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+Project Gutenberg’s The Parisians, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Parisians, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7749]
+Last Updated: August 28, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARISIANS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PARISIANS
+
+By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE. (BY THE AUTHOR’S SON.)
+
+“The Parisians” and “Kenelm Chillingly” were begun about the same time,
+and had their common origin in the same central idea. That idea first
+found fantastic expression in “The Coming Race;” and the three books,
+taken together, constitute a special group, distinctly apart from all
+the other works of their author.
+
+The satire of his earlier novels is a protest against false social
+respectabilities; the humour of his later ones is a protest against the
+disrespect of social realities. By the first he sought to promote social
+sincerity and the free play of personal character; by the last, to
+encourage mutual charity and sympathy amongst all classes, on whose
+interrelation depends the character of society itself. But in these
+three books, his latest fictions, the moral purpose is more definite and
+exclusive. Each of them is an expostulation against what seemed to him
+the perilous popularity of certain social and political theories, or a
+warning against the influence of certain intellectual tendencies upon
+individual character and national life. This purpose, however, though
+common to the three fictions, is worked out in each of them by a
+different method. “The Coming Race” is a work of pure fancy, and the
+satire of it is vague and sportive. The outlines of a definite purpose
+are more distinctly drawn in “Chillingly,”--a romance which has the
+source of its effect in a highly wrought imagination. The humour and
+pathos of “Chillingly” are of a kind incompatible with the design of
+“The Parisians,” which is a work of dramatized observation. “Chillingly”
+ is a romance; “The Parisians” is a novel. The subject of “Chillingly” is
+psychological; that of “The Parisians” is social. The author’s object in
+“Chillingly” being to illustrate the effects of “modern ideas” upon an
+individual character, he has confined his narrative to the biography
+of that one character; hence the simplicity of plot and small number of
+dramatis personae, whereby the work gains in height and depth what
+it loses in breadth of surface. “The Parisians,” on the contrary,
+is designed to illustrate the effect of “modern ideas” upon a whole
+community. This novel is therefore panoramic in the profusion and
+variety of figures presented by it to the reader’s imagination. No
+exclusive prominence is vouchsafed to any of these figures. All of them
+are drawn and coloured with an equal care, but by means of the bold,
+broad touches necessary for their effective presentation on a canvas
+so large and so crowded. Such figures are, indeed, but the component
+features of one great form, and their actions only so many modes of
+one collective impersonal character,--that of the Parisian Society of
+Imperial and Democratic France; a character everywhere present and busy
+throughout the story, of which it is the real hero or heroine. This
+society was doubtless selected for characteristic illustration as
+being the most advanced in the progress of “modern ideas.” Thus, for a
+complete perception of its writer’s fundamental purpose, “The Parisians”
+ should be read in connection with “Chillingly,” and these two books
+in connection with “The Coming Race.” It will then be perceived that
+through the medium of alternate fancy, sentiment, and observation,
+assisted by humour and passion, these three books (in all other respects
+so different from each other) complete the presentation of the same
+purpose under different aspects, and thereby constitute a group of
+fictions which claims a separate place of its own in any thoughtful
+classification of their author’s works.
+
+One last word to those who will miss from these pages the connecting
+and completing touches of the master’s hand. It may be hoped that such a
+disadvantage, though irreparable, is somewhat mitigated by the essential
+character of the work itself. The aesthetic merit of this kind of novel
+is in the vivacity of a general effect produced by large, swift strokes
+of character; and in such strokes, if they be by a great artist, force
+and freedom of style must still be apparent, even when they are left
+rough and unfinished. Nor can any lack of final verbal correction
+much diminish the intellectual value which many of the more thoughtful
+passages of the present work derive from a long, keen, and practical
+study of political phenomena, guided by personal experience of public
+life, and enlightened by a large, instinctive knowledge of the human
+heart.
+
+Such a belief is, at least, encouraged by the private communications
+spontaneously made to him who expresses it, by persons of political
+experience and social position in France, who have acknowledged
+the general accuracy of the author’s descriptions, and noticed the
+suggestive sagacity and penetration of his occasional comments on the
+circumstances and sentiments he describes.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
+
+They who chance to have read the “Coming Race” may perhaps remember that
+I, the adventurous discoverer of the land without a sun, concluded the
+sketch of my adventures by a brief reference to the malady which, though
+giving no perceptible notice of its encroachments, might, in the opinion
+of my medical attendant, prove suddenly fatal.
+
+I had brought my little book to this somewhat melancholy close a few
+years before the date of its publication, and in the meanwhile I was
+induced to transfer my residence to Paris, in order to place myself
+under the care of an English physician, renowned for his successful
+treatment of complaints analogous to my own.
+
+I was the more readily persuaded to undertake this journey,--partly
+because I enjoyed a familiar acquaintance with the eminent physician
+referred to, who had commenced his career and founded his reputation in
+the United States; partly because I had become a solitary man, the ties
+of home broken, and dear friends of mine were domiciled in Paris, with
+whom I should be sure of tender sympathy and cheerful companionship. I
+had reason to be thankful for this change of residence: the skill of
+Dr. C______ soon restored me to health. Brought much into contact
+with various circles of Parisian society, I became acquainted with the
+persons and a witness of the events that form the substance of the tale
+I am about to submit to the public, which has treated my former book
+with so generous an indulgence. Sensitively tenacious of that character
+for strict and unalloyed veracity which, I flatter myself, my account
+of the abodes and manners of the Vril-ya has established, I could have
+wished to preserve the following narrative no less jealously guarded
+than its predecessor from the vagaries of fancy. But Truth undisguised,
+never welcome in any civilized community above ground, is exposed at
+this time to especial dangers in Paris; and my life would not be worth
+an hour’s purchase if I exhibited her ‘in puris naturalibus’ to the eyes
+of a people wholly unfamiliarized to a spectacle so indecorous. That
+care for one’s personal safety which is the first duty of thoughtful man
+compels me therefore to reconcile the appearance of ‘la Verite’ to the
+‘bienseances’ of the polished society in which ‘la Liberte’ admits no
+opinion not dressed after the last fashion.
+
+Attired as fiction, Truth may be peacefully received; and, despite the
+necessity thus imposed by prudence, I indulge the modest hope that I do
+not in these pages unfaithfully represent certain prominent types of the
+brilliant population which has invented so many varieties of Koom-Posh;
+
+   [Koom-Posh, Glek-Nas. For the derivation of these terms and their
+   metaphorical signification, I must refer the reader to the “Coming
+   Race,” chapter xii., on the language of the Vril-ya. To those who
+   have not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may
+   be convenient to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is
+   the name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the
+   most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh.
+   When Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular
+   ferocity which precedes its decease, the name for that state of
+   things is Glek-Nas; namely, the universal strife-rot.]
+
+and even when it appears hopelessly lost in the slough of a Glek-Nas,
+re-emerges fresh and lively as if from an invigorating plunge into
+the Fountain of Youth. O Paris, ‘foyer des idees, et oeil du
+monde!’--animated contrast to the serene tranquillity of the Vril-ya,
+which, nevertheless, thy noisiest philosophers ever pretend to make the
+goal of their desires: of all communities on which shines the sun and
+descend the rains of heaven, fertilizing alike wisdom and folly, virtue
+and vice; in every city men have yet built on this earth,--mayest
+thou, O Paris, be the last to brave the wands of the Coming Race and be
+reduced into cinders for the sake of the common good!
+
+                            TISH.
+
+PARIS, August 28, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARISIANS.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It was a bright day in the early spring of 1869. All Paris seemed to
+have turned out to enjoy itself. The Tuileries, the Champs Elysees, the
+Bois de Boulogne, swarmed with idlers. A stranger might have wondered
+where Toil was at work, and in what nook Poverty lurked concealed.
+A millionaire from the London Exchange, as he looked round on the
+magasins, the equipages, the dresses of the women; as he inquired
+the prices in the shops and the rent of apartments,--might have asked
+himself, in envious wonder, How on earth do those gay Parisians live?
+What is their fortune? Where does it come from?
+
+As the day declined, many of the scattered loungers crowded into the
+Boulevards; the cafes and restaurants began to light up.
+
+About this time a young man, who might be some five or six and twenty,
+was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, heeding little the throng
+through which he glided his solitary way: there was that in his aspect
+and bearing which caught attention. He looked a somebody; but though
+unmistakably a Frenchman, not a Parisian. His dress was not in the
+prevailing mode: to a practised eye it betrayed the taste and the cut
+of a provincial tailor. His gait was not that of the Parisian,--less
+lounging, more stately; and, unlike the Parisian, he seemed indifferent
+to the gaze of others.
+
+Nevertheless there was about him that air of dignity or distinction
+which those who are reared from their cradle in the pride of birth
+acquire so unconsciously that it seems hereditary and inborn. It
+must also be confessed that the young man himself was endowed with
+a considerable share of that nobility which Nature capriciously
+distributes among her favourites with little respect for their pedigree
+and blazon, the nobility of form and face. He was tall and well shaped,
+with graceful length of limb and fall of shoulders; his face was
+handsome, of the purest type of French masculine beauty,--the nose
+inclined to be aquiline, and delicately thin, with finely-cut open
+nostrils; the complexion clear,--the eyes large, of a light hazel, with
+dark lashes,--the hair of a chestnut brown, with no tint of auburn,--the
+beard and mustache a shade darker, clipped short, not disguising the
+outline of lips, which were now compressed, as if smiles had of late
+been unfamiliar to them; yet such compression did not seem in harmony
+with the physiognomical character of their formation, which was that
+assigned by Lavater to temperaments easily moved to gayety and pleasure.
+
+Another man, about his own age, coming quickly out of one of the streets
+of the Chausee d’Antin, brushed close by the stately pedestrian
+above described, caught sight of his countenance, stopped short, and
+exclaimed, “Alain!” The person thus abruptly accosted turned his eye
+tranquilly on the eager face, of which all the lower part was enveloped
+in black beard; and slightly lifting his hat, with a gesture of the
+head that implied, “Sir, you are mistaken; I have not the honour to know
+you,” continued his slow indifferent way. The would-be acquaintance
+was not so easily rebuffed. “Peste,” he said, between his teeth, “I am
+certainly right. He is not much altered: of course I AM; ten years of
+Paris would improve an orang-outang.” Quickening his step, and regaining
+the side of the man he had called “Alain,” he said, with a well-bred
+mixture of boldness and courtesy in his tone and countenance,
+
+“Ten thousand pardons if I am wrong. Put surely I accost Alain de
+Kerouec, son of the Marquis de Rochebriant.”
+
+“True, sir; but--”
+
+“But you do not remember me, your old college friend, Frederic
+Lemercier?”
+
+“Is it possibly?” cried Alain, cordially, and with an animation which
+charged the whole character of his countenance. “My dear Frederic, my
+dear friend, this is indeed good fortune! So you, too, are at Paris?”
+
+“Of course; and you? Just come, I perceive,” he added, somewhat
+satirically, as, linking his arm in his new-found friend’s, he glanced
+at the cut of that friend’s coat-collar.
+
+“I have been here a fortnight,” replied Alain.
+
+“Hem! I suppose you lodge in the old Hotel de Rochebriant. I passed
+it yesterday, admiring its vast facade, little thinking you were its
+inmate.”
+
+“Neither am I; the hotel does not belong to me; it was sold some years
+ago by my father.”
+
+“Indeed! I hope your father got a good price for it; those grand hotels
+have trebled their value within the last five years. And how is your
+father? Still the same polished grand seigneur? I never saw him
+but once, you know; and I shall never forget his smile, style grand
+monarque, when he patted me on the head and tipped me ten napoleons.”
+
+“My father is no more,” said Alain, gravely; “he has been dead nearly
+three years.”
+
+“Ciel! forgive me; I am greatly shocked. Hem! so you are now the Marquis
+de Rochebriant, a great historical name, worth a large sum in the
+market. Few such names left. Superb place your old chateau, is it not?”
+
+“A superb place, no--a venerable ruin, yes!”
+
+“Ah, a ruin! so much the better. All the bankers are mad after ruins: so
+charming an amusement to restore them. You will restore yours, without
+doubt. I will introduce you to such an architect! has the ‘moyen age’ at
+his fingers’ ends. Dear,--but a genius.”
+
+The young Marquis smiled,--for since he had found a college friend,
+his face showed that it could smile,--smiled, but not cheerfully, and
+answered,
+
+“I have no intention to restore Rochebriant. The walls are solid: they
+have weathered the storms of six centuries, they will last my time, and
+with me the race perishes.”
+
+“Bah! the race perish, indeed! you will marry. ‘Parlez moi de ca’: you
+could not come to a better man. I have a list of all the heiresses at
+Paris, bound in russia leather. You may take your choice out of twenty.
+Ah, if I were but a Rochebriant! It is an infernal thing to come into
+the world a Lemercier. I am a democrat, of course. A Lemercier would be
+in a false position if he were not. But if any one would leave me twenty
+acres of land, with some antique right to the De and a title, faith,
+would not I be an aristocrat, and stand up for my order? But now we have
+met, pray let us dine together. Ah! no doubt you are engaged every day
+for a month. A Rochebriant just new to Paris must be ‘fete’ by all the
+Faubourg.”
+
+“No,” answered Alain, simply, “I am not engaged; my range of
+acquaintance is more circumscribed than you suppose.”
+
+“So much the better for me. I am luckily disengaged today, which is not
+often the case, for I am in some request in my own set, though it is not
+that of the Faubourg. Where shall we dine?--at the Trois Freres?”
+
+“Wherever you please. I know no restaurant at Paris, except a very
+ignoble one, close by my lodging.”
+
+“‘Apropos’, where do you lodge?”
+
+“Rue de l’Universite, Numero --.”
+
+“A fine street, but ‘triste’. If you have no longer your family hotel,
+you have no excuse to linger in that museum of mummies, the Faubourg St.
+Germain; you must go into one of the new quarters by the Champs Elysees.
+Leave it to me; I’ll find you a charming apartment. I know one to be had
+a bargain,--a bagatelle,--five hundred naps a-year. Cost you about two
+or three thousand more to furnish tolerably, not showily. Leave all to
+me. In three days you shall be settled. Apropos! horses! You must have
+English ones. How many?--three for the saddle, two for your ‘coupe’?
+I’ll find them for you. I will write to London to-morrow: Reese [Rice]
+is your man.”
+
+“Spare yourself that trouble, my dear Frederic. I keep no horses and no
+coupe. I shall not change my apartment.” As he said this, Rochebriant
+drew himself up somewhat haughtily.
+
+“Faith,” thought Lemercier, “is it possible that the Marquis is poor?
+No. I have always heard that the Rochebriants were among the greatest
+proprietors in Bretagne. Most likely, with all his innocence of the
+Faubourg St. Germain, he knows enough of it to be aware that I, Frederic
+Lemercier, am not the man to patronize one of its greatest nobles.
+‘Sacre bleu!’ if I thought that; if he meant to give himself airs to me,
+his old college friend,--I would--I would call him out.”
+
+Just as M. Lemercier had come to that bellicose resolution, the Marquis
+said, with a smile which, though frank, was not without a certain grave
+melancholy in its expression, “My dear Frederic, pardon me if I seem to
+receive your friendly offers ungraciously. But I believe that I have
+reasons you will approve for leading at Paris a life which you certainly
+will not envy;” then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he said
+in a livelier tone, “But what a marvellous city this Paris of ours is!
+Remember I had never seen it before: it burst on me like a city in the
+Arabian Nights two weeks ago. And that which strikes me most--I say
+it with regret and a pang of conscience--is certainly not the Paris of
+former times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte--I beg pardon, which
+the Emperor--has called up around him, and identified forever with his
+reign. It is what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrals me. Here I
+see the life of France, and I belong to her tombs!”
+
+“I don’t quite understand you,” said Lemercier. “If you think that
+because your father and grandfather were Legitimists, you have not the
+fair field of living ambition open to you under the Empire, you never
+were more mistaken. ‘Moyen age,’ and even rococo, are all the rage.
+You have no idea how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial
+Court or in a Commercial Company. But with your fortune you are
+independent of all but fashion and the Jockey Club.
+
+“And ‘apropos’ of that, pardon me,--what villain made your coat?--let
+me know; I will denounce him to the police.” Half amused, half amazed,
+Alain Marquis de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a
+good-tempered lion may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty
+with his mane, and after a pause he replied curtly, “The clothes I wear
+at Paris were made in Bretagne; and if the name of Rochebriant be of any
+value at all in Paris, which I doubt, let me trust that it will make me
+acknowledged as ‘gentilhomme,’ whatever my taste in a coat or whatever
+the doctrines of a club composed--of jockeys.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm of his friend,
+and laughing the more irresistibly as he encountered the grave look of
+the Marquis. “Pardon me,--I can’t help it,--the Jockey Club,--composed
+of jockeys!--it is too much!--the best joke. My dear, Alain, there is
+some of the best blood of Europe in the Jockey Club; they would exclude
+a plain bourgeois like me. But it is all the same: in one respect
+you are quite right. Walk in a blouse if you please: you are still
+Rochebriant; you would only be called eccentric. Alas! I am obliged to
+send to London for my pantaloons: that comes of being a Lemercier. But
+here we are in the Palais Royal.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The salons of the Trois Freres were crowded; our friends found a table
+with some little difficulty. Lemercier proposed a private cabinet,
+which, for some reason known to himself, the Marquis declined.
+
+Lemercier spontaneously and unrequested ordered the dinner and the
+wines.
+
+While waiting for their oysters, with which, when in season, French
+‘bon-vivants’ usually commence their dinner, Lemercier looked round the
+salon with that air of inimitable, scrutinizing, superb impertinence
+which distinguishes the Parisian dandy. Some of the ladies returned
+his glance coquettishly, for Lemercier was ‘beau garcon;’ others turned
+aside indignantly, and muttered something to the gentlemen dining with
+them. The said gentlemen, when old, shook their heads, and continued
+to eat unmoved; when young, turned briskly round, and looked at first
+fiercely at M. Lemercier, but, encountering his eye through the glass
+which he had screwed into his socket, noticing the hardihood of his
+countenance and the squareness of his shoulders, even they turned back
+to the tables, shook their heads, and continued to eat unmoved, just
+like the old ones.
+
+“Ah!” cried Lemercier, suddenly, “here comes a man you should know, ‘mon
+cher.’ He will tell you how to place your money,--a rising man, a coming
+man, a future minister. Ah! ‘bon jour,’ Duplessis, ‘bon jour,’” kissing
+his hand to a gentleman who had just entered and was looking about him
+for a seat. He was evidently well and favourably known at the Trois
+Freres. The waiters had flocked round him, and were pointing to a
+table by the window, which a saturnine Englishman, who had dined off a
+beefsteak and potatoes, was about to vacate.
+
+M. Duplessis, having first assured himself, like a prudent man, that
+his table was secure, having ordered his oysters, his chablis, and his
+‘potage a la bisque,’ now paced calmly and slowly across the salon, and
+halted before Lemercier.
+
+Here let me pause for a moment, and give the reader a rapid sketch of
+the two Parisians.
+
+Frederic Lemercier is dressed, somewhat too showily, in the extreme of
+the prevalent fashion. He wears a superb pin in his cravat,--a pin worth
+two thousand francs; he wears rings on his fingers, ‘breloques’ to his
+watch-chain. He has a warm though dark complexion, thick black eyebrows,
+full lips, a nose somewhat turned up, but not small, very fine large
+dark eyes, a bold, open, somewhat impertinent expression of countenance;
+withal decidedly handsome, thanks to colouring, youth, and vivacity of
+regard.
+
+Lucien Duplessis, bending over the table, glancing first with curiosity
+at the Marquis de Rochebriant, who leans his cheek on his hand and
+seems not to notice him, then concentrating his attention on Frederic
+Lemercier, who sits square with his hands clasped,--Lucien Duplessis
+is somewhere between forty and fifty, rather below the middle height,
+slender, but not slight,--what in English phrase is called “wiry.” He
+is dressed with extreme simplicity: black frockcoat buttoned up;
+black cravat worn higher than men who follow the fashions wear their
+neckcloths nowadays; a hawk’s eye and a hawk’s beak; hair of a dull
+brown, very short, and wholly without curl; his cheeks thin and smoothly
+shaven, but he wears a mustache and imperial, plagiarized from those of
+his sovereign, and, like all plagiarisms, carrying the borrowed beauty
+to extremes, so that the points of mustache and imperial, stiffened and
+sharpened by cosmetics which must have been composed of iron, looked
+like three long stings guarding lip and jaw from invasion; a pale
+olive-brown complexion, eyes small, deep-sunk, calm, piercing; his
+expression of face at first glance not striking, except for quiet
+immovability. Observed more heedfully, the expression was keenly
+intellectual,--determined about the lips, calculating about the brows:
+altogether the face of no ordinary man, and one not, perhaps, without
+fine and high qualities, concealed from the general gaze by habitual
+reserve, but justifying the confidence of those whom he admitted into
+his intimacy.
+
+“Ah, mon cher,” said Lemercier, “you promised to call on me yesterday at
+two o’clock. I waited in for you half an hour; you never came.”
+
+“No; I went first to the Bourse. The shares in that Company we spoke of
+have fallen; they will fall much lower: foolish to buy in yet; so the
+object of my calling on you was over. I took it for granted you would
+not wait if I failed my appointment. Do you go to the opera to-night?”
+
+“I think not; nothing worth going for: besides, I have found an old
+friend, to whom I consecrate this evening. Let me introduce you to the
+Marquis de Rochebriant. Alain, M. Duplessis.”
+
+The two gentlemen bowed.
+
+“I had the honour to be known to Monsieur your father,” said Duplessis.
+
+“Indeed,” returned Rochebriant. “He had not visited Paris for many years
+before he died.”
+
+“It was in London I met him, at the house of the Russian Princess
+C____.”
+
+The Marquis coloured high, inclined his head gravely, and made no reply.
+Here the waiter brought the oysters and the chablis, and Duplessis
+retired to his own table.
+
+“That is the most extraordinary man,” said Frederic, as he squeezed the
+lemon over his oysters, “and very much to be admired.”
+
+“How so? I see nothing at least to admire in his face,” said the
+Marquis, with the bluntness of a provincial.
+
+“His face. Ah! you are a Legitimist,--party prejudice. He dresses his
+face after the Emperor; in itself a very clever face, surely.”
+
+“Perhaps, but not an amiable one. He looks like a bird of prey.”
+
+“All clever men are birds of prey. The eagles are the heroes, and the
+owls the sages. Duplessis is not an eagle nor an owl. I should rather
+call him a falcon, except that I would not attempt to hoodwink him.”
+
+“Call him what you will,” said the Marquis, indifferently; “M. Duplessis
+can be nothing to me.”
+
+“I am not so sure of that,” answered Frederic, somewhat nettled by
+the phlegm with which the Provincial regarded the pretensions of the
+Parisian. “Duplessis, I repeat it, is an extraordinary man. Though
+untitled, he descends from your old aristocracy; in fact, I believe, as
+his name shows, from the same stem as the Richelieus. His father was
+a great scholar, and I believe he has read much himself. Might have
+distinguished himself in literature or at the bar, but his parents died
+fearfully poor; and some distant relations in commerce took charge of
+him, and devoted his talents to the ‘Bourse.’ Seven years ago he lived
+in a single chamber, ‘au quatrieme,’ near the Luxembourg. He has now a
+hotel, not large but charming, in the Champs Elysees, worth at least six
+hundred thousand francs. Nor has he made his own fortune alone, but that
+of many others; some of birth as high as your own. He has the genius of
+riches, and knocks off a million as a poet does an ode, by the force
+of inspiration. He is hand-in-glove with the Ministers, and has been
+invited to Compiegne by the Emperor. You will find him very useful.”
+
+Alain made a slight movement of incredulous dissent, and changed the
+conversation to reminiscences of old school-boy days.
+
+The dinner at length came to a close. Frederic rang for the
+bill,--glanced over it. “Fifty-nine francs,” said he, carelessly
+flinging down his napoleon and a half. The Marquis silently drew
+forth his purse and extracted the same sum. When they were out of
+the restaurant, Frederic proposed adjourning to his own rooms. “I
+can promise you an excellent cigar, one of a box given to me by an
+invaluable young Spaniard attached to the Embassy here. Such cigars are
+not to be had at Paris for money, nor even for love; seeing that women,
+however devoted and generous, never offer you anything better than a
+cigarette. Such cigars are only to be had for friendship. Friendship is
+a jewel.”
+
+“I never smoke,” answered the Marquis, “but I shall be charmed to come
+to your rooms; only don’t let me encroach on your good-nature. Doubtless
+you have engagements for the evening.”
+
+“None till eleven o’clock, when I have promised to go to a soiree
+to which I do not offer to take you; for it is one of those Bohemian
+entertainments at which it would do you harm in the Faubourg to
+assist,--at least until you have made good your position. Let me see, is
+not the Duchesse de Tarascon a relation of yours?”
+
+“Yes; my poor mother’s first cousin.”
+
+“I congratulate you. ‘Tres grande dame.’ She will launch you in ‘puro
+cielo,’ as Juno might have launched one of her young peacocks.”
+
+“There has been no acquaintance between our houses,” returned the
+Marquis, dryly, “since the mesalliance of her second nuptials.”
+
+“Mesalliance! second nuptials! Her second husband was the Duc de
+Tarascon.”
+
+“A duke of the First Empire, the grandson of a butcher.”
+
+“Diable! you are a severe genealogist, Monsieur le Marquis. How can you
+consent to walk arm-in-arm with me, whose great-grandfather supplied
+bread to the same army to which the Due de Tarascon’s grandfather
+furnished the meat?”
+
+“My dear Frederic, we two have an equal pedigree, for our friendship
+dates from the same hour. I do not blame the Duchesse de Tarascon for
+marrying the grandson of a butcher, but for marrying the son of a man
+made duke by a usurper. She abandoned the faith of her house and
+the cause of her sovereign. Therefore her marriage is a blot on our
+scutcheon.”
+
+Frederic raised his eyebrows, but had the tact to pursue the subject
+no further. He who interferes in the quarrels of relations must pass
+through life without a friend.
+
+The young men now arrived at Lemercier’s apartment, an entresol looking
+on the Boulevard des Italiens, consisting of more rooms than a bachelor
+generally requires; low-pitched, indeed, but of good dimensions, and
+decorated and furnished with a luxury which really astonished the
+provincial, though, with the high-bred pride of an oriental, he
+suppressed every sign of surprise.
+
+Florentine cabinets, freshly retouched by the exquisite skill of Mombro;
+costly specimens of old Sevres and Limoges; pictures and bronzes and
+marble statuettes,--all well chosen and of great price, reflected from
+mirrors in Venetian frames,--made a ‘coup d’oeil’ very favourable to
+that respect which the human mind pays to the evidences of money. Nor
+was comfort less studied than splendour. Thick carpets covered the
+floors, doubled and quilted portieres excluded all draughts from chinks
+in the doors. Having allowed his friend a few minutes to contemplate and
+admire the ‘salle a manger’ and ‘salon’ which constituted his more state
+apartments, Frederic then conducted him into a small cabinet, fitted up
+with scarlet cloth and gold fringes, whereon were artistically arranged
+trophies of Eastern weapons and Turkish pipes with amber mouthpieces.
+
+There, placing the Marquis at ease on a divan and flinging himself
+on another, the Parisian exquisite ordered a valet, well dressed as
+himself, to bring coffee and liqueurs; and after vainly pressing one of
+his matchless cigars on his friend, indulged in his own Regalia.
+
+“They are ten years old,” said Frederic, with a tone of compassion at
+Alain’s self-inflicted loss,--“ten years old. Born therefore about the
+year in which we two parted--”
+
+“When you were so hastily summoned from college,” said the Marquis, “by
+the news of your father’s illness. We expected you back in vain. Have
+you been at Paris ever since?”
+
+“Ever since; my poor father died of that illness. His fortune proved
+much larger than was suspected: my share amounted to an income from
+investments in stocks, houses, etc., to upwards of sixty thousand francs
+a-year; and as I wanted six years to my majority of course the capital
+on attaining my majority would be increased by accumulation. My mother
+desired to keep me near her; my uncle, who was joint guardian with her,
+looked with disdain on our poor little provincial cottage; so promising
+an heir should acquire his finishing education under masters at Paris.
+Long before I was of age, I was initiated into politer mysteries of our
+capital than those celebrated by Eugene Sue. When I took possession of
+my fortune five years ago, I was considered a Croesus; and really for
+that patriarchal time I was wealthy. Now, alas! my accumulations have
+vanished in my outfit; and sixty thousand francs a-year is the least a
+Parisian can live upon. It is not only that all prices have fabulously
+increased, but that the dearer things become, the better people live.
+When I first came out, the world speculated upon me; now, in order to
+keep my standing, I am forced to speculate on the world. Hitherto I have
+not lost; Duplessis let me into a few good things this year, worth one
+hundred thousand francs or so. Croesus consulted the Delphic Oracle.
+Duplessis was not alive in the time of Croesus, or Croesus would have
+consulted Duplessis.”
+
+Here there was a ring at the outer door of the apartment, and in another
+minute the valet ushered in a gentleman somewhere about the age of
+thirty, of prepossessing countenance, and with the indefinable air
+of good-breeding and ‘usage du monde.’ Frederic started up to greet
+cordially the new-comer, and introduced him to the Marquis under the
+name of “Sare Grarm Varn.”
+
+“Decidedly,” said the visitor, as he took off his paletot and seated
+himself beside the Marquis,--“decidedly, my dear Lemercier,” said he, in
+very correct French, and with the true Parisian accent and intonation,
+“you Frenchmen merit that praise for polished ignorance of the language
+of barbarians which a distinguished historian bestows on the ancient
+Romans. Permit me, Marquis, to submit to you the consideration whether
+Grarm Varn is a fair rendering of my name as truthfully printed on this
+card.”
+
+The inscription on the card, thus drawn from its case and placed in
+Alain’s hand, was--
+
+             MR. GRAHAM VANE,
+
+               No. __ Rue d’Anjou.
+
+The Marquis gazed at it as he might on a hieroglyphic, and passed it on
+to Lemercier in discreet silence.
+
+That gentleman made another attempt at the barbarian appellation.
+
+“‘Grar--ham Varne.’ ‘C’est ca!’ I triumph! all difficulties yield to
+French energy.”
+
+Here the coffee and liqueurs were served; and after a short pause the
+Englishman, who had very quietly been observing the silent Marquis,
+turned to him and said, “Monsieur le Marquis, I presume it was your
+father whom I remember as an acquaintance of my own father at Ems. It
+is many years ago; I was but a child. The Count de Chambord was then at
+that enervating little spa for the benefit of the Countess’s health.
+If our friend Lemercier does not mangle your name as he does mine, I
+understand him to say that you are the Marquis de Rochebriant.”
+
+“That is my name: it pleases me to hear that my father was among those
+who flocked to Ems to do homage to the royal personage who deigns to
+assume the title of Count de Chambord.”
+
+“My own ancestors clung to the descendants of James II. till their
+claims were buried in the grave of the last Stuart, and I honour the
+gallant men who, like your father, revere in an exile the heir to their
+ancient kings.”
+
+The Englishman said this with grace and feeling; the Marquis’s heart
+warmed to him at once.
+
+“The first loyal ‘gentilhome’ I have met at Paris,” thought the
+Legitimist; “and, oh, shame! not a Frenchman!” Graham Vane, now
+stretching himself and accepting the cigar which Lemercier offered him,
+said to that gentleman “You who know your Paris by heart--everybody and
+everything therein worth the knowing, with many bodies and many things
+that are not worth it--can you inform me who and what is a certain lady
+who every fine day may be seen walking in a quiet spot at the outskirts
+of the Bois de Boulogne, not far from the Baron de Rothschild’s villa?
+The said lady arrives at this selected spot in a dark-blue coupe without
+armorial bearings, punctually at the hour of three. She wears always
+the same dress,--a kind of gray pearl-coloured silk, with a ‘cachemire’
+shawl. In age she may be somewhat about twenty--a year or so more or
+less--and has a face as haunting as a Medusa’s; not, however, a face to
+turn a man into a stone, but rather of the two turn a stone into a man.
+A clear paleness, with a bloom like an alabaster lamp with the light
+flashing through. I borrow that illustration from Sare Scott, who
+applied it to Milor Bee-ren.”
+
+“I have not seen the lady you describe,” answered Lemercier, feeling
+humiliated by the avowal; “in fact, I have not been in that sequestered
+part of the Bois for months; but I will go to-morrow: three o’clock you
+say,--leave it to me; to-morrow evening, if she is a Parisienne, you
+shall know all about her. But, mon cher, you are not of a jealous
+temperament to confide your discovery to another.”
+
+“Yes, I am of a very jealous temperament,” replied the Englishman; “but
+jealousy comes after love, and not before it. I am not in love; I am
+only haunted. To-morrow evening, then, shall we dine at Philippe’s,
+seven o’clock?”
+
+“With all my heart,” said Lemercier; “and you too, Alain?”
+
+“Thank you, no,” said the Marquis, briefly; and he rose, drew on his
+gloves, and took up his hat.
+
+At these signals of departure, the Englishman, who did not want tact
+nor delicacy, thought that he had made himself ‘de trop’ in the
+‘tete-a-tete’ of two friends of the same age and nation; and, catching
+up his paletot, said hastily, “No, Marquis, do not go yet, and leave
+our host in solitude; for I have an engagement which presses, and only
+looked in at Lemercier’s for a moment, seeing the light at his windows.
+Permit me to hope that our acquaintance will not drop, and inform me
+where I may have the honour to call on you.”
+
+“Nay,” said the Marquis; “I claim the right of a native to pay my
+respects first to the foreigner who visits our capital, and,” he added
+in a lower tone, “who speaks so nobly of those who revere its exiles.”
+
+The Englishman saluted, and walked slowly towards the door; but on
+reaching the threshold turned back and made a sign to Lemercier,
+unperceived by Alain.
+
+Frederic understood the sign, and followed Graham Vane into the
+adjoining room, closing the door as he passed.
+
+“My dear Lemercier, of course I should not have intruded on you at this
+hour on a mere visit of ceremony. I called to say that the Mademoiselle
+Duval whose address you sent me is not the right one,--not the lady
+whom, knowing your wide range of acquaintance, I asked you to aid me in
+finding out.”
+
+“Not the right Duval? Diable! she answered your description, exactly.”
+
+“Not at all.”
+
+“You said she was very pretty and young,--under twenty.”
+
+“You forgot that I said she deserved that description twenty-one years
+ago.”
+
+“Ah, so you did; but some ladies are always young. ‘Age,’ says a wit
+in the ‘Figaro,’ ‘tis a river which the women compel to reascend to its
+source when it has flowed onward more than twenty years.’ Never mind:
+‘soyez tranquille;’ I will find your Duval yet if she is to be found.
+But why could not the friend who commissioned you to inquire choose
+a name less common? Duval! every street in Paris has a shop-door over
+which is inscribed the name of Duval.”
+
+“Quite true, there is the difficulty; however, my dear Lemercier,
+pray continue to look out for a Louise Duval who was young and pretty
+twenty-one years ago: this search ought to interest me more than that
+which I entrusted to you tonight, respecting the pearly-robed lady;
+for in the last I but gratify my own whim, in the first I discharge a
+promise to a friend. You, so perfect a Frenchman, know the difference;
+honour is engaged to the first. Be sure you let me know if you find
+any other Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and of course you remember
+your promise not to mention to any one the commission of inquiry you
+so kindly undertake. I congratulate you on your friendship for M. de
+Rochebriant. What a noble countenance and manner!”
+
+Lemercier returned to the Marquis. “Such a pity you can’t dine with us
+to-morrow. I fear you made but a poor dinner to-day. But it is always
+better to arrange the menu beforehand. I will send to Philippe’s
+tomorrow. Do not be afraid.”
+
+The Marquis paused a moment, and on his young face a proud struggle was
+visible. At last he said, bluntly and manfully,
+
+“My dear Frederic, your world and mine are not and cannot be the
+same. Why should I be ashamed to own to my old schoolfellow that I am
+poor,--very poor; that the dinner I have shared with you to-day is to
+me a criminal extravagance? I lodge in a single chamber on the
+fourth-story; I dine off a single plat at a small restaurateur’s; the
+utmost income I can allow to myself does not exceed five thousand francs
+a year: my fortunes I cannot hope much to improve. In his own country
+Alain de Rochebriant has no career.” Lemercier was so astonished by this
+confession that he remained for some moments silent, eyes and mouth
+both wide open; at length he sprang up, embraced his friend well-nigh
+sobbing, and exclaimed, “‘Tant mieux pour moi!’ You must take your
+lodging with me. I have a charming bedroom to spare. Don’t say no.
+It will raise my own position to say ‘I and Rochebriant keep house
+together.’ It must be so. Come here to-morrow. As for not having
+a career,--bah! I and Duplessis will settle that. You shall be a
+millionaire in two years. Meanwhile we will join capitals: I my paltry
+notes, you your grand name. Settled!”
+
+“My dear, dear Frederic,” said the young noble, deeply affected, “on
+reflection you will see what you propose is impossible. Poor I may
+be without dishonour; live at another man’s cost I cannot do without
+baseness. It does not require to be ‘gentilhomme’ to feel that: it is
+enough to be a Frenchman. Come and see me when you can spare the time.
+There is my address. You are the only man in Paris to whom I shall be at
+home. Au revoir.” And breaking away from Lemercier’s clasp, the Marquis
+hurried off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Alain reached the house in which he lodged. Externally a fine house,
+it had been the hotel of a great family in the old regime. On the first
+floor were still superb apartments, with ceilings painted by Le Brun,
+with walls on which the thick silks still seemed fresh. These rooms
+were occupied by a rich ‘agent de change;’ but, like all such ancient
+palaces, the upper stories were wretchedly defective even in the
+comforts which poor men demand nowadays: a back staircase, narrow,
+dirty, never lighted, dark as Erebus, led to the room occupied by the
+Marquis, which might be naturally occupied by a needy student or a
+virtuous ‘grisette.’ But there was to him a charm in that old hotel,
+and the richest ‘locataire’ therein was not treated with a respect so
+ceremonious as that which at tended the lodger on the fourth story.
+The porter and his wife were Bretons; they came from the village of
+Rochebriant; they had known Alain’s parents in their young days; it was
+their kinsman who had recommended him to the hotel which they served:
+so, when he paused at the lodge for his key, which he had left there,
+the porter’s wife was in waiting for his return, and insisted on
+lighting him upstairs and seeing to his fire, for after a warm day the
+night had turned to that sharp biting cold which is more trying in Paris
+than even in London.
+
+The old woman, running up the stairs before him, opened the door of his
+room, and busied herself at the fire. “Gently, my good Marthe,” said he,
+“that log suffices. I have been extravagant to-day, and must pinch for
+it.”
+
+“M. le Marquis jests,” said the old woman, laughing.
+
+“No, Marthe; I am serious. I have sinned, but I shall reform. ‘Entre
+nous,’ my dear friend, Paris is very dear when one sets one’s foot out
+of doors: I must soon go back to Rochebriant.”
+
+“When M. le Marquis goes back to Rochebriant he must take with him a
+Madame la Marquise,--some pretty angel with a suitable dot.”
+
+“A dot suitable to the ruins of Rochebriant would not suffice to repair
+them, Marthe: give me my dressing-gown, and good-night.”
+
+“‘Bon repos, M. le Marquis! beaux reves, et bel avenir.’”
+
+“‘Bel avenir!’” murmured the young man, bitterly, leaning his cheek
+on his hand; “what fortune fairer than the present can be mine? yet
+inaction in youth is more keenly felt than in age. How lightly I
+should endure poverty if it brought poverty’s ennobling companion,
+Labour,--denied to me! Well, well; I must go back to the old rock: on
+this ocean there is no sail, not even an oar, for me.”
+
+Alain de Rochebriant had not been reared to the expectation of poverty.
+The only son of a father whose estates were large beyond those of most
+nobles in modern France, his destined heritage seemed not unsuitable
+to his illustrious birth. Educated at a provincial academy, he had been
+removed at the age of sixteen to Rochebriant, and lived there simply and
+lonelily enough, but still in a sort of feudal state, with an aunt, an
+elder and unmarried sister to his father.
+
+His father he never saw but twice after leaving college. That brilliant
+seigneur visited France but rarely, for very brief intervals, residing
+wholly abroad. To him went all the revenues of Rochebriant save what
+sufficed for the manage of his son and his sister. It was the cherished
+belief of these two loyal natures that the Marquis secretly devoted his
+fortune to the cause of the Bourbons; how, they knew not, though they
+often amused themselves by conjecturing: and, the young man, as he grew
+up, nursed the hope that he should soon hear that the descendant of
+Henri Quatre had crossed the frontier on a white charger and hoisted the
+old gonfalon with its ‘fleur-de-lis.’ Then, indeed, his own career would
+be opened, and the sword of the Kerouecs drawn from its sheath. Day
+after day he expected to hear of revolts, of which his noble father was
+doubtless the soul. But the Marquis, though a sincere Legitimist, was
+by no means an enthusiastic fanatic. He was simply a very proud, a very
+polished, a very luxurious, and, though not without the kindliness and
+generosity which were common attributes of the old French noblesse, a
+very selfish grand seigneur.
+
+Losing his wife (who died the first year of marriage in giving birth to
+Alain) while he was yet very young, he had lived a frank libertine life
+until he fell submissive under the despotic yoke of a Russian Princess,
+who, for some mysterious reason, never visited her own country and
+obstinately refused to reside in France. She was fond of travel, and
+moved yearly from London to Naples, Naples to Vienna, Berlin, Madrid,
+Seville, Carlsbad, Baden-Baden,--anywhere for caprice or change, except
+Paris. This fair wanderer succeeded in chaining to herself the heart and
+the steps of the Marquis de Rochebriant.
+
+She was very rich; she lived semi-royally. Hers was just the house in
+which it suited the Marquis to be the ‘enfant qate.’ I suspect that,
+cat-like, his attachment was rather to the house than to the person of
+his mistress. Not that he was domiciled with the Princess; that would
+have been somewhat too much against the proprieties, greatly too
+much against the Marquis’s notions of his own dignity. He had his
+own carriage, his own apartments, his own suite, as became so grand a
+seigneur and the lover of so grand a dame. His estates, mortgaged
+before he came to them, yielded no income sufficient for his wants; he
+mortgaged deeper and deeper, year after year, till he could mortgage
+them no more. He sold his hotel at Paris; he accepted without scruple
+his sister’s fortune; he borrowed with equal ‘sang froid’ the two
+hundred thousand francs which his son on coming of age inherited from
+his mother. Alain yielded that fortune to him without a murmur,--nay,
+with pride; he thought it destined to go towards raising a regiment for
+the fleur-de-lis.
+
+To do the Marquis justice, he was fully persuaded that he should shortly
+restore to his sister and son what he so recklessly took from them. He
+was engaged to be married to his Princess so soon as her own husband
+died. She had been separated from the Prince for many years, and every
+year it was said he could not last a year longer. But he completed the
+measure of his conjugal iniquities by continuing to live; and one day,
+by mistake, Death robbed the lady of the Marquis instead of the Prince.
+
+This was an accident which the Marquis had never counted upon. He was
+still young enough to consider himself young; in fact, one principal
+reason for keeping Alain secluded in Bretagne was his reluctance
+to introduce into the world a son “as old as myself” he would say
+pathetically. The news of his death, which happened at Baden after a
+short attack of bronchitis caught in a supper ‘al fresco’ at the old
+castle, was duly transmitted to Rochebriant by the Princess; and the
+shock to Alain and his aunt was the greater because they had seen so
+little of the departed that they regarded him as a heroic myth, an
+impersonation of ancient chivalry, condemning himself to voluntary exile
+rather than do homage to usurpers. But from their grief they were soon
+roused by the terrible doubt whether Rochebriant could still be retained
+in the family. Besides the mortgagees, creditors from half the capitals
+in Europe sent in their claims; and all the movable effects transmitted
+to Alain by his father’s confidential Italian valet, except sundry
+carriages and horses which were sold at Baden for what they would fetch,
+were a magnificent dressing-case, in the secret drawer of which were
+some bank-notes amounting to thirty thousand francs, and three large
+boxes containing the Marquis’s correspondence, a few miniature female
+portraits, and a great many locks of hair.
+
+Wholly unprepared for the ruin that stared him in the face, the young
+Marquis evinced the natural strength of his character by the calmness
+with which he met the danger, and the intelligence with which he
+calculated and reduced it.
+
+By the help of the family notary in the neighbouring town, he made
+himself master of his liabilities and his means; and he found that,
+after paying all debts and providing for the interest of the mortgages,
+a property which ought to have realized a rental of L10,000 a year
+yielded not more than L400. Nor was even this margin safe, nor the
+property out of peril; for the principal mortgagee, who was a capitalist
+in Paris named Louvier, having had during the life of the late Marquis
+more than once to wait for his half-yearly interest longer than suited
+his patience,--and his patience was not enduring,--plainly declared that
+if the same delay recurred he should put his right of seizure in force;
+and in France still more than in England, bad seasons seriously affect
+the security of rents. To pay away L9,600 a year regularly out of
+L10,000, with the penalty of forfeiting the whole if not paid,--whether
+crops may fail, farmers procrastinate, and timber fall in price,--is to
+live with the sword of Damocles over one’s head.
+
+For two years and more, however, Alain met his difficulties with
+prudence and vigour; he retrenched the establishment hitherto kept at
+the chateau, resigned such rural pleasures as he had been accustomed to
+indulge, and lived like one of his petty farmers. But the risks of the
+future remained undiminished.
+
+“There is but one way, Monsieur le Marquis,” said the family notary, M.
+Hebert, “by which you can put your estate in comparative safety. Your
+father raised his mortgages from time to time, as he wanted money,
+and often at interest above the average market interest. You may add
+considerably to your income by consolidating all these mortgages into
+one at a lower percentage, and in so doing pay off this formidable
+mortgagee, M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent upon becoming
+the proprietor of Rochebriant. Unfortunately those few portions of your
+land which were but lightly charged, and, lying contiguous to small
+proprietors, were coveted by them, and could be advantageously sold, are
+already gone to pay the debts of Monsieur the late Marquis. There are,
+however, two small farms which, bordering close on the town of S______,
+I think I could dispose of for building purposes at high rates; but
+these lands are covered by M. Louvier’s general mortgage, and he has
+refused to release them, unless the whole debt be paid. Were that debt
+therefore transferred to another mortgagee, we might stipulate for their
+exception, and in so doing secure a sum of more than 100,000 francs,
+which you could keep in reserve for a pressing or unforeseen occasion,
+and make the nucleus of a capital devoted to the gradual liquidation
+of the charges on the estate. For with a little capital, Monsieur le
+Marquis, your rent-roll might be very greatly increased, the forests
+and orchards improved, those meadows round S_____ drained and irrigated.
+Agriculture is beginning to be understood in Bretagne, and your estate
+would soon double its value in the hands of a spirited capitalist. My
+advice to you, therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good ‘avoue,’
+practised in such branch of his profession, to negotiate the
+consolidation of your mortgages upon terms that will enable you to sell
+outlying portions, and so pay off the charge by instalments agreed upon;
+to see if some safe company or rich individual can be found to undertake
+for a term of years the management of your forests, the draining of the
+S_____ meadows, the superintendence of your fisheries, etc. They, it is
+true, will monopolize the profits for many years,--perhaps twenty; but
+you are a young man: at the end of that time you will reenter on your
+estate with a rental so improved that the mortgages, now so awful, will
+seem to you comparatively trivial.”
+
+In pursuance of this advice, the young Marquis had come to Paris
+fortified with a letter from M. Hebert to an ‘avoue’ of eminence, and
+with many letters from his aunt to the nobles of the Faubourg connected
+with his house. Now one reason why M. Hebert had urged his client to
+undertake this important business in person, rather than volunteer his
+own services in Paris, was somewhat extra-professional. He had a sincere
+and profound affection for Alain; he felt compassion for that young life
+so barrenly wasted in seclusion and severe privations; he respected,
+but was too practical a man of business to share, those chivalrous
+sentiments of loyalty to an exiled dynasty which disqualified the man
+for the age he lived in, and, if not greatly modified, would cut him
+off from the hopes and aspirations of his eager generation. He thought
+plausibly enough that the air of the grand metropolis was necessary to
+the mental health, enfeebled and withering amidst the feudal mists of
+Bretagne; that once in Paris, Alain would imbibe the ideas of Paris,
+adapt himself to some career leading to honour and to fortune, for which
+he took facilities from his high birth, an historical name too national
+for any dynasty not to welcome among its adherents, and an intellect
+not yet sharpened by contact and competition with others, but in itself
+vigorous, habituated to thought, and vivified by the noble aspirations
+which belong to imaginative natures.
+
+At the least, Alain would be at Paris in the social position which would
+afford him the opportunities of a marriage, in which his birth and rank
+would be readily accepted as an equivalent to some ample fortune that
+would serve to redeem the endangered seigneuries. He therefore warned
+Alain that the affair for which he went to Paris might be tedious, that
+lawyers were always slow, and advised him to calculate on remaining
+several months, perhaps a year; delicately suggesting that his rearing
+hitherto had been too secluded for his age and rank, and that a year at
+Paris, even if he failed in the object which took him there, would not
+be thrown away in the knowledge of men and things that would fit him
+better to grapple with his difficulties on his return.
+
+Alain divided his spare income between his aunt and himself, and had
+come to Paris resolutely determined to live within the L200 a year which
+remained to his share. He felt the revolution in his whole being that
+commenced when out of sight of the petty principality in which he
+was the object of that feudal reverence, still surviving in the more
+unfrequented parts of Bretagne, for the representatives of illustrious
+names connected with the immemorial legends of the province.
+
+The very bustle of a railway, with its crowd and quickness and
+unceremonious democracy of travel, served to pain and confound and
+humiliate that sense of individual dignity in which he had been
+nurtured. He felt that, once away from Rochebriant, he was but a cipher
+in the sum of human beings. Arrived at Paris, and reaching the gloomy
+hotel to which he had been recommended, he greeted even the desolation
+of that solitude which is usually so oppressive to a stranger in the
+metropolis of his native land. Loneliness was better than the loss of
+self in the reek and pressure of an unfamiliar throng. For the first few
+days he had wandered over Paris without calling even on the ‘avoue’ to
+whom M. Hebert had directed him. He felt with the instinctive acuteness
+of a mind which, under sounder training, would have achieved no mean
+distinction, that it was a safe precaution to imbue himself with the
+atmosphere of the place, and seize on those general ideas which in great
+capitals are so contagious that they are often more accurately caught
+by the first impressions than by subsequent habit, before he brought his
+mind into collision with those of the individuals he had practically to
+deal with.
+
+At last he repaired to the ‘avoue,’ M. Gandrin, Rue St. Florentin. He
+had mechanically formed his idea of the abode and person of an ‘avoue’
+from his association with M. Hebert. He expected to find a dull house
+in a dull street near the centre of business, remote from the haunts of
+idlers, and a grave man of unpretending exterior and matured years.
+
+He arrived at a hotel newly fronted, richly decorated, in the
+fashionable quartier close by the Tuileries. He entered a wide ‘porte
+cochere,’ and was directed by the concierge to mount ‘au premier.’
+There, first detained in an office faultlessly neat, with spruce young
+men at smart desks, he was at length admitted into a noble salon, and
+into the presence of a gentleman lounging in an easy-chair before a
+magnificent bureau of ‘marqueterie, genre Louis Seize,’ engaged in
+patting a white curly lapdog, with a pointed nose and a shrill bark.
+
+The gentleman rose politely on his entrance, and released the dog, who,
+after sniffing the Marquis, condescended not to bite.
+
+“Monsieur le Marquis,” said M. Gandrin, glancing at the card and the
+introductory note from M. Hebert, which Alain had sent in, and which
+lay on the ‘secretaire’ beside heaps of letters nicely arranged and
+labelled, “charmed to make the honour of your acquaintance; just arrived
+at Paris? So M. Hebert--a very worthy person whom I have never seen, but
+with whom I have had correspondence--tells me you wish for my advice;
+in fact, he wrote to me some days ago, mentioning the business in
+question,--consolidation of mortgages. A very large sum wanted, Monsieur
+le Marquis, and not to be had easily.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Alain, quietly, “I should imagine that there must
+be many capitalists in Paris willing to invest in good securities at
+fair interest.”
+
+“You are mistaken, Marquis; very few such capitalists. Men worth money
+nowadays like quick returns and large profits, thanks to the magnificent
+system of ‘Credit Mobilier,’ in which, as you are aware, a man may place
+his money in any trade or speculation without liabilities beyond his
+share. Capitalists are nearly all traders or speculators.”
+
+“Then,” said the Marquis, half rising, “I am to presume, sir, that you
+are not likely to assist me.”
+
+“No, I don’t say that, Marquis. I will look with care into the matter.
+Doubtless you have with you an abstract of the necessary documents,
+the conditions of the present mortgages, the rental of the estate, its
+probable prospects, and so forth.”
+
+“Sir, I have such an abstract with me at Paris; and having gone into
+it myself with M. Hebert, I can pledge you my word that it is strictly
+faithful to the facts.”
+
+The Marquis said this with naive simplicity, as if his word were quite
+sufficient to set that part of the question at rest. M. Gandrin smiled
+politely and said, “‘Eh bien,’ M. le Marquis: favour me with the
+abstract; in a week’s time you shall have my opinion. You enjoy Paris?
+Greatly improved under the Emperor. ‘Apropos,’ Madame Gandrin receives
+tomorrow evening; allow me that opportunity to present you to her.”
+ Unprepared for the proffered hospitality, the Marquis had no option but
+to murmur his gratification and assent.
+
+In a minute more he was in the streets. The next evening he went to
+Madame Gandrin’s,--a brilliant reception,--a whole moving flower-bed of
+“decorations” there. Having gone through the ceremony of presentation to
+Madame Gandrin,--a handsome woman dressed to perfection, and conversing
+with the secretary to an embassy,--the young noble ensconced himself in
+an obscure and quiet corner, observing all and imagining that he escaped
+observation. And as the young men of his own years glided by him, or
+as their talk reached his ears, he became aware that from top to toe,
+within and without, he was old-fashioned, obsolete, not of his race, not
+of his day. His rank itself seemed to him a waste-paper title-deed to
+a heritage long lapsed. Not thus the princely seigneurs of Rochebriant
+made their ‘debut’ at the capital of their nation. They had had the
+‘entree’ to the cabinets of their kings; they had glittered in the halls
+of Versailles; they had held high posts of distinction in court and
+camp; the great Order of St. Louis had seemed their hereditary appanage.
+His father, though a voluntary exile in manhood, had been in childhood a
+king’s page, and throughout life remained the associate of princes; and
+here, in an ‘avoue’s soiree,’ unknown, unregarded, an expectant on an
+‘avoue’s’ patronage, stood the last lord of Rochebriant.
+
+It is easy to conceive that Alain did not stay long. But he stayed long
+enough to convince him that on L200 a year the polite society of Paris,
+even as seen at M. Gandrin’s, was not for him. Nevertheless, a day or
+two after, he resolved to call upon the nearest of his kinsmen to whom
+his aunt had given him letters. With the Count de Vandemar, one of his
+fellow-nobles of the sacred Faubourg, he should be no less Rochebriant,
+whether in a garret or a palace. The Vandemars, in fact, though for many
+generations before the First Revolution a puissant and brilliant family,
+had always recognized the Rochebriants as the head of their house,--the
+trunk from which they had been slipped in the fifteenth century, when a
+younger son of the Rochebriants married a wealthy heiress and took the
+title with the lands of Vandemar.
+
+Since then the two families had often intermarried. The present count
+had a reputation for ability, was himself a large proprietor, and might
+furnish advice to guide Alain in his negotiations with M. Gandrin. The
+Hotel do Vandemar stood facing the old Hotel de Rochebriant; it was less
+spacious, but not less venerable, gloomy, and prison-like.
+
+As he turned his eyes from the armorial scutcheon which still rested,
+though chipped and mouldering, over the portals of his lost ancestral
+house, and was about to cross the street, two young men, who seemed two
+or three years older than himself, emerged on horseback from the Hotel
+de Vandemar.
+
+Handsome young men, with the lofty look of the old race, dressed with
+the punctilious care of person which is not foppery in men of birth,
+but seems part of the self-respect that appertains to the old chivalric
+point of honour. The horse of one of these cavaliers made a caracole
+which brought it nearly upon Alain as he was about to cross. The rider,
+checking his steed, lifted his hat to Alain and uttered a word of
+apology in the courtesy of ancient high-breeding, but still with
+condescension as to an inferior. This little incident, and the slighting
+kind of notice received from coevals of his own birth, and doubtless his
+own blood,--for he divined truly that they were the sons of the Count
+de Vandemar,--disconcerted Alain to a degree which perhaps a Frenchman
+alone can comprehend. He had even half a mind to give up his visit
+and turn back. However, his native manhood prevailed over that morbid
+sensitiveness which, born out of the union of pride and poverty, has all
+the effects of vanity, and yet is not vanity itself.
+
+The Count was at home, a thin spare man with a narrow but high forehead,
+and an expression of countenance keen, severe, and ‘un peu moqueuse.’
+
+He received the Marquis, however, at first with great cordiality,
+kissed him on both sides of his cheek, called him “cousin,” expressed
+immeasurable regret that the Countess was gone out on one of the
+missions of charity in which the great ladies of the Faubourg
+religiously interest themselves, and that his sons had just ridden forth
+to the Bois.
+
+As Alain, however, proceeded, simply and without false shame, to
+communicate the object of his visit at Paris, the extent of his
+liabilities, and the penury of his means, the smile vanished from the
+Count’s face. He somewhat drew back his fauteuil in the movement
+common to men who wish to estrange themselves from some other man’s
+difficulties; and when Alain came to a close, the Count remained some
+moments seized with a slight cough; and, gazing intently on the carpet,
+at length he said, “My dear young friend, your father behaved extremely
+ill to you,--dishonourably, fraudulently.”
+
+“Hold!” said the Marquis, colouring high. “Those are words no man can
+apply to my father in my presence.”
+
+The Count stared, shrugged his shoulders, and replied with ‘sang froid,’
+“Marquis, if you are contented with your father’s conduct, of course it
+is no business of mine: he never injured me. I presume, however, that,
+considering my years and my character, you come to me for advice: is it
+so?”
+
+Alain bowed his head in assent.
+
+“There are four courses for one in your position to take,” said the
+Count, placing the index of the right hand successively on the thumb and
+three fingers of the left,--“four courses, and no more.
+
+“First. To do as your notary recommended: consolidate your mortgages,
+patch up your income as you best can, return to Rochebriant, and devote
+the rest of your existence to the preservation of your property. By that
+course your life will be one of permanent privation, severe struggle;
+and the probability is that you will not succeed: there will come one
+or two bad seasons, the farmers will fail to pay, the mortgagee will
+foreclose, and you may find yourself, after twenty years of anxiety and
+torment, prematurely old and without a sou.
+
+“Course the second. Rochebriant, though so heavily encumbered as to
+yield you some such income as your father gave to his chef de cuisine,
+is still one of those superb ‘terres’ which bankers and Jews and
+stock-jobbers court and hunt after, for which they will give enormous
+sums. If you place it in good hands, I do not doubt that you could
+dispose of the property within three months, on terms that would leave
+you a considerable surplus, which, invested with judgment, would afford
+you whereon you could live at Paris in a way suitable to your rank and
+age. Need we go further?--does this course smile to you?”
+
+“Pass on, Count; I will defend to the last what I take from my
+ancestors, and cannot voluntarily sell their roof-tree and their tombs.”
+
+“Your name would still remain, and you would be just as well received
+in Paris, and your ‘noblesse’ just as implicitly conceded, if all Judaea
+encamped upon Rochebriant. Consider how few of us ‘gentilshommes’ of
+the old regime have any domains left to us. Our names alone survive: no
+revolution can efface them.”
+
+“It may be so, but pardon me; there are subjects on which we cannot
+reason,--we can but feel. Rochebriant may be torn from me, but I cannot
+yield it.”
+
+“I proceed to the third course. Keep the chateau and give up its
+traditions; remain ‘de facto’ Marquis of Rochebriant, but accept the new
+order of things. Make yourself known to the people in power. They will
+be charmed to welcome you a convert from the old noblesse is a guarantee
+of stability to the new system. You will be placed in diplomacy;
+effloresce into an ambassador, a minister,--and ministers nowadays have
+opportunities to become enormously rich.”
+
+“That course is not less impossible than the last. Till Henry V.
+formally resign his right to the throne of Saint Louis, I can be servant
+to no other man seated on that throne.”
+
+“Such, too, is my creed,” said the Count, “and I cling to it; but my
+estate is not mortgaged, and I have neither the tastes nor the age for
+public employments. The last course is perhaps better than the rest; at
+all events it is the easiest. A wealthy marriage; even if it must be a
+‘mesalliance.’ I think at your age, with your appearance, that your name
+is worth at least two million francs in the eyes of a rich ‘roturier’
+with an ambitious daughter.”
+
+“Alas!” said the young man, rising, “I see I shall have to go back to
+Rochebriant. I cannot sell my castle, I cannot sell my creed, and I
+cannot sell my name and myself.”
+
+“The last all of us did in the old ‘regime,’ Marquis. Though I
+still retain the title of Vandemar, my property comes from the
+Farmer-General’s daughter, whom my great-grandfather, happily for us,
+married in the days of Louis Quinze. Marriages with people of sense and
+rank have always been ‘marriages de convenance’ in France. It is only in
+‘le petit monde’ that men having nothing marry girls having nothing, and
+I don’t believe they are a bit the happier for it. On the contrary, the
+‘quarrels de menage’ leading to frightful crimes appear by the
+‘Gazette des Tribunaux’ to be chiefly found among those who do not sell
+themselves at the altar.”
+
+The old Count said this with a grim ‘persiflage.’ He was a Voltairian.
+
+Voltairianism, deserted by the modern Liberals of France, has its chief
+cultivation nowadays among the wits of the old ‘regime.’ They pick up
+its light weapons on the battle-field on which their fathers perished,
+and re-feather against the ‘canaille’ the shafts which had been pointed
+against the ‘noblesse.’
+
+“Adieu, Count,” said Alain, rising; “I do not thank you less for your
+advice because I have not the wit to profit by it.”
+
+“‘Au revoir,’ my cousin; you will think better of it when you have been
+a month or two at Paris. By the way, my wife receives every Wednesday;
+consider our house yours.”
+
+“Count, can I enter into the world which Madame la Comtesse receives, in
+the way that becomes my birth, on the income I take from my fortune?”
+
+The Count hesitated. “No,” said he at last, frankly; “not because you
+will be less welcome or less respected, but because I see that you have
+all the pride and sensitiveness of a ‘seigneur de province.’ Society
+would therefore give you pain, not pleasure. More than this, I know, by
+the remembrance of my own youth and the sad experience of my own
+sons, that you would be irresistibly led into debt, and debt in your
+circumstances would be the loss of Rochebriant. No; I invite you to
+visit us. I offer you the most select but not the most brilliant circles
+of Paris, because my wife is religious, and frightens away the birds
+of gay plumage with the scarecrows of priests and bishops. But if you
+accept my invitation and my offer, I am bound, as an old man of the
+world to a young kinsman, to say that the chances are that you will be
+ruined.”
+
+“I thank you, Count, for your candour; and I now acknowledge that I have
+found a relation and a guide,” answered the Marquis, with nobility of
+mien that was not without a pathos which touched the hard heart of the
+old man.
+
+“Come at least whenever you want a sincere if a rude friend;” and though
+he did not kiss his cousin’s cheek this time, he gave him, with more
+sincerity, a parting shake of the hand.
+
+And these made the principal events in Alain’s Paris life till he met
+Frederic Lemercier. Hitherto he had received no definite answer from M.
+Gandrin, who had postponed an interview, not having had leisure to make
+himself master of all the details in the abstract sent to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The next day, towards the afternoon, Frederic Lemercier, somewhat
+breathless from the rapidity at which he had ascended to so high an
+eminence, burst into Alain’s chamber.
+
+“‘Br-r! mon cher;’ what superb exercise for the health--how it must
+strengthen the muscles and expand the chest! After this who should
+shrink from scaling Mont Blanc? Well, well. I have been meditating on
+your business ever since we parted. But I would fain know more of its
+details. You shall confide them to me as we drive through the Bois. My
+coupe is below, and the day is beautiful; come.”
+
+To the young Marquis, the gayety, the heartiness of his college friend
+were a cordial. How different from the dry counsels of the Count de
+Vandemar! Hope, though vaguely, entered into his heart. Willingly he
+accepted Frederic’s invitation, and the young men were soon rapidly
+borne along the Champs Elysees. As briefly as he could Alain described
+the state of his affairs, the nature of his mortgages, and the result of
+his interview with M. Gandrin.
+
+Frederic listened attentively. “Then Gandrin has given you as yet no
+answer?”
+
+“None; but I have a note from him this morning asking me to call
+to-morrow.”
+
+“After you have seen him, decide on nothing,--if he makes you any offer.
+Get back your abstract, or a copy of it, and confide it to me.
+Gandrin ought to help you; he transacts affairs in a large way. ‘Belle
+clientele’ among the millionnaires. But his clients expect fabulous
+profits, and so does he. As for your principal mortgagee, Louvier, you
+know, of course, who he is.”
+
+“No, except that M. Hebert told me that he was very rich.”
+
+“‘Rich’ I should think so; one of the Kings of Finance, Ah! observe
+those young men on horseback.”
+
+Alain looked forth and recognized the two cavaliers whom he had
+conjectured to be the sons of the Count de Vandemar.
+
+“Those ‘beaux garcons’ are fair specimens of your Faubourg,” said
+Frederic; “they would decline my acquaintance because my grandfather
+kept a shop, and they keep a shop between them.”
+
+“A shop! I am mistaken, then. Who are they?”
+
+“Raoul and Enguerrand, sons of that mocker of man, the Count de
+Vandemar.”
+
+“And they keep a shop! You are jesting.”
+
+“A shop at which you may buy gloves and perfumes, Rue de la Chaussee
+d’Antin. Of course they don’t serve at the counter; they only invest
+their pocket-money in the speculation; and, in so doing, treble at least
+their pocket-money, buy their horses, and keep their grooms.”
+
+“Is it possible! nobles of such birth! How shocked the Count would be if
+he knew it!”
+
+“Yes, very much shocked if he was supposed to know it. But he is too
+wise a father not to give his sons limited allowances and unlimited
+liberty, especially the liberty to add to the allowances as they please.
+Look again at them; no better riders and more affectionate brothers
+since the date of Castor and Pollux. Their tastes indeed differ--Raoul
+is religious and moral, melancholy and dignified; Enguerrand is a lion
+of the first water,--elegant to the tips of his nails. These demigods
+nevertheless are very mild to mortals. Though Enguerrand is the best
+pistol-shot in Paris, and Raoul the best fencer, the first is so
+good-tempered that you would be a brute to quarrel with him, the last so
+true a Catholic, that if you quarrelled with him you need not fear his
+sword. He would not die in the committal of what the Church holds a
+mortal sin.”
+
+“Are you speaking ironically? Do you mean to imply that men of the name
+of Vandemar are not brave?”
+
+“On the contrary, I believe that, though masters of their weapons, they
+are too brave to abuse their skill; and I must add that, though they
+are sleeping partners in a shop, they would not cheat you of a farthing.
+Benign stars on earth, as Castor and Pollux were in heaven.”
+
+“But partners in a shop!”
+
+“Bah! when a minister himself, like the late M. de M______, kept a shop,
+and added the profits of ‘bons bons’ to his revenue, you may form
+some idea of the spirit of the age. If young nobles are not generally
+sleeping partners in shops, still they are more or less adventurers
+in commerce. The Bourse is the profession of those who have no other
+profession. You have visited the Bourse?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“No! this is just the hour. We have time yet for the Bois. Coachman,
+drive to the Bourse.”
+
+“The fact is,” resumed Frederic, “that gambling is one of the wants of
+civilized men. The ‘rouge-et-noir’ and ‘roulette’ tables are forbidden;
+the hells closed: but the passion for making money without working for
+it must have its vent, and that vent is the Bourse. As instead of a
+hundred wax-lights you now have one jet of gas, so instead of a hundred
+hells you have now one Bourse, and--it is exceedingly convenient;
+always at hand; no discredit being seen there as it was to be seen at
+Frascati’s; on the contrary, at once respectable, and yet the mode.”
+
+The coupe stops at the Bourse, our friends mount the steps, glide
+through the pillars, deposit their canes at a place destined to guard
+them, and the Marquis follows Frederic up a flight of stairs till he
+gains the open gallery round a vast hall below. Such a din! such a
+clamour! disputations, wrangling, wrathful.
+
+Here Lemercier distinguished some friends, whom he joined for a few
+minutes.
+
+Alain left alone, looked down into the hall. He thought himself in some
+stormy scene of the First Revolution. An English contested election in
+the market-place of a borough when the candidates are running close on
+each other--the result doubtful, passions excited, the whole borough in
+civil war--is peaceful compared to the scene at the Bourse.
+
+Bulls and bears screaming, bawling, gesticulating, as if one were about
+to strangle the other; the whole, to an uninitiated eye, a confusion, a
+Babel, which it seems absolutely impossible to reconcile to the notion
+of quiet mercantile transactions, the purchase and sale of shares and
+stocks. As Alain gazed bewildered, he felt himself gently touched, and,
+looking round, saw the Englishman.
+
+“A lively scene!” whispered Mr. Vane. “This is the heart of Paris: it
+beats very loudly.”
+
+“Is your Bourse in London like this?”
+
+“I cannot tell you: at our Exchange the general public are not admitted:
+the privileged priests of that temple sacrifice their victims in closed
+penetralia, beyond which the sounds made in the operation do not travel
+to ears profane. But had we an Exchange like this open to all the world,
+and placed, not in a region of our metropolis unknown to fashion, but
+in some elegant square in St. James’s or at Hyde Park Corner, I suspect
+that our national character would soon undergo a great change, and that
+all our idlers and sporting-men would make their books there every day,
+instead of waiting long months in ‘ennui’ for the Doncaster and the
+Derby. At present we have but few men on the turf; we should then
+have few men not on Exchange, especially if we adopt your law, and can
+contrive to be traders without risk of becoming bankrupts. Napoleon I.
+called us a shopkeeping nation. Napoleon III. has taught France to excel
+us in everything, and certainly he has made Paris a shopkeeping city.”
+
+Alain thought of Raoul and Enguerrand, and blushed to find that what he
+considered a blot on his countrymen was so familiarly perceptible to a
+foreigner’s eye.
+
+“And the Emperor has done wisely, at least for the time,” continued the
+Englishman, with a more thoughtful accent. “He has found vent thus for
+that very dangerous class in Paris society to which the subdivision of
+property gave birth; namely the crowd of well-born, daring young men
+without fortune and without profession. He has opened the ‘Bourse’ and
+said, ‘There, I give you employment, resource, an ‘avenir.’’ He has
+cleared the byways into commerce and trade, and opened new avenues of
+wealth to the noblesse, whom the great Revolution so unwisely beggared.
+What other way to rebuild a ‘noblesse’ in France, and give it a chance
+of power be side an access to fortune? But to how many sides of your
+national character has the Bourse of Paris magnetic attraction! You
+Frenchmen are so brave that you could not be happy without facing
+danger, so covetous of distinction that you would pine yourselves away
+without a dash, coute quo coute, at celebrity and a red ribbon. Danger!
+look below at that arena: there it is; danger daily, hourly. But there
+also is celebrity; win at the Bourse, as of old in a tournament, and
+paladins smile on you, and ladies give you their scarves, or, what
+is much the same, they allow you to buy their cachemires. Win at
+the Bourse,--what follows? the Chamber, the Senate, the Cross, the
+Minister’s ‘portefeuille.’ I might rejoice in all this for the sake
+of Europe,--could it last, and did it not bring the consequences that
+follow the demoralization which attends it. The Bourse and the Credit
+Mobilier keep Paris quiet, at least as quiet as it can be. These are
+the secrets of this reign of splendour; these the two lions couchants on
+which rests the throne of the Imperial reconstructor.”
+
+Alain listened surprised and struck. He had not given the Englishman
+credit for the cast of mind which such reflections evinced.
+
+Here Lemercier rejoined them, and shook hands with Graham Vane, who,
+taking him aside, said, “But you promised to go to the Bois, and indulge
+my insane curiosity about the lady in the pearl-coloured robe?”
+
+“I have not forgotten; it is not half-past two yet; you said three.
+‘Soyez tranquille;’ I drive thither from the Bourse with Rochebriant.”
+
+“Is it necessary to take with you that very good-looking Marquis?”
+
+“I thought you said you were not jealous, because not yet in love.
+However, if Rochebriant occasions you the pang which your humble servant
+failed to inflict, I will take care that he do not see the lady.”
+
+“No,” said the Englishman; “on consideration, I should be very much
+obliged to any one with whom she would fall in love. That would
+disenchant me. Take the Marquis by all means.”
+
+Meanwhile Alain, again looking down, saw just under him, close by one of
+the pillars, Lucien Duplessis. He was standing apart from the throng,
+a small space cleared round himself, and two men who had the air of
+gentlemen of the ‘beau monde,’ with whom he was conferring. Duplessis,
+thus seen, was not like the Duplessis at the restaurant. It would be
+difficult to explain what the change was, but it forcibly struck Alain:
+the air was more dignified, the expression keener; there was a look of
+conscious power and command about the man even at that distance; the
+intense, concentrated intelligence of his eye, his firm lip, his marked
+features, his projecting, massive brow, would have impressed a very
+ordinary observer. In fact, the man was here in his native element; in
+the field in which his intellect gloried, commanded, and had signalized
+itself by successive triumphs. Just thus may be the change in the great
+orator whom you deemed insignificant in a drawing-room, when you see his
+crest rise above a reverential audience; or the great soldier, who was
+not distinguishable from the subaltern in a peaceful club, could you see
+him issuing the order to his aids-de-camp amidst the smoke and roar of
+the battle-field.
+
+“Ah, Marquis!” said Graham Vane, “are you gazing at Duplessis? He is the
+modern genius of Paris. He is at once the Cousin, the Guizot, and
+the Victor Hugo of speculation. Philosophy, Eloquence, audacious
+Romance,--all Literature now is swallowed up in the sublime epic of
+‘Agiotage,’ and Duplessis is the poet of the Empire.”
+
+“Well said, M. Grarm Varn,” cried Frederic, forgetting his recent
+lesson in English names. “Alain underrates that great man. How could an
+Englishman appreciate him so well?”
+
+“‘Ma foi!’” returned Graham, quietly. “I am studying to think at Paris,
+in order some day or other to know how to act in London. Time for the
+Bois. Lemercier, we meet at seven,--Philippe’s.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+“What do you think of the Bourse?” asked Lemercier, as their carriage
+took the way to the Bois.
+
+“I cannot think of it yet; I am stunned. It seems to me as if I had been
+at a ‘Sabbat,’ of which the wizards were ‘agents de change,’ but not
+less bent upon raising Satan.”
+
+“Pooh! the best way to exorcise Satan is to get rich enough not to be
+tempted by him. The fiend always loved to haunt empty places; and of all
+places nowadays he prefers empty purses and empty stomachs.”
+
+“But do all people get rich at the Bourse? or is not one man’s wealth
+many men’s ruin?”
+
+“That is a question not very easy to answer; but under our present
+system Paris gets rich, though at the expense of individual Parisians. I
+will try and explain. The average luxury is enormously increased even in
+my experience; what were once considered refinements and fopperies are
+now called necessary comforts. Prices are risen enormously, house-rent
+doubled within the last five or six years; all articles of luxury are
+very much dearer; the very gloves I wear cost twenty per cent more than
+I used to pay for gloves of the same quality. How the people we meet
+live, and live so well, is an enigma that would defy AEdipus if AEdipus
+were not a Parisian. But the main explanation is this: speculation and
+commerce, with the facilities given to all investments, have really
+opened more numerous and more rapid ways to fortune than were known a
+few years ago.
+
+“Crowds are thus attracted to Paris, resolved to venture a small capital
+in the hope of a large one; they live on that capital, not on their
+income, as gamesters do. There is an idea among us that it is
+necessary to seem rich in order to become rich. Thus there is a general
+extravagance and profusion. English milords marvel at our splendour.
+Those who, while spending their capital as their income, fail in their
+schemes of fortune, after one, two, three, or four years, vanish. What
+becomes of them, I know no more than I do what becomes of the old moons.
+Their place is immediately supplied by new candidates. Paris is thus
+kept perennially sumptuous and splendid by the gold it engulfs. But
+then some men succeed,--succeed prodigiously, preternaturally; they make
+colossal fortunes, which are magnificently expended. They set an example
+of show and pomp, which is of course the more contagious because so many
+men say, ‘The other day those millionnaires were as poor as we are; they
+never economized; why should we?’ Paris is thus doubly enriched,--by the
+fortunes it swallows up, and by the fortunes it casts up; the last
+being always reproductive, and the first never lost except to the
+individuals.”
+
+“I understand: but what struck me forcibly at the scene we have left was
+the number of young men there; young men whom I should judge by their
+appearance to be gentlemen, evidently not mere spectators,--eager,
+anxious, with tablets in their hands. That old or middle-aged men should
+find a zest in the pursuit of gain I can understand, but youth and
+avarice seem to me a new combination, which Moliere never divined in his
+‘Avare.’”
+
+“Young men, especially if young gentlemen, love pleasure; and pleasure
+in this city is very dear. This explains why so many young men frequent
+the Bourse. In the old gaining now suppressed, young men were the
+majority; in the days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young
+nobles, not the old, who would stake their very mantles and swords on a
+cast of the die. And, naturally enough, mon cher; for is not youth
+the season of hope, and is not hope the goddess of gaming, whether at
+rouge-et-noir or the Bourse?”
+
+Alain felt himself more and more behind his generation. The acute
+reasoning of Lemercier humbled his amour propre. At college Lemercier
+was never considered Alain’s equal in ability or book-learning. What
+a stride beyond his school-fellow had Lemercier now made! How dull and
+stupid the young provincial felt himself to be as compared with the easy
+cleverness and half-sportive philosophy of the Parisian’s fluent talk!
+
+He sighed with a melancholy and yet with a generous envy. He had too
+fine a natural perception not to acknowledge that there is a rank of
+mind as well as of birth, and in the first he felt that Lemercier might
+well walk before a Rochebriant; but his very humility was a proof that
+he underrated himself.
+
+Lemercier did not excel him in mind, but in experience. And just as the
+drilled soldier seems a much finer fellow than the raw recruit, because
+he knows how to carry himself, but after a year’s discipline the
+raw recruit may excel in martial air the upright hero whom he now
+despairingly admires, and never dreams he can rival; so set a mind from
+a village into the drill of a capital, and see it a year after; it may
+tower a head higher than its recruiting-sergeant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+“I believe,” said Lemercier, as the coupe rolled through the lively
+alleys of the Bois de Boulogne, “that Paris is built on a loadstone,
+and that every Frenchman with some iron globules in his blood is
+irresistibly attracted towards it. The English never seem to feel for
+London the passionate devotion that we feel for Paris. On the contrary,
+the London middle class, the commercialists, the shopkeepers, the
+clerks, even the superior artisans compelled to do their business in the
+capital, seem always scheming and pining to have their home out of it,
+though but in a suburb.”
+
+“You have been in London, Frederic?”
+
+“Of course; it is the mode to visit that dull and hideous metropolis.”
+
+“If it be dull and hideous, no wonder the people who are compelled to do
+business in it seek the pleasures of home out of it.”
+
+“It is very droll that though the middle class entirely govern the
+melancholy Albion, it is the only country in Europe in which the middle
+class seem to have no amusements; nay, they legislate against amusement.
+They have no leisure-day but Sunday; and on that day they close
+all their theatres, even their museums and picture-galleries. What
+amusements there may be in England are for the higher classes and the
+lowest.”
+
+“What are the amusements of the lowest class?”
+
+“Getting drunk.”
+
+“Nothing else?”
+
+“Yes. I was taken at night under protection of a policeman to some
+cabarets, where I found crowds of that class which is the stratum below
+the working class; lads who sweep crossings and hold horses, mendicants,
+and, I was told, thieves, girls whom a servant-maid would not speak to,
+very merry, dancing quadrilles and waltzes, and regaling themselves on
+sausages,--the happiest-looking folks I found in all London; and, I must
+say, conducting themselves very decently.”
+
+“Ah!” Here Lemercier pulled the check-string. “Will you object to a walk
+in this quiet alley? I see some one whom I have promised the Englishman
+to--But heed me, Alain, don’t fall in love with her.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The lady in the pearl-coloured dress! Certainly it was a face that might
+well arrest the eye and linger long on the remembrance.
+
+There are certain “beauty-women” as there are certain “beauty-men,” in
+whose features one detects no fault, who are the show figures of any
+assembly in which they appear, but who, somehow or other, inspire no
+sentiment and excite no interest; they lack some expression, whether of
+mind, or of soul, or of heart, without which the most beautiful face is
+but a beautiful picture. This lady was not one of those “beauty-women.”
+ Her features taken singly were by no means perfect, nor were they set
+off by any brilliancy of colouring. But the countenance aroused and
+impressed the imagination with a belief that there was some history
+attached to it, which you longed to learn. The hair, simply parted over
+a forehead unusually spacious and high for a woman, was of lustrous
+darkness; the eyes, of a deep violet blue, were shaded with long lashes.
+
+Their expression was soft and mournful, but unobservant. She did not
+notice Alain and Lemercier as the two men slowly passed her. She seemed
+abstracted, gazing into space as one absorbed in thought or revery. Her
+complexion was clear and pale, and apparently betokened delicate health.
+
+Lemercier seated himself on a bench beside the path, and invited Alain
+to do the same. “She will return this way soon,” said the Parisian, “and
+we can observe her more attentively and more respectfully thus seated
+than if we were on foot; meanwhile, what do you think of her? Is she
+French? is she Italian? can she be English?”
+
+“I should have guessed Italian, judging by the darkness of the hair and
+the outline of the features; but do Italians have so delicate a fairness
+of complexion?”
+
+“Very rarely; and I should guess her to be French, judging by the
+intelligence of her expression, the simple neatness of her dress, and
+by that nameless refinement of air in which a Parisienne excels all
+the descendants of Eve,--if it were not for her eyes. I never saw
+a Frenchwoman with eyes of that peculiar shade of blue; and if a
+Frenchwoman had such eyes, I flatter myself she would have scarcely
+allowed us to pass without making some use of them.”
+
+“Do you think she is married?” asked Alain.
+
+“I hope so; for a girl of her age, if comme il faut, can scarcely
+walk alone in the Bois, and would not have acquired that look so
+intelligent,--more than intelligent,--so poetic.”
+
+“But regard that air of unmistakable distinction; regard that expression
+of face,-so pure, so virginal: comme il faut she must be.”
+
+As Alain said these last words, the lady, who had turned back, was
+approaching them, and in full view of their gaze. She seemed unconscious
+of their existence as before, and Lemercier noticed that her lips moved
+as if she were murmuring inaudibly to herself.
+
+She did not return again, but continued her walk straight on till at
+the end of the alley she entered a carriage in waiting for her, and was
+driven off.
+
+“Quick, quick!” cried Lemercier, running towards his own coupe; “we must
+give chase.”
+
+Alain followed somewhat less hurriedly, and, agreeably to instructions
+Lemercier had already given to his coachman, the Parisian’s coupe set
+off at full speed in the track of the strange lady’s, which was still in
+sight.
+
+In less than twenty minutes the carriage in chase stopped at the grille
+of one of those charming little villas to be found in the pleasant
+suburb of A-----; a porter emerged from the lodge, opened the gate; the
+carriage drove in, again stopped at the door of the house, and the
+two gentlemen could not catch even a glimpse of the lady’s robe as she
+descended from the carriage and disappeared within the house.
+
+“I see a cafe yonder,” said Lemercier; “let us learn all we can as to
+the fair unknown, over a sorbet or a petit verre.” Alain silently, but
+not reluctantly, consented. He felt in the fair stranger an interest new
+to his existence.
+
+They entered the little cafe, and in a few minutes Lemercier, with the
+easy savoir vivre of a Parisian, had extracted from the garcon as much
+as probably any one in the neighbourhood knew of the inhabitants of the
+villa.
+
+It had been hired and furnished about two months previously in the name
+of Signora Venosta; but, according to the report of the servants, that
+lady appeared to be the gouvernante or guardian of a lady much younger,
+out of whose income the villa was rented and the household maintained.
+
+It was for her the coupe was hired from Paris. The elder lady very
+rarely stirred out during the day, but always accompanied the younger in
+any evening visits to the theatre or the houses of friends.
+
+It was only within the last few weeks that such visits had been made.
+
+The younger lady was in delicate health, and under the care of an
+English physician famous for skill in the treatment of pulmonary
+complaints. It was by his advice that she took daily walking exercise in
+the Bois. The establishment consisted of three servants, all Italians,
+and speaking but imperfect French. The garcon did not know whether
+either of the ladies was married, but their mode of life was free from
+all scandal or suspicion; they probably belonged to the literary or
+musical world, as the garcon had observed as their visitors the eminent
+author M. Savarin and his wife; and, still more frequently, an old man
+not less eminent as a musical composer.
+
+“It is clear to me now,” said Lemercier, as the two friends reseated
+themselves in the carriage, “that our pearly ange is some Italian singer
+of repute enough in her own country to have gained already a competence;
+and that, perhaps on account of her own health or her friend’s, she is
+living quietly here in the expectation of some professional engagement,
+or the absence of some foreign lover.”
+
+“Lover! do you think that?” exclaimed Alain, in a tone of voice that
+betrayed pain.
+
+“It is possible enough; and in that case the Englishman may profit
+little by the information I have promised to give him.”
+
+“You have promised the Englishman?”
+
+“Do you not remember last night that he described the lady, and said
+that her face haunted him: and I--”
+
+“Ah! I remember now. What do you know of this Englishman? He is rich, I
+suppose.”
+
+“Yes, I hear he is very rich now; that an uncle lately left him an
+enormous sum of money. He was attached to the English Embassy many years
+ago, which accounts for his good French and his knowledge of Parisian
+life. He comes to Paris very often, and I have known him some time.
+Indeed he has intrusted to me a difficult and delicate commission. The
+English tell me that his father was one of the most eminent members of
+their Parliament, of ancient birth, very highly connected, but ran
+out his fortune and died poor; that our friend had for some years to
+maintain himself, I fancy, by his pen; that he is considered very able;
+and, now that his uncle has enriched him, likely to enter public life
+and run a career as distinguished as his father’s.”
+
+“Happy man! happy are the English,” said the Marquis, with a sigh;
+and as the carriage now entered Paris, he pleaded the excuse of an
+engagement, bade his friend goodby, and went his way musing through the
+crowded streets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LETTER FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
+
+                         VILLA D’-----, A------.
+
+I can never express to you, my beloved Eulalie, the strange charm which
+a letter from you throws over my poor little lonely world for days after
+it is received. There is always in it something that comforts, something
+that sustains, but also a something that troubles and disquiets me.
+I suppose Goethe is right, “that it is the property of true genius to
+disturb all settled ideas,” in order, no doubt, to lift them into a
+higher level when they settle down again.
+
+Your sketch of the new work you are meditating amid the orange groves of
+Provence interests me intensely; yet, do you forgive me when I add
+that the interest is not without terror? I do not find myself able
+to comprehend how, amid those lovely scenes of Nature, your mind
+voluntarily surrounds itself with images of pain and discord. I stand in
+awe of the calm with which you subject to your analysis the infirmities
+of reason and the tumults of passion. And all those laws of the social
+state which seem to me so fixed and immovable you treat with so quiet
+a scorn, as if they were but the gossamer threads which a touch of your
+slight woman’s hand could brush away. But I cannot venture to discuss
+such subjects with you. It is only the skilled enchanter who can stand
+safely in the magic circle, and compel the spirits that he summons, even
+if they are evil, to minister to ends in which he foresees a good.
+
+We continue to live here very quietly, and I do not as yet feel the
+worse for the colder climate. Indeed, my wonderful doctor, who was
+recommended to me as American, but is in reality English, assures me
+that a single winter spent here under his care will suffice for my
+complete re-establishment. Yet that career, to the training for which so
+many years have been devoted, does not seem to me so alluring as it once
+did.
+
+I have much to say on this subject, which I defer till I can better
+collect my own thoughts on it; at present they are confused and
+struggling. The great Maestro has been most gracious.
+
+In what a radiant atmosphere his genius lives and breathes! Even in
+his cynical moods, his very cynicism has in it the ring of a jocund
+music,--the laugh of Figaro, not of Mephistopheles.
+
+We went to dine with him last week. He invited to meet us Madame S-----,
+who has this year conquered all opposition, and reigns alone, the great
+S-----; Mr. T--------, a pianist of admirable promise; your friend M.
+Savarin, wit, critic, and poet, with his pleasant, sensible wife; and
+a few others, who, the Maestro confided to me in a whisper, were
+authorities in the press. After dinner S----- sang to us, magnificently,
+of course. Then she herself graciously turned to me, said how much she
+had heard from the Maestro in my praise, and so and so. I was persuaded
+to sing after her. I need not say to what disadvantage. But I forgot my
+nervousness; I forgot my audience; I forgot myself, as I always do when
+once my soul, as it were, finds wing in music, and buoys itself in the
+air, relieved from the sense of earth. I knew not that I had succeeded
+till I came to a close, and then my eyes resting on the face of the
+grand prima donna, I was seized with an indescribable sadness, with a
+keen pang of remorse. Perfect artiste though she be, and with powers in
+her own realm of art which admit of no living equal, I saw at once that
+I had pained her: she had grown almost livid; her lips were quivering,
+and it was only with a great effort that she muttered out some faint
+words intended for applause. I comprehended by an instinct how gradually
+there can grow upon the mind of an artist the most generous that
+jealousy which makes the fear of a rival annihilate the delight in art.
+If ever I should achieve S-----‘s fame as a singer, should I feel the
+same jealousy?--I think not now, but I have not been tested. She went
+away abruptly. I spare you the recital of the compliments paid to me
+by my other auditors, compliments that gave me no pleasure; for on
+all lips, except those of the Maestro, they implied, as the height of
+eulogy, that I had inflicted torture upon S-----. “If so,” said he, “she
+would be as foolish as a rose that was jealous of the whiteness of a
+lily. You would do yourself great wrong, my child, if you tried to vie
+with the rose in its own colour.”
+
+He patted my bended head as he spoke, with that kind of fatherly
+king-like fondness with which he honours me; and I took his hand in
+mine, and kissed it gratefully. “Nevertheless,” said Savarin, “when the
+lily comes out there will be a furious attack on it, made by the
+clique that devotes itself to the rose: a lily clique will be formed en
+revanche, and I foresee a fierce paper war. Do not be frightened at its
+first outburst: every fame worth having must be fought for.”
+
+Is it so? have you had to fight for your fame, Eulalie? and do you hate
+all contests as much as I do?
+
+Our only other gayety since I last wrote was a soiree at M. Louvier’s.
+That republican millionaire was not slow in attending to the kind letter
+you addressed to him recommending us to his civilities. He called at
+once, placed his good offices at our disposal, took charge of my
+modest fortune, which he has invested, no doubt, as safely as it is
+advantageously in point of interest, hired our carriage for us, and in
+short has been most amiably useful.
+
+At his house we met many to me most pleasant, for they spoke with such
+genuine appreciation of your works and yourself. But there were others
+whom I should never have expected to meet under the roof of a Croesus
+who has so great a stake in the order of things established. One young
+man--a noble whom he specially presented to me, as a politician
+who would be at the head of affairs when the Red Republic was
+established--asked me whether I did not agree with him that all private
+property was public spoliation, and that the great enemy to civilization
+was religion, no matter in what form.
+
+He addressed to me these tremendous questions with an effeminate lisp,
+and harangued on them with small feeble gesticulations of pale dirty
+fingers covered with rings.
+
+I asked him if there were many who in France shared his ideas.
+
+“Quite enough to carry them some day,” he answered with a lofty smile.
+“And the day may be nearer than the world thinks, when my confreres will
+be so numerous that they will have to shoot down each other for the sake
+of cheese to their bread.”
+
+That day nearer than the world thinks! Certainly, so far as one may
+judge the outward signs of the world at Paris, it does not think of
+such things at all. With what an air of self-content the beautiful city
+parades her riches! Who can gaze on her splendid palaces, her gorgeous
+shops, and believe that she will give ear to doctrines that would
+annihilate private rights of property; or who can enter her crowded
+churches, and dream that she can ever again install a republic too
+civilized for religion?
+
+Adieu. Excuse me for this dull letter. If I have written on much that
+has little interest even for me, it is that I wish to distract my mind
+from brooding over the question that interests me most, and on which I
+most need your counsel. I will try to approach it in my next.
+
+                         ISAURA.
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Eulalie, Eulalie!--What mocking spirit has been permitted in this modern
+age of ours to place in the heart of woman the ambition which is the
+prerogative of men? You indeed, so richly endowed with a man’s genius,
+have a right to man’s aspirations. But what can justify such ambition in
+me? Nothing but this one unintellectual perishable gift of a voice that
+does but please in uttering the thoughts of others. Doubtless I could
+make a name familiar for its brief time to the talk of Europe,--a name,
+what name? a singer’s name. Once I thought that name a glory. Shall I
+ever forget the day when you first shone upon me; when, emerging from
+childhood as from a dim and solitary bypath, I stood forlorn on the
+great thoroughfare of life, and all the prospects before me stretched
+sad in mists and in rain? You beamed on me then as the sun coming out
+from the cloud and changing the face of earth; you opened to my sight
+the fairy-land of poetry and art; you took me by the hand and said,
+“Courage! there is at each step some green gap in the hedgerows, some,
+soft escape from the stony thoroughfare. Beside the real life expands
+the ideal life to those who seek it. Droop not, seek it: the ideal life
+has its sorrows, but it never admits despair; as on the ear of him who
+follows the winding course of a stream, the stream ever varies the note
+of its music,--now loud with the rush of the falls; now low and calm as
+it glides by the level marge of smooth banks; now sighing through the
+stir of the reeds; now babbling with a fretful joy as some sudden curve
+on the shore stays its flight among gleaming pebbles,--so to the soul of
+the artist is the voice of the art ever fleeting beside and before him.
+Nature gave thee the bird’s gift of song: raise the gift into art, and
+make the art thy companion.
+
+“Art and Hope were twin-born, and they die together.” See how faithfully
+I remember, methinks, your very words. But the magic of the words, which
+I then but dimly understood, was in your smile and in your eye, and the
+queen-like wave of your hand as if beckoning to a world which lay before
+you, visible and familiar as your native land. And how devotedly, with
+what earnestness of passion, I gave myself up to the task of raising my
+gift into an art! I thought of nothing else, dreamed of nothing else;
+and oh, now sweet to me then were words of praise! “Another year yet,”
+ at length said the masters, “and you ascend your throne among the queens
+of song.” Then--then--I would have changed for no other throne on earth
+my hope of that to be achieved in the realms of my art. And then came
+that long fever: my strength broke down, and the Maestro said, “Rest, or
+your voice is gone, and your throne is lost forever.” How hateful that
+rest seemed to me! You again came to my aid. You said, “The time you
+think lost should be but time improved. Penetrate your mind with other
+songs than the trash of Libretti. The more you habituate yourself to the
+forms, the more you imbue yourself with the spirit, in which passions
+have been expressed and character delineated by great writers, the
+more completely you will accomplish yourself in your own special art of
+singer and actress.” So, then, you allured me to a new study. Ah! in
+so doing did you dream that you diverted me from the old ambition? My
+knowledge of French and Italian, and my rearing in childhood, which had
+made English familiar to me, gave me the keys to the treasure-houses of
+three languages. Naturally I began with that in which your masterpieces
+are composed. Till then I had not even read your works. They were the
+first I chose. How they impressed, how they startled me! what depths in
+the mind of man, in the heart of woman, they revealed to me! But I owned
+to you then, and I repeat it now, neither they nor any of the works
+in romance and poetry which form the boast of recent French literature
+satisfied yearnings for that calm sense of beauty, that divine joy in
+a world beyond this world, which you had led me to believe it was the
+prerogative of ideal art to bestow. And when I told you this with the
+rude frankness you had bid me exercise in talk with you, a thoughtful,
+melancholy shade fell over your face, and you said quietly, “You
+are right, child; we, the French of our time, are the offspring of
+revolutions that settled nothing, unsettled all: we resemble those
+troubled States which rush into war abroad in order to re-establish
+peace at home. Our books suggest problems to men for reconstructing
+some social system in which the calm that belongs to art may be found at
+last: but such books should not be in your hands; they are not for
+the innocence and youth of women as yet unchanged by the systems which
+exist.” And the next day you brought me ‘l’asso’s great poem, the
+“Gerusalemme Liberata,” and said, smiling, “Art in its calm is here.”
+
+You remember that I was then at Sorrento by the order of my physician.
+Never shall I forget the soft autumn day when I sat amongst the lonely
+rocklets to the left of the town,--the sea before me, with scarce
+a ripple; my very heart steeped in the melodies of that poem, so
+marvellous for a strength disguised in sweetness, and for a symmetry in
+which each proportion blends into the other with the perfectness of a
+Grecian statue. The whole place seemed to me filled with the presence of
+the poet to whom it had given birth. Certainly the reading of that poem
+formed an era in my existence: to this day I cannot acknowledge the
+faults or weaknesses which your criticisms pointed out; I believe
+because they are in unison with my own nature, which yearns for harmony,
+and, finding that, rests contented. I shrink from violent contrasts, and
+can discover nothing tame and insipid in a continuance of sweetness and
+serenity. But it was not till after I had read “La Gerusalemme” again
+and again, and then sat and brooded over it, that I recognized the main
+charm of the poem in the religion which clings to it as the perfume
+clings to a flower,--a religion sometimes melancholy, but never to me
+sad. Hope always pervades it. Surely if, as you said, “Hope is twin-born
+with art,” it is because art at its highest blends itself unconsciously
+with religion, and proclaims its affinity with hope by its faith in some
+future good more perfect than it has realized in the past.
+
+Be this as it may, it was in this poem so pre-eminently Christian that
+I found the something which I missed and craved for in modern French
+masterpieces; even yours,--a something spiritual, speaking to my own
+soul, calling it forth; distinguishing it as an essence apart from mere
+human reason; soothing, even when it excited; making earth nearer
+to heaven. And when I ran on in this strain to you after my own wild
+fashion, you took my head between your hands and kissed me, and said,
+“Happy are those who believe! long may that happiness be thine!” Why did
+I not feel in Dante the Christian charm that I felt in Tasso? Dante in
+your eyes, as in those of most judges, is infinitely the greater
+genius; but reflected on the dark stream of that genius the stars are so
+troubled, the heaven so threatening.
+
+Just as my year of holiday was expiring, I turned to English literature;
+and Shakspeare, of course, was the first English poet put into my hands.
+It proves how childlike my mind still was, that my earliest sensation in
+reading him was that of disappointment. It was not only that, despite my
+familiarity with English (thanks chiefly to the care of him whom I
+call my second father), there is much in the metaphorical diction of
+Shakspeare which I failed to comprehend; but he seemed to me so far like
+the modern French writers who affect to have found inspiration in his
+muse, that he obtrudes images of pain and suffering without cause or
+motive sufficiently clear to ordinary understandings, as I had taught
+myself to think it ought to be in the drama.
+
+He makes Fate so cruel that we lose sight of the mild deity behind her.
+Compare, in this, Corneille’s “Polyeucte,” with the “Hamlet.” In the
+first an equal calamity befalls the good, but in their calamity they are
+blessed. The death of the martyr is the triumph of his creed. But when
+we have put down the English tragedy,--when Hamlet and Ophelia are
+confounded in death with Polonius and the fratricidal king, we see not
+what good end for humanity is achieved. The passages that fasten on
+our memory do not make us happier and holier: they suggest but terrible
+problems, to which they give us no solution.
+
+In the “Horaces” of Corneille there are fierce contests, rude passions,
+tears drawn from some of the bitterest sources of human pity; but then
+through all stands out, large and visible to the eyes of all spectators,
+the great ideal of devoted patriotism. How much of all that has been
+grandest in the life of France, redeeming even its worst crimes of
+revolution in the love of country, has had its origin in the “Horaces”
+ of Corneille. But I doubt if the fates of Coriolanus and Caesar and
+Brutus and Antony, in the giant tragedies of Shakspeare, have made
+Englishmen more willing to die for England. In fine, it was long
+before--I will not say I understood or rightly appreciated Shakspeare,
+for no Englishman would admit that I or even you could ever do so, but
+before I could recognize the justice of the place his country claims
+for him as the genius without an equal in the literature of Europe.
+Meanwhile the ardour I had put into study, and the wear and tear of the
+emotions which the study called forth, made themselves felt in a return
+of my former illness, with symptoms still more alarming; and when the
+year was out I was ordained to rest for perhaps another year before I
+could sing in public, still less appear on the stage. How I rejoiced
+when I heard that fiat! for I emerged from that year of study with a
+heart utterly estranged from the profession in which I had centred my
+hopes before--Yes, Eulalie, you had bid me accomplish myself for the
+arts of utterance; by the study of arts in which thoughts originate the
+words they employ; and in doing so I had changed myself into another
+being. I was forbidden all fatigue of mind: my books were banished, but
+not the new self which the books had formed. Recovering slowly through
+the summer, I came hither two months since, ostensibly for the advice of
+Dr. C-------, but really in the desire to commune with my own heart and
+be still.
