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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Parisians, by E. B. Lytton, Book 3.
+#166 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: The Parisians, Book 3.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7739]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 20, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B3, LYTTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE PARISIANS
+
+                         By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+
+                                BOOK III.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The next day the guests at the Morleys' had assembled when Vane entered.
+His apology for unpunctuality was cut short by the lively hostess.  "Your
+pardon is granted without the humiliation of asking for it; we know that
+the characteristic of the English is always to be a little behindhand."
+
+She then proceeded to introduce him to the American Minister, to a
+distinguished American poet, with a countenance striking for mingled
+sweetness and power, and one or two other of her countrymen sojourning at
+Paris; and this ceremony over, dinner was announced, and she bade Graham
+offer his arm to Mademoiselle Cicogna.
+
+"Have you ever visited the United States, Mademoiselle?" asked Vane, as
+they seated themselves at the table.
+
+"No."
+
+"It is a voyage you are sure to make soon."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Because report says you will create a great sensation at the very
+commencement of your career; and the New World is ever eager to welcome
+each celebrity that is achieved in the Old,--more especially that which
+belongs to your enchanting art."
+
+"True, sir," said an American senator, solemnly striking into the
+conversation; "we are an appreciative people; and if that lady be as fine
+a singer as I am told, she might command any amount of dollars."
+
+Isaura coloured, and turning to Graham, asked him in a low voice if he
+were fond of music.
+
+"I ought of course to say 'yes,' answered Graham, in the same tone; "but
+I doubt if that 'yes' would be an honest one.  In some moods, music--if a
+kind of music I like--affects me very deeply; in other moods, not at all.
+And I cannot bear much at a time.  A concert wearies me shamefully; even
+an opera always seems to me a great deal too long.  But I ought to add
+that I am no judge of music; that music was never admitted into my
+education; and, between ourselves, I doubt if there be one Englishman in
+five hundred who would care for opera or concert if it were not the
+fashion to say he did.  Does my frankness revolt you?"
+
+"On the contrary, I sometimes doubt, especially of late, if I am fond of
+music myself."
+
+"Signorina,--pardon me,--it is impossible that you should not be.  Genius
+can never be untrue to itself, and must love that in which it excels,
+that by which it communicates joy, and," he added, with a half-suppressed
+sigh, "attains to glory."
+
+"Genius is a divine word, and not to be applied to a singer," said
+Isaura, with a humility in which there was an earnest sadness.
+
+Graham was touched and startled; but before he could answer, the American
+Minister appealed to him across the table, asking if he had quoted
+accurately a passage in a speech by Graham's distinguished father, in
+regard to the share which England ought to take in the political affairs
+of Europe.
+
+The conversation now became general, very political and very serious.
+Graham was drawn into it, and grew animated and eloquent.
+
+Isaura listened to him with admiration.  She was struck by what seemed to
+her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated his theme above the level of
+commonplace polemics.  She was pleased to notice, in the attentive
+silence of his intelligent listeners, that they shared the effect
+produced on herself.  In fact, Graham Vane was a born orator, and his
+studies had been those of a political thinker.  In common talk he was but
+the accomplished man of the world, easy and frank and genial, with a
+touch of good-natured sarcasm; but when the subject started drew him
+upward to those heights in which politics become the science of humanity,
+he seemed a changed being.  His cheek glowed, his eye brightened, his
+voice mellowed into richer tones, his language be came unconsciously
+adorned.  In such moments there might scarcely be an audience, even
+differing from him in opinion, which would not have acknowledged his
+spell.
+
+When the party adjourned to the salon, Isaura said softly to Graham, "I
+understand why you did not cultivate music; and I think, too, that I can
+now understand what effects the human voice can produce on human minds
+without recurring to the art of song."
+
+"Ah," said Graham, with a pleased smile, "do not make me ashamed of my
+former rudeness by the revenge of compliment; and, above all, do not
+disparage your own art by supposing that any prose effect of voice in its
+utterance of mind can interpret that which music alone can express, even
+to listeners so uncultured as myself.  Am I not told truly by musical
+composers, when I ask them to explain in words what they say in their
+music, that such explanation is impossible, that music has a language of
+its own untranslatable by words?"
+
+"Yes," said Isaura, with thoughtful brow but brightening eyes, "you are
+told truly.  It was only the other day that I was pondering over that
+truth."
+
+"But what recesses of mind, of heart, of soul, this untranslatable
+language penetrates and brightens up!  How incomplete the grand nature of
+man--though man the grandest--would be, if you struck out of his reason
+the comprehension of poetry, music, and religion!  In each are reached
+and are sounded deeps in his reason otherwise concealed from himself.
+History, knowledge, science, stop at the point in which mystery begins.
+There they meet with the world of shadow.  Not an inch of that world can
+they penetrate without the aid of poetry and religion, two necessities of
+intellectual man much more nearly allied than the votaries of the
+practical and the positive suppose.  To the aid and elevation of both
+those necessities comes in music, and there has never existed a religion
+in the world which has not demanded music as its ally.  If, as I said
+frankly, it is only in certain moods of my mind that I enjoy music, it is
+only because in certain moods of my mind I am capable of quitting the
+guidance of prosaic reason for the world of shadow; that I am so
+susceptible as at every hour, were my nature perfect, I should be to the
+mysterious influences of poetry and religion.  Do you understand what I
+wish to express?"
+
+"Yes, I do, and clearly."
+
+"Then, Signorina, you are forbidden to undervalue the gift of song.  You
+must feel its power over the heart, when you enter the opera-house; over
+the soul, when you kneel in a cathedral."
+
+"Oh," cried Isaura, with enthusiasm, a rich glow mantling over her lovely
+face, "how I thank you!  Is it you who say you do not love music?  How
+much better you understand it than I did till this moment!"
+
+Here Mrs. Morley, joined by the American poet, came to the corner in
+which the Englishman and the singer had niched themselves.  The poet
+began to talk, the other guests gathered round, and every one listened
+reverentially till the party broke up.  Colonel Morley handed Isaura to
+her carriage; the she-mountebank again fell to the lot of Graham.
+
+"Signor," said she, as he respectfully placed her shawl round her
+scarlet-and-gilt jacket, "are we so far from Paris that you cannot spare
+the time to call?  My child does not sing in public, but at home you can
+hear her.  It is not every woman's voice that is sweetest at home."
+
+Graham bowed, and said he would call on the morrow.  Isaura mused in
+silent delight over the words which had so extolled the art of the
+singer.  Alas, poor child! she could not guess that in those words,
+reconciling her to the profession of the stage, the speaker was pleading
+against his own heart.
+
+There was in Graham's nature, as I think it commonly is in that of most
+true orators, a wonderful degree of intellectual conscience which
+impelled him to acknowledge the benignant influences of song, and to set
+before the young singer the noblest incentives to the profession to which
+he deemed her assuredly destined; but in so doing he must have felt that
+he was widening the gulf between her life and his own.  Perhaps he wished
+to widen it in proportion as he dreaded to listen to any voice in his
+heart which asked if the gulf might not be overleapt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ON the morrow Graham called at the villa at A------.  The two ladies
+received him in Isaura's chosen sitting-room.
+
+Somehow or other, conversation at first languished.  Graham was reserved
+and distant, Isaura shy and embarrassed.  The Venosta had the frais of
+making talk to herself.  Probably at another time Graham would have been
+amused and interested in the observation of a character new to him, and
+thoroughly southern,--lovable not more from its naive simplicity of
+kindliness than from various little foibles and vanities, all of which
+were harmless, and some of them endearing as those of a child whom it is
+easy to make happy, and whom it seems so cruel to pain; and with all the
+Venosta's deviations from the polished and tranquil good taste of the
+beau monde, she had that indescribable grace which rarely deserts a
+Florentine, so that you might call her odd but not vulgar; while, though
+uneducated, except in the way of her old profession, and never having
+troubled herself to read anything but a libretto and the pious books
+commended to her by her confessor, the artless babble of her talk every
+now and then flashed out with a quaint humour, lighting up terse
+fragments of the old Italian wisdom which had mysteriously embedded
+themselves in the groundwork of her mind.
+
+But Graham was not at this time disposed to judge the poor Venosta kindly
+or fairly.  Isaura had taken high rank in his thoughts.  He felt an
+impatient resentment mingled with anxiety and compassionate tenderness at
+a companionship which seemed to him derogatory to the position he would
+have assigned to a creature so gifted, and unsafe as a guide amidst the
+perils and trials to which the youth, the beauty, and the destined
+profession of Isaura were exposed.  Like most Englishmen--especially
+Englishmen wise in the knowledge of life--he held in fastidious regard
+the proprieties and conventions by which the dignity of woman is fenced
+round; and of those proprieties and conventions the Venosta naturally
+appeared to him a very unsatisfactory guardian and representative.
+
+Happily unconscious of these hostile prepossessions, the elder Signora
+chatted on very gayly to the visitor.  She was in excellent spirits;
+people had been very civil to her both at Colonel Morley's and M.
+Louvier's.  The American Minister had praised the scarlet jacket.  She
+was convinced she had made a sensation two nights running.  When the
+_amour propre_ is pleased, the tongue is freed.
+
+The Venosta ran on in praise of Paris and the Parisians; of Louvier and
+his soiree and the pistachio ice; of the Americans, and a certain _creme
+de maraschino_ which she hoped the Signor Inglese had not failed to
+taste,--the _creme de maraschino_ led her thoughts back to Italy.  Then
+she grew mournful.  How she missed the native _beau ciel_!  Paris was
+pleasant, but how absurd to call it "le Paradis des Femmes,"--as if les
+Femmes could find Paradise in a _brouillard_!
+
+"But," she exclaimed, with vivacity of voice and gesticulation, "the
+Signor does not come to hear the parrot talk; he is engaged to come that
+he may hear the nightingale sing.  A drop of honey attracts the fly more
+than a bottle of vinegar."
+
+Graham could not help smiling at this adage.  "I submit," said he, "to
+your comparison as regards myself; but certainly anything less like a
+bottle of vinegar than your amiable conversation I cannot well conceive.
+However, the metaphor apart, I scarcely know how I dare ask Mademoiselle
+to sing after the confession I made to her last night."
+
+"What confession?" asked the Venosta.
+
+"That I know nothing of music and doubt if I can honestly say that I am
+fond of it."
+
+"Not fond of music!  Impossible!  You slander yourself.  He who loves not
+music would have a dull time of it in heaven.  But you are English, and
+perhaps have only heard the music of your own country.  Bad, very bad--a
+heretic's music!  Now listen."
