughter. He was often heard to say
+that he had rescued his niece as a castaway after shipwreck; and that,
+for his part, he had never taken a mean advantage of hospitality when
+he had saved an enemy from the fury of the storm. Though the Countess
+aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keep pace with Mesdames the
+Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and du Chaulieu, the Marquises d’Espard and
+d’Aiglemont, the Comtesses Feraud, de Montcornet, and de Restaud,
+Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des Touches, she did not yield to the
+addresses of the young Vicomte de Portenduere, who made her his idol.
+
+Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing-rooms in the
+Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was admired for her character, worthy
+of the old school, Emilie heard the Vicomte de Longueville announced.
+In the corner of the room where she was sitting, playing piquet with
+the Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed; she turned her
+head and saw her former lover come in, in all the freshness of youth.
+His father’s death, and then that of his brother, killed by the severe
+climate of Saint-Petersburg, had placed on Maximilien’s head the
+hereditary plumes of the French peer’s hat. His fortune matched his
+learning and his merits; only the day before his youthful and fervid
+eloquence had dazzled the Assembly. At this moment he stood before the
+Countess, free, and graced with all the advantages she had formerly
+required of her ideal. Every mother with a daughter to marry made
+amiable advances to a man gifted with the virtues which they attributed
+to him, as they admired his attractive person; but Emilie knew, better
+than any one, that the Vicomte de Longueville had the steadfast nature
+in which a wise woman sees a guarantee of happiness. She looked at the
+admiral who, to use his favorite expression, seemed likely to hold his
+course for a long time yet, and cursed the follies of her youth.
+
+At this moment Monsieur de Persepolis said with Episcopal grace: “Fair
+lady, you have thrown away the king of hearts--I have won. But do not
+regret your money. I keep it for my little seminaries.”
+
+
+PARIS, December 1829.
+
+
+
+
+ADDENDUM
+
+The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+
+     Beaudenord, Godefroid de
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+
+     Dudley, Lady Arabella
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       Letters of Two Brides
+
+     Fontaine, Comte de
+       The Chouans
+       Modeste Mignon
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       The Government Clerks
+
+     Kergarouet, Comte de
+       The Purse
+       Ursule Mirouet
+
+     Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
+       The Chouans
+       The Seamy Side of History
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       Colonel Chabert
+       The Government Clerks
+
+     Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
+       The Thirteen
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       A Marriage Settlement
+
+     Marsay, Henri de
+       The Thirteen
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Lily of the Valley
+       Father Goriot
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Marriage Settlement
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Letters of Two Brides
+       Modest Mignon
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+     Palma (banker)
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Gobseck
+       Lost Illusions
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+
+     Portenduere, Vicomte Savinien de
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       Beatrix
+
+     Rastignac, Eugene de
+       Father Goriot
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
+       The Interdiction
+       A Study of Woman
+       Another Study of Woman
+       The Magic Skin
+       The Secrets of a Princess
+       A Daughter of Eve
+       The Gondreville Mystery
+       The Firm of Nucingen
+       Cousin Betty
+       The Member for Arcis
+       The Unconscious Humorists
+
+     Vandenesse, Marquise Charles de (Emilie de Fontaine)
+       Cesar Birotteau
+       Ursule Mirouet
+       A Daughter of Eve
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ball at Sceaux, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1305 ***