+
+And now I have poured forth that heart to you, would you persuade me
+still to be a singer? If you do, remember at least how jealous and
+absorbing the art of the singer and the actress is,--how completely I
+must surrender myself to it, and live among books or among dreams
+no more. Can I be anything else but singer? and if not, should I be
+contented merely to read and to dream?
+
+I must confide to you one ambition which during the lazy Italian summer
+took possession of me; I must tell you the ambition, and add that I have
+renounced it as a vain one. I had hoped that I could compose, I mean
+in music. I was pleased with some things I did: they expressed in music
+what I could not express in words; and one secret object in coming here
+was to submit them to the great Maestro. He listened to them patiently:
+he complimented me on my accuracy in the mechanical laws of composition;
+he even said that my favourite airs were “touchants et gracieux.”
+
+And so he would have left me, but I stopped him timidly, and said, “Tell
+me frankly, do you think that with time and study I could compose music
+such as singers equal to myself would sing to?”
+
+“You mean as a professional composer?”
+
+“Well, yes.”
+
+“And to the abandonment of your vocation as a singer?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“My dear child, I should be your worst enemy if I encouraged such a
+notion: cling to the career in which you call be greatest; gain but
+health, and I wager my reputation on your glorious success on the stage.
+What can you be as a composer? You will set pretty music to pretty
+words, and will be sung in drawing-rooms with the fame a little more or
+less that generally attends the compositions of female amateurs. Aim at
+something higher, as I know you would do, and you will not succeed. Is
+there any instance in modern times, perhaps in any times, of a female
+composer who attains even to the eminence of a third-rate opera-writer?
+Composition in letters may be of no sex. In that Madame Dudevant and
+your friend Madame de Grantmesnil can beat most men; but the genius of
+musical composition is homme, and accept it as a compliment when I say
+that you are essentially femme.”
+
+He left me, of course, mortified and humbled; but I feel he is right as
+regards myself, though whether in his depreciation of our whole sex I
+cannot say. But as this hope has left me, I have become more disquieted,
+still more restless. Counsel me, Eulalie; counsel, and, if possible,
+comfort me.                         ISAURA.
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+No letter from you yet, and I have left you in peace for ten days.
+How do you think I have spent them? The Maestro called on us with M.
+Savarin, to insist on our accompanying them on a round of the theatres.
+I had not been to one since my arrival. I divined that the kind-hearted
+composer had a motive in this invitation. He thought that in witnessing
+the applauses bestowed on actors, and sharing in the fascination in
+which theatrical illusion holds an audience, my old passion for the
+stage, and with it the longing for an artiste’s fame, would revive.
+
+In my heart I wished that his expectations might be realized. Well for
+me if I could once more concentrate all my aspirations on a prize within
+my reach!
+
+We went first to see a comedy greatly in vogue, and the author
+thoroughly understands the French stage of our day. The acting was
+excellent in its way. The next night we went to the Odeon, a romantic
+melodrama in six acts, and I know not how many tableaux. I found
+no fault with the acting there. I do not give you the rest of our
+programme. We visited all the principal theatres, reserving the opera
+and Madame S------ for the last. Before I speak of the opera, let me say
+a word or two on the plays.
+
+There is no country in which the theatre has so great a hold on the
+public as in France; no country in which the successful dramatist has
+so high a fame; no country perhaps in which the state of the stage
+so faithfully represents the moral and intellectual condition of the
+people. I say this not, of course, from my experience of countries which
+I have not visited, but from all I hear of the stage in Germany and in
+England.
+
+The impression left on my mind by the performances I witnessed is, that
+the French people are becoming dwarfed. The comedies that please them
+are but pleasant caricatures of petty sections in a corrupt society.
+They contain no large types of human nature; their witticisms convey no
+luminous flashes of truth; their sentiment is not pure and noble,--it is
+a sickly and false perversion of the impure and ignoble into travesties
+of the pure and noble.
+
+Their melodramas cannot be classed as literature: all that really
+remains of the old French genius is its vaudeville. Great dramatists
+create great parts. One great part, such as a Rachel would gladly have
+accepted, I have not seen in the dramas of the young generation.
+
+High art has taken refuge in the opera; but that is not French opera.
+I do not complain so much that French taste is less refined. I complain
+that French intellect is lowered. The descent from “Polyeucte” to “Ruy
+Blas” is great, not so much in the poetry of form as in the elevation of
+thought; but the descent from “Ruy Blas” to the best drama now produced
+is out of poetry altogether, and into those flats of prose which give
+not even the glimpse of a mountain-top.
+
+But now to the opera. S------ in Norma! The house was crowded, and its
+enthusiasm as loud as it was genuine. You tell me that S------ never
+rivalled Pasta, but certainly her Norma is a great performance. Her
+voice has lost less of its freshness than I had been told, and what is
+lost of it her practised management conceals or carries off.
+
+The Maestro was quite right: I could never vie with her in her own line;
+but conceited and vain as I may seem even to you in saying so, I feel in
+my own line that I could command as large an applause,--of course taking
+into account my brief-lived advantage of youth. Her acting, apart from
+her voice, does not please me. It seems to me to want intelligence of
+the subtler feelings, the under-current of emotion which constitutes the
+chief beauty of the situation and the character. Am I jealous when I say
+this? Read on and judge.
+
+On our return that night, when I had seen the Venosta to bed, I went
+into my own room, opened the window, and looked out. A lovely night,
+mild as in spring at Florence,--the moon at her full, and the stars
+looking so calm and so high beyond our reach of their tranquillity. The
+evergreens in the gardens of the villas around me silvered over, and the
+summer boughs, not yet clothed with leaves, were scarcely visible amid
+the changeless smile of the laurels. At the distance lay Paris, only to
+be known by its innumerable lights. And then I said to myself,
+
+“No, I cannot be an actress; I cannot resign my real self for that
+vamped-up hypocrite before the lamps. Out on those stage-robes and
+painted cheeks! Out on that simulated utterance of sentiments learned by
+rote and practised before the looking-glass till every gesture has its
+drill!”
+
+Then I gazed on those stars which provoke our questionings, and return
+no answer, till my heart grew full,--so full,--and I bowed my head and
+wept like a child.
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+And still no letter from you! I see in the journals that you have left
+Nice. Is it that you are too absorbed in your work to have leisure to
+write to me? I know you are not ill, for if you were, all Paris would
+know of it. All Europe has an interest in your health. Positively I will
+write to you no more till a word from yourself bids me do so.
+
+I fear I must give up my solitary walks in the Bois de Boulogne: they
+were very dear to me, partly because the quiet path to which I confined
+myself was that to which you directed me as the one you habitually
+selected when at Paris, and in which you had brooded over and revolved
+the loveliest of your romances; and partly because it was there that,
+catching, alas! not inspiration but enthusiasm from the genius that had
+hallowed the place, and dreaming I might originate music, I nursed my
+own aspirations and murmured my own airs. And though so close to
+that world of Paris to which all artists must appeal for judgment or
+audience, the spot was so undisturbed, so sequestered. But of late that
+path has lost its solitude, and therefore its charm.
+
+Six days ago the first person I encountered in my walk was a man whom
+I did not then heed. He seemed in thought, or rather in revery, like
+myself; we passed each other twice or thrice, and I did not notice
+whether he was young or old, tall or short; but he came the next day,
+and a third day, and then I saw that he was young, and, in so regarding
+him, his eyes became fixed on mine. The fourth day he did not come, but
+two other men came, and the look of one was inquisitive and offensive.
+They sat themselves down on a bench in the walk, and though I did not
+seem to notice them, I hastened home; and the next day, in talking with
+our kind Madame Savarin, and alluding to these quiet walks of mine, she
+hinted, with the delicacy which is her characteristic, that the customs
+of Paris did not allow demoiselles comme il faut to walk alone even in
+the most sequestered paths of the Bois.
+
+I begin now to comprehend your disdain of customs which impose chains so
+idly galling on the liberty of our sex.
+
+We dined with the Savarins last evening: what a joyous nature he has!
+Not reading Latin, I only know Horace by translations, which I am told
+are bad; but Savarin seems to me a sort of half Horace,--Horace on
+his town-bred side, so playfully well-bred, so good-humoured in his
+philosophy, so affectionate to friends, and so biting to foes. But
+certainly Savarin could not have lived in a country farm upon endives
+and mallows. He is town-bred and Parisian, jusqu’au bout des ongles.
+How he admires you, and how I love him for it! Only in one thing
+he disappoints me there. It is your style that he chiefly praises:
+certainly that style is matchless; but style is only the clothing of
+thought, and to praise your style seems to me almost as invidious as the
+compliment to some perfect beauty, not on her form and face, but on her
+taste and dress.
+
+We met at dinner an American and his wife,--a Colonel and Mrs. Morley:
+she is delicately handsome, as the American women I have seen generally
+are, and with that frank vivacity of manner which distinguishes them
+from English women. She seemed to take a fancy to me, and we soon grew
+very good friends.
+
+She is the first advocate I have met, except yourself, of that doctrine
+upon the rights of Women, of which one reads more in the journals than
+one hears discussed in salons. Naturally enough I felt great interest
+in that subject, more especially since my rambles in the Bois were
+forbidden; and as long as she declaimed on the hard fate of the women
+who, feeling within them powers that struggle for air and light beyond
+the close precinct of household duties, find themselves restricted from
+fair rivalry with men in such fields of knowledge and toil and glory as
+men since the world began have appropriated to themselves, I need not
+say that I went with her cordially: you can guess that by my former
+letters. But when she entered into the detailed catalogue of our exact
+wrongs and our exact rights, I felt all the pusillanimity of my sex and
+shrank back in terror.
+
+Her husband, joining us when she was in full tide of eloquence, smiled
+at me with a kind of saturnine mirth. “Mademoiselle, don’t believe a
+word she says: it is only tall talk! In America the women are absolute
+tyrants, and it is I who, in concert with my oppressed countrymen, am
+going in for a platform agitation to restore the Rights of Men.”
+
+Upon this there was a lively battle of words between the spouses, in
+which, I must own, I thought the lady was decidedly worsted.
+
+No, Eulalie, I see nothing in these schemes for altering our
+relations towards the other sex which would improve our condition. The
+inequalities we suffer are not imposed by law,--not even by convention:
+they are imposed by nature.
+
+Eulalie, you have had an experience unknown to me: you have loved. In
+that day did you,--you, round whom poets and sages and statesmen gather,
+listening to your words as to an oracle,--did you feel that your pride
+of genius had gone out from you, that your ambition lived in whom you
+loved, that his smile was more to you than the applause of a world?
+
+I feel as if love in a woman must destroy her rights of equality, that
+it gives to her a sovereign even in one who would be inferior to herself
+if her love did not glorify and crown him. Ah! if I could but merge this
+terrible egotism which oppresses me, into the being of some one who is
+what I would wish to be were I man! I would not ask him to achieve
+fame. Enough if I felt that he was worthy of it, and happier methinks
+to console him when he failed than to triumph with him when he won. Tell
+me, have you felt this? When you loved did you stoop as to a slave, or
+did you bow down as to a master?
+
+FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TO ISAURA CICOGNA.
+
+Chere enfant,--All your four letters have reached me the same day. In
+one of my sudden whims I set off with a few friends on a rapid tour
+along the Riviera to Genoa, thence to Turin on to Milan. Not knowing
+where we should rest even for a day, my letters were not forwarded.
+
+I came back to Nice yesterday, consoled for all fatigues in having
+insured that accuracy in description of localities which my work
+necessitates.
+
+You are, my poor child, in that revolutionary crisis through which
+genius passes in youth before it knows its own self, and longs vaguely
+to do or to be a something other than it has done or has been before.
+For, not to be unjust to your own powers, genius you have,--that inborn
+undefinable essence, including talent, and yet distinct from it. Genius
+you have, but genius unconcentrated, undisciplined. I see, though you
+are too diffident to say so openly, that you shrink from the fame of
+singer, because, fevered by your reading, you would fain aspire to the
+thorny crown of author. I echo the hard saying of the Maestro: I should
+be your worst enemy did I encourage you to forsake a career in which a
+dazzling success is so assured, for one in which, if it were your true
+vocation, you would not ask whether you were fit for it; you would be
+impelled to it by the terrible star which presides over the birth of
+poets.
+
+Have you, who are so naturally observant, and of late have become so
+reflective, never remarked that authors, however absorbed in their
+own craft, do not wish their children to adopt it? The most successful
+author is perhaps the last person to whom neophytes should come for
+encouragement. This I think is not the case with the cultivators of the
+sister arts.
+
+The painter, the sculptor, the musician, seem disposed to invite
+disciples and welcome acolytes. As for those engaged in the practical
+affairs of life, fathers mostly wish their sons to be as they have been.
+
+The politician, the lawyer, the merchant, each says to his children,
+“Follow my steps.” All parents in practical life would at least agree
+in this,--they would not wish their sons to be poets. There must be some
+sound cause in the world’s philosophy for this general concurrence of
+digression from a road of which the travellers themselves say to those
+whom they love best, “Beware!”
+
+Romance in youth is, if rightly understood, the happiest nutriment of
+wisdom in after-years; but I would never invite any one to look upon the
+romance of youth as a thing
+
+        “To case in periods and embalm in ink.”
+
+Enfant, have you need of a publisher to create romance? Is it not in
+yourself? Do not imagine that genius requires for its enjoyment the
+scratch of the pen and the types of the printer. Do not suppose that the
+poet, the romancier, is most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving,
+struggling, labouring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize
+the images which visit him as souls into such tangible likenesses of
+flesh and blood that the highest compliment a reader can bestow on them
+is to say that they are lifelike: No: the poet’s real delight is not
+in the mechanism of composing; the best part of that delight is in the
+sympathies he has established with innumerable modifications of life and
+form, and art and Nature, sympathies which are often found equally keen
+in those who have not the same gift of language. The poet is but the
+interpreter. What of?--Truths in the hearts of others. He utters what
+they feel. Is the joy in the utterance? Nay, it is in the feeling
+itself. So, my dear, dark-bright child of song, when I bade thee open,
+out of the beaten thoroughfare, paths into the meads and river-banks
+at either side of the formal hedgerows, rightly dost thou add that I
+enjoined thee to make thine art thy companion. In the culture of that
+art for which you are so eminently gifted, you will find the ideal life
+ever beside the real. Are you not ashamed to tell me that in that
+art you do but utter the thoughts of others? You utter them in music;
+through the music you not only give to the thoughts a new character, but
+you make them reproductive of fresh thoughts in your audience.
+
+You said very truly that you found in composing you could put into
+music thoughts which you could not put into words. That is the peculiar
+distinction of music. No genuine musician can explain in words exactly
+what he means to convey in his music.
+
+How little a libretto interprets an opera; how little we care even to
+read it! It is the music that speaks to us; and how?--Through the human
+voice. We do not notice how poor are the words which the voice warbles.
+It is the voice itself interpreting the soul of the musician which
+enchants and enthralls us. And you who have that voice pretend to
+despise the gift. What! despise the power of communicating delight!--the
+power that we authors envy; and rarely, if ever, can we give delight
+with so little alloy as the singer.
+
+And when an audience disperses, can you guess what griefs the singer
+may have comforted? what hard hearts he may have softened? what high
+thoughts he may have awakened?
+
+You say, “Out on the vamped-up hypocrite! Out on the stage-robes and
+painted cheeks!”
+
+I say, “Out on the morbid spirit which so cynically regards the mere
+details by which a whole effect on the minds and hearts and souls of
+races and nations can be produced!”
+
+There, have I scolded you sufficiently? I should scold you more, if I
+did not see in the affluence of your youth and your intellect the cause
+of your restlessness. Riches are always restless. It is only to poverty
+that the gods give content.
+
+You question me about love; you ask if I have ever bowed to a master,
+ever merged my life in another’s: expect no answer on this from me.
+Circe herself could give no answer to the simplest maid, who, never
+having loved, asks, “What is love?”
+
+In the history of the passions each human heart is a world in itself;
+its experience profits no others. In no two lives does love play the
+same part or bequeath the same record.
+
+I know not whether I am glad or sorry that the word “love” now falls on
+my ear with a sound as slight and as faint as the dropping of a leaf in
+autumn may fall on thine.
+
+I volunteer but this lesson, the wisest I can give, if thou canst
+understand it: as I bade thee take art into thy life, so learn to look
+on life itself as an art. Thou couldst discover the charm in Tasso; thou
+couldst perceive that the requisite of all art, that which pleases, is
+in the harmony of proportion. We lose sight of beauty if we exaggerate
+the feature most beautiful.
+
+Love proportioned adorns the homeliest existence; love disproportioned
+deforms the fairest.
+
+Alas! wilt thou remember this warning when the time comes in which it
+may be needed?
+
+E----- G-------.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It is several weeks after the date of the last chapter; the lime-trees
+in the Tuileries are clothed in green.
+
+In a somewhat spacious apartment on the ground-floor in the quiet
+locality of the Rue d’Anjou, a man was seated, very still and evidently
+absorbed in deep thought, before a writing-table placed close to the
+window.
+
+Seen thus, there was an expression of great power both of intellect and
+of character in a face which, in ordinary social commune, might rather
+be noticeable for an aspect of hardy frankness, suiting well with the
+clear-cut, handsome profile, and the rich dark auburn hair, waving
+carelessly over one of those broad open foreheads, which, according to
+an old writer, seem the “frontispiece of a temple dedicated to Honour.”
+
+The forehead, indeed, was the man’s most remarkable feature. It could
+not but prepossess the beholder. When, in private theatricals, he had
+need to alter the character of his countenance, he did it effectually,
+merely by forcing down his hair till it reached his eyebrows. He no
+longer then looked like the same man.
+
+The person I describe has been already introduced to the reader as
+Graham Vane. But perhaps this is the fit occasion to enter into
+some such details as to his parentage and position as may make the
+introduction more satisfactory and complete.
+
+His father, the representative of a very ancient family, came into
+possession, after a long minority, of what may be called a fair squire’s
+estate, and about half a million in moneyed investments, inherited on
+the female side. Both land and money were absolutely at his disposal,
+unencumbered by entail or settlement. He was a man of a brilliant,
+irregular genius, of princely generosity, of splendid taste, of a
+gorgeous kind of pride closely allied to a masculine kind of vanity. As
+soon as he was of age he began to build, converting his squire’s hall
+into a ducal palace. He then stood for the county; and in days before
+the first Reform Bill, when a county election was to the estate of
+a candidate what a long war is to the debt of a nation. He won the
+election; he obtained early successes in Parliament. It was said by good
+authorities in political circles that, if he chose, he might aspire to
+lead his party, and ultimately to hold the first rank in the government
+of his country.
+
+That may or may not be true; but certainly he did not choose to take the
+trouble necessary for such an ambition. He was too fond of pleasure, of
+luxury, of pomp. He kept a famous stud of racers and hunters. He was a
+munificent patron of art. His establishments, his entertainments, were
+on a par with those of the great noble who represented the loftiest (Mr.
+Vane would not own it to be the eldest) branch of his genealogical tree.
+
+He became indifferent to political contests, indolent in his attendance
+at the House, speaking seldom, not at great length nor with much
+preparation, but with power and fire, originality and genius; so that
+he was not only effective as an orator, but combining with eloquence
+advantages of birth, person, station, the reputation of patriotic
+independence, and genial attributes of character, he was an authority of
+weight in the scales of party.
+
+This gentleman, at the age of forty, married the dowerless daughter of
+a poor but distinguished naval officer, of noble family, first cousin to
+the Duke of Alton.
+
+He settled on her a suitable jointure, but declined to tie up any
+portion of his property for the benefit of children by the marriage. He
+declared that so much of his fortune was invested either in mines, the
+produce of which was extremely fluctuating, or in various funds, over
+rapid transfers in which it was his amusement and his interest to
+have control, unchecked by reference to trustees, that entails and
+settlements on children were an inconvenience he declined to incur.
+
+Besides, he held notions of his own as to the wisdom of keeping children
+dependent on their father. “What numbers of young men,” said he, “are
+ruined in character and in fortune by knowing that when their father
+dies they are certain of the same provision, no matter how they
+displease him; and in the meanwhile forestalling that provision by
+recourse to usurers.” These arguments might not have prevailed over the
+bride’s father a year or two later, when, by the death of intervening
+kinsmen, he became Duke of Alton; but in his then circumstances
+the marriage itself was so much beyond the expectations which the
+portionless daughter of a sea-captain has the right to form that Mr.
+Vane had it all his own way, and he remained absolute master of his
+whole fortune, save of that part of his landed estate on which his
+wife’s jointure was settled; and even from this incumbrance he was very
+soon freed. His wife died in the second year of marriage, leaving an
+only son,--Graham. He grieved for her loss with all the passion of an
+impressionable, ardent, and powerful nature. Then for a while he sought
+distraction to his sorrow by throwing himself into public life with a
+devoted energy he had not previously displayed.
+
+His speeches served to bring his party into power, and he yielded,
+though reluctantly, to the unanimous demand of that party that he should
+accept one of the highest offices in the new Cabinet. He acquitted
+himself well as an administrator, but declared, no doubt honestly, that
+he felt like Sinbad released from the old man on his back, when, a year
+or two afterwards, he went out of office with his party. No persuasions
+could induce him to come in again; nor did he ever again take a very
+active part in debate. “No,” said he, “I was born to the freedom of
+a private gentleman: intolerable to me is the thraldom of a public
+servant. But I will bring up my son so that he may acquit the debt which
+I decline to pay to my country.” There he kept his word. Graham had been
+carefully educated for public life, the ambition for it dinned into his
+ear from childhood. In his school vacations his father made him learn
+and declaim chosen specimens of masculine oratory; engaged an eminent
+actor to give him lessons in elocution; bade him frequent theatres,
+and study there the effect which words derive from looks and gesture;
+encouraged him to take part himself in private theatricals. To all
+this the boy lent his mind with delight. He had the orator’s inborn
+temperament; quick, yet imaginative, and loving the sport of rivalry and
+contest. Being also, in his boyish years, good-humoured and joyous, he
+was not more a favourite with the masters in the schoolroom than with
+the boys in the play-ground. Leaving Eton at seventeen, he then entered
+at Cambridge, and became, in his first term, the most popular speaker at
+the Union.
+
+But his father cut short his academical career, and decided, for reasons
+of his own, to place him at once in diplomacy. He was attached to the
+Embassy at Paris, and partook of the pleasures and dissipations of that
+metropolis too keenly to retain much of the sterner ambition to which
+he had before devoted himself. Becoming one of the spoiled darlings of
+fashion, there was great danger that his character would relax into the
+easy grace of the Epicurean, when all such loiterings in the Rose
+Garden were brought to abrupt close by a rude and terrible change in his
+fortunes.
+
+His father was killed by a fall from his horse in hunting; and when his
+affairs were investigated, they were found to be hopelessly involved:
+apparently the assets would not suffice for the debts. The elder Vane
+himself was probably not aware of the extent of his liabilities. He had
+never wanted ready money to the last. He could always obtain that from a
+money-lender, or from the sale of his funded investments. But it became
+obvious, on examining his papers, that he knew at least how impaired
+would be the heritage he should bequeath to a son whom he idolized. For
+that reason he had given Graham a profession in diplomacy, and for that
+reason he had privately applied to the Ministry for the Viceroyalty of
+India, in the event of its speedy vacancy. He was eminent enough not to
+anticipate refusal, and with economy in that lucrative post much of
+his pecuniary difficulties might have been redeemed, and at least an
+independent provision secured for his son.
+
+Graham, like Alain de Rochebriant, allowed no reproach on his father’s
+memory; indeed, with more reason than Alain, for the elder Vane’s
+fortune had at least gone on no mean and frivolous dissipation.
+
+It had lavished itself on encouragement to art, on great objects of
+public beneficence, on public-spirited aid of political objects; and
+even in more selfish enjoyments there was a certain grandeur in his
+princely hospitalities, in his munificent generosity, in a warm-hearted
+carelessness for money. No indulgence in petty follies or degrading
+vices aggravated the offence of the magnificent squanderer.
+
+“Let me look on my loss of fortune as a gain to myself,” said Graham,
+manfully. “Had I been a rich man, my experience of Paris tells me that I
+should most likely have been a very idle one. Now that I have no gold, I
+must dig in myself for iron.”
+
+The man to whom he said this was an uncle-in-law,--if I may use that
+phrase,--the Right Hon. Richard King, popularly styled “the blameless
+King.”
+
+This gentleman had married the sister of Graham’s mother, whose loss in
+his infancy and boyhood she had tenderly and anxiously sought to supply.
+It is impossible to conceive a woman more fitted to invite love and
+reverence than was Lady Janet King, her manners were so sweet and
+gentle, her whole nature so elevated and pure.
+
+Her father had succeeded to the dukedom when she married Mr. King, and
+the alliance was not deemed quite suitable. Still it was not one to
+which the Duke would have been fairly justified in refusing his assent.
+
+Mr. King could not indeed boast of noble ancestry, nor was even a landed
+proprietor; but he was a not-undistinguished member of Parliament, of
+irreproachable character, and ample fortune inherited from a distant
+kinsman, who had enriched himself as a merchant. It was on both sides a
+marriage of love.
+
+It is popularly said that a man uplifts a wife to his own rank: it as
+often happens that a woman uplifts her husband to the dignity of her
+own character. Richard King rose greatly in public estimation after his
+marriage with Lady Janet.
+
+She united to a sincere piety a very active and a very enlightened
+benevolence. She guided his ambition aside from mere party politics into
+subjects of social and religious interest, and in devoting himself to
+these he achieved a position more popular and more respected than he
+could ever have won in the strife of party.
+
+When the Government of which the elder Vane became a leading Minister
+was formed, it was considered a great object to secure a name as high
+in the religious world, so beloved by the working classes, as that of
+Richard King; and he accepted one of those places which, though not in
+the cabinet, confers the rank of Privy Councillor.
+
+When that brief-lived Administration ceased, he felt the same sensation
+of relief that Vane had felt, and came to the same resolution never
+again to accept office, but from different reasons, all of which need
+not now be detailed. Amongst them, however, certainly this: he was
+exceedingly sensitive to opinion, thin-skinned as to abuse, and very
+tenacious of the respect due to his peculiar character of sanctity and
+philanthropy. He writhed under every newspaper article that had made
+“the blameless King” responsible for the iniquities of the Government to
+which he belonged. In the loss of office he seemed to recover his former
+throne.
+
+Mr. King heard Graham’s resolution with a grave approving smile, and his
+interest in the young man became greatly increased. He devoted himself
+strenuously to the object of saving to Graham some wrecks of his
+paternal fortunes, and having a clear head and great experience in
+the transaction of business, he succeeded beyond the most sanguine
+expectations formed by the family solicitor. A rich manufacturer was
+found to purchase at a fancy price the bulk of the estate with the
+palatial mansion, which the estate alone could never have sufficed to
+maintain with suitable establishments.
+
+So that when all debts were paid, Graham found himself in possession of
+a clear income of about L500 a year, invested in a mortgage secured on
+a part of the hereditary lands, on which was seated an old hunting-lodge
+bought by a brewer.
+
+With this portion of the property Graham parted very reluctantly. It was
+situated amid the most picturesque scenery on the estate, and the lodge
+itself was a remnant of the original residence of his ancestors before
+it had been abandoned for that which, built in the reign of Elizabeth,
+had been expanded into a Trenthain-like palace by the last owner.
+
+But Mr. King’s argument reconciled him to the sacrifice. “I can manage,”
+ said the prudent adviser, “if you insist on it, to retain that remnant
+of the hereditary estate which you are so loath to part with. But how?
+by mortgaging it to an extent that will scarcely leave you L50. a year
+net from the rents. This is not all. Your mind will then be distracted
+from the large object of a career to the small object of retaining a few
+family acres; you will be constantly hampered by private anxieties and
+fears; you could do nothing for the benefit of those around you,--could
+not repair a farmhouse for a better class of tenant, could not rebuild a
+labourer’s dilapidated cottage. Give up an idea that might be very well
+for a man whose sole ambition was to remain a squire, however beggarly.
+Launch yourself into the larger world of metropolitan life with energies
+wholly unshackled, a mind wholly undisturbed, and secure of an income
+which, however modest, is equal to that of most young men who enter that
+world as your equals.”
+
+Graham was convinced, and yielded, though with a bitter pang. It is hard
+for a man whose fathers have lived on the soil to give up all trace
+of their whereabouts. But none saw in him any morbid consciousness of
+change of fortune, when, a year after his father’s death, he reassumed
+his place in society. If before courted for his expectations, he was
+still courted for himself; by many of the great who had loved his
+father, perhaps even courted more.
+
+He resigned the diplomatic career, not merely because the rise in
+that profession is slow, and in the intermediate steps the chances of
+distinction are slight and few, but more because he desired to cast
+his lot in the home country, and regarded the courts of other lands as
+exile.
+
+It was not true, however, as Lemercier had stated on report, that he
+lived on his pen. Curbing all his old extravagant tastes, L500 a year
+amply supplied his wants. But he had by his pen gained distinction,
+and created great belief in his abilities for a public career. He had
+written critical articles, read with much praise, in periodicals of
+authority, and had published one or two essays on political questions
+which had created yet more sensation. It was only the graver literature,
+connected more or less with his ultimate object of a public career, in
+which he had thus evinced his talents of composition. Such writings were
+not of a nature to bring him much money, but they gave him a definite
+and solid station. In the old time, before the first Reform Bill, his
+reputation would have secured him at once a seat in Parliament; but
+the ancient nurseries of statesmen are gone, and their place is not
+supplied.
+
+He had been invited, however, to stand for more than one large and
+populous borough, with very fair prospects of success; and, whatever the
+expense, Mr. King had offered to defray it. But Graham would not have
+incurred the latter obligation; and when he learned the pledges which
+his supporters would have exacted, he would not have stood if success
+had been certain and the cost nothing. “I cannot,” he said to his
+friends, “go into the consideration of what is best for the country with
+my thoughts manacled; and I cannot be both representative and slave
+of the greatest ignorance of the greatest number. I bide my time, and
+meanwhile I prefer to write as I please, rather than vote as I don’t
+please.”
+
+Three years went by, passed chiefly in England, partly in travel; and at
+the age of thirty, Graham Vane was still one of those of whom admirers
+say, “He will be a great man some day;” and detractors reply, “Some day
+seems a long way off.”
+
+The same fastidiousness which had operated against that entrance into
+Parliament, to which his ambition not the less steadily adapted itself,
+had kept him free from the perils of wedlock. In his heart he yearned
+for love and domestic life, but he had hitherto met with no one who
+realized the ideal he had formed. With his person, his accomplishments,
+his connections, and his repute, he might have made many an advantageous
+marriage. But somehow or other the charm vanished from a fair face, if
+the shadow of a money-bag fell on it; on the other hand, his ambition
+occupied so large a share in his thoughts that he would have fled in
+time from the temptation of a marriage that would have overweighted
+him beyond the chance of rising. Added to all, he desired in a wife an
+intellect that, if not equal to his own, could become so by sympathy,--a
+union of high culture and noble aspiration, and yet of loving womanly
+sweetness which a man seldom finds out of books; and when he does find
+it, perhaps it does not wear the sort of face that he fancies. Be that
+as it may, Graham was still unmarried and heart-whole.
+
+And now a new change in his life befell him. Lady Janet died of a fever
+contracted in her habitual rounds of charity among the houses of the
+poor. She had been to him as the most tender mother, and a lovelier soul
+than hers never alighted on the earth. His grief was intense; but what
+was her husband’s?--one of those griefs that kill.
+
+To the side of Richard King his Janet had been as the guardian angel.
+His love for her was almost worship: with her, every object in a life
+hitherto so active and useful seemed gone. He evinced no noisy passion
+of sorrow. He shut himself up, and refused to see even Graham. But after
+some weeks had passed, he admitted the clergyman in whom on spiritual
+matters he habitually confided, and seemed consoled by the visits; then
+he sent for his lawyer and made his will; after which he allowed Graham
+to call on him daily, on the condition that there should be no reference
+to his loss. He spoke to the young man on other subjects, rather drawing
+him out about himself, sounding his opinion on various grave matters,
+watching his face while he questioned, as if seeking to dive into his
+heart, and sometimes pathetically sinking into silence, broken but by
+sighs. So it went on for a few more weeks; then he took the advice
+of his physician to seek change of air and scene. He went away alone,
+without even a servant, not leaving word where he had gone. After a
+little while he returned, more ailing, more broken than before. One
+morning he was found insensible,--stricken by paralysis. He regained
+consciousness, and even for some days rallied strength. He might have
+recovered, but he seemed as if he tacitly refused to live. He expired at
+last, peacefully, in Graham’s arms.
+
+At the opening of his will it was found that he had left Graham his sole
+heir and executor. Deducting government duties, legacies to servants,
+and donations to public charities, the sum thus bequeathed to his lost
+wife’s nephew was two hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
+
+With such a fortune, opening indeed was made for an ambition so long
+obstructed. But Graham affected no change in his mode of life; he still
+retained his modest bachelor’s apartments, engaged no servants, bought
+no horses, in no way exceeded the income he had possessed before. He
+seemed, indeed, depressed rather than elated by the succession to a
+wealth which he had never anticipated.
+
+Two children had been born from the marriage of Richard King: they had
+died young, it is true, but Lady Janet at the time of her own decease
+was not too advanced in years for the reasonable expectation of other
+offspring; and even after Richard King became a widower, he had given
+to Graham no hint of his testamentary dispositions. The young man was no
+blood-relation to him, and naturally supposed that such relations
+would become the heirs. But in truth the deceased seemed to have no
+blood-relations: none had ever been known to visit him; none raised a
+voice to question the justice of his will.
+
+Lady Janet had been buried at Kensal Green; her husband’s remains were
+placed in the same vault.
+
+For days and days Graham went his way lonelily to the cemetery. He might
+be seen standing motionless by that tomb, with tears rolling down his
+cheeks; yet his was not a weak nature,--not one of those that love
+indulgence of irremediable grief. On the contrary, people who did not
+know him well said “that he had more head than heart,” and the character
+of his pursuits, as of his writings, was certainly not that of a
+sentimentalist. He had not thus visited the tomb till Richard King had
+been placed within it. Yet his love for his aunt was unspeakably greater
+than that which he could have felt for her husband. Was it, then, the
+husband that he so much more acutely mourned; or was there something
+that, since the husband’s death, had deepened his reverence for the
+memory of her whom he had not only loved as a mother, but honoured as a
+saint?
+
+These visits to the cemetery did not cease till Graham was confined to
+his bed by a very grave illness,--the only one he had ever known. His
+physician said it was nervous fever, and occasioned by moral shock or
+excitement; it was attended with delirium. His recovery was slow, and
+when it was sufficiently completed he quitted England; and we find him
+now, with his mind composed, his strength restored, and his spirits
+braced, in that gay city of Paris; hiding, perhaps, some earnest purpose
+amid his participation in its holiday enjoyments. He is now, as I have
+said, seated before his writing-table in deep thought. He takes up a
+letter which he had already glanced over hastily, and reperuses it with
+more care.
+
+The letter is from his cousin, the Duke of Alton, who had succeeded
+a few years since to the family honours,--an able man, with no small
+degree of information, an ardent politician, but of very rational and
+temperate opinions; too much occupied by the cares of a princely estate
+to covet office for himself; too sincere a patriot not to desire office
+for those to whose hands he thought the country might be most safely
+entrusted; an intimate friend of Graham’s. The contents of the letter
+are these:--
+
+   MY DEAR GRAHAM,--I trust that you will welcome the brilliant opening
+   into public life which these lines are intended to announce to you.
+   Vavasour has just been with me to say that he intends to resign his
+   seat for the county when Parliament meets, and agreeing with me that
+   there is no one so fit to succeed him as yourself, he suggests the
+   keeping his intention secret until you have arranged your committee
+   and are prepared to take the field. You cannot hope to escape a
+   contest; but I have examined the Register, and the party has gained
+   rather than lost since the last election, when Vavasour was so
+   triumphantly returned. The expenses for this county, where there
+   are so many outvoters to bring up, and so many agents to retain, are
+   always large in comparison with some other counties; but that
+   consideration is all in your favour, for it deters Squire Hunston,
+   the only man who could beat you, from starting; and to your
+   resources a thousand pounds more or less are a trifle not worth
+   discussing. You know how difficult it is nowadays to find a seat
+   for a man of moderate opinions like yours and mine. Our county
+   would exactly suit you. The constituency is so evenly divided
+   between the urban and rural populations, that its representative
+   must fairly consult the interests of both. He can be neither an
+   ultra-Tory nor a violent Radical. He is left to the enviable
+   freedom, to which you say you aspire, of considering what is best
+   for the country as a whole.
+
+   Do not lose so rare an opportunity. There is but one drawback to
+   your triumphant candidature. It will be said that you have no
+   longer an acre in the county in which the Vanes have been settled so
+   long. That drawback can be removed. It is true that you can never
+   hope to buy back the estates which you were compelled to sell at
+   your father’s death: the old manufacturer gripes them too firmly to
+   loosen his hold; and after all, even were your income double what it
+   is, you would be overhoused in the vast pile in which your father
+   buried so large a share of his fortune. But that beautiful old
+   hunting-lodge, the Stamm Schloss of your family, with the adjacent
+   farms, can be now repurchased very reasonably. The brewer who
+   bought them is afflicted with an extravagant son, whom he placed in
+   the--Hussars, and will gladly sell the property for L5,000 more than
+   he gave: well worth the difference, as he has improved the farm-
+   buildings and raised the rental. I think, in addition to the sum
+   you have on mortgage, L3,000 will be accepted, and as a mere
+   investment pay you nearly three per cent. But to you it is worth
+   more than double the money; it once more identifies your ancient
+   name with the county. You would be a greater personage with that
+   moderate holding in the district in which your race took root, and
+   on which your father’s genius threw such a lustre, than you would be
+   if you invested all your wealth in a county in which every squire
+   and farmer would call you “the new man.” Pray think over this most
+   seriously, and instruct your solicitor to open negotiations with the
+   brewer at once. But rather put yourself into the train, and come
+   back to England straight to me. I will ask Vavasour to meet you.
+   What news from Paris? Is the Emperor as ill as the papers
+   insinuate? And is the revolutionary party gaining ground?
+
+   Your affectionate cousin,
+
+                  ALTON.
+
+As he put down this letter, Graham heaved a short impatient sigh.
+
+“The old Stamm Schloss,” he muttered,--“a foot on the old soil once
+more! and an entrance into the great arena with hands unfettered. Is it
+possible!--is it?--is it?”
+
+At this moment the door-bell of the apartment rang, and a servant whom
+Graham had hired at Paris as a laquais de place announced “Ce Monsieur.”
+
+Graham hurried the letter into his portfolio, and said, “You mean the
+person to whom I am always at home?”
+
+“The same, Monsieur.”
+
+“Admit him, of course.”
+
+There entered a wonderfully thin man, middle-aged, clothed in black, his
+face cleanly shaven, his hair cut very short, with one of those faces
+which, to use a French expression, say “nothing.” It was absolutely
+without expression: it had not even, despite its thinness, one salient
+feature. If you had found yourself anywhere seated next to that man,
+your eye would have passed him over as too insignificant to notice;
+if at a cafe, you would have gone on talking to your friend without
+lowering your voice. What mattered it whether a bete like that overheard
+or not? Had you been asked to guess his calling and station, you might
+have said, minutely observing the freshness of his clothes and the
+undeniable respectability of his tout ensemble, “He must be well off,
+and with no care for customers on his mind,--a ci-devant chandler who
+has retired on a legacy.”
+
+Graham rose at the entrance of his visitor, motioned him courteously
+to a seat beside him, and waiting till the laquais had vanished, then
+asked, “What news?”
+
+“None, I fear, that will satisfy Monsieur. I have certainly hunted out,
+since I had last the honour to see you, no less than four ladies of the
+name of Duval, but only one of them took that name from her parents, and
+was also christened Louise.”
+
+“Ah--Louise!”
+
+“Yes, the daughter of a perfumer, aged twenty-eight. She, therefore, is
+not the Louise you seek. Permit me to refer to your instructions.” Here
+M. Renard took out a note-book, turned over the leaves, and
+resumed, “Wanted, Louise Duval, daughter of Auguste Duval, a French
+drawing-master, who lived for many years at Tours, removed to Paris
+in 1845, lived at No. 12, Rue de S---- at Paris for some years, but
+afterwards moved to a different guartier of the town, and died 1848,
+in Rue I----, No. 39. Shortly after his death, his daughter Louise
+left that lodging, and could not be traced. In 1849 official documents
+reporting her death were forwarded from Munich to a person (a friend of
+yours, Monsieur). Death, of course, taken for granted; but nearly five
+years afterwards, this very person encountered the said Louise Duval at
+Aix-la-Chapelle, and never heard nor saw more of her. Demande submitted,
+to find out said Louise Duval or any children of hers born in 1848-9;
+supposed in 1852-3 to have one child, a girl, between four and five
+years old. Is that right, Monsieur?”
+
+“Quite right.”
+
+“And this is the whole information given to me. Monsieur on giving it
+asked me if I thought it desirable that he should commence inquiries
+at Aix-la-Chapelle, where Louise Duval was last seen by the
+person interested to discover her. I reply, No; pains thrown away.
+Aix-la-Chapelle is not a place where any Frenchwoman not settled there
+by marriage would remain. Nor does it seem probable that the said Duval
+would venture to select for her residence Munich, a city in which she
+had contrived to obtain certificates of her death. A Frenchwoman who has
+once known Paris always wants to get back to it; especially, Monsieur,
+if she has the beauty which you assign to this lady. I therefore
+suggested that our inquiries should commence in this capital.
+Monsieur agreed with me, and I did not grudge the time necessary for
+investigation.”
+
+“You were most obliging. Still I am beginning to be impatient if time is
+to be thrown away.”
+
+“Naturally. Permit me to return to my notes. Monsieur informs me that
+twenty-one years ago, in 1848, the Parisian police were instructed to
+find out this lady and failed, but gave hopes of discovering her through
+her relations. He asks me to refer to our archives; I tell him that
+is no use. However, in order to oblige him, I do so. No trace of such
+inquiry: it must have been, as Monsieur led me to suppose, a strictly
+private one, unconnected with crime or with politics; and as I have the
+honour to tell Monsieur, no record of such investigations is preserved
+in our office. Great scandal would there be, and injury to the peace of
+families, if we preserved the results of private inquiries intrusted
+to us--by absurdly jealous husbands, for instance. Honour,--Monsieur,
+honour forbids it. Next I suggest to Monsieur that his simplest
+plan would be an advertisement in the French journals, stating, if I
+understand him right, that it is for the pecuniary interest of Madame
+or Mademoiselle Duval, daughter of Auguste Duval, artiste en dessin, to
+come forward. Monsieur objects to that.”
+
+“I object to it extremely; as I have told you, this is a strictly
+confidential inquiry; and an advertisement which in all likelihood would
+be practically useless (it proved to be so in a former inquiry)
+would not be resorted to unless all else failed, and even then with
+reluctance.”
+
+“Quite so. Accordingly, Monsieur delegates to me, who have been
+recommended to him as the best person he can employ in that department
+of our police which is not connected with crime or political
+surveillance, a task the most difficult. I have, through strictly
+private investigations, to discover the address and prove the identity
+of a lady bearing a name among the most common in France, and of whom
+nothing has been heard for fifteen years, and then at so migratory an
+endroit as Aix-la-Chapelle. You will not or cannot inform me if since
+that time the lady has changed her name by marriage.”
+
+“I have no reason to think that she has; and there are reasons against
+the supposition that she married after 1849.”
+
+“Permit me to observe that the more details of information Monsieur can
+give me, the easier my task of research will be.”
+
+“I have given you all the details I can, and, aware of the difficulty of
+tracing a person with a name so much the reverse of singular, I adopted
+your advice in our first interview, of asking some Parisian friend of
+mine, with a large acquaintance in the miscellaneous societies of your
+capital, to inform me of any ladies of that name whom he might chance
+to encounter; and he, like you, has lighted upon one or two, who alas!
+resemble the right one in name and nothing more.”
+
+“You will do wisely to keep him on the watch as well as myself. If it
+were but a murderess or a political incendiary, then you might trust
+exclusively to the enlightenment of our corps, but this seems an affair
+of sentiment, Monsieur. Sentiment is not in our way. Seek the trace of
+that in the haunts of pleasure.”
+
+M. Renard, having thus poetically delivered himself of that
+philosophical dogma, rose to depart.
+
+Graham slipped into his hand a bank-note of sufficient value to justify
+the profound bow he received in return.
+
+When M. Renard had gone, Graham heaved another impatient sigh, and said
+to himself, “No, it is not possible,--at least not yet.”
+
+Then, compressing his lips as a man who forces himself to something he
+dislikes, he dipped his pen into the inkstand, and wrote rapidly thus to
+his kinsman:
+
+   MY DEAR COUSIN,--I lose not a post in replying to your kind and
+   considerate letter. It is not in my power at present to return to
+   England. I need not say how fondly I cherish the hope of
+   representing the dear old county some day. If Vavasour could be
+   induced to defer his resignation of the seat for another session, or
+   at least for six or seven months, why then I might be free to avail
+   myself of the opening; at present I am not. Meanwhile I am sorely
+   tempted to buy back the old Lodge; probably the brewer would allow
+   me to leave on mortgage the sum I myself have on the property, and a
+   few additional thousands. I have reasons for not wishing to
+   transfer at present much of the money now invested in the Funds. I
+   will consider this point, which probably does not press.
+
+   I reserve all Paris news till my next; and begging you to forgive so
+   curt and unsatisfactory a reply to a letter so important that it
+   excites me more than I like to own, believe me your affectionate
+   friend and cousin,
+
+               GRAHAM.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+AT about the same hour on the same day in which the Englishman held
+the conference with the Parisian detective just related, the Marquis de
+Rochebriant found himself by appointment in the cabinet d’affaires of
+his avoue M. Gandrin that gentleman had hitherto not found time to give
+him a definite opinion as to the case submitted to his judgment. The
+avoue received Alain with a kind of forced civility, in which the
+natural intelligence of the Marquis, despite his inexperience of life,
+discovered embarrassment.
+
+“Monsieur le Marquis,” said Gandrin, fidgeting among the papers on his
+bureau, “this is a very complicated business. I have given not only my
+best attention to it, but to your general interests. To be plain,
+your estate, though a fine one, is fearfully encumbered--fearfully--
+frightfully.”
+
+“Sir,” said the Marquis, haughtily, “that is a fact which was never
+disguised from you.”
+
+“I do not say that it was, Marquis; but I scarcely realized the
+amount of the liabilities nor the nature of the property. It will be
+difficult--nay, I fear, impossible--to find any capitalist to advance a
+sum that will cover the mortgages at an interest less than you now pay.
+As for a Company to take the whole trouble off your hands, clear off the
+mortgages, manage the forests, develop the fisheries, guarantee you an
+adequate income, and at the end of twenty-one years or so render up to
+you or your heirs the free enjoyment of an estate thus improved, we
+must dismiss that prospect as a wild dream of my good friend M. Hebert.
+People in the provinces do dream; in Paris everybody is wide awake.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said the Marquis, with that inborn imperturbable loftiness
+of sang froid which has always in adverse circumstances characterized
+the French noblesse, “be kind enough to restore my papers. I see that
+you are not the man for me. Allow me only to thank you, and inquire the
+amount of my debt for the trouble I have given.”
+
+“Perhaps you are quite justified in thinking I am not the man for you,
+Monsieur le Marquis; and your papers shall, if you decide on dismissing
+me, be returned to you this evening. But as to my accepting remuneration
+where I have rendered no service, I request M. le Marquis to put that
+out of the question. Considering myself, then, no longer your avoue,
+do not think I take too great a liberty in volunteering my counsel as a
+friend,--or a friend at least to M. Hebert, if you do not vouchsafe my
+right so to address yourself.”
+
+M. Gandrin spoke with a certain dignity of voice and manner which
+touched and softened his listener.
+
+“You make me your debtor far more than I pretend to repay,” replied
+Alain. “Heaven knows I want a friend, and I will heed with gratitude and
+respect all your counsels in that character.”
+
+“Plainly and briefly, my advice is this: M. Louvier is the principal
+mortgagee. He is among the six richest capitalists of Paris. He does
+not, therefore, want money, but, like most self-made men, he is very
+accessible to social vanities. He would be proud to think he had
+rendered a service to a Rochebriant. Approach him, either through me,
+or, far better, at once introduce yourself, and propose to consolidate
+all your other liabilities in one mortgage to him, at a rate of interest
+lower than that which is now paid to some of the small mortgagees. This
+would add considerably to your income and would carry out M. Hebert’s
+advice.”
+
+“But does it not strike you, dear M. Gandrin, that such going
+cap-in-hand to one who has power over my fate, while I have none
+over his, would scarcely be consistent with my self-respect, not as
+Rochebriant only, but as Frenchman?”
+
+“It does not strike me so in the least; at all events, I could make the
+proposal on your behalf, without compromising yourself, though I should
+be far more sanguine of success if you addressed M. Louvier in person.”
+
+“I should nevertheless prefer leaving it in your hands; but even for
+that I must take a few days to consider. Of all the mortgagees M.
+Louvier has been hitherto the severest and most menacing, the one whom
+Hebert dreads the most; and should he become sole mortgagee, my whole
+estate would pass to him if, through any succession of bad seasons and
+failing tenants, the interest was not punctually paid.”
+
+“It could so pass to him now.”
+
+“No; for there have been years in which the other mortgagees, who are
+Bretons and would be loath to ruin a Rochebriant, have been lenient and
+patient.”
+
+“If Louvier has not been equally so, it is only because he knew nothing
+of you, and your father no doubt had often sorely tasked his endurance.
+Come, suppose we manage to break the ice easily. Do me the honour to
+dine here to meet him; you will find that he is not an unpleasant man.”
+
+The Marquis hesitated, but the thought of the sharp and seemingly
+hopeless struggle for the retention of his ancestral home to which he
+would be doomed if he returned from Paris unsuccessful in his errand
+overmastered his pride. He felt as if that self-conquest was a duty he
+owed to the very tombs of his fathers. “I ought not to shrink from the
+face of a creditor,” said he, smiling somewhat sadly, “and I accept the
+proposal you so graciously make.”
+
+“You do well, Marquis, and I will write at once to Louvier to ask him to
+give me his first disengaged day.”
+
+The Marquis had no sooner quitted the house than M. Gandrin opened a
+door at the side of his office, and a large portly man strode into the
+room,--stride it was rather than step,--firm, self-assured, arrogant,
+masterful.
+
+“Well, mon ami,” said this man, taking his stand at the hearth, as a
+king might take his stand in the hall of his vassal, “and what says our
+petit muscadin?”
+
+“He is neither petit nor muscadin, Monsieur Louvier,” replied Gandrin,
+peevishly; “and he will task your powers to get him thoroughly into your
+net. But I have persuaded him to meet you here. What day can you dine
+with me? I had better ask no one else.”
+
+“To-morrow I dine with my friend O-----, to meet the chiefs of the
+Opposition,” said M. Louvier, with a sort of careless rollicking
+pomposity. “Thursday with Pereire; Saturday I entertain at home. Say
+Friday. Your hour?”
+
+“Seven.”
+
+“Good! Show me those Rochebriant papers again; there is something I had
+forgotten to note. Never mind me. Go on with your work as if I were not
+here.”
+
+Louvier took up the papers, seated himself in an armchair by the
+fireplace, stretched out his legs, and read at his ease, but with a very
+rapid eye, as a practised lawyer skims through the technical forms of a
+case to fasten upon the marrow of it.
+
+“Ah! as I thought. The farms could not pay even the interest on my
+present mortgage; the forests come in for that. If a contractor for the
+yearly sale of the woods was bankrupt and did not pay, how could I get
+my interest? Answer me that, Gandrin.”
+
+“Certainly you must run the risk of that chance.”
+
+“Of course the chance occurs, and then I foreclose, seize,--Rochebriant
+and its seigneuries are mine.”
+
+As he spoke he laughed, not sardonically,--a jovial laugh,--and opened
+wide, to reshut as in a vice, the strong iron hand which had doubtless
+closed over many a man’s all.
+
+“Thanks. On Friday, seven o’clock.” He tossed the papers back on the
+bureau, nodded a royal nod, and strode forth imperiously as he had
+strode in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MEANWHILE the young Marquis pursued his way thoughtfully through the
+streets, and entered the Champs Elysees. Since we first, nay, since we
+last saw him, he is strikingly improved in outward appearances. He has
+unconsciously acquired more of the easy grace of the Parisian in
+gait and bearing. You would no longer detect the Provincial--perhaps,
+however, because he is now dressed, though very simply, in habiliments
+that belong to the style of the day. Rarely among the loungers in the
+Champs Elysees could be seen a finer form, a comelier face, an air of
+more unmistakable distinction.
+
+The eyes of many a passing fair one gazed on him, admiringly or
+coquettishly. But he was still so little the true Parisian that they got
+no smile, no look in return. He was wrapped in his own thoughts; was he
+thinking of M. Louvier?
+
+He had nearly gained the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne, when he was
+accosted by a voice behind, and turning round saw his friend Lemercier
+arm-in-arm with Graham Vane.
+
+“Bonjour, Alain,” said Lemercier, hooking his disengaged arm into
+Rochebriant’s. “I suspect we are going the same way.”
+
+Alain felt himself change countenance at this conjecture, and replied
+coldly, “I think not; I have got to the end of my walk, and shall turn
+back to Paris;” addressing himself to the Englishman, he said with
+formal politeness, “I regret not to have found you at home when I
+called some weeks ago, and no less so to have been out when you had the
+complaisance to return my visit.”
+
+“At all events,” replied the Englishman, “let me not lose the
+opportunity of improving our acquaintance which now offers. It is true
+that our friend Lemercier, catching sight of me in the Rue de Rivoli,
+stopped his coupe and carried me off for a promenade in the Bois. The
+fineness of the day tempted us to get out of his carriage as the Bois
+came in sight. But if you are going back to Paris I relinquish the Bois
+and offer myself as your companion.”
+
+Frederic (the name is so familiarly English that the reader might think
+me pedantic did I accentuate it as French) looked from one to the other
+of his two friends, half amused and half angry.
+
+“And am I to be left alone to achieve a conquest, in which, if I
+succeed, I shall change into hate and envy the affection of my two best
+friends? Be it so.
+
+     “’ Un veritable amant ne connait point d’amis.’”
+
+“I do not comprehend your meaning,” said the Marquis, with a compressed
+lip and a slight frown.
+
+“Bah!” cried Frederic; “come, franc jeu; cards on the table. M. Gram
+Varn was going into the Bois at my suggestion on the chance of having
+another look at the pearl-coloured angel; and you, Rochebriant, can’t
+deny that you were going into the Bois for the same object.”
+
+“One may pardon an enfant terrible,” said the Englishman, laughing, “but
+an ami terrible should be sent to the galleys. Come, Marquis, let us
+walk back and submit to our fate. Even were the lady once more visible,
+we have no chance of being observed by the side of a Lovelace so
+accomplished and so audacious!”
+
+“Adieu, then, recreants: I go alone. Victory or death.” The Parisian
+beckoned his coachman, entered his carriage, and with a mocking grimace
+kissed his hand to the companions thus deserting or deserted.
+
+Rochebriant touched the Englishman’s arm, and said, “Do you think that
+Lemercier could be impertinent enough to accost that lady?”
+
+“In the first place,” returned the Englishman, “Lemercier himself tells
+me that the lady has for several weeks relinquished her walks in the
+Bois, and the probability is, therefore, that he will not have the
+opportunity to accost her. In the next place, it appears that when she
+did take her solitary walk, she did not stray far from her carriage, and
+was in reach of the protection of her laquais and coachman. But to speak
+honestly, do you, who know Lemercier better than I, take him to be a man
+who would commit an impertinence to a woman unless there were viveurs of
+his own sex to see him do it?”
+
+Alain smiled. “No. Frederic’s real nature is an admirable one, and if
+he ever do anything that he ought to be ashamed of, ‘twill be from the
+pride of showing how finely he can do it. Such was his character at
+college, and such it still seems at Paris. But it is true that the lady
+has forsaken her former walk; at least I--I have not seen her since the
+day I first beheld her in company with Frederic. Yet--yet, pardon me,
+you were going to the Bois on the chance of seeing her. Perhaps she has
+changed the direction of her walk, and--and--”
+
+The Marquis stopped short, stammering and confused.
+
+The Englishman scanned his countenance with the rapid glance of a
+practised observer of men and things, and after a short pause said: “If
+the lady has selected some other spot for her promenade, I am ignorant
+of it; nor have I ever volunteered the chance of meeting with her, since
+I learned--first from Lemercier, and afterwards from others--that her
+destination is the stage. Let us talk frankly, Marquis. I am accustomed
+to take much exercise on foot, and the Bois is my favourite resort: one
+day I there found myself in the allee which the lady we speak of used
+to select for her promenade, and there saw her. Something in her face
+impressed me; how shall I describe the impression? Did you ever open a
+poem, a romance, in some style wholly new to you, and before you were
+quite certain whether or not its merits justified the interest which the
+novelty inspired, you were summoned away, or the book was taken out
+of your hands? If so, did you not feel an intellectual longing to have
+another glimpse of the book? That illustration describes my impression,
+and I own that I twice again went to the same allee. The last time
+I only caught sight of the young lady as she was getting into her
+carriage. As she was then borne away, I perceived one of the custodians
+of the Bois; and learned, on questioning him, that the lady was in the
+habit of walking always alone in the same allee at the same hour on most
+fine days, but that he did not know her name or address. A motive of
+curiosity--perhaps an idle one--then made me ask Lemercier, who boasts
+of knowing his Paris so intimately, if he could inform me who the lady
+was. He undertook to ascertain.”
+
+“But,” interposed the Marquis, “he did not ascertain who she was; he
+only ascertained where she lived, and that she and an elder companion
+were Italians;--whom he suspected, without sufficient ground, to be
+professional singers.”
+
+“True; but since then I ascertained more detailed particulars from
+two acquaintances of mine who happen to know her,--M. Savarin, the
+distinguished writer, and Mrs. Morley, an accomplished and beautiful
+American lady, who is more than an acquaintance. I may boast the honour
+of ranking among her friends. As Savarin’s villa is at A------, I
+asked him incidentally if he knew the fair neighbour whose face had
+so attracted me; and Mrs. Morley being present, and overhearing me, I
+learned from both what I now repeat to you.
+
+“The young lady is a Signorina Cicogna,--at Paris, exchanging (except
+among particular friends), as is not unusual, the outlandish designation
+of Signorina for the more conventional one of Mademoiselle. Her father
+was a member of the noble Milanese family of the same name, therefore
+the young lady is well born. Her father has been long dead; his widow
+married again an English gentleman settled in Italy, a scholar and
+antiquarian; his name was Selby. This gentleman, also dead, bequeathed
+the Signorina a small but sufficient competence. She is now an orphan,
+and residing with a companion, a Signora Venosta, who was once a singer
+of some repute at the Neapolitan Theatre, in the orchestra of which her
+husband was principal performer; but she relinquished the stage several
+years ago on becoming a widow, and gave lessons as a teacher. She has
+the character of being a scientific musician, and of unblemished
+private respectability. Subsequently she was induced to give up general
+teaching, and undertake the musical education and the social charge of
+the young lady with her. This girl is said to have early given promise
+of extraordinary excellence as a singer, and excited great interest
+among a coterie of literary critics and musical cognoscenti. She was to
+have come out at the Theatre of Milan a year or two ago, but her career
+has been suspended in consequence of ill-health, for which she is now
+at Paris under the care of an English physician, who has made remarkable
+cures in all complaints of the respiratory organs. ------, the great
+composer, who knows her, says that in expression and feeling she has no
+living superior, perhaps no equal since Malibran.”
+
+“You seem, dear Monsieur, to have taken much pains to acquire this
+information.”
+
+“No great pains were necessary; but had they been I might have taken
+them, for, as I have owned to you, Mademoiselle Cicogna, while she was
+yet a mystery to me, strangely interested my thoughts or my fancies.
+That interest has now ceased. The world of actresses and singers lies
+apart from mine.”
+
+“Yet,” said Alain, in a tone of voice that implied doubt, “if I
+understand Lemercier aright, you were going with him to the Bois on the
+chance of seeing again the lady in whom your interest has ceased.”
+
+“Lemercier’s account was not strictly accurate. He stopped his carriage
+to speak to me on quite another subject, on which I have consulted him,
+and then proposed to take me on to the Bois. I assented; and it was
+not till we were in the carriage that he suggested the idea of seeing
+whether the pearly-robed lady had resumed her walk in the allee. You may
+judge how indifferent I was to that chance when I preferred turning back
+with you to going on with him. Between you and me, Marquis, to men of
+our age, who have the business of life before them, and feel that if
+there be aught in which noblesse oblige it is a severe devotion to noble
+objects, there is nothing more fatal to such devotion than allowing the
+heart to be blown hither and thither at every breeze of mere fancy, and
+dreaming ourselves into love with some fair creature whom we never could
+marry consistently with the career we have set before our ambition. I
+could not marry an actress,--neither, I presume, could the Marquis de
+Rochebriant; and the thought of a courtship which excluded the idea of
+marriage to a young orphan of name unblemished, of virtue unsuspected,
+would certainly not be compatible with ‘devotion to noble objects.’”
+
+Alain involuntarily bowed his head in assent to the proposition, and, it
+may be, in submission to an implied rebuke.
+
+The two men walked in silence for some minutes, and Graham first spoke,
+changing altogether the subject of conversation. “Lemercier tells me you
+decline going much into this world of Paris, the capital of capitals,
+which appears so irresistibly attractive to us foreigners.”
+
+“Possibly; but, to borrow your words, I have the business of life before
+me.”
+
+“Business is a good safeguard against the temptations to excess in
+pleasure, in which Paris abounds. But there is no business which does
+not admit of some holiday, and all business necessitates commerce
+with mankind. A propos, I was the other evening at the Duchese de
+Tarascon’s,--a brilliant assembly, filled with ministers, senators, and
+courtiers. I heard your name mentioned.”
+
+“Mine?”
+
+“Yes; Duplessis, the rising financier--who rather to my surprise was
+not only present among these official and decorated celebrities, but
+apparently quite at home among them--asked the Duchess if she had not
+seen you since your arrival at Paris. She replied, ‘No; that though you
+were among her nearest connections, you had not called on her;’ and bade
+Duplessis tell you that you were a monstre for not doing so. Whether or
+not Duplessis will take that liberty I know not; but you must pardon me
+if I do. She is a very charming woman, full of talent; and that
+stream of the world which reflects the stars, with all their mythical
+influences on fortune, flows through her salons.”
+
+“I am not born under those stars. I am a Legitimist.”
+
+“I did not forget your political creed; but in England the leaders
+of opposition attend the salons of the Prime Minister. A man is
+not supposed to compromise his opinions because he exchanges social
+courtesies with those to whom his opinions are hostile. Pray excuse me
+if I am indiscreet, I speak as a traveller who asks for information: but
+do the Legitimists really believe that they best serve their cause by
+declining any mode of competing with its opponents? Would there not be
+a fairer chance of the ultimate victory of their principles if they made
+their talents and energies individually prominent; if they were known as
+skilful generals, practical statesmen, eminent diplomatists, brilliant
+writers? Could they combine,--not to sulk and exclude themselves from
+the great battle-field of the world, but in their several ways to render
+themselves of such use to their country that some day or other, in
+one of those revolutionary crises to which France, alas! must long
+be subjected, they would find themselves able to turn the scale of
+undecided councils and conflicting jealousies.”
+
+“Monsieur, we hope for the day when the Divine Disposer of events
+will strike into the hearts of our fickle and erring countrymen the
+conviction that there will be no settled repose for France save under
+the sceptre of her rightful kings. But meanwhile we are,--I see it more
+clearly since I have quitted Bretagne,--we are a hopeless minority.”
+
+“Does not history tell us that the great changes of the world have been
+wrought by minorities,--but on the one condition that the minorities
+shall not be hopeless? It is almost the other day that the Bonapartists
+were in a minority that their adversaries called hopeless, and the
+majority for the Emperor is now so preponderant that I tremble for his
+safety. When a majority becomes so vast that intellect disappears in the
+crowd, the date of its destruction commences; for by the law of reaction
+the minority is installed against it. It is the nature of things that
+minorities are always more intellectual than multitudes, and intellect
+is ever at work in sapping numerical force. What your party want is
+hope; because without hope there is no energy. I remember hearing
+my father say that when he met the Count de Chambord at Ems, that
+illustrious personage delivered himself of a belle phrase much admired
+by his partisans. The Emperor was then President of the Republic, in
+a very doubtful and dangerous position. France seemed on the verge of
+another convulsion. A certain distinguished politician recommended the
+Count de Chambord to hold himself ready to enter at once as a candidate
+for the throne. And the Count, with a benignant smile on his handsome
+face, answered, ‘All wrecks come to the shore: the shore does not go to
+the wrecks.’”
+
+“Beautifully said!” exclaimed the Marquis.
+
+“Not if ‘Le beau est toujours le vrai.’ My father, no inexperienced nor
+unwise politician, in repeating the royal words, remarked: ‘The fallacy
+of the Count’s argument is in its metaphor. A man is not a shore. Do you
+not think that the seamen on board the wrecks would be more grateful to
+him who did not complacently compare himself to a shore, but considered
+himself a human being like themselves, and risked his own life in
+a boat, even though it were a cockleshell, in the chance of saving
+theirs?”
+
+Alain de Rochebriant was a brave man, with that intense sentiment of
+patriotism which characterizes Frenchmen of every rank and persuasion,
+unless they belong to the Internationalists; and, without pausing to
+consider, he cried, “Your father was right.”
+
+The Englishman resumed: “Need I say, my dear Marquis, that I am not a
+Legitimist? I am not an Imperialist, neither am I an Orleanist nor a
+Republican. Between all those political divisions it is for Frenchmen
+to make their choice, and for Englishmen to accept for France that
+government which France has established. I view things here as a simple
+observer. But it strikes me that if I were a Frenchman in your position,
+I should think myself unworthy my ancestors if I consented to be an
+insignificant looker-on.”
+
+“You are not in my position,” said the Marquis, half mournfully, half
+haughtily, “and you can scarcely judge of it even in imagination.”
+
+“I need not much task my imagination; I judge of it by analogy. I was
+very much in your position when I entered upon what I venture to call
+my career; and it is the curious similarity between us in circumstances,
+that made me wish for your friendship when that similarity was made
+known to me by Lemercier, who is not less garrulous than the true
+Parisian usually is. Permit me to say that, like you, I was reared
+in some pride of no inglorious ancestry. I was reared also in the
+expectation of great wealth. Those expectations were not realized: my
+father had the fault of noble natures,--generosity pushed to imprudence:
+he died poor and in debt. You retain the home of your ancestors; I had
+to resign mine.”
+
+The Marquis had felt deeply interested in this narrative, and as Graham
+now paused, took his hand and pressed it. “One of our most eminent
+personages said to me about that time, ‘Whatever a clever man of your
+age determines to do or to be, the odds are twenty to one that he has
+only to live on in order to do or to be it.’ Don’t you think he spoke
+truly? I think so.”
+
+“I scarcely know what to think,” said Rochebriant; “I feel as if you had
+given me so rough a shake when I was in the midst of a dull dream, that
+I am not yet quite sure whether I am asleep or awake.”
+
+Just as he said this, and towards the Paris end of the Champs Elysees,
+there was a halt, a sensation among the loungers round them; many of
+them uncovered in salute.
+
+A man on the younger side of middle age, somewhat inclined to
+corpulence, with a very striking countenance, was riding slowly by.
+He returned the salutations he received with the careless dignity of
+a Personage accustomed to respect, and then reined in his horse by the
+side of a barouche, and exchanged some words with a portly gentleman
+who was its sole occupant. The loungers, still halting, seemed to
+contemplate this parley--between him on horseback and him in the
+carriage--with very eager interest. Some put their hands behind their
+ears and pressed forward, as if trying to overhear what was said.
+
+“I wonder,” quoth Graham, “whether, with all his cleverness, the Prince
+has in any way decided what he means to do or to be.”
+
+“The Prince!” said Rochebriant, rousing himself from revery; “what
+Prince?”
+
+“Do you not recognize him by his wonderful likeness to the first
+Napoleon,--him on horseback talking to Louvier, the great financier.”
+
+“Is that stout bourgeois in the carriage Louvier,--my mortgagee,
+Louvier?”
+
+“Your mortgagee, my dear Marquis? Well, he is rich enough to be a very
+lenient one upon pay-day.”
+
+“Hein!--I doubt his leniency,” said Alain. “I have promised my avoue to
+meet him at dinner. Do you think I did wrong?”
+
+“Wrong! of course not; he is likely to overwhelm you with civilities.
+Pray don’t refuse if he gives you an invitation to his soiree next
+Saturday; I am going to it. One meets there the notabilities most
+interesting to study,--artists, authors, politicians, especially those
+who call themselves Republicans. He and the Prince agree in one thing;
+namely, the cordial reception they give to the men who would destroy the
+state of things upon which Prince and financier both thrive. Hillo! here
+comes Lemercier on return from the Bois.”
+
+Lemercier’s coupe stopped beside the footpath. “What tidings of the
+Belle Inconnue?” asked the Englishman. “None; she was not there. But I
+am rewarded: such an adventure! a dame of the haute volee; I believe
+she is a duchess. She was walking with a lap-dog, a pure Pomeranian. A
+strange poodle flew at the Pomeranian, I drove off the poodle, rescued
+the Pomeranian, received the most gracious thanks, the sweetest smile:
+femme superbe, middle aged. I prefer women of forty. Au revoir, I am due
+at the club.”
+
+Alain felt a sensation of relief that Lemercier had not seen the lady
+in the pearl-coloured dress, and quitted the Englishman with a lightened
+heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+“Piccola, piccola! com e cortese! another invitation from M. Louvier for
+next Saturday,--conversazione.” This was said in Italian by an elderly
+lady bursting noisily into the room,--elderly, yet with a youthful
+expression of face, owing perhaps to a pair of very vivacious black
+eyes. She was dressed, after a somewhat slatternly fashion, in a wrapper
+of crimson merino much the worse for wear, a blue handkerchief twisted
+turban-like round her head, and her feet encased in list slippers. The
+person to whom she addressed herself was a young lady with dark hair,
+which, despite its evident repugnance, was restrained into smooth glossy
+braids over the forehead, and at the crown of the small graceful head
+into the simple knot which Horace has described as “Spartan.” Her dress
+contrasted the speaker’s by an exquisite neatness.
+
+We have seen her before as the lady in the pearl-coloured robe; but
+seen now at home she looks much younger. She was one of those whom,
+encountered in the streets or in society, one might guess to be
+married,--probably a young bride; for thus seen there was about her an
+air of dignity and of self-possession which suits well with the ideal of
+chaste youthful matronage; and in the expression of the face there was a
+pensive thoughtfulness beyond her years. But as she now sat by the open
+window arranging flowers in a glass bowl, a book lying open on her lap,
+you would never have said, “What a handsome woman!” you would have said,
+“What a charming girl!” All about her was maidenly, innocent, and fresh.
+The dignity of her bearing was lost in household ease, the pensiveness
+of her expression in an untroubled serene sweetness.
+
+Perhaps many of my readers may have known friends engaged in some
+absorbing cause of thought, and who are in the habit when they go out,
+especially if on solitary walks, to take that cause of thought with
+them. The friend may be an orator meditating his speech, a poet his
+verses, a lawyer a difficult case, a physician an intricate malady. If
+you have such a friend, and you observe him thus away from his home, his
+face will seem to you older and graver. He is absorbed in the care that
+weighs on him. When you see him in a holiday moment at his own
+fireside, the care is thrown aside; perhaps he mastered while abroad the
+difficulty that had troubled him; he is cheerful, pleasant, sunny. This
+appears to be very much the case with persons of genius. When in their
+own houses we usually find them very playful and childlike. Most
+persons of real genius, whatever they may seem out of doors, are very
+sweet-tempered at home, and sweet temper is sympathizing and genial in
+the intercourse of private life. Certainly, observing this girl as she
+now bends over the flowers, it would be difficult to believe her to be
+the Isaura Cicogna whose letters to Madame de Grantinesnil exhibit the
+doubts and struggles of an unquiet, discontented, aspiring mind. Only
+in one or two passages in those letters would you have guessed at the
+writer in the girl as we now see her. It is in those passages where she
+expresses her love of harmony, and her repugnance to contest: those were
+characteristics you might have read in her face.
+
+Certainly the girl is very lovely: what long dark eyelashes! what
+soft, tender, dark-blue eyes! now that she looks up and smiles, what
+a bewitching smile it is! by what sudden play of rippling dimples the
+smile is enlivened and redoubled! Do you notice one feature? In
+very showy beauties it is seldom noticed; but I, being in my way a
+physiognomist, consider that it is always worth heeding as an index of
+character. It is the ear. Remark how delicately it is formed in
+her: none of that heaviness of lobe which is a sure sign of sluggish
+intellect and coarse perception. Hers is the artist’s ear. Note
+next those hands: how beautifully shaped! small, but not doll-like
+hands,--ready and nimble, firm and nervous hands, that could work for a
+helpmate. By no means very white, still less red, but somewhat embrowned
+as by the sun, such as you may see in girls reared in southern climes,
+and in her perhaps betokening an impulsive character which had not
+accustomed itself, when at sport in the open air, to the thraldom of
+gloves,--very impulsive people even in cold climates seldom do.
+
+In conveying to us by a few bold strokes an idea of the sensitive,
+quick-moved, warm-blooded Henry II., the most impulsive of the
+Plantagenets, his contemporary chronicler tells us that rather than
+imprison those active hands of his, even in hawking-gloves, he would
+suffer his falcon to fix its sharp claws into his wrist. No doubt
+there is a difference as to what is befitting between a burly bellicose
+creature like Henry II. and a delicate young lady like Isaura Cicogna;
+and one would not wish to see those dainty wrists of hers seamed and
+scarred by a falcon’s claws. But a girl may not be less exquisitely
+feminine for slight heed of artificial prettiness. Isaura had no need
+of pale bloodless hands to seem one of Nature’s highest grade of
+gentlewomen even to the most fastidious eyes. About her there was
+a charm apart from her mere beauty, and often disturbed instead of
+heightened by her mere intellect: it consisted in a combination of
+exquisite artistic refinement, and of a generosity of character by which
+refinement was animated into vigour and warmth.
+
+The room, which was devoted exclusively to Isaura, had in it much that
+spoke of the occupant. That room, when first taken furnished, had a good
+deal of the comfortless showiness which belongs to ordinary furnished
+apartments in France, especially in the Parisian suburbs, chiefly let
+for the summer: thin limp muslin curtains that decline to draw; stiff
+mahogany chairs covered with yellow Utrecht velvet; a tall secretaire in
+a dark corner; an oval buhl-table set in tawdry ormolu, islanded in the
+centre of a poor but gaudy Scotch carpet; and but one other table of
+dull walnut-wood, standing clothless before a sofa to match the chairs;
+the eternal ormolu clock flanked by the two eternal ormolu candelabra on
+the dreary mantelpiece. Some of this garniture had been removed, others
+softened into cheeriness and comfort. The room somehow or other--thanks
+partly to a very moderate expenditure in pretty twills with pretty
+borders, gracefully simple table-covers, with one or two additional
+small tables and easy-chairs, two simple vases filled with flowers;
+thanks still more to a nameless skill in re-arrangement, and the
+disposal of the slight knick-knacks and well-bound volumes, which, even
+in travelling, women who have cultivated the pleasures of taste carry
+about them--had been coaxed into that quiet harmony, that tone of
+consistent subdued colour, which corresponded with the characteristics
+of the inmate. Most people might have been puzzled where to place the
+piano, a semi-grand, so as not to take up too much space in the little
+room; but where it was placed it seemed so at home that you might have
+supposed the room had been built for it.
+
+There are two kinds of neatness,--one is too evident, and makes
+everything about it seem trite and cold and stiff; and another kind
+of neatness disappears from our sight in a satisfied sense of
+completeness,--like some exquisite, simple, finished style of writing,
+an Addison’s or a St. Pierre’s.
+
+This last sort of neatness belonged to Isaura, and brought to mind the
+well-known line of Catullus when on recrossing his threshold he invokes
+its welcome,--a line thus not inelegantly translated by Leigh Hunt,
+
+        “Smile every dimple on the cheek of Home.”
+
+I entreat the reader’s pardon for this long descriptive digression;
+but Isaura is one of those characters which are called many-sided, and
+therefore not very easy to comprehend. She gives us one side of her
+character in her correspondence with Madame de Grantmesnil, and another
+side of it in her own home with her Italian companion,--half nurse, half
+chaperon.
+
+“Monsieur Louvier is indeed very courteous,” said Isaura, looking up
+from the flowers with the dimpled smile we have noticed. “But I
+think, Madre, that we should do well to stay at home on Saturday,--not
+peacefully, for I owe you your revenge at Euchre.”
+
+“You can’t mean it, Piecola!” exclaimed the Signora, in evident
+consternation. “Stay at home!--why stay at home? Euchre is very well
+when there is nothing else to do: but change is pleasant; le bon Dieu
+likes it,
+
+            “‘Ne caldo ne gelo
+             Resta mai in cielo.’
+
+“And such beautiful ices one gets at M. Louvier’s! Did you taste the
+pistachio ice? What fine rooms, and so well lit up! I adore light. And
+the ladies so beautifully dressed: one sees the fashions. Stay at home!
+play at Euchre indeed! Piccola, you cannot be so cruel to yourself: you
+are young.”
+
+“But, dear Madre, just consider; we are invited because we are
+considered professional singers: your reputation as such is of course
+established,--mine is not; but still I shall be asked to sing, as I was
+asked before; and you know Dr. C. forbids me to do so except to a very
+small audience; and it is so ungracious always to say ‘No;’ and besides,
+did you not yourself say, when we came away last time from M. Louvier’s,
+that it was very dull, that you knew nobody, and that the ladies had
+such superb toilets that you felt mortified--and--”
+
+“Zitto! zitto! you talk idly, Piccola,--very idly. I was mortified
+then in my old black Lyons silk; but have I not bought since then my
+beautiful Greek jacket,--scarlet and gold lace? and why should I buy it
+if I am not to show it?”
+
+“But, dear Madre, the jacket is certainly very handsome, and will make
+an effect in a little dinner at the Savarins or Mrs. Morley’s; but in a
+great formal reception like M. Louvier’s will it not look--”
+
+“Splendid!” interrupted the Signora.
+
+“But singolare.”
+
+“So much the better; did not that great English Lady wear such a jacket,
+and did not every one admire her, piu tosto invidia the compassione?”
+
+Isaura sighed. Now the jacket of the Signora was a subject of
+disquietude to her friend. It so happened that a young English lady of
+the highest rank and the rarest beauty had appeared at M. Louvier’s,
+and indeed generally in the beau monde of Paris, in a Greek jacket that
+became her very much. The jacket had fascinated, at M. Louvier’s, the
+eyes of the Signora. But of this Isaura was unaware. The Signora, on
+returning home from M. Louvier’s, had certainly lamented much over the
+mesquin appearance of her old-fashioned Italian habiliments compared
+with the brilliant toilette of the gay Parisiennes; and Isaura--quite
+woman enough to sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities--proposed
+the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal couturieres
+of Paris, and adapt the Signora’s costume to the fashions of the place.
+But the Signora having predetermined on a Greek jacket, and knowing
+by instinct that Isaura would be disposed to thwart that splendid
+predilection, had artfully suggested that it would be better to go
+to the couturiere with Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced
+adviser,--and the coupe only held two.
+
+As Madame Savarin was about the same age as the Signora, and dressed
+as became her years and in excellent taste, Isaura thought this an
+admirable suggestion; and pressing into her chaperon’s hand a billet de
+banque sufficient to re-equip her cap-a pie, dismissed the subject from
+her mind. But the Signora was much too cunning to submit her passion
+for the Greek jacket to the discouraging comments of Madame Savarin.
+Monopolizing the coupe, she became absolute mistress of the situation.
+She went to no fashionable couturiere’s. She went to a magasin that she
+had seen advertised in the Petites Afiches as supplying superb costumes
+for fancy-balls and amateur performers in private theatricals. She
+returned home triumphant, with a jacket still more dazzling to the eye
+than that of the English lady.
+
+When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in a sort of superstitious
+terror, as of a comet or other blazing portent.
+
+“Cosa stupenda!” (stupendous thing!) She might well be dismayed when
+the Signora proposed to appear thus attired in M. Louvier’s salon. What
+might be admired as coquetry of dress in a young beauty of rank so great
+that even a vulgarity in her would be called distinguee, was
+certainly an audacious challenge of ridicule in the elderly ci-devant
+music-teacher.
+
+But how could Isaura, how can any one of common humanity, say to a woman
+resolved upon wearing a certain dress, “You are not young and handsome
+enough for that?” Isaura could only murmur, “For many reasons I would
+rather stay at home, dear Madre.”
+
+“Ah! I see you are ashamed of me,” said the Signora, in softened tones:
+“very natural. When the nightingale sings no more, she is only an
+ugly brown bird;” and therewith the Signora Venosta seated herself
+submissively, and began to cry.
+
+On this Isaura sprang up, wound her arms round the Signora’s neck,
+soothed her with coaxing, kissed and petted her, and ended by saying,
+“Of course we will go;” and, “but let me choose you another dress,--a
+dark-green velvet trimmed with blonde: blonde becomes you so well.”
+
+“No, no: I hate green velvet; anybody can wear that. Piccola, I am not
+clever like thee; I cannot amuse myself like thee with books. I am in a
+foreign land. I have a poor head, but I have a big heart” (another burst
+of tears); “and that big heart is set on my beautiful Greek jacket.”
+
+“Dearest Madre,” said Isaura, half weeping too, “forgive me, you are
+right. The Greek jacket is splendid; I shall be so pleased to see you
+wear it: poor Madre! so pleased to think that in the foreign land you
+are not without something that pleases you!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONFORMABLY with his engagement to meet M. Louvier, Alain found himself
+on the day and at the hour named in M. Gandrin’s salon. On this occasion
+Madame Gandrin did not appear. Her husband was accustomed to give diners
+d’hommes. The great man had not yet arrived. “I think, Marquis,” said
+M. Gandrin, “that you will not regret having followed my advice: my
+representations have disposed Louvier to regard you with much favour,
+and he is certainly flattered by being permitted to make your personal
+acquaintance.”
+
+The avoue had scarcely finished this little speech, when M. Louvier was
+announced. He entered with a beaming smile, which did not detract from
+his imposing presence. His flatterers had told him that he had a look
+of Louis Philippe; therefore he had sought to imitate the dress and the
+bonhomie of that monarch of the middle class. He wore a wig, elaborately
+piled up, and shaped his whiskers in royal harmony with the royal wig.
+Above all, he studied that social frankness of manner with which the
+able sovereign dispelled awe of his presence or dread of his astuteness.
+Decidedly he was a man very pleasant to converse and to deal with--so
+long as there seemed to him something to gain and nothing to lose by
+being pleasant. He returned Alain’s bow by a cordial offer of both
+expansive hands, into the grasp of which the hands of the aristocrat
+utterly disappeared. “Charmed to make your acquaintance, Marquis; still
+more charmed if you will let me be useful during your sejour at Paris.
+Ma foi, excuse my bluntness, but you are a fort beau garcon. Monsieur
+your father was a handsome man, but you beat him hollow. Gandrin, my
+friend, would not you and I give half our fortunes for one year of this
+fine fellow’s youth spent at Paris? Peste! what love-letters we should
+have, with no need to buy them by billets de banque!” Thus he ran on,
+much to Alain’s confusion, till dinner was announced. Then there was
+something grandiose in the frank bourgeois style wherewith he expanded
+his napkin and twisted one end into his waistcoat; it was so manly a
+renunciation of the fashions which a man so repandu in all circles might
+be supposed to follow,--as if he were both too great and too much in
+earnest for such frivolities. He was evidently a sincere bon vivant, and
+M. Gandrin had no less evidently taken all requisite pains to gratify
+his taste. The Montrachet served with the oysters was of precious
+vintage; that vin de madere which accompanied the potage a la bisque
+would have contented an American. And how radiant became Louvier’s face
+when amongst the entrees he came upon laitances de carpes! “The best
+thing in the world,” he cried, “and one gets it so seldom since the old
+Rocher de Cancale has lost its renown. At private houses, what does one
+get now? blanc de poulet, flavourless trash. After all, Gandrin, when we
+lose the love-letters, it is some consolation that laitances de carpes
+and sautes de foie gras are still left to fill up the void in our
+hearts. Marquis, heed my counsel; cultivate betimes the taste for the
+table,--that and whist are the sole resources of declining years. You
+never met my old friend Talleyrand--ah, no! he was long before your
+time. He cultivated both, but he made two mistakes. No man’s intellect
+is perfect on all sides. He confined himself to one meal a day, and
+he never learned to play well at whist. Avoid his errors, my young
+friend,--avoid them. Gandrin, I guess this pineapple is English,--it is
+superb.”
+
+“You are right,--a present from the Marquis of H-------.”
+
+“Ah! instead of a fee, I wager. The Marquis gives nothing for nothing,
+dear man! Droll people the English. You have never visited England, I
+presume, cher Rochebriant?” The affable financier had already made vast
+progress in familiarity with his silent fellow-guest.
+
+When the dinner was over and the three men had reentered the salon for
+coffee and liqueurs, Gandrin left Louvier and Alain alone, saying he was
+going to his cabinet for cigars which he could recommend. Then Louvier,
+lightly patting the Marquis on the shoulder, said with what the French
+call effusion, “My dear Rochebriant, your father and I did not quite
+understand each other. He took a tone of grand seigneur that sometimes
+wounded me; and I in turn was perhaps too rude in asserting my
+rights--as creditor, shall I say?--no, as fellow-citizen; and Frenchmen
+are so vain, so over-susceptible; fire up at a word; take offence when
+none is meant. We two, my dear boy, should be superior to such national
+foibles. Bref--I have a mortgage on your lands. Why should that thought
+mar our friendship? At my age, though I am not yet old, one is flattered
+if the young like us, pleased if we can oblige them, and remove from
+their career any little obstacle in its way. Gandrin tells me you wish
+to consolidate all the charges on your estate into one on a lower rate
+of interest. Is it so?”
+
+“I am so advised,” said the Marquis.
+
+“And very rightly advised; come and talk with me about it some day next
+week. I hope to have a large sum of money set free in a few days. Of
+course, mortgages on land don’t pay like speculations at the Bourse; but
+I am rich enough to please myself. We will see, we will see.”
+
+Here Gandrin returned with the cigars; but Alain at that time never
+smoked, and Louvier excused himself, with a laugh and a sly wink, on
+the plea that he was going to pay his respects--as doubtless that joli
+garcon was going to do likewise--to a belle dame who did not reckon the
+smell of tobacco among the perfumes of Houbigant or Arabia.
+
+“Meanwhile,” added Louvier, turning to Gandrin, “I have something to say
+to you on business about the contract for that new street of mine. No
+hurry,--after our young friend has gone to his ‘assignation.’”
+
+Alain could not misinterpret the hint; and in a few moments took leave
+of his host, more surprised than disappointed that the financier had not
+invited him, as Graham had assumed he would, to his soiree the following
+evening.
+
+When Alain was gone, Louvier’s jovial manner disappeared also, and
+became bluffly rude rather than bluntly cordial. “Gandrin, what did
+you mean by saying that that young man was no muscadin! Muscadin,
+aristocrate, offensive from top to toe.”
+
+“You amaze me; you seemed to take to him so cordially.”
+
+“And pray, were you too blind to remark with what cold reserve he
+responded to my condescensions; how he winced when I called him
+Rochebriant; how he coloured when I called him ‘dear boy’? These
+aristocrats think we ought to thank them on our knees when they take our
+money, and” here Louvier’s face darkened--“seduce our women.” “Monsieur
+Louvier, in all France I do not know a greater aristocrat than
+yourself.”
+
+I don’t know whether M. Gandrin meant that speech as a compliment, but
+M. Louvier took it as such,--laughed complacently and rubbed his hands.
+“Ay, ay, millionnaires are the real aristocrats, for they have power, as
+my beau Marquis will soon find. I must bid you good night. Of course I
+shall see Madame Gandrin and yourself to-morrow. Prepare for a motley
+gathering,--lots of democrats and foreigners, with artists and authors,
+and such creatures.”
+
+“Is that the reason why you did not invite the Marquis?”
+
+“To be sure; I would not shock so pure a Legitimist by contact with the
+sons of the people, and make him still colder to myself. No; when he
+comes to my house he shall meet lions and viveurs of the haut ton,
+who will play into my hands by teaching him how to ruin himself in the
+quickest manner and in the genre Regence. Bon soir, mon vieux.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The next night Graham in vain looked round for Alain in M. Louvier’s
+salons, and missed his high-bred mien and melancholy countenance.
+M. Louvier had been for some four years a childless widower, but his
+receptions were not the less numerously attended, nor his establishment
+less magnificently monde for the absence of a presiding lady: very much
+the contrary; it was noticeable how much he had increased his status and
+prestige as a social personage since the death of his unlamented spouse.
+
+To say truth, she had been rather a heavy drag on his triumphal car.
+She had been the heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal of
+money,--not in the higher walks of commerce, but in a retail trade.
+
+Louvier himself was the son of a rich money-lender; he had entered life
+with an ample fortune and an intense desire to be admitted into those
+more brilliant circles in which fortune can be dissipated with eclat. He
+might not have attained this object but for the friendly countenance of
+a young noble who was then--
+
+        “The glass of fashion and the mould of form;”
+
+but this young noble, of whom later we shall hear more, came suddenly to
+grief, and when the money-lender’s son lost that potent protector, the
+dandies, previously so civil, showed him a very cold shoulder.
+
+Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and recruited the fortune he had
+impaired by the aforesaid marriage, launched into colossal speculations,
+and became enormously rich. His aspirations for social rank now revived,
+but his wife sadly interfered with them. She was thrifty by nature;
+sympathized little with her husband’s genius for accumulation; always
+said he would end in a hospital; hated Republicans; despised authors and
+artists, and by the ladies of the beau monde was pronounced common and
+vulgar.
+
+So long as she lived, it was impossible for Louvier to realize his
+ambition of having one of the salons which at Paris establish celebrity
+and position. He could not then command those advantages of wealth which
+he especially coveted. He was eminently successful in doing this now.
+As soon as she was safe in Pere la Chaise, he enlarged his hotel by
+the purchase and annexation of an adjoining house; redecorated and
+refurnished it, and in this task displayed, it must be said to his
+credit, or to that of the administrators he selected for the purpose, a
+nobleness of taste rarely exhibited nowadays. His collection of pictures
+was not large, and consisted exclusively of the French school, ancient
+and modern, for in all things Louvier affected the patriot. But each of
+those pictures was a gem; such Watteaus, such Greuzes, such landscapes
+by Patel, and, above all, such masterpieces by Ingres, Horace Vernet,
+and Delaroche were worth all the doubtful originals of Flemish and
+Italian art which make the ordinary boast of private collectors.
+
+These pictures occupied two rooms of moderate size, built for their
+reception, and lighted from above. The great salon to which they led
+contained treasures scarcely less precious; the walls were covered with
+the richest silks which the looms of Lyons could produce. Every piece
+of furniture here was a work of art in its way: console-tables of
+Florentine mosaic, inlaid with pearl and lapis-lazuli; cabinets in which
+the exquisite designs of the Renaissance were carved in ebony; colossal
+vases of Russian malachite, but wrought by French artists. The very
+knick-knacks scattered carelessly about the room might have been admired
+in the cabinets of the Palazzo Pitti. Beyond this room lay the salle de
+danse, its ceiling painted by ------, supported by white marble columns,
+the glazed balcony and the angles of the room filled with tiers of
+exotics. In the dining-room, on the same floor, on the other side of
+the landing-place, were stored in glazed buffets not only vessels and
+salvers of plate, silver and gold, but, more costly still, matchless
+specimens of Sevres and Limoges, and mediaeval varieties of Venetian
+glass. On the ground-floor, which opened on the lawn of a large garden,
+Louvier had his suite of private apartments, furnished, as he said,
+“simply, according to English notions of comfort;”--Englishmen would
+have said, “according to French notions of luxury.” Enough of these
+details, which a writer cannot give without feeling himself somewhat
+vulgarized in doing so, but without a loose general idea of which
+a reader would not have an accurate conception of something not
+vulgar,--of something grave, historical, possibly tragical,--the
+existence of a Parisian millionaire at the date of this narrative.
+
+The evidence of wealth was everywhere manifest at M. Louvier’s, but it
+was everywhere refined by an equal evidence of taste. The apartments
+devoted to hospitality ministered to the delighted study of artists, to
+whom free access was given, and of whom two or three might be seen
+daily in the “show-rooms,” copying pictures or taking sketches of rare
+articles of furniture or effects for palatian interiors.
+
+Among the things which rich English visitors of Paris most coveted to
+see was M. Louvier’s hotel, and few among the richest left it without
+a sigh of envy and despair. Only in such London houses as belong to
+a Sutherland or a Holford could our metropolis exhibit a splendour as
+opulent and a taste as refined.
+
+M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular assemblies. At these were
+entertained the Liberals of every shade, from tricolor to rouge,
+with the artists and writers most in vogue, pele-mele with decorated
+diplomatists, ex-ministers, Orleanists, and Republicans, distinguished
+foreigners, plutocrats of the Bourse, and lions male and female from
+the arid nurse of that race, the Chaussee d’Antin. Of his more select
+reunions something will be said later.
+
+“And how does this poor Paris metamorphosed please Monsieur Vane?” asked
+a Frenchman with a handsome, intelligent countenance, very carefully
+dressed though in a somewhat bygone fashion, and carrying off his tenth
+lustrum with an air too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight.
+This gentleman, the Vicomte de Breze, was of good birth, and had a
+legitimate right to his title of Vicomte,--which is more than can be
+said of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. He had no other property,
+however, than a principal share in an influential journal, to which he
+was a lively and sparkling contributor. In his youth, under the reign
+of Louis Philippe, he had been a chief among literary exquisites; and
+Balzac was said to have taken him more than once as his model for those
+brilliant young vauriens who figure in the great novelist’s comedy of
+Human Life. The Vicomte’s fashion expired with the Orleanist dynasty.
+
+“Is it possible, my dear Vicomte,” answered Graham, “not to be pleased
+with a capital so marvellously embellished?”
+
+“Embellished it may be to foreign eyes,” said the Vicomte, sighing, “but
+not improved to the taste of a Parisian like me. I miss the dear Paris
+of old,--the streets associated with my beaux jours are no more.
+Is there not something drearily monotonous in those interminable
+perspectives? How frightfully the way lengthens before one’s eyes! In
+the twists and curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain
+of seeing how far one had to go from one spot to another,--each tortuous
+street had a separate idiosyncrasy; what picturesque diversities,
+what interesting recollections,--all swept away! Mon Dieu! and
+what for,--miles of florid facades staring and glaring at one with
+goggle-eyed pitiless windows; house-rents trebled, and the consciousness
+that if you venture to grumble underground railways, like concealed
+volcanoes, can burst forth on you at any moment with an eruption of
+bayonets and muskets. This maudit empire seeks to keep its hold
+on France much as a grand seigneur seeks to enchain a nymph of
+the ballet,--tricks her out in finery and baubles, and insures her
+infidelity the moment he fails to satisfy her whims.”
+
+“Vicomte,” answered Graham, “I have had the honour to know you since I
+was a small boy at a preparatory school home for the holidays, and you
+were a guest at my father’s country-house. You were then fete as one of
+the most promising writers among the young men of the day, especially
+favoured by the princes of the reigning family. I shall never forget
+the impression made on me by your brilliant appearance and your no less
+brilliant talk.”
+
+“Ah! ces beaux jours! ce bon Louis Philippe, ce cher petit Joinville,”
+ sighed the Vicomte.
+
+“But at that day you compared le bon Louis Philippe to Robert Macaire.
+You described all his sons, including, no doubt, ce cher petit
+Joinville, in terms of resentful contempt, as so many plausible gamins
+whom Robert Macaire was training to cheat the public in the interest of
+the family firm. I remember my father saying to you in answer, ‘No royal
+house in Europe has more sought to develop the literature of an epoch
+and to signalize its representatives by social respect and official
+honours than that of the Orleans dynasty. You, Monsieur de Breze, do but
+imitate your elders in seeking to destroy the dynasty under which you
+flourish; should you succeed, you hommes de plume will be the first
+sufferers and the loudest complainers.’”
+
+“Cher Monsieur Vane,” said the Vicomte, smiling complacently, “your
+father did me great honour in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexandre
+Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other stars of the Orleanist galaxy,
+including our friend here, M. Savarin. A very superior man was your
+father.”
+
+“And,” said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened to Graham’s
+speech with an approving smile,--“and if I remember right, my dear
+De Breze, no one was more brilliantly severe than yourself on poor De
+Lamartine and the Republic that succeeded Louis Philippe; no one more
+emphatically expressed the yearning desire for another Napoleon to
+restore order at home and renown abroad. Now you have got another
+Napoleon.”
+
+“And I want change for my Napoleon,” said De Breze, laughing.
+
+“My dear Vicomte,” said Graham, “one thing we may all grant,--that in
+culture and intellect you are far superior to the mass of your fellow
+Parisians; that you are therefore a favourable type of their political
+character.”
+
+“Ah, mon cher, vous etes trop aimable.”
+
+“And therefore I venture to say this,--if the archangel Gabriel were
+permitted to descend to Paris and form the best government for France
+that the wisdom of seraph could devise, it would not be two years--I
+doubt if it would be six months--before out of this Paris, which you
+call the Foyer des Idees, would emerge a powerful party, adorned by
+yourself and other hommes de plume, in favour of a revolution for the
+benefit of ce bon Satan and ce cher petit Beelzebub.”
+
+“What a pretty vein of satire you have, mon cher!” said the Vicomte,
+good-humouredly; “there is a sting of truth in your witticism. Indeed,
+I must send you some articles of mine in which I have said much the same
+thing,--les beaux, esprits se rencontrent. The fault of us French is
+impatience, desire of change; but then it is that desire which keeps the
+world going and retains our place at the head of it. However, at this
+time we are all living too fast for our money to keep up with it, and
+too slow for our intellect not to flag. We vie with each other on the
+road to ruin, for in literature all the old paths to fame are shut up.”
+
+Here a tall gentleman, with whom the Vicomte had been conversing before
+he accosted Vane, and who had remained beside De Breze listening in
+silent attention to this colloquy, interposed, speaking in the slow
+voice of one accustomed to measure his words, and with a slight but
+unmistakable German accent. “There is that, Monsieur de Breze, which
+makes one think gravely of what you say so lightly. Viewing things with
+the unprejudiced eyes of a foreigner, I recognize much for which France
+should be grateful to the Emperor. Under his sway her material resources
+have been marvellously augmented; her commerce has been placed by the
+treaty with England on sounder foundations, and is daily exhibiting
+richer life; her agriculture had made a prodigious advance wherever it
+has allowed room for capitalists, and escaped from the curse of petty
+allotments and peasant-proprietors, a curse which would have ruined any
+country less blessed by Nature; turbulent factions have been quelled;
+internal order maintained; the external prestige of France, up at
+least to the date of the Mexican war, increased to an extent that might
+satisfy even a Frenchman’s amour propre; and her advance in civilization
+has been manifested by the rapid creation of a naval power which should
+put even England on her mettle. But, on the other hand--”
+
+“Ay, on the other hand,” said the Vicomte.
+
+“On the other hand there are in the imperial system two causes of decay
+and of rot silently at work. They may not be the faults of the Emperor,
+but they are such misfortunes as may cause the fall of the Empire.
+The first is an absolute divorce between the political system and the
+intellectual culture of the nation. The throne and the system rest
+on universal suffrage,--on a suffrage which gives to classes the most
+ignorant a power that preponderates over all the healthful elements of
+knowledge. It is the tendency of all ignorant multitudes to personify
+themselves, as it were, in one individual. They cannot comprehend you
+when you argue for a principle; they do comprehend you when you talk
+of a name. The Emperor Napoleon is to them a name, and the prefects
+and officials who influence their votes are paid for incorporating all
+principles in the shibboleth of that single name. You have thus sought
+the well-spring of a political system in the deepest stratum of popular
+ignorance. To rid popular ignorance of its normal revolutionary bias,
+the rural peasants are indoctrinated with the conservatism that comes
+from the fear which appertains to property. They have their roots
+of land or their shares in a national loan. Thus you estrange the
+crassitude of an ignorant democracy still more from the intelligence of
+the educated classes by combining it with the most selfish and abject of
+all the apprehensions that are ascribed to aristocracy and wealth. What
+is thus embedded in the depths of your society makes itself shown on the
+surface. Napoleon III. has been compared to Augustus; and there are
+many startling similitudes between them in character and in fate. Each
+succeeds to the heritage of a great name that had contrived to unite
+autocracy with the popular cause; each subdued all rival competitors,
+and inaugurated despotic rule in the name of freedom; each mingled
+enough of sternness with ambitious will to stain with bloodshed the
+commencement of his power,--but it would be an absurd injustice to fix
+the same degree of condemnation on the coup d’etat as humanity fixes on
+the earlier cruelties of Augustus; each, once firm in his seat, became
+mild and clement,--Augustus perhaps from policy, Napoleon III. from a
+native kindliness of disposition which no fair critic of character
+can fail to acknowledge. Enough of similitudes; now for one salient
+difference. Observe how earnestly Augustus strove, and how completely he
+succeeded in the task, to rally round him all the leading intellects in
+every grade and of every party,--the followers of Antony, the friends of
+Brutus; every great captain, every great statesman, every great writer,
+every mail who could lend a ray of mind to his own Julian constellation,
+and make the age of Augustus an era in the annals of human intellect
+and genius. But this has not been the good fortune of your Emperor.