+
+Seating herself at the piano, she began an air from the "Lucia," crying
+out to Isaura to come and sing to her accompaniment.
+
+"Do you really wish it?" asked Isaura of Graham, fixing on him
+questioning, timid eyes.
+
+"I cannot say how much I wish to hear you."
+
+Isaura moved to the instrument, and Graham stood behind her.  Perhaps he
+felt that he should judge more impartially of her voice if not subjected
+to the charm of her face.
+
+But the first note of the voice held him spell-bound.  In itself the
+organ was of the rarest order, mellow and rich, but so soft that its
+power was lost in its sweetness, and so exquisitely fresh in every note.
+
+But the singer's charm was less in voice than in feeling; she conveyed to
+the listener so much more than was said by the words, or even implied by
+the music.  Her song in this caught the art of the painter who impresses
+the mind with the consciousness of a something which the eye cannot
+detect on the canvas.
+
+She seemed to breathe out from the depths of her heart the intense pathos
+of the original romance, so far exceeding that of the opera,-the human
+tenderness, the mystic terror of a tragic love-tale more solemn in its
+sweetness than that of Verona.
+
+When her voice died away no applause came,--not even a murmur.  Isaura
+bashfully turned round to steal a glance at her silent listener, and
+beheld moistened eyes and quivering lips.  At that moment she was
+reconciled to her art.  Graham rose abruptly and walked to the window.
+
+"Do you doubt now if you are fond of music?" cried the Venosta.
+
+"This is more than music," answered Graham, still with averted face.
+Then, after a short pause, he approached Isaura, and said, with a
+melancholy half-smile,--
+
+"I do not think, Mademoiselle, that I could dare to hear you often; it
+would take me too far from the hard real world: and he who would not be
+left behindhand on the road that he must journey cannot indulge frequent
+excursions into fairyland."
+
+"Yet," said Isaura, in a tone yet sadder, "I was told in my childhood, by
+one whose genius gives authority to her words, that beside the real world
+lies the ideal.  The real world then seemed rough to me.  'Escape,' said
+my counsellor, 'is granted from that stony thoroughfare into the fields
+beyond its formal hedgerows.  The ideal world has its sorrows, but it
+never admits despair.'  That counsel then, methought, decided my choice
+of life.  I know not now if it has done so."
+
+"Fate," answered Graham, slowly and thoughtfully, "Fate, which is not
+the ruler but the servant of Providence, decides our choice of life, and
+rarely from outward circumstances.  Usually the motive power is within.
+We apply the word 'genius' to the minds of the gifted few; but in all of
+us there is a genius that is inborn, a pervading something which
+distinguishes our very identity, and dictates to the conscience that
+which we are best fitted to do and to be.  In so dictating it compels
+our choice of life; or if we resist the dictate, we find at the close
+that we have gone astray.  My choice of life thus compelled is on the
+stony thoroughfares, yours in the green fields."
+
+As he thus said, his face became clouded and mournful.  The Venosta,
+quickly tired of a conversation in which she had no part, and having
+various little household matters to attend to, had during this dialogue
+slipped unobserved from the room; yet neither Isaura nor Graham felt the
+sudden consciousness that they were alone which belongs to lovers.
+"Why," asked Isaura, with that magic smile reflected in countless dimples
+which, even when her words were those of a man's reasoning, made them
+seem gentle with a woman's sentiment,--"why must your road through the
+world be so exclusively the stony one?  It is not from necessity, it can.
+not be from taste; and whatever definition you give to genius, surely it
+is not your own inborn genius that dictates to you a constant exclusive
+adherence to the commonplace of life."
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle, do not misrepresent me.  I did not say that I could
+not sometimes quit the real world for fairyland,--I said that I could not
+do so often.  My vocation is not that of a poet or artist."
+
+"It is that of an orator, I know," said Isaura, kindling; "so they tell
+me, and I believe them.  But is not the orator somewhat akin to the poet?
+Is not oratory an art?"
+
+"Let us dismiss the word orator; as applied to English public life, it is
+a very deceptive expression.  The Englishman who wishes to influence his
+countrymen by force of words spoken must mix with them in their beaten
+thoroughfares; must make himself master of their practical views and
+interests; must be conversant with their prosaic occupations and
+business; must understand how to adjust their loftiest aspirations to
+their material welfare; must avoid as the fault most dangerous to himself
+and to others that kind of eloquence which is called oratory in France,
+and which has helped to make the French the worst politicians in Europe.
+Alas!  Mademoiselle, I fear that an English statesman would appear to you
+a very dull orator."
+
+"I see that I spoke foolishly,--yes, you show me that the world of the
+statesman lies apart from that of the artist.  Yet--"
+
+"Yet what?"
+
+"May not the ambition of both be the same?"
+
+"How so?"
+
+"To refine the rude, to exalt the mean; to identify their own fame with
+some new beauty, some new glory, added to the treasure-house of all."
+
+Graham bowed his head reverently, and then raised it with the flush of
+enthusiasm on his cheek and brow.
+
+"Oh, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "what a sure guide and what a noble
+inspirer to a true Englishman's ambition nature has fitted you to be,
+were it not--"  He paused abruptly.
+
+This outburst took Isaura utterly by surprise.  She had been accustomed
+to the language of compliment till it had begun to pall, but a compliment
+of this kind was the first that had ever reached her ear.  She had no
+words in answer to it; involuntarily she placed her hand on her heart as
+if to still its beatings.  But the unfinished exclamation, "Were it not,"
+troubled her more than the preceding words had flattered, and
+mechanically she murmured, "Were it not--what?"
+
+"Oh," answered Graham, affecting a tone of gayety, "I felt too ashamed of
+my selfishness as man to finish my sentence."
+
+"Do so, or I shall fancy you refrained lest you might wound me as woman."
+
+"Not so; on the contrary, had I gone on it would have been to say that a
+woman of your genius, and more especially of such mastery in the most
+popular and fascinating of all arts, could not be contented if she
+inspired nobler thoughts in a single breast,--she must belong to the
+public, or rather the public must belong to her; it is but a corner of
+her heart that an individual can occupy, and even that individual must
+merge his existence in hers, must be contented to reflect a ray of the
+light she sheds on admiring thousands.  Who could dare to say to you,
+'Renounce your career; confine your genius, your art, to the petty circle
+of home'?  To an actress, a singer, with whose fame the world rings, home
+would be a prison.  Pardon me, pardon--"
+
+Isaura had turned away her face to hide tears that would force their way;
+but she held out her hand to him with a childlike frankness, and said
+softly, "I am not offended."  Graham did not trust himself to continue
+the same strain of conversation.  Breaking into a new subject, he said,
+after a constrained pause, "Will you think it very impertinent in so new
+an acquaintance, if I ask how it is that you, an Italian, know our
+language as a native; and is it by Italian teachers that you have been
+trained to think and to feel?"
+
+"Mr. Selby, my second father, was an Englishman, and did not speak any
+other language with comfort to himself.  He was very fond of me; and had
+he been really my father I could not have loved him more.  We were
+constant companions till--till I lost him."
+
+"And no mother left to console you!"
+
+Isaura shook her head mournfully, and the Venosta here re-entered.
+Graham felt conscious that he had already stayed too long, and took
+leave.
+
+They knew that they were to meet that evening at the Savarins'.
+
+To Graham that thought was not one of unmixed pleasure; the more he knew
+of Isaura, the more he felt self-reproach that he had allowed himself to
+know her at all.
+
+But after he had left, Isaura sang low to herself the song which had so
+affected her listener; then she fell into abstracted revery, but she felt
+a strange and new sort of happiness.  In dressing for M. Savarin's
+dinner, and twining the classic ivy wreath in her dark locks, her Italian
+servant exclaimed, "How beautiful the Signorina looks to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+M. Savarin was one of the most brilliant of that galaxy of literary men
+which shed lustre on the reign of Louis Philippe.
+
+His was an intellect peculiarly French in its lightness and grace.
+Neither England nor Germany nor America has produced any resemblance to
+it.  Ireland has, in Thomas Moore; but then in Irish genius there is so
+much that is French.
+
+M. Savarin was free from the ostentatious extravagance which had come
+into vogue with the Empire.  His house and establishment were modestly
+maintained within the limit of an income chiefly, perhaps entirely,
+derived from literary profits.
+
+Though he gave frequent dinners, it was but to few at a time, and without
+show or pretence.  Yet the dinners, though simple, were perfect of their
+kind; and the host so contrived to infuse his own playful gayety into the
+temper of his guests, that the feasts at his house were considered the
+pleasantest at Paris.  On this occasion the party extended to ten, the
+largest number his table admitted.
+
+All the French guests belonged to the Liberal party, though in changing
+tints of the tricolor. _Place aux dames_!  first to be named were the
+Countess de Craon and Madame Vertot, both without husbands.  The Countess
+had buried the Count, Madame Vertot had separated from Monsieur.  The
+Countess was very handsome, but she was sixty; Madame Vertot was twenty
+years younger, but she was very plain.  She had quarrelled with the
+distinguished author for whose sake she had separated from Monsieur, and
+no man had since presumed to think that he could console a lady so plain
+for the loss of an author so distinguished.
+
+Both these ladies were very clever.  The Countess had written lyrical
+poems entitled "Cries of Liberty," and a drama of which Danton was the
+hero, and the moral too revolutionary for admission to the stage; but at
+heart the Countess was not at all a revolutionist,--the last person in
+the world to do or desire anything that could bring a washerwoman an inch
+nearer to a countess.  She was one of those persons who play with fire in
+order to appear enlightened.
+
+Madame Vertot was of severer mould.  She had knelt at the feet of M.
+Thiers, and went into the historico-political line.  She had written a
+remarkable book upon the modern Carthage (meaning England), and more
+recently a work that had excited much attention upon the Balance of
+Power, in which she proved it to be the interest of civilization and the
+necessity of Europe that Belgium should be added to France, and Prussia
+circumscribed to the bounds of its original margraviate.  She showed how
+easily these two objects could have been effected by a constitutional
+monarch instead of an egotistical Emperor.  Madame Vertot was a decided
+Orleanist.
+
+Both these ladies condescended to put aside authorship in general
+society.  Next amongst our guests let me place the Count de Passy and
+_Madame son espouse_.  The Count was seventy-one, and, it is needless to
+add, a type of Frenchman rapidly vanishing, and not likely to find itself
+renewed.  How shall I describe him so as to make my English reader
+understand?  Let me try by analogy.  Suppose a man of great birth and
+fortune, who in his youth had been an enthusiastic friend of Lord Byron
+and a jocund companion of George IV.; who had in him an immense degree of
+lofty romantic sentiment with an equal degree of well-bred worldly
+cynicism, but who, on account of that admixture, which is so rare, kept a
+high rank in either of the two societies into which, speaking broadly,
+civilized life divides itself,--the romantic and the cynical.  The Count
+de Passy had been the most ardent among the young disciples of
+Chateaubriand, the most brilliant among the young courtiers of Charles X.
+Need I add that he had been a terrible lady-killer?
+
+But in spite of his admiration of Chateaubriand and his allegiance to
+Charles X., the Count had been always true to those caprices of the
+French noblesse from which he descended,--caprices which destroyed them
+in the old Revolution; caprices belonging to the splendid ignorance of
+their nation in general and their order in particular.  Speaking without
+regard to partial exceptions, the French _gentilhomme_ is essentially a
+Parisian; a Parisian is essentially impressionable to the impulse or
+fashion of the moment. Is it _a la mode_ for the moment to be Liberal or
+anti-Liberal?  Parisians embrace and kiss each other, and swear through
+life and death to adhere forever to the mode of the moment.  The Three
+Days were the mode of the moment,--the Count de Passy became an
+enthusiastic Orleanist.  Louis Philippe was very gracious to him.  He was
+decorated; he was named _prefet_ of his department; he was created
+senator; he was about to be sent Minister to a German Court when Louis
+Philippe fell.  The Republic was proclaimed.  The Count caught the
+popular contagion, and after exchanging tears and kisses with patriots
+whom a week before he had called _canaille_, he swore eternal fidelity to
+the Republic.  The fashion of the moment suddenly became Napoleonic, and
+with the _coup d'etat_ the Republic was metamorphosed into an Empire.
+The Count wept on the bosoms of all the _Vieilles Moustaches_ he could
+find, and rejoiced that the sun of Austerlitz had re-arisen.  But after
+the affair of Mexico the sun of Austerlitz waxed very sickly.
+Imperialism was fast going out of fashion.  The Count transferred his
+affection to Jules Favre, and joined the ranks of the advanced Liberals.
+During all these political changes, the Count had remained very much the
+same man in private life; agreeable, good-natured, witty, and, above all,
+a devotee of the fair sex.  When he had reached the age of sixty-eight he
+was still _fort bel homme_, unmarried, with a grand presence and charming
+manner.  At that age he said, "Je me range," and married a young lady of
+eighteen.  She adored her husband, and was wildly jealous of him; while
+the Count did not seem at all jealous of her, and submitted to her
+adoration with a gentle shrug of the shoulders.
+
+The three other guests who, with Graham and the two Italian ladies, made
+up the complement of ten, were the German Count von Rudesheim, a
+celebrated French physician named Bacourt, and a young author whom
+Savarin had admitted into his clique and declared to be of rare promise.
+This author, whose real name was Gustave Rameau, but who, to prove, I
+suppose, the sincerity of that scorn for ancestry which he professed,
+published his verses under the patrician designation of Alphonse de
+Valcour, was about twenty-four, and might have passed at the first glance
+for younger; but, looking at him closely, the signs of old age were
+already stamped on his visage.
+
+He was undersized, and of a feeble slender frame.  In the eyes of women
+and artists the defects of his frame were redeemed by the extraordinary
+beauty of the face.  His black hair, carefully parted in the centre, and
+worn long and flowing, contrasted the whiteness of a high though narrow
+forehead, and the delicate pallor of his cheeks.  His feature, were very
+regular, his eyes singularly bright; but the expression of the face spoke
+of fatigue and exhaustion; the silky locks were already thin, and
+interspersed with threads of silver; the bright eyes shone out from
+sunken orbits; the lines round the mouth were marked as they are in the
+middle age of one who has lived too fast.
+
+It was a countenance that might have excited a compassionate and tender
+interest but for something arrogant and supercilious in the expression,-
+something that demanded not tender pity but enthusiastic admiration.  Yet
+that expression was displeasing rather to men than to women; and one
+could well conceive that, among the latter, the enthusiastic admiration
+it challenged would be largely conceded.
+
+The conversation at dinner was in complete contrast to that at the
+Americans' the day before.  There the talk, though animated, had been
+chiefly earnest and serious; here it was all touch and go, sally and
+repartee.  The subjects were the light on lots and lively anecdotes of
+the day, not free from literature and politics, but both treated as
+matters of persiflage, hovered round with a jest and quitted with an
+epigram.  The two French lady authors, the Count de Passy, the physician,
+and the host far outspoke all the other guests.  Now and then, however,
+the German Count struck in with an ironical remark condensing a great
+deal of grave wisdom, and the young author with ruder and more biting
+sarcasm.  If the sarcasm told, he showed his triumph by a low-pitched
+laugh; if it failed, he evinced his displeasure by a contemptuous sneer
+or a grim scowl.
+
+Isaura and Graham were not seated near each other, and were for the most
+part contented to be listeners.
+
+On adjourning to the salon after dinner, Graham, however, was approaching
+the chair in which Isaura had placed herself, when the young author,
+forestalling him, dropped into the seat next to her, and began a
+conversation in a voice so low that it might have passed for a whisper.
+The Englishman drew back and observed them.  He soon perceived, with a
+pang of jealousy not unmingled with scorn, that the author's talk
+appeared to interest Isaura.  She listened with evident attention; and
+when she spoke in return, though Graham did not hear her words, he could
+observe on her expressive countenance an increased gentleness of aspect.
+
+"I hope," said the physician, joining Graham, as most of the other guests
+gathered round Savarin, who was in his liveliest vein of anecdote and
+wit,--"I hope that the fair Italian will not allow that ink-bottle imp to
+persuade her that she has fallen in love with him."
+
+"Do young ladies generally find him so seductive?" asked Graham, with a
+forced smile.
+
+"Probably enough.  He has the reputation of being very clever and very
+wicked, and that is a sort of character which has the serpent's
+fascination for the daughters of Eve."
+
+"Is the reputation merited?"
+
+"As to the cleverness, I am not a fair judge.  I dislike that sort of
+writing which is neither manlike nor womanlike, and in which young Rameau
+excels.  He has the knack of finding very exaggerated phrases by which to
+express commonplace thoughts.  He writes verses about love in words so
+stormy that you might fancy that Jove was descending upon Semele; but
+when you examine his words, as a sober pathologist like myself is
+disposed to do, your fear for the peace of households vanishes,--they are
+Fox et proeterea nihil; no man really in love would use them.  He writes
+prose about the wrongs of humanity.  You feel for humanity; you say,
+'Grant the wrongs, now for the remedy,'--and you find nothing but
+balderdash.  Still I am bound to say that both in verse and prose Gustave
+Rameau is in unison with a corrupt taste of the day, and therefore he is
+coming into vogue.  So much as to his writings; as to his wickedness, you
+have only to look at him to feel sure that he is not a hundredth part so
+wicked as he wishes to seem.  In a word, then, M. Gustave Rameau is a
+type of that somewhat numerous class among the youth of Paris, which I
+call 'the lost Tribe of Absinthe.'  There is a set of men who begin to
+live full gallop while they are still boys.  As a general rule, they are
+originally of the sickly frames which can scarcely even trot, much less
+gallop without the spur of stimulants, and no stimulant so fascinates
+their peculiar nervous system as absinthe.  The number of patients in
+this set who at the age of thirty are more worn out than septuagenarians
+increases so rapidly as to make one dread to think what will be the next
+race of Frenchmen.  To the predilection for absinthe young Rameau and the
+writers of his set add the imitation of Heine, after, indeed, the manner
+of caricaturists, who effect a likeness striking in proportion as it is
+ugly.  It is not easy to imitate the pathos and the wit of Heine; but it
+is easy to imitate his defiance of the Deity, his mockery of right and
+wrong, his relentless war on that heroic standard of thought and action
+which the writers who exalt their nation intuitively preserve.  Rameau
+cannot be a Heine, but he can be to Heine what a misshapen snarling dwarf
+is to a mangled blaspheming Titan.  Yet he interests the women in
+general, and he evidently interests the fair Signorina in especial."
+
+Just as Bacourt finished that last sentence, Isaura lifted the head which
+had hitherto bent in an earnest listening attitude that seemed to justify
+the Doctor's remarks, and looked round.  Her eyes met Graham's with the
+fearless candour which made half the charm of their bright yet soft
+intelligence; but she dropped them suddenly with a half-start and a
+change of colour, for the expression of Graham's face was unlike that
+which she had hitherto seen on it,--it was hard, stern, and somewhat
+disdainful.  A minute or so afterwards she rose, and in passing across
+the room towards the group round the host, paused at a table covered with
+books and prints near to which Graham was standing alone.  The Doctor had
+departed in company with the German Count.
+
+Isaura took up one of the prints.
+
+"Ah!" she exclaimed, "Sorrento, my Sorrento.  Have you ever visited
+Sorrento, Mr. Vane?"
+
+Her question and her movement were evidently in conciliation.  Was the
+conciliation prompted by coquetry, or by a sentiment more innocent and
+artless?
+
+Graham doubted, and replied coldly, as he bent over the print,--
+
+"I once stayed there a few days, but my recollection of it is not
+sufficiently lively to enable me to recognize its features in this
+design."
+
+"That is the house, at least so they say, of Tasso's father; of course
+you visited that?"
+
+"Yes, it was a hotel in my time; I lodged there."
+
+"And I too.  There I first read 'The Gerusalemine.'" The last words were
+said in Italian, with a low measured tone, inwardly and dreamily.
+
+A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking in French here struck in and
+prevented Graham's rejoinder: "Quel joli dessin!  What is it,
+Mademoiselle?"
+
+Graham recoiled; the speaker was Gustave Rameau, who had, unobserved,
+first watched Isaura, then rejoined her side.
+
+"A view of Sorrento, Monsieur, but it does not do justice to the place.
+I was pointing out the house which belonged to Tasso's father."
+
+"Tasso!  Hein! and which is the fair Eleonora's?"
+
+"Monsieur," answered Isaura, rather startled at that question, from a
+professed _homme de lettres_, "Eleonora did not live at Sorrento."
+
+"Tant pis pour Sorrente," said the homme de lettres, carelessly.  "No one
+would care for Tasso if it were not for Eleonora."
+
+"I should rather have thought," said Graham, "that no one would have
+cared for Eleonora if it were not for Tasso."