+The result of his system has been the suppression of intellect in
+every department. He has rallied round him not one great statesman; his
+praises are hymned by not one great poet. The celebrates of a former day
+stand aloof; or, preferring exile to constrained allegiance, assail him
+with unremitting missiles from their asylum in foreign shores. His
+reign is sterile of new celebrites. The few that arise enlist themselves
+against him. Whenever he shall venture to give full freedom to the press
+and to the legislature, the intellect thus suppressed or thus hostile
+will burst forth in collected volume. His partisans have not been
+trained and disciplined to meet such assailants. They will be as weak as
+no doubt they will be violent. And the worst is, that the intellect thus
+rising in mass against him will be warped and distorted, like captives
+who, being kept in chains, exercise their limbs on escaping in vehement
+jumps without definite object. The directors of emancipated opinion may
+thus be terrible enemies to the Imperial Government, but they will
+be very unsafe councillors to France. Concurrently with this divorce
+between the Imperial system and the national intellect,--a divorce
+so complete that even your salons have lost their wit, and even your
+caricatures their point,--a corruption of manners which the Empire, I
+own, did not originate, but inherit, has become so common that every
+one owns and nobody blames it. The gorgeous ostentation of the Court
+has perverted the habits of the people. The intelligence abstracted from
+other vents betakes itself to speculating for a fortune; and the greed
+of gain and the passion for show are sapping the noblest elements of the
+old French manhood. Public opinion stamps with no opprobrium a minister
+or favourite who profits by a job; and I fear you will find that jobbing
+pervades all your administrative departments.”
+
+“All very true,” said De Breze, with a shrug of the shoulders and in
+a tone of levity that seemed to ridicule the assertion he volunteered;
+“Virtue and Honour banished from courts and salons and the cabinet of
+authors ascend to fairer heights in the attics of ouvriers.”
+
+“The ouvriers, ouvriers of Paris!” cried this terrible German.
+
+“Ay, Monsieur le Comte, what can you say against our ouvriers? A German
+count cannot condescend to learn anything about ces petites gens.”
+
+“Monsieur,” replied the German, “in the eyes of a statesman there are
+no petites gens, and in those of a philosopher no petites choses. We in
+Germany have too many difficult problems affecting our working classes
+to solve, not to have induced me to glean all the information I can as
+to the ouvriers of Paris. They have among them men of aspirations as
+noble as can animate the souls of philosophers and poets, perhaps not
+the less noble because common-sense and experience cannot follow their
+flight; but as a body the ouvriers of Paris have not been elevated in
+political morality by the benevolent aim of the Emperor to find them
+ample work and good wages independent of the natural laws that regulate
+the markets of labour. Accustomed thus to consider the State bound to
+maintain them, the moment the State fails in that impossible task, they
+will accommodate their honesty to a rush upon property under the name of
+social reform.
+
+“Have you not noticed how largely increased within the last few years is
+the number of those who cry out, ‘La Propriete, cest le vol’? Have you
+considered the rapid growth of the International Association? I do not
+say that for all these evils--the Empire is exclusively responsible.
+To a certain degree they are found in all rich communities, especially
+where democracy is more or less in the ascendant. To a certain extent
+they exist in the large towns of Germany; they are conspicuously
+increasing in England; they are acknowledged to be dangerous in the
+United States of America; they are, I am told on good authority, making
+themselves visible with the spread of civilization in Russia. But under
+the French Empire they have become glaringly rampant, and I venture to
+predict that the day is not far off when the rot at work throughout all
+layers and strata of French society will insure a fall of the fabric at
+the sound of which the world will ring.
+
+“There is many a fair and stately tree which continues to throw out its
+leaves and rear its crest till suddenly the wind smites it, and then,
+and not till then, the trunk which seems so solid is found to be but the
+rind to a mass of crumbled powder.”
+
+“Monsieur le Comte,” said the Vicomte, “you are a severe critic and
+a lugubrious prophet; but a German is so safe from revolution that he
+takes alarm at the stir of movement which is the normal state of the
+French esprit.”
+
+“French esprit may soon evaporate into Parisian betise. As to Germany
+being safe from revolution, allow me to repeat a saying of Goethe’s-but
+has Monsieur le Vicomte ever heard of Goethe?”
+
+“Goethe, of course,--tres joli ecrivain.”
+
+“Goethe said to some one who was making much the same remark as
+yourself, ‘We Germans are in a state of revolution now, but we do things
+so slowly that it will be a hundred years before we Germans shall find
+it out; but when completed, it will be the greatest revolution society
+has yet seen, and will last like the other revolutions that, beginning,
+scarce noticed, in Germany, have transformed the world.’”
+
+“Diable, Monsieur le Comte! Germans transformed the world! What
+revolutions do you speak of?”
+
+“The invention of gunpowder, the invention of printing, and the
+expansion of a monk’s quarrel with his Pope into the Lutheran
+revolution.”
+
+Here the German paused, and asked the Vicomte to introduce him to Vane,
+which De Breze did by the title of Count von Rudesheim. On hearing
+Vane’s name, the Count inquired if he were related to the orator and
+statesman, George Graham Vane, whose opinions, uttered in Parliament,
+were still authoritative among German thinkers. This compliment to his
+deceased father immensely gratified but at the same time considerably
+surprised the Englishman. His father, no doubt, had been a man of much
+influence in the British House of Commons,--a very weighty speaker, and,
+while in office, a first-rate administrator; but Englishmen know what a
+House of Commons reputation is,--how fugitive, how little cosmopolitan;
+and that a German count should ever have heard of his father delighted
+but amazed him. In stating himself to be the son of George Graham Vane,
+he intimated not only the delight but the amaze, with the frank savoir
+vivre which was one of his salient characteristics.
+
+“Sir,” replied the German, speaking in very correct English, but still
+with his national accent, “every German reared to political service
+studies England as the school for practical thought distinct from
+impracticable theories. Long may you allow us to do so! Only excuse me
+one remark,--never let the selfish element of the practical supersede
+the generous element. Your father never did so in his speeches, and
+therefore we admired him. At the present day we don’t so much care to
+study English speeches; they may be insular,--they are not European. I
+honour England; Heaven grant that you may not be making sad mistakes
+in the belief that you can long remain England if you cease to be
+European.” Herewith the German bowed, not uncivilly,--on the contrary,
+somewhat ceremoniously,--and disappeared with a Prussian Secretary of
+Embassy, whose arm he linked in his own, into a room less frequented.
+
+“Vicomte, who and what is your German count?” asked Vane.
+
+“A solemn pedant,” answered the lively Vicomte,--“a German count, que
+voulez-vous de plus?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A LITTLE later Graham found himself alone amongst the crowd. Attracted
+by the sound of music, he had strayed into one of the rooms whence it
+came, and in which, though his range of acquaintance at Paris was for an
+Englishman large and somewhat miscellaneous, he recognized no familiar
+countenance. A lady was playing the pianoforte--playing remarkably
+well--with accurate science, with that equal lightness and strength of
+finger which produces brilliancy of execution; but to appreciate
+her music one should be musical one’s self. It wanted the charm
+that fascinates the uninitiated. The guests in the room were musical
+connoisseurs,--a class with whom Graham Vane had nothing in common. Even
+if he had been more capable of enjoying the excellence of the player’s
+performance, the glance he directed towards her would have sufficed
+to chill him into indifference. She was not young, and with prominent
+features and puckered skin, was twisting her face into strange
+sentimental grimaces, as if terribly overcome by the beauty and pathos
+of her own melodies. To add to Vane’s displeasure, she was dressed in
+a costume wholly antagonistic to his views of the becoming,--in a Greek
+jacket of gold and scarlet, contrasted by a Turkish turban.
+
+Muttering “What she-mountebank have we here?” he sank into a chair
+behind the door, and fell into an absorbed revery. From this he was
+aroused by the cessation of the music and the hum of subdued approbation
+by which it was followed. Above the hum swelled the imposing voice of M.
+Louvier as he rose from a seat on the other side of the piano, by which
+his bulky form had been partially concealed.
+
+“Bravo! perfectly played! excellent! Can we not persuade your charming
+young countrywoman to gratify us even by a single song?” Then turning
+aside and addressing some one else invisible to Graham he said, “Does
+that tyrannical doctor still compel you to silence, Mademoiselle?”
+
+A voice so sweetly modulated that if there were any sarcasm in the words
+it was lost in the softness of pathos, answered, “Nay, Monsieur Louvier,
+he rather overtasks the words at my command in thankfulness to those who
+like yourself, so kindly regard me as something else than a singer.”
+
+It was not the she-mountebank who thus spoke. Graham rose and looked
+round with instinctive curiosity. He met the face that he said had
+haunted him. She too had risen, standing near the piano, with one
+hand tenderly resting on the she-mountebank’s scarlet and gilded
+shoulder,--the face that haunted him, and yet with a difference. There
+was a faint blush on the clear pale cheek, a soft yet playful light in
+the grave dark-blue eyes, which had not been visible in the countenance
+of the young lady in the pearl-coloured robe. Graham did not hear
+Louvier’s reply, though no doubt it was loud enough for him to hear. He
+sank again into revery. Other guests now came into the room, among them
+Frank Morley, styled Colonel,--eminent military titles in the United
+States do not always denote eminent military services,--a wealthy
+American, and his sprightly and beautiful wife. The Colonel was a clever
+man, rather stiff in his deportment, and grave in speech, but by no
+means without a vein of dry humour. By the French he was esteemed
+a high-bred specimen of the kind of grand seigneur which democratic
+republics engender. He spoke French like a Parisian, had an imposing
+presence, and spent a great deal of money with the elegance of a man of
+taste and the generosity of a man of heart. His high breeding was not
+quite so well understood by the English, because the English are apt to
+judge breeding by little conventional rules not observed by the
+American Colonel. He had a slight nasal twang, and introduced “sir” with
+redundant ceremony in addressing Englishmen, however intimate he might
+be with them, and had the habit (perhaps with a sly intention to startle
+or puzzle them) of adorning his style of conversation with quaint
+Americanisms.
+
+Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the inherent dignity of his
+character made him acknowledged as a thorough gentleman by every
+Englishman, however conventional in tastes, who became admitted into his
+intimate acquaintance.
+
+Mrs. Morley, ten or twelve years younger than her husband, had no
+nasal twang, and employed no Americanisms in her talk, which was frank,
+lively, and at times eloquent. She had a great ambition to be esteemed
+of a masculine understanding; Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition
+in rendering her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately
+acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one
+of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite
+flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between
+persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their
+honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The
+Morleys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three
+words to him, before, catching sight of the haunting face, she darted
+towards it. Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the distance, and
+said, “To my taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in
+the present bee,* and full of mind, sir.”
+
+   [*Bee, a common expression in “the West” for a meeting or gathering
+   ]of people.
+
+“Singing mind,” said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill-natured
+impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to admire.
+
+“I have not heard her sing,” replied the American, dryly; “and the words
+‘singing mind’ are doubtless accurately English, since you employ them;
+but at Boston the collocation would be deemed barbarous. You fly off the
+handle. The epithet, sir, is not in concord with the substantive.”
+
+“Boston would be in the right, my dear Colonel. I stand rebuked; mind
+has little to do with singing.”
+
+“I take leave to deny that, sir. You fire into the wrong flock,
+and would not hazard the remark if you had conversed as I have with
+Signorina Cicogna.”
+
+Before Graham could answer, Signorina Cicogna stood before him, leaning
+lightly on Mrs. Morley’s arm.
+
+“Frank, you must take us into the refreshment-room,” said Mrs. Morley to
+her husband; and then, turning to Graham, added, “Will you help to make
+way for us?”
+
+Graham bowed, and offered his arm to the fair speaker. “No,” said she,
+taking her husband’s. “Of course you know the Signorina, or, as we
+usually call her, Mademoiselle Cicogna. No? Allow me to present you. Mr.
+Graham Vane, Mademoiselle Cicogna. Mademoiselle speaks English like a
+native.”
+
+And thus abruptly Graham was introduced to the owner of the haunting
+face. He had lived too much in the great world all his life to retain
+the innate shyness of an Englishman; but he certainly was confused and
+embarrassed when his eyes met Isaura’s, and he felt her hand on his
+arm. Before quitting the room she paused and looked back. Graham’s look
+followed her own, and saw behind them the lady with the scarlet jacket
+escorted by some portly and decorated connoisseur. Isaura’s face
+brightened to another kind of brightness,--a pleased and tender light.
+
+“Poor dear Madre,” she murmured to herself in Italian. “Madre!” echoed
+Graham, also in Italian. “I have been misinformed, then; that lady is
+your mother.”
+
+Isaura laughed a pretty, low, silvery laugh, and replied in English,
+“She is not my mother; but I call her Madre, for I know no name more
+loving.”
+
+Graham was touched, and said gently, “Your own mother was evidently very
+dear to you.”
+
+Isaura’s lip quivered, and she made a slight movement as if she would
+have withdrawn her hand from his arm. He saw that he had offended or
+wounded her, and with the straightforward frankness natural to him,
+resumed quickly, “My remark was impertinent in a stranger; forgive it.”
+
+“There is nothing to forgive, Monsieur.”
+
+The two now threaded their way through the crowd, both silent. At last
+Isaura, thinking she ought to speak first in order to show that Graham
+had not offended her, said,
+
+“How lovely Mrs. Morley is!”
+
+“Yes; and I like the spirit and ease of her American manner. Have you
+known her long, Mademoiselle?”
+
+“No; we met her for the first time some weeks ago at M. Savarin’s.”
+
+“Was she very eloquent on the rights of women?”
+
+“What! you have heard her on that subject?”
+
+“I have rarely heard her on any other, though she is the best and
+perhaps the cleverest friend I have at Paris; but that may be my fault,
+for I like to start it. It is a relief to the languid small-talk of
+society to listen to any one thoroughly in earnest upon turning the
+world topsy-turvy.”
+
+“Do you suppose poor Mrs. Morley would seek to do that if she had her
+rights?” asked Isaura, with her musical laugh.
+
+“Not a doubt of it; but perhaps you share her opinions.”
+
+“I scarcely know what her opinions are, but--”
+
+“Yes?--but--”
+
+“There is a--what shall I call it?--a persuasion, a sentiment, out of
+which the opinions probably spring, that I do share.”
+
+“Indeed? a persuasion, a sentiment, for instance, that a woman should
+have votes in the choice of legislators, and, I presume, in the task of
+legislation?”
+
+“No, that is not what I mean. Still, that is an opinion, right or wrong,
+which grows out of the sentiment I speak of.”
+
+“Pray explain the sentiment.”
+
+“It is always so difficult to define a sentiment; but does it not strike
+you that in proportion as the tendency of modern civilization has been
+to raise women more and more to an intellectual equality with men,
+in proportion as they read and study and think, an uneasy sentiment,
+perhaps querulous, perhaps unreasonable, grows up within their minds
+that the conventions of the world are against the complete development
+of the faculties thus aroused and the ambition thus animated; that they
+cannot but rebel, though it may be silently, against the notions of the
+former age, when women were not thus educated, notions that the aim
+of the sex should be to steal through life unremarked; that it is a
+reproach to be talked of; that women are plants to be kept in a hothouse
+and forbidden the frank liberty of growth in the natural air and
+sunshine of heaven? This, at least, is a sentiment which has sprung up
+within myself; and I imagine that it is the sentiment which has given
+birth to many of the opinions or doctrines that seem absurd, and very
+likely are so, to the general public. I don’t pretend even to have
+considered those doctrines; I don’t pretend to say what may be the
+remedies for the restlessness and uneasiness I feel. I doubt if on this
+earth there be any remedies; all I know is, that I feel restless and
+uneasy.”
+
+Graham gazed on her countenance as she spoke with an astonishment not
+unmingled with tenderness and compassion, astonishment at the contrast
+between a vein of reflection so hardy, expressed in a style of language
+that seemed to him so masculine, and the soft velvet dreamy eyes, the
+gentle tones, and delicate purity of hues rendered younger still by the
+blush that deepened their bloom.
+
+At this moment they had entered the refreshment-room; but a dense group
+being round the table, and both perhaps forgetting the object for which
+Mrs. Morley had introduced them to each other, they had mechancially
+seated themselves on an ottoman in a recess while Isaura was yet
+speaking. It must seem as strange to the reader as it did to Graham
+that such a speech should have been spoken by so young a girl to an
+acquaintance so new; but in truth Isaura was very little conscious of
+Graham’s presence. She had got on a subject that perplexed and tormented
+her solitary thoughts; she was but thinking aloud.
+
+“I believe,” said Graham, after a pause, “that I comprehend your
+sentiment much better than I do Mrs. Morley’s opinions; but permit me
+one observation. You say truly that the course of modern civilization
+has more or less affected the relative position of woman cultivated
+beyond that level on which she was formerly contented to stand,--the
+nearer perhaps to the heart of man because not lifting her head to
+his height,--and hence a sense of restlessness, uneasiness; but do you
+suppose that, in this whirl and dance of the atoms which compose the
+rolling ball of the civilized world, it is only women that are made
+restless and uneasy? Do you not see amid the masses congregated in the
+wealthiest cities of the world, writhings and struggles against the
+received order of things? In this sentiment of discontent there is a
+certain truthfulness, because it is an element of human nature, and how
+best to deal with it is a problem yet unsolved; but in the opinions and
+doctrines to which, among the masses, the sentiment gives birth, the
+wisdom of the wisest detects only the certainty of a common ruin,
+offering for reconstruction the same building-materials as the former
+edifice,--materials not likely to be improved because they may be
+defaced. Ascend from the working classes to all others in which
+civilized culture prevails, and you will find that same restless
+feeling,--the fluttering of untried wings against the bars between wider
+space and their longings. Could you poll all the educated ambitious
+young men in England,--perhaps in Europe,--at least half of them,
+divided between a reverence for the past and a curiosity as to the
+future, would sigh, ‘I am born a century too late or a century too
+soon!’”
+
+Isaura listened to this answer with a profound and absorbing
+interest. It was the first time that a clever young man talked thus
+sympathetically to her, a clever young girl.
+
+Then, rising, he said, “I see your Madre and our American friends are
+darting angry looks at me. They have made room for us at the table, and
+are wondering why I should keep you thus from the good things of this
+little life. One word more ere we join them,--consult your own mind,
+and consider whether your uneasiness and unrest are caused solely by
+conventional shackles on your sex. Are they not equally common to the
+youth of ours,--common to all who seek in art, in letters, nay, in the
+stormier field of active life, to clasp as a reality some image yet seen
+but as a dream?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+No further conversation in the way of sustained dialogue took place that
+evening between Graham and Isaura.
+
+The Americans and the Savarins clustered round Isaura when they quitted
+the refreshment-room. The party was breaking up. Vane would have
+offered his arm again to Isaura, but M. Savarin had forestalled him. The
+American was despatched by his wife to see for the carriage; and Mrs.
+Morley said, with her wonted sprightly tone of command,
+
+“Now, Mr. Vane, you have no option but to take care of me to the
+shawl-room.”
+
+Madame Savarin and Signora Venosta had each found their cavaliers,
+the Italian still retaining hold of the portly connoisseur, and the
+Frenchwoman accepting the safeguard of the Vicomte de Breze. As they
+descended the stairs, Mrs. Morley asked Graham what he thought of the
+young lady to whom she had presented him.
+
+“I think she is charming,” answered Graham.
+
+“Of course; that is the stereotyped answer to all such questions,
+especially by you Englishmen. In public or in private, England is the
+mouthpiece of platitudes.”
+
+“It is natural for an American to think so. Every child that has just
+learned to speak uses bolder expressions than its grandmamma; but I am
+rather at a loss to know by what novelty of phrase an American would
+have answered your question.”
+
+“An American would have discovered that Isaura Cicogna had a soul, and
+his answer would have confessed it.”
+
+“It strikes me that he would then have uttered a platitude more stolid
+than mine. Every Christian knows that the dullest human being has a
+soul. But, to speak frankly, I grant that my answer did not do justice
+to the Signorina, nor to the impression she makes on me; and putting
+aside the charm of the face, there is a charm in a mind that seems to
+have gathered stores of reflection which I should scarcely have expected
+to find in a young lady brought up to be a professional singer.”
+
+“You add prejudice to platitude, and are horribly prosaic to-night;
+but here we are in the shawl-room. I must take another opportunity of
+attacking you. Pray dine with us tomorrow; you will meet our Minister
+and a few other pleasant friends.”
+
+“I suppose I must not say, ‘I shall be charmed,’” answered Vane; “but I
+shall be.”
+
+“Bon Dieu! that horrid fat man has deserted Signora Venosta,--looking
+for his own cloak, I dare say; selfish monster! Go and hand her to her
+carriage; quick, it is announced!”
+
+Graham, thus ordered, hastened to offer his arm to the she-mountebank.
+Somehow she had acquired dignity in his eyes, and he did not feel the
+least ashamed of being in contact with the scarlet jacket.
+
+The Signora grappled to him with a confiding familiarity. “I am afraid,”
+ she said in Italian, as they passed along the spacious hall to the porte
+cochere,--“I am afraid that I did not make a good effect to-night. I was
+nervous; did not you perceive it?”
+
+“No, indeed; you enchanted us all;” replied the dissimulator.
+
+“How amiable you are to say so! You must think that I sought for a
+compliment. So I did; you gave me more than I deserved. Wine is the milk
+of old men, and praise of old women; but an old man may be killed by too
+much wine, and an old woman lives all the longer for too much praise.
+Buona notte.”
+
+Here she sprang, lithesomely enough, into the carriage, and Isaura
+followed, escorted by M. Savarin. As the two men returned towards the
+shawl-room, the Frenchman said, “Madame Savarin and I complain that you
+have not let us see so much of you as we ought. No doubt you are greatly
+sought after; but are you free to take your soup with us the day after
+to-morrow? You will meet the Count von Rudesheim, and a few others more
+lively if less wise.”
+
+“The day after to-morrow I will mark with a white stone. To dine with M.
+Savarin is an event to a man who covets distinction.”
+
+“Such compliments reconcile an author to his trade. You deserve the
+best return I can make you. You will meet la belle Isaura. I have just
+engaged her and her chaperon. She is a girl of true genius; and genius
+is like those objects of virtu which belong to a former age, and become
+every day more scarce and more precious.”
+
+Here they encountered Colonel Morley and his wife hurrying to their
+carriage. The American stopped Vane, and whispered, “I am glad, sir, to
+hear from my wife that you dine with us to-morrow. Sir, you will meet
+Mademoiselle Cicogna, and I am not without a kinkle [notion] that you
+will be enthused.”
+
+“This seems like a fatality,” soliloquized Vane as he walked through the
+deserted streets towards his lodging. “I strove to banish that haunting
+face from my mind. I had half forgotten it, and now--” Here his murmur
+sank into silence. He was deliberating in very conflicted thought
+whether or not he should write to refuse the two invitations he had
+accepted.
+
+“Pooh!” he said at last, as he reached the door of his lodging, “is
+my reason so weak that it should be influenced by a mere superstition?
+Surely I know myself too well, and have tried myself too long, to fear
+that I should be untrue to the duty and ends of my life, even if I found
+my heart in danger of suffering.”
+
+Certainly the Fates do seem to mock our resolves to keep our feet from
+their ambush, and our hearts from their snare! How our lives may be
+coloured by that which seems to us the most trivial accident, the merest
+chance! Suppose that Alain de Rochebriant had been invited to that
+reunion at M. Louvier’s, and Graham Vane had accepted some other
+invitation and passed his evening elsewhere, Alain would probably have
+been presented to Isaura--what then might have happened? The impression
+Isaura had already made upon the young Frenchman was not so deep as
+that made upon Graham; but then, Alain’s resolution to efface it was but
+commenced that day, and by no means yet confirmed. And if he had been
+the first clever young man to talk earnestly to that clever young
+girl, who can guess what impression he might have made upon her? His
+conversation might have had less philosophy and strong sense than
+Graham’s, but more of poetic sentiment and fascinating romance.
+
+However, the history of events that do not come to pass is not in the
+chronicle of the Fates.
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
+
+It is many days since I wrote to you, and but for your delightful note
+just received, reproaching me for silence, I should still be under the
+spell of that awe which certain words of M. Savarin were well fitted to
+produce. Chancing to ask him if he had written to you lately, he said,
+with that laugh of his, good-humouredly ironical, “No, Mademoiselle, I
+am not one of the Facheux whom Moliere has immortalized. If the meeting
+of lovers should be sacred from the intrusion of a third person, however
+amiable, more sacred still should be the parting between an author and
+his work. Madame de Grantmesnil is in that moment so solemn to a genius
+earnest as hers,--she is bidding farewell to a companion with whom, once
+dismissed into the world, she can never converse familiarly again; it
+ceases to be her companion when it becomes ours. Do not let us disturb
+the last hours they will pass together.”
+
+These words struck me much. I suppose there is truth in them. I can
+comprehend that a work which has long been all in all to its author,
+concentrating his thoughts, gathering round it the hopes and fears of
+his inmost heart, dies, as it were, to him when he has completed
+its life for others, and launched it into a world estranged from the
+solitude in which it was born and formed. I can almost conceive that, to
+a writer like you, the very fame which attends the work thus sent forth
+chills your own love for it. The characters you created in a fairyland,
+known but to yourself, must lose something of their mysterious charm
+when you hear them discussed and cavilled at, blamed or praised, as if
+they were really the creatures of streets and salons.
+
+I wonder if hostile criticism pains or enrages you as it seems to do
+such other authors as I have known. M. Savarin, for instance, sets
+down in his tablets as an enemy to whom vengeance is due the smallest
+scribbler who wounds his self-love, and says frankly, “To me praise is
+food, dispraise is poison. Him who feeds me I pay; him who poisons me
+I break on the wheel.” M. Savarin is, indeed, a skilful and energetic
+administrator to his own reputation. He deals with it as if it were a
+kingdom,--establishes fortifications for its defence, enlists soldiers
+to fight for it. He is the soul and centre of a confederation in which
+each is bound to defend the territory of the others, and all those
+territories united constitute the imperial realm of M. Savarin.
+Don’t think me an ungracious satirist in what I am thus saying of our
+brilliant friend. It is not I who here speak; it is himself. He avows
+his policy with the naivete which makes the charm of his style as
+writer. “It is the greatest mistake,” he said to me yesterday, “to talk
+of the Republic of Letters. Every author who wins a name is a sovereign
+in his own domain, be it large or small. Woe to any republican who wants
+to dethrone me!” Somehow or other, when M. Savarin thus talks I feel
+as if he were betraying the cause of, genius. I cannot bring myself
+to regard literature as a craft,--to me it is a sacred mission; and in
+hearing this “sovereign” boast of the tricks by which he maintains his
+state, I seem to listen to a priest who treats as imposture the religion
+he professes to teach. M. Savarin’s favourite eleve now is a young
+contributor to his journal, named Gustave Rameau. M. Savarin said the
+other day in my hearing, “I and my set were Young France; Gustave Rameau
+and his set are New Paris.”
+
+“And what is the distinction between the one and the other?” asked my
+American friend, Mrs. Morley.
+
+“The set of ‘Young France,’” answered M. Savarin, “had in it the hearty
+consciousness of youth; it was bold and vehement, with abundant vitality
+and animal spirits; whatever may be said against it in other
+respects, the power of thews and sinews must be conceded to its chief
+representatives. But the set of ‘New Paris’ has very bad health, and
+very indifferent spirits. Still, in its way, it is very clever; it can
+sting and bite as keenly as if it were big and strong. Rameau is the
+most promising member of the set. He will be popular in his time,
+because he represents a good deal of the mind of his time,--namely, the
+mind and the time of ‘New Paris.’”
+
+Do you know anything of this young Rameau’s writings? You do not know
+himself, for he told me so, expressing a desire, that was evidently very
+sincere, to find some occasion on which to render you his homage. He
+said this the first time I met him at M. Savarin’s, and before he knew
+how dear to me are yourself and your fame. He came and sat by me after
+dinner, and won my interest at once by asking me if I had heard that you
+were busied on a new work; and then, without waiting for my answer, he
+launched forth into praises of you, which made a notable contrast to the
+scorn with which he spoke of all your contemporaries,--except indeed M.
+Savarin, who, however, might not have been pleased to hear his favourite
+pupil style him “a great writer in small things.” I spare you his
+epigrams on Dumas and Victor Hugo and my beloved Lamartine. Though his
+talk was showy, and dazzled me at first, I soon got rather tired of it,
+even the first time we met. Since then I have seen him very often, not
+only at M. Savarin’s, but he calls here at least every other day, and we
+have become quite good friends. He gains on acquaintance so far that one
+cannot help feeling how much he is to be pitied. He is so envious! and
+the envious must be so unhappy. And then he is at once so near and so
+far from all the things that he envies. He longs for riches and luxury,
+and can only as yet earn a bare competence by his labours. Therefore
+he hates the rich and luxurious. His literary successes, instead of
+pleasing him, render him miserable by their contrast with the fame of
+the authors whom he envies and assails. He has a beautiful head, of
+which he is conscious, but it is joined to a body without strength or
+grace. He is conscious of this too,--but it is cruel to go on with this
+sketch. You can see at once the kind of person who, whether he inspire
+affection or dislike, cannot fail to create an interest, painful but
+compassionate.
+
+You will be pleased to hear that Dr. C. considers my health so improved
+that I may next year enter fairly on the profession for which I was
+intended and trained. Yet I still feel hesitating and doubtful. To
+give myself wholly up to the art in which I am told I could excel must
+alienate me entirely from the ambition that yearns for fields in
+which, alas! it may perhaps never appropriate to itself a rood for
+culture,--only wander, lost in a vague fairyland, to which it has not
+the fairy’s birthright. O thou great Enchantress, to whom are equally
+subject the streets of Paris and the realm of Faerie, thou who hast
+sounded to the deeps that circumfluent ocean called “practical human
+life,” and hast taught the acutest of its navigators to consider how far
+its courses are guided by orbs in heaven,--canst thou solve this riddle
+which, if it perplexes me, must perplex so many? What is the real
+distinction between the rare genius and the commonalty of human souls
+that feel to the quick all the grandest and divinest things which the
+rare genius places before them, sighing within themselves, “This rare
+genius does but express that which was previously familiar to us, so
+far as thought and sentiment extend”? Nay, the genius itself, however
+eloquent, never does, never can, express the whole of the thought or the
+sentiment it interprets; on the contrary, the greater the genius is, the
+more it leaves a something of incomplete satisfaction on our minds,--it
+promises so much more than it performs; it implies so much more than
+it announces. I am impressed with the truth of what I thus say in
+proportion as I re-peruse and re-study the greatest writers that have
+come within my narrow range of reading; and by the greatest writers I
+mean those who are not exclusively reasoners (of such I cannot judge),
+nor mere poets (of whom, so far as concerns the union of words with
+music, I ought to be able to judge), but the few who unite reason and
+poetry, and appeal at once to the common-sense of the multitude and
+the imagination of the few. The highest type of this union to me is
+Shakspeare; and I can comprehend the justice of no criticism on him
+which does not allow this sense of incomplete satisfaction augmenting
+in proportion as the poet soars to his highest. I ask again, In what
+consists this distinction between the rare genius and the commonalty of
+minds that exclaim, “He expresses what we feel, but never the whole of
+what we feel”? Is it the mere power over language, a larger knowledge of
+dictionaries, a finer ear for period and cadence, a more artistic craft
+in casing our thoughts and sentiments in well-selected words? Is it true
+what Buffon says, “that the style is the man”? Is it true what I am told
+Goethe said, “Poetry is form”? I cannot believe this; and if you tell me
+it is true, then I no longer pine to be a writer. But if it be not
+true, explain to me how it is that the greatest genius is popular in
+proportion as it makes itself akin to us by uttering in better words
+than we employ that which was already within us, brings to light what
+in our souls was latent, and does but correct, beautify, and publish the
+correspondence which an ordinary reader carries on privately every day
+between himself and his mind or his heart. If this superiority in the
+genius be but style and form, I abandon my dream of being something else
+than a singer of words by another to the music of another. But then,
+what then? My knowledge of books and art is wonderfully small. What
+little I do know I gather from very few books and from what I hear said
+by the few worth listening to whom I happen to meet; and out of these,
+in solitude and revery, not by conscious effort, I arrive at some
+results which appear to my inexperience original. Perhaps, indeed,
+they have the same kind of originality as the musical compositions of
+amateurs who effect a cantata or a quartette made up of borrowed details
+from great masters, and constituting a whole so original that no real
+master would deign to own it. Oh, if I could get you to understand how
+unsettled, how struggling my whole nature at this moment is! I wonder
+what is the sensation of the chrysalis which has been a silkworm, when
+it first feels the new wings stirring within its shell,--wings, alas!
+they are but those of the humblest and shortest-lived sort of moth,
+scarcely born into daylight before it dies. Could it reason, it might
+regret its earlier life, and say, “Better be the silkworm than the
+moth.”
+
+
+FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
+
+Have you known well any English people in the course of your life? I say
+well, for you must have had acquaintance with many. But it seems to
+me so difficult to know an Englishman well. Even I, who so loved
+and revered Mr. Selby,--I, whose childhood was admitted into his
+companionship by that love which places ignorance and knowledge, infancy
+and age, upon ground so equal that heart touches heart, cannot say that
+I understand the English character to anything like the extent to which
+I fancy I understand the Italian and the French. Between us of the
+Continent and them of the island the British Channel always flows. There
+is an Englishman here to whom I have been introduced, whom I have met,
+though but seldom, in that society which bounds the Paris world to me.
+Pray, pray tell me, did you ever know, ever meet him? His name is Graham
+Vane. He is the only son, I am told, of a man who was a celebrite in
+England as an orator and statesman, and on both sides he belongs to the
+haute aristocratic. He himself has that indescribable air and mien to
+which we apply the epithet ‘distinguished.’ In the most crowded salon
+the eye would fix on him, and involuntarily follow his movements.
+Yet his manners are frank and simple, wholly without the stiffness or
+reserve which are said to characterize the English. There is an inborn
+dignity in his bearing which consists in the absence of all dignity
+assumed. But what strikes me most in this Englishman is an expression
+of countenance which the English depict by the word ‘open,’--that
+expression which inspires you with a belief in the existence of
+sincerity. Mrs. Morley said of him, in that poetic extravagance of
+phrase by which the Americans startle the English, “That man’s forehead
+would light up the Mammoth Cave.” Do you not know, Eulalie, what it
+is to us cultivators of art--art being the expression of truth through
+fiction--to come into the atmosphere of one of those souls in which
+Truth stands out bold and beautiful in itself, and needs no idealization
+through fiction? Oh, how near we should be to heaven could we live
+daily, hourly, in the presence of one the honesty of whose word we could
+never doubt, the authority of whose word we could never disobey! Mr.
+Vane professes not to understand music, not even to care for it, except
+rarely, and yet he spoke of its influence over others with an enthusiasm
+that half charmed me once more back to my destined calling; nay, might
+have charmed me wholly, but that he seemed to think that I--that any
+public singer--must be a creature apart from the world,--the world in
+which such men live. Perhaps that is true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+It was one of those lovely noons towards the end of May in which a rural
+suburb has the mellow charm of summer to him who escapes awhile from the
+streets of a crowded capital. The Londoner knows its charm when he feels
+his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at
+Richmond under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the
+warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief
+trill of the blackbird. But the suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet
+more pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are more easily reached,
+and I know not why, but they seem more rural,--perhaps because the
+contrast of their repose with the stir left behind, of their redundance
+of leaf and blossom compared with the prim efflorescence of trees in the
+Boulevards and Tuileries, is more striking. However that may be, when
+Graham reached the pretty suburb in which Isaura dwelt, it seemed to him
+as if all the wheels of the loud busy life were suddenly smitten still.
+The hour was yet early; he felt sure that he should find Isaura at
+home. The garden-gate stood unfastened and ajar; he pushed it aside and
+entered. I think I have before said that the garden of the villa was
+shut out from the road and the gaze of neighbours by a wall and thick
+belts of evergreens; it stretched behind the house somewhat far for the
+garden of a suburban villa. He paused when he had passed the gateway,
+for he heard in the distance the voice of one singing,--singing low,
+singing plaintively. He knew it was the voice of Isaura-he passed on,
+leaving the house behind him, and tracking the voice till he reached the
+singer.
+
+Isaura was seated within an arbour towards the farther end of the
+garden,--an arbour which, a little later in the year, must indeed be
+delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine and woodbine; now
+into its iron trelliswork leaflets and flowers were insinuating their
+gentle way. Just at the entrance one white rose--a winter rose that had
+mysteriously survived its relations--opened its pale hues frankly to the
+noonday sun. Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, and the last note of
+the song had ceased when he stood at the entrance of the arbour. Isaura
+did not perceive him at first, for her face was bent downward musingly,
+as was often her wont after singing, especially when alone; but she felt
+that the place was darkened, that something stood between her and the
+sunshine. She raised her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as
+she uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, but inwardly and
+whisperingly, as in a sort of fear.
+
+“Pardon me, Mademoiselle,” said Graham, entering; “but I heard your
+voice as I came into the garden, and it drew me onward involuntarily.
+What a lovely air! and what simple sweetness in such of the words as
+reached me! I am so ignorant of music that you must not laugh at me if
+I ask whose is the music and whose are the words? Probably both are so
+well known as to convict me of a barbarous ignorance.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Isaura, with a still heightened colour, and in accents
+embarrassed and hesitating. “Both the words and music are by an unknown
+and very humble composer, yet not, indeed, quite original,--they have
+not even that merit; at least they were suggested by a popular song in
+the Neapolitan dialect which is said to be very old.”
+
+“I don’t know if I caught the true meaning of the words, for they seemed
+to me to convey a more subtle and refined sentiment than is common in
+the popular songs of southern Italy.”
+
+“The sentiment in the original is changed in the paraphrase, and not, I
+fear, improved by the change.”
+
+“Will you explain to me the sentiment in both, and let me judge which I
+prefer?”
+
+“In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, who has moored his boat under
+a rock on the shore, sees a beautiful face below the surface of the
+waters; he imagines it to be that of a Nereid, and casts in his net
+to catch this supposed nymph of the ocean. He only disturbs the water,
+loses the image, and brings up a few common fishes. He returns home
+disappointed, and very much enamoured of the supposed Nereid. The next
+day he goes again to the same place, and discovers that the face which
+had so charmed him was that of a mortal girl reflected on the waters
+from the rock behind him, on which she had been seated, and on which she
+had her home. The original air is arch and lively; just listen to it.”
+ And Isaura warbled one of those artless and somewhat meagre tunes to
+which light-stringed instruments are the fitting accompaniment.
+
+“That,” said Graham, “is a different music indeed from the other, which
+is deep and plaintive, and goes to the heart.”
+
+“But do you not see how the words have been altered? In the song you
+first heard me singing, the fisherman goes again to the spot, again and
+again sees the face in the water, again and again seeks to capture the
+Nereid, and never knows to the last that the face was that of the mortal
+on the rock close behind him, and which he passed by without notice
+every day. Deluded by an ideal image, the real one escapes from his
+eye.”
+
+“Is the verse that is recast meant to symbolize a moral in love?”
+
+“In love? nay, I know not; but in life, yes,--at least the life of the
+artist.”
+
+“The paraphrase of the original is yours, Signorina, words and music
+both. Am I not right? Your silence answers ‘Yes.’ Will you pardon me
+if I say that, though there can be no doubt of the new beauty you have
+given to the old song, I think that the moral of the old was the sounder
+one, the truer to human life. We do not go on to the last duped by an
+allusion. If enamoured by the shadow on the waters, still we do look
+around us and discover the image it reflects.”
+
+Isaura shook her head gently, but made no answer. On the table before
+her there were a few myrtle-sprigs and one or two buds from the last
+winter rose, which she had been arranging into a simple nosegay;
+she took up these, and abstractedly began to pluck and scatter the
+rose-leaves.
+
+“Despise the coming May flowers if you will, they will soon be so
+plentiful,” said Graham; “but do not cast away the few blossoms which
+winter has so kindly spared, and which even summer will not give again;”
+ and placing his hand on the winter buds, it touched hers,--lightly,
+indeed, but she felt the touch, shrank from it, coloured, and rose from
+her seat.
+
+“The sun has left this side of the garden, the east wind is rising, and
+you must find it chilly here,” she said, in an altered tone; “will you
+not come into the house?”
+
+“It is not the air that I feel chilly,” said Graham, with a half-smile;
+“I almost fear that my prosaic admonitions have displeased you.”
+
+“They were not prosaic; and they were kind and very wise,” she added,
+with her exquisite laugh,--laugh so wonderfully sweet and musical. She
+now had gained the entrance of the arbour; Graham joined her, and they
+walked towards the house. He asked her if she had seen much of the
+Savarins since they had met.
+
+“Once or twice we have been there of an evening.”
+
+“And encountered, no doubt, the illustrious young minstrel who despises
+Tasso and Corneille?”
+
+“M. Rameau? Oh, yes; he is constantly at the Savarins. Do not be severe
+on him. He is unhappy, he is struggling, he is soured. An artist has
+thorns in his path which lookers-on do not heed.”
+
+“All people have thorns in their path, and I have no great respect for
+those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever they are scratched.
+But M. Rameau seems to me one of those writers very common nowadays, in
+France and even in England; writers who have never read anything worth
+studying, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their
+ignorance. I should not have thought an artist like yourself could have
+recognized an artist in a M. Rameau who despises Tasso without knowing
+Italian.”
+
+Graham spoke bitterly; he was once more jealous.
+
+“Are you not an artist yourself? Are you not a writer? M. Savarin told
+me you were a distinguished man of letters.”
+
+“M. Savarin flatters me too much. I am not an artist, and I have a great
+dislike to that word as it is now hackneyed and vulgarized in England
+and in France. A cook calls himself an artist; a tailor does the same; a
+man writes a gaudy melodrame, a spasmodic song, a sensational novel,
+and straightway he calls Himself an artist, and indulges in a pedantic
+jargon about ‘essence’ and ‘form,’ assuring us that a poet we can
+understand wants essence, and a poet we can scan wants form. Thank
+heaven, I am not vain enough to call myself artist. I have written some
+very dry lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly political, or critical
+upon other subjects than art. But why, a propos of M. Rameau, did you
+ask me that question respecting myself?”
+
+“Because much in your conversation,” answered Isaura, in rather a
+mournful tone, “made me suppose you had more sympathies with art and its
+cultivators than you cared to avow; and if you had such sympathies,
+you would comprehend what a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like
+myself to come into communication with those who devote themselves to
+any art distinct from the common pursuits of the world, what a relief
+it is to escape from the ordinary talk of society. There is a sort of
+instinctive freemasonry among us, including masters and disciples; and
+one art has a fellowship with other arts. Mine is but song and music,
+yet I feel attracted towards a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a
+poet, as much as towards a singer, a musician. Do you understand why
+I cannot contemn M. Rameau as you do? I differ from his tastes in
+literature; I do not much admire such of his writings as I have read;
+I grant that he overestimates his own genius, whatever that be,--yet I
+like to converse with him. He is a struggler upwards, though with weak
+wings, or with erring footsteps, like myself.”
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said Graham, earnestly, “I cannot say how I thank you
+for this candour. Do not condemn me for abusing it, if--” he paused.
+
+“If what?”
+
+“If I, so much older than yourself,--I do not say only in years, but
+in the experience of life, I whose lot is cast among those busy and
+‘positive’ pursuits, which necessarily quicken that unromantic faculty
+called common-sense,--if, I say, the deep interest with which you must
+inspire all whom you admit into an acquaintance even as unfamiliar as
+that now between us makes me utter one caution, such as might be uttered
+by a friend or brother. Beware of those artistic sympathies which you so
+touchingly confess; beware how, in the great events of life, you allow
+fancy to misguide your reason. In choosing friends on whom to rely,
+separate the artist from the human being. Judge of the human being for
+what it is in itself. Do not worship the face on the waters, blind to
+the image on the rock. In one word, never see in an artist like a M.
+Rameau the human being to whom you could intrust the destinies of your
+life. Pardon me, pardon me; we may meet little hereafter, but you are
+a creature so utterly new to me, so wholly unlike any woman I have ever
+before encountered and admired, and to me seem endowed with such wealth
+of mind and soul, exposed to such hazard, that--that--” again he paused,
+and his voice trembled as he concluded--“that it would be a deep sorrow
+to me if, perhaps years hence, I should have to say, ‘Alas’! by what
+mistake has that wealth been wasted!’”
+
+While they had thus conversed, mechanically they had turned away from
+the house, and were again standing before the arbour.
+
+Graham, absorbed in the passion of his adjuration, had not till now
+looked into the face of the companion by his side. Now, when he had
+concluded, and heard no reply, he bent down and saw that Isaura was
+weeping silently.
+
+His heart smote him.
+
+“Forgive me,” he exclaimed, drawing her hand into his; “I have had no
+right to talk thus; but it was not from want of respect; it was--it
+was--”
+
+The hand which was yielded to his pressed it gently, timidly, chastely.
+
+“Forgive!” murmured Isaura; “do you think that I, an orphan, have never
+longed for a friend who would speak to me thus?” And so saying, she
+lifted her eyes, streaming still, to his bended countenance,--eyes,
+despite their tears, so clear in their innocent limpid beauty, so
+ingenuous, so frank, so virgin-like, so unlike the eyes of ‘any other
+woman he had encountered and admired.’
+
+“Alas!” he said, in quick and hurried accents, “you may remember, when
+we have before conversed, how I, though so uncultured in your art, still
+recognized its beautiful influence upon human breasts; how I sought to
+combat your own depreciation of its rank among the elevating agencies
+of humanity; how, too, I said that no man could venture to ask you to
+renounce the boards, the lamps,--resign the fame of actress, of singer.
+Well, now that you accord to me the title of friend, now that you so
+touchingly remind me that you are an orphan, thinking of all the perils
+the young and the beautiful of your sex must encounter when they abandon
+private life for public, I think that a true friend might put the
+question, ‘Can you resign the fame of actress, of singer?’”
+
+“I will answer you frankly. The profession which once seemed to me so
+alluring began to lose its charms in my eyes some months ago. It was
+your words, very eloquently expressed, on the ennobling effects of music
+and song upon a popular audience, that counteracted the growing distaste
+to rendering up my whole life to the vocation of the stage; but now I
+think I should feel grateful to the friend whose advice interpreted the
+voice of my own heart, and bade me relinquish the career of actress.”
+
+Graham’s face grew radiant. But whatever might have been his reply was
+arrested; voices and footsteps were heard behind. He turned round and
+saw the Venosta, the Savarins, and Gustave Rameau.
+
+Isaura heard and saw also, started in a sort of alarmed confusion, and
+then instinctively retreated towards the arbour. Graham hurried on to
+meet the Signora and the visitors, giving time to Isaura to compose
+herself by arresting them in the pathway with conventional salutations.
+
+A few minutes later Isaura joined them, and there was talk to which
+Graham scarcely listened, though he shared in it by abstracted
+monosyllables. He declined going into the house, and took leave at the
+gate. In parting, his eyes fixed themselves on Isaura. Gustave Rameau
+was by her side. That nosegay which had been left in the arbour was in
+her hand; and though she was bending over it, she did not now pluck and
+scatter the rose-leaves. Graham at that moment felt no jealousy of the
+fair-faced young poet beside her.
+
+As he walked slowly back, he muttered to himself, “But am I yet in the
+position to hold myself wholly free? Am I, am I? Were the sole choice
+before me that between her and ambition and wealth, how soon it would be
+made! Ambition has no prize equal to the heart of such a woman; wealth
+no sources of joy equal to the treasures of her love.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FROM ISAURA CICOGNA TO MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL.
+
+The day after I posted my last, Mr. Vane called on us. I was in
+our little garden at the time. Our conversation was brief, and soon
+interrupted by visitors,--the Savarins and M. Rameau. I long for your
+answer. I wonder how he impressed you, if you have met him; how he would
+impress, if you met him now. To me he is so different from all others;
+and I scarcely know why his words ring in my ears, and his image rests
+in my thoughts. It is strange altogether; for though he is young,
+he speaks to me as if he were so much older than I,--so kindly, so
+tenderly, yet as if I were a child, and much as the dear Maestro might
+do, if he thought I needed caution or counsel. Do not fancy, Eulalie,
+that there is any danger of my deceiving myself as to the nature of such
+interest as he may take in me. Oh, no! There is a gulf between us there
+which he does not lose sight of, and which we could not pass. How,
+indeed, I could interest him at all, I cannot guess. A rich, high-born
+Englishman, intent on political life; practical, prosaic--no, not
+prosaic; but still with the kind of sense which does not admit into its
+range of vision that world of dreams which is familiar as their daily
+home to Romance and to Art. It has always seemed to me that for love,
+love such as I conceive it, there must be a deep and constant sympathy
+between two persons,--not, indeed, in the usual and ordinary trifles
+of taste and sentiment, but in those essentials which form the root of
+character, and branch out in all the leaves and blooms that expand to
+the sunshine and shrink from the cold,--that the worldling should wed
+the worldling, the artist the artist. Can the realist and the idealist
+blend together, and hold together till death and beyond death? If not,
+can there be true love between them?
+
+By true love, I mean the love which interpenetrates the soul, and once
+given can never die. Oh, Eulalie, answer me, answer!
+
+P. S.--I have now fully made up my mind to renounce all thought of the
+stage.
+
+
+FROM MADAME DE GRANTMESNIL TOISAURA CICOGNA.
+
+MY DEAR CHILD,--how your mind has grown since you left me, the sanguine
+and aspiring votary of an art which, of all arts, brings the most
+immediate reward to a successful cultivator, and is in itself so divine
+in its immediate effects upon human souls! Who shall say what may be the
+after-results of those effects which the waiters on posterity presume to
+despise because they are immediate? A dull man, to whose mind a ray of
+that vague starlight undetected in the atmosphere of workday life has
+never yet travelled; to whom the philosopher, the preacher, the poet
+appeal in vain,--nay, to whom the conceptions of the grandest master of
+instrumental music are incomprehensible; to whom Beethoven unlocks no
+portal in heaven; to whom Rossini has no mysteries on earth unsolved
+by the critics of the pit,--suddenly hears the human voice of the human
+singer, and at the sound of that voice the walls which enclosed him
+fall. The something far from and beyond the routine of his commonplace
+existence becomes known to him. He of himself, poor man, can make
+nothing of it. He cannot put it down on paper, and say the next morning,
+“I am an inch nearer to heaven than I was last night;” but the feeling
+that he is an inch nearer to heaven abides with him. Unconsciously he
+is gentler, he is less earthly, and, in being nearer to heaven, he is
+stronger for earth. You singers do not seem to me to understand that you
+have--to use your own word, so much in vogue that it has become abused
+and trite--a mission! When you talk of missions, from whom comes the
+mission? Not from men. If there be a mission from man to men, it must be
+appointed from on high.
+
+Think of all this; and in being faithful to your art, be true to
+yourself. If you feel divided between that art and the art of the
+writer, and acknowledge the first to be too exacting to admit a rival,
+keep to that in which you are sure to excel. Alas, my fair child! do not
+imagine that we writers feel a happiness in our pursuits and aims more
+complete than that which you can command. If we care for fame (and, to
+be frank, we all do), that fame does not come up before us face to
+face, a real, visible, palpable form, as it does to the singer, to the
+actress. I grant that it may be more enduring, but an endurance on
+the length of which we dare not reckon. A writer cannot be sure of
+immortality till his language itself be dead; and then he has but a
+share in an uncertain lottery. Nothing but fragments remains of the
+Phrynichus who rivalled AEschylus; of the Agathon who perhaps excelled
+Euripides; of the Alcaeus, in whom Horace acknowledged a master and a
+model; their renown is not in their works, it is but in their names.
+And, after all, the names of singers and actors last perhaps as long.
+Greece retains the name of Polus, Rome of Roscius, England of Garrick,
+France of Talma, Italy of Pasta, more lastingly than posterity is likely
+to retain mine. You address to me a question, which I have often put
+to myself,--“What is the distinction between the writer and the reader,
+when the reader says, ‘These are my thoughts, these are my feelings;
+the writer has stolen them, and clothed them in his own words’?” And
+the more the reader says this, the more wide is the audience, the more
+genuine the renown, and, paradox though it seems, the more consummate
+the originality, of the writer. But no, it is not the mere gift of
+expression, it is not the mere craft of the pen, it is not the mere
+taste in arrangement of word and cadence, which thus enables the one
+to interpret the mind, the heart, the soul of the many. It is a power
+breathed into him as he lay in his cradle, and a power that gathered
+around itself, as he grew up, all the influences he acquired, whether
+from observation of external nature, or from study of men and books, or
+from that experience of daily life which varies with every human being.
+No education could make two intellects exactly alike, as no culture
+can make two leaves exactly alike. How truly you describe the sense of
+dissatisfaction which every writer of superior genius communicates
+to his admirers! how truly do you feel that the greater is the
+dissatisfaction in proportion to the writer’s genius, and the admirer’s
+conception of it! But that is the mystery which makes--let me borrow a
+German phrase--the cloud-land between the finite and the infinite.
+The greatest philosopher, intent on the secrets of Nature, feels that
+dissatisfaction in Nature herself. The finite cannot reduce into logic
+and criticism the infinite.
+
+Let us dismiss these matters, which perplex the reason, and approach
+that which touches the heart, which in your case, my child, touches
+the heart of woman. You speak of love, and deem that the love which
+lasts--the household, the conjugal love--should be based upon such
+sympathies of pursuit that the artist should wed the artist.
+
+This is one of the questions you do well to address to me; for
+whether from my own experience, or from that which I have gained from
+observation extended over a wide range of life, and quickened and
+intensified by the class of writing that I cultivate, and which
+necessitates a calm study of the passions, I am an authority on such
+subjects, better than most women can be. And alas, my child, I come to
+this result: there is no prescribing to men or to women whom to select,
+whom to refuse. I cannot refute the axiom of the ancient poet, “In love
+there is no wherefore.” But there is a time--it is often but a moment
+of time--in which love is not yet a master, in which we can say, “I will
+love, I will not love.”
+
+Now, if I could find you in such a moment, I would say to you, “Artist,
+do not love, do not marry, an artist.” Two artistic natures rarely
+combine. The artistic nature is wonderfully exacting. I fear it is
+supremely egotistical,--so jealously sensitive that it writhes at the
+touch of a rival. Racine was the happiest of husbands; his wife adored
+his genius, but could not understand his plays. Would Racine have been
+happy if he had married a Corneille in petticoats? I who speak have
+loved an artist, certainly equal to myself. I am sure that he loved
+me. That sympathy in pursuits of which you speak drew us together, and
+became very soon the cause of antipathy. To both of us the endeavour to
+coalesce was misery.
+
+I don’t know your M. Rameau. Savarin has sent me some of his writings;
+from these I judge that his only chance of happiness would be to marry a
+commonplace woman, with separation de biens. He is, believe me, but
+one of the many with whom New Paris abounds, who because they have the
+infirmities of genius imagine they have its strength.
+
+I come next to the Englishman. I see how serious is your questioning
+about him. You not only regard him as a being distinct from the crowd of
+a salon; he stands equally apart in the chamber of your thoughts,--you
+do not mention him in the same letter as that which treats of Rameau and
+Savarin. He has become already an image not to be lightly mixed up with
+others. You would rather not have mentioned him at all to me, but you
+could not resist it. The interest you feel in him so perplexed you, that
+in a kind of feverish impatience you cry out to me, “Can you solve
+the riddle? Did you ever know well Englishmen? Can an Englishman
+be understood out of his island?” etc. Yes, I have known well many
+Englishmen; in affairs of the heart they are much like all other men.
+No; I do not know this Englishman in particular, nor any one of his
+name.
+
+Well, my child, let us frankly grant that this foreigner has gained some
+hold on your thoughts, on your fancy, perhaps also on your heart. Do
+not fear that he will love you less enduringly, or that you will become
+alienated from him, because he is not an artist. If he be a strong
+nature, and with some great purpose in life, your ambition will fuse
+itself in his; and knowing you as I do, I believe you would make an
+excellent wife to an Englishman whom you honoured as well as loved;
+and sorry though I should be that you relinquished the singer’s fame, I
+should be consoled in thinking you safe in the woman’s best sphere,--a
+contented home, safe from calumny, safe from gossip. I never had that
+home; and there has been no part in my author’s life in which I would
+not have given all the celebrity it won for the obscure commonplace of
+such woman-lot. Could I move human beings as pawns on a chessboard, I
+should indeed say that the most suitable and congenial mate for you, for
+a woman of sentiment and genius, would be a well-born and well-educated
+German; for such a German unites, with domestic habits and a strong
+sense of family ties, a romance of sentiment, a love of art, a
+predisposition towards the poetic side of life, which is very rare among
+Englishmen of the same class. But as the German is not forthcoming, I
+give my vote for the Englishman, provided only you love him. Ah, child,
+be sure of that. Do not mistake fancy for love. All women do not require
+love in marriage, but without it that which is best and highest in you
+would wither and die. Write to me often and tell me all. M. Savarin is
+right. My book is no longer my companion. It is gone from me, and I am
+once more alone in the world.
+
+Yours affectionately.
+
+P. S.--Is not your postscript a woman’s? Does it not require a woman’s
+postscript in reply? You say in yours that you have fully made up your
+mind to renounce all thoughts of the stage. I ask in mine, “What has the
+Englishman to do with that determination?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Some weeks have passed since Graham’s talk with Isaura in the garden;
+he has not visited the villa since. His cousins the D’Altons have passed
+through Paris on their way to Italy, meaning to stay a few days; they
+stayed nearly a month, and monopolized much of Graham’s companionship.
+Both these were reasons why, in the habitual society of the Duke,
+Graham’s persuasion that he was not yet free to court the hand of
+Isaura became strengthened, and with that persuasion necessarily came a
+question equally addressed to his conscience. “If not yet free to court
+her hand, am I free to expose myself to the temptation of seeking to win
+her affection?” But when his cousin was gone, his heart began to assert
+its own rights, to argue its own case, and suggest modes of reconciling
+its dictates to the obligations which seemed to oppose them. In this
+hesitating state of mind he received the following note:--
+
+                     VILLA ------, LAC D’ENGHIEN.
+
+MY DEAR MR. VANE,--We have retreated from Paris to the banks of this
+beautiful little lake. Come and help to save Frank and myself from
+quarrelling with each other, which, until the Rights of Women are firmly
+established, married folks always will do when left to themselves,
+especially if they are still lovers, as Frank and I are. Love is a
+terribly quarrelsome thing. Make us a present of a few days out of your
+wealth of time. We will visit Montmorency and the haunts of Rousseau,
+sail on the lake at moonlight, dine at gypsy restaurants under trees
+not yet embrowned by summer heats, discuss literature and politics,
+“Shakspeare and the musical glasses,”--and be as sociable and pleasant
+as Boccaccio’s tale-tellers, at Fiesole. We shall be but a small party,
+only the Savarins, that unconscious sage and humourist Signora Venosta,
+and that dimple-cheeked Isaura, who embodies the song of nightingales
+and the smile of summer. Refuse, and Frank shall not have an easy moment
+till he sends in his claims for thirty millions against the Alabama.
+
+           Yours, as you behave,
+                  LIZZIE MORLEY.
+
+Graham did not refuse. He went to Enghien for four days and a quarter.
+He was under the same roof as Isaura. Oh, those happy days! so happy
+that they defy description. But though to Graham the happiest days he
+had ever known, they were happier still to Isaura. There were drawbacks
+to his happiness, none to hers,--drawbacks partly from reasons the
+weight of which the reader will estimate later; partly from reasons the
+reader may at once comprehend and assess. In the sunshine of her joy,
+all the vivid colourings of Isaura’s artistic temperament came forth, so
+that what I may call the homely, domestic woman-side of her nature faded
+into shadow. If, my dear reader, whether you be man or woman, you have
+come into familiar contact with some creature of a genius to which, even
+assuming that you yourself have a genius in its own way, you have no
+special affinities, have you not felt shy with that creature? Have
+you not, perhaps, felt how intensely you could love that creature,
+and doubted if that creature could possibly love you? Now I think that
+shyness and that disbelief are common with either man or woman, if,
+however conscious of superiority in the prose of life, he or she
+recognizes inferiority in the poetry of it. And yet this self-abasement
+is exceedingly mistaken. The poetical kind of genius is so grandly
+indulgent, so inherently deferential, bows with such unaffected modesty
+to the superiority in which it fears it may fail (yet seldom does
+fail),--the superiority of common-sense. And when we come to women, what
+marvellous truth is conveyed by the woman who has had no superior in
+intellectual gifts among her own sex! Corinne, crowned at the Capitol,
+selects out of the whole world as the hero of her love no rival poet and
+enthusiast, but a cold-blooded, sensible Englishman.
+
+Graham Vane, in his strong masculine form of intellect--Graham Vane,
+from whom I hope much, if he live to fulfil his rightful career--had,
+not unreasonably, the desire to dominate the life of the woman whom he
+selected as the partner of his own; but the life of Isaura seemed to
+escape him. If at moments, listening to her, he would say to himself,
+“What a companion! life could never be dull with her,” at other moments
+he would say, “True, never dull, but would it be always safe?” And then
+comes in that mysterious power of love which crushes all beneath its
+feet, and makes us end self-commune by that abject submission of reason,
+which only murmurs, “Better be unhappy with the one you love than
+happy with one whom you do not.” All such self-communes were unknown to
+Isaura. She lived in the bliss of the hour. If Graham could have read
+her heart, he would have dismissed all doubt whether he could dominate
+her life. Could a Fate or an Angel have said to her, “Choose,--on one
+side I promise you the glories of a Catalani, a Pasta, a Sappho, a De
+Stael, a Georges Sand, all combined into one immortal name; or, on the
+other side, the whole heart of the man who would estrange himself from
+you if you had such combination of glories,”--her answer would have
+brought Graham Vane to her feet. All scruples, all doubts, would have
+vanished; he would have exclaimed, with the generosity inherent in the
+higher order of man, “Be glorious, if your nature wills it so. Glory
+enough to me that you would have resigned glory itself to become mine.”
+ But how is it that men worth a woman’s loving become so diffident
+when they love intensely? Even in ordinary cases of love there is so
+ineffable a delicacy in virgin woman, that a man, be he how refined
+soever, feels himself rough and rude and coarse in comparison; and while
+that sort of delicacy was pre-eminent in this Italian orphan, there
+came, to increase the humility of the man so proud and so confident in
+himself when he had only men to deal with, the consciousness that his
+intellectual nature was hard and positive beside the angel-like purity
+and the fairy-like play of hers.
+
+There was a strong wish on the part of Mrs. Morley to bring about the
+union of these two. She had a great regard and a great admiration for
+both. To her mind, unconscious of all Graham’s doubts and prejudices,
+they were exactly suited to each other. A man of intellect so cultivated
+as Graham’s, if married to a commonplace English “Miss,” would surely
+feel as if life had no sunshine and no flowers. The love of an
+Isaura would steep it in sunshine, pave it with flowers. Mrs. Morley
+admitted--all American Republicans of gentle birth do admit--the
+instincts which lead “like” to match with “like,” an equality of blood
+and race. With all her assertion of the Rights of Woman, I do not think
+that Mrs. Morley would ever have conceived the possibility of consenting
+that the richest and prettiest and cleverest girl in the States could
+become the wife of a son of hers if the girl had the taint of negro
+blood, even though shown nowhere save the slight distinguishing hue of
+her finger-nails. So had Isaura’s merits been threefold what they were
+and she had been the wealthy heiress of a retail grocer, this fair
+Republican would have opposed (more strongly than many an English
+duchess, or at least a Scotch duke, would do, the wish of a son), the
+thought of an alliance between Graham Vane and the grocer’s daughter!
+But Isaura was a Cicogna, an offspring of a very ancient and very noble
+house. Disparities of fortune, or mere worldly position, Mrs. Morley
+supremely despised. Here were the great parities of alliance,--parities
+in years and good looks and mental culture. So, in short, she in the
+invitation given to them had planned for the union between Isaura and
+Graham. To this plan she had an antagonist, whom she did not even guess,
+in Madame Savarin. That lady, as much attached to Isaura as was Mrs.
+Morley herself, and still more desirous of seeing a girl, brilliant and
+parentless, transferred from the companionship of Signora Venosta to the
+protection of a husband, entertained no belief in the serious attentions
+of Graham Vane. Perhaps she exaggerated his worldly advantages, perhaps
+she undervalued the warmth of his affections; but it was not within the
+range of her experience, confined much to Parisian life, nor in harmony
+with her notions of the frigidity and morgue of the English national
+character, that a rich and high-born young man, to whom a great career
+in practical public life was predicted, should form a matrimonial
+alliance with a foreign orphan girl, who, if of gentle birth, had no
+useful connections, would bring no correspondent dot, and had been
+reared and intended for the profession of the stage. She much more
+feared that the result of any attentions on the part of such a man would
+be rather calculated to compromise the orphan’s name, or at least to
+mislead her expectations, than to secure her the shelter of a wedded
+home. Moreover, she had cherished plans of her own for Isaura’s future.
+Madame Savarin had conceived for Gustave Rameau a friendly regard,
+stronger than that which Mrs. Morley entertained for Graham Vane, for
+it was more motherly. Gustave had been familiarized to her sight and her
+thoughts since he had first been launched into the literary world under
+her husband’s auspices; he had confided to her his mortification in
+his failures, his joy in his successes. His beautiful countenance, his
+delicate health, his very infirmities and defects, had endeared him
+to her womanly heart. Isaura was the wife of all others who, in Madame
+Savarin’s opinion, was made for Rameau. Her fortune, so trivial beside
+the wealth of the Englishman, would be a competence to Rameau; then
+that competence might swell into vast riches if Isaura succeeded on the
+stage. She found with extreme displeasure that Isaura’s mind had become
+estranged from the profession to which she had been destined, and
+divined that a deference to the Englishman’s prejudices had something to
+do with that estrangement. It was not to be expected that a Frenchwoman,
+wife to a sprightly man of letters, who had intimate friends and allies
+in every department of the artistic world, should cherish any prejudice
+whatever against the exercise of an art in which success achieved riches
+and renown; but she was prejudiced, as most Frenchwomen are, against
+allowing to unmarried girls the same freedom and independence of action
+that are the rights of women--French women--when married; and she would
+have disapproved the entrance of Isaura on her professional career until
+she could enter it as a wife, the wife of an artist, the wife of Gustave
+Rameau.
+
+Unaware of the rivalry between these friendly diplomatists and schemers,
+Graham and Isaura glided hourly more and more down the current, which as
+yet ran smooth. No words by which love is spoken were exchanged between
+them; in fact, though constantly together, they were very rarely,
+and then but for moments, alone with each other. Mrs. Morley artfully
+schemed more than once to give them such opportunities for that mutual
+explanation of heart which, she saw, had not yet taken place; with art
+more practised and more watchful, Madame Savarin contrived to baffle her
+hostess’s intention. But, indeed, neither Graham nor Isaura sought to
+make opportunities for themselves. He, as we know, did not deem himself
+wholly justified in uttering the words of love by which a man of honour
+binds himself for life; and she!--what girl pure-hearted and loving
+truly does not shrink from seeking the opportunities which it is for
+the man to court? Yet Isaura needed no words to tell her that she was
+loved,--no, nor even a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eye; she
+felt it instinctively, mysteriously, by the glow of her own being in
+the presence of her lover. She knew that she herself could not so love
+unless she were beloved.
+
+Here woman’s wit is keener and truthfuller than man’s. Graham, as I have
+said, did not feel confident that he had reached the heart of Isaura.
+He was conscious that he had engaged her interest, that he had
+attracted her fancy; but often, when charmed by the joyous play of her
+imagination, he would sigh to himself, “To natures so gifted what single
+mortal can be the all in all.”
+
+They spent the summer mornings in excursions round the beautiful
+neighbourhood, dined early, and sailed on the calm lake at moonlight.
+Their talk was such as might be expected from lovers of books in summer
+holidays. Savarin was a critic by profession; Graham Vane, if not that,
+at least owed such literary reputation as he had yet gained to essays in
+which the rare critical faculty was conspicuously developed.
+
+It was pleasant to hear the clash of these two minds encountering each
+other; they differed perhaps less in opinions than in the mode by which
+opinions are discussed. The Englishman’s range of reading was wider than
+the Frenchman’s, and his scholarship more accurate; but the Frenchman
+had a compact neatness of expression, a light and nimble grace,
+whether in the advancing or the retreat of his argument, which covered
+deficiencies, and often made them appear like merits. Graham was
+compelled, indeed, to relinquish many of the forces of superior
+knowledge or graver eloquence, which with less lively antagonists he
+could have brought into the field, for the witty sarcasm of Savarin
+would have turned them aside as pedantry or declamation. But though
+Graham was neither dry nor diffuse, and the happiness at his
+heart brought out the gayety of humour which had been his early
+characteristic, and yet rendered his familiar intercourse genial
+and playful, still there was this distinction between his humour and
+Savarin’s wit,--that in the first there was always something earnest, in
+the last always something mocking. And in criticism Graham seemed ever
+anxious to bring out a latent beauty, even in writers comparatively
+neglected; Savarin was acutest when dragging forth a blemish never
+before discovered in writers universally read.
+
+Graham did not perhaps notice the profound attention with which
+Isaura listened to him in these intellectual skirmishes with the more
+glittering Parisian. There was this distinction she made between him
+and Savarin,--when the last spoke she often chimed in with some happy
+sentiment of her own; but she never interrupted Graham, never intimated
+a dissent from his theories of art, or the deductions he drew from them;
+and she would remain silent and thoughtful for some minutes when his
+voice ceased. There was passing from his mind into hers an ambition
+which she imagined, poor girl, that he would be pleased to think he had
+inspired, and which might become a new bond of sympathy between them.
+But as yet the ambition was vague and timid,--an idea or a dream to be
+fulfilled in some indefinite future.
+
+The last night of this short-lived holiday-time, the party, after
+staying out on the lake to a later hour than usual, stood lingering
+still on the lawn of the villa; and their host, who was rather addicted
+to superficial studies of the positive sciences, including, of course,
+the most popular of all, astronomy, kept his guests politely listening
+to speculative conjectures on the probable size of the inhabitants of
+Sirius, that very distant and very gigantic inhabitant of heaven who
+has led philosophers into mortifying reflections upon the utter
+insignificance of our own poor little planet, capable of producing
+nothing greater than Shakspeares and Newtons, Aristotles and
+Caesars,--mannikins, no doubt, beside intellects proportioned to the
+size of the world in which they flourish.
+
+As it chanced, Isaura and Graham were then standing close to each other
+and a little apart from the rest. “It is very strange,” said Graham,
+laughing low, “how little I care about Sirius. He is the sun of
+some other system, and is perhaps not habitable at all, except by
+Salamanders. He cannot be one of the stars with which I have established
+familiar acquaintance, associated with fancies and dreams and hopes,
+as most of us do, for instance, with Hesperus, the moon’s harbinger and
+comrade. But amid all those stars there is one--not Hesperus--which has
+always had from my childhood a mysterious fascination for me. Knowing as
+little of astrology as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that star I
+become credulously superstitious, and fancy it has an influence on my
+life. Have you, too, any favourite star?”
+
+“Yes,” said Isaura; “and I distinguish it now, but I do not even know
+its name, and never would ask it.”
+
+“So like me. I would not vulgarize my unknown source of beautiful
+illusions by giving it the name it takes in technical catalogues.
+For fear of learning that name I never have pointed it out to any
+one before. I too at this moment distinguish it apart from all its
+brotherhood. Tell me which is yours.”
+
+Isaura pointed and explained. The Englishman was startled. By what
+strange coincidence could they both have singled out from all the host
+of heaven the same favourite star? “Cher Vane,” cried Savarin, “Colonel
+Morley declares that what America is to the terrestrial system Sirius is
+to the heavenly. America is to extinguish Europe, and then Sirius is to
+extinguish the world.”
+
+“Not for some millions of years; time to look about us,” said the
+Colonel, gravely. “But I certainly differ from those who maintain that
+Sirius recedes from us. I say that he approaches. The principles of a
+body so enlightened must be those of progress.” Then addressing Graham
+in English, he added, “there will be a mulling in this fogified planet
+some day, I predicate. Sirius is a keener!”
+
+“I have not imagination lively enough to interest myself in the
+destinies of Sirius in connection with our planet at a date so remote,”
+ said Graham, smiling. Then he added in a whisper to Isaura, “My
+imagination does not carry me further than to wonder whether this day
+twelvemonth--the 8th of July-we two shall both be singling out that same
+star, and gazing on it as now, side by side.”
+
+This was the sole utterance of that sentiment in which the romance of
+love is so rich that the Englishman addressed to Isaura during those
+memorable summer days at Enghien.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The next morning the party broke up. Letters had been delivered both to
+Savarin and to Graham, which, even had the day for departure not been
+fixed, would have summoned them away. On reading his letter, Savarin’s
+brow became clouded. He made a sign to his wife after breakfast, and
+wandered away with her down an alley in the little garden. His trouble
+was of that nature which a wife either soothes or aggravates, according
+sometimes to her habitual frame of mind, sometimes to the mood of
+temper in which she may chance to be,--a household trouble, a pecuniary
+trouble.
+
+Savarin was by no means an extravagant man. His mode of living, though
+elegant and hospitable, was modest compared to that of many French
+authors inferior to himself in the fame which at Paris brings a very
+good return in francs; but his station itself as the head of a powerful
+literary clique necessitated many expenses which were too congenial to
+his extreme good-nature to be regulated by strict prudence. His hand was
+always open to distressed writers and struggling artists, and his sole
+income was derived from his pen and a journal in which he was chief
+editor and formerly sole proprietor. But that journal had of late
+not prospered. He had sold or pledged a considerable share in the
+proprietorship. He had been compelled also to borrow a sum large for
+him, and the debt obtained from a retired bourgeois who lent out his
+moneys “by way,” he said, “of maintaining an excitement and interest
+in life,” would in a few days become due. The letter was not from that
+creditor; but it was from his publisher, containing a very disagreeable
+statement of accounts, pressing for settlement, and declining an offer
+of Savarin for a new book (not yet begun) except upon terms that the
+author valued himself too highly to accept. Altogether, the situation
+was unpleasant. There were many times in which Madame Savarin presumed
+to scold her distinguished husband for his want of prudence and thrift.
+But those were never the times when scolding could be of no use.
+It could clearly be of no use now. Now was the moment to cheer and
+encourage him; to reassure him as to his own undiminished powers and
+popularity, for he talked dejectedly of himself as obsolete and passing
+out of fashion; to convince him also of the impossibility that the
+ungrateful publisher whom Savarin’s more brilliant successes had
+enriched could encounter the odium of hostile proceedings; and to
+remind him of all the authors, all the artists, whom he in their earlier
+difficulties had so liberally assisted, and from whom a sum sufficing to
+pay the bourgeois creditor when the day arrived could now be honourably
+asked and would be readily contributed. In this last suggestion the
+homely prudent good-sense of Madame Savarin failed her. She did not
+comprehend that delicate pride of honour which, with all his Parisian
+frivolities and cynicism, dignified the Parisian man of genius. Savarin
+could not, to save his neck from a rope, have sent round the begging-hat
+to friends whom he had obliged. Madame Savarin was one of those women
+with large-lobed ears, who can be wonderfully affectionate, wonderfully
+sensible, admirable wives and mothers, and yet are deficient in artistic
+sympathies with artistic natures. Still, a really good honest wife is
+such an incalculable blessing to her lord, that, at the end of the talk
+in the solitary alley, this man of exquisite finesse, of the undefinably
+high-bred temperament, and, alas! the painful morbid susceptibility,
+which belongs to the genuine artistic character, emerged into the open
+sunlit lawn with his crest uplifted, his lip curved upward in its joyous
+mockery, and perfectly persuaded that somehow or other he should put
+down the offensive publisher, and pay off the unoffending creditor when
+the day for payment came. Still he had judgment enough to know that to
+do this he must get back to Paris, and could not dawdle away precious
+hours in discussing the principles of poetry with Graham Vane.
+
+There was only one thing, apart from “the begging-hat,” in which Savarin
+dissented from his wife.--She suggested his starting a new journal in
+conjunction with Gustave Rameau, upon whose genius and the expectations
+to be formed from it (here she was tacitly thinking of Isaura wedded to
+Rameau, and more than a Malibran on the stage) she insisted vehemently.
+Savarin did not thus estimate Gustave Rameau, thought him a clever,
+promising young writer in a very bad school of writing, who might do
+well some day or other. But that a Rameau could help a Savarin to make
+a fortune! No; at that idea he opened his eyes, patted his wife’s
+shoulder, and called her “enfant.”
+
+Graham’s letter was from M. Renard, and ran thus:--
+
+   MONSIEUR,--I had the honour to call at your apartment this morning,
+   and I write this line to the address given to me by your concierge
+   to say that I have been fortunate enough to ascertain that the
+   relation of the missing lady is now at Paris. I shall hold myself
+   in readiness to attend your summons. Deign to accept, Monsieur, the
+   assurance of my profound consideration.
+                       J. RENARD.
+
+This communication sufficed to put Graham into very high spirits.
+Anything that promised success to his research seemed to deliver his
+thoughts from a burden and his will from a fetter. Perhaps in a few days
+he might frankly and honourably say to Isaura words which would justify
+his retaining longer, and pressing more ardently, the delicate hand
+which trembled in his as they took leave.
+
+On arriving at Paris, Graham despatched a note to M. Renard requesting
+to see him, and received a brief line in reply that M. Renard feared he
+should be detained on other and important business till the evening,
+but hoped to call at eight o’clock. A few minutes before that hour he
+entered Graham’s apartment.
+
+“You have discovered the uncle of Louise Duval!” exclaimed Graham; “of
+course you mean M. de Mauleon, and he is at Paris?”
+
+“True so far, Monsieur; but do not be too sanguine as to the results of
+the information I can give you. Permit me, as briefly as possible, to
+state the circumstances. When you acquainted me with the fact that M. de
+Mauleon was the uncle of Louise Duval, I told you that I was not without
+hopes of finding him out, though so long absent from Paris. I will
+now explain why. Some months ago, one of my colleagues engaged in the
+political department (which I am not) was sent to Lyons, in consequence
+of some suspicions conceived by the loyal authorities there of a plot
+against the emperor’s life. The suspicions were groundless, the plot a
+mare’s nest. But my colleague’s attention was especially drawn towards
+a man not mixed up with the circumstances from which a plot had been
+inferred, but deemed in some way or other a dangerous enemy to the
+Government. Ostensibly, he exercised a modest and small calling as a
+sort of courtier or agent de change; but it was noticed that certain
+persons familiarly frequenting his apartment, or to whose houses he used
+to go at night, were disaffected to the Government,--not by any means
+of the lowest rank,--some of them rich malcontents who had been devoted
+Orleanists; others, disappointed aspirants to office or the ‘cross;’
+one or two well-born and opulent fanatics dreaming of another Republic.
+Certain very able articles in the journals of the excitable Midi,
+though bearing another signature, were composed or dictated by this
+man,--articles evading the censure and penalties of the law, but very
+mischievous in their tone. All who had come into familiar communication
+with this person were impressed with a sense of his powers; and also
+with a vague belief that he belonged to a higher class in breeding and
+education than that of a petty agent de change. My colleague set himself
+to watch the man, and took occasions of business at his little office to
+enter into talk with him. Not by personal appearance, but by voice, he
+came to a conclusion that the man was not wholly a stranger to him,--a
+peculiar voice with a slight Norman breadth of pronunciation, though a
+Parisian accent; a voice very low, yet very distinct; very masculine,
+yet very gentle. My colleague was puzzled till late one evening
+he observed the man coming out of the house of one of these rich
+malcontents, the rich malcontent himself accompanying him. My colleague,
+availing himself of the dimness of light, as the two passed into a lane
+which led to the agent’s apartment, contrived to keep close behind and
+listen to their conversation; but of this he heard nothing,--only,
+when at the end of the lane, the rich man turned abruptly, shook his
+companion warmly by the hand, and parted from him, saying, ‘Never fear;
+all shall go right with you, my dear Victor.’ At the sound of that
+name ‘Victor,’ my colleague’s memories, before so confused, became
+instantaneously clear. Previous to entering our service, he had been in
+the horse business, a votary of the turf; as such he had often seen the
+brilliant ‘sportman,’ Victor de Mauleon; sometimes talked to him. Yes,
+that was the voice,--the slight Norman intonation (Victor de Mauleon’s
+father had it strongly, and Victor had passed some of his early
+childhood in Normandy), the subdued modulation of speech which had
+made so polite the offence to men, or so winning the courtship to
+women,--that was Victor de Mauleon. But why there in that disguise? What
+was his real business and object? My confrere had no time allowed to him
+to prosecute such inquiries. Whether Victor or the rich malcontent had
+observed him at their heels, and feared he might have overheard their
+words, I know not; but the next day appeared in one of the popular
+journals circulating among the ouvriers a paragraph stating that a
+Paris spy had been seen at Lyons, warning all honest men against his
+machinations, and containing a tolerably accurate description of his
+person. And that very day, on venturing forth, my estimable colleague
+suddenly found himself hustled by a ferocious throng, from whose hands
+he was with great difficulty rescued by the municipal guard. He left
+Lyons that night; and for recompense of his services received a sharp
+reprimand from his chief. He had committed the worst offence in our
+profession, trop de zele. Having only heard the outlines of this story
+from another, I repaired to my confrere after my last interview with
+Monsieur, and learned what I now tell you from his own lips. As he was
+not in my branch of the service, I could not order him to return to
+Lyons; and I doubt whether his chief would have allowed it. But I went
+to Lyons myself, and there ascertained that our supposed Vicomte had
+left that town for Paris some months ago, not long after the adventure
+of my colleague. The man bore a very good character generally,--was
+said to be very honest and inoffensive; and the notice taken of him by
+persons of higher rank was attributed generally to a respect for his
+talents, and not on account of any sympathy in political opinions. I
+found that the confrere mentioned, and who alone could identify M. de
+Mauleon in the disguise which the Vicomte had assumed, was absent on one
+of those missions abroad in which he is chiefly employed. I had to wait
+for his return, and it was only the day before yesterday that I obtained
+the following particulars. M. de Mauleon bears the same name as he
+did at Lyons,--that name is Jean Lebeau; he exercises the ostensible
+profession of a ‘letter-writer,’ and a sort of adviser on business among
+the workmen and petty bourgeoisie, and he nightly frequents the cafe
+Jean Jacques, Rue Faubourg Montmartre. It is not yet quite half-past
+eight, and, no doubt, you could see him at the cafe this very night, if
+you thought proper to go.”
+
+“Excellent! I will go! Describe him!”
+
+“Alas! that is exactly what I cannot do at present; for after hearing
+what I now tell you, I put the same request you do to my colleague,
+when, before he could answer me, he was summoned to the bureau of his
+chief, promising to return and give me the requisite description. He did
+not return; and I find that he was compelled, on quitting his chief,
+to seize the first train starting for Lille upon an important political
+investigation which brooked no delay. He will be back in a few days, and
+then Monsieur shall have the description.”
+
+“Nay; I think I will seize time by the forelock, and try my chance
+tonight. If the man be really a conspirator, and it looks likely enough,
+who knows but what he may see quick reason to take alarm and vanish from
+Paris at any hour?--Cafe Jean Jacques, Rue ------; I will go. Stay; you
+have seen Victor de Mauleon in his youth: what was he like then?”
+
+“Tall, slender, but broad-shouldered, very erect, carrying his head
+high, a profusion of dark curls, a small black mustache, fair clear
+complexion, light-coloured eyes with dark lashes, fort bel homme. But he
+will not look like that now.”
+
+“His present age?”
+
+“Forty-seven or forty-eight. But before you go, I must beg you to
+consider well what you are about. It is evident that M. de Mauleon has
+some strong reason, whatever it be, for merging his identity in that of
+Jean Lebeau. I presume, therefore, that you could scarcely go up to
+M. Lebeau, when you have discovered him, and say, ‘Pray, Monsieur le
+Vicomte, can you give me some tidings of your niece, Louise Duval?’ If
+you thus accosted him, you might possibly bring some danger on yourself,
+but you would certainly gain no information from him.”
+
+“True.”
+
+“On the other hand, if you make his acquaintance as M. Lebeau, how can
+you assume him to know anything about Louise Duval?”
+
+“Parbleu! Monsieur Renard, you try to toss me aside on both horns of the
+dilemma; but it seems to me that, if I once make his acquaintance as M.
+Lebeau, I might gradually and cautiously feel my way as to the best mode
+of putting the question to which I seek reply. I suppose, too, that the
+man must be in very poor circumstances to adopt so humble a calling, and
+that a small sum of money may smooth all difficulties.”
+
+“I am not so sure of that,” said M. Renard, thoughtfully; “but grant
+that money may do so, and grant also that the Vicomte, being a needy
+man, has become a very unscrupulous one,--is there anything in your
+motives for discovering Louise Duval which might occasion you trouble
+and annoyance, if it were divined by a needy and unscrupulous man;
+anything which might give him a power of threat or exaction? Mind, I am
+not asking you to tell me any secret you have reasons for concealing,
+but I suggest that it might be prudent if you did not let M. Lebeau know
+your real name and rank; if, in short, you could follow his example, and
+adopt a disguise. But no; when I think of it, you would doubtless be so
+unpractised in the art of disguise that he would detect you at once
+to be other than you seem; and if suspecting you of spying into his
+secrets, and if those secrets be really of a political nature, your very
+life might not be safe.”
+
+“Thank you for your hint; the disguise is an excellent idea, and
+combines amusement with precaution. That this Victor de Mauleon must
+be a very unprincipled and dangerous man is, I think, abundantly clear.
+Granting that he was innocent of all design of robbery in the affair
+of the jewels, still, the offence which he did own--that of admitting
+himself at night by a false key into the rooms of a wife, whom he sought
+to surprise or terrify into dishonour--was a villanous action; and his
+present course of life is sufficiently mysterious to warrant the
+most unfavourable supposition. Besides, there is another motive for
+concealing my name from him: you say that he once had a duel with a
+Vane, who was very probably my father, and I have no wish to expose
+myself to the chance of his turning up in London some day, and seeking
+to renew there the acquaintance that I had courted at Paris. As for my
+skill in playing any part I may assume, do not fear; I am no novice in
+that. In my younger days I was thought clever in private theatricals,
+especially in the transformations of appearance which belong to light
+comedy and farce. Wait a few minutes, and you shall see.”
+
+Graham then retreated into his bedroom, and in a few minutes reappeared
+so changed, that Renard at first glance took him for a stranger. He had
+doffed his dress--which habitually, when in Capitals, was characterized
+by the quiet, indefinable elegance that to a man of the great world,
+high-bred and young, seems “to the manner born”--for one of those coarse
+suits which Englishmen are wont to wear in their travels, and by which
+they are represented in French or German caricatures,--loose jacket of
+tweed with redundant pockets, waistcoat to match, short dust-coloured
+trousers. He had combed his hair straight over his forehead, which, as I
+have said somewhere before, appeared in itself to alter the character
+of his countenance, and, without any resort to paints or cosmetics,
+had somehow or other given to the expression of his face an impudent,
+low-bred expression, with a glass screwed on to his right eye,--such a
+look as a cockney journeyman, wishing to pass for a “swell” about town,
+may cast on a servant-maid in the pit of a suburban theatre.
+
+“Will it do, old fellow?” he exclaimed, in a rollicking, swaggering tone
+of voice, speaking French with a villanous British accent.
+
+“Perfectly,” said Renard, laughing. “I offer my compliments, and if ever
+you are ruined, Monsieur, I will promise you a place in our police. Only
+one caution,--take care not to overdo your part.”
+
+“Right. A quarter to nine; I’m off.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+There is generally a brisk exhilaration of spirits in the return to any
+special amusement or light accomplishment associated with the pleasant
+memories of earlier youth; and remarkably so, I believe, when the
+amusement or accomplishment has been that of the amateur stage-player.
+Certainly I have known persons of very grave pursuits, of very dignified
+character and position, who seem to regain the vivacity of boyhood when
+disguising look and voice for a part in some drawing-room comedy or
+charade. I might name statesmen of solemn repute rejoicing to raise and
+to join in a laugh at their expense in such travesty of their habitual
+selves.
+
+The reader must not therefore be surprised, nor, I trust, deem it
+inconsistent with the more serious attributes of Graham’s character, if
+the Englishman felt the sort of joyful excitement I describe, as, in his
+way to the cafe Jean Jacques, he meditated the role he had undertaken;
+and the joyousness was heightened beyond the mere holiday sense of
+humouristic pleasantry by the sanguine hope that much to effect his
+lasting happiness might result from the success of the object for which
+his disguise was assumed.
+
+It was just twenty minutes past nine when he arrived at the cafe Jean
+Jacques. He dismissed the fiacre and entered.
+
+The apartment devoted to customers comprised two large rooms. The first
+was the cafe properly speaking; the second, opening on it, was the
+billiard-room. Conjecturing that he should probably find the person
+of whom he was in quest employed at the billiard-table, Graham passed
+thither at once. A tall man, who might be seven-and-forty, with a long
+black beard, slightly grizzled, was at play with a young man of perhaps
+twenty-eight, who gave him odds,--as better players of twenty-eight
+ought to give odds to a player, though originally of equal force, whose
+eye is not so quick, whose hand is not so steady, as they were twenty
+years ago. Said Graham to himself, “The bearded man is my Vicomte.” He
+called for a cup of coffee, and seated himself on a bench at the end of
+the room.
+
+The bearded man was far behind in the game. It was his turn to play; the
+balls were placed in the most awkward position for him. Graham himself
+was a fair billiard-player, both in the English and the French game.
+He said to himself, “No man who can make a cannon there should accept
+odds.” The bearded man made a cannon; the bearded man continued to make
+cannons; the bearded man did not stop till he had won the game. The
+gallery of spectators was enthusiastic. Taking care to speak in very
+bad, very English-French, Graham expressed to one of the enthusiasts
+seated beside him his admiration of the bearded man’s playing, and
+ventured to ask if the bearded man were a professional or an amateur
+player.
+
+“Monsieur,” replied the enthusiast, taking a short cutty-pipe from his
+mouth, “it is an amateur, who has been a great player in his day, and is
+so proud that he always takes less odds than he ought of a younger man.
+It is not once in a month that he comes out as he has done to-night; but
+to-night he has steadied his hand. He has had six petits verres.”
+
+“Ah, indeed! Do you know his name?”
+
+“I should think so: he buried my father, my two aunts, and my wife.”
+
+“Buried?” said Graham, more and more British in his accent; “I don’t
+understand.”
+
+“Monsieur, you are English.”
+
+“I confess it.”
+
+“And a stranger to the Faubourg Montmartre.”
+
+“True.”
+
+“Or you would have heard of M. Giraud, the liveliest member of the State
+Company for conducting funerals. They are going to play La Poule.”
+
+Much disconcerted, Graham retreated into the cafe, and seated himself
+haphazard at one of the small tables. Glancing round the room, he saw no
+one in whom he could conjecture the once brilliant Vicomte.
+
+The company appeared to him sufficiently decent, and especially what may
+be called local. There were some blouses drinking wine, no doubt of the
+cheapest and thinnest; some in rough, coarse dresses, drinking beer.
+These were evidently English, Belgian, or German artisans. At one table,
+four young men, who looked like small journeymen, were playing cards.
+At three other tables, men older, better dressed, probably shop-keepers,
+were playing dominos. Graham scrutinized these last, but among them
+all could detect no one corresponding to his ideal of the Vicomte de
+Mauleon. “Probably,” thought he, “I am too late, or perhaps he will not
+be here this evening. At all events, I will wait a quarter of an hour.”
+ Then, the garcon approaching his table, he deemed it necessary to call
+for something, and, still in strong English accent, asked for lemonade
+and an evening journal. The garcon nodded and went his way. A monsieur
+at the round table next his own politely handed to him the “Galignani,”
+ saying in very good English, though unmistakably the good English of a
+Frenchman, “The English journal, at your service.”
+
+Graham bowed his head, accepted the “Galignani,” and inspected his
+courteous neighbour. A more respectable-looking man no Englishman could
+see in an English country town. He wore an unpretending flaxen wig, with
+limp whiskers that met at the chin, and might originally have been
+the same colour as the wig, but were now of a pale gray,--no beard,
+no mustache. He was dressed with the scrupulous cleanliness of a sober
+citizen,--a high white neckcloth, with a large old-fashioned pin,
+containing a little knot of hair covered with glass or crystal,
+and bordered with a black framework, in which were inscribed
+letters,--evidently a mourning pin, hallowed to the memory of lost
+spouse or child,--a man who, in England, might be the mayor of a
+cathedral town, at least the town-clerk. He seemed suffering from some
+infirmity of vision, for he wore green spectacles. The expression of
+his face was very mild and gentle; apparently he was about sixty years
+old,--somewhat more.
+
+Graham took kindly to his neighbour, insomuch that, in return for the
+“Galignani,” he offered him a cigar, lighting one himself.
+
+His neighbour refused politely.
+
+“Merci! I never smoke, never; mon medecin forbids it. If I could be
+tempted, it would be by, an English cigar. Ah, how you English beat us
+in all things,--your ships, your iron, your tabac,--which you do not
+grow!”
+
+This speech rendered literally as we now render it may give the idea of
+a somewhat vulgar speaker. But there was something in the man’s manner,
+in his smile, in his courtesy, which did not strike Graham as vulgar;
+on the contrary, he thought within himself, “How instinctive to all
+Frenchmen good breeding is!”
+
+Before, however, Graham had time to explain to his amiable neighbour
+the politico-economical principle according to which England, growing no
+tobacco, had tobacco much better than France, which did grow it, a rosy
+middle-aged monsieur made his appearance, saying hurriedly to Graham’s
+neighbour, “I’m afraid I’m late, but there is still a good half-hour
+before us if you will give me my revenge.”
+
+“Willingly, Monsieur Georges. Garcon, the dominos.”
+
+“Have you been playing at billiards?” asked M. Georges.
+
+“Yes, two games.”
+
+“With success?”
+
+“I won the first, and lost the second through the defect of my
+eyesight; the game depended on a stroke which would have been easy to an
+infant,--I missed it.”
+
+Here the dominos arrived, and M. Georges began shuffling them; the other
+turned to Graham and asked politely if he understood the game.
+
+“A little, but not enough to comprehend why it is said to require so
+much skill.”
+
+“It is chiefly an affair of memory with me; but M. Georges, my opponent,
+has the talent of combination, which I have not.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” replied M. Georges, gruffly, “you are not easily beaten;
+it is for you to play first, Monsieur Lebeau.” Graham almost started.
+Was it possible! This mild, limp-whiskered, flaxen-wigged man Victor de
+Mauleon, the Don Juan of his time; the last person in the room he should
+have guessed. Yet, now examining his neighbour with more attentive
+eye, he wondered at his stupidity in not having recognized at once the
+ci-devant gentilhomme and beau garcon. It happens frequently that our
+imagination plays us this trick; we form to ourselves an idea of some
+one eminent for good or for evil,--a poet, a statesman, a general, a
+murderer, a swindler, a thief. The man is before us, and our ideas have
+gone into so different a groove that he does not excite a suspicion; we
+are told who he is, and immediately detect a thousand things that ought
+to have proved his identity.
+
+Looking thus again with rectified vision at the false Lebeau, Graham
+observed an elegance and delicacy of feature which might, in youth, have
+made the countenance very handsome, and rendered it still good-looking,
+nay, prepossessing. He now noticed, too, the slight Norman accent,
+its native harshness of breadth subdued into the modulated tones which
+bespoke the habits of polished society. Above all, as M. Lebeau moved
+his dominos with one hand, not shielding his pieces with the other (as
+M. Georges warily did), but allowing it to rest carelessly on the table,
+he detected the hands of the French aristocrat,--hands that had never
+done work; never (like those of the English noble of equal birth) been
+embrowned or freckled, or roughened or enlarged by early practice in
+athletic sports; but hands seldom seen save in the higher circles of
+Parisian life,--partly perhaps of hereditary formation, partly owing
+their texture to great care begun in early youth, and continued
+mechanically in after life,--with long taper fingers and polished nails;
+white and delicate as those of a woman, but not slight, not feeble;
+nervous and sinewy as those of a practised swordsman.
+
+Graham watched the play, and Lebeau good-naturedly explained to him
+its complications as it proceeded; though the explanation, diligently
+attended to by M. Georges, lost Lebeau the game.
+
+The dominos were again shuffled, and during that operation M. Georges
+said, “By the way, Monsieur Lebeau, you promised to find me a locataire
+for my second floor; have you succeeded?”
+
+“Not yet. Perhaps you had better advertise in ‘Les Petites Affiches.’
+You ask too much for the habitues of this neighbourhood,--one hundred
+francs a month.”
+
+“But the lodging is furnished, and well too, and has four rooms. One
+hundred francs are not much.”
+
+A thought flashed upon Graham. “Pardon, Monsieur,” he said, “have you an
+appartement de garcon to let furnished?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur, a charming one. Are you in search of an apartment?”
+
+“I have some idea of taking one, but only by the month. I am but just
+arrived at Paris, and I have business which may keep me here a few
+weeks. I do but require a bedroom and a small cabinet, and the rent must
+be modest. I am not a milord.”
+
+“I am sure we could arrange, Monsieur,” said M. Georges, “though I
+could not well divide my logement. But one hundred francs a month is not
+much!”
+
+“I fear it is more than I can afford; however, if you will give me your
+address, I will call and see the rooms,--say the day after to-morrow.
+Between this and then, I expect letters which may more clearly decide my
+movements.”
+
+“If the apartments suit you,” said M. Lebeau, “you will at least be in
+the house of a very honest man, which is more than can be said of every
+one who lets furnished apartments. The house, too, has a concierge, with
+a handy wife who will arrange your rooms and provide you with coffee--or
+tea, which you English prefer--if you breakfast at home.” Here M.
+Georges handed a card to Graham, and asked what hour he would call.
+
+“About twelve, if that hour is convenient,” said Graham, rising. “I
+presume there is a restaurant in the neighbourhood where I could dine
+reasonably.”
+
+“Je crois bien, half-a-dozen. I can recommend to you one where you can
+dine en prince for thirty sous. And if you are at Paris on business,
+and want any letters written in private, I can also recommend to you my
+friend here, M. Lebeau. Ay, and on affairs his advice is as good as a
+lawyer’s, and his fee a bagatelle.”
+
+“Don’t believe all that Monsieur Georges so flatteringly says of me,”
+ put in M. Lebeau, with a modest half-smile, and in English. “I should
+tell you that I, like yourself, am recently arrived at Paris, having
+bought the business and goodwill of my predecessor in the apartment I
+occupy; and it is only to the respect due to his antecedents, and on the
+score of a few letters of recommendation which I bring from Lyons,
+that I can attribute the confidence shown to me, a stranger in this
+neighbourhood. Still I have some knowledge of the world, and I am always
+glad if I can be of service to the English. I love the English”--he said
+this with a sort of melancholy earnestness which seemed sincere; and
+then added in a more careless tone,--“I have met with much kindness from
+them in the course of a chequered life.”
+
+“You seem a very good fellow,--in fact, a regular trump, Monsieur
+Lebeau,” replied Graham, in the same language. “Give me your address. To
+say truth, I am a very poor French scholar, as you must have seen, and
+am awfully bother-headed how to manage some correspondence on matters
+with which I am entrusted by my employer, so that it is a lucky chance
+which has brought me acquainted with you.”
+
+M. Lebeau inclined his head gracefully, and drew from a very neat
+morocco case a card, which Graham took and pocketed. Then he paid for
+his coffee and lemonade, and returned home well satisfied with the
+evening’s adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The next morning Graham sent for M. Renard, and consulted with that
+experienced functionary as to the details of the plan of action which he
+had revolved during the hours of a sleepless night.
+
+“In conformity with your advice,” said he, “not to expose myself to the
+chance of future annoyance, by confiding to a man so dangerous as the
+false Lebeau my name and address, I propose to take the lodging offered
+to me, as Mr. Lamb, an attorney’s clerk, commissioned to get in
+certain debts, and transact other matters of business, on behalf of
+his employer’s clients. I suppose there will be no difficulty with the
+police in this change of name, now that passports for the English are
+not necessary?”
+
+“Certainly not. You will have no trouble in that respect.”
+
+“I shall thus be enabled very naturally to improve acquaintance with the
+professional letter-writer, and find an easy opportunity to introduce
+the name of Louise Duval. My chief difficulty, I fear, not being a
+practical actor, will be to keep up consistently the queer sort of
+language I have adopted, both in French and in English. I have too sharp
+a critic in a man so consummate himself in stage trick and disguise
+as M. Lebeau not to feel the necessity of getting through my role as
+quickly as I can. Meanwhile, can you recommend me to some magasin
+where I can obtain a suitable change of costume? I can’t always wear a
+travelling suit, and I must buy linen of coarser texture than mine, and
+with the initials of my new name inscribed on it.”
+
+“Quite right to study such details; I will introduce you to a magasin
+near the Temple, where you will find all you want.”
+
+“Next, have you any friends or relations in the provinces unknown to
+M. Lebeau, to whom I might be supposed to write about debts or business
+matters, and from whom I might have replies?”