+
+Rameau glanced at the Englishman superciliously.  "Pardon, Monsieur, in
+every age a love-story keeps its interest; but who cares nowadays for le
+clinquant du Tasse?"
+
+"Le clinquant du Tasse!" exclaimed Isaura, indignantly.
+
+"The expression is Boileau's, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of the 'Sot de
+qualite,' who prefers--
+
+               "'Le clinquant du Tasse a tout l'or de Virgile.'
+
+"But for my part I have as little faith in the last as the first."
+
+"I do not know Latin, and have therefore not read Virgil," said Isaura.
+
+"Possibly," remarked Graham, "Monsieur does not know Italian, and has
+therefore not read Tasso."
+
+"If that be meant in sarcasm," retorted Rameau, "I construe it as a
+compliment.  A Frenchman who is contented to study the masterpieces of
+modern literature need learn no language and read no authors but his
+own."
+
+Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh.  "I should admire the
+frankness of that boast, Monsieur, if in our talk just now you had not
+spoken as contemptuously of what we are accustomed to consider French
+masterpieces as you have done of Virgil and Tasso."
+
+"Ah, Mademoiselle!  it is not my fault if you have had teachers of taste
+so _rococo_ as to bid you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted
+tragedies of Corneille and Racine.  Poetry of a court, not of a people,
+one simple novel, one simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of
+the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state,
+denounces the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth
+a library of the rubbish which pedagogues call 'the classics.'  We agree,
+at least, in one thing, Mademoiselle; we both do homage to the genius of
+your friend Madame de Grantmesnil."
+
+"Your friend, Signorina!" cried Graham, incredulously; "is Madame de
+Grantmesnil your friend?"
+
+"The dearest I have in the world."
+
+Graham's face darkened; he turned away in silence, and in another minute
+vanished from the room, persuading himself that he felt not one pang of
+jealousy in leaving Gustave Rameau by the side of Isaura.  "Her dearest
+friend Madame de Grantmesnil!" he muttered.
+
+A word now on Isaura's chief correspondent.  Madame de Grantmesnil was a
+woman of noble birth and ample fortune.  She had separated from her
+husband in the second year after marriage.  She was a singularly eloquent
+writer, surpassed among contemporaries of her sex in popularity and
+renown only by Georges Sand.
+
+At least as fearless as that great novelist in the frank exposition of
+her views, she had commenced her career in letters by a work of
+astonishing power and pathos, directed against the institution of
+marriage as regulated in Roman Catholic communities.  I do not know that
+it said more on this delicate subject than the English Milton has said;
+but then Milton did not write for a Roman Catholic community, nor adopt a
+style likely to captivate the working classes.  Madame de Grantmesnil's
+first book was deemed an attack on the religion of the country, and
+captivated those among the working classes who had already abjured that
+religion.  This work was followed up by others more or less in defiance
+of "received opinions,"--some with political, some with social
+revolutionary aim and tendency, but always with a singular purity of
+style.  Search all her books, and however you might revolt from her
+doctrine, you could not find a hazardous expression.  The novels of
+English young ladies are naughty in comparison.  Of late years, whatever
+might be hard or audacious in her political or social doctrines softened
+itself into charm amid the golden haze of romance.  Her writings had
+grown more and more purely artistic,--poetizing what is good and
+beautiful in the realities of life rather than creating a false ideal out
+of what is vicious and deformed.  Such a woman, separated young from her
+husband, could not enunciate such opinions and lead a life so independent
+and uncontrolled as Madame de Grantmesnil had done, without scandal,
+without calumny.  Nothing, however, in her actual life had ever been so
+proved against her as to lower the high position she occupied in right of
+birth, fortune, renown.  Wherever she went she was _fetee_, as in England
+foreign princes, and in America foreign authors, are _fetes_.  Those who
+knew her well concurred in praise of her lofty, generous, lovable
+qualities.  Madame de Grantmesnil had known Mr. Selby; and when, at his
+death, Isaura, in the innocent age between childhood and youth, had been
+left the most sorrowful and most lonely creature on the face of the
+earth, this famous woman, worshipped by the rich for her intellect,
+adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to the orphan's friendless
+side, breathing love once more into her pining heart, and waking for the
+first time the desires of genius, the aspirations of art, in the dim
+self-consciousness of a soul between sleep and waking.
+
+But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in Graham's place, and suppose that
+you were beginning to fall in love with a girl whom for many good reasons
+you ought not to marry; suppose that in the same hour in which you were
+angrily conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom it wounds your
+self-esteem to consider a rival, the girl tells you that her dearest
+friend is a woman who is famed for her hostility to the institution of
+marriage!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+On the same day in which Graham dined with the Savarins, M. Louvier
+assembled round his table the elite of the young Parisians who
+constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he had invited his new
+friend the Marquis de Rochebriant.  Most of them belonged to the
+Legitimist party, the noblesse of the faubourg; those who did not,
+belonged to no political party at all,--indifferent to the cares of
+mortal States as the gods of Epicurus.  Foremost among this _Jeunesse
+doree_ were Alain's kinsmen, Raoul and Enguerrand de Vandemar.  To these
+Louvier introduced him with a burly parental bonhomie, as if he were the
+head of the family.  "I need not bid you, young folks, to make friends
+with each other.  A Vandemar and a Rochebriant are not made friends,--
+they are born friends."  So saying he turned to his other guests.
+
+Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint melt away in the cordial
+warmth with which his cousins greeted him.  These young men had a
+striking family likeness to each other, and yet in feature, colouring,
+and expression, in all save that strange family likeness, they were
+contrasts.  Raoul was tall, and, though inclined to be slender, with
+sufficient breadth of shoulder to indicate no inconsiderable strength of
+frame.  His hair worn short and his silky beard worn long were dark; so
+were his eyes, shaded by curved drooping lashes; his complexion was pale,
+but clear and healthful.  In repose the expression of his face was that
+of a somewhat melancholy indolence, but in speaking it became singularly
+sweet, with a smile of the exquisite urbanity which no artificial
+politeness can bestow; it must emanate from that native high breeding
+which has its source in goodness of heart.
+
+Enguerrand was fair, with curly locks of a golden chestnut.  He wore no
+beard, only a small mustache rather darker than his hair.  His complexion
+might in itself be called effeminate, its bloom was so fresh and
+delicate; but there was so much of boldness and energy in the play of his
+countenance, the hardy outline of the lips, and the open breadth of the
+forehead, that "effeminate" was an epithet no one ever assigned to his
+aspect.  He was somewhat under the middle height, but beautifully
+proportioned, carried himself well, and somehow or other did not look
+short even by the side of tall men.  Altogether he seemed formed to be a
+mother's darling, and spoiled by women, yet to hold his own among men
+with a strength of will more evident in his look and his bearing than it
+was in those of his graver and statelier brother.
+
+Both were considered by their young co-equals models in dress, but in
+Raoul there was no sign that care or thought upon dress had been
+bestowed; the simplicity of his costume was absolute and severe.  On his
+plain shirt-front there gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled
+not a ring.  Enguerrand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in
+his attire; the broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of
+the Fairies.  His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist-
+buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rental of
+Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing.  He was one of those
+happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make constant presents.  All about him
+was so bright that the atmosphere around seemed gayer for his presence.
+
+In one respect at least the brothers closely resembled each other,--in
+that exquisite graciousness of manner for which the genuine French noble
+is traditionally renowned; a graciousness that did not desert them even
+when they came reluctantly into contact with _roturiers_ or republicans;
+but the graciousness became _egalite, fraternite_, towards one of their
+caste and kindred.
+
+"We must do our best to make Paris pleasant to you," said Raoul, still
+retaining in his grasp the hand he had taken.
+
+"_Vilain cousin_," said the livelier Enguerrand, "to have been in Paris
+twenty-four hours, and without letting us know."
+
+"Has not your father told you that I called upon him?"
+
+"Our father," answered Raoul, "was not so savage as to conceal that fact;
+but he said you were only here on business for a day or two, had declined
+his invitation, and would not give your address. _Pauvre pere_!  we
+scolded him well for letting you escape from us thus.  My mother has not
+forgiven him yet; we must present you to her to-morrow.  I answer for
+your liking her almost as much as she will like you."
+
+Before Alain could answer dinner was announced.  Alain's place at dinner
+was between his cousins.  How pleasant they made themselves!  It was the
+first time in which Alain had been brought into such familiar
+conversation with countrymen of his own rank as well as his own age.  His
+heart warmed to them.  The general talk of the other guests was strange
+to his ear; it ran much upon horses and races, upon the opera and the
+ballet; it was enlivened with satirical anecdotes of persons whose names
+were unknown to the Provincial; not a word was said that showed the
+smallest interest in politics or the slightest acquaintance with
+literature.  The world of these well-born guests seemed one from which
+all that concerned the great mass of mankind was excluded, yet the talk
+was that which could only be found in a very polished society.  In it
+there was not much wit, but there was a prevalent vein of gayety, and the
+gayety was never violent, the laughter was never loud; the scandals
+circulated might imply cynicism the most absolute, but in language the
+most refined.  The Jockey Club of Paris has its perfume.
+
+Raoul did not mix in the general conversation; he devoted himself
+pointedly to the amusement of his cousin, explaining to him the point of
+the anecdotes circulated, or hitting off in terse sentences the
+characters of the talkers.
+
+Enguerrand was evidently of temper more vivacious than his brother, and
+contributed freely to the current play of light gossip and mirthful
+sally.
+
+Louvier, seated between a duke and a Russian prince, said little except
+to recommend a wine or an entree, but kept his eye constantly on the
+Vandemars and Alain.
+
+Immediately after coffee the guests departed.  Before they did so,
+however, Raoul introduced his cousin to those of the party most
+distinguished by hereditary rank or social position.  With these the name
+of Rochebriant was too historically famous not to insure respect of its
+owner; they welcomed him among them as if he were their brother.
+
+The French duke claimed him as a connection by an alliance in the
+fourteenth century; the Russian prince had known the late Marquis, and
+trusted that the son would allow him to improve into friendship the
+acquaintance he had formed with the father.
+
+Those ceremonials over, Raoul linked his arm in Alain's and said: "I am
+not going to release you so soon after we have caught you.  You must come
+with me to a house in which I at least spend an hour or two every
+evening.  I am at home there.  Bah!  I take no refusal.  Do not suppose I
+carry you off to Bohemia,--a country which, I am sorry to say, Enguerrand
+now and then visits, but which is to me as unknown as the mountains of
+the moon.  The house I speak of is _comme il faut_ to the utmost.  It is
+that of the Contessa di Rimini,--a charming Italian by marriage, but by
+birth and in character _on ne peut plus Francaise_.  My mother adores
+her."