+
+“I will think over it, and manage that for you very easily. Your letters
+shall find their way to me, and I will dictate the answers.”
+
+After some further conversation on that business, M. Renard made an
+appointment to meet Graham at a cafe near the Temple later in the
+afternoon, and took his departure.
+
+Graham then informed his laquais de place that, though he kept on his
+lodgings, he was going into the country for a few days, and should not
+want the man’s services till he returned. He therefore dismissed and
+paid him off at once, so that the laquais might not observe, when he
+quitted his rooms the next day, that he took with him no change of
+clothes, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Graham Vane has been for some days in the apartment rented of M.
+Georges. He takes it in the name of Mr. Lamb,--a name wisely chosen,
+less common than Thompson and Smith, less likely to be supposed an
+assumed name, yet common enough not to be able easily to trace it to any
+special family. He appears, as he had proposed, in the character of an
+agent employed by a solicitor in London to execute sundry commissions
+and to collect certain outstanding debts. There is no need to mention
+the name of the solicitor; if there were, he could give the name of his
+own solicitor, to whose discretion he could trust implicitly. He dresses
+and acts up to his assumed character with the skill of a man who, like
+the illustrious Charles Fox, has, though in private representations,
+practised the stage-play in which Demosthenes said the triple art of
+oratory consisted; who has seen a great deal of the world, and has that
+adaptability of intellect which knowledge of the world lends to one who
+is so thoroughly in earnest as to his end that he agrees to be sportive
+as to his means.
+
+The kind of language he employs when speaking English to Lebeau is that
+suited to the role of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind habituated
+to vulgar companionships. I feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at
+least to the memory of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so
+to modify and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which
+he disguises his birth and disgraces his culture, that it is only here
+and there that I can venture to indicate the general tone of it; but in
+order to supply my deficiencies therein, the reader has only to call
+to mind the forms of phraseology which polite novelists in vogue,
+especially young-lady novelists, ascribe to well-born gentlemen, and
+more emphatically to those in the higher ranks of the Peerage. No doubt
+Graham, in his capacity of critic, had been compelled to read, in
+order to review, those contributions to refined literature, and had
+familiarized himself to a vein of conversation abounding with “swell”
+ and “stunner” and “awfully jolly,” in its libel on manners and outrage
+on taste.
+
+He has attended nightly the cafe Jean Jacques; he has improved
+acquaintance with M. Georges and M. Lebeau; he has played at billiards,
+he has played at dominos, with the latter. He has been much surprised
+at the unimpeachable honesty which M. Lebeau has exhibited in both these
+games. In billiards, indeed, a man cannot cheat except by disguising
+his strength; it is much the same in dominos,--it is skill combined
+with luck, as in whist; but in whist there are modes of cheating which
+dominos do not allow,--you can’t mark a domino as you can a card. It was
+perfectly clear to Graham that M. Lebeau did not gain a livelihood by
+billiards or dominos at the cafe Jean Jacques. In the former he was not
+only a fair but a generous player. He played exceedingly well, despite
+his spectacles; but he gave, with something of a Frenchman’s lofty
+fanfaronnade, larger odds to his adversary than his play justified. In
+dominos, where such odds could not well be given, he insisted on playing
+such small stakes as two or three francs might cover. In short, M.
+Lebeau puzzled Graham. All about M. Lebeau, his manner, his talk, was
+irreproachable, and baffled suspicion; except in this,--Graham gradually
+discovered that the cafe had a quasi-political character. Listening to
+talkers round him, he overheard much that might well have shocked the
+notions of a moderate Liberal; much that held in disdain the objects
+to which, in 1869, an English Radical directed his aspirations. Vote by
+ballot, universal suffrage, etc.,--such objects the French had already
+attained. By the talkers at the cafe Jean Jacques they were deemed to be
+the tricky contrivances of tyranny. In fact, the talk was more scornful
+of what Englishmen understand by radicalism or democracy than Graham
+ever heard from the lips of an ultra-Tory. It assumed a strain
+of philosophy far above the vulgar squabbles of ordinary party
+politicians,--a philosophy which took for its fundamental principles
+the destruction of religion and of private property. These two objects
+seemed dependent the one on the other. The philosophers of the Jean
+Jacques held with that expounder of Internationalism, Eugene Dupont,
+“Nous ne voulons plus de religion, car les religions etouffent
+l’intelligence.”
+
+   [Discours par Eugene Dupont a la Cloture du Congres de Bruxelles,
+   Sept. 3, 1868]
+
+Now and then, indeed, a dissentient voice was raised as to the existence
+of a Supreme Being, but, with one exception, it soon sank into silence.
+No voice was raised in defence of private property. These sages appeared
+for the most part to belong to the class of ouvriers or artisans. Some
+of them were foreigners,--Belgian, German, English; all seemed well off
+for their calling. Indeed they must have had comparatively high wages,
+to judge by their dress and the money they spent on regaling themselves.
+The language of several was well chosen, at times eloquent. Some brought
+with them women who seemed respectable, and who often joined in the
+conversation, especially when it turned upon the law of marriage as a
+main obstacle to all personal liberty and social improvement. If this
+was a subject on which the women did not all agree, still they discussed
+it, without prejudice and with admirable sang froid. Yet many of them
+looked like wives and mothers. Now and then a young journeyman brought
+with him a young lady of more doubtful aspect, but such a couple kept
+aloof from the others. Now and then, too, a man evidently of higher
+station than that of ouvrier, and who was received by the philosophers
+with courtesy and respect, joined one of the tables and ordered a bowl
+of punch for general participation. In such occasional visitors, Graham,
+still listening, detected a writer of the press; now and then, a small
+artist or actor or medical student. Among the habitues there was one
+man, an ouvrier, in whom Graham could not help feeling an interest.
+He was called Monnier, sometimes more familiarly Armand, his baptismal
+appellation. This man had a bold and honest expression of countenance.
+He talked like one who, if he had not read much, had thought much on the
+subjects he loved to discuss. He argued against the capital of employers
+quite as ably as Mr. Mill has argued against the rights of property
+in land. He was still more eloquent against the laws of marriage and
+Heritage. But his was the one voice not to be silenced in favour of
+a Supreme Being. He had at least the courage of his opinions, and was
+always thoroughly in earnest. M. Lebeau seemed to know this man, and
+honoured him with a nod and a smile, when passing by him to the table
+he generally occupied. This familiarity with a man of that class, and of
+opinions so extreme, excited Graham’s curiosity. One evening he said to
+Lebeau, “A queer fellow that you have just nodded to.
+
+“How so?”
+
+“Well, he has queer notions.”
+
+“Notions shared, I believe, by many of your countrymen?”
+
+“I should think not many. Those poor simpletons yonder may have caught
+‘em from their French fellow-workmen, but I don’t think that even the
+gobemouches in our National Reform Society open their mouths to swallow
+such wasps.”
+
+“Yet I believe the association to which most of those ouvriers belong
+had its origin in England.”
+
+“Indeed! what association?”
+
+“The International.”
+
+“Ah, I have heard of that.”
+
+Lebeau turned his green spectacles full on Graham’s face as he said
+slowly, “And what do you think of it?”
+
+Graham prudently checked the disparaging reply that first occurred to
+him, and said, “I know so little about it that I would rather ask you.”
+
+“I think it might become formidable if it found able leaders who knew
+how to use it. Pardon me, how came you to know of this cafe? Were you
+recommended to it?”
+
+“No; I happened to be in this neighbourhood on business, and walked in,
+as I might into any other cafe.”
+
+“You don’t interest yourself in the great social questions which are
+agitated below the surface of this best of all possible worlds?”
+
+“I can’t say that I trouble my head much about them.”
+
+“A game at dominos before M. Georges arrives?”
+
+“Willingly. Is M. Georges one of those agitators below the surface?”
+
+“No, indeed. It is for you to play.”
+
+Here M. Georges arrived, and no further conversation on political or
+social questions ensued.
+
+Graham had already called more than once at M. Lebeau’s office,
+and asked him to put into good French various letters on matters of
+business, the subjects of which had been furnished by M. Renard. The
+office was rather imposing and stately, considering the modest nature of
+M. Lebeau’s ostensible profession. It occupied the entire ground-floor
+of a corner house, with a front-door at one angle and a back-door at the
+other. The anteroom to his cabinet, and in which Graham had generally to
+wait some minutes before he was introduced, was generally well filled,
+and not only by persons who, by their dress and outward appearance,
+might be fairly supposed sufficiently illiterate to require his aid
+as polite letter-writers,--not only by servant-maids and grisettes,
+by sailors, zouaves, and journeymen workmen,--but not unfrequently by
+clients evidently belonging to a higher, or at least a richer, class
+of society,--men with clothes made by a fashionable tailor; men, again,
+who, less fashionably attired; looked like opulent tradesmen and fathers
+of well-to-do families,--the first generally young, the last generally
+middle-aged. All these denizens of a higher world were introduced by
+a saturnine clerk into M. Lebeau’s reception-room, very quickly and in
+precedence of the ouvriers and grisettes.
+
+“What can this mean?” thought Graham; “is it really that this
+humble business avowed is the cloak to some political conspiracy
+concealed,--the International Association?” And so pondering, the clerk
+one day singled him from the crowd and admitted him into M. Lebeau’s
+cabinet. Graham thought the time had now arrived when he might safely
+approach the subject that had brought him to the Faubourg Montmartre.
+
+“You are very good,” said Graham, speaking in the English of a young
+earl in our elegant novels,--“you are very good to let me in while you
+have so many swells and nobs waiting for you in the other room. But, I
+say, old fellow, you have not the cheek to tell me that they want you to
+correct their cocker or spoon for them by proxy?”
+
+“Pardon me,” answered M. Lebeau in French, “if I prefer my own language
+in replying to you. I speak the English I learned many years ago, and
+your language in the beau monde, to which you evidently belong, is
+strange to me. You are quite right, however, in your surmise that I have
+other clients than those who, like yourself, think I could correct their
+verbs or their spelling. I have seen a great deal of the world,--I know
+something of it, and something of the law; so that many persons come
+to me for advice and for legal information on terms more moderate than
+those of an avoue. But my ante-chamber is full, I am pressed for time;
+excuse me if I ask you to say at once in what I can be agreeable to you
+to-day.”
+
+“Ah!” said Graham, assuming a very earnest look, “you do know the world,
+that is clear; and you do know the law of France, eh?”
+
+“Yes, a little.”
+
+“What I wanted to say at present may have something to do with French
+law, and I meant to ask you either to recommend to me a sharp lawyer, or
+to tell me how I can best get at your famous police here.”
+
+“Police?”
+
+“I think I may require the service of one of those officers whom we in
+England call detectives; but if you are busy now, I can call to-morrow.”
+
+“I spare you two minutes. Say at once, dear Monsieur, what you want with
+law or police.”
+
+“I am instructed to find out the address of a certain Louise Duval,
+daughter of a drawing-master named Adolphe Duval, living in the Rue
+----in the year 1848.”
+
+Graham, while he thus said, naturally looked Lebeau in the face,--not
+pryingly, not significantly, but as a man generally does look in the
+face the other man whom he accosts seriously. The change in the face he
+regarded was slight, but it was unmistakable. It was the sudden meeting
+of the eyebrows, accompanied with the sudden jerk of the shoulder and
+bend of the neck, which betoken a man taken by surprise, and who pauses
+to reflect before he replies. His pause was but momentary,
+
+“For what object is this address required?”
+
+“That I don’t know; but evidently for some advantage to Madame or
+Mademoiselle Duval, if still alive, because my employer authorizes me to
+spend no less than L100 in ascertaining where she is, if alive, or where
+she was buried, if dead; and if other means fail, I am instructed to
+advertise to the effect that if Louise Duval, or, in case of her death,
+any children of hers living in the year 1849, will communicate with some
+person whom I may appoint at Paris, such intelligence, authenticated,
+may prove to the advantage of the party advertised for. I am, however,
+told not to resort to this means without consulting either with a legal
+adviser or the police.”
+
+“Hem! have you inquired at the house where this lady was, you say,
+living in 1848?”
+
+“Of course I have done that; but very clumsily, I dare say, through
+a friend, and learned nothing. But I must not keep you now. I think I
+shall apply at once to the police. What should I say when I get to the
+bureau?”
+
+“Stop, Monsieur, stop. I do not advise you to apply to the police. It
+would be waste of time and money. Allow me to think over the matter. I
+shall see you this evening at the cafe Jean Jacques at eight o’clock.
+Till then do nothing.”
+
+“All right; I obey you. The whole thing is out of my way of business
+awfully. Bonjour.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Punctually at eight o’clock Graham Vane had taken his seat at a corner
+table at the remote end of the cafe Jean Jacques, called for his cup of
+coffee and his evening journal, and awaited the arrival of M. Lebeau.
+His patience was not tasked long. In a few minutes the Frenchman
+entered, paused at the comptoir, as was his habit, to address a polite
+salutation to the well-dressed lady who there presided, nodded as usual
+to Armand Monnier, then glanced round, recognized Graham with a smile,
+and approached his table with the quiet grace of movement by which he
+was distinguished.
+
+Seating himself opposite to Graham, and speaking in a voice too low to
+be heard by others, and in French, he then said,
+
+“In thinking over your communication this morning, it strikes me as
+probable, perhaps as certain, that this Louise Duval or her children,
+if she have any, must be entitled to some moneys bequeathed to her by a
+relation or friend in England. What say you to that assumption, Monsieur
+Lamb?”
+
+“You are a sharp fellow,” answered Graham. “Just what I say to myself.
+Why else should I be instructed to go to such expense in finding her
+out? Most likely, if one can’t trace her, or her children born before
+the date named, any such moneys will go to some one else; and that some
+one else, whoever he be, has commissioned my employer to find out. But
+I don’t imagine any sum due to her or her heirs can be much, or that the
+matter is very important; for, if so, the thing would not be carelessly
+left in the hands of one of the small fry like myself, and clapped in
+along with a lot of other business as an off-hand job.”
+
+“Will you tell me who employed you?”
+
+“No, I don’t feel authorized to do that at present; and I don’t see
+the necessity of it. It seems to me, on consideration, a matter for the
+police to ferret out; only, as I asked before, how should I get at the
+police?”
+
+“That is not difficult. It is just possible that I might help you better
+than any lawyer or any detective.”
+
+“Why, did you ever know this Louise Duval?”
+
+“Excuse me, Monsieur Lamb; you refuse me your full confidence; allow me
+to imitate your reserve.”
+
+“Oho!” said Graham; “shut up as close as you like; it is nothing to me.
+Only observe, there is this difference between us, that I am employed by
+another. He does not authorize me to name him, and if I did commit
+that indiscretion, I might lose my bread and cheese. Whereas you have
+nobody’s secret to guard but your own, in saying whether or not you ever
+knew a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and if you have some reason for
+not getting me the information I am instructed to obtain, that is also
+a reason for not troubling you further. And after all, old boy” (with
+a familiar slap on Lebeau’s stately shoulder), “after all, it is I who
+would employ you; you don’t employ me. And if you find out the lady, it
+is you who would get the L100., not I.”
+
+M. Lebeau mechanically brushed, with a light movement of hand, the
+shoulder which the Englishman had so pleasantly touched, drew himself
+and chair some inches back, and said slowly,--
+
+“Monsieur Lamb, let us talk as gentleman to gentleman. Put aside the
+question of money altogether; I must first know why your employer wants
+to hunt out this poor Louise Duval. It may be to her injury, and I would
+do her none if you offered thousands where you offer pounds. I forestall
+the condition of mutual confidence; I own that I have known her,--it
+is many years ago; and, Monsieur Lamb, though a Frenchman very often
+injures a woman from love, he is in a worse plight for bread and cheese
+than I am if he injures her for money.”
+
+“Is he thinking of the duchess’s jewels?” thought Graham. “Bravo, mon
+vieux,” he said aloud; “but as I don’t know what my employer’s motive in
+his commission is, perhaps you can enlighten me. How could his inquiry
+injure Louise Duval?”
+
+“I cannot say; but you English have the power to divorce your wives.
+Louise Duval may have married an Englishman, separated from him, and he
+wants to know where he can find, in order to criminate and divorce her,
+or it may be to insist on her return to him.”
+
+“Bosh! that is not likely.”
+
+“Perhaps, then, some English friend she may have known has left her
+a bequest, which would of course lapse to some one else if she be not
+living.”
+
+“By gad!” cried Graham, “I think you hit the right nail on the head:
+c’est cela. But what then?”
+
+“Well, if I thought any substantial benefit to Louise Duval might result
+from the success of your inquiry, I would really see if it were in my
+power to help you. But I must have time to consider.”
+
+“How long?”
+
+“I can’t exactly say; perhaps three or four days.”
+
+“Bon! I will wait. Here comes M. Georges. I leave you to dominos and
+him. Good-night.”
+
+Late that night M. Lebeau was seated alone in a chamber connected with
+the cabinet in which he received visitors. A ledger was open before him,
+which he scanned with careful eyes, no longer screened by spectacles.
+The survey seemed to satisfy him. He murmured, “It suffices, the time
+has come,” closed the book, returned it to his bureau, which he locked
+up, and then wrote in cipher the letter here reduced into English:--
+
+   “DEAR AND NOBLE FRIEND,--Events march; the Empire is everywhere
+   undermined. Our treasury has thriven in my hands; the sums
+   subscribed and received by me through you have become more than
+   quadrupled by advantageous speculations, in which M. Georges has
+   been a most trustworthy agent. A portion of them I have continued
+   to employ in the mode suggested,--namely, in bringing together men
+   discreetly chosen as being in their various ways representatives and
+   ringleaders of the motley varieties that, when united at the right
+   moment, form a Parisian mob. But from that right moment we are as
+   yet distant. Before we can call passion into action, we must
+   prepare opinion for change. I propose now to devote no
+   inconsiderable portion of our fund towards the inauguration of a
+   journal which shall gradually give voice to our designs. Trust me
+   to insure its success, and obtain the aid of writers who will have
+   no notion of the uses to which they ultimately contribute. Now that
+   the time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press,
+   addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are needed
+   to destroy and incapable of reconstructing, the time has also
+   arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and rank of the man
+   in whom you take so gracious an interest. In vain you have pressed
+   him to do so before; till now he had not amassed together, by the
+   slow process of petty gains and constant savings, with such
+   additions as prudent speculations on his own account might
+   contribute, the modest means necessary to his resumed position; and
+   as he always contended against your generous offers, no
+   consideration should ever tempt him either to appropriate to his
+   personal use a single sou intrusted to him for a public purpose, or
+   to accept from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him
+   into the hireling of a cause. No! Victor de Mauleon despises too
+   much the tools that he employs to allow any man hereafter to say,
+   ‘Thou also wert a tool, and hast been paid for thy uses.’
+
+   “But to restore the victim of calumny to his rightful place in this
+   gaudy world, stripped of youth and reduced in fortune, is a task
+   that may well seem impossible. To-morrow he takes the first step
+   towards the achievement of the impossible. Experience is no bad
+   substitute for youth, and ambition is made stronger by the goad of
+   poverty.
+
+   “Thou shalt hear of his news soon.”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The next day at noon M. Louvier was closeted in his study with M.
+Gandrin.
+
+“Yes,” cried Louvier, “I have behaved very handsomely to the beau
+Marquis. No one can say to the contrary.”
+
+“True,” answered Gandrin. “Besides the easy terms for the transfer of
+the mortgages, that free bonus of one thousand louis is a generous and
+noble act of munificence.”
+
+“Is it not! and my youngster has already begun to do with it as I meant
+and expected. He has taken a fine apartment; he has bought a coupe
+and horses; he has placed himself in the hands of the Chevalier de
+Finisterre; he is entered at the Jockey Club. Parbleu, the one thousand
+louis will be soon gone.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“And then! why, he will have tasted the sweets of Parisian life; he will
+think with disgust of the vieux manoir. He can borrow no more. I must
+remain sole mortgagee, and I shall behave as handsomely in buying his
+estates as I have behaved in increasing his income.”
+
+Here a clerk entered and said that a monsieur wished to see M. Louvier
+for a few minutes in private, on urgent business.
+
+“Tell him to send in his card.”
+
+“He has declined to do so, but states that he has already the honour of
+your acquaintance.”
+
+“A writer in the press, perhaps; or is he an artist?”
+
+“I have not seen him before, Monsieur, but he has the air tres comme il
+faut.”
+
+“Well, you may admit him. I will not detain you longer, my dear Gandrin.
+My homages to Madame. Bonjour.”
+
+Louvier bowed out M. Gandrin, and then rubbed his hands complacently.
+He was in high spirits. “Aha, my dear Marquis, thou art in my trap now.
+Would it were thy father instead,” he muttered chucklingly, and then
+took his stand on the hearth, with his back to the fireless grate. There
+entered a gentleman exceedingly well dressed,--dressed according to the
+fashion, but still as became one of ripe middle age, not desiring to
+pass for younger than he was.
+
+He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his air and his movements; not
+slight of frame, but spare enough to disguise the strength and endurance
+which belong to sinews and thews of steel, freed from all superfluous
+flesh, broad across the shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had
+in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl; it was now clipped short,
+and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of
+its colour and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore neither beard
+nor mustache, and the darkness of his hair was contrasted by a clear
+fairness of complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, and eyes of
+that rare gray tint which has in it no shade of blue,--peculiar eyes,
+which give a very distinct character to the face. The man must have been
+singularly handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in
+his forty-seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind
+of comeliness. The form of the features and the contour of the face were
+those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty
+would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier
+days; but the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care and
+sorrow between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed
+lengthened, and the features had become more salient.
+
+Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had seen him
+before, and could not remember where or when; but at all events he
+recognized at the first glance a man of rank and of the great world.
+
+“Pray be seated, Monsieur,” he said, resuming his own easy-chair.
+
+The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend of his head,
+drew his chair near to the financier’s, stretched his limbs with the
+ease of a man making himself at home, and fixing his calm bright eyes
+quietly on Louvier, said, with a bland smile,--
+
+“My dear old friend, do you not remember me? You are less altered than I
+am.”
+
+Louvier stared hard and long; his lip fell, his cheek paled, and at last
+he faltered out, “Ciel! is it possible! Victor, the Vicomte de Mauleon?”
+
+“At your service, my dear Louvier.”
+
+There was a pause; the financier was evidently confused and embarrassed,
+and not less evidently the visit of the “dear old friend” was unwelcome.
+
+“Vicomte,” he said at last, “this is indeed a surprise; I thought you
+had long since quitted Paris for good.”
+
+“‘L’homme propose,’ etc. I have returned, and mean to enjoy the rest of
+my days in the metropolis of the Graces and the Pleasures. What though
+we are not so young as we were, Louvier,--we have more vigour in us than
+the new generation; and though it may no longer befit us to renew the
+gay carousals of old, life has still excitements as vivid for the social
+temperament and ambitious mind. Yes, the roi des viveurs returns to
+Paris for a more solid throne than he filled before.”
+
+“Are you serious?”
+
+“As serious as the French gayety will permit one to be.”
+
+“Alas, Monsieur le Vicomte! can you flatter yourself that you will
+regain the society you have quitted, and the name you have--”
+
+Louvier stopped short; something in the Vicomte’s eye daunted him.
+
+“The name I have laid aside for convenience of travel. Princes travel
+incognito, and so may a simple gentilhomme. ‘Regain my place in
+society,’ say you? Yes; it is not that which troubles me.”
+
+“What does?”
+
+“The consideration whether on a very modest income I can be sufficiently
+esteemed for myself to render that society more pleasant than ever. Ah,
+mon cher! why recoil? why so frightened? Do you think I am going to ask
+you for money? Have I ever done so since we parted; and did I ever do
+so before without repaying you? Bah! you roturiers are worse than the
+Bourbons. You never learn or unlearn. ‘Fors non mutat genus.’”
+
+The magnificent millionaire, accustomed to the homage of grandees from
+the Faubourg and lions from the Chaussee d’Antin, rose to his feet in
+superb wrath, less at the taunting words than at the haughtiness of mien
+with which they were uttered.
+
+“Monsieur, I cannot permit you to address me in that tone. Do you mean
+to insult me?”
+
+“Certainly not. Tranquillize your nerves, reseat yourself, and
+listen,--reseat yourself, I say.”
+
+Louvier dropped into his chair.
+
+“No,” resumed the Vicomte, politely, “I do not come here to insult you,
+neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I
+ask Monsieur Louvier what has become of Louise Duval?”
+
+“Louise Duval! I know nothing about her.”
+
+“Possibly not now; but you did know her well enough, when we two parted,
+to be a candidate for her hand. You did know her enough to solicit my
+good offices in promotion of your suit; and you did, at my advice, quit
+Paris to seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle.”
+
+“What! have you, Monsieur de Mauleon, not heard news of her since that
+day?”
+
+“I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine. You went
+to Aix-la-Chapelle; you saw Louise Duval, at my urgent request she
+condescended to accept your hand.”
+
+“No, Monsieur de Mauleon, she did not accept my hand. I did not even see
+her. The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it,--not
+alone,--left it with her lover.”
+
+“Her lover! You do not mean the miserable Englishman who--”
+
+“No Englishman,” interrupted Louvier, fiercely. “Enough that the step
+she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself. I have never
+even sought to hear of her since that day. Vicomte, that woman was the
+one love of my life. I loved her, as you must have known, to folly, to
+madness. And how was my love requited? Ah! you open a very deep wound,
+Monsieur le Vicomte.”
+
+“Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen
+and so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters
+belonging to a past life so remote from the present. For whom did Louise
+forsake you?”
+
+“It matters not; he is dead.”
+
+“I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you.”
+
+“I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass.”
+
+“Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer? So proud as she was, I
+can scarcely believe it.”
+
+“Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled; her pride would not have
+allowed that.”
+
+“He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue to live with him?”
+
+“That question, at least, I can answer; for though I lost all trace of
+her life, his life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very
+few months after she fled he was enchained to another. Let us talk of
+her no more.”
+
+“Ay, ay,” muttered De Mauleon, “some disgraces are not to be redeemed,
+and therefore not to be discussed. To me, though a relation, Louise
+Duval was but little known, and after what you tell me, I cannot dispute
+your right to say, ‘Talk of her no more.’ You loved her, and she wronged
+you. My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed afresh.”
+
+These words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness; they softened
+Louvier towards the speaker.
+
+After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his brow, as if
+to dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive thought; then with
+a changed expression of countenance,--an expression frank and
+winning,--with voice and with manner in which no vestige remained of the
+irony or the haughtiness with which he had resented the frigidity of
+his reception, he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier’s, and resumed:
+“Our situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we two became
+friends. I then could say, ‘Open sesame’ to whatever recesses, forbidden
+to vulgar footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by the hand might
+wish to explore. In those days my heart was warm; I liked you,
+Louvier,--honestly liked you. I think our personal acquaintance
+commenced in some gay gathering of young viveurs, whose behaviour to you
+offended my sense of good breeding?”
+
+Louvier coloured and muttered inaudibly. De Mauleon continued: “I felt
+it due to you to rebuke their incivilities, the more so as you evinced
+on that occasion your own superiority in sense and temper, permit me to
+add, with no lack of becoming spirit.”
+
+Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified.
+
+“From that day we became familiar. If any obligation to me were
+incurred, you would not have been slow to return it. On more than one
+occasion when I was rapidly wasting money--and money was plentiful with
+you--you generously offered me your purse. On more than one occasion I
+accepted the offer; and you would never have asked repayment if I had
+not insisted on repaying. I was no less grateful for your aid.” Louvier
+made a movement as if to extend his hand, but he checked the impulse.
+
+“There was another attraction which drew me towards you. I recognized
+in your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I
+imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the freluquets
+and lions who were my more habitual associates. Do you not remember
+some hours of serious talk we have had together when we lounged in
+the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the garden of the Palais
+Royal?--hours when we forgot that those were the haunts of idlers, and
+thought of the stormy actions affecting the history of the world of
+which they had been the scene; hours when I confided to you, as I
+confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my
+follies in the present, alas! were hourly tending to frustrate.”
+
+“Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the
+Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,--it was on the Pont de la Concorde,
+on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you
+said, pointing towards the walls of the Corps Legislatif, ‘Paul, when
+I once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First
+Minister of France?’”
+
+“Did I say so?--possibly; but I was too young then for admission to
+the Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle
+loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass over these circumstances. You
+became in love with Louise. I told you her troubled history; it did not
+diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out
+for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards; then fell the thunderbolt
+which shattered my existence, and we have never met again till this
+hour. You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier.”
+
+“But,” said Louvier, falteringly, “but since you refer to that
+thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that--that--”
+
+“I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who have known me as
+well as you did to assist me now to refute.”
+
+“If it be really a calumny.”
+
+“Heavens, man! could you ever doubt that?” cried De Mauleon, with heat;
+“ever doubt that I would rather have blown out my brains than allowed
+them even to conceive the idea of a crime so base?”
+
+“Pardon me,” answered Louvier, meekly, “but I did not return to Paris
+for months after you had disappeared. My mind was unsettled by the news
+that awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it by travel,--visited
+Holland and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard
+of your story was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own
+account. You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse de
+------‘s jewels; and your friend M. de ----- never sold them to one
+jeweller and obtained their substitutes in paste from another?”
+
+The Vicomte made a perceptible effort to repress an impulse of rage;
+then reseating himself in his chair, and with that slight shrug of the
+shoulder by which a Frenchman implies to himself that rage would be out
+of place, replied calmly, “M. de N. did as you say, but of course not
+employed by me, nor with my knowledge. Listen; the truth is this,--the
+time has come to tell it. Before you left Paris for Aix I found myself
+on the brink of ruin. I had glided towards it with my characteristic
+recklessness, with that scorn of money for itself, that sanguine
+confidence in the favour of fortune, which are vices common to every roi
+des viveurs. Poor mock Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in youth! we
+divide all we have among others, and when asked by some prudent friend,
+‘What have you left for your own share?’ answer, ‘Hope.’ I knew, of
+course, that my patrimony was rapidly vanishing; but then my horses
+were matchless. I had enough to last me for years on their chance of
+winning--of course they would win. But you may recollect when we
+parted that I was troubled,--creditors’ bills before me--usurers’ bills
+too,--and you, my dear Louvier, pressed on me your purse, were angry
+when I refused it. How could I accept? All my chance of repayment was
+in the speed of a horse. I believed in that chance for myself; but for
+a trustful friend, no. Ask your own heart now,--nay, I will not say
+heart,--ask your own common-sense, whether a man who then put aside your
+purse--spendthrift, vaurien, though he might be--was likely to steal or
+accept a woman’s jewels. Va, mon pauvre Louvier, again I say, ‘Fors non
+mutat genus.’”
+
+Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, such
+reminiscences of his visitor’s motley character--irregular, turbulent,
+the reverse of severe, but, in its own loose way, grandly generous and
+grandly brave--struck both on the common-sense and the heart of the
+listener; and the Frenchman recognized the Frenchman. Louvier doubted De
+Mauleon’s word no more, bowed his head, and said, “Victor de Mauleon, I
+have wronged you; go on.”
+
+“On the day after you left for Aix came that horse-race on which my
+all depended: it was lost. The loss absorbed the whole of my remaining
+fortune; it absorbed about twenty thousand francs in excess, a debt of
+honour to De N., whom you called my friend. Friend he was not; imitator,
+follower, flatterer, yes. Still I deemed him enough my friend to say to
+him, ‘Give me a little time to pay the money; I must sell my stud, or
+write to my only living relation from whom I have expectations.’ You
+remember that relation,--Jacques de Mauleon, old and unmarried. By De
+N.’s advice I did write to my kinsman. No answer came; but what did come
+were fresh bills from creditors. I then calmly calculated my assets. The
+sale of my stud and effects might suffice to pay every sou that I owed,
+including my debt to De N.; but that was not quite certain. At all
+events, when the debts were paid I should be beggared. Well, you know,
+Louvier, what we Frenchmen are: how Nature has denied to us the quality
+of patience; how involuntarily suicide presents itself to us when hope
+is lost; and suicide seemed to me here due to honour, namely, to the
+certain discharge of my liabilities,--for the stud and effects of Victor
+de Mauleon, roi des viveurs, would command much higher prices if he died
+like Cato than if he ran away from his fate like Pompey. Doubtless De N.
+guessed my intention from my words or my manner; but on the very day
+in which I had made all preparations for quitting the world from
+which sunshine had vanished, I received in a blank envelope bank-notes
+amounting to seventy thousand francs, and the post-mark on the envelope
+was that of the town of Fontainebleau, near to which lived my rich
+kinsman Jacques. I took it for granted that the sum came from him.
+Displeased as he might have been with my wild career, still I was
+his natural heir. The sum sufficed to pay my debt to De N., to all
+creditors, and leave a surplus. My sanguine spirits returned. I would
+sell my stud; I would retrench, reform, go to my kinsman as the penitent
+son. The fatted calf would be killed, and I should wear purple yet. You
+understand that, Louvier?”
+
+“Yes, yes; so like you. Go on.”
+
+“Now, then, came the thunderbolt! Ah! in those sunny days you used
+to envy me for being so spoilt by women. The Duchesse de ------ had
+conceived for me one of those romantic fancies which women without
+children and with ample leisure for the waste of affection do sometimes
+conceive for very ordinary men younger than themselves, but in whom they
+imagine they discover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt. I had been
+honoured by some notes from the Duchesse in which this sort of romance
+was owned. I had not replied to them encouragingly. In truth, my heart
+was then devoted to another,--the English girl whom I had wooed as my
+wife; who, despite her parents’ retraction of their consent to our union
+when they learned how dilapidated were my fortunes, pledged herself
+to remain faithful to me, and wait for better days.” Again De Mauleon
+paused in suppressed emotion, and then went on hurriedly: “No, the
+Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me
+with an affectionate respect. I felt that she was by nature meant to be
+a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that moment
+wholly misled from her right place amongst women by an illusion of mere
+imagination about a man who happened then to be very much talked about,
+and perhaps resembled some Lothario in the novels which she was always
+reading. We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house.”
+
+“Yes, I remember. I remember how you once took me to a great ball given
+by the Duchesse; how handsome I thought her, though no longer young; and
+you say right--how I did envy you, that night!”
+
+“From that night, however, the Duc, not unnaturally, became jealous. He
+reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable manner towards a mauvais sujet
+like myself, and forbade her in future to receive my visits. It was then
+that these notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me by her
+maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies.
+
+“But to proceed. In the flush of my high spirits, and in the insolence
+of magnificent ease with which I paid De N------ the trifle I owed him,
+something he said made my heart stand still.”
+
+“I told him that the money received had come from Jacques de Mauleon,
+and that I was going down to his house that day to thank him. He
+replied, ‘Don’t go; it did not come from him.’ ‘It must; see
+the post-mark of the envelope,--Fontainebleau.’ ‘I posted it at
+Fontainebleau.’ ‘You sent me the money, you!’ ‘Nay, that is beyond my
+means. Where it came from,’ said this miserable, ‘much more may yet
+come;’ and then be narrated, with that cynicism so in vogue at Paris,
+how he had told the Duchesse (who knew him as my intimate associate)
+of my stress of circumstance, of his fear that I meditated something
+desperate; how she gave him the jewels to sell and to substitute; how,
+in order to baffle my suspicion and frustrate my scruples, he had
+gone to Fontainebleau and there posted the envelope containing the
+bank-notes, out of which he secured for himself the payment he deemed
+otherwise imperilled. De N. having made this confession, hurried down
+the stairs swiftly enough to save himself a descent by the window. Do
+you believe me still?”
+
+“Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so considerate of self,
+I believe you implicitly.”
+
+“Of course I did what any man would do; I wrote a hasty letter to the
+Duchesse, stating all my gratitude for an act of pure friendship so
+noble; urging also the reasons that rendered it impossible for a man of
+honour to profit by such an act. Unhappily, what had been sent was paid
+away ere I knew the facts; but I could not bear the thought of life till
+my debt to her was acquitted; in short, Louvier, conceive for yourself
+the sort of letter which I--which any honest man--would write, under
+circumstances so cruel.”
+
+“H’m!” grunted Louvier.
+
+“Something, however, in my letter, conjoined with what De N. had told
+her as to my state of mind, alarmed this poor woman, who had deigned to
+take in me an interest so little deserved. Her reply, very agitated and
+incoherent, was brought to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, and
+by whom, as I before said, our correspondence had been of late carried
+on. In her reply she implored me to decide, to reflect on nothing till I
+had seen her; stated how the rest of her day was pre-engaged; and since
+to visit her openly had been made impossible by the Due’s interdict,
+enclosed the key to the private entrance to her rooms, by which I could
+gain an interview with her at ten o’clock that night, an hour at which
+the Duc had informed her he should be out till late at his club. Now,
+however great the indiscretion which the Duchesse here committed, it is
+due to her memory to say that I am convinced that her dominant idea was
+that I meditated self-destruction; that no time was to be lost to
+save me from it; and for the rest she trusted to the influence which
+a woman’s tears and adjurations and reasonings have over even the
+strongest and hardest men. It is only one of those coxcombs in whom the
+world of fashion abounds who could have admitted a thought that would
+have done wrong to the impulsive, generous, imprudent eagerness of a
+woman to be in time to save from death by his own hand a fellow-being
+for whom she had conceived an interest. I so construed her note. At the
+hour she named I admitted myself into the rooms by the key she sent. You
+know the rest: I was discovered by the Duc and by the agents of police
+in the cabinet in which the Duchesse’s jewels were kept. The key that
+admitted me into the cabinet was found in my possession.”
+
+De Mauleon’s voice here faltered, and he covered his face with a
+convulsive hand. Almost in the same breath he recovered from visible
+sign of emotion, and went on with a half laugh.
+
+“Ah! you envied me, did you, for being spoiled by the women? Enviable
+position indeed was mine that night! The Duc obeyed the first impulse of
+his wrath. He imagined that I had dishonoured him; he would dishonour
+me in return. Easier to his pride, too, a charge against the robber of
+jewels than against a favoured lover of his wife. But when I, obeying
+the first necessary obligation of honour, invented on the spur of the
+moment the story by which the Duchesse’s reputation was cleared from
+suspicion, accused myself of a frantic passion and the trickery of
+a fabricated key, the Due’s true nature of gentilhomme came back. He
+retracted the charge which he could scarcely even at the first blush
+have felt to be well-founded; and as the sole charge left was simply
+that which men comme il faut do not refer to criminal courts and police
+investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested and retreat to my
+own rooms, awaiting there such communciations as the Duc might deem it
+right to convey to me on the morrow.
+
+“But on the morrow the Duc, with his wife and personal suite, quitted
+Paris en route for Spain; the bulk of his retinue, including the
+offending Abigail, was discharged; and, whether through these servants
+or through the police, the story before evening was in the mouth of
+every gossip in club or cafe,--exaggerated, distorted, to my ignominy
+and shame. My detection in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the
+substitution of paste by De N., who was known to be my servile imitator
+and reputed to be my abject tool, all my losses on the turf, my
+debts,--all these scattered fibres of flax were twisted together in a
+rope that would have hanged a dog with a much better name than mine. If
+some disbelieved that I could be a thief, few of those who should have
+known me best held me guiltless of a baseness almost equal to that of
+theft,--the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish woman.”
+
+“But you could have told your own tale, shown the letters you had
+received from the Duchesse, and cleared away every stain on your
+honour.”
+
+“How?--shown her letters, ruined her character, even stated that she
+had caused her jewels to be sold for the uses of a young roue! Ah, no,
+Louvier! I would rather have gone to the galleys.”
+
+“H’m!” grunted Louvier again.
+
+“The Duc generously gave me better means of righting myself. Three
+days after he quitted Paris I received a letter from him, very politely
+written, expressing his great regret that any words implying the
+suspicion too monstrous and absurd to need refutation should have
+escaped him in the surprise of the moment; but stating that since the
+offence I had owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under
+the necessity of asking the only reparation I could make. That if it
+‘deranged’ me to quit Paris, he would return to it for the purpose
+required; but that if I would give him the additional satisfaction
+of suiting his convenience, he should prefer to await my arrival at
+Bayonne, where he was detained by the indisposition of the Duchesse.”
+
+“You have still that letter?” asked Louvier, quickly. “Yes; with
+other more important documents constituting what I may call my pieces
+justificatives.
+
+“I need not say that I replied stating the time at which I should arrive
+at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should await the Duc’s command.
+Accordingly I set out that same day, gained the hotel named, despatched
+to the Duc the announcement of my arrival, and was considering how I
+should obtain a second in some officer quartered in the town--for
+my soreness and resentment at the marked coldness of my former
+acquaintances at Paris had forbidden me to seek a second among any of
+that faithless number--when the Due himself entered my room. Judge of my
+amaze at seeing him in person; judge how much greater the amaze became
+when he advanced with a grave but cordial smile, offering me his hand!
+
+“‘Monsieur de Mauleon,’ said he, ‘since I wrote to you, facts have
+become known to me which would induce me rather to ask your friendship
+than call on you to defend your life. Madame la Duchesse has been
+seriously ill since we left Paris, and I refrained from all explanations
+likely to add to the hysterical excitement under which she was
+suffering. It is only this day that her mind became collected, and she
+herself then gave me her entire confidence. Monsieur, she insisted on my
+reading the letters that you addressed to her. Those letters, Monsieur,
+suffice to prove your innocence of any design against my peace. The
+Duchesse has so candidly avowed her own indiscretion, has so clearly
+established the distinction between indiscretion and guilt, that I have
+granted her my pardon with a lightened heart and a firm belief that we
+shall be happier together than we have been yet.’
+
+“The Due continued his journey the next day, but he subsequently
+honoured me with two or three letters written as friend to friend, and
+in which you will find repeated the substance of what I have stated him
+to say by word of mouth.”
+
+“But why not then have returned to Paris? Such letters, at least, you
+might have shown, and in braving your calumniators you would have soon
+lived them down.”
+
+“You forget that I was a ruined man. When, by the sale of my horses,
+etc., my debts, including what was owed to the Duchesse, and which I
+remitted to the Duc, were discharged, the balance left to me would
+not have maintained me a week at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so
+indignant. Paris and the Parisians had become to me so hateful. And to
+crown all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose
+fidelity I had so counted--well, I received a letter from her, gently
+but coldly bidding me farewell forever. I do not think she believed me
+guilty of theft; but doubtless the offence I had confessed, in order to
+save the honour of the Duchesse, could but seem to her all sufficient!
+Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very core, still
+self-destruction was no longer to be thought of. I would not die till I
+could once more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon.”
+
+“What then became of you, my poor Victor?”
+
+“Ah! that is a tale too long for recital. I have played so many parts
+that I am puzzled to recognize my own identity with the Victor de
+Mauleon whose name I abandoned. I have been a soldier in Algeria, and
+won my cross on the field of battle,--that cross and my colonel’s
+letter are among my pieces justificatives; I have been a gold-digger in
+California, a speculator in New York, of late in callings obscure and
+humble. But in all my adventures, under whatever name, I have earned
+testimonials of probity, could manifestations of so vulgar a virtue
+be held of account by the enlightened people of Paris. I come now to a
+close. The Vicomte de Mauleon is about to re-appear in Paris, and the
+first to whom he announces that sublime avatar is Paul Louvier. When
+settled in some modest apartment, I shall place in your hands my pieces
+justificatives. I shall ask you to summon my surviving relations or
+connections, among which are the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De
+Passy, and the Marquis de Rochebriant, with any friends of your own who
+sway the opinions of the Great World. You will place my justification
+before them, expressing your own opinion that it suffices; in a word,
+you will give me the sanction of your countenance. For the rest, I trust
+to myself to propitiate the kindly and to silence the calumnious. I have
+spoken; what say you?”
+
+“You overrate my power in society. Why not appeal yourself to your
+high-born relations?”
+
+“No, Louvier; I have too well considered the case to alter my decision.
+It is through you, and you alone, that I shall approach my relations.
+My vindicator must be a man of whom the vulgar cannot say, ‘Oh, he is a
+relation,--a fellow-noble; those aristocrats whitewash each other.’
+It must be an authority with the public at large,--a bourgeois, a
+millionaire, a roi de la Bourse. I choose you, and that ends the
+discussion.”
+
+Louvier could not help laughing good-humouredly at the sang froid of the
+Vicomte. He was once more under the domination of a man who had for a
+time dominated all with whom he lived.
+
+De Mauleon continued: “Your task will be easy enough. Society changes
+rapidly at Paris. Few persons now exist who have more than a vague
+recollection of the circumstances which can be so easily explained to my
+complete vindication when the vindication comes from a man of your solid
+respectability and social influence. Besides, I have political
+objects in view. You are a Liberal; the Vandemars and Rochebriants are
+Legitimists. I prefer a godfather on the Liberal side. Pardieu, mon ami,
+why such coquettish hesitation? Said and done. Your hand on it.”
+
+“There is my hand then. I will do all I can to help you.”
+
+“I know you will, old friend; and you do both kindly and wisely.” Here
+De Mauleon cordially pressed the hand he held, and departed.
+
+On gaining the street, the Vicomte glided into a neighbouring courtyard,
+in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the coachman drive towards the
+Boulevard Sebastopol. On the way, he took from a small bag that he
+had left in the carriage the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which
+distinguished M. Lebeau, and mantled his elegant habiliments in an
+immense cloak, which he had also left in the fiacre. Arrived at the
+Boulevard Sebastopol, he drew up the collar of the cloak so as to
+conceal much of his face, stopped the driver, paid him quickly, and, bag
+in hand, hurried on to another stand of fiacres at a little distance,
+entered one, drove to the Faubourg Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle
+at the mouth of a street not far from M. Lebeau’s office, and gained
+on foot the private side-door of the house, let himself in with his
+latchkey, entered the private room on the inner side of his office,
+locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to exchange the brilliant
+appearance which the Vicomte de Mauleon had borne on his visit to the
+millionaire for the sober raiment and bourgeois air of M. Lebeau, the
+letter-writer.
+
+Then after locking up his former costume in a drawer of his secretaire,
+he sat himself down and wrote the following lines:--
+
+   DEAR MONSIEUR GEORGES,--I advise you strongly, from information that
+   has just reached me, to lose no time in pressing M. Savarin to repay
+   the sum I recommended you to lend him, and for which you hold his
+   bill due this day. The scandal of legal measures against a writer
+   so distinguished should be avoided if possible. He will avoid it
+   and get the money somehow; but he must be urgently pressed. If you
+   neglect this warning, my responsibility is past. Agreez mes
+   sentimens les plus sinceres.
+                       J. L.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Marquis de Rochebriant is no longer domiciled in an attic in the
+gloomy Faubourg. See him now in a charming appartement de garcon an
+premier in the Rue du Helder, close by the promenades and haunts of
+the mode. It had been furnished and inhabited by a brilliant young
+provincial from Bordeaux, who, coming into an inheritance of one hundred
+thousand francs, had rushed up to Paris to enjoy himself, and make his
+million at the Bourse. He had enjoyed himself thoroughly,--he had been
+a darling of the demi monde; he had been a successful and an inconstant
+gallant. Zelie had listened to his vows of eternal love, and his offers
+of unlimited cachemires; Desiree, succeeding Zelie, had assigned to him
+her whole heart--or all that was left of it--in gratitude for the
+ardour of his passion, and the diamonds and coupe which accompanied and
+attested the ardour; the superb Hortense, supplanting Desiree,
+received his visits in the charming apartment he furnished for her, and
+entertained him and his friends at the most delicate little suppers, for
+the moderate sum of four thousand francs a month. Yes, he had enjoyed
+himself thoroughly, but he had not made a million at the Bourse. Before
+the year was out, the one hundred thousand francs were gone. Compelled
+to return to his province, and by his hard-hearted relations ordained,
+on penalty of starvation, to marry the daughter of an avoue, for
+the sake of her dot and a share in the hated drudgery of the avoue’s
+business,--his apartment was to be had for a tenth part of the original
+cost of its furniture. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, to whom
+Louvier had introduced the Marquis as a useful fellow who knew Paris,
+and would save him from being cheated, had secured this bijou of an
+apartment for Alain, and concluded the bargain for the bagatelle of
+L500. The Chevalier took the same advantageous occasion to purchase the
+English well-bred hack and the neat coupe and horses which the Bordelais
+was also necessitated to dispose of. These purchases made, the Marquis
+had some five thousand francs (L200) left out of Louvier’s premium of
+L1,000. The Marquis, however, did not seem alarmed or dejected by the
+sudden diminution of capital so expeditiously effected. The easy life
+thus commenced seemed to him too natural to be fraught with danger;
+and easy though it was, it was a very simple and modest sort of life
+compared with that of many other men of his age to whom Enguerrand had
+introduced him, though most of them had an income less than his, and
+few, indeed, of them were his equals in dignity of birth. Could a
+Marquis de Rochebriant, if he lived at Paris at all, give less than
+three thousand francs a year for his apartment, or mount a more humble
+establishment than that confined to a valet and a tiger, two horses for
+his coupe and one for the saddle? “Impossible,” said the Chevalier de
+Finisterre, decidedly; and the Marquis bowed to so high an authority. He
+thought within himself, “If I find in a few months that I am exceeding
+my means, I can but dispose of my rooms and my horses, and return to
+Rochebriant a richer man by far than I left it.”
+
+To say truth, the brilliant seductions of Paris had already produced
+their effect, not only on the habits, but on the character and cast of
+thought, which the young noble had brought with him from the feudal and
+melancholy Bretagne.
+
+Warmed by the kindness with which, once introduced by his popular
+kinsmen, he was everywhere received, the reserve or shyness which is the
+compromise between the haughtiness of self-esteem and the painful doubt
+of appreciation by others rapidly melted away. He caught insensibly the
+polished tone, at once so light and so cordial, of his new-made
+friends. With all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and
+fraternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity are
+most to be found. All gentilshommes in the best society are equals;
+and whether they embrace or fight each other, they embrace or fight
+as brothers of the same family. But with the tone of manners Alain de
+Rochebriant imbibed still more insensibly the lore of that philosophy
+which young idlers in pursuit of pleasure teach to each other. Probably
+in all civilized and luxurious capitals that philosophy is very much
+the same among the same class of idlers at the same age; probably it
+flourishes in Pekin not less than at Paris. If Paris has the credit,
+or discredit, of it more than any other capital, it is because in Paris
+more than in any other capital it charms the eye by grace and amuses
+the ear by wit. A philosophy which takes the things of this life very
+easily; which has a smile and a shrug of the shoulders for any
+pretender to the Heroic; which subdivides the wealth of passion into the
+pocket-money of caprices, is always in or out of love ankle-deep, never
+venturing a plunge; which, light of heart as of tongue, turns “the
+solemn plausibilities” of earth into subjects for epigrams and bons
+mots,--jests at loyalty to kings and turns up its nose at enthusiasm
+for commonwealths, abjures all grave studies and shuns all profound
+emotions. We have crowds of such philosophers in London; but there they
+are less noticed, because the agreeable attributes of the sect are there
+dimmed and obfuscated. It is not a philosophy that flowers richly in
+the reek of fogs and in the teeth of east winds; it wants for full
+development the light atmosphere of Paris. Now this philosophy began
+rapidly to exercise its charms upon Alain de Rochebriant. Even in the
+society of professed Legitimists, he felt that faith had deserted the
+Legitimist creed or taken refuge only as a companion of religion in
+the hearts of high-born women and a small minority of priests. His
+chivalrous loyalty still struggled to keep its ground, but its
+roots were very much loosened. He saw--for his natural intellect was
+keen--that the cause of the Bourbon was hopeless, at least for the
+present, because it had ceased, at least for the present, to be a cause.
+His political creed thus shaken, with it was shaken also that adherence
+to the past which had stifled his ambition of a future. That ambition
+began to breathe and to stir, though he owned it not to others, though,
+as yet, he scarce distinguished its whispers, much less directed its
+movements towards any definite object. Meanwhile, all that he knew of
+his ambition was the new-born desire for social success.
+
+We see him, then, under the quick operation of this change in sentiments
+and habits, reclined on the fauteuil before his fireside, and listening
+to his college friend, of whom we have so long lost sight, Frederic
+Lemercier. Frederic had breakfasted with Alain,--a breakfast such as
+might have contented the author of the “Almanach des Gourmands,” and
+provided from the cafe Anglais. Frederic has just thrown aside his
+regalia.
+
+“Pardieu! my dear Alain. If Louvier has no sinister object in the
+generosity of his dealings with you, he will have raised himself
+prodigiously in my estimation. I shall forsake, in his favour, my
+allegiance to Duplessis, though that clever fellow has just made a
+wondrous coup in the Egyptians, and I gain forty thousand francs by
+having followed his advice. But if Duplessis has a head as long as
+Louvier’s, he certainly has not an equal greatness of soul. Still, my
+dear friend, will you pardon me if I speak frankly, and in the way of a
+warning homily?”
+
+“Speak; you cannot oblige me more.”
+
+“Well, then, I know that you can no more live at Paris in the way you
+are doing, or mean to do, without some fresh addition to your income,
+than a lion could live in the Jardin des Plantes upon an allowance of
+two mice a week.”
+
+“I don’t see that. Deducting what I pay to my aunt,--and I cannot get
+her to take more than six thousand francs a year,--I have seven hundred
+napoleons left, net and clear. My rooms and stables are equipped, and
+I have twenty-five hundred francs in hand. On seven hundred napoleons
+a year, I calculate that I can very easily live as I do; and if I
+fail--well, I must return to Pochebriant. Seven hundred napoleons a year
+will be a magnificent rental there.”
+
+Frederic shook his head. “You do not know how one expense leads to
+another. Above all, you do not calculate the chief part of one’s
+expenditure,--the unforeseen. You will play at the Jockey Club, and lose
+half your income in a night.”
+
+“I shall never touch a card.”
+
+“So you say now, innocent as a lamb of the force of example. At all
+events, beau seigneur, I presume you are not going to resuscitate the
+part of the Ermite de la Chaussee d’Antin; and the fair Parisiennes are
+demons of extravagance.”
+
+“Demons whom I shall not court.”
+
+“Did I say you would? They will court you. Before another month has
+flown you will be inundated with billets-doux.”
+
+“It is not a shower that will devastate my humble harvest. But, mon
+cher, we are falling upon very gloomy topics. Laissez-moi tranquille in
+my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you cannot conceive what a new
+life opens to the man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of his youth
+in privation and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and hope. If
+it lasts only a year, it will be something to say ‘Vixi.’”
+
+“Alain,” said Frederic; very earnestly, “believe me, I should not have
+assumed the ungracious and inappropriate task of Mentor, if it were only
+a year’s experience at stake, or if you were in the position of men like
+myself,--free from the encumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged
+lands. Should you fail to pay regularly the interest due to Louvier,
+he has the power to put up at public auction, and there to buy in for
+himself, your chateau and domain.”
+
+“I am aware that in strict law he would have such power, though I doubt
+if he would use it. Louvier is certainly a much better and more generous
+fellow than I could have expected; and if I believe De Finisterre, he
+has taken a sincere liking to me on account of affection to my poor
+father. But why should not the interest be paid regularly? The revenues
+from Rochebriant are not likely to decrease, and the charge on them is
+lightened by the contract with Louvier. And I will confide to you a hope
+I entertain of a very large addition to my rental.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“A chief part of my rental is derived from forests, and De Finisterre
+has heard of a capitalist who is disposed to make a contract for their
+sale at the fall this year, and may probably extend it to future years,
+at a price far exceeding that which I have hitherto obtained.”
+
+“Pray be cautious. De Finisterre is not a man I should implicitly trust
+in such matters.”
+
+“Why? Do you know anything against him? He is in the best
+society,--perfect gentilhomme,--and, as his name may tell you, a
+fellow-Breton. You yourself allow, and so does Enguerrand, that the
+purchases he made for me--in this apartment, my horses, etc.--are
+singularly advantageous.”
+
+“Quite true; the Chevalier is reputed sharp and clever, is said to
+be very amusing, and a first-rate piquet-player. I don’t know him
+personally,--I am not in his set. I have no valid reason to disparage
+his character, nor do I conjecture any motive he could have to injure or
+mislead you. Still, I say, be cautious how far you trust to his advice
+or recommendation.”
+
+“Again I ask why?”
+
+“He is unlucky to his friends. He attaches himself much to men younger
+than himself; and somehow or other I have observed that most of them
+have come to grief. Besides, a person in whose sagacity I have great
+confidence warned me against making the Chevalier’s acquaintance, and
+said to me, in his blunt way, ‘De Finisterre came to Paris with nothing;
+he has succeeded to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profession by
+which anything can be made. But evidently now he has picked up a good
+deal; and in proportion as any young associate of his becomes poorer,
+De Finisterre seems mysteriously to become richer. Shun that sort of
+acquaintance.’”
+
+“Who is your sagacious adviser!”
+
+“Duplessis.”
+
+“Ah, I thought so. That bird of prey fancies every other bird
+looking out for pigeons. I fancy that Duplessis is, like all those
+money-getters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finisterre has not
+returned his bow.”
+
+“My dear Alain, I am to blame; nothing is so irritating as a dispute
+about the worth of the men we like. I began it, now let it be dropped;
+only make me one promise,--that if you should be in arrear, or if need
+presses, you will come at once to me. It was very well to be absurdly
+proud in an attic, but that pride will be out of place in your
+appartement au premier.”
+
+“You are the best fellow in the world, Frederic, and I make you the
+promise you ask,” said Alain, cheerfully, but yet with a secret emotion
+of tenderness and gratitude. “And now, mon cher, what day will you dine
+with me to meet Raoul and Enguerrand, and some others whom you would
+like to know?”
+
+“Thanks, and hearty ones, but we move now in different spheres, and
+I shall not trespass on yours. Je suis trop bourgeois to incur the
+ridicule of le bourgeois gentilhomme.”
+
+“Frederic, how dare you speak thus? My dear fellow, my friends shall
+honour you as I do.”
+
+“But that will be on your account, not mine. No; honestly that kind of
+society neither tempts nor suits me. I am a sort of king in my own walk;
+and I prefer my Bohemian royalty to vassalage in higher regions. Say no
+more of it. It will flatter my vanity enough if you will now and then
+descend to my coteries, and allow me to parade a Rochebriant as my
+familiar crony, slap him on the shoulder, and call him Alain.”
+
+“Fie! you who stopped me and the English aristocrat in the Champs
+Elysees, to humble us with your boast of having fascinated une grande
+dame,--I think you said a duchesse.”
+
+“Oh,” said Lemercier, conceitedly, and passing his hand through his
+scented locks, “women are different; love levels all ranks. I don’t
+blame Ruy Blas for accepting the love of a queen, but I do blame him
+for passing himself off as a noble,--a plagiarism, by the by, from an
+English play. I do not love the English enough to copy them. A propos,
+what has become of ce beau Grarm Varn? I have not seen him of late.”
+
+“Neither have I.”
+
+“Nor the belle Italienne?”
+
+“Nor her,” said Alain, slightly blushing.
+
+At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the room. Alain stopped Lemercier
+to introduce him to his kinsman. “Enguerrand, I present to you M.
+Lemercier, my earliest and one of my dearest friends.”
+
+The young noble held out his hand with the bright and joyous grace
+which accompanied all his movements, and expressed in cordial words
+his delight to make M. Lemercier’s acquaintance. Bold and assured as
+Frederic was in his own circles, he was more discomposed than set at
+ease by the gracious accost of a lion, whom he felt at once to be of a
+breed superior to his own. He muttered some confused phrases, in which
+ravi and flatte were alone audible, and evanished.
+
+“I know M. Lemercier by sight very well,” said Enguerrand, seating
+himself. “One sees him very often in the Bois; and I have met him in
+the Coulisses and the Bal Mabille. I think, too, that he plays at the
+Bourse, and is lie with M. Duplessis, who bids fair to rival Louvier one
+of these days. Is Duplessis also one of your dearest friends?”
+
+“No, indeed. I once met him, and was not prepossessed in his favour.”
+
+“Nevertheless, he is a man much to be admired and respected.”
+
+“Why so?”
+
+“Because he understands so well the art of making what we all
+covet,--money. I will introduce you to him.”
+
+“I have been already introduced.”
+
+“Then I will re-introduce you. He is much courted in a society which I
+have recently been permitted by my father to frequent,--the society, of
+the Imperial Court.”
+
+“You frequent that society, and the Count permits it?”
+
+“Yes; better the Imperialists than the Republicans; and my father begins
+to own that truth, though he is too old or too indolent to act on it.”
+
+“And Raoul?”
+
+“Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophical Raoul, has no ambition
+of any kind, so long as--thanks somewhat to me--his purse is always
+replenished for the wants of his stately existence, among the foremost
+of which wants are the means to supply the wants of others. That is the
+true reason why he consents to our glove-shop. Raoul belongs, with some
+other young men of the Faubourg, to a society enrolled under the name
+of Saint Francois de Sales, for the relief of the poor. He visits their
+houses, and is at home by their sickbeds as at their stinted boards.
+Nor does he confine his visitations to the limits of our Faubourg; he
+extends his travels to Montmartre and Belleville. As to our upper world,
+he does not concern himself much with its changes. He says that we have
+destroyed too much ever to rebuild solidly; and that whatever we do
+build could be upset any day by a Paris mob, which he declares to be
+the only institution we have left. A wonderful fellow is Raoul,--full of
+mind, though he does little with it; full of heart, which he devotes
+to suffering humanity, and to a poetic, knightly reverence (not to be
+confounded with earthly love, and not to be degraded into that sickly
+sentiment called Platonic affection) for the Comtesse di Rimini, who is
+six years older than himself, and who is very faithfully attached to
+her husband, Raoul’s intimate friend, whose honour he would guard as
+his own. It is an episode in the drama of Parisian life, and one not so
+uncommon as the malignant may suppose. Di Rimini knows and approves of
+his veneration; my mother, the best of women, sanctions it, and deems
+truly that it preserves Raoul safe from all the temptations to which
+ignobler youth is exposed. I mention this lest you should imagine there
+was anything in Raoul’s worship of his star less pure than it is.
+For the rest, Raoul, to the grief and amazement of that disciple of
+Voltaire, my respected father, is one of the very few men I know in our
+circles who is sincerely religious,--an orthodox Catholic,--and the only
+man I know who practises the religion he professes; charitable, chaste,
+benevolent; and no bigot, no intolerant ascetic. His only weakness
+is his entire submission to the worldly common-sense of his
+good-for-nothing, covetous, ambitious brother Enguerrand. I cannot say
+how I love him for that. If he had not such a weakness, his excellence
+would gall me, and I believe I should hate him.”
+
+Alain bowed his head at this eulogium. Such had been the character that
+a few months ago he would have sought as example and model. He seemed to
+gaze upon a flattered portrait of himself as he had been.
+
+“But,” said Enguerrand, “I have not come here to indulge in the overflow
+of brotherly affection. I come to take you to your relation, the
+Duchesse of Tarascon. I have pledged myself to her to bring you, and she
+is at home on purpose to receive you.”
+
+“In that case I cannot be such a churl as to refuse. And, indeed, I no
+longer feel quite the same prejudices against her and the Imperialists
+as I brought from Bretagne. Shall I order my carriage?”
+
+“No; mine is at the door. Yours can meet you where you will, later.
+Allons.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Duchesse de Tarascon occupied a vast apartment in the Rue Royale,
+close to the Tuileries. She held a high post among the ladies who graced
+the brilliant court of the Empress. She had survived her second husband
+the duke, who left no issue, and the title died with him.
+
+Alain and Enguerrand were ushered up the grand staircase, lined with
+tiers of costly exotics as if for a fete; but in that and in all kinds
+of female luxury, the Duchesse lived in a state of fete perpetuelle.
+The doors on the landing-place were screened by heavy portieres of Genoa
+velvet, richly embroidered in gold with the ducal crown and cipher. The
+two salons through which the visitors passed to the private cabinet or
+boudoir were decorated with Gobelin tapestries, fresh, with a mixture
+of roseate hues, and depicting incidents in the career of the first
+emperor; while the effigies of the late duke’s father--the gallant
+founder of a short-lived race figured modestly in the background. On a
+table of Russian malachite within the recess of the central window lay,
+preserved in glass cases, the baton and the sword, the epaulettes
+and the decorations of the brave Marshal. On the consoles and the
+mantelpieces stood clocks and vases of Sevres that could scarcely be
+eclipsed by those in the Imperial palaces. Entering the cabinet, they
+found the Duchesse seated at her writing-table, with a small Skye
+terrier, hideous in the beauty of the purest breed, nestled at her
+feet. This room was an exquisite combination of costliness and
+comfort,--Luxury at home. The hangings were of geranium-coloured
+silk, with double curtains of white satin; near to the writing-table a
+conservatory, with a white marble fountain at play in the centre, and
+a trellised aviary at the back. The walls were covered with small
+pictures,--chiefly portraits and miniatures of the members of the
+imperial family, of the late Duc, of his father the Marshal and Madame
+la Marechale, of the present Duchesse herself, and of some of the
+principal ladies of the court.
+
+The Duchesse was still in the prime of life. She had passed her fortieth
+year, but was so well “conserved” that you might have guessed her to
+be ten years younger. She was tall; not large, but with rounded figure
+inclined to en bon point; with dark hair and eyes, but fair complexion,
+injured in effect rather than improved by pearl-powder, and that
+atrocious barbarism of a dark stain on the eyelids which has of late
+years been a baneful fashion; dressed,--I am a man, and cannot describe
+her dress; all I know is that she had the acknowledged fame of the
+best-dressed subject of France. As she rose from her seat there was in
+her look and air the unmistakable evidence of grande dame,--a family
+likeness in feature to Alain himself, a stronger likeness to the picture
+of her first cousin (his mother) which was preserved at Rochebriant. Her
+descent was indeed from ancient and noble houses. But to the distinction
+of race she added that of fashion, crowning both with a tranquil
+consciousness of lofty position and unblemished reputation.
+
+“Unnatural cousin!” she said to Alain, offering her hand to him, with
+a gracious smile,--“all this age in Paris, and I see you for the first
+time. But there is joy on earth as in heaven over sinners who truly
+repent. You repent truly--n’est ce pas?”
+
+It is impossible to describe the caressing charm which the Duchesse
+threw into her words, voice, and look. Alain was fascinated and subdued.
+
+“Ah, Madame la Duchesse,” said he, bowing over the fait hand he lightly
+held, “it was not sin, unless modesty be a sin, which made a rustic
+hesitate long before he dared to offer his homage to the queen of the
+graces.”
+
+“Not badly said for a rustic,” cried Enguerrand; “eh, Madame?”
+
+“My cousin, you are pardoned,” said the Duchesse. “Compliment is the
+perfume of gentilhommerie; and if you brought enough of that perfume
+from the flowers of Rochebriant to distribute among the ladies at
+court, you will be terribly the mode there. Seducer!”--here she gave
+the Marquis a playful tap on the cheek, not in a coquettish but in a
+mother-like familiarity, and looking at him attentively, said: “Why,
+you are even handsomer than your father. I shall be proud to present to
+their Imperial Majesties so becoming a cousin. But seat yourselves here,
+Messieurs, close to my arm-chair, caussons.”
+
+The Duchesse then took up the ball of the conversation. She talked
+without any apparent artifice, but with admirable tact; put just the
+questions about Rochebriant most calculated to please Alain, shunning
+all that might have pained him; asking him for descriptions of the
+surrounding scenery, the Breton legends; hoping that the old castle
+would never be spoiled by modernizing restorations; inquiring tenderly
+after his aunt, whom she had in her childhood once seen, and still
+remembered with her sweet, grave face; paused little for replies; then
+turned to Enguerrand with sprightly small-talk on the topics of the day,
+and every now and then bringing Alain into the pale of the talk, leading
+on insensibly until she got Enguerrand himself to introduce the subject
+of the emperor, and the political troubles which were darkening a reign
+heretofore so prosperous and splendid.
+
+Her countenance then changed; it became serious, and even grave in its
+expression.
+
+“It is true,” she said, “that the times grow menacing, menacing not only
+to the throne, but to order and property and France. One by one they are
+removing all the breakwaters which the empire had constructed between
+the executive and the most fickle and impulsive population that ever
+shouted ‘long live’ one day to the man whom they would send to the
+guillotine the next. They are denouncing what they call personal
+government. Grant that it has its evils; but what would they
+substitute,--a constitutional monarchy like the English? That is
+impossible with universal suffrage and without an hereditary chamber.
+The nearest approach to it was the monarchy of Louis Philippe,--we
+know how sick they became of that. A republic?--mon Dieu! composed of
+Republicans terrified out of their wits at each other. The moderate
+men, mimics of the Girondins, with the Reds and the Socialists and the
+Communists, ready to tear them to pieces. And then--What then?--the
+commercialists, the agriculturists, the middle class combining to elect
+some dictator who will cannonade the mob and become a mimic Napoleon,
+grafted on a mimic Necker or a mimic Danton. Oh, Messieurs, I am French
+to the core. You inheritors of such names must be as French as I am; and
+yet you men insist on remaining more useless to France in the midst of
+her need than I am,--I, a woman who can but talk and weep.”
+
+The Duchesse spoke with a warmth of emotion which startled and
+profoundly affected Alain. He remained silent, leaving it to Enguerrand
+to answer.
+
+“Dear Madame,” said the latter, “I do not see how either myself or our
+kinsman can merit your reproach. We are not legislators. I doubt if
+there is a single department in France that would elect us, if we
+offered ourselves. It is not our fault if the various floods of
+revolution leave men of our birth and opinions stranded wrecks of a
+perished world. The emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are
+bad ones, his Majesty certainly will not ask Alain and me to replace
+them.”
+
+“You do not answer--you evade me,” said the Duchesse; with a mournful
+smile. “You are too skilled a man of the world, Monsieur Enguerrand, not
+to know that it is not only legislators and ministers that are necessary
+to the support of a throne, and the safeguard of a nation. Do you not
+see how great a help it is to both throne and nation when that section
+of public opinion which is represented by names illustrious in history,
+identified with records of chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion, rallies
+round the order established? Let that section of public opinion stand
+aloof, soured and discontented, excluded from active life, lending no
+counter-balance to the perilous oscillations of democratic passion,
+and tell me if it is not an enemy to itself as well as a traitor to the
+principles it embodies?”
+
+“The principles it embodies, Madame,” said Alain, “are those of fidelity
+to a race of kings unjustly set aside, less for the vices than the
+virtues of ancestors. Louis XV. was the worst of the Bourbons,--he was
+the bien aime: he escapes. Louis XVI. was in moral attributes the best
+of the Bourbons,--he dies the death of a felon. Louis XVIII., against
+whom much may be said, restored to the throne by foreign bayonets,
+reigning as a disciple of Voltaire might reign, secretly scoffing alike
+at the royalty and the religion which were crowned in his person, dies
+peacefully in his bed. Charles X., redeeming the errors of his youth
+by a reign untarnished by a vice, by a religion earnest and sincere, is
+sent into exile for defending established order from the very inroads
+which you lament. He leaves an heir against whom calumny cannot invent
+a tale, and that heir remains an outlaw simply because he descends from
+Henry IV., and has a right to reign. Madame, you appeal to us as among
+the representatives of the chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion which
+characterized the old nobility of France. Should we deserve that
+character if we forsook the unfortunate, and gained wealth and honour in
+forsaking?”
+
+“Your words endear you to me. I am proud to call you cousin,” said the
+Duchesse. “But do you, or does any man in his senses believe that if you
+upset the Empire you could get back the Bourbons; that you would not
+be in imminent danger of a Government infinitely more opposed to the
+theories on which rests the creed of Legitimists than that of Louis
+Napoleon? After all, what is there in the loyalty of you Bourbonites
+that has in it the solid worth of an argument which can appeal to the
+comprehension of mankind, except it be the principle of a hereditary
+monarchy? Nobody nowadays can maintain the right divine of a single
+regal family to impose itself upon a nation. That dogma has ceased to be
+a living principle; it is only a dead reminiscence. But the institution
+of monarchy is a principle strong and vital, and appealing to the
+practical interests of vast sections of society. Would you sacrifice
+the principle which concerns the welfare of millions, because you
+cannot embody it in the person of an individual utterly insignificant
+in himself? In a word, if you prefer monarchy to the hazard of
+republicanism for such a country as France, accept the monarchy you
+find, since it is quite clear you cannot rebuild the monarchy you would
+prefer. Does it not embrace all the great objects for which you call
+yourself Legitimist? Under it religion is honoured, a national Church
+secured, in reality if not in name; under it you have united the
+votes of millions to the establishment of the throne; under it all
+the material interests of the country, commercial, agricultural, have
+advanced with an unequalled rapidity of progress; under it Paris has
+become the wonder of the world for riches, for splendour, for grace and
+beauty; under it the old traditional enemies of France have been humbled
+and rendered impotent. The policy of Richelieu has been achieved in the
+abasement of Austria; the policy of Napoleon I. has been consummated
+in the salvation of Europe from the semi-barbarous ambition of Russia.
+England no longer casts her trident in the opposition scale of the
+balance of European power. Satisfied with the honour of our alliance,
+she has lost every other ally; and her forces neglected, her spirit
+enervated, her statesmen dreaming believers in the safety of their
+island, provided they withdraw from the affairs of Europe, may sometimes
+scold us, but will certainly not dare to fight. With France she is but
+an inferior satellite; without France she is--nothing. Add to all this
+a court more brilliant than that of Louis XIV., a sovereign not
+indeed without faults and errors, but singularly mild in his nature,
+warm-hearted to friends, forgiving to foes, whom personally no one could
+familiarly know and not be charmed with a bonte of character, lovable as
+that of Henri IV.,--and tell me what more than all this could you expect
+from the reign of a Bourbon?”
+
+“With such results,” said Alain, “from the monarchy you so eloquently
+praise, I fail to discover what the emperor’s throne could possibly gain
+by a few powerless converts from an unpopular, and you say, no doubt
+truly, from a hopeless cause.”
+
+“I say monarchy gains much by the loyal adhesion of any man of courage,
+ability, and honour. Every new monarchy gains much by conversions from
+the ranks by which the older monarchies were strengthened and adorned.
+But I do not here invoke your aid merely to this monarchy, my cousin;
+I demand your devotion to the interests of France; I demand that you
+should not rest an outlaw from her service. Ah, you think that France is
+in no danger, that you may desert or oppose the Empire as you list, and
+that society will remain safe! You are mistaken. Ask Enguerrand.”
+
+“Madame,” said Enguerrand, “you overrate my political knowledge in that
+appeal; but, honestly speaking, I subscribe to your reasonings. I agree
+with you that the empire sorely needs the support of men of honour; it
+has one cause of rot which now undermines it,--dishonest jobbery in its
+administrative departments; even in that of the army, which apparently
+is so heeded and cared for. I agree with you that France is in danger,
+and may need the swords of all her better sons, whether against the
+foreigner or against her worst enemies,--the mobs of her great towns.
+I myself received a military education, and but for my reluctance to
+separate myself from my father and Raoul, I should be a candidate for
+employments more congenial to me than those of the Bourse and my trade
+in the glove-shop. But Alain is happily free from all family ties, and
+Alain knows that my advice to him is not hostile to your exhortations.”
+
+“I am glad to think he is under so salutary an influence,” said the
+Duchesse; and seeing that Alain remained silent and thoughtful, she
+wisely changed the subject, and shortly afterwards the two friends took
+leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Three days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Lebeau. The letter-writer
+did not show himself at the cafe, and was not to be found at his office,
+the ordinary business of which was transacted by his clerk, saying that
+his master was much engaged on important matters that took him from
+home.
+
+Graham naturally thought that these matters concerned the discovery
+of Louise Duval, and was reconciled to suspense. At the cafe, awaiting
+Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaintance with the ouvrier Armand
+Monnier, whose face and talk had before excited his interest. Indeed,
+the acquaintance had been commenced by the ouvrier, who seated himself
+at a table near to Graham’s, and, after looking at him earnestly for
+some minutes, said, “You are waiting for your antagonist at dominos, M.
+Lebeau,--a very remarkable man.”
+
+“So he seems. I know, however, but little of him. You, perhaps, have
+known him longer?”
+
+“Several months. Many of your countrymen frequent this cafe, but you do
+not seem to care to associate with the blouses.”
+
+“It is not that; but we islanders are shy, and don’t make acquaintance
+with each other readily. By the way, since you so courteously accost me,
+I may take the liberty of saying that I overheard you defend the other
+night, against one of my countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great
+nonsense, the existence of le bon Dieu. You had much the best of it. I
+rather gathered from your argument that you went somewhat further, and
+were not too enlightened to admit of Christianity.”
+
+Armand Monnier looked pleased. He liked praise; and he liked to hear
+himself talk, and he plunged at once into a very complicated sort of
+Christianity,--partly Arian, partly Saint Simonian, with a little of
+Rousseau and a great deal of Armand Monnier. Into this we need not
+follow him; but, in sum, it was a sort of Christianity, the main heads
+of which consisted in the removal of your neighbour’s landmarks, in the
+right of the poor to appropriate the property of the rich, in the right
+of love to dispense with marriage, and the duty of the State to provide
+for any children that might result from such union,--the parents being
+incapacitated to do so, as whatever they might leave was due to the
+treasury in common. Graham listened to these doctrines with melancholy
+not unmixed with contempt. “Are these opinions of yours,” he asked,
+“derived from reading or your own reflection?”
+
+“Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that induced me to
+read and reflect. I am one of the many victims of the tyrannical law of
+marriage. When very young I married a woman who made me miserable, and
+then forsook me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wife; legally, she is.
+I then met with another woman who suits me, who loves me. She lives with
+me; I cannot marry her; she has to submit to humiliations, to be called
+contemptuously an ouvrier’s mistress. Then, though before I was only a
+Republican, I felt there was something wrong in society which needed
+a greater change than that of a merely political government; and then,
+too, when I was all troubled and sore, I chanced to read one of Madame
+de Grantmesnil’s books. A glorious genius that woman’s!”
+
+“She has genius, certainly,” said Graham, with a keen pang at his
+heart,--Madame de Grantmesnil, the dearest friend of Isaura! “But,” he
+added, “though I believe that eloquent author has indirectly assailed
+certain social institutions, including that of marriage, I am perfectly
+persuaded that she never designed to effect such complete overthrow
+of the system which all civilized communities have hitherto held in
+reverence as your doctrines would attempt; and, after all, she but
+expresses her ideas through the medium of fabulous incidents and
+characters. And men of your sense should not look for a creed in the
+fictions of poets and romance-writers.”
+
+“Ah,” said Monnier, “I dare say neither Madame de Grantmesnil nor even
+Rousseau ever even guessed the ideas they awoke in their readers; but
+one idea leads on to another. And genuine poetry and romance touch
+the heart so much more than dry treatises. In a word, Madame de
+Grantmesnil’s book set me thinking; and then I read other books, and
+talked with clever men, and educated myself. And so I became the man I
+am.” Here, with a self-satisfied air, Monnier bowed to the Englishman,
+and joined a group at the other end of the room.
+
+The next evening, just before dusk, Graham Vane was seated musingly in
+his own apartment in the Faubourg Montmartre, when there came a slight
+knock at his door. He was so wrapped in thought that he did not hear
+the sound, though twice repeated. The door opened gently, and M. Lebeau
+appeared on the threshold. The room was lighted only by the gas-lamp
+from the street without.
+
+Lebeau advanced through the gloom, and quietly seated himself in the
+corner of the fireplace opposite to Graham before he spoke. “A thousand
+pardons for disturbing your slumbers, Monsieur Lamb.”
+
+Startled then by the voice so near him, Graham raised his head, looked
+round, and beheld very indistinctly the person seated so near him.
+
+“Monsieur Lebeau?”
+
+“At your service. I promise to give an answer to your question; accept
+my apologies that it has been deferred so long. I shall not this evening
+go to our cafe. I took the liberty of calling--”
+
+“Monsieur Lebeau, you are a brick.”
+
+“A what, Monsieur!--a brique?”
+
+“I forgot; you are not up to our fashionable London idioms. A brick
+means a jolly fellow, and it is very kind in you to call. What is your
+decision?”
+
+“Monsieur, I can give you some information, but it is so slight that
+I offer it gratis, and forego all thought of undertaking further
+inquiries. They could only be prosecuted in another country, and it
+would not be worth my while to leave Paris on the chance of gaining so
+trifling a reward as you propose. Judge for yourself. In the year 1849,
+and in the month of July, Louise Duval left Paris for Aix-la-Chapelle.
+There she remained some weeks, and then left it. I can learn no further
+traces of her movements.”
+
+“Aix-la-Chapelle! What could she do there?”
+
+“It is a Spa in great request; crowded during the summer season with
+visitors from all countries. She might have gone there for health or for
+pleasure.”
+
+“Do you think that one could learn more at the Spa itself if one went
+there?”
+
+“Possibly. But it is so long,--twenty years ago.”
+
+“She might have revisited the place.”
+
+“Certainly; but I know no more.”
+
+“Was she there under the same name,--Duval?”
+
+“I am sure of that.”
+
+“Do you think she left it alone or with others? You tell me she was
+awfully belle; she might have attracted admirers.”
+
+“If,” answered Lebeau, reluctantly, “I could believe the report of my
+informant, Louise Duval left Aix not alone, but with some gallant; not
+an Englishman. They are said to have parted soon, and the man is now
+dead. But, speaking frankly, I do not think Mademoiselle Duval would
+have thus compromised her honour and sacrificed her future. I believe
+she would have scorned all proposals that were not those of marriage.
+But all I can say for certainty is that nothing is known to me of her
+fate since she quitted Aix-la-Chapelle.”
+
+“In 1849? She had then a child living.”
+
+“A child? I never heard that she had any child; and I do not believe she
+could have had any child in 1849.”
+
+Graham mused. Somewhat less than five years after 1849 Louise Duval had
+been seen at Aix-la-Chapelle. Possibly she found some attraction at
+that place, and might yet be discovered there. “Monsieur Lebeau,” said
+Graham, “you know this lady by sight; you would recognize her in spite
+of the lapse of years. Will you go to Aix and find out there what you
+can? Of course, expenses will be paid, and the reward will be given if
+you succeed.”
+
+“I cannot oblige you. My interest in this poor lady is not very strong,
+though I should be willing to serve her, and glad to know that she were
+alive. I have now business on hand which interests me much more, and
+which will take me from Paris, but not in the direction of Aix.”
+
+“If I wrote to my employer, and got him to raise the reward to some
+higher amount, that might make it worth your while?”
+
+“I should still answer that my affairs will not permit such a journey.
+But if there be any chance of tracing Louise Duval at Aix,--and there
+may be,--you would succeed quite as well as I should. You must judge for
+yourself if it be worth your trouble to attempt such a task; and if you
+do attempt it, and do succeed, pray let me know.--A line to my office
+will reach me for some little time, even if I am absent from Paris.
+Adieu, Monsieur Lamb.”
+
+Here M. Lebeau Lose and departed.
+
+Graham relapsed into thought; but a train of thought much more active,
+much more concentred than before. “No,” thus ran his meditations,--“no,
+it would not be safe to employ that man further. The reasons that forbid
+me to offer any very high reward for the discovery of this woman operate
+still more strongly against tendering to her own relation a sum that
+might indeed secure his aid, but would unquestionably arouse his
+suspicions, and perhaps drag into light all that must be concealed.
+Oh, this cruel mission! I am, indeed, an impostor to myself till it be
+fulfilled. I will go to Aix, and take Renard with me. I am impatient
+till I set out, but I cannot quit Paris without once more seeing Isaura.
+She consents to relinquish the stage; surely I could wean her too from
+intimate friendship with a woman whose genius has so fatal an effect
+upon enthusiastic minds. And then--and then?”
+
+He fell into a delightful revery; and contemplating Isaura as his future
+wife, he surrounded her sweet image with all those attributes of
+dignity and respect with which an Englishman is accustomed to invest the
+destined bearer of his name, the gentle sovereign of his household,
+the sacred mother of his children. In this picture the more brilliant
+qualities of Isaura found, perhaps, but faint presentation. Her glow of
+sentiment, her play of fancy, her artistic yearnings for truths remote,
+for the invisible fairyland of beautiful romance, receded into the
+background of the picture. It was all these, no doubt, that had so
+strengthened and enriched the love at first sight, which had shaken the
+equilibrium of his positive existence; and yet he now viewed all these
+as subordinate to the one image of mild decorous matronage into which
+wedlock was to transform the child of genius, longing for angel wings
+and unlimited space.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+On quitting the sorry apartment of the false M. Lamb, Lebeau walked
+on with slow steps and bended head, like a man absorbed in thought.
+He threaded a labyrinth of obscure streets, no longer in the Faubourg
+Montmartre, and dived at last into one of the few courts which preserve
+the cachet of the moyen age untouched by the ruthless spirit of
+improvement which during the second empire has so altered the face of
+Paris. At the bottom of the court stood a large house, much dilapidated,
+but bearing the trace of former grandeur in pilasters and fretwork in
+the style of the Renaissance, and a defaced coat of arms, surmounted
+with a ducal coronet, over the doorway. The house had the aspect of
+desertion: many of the windows were broken; others were jealously closed
+with mouldering shutters. The door stood ajar; Lebeau pushed it open,
+and the action set in movement a bell within a porter’s lodge.
+The house, then, was not uninhabited; it retained the dignity of a
+concierge. A man with a large grizzled beard cut square, and holding a
+journal in his hand, emerged from the lodge, and moved his cap with a
+certain bluff and surly reverence on recognizing Lebeau.
+
+“What! so early, citizen?”
+
+“Is it too early?” said Lebeau, glancing at his watch. “So it is; I
+was not aware of the time. But I am tired with waiting; let me into
+the salon. I will wait for the rest; I shall not be sorry for a little
+repose.”
+
+“Bon,” said the porter, sententiously; “while man reposes men advance.”
+
+“A profound truth, citizen Le Roux; though if they advance on a reposing
+foe, they have blundering leaders unless they march through unguarded
+by-paths and with noiseless tread.”
+
+Following the porter up a dingy broad staircase, Lebeau was admitted
+into a large room, void of all other furniture than a table, two benches
+at its sides, and a fauteuil at its head. On the mantelpiece there was a
+huge clock, and some iron sconces were fixed on the panelled walls.
+
+Lebeau flung himself, with a wearied air, into the fauteuil. The porter
+looked at him with a kindly expression. He had a liking to Lebeau, whom
+he had served in his proper profession of messenger or commissionnaire
+before being placed by that courteous employer in the easy post he
+now held. Lebeau, indeed, had the art, when he pleased, of charming
+inferiors; his knowledge of mankind allowed him to distinguish
+peculiarities in each individual, and flatter the amour propre by
+deference to such eccentricities. Marc le Roux, the roughest of “red
+caps,” had a wife of whom he was very proud. He would have called the
+empress Citoyenne Eugenie, but he always spoke of his wife as Madame.
+Lebeau won his heart by always asking after Madame.
+
+“You look tired, citizen,” said the porter; “let me bring you a glass of
+wine.”
+
+“Thank you, mon ami, no. Perhaps later, if I have time, after we break
+up, to pay my respects to Madame.”
+
+The porter smiled, bowed, and retired muttering, “Nom d’un petit
+bonhomme; il n’y a rien de tel que les belles manieres.”
+
+Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on the table, resting his chin on
+his hand, and gazing into the dim space,--for it was now, indeed, night,
+and little light came through the grimy panes of the one window left
+unclosed by shutters. He was musing deeply. This man was, in much, an
+enigma to himself. Was he seeking to unriddle it? A strange compound
+of contradictory elements. In his stormy youth there had been
+lightning-like flashes of good instincts, of irregular honour, of
+inconsistent generosity,--a puissant wild nature, with strong passions
+of love and of hate, without fear, but not without shame. In other forms
+of society that love of applause which had made him seek and exult in
+the notoriety which he mistook for fame might have settled down into
+some solid and useful ambition. He might have become great in the
+world’s eye, for at the service of his desires there were no ordinary
+talents. Though too true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, on
+the whole, he had acquired much general information, partly from books,
+partly from varied commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both by
+tongue and by pen, of expressing himself with force and warmth; time and
+necessity had improved that gift. Coveting, during his brief career of
+fashion, the distinctions which necessitate lavish expenditure, he had
+been the most reckless of spendthrifts; but the neediness which follows
+waste had never destroyed his original sense of personal honour.
+Certainly Victor de Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to
+whom the thought of accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of
+a woman who loved him could have occurred as a possible question of
+casuistry between honour and temptation. Nor could that sort of question
+have, throughout the sternest trials or the humblest callings to which
+his after-life had been subjected, forced admission into his brain.
+He was one of those men, perhaps the most terrible though unconscious
+criminals, who are the offsprings produced by intellectual power and
+egotistical ambition. If you had offered to Victor de Mauleon the crown
+of the Caesars, on condition of his doing one of those base things
+which “a gentleman” cannot do, pick a pocket, cheat at cards,--Victor
+de Mauleon would have refused the crown. He would not have refused on
+account of any laws of morality affecting the foundations of the
+social system, but from the pride of his own personality. “I, Victor
+de Mauleon! I pick a pocket! I cheat at cards! I!” But when something
+incalculably worse for the interests of society than picking a pocket
+or cheating at cards was concerned; when for the sake either of private
+ambition or political experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very
+doubtful, the peace and order and happiness of millions might be exposed
+to the release of the most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary
+madness or civil massacre, then this French dare-devil would have been
+just as unscrupulous as any English philosopher whom a metropolitan
+borough might elect as its representative. The system of the empire was
+in the way of Victor de Mauleon,--in the way of his private ambition, in
+the way of his political dogmas; and therefore it must be destroyed, no
+matter what nor whom it crushed beneath its ruins. He was one of those
+plotters of revolutions not uncommon in democracies, ancient and modern,
+who invoke popular agencies with the less scruple because they have a
+supreme contempt for the populace. A man with mental powers equal to De
+Mauleon’s, and who sincerely loves the people and respects the grandeur
+of aspiration with which, in the great upheaving of their masses, they
+so often contrast the irrational credulities of their ignorance and
+the blind fury of their wrath, is always exceedingly loath to pass the
+terrible gulf that divides reform from revolution. He knows how rarely
+it happens that genuine liberty is not disarmed in the passage, and what
+sufferings must be undergone by those who live by their labour during
+the dismal intervals between the sudden destruction of one form of
+society and the gradual settlement of another. Such a man, however, has
+no type in a Victor de Mauleon. The circumstances of his life had placed
+this strong nature at war with society, and corrupted into misanthropy
+affections that had once been ardent. That misanthropy made his ambition
+more intense, because it increased his scorn for the human instruments
+it employed.
+
+Victor de Mauleon knew that however innocent of the charges that had so
+long darkened his name, and however--thanks to his rank, his manners,
+his savoir vivre, the aid of Louvier’s countenance and the support of
+his own high-born connections--he might restore himself to his rightful
+grade in private life, the higher prizes in public life would scarcely
+be within reach, to a man of his antecedents and stinted means, in the
+existent form and conditions of established political order. Perforce,
+the aristocrat must make himself democrat if he would become a political
+chief. Could he assist in turning upside down the actual state of
+things, he trusted to his individual force of character to find himself
+among the uppermost in the general bouleversement. And in the first
+stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater darling than
+the noble who deserts his order, though in the second stage it may
+guillotine him at the denunciation of his cobbler. A mind so sanguine
+and so audacious as that of Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second
+step if it sees a way to the first.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The room was in complete darkness, save where a ray from a gas-lamp at
+the mouth of the court came aslant through the window, when citizen Le
+Roux re-entered, closed the window, lighted two of the sconces, and drew
+forth from a drawer in the table implements of writing, which he placed
+thereon noiselessly, as if he feared to disturb M. Lebeau, whose head,
+buried in his hands, rested on the table. He seemed in a profound
+sleep. At last the porter gently touched the arm of the slumberer, and
+whispered in his ear, “It is on the stroke of ten, citizen; they will be
+here in a minute or so.” Lebeau lifted his head drowsily.
+
+“Eh,” said he--“what?”
+
+“You have been asleep.”
+
+“I suppose so, for I have been dreaming. Ha! I hear the door-bell. I am
+wide awake now.”
+
+The porter left him, and in a few minutes conducted into the salon two
+men wrapped in cloaks, despite the warmth of the summer night. Lebeau
+shook hands with them silently, and not less silently they laid aside
+their cloaks and seated themselves. Both these men appeared to belong to
+the upper section of the middle class. One, strongly built, with a
+keen expression of countenance, was a surgeon considered able in his
+profession, but with limited practice, owing to a current suspicion
+against his honour in connection with a forged will. The other, tall,
+meagre, with long grizzled hair and a wild unsettled look about the
+eyes, was a man of science; had written works well esteemed upon
+mathematics and electricity, also against the existence of any other
+creative power than that which he called “nebulosity,” and defined to be
+the combination of heat and moisture. The surgeon was about the age of
+forty, the atheist a few years older. In another minute or so, a knock
+was heard against the wall. One of the men rose and touched a spring
+in the panel, which then flew back, and showed an opening upon a narrow
+stair, by which, one after the other, entered three other members of the
+society. Evidently there was more than one mode of ingress and exit.
+
+The three new-comers were not Frenchmen,--one might see that at a
+glance; probably they had reasons for greater precaution than those who
+entered by the front door. One, a tall, powerfully-built man, with fair
+hair and beard, dressed with a certain pretension to elegance,--faded
+threadbare elegance,--exhibiting no appearance of linen, was a Pole.
+One, a slight bald man, very dark and sallow, was an Italian. The third,
+who seemed like an ouvrier in his holiday clothes, was a Belgian.
+
+Lebeau greeted them all with an equal courtesy, and each with an equal
+silence took his seat at the table.
+
+Lebeau glanced at the clock. “Confreres,” he said, “our number as fixed
+for this seance still needs two to be complete, and doubtless they will
+arrive in a few minutes. Till they come, we can but talk upon trifles.
+Permit me to offer you my cigar-case.” And so saying, he who professed
+to be no smoker handed his next neighbour, who was the Pole, a large
+cigar-case amply furnished; and the Pole, helping himself to two cigars,
+handed the case to the man next him,--two only declining the luxury,
+the Italian and the Belgian. But the Pole was the only man who took two
+cigars.
+
+Steps were now heard on the stairs, the door opened, and citizen Le
+Toux ushered in, one after the other, two men, this time unmistakably
+French,--to an experienced eye unmistakably Parisians: the one, a young
+beardless man, who seemed almost boyish, with a beautiful face, and
+a stinted, meagre frame; the other, a stalwart man of about eight-and
+twenty, dressed partly as an ouvrier, not in his Sunday clothes, rather
+affecting the blouse,--not that he wore that antique garment, but that
+he was in rough costume unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes and
+coarse stockings, and a workman’s cap. But of all who gathered round
+the table at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distinguished
+exterior,--a virile honest exterior, a massive open forehead,
+intelligent eyes, a handsome clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw.
+The expression of the face was stern, but not mean,--an expression which
+might have become an ancient baron as well as a modern workman; in it
+plenty of haughtiness and of will, and still more of self-esteem.
+
+“Confreres,” said Lebeau, rising, and every eye turned to him, “our
+number for the present seance is complete. To business. Since we last
+met, our cause has advanced with rapid and not with noiseless stride. I
+need not tell you that Louis Bonaparte has virtually abnegated Les idees
+Napoleoniennes,--a fatal mistake for him, a glorious advance for us. The
+liberty of the press must very shortly be achieved, and with it personal
+government must end. When the autocrat once is compelled to go by the
+advice of his ministers, look for sudden changes. His ministers will be
+but weathercocks, turned hither and thither according as the wind chops
+at Paris; and Paris is the temple of the winds. The new revolution is
+almost at hand. [Murmurs of applause.] It would move the laughter of the
+Tuileries and its ministers, of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of every
+dainty salon of this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits, if
+they were told that here within this mouldering baraque, eight men, so
+little blessed by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, met
+to concert the fall of an empire. The Government would not deem us
+important enough to notice our existence.”
+
+“I know not that,” interrupted the Pole.
+
+“Ah, pardon,” resumed the orator; “I should have confined my remark
+to the five of us who are French. I did injustice to the illustrious
+antecedents of our foreign allies. I know that you, Thaddeus Loubisky,
+that you, Leonardo Raselli, have been too eminent for hands hostile to
+tyrants not to be marked with a black cross in the books of the police;
+I know that you, Jan Vanderstegen, if hitherto unscarred by those wounds
+in defence of freedom which despots and cowards would fain miscall the
+brands of the felon, still owe it to your special fraternity to
+keep your movements rigidly concealed. The tyrant would suppress the
+International Society, and forbids it the liberty of congress. To
+you three is granted the secret entrance to our council-hall. But we
+Frenchmen are as yet safe in our supposed insignificance. Confreres,
+permit me to impress on you the causes why, insignificant as we seem, we
+are really formidable. In the first place, we are few: the great mistake
+in most secret associations has been to admit many councillors; and
+disunion enters wherever many tongues can wrangle. In the next place,
+though so few in council, we are legion when the time comes for action;
+because we are representative men, each of his own section, and each
+section is capable of an indefinite expansion.
+
+“You, valiant Pole, you, politic Italian, enjoy the confidence of
+thousands now latent in unwatched homes and harmless callings, but who,
+when you lift a finger, will, like the buried dragon’s teeth, spring
+up into armed men. You, Jan Vanderstegen, the trusted delegate from
+Verviers, that swarming camp of wronged labour in its revolt from the
+iniquities of capital,--you, when the hour arrives, can touch the wire
+that flashes the telegram ‘Arise’ through all the lands in which workmen
+combine against their oppressors.
+
+“Of us five Frenchmen, let me speak more modestly. You, sage and
+scholar, Felix Ruvigny, honoured alike for the profundity of your
+science and the probity of your manners, induced to join us by your
+abhorrence of priestcraft and superstition,--you made a wide connection
+among all the enlightened reasoners who would emancipate the mind of
+man from the trammels of Church-born fable, and when the hour arrives in
+which it is safe to say, ‘Delenda est Roma,’ you know where to find the
+pens that are more victorious than swords against a Church and a Creed.
+You” (turning to the surgeon)--“you, Gaspard le Noy, whom a vile calumny
+has robbed of the throne in your profession so justly due to your skill,
+you, nobly scorning the rich and great, have devoted yourself to tend
+and heal the humble and the penniless, so that you have won the popular
+title of the ‘Medecin des Pauvres,’ when the time comes wherein soldiers
+shall fly before the sansculottes, and the mob shall begin the work
+which they who move mobs will complete, the clients of Gaspard le Noy
+will be the avengers of his wrongs.
+
+“You, Armand Monnier, simple ouvrier, but of illustrious parentage, for
+your grandsire was the beloved friend of the virtuous Robespierre, your
+father perished a hero and a martyr in the massacre of the coup d’etat;
+you, cultured in the eloquence of Robespierre himself, and in the
+persuasive philosophy of Robespierre’s teacher, Rousseau; you, the
+idolized orator of the Red Republicans,--you will be indeed a chief of
+dauntless bands when the trumpet sounds for battle. Young publicist and
+poet, Gustave Rameau,--I care not which you are at present, I know what
+you will be soon, you need nothing for the development of your powers
+over the many but an organ for their manifestation. Of that anon. I now
+descend into the bathos of egotism. I am compelled lastly to speak of
+myself. It was at Marseilles and Lyons, as you already know, that I
+first conceived the plan of this representative association. For
+years before I had been in familiar intercourse with the friends of
+freedom,--that is, with the foes of the Empire. They are not all poor;
+some few are rich and generous. I do not say these rich and few concur
+in the ultimate objects of the poor and many; ‘but they concur in the
+first object, the demolition of that which exists,--the Empire. In the
+course of my special calling of negotiator or agent in the towns of the
+Midi, I formed friendships with some of these prosperous malcontents;
+and out of these friendships I conceived the idea which is embodied in
+this council.
+
+“According to that conception, while the council may communicate as it
+will with all societies, secret or open, having revolution for their
+object, the council refuses to merge itself in any other confederation;
+it stands aloof and independent; it declines to admit into its code
+any special articles of faith in a future beyond the bounds to which
+it limits its design and its force. That design unites us; to go beyond
+would divide. We all agree to destroy the Napoleonic dynasty; none of
+us might agree as to what we should place in its stead. All of us here
+present might say, ‘A republic.’ Ay, but of what kind? Vanderstegen
+would have it socialistic; Monnier goes further, and would have it
+communistic, on the principles of Fourier; Le Noy adheres to the policy
+of Danton, and would commence the republic by a reign of terror; our
+Italian ally abhors the notion of general massacre, and advocates
+individual assassination. Ruvigny would annihilate the worship of a
+Deity; Monnier holds with Voltaire and Robespierre, that, ‘if there were
+no Deity, it would be necessary to man to create one.’ Bref, we could
+not agree upon any plan for the new edifice, and therefore we refuse to
+discuss one till the ploughshare has gone over the ruins of the old.
+But I have another and more practical reason for keeping our council
+distinct from all societies with professed objects beyond that of
+demolition. We need a certain command of money. It is I who bring to you
+that, and--how? Not from my own resources,--they but suffice to support
+myself; not by contributions from ouvriers who, as you well know,
+will subscribe only for their own ends in the victory of workmen over
+masters. I bring money to you from the coffers of the rich malcontents.
+Their politics are not those of most present; their politics are what
+they term moderate. Some are indeed for a republic, but for a republic
+strong in defence of order, in support of property; others--and they are
+more numerous and the more rich--for a constitutional monarchy, and, if
+possible, for the abridgment of universal suffrage, which in their eyes
+tends only to anarchy in the towns and arbitrary rule under priestly
+influence in the rural districts. They would not subscribe a sou if they
+thought it went to further the designs whether of Ruvigny the atheist,
+or of Monnier, who would enlist the Deity of Rousseau on the side of
+the drapeau rouge; not a sou if they knew I had the honour to boast such
+confreres as I see around me. They subscribe, as we concert, for the
+fall of Bonaparte. The policy I adopt I borrow from the policy of the
+English Liberals. In England, potent millionnaires, high-born dukes,
+devoted Churchmen, belonging to the Liberal party, accept the services
+of men who look forward to measures which would ruin capital, eradicate
+aristocracy, and destroy the Church, provided these men combine with
+them in some immediate step onward against the Tories. They have a
+proverb which I thus adapt to French localities: if a train passes
+Fontainebleau on its way to Marseilles, why should I not take it to
+Fontainebleau because other passengers are going on to Marseilles?
+
+“Confreres, it seems to me the moment has come when we may venture some
+of the fund placed at my disposal to other purposes than those to which
+it has been hitherto devoted. I propose, therefore, to set up a journal
+under the auspices of Gustave Rameau as editor-in-chief,--a journal
+which, if he listen to my advice, will create no small sensation.
+It will begin with a tone of impartiality; it will refrain from all
+violence of invective; it will have wit, it will have sentiment, and
+eloquence; it will win its way into the salons and cafes of educated
+men; and then, and then, when it does change from polished satire into
+fierce denunciation and sides with the blouses, its effect will be
+startling and terrific. Of this I will say more to citizen Rameau in
+private. To you I need not enlarge upon the fact that, at Paris, a
+combination of men, though immeasurably superior to us in status or
+influence, without a journal at command is nowhere; with such a journal,
+written not to alarm but to seduce fluctuating opinions, a combination
+of men immeasurably inferior to us may be anywhere.
+
+“Confreres, this affair settled, I proceed to distribute amongst you
+sums of which each who receives will render me an account, except our
+valued confrere the Pole. All that we can subscribe to the cause of
+humanity a representative of Poland requires for himself.” (A suppressed
+laugh among all but the Pole, who looked round with a grave, imposing
+air, as much as to say, “What is there to laugh at?--a simple truth.”)
+
+M. Lebeau then presented to each of his confreres a sealed envelope,
+containing no doubt a bank-note, and perhaps also private instructions
+as to its disposal. It was one of his rules to make the amount of any
+sum granted to an individual member of the society from the fund at his
+disposal a confidential secret between himself and the recipient.
+Thus jealousy was avoided if the sums were unequal; and unequal they
+generally were. In the present instance the two largest sums were given
+to the “Medecin des Pauvres” and to the delegate from Verviers. Both
+were no doubt to be distributed among “the poor,” at the discretion of
+the trustee appointed.
+
+Whatever rules with regard to the distribution of money M. Lebeau
+laid down were acquiesced in without demur, for the money was found
+exclusively by himself, and furnished without the pale of the Secret
+Council, of which he had made himself founder and dictator. Some other
+business was then discussed, sealed reports from each member were handed
+to the president, who placed them unopened in his pocket, and resumed,
+“Confreres, our seance is now concluded. The period for our next meeting
+must remain indefinite, for I myself shall leave Paris as soon as I
+have set on foot the journal, on the details of which I will confer with
+citizen Rameau. I am not satisfied with the progress made by the two
+travelling missionaries who complete our Council of Ten; and though I do
+not question their zeal, I think my experience may guide it if I take a
+journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Marseilles, where they now are. But
+should circumstances demanding concert or action arise, you may be sure
+that I will either summon a meeting or transmit instructions to such
+of our members as may be most usefully employed. For the present,
+confreres, you are relieved. Remain only you, dear young author.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council
+remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no
+longer moody and overcast,--his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph;
+there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him
+curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable,
+excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,--especially when it
+nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a
+secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which
+this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for
+impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian
+Rock than to the Capitol, while yet those crazed combinations might,
+in some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of
+practical ambition. Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions
+in his intoxicated vision,--vision indeed intoxicated at this moment,
+for before it floated the realized image of his aspirations,--a journal
+of which he was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his
+prose, should occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his
+name, hitherto scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound
+in salon and club and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of
+fashion. And he owed this to the man seated there,--a prodigious man.
+
+“Cher poete,” said Lebeau, breaking silence, “it gives me no mean
+pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him
+for those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity
+shall read. Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made
+celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to
+inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All
+confirmed my first impression,--that you were exactly the writer I
+wish to secure to our cause. I therefore sought you in your rooms,
+unintroduced and a stranger, in order to express my admiration of your
+compositions. Bref, we soon became friends; and after comparing minds,
+I admitted you, at your request, into this Secret Council. Now, in
+proposing to you the conduct of the journal I would establish, for
+which I am prepared to find all necessary funds, I am compelled to
+make imperative conditions. Nominally you will be editor-in-chief: that
+station, if the journal succeeds, will secure you position and fortune;
+if it fail, you fail with it. But we will not speak of failure; I must
+have it succeed. Our interest, then, is the same. Before that
+interest all puerile vanities fade away. Nominally, I say, you are
+editor-in-chief; but all the real work of editing will, at first, be
+done by others.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Rameau, aghast and stunned. Lebeau resumed,
+
+“To establish the journal I propose needs more than the genius of youth;
+it needs the tact and experience of mature years.”
+
+Rameau sank back on his chair with a sullen sneer on his pale lips.
+Decidedly Lebeau was not so great a man as he had thought.
+
+“A certain portion of the journal,” continued Lebeau, “will be
+exclusively appropriated to your pen.”
+
+Rameau’s lip lost the sneer.
+
+“But your pen must be therein restricted to compositions of pure fancy,
+disporting in a world that does not exist; or, if on graver themes
+connected with the beings of the world that does exist, the subjects
+will be dictated to you and revised. Yet even in the higher departments
+of a journal intended to make way at its first start, we need the aid,
+not indeed of men who write better than you, but of men whose fame is
+established,--whose writings, good or bad, the public run to read, and
+will find good even if they are bad. You must consign one column to the
+playful comments and witticisms of Savarin.”
+
+“Savarin? But he has a journal of his own. He will not, as an author,
+condescend to write in one just set up by me; and as a politician, he as
+certainly will not aid in an ultrademocratic revolution. If he care for
+politics at all, he is a constitutionalist, an Orleanist.”
+
+“Enfant! as an author Savarin will condescend to contribute to your
+journal, first, because it in no way attempts to interfere with his own;
+secondly,--I can tell you a secret, Savarin’s journal no longer suffices
+for his existence. He has sold more than two-thirds of its property;
+he is in debt, and his creditor is urgent; and to-morrow you will offer
+Savarin thirty thousand francs for one column from his pen, and signed
+by his name, for two months from the day the journal starts. He will
+accept, partly because the sum will clear off the debt that hampers him,
+partly because he will take care that the amount becomes known; and
+that will help him to command higher terms for the sale of the remaining
+shares in the journal he now edits, for the new book which you told me
+he intended to write, and for the new journal which he will be sure to
+set up as soon as he has disposed of the old one. You say that, as a
+politician, Savarin, an Orleanist, will not aid in an ultra-democratic
+revolution. Who asks him to do so? Did I not imply at the meeting that
+we commence our journal with politics the mildest? Though revolutions
+are not made with rose-water, it is rose-water that nourishes their
+roots. The polite cynicism of authors, read by those who float on the
+surface of society, prepares the way for the social ferment in its
+deeps. Had there been no Voltaire, there would have been no Camille
+Desmoulins; had there been no Diderot, there would have been no Marat.
+We start as polite cynics. Of all cynics Savarin is the politest. But
+when I bid high for him, it is his clique that I bid for. Without his
+clique he is but a wit; with his clique, a power. Partly out of that
+clique, partly out of a circle beyond it, which Savarin can more or less
+influence, I select ten. Here is the list of them; study it. Entre nous,
+I esteem their writings as little as I do artificial flies; but they are
+the artificial flies at which, in this particular season of the year,
+the public rise. You must procure at least five of the ten; and I leave
+you carte blanche as to the terms. Savarin gained, the best of them will
+be proud of being his associates. Observe, none of these messieurs of
+brilliant imagination are to write political articles; those will be
+furnished to you anonymously, and inserted without erasure or omission.
+When you have secured Savarin, and five at least of the collaborateurs
+in the list, write to me at my office. I give you four days to do this;
+and the day the journal starts you enter into the income of fifteen
+thousand francs a year, with a rise in salary proportioned to profits.
+Are you contented with the terms?”
+
+“Of course I am; but supposing I do not gain the aid of Savarin, or five
+at least of the list you give, which I see at a glance contains names
+the most a la mode in this kind of writing, more than one of them of
+high social rank, whom it is difficult for me even to approach,--if, I
+say, I fail?”
+
+“What! with a carte blanche of terms? fie! Are you a Parisian? Well, to
+answer you frankly, if you fail in so easy a task, you are not the man
+to edit our journal, and I shall find another. Allez, courage! Take my
+advice; see Savarin the first thing to-morrow morning. Of course, my
+name and calling you will keep a profound secret from him, as from all.
+Say as mysteriously as you can that parties you are forbidden to name
+instruct you to treat with M. Savarin, and offer him the terms I have
+specified, the thirty thousand francs paid to him in advance the moment
+he signs the simple memorandum of agreement. The more mysterious you
+are, the more you will impose,--that is, wherever you offer money and
+don’t ask for it.”
+
+Here Lebeau took up his hat, and, with a courteous nod of adieu, lightly
+descended the gloomy stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+At night, after this final interview with Lebeau, Graham took leave for
+good of his lodgings in Montmartre, and returned to his apartment in
+the Rue d’Anjou. He spent several hours of the next morning in answering
+numerous letters accumulated during his absence. Late in the afternoon
+he had an interview with M. Renard, who, as at that season of the year
+he was not over-busied with other affairs, engaged to obtain leave to
+place his services at Graham’s command during the time requisite for
+inquiries at Aix, and to be in readiness to start the next day. Graham
+then went forth to pay one or two farewell visits; and these over,
+bent his way through the Champs Elysees towards Isaura’s villa, when he
+suddenly encountered Rochebriant on horseback. The Marquis courteously
+dismounted, committing his horse to the care of the groom, and linking
+his arm in Graham’s, expressed his pleasure at seeing him again;
+then, with some visible hesitation and embarrassment, he turned the
+conversation towards the political aspects of France.
+
+“There was,” he said, “much in certain words of yours, when we last
+walked together in this very path, that sank deeply into my mind at the
+time, and over which I have of late still more earnestly reflected. You
+spoke of the duties a Frenchman owed to France, and the ‘impolicy’ of
+remaining aloof from all public employment on the part of those attached
+to the Legitimist cause.”
+
+“True; it cannot be the policy of any party to forget that between the
+irrevocable past and the uncertain future there intervenes the action of
+the present time.”
+
+“Should you, as an impartial bystander, consider it dishonourable in me
+if I entered the military service under the ruling sovereign?”
+
+“Certainly not, if your country needed you.”
+
+“And it may, may it not? I hear vague rumours of coming war in almost
+every salon I frequent. There has been gunpowder in the atmosphere
+we breathe ever since the battle of Sadowa. What think you of German
+arrogance and ambition? Will they suffer the swords of France to rust in
+their scabbards?”
+
+“My dear Marquis, I should incline to put the question otherwise. Will
+the jealous amour propre of France permit the swords of Germany to
+remain sheathed? But in either case, no politician can see without grave
+apprehension two nations so warlike, close to each other, divided by a
+borderland that one covets and the other will not yield, each armed
+to the teeth,--the one resolved to brook no rival, the other equally
+determined to resist all aggression. And therefore, as you say, war is
+in the atmosphere; and we may also hear, in the clouds that give no sign
+of dispersion, the growl of the gathering thunder. War may come any day;
+and if France be not at once the victor--”
+
+“France not at once the victor?” interrupted Alain, passionately; “and
+against a Prussian! Permit me to say no Frenchman can believe that.”
+
+“Let no man despise a foe,” said Graham, smiling half sadly. “However, I
+must not incur the danger of wounding your national susceptibilities. To
+return to the point you raise. If France needed the aid of her best
+and bravest, a true descendant of Henri Quatre ought to blush for his
+ancient noblesse were a Rochebriant to say, ‘But I don’t like the colour
+of the flag.’”
+
+“Thank you,” said Alain, simply; “that is enough.” There was a pause,
+the young men walking on slowly, arm in arm. And then there flashed
+across Graham’s mind the recollection of talk on another subject in that
+very path. Here he had spoken to Alain in deprecation of any possible
+alliance with Isaura Cicogna, the destined actress and public; singer.
+His cheek flushed; his heart smote him. What! had he spoken slightingly
+of her--of her? What if she became his own wife? What! had he himself
+failed in the respect which he would demand as her right from the
+loftiest of his high-born kindred? What, too, would this man, of fairer
+youth than himself, think of that disparaging counsel, when he heard
+that the monitor had won the prize from which he had warned another?
+Would it not seem that he had but spoken in the mean cunning dictated by
+the fear of a worthier rival? Stung by these thoughts, he arrested his
+steps, and, looking the Marquis full in the face, said, “You remind me
+of one subject in our talk many weeks since; it is my duty to remind
+you of another. At that time you, and, speaking frankly, I myself,
+acknowledged the charm in the face of a young Italian lady. I told you
+then that, on learning she was intended for the stage, the charm for me
+had vanished. I said bluntly that it should vanish perhaps still more
+utterly for a noble of your illustrious name; you remember?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Alain, hesitatingly, and with a look of surprise.
+
+“I wish now to retract all I said thereon. Mademoiselle Cicogna is not
+bent on the profession for which she was educated. She would willingly
+renounce all idea of entering it. The only counterweight which, viewed
+whether by my reason or my prejudices, could be placed in the opposite
+scale to that of the excellences which might make any man proud to win
+her, is withdrawn. I have become acquainted with her since the date of
+our conversation. Hers is a mind which harmonizes with the loveliness of
+her face. In one word, Marquis, I should deem myself honoured, as well
+as blest, by such a bride. It was due to her that I should say this; it
+was due also to you, in case you should retain the impression I sought
+in ignorance to efface. And I am bound, as a gentleman, to obey this
+twofold duty, even though in so doing I bring upon myself the affliction
+of a candidate for the hand to which I would fain myself aspire,--a
+candidate with pretensions in every way far superior to my own.”
+
+An older or a more cynical man than Alain de Rochebriant might well have
+found something suspicious in a confession thus singularly volunteered;
+but the Marquis was himself so loyal that he had no doubt of the loyalty
+of Graham.
+
+“I reply to you,” he said, “with a frankness which finds an example in
+your own. The first fair face which attracted my fancy since my arrival
+at Paris was that of the Italian demoiselle of whom you speak in terms
+of such respect. I do think if I had then been thrown into her society,
+and found her to be such as you no doubt truthfully describe, that
+fancy might have become a very grave emotion. I was then so poor, so
+friendless, so despondent! Your words of warning impressed me at the
+time, but less durably than you might suppose; for that very night as I
+sat in my solitary attic I said to myself, ‘Why should I shrink, with an
+obsolete old-world prejudice, from what my forefathers would have termed
+a mesalliance? What is the value of my birthright now? None,--worse than
+none. It excludes me from all careers; my name is but a load that
+weighs me down. Why should I make that name a curse as well as a burden?
+Nothing is left to me but that which is permitted to all men,--wedded
+and holy love. Could I win to my heart the smile of a woman who brings
+me that dower, the home of my fathers would lose its gloom.’ And
+therefore, if at that time I had become familiarly acquainted with her
+who had thus attracted my eye and engaged my thoughts, she might have
+become my destiny; but now!”
+
+“But now?”
+
+“Things have changed. I am no longer poor, friendless, solitary. I have
+entered the world of my equals as a Rochebriant; I have made myself
+responsible for the dignity of my name. I could not give that name to
+one, however peerless in herself, of whom the world would say, ‘But
+for her marriage she would have been a singer on the stage!’ I will own
+more: the fancy I conceived for the first fair face, other fair faces
+have dispelled. At this moment, however, I have no thought of marriage;
+and having known the anguish of struggle, the privations of poverty, I
+would ask no woman to share the hazard of my return to them. You might
+present me, then, safely to this beautiful Italian,--certain, indeed,
+that I should be her admirer; equally certain that I could not become
+your rival.”
+
+There was something in this speech that jarred upon Graham’s sensitive
+pride; but on the whole, he felt relieved, both in honour and in heart.
+After a few more words, the two young men shook hands and parted. Alain
+remounted his horse. The day was now declining. Graham hailed a vacant
+fiacre, and directed the driver to Isaura’s villa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ISAURA.
+
+The sun was sinking slowly as Isaura sat at her window, gazing dreamily
+on the rose-hued clouds that made the western borderland between earth
+and heaven. On the table before her lay a few sheets of manuscript
+hastily written, not yet reperused. That restless mind of hers had left
+its trace on the manuscript.
+
+It is characteristic perhaps of the different genius of the sexes, that
+woman takes to written composition more impulsively, more intuitively,
+than man,--letter-writing, to him a task-work, is to her a recreation.
+Between the age of sixteen and the date of marriage, six well-educated
+clever girls out of ten keep a journal; not one well-educated man in ten
+thousand does. So, without serious and settled intention of becoming an
+author, how naturally a girl of ardent feeling and vivid fancy seeks
+in poetry or romance a confessional,--an outpouring of thought and
+sentiment, which are mysteries to herself till she has given them words,
+and which, frankly revealed on the page, she would not, perhaps could
+not, utter orally to a living ear.
+
+During the last few days, the desire to create in the realm of fable
+beings constructed by her own breath, spiritualized by her own soul, had
+grown irresistibly upon this fair child of song. In fact, when
+Graham’s words had decided the renunciation of her destined career, her
+instinctive yearnings for the utterance of those sentiments or thoughts
+which can only find expression in some form of art, denied the one vent,
+irresistibly impelled her to the other. And in this impulse she was
+confirmed by the thought that here at least there was nothing which
+her English friend could disapprove,--none of the perils that beset the
+actress. Here it seemed as if, could she but succeed, her fame would be
+grateful to the pride of all who loved her. Here was a career ennobled
+by many a woman, and side by side in rivalry with renowned men. To her
+it seemed that, could she in this achieve an honoured name, that name
+took its place at once amid the higher ranks of the social world, and
+in itself brought a priceless dowry and a starry crown. It was, however,
+not till after the visit to Enghien that this ambition took practical
+life and form. One evening after her return to Paris, by an effort
+so involuntary that it seemed to her no effort, she had commenced a
+tale,--without plan, without method, without knowing in one page what
+would fill the next. Her slight fingers hurried on as if, like the
+pretended spirit manifestations, impelled by an invisible agency without
+the pale of the world. She was intoxicated by the mere joy of inventing
+ideal images. In her own special art an elaborate artist, here she had
+no thought of art; if art was in her work, it sprang unconsciously from
+the harmony between herself and her subject,--as it is, perhaps, with
+the early soarings of the genuine lyric poets, in contrast to the
+dramatic. For the true lyric poet is intensely personal, intensely
+subjective. It is himself that he expresses, that he represents; and he
+almost ceases to be lyrical when he seeks to go out of his own existence
+into that of others with whom he has no sympathy, no rapport. This
+tale was vivid with genius as yet untutored,--genius in its morning
+freshness, full of beauties, full of faults. Isaura distinguished not
+the faults from the beauties. She felt only a vague persuasion that
+there was a something higher and brighter--a something more true to her
+own idiosyncrasy--than could be achieved by the art that “sings other
+people’s words to other people’s music.” From the work thus commenced
+she had now paused; and it seemed to her fancies that between her inner
+self and the scene without, whether in the skies and air and sunset, or
+in the abodes of men stretching far and near till lost amid the roofs
+and domes of the great city, she had fixed and riveted the link of a
+sympathy hitherto fluctuating, unsubstantial, evanescent, undefined.
+Absorbed in her revery, she did not notice the deepening of the short
+twilight, till the servant entering drew the curtains between her and
+the world without, and placed the lamp on the table beside her. Then she
+turned away with a restless sigh; her eyes fell on the manuscript, but
+the charm of it was gone. A sentiment of distrust in its worth had crept
+into her thoughts, unconsciously to herself, and the page open before
+her at an uncompleted sentence seemed unwelcome and wearisome as a
+copy-book is to a child condemned to relinquish a fairy tale half told,
+and apply himself to a task half done. She fell again into a revery,
+when, starting as from a dream, she heard herself addressed by name, and
+turning round saw Savarin and Gustave Rameau in the room.
+
+“We are come, Signorina,” said Savarin, “to announce to you a piece of
+news, and to hazard a petition. The news is this: my young friend
+here has found a Maecenas who has the good taste so to admire his
+lucubrations under the nom de plume of Alphonse de Valcour as to
+volunteer the expenses for starting a new journal, of which Gustave
+Rameau is to be editor-in-chief; and I have promised to assist him
+as contributor for the first two months. I have given him notes of
+introduction to certain other feuilletonistes and critics whom he has on
+his list. But all put together would not serve to float the journal like
+a short roman from Madame de Grantmesnil. Knowing your intimacy with
+that eminent artist, I venture to back Rameau’s supplication that you
+would exert your influence on his, behalf. As to the honoraires, she has
+but to name them.”
+
+“Carte blanche,” cried Rameau, eagerly.
+
+“You know Eulalie too well, Monsieur Savarin,” answered Isaura, with a
+smile half reproachful, “to suppose that she is a mercenary in letters,
+and sells her services to the best bidder.”
+
+“Bah, belle enfant!” said Savarin, with his gay light laugh. “Business
+is business, and books as well as razors are made to sell. But, of
+course, a proper prospectus of the journal must accompany your request
+to write in it. Meanwhile Rameau will explain to you, as he has done
+to me, that the journal in question is designed for circulation among
+readers of haute classe it is to be pleasant and airy, full of bons mots
+and anecdote; witty, but not ill-natured. Politics to be Liberal, of
+course, but of elegant admixture,--champagne and seltzer-water. In
+fact, however, I suspect that the politics will be a very inconsiderable
+feature in this organ of fine arts and manners; some amateur scribbler
+in the beau monde will supply them. For the rest, if my introductory
+letters are successful, Madame de Grantmesnil will not be in bad
+company.”
+
+“You will write to Madame de Grantmesnil?” asked Rameau, pleadingly.
+
+“Certainly I will, as soon--”
+
+“As soon as you have the prospectus, and the names of the
+collaborateurs,” interrupted Rameau. “I hope to send you these in a very
+few days.”
+
+While Rameau was thus speaking, Savarin had seated himself by the table,
+and his eye mechanically resting on the open manuscript lighted by
+chance upon a sentence--an aphorism--embodying a very delicate sentiment
+in very felicitous diction,--one of those choice condensations of
+thought, suggesting so much more than is said, which are never found in
+mediocre writers, and, rare even in the best, come upon us like truths
+seized by surprise.
+
+“Parbleu!” exclaimed Savarin, in the impulse of genuine admiration, “but
+this is beautiful; what is more, it is original,”--and he read the words
+aloud. Blushing with shame and resentment, Isaura turned and hastily
+placed her hand on the manuscript.
+
+“Pardon,” said Savarin, humbly; “I confess my sin, but it was so
+unpremeditated that it does not merit a severe penance. Do not look
+at me so reproachfully. We all know that young ladies keep commonplace
+books in which they enter passages that strike them in the works they
+read; and you have but shown an exquisite taste in selecting this gem.
+Do tell me where you found it. Is it somewhere in Lamartine?”
+
+“No,” answered Isaura, half inaudibly, and with an effort to withdraw
+the paper. Savarin gently detained her hand, and looking earnestly into
+her tell-tale face, divined her secret.
+
+“It is your own, Signorina! Accept the congratulations of a very
+practised and somewhat fastidious critic. If the rest of what you write
+resembles this sentence, contribute to Rameau’s journal, and I answer
+for its success.”
+
+Rameau approached, half incredulous, half envious.
+
+“My dear child,” resumed Savarin, drawing away the manuscript from
+Isaura’s coy, reluctant clasp, “do permit me to cast a glance over these
+papers. For what I yet know, there may be here more promise of fame than
+even you could gain as a singer.”
+
+The electric chord in Isaura’s heart was touched. Who cannot conceive
+what the young writer feels, especially the young woman-writer, when
+hearing the first cheery note of praise from the lips of a writer of
+established fame?
+
+“Nay, this cannot be worth your reading,” said Isaura, falteringly; “I
+have never written anything of the kind before, and this is a riddle to
+me. I know not,” she added, with a sweet low laugh, “why I began, nor
+how I should end it.”
+
+“So much the better,” said Savarin; and he took the manuscript, withdrew
+to a recess by the farther window, and seated himself there, reading
+silently and quickly, but now and then with a brief pause of reflection.
+
+Rameau placed himself beside Isaura on the divan, and began talking with
+her earnestly,--earnestly, for it was about himself and his aspiring
+hopes. Isaura, on the other hand, more woman-like than author-like,
+ashamed even to seem absorbed in herself and her hopes, and with her
+back turned, in the instinct of that shame, against the reader of her
+manuscript,--Isaura listened and sought to interest herself solely in
+the young fellow-author. Seeking to do so she succeeded genuinely, for
+ready sympathy was a prevalent characteristic of her nature.
+
+“Oh,” said Rameau, “I am at the turning-point of my life. Ever since
+boyhood I have been haunted with the words of Andre Chenier on the
+morning he was led to the scaffold ‘And yet there was something here,’
+striking his forehead. Yes, I, poor, low-born, launching myself headlong
+in the chase of a name; I, underrated, uncomprehended, indebted even for
+a hearing to the patronage of an amiable trifler like Savarin, ranked
+by petty rivals in a grade below themselves,--I now see before me,
+suddenly, abruptly presented, the expanding gates into fame and fortune.
+Assist me, you!”
+
+“But how?” said Isaura, already forgetting her manuscript; and certainly
+Rameau did not refer to that.
+
+“How!” echoed Rameau; “how! But do you not see--or at least, do you not
+conjecture--this journal of which Savarin speaks contains my present and
+my future? Present independence, opening to fortune and renown. Ay,--and
+who shall say? renown beyond that of the mere writer. Behind the gaudy
+scaffolding of this rickety Empire, a new social edifice unperceived
+arises; and in that edifice the halls of State shall be given to the men
+who help obscurely to build it,--to men like me.” Here, drawing her
+hand into his own, fixing on her the most imploring gaze of his dark
+persuasive eyes, and utterly unconscious of bathos in his adjuration, he
+added: “Plead for me with your whole mind and heart; use your uttermost
+influence with the illustrious writer whose pen can assure the fates of
+my journal.”
+
+Here the door suddenly opened, and following the servant, who announced
+unintelligibly his name, there entered Graham Vane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The Englishman halted at the threshold. His eye, passing rapidly over
+the figure of Savarin reading in the window-niche, rested upon Rameau
+and Isaura seated on the same divan, he with her hand clasped in both
+his own, and bending his face towards hers so closely that a loose tress
+of her hair seemed to touch his forehead.
+
+The Englishman halted, and no revolution which changes the habitudes and
+forms of States was ever so sudden as that which passed without a word
+in the depths of his unconjectured heart. The heart has no history
+which philosophers can recognize. An ordinary political observer,
+contemplating the condition of a nation, may very safely tell us what
+effects must follow the causes patent to his eyes; but the wisest and
+most far-seeing sage, looking at a man at one o’clock, cannot tell us
+what revulsions of his whole being may be made ere the clock strike two.
+
+As Isaura rose to greet her visitor, Savarin came from the window-niche,
+the manuscript in his hand.
+
+“Son of perfidious Albion,” said Savarin, gayly, “we feared you had
+deserted the French alliance. Welcome back to Paris, and the entente
+cordiale.”
+
+“Would I could stay to enjoy such welcome! but I must again quit Paris.”
+
+“Soon to return, n’est ce pas? Paris is an irresistible magnet to les
+beaux esprits. A propos of beaux esprits, be sure to leave orders with
+your bookseller, if you have one, to enter your name as subscriber to a
+new journal.”
+
+“Certainly, if Monsieur Savarin recommends it.”
+
+“He recommends it as a matter of course; he writes in it,” said Rameau.
+
+“A sufficient guarantee for its excellence. What is the name of the
+journal?”
+
+“Not yet thought of,” answered Savarin. “Babes must be born before they
+are christened; but it will be instruction enough to your bookseller to
+order the new journal to be edited by Gustave Rameau.”
+
+Bowing ceremoniously to the editor in prospect, Graham said, half
+ironically, “May I hope that in the department of criticism you will not
+be too hard upon poor Tasso?”
+
+“Never fear; the Signorina, who adores Tasso, will take him under her
+special protection,” said Savarin, interrupting Rameau’s sullen and
+embarrassed reply.
+
+Graham’s brow slightly contracted. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “is then to
+be united in the conduct of this journal with M. Gustave Rameau?”
+
+“No, indeed!” exclaimed Isaura, somewhat frightened at the idea.
+
+“But I hope,” said Savarin, “that the Signorina may become a contributor
+too important for an editor to offend by insulting her favourites, Tasso
+included. Rameau and I came hither to entreat her influence with her
+intimate and illustrious friend, Madame de Grantmesnil, to insure the
+success of our undertaking by sanctioning the announcement of her name
+as a contributor.”
+
+“Upon social questions,--such as the laws of marriage?” said Graham,
+with a sarcastic smile, which concealed the quiver of his lip and the
+pain in his voice.
+
+“Nay,” answered Savarin, “our journal will be too sportive, I hope, for
+matters so profound. We would rather have Madame de Grantmesnil’s aid
+in some short roman, which will charm the fancy of all and offend the
+opinions of none. But since I came into the room, I care less for
+the Signorina’s influence with the great authoress,” and he glanced
+significantly at the manuscript.
+
+“How so?” asked Graham, his eye following the glance.
+
+“If the writer of this manuscript will conclude what she has begun, we
+shall be independent of Madame de Grantmesnil.”
+
+“Fie!” cried Isaura, impulsively, her face and neck bathed in
+blushes,--“fie! such words are a mockery.”
+
+Graham gazed at her intently, and then turned his eyes on Savarin. He
+guessed aright the truth. “Mademoiselle then is an author? In the style
+of her friend Madame de Grantmesnil?”
+
+“Bah!” said Savarin, “I should indeed be guilty of mockery if I paid
+the Signorina so false a compliment as to say that in a first effort she
+attained to the style of one of the most finished sovereigns of language
+that has ever swayed the literature of France. When I say, ‘Give us this
+tale completed, and I shall be consoled if the journal does not gain the
+aid of Madame de Grantmesnil,’ I mean that in these pages there is
+that nameless charm of freshness and novelty which compensates for many
+faults never committed by a practised pen like Madame de Grantmesnil’s.
+My dear young lady, go on with this story,--finish it; when finished, do
+not disdain any suggestions I may offer in the way of correction,--and I
+will venture to predict to you so brilliant a career as author, that you
+will not regret should you resign for that career the bravoes you could
+command as actress and singer.”
+
+The Englishman pressed his hand convulsively to his heart, as if smitten
+by a sudden spasm. But as his eyes rested on Isaura’s face, which had
+become radiant with the enthusiastic delight of genius when the path it
+would select opens before it as if by a flash from heaven, whatever of
+jealous irritation, whatever of selfish pain he might before have felt;
+was gone, merged in a sentiment of unutterable sadness and compassion.
+Practical man as he was, he knew so well all the dangers, all the
+snares, all the sorrows, all the scandals menacing name and fame, that
+in the world of Paris must beset the fatherless girl who, not less
+in authorship than on the stage, leaves the safeguard of private life
+forever behind her, who becomes a prey to the tongues of the public.
+At Paris, how slender is the line that divides the authoress from the
+Bohemienne! He sank into his chair silently, and passed his hand over
+his eyes, as if to shut out a vision of the future.
+
+Isaura in her excitement did not notice the effect on her English
+visitor. She could not have divined such an effect as possible. On the
+contrary, even subordinate to her joy at the thought that she had not
+mistaken the instincts which led her to a nobler vocation than that of
+the singer, that the cage-bar was opened, and space bathed in sunshine
+was inviting the new-felt wings,--subordinate even to that joy was a joy
+more wholly, more simply woman’s. “If,” thought she, in this joy, “if
+this be true, my proud ambition is realized; all disparities of worth
+and fortune are annulled between me and him to whom I would bring no
+shame of mesalliance!” Poor dreamer, poor child!
+
+“You will let me see what you have written,” said Rameau, somewhat
+imperiously, in the sharp voice habitual to him, and which pierced
+Graham’s ear like a splinter of glass.
+
+“No, not now; when finished.”
+
+“You will finish it?”
+
+“Oh, yes; how can I help it after such encouragement?” She held out
+her hand to Savarin, who kissed it gallantly; then her eyes intuitively
+sought Graham’s. By that time he had recovered his self-possession. He
+met her look tranquilly, and with a smile; but the smile chilled her,
+she knew not why.
+
+The conversation then passed upon books and authors of the day, and was
+chiefly supported by the satirical pleasantries of Savarin, who was in
+high good-spirits.
+
+Graham, who, as we know, had come with the hope of seeing Isaura alone,
+and with the intention of uttering words which, however guarded, might
+yet in absence serve as links of union, now no longer coveted that
+interview, no longer meditated those words. He soon rose to depart.
+
+“Will you dine with me to-morrow?” asked Savarin. “Perhaps I may induce
+the Signorina and Rameau to offer you the temptation of meeting them.”
+
+“By to-morrow I shall be leagues away.”
+
+Isaura’s heart sank. This time the manuscript was fairly forgotten.
+
+“You never said you were going so soon,” cried Savarin. “When do you
+come back, vile deserter?”
+
+“I cannot even guess. Monsieur Rameau, count me among your subscribers.
+Mademoiselle, my best regards to Signora Venosta. When I see you again,
+no doubt you will have become famous.”
+
+Isaura here could not control herself. She rose impulsively, and
+approached him, holding out her hand, and attempting a smile.
+
+“But not famous in the way that you warned me from,” she said in
+whispered tones. “You are friends with me still?” It was like the
+piteous wail of a child seeking to make it up with one who wants to
+quarrel, the child knows not why. Graham was moved, but what could he
+say? Could he have the right to warn her from this profession also;
+forbid all desires, all roads of fame to this brilliant aspirant? Even a
+declared and accepted lover might well have deemed that that would be to
+ask too much. He replied, “Yes, always a friend, if you could ever need
+one.” Her hand slid from his, and she turned away wounded to the quick.
+
+“Have you your coupe at the door?” asked Savarin.
+
+“Simply a fiacre.”
+
+“And are going back at once to Paris?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Will you kindly drop me in the Rue de Rivoli?”
+
+“Charmed to be of use.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+As the fiacre bore to Paris Savarin and Graham, the former said, “I
+cannot conceive what rich simpleton could entertain so high an opinion
+of Gustave Rameau as to select a man so young, and of reputation though
+promising so undecided, for an enterprise which requires such a degree
+of tact and judgment as the conduct of a new journal,--and a journal,
+too, which is to address itself to the beau monde. However, it is not
+for me to criticise a selection which brings a god-send to myself.”
+
+“To yourself? You jest; you have a journal of your own. It can only be
+through an excess of good-nature that you lend your name and pen to the
+service of M. Gustave Rameau.”
+
+“My good-nature does not go to that extent. It is Rameau who confers a
+service upon me. Peste! mon cher, we French authors have not the rents
+of you rich English milords. And though I am the most economical of our
+tribe, yet that journal of mine has failed me of late; and this morning
+I did not exactly see how I was to repay a sum I had been obliged to
+borrow of a money-lender,--for I am too proud to borrow of friends,
+and too sagacious to borrow of publishers,--when in walks ce cher petit
+Gustave with an offer, for a few trifles towards starting this new-born
+journal, which makes a new man of me. Now I am in the undertaking, my
+amour propre and my reputation are concerned in its success; and I shall
+take care that collaborateurs of whose company I am not ashamed are in
+the same boat. But that charming girl, Isaura! What an enigma the gift
+of the pen is! No one can ever guess who has it until tried.”
+
+“The young lady’s manuscript, then, really merits the praise you
+bestowed on it?”
+
+“Much more praise, though a great deal of blame, which I did not
+bestow,--for in a first work faults insure success as much as beauties.
+Anything better than tame correctness. Yes, her first work, to judge by
+what is written, must make a hit,--a great hit. And that will decide her
+career. A singer, an actress, may retire,--often does when she marries
+an author; but once an author always an author.”
+
+“Ah! is it so? If you had a beloved daughter, Savarin, would you
+encourage her to be an author?”
+
+“Frankly, no: principally because in that case the chances are that she
+would marry an author; and French authors, at least in the imaginative
+school, make very uncomfortable husbands.”
+
+“Ah! you think the Signorina will marry one of those uncomfortable
+husbands,--M. Rameau, perhaps?”
+
+“Rameau! Hein! nothing more likely. That beautiful face of his has
+its fascination. And to tell you the truth, my wife, who is a striking
+illustration of the truth that what woman wills heaven wills, is bent
+upon that improvement in Gustave’s moral life which she thinks a union
+with Mademoiselle Cicogna would achieve. At all events, the fair Italian
+would have in Rameau a husband who would not suffer her to bury her
+talents under a bushel. If she succeeds as a writer (by succeeding I
+mean making money), he will see that her ink-bottle is never empty; and
+if she don’t succeed as a writer, he will take care that the world shall
+gain an actress or a singer. For Gustave Rameau has a great taste for
+luxury and show; and whatever his wife can make, I will venture to say
+that he will manage to spend.”
+
+“I thought you had an esteem and regard for Mademoiselle Cicogna. It is
+Madame your wife, I suppose, who has a grudge against her?”
+
+“On the contrary, my wife idolizes her.”
+
+“Savages sacrifice to their idols the things they deem of value;
+civilized Parisians sacrifice their idols themselves, and to a thing
+that is worthless.”
+
+“Rameau is not worthless; he has beauty and youth and talent. My wife
+thinks more highly of him than I do; but I must respect a man who has
+found admirers so sincere as to set him up in a journal, and give him
+carte blanche for terms to contributors. I know of no man in Paris more
+valuable to me. His worth to me this morning is thirty thousand francs.
+I own I do not think him likely to be a very safe husband; but then
+French female authors and artists seldom take any husbands except upon
+short leases. There are no vulgar connubial prejudices in the pure
+atmosphere of art. Women of genius, like Madame de Grantmesnil, and
+perhaps like our charming young friend, resemble canary-birds,--to sing
+their best you must separate them from their mates.”
+
+The Englishman suppressed a groan, and turned the conversation.
+
+When he had set down his lively companion, Vane dismissed his fiacre,
+and walked to his lodgings musingly.
+
+“No,” he said inly; “I must wrench myself from the very memory of that
+haunting face,--the friend and pupil of Madame de Grantmesnil, the
+associate of Gustave Rameau, the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant
+to that pure atmosphere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial
+prejudices! Could I--whether I be rich or poor--see in her the ideal of
+an English wife? As it is--as it is--with this mystery which oppresses
+me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insoluble,--as it is, how
+fortunate that I did not find her alone; did not utter the words that
+would fain have leaped from my heart; did not say, ‘I may not be the
+rich man I seem, but in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because
+struggle and labour are the sinews of ambition! Should I be rich, will
+you adorn my station? Should I be poor, will you enrich poverty with
+your smile? And can you, in either case, forego--really, painlessly
+forego, as you led me to hope--the pride in your own art?’ My ambition
+were killed did I marry an actress, a singer. Better that than the
+hungerer after excitements which are never allayed, the struggler in a
+career which admits of no retirement,--the woman to whom marriage is no
+goal, who remains to the last the property of the public, and glories
+to dwell in a house of glass into which every bystander has a right to
+peer. Is this the ideal of an Englishman’s wife and home? No, no!--woe
+is me, no!”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A few weeks after the date of the preceding chapter, a gay party of
+men were assembled at supper in one of the private salons of the Maison
+Doree. The supper was given by Frederic Lemercier, and the guests were,
+though in various ways, more or less distinguished. Rank and fashion
+were not unworthily represented by Alain de Rochebriant and Enguerrand
+de Vandemar, by whose supremacy as “lion” Frederic still felt rather
+humbled, though Alain had contrived to bring them familiarly together.
+Art, Literature, and the Bourse had also their representatives in Henri
+Bernard, a rising young portrait-painter, whom the Emperor honoured with
+his patronage, the Vicomte de Braze, and M. Savarin. Science was not
+altogether forgotten, but contributed its agreeable delegate in
+the person of the eminent physician to whom we have been before
+introduced,--Dr. Bacourt. Doctors in Paris are not so serious as they
+mostly are in London; and Bacourt, a pleasant philosopher of the school
+of Aristippus, was no unfrequent nor ungenial guest at any banquet in
+which the Graces relaxed their zones. Martial glory was also represented
+at that social gathering by a warrior, bronzed and decorated, lately
+arrived from Algiers, on which arid soil he had achieved many laurels
+and the rank of Colonel. Finance contributed Duplessis. Well it might;
+for Duplessis had just assisted the host to a splendid coup at the
+Bourse.
+
+“Ah, cher Monsieur Savarin,” says Enguerrand de Vandemar, whose
+patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that he is always
+instinctively polite, “what a masterpiece in its way is that little
+paper of yours in the ‘Sens Commun,’ upon the connection between the
+national character and the national diet! so genuinely witty!--for wit
+is but truth made amusing.”
+
+“You flatter me,” replied Savarin, modestly; “but I own I do think there
+is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle. Perhaps, however, the
+character of a people depends more on its drinks than its food. The
+wines of Italy, heady, irritable, ruinous to the digestion, contribute
+to the character which belongs to active brains and disordered livers.
+The Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them. The
+English common-people drink beer, and the beerish character is stolid,
+rude, but stubborn and enduring. The English middle-class imbibe
+port and sherry; and with these strong potations their ideas become
+obfuscated. Their character has no liveliness; amusement is not one of
+their wants; they sit at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of
+their beverage in the dulness of domesticity. If the English aristocracy
+are more vivacious and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines of
+France, which it is the mode with them to prefer; but still, like all
+plagiarists, they are imitators, not inventors; they borrow our wines
+and copy our manners. The Germans--”
+
+“Insolent barbarians!” growled the French Colonel, twirling his
+mustache; “if the Emperor were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would ere
+this have cost them their Rhine.”
+
+“The Germans,” resumed Savarin, unheeding the interruption, “drink acrid
+wines, varied with beer, to which last their commonalty owes a quasi
+resemblance in stupidity and endurance to the English masses. Acrid
+wines rot the teeth Germans are afflicted with toothache from infancy.
+All people subject to toothache are sentimental. Goethe was a martyr
+to toothache. ‘Werther’ was written in one of those paroxysms which
+predispose genius to suicide. But the German character is not all
+toothache; beer and tobacco step in to the relief of Rhenish acridities,
+blend philosophy with sentiment, and give that patience in detail which
+distinguishes their professors and their generals. Besides, the German
+wines in themselves have other qualities than that of acridity. Taken
+with sourkrout and stewed prunes, they produce fumes of self-conceit.
+A German has little of French vanity; he has German self-esteem. He
+extends the esteem of self to those around him; his home, his village,
+his city, his country,--all belong to him. It is a duty he owes to
+himself to defend them. Give him his pipe and his sabre, and, Monsieur
+le Colonel, believe me, you will never take the Rhine from him.”
+
+“P-r-r,” cried the Colonel; “but we have had the Rhine.”
+
+“We did not keep it. And I should not say I had a francpiece if I
+borrowed it from your purse and had to give it back the next day.”
+
+Here there arose a very general hubbub of voices, all raised against
+M. Savarin. Enguerrand, like a man of good ton, hastened to change the
+conversation.
+
+“Let us leave these poor wretches to their sour wines and toothaches. We
+drinkers of the champagne, all our own, have only pity for the rest of
+the human race. This new journal ‘Le Sens Commun’ has a strange title,
+Monsieur Savarin.”
+
+“Yes; ‘Le Sens Commun’ is not common in Paris, where we all have too
+much genius for a thing so vulgar.”
+
+“Pray,” said the young painter, “tell me what you mean by the title ‘Le
+Sens Commun.’ It is mysterious.”
+
+“True,” said Savarin; “it may mean the Sensus communis of the Latins, or
+the Good Sense of the English. The Latin phrase signifies the sense
+of the common interest; the English phrase, the sense which persons of
+understanding have in common. I suppose the inventor of our title meant
+the latter signification.”
+
+“And who was the inventor?” asked Bacourt.
+
+“That is a secret which I do not know myself,” answered Savarin.
+
+“I guess,” said Enguerrand, “that it must be the same person who writes
+the political leaders. They are most remarkable; for they are so unlike
+the articles in other journals, whether those journals be the best
+or the worst. For my own part, I trouble my head very little about
+politics, and shrug my shoulders at essays which reduce the government
+of flesh and blood into mathematical problems. But these articles seem
+to be written by a man of the world, and as a man of the world myself, I
+read them.”
+
+“But,” said the Vicomte de Breze, who piqued himself on the polish
+of his style, “they are certainly not the composition of any eminent
+writer. No eloquence, no sentiment; though I ought not to speak
+disparagingly of a fellow-contributor.”
+
+“All that may be very true;” said Savarin; “but M. Enguerrand is right.
+The papers are evidently the work of a man of the world, and it is for
+that reason that they have startled the public, and established the
+success of ‘Le Sens Commun.’ But wait a week or two longer, Messieurs,
+and then tell me what you think of a new roman by a new writer, which
+we shall announce in our impression to-morrow. I shall be disappointed,
+indeed, if that does not charm you. No lack of eloquence and sentiment
+there.”
+
+“I am rather tired of eloquence and sentiment,” said Enguerrand. “Your
+editor, Gustave Rameau, sickens me of them with his ‘Starlit Meditations
+in the Streets of Paris,’ morbid imitations of Heine’s enigmatical
+‘Evening Songs.’ Your journal would be perfect if you could suppress the
+editor.”
+
+“Suppress Gustave Rameau!” cried Bernard, the painter; “I adore his
+poems, full of heart for poor suffering humanity.”
+
+“Suffering humanity so far as it is packed up in himself,” said the
+physician, dryly,--“and a great deal of the suffering is bile. But a
+propos of your new journal, Savarin, there is a paragraph in it to-day
+which excites my curiosity. It says that the Vicomte de Mauleon
+has arrived in Paris, after many years of foreign travel; and then,
+referring modestly enough to the reputation for talent which he had
+acquired in early youth, proceeds to indulge in a prophecy of the future
+political career of a man who, if he have a grain of sens common, must
+think that the less said about him the better. I remember him well;
+a terrible mauvais sujet, but superbly handsome. There was a shocking
+story about the jewels of a foreign duchess, which obliged him to leave
+Paris.”
+
+“But,” said Savarin, “the paragraph you refer to hints that that story
+is a groundless calumny, and that the true reason for De Mauleon’s
+voluntary self-exile was a very common one among young Parisians,--he
+had lavished away his fortune. He returns, when, either by heritage or
+his own exertions, he has secured elsewhere a competence.”
+
+“Nevertheless I cannot think that society will receive him,” said
+Bacourt. “When he left Paris, there was one joyous sigh of relief
+among all men who wished to avoid duels, and keep their wives out
+of temptation. Society may welcome back a lost sheep, but not a
+reinvigorated wolf.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, mon cher,” said Enguerrand; “society has already
+opened its fold to this poor ill-treated wolf. Two days ago Louvier
+summoned to his house the surviving relations or connections of De
+Mauleon--among whom are the Marquis de Rochebriant, the Counts de Passy,
+De Beauvilliers, De Chavigny, my father, and of course his two sons--and
+submitted to us the proofs which completely clear the Vicomte de Mauleon
+of even a suspicion of fraud or dishonour in the affair of the jewels.
+The proofs include the written attestation of the Duke himself, and
+letters from that nobleman after De Mauleon’s disappearance from Paris,
+expressive of great esteem, and indeed, of great admiration, for the
+Vicomte’s sense of honour and generosity of character. The result
+of this family council was that we all went in a body to call on De
+Mauleon; and he dined with my father that same day. You know enough of
+the Comte de Vandemar, and, I may add, of my mother, to be sure
+that they are both, in their several ways, too regardful of social
+conventions to lend their countenance even to a relation without well
+weighing the pros and cons. And as for Raoul, Bayard himself could not
+be a greater stickler on the point of honour.”
+
+This declaration was followed by a silence that had the character of
+stupor.
+
+At last Duplessis said, “But what has Louvier to do in this galere?
+Louvier is no relation of that well-born vaurien; why should he summon
+your family council?”
+
+“Louvier excused his interference on the ground of early and intimate
+friendship with De Mauleon, who, he said, came to consult him on
+arriving at Paris, and who felt too proud or too timid to address
+relations with whom he had long dropped all intercourse. An intermediary
+was required, and Louvier volunteered to take that part on himself;
+nothing more natural nor more simple. By the way, Alain, you dine with
+Louvier to-morrow, do you not?--a dinner in honour of our rehabilitated
+kinsman. I and Raoul go.”
+
+“Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a man who, whatever might be
+his errors in youth, on which,” added Alain, slightly colouring, “it
+certainly does not become me to be severe, must have suffered the most
+poignant anguish a man of honour can undergo,--namely, honour suspected;
+and who now, whether by years or sorrow, is so changed that I cannot
+recognize a likeness to the character I have just heard given to him as
+mauvais sujet and vaurien.”
+
+“Bravo!” cried Enguerrand; “all honour to courage!--and at Paris it
+requires great courage to defend the absent.”
+
+“Nay,” answered Alain, in a low voice. “The gentilhomme who will not
+defend another gentilhomme traduced, would, as a soldier, betray a
+citadel and desert a flag.”
+
+“You say M. de Mauleon is changed,” said De Breze; “yes, he must be
+growing old. No trace left of his good looks?”
+
+“Pardon me,” said Enguerrand; “he is bien conserve, and has still a very
+handsome head and an imposing presence. But one cannot help doubting
+whether he deserved the formidable reputation he acquired in youth; his
+manner is so singularly mild and gentle, his conversation so winningly
+modest, so void of pretence, and his mode of life is as simple as that
+of a Spanish hidalgo.”
+
+“He does not, then, affect the role of Monte Cristo,” said Duplessis,
+“and buy himself into notice like that hero of romance?”
+
+“Certainly not: he says very frankly that he has but a very small
+income, but more than enough for his wants,--richer than in his youth,
+for he has learned content. We may dismiss the hint in ‘Le Sens
+Commun’ about his future political career,--at least he evinces no such
+ambition.”
+
+“How could he as a Legitimist?” said Alain, bitterly. “What department
+would elect him?”
+
+“But is he a Legitimist?” asked De Breze.
+
+“I take it for granted that he must be that,” answered Alain, haughtily,
+“for he is a De Mauleon.”
+
+“His father was as good a De Mauleon as himself, I presume,” rejoined
+De Breze, dryly; “and he enjoyed a place at the Court of Louis Philippe,
+which a Legitimist could scarcely accept. Victor did not, I fancy,
+trouble his head about politics at all, at the time I remember him; but
+to judge by his chief associates, and the notice he received from
+the Princes of the House of Orleans, I should guess that he had no
+predilections in favour of Henri V.”
+
+“I should regret to think so,” said Alain, yet more haughtily,
+“since the De Mauleons acknowledge the head of their house in the
+representative of the Rochebriants.”
+
+“At all events,” said Duplessis, “M. de Mauleon appears to be a
+philosopher of rare stamp. A Parisian who has known riches and is
+contented to be poor is a phenomenon I should like to study.”
+
+“You have that chance to-morrow evening, Monsieur Duplessis,” said
+Enguerrand.
+
+“What! at M. Louvier’s dinner? Nay, I have no other acquaintance with M.
+Louvier than that of the Bourse, and the acquaintance is not cordial.”
+
+“I did not mean at M. Louvier’s dinner, but at the Duchesse de
+Tarascon’s ball. You, as one of her special favourites, will doubtless
+honour her reunion.”
+
+“Yes; I have promised my daughter to go to the ball. But the Duchesse is
+Imperialist. M. de Mauleon seems to be either a Legitimist, according to
+Monsieur le Marquis, or an Orleanist, according to our friend De Breze.”
+
+“What of that? Can there be a more loyal Bourbonite than De
+Rochebriant?--and he goes to the ball. It is given out of the season,
+in celebration of a family marriage. And the Duchesse de Tarascon
+is connected with Alain, and therefore with De Mauleon, though but
+distantly.”
+
+“Ah! excuse my ignorance of genealogy.”
+
+“As if the genealogy of noble names were not the history of France,”
+ muttered Alain, indignantly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Yes, the “Sens Commun” was a success: it had made a sensation at
+starting; the sensation was on the increase. It is difficult for an
+Englishman to comprehend the full influence of a successful journal at
+Paris; the station--political, literary, social--which it confers on
+the contributors who effect the success. M. Lebeau had shown much more
+sagacity in selecting Gustave Rameau for the nominal editor than Savarin
+supposed or my reader might detect. In the first place, Gustave himself,
+with all his defects of information and solidity of intellect, was not
+without real genius,--and a sort of genius that when kept in restraint,
+and its field confined to sentiment or sarcasm, was in unison with the
+temper of the day; in the second place, it was only through Gustave that
+Lebeau could have got at Savarin, and the names which that brilliant
+writer had secured at the outset would have sufficed to draw attention
+to the earliest numbers of the “Sens Commun,” despite a title which
+did not seem alluring. But these names alone could not have sufficed to
+circulate the new journal to the extent it had already reached. This was
+due to the curiosity excited by leading articles of a style new to the
+Parisian public, and of which the authorship defied conjecture. They
+were signed Pierre Firmin,--supposed to be a nom de plume, as, that name
+was utterly unknown in the world of letters. They affected the tone of
+an impartial observer; they neither espoused nor attacked any particular
+party; they laid down no abstract doctrines of government. But somehow
+or other, in language terse yet familiar, sometimes careless yet never
+vulgar, they expressed a prevailing sentiment of uneasy discontent,
+a foreboding of some destined change in things established, without
+defining the nature of such change, without saying whether it would be
+for good or for evil. In his criticisms upon individuals, the writer
+was guarded and moderate--the keenest-eyed censor of the press could
+not have found a pretext for interference with expression of opinions so
+polite. Of the Emperor these articles spoke little, but that little was
+not disrespectful; yet, day after day, the articles contributed to sap
+the Empire. All malcontents of every shade comprehended, as by a secret
+of freemasonry, that in this journal they had an ally. Against religion
+not a word was uttered, yet the enemies of religion bought that journal;
+still, the friends of religion bought it too, for those articles
+treated with irony the philosophers on paper who thought that their
+contradictory crotchets could fuse themselves into any single Utopia, or
+that any social edifice, hurriedly run up by the crazy few, could become
+a permanent habitation for the turbulent many, without the clamps of a
+creed.
+
+The tone of these articles always corresponded with the title of
+the journal,--“Common-sense.” It was to common-sense that it
+appealed,--appealed in the utterance of a man who disdained the subtle
+theories, the vehement declamation, the credulous beliefs, or the
+inflated bombast, which constitute so large a portion of the Parisian
+press. The articles rather resembled certain organs of the English
+press, which profess to be blinded by no enthusiasm for anybody or
+anything, which find their sale in that sympathy with ill-nature to
+which Huet ascribes the popularity of Tacitus, and, always quietly
+undermining institutions with a covert sneer, never pretend to a spirit
+of imagination so at variance with common-sense as a conjecture how the
+institutions should be rebuilt or replaced.
+
+Well, somehow or other the journal, as I was saying, hit the taste
+of the Parisian public. It intimated, with the easy grace of an
+unpremeditated agreeable talker, that French society in all its classes
+was rotten; and each class was willing to believe that all the others
+were rotten, and agreed that unless the others were reformed, there was
+something very unsound in itself.
+
+The ball at the Duchesse de Tarascon’s was a brilliant event. The summer
+was far advanced; many of the Parisian holiday-makers had returned to
+the capital, but the season had not commenced, and a ball at that time
+of year was a very unwonted event. But there was a special occasion for
+this fete,--a marriage between a niece of the Duchesse and the son of a
+great official in high favour at the Imperial Court.
+
+The dinner at Louvier’s broke up early, and the music for the second
+waltz was sounding when Enguerrand, Alain, and the Vicomte de Mauleon
+ascended the stairs. Raoul did not accompany them; he went very rarely
+to any balls,--never to one given by an Imperialist, however nearly
+related to him the Imperialist might be. But in the sweet indulgence
+of his good-nature, he had no blame for those who did go,--not for
+Enguerrand, still less, of course, for Alain.
+
+Something too might well here be said as to his feeling towards Victor
+de Mauleon. He had joined in the family acquittal of that kinsman as to
+the grave charge of the jewels; the proofs of innocence thereon seemed
+to him unequivocal and decisive, therefore he had called on the Vicomte
+and acquiesced in all formal civilities shown to him. But such acts of
+justice to a fellow-gentilhomme and a kinsman duly performed, he desired
+to see as little as possible of the Vicomte de Mauleon. He reasoned
+thus: “Of every charge which society made against this man he is
+guiltless; but of all the claims to admiration which society accorded to
+him before it erroneously condemned, there are none which make me covet
+his friendship, or suffice to dispel doubts as to what he may be when
+society once more receives him. And the man is so captivating that I
+should dread his influence over myself did I see much of him.”
+
+Raoul kept his reasonings to himself, for he had that sort of charity
+which indisposes an amiable man to be severe on bygone offences. In the
+eyes of Enguerrand and Alain, and such young votaries of the mode
+as they could influence, Victor de Mauleon assumed almost heroic
+proportions. In the affair which had inflicted on him a calumny so
+odious, it was clear that he had acted with chivalrous delicacy of
+honour. And the turbulence and recklessness of his earlier years,
+redeemed as they were, in the traditions of his contemporaries, by
+courage and generosity, were not offences to which young Frenchmen are
+inclined to be harsh. All question as to the mode in which his life
+might have been passed during his long absence from the capital was
+merged in the respect due to the only facts known, and these were
+clearly proved in his pieces justificatives: First, that he had
+served under another name in the ranks of the army in Algiers; had
+distinguished himself there for signal valour, and received, with
+promotion, the decoration of the cross. His real name was known only
+to his colonel, and on quitting the service, the colonel placed in his
+hands a letter of warm eulogy on his conduct, and identifying him as
+Victor de Mauleon. Secondly, that in California he had saved a wealthy
+family from midnight murder, fighting single-handed against and
+overmastering three ruffians, and declining all other reward from those
+he had preserved than a written attestation of their gratitude. In all
+countries, valour ranks high in the list of virtues; in no country does
+it so absolve from vices as it does in France.
+
+But as yet Victor de Mauleon’s vindication was only known by a few, and
+those belonging to the gayer circles of life. How he might be judged by
+the sober middle class, which constitutes the most important section of
+public opinion to a candidate for political trusts and distinctions, was
+another question.
+
+The Duchesse stood at the door to receive her visitors. Duplessis was
+seated near the entrance, by the side of a distinguished member of
+the Imperial Government, with whom he was carrying on a whispered
+conversation. The eye of the financier, however, turned towards the
+doorway as Alain and Enguerrand entered, and passing over their familiar
+faces, fixed itself attentively on that of a mach older man whom
+Enguerrand was presenting to the Duchesse, and in whom Duplessis
+rightly divined the Vicomte de Mauleon. Certainly if no one could have
+recognized M. Lebeau in the stately personage who had visited Louvier,
+still less could one who had heard of the wild feats of the roi des
+viveurs in his youth reconcile belief in such tales with the quiet
+modesty of mien which distinguished the cavalier now replying, with
+bended head and subdued accents, to the courteous welcome of the
+brilliant hostess. But for such difference in attributes between the
+past and the present De Mauleon, Duplessis had been prepared by the
+conversation at the Maison Doree. And now, as the Vicomte, yielding his
+place by the Duchesse to some new-comer, glided on, and, leaning against
+a column, contemplated the gay scene before him with that expression of
+countenance, half sarcastic, half mournful, with which men regard, after
+long estrangement, the scenes of departed joys, Duplessis felt that no
+change in that man had impaired the force of character which had made
+him the hero of reckless coevals. Though wearing no beard, not even a
+mustache, there was something emphatically masculine in the contour
+of the close-shaven cheek and resolute jaw; in a forehead broad at the
+temples, and protuberant in those organs over the eyebrows which are
+said to be significant of quick perception and ready action; in the
+lips, when in repose compressed, perhaps somewhat stern in their
+expression, but pliant and mobile when speaking, and wonderfully
+fascinating when they smiled. Altogether, about this Victor de Mauleon
+there was a nameless distinction, apart from that of conventional
+elegance. You would have said, “That is a man of some marked
+individuality, an eminence of some kind in himself.” You would not be
+surprised to hear that he was a party-leader, a skilled diplomatist, a
+daring soldier, an adventurous traveller; but you would not guess him to
+be a student, an author, an artist.
+
+While Duplessis thus observed the Vicomte de Mauleon, all the while
+seeming to lend an attentive ear to the whispered voice of the Minister
+by his side, Alain passed on into the ball-room. He was fresh enough to
+feel the exhilaration of the dance. Enguerrand (who had survived that
+excitement, and who habitually deserted any assembly at an early hour
+for the cigar and whist of his club) had made his way to De Mauleon, and
+there stationed himself. The lion of one generation has always a mixed
+feeling of curiosity and respect for the lion of a generation before
+him, and the young Vandemar had conceived a strong and almost an
+affectionate interest in this discrowned king of that realm in fashion
+which, once lost, is never to be regained; for it is only Youth that can
+hold its sceptre and command its subjects.
+
+“In this crowd, Vicomte,” said Enguerrand, “there must be many old
+acquaintances of yours?”
+
+“Perhaps so, but as yet I have only seen new faces.”
+
+As he thus spoke, a middle-aged man, decorated with the grand cross of
+the Legion and half-a-dozen foreign orders, lending his arm to a lady of
+the same age radiant in diamonds, passed by towards the ball-room,
+and in some sudden swerve of his person, occasioned by a pause of
+his companion to adjust her train, he accidentally brushed against De
+Mauleon, whom he had not before noticed. Turning round to apologize for
+his awkwardness, he encountered the full gaze of the Vicomte, started,
+changed countenance, and hurried on his companion.
+
+“Do you not recognize his Excellency?” said Enguerrand, smiling. “His
+cannot be a new face to you.”
+
+“Is it the Baron de Lacy?” asked De Mauleon.
+
+“The Baron de Lacy, now Comte d’Epinay, ambassador at the Court of
+-----, and, if report speak true, likely soon to exchange that post for
+the porte feuille of Minister.”
+
+“He has got on in life since I saw him last, the little Baron. He was
+then my devoted imitator, and I was not proud of the imitation.”
+
+“He has got on by always clinging to the skirts of some one stronger
+than himself,--to yours, I dare say, when, being a parvenu despite his
+usurped title of baron, he aspired to the entree into clubs and
+salons. The entree thus obtained, the rest followed easily; he became a
+millionaire through a wife’s dot, and an ambassador through the wife’s
+lover, who is a power in the State.”
+
+“But he must have substance in himself. Empty bags can not be made to
+stand upright. Ah! unless I mistake, I see some one I knew better.
+Yon pale, thin man, also with the grand cross--surely that is Alfred
+Hennequin. Is he too a decorated Imperialist? I left him a socialistic
+Republican.”
+
+“But, I presume, even then an eloquent avocat. He got into the Chamber,
+spoke well, defended the coup-d’etat. He has just been made Prefet
+of the great department of the a popular appointment. He bears a high
+character. Pray renew your acquaintance with him; he is coming this
+way.”
+
+“Will so grave a dignitary renew acquaintance with me? I doubt it.”
+
+But as De Mauleon said this, he moved from the column, and advanced
+towards the Prefet. Enguerrand followed him, and saw the Vicomte extend
+his hand to his old acquaintance.
+
+The Prefet stared, and said, with frigid courtesy, “Pardon me,--some
+mistake.”
+
+“Allow me, Monsieur Hennequin,” said Enguerrand, interposing, and
+wishing good-naturedly to save De Mauleon the awkwardness of introducing
+himself,--“allow me to reintroduce you to my kinsman, whom the lapse of
+years may well excuse you for forgetting, the Vicomte de Mauleon.”
+
+Still the Prefet did not accept the hand. He bowed with formal ceremony,
+said, “I was not aware that Monsieur le Vicomte had returned to Paris,”
+ and moving to the doorway, made his salutation to the hostess and
+disappeared.
+
+“The insolent!” muttered Enguerrand.
+
+“Hush!” said De Mauleon, quietly, “I can fight no more
+duels,--especially with a Prefet. But I own I am weak enough to
+feel hurt at such a reception from Hennequin, for he owed me some
+obligations,--small, perhaps, but still they were such as might have
+made me select him, rather than Louvier, as the vindicator of my name,
+had I known him to be so high placed. But a man who has raised himself
+into an authority may well be excused for forgetting a friend whose
+character needs defence. I forgive him.”
+
+There was something pathetic in the Vicomte’s tone which touched
+Enguerrand’s warm if light heart. But De Mauleon did not allow him time
+to answer. He went on quickly through an opening in the gay crowd,
+which immediately closed behind him, and Enguerrand saw him no more that
+evening.
+
+Duplessis ere this had quitted his seat by the Minister, drawn thence by
+a young and very pretty girl resigned to his charge by a cavalier with
+whom she had been dancing. She was the only daughter of Duplessis, and
+he valued her even more than the millions he had made at the Bourse.
+“The Princess,” she said, “has been swept off in the train of some
+German Royalty; so, petit pere, I must impose myself on thee.”
+
+The Princess, a Russian of high rank, was the chaperon that evening of
+Mademoiselle Valerie Duplessis.
+
+“And I suppose I must take thee back into the ballroom,” said the
+financier, smiling proudly, “and find thee partners.”
+
+“I don’t want your aid for that, Monsieur; except this quadrille, my
+list is pretty well filled up.”
+
+“And I hope the partners will be pleasant. Let me know who they are,” he
+whispered, as they threaded their way into the ball-room.
+
+The girl glanced at her tablet.
+
+“Well, the first on the list is milord somebody, with an unpronounceable
+English name.”
+
+“Beau cavalier?”
+
+“No; ugly, old too; thirty at least.”
+
+Duplessis felt relieved. He did not wish his daughter to fall in love
+with an Englishman.
+
+“And the next?”
+
+“The next?” she said hesitatingly, and he observed that a soft blush
+accompanied the hesitation.
+
+“Yes, the next. Not English too?”
+
+“Oh, no; the Marquis de Rochebriant.”
+
+“Ah! who presented him to thee?”
+
+“Thy friend, petit pere, M. de Braze.”
+
+Duplessis again glanced at his daughter’s face; it was bent over her
+bouquet.
+
+“Is he ugly also?”
+
+“Ugly!” exclaimed the girl, indignantly; “why, he is--” she checked
+herself and turned away her head.
+
+Duplessis became thoughtful. He was glad that he had accompanied his
+child into the ball-room; he would stay there, and keep watch on her and
+Rochebriant also.
+
+Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to Rochebriant. That young
+noble’s too obvious pride of race had nettled him, not the less that the
+financier himself was vain of his ancestry. Perhaps he still disliked
+Alain, but the dislike was now accompanied with a certain, not hostile,
+interest; and if he became connected with the race, the pride in it
+might grow contagious.
+
+They had not been long in the ball-room before Alain came up to claim
+his promised partner. In saluting Duplessis, his manner was the same as
+usual, not more cordial, not less ceremoniously distant. A man so able
+as the financier cannot be without quick knowledge of the human heart.
+
+“If disposed to fall in love with Valerie,” thought Duplessis, “he would
+have taken more pains to please her father. Well, thank heaven, there
+are better matches to be found for her than a noble without fortune and
+a Legitimist without career.”
+
+In fact, Alain felt no more for Valerie than for any other pretty girl
+in the room. In talking with the Vicomte de Braze in the intervals of
+the dance, he had made some passing remark on her beauty. De Braze had
+said, “Yes, she is charming; I will present you,” and hastened to do so
+before Rochebriant even learned her name. So introduced, he could but
+invite her to give him her first disengaged dance, and when that was
+fixed, he had retired, without entering into conversation.
+
+Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, he felt that effort
+of speech had become a duty, if not a pleasure; and of course, he began
+with the first commonplace which presented itself to his mind.
+
+“Do you not think it a very pleasant ball, Mademoiselle?”
+
+“Yes,” dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie’s rosy lips.
+
+“And not over-crowded, as most balls are?”
+
+Valerie’s lips again moved, but this time quite inaudibly. The
+obligations of the figure now caused a pause. Alain racked his brains
+and began,
+
+“They tell me the last season was more than usually gay; of that I
+cannot judge, for it was well-nigh over when I came to Paris for the
+first time.”
+
+Valerie looked up with a more animated expression than her childlike
+face had yet shown, and said, this time distinctly, “This is my first
+ball, Monsieur le Marquis.”
+
+“One has only to look at Mademoiselle to divine that fact,” replied
+Alain, gallantly.
+
+Again the conversation was interrupted by the dance; but the ice between
+the two was now broken; and when the quadrille was concluded, and
+Rochebriant led the fair Valerie back to her father’s side, she felt
+as if she had been listening to the music of the spheres, and that the
+music had now suddenly stopped. Alain, alas for her! was under no such
+pleasing illusion. Her talk had seemed to him artless indeed, but
+very insipid, compared with the brilliant conversation of the wedded
+Parisiennes with whom he more habitually danced; and it was with rather
+a sensation of relief that he made his parting bow, and receded into the
+crowd of bystanders.
+
+Meanwhile De Mauleon had quitted the assemblage, walking slowly through
+the deserted streets towards his apartment. The civilities he had met
+at Louvier’s dinner-party, and the marked distinction paid to him by
+kinsmen of rank and position so unequivocal as Alain and Enguerrand,
+had softened his mood and cheered his spirits. He had begun to question
+himself whether a fair opening to his political ambition was really
+forbidden to him under the existent order of things, whether it
+necessitated the employment of such dangerous tools as those to which
+anger and despair had reconciled his intellect. But the pointed way in
+which he had been shunned or slighted by the two men who belonged to
+political life--two men who in youth had looked up to himself, and
+whose dazzling career of honours was identified with the Imperial
+system--reanimated his fiercer passions and his more perilous designs.
+The frigid accost of Hennequin more especially galled him; it wounded
+not only his pride but his heart; it had the venom of ingratitude, and
+it is the peculiar privilege of ingratitude to wound hearts that have
+learned to harden themselves to the hate or contempt of men to whom
+no services have been rendered. In some private affair concerning his
+property, De Mauleon had had occasion to consult Hennequin, then a
+rising young avocat. Out of that consultation a friendship had sprung
+up, despite the differing habits and social grades of the two men. One
+day, calling on Hennequin, he found him in a state of great nervous
+excitement. The avocat had received a public insult in the salon of a
+noble, to whom De Mauleon had introduced him, from a man who pretended
+to the hand of a young lady to whom Hennequin was attached, and indeed
+almost affianced. The man was a notorious spadassin,--a duellist little
+less renowned for skill in all weapons than De Mauleon himself. The
+affair had been such that Hennequin’s friends assured him he had no
+choice but to challenge this bravo. Hennequin, brave enough at the bar,
+was no hero before sword-point or pistol. He was utterly ignorant of the
+use of either weapon; his death in the encounter with an antagonist
+so formidable seemed to him certain, and life was so precious,--an
+honourable and distinguished career opening before him, marriage with
+the woman he loved. Still he had the Frenchman’s point of honour. He had
+been told that he must fight; well, then, he must. He asked De Mauleon
+to be one of his seconds, and in asking him, sank in his chair, covered
+his face with his hands, and burst into tears.
+
+“Wait till to-morrow,” said De Mauleon; “take no step till then.
+Meanwhile, you are in my hands, and I answer for your honour.”
+
+On leaving Hennequin, Victor sought the spadassin at the club of which
+they were both members, and contrived, without reference to Hennequin,
+to pick a quarrel with him. A challenge ensued; a duel with swords took
+place the next morning. De Mauleon disarmed and wounded his antagonist,
+not gravely, but sufficiently to terminate the encounter. He assisted
+to convey the wounded man to his apartment, and planted himself by his
+bedside, as if he were a friend.
+
+“Why on earth did you fasten a quarrel on me?” asked the spadassin; “and
+why, having done so, did you spare my life; for your sword was at my
+heart when you shifted its point, and pierced my shoulder?”
+
+“I will tell you, and in so doing, beg you to accept my friendship
+hereafter, on one condition. In the course of the day, write or dictate
+a few civil words of apology to M. Hennequin. Ma foi! every one will
+praise you for a generosity so becoming in a man who has given such
+proofs of courage and skill to an avocat who has never handled a sword
+nor fired a pistol.”
+
+That same day De Mauleon remitted to Hennequin an apology for heated
+words freely retracted, which satisfied all his friends. For the service
+thus rendered by De Mauleon, Hennequin declared himself everlastingly
+indebted. In fact, he entirely owed to that friend his life, his
+marriage, his honour, his career.
+
+“And now,” thought De Mauleon, “now, when he could so easily requite
+me,--now he will not even take my hand. Is human nature itself at war
+with me?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Nothing could be simpler than the apartment of the Vicomte de Mauleon,
+in the second story of a quiet old-fashioned street. It had been
+furnished at small cost out of his savings. Yet, on the whole, it
+evinced the good taste of a man who had once been among the exquisites
+of the polite world. You felt that you were in the apartment of a
+gentleman, and a gentleman of somewhat severe tastes, and of sober
+matured years. He was sitting the next morning in the room which he used
+as a private study. Along the walls were arranged dwarf bookcases, as
+yet occupied by few books, most of them books of reference, others cheap
+editions of the French classics in prose--no poets, no romance-writers,
+with a few Latin authors also in prose,--Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus. He
+was engaged at his desk writing,--a book with its leaves open before
+him, “Paul Louis Courier,” that model of political irony and masculine
+style of composition. There was a ring at his door-bell. The Vicomte
+kept no servant. He rose and answered the summons. He recoiled a few
+paces on recognizing his visitor in M. Hennequin.
+
+The Prefet this time did not withdraw his hand; he extended it, but it
+was with a certain awkwardness and timidity. “I thought it my duty to
+call on you, Vicomte, thus early, having already seen M. Enguerrand de
+Vandemar. He has shown me the copies of the pieces which were inspected
+by your distinguished kinsmen, and which completely clear you of the
+charge that--grant me your pardon when I say--seemed to me still to
+remain unanswered when I had the honour to meet you last night.”
+
+“It appears to me, Monsieur Hennequin, that you, as an avocat so
+eminent, might have convinced yourself very readily of that fact.”
+
+“Monsieur le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with my wife at the time of
+the unfortunate affair in which you were involved.”
+
+“But when you returned to Paris, you might perhaps have deigned to make
+inquiries so affecting the honour of one you had called a friend, and
+for whom you had professed”--De Mauleon paused; he disdained to add--“an
+eternal gratitude.”
+
+Hennequin coloured slightly, but replied with self-possession.
+
+“I certainly did inquire. I did hear that the charge against you with
+regard to the abstraction of the jewels was withdrawn, that you were
+therefore acquitted by law; but I heard also that society did not acquit
+you, and that, finding this, you had quitted France. Pardon me again, no
+one would listen to me when I attempted to speak on your behalf but
+now that so many years have elapsed, that the story is imperfectly
+remembered, that relations so high-placed receive you so cordially,--now
+I rejoice to think that you will have no difficulty in regaining a
+social position never really lost, but for a time resigned.”
+
+“I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you express. I was reading the
+other day in a lively author some pleasant remarks on the effects of
+medisance or calumny upon our impressionable Parisian public. ‘If,’
+says the writer, ‘I found myself accused of having put the two towers
+of Notre Dame into my waistcoat-pocket I should not dream of defending
+myself; I should take to flight. And,’ adds the writer, ‘if my best
+friend were under the same accusation, I should be so afraid of being
+considered his accomplice that I should put my best friend outside the
+door.’ Perhaps, Monsieur Hennequin, I was seized with the first alarm.
+Why should I blame you if seized with the second? Happily, this good
+city of Paris has its reactions. And you can now offer me your hand.
+Paris has by this time discovered that the two towers of Notre Dame are
+not in my pocket.”
+
+There was a pause. De Mauleon had resettled himself at his desk, bending
+over his papers, and his manner seemed to imply that he considered the
+conversation at an end.
+
+But a pang of shame, of remorse, of tender remembrance, shot across the
+heart of the decorous, worldly, self-seeking man, who owed all that he
+now was to the ci-devant vaurien before him. Again he stretched forth
+his hand, and this time grasped De Mauleon’s warmly. “Forgive me,” he
+said, feelingly and hoarsely; “forgive me, I was to blame. By character,
+and perhaps by the necessities of my career, I am over-timid to public
+opinion, public scandal. Forgive me. Say if in anything now I can
+requite, though but slightly, the service I owe you.”
+
+De Mauleon looked steadily at the Prefet, and said slowly, “Would you
+serve me in turn? Are you sincere?”
+
+The Prefet hesitated a moment, then answered firmly, “Yes.”
+
+“Well, then, what I ask of you is a frank opinion,--not as lawyer, not
+as Prefet, but as a man who knows the present state of French society.
+Give that opinion without respect to my feelings one way or other. Let
+it emanate solely from your practised judgment.”
+
+“Be it so,” said Hennequin, wondering what was to come. De Mauleon
+resumed, “As you may remember, during my former career I had no
+political ambition. I did not meddle with politics. In the troubled
+times that immediately succeeded the fall of Louis Philippe I was but
+an epicurean looker-on. Grant that, so far as admission to the salons is
+concerned, I shall encounter no difficulty in regaining position; but as
+regards the Chamber, public life, a political career, can I have my
+fair opening under the Empire? You pause. Answer as you have promised,
+frankly.”
+
+“The difficulties in the way of a political career would be very great.”
+
+“Insuperable?”
+
+“I fear so. Of course, in my capacity of Prefet, I have no small
+influence in my department in support of a Government candidate. But
+I do not think that the Imperial Government could, at this time
+especially, in which it must be very cautious in selecting its
+candidates, be induced to recommend you. The affair of the jewels would
+be raked up; your vindication disputed, denied; the fact that for so
+many years you have acquiesced in that charge without taking steps to
+refute it; your antecedents, even apart from that charge; your present
+want of property (M. Enguerrand tells me your income is but moderate);
+the absence of all previous repute in public life. No; relinquish
+the idea of political contest,--it would expose you to inevitable
+mortifications, to a failure that would even jeopardize the admission
+to the salons which you are now gaining. You could not be a Government
+candidate.”
+
+“Granted. I may have no desire to be one; but an opposition candidate,
+one of the Liberal party?”
+
+“As an Imperialist,” said Hennequin, smiling gravely, “and holding the
+office I do, it would not become me to encourage a candidate against
+the Emperor’s Government. But speaking with the frankness you solicit, I
+should say that your chances there are infinitely worse. The Opposition
+are in a pitiful minority,--the most eminent of the Liberals can
+scarcely gain seats for themselves; great local popularity or property,
+high established repute for established patriotism, or proved talents
+of oratory and statesmanship, are essential qualifications for a seat in
+the Opposition; and even these do not suffice for a third of the persons
+who possess them. Be again what you were before,--the hero of salons
+remote from the turbulent vulgarity of politics.”
+
+“I am answered. Thank you once more. The service I rendered you once is
+requited now.”
+
+“No, indeed,--no; but will you dine with me quietly today, and allow me
+to present to you my wife and two children, born since we parted? I say
+to-day, for to-morrow I return to my Prefecture.”
+
+“I am infinitely obliged by your invitation, but to-day I dine with the
+Comte de Beauvilliers to meet some of the Corps Diplomatique. I must
+make good my place in the salons, since you so clearly show me that I
+have no chance of one in the Legislature--unless--”
+
+“Unless what?”
+
+“Unless there happen one of those revolutions in which the scum comes
+uppermost.”
+
+“No fear of that. The subterranean barracks and railway have ended
+forever the rise of the scum, the reign of the canaille and its
+barricades.”
+
+“Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful hommages a Madame.”
+
+After that day the writing of Pierre Firmin in “Le Sens Commun,” though
+still keeping within the pale of the law, became more decidedly hostile
+to the Imperial system, still without committing their author to any
+definite programme of the sort of government that should succeed it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The weeks glided on. Isaura’s manuscript bad passed into print; it came
+out in the French fashion of feuilletons,--a small detachment at a time.
+A previous flourish of trumpets by Savarin and the clique at his command
+insured it attention, if not from the general public, at least from
+critical and literary coteries. Before the fourth instalment appeared
+it had outgrown the patronage of the coteries; it seized hold of the
+public. It was not in the last school in fashion; incidents were not
+crowded and violent,--they were few and simple, rather appertaining
+to an elder school, in which poetry of sentiment and grace of diction
+prevailed. That very resemblance to old favourites gave it the
+attraction of novelty. In a word, it excited a pleased admiration, and
+great curiosity was felt as to the authorship. When it oozed out that it
+was by the young lady whose future success in the musical world had
+been so sanguinely predicted by all who had heard her sing, the interest
+wonderfully increased. Petitions to be introduced to her acquaintance
+were showered upon Savarin. Before she scarcely realized her dawning
+fame, she was drawn from her quiet home and retired habits; she was
+fetee and courted in the literary circle of which Savarin was a chief.
+That circle touched, on one side, Bohemia; on the other, that realm of
+politer fashion which, in every intellectual metropolis, but especially
+in Paris, seeks to gain borrowed light from luminaries in art and
+letters. But the very admiration she obtained somewhat depressed,
+somewhat troubled her; after all, it did not differ from that which was
+at her command as a singer.
+
+On the one hand, she shrank instinctively from the caresses of female
+authors and the familiar greetings of male authors, who frankly lived
+in philosophical disdain of the conventions respected by sober, decorous
+mortals. On the other hand, in the civilities of those who, while they
+courted a rising celebrity, still held their habitual existence apart
+from the artistic world, there was a certain air of condescension,
+of patronage, towards the young stranger with no other protector but
+Signora Venosta, the ci-devant public singer, and who had made her debut
+in a journal edited by M. Gustave Rameau, which, however disguised by
+exaggerated terms of praise, wounded her pride of woman in flattering
+her vanity as author. Among this latter set were wealthy, high-born men,
+who addressed her as woman--as woman beautiful and young--with words of
+gallantry that implied love, but certainly no thought of marriage,--many
+of the most ardent were indeed married already. But once launched into
+the thick of Parisian hospitalities, it was difficult to draw back. The
+Venosta wept at the thought of missing some lively soiree, and Savarin
+laughed at her shrinking fastidiousness as that of a child’s ignorance
+of the world. But still she had her mornings to herself; and in those
+mornings, devoted to the continuance of her work (for the commencement
+was in print before a third was completed), she forgot the commonplace
+world that received her in the evenings. Insensibly to herself the tone
+of this work had changed as it proceeded. It had begun seriously indeed,
+but in the seriousness there was a certain latent joy. It might be the
+joy of having found vent of utterance; it might be rather a joy still
+more latent, inspired by the remembrance of Graham’s words and looks,
+and by the thought that she had renounced all idea of the professional
+career which he had evidently disapproved. Life then seemed to her a
+bright possession. We have seen that she had begun her roman without
+planning how it should end. She had, however, then meant it to end,
+somehow or other, happily. Now the lustre had gone from life; the tone
+of the work was saddened; it foreboded a tragic close. But for the
+general reader it became, with every chapter, still more interesting;
+the poor child had a singularly musical gift of style,--a music which
+lent itself naturally to pathos. Every very young writer knows how his
+work, if one of feeling, will colour itself from the views of some
+truth in his innermost self; and in proportion as it does so, how his
+absorption in the work increases, till it becomes part and parcel of his
+own mind and heart. The presence of a hidden sorrow may change the fate
+of the beings he has created, and guide to the grave those whom, in a
+happier vein, he would have united at the altar. It is not till a later
+stage of experience and art that the writer escapes from the influence
+of his individual personality, and lives in existences that take no
+colourings from his own. Genius usually must pass through the subjective
+process before it gains the objective. Even a Shakspeare represents
+himself in the Sonnets before no trace of himself is visible in a
+Falstaff or a Lear.
+
+No news of the Englishman,--not a word. Isaura could not but feel that
+in his words, his looks, that day in her own garden, and those yet
+happier days at Enghien, there had been more than friendship; there
+had been love,--love enough to justify her own pride in whispering to
+herself, “And I love too.” But then that last parting! how changed he
+was! how cold! She conjectured that jealousy of Rameau might, in some
+degree, account for the coldness when he first entered the room, but
+surely not when he left; surely not when she had overpassed the reserve
+of her sex, and implied by signs rarely misconstrued by those who love
+that he had no cause for jealousy of another. Yet he had gone,--parted
+with her pointedly as a friend, a mere friend. How foolish she had been
+to think this rich ambitious foreigner could ever have meant to be more!
+In the occupation of her work she thought to banish his image; but in
+that work the image was never absent; there were passages in which
+she pleadingly addressed it, and then would cease abruptly, stifled by
+passionate tears. Still she fancied that the work would reunite them;
+that in its pages he would hear her voice and comprehend her heart. And
+thus all praise of the work became very, very dear to her.
+
+At last, after many weeks, Savarin heard from Graham. The letter was
+dated Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the Englishman said he might yet be some
+time detained. In the letter Graham spoke chiefly of the new journal:
+in polite compliment of Savarin’s own effusions; in mixed praise
+and condemnation of the political and social articles signed Pierre
+Firmin,--praise of their intellectual power, condemnation of their moral
+cynicism.
+
+   “The writer,” he said, “reminds me of a passage in which Montesquieu
+   compares the heathen philosophers to those plants which the earth
+   produces in places that have never seen the heavens. The soil of
+   his experience does not grow a single belief; and as no community
+   can exist without a belief of some kind, so a politician without
+   belief can but help to destroy; he cannot reconstruct. Such writers
+   corrupt a society; they do not reform a system.”
+
+He closed his letter with a reference to Isaura:
+
+   “Do, in your reply, my dear Savarin, tell me something about your
+   friends Signora Venosta and the Signorina, whose work, so far as yet
+   published, I have read with admiring astonishment at the power of a
+   female writer so young to rival the veteran practitioners of fiction
+   in the creation of interest in imaginary characters, and in
+   sentiments which, if they appear somewhat over-romantic and
+   exaggerated, still touch very fine chords in human nature not
+   awakened in our trite every-day existence. I presume that the
+   beauty of the roman has been duly appreciated by a public so
+   refined as the Parisian, and that the name of the author is
+   generally known. No doubt she is now much the rage of the literary
+   circles, and her career as a writer may be considered fixed. Pray
+   present my congratulations to the Signorina when you see her.”
+
+Savarin had been in receipt of this letter some days before he called
+on Isaura, and carelessly showed it to her. She took it to the window to
+read, in order to conceal the trembling of her hands. In a few minutes
+she returned it silently.
+
+“Those Englishmen,” said Savarin, “have not the heart of compliment. I
+am by no means flattered by what he says of my trifles, and I dare say
+you are still less pleased with this chilly praise of your charming
+tale; but the man means to be civil.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Isaura, smiling faintly.
+
+“Only think of Rameau!” resumed Savarin. “On the strength of his salary
+in the ‘Sens Commun,’ and on the chateaux en Espagne which he constructs
+thereon, he has already furnished an apartment in the Chaussee d’Antin,
+and talks of setting up a coupe in order to maintain the dignity of
+letters when he goes to dine with the duchesses who are some day or
+other to invite him. Yet I admire his self-confidence, though I laugh at
+it. A man gets on by a spring in his own mechanism, and he should always
+keep it wound up. Rameau will make a figure. I used to pity him; I begin
+to respect. Nothing succeeds like success. But I see I am spoiling your
+morning. Au revoir, mon enfant.”
+
+Left alone, Isaura brooded in a sort of mournful wonderment over the
+words referring to herself in Graham’s letter. Read though but once,
+she knew them by heart. What! did he consider those characters she had
+represented as wholly imaginary? In one--the most prominent, the
+most attractive--could he detect no likeness to himself? What! did he
+consider so “over-romantic and exaggerated” sentiments which couched
+appeals from her heart to his? Alas! in matters of sentiment it is the
+misfortune of us men that even the most refined of us often grate upon
+some sentiment in a woman, though she may not be romantic,--not romantic
+at all, as people go,--some sentiment which she thought must be so
+obvious if we cared a straw about her, and which, though we prize
+her above the Indies, is by our dim, horn-eyed, masculine vision
+undiscernible. It may be something in itself the airiest of trifles: the
+anniversary of a day in which the first kiss was interchanged, nay, of a
+violet gathered, a misunderstanding cleared up; and of that anniversary
+we remember no more than we do of our bells and coral. But she--she
+remembers it; it is no bells and coral to her. Of course, much is to be
+said in excuse of man, brute though he be. Consider the multiplicity
+of his occupations, the practical nature of his cares. But granting the
+validity of all such excuse, there is in man an original obtuseness of
+fibre as regards sentiment in comparison with the delicacy of woman’s.
+It comes, perhaps, from the same hardness of constitution which forbids
+us the luxury of ready tears. Thus it is very difficult for the wisest
+man to understand thoroughly a woman. Goethe says somewhere that the
+highest genius in man must have much of the woman in it. If this be
+true, the highest genius alone in man can comprehend and explain the
+nature of woman, because it is not remote from him, but an integral part
+of his masculine self. I am not sure, however, that it necessitates the
+highest genius, but rather a special idiosyncrasy in genius which the
+highest may or may not have. I think Sophocles a higher genius than
+Euripides; but Euripides has that idiosyncrasy, and Sophocles not. I
+doubt whether women would accept Goethe as their interpreter with the
+same readiness with which they would accept Schiller. Shakspeare, no
+doubt, excels all poets in the comprehension of women, in his sympathy
+with them in the woman-part of his nature which Goethe ascribes to the
+highest genius; but, putting aside that “monster,” I do not remember any
+English poet whom we should consider conspicuously eminent in that lore,
+unless it be the prose poet, nowadays generally underrated and little
+read, who wrote the letters of Clarissa Harlowe. I say all this in
+vindication of Graham Vane, if, though a very clever man in his way,
+and by no means uninstructed in human nature, he had utterly failed in
+comprehending the mysteries which to this poor woman-child seemed to
+need no key for one who really loved her. But we have said somewhere
+before in this book that music speaks in a language which cannot explain
+itself except in music. So speaks, in the human heart, much which is
+akin to music. Fiction (that is, poetry, whether in form of rhyme or
+prose) speaks thus pretty often. A reader must be more commonplace
+than, I trust, my gentle readers are, if he suppose that when Isaura
+symbolized the real hero of her thoughts in the fabled hero of her
+romance, she depicted him as one of whom the world could say, “That is
+Graham Vane.” I doubt if even a male poet would so vulgarize any woman
+whom he thoroughly reverenced and loved. She is too sacred to him to
+be thus unveiled to the public stare; as the sweetest of all ancient
+love-poets says well--
+
+        “Qui sapit in tacito gaudeat ille sinu.”
+
+But a girl, a girl in her first untold timid love, to let the world
+know, “that is the man I love and would die for!”--if such a girl be,
+she has no touch of the true woman-genius, and certainly she and Isaura
+have nothing in common. Well, then, in Isaura’s invented hero, though
+she saw the archetypal form of Graham Vane,--saw him as in her young,
+vague, romantic dreams idealized, beautified, transfigured,--he would
+have been the vainest of men if he had seen therein the reflection of
+himself. On the contrary he said, in the spirit of that jealousy to
+which he was too prone, “Alas! this, then, is some ideal, already seen
+perhaps, compared to which how commonplace am I!” and thus persuading
+himself, no wonder that the sentiments surrounding this unrecognized
+archetype appeared to him over-romantic. His taste acknowledged the
+beauty of form which clothed them; his heart envied the ideal that
+inspired them. But they seemed so remote from him; they put the
+dreamland of the writer farther and farther from his workday real life.
+
+In this frame of mind, then, he had written to Savarin, and the answer
+he received hardened it still more. Savarin had replied, as was his
+laudable wont in correspondence, the very day he received Graham’s
+letter, and therefore before he had even seen Isaura. In his reply,
+he spoke much of the success her work had obtained; of the invitations
+showered upon her, and the sensation she caused in the salons; of her
+future career, with hope that she might even rival Madame de Grantmesnil
+some day, when her ideas became emboldened by maturer experience, and
+a closer study of that model of eloquent style,--saying that the young
+editor was evidently becoming enamoured of his fair contributor; and
+that Madame Savarin had ventured the prediction that the Signorina’s
+roman would end in the death of the heroine, and the marriage of the
+writer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+And still the weeks glided on: autumn succeeded to summer, the winter
+to autumn; the season of Paris was at its height. The wondrous capital
+seemed to repay its Imperial embellisher by the splendour and the joy
+of its fetes. But the smiles on the face of Paris were hypocritical
+and hollow. The Empire itself had passed out of fashion. Grave men
+and impartial observers felt anxious. Napoleon had renounced les ideas
+Napoleoniennes. He was passing into the category of constitutional
+sovereigns, and reigning, not by his old undivided prestige, but by the
+grace of party. The press was free to circulate complaints as to the
+past and demands as to the future, beneath which the present reeled,
+ominous of earthquake. People asked themselves if it were possible that
+the Empire could co-exist with forms of government not imperial, yet not
+genuinely constitutional, with a majority daily yielding to a minority.
+The basis of universal suffrage was sapped. About this time the articles
+in the “Sens Commun” signed Pierre Firmin were creating not only
+considerable sensation, but marked effect on opinion; and the sale of
+the journal was immense.
+
+Necessarily the repute and the position of Gustave Rameau, as the avowed
+editor of this potent journal, rose with its success. Nor only his
+repute and position; bank-notes of considerable value were transmitted
+to him by the publisher, with the brief statement that they were sent by
+the sole proprietor of the paper as the editor’s fair share of profit.
+The proprietor was never named, but Rameau took it for granted that it
+was M. Lebeau. M. Lebeau he had never seen since the day he had brought
+him the list of contributors, and was then referred to the publisher,
+whom he supposed M. Lebeau had secured, and received the first quarter
+of his salary in advance. The salary was a trifle compared to the extra
+profits thus generously volunteered. He called at Lebeau’s office, and
+saw only the clerk, who said that his chef was abroad.
+
+Prosperity produced a marked change for the better, if not in the
+substance of Rameau’s character, at least in his manners and social
+converse. He no longer exhibited that restless envy of rivals, which is
+the most repulsive symptom of vanity diseased. He pardoned Isaura her
+success; nay, he was even pleased at it. The nature of her work did not
+clash with his own kind of writing. It was so thoroughly woman like
+that one could not compare it to a man’s. Moreover, that success had
+contributed largely to the profits by which he had benefited, and to his
+renown as editor of the journal which accorded place to this new-found
+genius. But there was a deeper and more potent cause for sympathy with
+the success of his fair young contributor. He had imperceptibly glided
+into love with her,--a love very different from that with which poor
+Julie Caumartin flattered herself she had inspired the young poet.
+Isaura was one of those women for whom, even in natures the least
+chivalric, love, however ardent, cannot fail to be accompanied with a
+certain reverence,--the reverence with which the ancient knighthood, in
+its love for women, honoured the ideal purity of womanhood itself. Till
+then Rameau had never revered any one.
+
+On her side, brought so frequently into communication with the young
+conductor of the journal in which she wrote, Isaura entertained for him
+a friendly, almost sister-like affection.
+
+I do not think that, even if she had never known the Englishman, she
+would have really become in love with Rameau, despite the picturesque
+beauty of his countenance and the congeniality of literary pursuits; but
+perhaps she might have fancied herself in love with him. And till one,
+whether man or woman, has known real love, fancy is readily mistaken for
+it. But little as she had seen of Graham, and that little not in itself
+wholly favourable to him, she knew in her heart of hearts that his image
+would never be replaced by one equally dear. Perhaps in those qualities
+that placed him in opposition to her she felt his attractions. The
+poetical in woman exaggerates the worth of the practical in man. Still
+for Rameau her exquisitely kind and sympathizing nature conceived one of
+those sentiments which in woman are almost angel-like. We have seen in
+her letters to Madame de Grantmesnil that from the first he inspired her
+with a compassionate interest; then the compassion was checked by her
+perception of his more unamiable and envious attributes. But now those
+attributes, if still existent, had ceased to be apparent to her, and the
+compassion became unalloyed. Indeed, it was thus so far increased that
+it was impossible for any friendly observer to look at the beautiful
+face of this youth, prematurely wasted and worn, without the kindliness
+of pity. His prosperity had brightened and sweetened the expression of
+that face, but it had not effaced the vestiges of decay; rather perhaps
+deepened them, for the duties of his post necessitated a regular labour,
+to which he had been unaccustomed, and the regular labour necessitated,
+or seemed to him to necessitate, an increase of fatal stimulants. He
+imbibed absinthe with everything he drank, and to absinthe he united
+opium. This, of course, Isaura knew not, any more than she knew of
+his liaison with the “Ondine” of his muse; she saw only the increasing
+delicacy of his face and form, contrasted by his increased geniality and
+liveliness of spirits, and the contrast saddened her. Intellectually,
+too, she felt for him compassion. She recognized and respected in him
+the yearnings of a genius too weak to perform a tithe of what, in the
+arrogance of youth, it promised to its ambition. She saw, too, those
+struggles between a higher and a lower self, to which a weak degree of
+genius united with a strong degree of arrogance is so often subjected.
+Perhaps she overestimated the degree of genius, and what, if rightly
+guided, it could do; but she did, in the desire of her own heavenlier
+instinct, aspire to guide it heavenward. And as if she were twenty years
+older than himself, she obeyed that desire in remonstrating and warning
+and urging, and the young man took all these “preachments” with a
+pleased submissive patience. Such, as the new year dawned upon the grave
+of the old one, was the position between these two. And nothing more was
+heard from Graham Vane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+It has now become due to Graham Vane, and to his place in the estimation
+of my readers, to explain somewhat more distinctly the nature of the
+quest in prosecution of which he had sought the aid of the Parisian
+police, and under an assumed name made the acquaintance of M. Lebeau.
+
+The best way of discharging this duty will perhaps be to place before
+the reader the contents of the letter which passed under Graham’s eyes
+on the day in which the heart of the writer ceased to beat.
+
+(Confidential. To be opened immediately after my death, and before the
+perusal of my will.--Richard King.)
+
+TO GRAHAM VANE, Esq.
+
+My DEAR GRAHAM,--By the direction on the envelope of this letter,
+“Before the perusal of my will,” I have wished to save you from the
+disappointment you would naturally experience if you learned my bequest
+without being prevised of the conditions which I am about to impose upon
+your honour. You will see ere you conclude this letter that you are the
+only man living to whom I could intrust the secret it contains and the
+task it enjoins.