+
+That dinner at M. Louvier's had already effected a great change in the
+mood and temper of Alain de Rochebriant; he felt, as if by magic, the
+sense of youth, of rank, of station, which had been so suddenly checked
+and stifled, warmed to life within his veins.  He should have deemed
+himself a boor had he refused the invitation so frankly tendered.
+
+But on reaching the _coupe_ which the brothers kept in common, and seeing
+it only held two, he drew back.
+
+"Nay, enter, mon cher," said Raoul, divining the cause of his hesitation;
+"Enguerrand has gone on to his club."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"Tell me," said Raoul, when they were in the carriage, "how you came to
+know M. Louvier."
+
+"He is my chief mortgagee."
+
+"H'm! that explains it.  But you might be in worse hands; the man has a
+character for liberality."
+
+"Did your father mention to you my circumstances, and the reason that
+brings me to Paris?"
+
+"Since you put the question point-blank, my dear cousin, he did."
+
+"He told you how poor I am, and how keen must be my lifelong struggle to
+keep Rochebriant as the home of my race?"
+
+"He told us all that could make us still more respect the Marquis de
+Rochebriant, and still more eagerly long to know our cousin and the head
+of our house," answered Raoul, with a certain nobleness of tone and
+manner.
+
+Alain pressed his kinsman's hand with grateful emotion.  "Yet," he said
+falteringly, "your father agreed with me that my circumstances would not
+allow me to--"
+
+"Bah!" interrupted Raoul, with a gentle laugh; "my father is a very
+clever man, doubtless, but he knows only the world of his own day,
+nothing of the world of ours.  I and Enguerrand will call on you
+to-morrow, to take you to my mother, and before doing so, to consult as
+to affairs in general.  On this last matter Enguerrand is an oracle.
+Here we are at the Contessa's."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Contessa di Rimini received her visitors in a boudoir furnished with
+much apparent simplicity, but a simplicity by no means inexpensive.  The
+draperies were but of chintz, and the walls covered with the same
+material,--a lively pattern, in which the prevalents were rose-colour and
+white; but the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the
+cabinets or arranged on the shelves, the small knickknacks scattered on
+the tables, were costly rarities of art.
+
+The Contessa herself was a woman who had somewhat passed her thirtieth
+year,--not strikingly handsome, but exquisitely pretty.  "There is," said
+a great French writer, "only one way in which a woman can be handsome,
+but a hundred thousand ways in which she can be pretty;" and it would be
+impossible to reckon up the number of ways in which Adeline di Rimini
+carried off the prize in prettiness.
+
+Yet it would be unjust to the personal attractions of the Contessa to
+class them all under the word "prettiness."  When regarded more
+attentively, there was an expression in her countenance that might almost
+be called divine, it spoke so unmistakably of a sweet nature and an
+untroubled soul.  An English poet once described her by repeating the old
+lines,
+
+          "Her face is like the milky way I' the sky,
+          --A meeting of gentle lights without a name."
+
+She was not alone; an elderly lady sat on an armchair by the fire,
+engaged in knitting; and a man, also elderly, and whose dress proclaimed
+him an ecclesiastic, sat at the opposite corner, with a large Angora cat
+on his lap.
+
+"I present to you, Madame," said Raoul, "my new-found cousin, the
+seventeenth Marquis de Rochebriant, whom I am proud to consider on the
+male side the head of our house, representing its eldest branch.  Welcome
+him for my sake,--in future he will be welcome for his own."
+
+The Contessa replied very graciously to this introduction, and made room
+for Alain on the divan from which she had risen.
+
+The old lady looked up from her knitting; the ecclesiastic removed the
+cat from his lap.  Said the old lady, "I announce myself to M. le
+Marquis.  I knew his mother well enough to be invited to his christening;
+otherwise I have no pretension to the acquaintance of a cavalier _si
+beau_, being old, rather deaf, very stupid, exceedingly poor--"
+
+"And," interrupted Raoul, "the woman in all Paris the most adored for
+_bonte_, and consulted for _savoir vivre_ by the young cavaliers whom she
+deigns to receive.  Alain, I present you to Madame de Maury, the widow of
+a distinguished author and academician, and the daughter of the brave
+Henri de Gerval, who fought for the good cause in La Vendee.  I present
+you also to the Abbe Vertpre, who has passed his life in the vain
+endeavour to make other men as good as himself."
+
+"Base flatterer!" said the Abbe, pinching Raoul's ear with one hand,
+while he extended the other to Alain.  "Do not let your cousin frighten
+you from knowing me, Monsieur le Marquis; when he was my pupil, he so
+convinced me of the incorrigibility of perverse human nature, that I now
+chiefly address myself to the moral improvement of the brute creation.
+Ask the Contessa if I have not achieved a _beau succes_ with her Angora
+cat.  Three months ago that creature had the two worst propensities of
+man,--he was at once savage and mean; he bit, he stole.  Does he ever
+bite now?  No.  Does he ever steal?  No.  Why?  I have awakened in that
+cat the dormant conscience, and that done, the conscience regulates his
+actions; once made aware of the difference between wrong and right, the
+cat maintains it unswervingly, as if it were a law of nature.  But if,
+with prodigious labour, one does awaken conscience in a human sinner, it
+has no steady effect on his conduct,--he continues to sin all the same.
+Mankind at Paris, Monsieur le Marquis, is divided between two classes,-
+one bites and the other steals.  Shun both; devote yourself to cats."
+
+The Abbe delivered this oration with a gravity of mien and tone which
+made it difficult to guess whether he spoke in sport or in earnest, in
+simple playfulness or with latent sarcasm.
+
+But on the brow and in the eye of the priest there was a general
+expression of quiet benevolence, which made Alain incline to the belief
+that he was only speaking as a pleasant humourist; and the Marquis
+replied gayly,--
+
+"Monsieur L'Abbe, admitting the superior virtue of cats when taught by so
+intelligent a preceptor, still the business of human life is not
+transacted by cats; and since men must deal with men, permit me, as a
+preliminary caution, to inquire in which class I must rank yourself.  Do
+you bite or do you steal?"
+
+This sally, which showed that the Marquis was already shaking off his
+provincial reserve, met with great success.  Raoul and the Contessa
+laughed merrily; Madame de Maury clapped her hands, and cried "Bien!"
+
+The Abbe replied, with unmoved gravity, "Both.  I am a priest; it is my
+duty to bite the bad and steal from the good, as you will see, Monsieur
+le Marquis, if you will glance at this paper."
+
+Here he handed to Alain a memorial on behalf of an afflicted family who
+had been burnt out of their home, and reduced from comparative ease to
+absolute want.  There was a list appended of some twenty subscribers, the
+last being the Contessa, fifty francs, and Madame de Maury, five.
+
+"Allow me, Marquis," said the Abbe, "to steal from you.  Bless you two-
+fold, _mon fils_!" (taking the napoleon Alain extended to him) "first for
+your charity; secondly, for the effect of its example upon the heart of
+your cousin.  Raoul de Vandemar, stand and deliver.  Bah! what! only ten
+francs."
+
+Raoul made a sign to the Abbe, unperceived by the rest, as he answered,
+"Abbe, I should excel your expectations of my career if I always continue
+worth half as much as my cousin."
+
+Alain felt to the bottom of his heart the delicate tact of his richer
+kinsman in giving less than himself, and the Abbe replied, "Niggard, you
+are pardoned.  Humility is a more difficult virtue to produce than
+charity, and in your case an instance of it is so rare that it merits
+encouragement."
+
+The "tea equipage" was now served in what at Paris is called the English
+fashion; the Contessa presided over it, the guests gathered round the
+table, and the evening passed away in the innocent gayety of a domestic
+circle.  The talk, if not especially intellectual, was at least not
+fashionable.  Books were not discussed, neither were scandals; yet
+somehow or other it was cheery and animated, like that of a happy family
+in a country-house.  Alain thought still the better of Raoul that,
+Parisian though he was, he could appreciate the charm of an evening so
+innocently spent.
+
+On taking leave, the Contessa gave Alain a general invitation to drop in
+whenever he was not better engaged.
+
+"I except only the opera nights," said she.  "My husband has gone to
+Milan on his affairs, and during his absence I do not go to parties; the
+opera I cannot resist."
+
+Raoul set Alain down at his lodgings.  "Au revoir; tomorrow at one
+o'clock expect Enguerrand and myself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Raul and Enguerrand called on Alain at the hour fixed.  "In the first
+place," said Raoul, "I must beg you to accept my mother's regrets that
+she cannot receive you to-day.  She and the Contessa belong to a society
+of ladies formed for visiting the poor, and this is their day; but to-
+morrow you must dine with us _en famille_.  Now to business.  Allow me to
+light my cigar while you confide the whole state of affairs to
+Enguerrand.  Whatever he counsels, I am sure to approve."
+
+Alain, as briefly as he could, stated his circumstances, his mortgages,
+and the hopes which his avow had encouraged him to place in the friendly
+disposition of M. Louvier.  When he had concluded, Enguerrand mused for a
+few moments before replying.  At last he said, "Will you trust me to call
+on Louvier on your behalf?  I shall but inquire if he is inclined to take
+on himself the other mortgages; and if so, on what terms.  Our
+relationship gives me the excuse for my interference; and to say truth, I
+have had much familiar intercourse with the man.  I too am a speculator,
+and have often profited by Louvier's advice.  You may ask what can be his
+object in serving me; he can gain nothing by it.  To this I answer, the
+key to his good offices is in his character.  Audacious though he be as a
+speculator, he is wonderfully prudent as a politician.  This belle France
+of ours is like a stage tumbler; one can never be sure whether it will
+stand on its head or its feet.  Louvier very wisely wishes to feel
+himself safe whatever party comes uppermost.  He has no faith in the
+duration of the Empire; and as, at all events, the Empire will not
+confiscate his millions, he takes no trouble in conciliating
+Imperialists.  But on the principle which induces certain savages to
+worship the devil and neglect the _bon Dieu_, because the devil is
+spiteful and the bon Dieu is too beneficent to injure them, Louvier, at
+heart detesting as well as dreading a republic, lays himself out to
+secure friends with the Republicans of all classes, and pretends to
+espouse their cause; next to them, he is very conciliatory to the
+Orleanists; lastly, though he thinks the Legitimists have no chance, he
+desires to keep well with the nobles of that party, because they exercise
+a considerable influence over that sphere of opinion which belongs to
+fashion,--for fashion is never powerless in Paris.  Raoul and myself are
+no mean authorities in salons and clubs, and a good word from us is worth
+having.