+
+You are aware that I was not born to the fortune that passed to me by
+the death of a distant relation, who had, in my earlier youth, children
+of his own. I was an only son, left an orphan at the age of sixteen
+with a very slender pittance. My guardians designed me for the medical
+profession. I began my studies at Edinburgh, and was sent to Paris to
+complete them, It so chanced that there I lodged in the same house with
+an artist named Auguste Duval, who, failing to gain his livelihood as a
+painter, in what--for his style was ambitious--is termed the Historical
+School, had accepted the humbler calling of a drawing-master. He had
+practised in that branch of the profession for several years at Tours,
+having a good clientele among English families settled there. This
+clientele, as he frankly confessed, he had lost from some irregularities
+of conduct. He was not a bad man, but of convivial temper, and easily
+led into temptation. He had removed to Paris a few months before I made
+his acquaintance. He obtained a few pupils, and often lost them as soon
+as gained. He was unpunctual and addicted to drink. But he had a small
+pension, accorded to him, he was wont to say mysteriously, by some
+high-born kinsfolk, too proud to own connection with a drawing-master,
+and on the condition that he should never name them. He never did name
+them to me, and I do not know to this day whether the story of this
+noble relationship was true or false. A pension, however, he did receive
+quarterly from some person or other, and it was an unhappy provision for
+him. It tended to make him an idler in his proper calling; and whenever
+he received the payment he spent it in debauch, to the neglect, while it
+lasted, of his pupils. This man had residing with him a young daughter,
+singularly beautiful. You may divine the rest. I fell in love with
+her,--a love deepened by the compassion with which she inspired me. Her
+father left her so frequently that, living on the same floor, we saw
+much of each other. Parent and child were often in great need,--lacking
+even fuel or food. Of course I assisted them to the utmost of my scanty
+means Much as I was fascinated by Louise Duval, I was not blind to great
+defects in her character. She was capricious, vain, aware of her beauty,
+and sighing for the pleasures or the gauds beyond her reach. I knew that
+she did not love me,--there was little, indeed, to captivate her fancy
+in a poor, thread-bare medical student,--and yet I fondly imagined that
+my own persevering devotion would at length win her affections, I spoke
+to her father more than once of my hope some day to make Louise my
+wife. This hope, I must frankly acknowledge, he never encouraged. On the
+contrary, he treated it with scorn,--“His child with her beauty
+would look much higher;” but be continued all the same to accept my
+assistance, and to sanction my visits. At length my slender purse was
+pretty well exhausted, and the luckless drawing-master was so harassed
+with petty debts that further credit became impossible. At this time
+I happened to hear from a fellow-student that his sister, who was the
+principal of a lady’s school in Cheltenham, bad commissioned him to look
+out for a first-rate teacher of drawing with whom her elder pupils
+could converse in French, but who should be sufficiently acquainted with
+English to make his instructions intelligible to the young. The salary
+was liberal, the school large and of high repute, and his appointment
+to it would open to an able teacher no inconsiderable connection among
+private families. I communicated this intelligence to Duval. He caught
+at it eagerly. He had learned at Tours to speak English fluently; and
+as his professional skill was of high order, and he was popular with
+several eminent artists, he obtained certificates as to his talents,
+which my fellow-student forwarded to England with specimens of Duval’s
+drawings. In a few days the offer of an engagement arrived, was
+accepted, and Duval and his daughter set out for Cheltenham. At the
+eve of their departure, Louise, profoundly dejected at the prospect of
+banishment to a foreign country, and placing no trust in her father’s
+reform to steady habits, evinced a tenderness for me hitherto new; she
+wept bitterly; she allowed me to believe that her tears flowed at the
+thought of parting with me, and even besought me to accompany them to
+Cheltenham, if only for a few days. You may suppose how delightedly I
+complied with the request. Duval had been about a week at the watering
+place, and was discharging the duties he had undertaken with such
+unwonted steadiness and regularity that I began sorrowfully to feel I
+had no longer an excuse for not returning to my studies at Paris, when
+the poor teacher was seized with a fit of paralysis. He lost the power
+of movement, and his mind was affected. The medical attendant called
+in said that he might linger thus for some time, but that, even if he
+recovered his intellect, which was more than doubtful, he would never be
+able to resume his profession. I could not leave Louise in circumstances
+so distressing,--I remained. The little money Duval had brought from
+Paris was now exhausted; and when the day on which he had been in the
+habit of receiving his quarter’s pension came round, Louise was unable
+even to conjecture how it was to be applied for. It seems he had always
+gone for it in person; but to whom he went was a secret which he had
+never divulged, and at this critical juncture his mind was too enfeebled
+even to comprehend us when we inquired. I had already drawn from the
+small capital on the interest of which I had maintained myself; I now
+drew out most of the remainder. But this was a resource that could
+not last long. Nor could I, without seriously compromising Louise’s
+character, be constantly in the house with a girl so young, and whose
+sole legitimate protector was thus afflicted. There seemed but one
+alternative to that of abandoning her altogether,--namely, to make her
+my wife, to conclude the studies necessary to obtain my diploma, and
+purchase some partnership in a small country practice with the scanty
+surplus that might be left of my capital. I placed this option before
+Louise timidly, for I could not bear the thought of forcing her
+inclinations. She seemed much moved by what she called my generosity:
+she consented; we were married. I was, as you may conceive, wholly
+ignorant of French law. We were married according to the English
+ceremony and the Protestant ritual. Shortly after our marriage we all
+three returned to Paris, taking an apartment in a quarter remote from
+that in which we had before lodged, in order to avoid any, harassment
+to which such small creditors as Duval had left behind him might
+subject us. I resumed my studies with redoubled energy, and Louise was
+necessarily left much alone with her poor father in the daytime. The
+defects in her character became more and more visible. She reproached me
+for the solitude to which I condemned her; our poverty galled her; she
+had no kind greeting for me when I returned at evening, wearied out.
+Before marriage she had not loved me; after marriage, alas! I fear she
+hated. We had been returned to Paris some months when poor Duval died;
+he had never recovered his faculties, nor had we ever learned from whom
+his pension had been received. Very soon after her father’s death I
+observed a singular change in the humour and manner of Louise. She was
+no longer peevish, irascible, reproachful; but taciturn and thoughtful.
+She seemed to me under the influence of some suppressed excitement, her
+cheeks flushed and her eye abstracted. At length, one evening when I
+returned I found her gone. She did not come back that night nor the next
+day. It was impossible for me to conjecture what had become of her.
+She had no friends, so far as I knew; no one had visited at our squalid
+apartment. The poor house in which we lodged had no concierge whom
+I could question; but the ground-floor was occupied by a small
+tobacconist’s shop, and the woman at the counter told me that for some
+days before my wife’s disappearance, she had observed her pass the
+shop-window in going out in the afternoon and returning towards the
+evening. Two terrible conjectures beset me either in her walk she
+had met some admirer, with whom she had fled; or, unable to bear the
+companionship and poverty of a union which she had begun to loathe, she
+had gone forth to drown herself in the Seine. On the third day from her
+flight I received the letter I enclose. Possibly the handwriting may
+serve you as a guide in the mission I intrust to you.
+
+   MONSIEUR,--You have deceived me vilely,--taken advantage of my
+   inexperienced youth and friendless position to decoy me into an
+   illegal marriage. My only consolation under my calamity and
+   disgrace is, that I am at least free from a detested bond. You will
+   not see me again,--it is idle to attempt to do so. I have obtained
+   refuge with relations whom I have been fortunate enough to discover,
+   and to whom I intrust my fate; and even if you could learn the
+   shelter I have sought, and have the audacity to molest me, you would
+   but subject yourself to the chastisement you so richly deserve.
+
+                    Louise DUVAL.
+
+At the perusal of this cold-hearted, ungrateful letter, the love I had
+felt for this woman--already much shaken by her wayward and perverse
+temper--vanished from my heart, never to return. But as an honest
+man, my conscience was terribly stung. Could it be possible that I
+had unknowingly deceived her,--that our marriage was not legal? When
+I recovered from the stun which was the first effect of her letter, I
+sought the opinion of an avoue in the neighbourbood, named Sartiges, and
+to my dismay, I learned that while I, marrying according to the customs
+of my own country, was legally bound to Louise in England, and could
+not marry another, the marriage was in all ways illegal for her,--being
+without the consent of her relations while she was under age; without
+the ceremonials of the Roman Catholic Church,--to which, though I never
+heard any profession of religious belief from her or her father, it
+might fairly be presumed that she belonged; and, above all, without the
+form of civil contract which is indispensable to the legal marriage of a
+French subject.
+
+The avoue said that the marriage, therefore, in itself was null, and
+that Louise could, without incurring legal penalties for bigamy,
+marry again in France according to the French laws; but that under the
+circumstances it was probable that her next of kin would apply on her
+behalf to the proper court for the formal annulment of the marriage,
+which would be the most effectual mode of saving her from any
+molestation on my part, and remove all possible questions hereafter as
+to her single state and absolute right to remarry. I had better remain
+quiet, and wait for intimation of further proceedings. I knew not what
+else to do, and necessarily submitted.
+
+From this wretched listlessness of mind, alternated now by vehement
+resentment against Louise, now by the reproach of my own sense of honour
+in leaving that honour in so questionable a point of view, I was aroused
+by a letter from the distant kinsman by whom hitherto I had been so
+neglected. In the previous year he had lost one of his two children; the
+other was just dead. No nearer relation now surviving stood between me
+and my chance of inheritance from him. He wrote word of his domestic
+affliction with a manly sorrow which touched me, said that his health
+was failing, and begged me, as soon as possible, to come and visit him
+in Scotland. I went, and continued to reside with him till his death,
+some months afterwards. By his will I succeeded to his ample fortune on
+condition of taking his name.
+
+As soon as the affairs connected with this inheritance permitted, I
+returned to Paris, and again saw M. Sartiges. I had never heard from
+Louise, nor from any one connected with her since the letter you have
+read. No steps had been taken to annul the marriage, and sufficient time
+had elapsed to render it improbable that such steps would be taken now;
+but if no such steps were taken, however free from the marriage-bond
+Louise might be, it clearly remained binding on myself.
+
+At my request, M. Sartiges took the most vigorous measures that occurred
+to him to ascertain where Louise was, and what and who was the relation
+with whom she asserted she had found refuge. The police were employed;
+advertisements were issued, concealing names, but sufficiently clear to
+be intelligible to Louise if they came under her eye, and to the effect
+that if any informality in our marriage existed, she was implored for
+her own sake to remove it by a second ceremonial--answer to be addressed
+to the avoue. No answer came; the police had hitherto failed of
+discovering her, but were sanguine of success, when a few weeks after
+these advertisements a packet reached M. Sartiges, enclosing the
+certificates annexed to this letter, of the death of Louise Duval at
+Munich. The certificates, as you will see, are to appearance officially
+attested and unquestionably genuine. So they were considered by M.
+Sartiges as well as by myself. Here, then, all inquiry ceased; the
+police were dismissed. I was free. By little and little I overcame the
+painful impressions which my ill-starred union and the announcement of
+Louise’s early death bequeathed. Rich, and of active mind, I learned to
+dismiss the trials of my youth as a gloomy dream. I entered into public
+life; I made myself a creditable position; became acquainted with your
+aunt; we were wedded, and the beauty of her nature embellished mine.
+Alas, alas! two years after our marriage--nearly five years after I
+had received the certificates of Louise’s death--I and your aunt made a
+summer excursion into the country of the Rhine; on our return we rested
+at Aix-la-Chapelle. One day while there I was walking alone in the
+environs of the town, when, on the road, a little girl, seemingly about
+five years old, in chase of a butterfly, stumbled and fell just before
+my feet; I took her up, and as she was crying more from the shock of the
+fall than any actual hurt, I was still trying my best to comfort her,
+when a lady some paces behind her came up, and in taking the child from
+my arms as I was bending over her, thanked me in a voice that made my
+heart stand still. I looked up, and beheld Louise.
+
+It was not till I had convulsively clasped her hand and uttered her
+name that she recognized me. I was, no doubt, the more altered of the
+two,--prosperity and happiness had left little trace of the needy, care
+worn, threadbare student. But if she were the last to recognize, she was
+the first to recover self-possession. The expression of her face became
+hard and set. I cannot pretend to repeat with any verbal accuracy the
+brief converse that took place between us, as she placed the child on
+the grass bank beside the path, bade her stay there quietly, and walked
+on with me some paces as if she did not wish the child to hear what was
+said.
+
+The purport of what passed was to this effect: She refused to explain
+the certificates of her death further than that, becoming aware of what
+she called the “persecution” of the advertisements issued and inquiries
+instituted, she had caused those documents to be sent to the address
+given in the advertisement, in order to terminate all further
+molestation. But how they could have been obtained, or by what art so
+ingeniously forged as to deceive the acuteness of a practised lawyer, I
+know not to this day. She declared, indeed, that she was now happy, in
+easy circumstances, and that if I wished to make some reparation for
+the wrong I had done her, it would be to leave her in peace; and in
+case--which was not likely--we ever met again, to regard and treat her
+as a stranger; that she, on her part, never would molest me, and that
+the certified death of Louise Duval left me as free to marry again as
+she considered herself to be.
+
+My mind was so confused, so bewildered, while she thus talked, that
+I did not attempt to interrupt her. The blow had so crushed me that I
+scarcely struggled under it; only, as she turned to leave me, I suddenly
+recollected that the child, when taken from my arms, had called her
+“Maman,” and, judging by the apparent age of the child, it must have
+been born but a few months after Louise had left me,--that it must
+be mine. And so, in my dreary woe, I faltered out, “But what of your
+infant? Surely that has on me a claim that you relinquish for yourself.
+You were not unfaithful to me while you deemed you were my wife?”
+
+“Heavens! can you insult me by such a doubt? No!” she cried out,
+impulsively and haughtily. “But as I was not legally your wife, the
+child is not legally yours; it is mine, and only mine. Nevertheless, if
+you wish to claim it”--here she paused as in doubt. I saw at once that
+she was prepared to resign to me the child if I had urged her to do
+so. I must own, with a pang of remorse, that I recoiled from such a
+proposal. What could I do with the child? How explain to my wife the
+cause of my interest in it? If only a natural child of mine, I should
+have shrunk from owning to Janet a youthful error. But as it was,--the
+child by a former marriage, the former wife still living!--my blood ran
+cold with dread. And if I did take the child, invent what story I
+might as to its parentage, should I not expose myself, expose Janet, to
+terrible constant danger? The mother’s natural affection might urge
+her at any time to seek tidings of the child, and in so doing she might
+easily discover my new name, and, perhaps years hence, establish on me
+her own claim.
+
+No, I could not risk such perils. I replied sullenly, “You say rightly;
+the child is yours,--only yours.” I was about to add an offer of
+pecuniary provision for it, but Louise had already turned scornfully
+towards the bank on which she had left the infant. I saw her snatch from
+the child’s hand some wild flowers the poor thing had been gathering;
+and how often have I thought of the rude way in which she did it,--not
+as a mother who loves her child. Just then other passengers appeared on
+the road; two of them I knew,--an English couple very intimate with Lady
+Janet and myself. They stopped to accost me, while Louise passed by with
+the infant towards the town. I turned in the opposite direction, and
+strove to collect my thoughts. Terrible as was the discovery thus
+suddenly made, it was evident that Louise had as strong an interest
+as myself to conceal it. There was little chance that it would ever be
+divulged. Her dress and that of the child were those of persons in
+the richer classes of life. After all, doubtless, the child needed not
+pecuniary assistance from me, and was surely best off under the mother’s
+care. Thus I sought to comfort and to delude myself.
+
+The next day Janet and I left Aix-la-Chapelle and returned to England.
+But it was impossible for me to banish the dreadful thought that Janet
+was not legally my wife; that could she even guess the secret lodged in
+my breast she would be lost to me forever, even though she died of
+the separation (you know well how tenderly she loved me). My nature
+underwent a silent revolution. I had previously cherished the ambition
+common to most men in public life,--the ambition for fame, for place,
+for power. That ambition left me; I shrank from the thought of becoming
+too well known, lest Louise or her connections, as yet ignorant of my
+new name, might more easily learn what the world knew; namely that I had
+previously borne another name,--the name of her husband,--and finding me
+wealthy and honoured, might hereafter be tempted to claim for herself or
+her daughter the ties she adjured for both while she deemed me poor and
+despised. But partly my conscience, partly the influence of the angel
+by my side, compelled me to seek whatever means of doing good to others
+position and circumstances placed at my disposal. I was alarmed
+when even such quiet exercise of mind and fortune acquired a sort of
+celebrity. How pain fully I shrank from it! The world attributed my
+dread of publicity to unaffected modesty. The world praised me, and
+I knew myself an impostor. But the years stole on. I heard no more of
+Louise or her child, and my fears gradually subsided. Yet I was consoled
+when the two children born to me by Janet died in their infancy. Had
+they lived, who can tell whether something might not have transpired to
+prove them illegitimate.
+
+I must hasten on. At last came the great and crushing calamity of my
+life,--I lost the woman who was my all in all. At least she was spared
+the discovery that would have deprived me of the right of tending her
+deathbed, and leaving within her tomb a place vacant for myself.
+
+But after the first agonies that followed her loss, the conscience I had
+so long sought to tranquillize became terribly reproachful. Louise had
+forfeited all right to my consideration, but my guiltless child had
+not done so. Did it live still? If so, was it not the heir to my
+fortunes,--the only child left to me? True, I have the absolute right to
+dispose of my wealth: it is not in land; it is not entailed: but was
+not the daughter I had forsaken morally the first claimant; was no
+reparation due to her? You remember that my physician ordered me, some
+little time after your aunt’s death, to seek a temporary change of
+scene. I obeyed, and went away no one knew whither. Well, I repaired to
+Paris; there I sought M. Sartiges, the avoue. I found he had been
+long dead. I discovered his executors, and inquired if any papers or
+correspondence between Richard Macdonald and himself many years ago
+were in existence. All such documents, with others not returned to
+correspondents at his decease, had been burned by his desire. No
+possible clew to the whereabouts of Louise, should any have been gained
+since I last saw her, was left. What then to do I knew not. I did not
+dare to make inquiries through strangers, which, if discovering my
+child, might also bring to light a marriage that would have dishonoured
+the memory of my lost saint. I returned to England, feeling that my days
+were numbered. It is to you that I transmit the task of those researches
+which I could not institute. I bequeath to you, with the exception of
+trifling legacies and donations to public charities, the whole of my
+fortune; but you will understand by this letter that it is to be held
+on a trust which I cannot specify in my will. I could not, without
+dishonouring the venerated name of your aunt, indicate as the heiress of
+my wealth a child by a wife living at the time I married Janet. I cannot
+form any words for such a devise which would not arouse gossip and
+suspicion, and furnish ultimately a clew to the discovery I would shun.
+I calculate that, after all deductions, the sum that will devolve to you
+will be about L220,000. That which I mean to be absolutely and at once
+yours is the comparatively trifling legacy of L20,000. If Louise’s
+child be not living, or if you find full reason to suppose that despite
+appearances the child is not mine, the whole of my fortune lapses to
+you; but should Louise be surviving and need pecuniary aid, you will
+contrive that she may have such an annuity as you may deem fitting,
+without learning whence it come. You perceive that it is your object, if
+possible, even more than mine, to preserve free from slur the name and
+memory of her who was to you a second mother. All ends we desire would
+be accomplished could you, on discovering my lost child, feel that,
+without constraining your inclinations, you could make her your wife.
+She would then naturally share with you my fortune, and all claims of
+justice and duty would be quietly appeased. She would now be of age
+suitable to yours. When I saw her at Aix she gave promise of inheriting
+no small share of her mother’s beauty. If Louise’s assurance of her easy
+circumstances were true, her daughter has possibly been educated and
+reared with tenderness and care. You have already assured me that you
+have no prior attachment. But if, on discovering this child, you find
+her already married, or one whom you could not love nor esteem, I leave
+it implicitly to your honour and judgment to determine what share of
+the L200,000 left in your hands should be consigned to her. She may have
+been corrupted by her mother’s principles. She may--Heaven forbid!--have
+fallen into evil courses, and wealth would be misspent in her hands. In
+that case a competence sufficing to save her from further degradation,
+from the temptations of poverty, would be all that I desire you to
+devote from my wealth. On the contrary, you may find in her one who, in
+all respects, ought to be my chief inheritor. All this I leave in full
+confidence to you, as being, of all the men I know, the one who unites
+the highest sense of honour with the largest share of practical sense
+and knowledge of life. The main difficulty, whatever this lost girl may
+derive from my substance, will be in devising some means to convey it
+to her so that neither she nor those around her may trace the bequest
+to me. She can never be acknowledged as my child,--never! Your reverence
+for the beloved dead forbids that. This difficulty your clear strong
+sense must overcome; mine is blinded by the shades of death. You too
+will deliberately consider how to institute the inquiries after mother
+and child so as not to betray our secret. This will require great
+caution. You will probably commence at Paris, through the agency of the
+police, to whom you will be very guarded in your communications. It
+is most unfortunate that I have no miniature of Louise, and that any
+description of her must be so vague that it may not serve to discover
+her; but such as it is, it may prevent your mistaking for her some other
+of her name. Louise was above the common height, and looked taller than
+she was, with the peculiar combination of very dark hair, very fair
+complexion, and light-gray eyes. She would now be somewhat under the
+age of forty. She was not without accomplishments, derived from the
+companionship with her father. She spoke English fluently; she drew
+with taste, and even with talent. You will see the prudence of confining
+research at first to Louise, rather than to the child who is the
+principal object of it; for it is not till you can ascertain what
+has become of her that you can trust the accuracy of any information
+respecting the daughter, whom I assume, perhaps after all erroneously,
+to be mine. Though Louise talked with such levity of holding herself
+free to marry, the birth of her child might be sufficient injury to her
+reputation to become a serious obstacle to such second nuptials, not
+having taken formal steps to annul her marriage with myself. If not thus
+remarried, there would be no reason why she should not resume her maiden
+name of Duval, as she did in the signature of her letter to me: finding
+that I had ceased to molest her by the inquiries, to elude which she had
+invented the false statement of her death. It seems probable, therefore,
+that she is residing somewhere in Paris, and in the name of Duval. Of
+course the burden of uncertainty as to your future cannot be left to
+oppress you for an indefinite length of time. If at the end, say, of two
+years, your researches have wholly failed, consider three-fourths of
+my whole fortune to have passed to you, and put by the fourth to
+accumulate, should the child afterwards be discovered, and satisfy your
+judgment as to her claims on me as her father. Should she not, it will
+be a reserve fund for your own children. But oh, if my child could be
+found in time! and oh, if she be all that could win your heart, and be
+the wife you would select from free choice! I can say no more. Pity me,
+and judge leniently of Janet’s husband.
+
+                  R. K.
+
+The key to Graham’s conduct is now given,--the deep sorrow that took
+him to the tomb of the aunt he so revered, and whose honoured memory
+was subjected to so great a risk; the slightness of change in his
+expenditure and mode of life, after an inheritance supposed to be so
+ample; the abnegation of his political ambition; the subject of his
+inquiries, and the cautious reserve imposed upon them; above all, the
+position towards Isaura in which he was so cruelly placed.
+
+Certainly, his first thought in revolving the conditions of his trust
+had been that of marriage with this lost child of Richard King’s,
+should she be discovered single, disengaged, and not repulsive to his
+inclinations. Tacitly he subscribed to the reasons for this course
+alleged by the deceased. It was the simplest and readiest plan of
+uniting justice to the rightful inheritor with care for a secret so
+important to the honour of his aunt, of Richard King himself,--his
+benefactor,--of the illustrious house from which Lady Janet had sprung.
+Perhaps, too, the consideration that by this course a fortune so useful
+to his career was secured was not without influence on the mind of a
+man naturally ambitious. But on that consideration he forbade himself to
+dwell. He put it away from him as a sin. Yet, to marriage with any one
+else, until his mission was fulfilled, and the uncertainty as to the
+extent of his fortune was dispelled, there interposed grave practical
+obstacles. How could he honestly present himself to a girl and to her
+parents in the light of a rich man, when in reality he might be but a
+poor man? How could he refer to any lawyer the conditions which rendered
+impossible any settlement that touched a shilling of the large sum which
+at any day he might have to transfer to another? Still, when once fully
+conspicuous how deep was the love with which Isaura had inspired him,
+the idea of wedlock with the daughter of Richard King, if she yet lived
+and was single, became inadmissible. The orphan condition of the young
+Italian smoothed away the obstacles to proposals of marriage which
+would have embarrassed his addresses to girls of his own rank, and with
+parents who would have demanded settlements. And if he had found Isaura
+alone on that day on which he had seen her last, he would doubtless have
+yielded to the voice of his heart, avowed his love, wooed her own, and
+committed both to the tie of betrothal. We have seen how rudely such
+yearnings of his heart were repelled on that last interview. His English
+prejudices were so deeply rooted, that, even if he had been wholly free
+from the trust bequeathed to him, he would have recoiled from marriage
+with a girl who, in the ardour for notoriety, could link herself
+with such associates as Gustave Rameau, by habits a Bohemian, and by
+principles a Socialist.
+
+In flying from Paris, he embraced the resolve to banish all thought of
+wedding Isaura, and to devote himself sternly to the task which had so
+sacred a claim upon him. Not that he could endure the idea of marrying
+another, even if the lost heiress should be all that his heart could
+have worshipped, had that heart been his own to give; but he was
+impatient of the burden heaped on him,--of the fortune which might not
+be his, of the uncertainty which paralyzed all his ambitious schemes for
+the future.
+
+Yet, strive as he would--and no man could strive more resolutely--he
+could not succeed in banishing the image of Isaura. It was with him
+always; and with it a sense of irreparable loss, of a terrible void, of
+a pining anguish.
+
+And the success of his inquiries at Aix-la-Chapelle, while sufficient
+to detain him in the place, was so slight, and advanced by such slow
+degrees, that it furnished no continued occupation to his restless mind.
+M. Renard was acute and painstaking. But it was no easy matter to obtain
+any trace of a Parisian visitor to so popular a Spa so many years ago.
+The name Duval, too, was so common, that at Aix, as we have seen at
+Paris, time was wasted in the chase of a Duval who proved not to be the
+lost Louise. At last M. Renard chanced on a house in which, in the year
+1849, two ladies from Paris had lodged for three weeks. One was named
+Madame Duval, the other Madame Marigny. They were both young, both very
+handsome, and much of the same height and colouring. But Madame Marigny
+was the handsomer of the two. Madame Duval frequented the gaming-tables
+and was apparently of very lively temper. Madame Marigny lived very
+quietly, rarely or never stirred out, and seemed in delicate health.
+She, however, quitted the apartment somewhat abruptly, and, to the best
+of the lodging-house-keeper’s recollection, took rooms in the country
+near Aix--she could not remember where. About two months after the
+departure of Madame Marigny, Madame Duval also left Aix, and in company
+with a French gentleman who had visited her much of late,--a handsome
+man of striking appearance. The lodging house-keeper did not know what
+or who he was. She remembered that he used to be announced to Madame
+Duval by the name of M. Achille. Madame Duval had never been seen again
+by the lodging-house-keeper after she had left. But Madame Marigny
+she had once seen, nearly five years after she had quitted the
+lodgings,--seen her by chance at the railway station, recognized her at
+once, and accosted her, offering her the old apartment. Madame Marigny
+had, however, briefly replied that she was only at Aix for a few hours,
+and should quit it the same day.
+
+The inquiry now turned towards Madame Marigny. The date on which the
+lodging-house-keeper had last seen her coincided with the year in
+which Richard King had met Louise. Possibly, therefore, she might have
+accompanied the latter to Aix at that time, and could, if found, give
+information as to her subsequent history and present whereabouts.
+
+After a tedious search throughout all the environs of Aix, Graham
+himself came, by the merest accident, upon the vestiges of Louise’s
+friend. He had been wandering alone in the country round Aix, when a
+violent thunderstorm drove him to ask shelter in the house of a small
+farmer, situated in a field, a little off the byway which he had taken.
+While waiting for the cessation of the storm, and drying his clothes
+by the fire in a room that adjoined the kitchen, he entered into
+conversation with the farmer’s wife, a pleasant, well-mannered person,
+and made some complimentary observation on a small sketch of the house
+in water-colours that hung upon the wall. “Ah,” said the farmer’s wife,
+“that was done by a French lady who lodged here many years ago. She drew
+very prettily, poor thing.”
+
+“A lady who lodged here many years ago,--how many?”
+
+“Well, I guess somewhere about twenty.”
+
+“Ah, indeed! Was it a Madame Marigny?”
+
+“Bon Dieu! That was indeed her name. Did you know her? I should be so
+glad to hear she is well and--I hope--happy.”
+
+“I do not know where she is now, and am making inquiries to ascertain.
+Pray help me. How long did Madame Marigny lodge with you?”
+
+“I think pretty well two months; yes, two months. She left a month after
+her confinement.”
+
+“She was confined here?”
+
+“Yes. When she first came, I had no idea that she was enceinte. She had
+a pretty figure, and no one would have guessed it, in the way she
+wore her shawl. Indeed I only began to suspect it a few days before it
+happened; and that was so suddenly, that all was happily over before we
+could send for the accoucheur.”
+
+“And the child lived?--a girl or a boy?”
+
+“A girl,--the prettiest baby.”
+
+“Did she take the child with her when she went?”
+
+“No; it was put out to nurse with a niece of my husband who was confined
+about the same time. Madame paid liberally in advance, and continued to
+send money half-yearly, till she came herself and took away the little
+girl.”
+
+“When was that,--a little less than five years after she had left it?”
+
+“Why, you know all about it, Monsieur; yes, not quite five years after.
+She did not come to see me, which I thought unkind, but she sent me,
+through my niece-in-law, a real gold watch and a shawl. Poor dear
+lady--for lady she was all over,--with proud ways, and would not bear to
+be questioned. But I am sure she was none of your French light ones, but
+an honest wife like myself, though she never said so.”
+
+“And have you no idea where she was all the five years she was away, or
+where she went after reclaiming her child?”
+
+“No, indeed, Monsieur.”
+
+“But her remittances for the infant must have been made by letters, and
+the letters would have had post-marks?”
+
+“Well, I dare say; I am no scholar myself. But suppose you see Marie
+Hubert, that is my niece-in-law, perhaps she has kept the envelopes.”
+
+“Where does Madame Hubert live?”
+
+“It is just a league off by the short path; you can’t miss the way. Her
+husband has a bit of land of his own, but he is also a carrier--‘Max
+Hubert, carrier,’--written over the door, just opposite the first church
+you get to. The rain has ceased, but it may be too far for you to-day.”
+
+“Not a bit of it. Many thanks.”
+
+“But if you find out the dear lady and see her, do tell her how pleased
+I should be to hear good news of her and the little one.”
+
+Graham strode on under the clearing skies to the house indicated. He
+found Madame Hubert at home, and ready to answer all questions; but,
+alas! she had not the envelopes. Madame Marigny, on removing the child,
+had asked for all the envelopes or letters, and carried them away with
+her. Madame Hubert, who was as little of a scholar as her aunt-in-law
+was, had never paid much attention to the post-marks on the envelopes;
+and the only one that she did remember was the first, that contained a
+bank-note, and that post-mark was “Vienna.”
+
+“But did not Madame Marigny’s letters ever give you an address to which
+to write with news of her child?”
+
+“I don’t think she cared much for her child, Monsieur. She kissed it
+very coldly when she came to take it away. I told the poor infant that
+that was her own mamma; and Madame said, ‘Yes, you may call me maman,’
+in a tone of voice--well, not at all like that of a mother. She brought
+with her a little bag which contained some fine clothes for the child,
+and was very impatient till the child had got them on.”
+
+“Are you quite sure it was the same lady who left the child?”
+
+“Oh, there is no doubt of that. She was certainly tres belle, but I did
+not fancy her as aunt did. She carried her head very high, and looked
+rather scornful. However, I must say she behaved very generously.”
+
+“Still you have not answered my question whether her letters contained
+no address.”
+
+“She never wrote more than two letters. One enclosing the first
+remittance was but a few lines, saying that if the child was well and
+thriving, I need not write; but if it died or became dangerously ill, I
+might at any time write a line to Madame -----, Poste Restante, Vienna.
+She was travelling about, but the letter would be sure to reach her
+sooner or later. The only other letter I had was to apprise me that
+she was coming to remove the child, and might be expected in three days
+after the receipt of her letter.”
+
+“And all the other communications from her were merely remittances in
+blank envelopes?”
+
+“Exactly so.”
+
+Graham, finding he could learn no more, took his departure. On his way
+home, meditating the new idea that his adventure that day suggested, he
+resolved to proceed at once, accompanied by M. Renard, to Munich, and
+there learn what particulars could be yet ascertained respecting those
+certificates of the death of Louise Duval, to which (sharing Richard
+King’s very natural belief that they had been skilfully forged) he had
+hitherto attached no importance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+No satisfactory result attended the inquiries made at Munich save indeed
+this certainty,--the certificates attesting the decease of some person
+calling herself Louise Duval had not been forged. They were indubitably
+genuine. A lady bearing that name had arrived at one of the principal
+hotels late in the evening, and had there taken handsome rooms. She was
+attended by no servant, but accompanied by a gentleman, who, however,
+left the hotel as soon as he had seen her lodged to her satisfaction.
+The books of the hotel still retained the entry of her name,--Madame
+Duval, Francaise rentiere. On comparing the handwriting of this entry
+with the letter from Richard King’s first wife, Graham found it to
+differ; but then it was not certain, though probable, that the entry had
+been written by the alleged Madame Duval herself. She was visited the
+next day by the same gentleman who had accompanied her on arriving.
+He dined and spent the evening with her. But no one at the hotel could
+remember what was the gentleman’s name, nor even if he were announced by
+any name. He never called again. Two days afterwards, Madame Duval was
+taken ill; a doctor was sent for, and attended her till her death. This
+doctor was easily found. He remembered the case perfectly,--congestion
+of the lungs, apparently caused by cold caught on her journey. Fatal
+symptoms rapidly manifested themselves, and she died on the third day
+from the seizure. She was a young and handsome woman. He had asked her
+during her short illness if he should not write to her friends; if there
+were no one she would wish to be sent for. She replied that there was
+only one friend, to whom she had already written, and who would arrive
+in a day or two; and on inquiring, it appeared that she had written such
+a letter, and taken it herself to the post on the morning of the day she
+was taken ill.
+
+She had in her purse not a large sum, but money enough to cover all her
+expenses, including those of her funeral, which, according to the law in
+force at the place, followed very quickly on her decease. The arrival of
+the friend to whom she had written being expected, her effects were, in
+the meanwhile, sealed up. The day after her death a letter arrived for
+her, which was opened. It was evidently written by a man, and apparently
+by a lover. It expressed an impassioned regret that the writer was
+unavoidably prevented returning to Munich so soon as he had hoped, but
+trusted to see his dear bouton de rose in the course of the following
+week; it was only signed Achille, and gave no address. Two or three
+days after, a lady, also young and handsome, arrived at the hotel, and
+inquired for Madame Duval. She was greatly shocked at hearing of her
+decease. When sufficiently recovered to bear being questioned as to
+Madame Duval’s relations and position, she appeared confused; said,
+after much pressing, that she was no relation to the deceased; that she
+believed Madame Duval had no relations with whom she was on friendly
+terms,--at least she had never heard her speak of any; and that her own
+acquaintance with the deceased, though cordial, was very recent. She
+could or would not give any clew to the writer of the letter signed
+Achille, and she herself quitted Munich that evening, leaving the
+impression that Madame Duval had been one of those ladies who, in
+adopting a course of life at variance with conventional regulations,
+are repudiated by their relations, and probably drop even their rightful
+names.
+
+Achille never appeared; but a few days after, a lawyer at Munich
+received a letter from another at Vienna, requesting, in compliance
+with a client’s instructions, the formal certificates of Louise Duval’s
+death. These were sent as directed, and nothing more about the ill-fated
+woman was heard of. After the expiration of the time required by law,
+the seals were removed from the effects, which consisted of two malles
+and a dressing-case. But they only contained the articles appertaining
+to a lady’s wardrobe or toilet,--no letters, not even another note
+from Achille,--no clew, in short, to the family or antecedents of the
+deceased. What then had become of these effects, no one at the hotel
+could give a clear or satisfactory account. It was said by the mistress
+of the hotel, rather sullenly, that they had, she supposed, been sold by
+her predecessor, and by order of the authorities, for the benefit of the
+poor.
+
+If the lady who had represented herself as Louise Duval’s acquaintance
+had given her own name, which doubtless she did, no one recollected it.
+It was not entered in the books of the hotel, for she had not
+lodged there; nor did it appear that she had allowed time for formal
+examination by the civil authorities. In fact, it was clear that poor
+Louise Duval had been considered as an adventuress by the hotel-keeper
+and the medical attendant at Munich; and her death had excited so little
+interest, that it was strange that even so many particulars respecting
+it could be gleaned.
+
+After a prolonged but fruitless stay at Munich, Graham and M. Renard
+repaired to Vienna; there, at least, Madame Marigny had given an
+address, and there she might be heard of.
+
+At Vienna, however, no research availed to discover a trace of any such
+person; and in despair Graham returned to England in the January of
+1870, and left the further prosecution of his inquiries to M. Renard,
+who, though obliged to transfer himself to Paris for a time, promised
+that he would leave no stone unturned for the discovery of Madame
+Marigny; and Graham trusted to that assurance when M. Renard, rejecting
+half of the large gratuity offered him, added, “Je suis Francais; this
+with me has ceased to be an affair of money; it has become an affair
+that involves my amour propre.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+If Graham Vane had been before caressed and courted for himself, he
+was more than ever appreciated by polite society, now that he added the
+positive repute of wealth to that of a promising intellect. Fine ladies
+said that Graham Vane was a match for any girl. Eminent politicians
+listened to him with a more attentive respect, and invited him to
+selecter dinner-parties. His cousin the Duke urged him to announce
+his candidature for the county, and purchase back, at least, the old
+Stamm-schloss. But Graham obstinately refused to entertain either
+proposal, continued to live as economically as before in his old
+apartments, and bore with an astonishing meekness of resignation the
+unsolicited load of fashion heaped upon his shoulders. At heart he was
+restless and unhappy. The mission bequeathed to him by Richard King
+haunted his thoughts like a spectre not to be exorcised. Was his whole
+life to be passed in the weary sustainment of an imposture which in
+itself was gall and wormwood to a nature constitutionally frank and
+open? Was he forever to appear a rich man and live as a poor one? Was he
+till his deathbed to be deemed a sordid miser whenever he refused a just
+claim on his supposed wealth, and to feel his ambition excluded from the
+objects it earnestly coveted, and which he was forced to appear too much
+of an Epicurean philosopher to prize?
+
+More torturing than all else to the man’s innermost heart was the
+consciousness that he had not conquered, could not conquer, the yearning
+love with which Isaura had inspired him, and yet that against such love
+all his reasonings, all his prejudices, more stubbornly than ever were
+combined. In the French newspapers which he had glanced over while
+engaged in his researches in Germany-nay, in German critical journals
+themselves--he had seen so many notices of the young author,--highly
+eulogistic, it is true, but which to his peculiar notions were more
+offensive than if they had been sufficiently condemnatory of her work
+to discourage her from its repetition; notices which seemed to him the
+supreme impertinences which no man likes exhibited towards the woman to
+whom he would render the chivalrous homage of respect. Evidently this
+girl had become as much public property as if she had gone on the stage.
+Minute details of her personal appearance,--of the dimples on her cheek,
+of the whiteness of her arms, of her peculiar way of dressing her hair;
+anecdotes of her from childhood (of course invented, but how could
+Graham know that?); of the reasons why she had adopted the profession of
+author instead of that of the singer; of the sensation she had created
+in certain salons (to Graham, who knew Paris so well, salons in which he
+would not have liked his wife to appear); of the compliments paid to her
+by grands seigneurs noted for their liaisons with ballet-dancers, or by
+authors whose genius soared far beyond the flammantia maenia of a world
+confined by respect for one’s neighbours’ land-marks,--all this, which
+belongs to ground of personal gossip untouched by English critics of
+female writers, ground especially favoured by Continental, and, I am
+grieved to say, by American journalists,--all this was to the sensitive
+Englishman much what the minute inventory of Egeria’s charms would have
+been to Numa Pompilius. The nymph, hallowed to him by secret devotion,
+was vulgarized by the noisy hands of the mob, and by the popular
+voices, which said, “We know more about Egeria than you do.” And when he
+returned to England, and met with old friends familiar to Parisian life,
+who said, “of course you have read the Cicogna’s roman. What do you
+think of it? Very fine writing, I dare say, but above me. I go in for
+‘Les Mysteres de Paris’ or ‘Monte Cristo;’ but I even find Georges Sand
+a bore,” then as a critic Graham Vane fired up, extolled the roman he
+would have given his ears for Isaura never to have written; but retired
+from the contest muttering inly, “How can I--I, Graham Vane--how can
+I be such an idiot; how can I in every hour of the twenty-four sigh to
+myself, ‘What are other women to me? Isaura, Isaura!’”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It is the first week in the month of May, 1870. Celebrities are of rapid
+growth in the salons of Paris. Gustave Rameau has gained the position
+for which he sighed. The journal he edits has increased its hold on the
+public, and his share of the profits has been liberally augmented by
+the secret proprietor. Rameau is acknowledged as a power in literary
+circles. And as critics belonging to the same clique praise each other
+in Paris, whatever they may do in communities more rigidly virtuous, his
+poetry has been declared by authorities in the press to be superior
+to that of Alfred de Musset in vigour--to that of Victor Hugo in
+refinement; neither of which assertions would much, perhaps, shock a
+cultivated understanding.
+
+It is true that it (Gustave’s poetry) has not gained a wide audience
+among the public. But with regard to poetry nowadays, there are plenty
+of persons who say as Dr. Johnson said of the verse of Spratt, “I would
+rather praise it than read.”
+
+At all events, Rameau was courted in gay and brilliant circles, and,
+following the general example of French litterateurs in fashion,
+lived well up to the income he received, had a delightful bachelor’s
+apartment, furnished with artistic effect, spent largely on the
+adornment of his person, kept a coupe, and entertained profusely at the
+cafe Anglais and the Maison Doree. A reputation that inspired a graver
+and more unquiet interest had been created by the Vicomte de Mauleon.
+Recent articles in the Sens Commun, written under the name of Pierre
+Firmin on the discussions on the vexed question of the plebiscite, had
+given umbrage to the Government, and Rameau had received an intimation
+that he, as editor, was responsible for the compositions of the
+contributors to the journal he edited; and that though, so long as
+Pierre Firmin had kept his caustic spirit within proper bounds, the
+Government had winked at the evasion of the law which required every
+political article in a journal to be signed by the real name of its
+author, it could do so no longer. Pierre Firmin was apparently a nom
+de plume; if not, his identity must be proved, or Rameau would pay the
+penalty which his contributor seemed bent on incurring.
+
+Rameau, much alarmed for the journal that might be suspended, and for
+himself who might be imprisoned, conveyed this information through the
+publisher to his correspondent Pierre Firmin, and received the next
+day an article signed Victor de Mauleon, in which the writer proclaimed
+himself to be one and the same with Pierre Firmin, and, taking a yet
+bolder tone than he had before assumed, dared the Government to attempt
+legal measures against him. The Government was prudent enough to
+disregard that haughty bravado, but Victor de Mauleon rose at once into
+political importance. He had already in his real name and his quiet way
+established a popular and respectable place in Parisian society. But if
+this revelation created him enemies whom he had not before provoked, he
+was now sufficiently acquitted, by tacit consent, of the sins formerly
+laid to his charge, to disdain the assaults of party wrath. His old
+reputation for personal courage and skill in sword and pistol served,
+indeed, to protect him from such charges as a Parisian journalist does
+not reply to with his pen. If he created some enemies, he created many
+more friends, or, at least, partisans and admirers. He only needed fine
+and imprisonment to become a popular hero.
+
+A few days after he had thus proclaimed himself, Victor de Mauleon--who
+had before kept aloof from Rameau, and from salons at which he was
+likely to meet that distinguished minstrel--solicited his personal
+acquaintance, and asked him to breakfast.
+
+Rameau joyfully went. He had a very natural curiosity to see the
+contributor whose articles had so mainly insured the sale of the Sens
+Commun.
+
+In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with
+commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognise any
+resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling
+sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of
+voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had
+heard the voice it resembled. The thought of Lebeau did not occur
+to him; if it had occurred it would only have struck him as a chance
+coincidence. Rameau, like most egotists, was rather a dull observer of
+men. His genius was not objective.
+
+“I trust, Monsieur Rameau,” said the Vicomte, as he and his guest were
+seated at the breakfast-table, “that you are not dissatisfied with the
+remuneration your eminent services in the journal have received.”
+
+“The proprietor, whoever he be, has behaved most liberally,” answered
+Rameau.
+
+“I take that compliment to myself, cher confrere; for though the
+expenses of starting the Sens Commun, and the caution money lodged, were
+found by a friend of mine, that was as a loan, which I have long since
+repaid, and the property in the journal is now exclusively mine. I have
+to thank you not only for your own brilliant contributions, but
+for those of the colleagues you secured. Monsieur Savarin’s piquant
+criticisms were most valuable to us at starting. I regret to have lost
+his aid. But as he has set up a new journal of his own, even he has not
+wit enough to spare for another. A propos of our contributors, I shall
+ask you to present me to the fair author of The Artist’s Daughter. I am
+of too prosaic a nature to appreciate justly the merits of a roman; but
+I have heard warm praise of this story from the young--they are the best
+judges of that kind of literature; and I can at least understand the
+worth of a contributor who trebled the sale of our journal. It is a
+misfortune to us, indeed, that her work is completed, but I trust that
+the sum sent to her through our publisher suffices to tempt her to
+favour us with another roman in series.”
+
+“Mademoiselle Cicogna,” said Rameau, with a somewhat sharper intonation
+of his sharp voice, “has accepted for the republication of her roman in
+a separate form terms which attest the worth of her genius, and has had
+offers from other journals for a serial tale of even higher amount than
+the sum so generously sent to her through your publisher.”
+
+“Has she accepted them, Monsieur Rameau? If so, tant pis pour vous.
+Pardon me, I mean that your salary suffers in proportion as the Sens
+Commun declines in sale.”
+
+“She has not accepted them. I advised her not to do so until she could
+compare them with those offered by the proprietor of the Sens Commun.”
+
+“And your advice guides her? Ah, cher confrere, you are a happy
+man!--you have influence over this young aspirant to the fame of a De
+Stael or a Georges Sand.”
+
+“I flatter myself that I have some,” answered Rameau, smiling loftily
+as he helped himself to another tumbler of. Volnay wine--excellent, but
+rather heady.
+
+“So much the better. I leave you free to arrange terms with Mademoiselle
+Cicogna, higher than she can obtain elsewhere, and kindly contrive my
+own personal introduction to her--you have breakfasted already?--permit
+me to offer you a cigar--excuse me if I do not bear you company; I
+seldom smoke--never of a morning. Now to business, and the state of
+France. Take that easy-chair, seat yourself comfortably. So! Listen! If
+ever Mephistopheles revisit the earth, how he will laugh at Universal
+Suffrage and Vote by Ballot in an old country like France, as things to
+be admired by educated men, and adopted by friends of genuine freedom!”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said Rameau.
+
+“In this respect at least, let me hope that I can furnish you with
+understanding.
+
+“The Emperor has resorted to a plebiscite--viz., a vote by ballot and
+universal suffrage--as to certain popular changes which circumstances
+compel him to substitute for his former personal rule. Is there a single
+intelligent Liberal who is not against that plebiscite?--is there any
+such who does not know that the appeal of the Emperor to universal
+suffrage and vote by ballot must result in a triumph over all the
+variations of free thought, by the unity which belongs to Order,
+represented through an able man at the head of the State? The multitude
+never comprehend principles; principles are complex ideas; they
+comprehend a single idea, and the simplest idea is, a Name that rids
+their action of all responsibility to thought.
+
+“Well, in France there are principles superabundant which you can pit
+against the principle of Imperial rule. But there is not one name you
+can pit against Napoleon the Third; therefore, I steer our little bark
+in the teeth of the popular gale when I denounce the plebiscite, and
+Le Sens Commun will necessarily fall in sale--it is beginning to fall
+already. We shall have the educated men with us, the rest against. In
+every country--even in China, where all are highly educated--a few must
+be yet more highly educated than the many. Monsieur Rameau, I desire to
+overthrow the Empire: in order to do that, it is not enough to have
+on my side the educated men, I must have the canaille--the canaille
+of Paris and of the manufacturing towns. But I use the canaille for
+my purpose--I don’t mean to enthrone it. You comprehend?--the canaille
+quiescent is simply mud at the bottom of a stream; the canaille agitated
+is mud at the surface. But no man capable of three ideas builds the
+palaces and senates of civilised society out of mud, be it at the top or
+the bottom of an ocean. Can either you or I desire that the destinies
+of France shall be swayed by coxcombical artisans who think themselves
+superior to every man who writes grammar, and whose idea of a
+common-wealth is the confiscation of private property?” Rameau,
+thoroughly puzzled by this discourse, bowed his head, and replied
+whisperingly, “Proceed. You are against the Empire, yet against the
+populace!--What are you for? not, surely, the Legitimists?--are you
+Republican? Orleanist? or what?”
+
+“Your questions are very pertinent,” answered the Vicomte, courteously,
+“and my answer shall be very frank. I am against absolute rule, whether
+under a Buonaparte or a Bourbon. I am for a free State, whether under
+a constitutional hereditary sovereign like the English or Belgian, or
+whether, republican in name, it be less democratic than constitutional
+monarchy in practice, like the American. But as a man interested in the
+fate of le Sens Commun, I hold in profound disdain all crotchets for
+revolutionising the elements of Human Nature. Enough of this abstract
+talk. To the point. You are of course aware of the violent meetings held
+by the Socialists, nominally against the plebiscite, really against the
+Emperor himself?”
+
+“Yes, I know at least that the working class are extremely discontented;
+the numerous strikes last month were not on a mere question of
+wages--they were against the existing forms of society. And the articles
+by Pierre Firmin which brought me into collision with the Government,
+seemed to differ from what you now say. They approve those strikes; they
+appeared to sympathise with the revolutionary meetings at Belleville and
+Montmartre.”
+
+“Of course--we use coarse tools for destroying; we cast them aside for
+finer ones when we want to reconstruct.
+
+“I attended one of those meetings last night. See, I have a pass for all
+such assemblies, signed by some dolt who cannot even spell the name he
+assumes--‘Pom-de-Tair.’ A commissary of police sat yawning at the end of
+the orchestra, his secretary by his side, while the orators stammer
+out fragments of would-be thunderbolts. Commissary of police yawns
+more wearily than before, secretary disdains to use his pen, seizes
+his penknife and pares his nails. Up rises a wild-haired, weak-limbed
+silhouette of a man, and affecting a solemnity of mien which might have
+become the virtuous Guizot, moves this resolution: ‘The French people
+condemns Charles Louis Napoleon the Third to the penalty of perpetual
+hard labour.’ Then up rises the commissary of police and says quietly,
+‘I declare this meeting at an end.’
+
+“Sensation among the audience--they gesticulate--they screech--they
+bellow--the commissary puts on his greatcoat--the secretary gives a last
+touch to his nails and pockets his penknife--the audience disperses--the
+silhouette of a man effaces itself--all is over.”
+
+“You describe the scene most wittily,” said Rameau, laughing, but the
+laugh was constrained. A would-be cynic himself, there was a something
+grave and earnest in the real cynic that awed him.
+
+“What conclusion do you draw from such a scene, cher poete” asked De
+Mauleon, fixing his keen quiet eyes on Rameau.
+
+“What conclusion? Well, that--that--”
+
+“Yes, continue.”
+
+“That the audience were sadly degenerated from the time when Mirabeau
+said to a Master of the Ceremonies, ‘We are here by the power of the
+French people, and nothing but the point of the bayonet shall expel
+us.’”
+
+“Spoken like a poet, a French poet. I suppose you admire M. Victor
+Hugo. Conceding that he would have employed a more sounding phraseology,
+comprising more absolute ignorance of men, times, and manners in
+unintelligible metaphor and melodramatic braggadocio, your answer might
+have been his; but pardon me if I add, it would not be that of Common
+Sense.”
+
+“Monsieur le Vicomte might rebuke me more politely,” said Rameau,
+colouring high.
+
+“Accept my apologies; I did not mean to rebuke, but to instruct. The
+times are not those of 1789. And Nature, ever repeating herself in the
+production of coxcombs and blockheads, never repeats herself in the
+production of Mirabeaus. The Empire is doomed--doomed, because it
+is hostile to the free play of intellect. Any Government that gives
+absolute preponderance to the many is hostile to intellect, for
+intellect is necessarily confined to the few.
+
+“Intellect is the most revengeful of all the elements of society. It
+cares not what the materials through which it insinuates or forces its
+way to its seat.
+
+“I accept the aid of Pom-de-Tair. I do not demean myself to the extent
+of writing articles that may favor the principles of Pom-de-Tair, signed
+in the name of Victor de Mauleon or of Pierre Firinin.
+
+“I will beg you, my dear editor, to obtain clever, smart writers, who
+know nothing about Socialists and Internationalists, who therefore will
+not commit Le Sens Commun by advocating the doctrines of those idiots,
+but who will flatter the vanity of the canaille--vaguely; write any
+stuff they please about the renown of Paris, ‘the eye of the world,’
+‘the sun of the European system,’ &c., of the artisans of Paris as
+supplying soul to that eye and fuel to that sun--any blague of that
+sort--genre Victor Hugo; but nothing definite against life and
+property, nothing that may not be considered hereafter as the harmless
+extravagance of a poetic enthusiasm. You might write such articles
+yourself. In fine, I want to excite the multitude, and yet not to commit
+our journal to the contempt of the few. Nothing is to be admitted that
+may bring the law upon us except it be signed by my name. There may be a
+moment in which it would be desirable for somebody to be sent to prison:
+in that case, I allow no substitute--I go myself.
+
+“Now you have my most secret thoughts. I intrust them to your judgment
+with entire confidence. Monsieur Lebeau gave you a high character, which
+you have hitherto deserved. By the way, have you seen anything lately of
+that bourgeois conspirator?”
+
+“No, his professed business of letter-writer or agent is transferred to
+a clerk, who says M. Lebeau is abroad.”
+
+“Ah! I don’t think that is true. I fancy I saw him the other evening
+gilding along the lanes of Belleville. He is too confirmed a conspirator
+to be long out of Paris; no place like Paris for seething brains.”
+
+“Have you known M. Lebeau long?” asked Rameau. “Ay, many years. We are
+both Norman by birth, as you may perceive by something broad in our
+accent.”
+
+“Ha! I knew your voice was familiar to me; certainly it does remind me
+of Lebeau’s.”
+
+“Normans are like each other in many things besides voice and
+accent--obstinacy, for instance, in clinging to ideas once formed; this
+makes them good friends and steadfast enemies. I would advise no man to
+make an enemy of Lebeau.
+
+“Au revoir, cher confrere. Do not forget to present me to Mademoiselle
+Cicogna.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+On leaving De Mauleon and regaining his coupe, Rameau felt at once
+bewildered and humbled, for he was not prepared for the tone of careless
+superiority which the Vicomte assumed over him. He had expected to be
+much complimented, and he comprehended vaguely that he had been somewhat
+snubbed. He was not only irritated--he was bewildered; for De Mauleon’s
+political disquisitions did not leave any clear or definite idea on his
+mind as to the principles which as editor of the Sens Commun he was to
+see adequately represented and carried out. In truth, Rameau was one of
+those numerous Parisian politicians who have read little and reflected
+less on the government of men and States. Envy is said by a great French
+writer to be the vice of Democracies. Envy certainly had made Rameau
+a democrat. He could talk and write glibly enough upon the themes
+of equality and fraternity, and was so far an ultra-democrat that he
+thought moderation the sign of a mediocre understanding.
+
+De Mauleon’s talk, therefore, terribly perplexed him. It was unlike
+anything he had heard before. Its revolutionary professions, accompanied
+with so much scorn for the multitude, and the things the multitude
+desired, were Greek to him. He was not shocked by the cynicism which
+placed wisdom in using the passions of mankind as tools for the
+interests of an individual; but he did not understand the frankness of
+its avowal.
+
+Nevertheless the man had dominated over and subdued him. He recognized
+the power of his contributor without clearly analysing its nature--a
+power made up of large experience of life, of cold examination of
+doctrines that heated others--of patrician calm--of intellectual
+sneer--of collected confidence in self.
+
+Besides, Rameau felt, with a nervous misgiving, that in this man, who so
+boldly proclaimed his contempt for the instruments he used, he had found
+a master. De Mauleon, then, was sole proprietor of the journal from
+which Rameau drew his resources; might at any time dismiss him; might
+at any time involve the journal in penalties which, even if Rameau could
+escape in his official capacity as editor, still might stop the Sens
+Commun, and with it Rameau’s luxurious subsistence.
+
+Altogether the visit to De Mauleon had been anything but a pleasant
+one. He sought, as the carriage rolled on, to turn his thoughts to more
+agreeable subjects, and the image of Isaura rose before him. To do him
+justice he had learned to love this girl as well as his nature would
+permit: he loved her with the whole strength of his imagination, and
+though his heart was somewhat cold, his imagination was very ardent.
+He loved her also with the whole strength of his vanity, and vanity was
+even a more preponderant organ of his system than imagination. To carry
+off as his prize one who had already achieved celebrity, whose beauty
+and fascination of manner were yet more acknowledged than her genius,
+would certainly be a glorious triumph.
+
+Every Parisian of Rameau’s stamp looks forward in marriage to a
+brilliant salon. What salon more brilliant than that which he and Isaura
+united could command? He had long conquered his early impulse of envy at
+Isaura’s success,--in fact that success had become associated with his
+own, and had contributed greatly to his enrichment. So that to other
+motives of love he might add the prudential one of interest. Rameau well
+knew that his own vein of composition, however lauded by the cliques,
+and however unrivalled in his own eyes, was not one that brings much
+profit in the market. He compared himself to those poets who are too far
+in advance of their time to be quite as sure of bread and cheese as they
+are of immortal fame.
+
+But he regarded Isaura’s genius as of a lower order, and a thing in
+itself very marketable. Marry her, and the bread and cheese were so
+certain that he might elaborate as slowly as he pleased the verses
+destined to immortal fame. Then he should be independent of inferior
+creatures like Victor de Mauleon. But while Rameau convinced himself
+that he was passionately in love with Isaura, he could not satisfy
+himself that she was in love with him.
+
+Though during the past year they had seen each other constantly,
+and their literary occupations had produced many sympathies between
+them--though he had intimated that many of his most eloquent love-poems
+were inspired by her--though he had asserted in prose, very pretty
+prose too, that she was all that youthful poets dream of,--yet she had
+hitherto treated such declarations with a playful laugh, accepting them
+as elegant compliments inspired by Parisian gallantry; and he felt an
+angry and sore foreboding that if he were to insist too seriously on
+the earnestness of their import and ask her plainly to be his wife,
+her refusal would be certain, and his visits to her house might be
+interdicted.
+
+Still Isaura was unmarried, still she had refused offers of marriage
+from men higher placed than himself,--still he divined no one whom she
+could prefer. And as he now leaned back in his coupe he muttered to
+himself, “Oh, if I could but get rid of that little demon Julie, I
+would devote myself so completely to winning Isaura’s heart that I
+must succeed!--but how to get rid of Julie? She so adores me, and is
+so headstrong! She is capable of going to Isaura--showing my
+letters--making such a scene!”
+
+Here he checked the carriage at a cafe on the Boulevard--descended,
+imbibed two glasses of absinthe,--and then feeling much emboldened,
+remounted his coupe and directed the driver to Isaura’s apartment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Yes, celebrities are of rapid growth in the salons of Paris. Far more
+solid than that of Rameau, far more brilliant than that of De Mauleon,
+was the celebrity which Isaura had now acquired. She had been unable to
+retain the pretty suburban villa at A------. The owner wanted to alter
+and enlarge it for his own residence, and she had been persuaded by
+Signora Venosta, who was always sighing for fresh salons to conquer,
+to remove (towards the close of the previous year) to apartments in
+the centre of the Parisian beau monde. Without formally professing to
+receive, on one evening in the week her salon was open to those who had
+eagerly sought her acquaintance--comprising many stars in the world of
+fashion, as well as those in the world of art and letters. And as she
+had now wholly abandoned the idea of the profession for which her voice
+had been cultivated, she no longer shrank from the exercise of her
+surpassing gift of song for the delight of private friends. Her
+physician had withdrawn the interdict on such exercise. His skill,
+aided by the rich vitality of her constitution, had triumphed over all
+tendencies to the malady for which he had been consulted. To hear Isaura
+Cicogna sing in her own house was a privilege sought and prized by many
+who never read a word of her literary compositions. A good critic of
+a book is rare; but good judges of a voice are numberless. Adding
+this attraction of song to her youth, her beauty, her frank powers of
+converse--an innocent sweetness of manner free from all conventional
+affectation--and to the fresh novelty of a genius which inspired the
+young with enthusiast and beguiled the old to indulgence, it was no
+wonder that Isaura became a celebrity at Paris.
+
+Perhaps it was a wonder that her head was not turned by the adulation
+that surrounded her. But I believe, be it said with diffidence, that
+a woman of mind so superior that the mind never pretends to efface the
+heart, is less intoxicated with flattery than a man equally exposed to
+it.
+
+It is the strength of her heart that keeps her head sober. Isaura had
+never yet overcome her first romance of love; as yet, amid all her
+triumphs, there was not a day in which her thoughts did not wistfully,
+mournfully, fly back to those blessed moments in which she felt her
+cheek colour before a look, her heart beat at the sound of a footfall.
+Perhaps if there had been the customary finis to this young romance--the
+lover’s deliberate renunciation, his formal farewell--the girl’s
+pride would ere this have conquered her affection,--possibly--who
+knows?--replaced it.
+
+But, reader, be you male or female, have you ever known this sore
+trial of affection and pride, that from some cause or other, to you
+mysterious, the dear intercourse to which you had accustomed the secret
+life of your life, abruptly ceases; you know that a something has
+come between you and the beloved which you cannot distinguish, cannot
+measure, cannot guess, and therefore cannot surmount; and you say to
+yourself at the dead of solitary night, “Oh for an explanation! Oh for
+one meeting more! All might be so easily set right; or if not, I should
+know the worst, and knowing it, could conquer!”
+
+This trial was Isaura’s. There had been no explanation, no last farewell
+between her and Graham. She divined--no woman lightly makes a mistake
+there--that he loved her! She knew that this dread something had
+intervened between her and him when he took leave of her before others
+so many months ago; that this dread something still continued--what was
+it? She was certain that it would vanish, could they but once meet again
+and not before others. Oh for such a meeting!
+
+She could not herself destroy hope. She could not marry another. She
+would have no heart to give to another while he was free, while in doubt
+if his heart was still her own. And thus her pride did not help her to
+conquer her affection.
+
+Of Graham Vane she heard occasionally. He had ceased to correspond with
+Savarin; but among those who most frequented her salon were the Morleys.
+Americans so well educated and so well placed as the Morleys knew
+something about every Englishman of the social station of Graham Vane.
+Isaura learned from them that Graham, after a tour on the Continent, had
+returned to England at the commencement of the year, had been invited
+to stand for Parliament, had refused, that his name was in the list
+published by the Morning Post of the elite whose arrivals in London,
+or whose presence at dinner-tables, is recorded as an event. That the
+Athenaeum had mentioned a rumour that Graham Vane was the author of
+a political pamphlet which, published anonymously, had made no
+inconsiderable sensation. Isaura sent to England for that pamphlet: the
+subject was somewhat dry, and the style, though clear and vigorous, was
+scarcely of the eloquence which wins the admiration of women; and yet
+she learned every word of it by heart.
+
+We know how little she dreamed that the celebrity which she hailed as an
+approach to him was daily making her more remote. The sweet labours
+she undertook for that celebrity continued to be sweetened yet more by
+secret associations with the absent one. How many of the passages most
+admired could never have been written had he been never known!
+
+And she blessed those labours the more that they upheld her from the
+absolute feebleness of sickened reverie, beguiled her from the gnawing
+torture of unsatisfied conjecture. She did comply with Madame de
+Grantmesnil’s command--did pass from the dusty beaten road of life into
+green fields and along flowery river-banks, and did enjoy that ideal
+by-world.
+
+But still the one image which reigned over her human heart moved beside
+her in the gardens of fairyland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Isaura was seated in her pretty salon, with the Venosta, M. Savarin, the
+Morleys, and the financier Louvier, when Rameau was announced.
+
+“Ha!” cried Savarin, “we were just discussing a matter which nearly
+concerns you, cher poete. I have not seen you since the announcement
+that Pierre Firmin is no other than Victor de Mauleon. Ma foi, that
+worthy seems likely to be as dangerous with his pen as he was once with
+his sword. The article in which he revealed himself makes a sharp lunge
+on the Government. ‘Take care of yourself. When hawks and nightingales
+fly together the hawk may escape, and the nightingale complain of the
+barbarity of kings, in a cage: ‘flebiliter gemens infelix avis.’’”
+
+“He is not fit to conduct a journal,” replied Rameau, magniloquently,
+“who will not brave a danger for his body in defence of the right to
+infinity for his thought.”
+
+“Bravo!” said Mrs. Morley, clapping her pretty hands. “That speech
+reminds me of home. The French are very much like the Americans in their
+style of oratory.”
+
+“So,” said Louvier, “my old friend the Vicomte has come out as a writer,
+a politician, a philosopher; I feel hurt that he kept this secret
+from me despite our intimacy. I suppose you knew it from the first, M.
+Rameau?”
+
+“No, I was as much taken by surprise as the rest of the world. You have
+long known M. de Mauleon?”
+
+“Yes, I may say we began life together--that is, much at the same time.”
+
+“What is he like in appearance?” asked Mrs. Morley. “The ladies thought
+him very handsome when he was young,” replied Louvier. “He is still a
+fine-looking man, about my height.”
+
+“I should like to know him!” cried Mrs. Morley, “if only to tease that
+husband of mine. He refuses me the dearest of woman’s rights.--I can’t
+make him jealous.”
+
+“You may have the opportunity of knowing this ci-devant Lovelace very
+soon,” said Rameau, “for he has begged me to present him to Mademoiselle
+Cicogna, and I will ask her permission to do so, on Thursday evening
+when she receives.”
+
+Isaura, who had hitherto attended very listlessly to the conversation,
+bowed assent. “Any friend of yours will be welcome. But I own the
+articles signed in the name of Pierre Firmin do not prepossess me in
+favour of their author.”
+
+“Why so?” asked Louvier; “surely you are not an Imperialist?”
+
+“Nay, I do not pretend to be a politician at all, but there is something
+in the writing of Pierre Firmin that pains and chills me.”
+
+“Yet the secret of its popularity,” said Savarin, “is that it says what
+every one says--only better.”
+
+“I see now that it is exactly that which displeases me; it is the Paris
+talk condensed into epigram: the graver it is the less it elevates--the
+lighter it is, the more it saddens.”
+
+“That is meant to hit me,” said Savarin, with his sunny laugh--“me whom
+you call cynical.”
+
+“No, dear M. Savarin; for above all your cynicism is genuine gaiety,
+and below it solid kindness. You have that which I do not find in M.
+de Mauleon’s writing, nor often in the talk of the salon--you have
+youthfulness.”
+
+“Youthfulness at sixty--flatterer!”
+
+“Genius does not count its years by the almanac,” said Mrs. Morley. “I
+know what Isaura means--she is quite right; there is a breath of winter
+in M. de Mauleon’s style, and an odour of fallen leaves. Not that his
+diction wants vigour; on the contrary, it is crisp with hoar-frost. But
+the sentiments conveyed by the diction are those of a nature sear and
+withered. And it is in this combination of brisk words and decayed
+feelings that his writing represents the talk and mind of Paris. He and
+Paris are always fault-finding: fault-finding is the attribute of old
+age.”
+
+Colonel Morley looked round with pride, as much as to say, “Clever
+talker my wife.”
+
+Savarin understood that look, and replied to it courteously. “Madame has
+a gift of expression which Emile de Girardin can scarcely surpass. But
+when she blames us for fault-finding, can she expect the friends of
+liberty to praise the present style of things?”
+
+“I should be obliged to the friends of liberty,” said the Colonel,
+drily, “to tell me how that state of things is to be mended. I find
+no enthusiasm for the Orleanists, none for a Republic; people sneer
+at religion; no belief in a cause, no adherence to an opinion. But the
+worst of it is that, like all people who are blases, the Parisians are
+eager for strange excitement, and ready to listen to any oracle who
+promises a relief from indifferentism. This it is which makes the Press
+more dangerous in France than it is in any other country. Elsewhere the
+Press sometimes leads, sometimes follows, public opinion. Here there
+is no public opinion to consult, and instead of opinion the Press
+represents passion.”
+
+“My dear Colonel Morley,” said Savarin, “I hear you very often say that
+a Frenchman cannot understand America. Permit me to observe that an
+American cannot understand France--or at least Paris. Apropos of Paris
+that is a large speculation of yours, Louvier, in the new suburb.”
+
+“And a very sound one; I advise you to invest in it. I can secure you at
+present 5 per cent. on the rental; that is nothing--the houses will be
+worth double when the Rue de Louvier is completed.”
+
+“Alas! I have no money; my new journal absorbs all my capital.”
+
+“Shall I transfer the money I hold for you, Signorina, and add to them
+whatever you may have made by your delightful roman, as yet lying idle,
+to this investment? I cannot say more in its favour than this: I have
+embarked a very large portion of my capital in the Rue de Louvier, and I
+flatter myself that I am not one of those men who persuade their friends
+to do a foolish thing by setting them the example.”
+
+“Whatever you advise on such a subject,” said Isaura, graciously, “is
+sure to be as wise as it is kind!”
+
+“You consent, then?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+Here the Venosta, who had been listening with great attention to
+Louvier’s commendation of this investment, drew him aside, and whispered
+in his ear: “I suppose, M. Louvier, that one can’t put a little money-a
+very little money--poco-poco pocolino, into your street.”
+
+“Into my street! Ah, I understand--into the speculation of the Rue de
+Louvier! Certainly you can. Arrangements are made on purpose to suit the
+convenience of the smallest capitalists--from 500 francs upwards.”
+
+“And you feel quite sure that we shall double our money when the street
+is completed--I should not like to have my brains in my heels.”
+
+   [“‘Avere il cervello nella calcagna,”--viz., to act without prudent
+   reflection.]
+
+“More than double it, I hope, long before the street is completed.”
+
+“I have saved a little money--very little. I have no relations, and I
+mean to leave it all to the Signorina; and if it could be doubled, why,
+there would be twice as much to leave her.”
+
+“So there would,” said Louvier. “You can’t do better than put it all
+into the Rue de Louvier. I will send you the necessary papers to-morrow,
+when I send hers to the Signorina.”
+
+Louvier here turned to address himself to Colonel Morley, but finding
+that degenerate son of America indisposed to get cent. per cent. for his
+money when offered by a Parisian, he very soon took his leave. The other
+visitors followed his example, except Rameau, who was left alone with
+the Venosta and Isaura. The former had no liking for Rameau, who showed
+her none of the attentions her innocent vanity demanded, and she soon
+took herself off to her own room to calculate the amount of her savings,
+and dream of the Rue de Louvier and “golden joys.”
+
+Rameau approaching his chair to Isaura’s then commenced conversation,
+drily enough, upon pecuniary matters; acquitting himself of the mission
+with which De Mauleon had charged him, the request for a new work from
+her pen for the Sens Commun, and the terms that ought to be asked for
+compliance. The young lady-author shrank from this talk. Her private
+income, though modest, sufficed for her wants, and she felt a sensitive
+shame in the sale of her thoughts and fancies.
+
+Putting hurriedly aside the mercantile aspect of the question, she said
+that she had no other work in her mind at present--that, whatever her
+vein of invention might be, it flowed at its own will, and could not be
+commanded.
+
+“Nay,” said Rameau, “this is not true. We fancy, in our hours of
+indolence, that we must wait for inspiration; but once force ourselves
+to work, and ideas spring forth at the wave of the pen. You may believe
+me here, I speak from experience: I, compelled to work, and in modes not
+to my taste--I do my task I know not how. I rub the lamp, ‘the genius
+comes.’”
+
+“I have read in some English author that motive power is necessary to
+continued labour: you have motive power, I have none.”
+
+“I do not quite understand you.”
+
+“I mean that a strong ruling motive is required to persist in any
+regular course of action that needs effort: the motive with the majority
+of men is the need of subsistence; with a large number (as in trades or
+professions), not actually want, but a desire of gain, and perhaps of
+distinction, in their calling: the desire of professional distinction
+expands into the longings for more comprehensive fame, more exalted
+honours, with the few who become great writers, soldiers, statesmen,
+orators.”
+
+“And do you mean to say you have no such motive?”
+
+“None in the sting of want, none in the desire of gain.”
+
+“But fame?”
+
+“Alas! I thought so once. I know not now--I begin to doubt if fame
+should be sought by women.” This was said very dejectedly.
+
+“Tut, dearest Signorina! what gadfly has stung you? Your doubt is a
+weakness unworthy of your intellect; and even were it not, genius is
+destiny and will be obeyed: you must write, despite yourself--and your
+writing must bring fame, whether you wish it or not.”
+
+Isaura was silent, her head drooped on her breast--there were tears in
+her downcast eyes.
+
+Rameau took her hand, which she yielded to him passively, and clasping
+it in both his own, he rushed on impulsively--
+
+“Oh, I know what these misgivings are when we feel ourselves solitary,
+unloved: how often have they been mine! But how different would labour
+be if shared and sympathised with by a congenial mind, by a heart that
+beats in unison with one’s own!”
+
+Isaura’s breast heaved beneath her robe, she sighed softly.
+
+“And then how sweet the fame of which the one we love is proud! how
+trifling becomes the pang of some malignant depreciation, which a word
+from the beloved one can soothe! O Signorina! O Isaura! are we not made
+for each other? Kindred pursuits, hopes, and fears in common; the same
+race to run, the same goal to win! I need a motive stronger than I have
+yet known for the persevering energy that insures success: supply to me
+that motive. Let me think that whatever I win in the strife of the world
+is a tribute to Isaura. No, do not seek to withdraw this hand, let me
+claim it as mine for life. I love you as man never loved before--do not
+reject my love.”
+
+They say the woman who hesitates is lost. Isaura hesitated, but was not
+yet lost. The words she listened to moved her deeply. Offers of marriage
+she had already received: one from a rich middle-aged noble, a devoted
+musical virtuoso; one from a young avocat fresh from the provinces,
+and somewhat calculating on her dot; one from a timid but enthusiastic
+admirer of her genius and her beauty, himself rich, handsome, of good
+birth, but with shy manners and faltering tongue.
+
+But these had made their proposals with the formal respect habitual to
+French decorum in matrimonial proposals. Words so eloquently impassioned
+as Gustave Rameau’s had never before thrilled her ears; Yes, she was
+deeply moved; and yet, by that very emotion she knew that it was not to
+the love of this wooer that her heart responded.
+
+There is a circumstance in the history of courtship familiar to the
+experience of many women, that while the suitor is pleading his cause,
+his language may touch every fibre in the heart of his listener, yet
+substitute, as it were, another presence for his own. She may be saying
+to herself, “Oh that another had said those words!” and be dreaming of
+the other, while she hears the one. Thus it was with Isaura, and not
+till Rameau’s voice had ceased did that dream pass away, and with a
+slight shiver she turned her face towards the wooer sadly and pityingly.
+“It cannot be,” she said, in a low whisper; “I were not worthy of your
+love could I accept it. Forget that you have so spoken; let me still be
+a friend admiring your genius, interested in your career. I cannot be
+more. Forgive me if I unconsciously led you to think I could, I am so
+grieved to pain you.”
+
+“Am I to understand,” said Rameau, coldly, for his amour propre was
+resentful, “that the proposals of another have been more fortunate than
+mine?” And he named the youngest and comeliest of those whom she had
+rejected. “Certainly not,” said Isaura.
+
+Rameau rose and went to the window, turning his face from her. In
+reality he was striving to collect his thoughts and decide on the course
+it were most prudent for him now to pursue. The fumes of the absinthe
+which had, despite his previous forebodings, emboldened him to hazard
+his avowal, had now subsided into the languid reaction which is
+generally consequent on that treacherous stimulus, a reaction not
+unfavourable to passionless reflection. He knew that if he said he
+could not conquer his love, he would still cling to hope, and trust to
+perseverance and time, he should compel Isaura to forbid his visits and
+break off their familiar intercourse. This would be fatal to the chance
+of yet winning her, and would also be of serious disadvantage to his
+more worldly interests. Her literary aid might become essential to
+the journal on which his fortunes depended; and at all events, in her
+conversation, in her encouragement, in her sympathy with the pains and
+joys of his career, he felt a support, a comfort, nay, an inspiration.
+For the spontaneous gush of her fresh thoughts and fancies served
+to recruit his own jaded ideas, and enlarge his own stinted range of
+invention. No, he could not commit himself to the risk of banishment
+from Isaura.
+
+And mingled with meaner motives for discretion, there was one of which
+he was but vaguely conscious, purer and nobler. In the society of this
+girl, in whom whatever was strong and high in mental organisation became
+so sweetened into feminine grace by gentleness of temper and kindliness
+of disposition, Rameau felt himself a better man. The virgin-like
+dignity with which she moved, so untainted by a breath of scandal, amid
+salons in which the envy of virtues doubted sought to bring innocence
+itself into doubt, warmed into a genuine reverence the cynicism of his
+professed creed.
+
+While with her, while under her chastening influence, he was sensible
+of a poetry infused within him far more true to the Camoenae than all he
+had elaborated into verse. In these moments he was ashamed of the vices
+he had courted as distractions. He imagined that with her all his own,
+it would be easy to reform.
+
+No; to withdraw wholly from Isaura was to renounce his sole chance of
+redemption.
+
+While these thoughts, which it takes so long to detail, passed rapidly
+through his brain, he felt a soft touch on his arm, and, turning his
+face slowly, encountered the tender, compassionate eyes of Isaura.
+
+“Be consoled, dear friend,” she said, with a smile, half cheering, half
+mournful. “Perhaps for all true artists the solitary lot is the best.”
+
+“I will try to think so,” answered Rameau; “and meanwhile I thank you
+with a full heart for the sweetness with which you have checked my
+presumption--the presumption shall not be repeated. Gratefully I accept
+the friendship you deign to tender me. You bid me forget the words I
+uttered. Promise in turn that you will forget them--or at least consider
+them withdrawn. You will receive me still as friend?”
+
+“As friend, surely: yes. Do we not both need friends?” She held out
+her hand as she spoke; he bent over it, kissed it with respect, and the
+interview thus closed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+It was late in the evening that day when a man who had the appearance
+of a decent bourgeois, in the lower grades of that comprehensive class,
+entered one of the streets in the Faubourg Montmartre, tenanted chiefly
+by artisans. He paused at the open doorway of a tall narrow house, and
+drew back as he heard footsteps descending a very gloomy staircase.
+
+The light from a gas lamp on the street fell full on the face of the
+person thus quitting the house--the face of a young and handsome man,
+dressed with the quiet elegance which betokened one of higher rank
+or fashion than that neighbourhood was habituated to find among its
+visitors. The first comer retreated promptly into the shade, and, as by
+sudden impulse, drew his hat low down over his eyes.
+
+The other man did not, however, observe him, went his way with a quick
+step along the street, and entered another house some yards distant.
+
+“What can that pious Bourbonite do here?” muttered the first comer. “Can
+he be a conspirator? Diable! ‘tis as dark as Erebus on that staircase.”
+
+Taking cautious hold of the banister, the man now ascended the stairs.
+On the landing of the first floor there was a gas lamp which threw
+upward a faint ray that finally died at the third story. But at that
+third story the man’s journey ended; he pulled a bell at the door to the
+right, and in another moment or so the door was opened by a young woman
+of twenty-eight or thirty, dressed very simply, but with a certain
+neatness not often seen in the wives of artisans in the Faubourg
+Montmartre. Her face, which, though pale and delicate, retained much
+of the beauty of youth, became clouded as she recognised the visitor;
+evidently the visit was not welcome to her.
+
+“Monsieur Lebeau again!” she exclaimed, shrinking back.
+
+“At your service, chere dame. The goodman is of course at home? Ah,
+I catch sight of him,” and sliding by the woman, M. Lebeau passed the
+narrow lobby in which she stood, through the open door conducting into
+the room in which Armand Monnier was seated, his chin propped on his
+hand, his elbow resting on a table, looking abstractedly into space. In
+a corner of the room two small children were playing languidly with a
+set of bone tablets, inscribed with the letters of the alphabet. But
+whatever the children were doing with the alphabet, they were certainly
+not learning to read from it.
+
+The room was of fair size and height, and by no means barely or shabbily
+furnished. There was a pretty clock on the mantelpiece. On the wall were
+hung designs for the decoration of apartments, and shelves on which were
+ranged a few books.
+
+The window was open, and on the sill were placed flowerpots; you
+could scent the odour they wafted into the room. Altogether it was an
+apartment suited to a skilled artisan earning high wages. From the room
+we are now in, branched on one side a small but commodious kitchen; on
+the other side, on which the door was screened by a portiere, with a
+border prettily worked by female hands--some years ago, for it was faded
+now--was a bedroom, communicating with one of less size in which the
+children slept. We do not enter those additional rooms, but it may be
+well here to mention them as indications of the comfortable state of
+an intelligent skilled artisan of Paris, who thinks he can better that
+state by some revolution which may ruin his employer.
+
+Monnier started up at the entrance of Lebeau, and his face showed that
+he did not share the dislike to the visit which that of the female
+partner of his life had evinced. On the contrary, his smile was cordial,
+and there was a hearty ring in the voice which cried out--
+
+“I am glad to see you--something to do? Eh!”
+
+“Always ready to work for liberty, mon brave.”
+
+“I hope so: what’s in the wind now?”
+
+“O Armand, be prudent--be prudent!” cried the woman, piteously. “Do not
+lead him into further mischief, Monsieur Lebeau;” as she faltered forth
+the last words, she bowed her head over the two little ones, and her
+voice died in sobs.
+
+“Monnier,” said Lebeau, gravely, “Madame is right. I ought not to lead
+you into further mischief; there are three in the room who have better
+claims on you than--”
+
+“The cause of millions,” interrupted Monnier.
+
+“No.”
+
+He approached the woman and took up one of the children very tenderly,
+stroking back its curls and kissing the face, which, if before surprised
+and saddened by the mother’s sob, now smiled gaily under the father’s
+kiss.
+
+“Canst thou doubt, my Heloise,” said the artisan, mildly, “that whatever
+I do thou and these are not uppermost in my thoughts? I act for thine
+interest and theirs--the world as it exists is the foe of you three. The
+world I would replace it by will be more friendly.”
+
+The poor woman made no reply, but as he drew her towards him, she leant
+her head upon his breast and wept quietly. Monnier led her thus from the
+room, whispering words of soothing. The children followed the parents
+into the adjoining chamber. In a few minutes Monnier returned, shutting
+the door behind him, and drawing the portiere close.
+
+“You will excuse me, Citizen, and my poor wife--wife she is to me and to
+all who visit here, though the law says she is not.”
+
+“I respect Madame the more for her dislike to myself,” said Lebeau, with
+a somewhat melancholy smile.
+
+“Not dislike to you personally, Citizen, but dislike to the business
+which she connects with your visits, and she is more than usually
+agitated on that subject this evening, because, just before you came,
+another visitor had produced a great effect on her feelings--poor dear
+Heloise!”
+
+“Indeed! how?”
+
+“Well, I was employed in the winter in redecorating the salon, and
+boudoir, of Madame de Vandemar; her son, M. Raoul, took great interest
+in superintending the details. He would sometimes talk to me very
+civilly, not only on my work, but on other matters. It seems that Madame
+now wants something done to the salle-a-manger, and asked old
+Gerard--my late master, you know--to send me. Of course he said that was
+impossible--for, though I was satisfied with my own wages, I had induced
+his other men to strike, and was one of the ringleaders in the recent
+strike of artisans in general--a dangerous man, and he would have
+nothing more to do with me. So M. Raoul came to see and talk to
+me--scarce gone before you rang at the bell--you might have almost met
+him on the stairs.”
+
+“I saw a beau monsieur come out of the house. And so his talk has
+affected Madame.”
+
+“Very much; it was quite brother-like. He is one of the religious set,
+and they always get at the weak side of the soft sex.”
+
+“Ay,” said Lebeau, thoughtfully; “if religion were banished from the
+laws of men, it would still find a refuge in the hearts of women. But
+Raoul de Vandemar did not presume to preach to Madame upon the sin of
+loving you and your children?”
+
+“I should like to have heard him preach to her,” cried Monnier,
+fiercely. “No, he only tried to reason with me about matters he could
+not understand.”
+
+“Strikes?”
+
+“Well, not exactly strikes--he did not contend that we workmen had not
+full right to combine and to strike for obtaining fairer money’s worth
+for our work; but he tried to persuade me that where, as in my case, it
+was not a matter of wages, but of political principle--of war against
+capitalists--I could but injure myself and mislead others. He wanted to
+reconcile me to old Gerard, or to let him find me employment elsewhere;
+and when I told him that my honour forbade me to make terms for myself
+till those with whom I was joined were satisfied, he said, ‘But if
+this lasts much longer, your children will not look so rosy;’ then
+poor Heloise began to wring her hands and cry, and he took me aside and
+wanted to press money on me--as a loan. He spoke so kindly that I could
+not be angry; but when he found I would take nothing, he asked me about
+some families in the street of whom he had a list, and who, he was
+informed, were in great distress. That is true; I am feeding some of
+them myself out of my savings. You see, this young Monsieur belongs to
+a society of men, many as young as he is, which visits the poor and
+dispenses charity. I did not feel I had a right to refuse aid for
+others, and I told him where his money would be best spent. I suppose he
+went there when he left me.”
+
+“I know the society you mean, that of St. Francois de Sales. It
+comprises some of the most ancient of that old noblesse to which the
+ouvriers in the great Revolution were so remorseless.”
+
+“We ouvriers are wiser now; we see that in assailing them, we gave
+ourselves worse tyrants in the new aristocracy of the capitalists. Our
+quarrel now is that of artisans against employers.”
+
+“Of course, I am aware of that; but to leave general politics, tell me
+frankly, How has the strike affected you as yet? I mean in purse? Can
+you stand its pressure? If not, you are above the false pride of not
+taking help from me, a fellow-conspirator, though you were justified
+in refusing it when offered by Raoul de Vandemar, the servant of the
+Church.”
+
+“Pardon, I refuse aid from any one, except for the common cause. But do
+not fear for me, I am not pinched as yet. I have had high wages for some
+years, and since I and Heloise came together, I have not wasted a sous
+out of doors, except in the way of public duty, such as making converts
+at the Jean Jacques and elsewhere; a glass of beer and a pipe don’t cost
+much. And Heloise is such a house-wife, so thrifty, scolds me if I buy
+her a ribbon, poor love! No wonder that I would pull down a society that
+dares to scoff at her--dares to say she is not my wife, and her children
+are base born. No, I have some savings left yet. War to society, war to
+the knife!”
+
+“Monnier,” said Lebeau, in a voice that evinced emotion, “listen to
+me: I have received injuries from society which, when they were fresh,
+half-maddened me--that is twenty years ago. I would then have thrown
+myself into any plot against society that proffered revenge; but
+society, my friend, is a wall of very strong masonry, as it now stands;
+it may be sapped in the course of a thousand years, but stormed in a
+day--no. You dash your head against it--you scatter your brains, and
+you dislodge a stone. Society smiles in scorn, effaces the stain, and
+replaces the stone. I no longer war against society. I do war against
+a system in that society which is hostile to me--systems in France are
+easily overthrown. I say this because I want to use you, and I do not
+want to deceive.”
+
+“Deceive me, bah! You are an honest man,” cried Monnier; and he seized
+Lebeau’s hand, and shook it with warmth and vigour.
+
+“But for you I should have been a mere grumbler. No doubt I should have
+cried out where the shoe pinched, and railed against laws that vex
+me; but from the moment you first talked to me I became a new man. You
+taught me to act, as Rousseau and Madame de Grantmesnil had taught me to
+think and to feel. There is my brother, a grumbler too, but professes
+to have a wiser head than mine. He is always warning me against
+you--against joining a strike--against doing any thing to endanger my
+skin. I always went by his advice till you taught me that it was well
+enough for women to talk and complain; men should dare and do.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Lebeau, “your brother is a safer counsellor to a
+pere de famille than I. I repeat what I have so often said before:
+I desire, and I resolve, that the Empire of M. Bonaparte shall be
+overthrown. I see many concurrent circumstances to render that desire
+and resolve of practicable fulfilment. You desire and resolve the same
+thing. Up to that point we can work together. I have encouraged your
+action only so far as it served my design; but I separate from you the
+moment you would ask me to aid your design in the hazard of experiments
+which the world has never yet favoured, and trust me, Monnier, the world
+never will favour.”
+
+“That remains to be seen,” said Monnier, with compressed, obstinate
+lips. “Forgive me, but you are not young; you belong to an old school.”
+
+“Poor young man!” said Lebeau, readjusting his spectacles, “I recognise
+in you the genius of Paris, be the genius good or evil. Paris is never
+warned by experience. Be it so. I want you so much, your enthusiasm is
+so fiery, that I can concede no more to the mere sentiment which makes
+me say to myself, ‘It is a shame to use this great-hearted, wrong-headed
+creature for my personal ends.’ I come at once to the point--that is,
+the matter on which I seek you this evening. At my suggestion, you have
+been a ringleader in strikes which have terribly shaken the Imperial
+system, more than its Ministers deem; now I want a man like you to
+assist in a bold demonstration against the Imperial resort to a rural
+priest-ridden suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working class of
+Paris.”
+
+“Good!” said Monnier.
+
+“In a day or two the result of the plebiscite will be known. The
+result of universal suffrage will be enormously in favour of the desire
+expressed by one man.”
+
+“I don’t believe it,” said Monnier, stoutly. “France cannot be so
+hoodwinked by the priests.”
+
+“Take what I say for granted,” resumed Lebeau, calmly. “On the 8th of
+this month we shall know the amount of the majority--some millions of
+French votes. I want Paris to separate itself from France, and declare
+against those blundering millions. I want an emeute, or rather a
+menacing demonstration--not a premature revolution, mind. You must avoid
+bloodshed.”
+
+“It is easy to say that beforehand; but when a crowd of men once meets
+in the streets of Paris--”
+
+“It can do much by meeting, and cherishing resentment if the meeting be
+dispersed by an armed force, which it would be waste of life to resist.”
+
+“We shall see when the time comes,” said Monnier, with a fierce gleam in
+his bold eyes.
+
+“I tell you, all that is required at this moment is an evident protest
+of the artisans of Paris against the votes of the ‘rurals’ of France. Do
+you comprehend me?”
+
+“I think so; if not, I obey. What we ouvriers want is what we have not
+got--a head to dictate action to us.”
+
+“See to this, then. Rouse the men you can command. I will take care that
+you have plentiful aid from foreigners. We may trust to the confreres of
+our council to enlist Poles and Italians; Gaspard le Noy will turn out
+the volunteer rioters at his command. Let the emeute be within, say a
+week, after the vote of the plebiscite is taken. You will need that time
+to prepare.”
+
+“Be contented--it shall be done.”
+
+“Good night, then.” Lebeau leisurely took up his hat and drew on his
+gloves--then, as if struck by a sudden thought, he turned briskly on the
+artisan and said in quick blunt tones:
+
+“Armand Monnier, explain to me why it is that you--a Parisian artisan,
+the type of a class the most insubordinate, the most self-conceited that
+exists on the face of earth--take without question, with so docile
+a submission, the orders of a man who plainly tells you he does not
+sympathise in your ultimate objects, of whom you really know very
+little, and whose views you candidly own you think are those of an old
+and obsolete school of political reasoners.”
+
+“You puzzle me to explain,” said Monnier, with an ingenuous laugh, that
+brightened up features stern and hard, though comely when in repose.
+“Partly, because you are so straightforward, and do not talk blague;
+partly, because I don’t think the class I belong to would stir an inch
+unless we had a leader of another class--and you give me at least that
+leader. Again, you go to that first stage which we all agree to take,
+and--well, do you want me to explain more?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Et bien! you have warned me, like an honest man; like an honest man I
+warn you. That first step we take together; I want to go a step further;
+you retreat, you say, ‘No:’ I reply you are committed; that further
+step you must take, or I cry ‘Traitre!--au la lanterne!’ You talk of
+‘superior experience:’ bah! what does experience really tell you? Do you
+suppose that Philippe Egalite, when he began to plot against Louis XVI.,
+meant to vote for his kinsman’s execution by the guillotine? Do you
+suppose that Robespierre, when he commenced his career as the foe of
+capital punishment, foresaw that he should be the Minister of the Reign
+of Terror? Not a bit of it. Each was committed by his use of those he
+designed for his tools: so must you be--or you perish.”
+
+Lebeau, leaning against the door, heard the frank avowal he had courted
+without betraying a change of countenance. But when Armand Monnier had
+done, a slight movement of his lips showed emotion; was it of fear or
+disdain?
+
+“Monnier,” he said, gently; “I am so much obliged to you for the manly
+speech you have made. The scruples which my conscience had before
+entertained are dispelled. I dreaded lest I, a declared wolf, might
+seduce into peril an innocent sheep. I see I have to deal with a wolf of
+younger vigour and sharper fangs than myself, so much the better: obey
+my orders now; leave it to time to say whether I obey yours later. Au
+revoir.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Isaura’s apartment, on the following Thursday evening, was more filled
+than usual. Besides her habitual devotees in the artistic or literary
+world, there were diplomatists and deputies commixed with many fair
+chiefs of la jeunesse doree; amongst the latter the brilliant Enguerrand
+de Vandemar, who, deeming the acquaintance of every celebrity essential
+to his own celebrity in either Carthage, the beau monde, or the
+demi-monde, had, two Thursdays before, made Louvier attend her soiree
+and present him. Louvier, though gathering to his own salons authors and
+artists, very rarely favoured their rooms with his presence; he did
+not adorn Isaura’s party that evening. But Duplessis was there, in
+compensation. It had chanced that Valerie had met Isaura at some house
+in the past winter, and conceived an enthusiastic affection for her:
+since then, Valerie came very often to see her, and made a point of
+dragging with her to Isaura’s Thursday reunions her obedient father.
+Soirees, musical or literary, were not much in his line; but he had no
+pleasure like that of pleasing his spoilt child. Our old friend Frederic
+Lemercier was also one of Isaura’s guests that night. He had become more
+and more intimate with Duplessis, and Duplessis had introduced him to
+the fair Valerie as “un jeune homme plein de moyens, qui ira loin.”
+
+Savarin was there of course, and brought with him an English gentleman
+of the name of Bevil, as well known at Paris as in London--invited
+everywhere--popular everywhere,--one of those welcome contributors to
+the luxuries of civilised society who trade in gossip, sparing no pains
+to get the pick of it, and exchanging it liberally sometimes for a
+haunch of venison, sometimes for a cup of tea. His gossip not being
+adulterated with malice was in high repute for genuine worth.
+
+If Bevil said, “This story is a fact,” you no more thought of doubting
+him than you would doubt Rothschild if he said, “This is Lafitte of
+‘48.”
+
+Mr. Bevil was at present on a very short stay at Paris, and, naturally
+wishing to make the most of his time, he did not tarry beside Savarin,
+but, after being introduced to Isaura, flitted here and there through
+the assembly.
+
+            “Apis Matinae--
+             More modoque--
+             Grata carpentis thyma”--
+
+The bee proffers honey, but bears a sting.
+
+The room was at its fullest when Gustave Rameau entered, accompanied by
+Monsieur de Mauleon.
+
+Isaura was agreeably surprised by the impression made on her by the
+Vicomte’s appearance and manner. His writings, and such as she had heard
+of his earlier repute, had prepared her to see a man decidedly old, of
+withered aspect and sardonic smile--aggressive in demeanour--forward or
+contemptuous in his very politeness--a Mephistopheles engrafted on the
+stem of a Don Juan. She was startled by the sight of one who, despite
+his forty-eight years--and at Paris a man is generally older at
+forty-eight than he is elsewhere--seemed in the zenith of ripened
+manhood--startled yet more by the singular modesty of a deportment
+too thoroughly high-bred not to be quietly simple--startled most by a
+melancholy expression in eyes that could be at times soft, though always
+so keen, and in the grave pathetic smile which seemed to disarm censure
+of past faults in saying, “I have known sorrows.”
+
+He did not follow up his introduction to his young hostess by any of the
+insipid phrases of compliment to which she was accustomed; but, after
+expressing in grateful terms his thanks for the honour she had permitted
+Rameau to confer on him, he moved aside, as if he had no right to detain
+her from other guests more worthy her notice, towards the doorway,
+taking his place by Enguerrand amidst a group of men of whom Duplessis
+was the central figure.
+
+At that time--the first week in May, 1870--all who were then in Paris
+will remember that there were two subjects uppermost in the mouths
+of men: first, the plebiscite; secondly, the conspiracy to murder the
+Emperor--which the disaffected considered to be a mere fable, a pretence
+got up in time to serve the plebiscite and prop the Empire.
+
+Upon this latter subject Duplessis had been expressing himself with
+unwonted animation. A loyal and earnest Imperialist, it was only with
+effort that he could repress his scorn of that meanest sort of gossip
+which is fond of ascribing petty motives to eminent men.
+
+To him nothing could be more clearly evident than the reality of this
+conspiracy, and he had no tolerance for the malignant absurdity of
+maintaining that the Emperor or his Ministers could be silly and wicked
+enough to accuse seventy-two persons of a crime which the police had
+been instructed to invent.
+
+As De Mauleon approached, the financier brought his speech to an abrupt
+close. He knew in the Vicomte de Mauleon the writer of articles which
+had endangered the Government, and aimed no pointless shafts against its
+Imperial head.
+
+“My cousin,” said Enguerrand, gaily, as he exchanged a cordial shake
+of the hand with Victor, “I congratulate you on the fame of journalist,
+into which you have vaulted, armed cap-a pie, like a knight of old into
+his saddle; but I don’t sympathise with the means you have taken to
+arrive at that renown. I am not myself an Imperialist--a Vandemar can be
+scarcely that. But if I am compelled to be on board a ship, I don’t
+wish to take out its planks and let in an ocean, when all offered to me
+instead is a crazy tub and a rotten rope.”
+
+“Tres bien,” said Duplessis, in Parliamentary tone and phrase.
+
+“But,” said De Mauleon, with his calm smile, “would you like the captain
+of the ship, when the sky darkened and the sea rose, to ask the common
+sailors ‘whether they approved his conduct on altering his course or
+shortening his sail’? Better trust to a crazy tub and a rotten rope than
+to a ship in which the captain consults a plebiscite.”
+
+“Monsieur,” said Duplessis, “your metaphor is ill chosen no metaphor
+indeed is needed. The head of the State was chosen by the voice of the
+people, and, when required to change the form of administration which
+the people had sanctioned, and inclined to do so from motives the most
+patriotic and liberal, he is bound again to consult the people from
+whom he holds his power. It is not, however, of the plebiscite we were
+conversing, so much as of the atrocious conspiracy of assassins--so
+happily discovered in time. I presume that Monsieur de Mauleon must
+share the indignation which true Frenchmen of every party must feel
+against a combination united by the purpose of murder.”
+
+The Vicomte bowed as in assent. “But do you believe,” asked a Liberal
+Depute, “that such a combination existed, except in the visions of the
+police or the cabinet of a Minister?”
+
+Duplessis looked keenly at De Mauleon while this question was put to
+him. Belief or disbelief in the conspiracy was with him, and with many,
+the test by which a sanguinary revolutionist was distinguished from an
+honest politician.
+
+“Ma foi,” answered De Mauleon, shrugging his shoulders, “I have only one
+belief left; but that is boundless. I believe in the folly of mankind
+in general, and of Frenchmen in particular. That seventy-two men
+should plot the assassination of a sovereign on whose life interests so
+numerous and so watchful depend, and imagine they could keep a secret
+which any drunkard amongst them would blab out, any tatterdemalion would
+sell, is a betise so gross that I think it highly probable. But pardon
+me if I look upon the politics of Paris much as I do upon its mud--one
+must pass through it when one walks in the street. One changes one’s
+shoes before entering the salon. A word with you, Enguerrand,”--and
+taking his kinsman’s arm he drew him aside from the circle. “What has
+become of your brother? I see nothing of him now.”
+
+“Oh, Raoul,” answered Enguerrand, throwing himself on a couch in a
+recess, and making room for De Mauleon beside him--“Raoul is devoting
+himself to the distressed ouvriers who have chosen to withdraw from
+work. When he fails to persuade them to return, he forces food and
+fuel on their wives and children. My good mother encourages him in this
+costly undertaking, and no one but you who believe in the infinity of
+human folly would credit me when I tell you that his eloquence has drawn
+from me all the argent de poche I get from our shop. As for himself,
+he has sold his horses, and even grudges a cab-fare, saying, ‘That is a
+meal for a family.’ Ah! if he had but gone into the Church, what a saint
+would have deserved canonisation!”
+
+“Do not lament--he will probably have what is a better claim than mere
+saintship on Heaven--martyrdom,” said De Mauleon, with a smile in which
+sarcasm disappeared in melancholy. “Poor Raoul!--and what of my other
+cousin, the beau Marquis? Several months ago his Legitimist faith seemed
+vacillating--he talked to me very fairly about the duties a Frenchman
+owed to France, and hinted that he should place his sword at the command
+of Napoleon III. I have not yet heard of him as a soldat de France--I
+hear a great deal of him as a viveur de Paris.”
+
+“Don’t you know why his desire for a military career was frost-bitten?”
+
+“No! why?”
+
+“Alain came from Bretagne profoundly ignorant of most things known to a
+gamin of Paris. When he conscientiously overcame the scruples natural to
+one of his name and told the Duchesse de Tarascon that he was ready
+to fight under the flag of France whatever its colour, he had a vague
+reminiscence of ancestral Rochebriants earning early laurels at the head
+of their regiments. At all events he assumed as a matter of course that
+he, in the first rank as gentilhomme, would enter the army, if as a
+sous-lieutenant, still as gentilhomme. But when told that, as he had
+been at no military college, he could only enter the ranks as a private
+soldier--herd with private soldiers--for at least two years before,
+passing through the grade of corporal, his birth, education, habits
+of life could, with great favour, raise him to the station of a
+sous-lieutenant, you may conceive that the martial ardour of a
+Rochebriant was somewhat cooled.”
+
+“If he knew what the dormitory of French privates is, and how difficult
+a man well educated well brought up, finds it, first, to endure the
+coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy, and then, having endured
+and been compelled to share them, ever enforce obedience and discipline
+as a superior among those with whom just before he was an equal, his
+ardour would not have been merely cooled--it would have been changed
+into despair for the armies of France, if hereafter they are met by
+those whose officers have been trained to be officers from the outset
+and have imbibed from their cradle an education not taught to the
+boy-pedants from school--the two-fold education how with courtesy to
+command, how with dignity to obey. To return to Rochebriant, such salons
+as I frequent are somewhat formal--as befits my grave years and my
+modest income; I may add, now that you know my vocation, befits me also
+as a man who seeks rather to be instructed than amused. In those salons
+I did, last year sometimes, however, meet Rochebriant--as I sometimes
+still meet you; but of late he has deserted such sober reunions, and I
+hear with pain that he is drifting among those rocks against which my
+own youth was shipwrecked. Is the report true?”