+
+"Besides, Louvier himself in his youth set up for a dandy; and that
+deposed ruler of dandies, our unfortunate kinsman, Victor de Mauleon,
+shed some of his own radiance on the money-lender's son.  But when
+Victor's star was eclipsed, Louvier ceased to gleam.  The dandies cut
+him.  In his heart he exults that the dandies now throng to his
+_soirees_.
+
+"Bref, the millionaire is especially civil to me,--the more so as I know
+intimately two or three eminent journalists; and Louvier takes pains to
+plant garrisons in the press.  I trust I have explained the grounds on
+which I may be a better diplomatist to employ than your _avoue_; and with
+your leave I will go to Louvier at once."
+
+"Let him go," said Raoul.  "Enguerrand never fails in anything he
+undertakes; especially," he added, with a smile half sad, half tender,
+"when one wishes to replenish one's purse."
+
+"I too gratefully grant such an ambassador all powers to treat," said
+Alain.  "I am only ashamed to consign to him a post so much beneath his
+genius," and "his birth" he was about to add, but wisely checked himself.
+Enguerrand said, shrugging his shoulders, "You can't do me a greater
+kindness than by setting my wits at work.  I fall a martyr to _ennui_
+when I am not in action;" he said, and was gone.
+
+"It makes me very melancholy at times," said Raoul, flinging away the end
+of his cigar, "to think that a man so clever and so energetic as
+Enguerrand should be as much excluded from the service of his country as
+if he were an Iroquois Indian.  He would have made a great diplomatist."
+
+"Alas!" replied Alain, with a sigh, "I begin to doubt whether we
+Legitimists are justified in maintaining a useless loyalty to a sovereign
+who renders us morally exiles in the land of our birth."
+
+"I have no doubt on the subject," said Raoul.  "We are not justified on
+the score of policy, but we have no option at present on the score of
+honour.  We should gain so much for ourselves if we adopted the State
+livery and took the State wages that no man would esteem us as patriots;
+we should only be despised as apostates.  So long as Henry V. lives, and
+does not resign his claim, we cannot be active citizens; we must be
+mournful lookers-on.  But what matters it?  We nobles of the old race are
+becoming rapidly extinct.  Under any form of government likely to be
+established in France we are equally doomed.  The French people, aiming
+at an impossible equality, will never again tolerate a race of
+gentilshommes.  They cannot prevent, without destroying commerce and
+capital altogether, a quick succession of men of the day, who form
+nominal aristocracies much more opposed to equality than any hereditary
+class of nobles; but they refuse these fleeting substitutes of born
+patricians all permanent stake in the country, since whatever estate they
+buy must be subdivided at their death my poor Alain, you are making it
+the one ambition of your life to preserve to your posterity the home and
+lands of your forefathers.  How is that possible, even supposing you
+could redeem the mortgages?  You marry some day; you have children, and
+Rochebriant must then be sold to pay for their separate portions.  How
+this condition of things, while rendering us so ineffective to perform
+the normal functions of a noblesse in public life, affects us in private
+life, may be easily conceived.
+
+"Condemned to a career of pleasure and frivolity, we can scarcely escape
+from the contagion of extravagant luxury which forms the vice of the
+time.  With grand names to keep up, and small fortunes whereon to keep
+them, we readily incur embarrassment and debt.  Then neediness conquers
+pride.  We cannot be great merchants, but we can be small gamblers on the
+Bourse, or, thanks to the Credit Mobilier, imitate a cabinet minister,
+and keep a shop under another name.  Perhaps you have heard that
+Enguerrand and I keep a shop.  Pray, buy your gloves there.  Strange fate
+for men whose ancestors fought in the first Crusade--_mais que voulez-
+vous_?"
+
+"I was told of the shop," said Alain; "but the moment I knew you I
+disbelieved the story."
+
+"Quite true.  Shall I confide to you why we resorted to that means of
+finding ourselves in pocket-money?  My father gives us rooms in his
+hotel; the use of his table, which we do not much profit by; and an
+allowance, on which we could not live as young men of our class live at
+Paris.  Enguerrand had his means of spending pocket-money, I mine; but it
+came to the same thing,--the pockets were emptied.  We incurred debts.
+Two years ago my father straitened himself to pay them, saying, 'The next
+time you come to me with debts, however small, you must pay them
+yourselves, or you must marry, and leave it to me to find you wives.'
+This threat appalled us both.  A month afterwards, Enguerrand made a
+lucky hit at the Bourse, and proposed to invest the proceeds in a shop.
+I resisted as long as I could; but Enguerrand triumphed over me, as he
+always does.  He found an excellent deputy in a _bonne_ who had nursed us
+in childhood, and married a journeyman perfumer who understands the
+business.  It answers well; we are not in debt, and we have preserved our
+freedom."
+
+After these confessions Raoul went away, and Alain fell into a mournful
+revery, from which he was roused by a loud ring at his bell.  He opened
+the door, and beheld M. Louvier.  The burly financier was much out of
+breath after making so steep an ascent.  It was in gasps that he
+muttered, "Bon jour; excuse me if I derange you."  Then entering and
+seating himself on a chair, he took some minutes to recover speech,
+rolling his eyes staringly round the meagre, unluxurious room, and then
+concentrating their gaze upon its occupier.
+
+"_Peste_, my dear Marquis!" he said at last, "I hope the next time I
+visit you the ascent may be less arduous.  One would think you were in
+training to ascend the Himalaya."
+
+The haughty noble writhed under this jest, and the spirit inborn in his
+order spoke in his answer.
+
+"I am accustomed to dwell on heights, Monsieur Louvier; the castle of
+Rochebriant is not on a level with the town."  An angry gleam shot out
+from the eyes of the millionaire, but there was no other sign of
+displeasure in his answer.  "_Bien dit, mon cher_; how you remind me of
+your father!  Now, give me leave to speak on affairs.  I have seen your
+cousin Enguerrand de Vandemar. _Homme de moyens_, though _joli garcon_.
+He proposed that you should call on me.  I said 'no' to the _cher petit_
+Enguerrand,--a visit from me was due to you.  To cut matters short, M.
+Gandrin has allowed me to look into your papers.  I was disposed to serve
+you from the first; I am still more disposed to serve you now.  I
+undertake to pay off all your other mortgages, and become sole mortgagee,
+and on terms that I have jotted down on this paper, and which I hope will
+content you."
+
+He placed a paper in Alain's hand, and took out a box, from which he
+extracted a jujube, placed it in his mouth, folded his hands, and
+reclined back in his chair, with his eyes half closed, as if exhausted
+alike by his ascent and his generosity.
+
+In effect, the terms were unexpectedly liberal.  The reduced interest on
+the mortgages would leave the Marquis an income of L1,000 a year instead
+of L400.  Louvier proposed to take on himself the legal cost of transfer,
+and to pay to the Marquis 25,000 francs, on the completion of the deed,
+as a bonus.  The mortgage did not exempt the building-land, as Hebert
+desired.  In all else it was singularly advantageous, and Alain could but
+feel a thrill of grateful delight at an offer by which his stinted income
+was raised to comparative affluence.
+
+"Well, Marquis," said Louvier, "what does the castle say to the town?"
+
+"Monsieur Louvier," answered Alain, extending his hand with cordial
+eagerness, "accept my sincere apologies for the indiscretion of my
+metaphor.  Poverty is proverbially sensitive to jests on it.  I owe it to
+you if I cannot hereafter make that excuse for any words of mine that may
+displease you.  The terms you propose are most liberal, and I close with
+them at once."
+
+"_Bon_," said Louvier, shaking vehemently the hand offered to him; "I
+will take the paper to Gandrin, and instruct him accordingly.  And now,
+may I attach a condition to the agreement which is not put down on
+paper? It may have surprised you perhaps that I should propose a
+gratuity of 25,000 francs on completion of the contract.  It is a droll
+thing to do, and not in the ordinary way of business, therefore I must
+explain. Marquis, pardon the liberty I take, but you have inspired me
+with an interest in your future.  With your birth, connections, and
+figure you should push your way in the world far and fast.  But you
+can't do so in a province.  You must find your opening at Paris.  I wish
+you to spend a year in the capital, and live, not extravagantly, like a
+nouveau riche, but in a way not unsuited to your rank, and permitting
+you all the social advantages that belong to it.  These 25,000 francs,
+in addition to your improved income, will enable you to gratify my wish
+in this respect.  Spend the money in Paris; you will want every sou of
+it in the course of the year. It will be money well spent.  Take my
+advice, _cher Marquis.  Au plaisir_."
+
+The financier bowed himself out.  The young Marquis forgot all the
+mournful reflections with which Raoul's conversation had inspired him.
+He gave a new touch to his toilette, and sallied forth with the air of a
+man on whose morning of life a sun heretofore clouded has burst forth and
+bathed the landscape in its light.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Since the evening spent at the Savarins', Graham had seen no more of
+Isaura.  He had avoided all chance of seeing her; in fact, the jealousy
+with which he had viewed her manner towards Rameau, and the angry amaze
+with which he had heard her proclaim her friendship for Madame de
+Grantmesnil, served to strengthen the grave and secret reasons which made
+him desire to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet unpledged.  But
+alas! the heart was enslaved already.  It was under the most fatal of all
+spells,--first love conceived at first sight.  He was wretched; and in
+his wretchedness his resolves became involuntarily weakened.  He found
+himself making excuses for the beloved.  What cause had he, after all,
+for that jealousy of the young poet which had so offended him; and if in
+her youth and inexperience Isaura had made her dearest friend of a great
+writer by whose genius she might be dazzled, and of whose opinions she
+might scarcely be aware, was it a crime that necessitated her eternal
+banishment from the reverence which belongs to all manly love?  Certainly
+he found no satisfactory answers to such self-questionings.  And then
+those grave reasons known only to himself, and never to be confided to
+another--why he should yet reserve his hand unpledged--were not so
+imperative as to admit of no compromise.  They might entail a sacrifice,
+and not a small one to a man of Graham's views and ambition.  But what is
+love if it can think any sacrifice, short of duty and honour, too great
+to offer up unknown uncomprehended, to the one beloved?  Still, while
+thus softened in his feelings towards Isaura, he became, perhaps in
+consequence of such softening, more and more restlessly impatient to
+fulfil the object for which he had come to Paris, the great step towards
+which was the discovery of the undiscoverable Louise Duval.