+
+“I fear,” said Enguerrand, reluctantly, “that at least the report is not
+unfounded. And my conscience accuses me of having been to blame in the
+first instance. You see, when Alain made terms with Louvier by which he
+obtained a very fair income, if prudently managed, I naturally wished
+that a man of so many claims to social distinction, and who represents
+the oldest branch of my family, should take his right place in our world
+of Paris. I gladly therefore presented him to the houses and the
+men most a la mode--advised him as to the sort of establishment,
+in apartments, horses, &c., which it appeared to me that he might
+reasonably afford--I mean such as, with his means, I should have
+prescribed to myself--”
+
+“Ah! I understand. But you, dear Enguerrand, are a born Parisian,
+every inch of you: and a born Parisian is, whatever be thought to the
+contrary, the best manager in the world. He alone achieves the difficult
+art of uniting thrift with show. It is your Provincial who comes to
+Paris in the freshness of undimmed youth, who sows his whole life on
+its barren streets. I guess the rest: Alain is ruined.” Enguerrand, who
+certainly was so far a born Parisian that with all his shrewdness and
+savoir faire, he had a wonderfully sympathetic heart, very easily moved,
+one way or the other--Enguerrand winced at his elder kinsman’s words
+complimentarily reproachful, and said in unwonted tones of humility:
+“Cousin, you are cruel, but you are in the right. I did not calculate
+sufficiently on the chances of Alain’s head being turned. Hear my
+excuse. He seemed to me so much more thoughtful than most at our age
+are, so much more stately and proud; well, also so much more pure, so
+impressed with the responsibilities of station, so bent on retaining
+the old lands in Bretagne; by habit and rearing so simple and
+self-denying,--that I took it for granted he was proof against stronger
+temptations than those which a light nature like my own puts aside with
+a laugh. And at first I had no reason to think myself deceived, when,
+some months ago, I heard that he was getting into debt, losing at play,
+paying court to female vampires, who drain the life-blood of those on
+whom they fasten their fatal lips. Oh, then I spoke to him earnestly!”
+
+“And in vain?”
+
+“In vain. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, whom you may have heard
+of--”
+
+“Certainly, and met; a friend of Louvier’s--”
+
+“The same man--has obtained over him an influence which so far subdues
+mine, that he almost challenged me when I told him his friend was a
+scamp. In fine, though Alain and I have not actually quarrelled, we pass
+each other with, ‘Bon jour, mon ami.’”
+
+“Hum! My dear Enguerrand, you have done all you could. Flies will be
+flies, and spiders, spiders, till the earth is destroyed by a comet.
+Nay, I met a distinguished naturalist in America who maintained that we
+shall find flies and spiders in the next world.”
+
+“You have been in America? Ah, true--I remember, California!”
+
+“Where have I not been? Tush! music--shall I hear our fair hostess
+sing?”
+
+“I am afraid not to-night: because Madame S---------- is to favour us,
+and the Signorina makes it a rule not to sing at her own house when
+professional artists do. You must hear the Cicogna quietly some day;
+such a voice, nothing like it.”
+
+Madame S---------, who, since she had learned that there was no cause to
+apprehend that Isaura might become her professional rival, conceived
+for her a wonderful affection, and willingly contributed her magnificent
+gifts of song to the charms of Isaura’s salon, now began a fragment from
+I Puritani, which held the audience as silent as the ghosts listening
+to Sappho, and when it was over, several of the guests slipped away,
+especially those who disliked music, and feared Madame S--------- might
+begin again. Enguerrand was not one of such soulless recreants, but he
+had many other places to go to. Besides, Madame S-------- was no novelty
+to him.
+
+De Mauleon now approached Isaura, who was seated next to Valerie, and
+after well-merited encomium on Madame S------‘s performance, slid into
+some critical comparisons between that singer and those of a former
+generation, which interested Isaura, and evinced to her quick
+perceptions that kind of love for music which has been refined by more
+knowledge of the art than is common to mere amateurs.
+
+“You have studied music, Monsieur de Mauleon,” she said. “Do you not
+perform yourself?”
+
+“I? No. But music has always had a fatal attraction for me. I ascribe
+half the errors of my life to that temperament which makes me too
+fascinated by harmonies--too revolted by discords.”
+
+“I should have thought such a temperament would have led from
+errors--are not errors discords?”
+
+“To the inner sense, yes; but to the outer sense not always. Virtues
+are often harsh to the ear--errors very sweet-voiced. The sirens did not
+sing out of tune. Better to stop one’s ears than glide on Scylla or be
+merged into Charybdis.”
+
+“Monsieur,” cried Valerie, with a pretty brusquerie which became her
+well, “you talk like a Vandal.”
+
+“It is, I think, by Mademoiselle Duplessis that I have the honour to be
+rebuked. Is Monsieur your father very susceptible to music?”
+
+“Well, I cannot say that he cares much for it. But then his mind is so
+practical--”
+
+“And his life so successful. No Scylla, no Charybdis for him. However,
+Mademoiselle, I am not quite the Vandal you suppose, I do not say
+that susceptibility to the influence of music may not be safe, nay,
+healthful, to others it was not so to me in my youth. It can do me no
+harm now.”
+
+Here Duplessis came up and whispered his daughter “it was time to leave;
+they had promised the Duchesse de Tarascon to assist at the soiree she
+gave that night.” Valerie took her father’s arm with a brightening smile
+and a heightened colour. Alain de Rochebriant might probably be at the
+Duchesse’s.
+
+“Are you not going also to the Hotel de Tarascon, M. de Mauleon?” asked
+Duplessis.
+
+“No; I was never there but once. The Duchesse is an Imperialist, at once
+devoted and acute, and no doubt very soon divined my lack of faith in
+her idols.”
+
+Duplessis frowned, and hastily led Valerie away.
+
+In a few minutes the room was comparatively deserted. De Mauleon,
+however, lingered by the side of Isaura till all the other guests
+were gone. Even then he lingered still, and renewed the interrupted
+conversation with her, the Venosta joining therein; and so agreeable did
+he make himself to her Italian tastes by a sort of bitter-sweet wisdom
+like that of her native proverbs--comprising much knowledge of mankind
+on the unflattering side of humanity in that form of pleasantry which
+has a latent sentiment of pathos--that the Venosta exclaimed, “Surely
+you must have been brought up in Florence!”
+
+There was that in De Mauleon’s talk hostile to all which we call romance
+that excited the imagination of Isaura, and compelled her instinctive
+love for whatever is more sweet, more beautiful, more ennobling on the
+many sides of human life, to oppose what she deemed the paradoxes of
+a man who had taught himself to belie even his own nature. She became
+eloquent, and her countenance, which in ordinary moments owed much of
+its beauty to an expression of meditative gentleness, was now lighted
+up by the energy of earnest conviction--the enthusiasm of an impassioned
+zeal.
+
+Gradually De Mauleon relaxed his share in the dialogue, and listened
+to her, rapt and dreamily as in his fiery youth he had listened to the
+songs of the sirens. No siren Isaura! She was defending her own cause,
+though unconsciously--defending the vocation of art as the embellisher
+of external nature, and more than embellisher of the nature which dwells
+crude, but plastic in the soul of man: indeed therein the creator of a
+new nature, strengthened, expanded, and brightened in proportion as it
+accumulates the ideas that tend beyond the boundaries of the visible and
+material nature, which is finite; for ever seeking in the unseen and
+the spiritual the goals in the infinite which it is their instinct to
+divine. “That which you contemptuously call romance,” said Isaura, “is
+not essential only to poets and artists. The most real side of every
+life, from the earliest dawn of mind in the infant, is the romantic.”
+
+“When the child is weaving flower-chains, chasing butterflies, or
+sitting apart and dreaming what it will do in the future, is not that
+the child’s real life, and yet is it not also the romantic?”
+
+“But there comes a time when we weave no flower-chains, and chase no
+butterflies.”
+
+“Is it so?--still on one side of life, flowers and butterflies may be
+found to the last; and at least to the last are there no dreams of the
+future? Have you no such dreams at this moment? and without the romance
+of such dreams, would there be any reality to human life which could
+distinguish it from the life of the weed that rots on Lethe?”
+
+“Alas, Mademoiselle,” said De Mauleon, rising to take leave, “your
+argument must rest without answer. I would not, if I could, confute the
+beautiful belief that belongs to youth, fusing into one rainbow all
+the tints that can colour the world. But the Signora Venosta will
+acknowledge the truth of an old saying expressed in every civilised
+language, but best, perhaps in that of the Florentine--‘You might as
+well physic the dead as instruct the old.’”
+
+“But you are not old!” said the Venosta, with Florentine politeness,--
+“you! not a grey hair.”
+
+“‘Tis not by the grey of the hair that one knows the age of the heart,”
+ answered De Mauleon, in another paraphrase of Italian proverb, and he
+was gone.
+
+As he walked homeward, through deserted streets, Victor de Mauleon
+thought to himself, “Poor girl, how I pity her! married to a Gustave
+Rameau--married to any man--nothing in the nature of man, be he the best
+and the cleverest, can ever realise the dream of a girl who is pure and
+has genius. Ah, is not the converse true? What girl, the best and the
+cleverest, comes up to the ideal of even a commonplace man--if he ever
+dreamed of an ideal!”
+
+Then he paused, and in a moment or so afterwards his thought knew such
+questionings no more. It turned upon personalities, on stratagems and
+plots, on ambition. The man had more than his share of that
+peculiar susceptibility which is one of the characteristics of his
+countrymen--susceptibility to immediate impulse--susceptibility to
+fleeting impressions. It was a key to many mysteries in his character
+when he owned his subjection to the influence of music, and in music
+recognised not the seraph’s harp, but the siren’s song. If you could
+have permanently fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good moments
+of his life--even now--some moment of exquisite kindness--of superb
+generosity--of dauntless courage--you would have secured a very rare
+specimen of noble humanity. But so to fix him was impossible.
+
+That impulse of the moment vanished the moment after; swept aside by the
+force of his very talents--talents concentrated by his intense sense
+of individuality--sense of wrongs or of rights--interests or objects
+personal to himself. He extended the royal saying, “L’etat, c’est moi,”
+ to words far more grandiloquent. “The universe, ‘tis I.” The Venosta
+would have understood him and smiled approvingly, if he had said with
+good-humoured laugh, “I dead, the world is dead!” That is an Italian
+proverb, and means much the same thing.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+On the 8th of May the vote of the plebiscite was recorded,--between
+seven and eight millions of Frenchmen in support of the Imperial
+programme--in plain words, of the Emperor himself--against a minority of
+1,500,000. But among the 1,500,000 were the old throne-shakers-those who
+compose and those who lead the mob of Paris. On the 14th, as Rameau was
+about to quit the editorial bureau of his printing-office, a note
+was brought in to him which strongly excited his nervous system.
+It contained a request to see him forthwith, signed by those two
+distinguished foreign members of the Secret Council of Ten, Thaddeus
+Loubinsky and Leonardo Raselli.
+
+The meetings of that Council had been so long suspended that Rameau
+had almost forgotten its existence. He gave orders to admit the
+conspirators. The two men entered, the Pole, tall, stalwart, and with
+martial stride--the Italian, small, emaciated, with skulking, noiseless,
+cat-like step, both looking wondrous threadbare, and in that state
+called “shabby genteel,” which belongs to the man who cannot work for
+his livelihood, and assumes a superiority over the man who can.
+Their outward appearance was in notable discord with that of the
+poet-politician--he all new in the last fashions of Parisian elegance,
+and redolent of Parisian prosperity and extrait de Mousseline!
+
+“Confrere,” said the Pole, seating himself on the edge of the table,
+while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the
+room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide
+where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,--“confrere,”
+ said the Pole, “your country needs you--”
+
+“Rather the cause of all countries,” interposed the Italian
+softly,--“Humanity.”
+
+“Please to explain yourselves; but stay, wait a moment,” said Rameau;
+and rising, he went to the door, opened it, looked forth, ascertained
+that the coast was clear, then reclosed the door as cautiously as a
+prudent man closes his pocket whenever shabby-genteel visitors appeal
+to him in the cause of his country, still more if they appeal in that of
+Humanity.
+
+“Confrere,” said the Pole, “this day a movement is to be made--a
+demonstration on behalf of your country--”
+
+“Of Humanity,” again softly interposed the Italian. “Attend and share
+it,” said the Pole.
+
+“Pardon me,” said Rameau, “I do not know what you mean. I am now
+the editor of a journal in which the proprietor does not countenance
+violence; and if you come to me as a member of the Council, you must be
+aware that I should obey no orders but that of its president, whom I--I
+have not seen for nearly a year; indeed I know not if the Council still
+exists.”
+
+“The Council exists, and with it the obligation it imposes,” replied
+Thaddeus.
+
+“Pampered with luxury,” here the Pole raised his voice, “do you dare to
+reject the voice of Poverty and Freedom?”
+
+“Hush, dear but too vehement confrere,” murmured the bland Italian;
+“permit me to dispel the reasonable doubts of our confrere,” and he took
+out of his breast-pocket a paper which he presented to Rameau; on it
+were written these words:
+
+“This evening May 24th. Demonstration.--Faubourg du Temple.--Watch
+events, under orders of A. M. Bid the youngest member take that first
+opportunity to test nerves and discretion. He is not to act, but to
+observe.”
+
+No name was appended to this instruction, but a cipher intelligible to
+all members of the Council as significant of its president, Jean Lebeau.
+
+“If I err not,” said the Italian, “Citizen Rameau is our youngest
+confrere.”
+
+Rameau paused. The penalties for disobedience to an order of the
+President of the Council were too formidable to be disregarded. There
+could be no doubt that,--though his name was not mentioned, he, Rameau,
+was accurately designated as the youngest member of the Council. Still,
+however he might have owed his present position to the recommendation
+of Lebeau, there was nothing in the conversation of M. de Mauleon which
+would warrant participation in a popular emeute by the editor of a
+journal belonging to that mocker of the mob. Ah! but--and here again he
+glanced over the paper--he was asked “not to act; but to observe.” To
+observe was the duty of a journalist. He might go to the demonstration
+as De Mauleon confessed he had gone to the Communist Club, a
+philosophical spectator.
+
+“You do not disobey this order?” said the Pole, crossing his arms.
+
+“I shall certainly go into the Faubourg du Temple this evening,”
+ answered Rameau, drily, “I have business that way.”
+
+“Bon!” said the Pole; “I did not think you would fail us, though you do
+edit a journal which says not a word on the duties that bind the French
+people to the resuscitation of Poland.”
+
+“And is not pronounced in decided accents upon the cause of the human
+race,” put in the Italian, whispering.
+
+“I do not write the political articles in Le Seas Commun,” answered
+Rameau; “and I suppose that our president is satisfied with them since
+he recommended me to the preference of the person who does. Have you
+more to say? Pardon me, my time is precious, for it does not belong to
+me.”
+
+“Eno’!” said the Italian, “we will detain you no longer.” Here, with a
+bow and a smile, he glided towards the door.
+
+“Confrere,” muttered the Pole, lingering, “you must have become
+very rich!--do not forget the wrongs of Poland--I am their
+Representative--I--speaking in that character, not as myself
+individually--I have not breakfasted!”
+
+Rameau, too thoroughly Parisian not to be as lavish of his own money as
+he was envious of another’s, slipped some pieces of gold in the Pole’s
+hand. The Pole’s bosom heaved with manly emotion: “These pieces bear the
+effigies of the tyrant--I accept them as redeemed from disgrace by their
+uses to Freedom.”
+
+“Share them with Signor Raselli in the name of the same cause,”
+ whispered Rameau, with a smile he might have plagiarised from De
+Mauleon.
+
+The Italian, whose ear was inured to whispers, heard and turned round as
+he stood at the threshold.
+
+“No, confrere of France--no, confrere of Poland--I am Italian. All ways
+to take the life of an enemy are honourable--no way is honourable which
+begs money from a friend.”
+
+An hour or so later, Rameau was driven in his comfortable coupe to the
+Faubourg du Temple.
+
+Suddenly, at the angle of a street, his coachman was stopped--a
+rough-looking man appeared at the door--__“Descends, mon petit
+bourgeois__.” Behind the rough-looking man were menacing faces.
+
+Rameau was not physically a coward--very few Frenchmen are, still fewer
+Parisians; and still fewer no matter what their birthplace, the men whom
+we call vain--the men who over-much covet distinction, and over-much
+dread reproach.
+
+“Why should I descend at your summons?” said Rameau, haughtily. “Bah!
+Coachman, drive on!”
+
+The rough-looking man opened the door, and silently extended a hand to
+Rameau, saying gently: “Take my advice, mon bourgeois. Get out--we want
+your carriage. It is a day of barricades--every little helps, even your
+coupe!”
+
+While this man spoke others gesticulated; some shrieked out, “He is an
+employer! he thinks he can drive over the employed!”
+
+Some leader of the crowd--a Parisian crowd always has a classical
+leader, who has never read the classics--thundered forth,
+“Tarquin’s car! Down with Tarquin!” Therewith came a yell, “A la
+lanterne--Tarquin!”
+
+We Anglo-Saxons, of the old country or the new, are not familiarised
+to the dread roar of a populace delighted to have a Roman authority for
+tearing us to pieces; still Americans know what is Lynch law. Rameau
+was in danger of Lynch law, when suddenly a face not unknown to him
+interposed between himself and the rough-looking man.
+
+“Ha!” cried this new comer, “my young confrere, Gustave Rameau, welcome!
+Citizens, make way. I answer for this patriot--I, Armand Monnier. He
+comes to help use! Is this the way you receive him?” Then in a low voice
+to Rameau, “Come out. Give your coupe to the barricade. What matters
+such rubbish? Trust to me--I expected you. Hist!--Lebeau bids me
+see that you are safe.” Rameau then, seeking to drape himself in
+majesty,--as the aristocrats of journalism in a city wherein no other
+aristocracy is recognised naturally and commendably do, when ignorance
+combined with physical strength asserts itself to be a power,
+beside which the power of knowledge is what a learned poodle is to a
+tiger--Rameau then descended from his coupe, and said to this Titan of
+labour, as a French marquis might have said to his valet, and as, when
+the French marquis has become a ghost of the past, the man who keeps
+a coupe says to the man who mends its wheels, “Honest fellow, I trust
+you.”
+
+Monnier led the journalist through the mob to the rear of the barricade
+hastily constructed. Here were assembled very motley groups.
+
+The majority were ragged boys, the gamins of Paris, commingled with
+several women of no reputable appearance, some dingily, some gaudily
+apparelled. The crowd did not appear as if the business in hand was a
+very serious one. Amidst the din of voices the sounds of laughter rose
+predominant, jests and bon mots flew from lip to lip. The astonishing
+good-humour of the Parisians was not yet excited into the ferocity that
+grows out of it by a street contest. It was less like a popular emeute
+than a gathering of schoolboys, bent not less on fun than on mischief.
+But, still, amid this gayer crowd were sinister, lowering faces; the
+fiercest were not those of the very poor, but rather of artisans, who,
+to judge by their dress, seemed well off of men belonging to yet higher
+grades. Rameau distinguished amongst these the medecin des pauvres, the
+philosophical atheist, sundry young, long-haired artists, middle aged
+writers for the Republican press, in close neighbourhood with ruffians
+of villainous aspect, who might have been newly returned from the
+galleys. None were regularly armed; still revolvers and muskets and long
+knives were by no means unfrequently interspersed among the rioters. The
+whole scene was to Rameau a confused panorama, and the dissonant tumult
+of yells and laughter, of menace and joke, began rapidly to act on his
+impressionable nerves. He felt that which is the prevalent character of
+a Parisian riot--the intoxication of an impulsive sympathy; coming there
+as a reluctant spectator, if action commenced he would have been borne
+readily into the thick of the action--he could not have helped it;
+already he grew impatient of the suspense of strife. Monnier having
+deposited him safely with his back to a wall, at the corner of a street
+handy for flight, if flight became expedient, had left him for several
+minutes, having business elsewhere. Suddenly the whisper of the Italian
+stole into his ear--“These men are fools. This is not the way to do
+business; this does not hurt the robber of Nice--Garibaldi’s Nice: they
+should have left it to me.”
+
+“What would you do?”
+
+“I have invented a new machine,” whispered the Friend of humanity; “it
+would remove all at one blow--lion and lioness, whelp and jackals--and
+then the Revolution if you will! not this paltry tumult. The cause of
+the human race is being frittered away. I am disgusted with Lebeau.
+Thrones are not overturned by gamins.”
+
+Before Rameau could answer, Monnier rejoined him. The artisan’s face
+was overcast--his lips compressed, yet quivering with indignation.
+“Brother,” he said to Rameau, “to-day the cause is betrayed”--(the word
+trahi was just then coming into vogue at Paris)--“the blouses I counted
+on are recreant. I have just learned that all is quiet in the other
+quartiers where the rising was to have been simultaneous with this. We
+are in a guet-apens--the soldiers will be down on us in a few minutes;
+hark! don’t you hear the distant tramp? Nothing for us but to die like
+men. Our blood will be avenged later. Here,” and he thrust a revolver
+into Rameau’s hand. Then with a lusty voice that rang through the crowd,
+he shouted “Vive le peuple!” The rioters caught and re-echoed the
+cry, mingled with other cries,’ “Vive la Republique!” “Vive le drapeau
+rouge!”
+
+The shouts were yet at their full when a strong hand grasped Monnier’s
+arm, and a clear, deep, but low voice thrilled through his ear: “Obey!
+I warned you. No fight to-day. Time not ripe. All that is needed is
+done--do not undo it. Hist! the sergens de ville are force enough to
+disperse the swarm of those gnats. Behind the sergens come soldiers who
+will not fraternise. Lose not one life to-day. The morrow when we shall
+need every man--nay, every gamin--will dawn soon. Answer not. Obey!” The
+same strong hand quitting its hold on Monnier, then seized Rameau by the
+wrist, and the same deep voice said, “Come with me.” Rameau, turning in
+amaze, not unmixed with anger, saw beside him a tall man with sombrero
+hat pressed close over his head, and in the blouse of a labourer, but
+through such disguise he recognized the pale grey whiskers and green
+spectacles of Lebeau. He yielded passively to the grasp that led him
+away down the deserted street at the angle.
+
+At the further end of that street, however, was heard the steady thud of
+hoofs.
+
+“The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear,” said Lebeau, calmly;
+“we have not a moment to lose--this way,” and he plunged into a dismal
+court, then into a labyrinth of lanes, followed mechanically by Rameau.
+They issued at last on the Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were
+quietly sauntering, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere. “Now, take
+that fiacre and go home; write down your impressions of what you have
+seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mauleon.” Lebeau here quitted him.
+
+Meanwhile all happened as Lebeau had predicted. The sergens de ville
+showed themselves in front of the barricades, a small troop of mounted
+soldiers appeared in the rear. The mob greeted the first with yells
+and a shower of stones; at the sight of the last they fled in all
+directions; and the sergens de ville, calmly scaling the barricades,
+carried off in triumph, as prisoners of war, 4 gamins, 3 women, and 1
+Irishman loudly protesting innocence, and shrieking “Murther!” So ended
+the first inglorious rise against the plebiscite and the Empire, on the
+14th of May, 1870.
+
+From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil. Saturday. May 21.
+
+“I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of impressions wholly
+new to me. I have this day witnessed one of those scenes which take us
+out of our private life, not into the world of fiction, but of history,
+in which we live as in the life of a nation. You know how intimate I
+have become with Valerie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her
+combination of petulant wilfulness and guileless naivete, that she might
+sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Her father, who is in
+great favour at Court, had tickets for the Salle des Etats of the
+Louvre today--when, as the journals will tell you, the results of the
+plebiscite were formally announced to the Emperor--and I accompanied him
+and Valerie. I felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living for
+months in an atmosphere of false rumours, for those I chiefly meet in
+the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and flaneurs who
+haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the Emperor. They agree,
+at least, in asserting the decline of his popularity--the failure of his
+intellectual powers; in predicting his downfall--deriding the notion
+of a successor in his son. Well, I know not how to reconcile these
+statements with the spectacle I have beheld to-day.
+
+“In the chorus of acclamation amidst which the Emperor entered the hall,
+it seemed as if one heard the voice of the France he had just appealed
+to. If the Fates are really weaving woe and shame in his woof, it is in
+hues which, to mortal eyes, seem brilliant with glory and joy.
+
+“You will read the address of the President of the Corps Legislatif; I
+wonder how it will strike you! I own fairly that me it wholly carried
+away. At each sentiment I murmured to myself, ‘Is not this true? and, if
+true, are France and human nature ungrateful?’
+
+“‘It is now,’ said the President, ‘eighteen years since France, wearied
+with confusion, and anxious for security, confiding in your genuis and
+the Napoleonic dynasty, placed in your hands, together with the Imperial
+Crown, the authority which the public necessity demanded.’ Then the
+address proceeded to enumerate the blessings that ensued--social
+order speedily restored--the welfare of all classes of society
+promoted--advances in commerce and manufactures to an extent hitherto
+unknown. Is not this true? and, if so, are you, noble daughter of
+France, ungrateful?
+
+“Then came words which touched me deeply--me, who, knowing nothing of
+politics, still feel the link that unites Art to Freedom: ‘But from
+the first your Majesty has looked forward to the time when this
+concentration of power would no longer correspond to the aspirations of
+a tranquil and reassured country, and, foreseeing the progress of
+modern society, you proclaimed that ‘Liberty must be the crowning of the
+edifice.’’ Passing then over the previous gradual advances in popular
+government, the President came to the ‘present self-abnegation,
+unprecedented in history,’ and to the vindication of that plebiscite
+which I have heard so assailed--viz., Fidelity to the great principle
+upon which the throne was founded, required that so important a
+modification of a power bestowed by the people should not be made
+without the participation of the people themselves. Then, enumerating
+the millions who had welcomed the new form of government--the President
+paused a second or two, as if with suppressed emotion--and every one
+present held his breath, till, in a deeper voice, through which there
+ran a quiver that thrilled through the hall, he concluded with--‘France
+is with you; France places the cause of liberty under the protection of
+your dynasty and the great bodies of the State.’ Is France with him? I
+know not; but if the malcontents of France had been in the hall at
+that moment, I believe they would have felt the power of that wonderful
+sympathy which compels all the hearts in great audiences to beat in
+accord, and would have answered, ‘It is true.’
+
+“All eyes now fixed on the Emperor, and I noticed few eyes which were
+not moist with tears. You know that calm unrevealing face of his--a face
+which sometimes disappoints expectation. But there is that in it which
+I have seen in no other, but which I can imagine to have been common
+to the Romans of old, the dignity that arises from self-control--an
+expression which seems removed from the elation of joy, the depression
+of sorrow--not unbecoming to one who has known great vicissitudes of
+Fortune, and is prepared alike for her frowns or her smiles.
+
+“I had looked at that face while M. Schneider was reading the
+address--it moved not a muscle, it might have been a face of marble.
+Even when at moments the words were drowned in applause and the Empress,
+striving at equal composure, still allowed us to see a movement of
+her eye lids, a tremble on her lips. The boy at his right, heir to his
+dynasty, had his looks fixed on the President, as if eagerly swallowing
+each word in the address, save once or twice, when he looked around the
+hall curiously, and with a smile as a mere child might look. He struck
+me as a mere child. Next to the Prince was one of those countenances
+which once seen are never to be forgotten--the true Napoleonic type,
+brooding, thoughtful, ominous, beautiful. But not with the serene energy
+that characterises the head of the first Napoleon when Emperor, and
+wholly without the restless eagerness for action which is stamped in the
+lean outline of Napoleon when First Consul: no--in Prince Napoleon there
+is a beauty to which, as woman, I could never give my heart--were I a
+man, the intellect that would not command my trust. But, nevertheless,
+in beauty, it is signal, and in that beauty the expression of intellect
+is predominant.
+
+“Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am digressing! The Emperor spoke--and believe
+me, Eulalie, whatever the journals or your compatriots may insinuate,
+there is in that man no sign of declining intellect or failing health. I
+care not what may be his years, but that man is in mind and in health as
+young as Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon.
+
+“The old cling to the past--they do not go forward to the future. There
+was no going back in that speech of the Emperor. There was something
+grand and something young in the modesty with which he put aside all
+references to that which his Empire had done in the past, and said with
+a simple earnestness of manner which I cannot adequately describe--
+
+“‘We must more than ever look fearlessly forward to the future. Who
+can be opposed to the progressive march of a regime founded by a great
+people in the midst of political disturbance, and which now is fortified
+by liberty?’
+
+“As he closed, the walls of that vast hall seemed to rock with an
+applause that must have been heard on the other side of the Seine.
+
+“‘Vive l’Empereur!’” “‘Vive l’Imperatrice!’” “‘Vive le Prince
+Imperial!’”--and the last cry was yet more prolonged than the others, as
+if to affirm the dynasty.
+
+“Certainly I can imagine no Court in the old days of chivalry more
+splendid than the audience in that grand hall of the Louvre. To the
+right of the throne all the ambassadors of the civilised world in the
+blaze of their rich costumes and manifold orders. In the gallery at the
+left, yet more behind, the dresses and jewels of the dames d’honneur
+and of the great officers of State. And when the Empress rose to depart,
+certainly my fancy cannot picture a more queenlike image, or one that
+seemed more in unison with the representation of royal pomp and power.
+The very dress, of colour which would have been fatal to the beauty of
+most women equally fair--a deep golden colour--(Valerie profanely called
+it buff)--seemed so to suit the splendour of the ceremony and the day;
+it seemed as if that stately form stood in the midst of a sunlight
+reflected from itself. Day seemed darkened when that sunlight passed
+away.
+
+“I fear you will think I have suddenly grown servile to the gauds and
+shows of mere royalty. I ask myself if that be so--I think not. Surely
+it is a higher sense of greatness which has been impressed on me by the
+pageant of to-day I feel as if there were brought vividly before me
+the majesty of France, through the representation of the ruler she has
+crowned.
+
+“I feel also as if there, in that hall, I found a refuge from all the
+warring contests in which no two seem to me in agreement as to the sort
+of government to be established in place of the present. The ‘Liberty’
+clamoured for by one would cut the throat of the ‘Liberty’ worshipped by
+another.
+
+“I see a thousand phantom forms of LIBERTY--but only one living symbol
+of ORDER--that which spoke from a throne to-day.”
+
+Isaura left her letter uncompleted. On the following Monday she was
+present at a crowded soiree given by M. Louvier. Among the guests were
+some of the most eminent leaders of the Opposition, including that
+vivacious master of sharp sayings, M. P-------, whom Savarin entitled
+“the French Sheridan;” if laws could be framed in epigrams he would be
+also the French Solon.
+
+There, too, was Victor de Mauleon, regarded by the Republican party with
+equal admiration and distrust. For the distrust, he himself pleasantly
+accounted in talk with Savarin.
+
+“How can I expect to be trusted? I represent ‘Common Sense;’ every
+Parisian likes Common Sense in print, and cries ‘Je suis trahi’ when
+Common Sense is to be put into action.”
+
+A group of admiring listeners had collected round one (perhaps the most
+brilliant) of those oratorical lawyers by whom, in France, the respect
+for all laws has been so often talked away: he was speaking of the
+Saturday’s ceremonial with eloquent indignation. It was a mockery
+to France to talk of her placing Liberty under the protection of the
+Empire.
+
+There was a flagrant token of the military force under which civil
+freedom was held in the very dress of the Emperor and his insignificant
+son: the first in the uniform of a General of Division; the second,
+forsooth, in that of a sous-lieutenant. The other liberal chiefs chimed
+in: “The army,” said one, “was an absurd expense; it must be put down:”
+ “The world was grown too civilised for war,” said another: “The Empress
+was priest-ridden,” said a third: “Churches might be tolerated; Voltaire
+built a church, but a church simply to the God of Nature, not of
+priestcraft,”--and so on.
+
+Isaura, whom any sneer at religion pained and revolted, here turned
+away from the orators to whom she had before been listening with earnest
+attention, and her eyes fell on the countenance of De Mauleon, who was
+seated opposite.
+
+The countenance startled her, its expression was so angrily scornful;
+that expression, however, vanished at once as De Mauleon’s eyes met her
+own, and drawing his chair near to her, he said, smiling: “Your look
+tells me that I almost frightened you by the ill-bred frankness with
+which my face must have betrayed my anger, at hearing such imbecile
+twaddle from men who aspire to govern our turbulent France. You remember
+that after Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake a quack advertised
+‘pills against earthquakes.’ These messieurs are not so cunning as the
+quack; he did not name the ingredients of his pills.”
+
+“But, M. de Mauleon,” said Isaura, “if you, being opposed to the Empire,
+think so ill of the wisdom of those who would destroy it, are you
+prepared with remedies for earthquakes more efficacious than their
+pills?”
+
+“I reply as a famous English statesman, when in opposition, replied to a
+somewhat similar question,--‘I don’t prescribe till I’m called in.’”
+
+“To judge by the seven millions and a half whose votes were announced
+on Saturday, and by the enthusiasm with which the Emperor was greeted,
+there is too little fear of an earthquake for a good trade of the
+pills of these messieurs, or for fair play to the remedies you will not
+disclose till called in.”
+
+“Ah, Mademoiselle! playful wit from lips not formed for politics makes
+me forget all about emperors and earthquakes. Pardon that commonplace
+compliment--remember I am a Frenchman, and cannot help being frivolous.”
+
+“You rebuke my presumption too gently. True, I ought not to intrude
+political subjects on one like you--I understand so little about
+them--but this is my excuse, I do so desire to know more.”
+
+M. de Mauleon paused, and looked at her earnestly with a kindly, half
+compassionate look, wholly free from the impertinence of gallantry.
+“Young poetess,” he said, softly, “you care for politics. Happy, indeed,
+is he--and whether he succeed or fail in his ambition abroad, proud
+should he be of an ambition crowned at home--he who has made you desire
+to know more of politics!”
+
+The girl felt the blood surge to her temples. How could she have been so
+self-confessed? She made no reply, nor did M. de Mauleon seem to expect
+one; with that rare delicacy of high breeding which appears in France
+to belong to a former generation, he changed his tone, and went on as if
+there had been no interruption to the question her words implied.
+
+“You think the Empire secure--that it is menaced by on earthquake? You
+deceive yourself. The Emperor began with a fatal mistake, but a mistake
+it needs many years to discover. He disdained the slow natural process
+of adjustment between demand and supply--employer and workmen. He
+desired--no ignoble ambition--to make Paris the wonder of the world,
+the eternal monument of his reign. In so doing, he sought to create
+artificial modes of content for revolutionary workmen. Never has any
+ruler had such tender heed of manual labour to the disparagement of
+intellectual culture. Paris is embellished; Paris is the wonder of the
+world; other great towns have followed its example; they, too, have
+their rows of palaces and temples. Well, the time comes when the
+magician can no longer give work to the spirits he raises; then they
+must fall on him and rend: out of the very houses he built for the
+better habitation of workmen will flock the malcontents who cry, ‘Down
+with the Empire!’ On the 21st of May you witnessed the pompous ceremony
+which announces to the Empire a vast majority of votes, that will be
+utterly useless to it except as food for gunpowder in the times that are
+at hand. Seven days before, on the 14th of May, there was a riot in the
+Faubourg d’Temple--easily put down--you scarcely hear of it. That riot
+was not the less necessary to those who would warn the Empire that it is
+mortal. True, the riot disperses--but it is unpunished; riot unpunished
+is a revolution begun. The earthquake is nearer than you think; and for
+that earthquake what are the pills you quacks advertise? They prate
+of an age too enlightened for war; they would mutilate the army--nay,
+disband it if they could--with Prussia next door to France. Prussia,
+desiring, not unreasonably, to take that place in the world which France
+now holds, will never challenge France; if she did, she would be too
+much in the wrong to find a second: Prussia knowing that she has to do
+with the vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever
+flourished a rapier in the face of a spadassin--Prussia will make France
+challenge her.
+
+“And how do ces messieurs deal with the French army? Do they dare to say
+to the ministers, ‘Reform it’? Do they dare say, ‘Prefer for men
+whose first duty it is to obey, discipline to equality--insist on the
+distinction between the officer and the private, and never confound it;
+Prussian officers are well-educated gentlemen, see that yours are’? Oh
+no; they are democrats too stanch not to fraternise with an armed mob;
+they content themselves with grudging an extra sou to the Commissariat,
+and winking at the millions fraudulently pocketed by some ‘Liberal
+contractor.’ Dieu des dieux! France to be beaten, not as at Waterloo
+by hosts combined, but in fair duel by a single foe! Oh, the shame! the
+shame! But as the French army is now organised, beaten she must be, if
+she meets the march of the German.”
+
+“You appal me with your sinister predictions,” said Isaura; “but,
+happily, there is no sign of war. M. Duplessis, who is in the confidence
+of the Emperor, told us only the other day that Napoleon, on learning
+the result of the plebiscite, said: ‘The foreign journalists who have
+been insisting that the Empire cannot coexist with free institutions,
+will no longer hint that it can be safely assailed from without.’ And
+more than ever I may say L’Empire c’est la paix!”
+
+Monsieur de Mauleon shrugged his shoulders. “The old story--Troy and the
+wooden horse.”
+
+“Tell me, M. de Mauleon, why do you, who so despise the Opposition, join
+with it in opposing the Empire?”
+
+“Mademoiselle, the Empire opposes me; while it lasts I cannot be even a
+Depute; when it is gone, Heaven knows that I may be, perhaps Dictator;
+one thing, you may rely upon, that I would, if not Dictator myself,
+support any man who was better fitted for that task.”
+
+“Better fitted to destroy the liberty which he pretended to fight for.”
+
+“Not exactly so,” replied M. de Mauleon, imperturbably--“better fitted
+to establish a good government in lieu of the bad one he had fought
+against, and the much worse governments that would seek to turn France
+into a madhouse, and make the maddest of the inmates the mad doctor!” He
+turned away, and here their conversation ended.
+
+But it so impressed Isaura, that the same night she concluded her letter
+to Madame de Grantmesnil, by giving a sketch of its substance, prefaced
+by an ingenuous confession that she felt less sanguine confidence in
+the importance of the applauses which had greeted the Emperor at the
+Saturday’s ceremonial, and ending thus: “I can but confusedly transcribe
+the words of this singular man, and can give you no notion of the manner
+and the voice which made them eloquent. Tell me, can there be any truth
+in his gloomy predictions? I try not to think so, but they seem to rest
+over that brilliant hall of the Louvre like an ominous thunder-cloud.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Marquis de Rochebriant was seated in his pleasant apartment,
+glancing carelessly at the envelopes of many notes and letters lying yet
+unopened on his breakfast-table. He had risen late at noon, for he had
+not gone to bed till dawn. The night had been spent at his club--over
+the card-table--by no means to the pecuniary advantage of the Marquis.
+The reader will have learned, through the conversation recorded in a
+former chapter between De Mauleon and Enguerrand de Vandemar, that the
+austere Seigneur Breton had become a fast viveur of Paris. He had long
+since spent the remnant of Louvier’s premium of L10,000., and he owed
+a year’s interest. For this last there was an excuse. M. Collot, the
+contractor to whom he had been advised to sell the yearly fall of his
+forest-trees, had removed the trees, but had never paid a sou beyond
+the preliminary deposit; so that the revenue, out of which the mortgagee
+should be paid his interest, was not forthcoming. Alain had instructed
+M. Hebert to press the contractor; the contractor had replied, that if
+not pressed he could soon settle all claims--if pressed, he must declare
+himself bankrupt. The Chevalier de Finisterre had laughed at the alarm
+which Alain conceived when he first found himself in the condition
+of debtor for a sum he could not pay--creditor for a sum he could not
+recover.
+
+“Bagatelle!” said the Chevalier. “Tschu! Collot, if you give him time,
+is as safe as the Bank of France, and Louvier knows it. Louvier will not
+trouble you--Louvier, the best fellow in the world! I’ll call on him and
+explain matters.”
+
+It is to be presumed that the Chevalier did so explain; for though both
+at the first, and quite recently at the second default of payment, Alain
+received letters from M. Louvier’s professional agent, as reminders of
+interest due, and as requests for its payment, the Chevalier assured him
+that these applications were formalities of convention--that Louvier, in
+fact, knew nothing about them; and when dining with the great financier
+himself, and cordially welcomed and called “Mon cher,” Alain had taken
+him aside and commenced explanation and excuse, Louvier had cut him
+short. “Peste! don’t mention such trifles. There is such a thing as
+business--that concerns my agent; such a thing as friendship--that
+concerns me. Allez!”
+
+Thus M. de Rochebriant, confiding in debtor and in creditor, had
+suffered twelve months to glide by without much heed of either, and more
+than live up to an income amply sufficient indeed for the wants of an
+ordinary bachelor, but needing more careful thrift than could well be
+expected from the head of one of the most illustrious houses in France,
+cast so young into the vortex of the most expensive capital in the
+world.
+
+The poor Marquis glided into the grooves that slant downward, much as
+the French Marquis of tradition was wont to glide; not that he appeared
+to live extravagantly, but he needed all he had for his pocket-money,
+and had lost that dread of being in debt which he had brought up from
+the purer atmosphere of Bretagne.
+
+But there were some debts which; of course, a Rochebriant must
+pay--debts of honour--and Alain had, on the previous night, incurred
+such a debt and must pay it that day. He had been strongly tempted, when
+the debt rose to the figure it had attained, to risk a change of luck;
+but whatever his imprudence, he was incapable of dishonesty. If the luck
+did not change, and he lost more, he would be without means to meet his
+obligations. As the debt now stood, he calculated that he could just
+discharge it by the sale of his coupe and horses. It is no wonder he
+left his letters unopened, however charming they might be; he was quite
+sure they would contain no cheque which would enable him to pay his debt
+and retain his equipage.
+
+The door opened, and the valet announced M. le Chevalier de
+Finisterre--a man with smooth countenance and air distinque, a pleasant
+voice and perpetual smile.
+
+“Well, mon cher,” cried the Chevalier, “I hope that you recovered the
+favour of Fortune before you quitted her green table last night. When I
+left she seemed very cross with you.”
+
+“And so continued to the end,” answered Alain, with well-simulated
+gaiety--much too bon gentilhomme to betray rage or anguish for pecuniary
+loss.
+
+“After all,” said de Finisterre, lighting his cigarette, “the uncertain
+goddess could not do you much harm; the stakes were small, and your
+adversary, the Prince, never goes double or quits.”
+
+“Nor I either. ‘Small,’ however, is a word of relative import; the
+stakes might be small to you, to me large. Entre nous, cher ami, I am
+at the end of my purse, and I have only this consolation-I am cured of
+play: not that I leave the complaint, the complaint leaves me; it can no
+more feed on me than a fever can feed on a skeleton.”
+
+“Are you serious?”
+
+“As serious as a mourner who has just buried his all.”
+
+“His all? Tut, with such an estate as Rochebriant!”
+
+For the first time in that talk Alain’s countenance became overcast.
+
+“And how long will Rochebriant be mine? You know that I hold it at the
+mercy of the mortgagee, whose interest has not been paid, and who could
+if, he so pleased, issue notice, take proceedings--that--”
+
+“Peste!” interrupted de Finisterre; “Louvier take proceedings! Louvier,
+the best fellow in the world! But don’t I see his handwriting on that
+envelope? No doubt an invitation to dinner.”
+
+Alain took up the letter thus singled forth from a miscellany of
+epistles, some in female handwritings, unsealed but ingeniously
+twisted into Gordian knots--some also in female handwritings, carefully
+sealed--others in ill-looking envelopes, addressed in bold, legible,
+clerk-like caligraphy. Taken altogether, these epistles had a character
+in common; they betokened the correspondence of a viveur, regarded from
+the female side as young, handsome, well-born--on the male side, as a
+viveur who had forgotten to pay his hosier and tailor.
+
+Louvier wrote a small, not very intelligible, but very masculine hand,
+as most men who think cautiously and act promptly do write. The letter
+ran thus:
+
+“Cher petit Marquis” (at that commencement Alain haughtily raised his
+head and bit his lips).
+
+   “CHER PETIT MARQUIS,--It is an age since I have seen you. No
+   doubt my humble soirees are too dull for a beau seigueur so
+   courted. I forgive you. Would I were a beau seigneur at your age!
+   Alas! I am only a commonplace man of business, growing old, too.
+   Aloft from the world in which I dwell, you can scarcely be aware
+   that I have embarked a great part of my capital in building
+   speculations. There is a Rue de Louvier that runs its drains right
+   through my purse. I am obliged to call in the moneys due to me. My
+   agent informs me that I am just 7000 louis short of the total I
+   need--all other debts being paid in--and that there is a trifle more
+   than 7000 louis owned to me as interest on my hypotheque on
+   Rochebriant: kindly pay into his hands before the end of this week
+   that sum. You have been too lenient to Collot, who must owe you
+   more than that. Send agent to him. Desole to trouble you, and am
+   au desespoir to think that my own pressing necessities compel me
+   to urge you to take so much trouble. Mais que faire? The Rue de
+   Louvier stops the way, and I must leave it to my agent to clear it.
+
+   “Accept all my excuses, with the assurance of my sentiments the most
+   cordial. PAUL LOUVIER.”
+
+Alain tossed the letter to De Finisterre. “Read that from the best
+fellow in the world.”
+
+The Chevalier laid down his cigarette and read. “Diable!” he said, when
+he returned the letter and resumed the cigarette--“Diable! Louvier must
+be much pressed for money, or he would not have written in this strain.
+What does it matter? Collot owes you more than 7000 louis. Let your
+lawyer get them, and go to sleep with both ears on your pillow.”
+
+“Ah! you think Collot can pay if he will?”
+
+“Ah! foi! did not M. Gandrin tell you that M. Collot was safe to buy
+your wood at more money than any one else would give?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Alain, comforted. “Gandrin left that impression on my
+mind. I will set him on the man. All will come right, I dare say; but if
+it does not come right, what would Louvier do?”
+
+“Louvier do!” answered Finisterre, reflectively. “Well do you ask my
+opinion and advice?”
+
+“Earnestly, I ask.”
+
+“Honestly, then, I answer. I am a little on the Bourse myself--most
+Parisians are. Louvier has made a gigantic speculation in this new
+street, and with so many other irons in the fire he must want all the
+money he can get at. I dare say that if you do not pay him what you owe,
+he must leave it to his agent to take steps for announcing the sale
+of Rochebriant. But he detests scandal; he hates the notion of being
+severe; rather than that, in spite of his difficulties, he will buy
+Rochebriant of you at a better price than it can command at public sale.
+Sell it to him. Appeal to him to act generously, and you will flatter
+him. You will get more than the old place is worth. Invest the
+surplus--live as you have done, or better--and marry an heiress.
+Morbleu! a Marquis de Rochebriant, if he were sixty years old, would
+rank high in the matrimonial market. The more the democrats have sought
+to impoverish titles and laugh down historical names, the more do rich
+democrat fathers-in-law seek to decorate their daughters with titles
+and give their grandchildren the heritage of historical names. You look
+shocked, pauvre anti. Let us hope, then, that Collot will pay. Set your
+dog--I mean your lawyer--at him; seize him by the throat!”
+
+Before Alain had recovered from the stately silence with which he had
+heard this very practical counsel, the valet again appeared, and ushered
+in M. Frederic Lemercier.
+
+There was no cordial acquaintance between the visitors. Lemercier was
+chafed at finding himself supplanted in Alain’s intimate companionship
+by so new a friend, and De Finisterre affected to regard Lemercier as a
+would-be exquisite of low birth and bad taste.
+
+Alain, too, was a little discomposed at the sight of Lemercier,
+remembering the wise cautious which that old college friend had wasted
+on him at the commencement of his Parisian career, and smitten with vain
+remorse that the cautions had been so arrogantly slighted.
+
+It was with some timidity that he extended his hand to Frederic, and he
+was surprised as well as moved by the more than usual warmth with which
+it was grasped by the friend he had long neglected. Such affectionate
+greeting was scarcely in keeping with the pride which characterised
+Frederic Lemercier.
+
+“Ma foi!” said the Chevalier, glancing towards the clock, “how time
+flies! I had no idea it was so late. I must leave you now, my dear
+Rochebriant. Perhaps we shall meet at the club later--I dine there
+to-day. Au plaisir, M. Lemercier.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+When the door had closed on the Chevalier, Frederic’s countenance became
+very grave. Drawing his chair near to Alain, he said: “We have not seen
+much of each other lately,--nay, no excuses; I am well aware that it
+could scarcely be otherwise. Paris has grown so large and so subdivided
+into sets, that the best friends belonging to different sets become
+as divided as if the Atlantic flowed between them. I come to-day in
+consequence of something I have just heard from Duplessis. Tell me, have
+you got the money for the wood you sold to M. Collot a year ago?”
+
+“No,” said Alain, falteringly.
+
+“Good heavens! none of it?”
+
+“Only the deposit of ten per cent., which of course I spent, for it
+formed the greater part of my income. What of Collot? Is he really
+unsafe?”
+
+“He is ruined, and has fled the country. His flight was the talk of the
+Bourse this morning. Duplessis told me of it.”
+
+Alain’s face paled. “How is Louvier to be paid? Read that letter!”
+
+Lemercier rapidly scanned his eye over the contents of Louvier’s letter.
+
+“It is true, then, that you owe this man a year’s interest--more than
+7,000 louis?”
+
+“Somewhat more--yes. But that is not the first care that troubles
+me--Rochebriant may be lost, but with it not my honour. I owe the
+Russian Prince 300 louis, lost to him last night at ecarte. I must
+find a purchaser for my coupe and horses; they cost me 600 louis last
+year,--do you know any one who will give me three?”
+
+“Pooh! I will give you six; your alezan alone is worth half the money!”
+
+“My dear Frederic, I will not sell them to you on any account. But you
+have so many friends--”
+
+“Who would give their soul to say, ‘I bought these horses of
+Rochebriant.’ Of course I do. Ha! young Rameau, you are acquainted with
+him?”
+
+“Rameau! I never heard of him!”
+
+“Vanity of vanities, then what is fame? Rameau is the editor of Le Sens
+Commun. You read that journal?”
+
+“Yes, it has clever articles, and I remember how I was absorbed in the
+eloquent romance which appeared in it.”
+
+“Ah! by the Signora Cicogna, with whom I think you were somewhat smitten
+last year.”
+
+“Last year--was I? How a year can alter a man! But my debt to the
+Prince. What has Le Sens Commun to do with my horses?”
+
+“I met Rameau at Savarin’s the other evening. He was making himself out
+a hero and a martyr! his coupe had been taken from him to assist in a
+barricade in that senseless emeute ten days ago; the coupe got smashed,
+the horses disappeared. He will buy one of your horses and coupe.
+
+“Leave it to me! I know where to dispose of the other two horses. At
+what hour do you want the money?”
+
+“Before I go to dinner at the club.”
+
+“You shall have it within two hours; but you must not dine at the club
+to-day. I have a note from Duplessis to invite you to dine with him
+to-day!”
+
+“Duplessis! I know so little of him!”
+
+“You should know him better. He is the only man who can give you sound
+advice as to this difficulty with Louvier; and he will give it the more
+carefully and zealously because he has that enmity to Louvier which one
+rival financier has to another. I dine with him too. We shall find an
+occasion to consult him quietly; he speaks of you most kindly. What a
+lovely girl his daughter is!”
+
+“I dare say. Ah! I wish I had been less absurdly fastidious. I wish I
+had entered the army as a private soldier six months ago; I should have
+been a corporal by this time! Still it is not too late. When Rochebriant
+is gone, I can yet say with the Mouszquetaire in the melodrame: ‘I am
+rich--I have my honour and my sword!’”
+
+“Nonsense! Rochebriant shall be saved; meanwhile I hasten to Rameau. Au
+revoir, at the Hotel Duplessis--seven o’clock.”
+
+Lemercier went, and in less than two hours sent the Marquis bank-notes
+for 600 louis, requesting an order for the delivery of the horses and
+carriage.
+
+That order written and signed, Alain hastened to acquit himself of his
+debt of honour, and contemplating his probable ruin with a lighter heart
+presented himself at the Hotel Duplessis.
+
+Duplessis made no pretensions to vie with the magnificent existence of
+Louvier. His house, though agreeably situated and flatteringly styled
+the Hotel Duplessis, was of moderate size, very unostentatiously
+furnished; nor was it accustomed to receive the brilliant motley crowds
+which assembled in the salons of the elder financier.
+
+Before that year, indeed, Duplessis had confined such entertainments as
+he gave to quiet men of business, or a few of the more devoted and loyal
+partisans of the Imperial dynasty; but since Valerie came to live with
+him he had extended his hospitalities to wider and livelier circles,
+including some celebrities in the world of art and letters as well as of
+fashion. Of the party assembled that evening at dinner were Isaura, with
+the Signora Venosta, one of the Imperial Ministers, the Colonel
+whom Alain had already met at Lemercier’s supper, Deputes (ardent
+Imperialists), and the Duchesse de Tarascon; these, with Alain and
+Frederic, made up the party. The conversation was not particularly gay.
+Duplessis himself, though an exceedingly well-read and able man, had not
+the genial accomplishments of a brilliant host. Constitutionally grave
+and habitually taciturn--though there were moments in which he was
+roused out of his wonted self into eloquence or wit--he seemed to-day
+absorbed in some engrossing train of thought. The Minister, the Deputes
+and the Duchesse de Tarascon talked politics, and ridiculed the trumpery
+emeute of the 14th; exulted in the success of the plebiscite; and
+admitting, with indignation, the growing strength of Prussia, and--with
+scarcely less indignation, but more contempt, censuring the selfish
+egotism of England in disregarding the due equilibrium of the European
+balance of power,--hinted at the necessity of annexing Belgium as a
+set-off against the results of Sadowa.
+
+Alain found himself seated next to Isaura--to the woman who had so
+captivated his eye and fancy on his first arrival in Paris.
+
+Remembering his last conversation with Graham nearly a year ago, he felt
+some curiosity to ascertain whether the rich Englishman had proposed to
+her, and if so, been refused or accepted.
+
+The first words that passed between them were trite enough, but after a
+little pause in the talk, Alain said:
+
+“I think Mademoiselle and myself have an acquaintance in common-Monsieur
+Vane, a distinguished Englishman. Do you know if he be in Paris at
+present? I have not seen him for many months.”
+
+“I believe he is in London; at least, Colonel Morley met the other day a
+friend of his who said so.”
+
+Though Isaura strove to speak in a tone of indifference, Alain’s ear
+detected a ring of pain in her voice; and watching her countenance, he
+was impressed with a saddened change in its expression. He was touched,
+and his curiosity was mingled with a gentler interest as he said “When I
+last saw M. Vane I should have judged him to be too much under the spell
+of an enchantress to remain long without the pale of the circle she
+draws around her.”
+
+Isaura turned her face quickly towards the speaker, and her lips moved,
+but she said nothing audibly.
+
+“Can there have been quarrel or misunderstanding?” thought Alain; and
+after that question his heart asked itself, “Supposing Isaura were free,
+her affections disengaged, could he wish to woo and to win her?” and his
+heart answered--“Eighteen months ago thou wert nearer to her than now.
+Thou wert removed from her for ever when thou didst accept the world
+as a barrier between you; then, poor as thou wert, thou wouldst have
+preferred her to riches. Thou went then sensible only of the ingenuous
+impulses of youth, but the moment thou saidst, ‘I am Rochebriant, and
+having once owned the claims of birth and station, I cannot renounce
+them for love, Isaura became but a dream. Now that ruin stares thee in
+the face--now that thou must grapple with the sternest difficulties of
+adverse fate--thou hast lost the poetry of sentiment which could alone
+give to that dream the colours and the form of human life.” He could not
+again think of that fair creature as a prize that he might even dare to
+covet. And as he met her inquiring eyes, and saw her quivering lip,
+he felt instinctively that Graham was dear to her, and that the tender
+interest with which she inspired himself was untroubled by one pang of
+jealousy. He resumed:
+
+“Yes, the last time I saw the Englishman he spoke with such respectful
+homage of one lady, whose hand he would deem it the highest reward of
+ambition to secure, that I cannot but feel deep compassion for him
+if that ambition has been foiled; and thus only do I account for his
+absence from Paris.”
+
+“You are an intimate friend of Mr. Vane’s?”
+
+“No, indeed, I have not that honour; our acquaintance is but slight,
+but it impressed me with the idea of a man of vigorous intellect, frank
+temper, and perfect honour.”
+
+Isaura’s face brightened with the joy we feel when we hear the praise of
+those we love.
+
+At this moment, Duplessis, who had been observing the Italian and the
+young Marquis, for the first time during dinner, broke silence.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” he said, addressing Isaura across the table, “I hope I
+have not been correctly informed that your literary triumph has induced
+you to forego the career in which all the best judges concur that your
+successes would be not less brilliant; surely one art does not exclude
+another.”
+
+Elated by Alain’s report of Graham’s words, by the conviction that these
+words applied to herself, and by the thought that her renunciation of
+the stage removed a barrier between them, Isaura answered, with a sort
+of enthusiasm:
+
+“I know not, M. Duplessis, if one art excludes another; if there be
+desire to excel in each. But I have long lost all desire to excel in
+the art you refer to, and resigned all idea of the career in which it
+opens.”
+
+“So M. Vane told me,” said Alain, in a whisper.
+
+“When?”
+
+“Last year--on the day that he spoke in terms of admiration so merited
+of the lady whom M. Duplessis has just had the honour to address.”
+
+All this while, Valerie, who was seated at the further end of the table
+beside the Minister, who had taken her in to dinner, had been watching,
+with eyes, the anxious tearful sorrow of which none but her father had
+noticed, the low-voiced confidence between Alain and the friend, whom
+till that day she had so enthusiastically loved. Hitherto she had been
+answering in monosyllables all attempts of the great man to draw her
+into conversation; but now, observing how Isaura blushed and looked
+down, that strange faculty in women, which we men call dissimulation,
+and which in them is truthfulness to their own nature, enabled her to
+carry off the sharpest anguish she had ever experienced, by a sudden
+burst of levity of spirit. She caught up some commonplace the Minister
+had adapted to what he considered the poverty of her understanding, with
+a quickness of satire which startled that grave man, and he gazed at her
+astonished. Up to that moment he had secretly admired her as a girl well
+brought up--as girls fresh from a French convent are supposed to be;
+now, hearing her brilliant rejoinder to his stupid observation, he said
+inly: “Dame! the low birth of a financier’s daughter shows itself.”
+
+But, being a clever man himself, her retort put him on his mettle, and
+he became, to his own amazement, brilliant himself. With that matchless
+quickness which belongs to Parisians, the guests around him seized the
+new esprit de conversation which had been evoked between the statesman
+and the childlike girl beside him; and as they caught up the ball,
+lightly flung among them, they thought within themselves how much
+more sparkling the financier’s pretty, lively daughter was than that
+dark-eyed young muse, of whom all the journalists of Paris were writing
+in a chorus of welcome and applause, and who seemed not to have a word
+to say worth listening to, except to the handsome young Marquis, whom,
+no doubt, she wished to fascinate.
+
+Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in intellect and in wit; and neither
+Valerie nor Isaura cared, to the value of a bean-straw, about that
+distinction. Each was thinking only of the prize which the humblest
+peasant women have in common with the most brilliantly accomplished of
+their sex--the heart of a man beloved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+On the Continent generally, as we all know, men do not sit drinking wine
+together after the ladies retire. So when the signal was given all the
+guests adjourned to the salon; and Alain quitted Isaura to gain the ear
+of the Duchesse de Tarascon.
+
+“It is long--at, least long for Paris life,” said the Marquis--“since
+my first visit to you, in company with Enguerrand de Vandemar. Much that
+you then said rested on my mind, disturbing the prejudices I took from
+Bretagne.”
+
+“I am proud to hear it, my kinsman.”
+
+“You know that I would have taken military service under the Emperor,
+but for the regulation which would have compelled me to enter the ranks
+as a private soldier.”
+
+“I sympathise with that scruple; but you are aware that the Emperor
+himself could not have ventured to make any exception even in your
+favour.”
+
+“Certainly not. I repent me of my pride; perhaps I may enlist still in
+some regiment sent to Algiers.”
+
+“No; there are other ways in which a Rochebriant can serve a throne.
+There will be an office at Court vacant soon, which would not misbecome
+your birth.”
+
+“Pardon me; a soldier serves his country--a courtier owns a master; and
+I cannot take the livery of the Emperor, though I could wear the uniform
+of France.”
+
+“Your distinction is childish, my kinsman,” said the Duchesse,
+impetuously. “You talk as if the Emperor had an interest apart from the
+nation. I tell you that he has not a corner of his heart--not even one
+reserved for his son and his dynasty--in which the thought of France
+does not predominate.”
+
+“I do not presume, Madame la Duchesse, to question the truth of what
+you say; but I have no reason to suppose that the same thought does not
+predominate in the heart of the Bourbon. The Bourbon would be the first
+to say to me: ‘If France needs your sword against her foes, let it
+not rest in the scabbard.’ But would the Bourbon say, ‘The place of a
+Rochebriant is among the valetaille of the Corsican’s successor’?”
+
+“Alas for poor France!” said the Duchesse; “and alas for men like you,
+my proud cousin, if the Corsican’s successors or successor be--”
+
+“Henry V.” interrupted Alain, with a brightening eye. “Dreamer! No;
+some descendant of the mob-kings who gave Bourbons and nobles to the
+guillotine.”
+
+While the Duchesse and Alain were thus conversing, Isaura had seated
+herself by Valerie, and, unconscious of the offence she had given,
+addressed her in those pretty caressing terms with which young-lady
+friends are wont to compliment each other; but Valerie answered curtly
+or sarcastically, and turned aside to converse with the Minister. A
+few minutes more, and the party began to break up. Lemercier, however,
+detained Alain, whispering, “Duplessis will see us on your business so
+soon as the other guests have gone.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+“Monsieur le Marquis,” said Duplessis, when the salon was cleared of all
+but himself and the two friends, “Lemercier has confided to me the
+state of your affairs in connection with M. Louvier, and flatters me by
+thinking my advice may be of some service; if so, command me.”
+
+“I shall most gratefully accept your advice,” answered Alain, “but I
+fear my condition defies even your ability and skill.”
+
+“Permit me to hope not, and to ask a few necessary questions. M. Louvier
+has constituted himself your sole mortgagee; to what amount, at what
+interest, and from what annual proceeds is the interest paid?”
+
+Herewith Alain gave details already furnished to the reader. Duplessis
+listened, and noted down the replies.
+
+“I see it all,” he said, when Alain had finished. “M. Louvier had
+predetermined to possess himself of your estate: he makes himself
+mortgagee at a rate of interest so low, that I tell you fairly, at the
+present value of money, I doubt if you could find any capitalist who
+would accept the transfer of the mortgage at the same rate. This is not
+like Louvier, unless he had an object to gain, and that object is your
+land. The revenue from your estate is derived chiefly from wood, out
+of which the interest due to Louvier is to be paid. M. Gandrin, in a
+skilfully-guarded letter, encourages you to sell the wood from your
+forests to a man who offers you several thousand francs more than it
+could command from customary buyers. I say nothing against M. Gandrin,
+but every man who knows Paris as I do, knows that M. Louvier can
+put, and has put, a great deal of money into M. Gandrin’s pocket. The
+purchaser of your wood does not pay more than his deposit, and has
+just left the country insolvent. Your purchaser, M. Collot, was an
+adventurous speculator; he would have bought anything at any price,
+provided he had time to pay; if his speculations had been lucky he would
+have paid. M. Louvier knew, as I knew, that M. Collot was a gambler,
+and the chances were that he would not pay. M. Louvier allows a year’s
+interest on his hypotheque to become due-notice thereof duly given
+to you by his agent--now you come under the operation of the law. Of
+course, you know what the law is?”
+
+“Not exactly,” answered Alain, feeling frostbitten by the congealing
+words of his counsellor; “but I take it for granted that if I cannot pay
+the interest of a sum borrowed on my property, that property itself is
+forfeited.”
+
+“No, not quite that--the law is mild. If the interest which should be
+paid half-yearly remains unpaid at the end of a year, the mortgagee has
+a right to be impatient, has he not?”
+
+“Certainly he has.”
+
+“Well, then, on fait un commandement tendant de saisie immobiliere, viz:
+The mortgagee gives a notice that the property shall be put up for sale.
+Then it is put up for sale, and in most cases the mortgagee buys it in.
+Here, certainly, no competitors in the mere business way would vie with
+Louvier; the mortgage at three and a half per cent. covers more than the
+estate is apparently worth. Ah! but stop, M. le Marquis; the notice is
+not yet served: the whole process would take six months from the day it
+is served to the taking possession after the sale; in the meanwhile, if
+you pay the interest due, the action drops. Courage, M. le Marquis! Hope
+yet, if you condescend to call me friend.”
+
+“And me,” cried Lemercier; “I will sell out of my railway shares
+to-morrow-see to it, Duplessis--enough to pay off the damnable interest.
+See to it, mon ami.”
+
+“Agree to that, M. le Marquis, and you are safe for another year,” said
+Duplessis, folding up the paper on which he had made his notes, but
+fixing on Alain quiet eyes half concealed under drooping lids.
+
+“Agree to that!” cried Rochebriant, rising--“agree to allow even my
+worst enemy to pay for me moneys I could never hope to repay--agree
+to allow the oldest and most confiding friends to do so--M. Duplessis,
+never! If I carried the porter’s knot of an Auverguat, I should still
+remain gentilhomme and Breton.”
+
+Duplessis, habitually the driest of men, rose with a moistened eye and
+flushing cheek--“Monsieur le Marquis, vouchsafe me the honour to shake
+hands with you. I, too, am by descent gentilhomme, by profession a
+speculator on the Bourse. In both capacities I approve the sentiment you
+have uttered. Certainly, if our friend Frederic lent you 7000 Louis or
+so this year, it would be impossible for you even to foresee the year
+in which you could repay it; but,”--here Duplessis paused a minute, and
+then lowering the tone of his voice, which had been somewhat vehement
+and enthusiastic, into that of a colloquial good-fellowship, equally
+rare to the measured reserve of the financier, he asked, with a lively
+twinkle of his grey eye, “Did you never hear, Marquis, of a little
+encounter between me and M. Louvier?”
+
+“Encounter at arms--does Louvier fight?” asked Alain, innocently.
+
+“In his own way he is always fighting; but I speak metaphorically. You
+see this small house of mine--so pinched in by the houses next to
+it that I can neither get space for a ball-room for Valerie, nor a
+dining-room for more than a friendly party like that which has honoured
+me to-day. Eh bien! I bought this house a few years ago, meaning to buy
+the one next to it and throw the two into one. I went to the proprietor
+of the next house, who, as I knew, wished to sell. ‘Aha,’ he thought,
+‘this is the rich Monsieur Duplessis;’ and he asked me 2000 louis more
+than the house was worth. We men of business cannot bear to be too much
+cheated; a little cheating we submit to--much cheating raises our gall.
+Bref--this was on Monday. I offered the man 1000 louis above the fair
+price, and gave him till Thursday to decide. Somehow or other Louvier
+hears of this. ‘Hillo!’ says Louvier, ‘here is a financier who desires a
+hotel to vie with mine!’ He goes on Wednesday to my next-door neighbour.
+‘Friend, you want to sell your house. I want to buy--the price?’ The
+proprietor, who does not know him by sight, says: ‘It is as good as
+sold. M. Duplessis and I shall agree.’ ‘Bah! What sum did you ask M.
+Duplessis?’ He names the sum; 2000 louis more than he can get elsewhere.
+‘But M. Duplessis will give me the sum.’ ‘You ask too little. I will
+give 3000. A fig for M. Duplessis. I am Monsieur Louvier.’ So when I
+call on Thursday the house is sold. I reconcile myself easily enough to
+the loss of space for a larger dining-room; but though Valerie was then
+a child at a convent, I was sadly disconcerted by the thought that I
+could have no salle de bal ready for her when she came to reside with
+me. Well, I say to myself, patience; I owe M. Louvier a good turn; my
+time to pay him off will come. It does come, and very soon. M. Louvier
+buys an estate near Paris--builds a superb villa. Close to his property
+is a rising forest ground for sale. He goes to the proprietor: says the
+proprietor to himself, ‘The great Louvier wants this,’ and adds 5000
+louis to its market price. Louvier, like myself, can’t bear to be
+cheated egregiously. Louvier offers 2000 louis more than the man
+could fairly get, and leaves him till Saturday to consider. I hear of
+this--speculators hear of everything. On Friday night I go to the man
+and I give him 6000 louis, where he had asked 5000. Fancy Louvier’s face
+the next day! But there my revenge only begins,” continued Duplessis,
+chuckling inwardly. “My forest looks down on the villa he is building. I
+only wait till his villa is built, in order to send to my architect
+and say, Build me a villa at least twice as grand as M. Louvier’s, then
+clear away the forest trees, so that every morning he may see my palace
+dwarfing into insignificance his own.”
+
+“Bravo!” cried Lemercier, clapping his hands. Lemercier had the spirit
+of party, and felt for Duplessis against Louvier much as in England Whig
+feels against Tory, or vice versa.
+
+“Perhaps now,” resumed Duplessis, more soberly,--“perhaps now, M.
+le Marquis, you may understand why I humiliate you by no sense of
+obligation if I say that M. Louvier shall not be the Seigneur de
+Rochebriant if I can help it. Give me a line of introduction to your
+Breton lawyer and to Mademoiselle your aunt--let me have your letters
+early to-morrow. I will take the afternoon train. I know not how many
+days I may be absent, but I shall not return till I have carefully
+examined the nature and conditions of your property. If I see my way to
+save your estate, and give a mauvais quart d’heure to Louvier, so much
+the better for you, M. le Marquis; if I cannot, I will say frankly,
+‘Make the best terms you can with your creditor.’”
+
+“Nothing can be more delicately generous than the way you put it,”
+ said Alain; “but pardon me, if I say that the pleasantry with which you
+narrate your grudge against M. Louvier does not answer its purpose in
+diminishing my sense of obligation.” So, linking his arm in Lemercier’s,
+Alain made his bow and withdrew.
+
+When his guests had gone, Duplessis remained seated in
+meditation--apparently pleasant meditation, for he smiled while
+indulging it; he then passed through the reception-rooms to one at the
+far end appropriated to Valerie as a boudoir or morning-room, adjoining
+her bed-chamber; he knocked gently at the door, and, all remaining
+silent within, he opened it noiselessly and entered. Valerie was
+reclining on the sofa near the window-her head drooping, her hands
+clasped on her knees. Duplessis neared her with tender stealthy steps,
+passed his arm round her, and drew her head towards his bosom. “Child!”
+ he murmured; “my child, my only one!”
+
+At that soft loving voice, Valerie flung her arms round him, and wept
+aloud like an infant in trouble. He seated himself beside her, and
+wisely suffered her to weep on, till her passion had exhausted itself;
+he then said, half fondly, half chillingly: “Have you forgotten our
+conversation only three days ago? Have you forgotten that I then drew
+forth the secret of your heart? Have you forgotten what I promised you
+in return for your confidence? and a promise to you have I ever yet
+broken?”
+
+“Father! father! I am so wretched and so ashamed of myself for being
+wretched! Forgive me. No, I do not forget your promise; but who can
+promise to dispose of the heart of another? and that heart will never be
+mine. But bear with me a little, I shall soon recover.”
+
+“Valerie, when I made you the promise you now think I cannot keep, I
+spoke only from that conviction of power to promote the happiness of a
+child which nature implants in the heart of parents; and it may be also
+from the experience of my own strength of will, since that which I have
+willed I have always won. Now I speak on yet surer ground. Before the
+year is out you shall be the beloved wife of Alain de Rochebriant. Dry
+your tears and smile on me, Valerie. If you will not see in me mother
+and father both, I have double love for you, motherless child of her
+who shared the poverty of my youth, and did not live to enjoy the wealth
+which I hold as a trust for that heir to mine all which she left me.”
+
+As this man thus spoke you would scarcely have recognized in him the
+old saturnine Duplessis, his countenance became so beautified by the
+one soft feeling which care and contest, ambition and money-seeking, had
+left unaltered in his heart. Perhaps there is no country in which the
+love of parent and child, especially of father and daughter, is so
+strong as it is in France; even in the most arid soil, among the
+avaricious, even among the profligate, it forces itself into flower.
+Other loves fade away: in the heart of the true Frenchman that parent
+love blooms to the last. Valerie felt the presence of that love as a
+divine protecting guardianship. She sank on her knees and covered his
+hand with grateful kisses.
+
+“Do not torture yourself, my child, with jealous fears of the fair
+Italian. Her lot and Alain de Rochebriant’s can never unite; and
+whatever you may think of their whispered converse, Alain’s heart at
+this moment is too filled with anxious troubles to leave one spot in it
+accessible even to a frivolous gallantry. It is for us to remove these
+troubles; and then, when he turns his eyes towards you, it will be
+with the gaze of one who beholds his happiness. You do not weep now,
+Valerie!”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+On waking some morning, have you ever felt, reader, as if a change for
+the brighter in the world, without and within you, had suddenly come to
+pass-some new glory has been given to the sunshine, some fresh balm to
+the air-you feel younger, and happier, and lighter, in the very beat of
+your heart-you almost fancy you hear the chime of some spiritual music
+far off, as if in the deeps of heaven? You are not at first conscious
+how, or wherefore, this change has been brought about. Is it the effect
+of a dream in the gone sleep, that has made this morning so different
+from mornings that have dawned before? And while vaguely asking yourself
+that question, you become aware that the cause is no mere illusion,
+that it has its substance in words spoken by living lips, in things that
+belong to the work-day world.
+
+It was thus that Isaura woke the morning after the conversation with
+Alain de Rochebriant, and as certain words, then spoken, echoed back on
+her ear, she knew why she was so happy, why the world was so changed.
+
+In those words she heard the voice of Graham Vane--nor she had not
+deceived herself--she was loved! she was loved! What mattered that long
+cold interval of absence? She had not forgotten--she could not believe
+that absence had brought forgetfulness. There are moments when we insist
+on judging another’s heart by our own. All would be explained some
+day--all would come right.
+
+How lovely was the face that reflected itself in the glass as she stood
+before it, smoothing back her long hair, murmuring sweet snatches of
+Italian love-song, and blushing with sweeter love-thoughts as she sang!
+All that had passed in that year so critical to her outer life--the
+authorship, the fame, the public career, the popular praise--vanished
+from her mind as a vapour that rolls from the face of a lake to which
+the sunlight restores the smile of a brightened heaven.
+
+She was more the girl now than she had ever been since the day on which
+she sat reading Tasso on the craggy shore of Sorrento.
+
+Singing still as she passed from her chamber, and entering the
+sitting-room, which fronted the east, and seemed bathed in the sunbeams
+of deepening May, she took her bird from its cage, and stopped her song
+to cover it with kisses, which perhaps yearned for vent somewhere.
+
+Later in the day she went out to visit Valerie. Recalling the altered
+manner of her young friend, her sweet nature became troubled. She
+divined that Valerie had conceived some jealous pain which she longed
+to heal; she could not bear the thought of leaving any one that day
+unhappy. Ignorant before of the girl’s feelings towards Alain, she now
+partly guessed them--one woman who loves in secret is clairvoyante as to
+such secrets in another.
+
+Valerie received her visitor with a coldness she did not attempt to
+disguise. Not seeming to notice this, Isaura commenced the conversation
+with frank mention of Rochebriant. “I have to thank you so much, dear
+Valerie, for a pleasure you could not anticipate--that of talking about
+an absent friend, and hearing the praise he deserved from one so capable
+of appreciating excellence as M. de Rochebriant appears to be.”
+
+“You were talking to M. de Rochebriant of an absent friend--ah! you
+seemed indeed very much interested in the conversation--”
+
+“Do not wonder at that, Valerie; and do not grudge me the happiest
+moments I have known for months.”
+
+“In talking with M. de Rochebriant! No doubt, Mademoiselle Cicogna, you
+found him very charming.”
+
+To her surprise and indignation, Valerie here felt the arm of Isaura
+tenderly entwining her waist, and her face drawn towards Isaura’s
+sisterly kiss.
+
+“Listen to me, naughty child-listen and believe. M. de Rochebriant can
+never be charming to me--never touch a chord in my heart or my fancy
+except as friend to another, or--kiss me in your turn, Valerie--as
+suitor to yourself.”
+
+Valerie here drew back her pretty childlike head, gazed keenly a moment
+into Isaura’s eyes, felt convinced by the limpid candour of their
+unmistakable honesty, and flinging herself on her friend’s bosom, kissed
+her passionately, and burst into tears.
+
+The complete reconciliation between the two girls was thus peacefully
+effected; and then Isaura had to listen, at no small length, to the
+confidences poured into her ears by Valerie, who was fortunately too
+engrossed by her own hopes and doubts to exact confidences in return.
+Valerie’s was one of those impulsive eager natures that longs for a
+confidante. Not so Isaura’s. Only when Valerie had unburthened her
+heart, and been soothed and caressed into happy trust in the future,
+did she recall Isaura’s explanatory words, and said, archly: “And your
+absent friend? Tell me about him. Is he as handsome as Alain?”
+
+“Nay,” said Isaura, rising to take up the mantle and hat she had laid
+aside on entering, “they say that the colour of a flower is in our
+vision, not in the leaves.” Then with a grave melancholy in the look
+she fixed upon Valerie, she added: “Rather than distrust of me should
+occasion you pain, I have pained myself, in making clear to you the
+reason why I felt interest in M. de Rochebriant’s conversation. In turn,
+I ask of you a favour--do not on this point question me farther. There
+are some things in our past which influence the present, but to which
+we dare not assign a future--on which we cannot talk to another. What
+soothsayer can tell us if the dream of a yesterday will be renewed on
+the night of a morrow? All is said--we trust one another, dearest.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+That evening the Morleys looked in at Isaura’s on their way to a crowded
+assembly at the house of one of those rich Americans, who were then
+outvying the English residents at Paris in the good graces of Parisian
+society. I think the Americans get on better with the French than the
+English do--I mean the higher class of Americans. They spend more money;
+their men speak French better; the women are better dressed, and, as a
+general rule, have read more largely, and converse more frankly. Mrs.
+Morley’s affection for Isaura had increased during the last few months.
+As so notable an advocate of the ascendancy of her sex, she felt a
+sort of grateful pride in the accomplishments and growing renown of
+so youthful a member of the oppressed sisterhood. But, apart from that
+sentiment, she had conceived a tender mother-like interest for the girl
+who stood in the world so utterly devoid of family ties, so destitute of
+that household guardianship and protection which, with all her assertion
+of the strength and dignity of woman, and all her opinions as to woman’s
+right of absolute emancipation from the conventions fabricated by the
+selfishness of man, Mrs. Morley was too sensible not to value for the
+individual, though she deemed it not needed for the mass. Her great
+desire was that Isaura should marry well, and soon. American women
+usually marry so young that it seemed to Mrs. Morley an anomaly in
+social life, that one so gifted in mind and person as Isaura should
+already have passed the age in which the belles of the great Republic
+are enthroned as wives and consecrated as mothers. We have seen that
+in the past year she had selected from our unworthy but necessary sex,
+Graham Vane as a suitable spouse to her young friend. She had divined
+the state of his heart--she had more than suspicions of the state of
+Isaura’s. She was exceedingly perplexed and exceedingly chafed at the
+Englishman’s strange disregard to his happiness and her own projects.
+She had counted, all this past winter, on his return to Paris; and
+she became convinced that some misunderstanding, possibly some lover’s
+quarrel, was the cause of his protracted absence, and a cause that,
+if ascertained, could be removed. A good opportunity now presented
+itself--Colonel Morley was going to London the next day. He had business
+there which would detain him at least a week. He would see Graham; and
+as she considered her husband the shrewdest and wisest person in the
+world--I mean of the male sex--she had no doubt of his being able
+to turn Graham’s mind thoroughly inside out, and ascertain his exact
+feelings and intentions. If the Englishman, thus assayed, were found
+of base metal, then, at least, Mrs. Morley would be free to cast him
+altogether aside, and coin for the uses of the matrimonial market some
+nobler effigy in purer gold.
+
+“My dear child,” said Mrs. Morley, in a low voice, nestling herself
+close to Isaura, while the Colonel, duly instructed, drew off the
+Venosta, “have you heard anything lately of our pleasant friend Mr.
+Vane?”
+
+You can guess with what artful design Mrs. Morley put that question
+point-blank, fixing keen eyes on Isaura while she put it. She saw the
+heightened colour, the quivering lip of the girl thus abruptly appealed
+to, and she said inly: “I was right--she loves him!”
+
+“I heard of Mr. Vane last night--accidentally.”
+
+“Is he coming to Paris soon?”
+
+“Not that I know of. How charmingly that wreath becomes you! it suits
+the earrings so well, too.”
+
+“Frank chose it; he has good taste for a man. I trust him with my
+commissions to Hunt and Roskell’s but I limit him as to price, he is
+so extravagant--men are, when they make presents. They seem to think we
+value things according to their cost. They would gorge us with jewels,
+and let us starve for want of a smile. Not that Frank is so bad as the
+rest of them. But a propos of Mr. Vane--Frank will be sure to see him,
+and scold him well for deserting us all. I should not be surprised if he
+brought the deserter back with him, for I send a little note by Frank,
+inviting him to pay us a visit. We have spare rooms in our apartments.”
+
+Isaura’s heart heaved beneath her robe, but she replied in a tone of
+astonishing indifference: “I believe this is the height of the London
+season, and Mr. Vane would probably be too engaged to profit even by an
+invitation so tempting.”
+
+“Nous verrons. How pleased he will be to hear of your triumphs! He
+admired you so much before you were famous: what will be his admiration
+now! men are so vain--they care for us so much more when people praise
+us. But till we have put the creatures in their proper place, we must
+take them for what they are.”
+
+Here the Venosta, with whom the poor Colonel had exhausted all the arts
+at his command for chaining her attention, could be no longer withheld
+from approaching Mrs. Morley, and venting her admiration of that lady’s
+wreath, earrings, robes, flounces. This dazzling apparition had on her
+the effect which a candle has on a moth--she fluttered round it,
+and longed to absorb herself in its blaze. But the wreath especially
+fascinated her--a wreath which no prudent lady with colourings less
+pure, and features less exquisitely delicate than the pretty champion
+of the rights of women, could have fancied on her own brows without a
+shudder. But the Venosta in such matters was not prudent. “It can’t be
+dear,” she cried piteously, extending her arms towards Isaura. “I must
+have one exactly like. Who made it? Cara signora, give me the address.”
+
+“Ask the Colonel, dear Madame; he chose and bought it,” and Mrs. Morley
+glanced significantly at her well-tutored Frank.
+
+“Madame,” said the Colonel, speaking in English, which he usually did
+with the Venosta--who valued herself on knowing that language and was
+flattered to be addressed in it--while he amused himself by introducing
+into its forms the dainty Americanisms with which he puzzled the
+Britisher--he might well puzzle the Florentine,--“Madame, I am too
+anxious for the appearance of my wife to submit to the test of a rival
+schemer like yourself in the same apparel. With all the homage due to a
+sex of which I am enthused dreadful, I decline to designate the florist
+from whom I purchased Mrs. Morley’s head-fixings.”
+
+“Wicked man!” cried the Venosta, shaking her finger at him coquettishly.
+“You are jealous! Fie! a man should never be jealous of a woman’s
+rivalry with women;” and then, with a cynicism that might have become
+a greybeard, she added, “but of his own sex every man should be
+jealous--though of his dearest friend. Isn’t it so, Colonello?”
+
+The Colonel looked puzzled, bowed, and made no reply. “That only shows,”
+ said Mrs. Morley, rising, “what villains the Colonel has the misfortune
+to call friends and fellow-men.”
+
+“I fear it is time to go,” said Frank, glancing at the clock.
+
+In theory the most rebellious, in practice the most obedient, of wives,
+Mrs. Morley here kissed Isaura, resettled her crinoline, and shaking
+hands with the Venosta, retreated to the door.
+
+“I shall have the wreath yet,” cried the Venosta, impishly. “La speranza
+e fenamina” (Hope is female).
+
+“Alas!” said Isaura, half mournfully, half smiling, “alas! do you
+not remember what the poet replied when asked what disease was most
+mortal?--‘the hectic fever caught from the chill of hope.’”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Graham Vane was musing very gloomily in his solitary apartment one
+morning, when his servant announced Colonel Morley.
+
+He received his visitor with more than the cordiality with which every
+English politician receives an American citizen. Graham liked the
+Colonel too well for what he was in himself to need any national title
+to his esteem. After some preliminary questions and answers as to the
+health of Mrs. Morley, the length of the Colonel’s stay in London, what
+day he could dine with Graham at Richmond or Gravesend, the Colonel took
+up the ball. “We have been reckoning to see you at Paris, sir, for the
+last six months.”
+
+“I am very much flattered to hear that you have thought of me at all;
+but I am not aware of having warranted the expectation you so kindly
+express.”
+
+“I guess you must have said something to my wife which led her to do
+more than expect--to reckon on your return. And, by the way, sir, I am
+charged to deliver to you this note from her, and to back the request it
+contains that you will avail yourself of the offer. Without summarising
+the points I do so.”
+
+Graham glanced over the note addressed to him
+
+   “DEAR MR. VANE,--Do you forget how beautiful the environs of Paris
+   are in May and June? how charming it was last year at the lake of
+   Enghien? how gay were our little dinners out of doors in the garden
+   arbours, with the Savarins and the fair Italian, and her
+   incomparably amusing chaperon? Frank has my orders to bring you
+   back to renew these happy days, while the birds are in their first
+   song, and the leaves are in their youngest green. I have prepared
+   your rooms chez nous--a chamber that looks out on the Champs
+   Elysees, and a quiet cabinet de travail at the back, in which you
+   can read, write, or sulk undisturbed. Come, and we will again visit
+   Enghien and Montmorency. Don’t talk of engagements. If man
+   proposes, woman disposes. Hesitate not--obey. Your sincere little
+   friend, Lizzy.”
+
+“My dear Morley,” said Graham, with emotion, “I cannot find words to
+thank your wife sufficiently for an invitation so graciously conveyed.
+Alas! I cannot accept it.”
+
+“Why?” asked the Colonel, drily.
+
+“I have too much to do in London.”
+
+“Is that the true reason, or am I to suspicion that there is anything,
+sir, which makes you dislike a visit to Paris?”
+
+The Americans enjoy the reputation of being the frankest putters of
+questions whom liberty of speech has yet educated into la recherche de
+la verite, and certainly Colonel Morley in this instance did not impair
+the national reputation.
+
+Graham Vane’s brow slightly contracted, and he bit his lip as if
+stung by a sudden pang; but after a moment’s pause, he answered with a
+good-humoured smile:
+
+“No man who has taste enough to admire the most beautiful city, and
+appreciate the charms of the most brilliant society in the world, can
+dislike Paris.”
+
+“My dear sir, I did not ask you if you disliked Paris, but if there were
+anything that made you dislike coming back to it on a visit.”
+
+“What a notion! and what a cross-examiner you would have made if you had
+been called to the bar! Surely, my dear friend, you can understand that
+when a man has in one place business which he cannot neglect, he may
+decline going to another place, whatever pleasure it would give him
+to do so. By the way, there is a great ball at one of the Ministers’
+to-night; you should go there, and I will point out to you all those
+English notabilities in whom Americans naturally take interest. I will
+call for you at eleven o’clock. Lord ------, who is a connection of
+mine, would be charmed to know you.”
+
+Morley hesitated; but when Graham said, “How your wife will scold you if
+you lose such an opportunity of telling her whether the Duchess of ----
+is as beautiful as report says, and whether Gladstone or Disraeli seems
+to your phrenological science to have the finer head!” the Colonel gave
+in, and it was settled that Graham should call for him at the Langham
+Hotel.
+
+That matter arranged, Graham probably hoped that his inquisitive visitor
+would take leave for the present, but the Colonel evinced no such
+intention. On the contrary, settling himself more at ease in his
+arm-chair, he said, “if I remember aright, you do not object to the
+odour of tobacco?”
+
+Graham rose and presented to his visitor a cigar-box which he took from
+the mantelpiece.
+
+The Colonel shook his head, and withdrew from his breast pocket a
+leather case, from which he extracted a gigantic regalia; this he
+lighted from a gold match-box in the shape of a locket attached to his
+watch-chain, and took two or three preliminary puffs, with his head
+thrown back and his eyes meditatively intent upon the ceiling.
+
+We know already that strange whim of the Colonel’s (than whom, if he so
+pleased, no man could speak purer English as spoken by the Britisher) to
+assert the dignity of the American citizen by copious use of expressions
+and phrases familiar to the lips of the governing class of the great
+Republic--delicacies of speech which he would have carefully shunned in
+the polite circles of the Fifth Avenue in New York. Now the Colonel
+was much too experienced a man of the world not to be aware that the
+commission with which his Lizzy had charged him was an exceedingly
+delicate one; and it occurred to his mother wit that the best way to
+acquit himself of it, so as to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving
+serious affront, would be to push that whim of his into more than wonted
+exaggeration. Thus he could more decidedly and briefly come to the
+point; and should he, in doing so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke
+a laugh than a frown-retiring from the ground with the honours due to a
+humorist. Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing
+his eyes from the ceiling, he began:
+
+“You have not asked, sir, after the signorina, or as we popularly call
+her, Mademoiselle Cicogna?”
+
+“Have I not? I hope she is quite well, and her lively companion, Signora
+Venosta.”
+
+“They are not sick, sir; or at least they were not so last night when
+my wife and I had the pleasure to see them. Of course you have read
+Mademoiselle Cicogna’s book--a bright performance, sir, age considered.”
+
+“Certainly, I have read the book; it is full of unquestionable genius.
+Is Mademoiselle writing another? But of course she is.”
+
+“I am not aware of the fact, sir. It may be predicated; such a mind
+cannot remain inactive; and I know from M. Savarin and that rising
+young man Gustave Rameau, that the publishers bid high for her brains
+considerable. Two translations have already appeared in our country.
+Her fame, sir, will be world-wide. She may be another George Sand, or at
+least another Eulalie Grantmesnil.”
+
+Graham’s cheek became as white as the paper I write on. He inclined his
+head as in assent, but without a word. The Colonel continued:
+
+“We ought to be very proud of her acquaintance, sir. I think you
+detected her gifts while they were yet unconjectured. My wife says so.
+You must be gratified to remember that, sir--clear grit, sir, and no
+mistake.”
+
+“I certainly more than once have said to Mrs. Morley, that I esteemed
+Mademoiselle’s powers so highly that I hoped she would never become a
+stage-singer and actress. But this M. Rameau? You say he is a rising
+man. It struck me when at Paris that he was one of those charlatans
+with a great deal of conceit and very little information, who are always
+found in scores on the ultra-Liberal side of politics;-possibly I was
+mistaken.”
+
+“He is the responsible editor of Le Sens Commun, in which talented
+periodical Mademoiselle Cicogna’s book was first raised.”
+
+“Of course, I know that; a journal which, so far as I have looked into
+its political or social articles, certainly written by a cleverer and
+an older man than M. Rameau, is for unsettling all things and settling
+nothing. We have writers of that kind among ourselves--I have no
+sympathy with them. To me it seems that when a man says, ‘Off with
+your head,’ he ought to let us know what other head he would put on our
+shoulders, and by what process the change of heads shall be effected.
+Honestly speaking, if you and your charming wife are intimate friends
+and admirers of Mademoiselle Cicogna, I think you could not do her a
+greater service than that of detaching her from all connection with men
+like M. Rameau, and journals like La Sens Commun.”
+
+The Colonel here withdrew his cigar from his lips, lowered his head to a
+level with Graham’s, and relaxing into an arch significant smile, said:
+“Start to Paris, and dissuade her yourself. Start--go ahead--don’t
+be shy--don’t seesaw on the beam of speculation. You will have more
+influence with that young female than we can boast.” Never was England
+in greater danger of quarrel with America than at that moment; but
+Graham curbed his first wrathful impulse, and replied coldly:
+
+“It seems to me, Colonel, that you, though very unconsciously, derogate
+from the respect due to Mademoiselle Cicogna. That the counsel of a
+married couple like yourself and Mrs. Morley should be freely given to
+and duly heeded by a girl deprived of her natural advisers in parents,
+is a reasonable and honourable supposition; but to imply that the most
+influential adviser of a young lady so situated is a young single man,
+in no way related to her, appears to me a dereliction of that regard to
+the dignity of her sex which is the chivalrous characteristic of your
+countrymen--and to Mademoiselle Cicogna herself, a surmise which she
+would be justified in resenting as an impertinence.”
+
+“I deny both allegations,” replied the Colonel serenely. “I maintain
+that a single man whips all connubial creation when it comes to
+gallantising a single young woman; and that no young lady would be
+justified in resenting as impertinence my friendly suggestion to the
+single man so deserving of her consideration as I estimate you to be, to
+solicit the right to advise her for life. And that’s a caution.”
+
+Here the Colonel resumed his regalia, and again gazed intent on the
+ceiling.
+
+“Advise her for life! You mean, I presume, as a candidate for her hand.”
+
+“You don’t Turkey now. Well, I guess, you are not wide of the mark
+there, sir.”
+
+“You do me infinite honour, but I do not presume so far.”
+
+“So, so--not as yet. Before a man who is not without gumption runs
+himself for Congress, he likes to calculate how the votes will run.
+Well, sir, suppose we are in caucus, and let us discuss the chances of
+the election with closed doors.”
+
+Graham could not help smiling at the persistent officiousness of his
+visitor, but his smile was a very sad one.
+
+“Pray change the subject, my dear Colonel Morley--it is not a pleasant
+one to me; and as regards Mademoiselle Cicogna, can you think it would
+not shock her to suppose that her name was dragged into the discussions
+you would provoke, even with closed doors?”
+
+“Sir,” replied the Colonel, imperturbably, “since the doors are closed,
+there is no one, unless it be a spirit-listener under the table, who can
+wire to Mademoiselle Cicogna the substance of debate. And, for my part,
+I do not believe in spiritual manifestations. Fact is, that I have
+the most amicable sentiments towards both parties, and if there is a
+misunderstanding which is opposed to the union of the States, I wish to
+remove it while yet in time. Now, let us suppose that you decline to be
+a candidate; there are plenty of others who will run; and as an elector
+must choose one representative or other, so a gal must choose one
+husband or other. And then you only repent when it is too late. It is a
+great thing to be first in the field. Let us approximate to the point;
+the chances seem good-will you run? Yes or no?”
+
+“I repeat, Colonel Morley, that I entertain no such presumption.”
+
+The Colonel here, rising, extended his hand, which Graham shook with
+constrained cordiality, and then leisurely walked to the door; there he
+paused, as if struck by a new thought, and said gravely, in his natural
+tone of voice, “You have nothing to say, sir, against the young lady’s
+character and honour?”
+
+“I!--heavens, no! Colonel Morley, such a question insults me.”
+
+The Colonel resumed his deepest nasal bass: “It is only, then, because
+you don’t fancy her now so much as you did last year--fact, you are
+soured on her and fly off the handle. Such things do happen. The same
+thing has happened to myself, sir. In my days of celibacy, there was a
+gal at Saratoga whom I gallantised, and whom, while I was at Saratoga,
+I thought Heaven had made to be Mrs. Morley: I was on the very point of
+telling her so, when I was suddenly called off to Philadelphia; and at
+Philadelphia, sir, I found that Heaven had made another Mrs. Morley. I
+state this fact, sir, though I seldom talk of my own affairs, even when
+willing to tender my advice in the affairs of another, in order to prove
+that I do not intend to censure you if Heaven has served you in the
+same manner. Sir, a man may go blind for one gal when he is not yet
+dry behind the ears, and then, when his eyes are skinned, go in for one
+better. All things mortal meet with a change, as my sisters little
+boy said when, at the age of eight, he quitted the Methodys and turned
+Shaker. Threep and argue as we may, you and I are both mortals--more’s
+the pity. Good morning, sir (glancing at the clock, which proclaimed the
+hour of 3 P.M.),--I err--good evening.”
+
+By the post that day the Colonel transmitted a condensed and laconic
+report of his conversation with Graham Vane. I can state its substance
+in yet fewer words. He wrote word that Graham positively declined the
+invitation to Paris; that he had then, agreeably to Lizzy’s instruction,
+ventilated the Englishman, in the most delicate terms, as to his
+intentions with regard to Isaura, and that no intentions at all existed.
+The sooner all thoughts of him were relinquished, as a new suitor on
+the ground, the better it would be for the young lady’s happiness in the
+only state in which happiness should be, if not found, at least sought,
+whether by maid or man.
+
+Mrs. Morley was extremely put out by this untoward result of the
+diplomacy she had intrusted to the Colonel; and when, the next day, came
+a very courteous letter from Graham, thanking her gratefully for the
+kindness of her invitation, and expressing his regret briefly, though
+cordially, at his inability to profit by it, without the most distant
+allusion to the subject which the Colonel had brought on the tapis, or
+even requesting his compliments to the Signoras Venosta and Cicogna,
+she was more than put out, more than resentful,--she was deeply grieved.
+Being, however, one of those gallant heroes of womankind who do not give
+in at the first defeat, she began to doubt whether Frank had not rather
+overstrained the delicacy which he said he had put into his “soundings.”
+ He ought to have been more explicit. Meanwhile she resolved to call
+on Isaura, and, without mentioning Graham’s refusal of her invitation,
+endeavour to ascertain whether the attachment which she felt persuaded
+the girl secretly cherished for this recalcitrant Englishman were
+something more than the first romantic fancy--whether it were
+sufficiently deep to justify farther effort on Mrs. Morley’s part to
+bring it to a prosperous issue.
+
+She found Isaura at home and alone; and, to do her justice, she
+exhibited wonderful tact in the fulfilment of the task she had set
+herself. Forming her judgment by manner and look--not words--she
+returned home, convinced that she ought to seize the opportunity
+afforded to her by Graham’s letter. It was one to which she might very
+naturally reply, and in that reply she might convey the object at her
+heart more felicitously than the Colonel had done. “The cleverest man
+is,” she said to herself, “stupid compared to an ordinary woman in
+the real business of life, which does not consist of fighting and
+moneymaking.”
+
+Now there was one point she had ascertained by words in her visit to
+Isaura--a point on which all might depend. She had asked Isaura when
+and where she had seen Graham last; and when Isaura had given her that
+information, and she learned it was on the eventful day on which Isaura
+gave her consent to the publication of her MS. if approved by Savarin,
+in the journal to be set up by the handsome-faced young author, she
+leapt to the conclusion that Graham had been seized with no unnatural
+jealousy, and was still under the illusive glamoury of that green-eyed
+fiend. She was confirmed in this notion, not altogether an unsound one,
+when asking with apparent carelessness, “And in that last interview, did
+you see any change in Mr. Vane’s manner, especially when he took leave?”
+
+Isaura turned away pale, and involuntarily clasping her hands-as women
+do when they would suppress pain-replied, in a low murmur, “His manner
+was changed.”
+
+Accordingly, Mrs. Morley sat down and wrote the following letter:
+
+“DEAR MR. VANE,--I am very angry indeed with you for refusing my
+invitation--I had so counted on you, and I don’t believe a word of your
+excuse. Engagements! To balls and dinners, I suppose, as if you were not
+much too clever to care about such silly attempts to enjoy solitude in
+crowds. And as to what you men call business, you have no right to have
+any business at all. You are not in commerce; you are not in Parliament;
+you told me yourself that you had no great landed estates to give you
+trouble; you are rich, without any necessity to take pains to remain
+rich, or to become richer; you have no business in the world except to
+please yourself: and when you will not come to Paris to see one of your
+truest friends--which I certainly am--it simply means, that no matter
+how such a visit would please me, it does not please yourself. I call
+that abominably rude and ungrateful.
+
+“But I am not writing merely to scold you. I have something else on my
+mind, and it must come out. Certainly, when you were at Paris last year
+you did admire, above all other young ladies, Isaura Cicogna. And I
+honoured you for doing so. I know no other young lady to be called her
+equal. Well, if you admired her then, what would you do now if you
+met her? Then she was but a girl--very brilliant, very charming, it is
+true--but undeveloped, untested. Now she is a woman, a princess among
+women, but retaining all that is most lovable in a girl; so courted, yet
+so simple--so gifted, yet so innocent. Her head is not a bit turned
+by all the flattery that surrounds her. Come and judge for yourself. I
+still hold the door of the rooms destined to you open for repentance.
+
+“My dear Mr. Vane, do not think me a silly match-making little woman,
+when I write to you thus, a coeur ouvert.
+
+“I like you so much that I would fain secure to you the rarest prize
+which life is ever likely to offer to your ambition. Where can you hope
+to find another Isaura? Among the stateliest daughters of your English
+dukes, where is there one whom a proud man would be more proud to show
+to the world, saying, ‘She is mine!’ where one more distinguished--I
+will not say by mere beauty, there she might be eclipsed--but by
+sweetness and dignity combined--in aspect, manner, every movement, every
+smile?
+
+“And you, who are yourself so clever, so well read--you who would be so
+lonely with a wife who was not your companion, with whom you could not
+converse on equal terms of intellect,--my dear friend, where could you
+find a companion in whom you would not miss the poet-soul of Isaura?
+Of course I should not dare to obtrude all these questionings on your
+innermost reflection, if I had not some idea, right or wrong, that since
+the days when at Enghien and Montmorency, seeing you and Isaura side by
+side, I whispered to Frank, ‘So should those two be through life,’ some
+cloud has passed between your eyes and the future on which they gazed.
+Cannot that cloud be dispelled? Were you so unjust to yourself as to
+be jealous of a rival, perhaps of a Gustave Rameau? I write to you
+frankly--answer me frankly; and if you answer, ‘Mrs. Morley, I don’t
+know, what you mean; I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna as I might admire
+any other pretty, accomplished girl, but it is really nothing to me
+whether she marries Gustave Rameau or any one else,’--why, then, burn
+this letter--forget that it has been written; and may you never know
+the pang of remorseful sigh, if, in the days to come, you see her--whose
+name in that case I should profane did I repeat it--the comrade of
+another man’s mind, the half of another man’s heart, the pride and
+delight of another man’s blissful home.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+There is somewhere in Lord Lytton’s writings--writings so numerous that
+I may be pardoned if I cannot remember where-a critical definition of
+the difference between dramatic and narrative art of story, instanced by
+that marvellous passage in the loftiest of Sir Walter Scott’s works, in
+which all the anguish of Ravenswood on the night before he has to meet
+Lucy’s brother in mortal combat is conveyed without the spoken words
+required in tragedy. It is only to be conjectured by the tramp of his
+heavy boots to and fro all the night long in his solitary chamber,
+heard below by the faithful Caleb. The drama could not have allowed that
+treatment; the drama must have put into words, as “soliloquy,” agonies
+which the non-dramatic narrator knows that no soliloquy can describe.