+
+He had written more than once to M. Renard since the interview with that
+functionary already recorded, demanding whether Renard had not made some
+progress in the research on which he was employed, and had received short
+unsatisfactory replies preaching patience and implying hope.
+
+The plain truth, however, was that M. Renard had taken no further pains
+in the matter.  He considered it utter waste of time and thought to
+attempt a discovery to which the traces were so faint and so obsolete.
+If the discovery were effected, it must be by one of those chances which
+occur without labour or forethought of our own.  He trusted only to such
+a chance in continuing the charge he had undertaken.  But during the last
+day or two Graham had become yet more impatient than before, and
+peremptorily requested another visit from this dilatory confidant.
+
+In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and though naturally
+willing, if possible, to retain a client unusually generous, yet being on
+the whole an honest member of his profession, and feeling it to be
+somewhat unfair to accept large remuneration for doing nothing, M. Renard
+said frankly, "Monsieur, this affair is beyond me; the keenest agent of
+our police could make nothing of it.  Unless you can tell me more than
+you have done, I am utterly without a clew.  I resign, therefore, the
+task with which you honoured me, willing to resume it again if you can
+give me information that could render me of use."
+
+"What sort of information?"
+
+"At least the names of some of the lady's relations who may yet be
+living."
+
+"But it strikes me that, if I could get at that piece of knowledge, I
+should not require the services of the police.  The relations would tell
+me what had become of Louise Duval quite as readily as they would tell a
+police agent."
+
+"Quite true, Monsieur.  It would really be picking your pockets if I did
+not at once retire from your service.  Nay, Monsieur, pardon me, no
+further payments; I have already accepted too much.  Your most obedient
+servant."
+
+Graham, left alone, fell into a very gloomy revery.  He could not but be
+sensible of the difficulties in the way of the object which had brought
+him to Paris, with somewhat sanguine expectations of success founded on a
+belief in the omniscience of the Parisian police, which is only to be
+justified when they have to deal with a murderess or a political
+incendiary.  But the name of Louise Duval is about as common in France as
+that of Mary Smith in England; and the English reader may judge what
+would be the likely result of inquiring through the ablest of our
+detectives after some Mary Smith of whom you could give little more
+information than that she was the daughter of a drawing-master who had
+died twenty years ago, that it was about fifteen years since anything had
+been heard of her, that you could not say if through marriage or for
+other causes she had changed her name or not, and you had reasons for
+declining resort to public advertisements.  In the course of inquiry so
+instituted, the probability would be that you might hear of a great many
+Mary Smiths, in the pursuit of whom your employee would lose all sight
+and scent of the one Mary Smith for whom the chase was instituted.
+
+In the midst of Graham's despairing reflections his laquais announced M.
+Frederic Lemercier.
+
+"_Cher_ Grarm-Varn.  A thousand pardons if I disturb you at this late
+hour of the evening; but you remember the request you made me when you
+first arrived in Paris this season?"
+
+"Of course I do,--in case you should ever chance in your wide round of
+acquaintance to fall in with a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval of about the
+age of forty, or a year or so less, to let me know; and you did fall in
+with two ladies of that name, but they were not the right one, not the
+person whom my friend begged me to discover; both much too young."
+
+"_Eh bien, mon cher_.  If you will come with me to the _bal champetre_ in
+the Champs Elysees to-night, I can show you a third Madame Duval,--her
+Christian name is Louise, too, of the age you mention,--though she does
+her best to look younger, and is still very handsome.  You said your
+Duval was handsome.  It was only last evening that I met this lady at a
+_soiree_ given by Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, _coryphee distinguee_, in
+love with young Rameau."
+
+"In love with young Rameau?  I am very glad to hear it.  He returns the
+love?"
+
+"I suppose so.  He seems very proud of it.  But apropos of Madame Duval,
+she has been long absent from Paris, just returned, and looking out for
+conquests.  She says she has a great penchant for the English; promises
+me to be at this ball.  Come."
+
+"Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier.  I am at your service."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The _bal champetre_ was gay and brilliant, as such festal scenes are at
+Paris.  A lovely night in the midst of May, lamps below and stars above;
+the society mixed, of course.  Evidently, when Graham has singled out
+Frederic Lemercier from all his acquaintances at Paris to conjoin with
+the official aid of M. Renard in search of the mysterious lady, he had
+conjectured the probability that she might be found in the Bohemian world
+so familiar to Frederic; if not as an inhabitant, at least as an
+explorer.  Bohemia was largely represented at the _bal champetre_, but
+not without a fair sprinkling of what we call the "respectable classes,"
+especially English and Americans, who brought their wives there to take
+care of them.  Frenchmen, not needing such care, prudently left their
+wives at home.  Among the Frenchmen of station were the Comte de Passy
+and the Vicomte de Breze.
+
+On first entering the gardens, Graham's eye was attracted and dazzled by
+a brilliant form.  It was standing under a festoon of flowers extended
+from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite shone full upon the face,--the
+face of a girl in all the freshness of youth.  If the freshness owed
+anything to art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature.
+The beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant; and yet
+one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of deep mournfulness.
+She was surrounded by a group of young men, and the ring of her laugh
+jarred upon Graham's ear.  He pressed Frederic's arm, and directing his
+attention to the girl, asked who she was.
+
+"Who?  Don't you know?  That is Julie Caumartin.  A little while ago her
+equipage was the most admired in the Bois, and great ladies condescended
+to copy her dress or her coiffure; but she has lost her splendour, and
+dismissed the rich admirer who supplied the fuel for its blaze, since
+she fell in love with Gustave Rameau.  Doubtless she is expecting him
+to-night.  You ought to know her; shall I present you?"
+
+"No," answered Graham, with a compassionate expression in his manly face.
+"So young; seemingly so gay.  How I pity her!"
+
+"What! for throwing herself away on Rameau?  True.  There is a great deal
+of good in that girl's nature, if she had been properly trained.  Rameau
+wrote a pretty poem on her which turned her head and won her heart, in
+which she is styled the 'Ondine of Paris,'--a nymph-like type of Paris
+itself."
+
+"Vanishing type, like her namesake; born of the spray, and vanishing soon
+into the deep," said Graham.  "Pray go and look for the Duval; you will
+find me seated yonder."
+
+Graham passed into a retired alley, and threw himself on a solitary
+bench, while Lemercier went in search of Madame Duval.  In a few minutes
+the Frenchman reappeared.  By his side was a lady well dressed, and as
+she passed under the lamps Graham perceived that, though of a certain
+age, she was undeniably handsome.  His heart beat more quickly.  Surely
+this was the Louise Duval he sought.
+
+He rose from his seat, and was presented in due form to the lady, with
+whom Frederic then discreetly left him.  "M. Lemercier tells me that you
+think that we were once acquainted with each other."
+
+"Nay, Madame; I should not fail to recognize you were that the case.  A
+friend of mine had the honour of knowing a lady of your name; and should
+I be fortunate enough to meet that lady, I am charged with a commission
+that may not be unwelcome to her.  M. Lemercier tells me your nom de
+bapteme is Louise."
+
+"Louise Corinne, Monsieur."
+
+"And I presume that Duval is the name you take from your parents?"
+
+"No; my father's name was Bernard.  I married, when I was a mere child,
+M. Duval, in the wine trade at Bordeaux."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Graham, much disappointed, but looking at her with a
+keen, searching eye, which she met with a decided frankness.  Evidently,
+in his judgment, she was speaking the truth.
+
+"You know English, I think, Madame," he resumed, addressing her in that
+language.
+
+"A leetle; speak un peu."
+
+"Only a little?"
+
+Madame Duval looked puzzled, and replied in French, with a laugh, "Is it
+that you were told that I spoke English by your countryman, Milord Sare
+Boulby? _Petit scelerat_, I hope he is well.  He sends you a commission
+for me,--so he ought; he behaved to me like a monster."
+
+"Alas!  I know nothing of Milord Sir Boulby.  Were you never in England
+yourself?"
+
+"Never," with a coquettish side-glance; "I should like so much to go.  I
+have a foible for the English in spite of that _vilain petit Boulby_.
+Who is it gave you the commission for me?  Ha!  I guess, le Capitaine
+Nelton."
+
+"No.  What year, Madame, if not impertinent, were you at Aix-la-
+Chapelle?"
+
+"You mean Baden?  I was there seven years ago, when I met le Capitaine
+Nelton, _bel homme aux cheveux rouges_."
+
+"But you have been at Aix?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"I have, then, been mistaken, Madame, and have only to offer my most
+humble apologies."
+
+"But perhaps you will favour me with a visit, and we may on further
+conversation find that you are not mistaken.  I can't stay now, for I am
+engaged to dance with the Belgian of whom, no doubt, M. Lemercier has
+told you."
+
+"No, Madame, he has not."
+
+"Well, then, he will tell you.  The Belgian is very jealous; but I am
+always at home between three and four; this is my card."
+
+Graham eagerly took the card, and exclaimed, "Is this you're your own
+handwriting, Madame?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"_Tres belle ecriture_," said Graham, and receded with a ceremonious bow.
+"Anything so unlike her handwriting!  Another disappointment," muttered
+the Englishman as the lady went back to the ball.
+
+A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, who was talking with De
+Passy and De Breze.
+
+"Well," said Lemercier, when his eye rested on Graham, "I hit the right
+nail on the head this time, eh?"
+
+Graham shook his head.
+
+"What! is she not the right Louise Duval?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+The Count de Passy overheard the name, and turned.  "Louise Duval," he
+said; "does Monsieur Vane know a Louise Duval?"
+
+"No; but a friend asked me to inquire after a lady of that name whom he
+had met many years ago at Paris."  The Count mused a moment, and said,
+"Is it possible that your friend knew the family De Mauleon?"
+
+"I really can't say.  What then?"
+
+"The old Vicomte de Mauleon was one of my most intimate associates.  In
+fact, our houses are connected.  And he was extremely grieved, poor man,
+when his daughter Louise married her drawing-master, Auguste Duval."
+
+"Her drawing-master, Auguste Duval?  Pray say on.  I think the Louise
+Duval my friend knew must have been her daughter.  She was the only child
+of a drawing-master or artist named Auguste Duval, and probably enough
+her Christian name would have been derived from her mother.  A
+Mademoiselle de Mauleon, then, married M. Auguste Duval?"
+
+"Yes; the old Vicomte had espoused _en premieres noces_ Mademoiselle
+Camille de Chavigny, a lady of birth equal to his own; had by her one
+daughter, Louise.  I recollect her well,--a plain girl, with a high nose
+and a sour expression.  She was just of age when the first Vicomtesse
+died, and by the marriage settlement she succeeded at once to her
+mother's fortune, which was not large.  The Vicomte was, however, so poor
+that the loss of that income was no trifle to him.  Though much past
+fifty, he was still very handsome.  Men of that generation did not age
+soon, Monsieur," said the Count, expanding his fine chest and laughing
+exultingly.
+
+"He married, _en secondes noces_, a lady of still higher birth than the
+first, and with a much larger _dot_.  Louise was indignant at this, hated
+her stepmother; and when a son was born by the second marriage she left
+the paternal roof, went to reside with an old female relative near the
+Luxembourg, and there married this drawing-master.  Her father and the
+family did all they could to prevent it; but in these democratic days a
+woman who has attained her majority can, if she persist in her
+determination, marry to please herself and disgrace her ancestors.  After
+that _mesalliance_ her father never would see her again.  I tried in vain
+to soften him.  All his parental affections settled on his handsome
+Victor.
+
+"Ah!  you are too young to have known Victor de Mauleon during his short
+reign at Paris, as _roi des viveurs_."
+
+"Yes, he was before my time; but I have heard of him as a young man of
+great fashion; said to be very clever, a duellist, and a sort of Don
+Juan."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"And then I remember vaguely to have heard that he committed, or was said
+to have committed, some villanous action connected with a great lady's
+jewels, and to have left Paris in consequence."
+
+"Ah, yes; a sad scrape.  At that time there was a political crisis; we
+were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed.  But I am
+sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny.  However, it
+is quite true that he left Paris, and I don't know what has become of him
+since."  Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not been
+listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter with
+Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance.
+
+"De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear Victor de
+Mauleon?--you knew him."
+
+"Knew him?  I should think so.  Who could be in the great world and not
+know _le beau_ Victor?  No; after he vanished I never heard more of him;
+doubtless long since dead.  A good-hearted fellow in spite of all his
+sins."
+
+"My dear Monsieur de Breze, did you know his half-sister?" asked Graham,
+--"a Madame Duval?"
+
+"No.  I never heard he had a half-sister.  Halt there; I recollect that I
+met Victor once, in the garden at Versailles, walking arm-in-arm with the
+most beautiful girl I ever saw; and when I complimented him afterwards at
+the Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied very gravely that the
+young lady was his niece.  'Niece!' said I; 'why, there can't be more
+than five or six years between you.'  'About that, I suppose,' said he;
+'my half-sister, her mother, was more than twenty years older than I at
+the time of my birth.'  I doubted the truth of his story at the time; but
+since you say he really had a sister, my doubt wronged him."
+
+"Have you never seen that same young lady since?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"How many years ago was this?"
+
+"Let me see, about twenty or twenty-one years ago.  How time flies!"
+
+Graham still continued to question, but could learn no further
+particulars.  He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking
+up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that
+German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one
+laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted
+joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound
+of which had then saddened him.  Looking towards the quarter from which
+it came, he again saw the "Ondine of Paris."  She was not now the centre
+of a group.  She had just found Gustave Rameau, and was clinging to his
+arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a
+child's; and so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary lamplit
+alley, till lost to the Englishman's lingering gaze.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard.  "Well," he cried, when
+that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him, "chance has favoured
+me."
+
+"I always counted on chance, Monsieur.  Chance has more wit in its little
+finger than the Paris police in its whole body."
+
+"I have ascertained the relations, on the mother's side, of Louise Duval,
+and the only question is how to get at them."  Here Graham related what
+he had heard, and ended by saying, "This Victor de Mauleon is therefore
+my Louise Duval's uncle.  He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in the
+year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight of her in
+Paris; and surely he must know what became of her afterwards."
+
+"Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the discovery of Victor
+de Mauleon.  You seem not to know the particulars of that story about the
+jewels which brought him into some connection with the police, and
+resulted in his disappearance from Paris."
+
+"No; tell me the particulars."
+
+"Victor de Mauleon was heir to some 60,000 or 70,000 francs a year,
+chiefly on the mother's side; for his father, though the representative
+of one of the most ancient houses in Normandy, was very poor, having
+little of his own except the emoluments of an appointment in the Court of
+Louis Philippe.
+
+"But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into that
+inheritance, he very largely forestalled it.  His tastes were
+magnificent.  He took to 'sport,' kept a famous stud, was a great
+favourite with the English, and spoke their language fluently.  Indeed he
+was considered very accomplished, and of considerable intellectual
+powers.  It was generally said that some day or other, when he had sown
+his wild oats, he would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man.
+Altogether he was a very strong creature.  That was a very strong age
+under Louis Philippe.  The _viveurs_ of Paris were fine types for the
+heroes of Dumas and Sue,--full of animal life and spirits.  Victor de
+Mauleon was a romance of Dumas, incarnated."
+
+"Monsieur Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to your
+taste in polite literature."
+
+"Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to my humble
+eminence if he be not something else than a professional.  He must study
+mankind wherever they are described, even in _les romans_.  To return to
+Victor de Mauleon.  Though he was a 'sportman,' a gambler, a Don Juan, a
+duel list, nothing was ever said against his honour.  On the contrary, on
+matters of honour he was a received oracle; and even though he had fought
+several duels (that was the age of duels), and was reported without a
+superior, almost without an equal, in either weapon, the sword or the
+pistol, he is said never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to
+have so used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely
+to wound, an antagonist.
+
+"I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect; for it was
+much talked of at the time.  One of your countrymen, who had never
+handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something
+M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and
+called him out.  Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his
+pistol, not in the air--that might have been an affront--but so as to be
+wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot at, and when missed,
+said, 'Excuse the susceptibility of a Frenchman loath to believe that his
+countryman can be beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one
+gentleman can make to another for having forgotten the respect due to one
+of the most renowned of your national heroes.'  The Englishman's name was
+Vane.  Could it have been your father?"
+
+"Very probably; just like my father to call out any man who insulted the
+honour of his country, as represented by its men.  I hope the two
+combatants became friends?"
+
+"That I never heard; the duel was over; there my story ends."
+
+"Pray go on."
+
+"One day--it was in the midst of political events which would have
+silenced most subjects of private gossip--the _beau monde_ was startled
+by the news that the Vicomte (he was then, by his father's death,
+Vicomte) de Mauleon had been given into the custody of the police on the
+charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a
+distinguished foreigner).  It seems that some days before this event, the
+Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had
+resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of
+setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her
+birthday.  He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron
+safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more
+valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace.  Imagine his
+dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it
+recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had
+some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a
+Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted.  The Duchesse was at that
+time in delicate health; and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell on
+the servants, especially on the _femme de chambre_, who was in great
+favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to
+put the servants on their guard.  He resolved, therefore, to place the
+matter in the hands of the famous --------, who was then the pride and
+ornament of the Parisian police.  And the very night afterwards the
+Vicomte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the
+jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at
+least a duplicate key, found in his possession.  I should observe that
+M. de Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper
+rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite.  As soon as
+this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next
+morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before
+scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the medium
+of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which
+he was accused.  We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most
+startling reactions of feeling.  The men we adore one day we execrate the
+next.  The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one bestows
+on a hero to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty
+larcener.  Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into
+its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan.  However, one
+compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society for
+the grave injuries he had done it.  Society would attend his trial,
+witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his face
+when he was sentenced to the, galleys.  But, Monsieur, this wretch
+completed the measure of his iniquities.  He was not tried at all.  The
+Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his
+lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's
+complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had
+confessed."
+
+"What did the Vicomte confess?  You omitted to state that."
+
+"The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane
+passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it,
+met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the
+same house to admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her dressing-room
+by means of a key which he had procured, made from an impression of the
+key-hole taken in wax.
+
+"No evidence in support of any other charge against the Vicomte was
+forthcoming,--nothing, in short, beyond the _infraction du domicile_
+caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no
+prosecution.  The law, therefore, could have little to say against him.
+But society was more rigid; and exceedingly angry to find that a man who
+had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted
+on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the meaner, though not
+perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the
+two offences.  I presume that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a
+dilemma from which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he
+left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared.  The sale of his stud
+and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for I will do him the
+justice to say that they were paid."
+
+"But though the Vicomte de Mauleon has disappeared, he must have left
+relations at Paris, who would perhaps know what has become of him and of
+his niece."
+
+"I doubt it.  He had no very near relations.  The nearest was an old
+_celibataire_ of the same name, from whom he had some expectations, but
+who died shortly after this esclandre, and did not name the Vicomte in
+his will.  M. Victor had numerous connections among the highest families,
+the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Passys, Beauvilliers; but they
+are not likely to have retained any connection with a ruined _vaurien_,
+and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a drawing-master.
+But now you have given me a clew, I will try to follow it up.  We must
+find the Vicomte, and I am not without hope of doing so.  Pardon me if I
+decline to say more at present.  I would not raise false expectations;
+but in a week or two I will have the honour to call again upon Monsieur."
+
+"Wait one instant.  You have really a hope of discovering M. de Mauleon?"
+
+"Yes.  I cannot say more at present."
+
+M. Renard departed.  Still that hope, however faint it might prove,
+served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load
+had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the
+thought of Isaura.  Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the
+commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring
+Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning desire to see
+more of her, to understand her better.  Faded into thin air was the vague
+jealousy of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreasonably conceived; he
+felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the "Ondine of Paris"
+claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope to win an Isaura.  He even
+forgot the friendship with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond,
+which a little while ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offence.  He
+remembered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent; only
+the sweet voice, which had for the first time breathed music into his own
+soul; only the gentle hand, whose touch had for the first time sent
+through his veins the thrill which distinguishes from all her sex the
+woman whom we love.  He went forth elated and joyous, and took his way to
+Isaura's villa.  As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he
+passed seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own
+delight.  Perhaps it was rather the reverse: his own silent delight
+sympathized with all delight in awakening Nature.  The lover seeking
+reconciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle has unreasonably
+estranged him, in a cloudless day of May,--if he be not happy enough to
+feel a brotherhood in all things happy,--a leaf in bloom, a bird in
+song,--then indeed he may call himself lover, but he does not know what
+is love.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, B3, LYTTON ***
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