+Humbly do I imitate, then, the great master of narrative in declining
+to put into words the conflict between love and reason that tortured the
+heart of Graham Vane when, dropping noiselessly the letter I have just
+transcribed, he covered his face with his hands and remained--I know
+not how long--in the same position, his head bowed, not a sound escaping
+from his lips.
+
+He did not stir from his rooms that day; and had there been a Caleb’s
+faithful ear to listen, his tread, too, might have been heard all that
+sleepless night passing to and fro, but pausing oft, along his solitary
+floors.
+
+Possibly love would have borne down all opposing seasonings, doubts, and
+prejudices, but for incidents that occurred the following evening. On
+that evening Graham dined en famille with his cousins the Altons. After
+dinner, the Duke produced the design for a cenotaph inscribed to the
+memory of his aunt, Lady Janet King, which he proposed to place in the
+family chapel at Alton.
+
+“I know,” said the Duke, kindly, “you would wish the old house from
+which she sprang to preserve some such record of her who loved you as
+her son; and even putting you out of the question, it gratifies me to
+attest the claim of our family to a daughter who continues to be famous
+for her goodness, and made the goodness so lovable that envy forgave it
+for being famous. It was a pang to me when poor Richard King decided on
+placing her tomb among strangers; but in conceding his rights as to
+her resting-place, I retain mine to her name,--Nostris liberis virtutis
+exemplar.”
+
+Graham wrung his cousin’s hand-he could not speak, choked by suppressed
+tears.
+
+The Duchess, who loved and honoured Lady Janet almost as much as did
+her husband, fairly sobbed aloud. She had, indeed, reason for grateful
+memories of the deceased: there had been some obstacles to her marriage
+with the man who had won her heart, arising from political differences
+and family feuds between their parents, which the gentle meditation of
+Lady Janet had smoothed away. And never did union founded on mutual and
+ardent love more belie the assertions of the great Bichat (esteemed by
+Dr. Buckle the finest intellect which practical philosophy has exhibited
+since Aristotle), that “Love is a sort of fever which does not last
+beyond two years,” than that between those eccentric specimens of a
+class denounced as frivolous and artless by philosophers, English and
+French, who have certainly never heard of Bichat.
+
+When the emotion the Duke had exhibited was calmed down, his wife pushed
+towards Graham a sheet of paper, inscribed with the epitaph composed by
+his hand. “Is it not beautiful,” she said, falteringly--“not a word too
+much or too little?”
+
+Graham read the inscription slowly, and with very dimmed eyes. It
+deserved the praise bestowed on it; for the Duke, though a shy and
+awkward speaker, was an incisive and graceful writer.
+
+Yet, in his innermost self, Graham shivered when he read that epitaph,
+it expressed so emphatically the reverential nature of the love which
+Lady Janet had inspired--the genial influences which the holiness of
+a character so active in doing good had diffused around it. It brought
+vividly before Graham that image of perfect spotless womanhood. And
+a voice within him asked, “Would that cenotaph be placed amid the
+monuments of an illustrious lineage if the secret known to thee could
+transpire? What though the lost one were really as unsullied by sin as
+the world deems, would the name now treasured as an heirloom not be a
+memory of gall and a sound of shame?”
+
+He remained so silent after putting down the inscription, that the Duke
+said modestly: “My dear Graham, I see that you do not like what I have
+written. Your pen is much more practised than mine. If I did not ask
+you to compose the epitaph, it was because I thought it would please
+you more in coming, as a spontaneous tribute due to her, from the
+representative of her family. But will you correct my sketch, or give me
+another according to your own ideas?”
+
+“I see not a word to alter,” said Graham; “forgive me if my silence
+wronged my emotion; the truest eloquence is that which holds us too mute
+for applause.”
+
+“I knew you would like it. Leopold is always so disposed to underrate
+himself,” said the duchess, whose hand was resting fondly on her
+husband’s shoulder. “Epitaphs are so difficult to write-especially
+epitaphs on women of whom in life the least said the better. Janet was
+the only woman I ever knew whom one could praise in safety.”
+
+“Well expressed,” said the Duke, smiling: “and I wish you would make
+that safety clear to some lady friends of yours, to whom it might serve
+as a lesson. Proof against every breath of scandal herself, Janet King
+never uttered and never encouraged one ill-natured word against another.
+But I am afraid, my dear fellow, that I must leave you to a tete-a-tete
+with Eleanor. You know that I must be at the House this evening--I only
+paired till half-past nine.”
+
+“I will walk down to the House with you, if you are going on foot.”
+
+“No,” said the Duchess; “you must resign yourself to me for at least
+half an hour. I was looking over your aunt’s letters to-day, and I found
+one which I wish to show you; it is all about yourself, and written
+within the last few months of her life.” Here she put her arm into
+Graham’s, and led him into her own private drawing-room, which, though
+others might call it a boudoir, she dignified by the name of her study.
+The Duke remained for some minutes thoughtfully leaning his arm on the
+mantelpiece. It was no unimportant debate in the Lords that night, and
+on a subject in which he took great interest, and the details of which
+he had thoroughly mastered. He had been requested to speak, if only a
+few words, for his high character and his reputation for good sense gave
+weight to the mere utterance of his opinion. But though no one had more
+moral courage in action, the Duke had a terror at the very thought of
+addressing an audience, which made him despise himself.
+
+“Ah!” he muttered, “if Graham Vane were but in Parliament, I could trust
+him to say exactly what I would rather be swallowed up by an earthquake
+than stand up and say for myself. But now he has got money he seems to
+think of nothing but saving it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The letter from Lady Janet, which the Duchess took from the desk and
+placed in Graham’s hand, was in strange coincidence with the subject
+that for the last twenty-four hours had absorbed his thoughts and
+tortured his heart. Speaking of him in terms of affectionate eulogy, the
+writer proceeded to confide her earnest wish that he should not longer
+delay that change in life which, concentrating so much that is vague in
+the desires and aspirations of man, leaves his heart and his mind, made
+serene by the contentment of home, free for the steadfast consolidation
+of their warmth and their light upon the ennobling duties that unite the
+individual to his race.
+
+“There is no one,” wrote Lady Janet, “whose character and career a
+felicitous choice in marriage can have greater influence over than this
+dear adopted son of mine. I do not fear that in any case he will be
+liable to the errors of his brilliant father. His early reverse of
+fortune here seems to me one of those blessings which Heaven conceals
+in the form of affliction. For in youth, the genial freshness of his gay
+animal spirits, a native generosity mingled with desire of display
+and thirst for applause, made me somewhat alarmed for his future. But,
+though he still retains these attributes of character, they are no
+longer predominant; they are modified and chastened. He has learned
+prudence. But what I now fear most for him is that which he does not
+show in the world, which neither Leopold nor you seem to detect,--it is
+an exceeding sensitiveness of pride. I know not how else to describe it.
+It is so interwoven with the highest qualities, that I sometimes dread
+injury to them could it be torn away from the faultier ones which it
+supports.
+
+“It is interwoven with that lofty independence of spirit which has made
+him refuse openings the most alluring to his ambition; it communicates a
+touching grandeur to his self-denying thrift; it makes him so tenacious
+of his word once given, so cautious before he gives it. Public life to
+him is essential; without it he would be incomplete; and yet I sigh to
+think that whatever success he may achieve in it will be attended with
+proportionate pain. Calumny goes side by side with fame, and courting
+fame as a man, he is as thin-skinned to calumny as a woman.
+
+“The wife for Graham should have qualities, not taken individually,
+uncommon in English wives, but in combination somewhat rare.
+
+“She must have mind enough to appreciate his--not to clash with it.
+She must be fitted with sympathies to be his dearest companion, his
+confidante in the hopes and fears which the slightest want of sympathy
+would make him keep ever afterwards pent within his breast. In herself
+worthy of distinction, she must merge all distinction in his. You have
+met in the world men who, marrying professed beauties, or professed
+literary geniuses, are spoken of as the husband of the beautiful Mrs.
+A------, or of the clever Mrs. B-------: can you fancy Graham Vane in
+the reflected light of one of those husbands? I trembled last year when
+I thought he was attracted by a face which the artists raved about, and
+again by a tongue which dropped bons mots that went the round of the
+club. I was relieved, when, sounding him, he said, laughingly, ‘No, dear
+aunt, I should be one sore from head to foot if I married a wife that
+was talked about for anything but goodness.’
+
+“No,--Graham Vane will have pains sharp enough if he live to be talked
+about himself. But that tenderest half of himself, the bearer of the
+name he would make, and for the dignity of which he alone would be
+responsible,--if that were the town talk, he would curse the hour he
+gave any one the right to take on herself his man’s burden of calumny
+and fame. I know not which I should pity the most, Graham Vane or his
+wife.
+
+“Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor? No doubt you do so far, that you
+comprehend that the women whom men most admire are not the women we, as
+women ourselves, would wish our sons or brothers to marry. But perhaps
+you do not comprehend my cause of fear, which is this--for in such
+matters men do not see as we women do--Graham abhors, in the girls of
+our time, frivolity and insipidity. Very rightly, you will say. True,
+but then he is too likely to be allured by contrasts. I have seen him
+attracted by the very girls we recoil from more than we do from those
+we allow to be frivolous and insipid. I accused him of admiration for a
+certain young lady whom you call ‘odious,’ and whom the slang that has
+come into vogue calls ‘fast;’ and I was not satisfied with his answer,
+‘Certainly I admire her; she is not a doll--she has ideas.’ I would
+rather of the two see Graham married to what men call a doll, than to a
+girl with ideas which are distasteful to women.”
+
+Lady Janet then went on to question the Duchess about a Miss Asterisk,
+with whom this tale will have nothing to do, but who, from the little
+which Lady Janet had seen of her, might possess all the requisites that
+fastidious correspondent would exact for the wife of her adopted son.
+
+This Miss Asterisk had been introduced into the London world by the
+Duchess. The Duchess had replied to Lady Janet, that if earth could be
+ransacked, a more suitable wife for Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could
+not be found; she was well born--an heiress; the estates she inherited
+were in the county of--(viz., the county in which the ancestors of
+D’Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their whereabout). Miss
+Asterisk was pretty enough to please any man’s eye, but not with the
+beauty of which artists rave; well informed enough to be companion to a
+well-informed man, but certainly not witty enough to supply bons mots to
+the clubs. Miss Asterisk was one of those women of whom a husband might
+be proud, yet with whom a husband would feel safe from being talked
+about.
+
+And in submitting the letter we have read to Graham’s eye, the Duchess
+had the cause of Miss Asterisk pointedly in view. Miss Asterisk had
+confided to her friend, that, of all men she had seen, Mr. Graham Vane
+was the one she would feel the least inclined to refuse.
+
+So when Graham Vane returned the letter to the Duchess, simply saying,
+“How well my dear aunt divined what is weakest in me!” the Duchess
+replied quickly, “Miss Asterisk dines here to-morrow; pray come; you
+would like her if you knew more of her.”
+
+“To-morrow I am engaged--an American friend of mine dines with me; but
+‘tis no matter, for I shall never feel more for Miss Asterisk than I
+feel for Mont Blanc.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+On leaving his cousin’s house Graham walked on, he scarce knew or
+cared whither, the image of the beloved dead so forcibly recalled the
+solemnity of the mission with which he had been intrusted, and which
+hitherto he had failed to fulfil. What if the only mode by which he
+could, without causing questions and suspicions that might result in
+dragging to day the terrible nature of the trust he held, enrich the
+daughter of Richard King, repair all wrong hitherto done to her, and
+guard the sanctity of Lady Janet’s home,--should be in that union which
+Richard King had commended to him while his heart was yet free? In such
+a case, would not gratitude to the dead, duty to the living, make that
+union imperative at whatever sacrifice of happiness to himself? The two
+years to which Richard King had limited the suspense of research were
+not yet expired. Then, too, that letter of Lady Janet’s,--so tenderly
+anxious for his future, so clear-sighted as to the elements of his
+own character in its strength or its infirmities--combined with graver
+causes to withhold his heart from its yearning impulse, and--no, not
+steel it against Isaura, but forbid it to realise, in the fair creature
+and creator of romance, his ideal of the woman to whom an earnest,
+sagacious, aspiring man commits all the destinies involved in the
+serene dignity of his hearth. He could not but own that this gifted
+author--this eager seeker after fame--this brilliant and bold competitor
+with men on their own stormy battle-ground-was the very person from whom
+Lady Janet would have warned away his choice. She (Isaura) merge her own
+distinctions in a husband’s;--she leave exclusively to him the burden of
+fame and calumny!--she shun “to be talked about!” she who could feel
+her life to be a success or a failure, according to the extent and the
+loudness of the talk which it courted!
+
+While these thoughts racked his mind, a kindly hand was laid on his arm,
+and a cheery voice accosted him. “Well met, my dear Vane! I see we are
+bound to the same place; there will be a good gathering to-night.”
+
+“What do you mean, Bevil? I am going nowhere, except to my own quiet
+rooms.”
+
+“Pooh! Come in here at least for a few minutes,”--and Bevil drew him
+up to the door-step of a house close by, where, on certain evenings,
+a well-known club drew together men who seldom meet so familiarly
+elsewhere--men of all callings; a club especially favoured by wits,
+authors, and the flaneurs of polite society.
+
+Graham shook his head, about to refuse, when Bevil added, “I have just
+come from Paris, and can give you the last news, literary, political,
+and social. By the way, I saw Savarin the other night at the
+Cicogna’s--he introduced me there.” Graham winced; he was spelled by the
+music of a name, and followed his acquaintance into the crowded room,
+and, after returning many greetings and nods, withdrew into a remote
+corner, and motioned Bevil to a seat beside him.
+
+“So you met Savarin? Where, did you say?”
+
+“At the house of the new lady-author--I hate the word
+authoress--Mademoiselle Cicogna! Of course you have read her book?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Full of fine things, is it not?--though somewhat highflown and
+sentimental: however, nothing succeeds like success. No book has been
+more talked about at Paris: the only thing more talked about is the
+lady-author herself.”
+
+“Indeed, and how?”
+
+“She doesn’t look twenty, a mere girl--of that kind of beauty which
+so arrests the eye that you pass by other faces to gaze on it, and the
+dullest stranger would ask, ‘Who, and what is she?’ A girl, I say, like
+that--who lives as independently as if she were a middle-aged widow,
+receives every week (she has her Thursdays), with no other chaperon than
+an old ci-devant Italian singing woman, dressed like a guy--must set
+Parisian tongues into play even if she had not written the crack book of
+the season.”
+
+“Mademoiselle Cicogna receives on Thursdays,--no harm in that; and if
+she have no other chaperon than the Italian lady you mention, it is
+because Mademoiselle Cicogna is an orphan, and having a fortune, such as
+it is, of her own, I do not see why she should not live as independently
+as many an unmarried woman in London placed under similar circumstances.
+I suppose she receives chiefly persons in the literary or artistic
+world, and if they are all as respectable as the Savarins, I do not
+think ill-nature itself could find fault with her social circle.”
+
+“Ah! you know the Cicogna, I presume. I am sure I did not wish to say
+anything that could offend her best friends, only I do think it is a
+pity she is not married, poor girl!”
+
+“Mademoiselle Cicogna, accomplished, beautiful, of good birth (the
+Cicogna’s rank among the oldest of Lombard families), is not likely to
+want offers.”
+
+“Offers of marriage,--h’m--well, I dare say, from authors and artists.
+You know Paris better even than I do, but I don’t suppose authors and
+artists there make the most desirable husbands; and I scarcely know a
+marriage in France between a man-author and lady-author which does not
+end in the deadliest of all animosities--that of wounded amour propre.
+Perhaps the man admires his own genius too much to do proper homage to
+his wife’s.”
+
+“But the choice of Mademoiselle Cicogna need not be restricted to
+the pale of authorship--doubtless she has many admirers beyond that
+quarrelsome borderland.”
+
+“Certainly-countless adorers. Enguerrand de Vandemar--you know that
+diamond of dandies?”
+
+“Perfectly--is he an admirer?”
+
+“Cela va sans dire--he told me that though she was not the handsomest
+woman in Paris, all other women looked less handsome since he had seen
+her. But, of course, French lady-killers like Enguerrand, when it comes
+to marriage, leave it to their parents to choose their wives and arrange
+the terms of the contract. Talking of lady-killers, I beheld amid the
+throng at Mademoiselle Cicogna’s the ci-devant Lovelace whom I remember
+some twenty-three years ago as the darling of wives and the terror of
+husbands-Victor de Mauleon.”
+
+“Victor de Mauleon at Mademoiselle Cicogna’s!--what, is that man
+restored to society?”
+
+“Ah! you are thinking of the ugly old story about the jewels--oh,
+yes, he has got over that; all his grand relations, the Vandemars,
+Beauvilliers, Rochebriant, and others, took him by the hand when he
+reappeared at Paris last year; and though I believe he is still avoided
+by many, he is courted by still more--and avoided, I fancy, rather from
+political than social causes. The Imperialist set, of course, execrate
+and prescribe him. You know he is the writer of those biting articles
+signed Pierre Firmin in the Sens Commun; and I am told he is the
+proprietor of that very clever journal, which has become a power.”
+
+“So, so--that is the journal in which Mademoiselle Cicogna’s roman
+first appeared. So, so--Victor de Mauleon one of her associates, her
+counsellor and friend--ah!”
+
+“No, I didn’t say that; on the contrary, he was presented to her the
+first time the evening I was at the house. I saw that young silk-haired
+coxcomb, Gustave Rameau, introduce him to her. You don’t perhaps know
+Rameau, editor of the Sens Commun--writes poems and criticisms. They say
+he is a Red Republican, but De Mauleon keeps truculent French politics
+subdued if not suppressed in his cynical journal. Somebody told me
+that the Cicogna is very much in love with Rameau; certainly he has a
+handsome face of his own, and that is the reason why she was so rude to
+the Russian Prince X-----.”
+
+“How rude! Did the Prince propose to her?”
+
+“Propose! you forget--he is married. Don’t you know the Princess? Still
+there are other kinds of proposals than those of marriage which a rich
+Russian prince may venture to make to a pretty novelist brought up for
+the stage.”
+
+“Bevil!” cried Graham, grasping the man’s arm fiercely, “how dare you?”
+
+“My dear boy,” said Bevil, very much astonished, “I really did not know
+that your interest in the young lady was so great. If I have wounded
+you in relating a mere on dit picked up at the Jockey Club, I beg you a
+thousand pardons. I dare say there was not a word of truth in it.”
+
+“Not a word of truth, you may be sure, if the on dit was injurious to
+Mademoiselle Cicogna. It is true, I have a strong interest in her; any
+man--any gentleman--would have such interest in a girl so brilliant and
+seemingly so friendless. It shames one of human nature to think that
+the reward which the world makes to those who elevate its platitudes,
+brighten its dulness, delight its leisure, is Slander! I have had
+the honour to make the acquaintance of this lady before she became a
+‘celebrity,’ and I have never met in my paths through life a purer
+heart or a nobler nature. What is the wretched on dit you condescend to
+circulate? Permit me to add:
+
+“‘He who repeats a slander shares the crime.’”
+
+“Upon my honour, my dear Vane,” said Bevil seriously (he did not want
+for spirit), “I hardly know you this evening. It is not because duelling
+is out of fashion that a man should allow himself to speak in a tone
+that gives offence to another who intended none; and if duelling is out
+of fashion in England, it is still possible in France.--Entre nous, I
+would rather cross the Channel with you than submit to language that
+conveys unmerited insult.”
+
+Graham’s cheek, before ashen pale, flushed into dark red. “I understand
+you,” he said quietly, “and will be at Boulogne to-morrow.”
+
+“Graham Vane,” replied Bevil, with much dignity, “you and I have known
+each other a great many years, and neither of us has cause to question
+the courage of the other; but I am much older than yourself--permit
+me to take the melancholy advantage of seniority. A duel between us in
+consequence of careless words said about a lady in no way connected
+with either, would be a cruel injury to her; a duel on grounds so slight
+would little injure me--a man about town, who would not sit an hour in
+the House of Commons if you paid him a thousand pounds a minute. But
+you, Graham Vane--you whose destiny it is to canvass electors and make
+laws--would it not be an injury to you to be questioned at the hustings
+why you broke the law, and why you sought another man’s life? Come,
+come! shake hands and consider all that seconds, if we chose them, would
+exact, is said, every affront on either side retracted, every apology on
+either side made.”
+
+“Bevil, you disarm and conquer me. I spoke like a hotheaded fool; forget
+it--forgive. But--but--I can listen calmly now--what is that on dit?”
+
+“One that thoroughly bears out your own very manly upholding of the
+poor young orphan, whose name I shall never again mention without such
+respect as would satisfy her most sensitive champion. It was said that
+the Prince X------ boasted that before a week was out Mademoiselle
+Cicogna should appear in his carriage at the Bois de Boulogne, and wear
+at the opera diamonds he had sent to her; that this boast was enforced
+by a wager, and the terms of the wager compelled the Prince to confess
+the means he had taken to succeed, and produce the evidence that he
+had lost or won. According to this on dit, the Prince had written to
+Mademoiselle Cicogna, and the letter had been accompanied by a parure
+that cost him half a million of francs; that the diamonds had been
+sent back with a few words of such scorn as a queen might address to
+an upstart lackey. But, my dear Vane, it is a mournful position for the
+girl to receive such offers; and you must agree with me in wishing she
+were safely married, even to Monsieur Rameau, coxcomb though he be.
+Let us hope that they will be an exception to French authors, male and
+female, in general, and live like turtle-doves.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A few days after the date of the last chapter, Colonel Morley returned
+to Paris. He had dined with Graham at Greenwich, had met him afterwards
+in society, and paid him a farewell visit on the day before the
+Colonel’s departure; but the name of Isaura Cicogna had not again been
+uttered by either. Morley was surprised that his wife did not question
+him minutely as to the mode in which he had executed her delicate
+commission, and the manner as well as words with which Graham had
+replied to his “ventilations.” But his Lizzy cut him short when he began
+his recital:
+
+“I don’t want to hear anything more about the man. He has thrown away a
+prize richer than his ambition will ever gain, even if it gained him a
+throne.”
+
+“That it can’t gain him in the old country. The people are loyal to the
+present dynasty, whatever you may be told to the contrary.”
+
+“Don’t be so horribly literal, Frank; that subject is done with. How was
+the Duchess of ------ dressed?”
+
+But when the Colonel had retired to what the French call the cabinet de
+traivail--and which he more accurately termed his “smoke den”--and
+there indulged in the cigar which, despite his American citizenship,
+was forbidden in the drawing-room of the tyrant who ruled his life,
+Mrs. Morley took from her desk a letter received three days before,
+and brooded over it intently, studying every word. When she had
+thus reperused it, her tears fell upon the page. “Poor Isaura!” she
+muttered--“poor Isaura! I know she loves him--and how deeply a nature
+like hers can love! But I must break it to her. If I did not, she would
+remain nursing a vain dream, and refuse every chance of real happiness
+for the sake of nursing it.” Then she mechanically folded up the
+letter--I need not say it was from Graham Vane--restored it to the desk,
+and remained musing till the Colonel looked in at the door and said
+peremptorily, “Very late--come to bed.”
+
+The next day Madame Savarin called on Isaura.
+
+“Chere enfant,” said she, “I have bad news for you. Poor Gustave is very
+ill--an attack of the lungs and fever; you know how delicate he is.”
+
+“I am sincerely grieved,” said Isaura, in earnest tender tones; “it must
+be a very sudden attack: he was here last Thursday.”
+
+“The malady only declared itself yesterday morning, but surely you must
+have observed how ill he has been looking for several days past? It
+pained me to see him.”
+
+“I did not notice any change in him,” said Isaura, somewhat
+conscience-stricken. Wrapt in her own happy thoughts, she would not have
+noticed change in faces yet more familiar to her than that of her young
+admirer.
+
+“Isaura,” said Madame Savarin, “I suspect there are moral causes for our
+friend’s failing health. Why should I disguise my meaning? You know well
+how madly he is in love with you, and have you denied him hope?”
+
+“I like M. Rameau as a friend; I admire him--at times I pity him.”
+
+“Pity is akin to love.”
+
+“I doubt the truth of that saying, at all events as you apply it now. I
+could not love M. Rameau; I never gave him cause to think I could.”
+
+“I wish for both your sakes that you could make me a different answer;
+for his sake, because, knowing his faults and failings, I am persuaded
+that they would vanish in a companionship so pure, so elevating as
+yours: you could make him not only so much happier but so much better a
+man. Hush! let me go on, let me come to yourself,--I say for your sake
+I wish it. Your pursuits, your ambition, are akin to his; you should
+not marry one who could not sympathise with you in these. If you did,
+he might either restrict the exercise of your genius or be chafed at its
+display. The only authoress I ever knew whose married lot was serenely
+happy to the last, was the greatest of English poetesses married to a
+great English poet. You cannot, you ought not, to devote yourself to the
+splendid career to which your genius irresistibly impels you, without
+that counsel, that support, that protection, which a husband alone
+can give. My dear child, as the wife myself of a man of letters, and
+familiarised to all the gossip, all the scandal, to which they who
+give their names to the public are exposed, I declare that if I had a
+daughter who inherited Savarin’s talents, and was ambitious of attaining
+to his renown, I would rather shut her up in a convent than let her
+publish a book that was in every one’s hands until she had sheltered
+her name under that of a husband; and if I say this of my child, with a
+father so wise in the world’s ways, and so popularly respected as my bon
+homme, what must I feel to be essential to your safety, poor stranger
+in our land! poor solitary orphan! with no other advice or guardian
+than the singing mistress whom you touchingly call ‘Madre!’ I see how
+I distress and pain you--I cannot help it. Listen! The other evening
+Savarin came back from his favourite cafe in a state of excitement that
+made me think he came to announce a revolution. It was about you; he
+stormed, he wept--actually wept--my philosophical laughing Savarin.
+He had just heard of that atrocious wager made by a Russian barbarian.
+Every one praised you for the contempt with which you had treated the
+savage’s insolence. But that you should have been submitted to such an
+insult without one male friend who had the right to resent and chastise
+it,--you cannot think how Savarin was chafed and galled. You know how he
+admires, but you cannot guess how he reveres you; and since then he says
+to me every day: ‘That girl must not remain single. Better marry any
+man who has a heart to defend a wife’s honour and the nerve to fire a
+pistol: every Frenchman has those qualifications!’”
+
+Here Isaura could no longer restrain her emotions; she burst into sobs
+so vehement, so convulsive, that Madame Savarin became alarmed; but when
+she attempted to embrace and soothe her, Isaura recoiled with a visible
+shudder, and gasping out, “Cruel, cruel!” turned to the door, and rushed
+to her own room.
+
+A few minutes afterwards a maid entered the salon with a message to
+Madame Savarin that Mademoiselle was so unwell that she must beg Madame
+to excuse her return to the salon.
+
+Later in the day Mrs. Morley called, but Isaura would not see her.
+
+Meanwhile poor Rameau was stretched on his sick-bed, and in sharp
+struggle between life and death. It is difficult to disentangle, one by
+one, all the threads in a nature so complex as Rameau’s; but if we
+may hazard a conjecture, the grief of disappointed love was not the
+immediate cause of his illness, and yet it had much to do with it. The
+goad of Isaura’s refusal had driven him into seeking distraction in
+excesses which a stronger frame could not have courted with impunity.
+The man was thoroughly Parisian in many things, but especially in
+impatience of any trouble. Did love trouble him--love could be drowned
+in absinthe; and too much absinthe may be a more immediate cause of
+congested lungs than the love which the absinthe had lulled to sleep.
+
+His bedside was not watched by hirelings. When first taken thus ill--too
+ill to attend to his editorial duties--information was conveyed to the
+publisher of the Sens Commun, and in consequence of that information,
+Victor de Mauleon came to see the sick man. By his bed he found Savarin,
+who had called, as it were by chance, and seen the doctor, who had said,
+“It is grave. He must be well nursed.” Savarin whispered to De Mauleon,
+“Shall we call in a professional nurse, or a soeur de charite?”
+
+De Mauleon replied, also in a whisper, “Somebody told me that the man
+had a mother.”
+
+It was true--Savarin had forgotten it. Rameau never mentioned his
+parents--he was not proud of them.
+
+They belonged to a lower class of the bourgeoisie, retired shopkeepers,
+and a Red Republican is sworn to hate of the bourgeoisie, high or low;
+while a beautiful young author pushing his way into the Chaussee d’Antin
+does not proclaim to the world that his parents had sold hosiery in the
+Rue St. Denis.
+
+Nevertheless Savarin knew that Rameau had such parents still living,
+and took the hint. Two hours afterwards Rameau was leaning his burning
+forehead on his mother’s breast.
+
+The next morning the doctor said to the mother, “You are worth ten of
+me. If you can stay here we shall pull him through.”
+
+“Stay here!--my own boy!” cried indignantly the poor mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The day which had inflicted on Isaura so keen an anguish was marked by a
+great trial in the life of Alain de Rochebriant.
+
+In the morning he received the notice “of un commandement tendant a
+saisie immobiliere,” on the part of his creditor, M. Louvier; in plain
+English, an announcement that his property at Rochebriant would be
+put up to public sale on a certain day, in case all debts due to the
+mortgagee were not paid before. An hour afterwards came a note from
+Duplessis stating that “he had returned from Bretagne on the previous
+evening, and would be very happy to see the Marquis de Rochebriant
+before two o’clock, if not inconvenient to call.”
+
+Alain put the “commandement” into his pocket, and repaired to the Hotel
+Duplessis.
+
+The financier received him with very cordial civility. Then he began:
+“I am happy to say I left your excellent aunt in very good health.
+She honoured the letter of introduction to her which I owe to your
+politeness with the most amiable hospitalities; she insisted on my
+removing from the auberge at which I first put up and becoming a guest
+under your venerable roof-tree--a most agreeable lady, and a most
+interesting chateau.”
+
+“I fear your accommodation was in striking contrast to your comforts
+at Paris; my chateau is only interesting to an antiquarian enamoured of
+ruins.”
+
+“Pardon me, ‘ruins’ is an exaggerated expression. I do not say that the
+chateau does not want some repairs, but they would not be costly; the
+outer walls are strong enough to defy time for centuries to come, and
+a few internal decorations and some modern additions of furniture would
+make the old manoir a home fit for a prince. I have been over the whole
+estate, too, with the worthy M. Hebert,--a superb property.”
+
+“Which M. Louvier appears to appreciate,” said Alain, with a somewhat
+melancholy smile, extending to Duplessis the menacing notice.
+
+Duplessis glanced at it, and said drily: “M. Louvier knows what he is
+about. But I think we had better put an immediate stop to formalities
+which must be painful to a creditor so benevolent. I do not presume
+to offer to pay the interest due on the security you can give for the
+repayment. If you refused that offer from so old a friend as Lemercier,
+of course you could not accept it from me. I make another proposal, to
+which you can scarcely object. I do not like to give my scheming rival
+on the Bourse the triumph of so profoundly planned a speculation. Aid
+me to defeat him. Let me take the mortgage on myself, and become sole
+mortgagee--hush!--on this condition,--that there should be an entire
+union of interests between us two; that I should be at liberty to make
+the improvements I desire, and when the improvements be made, there
+should be a fair arrangement as to the proportion of profits due to me
+as mortgagee and improver, to you as original owner. Attend, my dear
+Marquis,--I am speaking as a mere man of business. I see my way to
+adding more than a third, I might even say a half--to the present
+revenues of Rochbriant. The woods have been sadly neglected, drainage
+alone would add greatly to their produce. Your orchards might be
+rendered magnificent supplies to Paris with better cultivation. Lastly,
+I would devote to building purposes or to market gardens all the lands
+round the two towns of ------ and ---------. I think I can lay my hands
+on suitable speculators for these last experiments. In a word, though
+the market value of Rochebriant, as it now stands, would not be
+equivalent to the debt on it, in five or six years it could be made
+worth--well, I will not say how much--but we shall be both well
+satisfied with the result. Meanwhile, if you allow me to find purchasers
+for your timber, and if you will not suffer the Chevalier de Finisterre
+to regulate your expenses, you need have no fear that the interest due
+to me will not be regularly paid, even though I shall be compelled, for
+the first year or two at least, to ask a higher rate of interest than
+Louvier exacted--say a quarter per cent. more; and in suggesting that,
+you will comprehend that this is now a matter of business between us,
+and not of friendship.”
+
+Alain turned his head aside to conceal his emotion, and then, with the
+quick affectionate impulse of the genuine French nature, threw himself
+on the financier’s breast and kissed him on both cheeks.
+
+“You save me! you save the home and the tombs of my ancestors! Thank
+you I cannot; but I believe in God--I pray--I will pray for you as for
+a father; and if ever,” he hurried on in broken words, “I am mean enough
+to squander on idle luxuries one franc that I should save for the debt
+due to you, chide me as a father would chide a graceless son.”
+
+Moved as Alain was, Duplessis was moved yet more deeply. “What father
+would not be proud of such a son? Ah, if I had such a one!” he said
+softly. Then, quickly recovering his wonted composure, he added, with
+the sardonic smile which often chilled his friends and alarmed his foes,
+“Monsieur Louvier is about to pass that which I ventured to promise him,
+a ‘mauvais quart-d’heure.’ Lend me that commandement tendant a saisie.
+I must be off to my avoue with instructions. If you have no better
+engagement, pray dine with me to-day and accompany Valerie and myself to
+the opera.”
+
+I need not say that Alain accepted the invitation. How happy Valerie was
+that evening!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+The next day Duplessis was surprised by a visit from M. Louvier--that
+magnate of millionaires had never before set foot in the house of his
+younger and less famous rival.
+
+The burly man entered the room with a face much flushed, and with more
+than his usual mixture of jovial brusquerie and opulent swagger.
+
+“Startled to see me, I dare say,” began Louvier, as soon as the door was
+closed. “I have this morning received a communication from your agent
+containing a cheque for the interest due to me from M. Rochebriant, and
+a formal notice of your intention to pay off the principal on behalf of
+that popinjay prodigal. Though we two have not hitherto been the best
+friends in the world, I thought it fair to a man in your station to come
+to you direct and say, ‘Cher confrere, what swindler has bubbled you?
+You don’t know the real condition of this Breton property, or you
+would never so throw away your millions. The property is not worth the
+mortgage I have on it by 30,000 louis.”
+
+“Then, M. Louvier, you will be 30,000 louis the richer if I take the
+mortgage off your hands.”
+
+“I can afford the loss--no offence--better than you can; and I may
+have fancies which I don’t mind paying for, but which cannot influence
+another. See, I have brought with me the exact schedule of all details
+respecting this property. You need not question their accuracy; they
+have been arranged by the Marquis’s own agents, M. Gandrin and M.
+Hebert. They contain, you will perceive, every possible item of revenue,
+down to an apple-tree. Now, look at that, and tell me if you are
+justified in lending such a sum on such a property.”
+
+“Thank you very much for an interest in my affairs that I scarcely
+ventured to expect M. Louvier to entertain; but I see that I have a
+duplicate of this paper, furnished to me very honestly by M. Hebert
+himself. Besides, I, too, have fancies which I don’t mind paying for,
+and among them may be a fancy for the lands of Rochebriant.”
+
+“Look you, Duplessis, when a man like me asks a favour, you may be sure
+that he has the power to repay it. Let me have my whim here, and ask
+anything you like from me in return!”
+
+“Desole not to oblige you, but this has become not only a whim of mine,
+but a matter of honour; and honour you know, my dear M. Louvier, is
+the first principle of sound finance. I have myself, after careful
+inspection of the Rochebriant property, volunteered to its owner to
+advance the money to pay off your hypotheque; and what would be said on
+the Bourse if Lucien Duplessis failed in an obligation?”
+
+“I think I can guess what will one day be said of Lucien Duplessis if he
+make an irrevocable enemy of Paul Louvier. Corbleu! mon cher, a man
+of thrice your capital, who watched every speculation of yours with a
+hostile eye, might some beau jour make even you a bankrupt!”
+
+“Forewarned, forearmed!” replied Duplessis, imperturbably, “Fas est ab
+hoste doceri,--I mean, ‘It is right to be taught by an enemy;’ and
+I never remember the day when you were otherwise, and yet I am not a
+bankrupt, though I receive you in a house which, thanks to you, is so
+modest in point of size!”
+
+“Bah! that was a mistake of mine,--and, ha! ha! you had your revenge
+there--that forest!”
+
+“Well, as a peace offering, I will give you up the forest, and content
+my ambition as a landed proprietor with this bad speculation of
+Rochebriant!”
+
+“Confound the forest, I don’t care for it now! I can sell my place for
+more than it has cost me to one of your imperial favourites. Build a
+palace in your forest. Let me have Rochebriant, and name your terms.”
+
+“A thousand pardons! but I have already had the honour to inform you,
+that I have contracted an obligation which does not allow me to listen
+to terms.”
+
+As a serpent, that, after all crawlings and windings, rears itself on
+end, Louvier rose, crest erect:
+
+“So then it is finished. I came here disposed to offer peace--you
+refuse, and declare war.”
+
+“Not at all, I do not declare war; I accept it if forced on me.”
+
+“Is that your last word, M. Duplessis?”
+
+“Monsieur Louvier, it is.”
+
+“Bon jour!”
+
+And Louvier strode to the door; here he paused: “Take a day to
+consider.”
+
+“Not a moment.”
+
+“Your servant, Monsieur,--your very humble servant.” Louvier vanished.
+
+Duplessis leaned his large thoughtful forehead on his thin nervous hand.
+“This loan will pinch me,” he muttered. “I must be very wary now with
+such a foe. Well, why should I care to be rich? Valerie’s dot, Valerie’s
+happiness, are secured.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Madame Savarin wrote a very kind and very apologetic letter to Isaura,
+but no answer was returned to it. Madame Savarin did not venture to
+communicate to her husband the substance of a conversation which had
+ended so painfully. He had, in theory, a delicacy of tact, which, if he
+did not always exhibit it in practice, made him a very severe critic of
+its deficiency in others. Therefore, unconscious of the offence given,
+he made a point of calling at Isaura’s apartments, and leaving word with
+her servant that “he was sure she would be pleased to hear M. Rameau was
+somewhat better, though still in danger.”
+
+It was not till the third day after her interview with Madame Savarin
+that Isaura left her own room,--she did so to receive Mrs. Morley.
+
+The fair American was shocked to see the change in Isaura’s countenance.
+She was very pale, and with that indescribable appearance of exhaustion
+which betrays continued want of sleep; her soft eyes were dim, the play
+of her lips was gone, her light step weary and languid.
+
+“My poor darling!” cried Mrs. Morley, embracing her, “you have indeed
+been ill! What is the matter?--who attends you?”
+
+“I need no physician, it was but a passing cold--the air of Paris is
+very trying. Never mind me, dear--what is the last news?”
+
+Therewith Mrs. Morley ran glibly through the principal topics of the
+hour: the breach threatened between M. Ollivier and his former
+liberal partisans; the tone unexpectedly taken by M. de Girardin; the
+speculations as to the result of the trial of the alleged conspirators
+against the Emperor’s life, which was fixed to take place towards the
+end of that month of June,--all matters of no slight importance to the
+interests of an empire. Sunk deep into the recesses of her fauteuil,
+Isaura seemed to listen quietly, till, when a pause came, she said in
+cold clear tones:
+
+“And Mr. Graham Vane--he has refused your invitation?”
+
+“I am sorry to say he has--he is so engaged in London.”
+
+“I knew he had refused,” said Isaura, with a low bitter laugh.
+
+“How? who told you?”
+
+“My own good sense told me. One may have good sense, though one is a
+poor scribbler.”
+
+“Don’t talk in that way; it is beneath you to angle for compliments.”
+
+“Compliments, ah! And so Mr. Vane has refused to come to Paris; never
+mind, he will come next year. I shall not be in Paris then. Did Colonel
+Morley see Mr. Vane?”
+
+“Oh, yes; two or three times.”
+
+“He is well?”
+
+“Quite well, I believe--at least Frank did not say to the contrary; but,
+from what I hear, he is not the person I took him for. Many people told
+Frank that he is much changed since he came into his fortune--is grown
+very stingy, quite miserly indeed; declines even a seat in Parliament
+because of the expense. It is astonishing how money does spoil a man.”
+
+“He had come into his fortune when he was here. Money had not spoiled
+him then.”
+
+Isaura paused, pressing her hands tightly together; then she suddenly
+rose to her feet, the colour on her cheek mantling and receding
+rapidly, and fixing on her startled visitor eyes no longer dim, but
+with something half fierce, half imploring in the passion of their gaze,
+said: “Your husband spoke of me to Mr. Vane: I know he did. What did Mr.
+Vane answer? Do not evade my question. The truth! the truth! I only ask
+the truth!”
+
+“Give me your hand; sit here beside me, dearest child.”
+
+“Child!--no, I am a woman!--weak as a woman, but strong as a woman
+too!--The truth!”
+
+Mrs. Morley had come prepared to carry out the resolution she had formed
+and “break” to Isaura “the truth,” that which the girl now demanded. But
+then she had meant to break the truth in her own gentle, gradual way.
+Thus suddenly called upon, her courage failed her. She burst into tears.
+Isaura gazed at her dry-eyed.
+
+“Your tears answer me. Mr. Vane has heard that I have been insulted. A
+man like him does not stoop to love for a woman who has known an insult.
+I do not blame him; I honour him the more--he is right.”
+
+“No-no-no!--you insulted! Who dared to insult you? (Mrs. Morley had
+never heard the story about the Russian Prince.) Mr. Vane spoke to
+Frank, and writes of you to me as of one whom it is impossible not
+to admire, to respect; but--I cannot say it--you will have the
+truth,--there, read and judge for yourself.” And Mrs. Morley drew forth
+and thrust into Isaura’s hands the letter she had concealed from her
+husband. The letter was not very long; it began with expressions of
+warm gratitude to Mrs. Morley, not for her invitation only, but for the
+interest she had conceived in his happiness. It went on thus “I join
+with my whole heart in all that you say, with such eloquent justice, of
+the mental and personal gifts so bounteously lavished by nature on the
+young lady whom you name.
+
+“No one can feel more sensible than I of the charm of so exquisite a
+loveliness; no one can more sincerely join in the belief that the praise
+which greets the commencement of her career is but the whisper of the
+praise that will cheer its progress with louder and louder plaudits.
+
+“He only would be worthy of her hand, who, if not equal to herself in
+genius, would feel raised into partnership with it by sympathy with its
+objects and joy in its triumphs. For myself, the same pain with which I
+should have learned she had adopted the profession which she originally
+contemplated, saddened and stung me when, choosing a career that confers
+a renown yet more lasting than the stage, she no less left behind her
+the peaceful immunities of private life. Were I even free to consult
+only my own heart in the choice of the one sole partner of my destinies
+(which I cannot at present honestly say that I am, though I had
+expected to be so ere this, when I last saw you at Paris); could I even
+hope--which I have no right to do--that I could chain to myself any
+private portion of thoughts which now flow into the large channels
+by which poets enrich the blood of the world,--still (I say it in
+self-reproach, it may be the fault of my English rearing, it may rather
+be the fault of an egotism peculiar to myself)--still I doubt if I could
+render happy any woman whose world could not be narrowed to the Home
+that she adorned and blessed.
+
+“And yet not even the jealous tyranny of man’s love could dare to say to
+natures like hers of whom we speak, ‘Limit to the household glory of
+one the light which genius has placed in its firmament for the use and
+enjoyment of all.’”
+
+“I thank you so much,” said Isaura, calmly; “suspense makes a woman so
+weak--certainty so strong.” Mechanically she smoothed and refolded the
+letter--mechanically, with slow, lingering hands--then she extended it
+to her friend, smiling.
+
+“Nay, will you not keep it yourself?” said Mrs. Morley. “The more you
+examine the narrow-minded prejudices, the English arrogant man’s jealous
+dread of superiority--nay, of equality--in the woman he ‘can only
+value as he does his house or his horse, because she is his exclusive
+property, the more you will be rejoiced to find yourself free for a more
+worthy choice. Keep the letter; read it till you feel for the writer
+forgiveness and disdain.”
+
+Isaura took back the letter, and leaned her cheek on her hand, looking
+dreamily into space. It was some moments before she replied, and her
+words then had no reference to Mrs. Morley’s consolatory exhortation.
+
+“He was so pleased when he learned that I renounced the career on which
+I had set my ambition. I thought he would have been so pleased when I
+sought in another career to raise myself nearer to his level--I see
+now how sadly I was mistaken. All that perplexed me before in him is
+explained. I did not guess how foolishly I had deceived myself till
+three days ago,--then I did guess it; and it was that guess which
+tortured me so terribly that I could not keep my heart to myself when I
+saw you to-day; in spite of all womanly pride it would force its way--to
+the truth.
+
+“Hush! I must tell you what was said to me by another friend of mine--a
+good friend, a wise and kind one. Yet I was so angry when she said it
+that I thought I could never see her more.”
+
+“My sweet darling! who was this friend, and what did she say to you?”
+
+“The friend was Madame Savarin.”
+
+“No woman loves you more except myself--and she said?”
+
+“That she would have suffered no daughter of hers to commit her name to
+the talk of the world as I have done--be exposed to the risk of insult
+as I have been--until she had the shelter and protection denied to
+me. And I have thus overleaped the bound that a prudent mother would
+prescribe to her child, have become one whose hand men do not seek,
+unless they themselves take the same roads to notoriety. Do you not
+think she was right?”
+
+“Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl,--certainly not right. But
+I do wish that you had the shelter and protection which Madame Savarin
+meant to express; I do wish that you were happily married to one very
+different from Mr. Vane--one who would be more proud of your genius than
+of your beauty--one who would say, ‘My name, safer far in its enduring
+nobility than those that depend on titles and lands--which are held on
+the tenure of the popular breath--must be honoured by posterity, for
+She has deigned to make it hers. No democratic revolution can disennoble
+me.”
+
+“Ay, ay, you believe that men will be found to think with complacency
+that they owe to a wife a name they could not achieve for themselves.
+Possibly there are such men. Where?--among those that are already united
+by sympathies in the same callings, the same labours, the same hopes and
+fears with the women who have left behind them the privacies of home.
+Madame de Grantmesnil was wrong. Artists should wed with artists.
+True--true!”
+
+Here she passed her hand over her forehead--it was a pretty way of hers
+when seeking to concentrate thought--and was silent a moment or so.
+
+“Did you ever feel,” she then asked dreamily, “that there are moments in
+life when a dark curtain seems to fall over one’s past that a day before
+was so clear, so blended with the present? One cannot any longer look
+behind; the gaze is attracted onward, and a track of fire flashes upon
+the future,--the future which yesterday was invisible. There is a line
+by some English poet--Mr. Vane once quoted it, not to me, but to M.
+Savarin, and in illustration of his argument, that the most complicated
+recesses of thought are best reached by the simplest forms of
+expression. I said to myself, ‘I will study that truth if ever I take to
+literature as I have taken to song;’ and--yes--it was that evening
+that the ambition fatal to woman fixed on me its relentless fangs--at
+Enghien--we were on the lake--the sun was setting.”
+
+“But you do not tell me the line that so impressed you,” said Mrs.
+Morley, with a woman’s kindly tact.
+
+“The line--which line? Oh, I remember; the line was this:
+
+“‘I see as from a tower the end of all.”
+
+“And now--kiss me, dearest--never a word again to me about this
+conversation: never a word about Mr. Vane--the dark curtain has fallen
+on the past.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Men and women are much more like each other in certain large elements
+of character than is generally supposed, but it is that very resemblance
+which makes their differences the more incomprehensible to each other;
+just as in politics, theology, or that most disputatious of all things
+disputable, metaphysics, the nearer the reasoners approach each other in
+points that to an uncritical bystander seem the most important, the
+more sure they are to start off in opposite directions upon reaching the
+speck of a pin-prick.
+
+Now there are certain grand meeting-places between man and woman--the
+grandest of all is on the ground of love, and yet here also is the great
+field of quarrel. And here the teller of a tale such as mine ought,
+if he is sufficiently wise to be humble, to know that it is almost
+profanation if, as man, he presumes to enter the penetralia of a woman’s
+innermost heart, and repeat, as a man would repeat, all the vibrations
+of sound which the heart of a woman sends forth undistinguishable even
+to her own ear.
+
+I know Isaura as intimately as if I had rocked her in her cradle, played
+with her in her childhood, educated and trained her in her youth; and
+yet I can no more tell you faithfully what passed in her mind during
+the forty-eight hours that intervened between her conversation with that
+American lady and her reappearance in some commonplace drawing-room,
+than I can tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel if the sun that
+his world reflected were blotted out of creation.
+
+I can only say that when she reappeared in that commonplace drawing-room
+world, there was a change in her face not very perceptible to the
+ordinary observer. If anything, to his eye she was handsomer--the eye
+was brighter--the complexion (always lustrous, though somewhat pale,
+the limpid paleness that suits so well with dark hair) was yet more
+lustrous,--it was flushed into delicate rose hues--hues that still
+better suit with dark hair. What, then, was the change, and change not
+for the better? The lips, once so pensively sweet, had grown hard; on
+the brow that had seemed to laugh when the lips did, there was no longer
+sympathy between brow and lip; there was scarcely seen a fine threadlike
+line that in a few years would be a furrow on the space between the
+eyes; the voice was not so tenderly soft; the step was haughtier. What
+all such change denoted it is for a woman to decide-I can only guess.
+In the mean while, Mademoiselle Cicogna had sent her servant daily to
+inquire after M. Rameau. That, I think, she would have done under any
+circumstances. Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin--made it
+up with her--sealed the reconciliation by a cold kiss. That, too, under
+any circumstances, I think she would have done--under some circumstances
+the kiss might have been less cold.
+
+There was one thing unwonted in her habits. I mention it, though it is
+only a woman who can say if it means anything worth noticing.
+
+For six days she had left a letter from Madame de Grantmesnil
+unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was connected the whole of her
+innermost life--from the day when the lonely desolate child had seen,
+beyond the dusty thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery land
+in poetry and art-onward through her restless, dreamy, aspiring
+youth-onward--onward--till now, through all that constitutes the
+glorious reality that we call romance.
+
+Never before had she left for two days unanswered letters which were to
+her as Sibylline leaves to some unquiet neophyte yearning for solutions
+to enigmas suggested whether by the world without or by the soul within.
+For six days Madame de Grantmesnil’s letter remained unanswered, unread,
+neglected, thrust out of sight; just as when some imperious necessity
+compels us to grapple with a world that is, we cast aside the romance
+which, in our holiday hours, had beguiled us to a world with which we
+have interests and sympathies no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Gustave recovered, but slowly. The physician pronounced him out of all
+immediate danger, but said frankly to him, and somewhat more guardedly
+to his parents, “There is ample cause to beware.” “Look you, my young
+friend,” he added to Rameau, “mere brain-work seldom kills a man
+once accustomed to it like you; but heart-work, and stomach-work, and
+nerve-work, added to brain-work, may soon consign to the coffin a frame
+ten times more robust than yours. Write as much as you will--that is
+your vocation; but it is not your vocation to drink absinthe--to preside
+at orgies in the Maison Doree. Regulate yourself, and not after the
+fashion of the fabulous Don Juan. Marry--live soberly and quietly--and
+you may survive the grandchildren of viveurs. Go on as you have done,
+and before the year is out you are in Pere la Chaise.”
+
+Rameau listened languidly, but with a profound conviction that the
+physician thoroughly understood his case.
+
+Lying helpless on his bed, he had no desire for orgies at the Maison
+Doree; with parched lips thirsty for innocent tisane of lime-blossoms,
+the thought of absinthe was as odious to him as the liquid fire of
+Phlegethon. If ever sinner became suddenly convinced that there was
+a good deal to be said in favour of a moral life, that sinner at the
+moment I speak of was Gustave Rameau: Certainly a moral life--‘Domus
+et placens uxor’,--was essential to the poet who, aspiring to immortal
+glory, was condemned to the ailments of a very perishable frame.
+
+“Ah,” he murmured plaintively to himself, “that girl Isaura can have no
+true sympathy with genius! It is no ordinary man that she will kill in
+me!”
+
+And so murmuring he fell asleep. When he woke and found his head
+pillowed on his mother’s breast, it was much as a sensitive, delicate
+man may wake after having drunk too much the night before. Repentant,
+mournful, maudlin, he began to weep, and in the course of his weeping he
+confided to his mother the secret of his heart.
+
+Isaura had refused him--that refusal had made him desperate.
+
+“Ah! with Isaura how changed would be his habits! how pure! how
+healthful!” His mother listened fondly, and did her best to comfort him
+and cheer his drooping spirits.
+
+She told him of Isaura’s messages of inquiry duly twice a day. Rameau,
+who knew more about women in general, and Isaura in particular, than his
+mother conjectured, shook his head mournfully. “She could not do less,”
+ he said. “Has no one offered to do more?”--he thought of Julie when he
+asked that--Madame Rameau hesitated.
+
+The poor Parisians! it is the mode to preach against them; and before
+my book closes, I shall have to preach--no, not to preach, but to
+imply--plenty of faults to consider and amend. Meanwhile I try my best
+to take them, as the philosophy of life tells us to take other people,
+for what they are.
+
+I do not think the domestic relations of the Parisian bourgeoisie are
+as bad as they are said to be in French novels. Madame Rameau is not
+an uncommon type of her class. She had been when she first married
+singularly handsome. It was from her that Gustave inherited his beauty;
+and her husband was a very ordinary type of the French shopkeeper--very
+plain, by no means intellectual, but gay, good-humoured, devotedly
+attached to his wife, and with implicit trust in her conjugal virtue.
+Never was trust better placed. There was not a happier nor a more
+faithful couple in the quartier in which they resided. Madame Rameau
+hesitated when her boy, thinking of Julie, asked if no one had done more
+than send to inquire after him as Isaura had done.
+
+After that hesitating pause she said, “Yes--a young lady calling herself
+Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin wished to instal herself here as your
+nurse. When I said, ‘But I am his mother--he needs no other nurses,’ she
+would have retreated, and looked ashamed--poor thing! I don’t blame her
+if she loved my son. But, my son, I say this,--if you love her, don’t
+talk to me about that Mademoiselle Cicogna; and if you love Mademoiselle
+Cicogna, why, then your father will take care that the poor girl
+who loved you not knowing that you loved another is not left to the
+temptation of penury.”
+
+Rameau’s pale lips withered into a phantom-like sneer! Julie! the
+resplendent Julie!--true, only a ballet-dancer, but whose equipage in
+the Bois had once been the envy of duchesses--Julie! who had sacrificed
+fortune for his sake--who, freed from him, could have millionaires again
+at her feet!--Julie! to be saved from penury, as a shopkeeper would save
+an erring nursemaid--Julie! the irrepressible Julie! who had written
+to him, the day before his illness, in a pen dipped, not in ink, but in
+blood from a vein she had opened in her arm:
+
+   “Traitor!--I have not seen thee for three days. Dost thou dare to
+   love another? If so, I care not how thou attempt to conceal it--woe
+   to her! Ingrat! woe to thee! Love is not love, unless, when
+   betrayed by Love, it appeals to death. Answer me quick--quick.
+   JULIE.”
+
+Poor Gustave thought of that letter and groaned. Certainly his mother
+was right--he ought to get rid of Julie; but he did not clearly see
+how Julie was to be got rid of. He replied to Madame Rameau peevishly,
+“Don’t trouble your head about Mademoiselle Caumartin; she is in no want
+of money. Of course, if I could hope for Isaura--but, alas! I dare not
+hope. Give me my tisane.”
+
+When the doctor called next day, he looked grave, and, drawing Madame
+Rameau into the next room, he said, “We are not getting on so well as
+I had hoped; the fever is gone, but there is much to apprehend from the
+debility left behind. His spirits are sadly depressed.” Then added the
+doctor, pleasantly, and with that wonderful insight into our complex
+humanity in which physicians excel poets, and in which Parisian
+physicians are not excelled by any physicians in the world: “Can’t you
+think of any bit of good news--that ‘M. Thiers raves about your son’s
+last poem! that ‘it is a question among the Academicians between him and
+Jules Janin’--or that ‘the beautiful Duchesse de ------- has been placed
+in a lunatic asylum because she has gone mad for love of a certain young
+Red Republican whose name begins with R.’--can’t you think of any bit of
+similar good news? If you can, it will be a tonic to the relaxed state
+of your dear boy’s amour propre, compared to which all the drugs in the
+Pharmacopoeia are moonshine and water; and meanwhile be sure to remove
+him to your own house, and out of the reach of his giddy young friends,
+as soon as you possibly can.”
+
+When that great authority thus left his patient’s case in the hands of
+the mother, she said, “The boy shall be saved.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Isaura was seated beside the Venosta,--to whom, of late, she seemed
+to cling with greater fondness than ever,--working at some piece of
+embroidery--a labour from which she had been estranged for years; but
+now she had taken writing, reading, music, into passionate disgust.
+Isaura was thus seated, silently intent upon her work, and the Venosta
+in full talk, when the servant announced Madame Rameau.
+
+The name startled both; the Venosta had never heard that the poet had
+a mother living, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that Madame
+Rameau must be a wife he had hitherto kept unrevealed. And when a woman,
+still very handsome, with a countenance grave and sad, entered the
+salon, the Venosta murmured, “The husband’s perfidy reveals itself on
+a wife’s face,” and took out her handkerchief in preparation for
+sympathising tears.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said the visitor, halting, with eyes fixed on Isaura.
+“Pardon my intrusion-my son has the honour to be known to you. Every one
+who knows him must share in my sorrow--so young--so promising, and in
+such danger--my poor boy!” Madame Rameau stopped abruptly. Her tears
+forced their way--she turned aside to conceal them.
+
+In her twofold condition of being--womanhood and genius--Isaura was
+too largely endowed with that quickness of sympathy which distinguishes
+woman from man, and genius from talent, not to be wondrously susceptible
+to pity.
+
+Already she had wound her arm round the grieving mother--already drawn
+her to the seat from which she herself had risen--and bending over her
+had said some words--true, conventional enough in themselves,--but cooed
+forth in a voice the softest I ever expect to hear, save in dreams, on
+this side of the grave.
+
+Madame Rameau swept her hand over her eyes, glanced round the room, and
+noticing the Venosta in dressing-robe and slippers, staring with those
+Italian eyes, in seeming so quietly innocent, in reality so searchingly
+shrewd, she whispered pleadingly, “May I speak to you a few minutes
+alone?” This was not a request that Isaura could refuse, though she was
+embarrassed and troubled by the surmise of Madame Rameau’s object in
+asking it; accordingly she led her visitor into the adjoining room, and
+making an apologetic sign to the Venosta, closed the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+When they were alone, Madame Rameau took Isaura’s hand in both her
+own, and, gazing wistfully into her face, said, “No wonder you are so
+loved--yours is the beauty that sinks into the hearts and rests there.
+I prize my boy more, now that I have seen you. But, oh, Mademoiselle!
+pardon me--do not withdraw your hand--pardon the mother who comes from
+the sick-bed of her only son and asks if you will assist to save him! A
+word from you is life or death to him!”
+
+“Nay, nay, do not speak thus, Madame; your son knows how much I value,
+how sincerely I return, his friendship; but--but,” she paused a moment,
+and continued sadly and with tearful eyes--“I have no heart to give to
+him-to any one.”
+
+“I do not--I would not if I dared--ask what it would be violence to
+yourself to promise. I do not ask you to bid me return to my son and
+say, ‘Hope and recover,’ but let me take some healing message from your
+lips. If I understand your words rightly, I at least may say that you do
+not give to another the hopes you, deny to him?”
+
+“So far you understand me rightly, Madame. It has been said, that
+romance-writers give away so much of their hearts to heroes or heroines
+of their own creation, that they leave nothing worth the giving to human
+beings like themselves. Perhaps it is so; yet, Madame,” added Isaura,
+with a smile of exquisite sweetness in its melancholy, “I have heart
+enough left to feel for you.”
+
+Madame Rameau was touched. “Ah, Mademoiselle, I do not believe in the
+saying you have quoted. But I must not abuse your goodness by pressing
+further upon you subjects from which you shrink. Only one word more:
+you know that my husband and I are but quiet tradesfolks, not in the
+society, nor aspiring to it, to which my son’s talents have raised
+himself; yet dare I ask that you will not close here the acquaintance
+that I have obtruded on you?--dare I ask, that I may, now and then, call
+on you--that now and then I may see you at my own home? Believe that I
+would not here ask anything which your own mother would disapprove if
+she overlooked disparities of station. Humble as our home is, slander
+never passed its threshold.”
+
+“Ah, Madame, I and the Signora Venosta, whom in our Italian tongue I
+call mother, can but feel honoured and grateful whenever it pleases you
+to receive visits from us.”
+
+“It would be a base return for such gracious compliance with my request
+if I concealed from you the reason why I pray Heaven to bless you for
+that answer. The physician says that it may be long before my son is
+sufficiently convalescent to dispense with a mother’s care, and resume
+his former life and occupation in the great world. It is everything
+for us if we can coax him into coming under our own roof-tree. This is
+difficult to do. It is natural for a young man launched into the world
+to like his own chez lui. Then what will happen to Gustave? He,
+lonely and heart-stricken, will ask friends, young as himself, but
+far stronger, to come and cheer him; or he will seek to distract his
+thoughts by the overwork of his brain; in either case he is doomed. But
+I have stronger motives yet to fix him a while at our hearth. This
+is just the moment, once lost never to be regained, when soothing
+companionship, gentle reproachless advice, can fix him lastingly in the
+habits and modes of life which will banish all fears of his future from
+the hearts of his parents. You at least honour him with friendship, with
+kindly interest--you at least would desire to wean him from all that a
+friend may disapprove or lament--a creature whom Providence meant to be
+good, and perhaps great. If I say to him, ‘It will be long before you
+can go out and see your friends, but at my house your friends shall come
+and see you--among them Signora Venosta and Mademoiselle Cicogna will
+now and then drop in’--my victory is gained, and my son is saved.”
+
+“Madame,” said Isaura, half sobbing, “what a blessing to have a mother
+like you! Love so noble ennobles those who hear its voice. Tell your son
+how ardently I wish him to be well, and to fulfil more than the promise
+of his genius; tell him also this--how I envy him his mother.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+It needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligent reader,
+be thou man or woman--but more especially woman--of the consequences
+following each other, as wave follows wave in a tide, that resulted from
+the interview with which my last chapter closed. Gustave is removed to
+his parents’ house; he remains for weeks confined within doors, or, on
+sunny days, takes an hour or so in his own carriage, drawn by the horse
+bought from Rochebriant, into by-roads remote from the fashionable
+world; Isaura visits his mother, liking, respecting, influenced by her
+more and more; in those visits she sits beside the sofa on which Rameau
+reclines. Gradually, gently--more and more by his mother’s lips--is
+impressed on her the belief that it is in her power to save a human
+life, and to animate its career towards those goals which are never
+based wholly upon earth in the earnest eyes of genius, or perhaps in the
+yet more upward vision of pure-souled believing woman.
+
+And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages of
+convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every step in his
+progress--seems so gently softened in character--seems so refined from
+the old affectations, so ennobled above the old cynicism--and, above
+all, so needing her presence, so sunless without it, that--well, need I
+finish the sentence?--the reader will complete what I leave unsaid.
+
+Enough, that one day Isaura returned home from a visit at Madame
+Rameau’s with the knowledge that her hand was pledged--her future life
+disposed of; and that, escaping from the Venosta, whom she so fondly,
+and in her hunger for a mother’s love, called Madre, the girl shut
+herself up in her own room with locked doors.
+
+Ah, poor child! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura! whose delicate image I feel
+myself too rude and too hard to transfer to this page in the purity of
+its outlines, and the blended softnesses of its hues--thou who,
+when saying things serious in the words men use, saidst them with a
+seriousness so charming, and with looks so feminine--thou, of whom no
+man I ever knew was quite worthy--ah, poor, simple, miserable girl, as I
+see thee now in the solitude of that white-curtained virginal room; hast
+thou, then, merged at last thy peculiar star into the cluster of all
+these commonplace girls whose lips have said “Ay,” when their hearts
+said “No”?--thou, O brilliant Isaura! thou, O motherless child!
+
+She had sunk into her chair--her own favourite chair, the covering of it
+had been embroidered by Madame de Grantmesnil, and bestowed on her as a
+birthday present last year--the year in which she had first learned what
+it is to love--the year in which she had first learned what it is to
+strive for fame. And somehow uniting, as many young people do, love and
+fame in dreams of the future, that silken seat had been to her as the
+Tripod of Delphi was to the Pythian: she had taken to it, as it were
+intuitively, in all those hours, whether of joy or sorrow, when youth
+seeks to prophesy, and does but dream.
+
+There she sat now, in a sort of stupor--a sort of dreary
+bewilderment--the illusion of the Pythian gone--desire of dream and of
+prophecy alike extinct--pressing her hands together, and muttering to
+herself, “What has happened?--what have I done?”
+
+Three hours later you would not have recognised the same face that you
+see now. For then the bravery, the honour, the loyalty of the girl’s
+nature had asserted their command. Her promise had been given to one
+man--it could not be recalled. Thought itself of any other man must be
+banished. On her hearth lay ashes and tinder--the last remains of every
+treasured note from Graham Vane; of the hoarded newspaper extracts that
+contained his name; of the dry treatise he had published, and which had
+made the lovely romance-writer first desire “to know something about
+politics.” Ay, if the treatise had been upon fox-hunting, she would have
+desired “to know something about” that! Above all, yet distinguishable
+from the rest--as the sparks still upon stem and leaf here and there
+faintly glowed and twinkled--the withered flowers which recorded that
+happy hour in the arbour, and the walks of the forsaken garden--the hour
+in which she had so blissfully pledged herself to renounce that career
+in art wherein fame would have been secured, but which would not have
+united Fame with Love--in dreams evermore over now.
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Graham Vane had heard nothing for months from M. Renard, when one
+morning he received the letter I translate:
+
+“MONSIEUR,--I am happy to inform you that I have at last obtained one
+piece of information which may lead to a more important discovery. When
+we parted after our fruitless research in Vienna, we had both concurred
+in the persuasion that, for some reason known only to the two ladies
+themselves, Madame Marigny and Madame Duval had exchanged names--that
+it was Madame Marigny who had deceased in the name of Madame Duval, and
+Madame Duval who had survived in that of Marigny.
+
+“It was clear to me that the beau Monsieur who had visited the false
+Duval must have been cognisant of this exchange of name, and that, if
+his name and whereabouts could be ascertained, he, in all probability,
+would know what had become of the lady who is the object of our
+research; and after the lapse of so many years he would probably have
+very slight motive to preserve the concealment of facts which might,
+no doubt, have been convenient at the time. The lover of the soi-disant
+Mademoiselle Duval was by such accounts as we could gain a man of some
+rank--very possibly a married man; and the liaison, in short, was one of
+those which, while they last, necessitate precautions and secrecy.
+
+“Therefore, dismissing all attempts at further trace of the missing
+lady, I resolved to return to Vienna as soon as the business that
+recalled me to Paris was concluded, and devote myself exclusively to the
+search after the amorous and mysterious Monsieur.
+
+“I did not state this determination to you, because, possibly, I
+might be in error--or, if not in error, at least too sanguine in my
+expectations--and it is best to avoid disappointing an honourable
+client.
+
+“One thing was clear, that, at the time of the soi-disant Duval’s
+decease, the beau Monsieur was at Vienna.
+
+“It appeared also tolerably clear that when the lady friend of the
+deceased quitted Munich so privately, it was to Vienna she repaired,
+and from Vienna comes the letter demanding the certificates of Madame
+Duval’s death. Pardon me, if I remind you of all these circumstances no
+doubt fresh in your recollection. I repeat them in order to justify the
+conclusions to which they led me.
+
+“I could not, however, get permission to absent myself from Paris for
+the time I might require till the end of last April. I had meanwhile
+sought all private means of ascertaining what Frenchmen of rank and
+station were in that capital in the autumn of 1849. Among the list of
+the very few such Messieurs I fixed upon one as the most likely to be
+the mysterious Achille--Achille was, indeed, his nom de bapteme.
+
+“A man of intrigue--a bonnes fortunes--of lavish expenditure withal;
+very tenacious of his dignity, and avoiding any petty scandals by
+which it might be lowered; just the man who, in some passing affair of
+gallantry with a lady of doubtful repute, would never have signed his
+titular designation to a letter, and would have kept himself as much
+incognito as he could. But this man was dead--had been dead some years.
+He had not died at Vienna--never visited that capital for some years
+before his death. He was then, and had long been, the ami de la maison
+of one of those grandes dames of whose intimacy grands seigneurs are not
+ashamed. They parade there the bonnes fortunes they conceal elsewhere.
+Monsieur and the grande dame were at Baden when the former died. Now,
+Monsieur, a Don Juan of that stamp is pretty sure always to have a
+confidential Leporello. If I could find Leporello alive I might learn
+the secrets not to be extracted from a Don Juan defunct. I ascertained,
+in truth, both at Vienna, to which I first repaired in order to verify
+the renseignements I had obtained at Paris, and at Baden, to which I
+then bent my way, that this brilliant noble had a favourite valet who
+had lived with him from his youth--an Italian, who had contrived in
+the course of his service to lay by savings enough to set up a hotel
+somewhere in Italy, supposed to be Pisa. To Pisa I repaired, but the man
+had left some years; his hotel had not prospered--he had left in debt.
+No one could say what had become of him. At last, after a long and
+tedious research, I found him installed as manager of a small hotel at
+Genoa--a pleasant fellow enough; and after friendly intercourse with
+him (of course I lodged at his hotel), I easily led him to talk of his
+earlier life and adventures, and especially of his former master, of
+whose splendid career in the army of ‘La Belle Deesse’ he was not a
+little proud. It was not very easy to get him to the particular subject
+in question. In fact, the affair with the poor false Duval had been so
+brief and undistinguished an episode in his master’s life, that it was
+not without a strain of memory that he reached it.
+
+“By little and little, however, in the course of two or three evenings,
+and by the aid of many flasks of Orviette or bottles of Lacrima (wines,
+Monsieur, that I do not commend to any one who desires to keep his
+stomach sound and his secrets safe), I gathered these particulars.
+
+“Our Don Juan, since the loss of a wife in the first year of marriage,
+had rarely visited Paris where he had a domicile--his ancestral hotel
+there he had sold.
+
+“But happening to visit that capital of Europe a few months before we
+come to our dates at Aix-la-Chapelle, he made acquaintance with Madame
+Marigny, a natural daughter of high-placed parents, by whom, of course,
+she had never been acknowledged, but who had contrived that she should
+receive a good education at a convent; and on leaving it also contrived
+that an old soldier of fortune--which means an officer without
+fortune--who had served in Algiers with some distinction, should offer
+her his hand, and add the modest dot they assigned her to his yet more
+modest income. They contrived also that she should understand the
+offer must be accepted. Thus Mademoiselle ‘Quelque Chose’ became Madame
+Marigny, and she, on her part, contrived that a year or so later she
+should be left a widow. After a marriage, of course the parents washed
+their hands of her--they had done their duty. At the time Don Juan made
+this lady’s acquaintance nothing could be said against her character;
+but the milliners and butchers had begun to imply that they would rather
+have her money than trust to her character. Don Juan fell in love with
+her, satisfied the immediate claims of milliner and butcher, and
+when they quitted Paris it was agreed that they should meet later at
+Aix-la-Chapelle. But when he resorted to that sultry and, to my mind,
+unalluring spa, he was surprised by a line from her saying that she had
+changed her name of Marigny for that of Duval.
+
+“‘I recollect,’ said Leporello, ‘that two days afterwards my master said
+to me, ‘Caution and secrecy. Don’t mention my name at the house to which
+I may send you with any note for Madame Duval. I don’t announce my name
+when I call. La petite Marigny has exchanged her name for that of Louise
+Duval; and I find that there is a Louise Duval here, her friend, who
+is niece to a relation of my own, and a terrible relation to quarrel
+with--a dead shot and unrivalled swordsman--Victor de Mauleon. My master
+was brave enough, but he enjoyed life, and he did not think la petite
+Marigny worth being killed for.’
+
+“Leporello remembered very little of what followed. All he did remember
+is that Don Juan, when at Vienna, said to him one morning, looking less
+gay than usual, ‘It is finished with ca petite Marigny-she is no more.’
+Then he ordered his bath, wrote a note, and said with tears in his eyes,
+‘Take this to Mademoiselle Celeste; not to be compared to la petite
+Marigny; but la petite Celeste is still alive.’ Ah, Monsieur! if only
+any man in France could be as proud of his ruler as that Italian was of
+my countrymen! Alas! we Frenchmen are all made to command--or at least
+we think ourselves so--and we are insulted by one who says to us, ‘Serve
+and obey.’ Nowadays, in France, we find all Don Juans and no Leporellos.
+
+“After strenuous exertions upon my part to recall to Leporello’s mind
+the important question whether he had ever seen the true Duval, passing
+under the name of Marigny--whether she had not presented herself to his
+master at Vienna or elsewhere--he rubbed his forehead, and drew from it
+these reminiscences.
+
+“‘On the day that his Excellency,’--Leporello generally so styled his
+master--‘Excellency,’ as you are aware, is the title an Italian would
+give to Satan if taking his wages, told me that la petite Marigny was no
+more, he had received previously a lady veiled and mantled, whom I did
+not recognise as any one I had seen before, but I noticed her way of
+carrying herself--haughtily--her head thrown back; and I thought to
+myself, that lady is one of his grandes dames. She did call again two or
+three times, never announcing her name; then she did not reappear. She
+might be Madame Duval--I can’t say.’
+
+“‘But did you never hear his Excellency speak of the real Duval after
+that time?’
+
+“‘No--non mi ricordo--I don’t remember.’
+
+“‘Nor of some living Madame Marigny, though the real one was dead?’
+
+“‘Stop, I do recollect; not that he ever named such a person to me, but
+that I have posted letters for him to a Madame Marigny--oh, yes! even
+years after the said petite Marigny was dead; and once I did venture to
+say, ‘Pardon me, Eccellenza, but may I ask if that poor lady is really
+dead, since I have to prepay this letter to her?’”
+
+“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘Madame Marigny! Of course the one you know is dead, but
+there are others of the same name; this lady is of my family. Indeed,
+her house, though noble in itself, recognises the representative of mine
+as its head, and I am too bon prince not to acknowledge and serve any
+one who branches out of my own tree.’”
+
+“A day after this last conversation on the subject, Leporello said to
+me: ‘My friend, you certainly have some interest in ascertaining what
+became of the lady who took the name of Marigny (I state this frankly,
+Monsieur, to show how difficult even for one so prudent as I am to beat
+about a bush long but what you let people know the sort of bird you are
+in search of).
+
+“‘Well,’ said I, ‘she does interest me. I knew something of that Victor
+de Mauleon, whom his Excellency did not wish to quarrel with; and it
+would be a kindly act to her relation if one could learn what became of
+Louise Duval.’
+
+“‘I can put you on the way of learning all that his Excellency was
+likely to have known of her through correspondence. I have often heard
+him quote, with praise, a saying so clever that it might have been
+Italian, “Never write, never burn;” that is, never commit yourself by
+a letter--keep all letters that could put others in your power. All the
+letters he received were carefully kept and labelled. I sent them to his
+son in four large trunks. His son, no doubt, has them still.’
+
+“Now, however, I have exhausted my budget. I arrived at Paris last
+night. I strongly advise you to come hither at once, if you still desire
+to prosecute your search.
+
+“You, Monsieur, can do what I could not venture to do; you can ask the
+son of Don Juan if, amid the correspondence of his father, which he may
+have preserved, there be any signed Marigny or Duval--any, in
+short, which can throw light on this very obscure complication of
+circumstances. A grand seigneur would naturally be more complaisant to
+a man of your station than he would be to an agent of police. Don
+Juan’s son, inheriting his father’s title, is Monsieur le Marquis de
+Rochebriant; and permit me to add, that at this moment, as the journals
+doubtless inform you, all Paris resounds with the rumour of the coming
+war; and Monsieur de Rochebriant--who is, as I have ascertained, now
+in Paris--it may be difficult to find anywhere on earth a month or
+two hence.--I have the honour, with profound consideration, &c., &c.,
+RENARD.”
+
+The day after the receipt of this letter Graham Vane was in Paris.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Among things indescribable is that which is called “Agitation” in
+Paris--“Agitation” without riot or violence--showing itself by no
+disorderly act, no turbulent outburst. Perhaps the cafes are more
+crowded; passengers in the streets stop each other more often, and
+converse in small knots and groups; yet, on the whole, there is little
+externally to show how loudly the heart of Paris is beating. A traveller
+may be passing through quiet landscapes, unconscious that a great battle
+is going on some miles off, but if he will stop and put his ear to the
+ground he will recognise by a certain indescribable vibration, the voice
+of the cannon.
+
+But at Paris an acute observer need not stop and put his ear to the
+ground; he feels within himself a vibration--a mysterious inward
+sympathy which communicates to the individual a conscious thrill--when
+the passions of the multitude are stirred, no matter how silently.
+
+Tortoni’s cafe was thronged when Duplessis and Frederic Lemercier
+entered it: it was in vain to order breakfast; no table was vacant
+either within the rooms or under the awnings without.
+
+But they could not retreat so quickly as they had entered. On catching
+sight of the financier several men rose and gathered round him, eagerly
+questioning:
+
+“What do you think, Duplessis? Will any insult to France put a drop of
+warm blood into the frigid veins of that miserable Ollivier?”
+
+“It is not yet clear that France has been insulted, Messieurs,” replied
+Duplessis, phlegmatically.
+
+“Bah! Not insulted! The very nomination of a Hohenzollern to the crown
+of Spain was an insult--what would you have more?”
+
+“I tell you what it is, Duplessis,” said the Vicomte de Breze, whose
+habitual light good temper seemed exchanged for insolent swagger--“I
+tell you what it is, your friend the Emperor has no more courage than a
+chicken. He is grown old, and infirm, and lazy; he knows that he can’t
+even mount on horseback. But if, before this day week, he has not
+declared war on the Prussians, he will be lucky if he can get off as
+quietly as poor Louis Philippe did under shelter of his umbrella, and
+ticketed ‘Schmidt.’ Or could you not, M. Duplessis, send him back to
+London in a bill of exchange?”
+
+“For a man of your literary repute, M. le Vicomte,” said Duplessis, “you
+indulge in a strange confusion of metaphors. But, pardon me, I came here
+to breakfast, and I cannot remain to quarrel. Come, Lemercier, let us
+take our chance of a cutlet at the Trois Freres.”
+
+“Fox, Fox,” cried Lemercier, whistling to a poodle that had followed him
+into the cafe, and, frightened by the sudden movement and loud voices of
+the habitues, had taken refuge under the table.
+
+“Your dog is poltron,” said De Breze; “call him Nap.” At this stroke
+of humour there was a general laugh, in the midst of which Duplessis
+escaped, and Frederic, having discovered and caught his dog, followed
+with that animal tenderly clasped in his arms.
+
+“I would not lose Fox for a great deal,” said Lemercier with
+effusion; “a pledge of love and fidelity from an English lady the most
+distinguished: the lady left me--the dog remains.”
+
+Duplessis smiled grimly: “What a thoroughbred Parisian you are, my dear
+Frederic! I believe if the tramp of the last angel were sounding, the
+Parisians would be divided into two sets: one would be singing the
+Marseillaise, and parading the red flag; the other would be shrugging
+their shoulders and saying, ‘Bah! as if le Bon Dieu would have the bad
+taste to injure Paris--the Seat of the Graces, the School of the Arts,
+the Fountain of Reason, the Eye of the World;’ and so be found by
+the destroying angel caressing poodles and making bons mots about les
+femmes.”
+
+“And quite right, too,” said Lemercier, complacently; “what other people
+in the world could retain lightness of heart under circumstances so
+unpleasant? But why do you take things so solemnly? Of course there will
+be war idle now to talk of explanations and excuses. When a Frenchman
+says, ‘I am insulted,’ he is not going to be told that he is not
+insulted. He means fighting, and not apologising. But what if there be
+war? Our brave soldiers beat the Prussians--take the Rhine--return
+to Paris covered with laurels; a new Boulevard de Berlin eclipses the
+Boulevard Sebastopol. By the way, Duplessis, a Boulevard de Berlin will
+be a good speculation--better than the Rue de Louvier. Ah! is not that
+my English friend, Grarm Varn?” here, quitting the arm of Duplessis,
+Lemercier stopped a gentleman who was about to pass him unnoticing. “Bon
+jour, mon ami! how long have you been at Paris?”
+
+“I only arrived last evening,” answered Graham, “and my stay will be so
+short that it is a piece of good luck, my dear Lemercier, to meet with
+you, and exchange a cordial shake of the hand.”
+
+“We are just going to breakfast at the Trois Freres--Duplessis and
+I--pray join us.”
+
+“With great pleasure--ah, M. Duplessis, I shall be glad to hear from
+you that the Emperor will be firm enough to check the advances of that
+martial fever which, to judge by the persons I meet, seems to threaten
+delirium.”
+
+Duplessis looked very keenly at Graham’s face, as he replied slowly:
+“The English, at least, ought to know that when the Emperor by his last
+reforms resigned his personal authority for constitutional monarchy, it
+ceased to be a question whether he could or could not be firm in
+matters that belonged to the Cabinet and the Chambers. I presume that
+if Monsieur Gladstone advised Queen Victoria to declare war upon the
+Emperor of Russia, backed by a vast majority in Parliament, you would
+think me very ignorant of constitutional monarchy and Parliamentary
+government if I said, ‘I hope Queen Victoria will resist that martial
+fever.’”
+
+“You rebuke me very fairly, M. Duplessis, if you can show me that the
+two cases are analogous; but we do not understand in England that,
+despite his last reforms, the Emperor has so abnegated his individual
+ascendency, that his will, clearly and resolutely expressed, would not
+prevail in his Council and silence opposition in the Chambers. Is it so?
+I ask for information.”
+
+The three men were walking on towards the Palais Royal side by side
+while this conversation proceeded.
+
+“That all depends,” replied Duplessis, “upon what may be the increase
+of popular excitement at Paris. If it slackens, the Emperor, no doubt,
+could turn to wise account that favourable pause in the fever. But if
+it continues to swell, and Paris cries, ‘War,’ in a voice as loud as
+it cried to Louis Philippe ‘Revolution,’ do you think that the Emperor
+could impose on his ministers the wisdom of peace? His ministers would
+be too terrified by the clamour to undertake the responsibility of
+opposing it--they would resign. Where is the Emperor to find another
+Cabinet? a peace Cabinet? What and who are the orators for peace?--whom
+a handful!--who? Gambetta, Jules Favre, avowed Republicans,--would they
+even accept the post of ministers to Louis Napoleon? If they did,
+would not their first step be the abolition of the Empire? Napoleon is
+therefore so far a constitutional monarch in the same sense as Queen
+Victoria, that the popular will in the country (and in France in such
+matters Paris is the country) controls the Chambers, controls the
+Cabinet; and against the Cabinet the Emperor could not contend. I say
+nothing of the army--a power in France unknown to you in England,
+which would certainly fraternise with no peace party. If war is
+proclaimed,--let England blame it if she will--she can’t lament it more
+than I should: but let England blame the nation; let her blame, if she
+please, the form of the government, which rests upon popular suffrage;
+but do not let her blame our sovereign more than the French would blame
+her own, if compelled by the conditions on which she holds her crown to
+sign a declaration of war, which vast majorities in a Parliament just
+elected, and a Council of Ministers whom she could not practically
+replace, enforced upon her will.”
+
+“Your observations, M. Duplessis, impress me strongly, and add to the
+deep anxieties with which, in common with all my countrymen, I regard
+the menacing aspect of the present hour. Let us hope the best. Our
+Government, I know, is exerting itself to the utmost verge of its power,
+to remove every just ground of offence that the unfortunate nomination
+of a German Prince to the Spanish throne could not fail to have given to
+French statesmen.”
+
+“I am glad you concede that such a nomination was a just ground of
+offence,” said Lemercier, rather bitterly; “for I have met Englishmen
+who asserted that France had no right to resent any choice of a
+sovereign that Spain might make.”
+
+“Englishmen in general are not very reflective politicians in foreign
+affairs,” said Graham; “but those who are must see that France could
+not, without alarm the most justifiable, contemplate a cordon of hostile
+states being drawn around her on all sides,--Germany, is, itself so
+formidable since the field of Sadowa, on the east; a German prince
+in the southwest; the not improbable alliance between Prussia and the
+Italian kingdom, already so alienated from the France to which it
+owed so much. If England would be uneasy were a great maritime power
+possessed of Antwerp, how much more uneasy might France justly be if
+Prussia could add the armies of Spain to those of Germany, and launch
+them both upon France. But that cause of alarm is over--the Hohenzollern
+is withdrawn. Let us hope for the best.”
+
+The three men had now seated themselves at a table in the Trois Freres,
+and Lemercier volunteered the task of inspecting the menu and ordering
+the repast, still keeping guard on Fox.
+
+“Observe that man,” said Duplessis, pointing towards a gentleman who
+had just entered; “the other day he was the popular hero--now, in the
+excitement of threatened war, he is permitted to order his bifteck
+uncongratulated, uncaressed; such is fame at Paris! here to-day and gone
+to-morrow.”
+
+“How did the man become famous?”
+
+“He is a painter, and refused a decoration--the only French painter who
+ever did.”
+
+“And why refuse?”
+
+“Because he is more stared at as the man who refused than he would have
+been as the man who accepted. If ever the Red Republicans have their
+day, those among them most certain of human condemnation will be the
+coxcombs who have gone mad for the desire of human applause.”
+
+“You are a profound philosopher, M. Duplessis.”
+
+“I hope not--I have an especial contempt for philosophers. Pardon me a
+moment--I see a man to whom I would say a word or two.”
+
+Duplessis crossed over to another table to speak to a middle-aged man of
+somewhat remarkable countenance, with the red ribbon in his buttonhole,
+in whom Graham recognised an ex-minister of the Emperor, differing from
+most of those at that day in his Cabinet, in the reputation of being
+loyal to his master and courageous against a mob. Left thus alone with
+Lemercier, Graham said:
+
+“Pray tell me where I can find your friend the Marquis de Rochebriant. I
+called at his apartment this morning, and I was told that he had gone on
+some visit into the country, taking his valet, and the concierge could
+not give me his address. I thought myself so lucky on meeting with you,
+who are sure to know.”
+
+“No, I do not; it is some days since I saw Alain. But Duplessis will be
+sure to know.” Here the financier rejoined them.
+
+“Mon cher, Grarm Varn wants to know for what Sabine shades Rochebriant
+has deserted the ‘fumum opes strepitumque’ of the capital.”
+
+“Ah! the Marquis is a friend of yours, Monsieur?”
+
+“I can scarcely boast that honour, but he is an acquaintance whom I
+should be very glad to see again.”
+
+“At this moment he is at the Duchesse de Tarascon’s country-house near
+Fontainebleau; I had a hurried line from him two days ago stating
+that he was going there on her urgent invitation. But he may return
+to-morrow; at all events he dines with me on the 8th, and I shall be
+charmed if you will do me the honour to meet him at my house.”
+
+“It is an invitation too agreeable to refuse, and I thank you very much
+for it.”
+
+Nothing worth recording passed further in conversation between Graham
+and the two Frenchmen. He left them smoking their cigars in the garden,
+and walked homeward by the Rue de Rivoli. As he was passing beside the
+Magasin du Louvre he stopped, and made way for a lady crossing quickly
+out of the shop towards her carriage at the door. Glancing at him with
+a slight inclination of her head in acknowledgment of his courtesy, the
+lady recognised his features,--
+
+“Ah, Mr. Vane!” she cried, almost joyfully--“you are then at Paris,
+though you have not come to see me.”
+
+“I only arrived last night, dear Mrs. Morley,” said Graham, rather
+embarrassed, “and only on some matters of business which unexpectedly
+summoned me. My stay will probably be very short.”
+
+“In that case let me rob you of a few minutes--no, not rob you even of
+them; I can take you wherever you want to go, and as my carriage moves
+more quickly than you do on foot, I shall save you the minutes instead
+of robbing you of them.”
+
+“You are most kind, but I was only going to my hotel, which is close
+by.”
+
+“Then you have no excuse for not taking a short drive with me in the
+Champs Elysees--come.”
+
+Thus bidden, Graham could not civilly disobey. He handed the fair
+American into her carriage, and seated himself by her side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+“Mr. Vane, I feel as if I had many apologies to make for the interest in
+your life which my letter to you so indiscreetly betrayed.”
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Morley! you cannot guess how deeply that interest touched me.”
+
+“I should not have presumed so far,” continued Mrs. Morley, unheeding
+the interruption, “if I had not been altogether in error as to the
+nature of your sentiments in a certain quarter. In this you must blame
+my American rearing. With us there are many flirtations between boys and
+girls which come to nothing; but when in my country a man like you meets
+with a woman like Mademoiselle Cicogna, there cannot be flirtation. His
+attentions, his looks, his manner, reveal to the eyes of those who care
+enough for him to watch, one of two things--either he coldly admires
+and esteems, or he loves with his whole heart and soul a woman worthy to
+inspire such a love. Well, I did watch, and I was absurdly mistaken. I
+imagined that I saw love, and rejoiced for the sake of both of you to
+think so. I know that in all countries, our own as well as yours, love
+is so morbidly sensitive and jealous that it is always apt to invent
+imaginary foes to itself. Esteem and admiration never do that. I thought
+that some misunderstanding, easily removed by the intervention of a
+third person, might have impeded the impulse of two hearts towards each
+other--and so I wrote. I had assumed that you loved--I am humbled to the
+last degree--you only admired and esteemed.”
+
+“Your irony is very keen, Mrs. Morley, and to you it may seem very
+just.”
+
+“Don’t call me Mrs. Morley in that haughty tone of voice,--can’t
+you talk to me as you would talk to a friend? You only esteemed and
+admired--there is an end of it.”
+
+“No, there is not an end of it,” cried Graham, giving way to an
+impetuosity of passion, which rarely, indeed, before another, escaped
+his self-control; “the end of it to me is a life out of which is ever
+stricken such love as I could feel for woman. To me true love can only
+come once. It came with my first look on that fatal face--it has never
+left me in thought by day, in dreams by night. The end of it to me
+is farewell to all such happiness as the one love of a life can
+promise--but--”
+
+“But what?” asked Mrs. Morley, softly, and very much moved by the
+passionate earnestness of Graham’s voice and words.
+
+“But,” he continued with a forced smile, “we Englishmen are trained to
+the resistance of absolute authority; we cannot submit all the elements
+that make up our being to the sway of a single despot. Love is the
+painter of existence, it should not be its sculptor.”
+
+“I do not understand the metaphor.”
+
+“Love colours our life, it should not chisel its form.”
+
+“My dear Mr. Vane, that is very cleverly said, but the human heart is
+too large and too restless to be quietly packed up in an aphorism. Do
+you mean to tell me that if you found you had destroyed Isaura Cicogna’s
+happiness as well as resigned your own, that thought would not somewhat
+deform the very shape you would give to your life? Is it colour alone
+that your life would lose?”
+
+“Ah, Mrs. Morley, do not lower your friend into an ordinary girl in whom
+idleness exaggerates the strength of any fancy over which it dreamily
+broods. Isaura Cicogna has her occupations--her genius--her fame--her
+career. Honestly speaking, I think that in these she will find a
+happiness that no quiet hearth could bestow. I will say no more. I feel
+persuaded that were we two united I could not make her happy. With the
+irresistible impulse that urges the genius of the writer towards its
+vent in public sympathy and applause, she would chafe if I said, ‘Be
+contented to be wholly mine.’ And if I said it not, and felt I had no
+right to say it, and allowed the full scope to her natural ambition,
+what then? She would chafe yet more to find that I had no fellowship in
+her aims and ends--that where I should feel pride, I felt humiliation.
+It would be so; I cannot help it, ‘tis my nature.”
+
+“So be it then. When, next year perhaps, you visit Paris, you will
+be safe from my officious interference! Isaura will be the wife of
+another.”
+
+Graham pressed his hand to his heart with the sudden movement of one who
+feels there an agonising spasm--his cheek, his very lips were bloodless.
+
+“I told you,” he said bitterly, “that your fears of my influence over
+the happiness of one so gifted, and so strong in such gifts, were
+groundless; you allow that I should be very soon forgotten?”
+
+“I allow no such thing--I wish I could. But do you know so little of a
+woman’s heart (and in matters of heart, I never yet heard that genius
+had a talisman against emotion),--do you know so little of a woman’s
+heart as not to know that the very moment in which she may accept a
+marriage the least fitted to render her happy, is that in which she has
+lost all hope of happiness in another?”
+
+“Is it indeed so?” murmured Graham--“Ay, I can conceive it.”
+
+“And have you so little comprehension of the necessities which that
+fame, that career to which you allow she is impelled by the instincts of
+genius, impose on this girl, young, beautiful, fatherless, motherless?
+No matter how pure her life, can she guard it from the slander of
+envious tongues? Will not all her truest friends--would not you, if you
+were her brother--press upon her by all the arguments that have most
+weight with the woman who asserts independence in her modes of life, and
+yet is wise enough to know that the world can only judge of virtue by
+its shadow--reputation, not to dispense with the protection which a
+husband can alone secure? And that is why I warn you, if it be yet time,
+that in resigning your own happiness you may destroy Isaura’s. She will
+wed another, but she will not be happy. What a chimera or dread your
+egotism as man conjures up! Oh! forsooth, the qualities that charm and
+delight a world are to unfit a woman to be helpmate to a man. Fie on
+you!--fie!”
+
+Whatever answer Graham might have made to these impassioned reproaches
+was here checked.
+
+Two men on horseback stopped the carriage. One was Enguerrand de
+Vandemar, the other was the Algerine Colonel whom we met at the supper
+given at the Maison Doree by Frederic Lemercier.
+
+“Pardon, Madame Morley,” said Enguerrand; “but there are symptoms of a
+mob-epidemic a little further up the fever began at Belleville, and is
+threatening the health of the Champs Elysees. Don’t be alarmed--it may
+be nothing, though it may be much. In Paris, one can never calculate
+an hour beforehand the exact progress of a politico-epidemic fever. At
+present I say, ‘Bah! a pack of ragged boys, gamins de Paris;’ but my
+friend the Colonel, twisting his moustache en souriant amerement, says,
+‘It is the indignation of Paris at the apathy of the Government under
+insult to the honour of France;’ and Heaven only knows how rapidly
+French gamins grow into giants when Colonels talk about the indignation
+of Paris and the honour of France!”
+
+“But what has happened?” asked Mrs. Morley, turning to the Colonel.
+
+“Madame,” replied the warrior, “it is rumoured that the King of Prussia
+has turned his back upon the ambassador of France; and that the pekin
+who is for peace at any price--M. Ollivier--will say tomorrow in the
+Chamber, that France submits to a slap in the face.”
+
+“Please, Monsieur de Vandemar, to tell my coachman to drive home,” said
+Mrs. Morley.
+
+The carriage turned and went homeward. The Colonel lifted his hat, and
+rode back to see what the gamins were about. Enguerrand, who had no
+interest in the gamins, and who looked on the Colonel as a bore, rode by
+the side of the carriage.
+
+“Is there anything serious in this?” asked Mrs. Morley.
+
+“At this moment, nothing. What it may be this hour to-morrow I cannot
+say. Ah! Monsieur Vane, bon jour I did not recognise you at first. Once,
+in a visit at the chateau of one of your distinguished countrymen, I saw
+two game-cocks turned out facing each other: they needed no pretext for
+quarrelling--neither do France and Prussia--no matter which game-cock
+gave the last offence, the two game-cocks must have it out. All that
+Ollivier can do, if he be wise, is to see that the French cock has
+his steel spurs as long as the Prussians. But this I do say, that if
+Ollivier attempts to put the French cock back into its bag, the Empire
+is gone in forty-eight hours. That to me is a trifle--I care nothing for
+the Empire; but that which is not a trifle is anarchy and chaos. Better
+war and the Empire than peace and Jules Favre. But let us seize the
+present hour, Mr. Vane; whatever happens to-morrow, shall we dine
+together to-day? Name your restaurant.”
+
+“I am so grieved,” answered Graham, rousing himself, “I am here only on
+business, and engaged all the evening.”
+
+“What a wonderful thing is this life of ours!” said Enguerrand. “The
+destiny of France at this moment hangs on a thread--I, a Frenchman,
+say to an English friend, ‘Let us dine--a cutlet to-day and a fig for
+to-morrow;’ and my English friend, distinguished native of a country
+with which we have the closest alliance, tells me that in this crisis
+of France he has business to attend to! My father is quite right; he
+accepts the Voltairean philosophy, and cries, Vivent les indifferents!”
+
+“My dear M. de Vandemar,” said Graham, “in every country you will find
+the same thing. All individuals massed together constitute public life.
+Each individual has a life of his own, the claims and the habits and
+the needs of which do not suppress his sympathies with public life,
+but imperiously overrule them. Mrs. Morley, permit me to pull the
+check-string--I get out here.”
+
+“I like that man,” said Enguerrand, as he continued to ride by the fair
+American, “in language and esprit he is so French.”
+
+“I use to like him better than you can,” answered Mrs. Morley, “but
+in prejudice and stupidity he is so English. As it seems you are
+disengaged, come and partake, pot au feu, with Frank and me.”
+
+“Charmed to do so,” answered the cleverest and best bred of all Parisian
+beaux garcons, “but forgive me if I quit you soon. This poor France!
+Entre nous, I am very uneasy about the Parisian fever. I must run away
+after dinner to clubs and cafes to learn the last bulletins.”
+
+“We have nothing like that French Legitimist in the States,” said the
+fair American to herself, “unless we should ever be so silly as to make
+Legitimists of the ruined gentlemen of the South.”
+
+Meanwhile Graham Vane went slowly back to his apartment. No false excuse
+had he made to Enguerrand; this evening was devoted to M. Renard, who
+told him little he had not known before; but his private life overruled
+his public, and all that night he, professed politician, thought
+sleeplessly, not over the crisis to France, which might alter the
+conditions of Europe, but the talk on his private life of that
+intermeddling American woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The next day, Wednesday, July 6th, commenced one of those eras in
+the world’s history in which private life would vainly boast that it
+overrules Life Public. How many private lives does such a terrible time
+influence, absorb, darken with sorrow, crush into graves?
+
+It was the day when the Duc de Gramont uttered the fatal speech which
+determined the die between peace and war. No one not at Paris on that
+day can conceive the popular enthusiasm with which that speech was
+hailed--the greater because the warlike tone of it was not anticipated;
+because there had been a rumour amidst circles the best informed that
+a speech of pacific moderation was to be the result of the Imperial
+Council. Rapturous indeed were the applauses with which the sentences
+that breathed haughty defiance were hailed by the Assembly. The ladies
+in the tribune rose with one accord, waving their handkerchiefs. Tall,
+stalwart, dark, with Roman features and lofty presence, the Minister
+of France seemed to say with Catiline in the fine tragedy: “Lo! where I
+stand, I am war!”
+
+Paris had been hungering for some hero of the hour--the Duc de Gramont
+became at once raised to that eminence. All the journals, save the
+very few which were friendly to peace, because hostile to the Emperor,
+resounded with praise, not only of the speech, but of the speaker. It is
+with a melancholy sense of amusement that one recalls now to mind those
+organs of public opinion--with what romantic fondness they dwelt on the
+personal graces of the man who had at last given voice to the chivalry
+of France: “The charming gravity of his countenance--the mysterious
+expression of his eye!”
+
+As the crowd poured from the Chambers, Victor de Mauleon and Savarin,
+who had been among the listeners, encountered.
+
+“No chance for my friends the Orleanists now,” said Savarin. “You who
+mock at all parties are, I suppose, at heart for the Republican--small
+chance, too, for that.”
+
+“I do not agree with you. Violent impulses have quick reactions.”
+
+“But what reaction could shake the Emperor after he returns a conqueror,
+bringing in his pocket the left bank of the Rhine?”
+
+“None--when he does that. Will he do it? Does he himself think he will
+do it? I doubt--”
+
+“Doubt the French army against the Prussian?”
+
+“Against the German people united--yes, very much.”
+
+“But war will disunite the German people. Bavaria will surely assist
+us--Hanover will rise against the spoliator--Austria at our first
+successes must shake off her present enforced neutrality?”
+
+“You have not been in Germany, and I have. What yesterday was a Prussian
+army, to-morrow will be a German population; far exceeding our own in
+numbers, in hardihood of body, in cultivated intellect, in military
+discipline. But talk of something else. How is my ex-editor--poor
+Gustave Rameau?”
+
+“Still very weak, but on the mend. You may have him back in his office
+soon.”
+
+“Impossible! even in his sick-bed his vanity was more vigorous than
+ever. He issued a war-song, which has gone the round of the war journals
+signed by his own name. He must have known very well that the name of
+such a Tyrtaeus cannot reappear as the editor of Le Sens Commun; that in
+launching his little firebrand he burned all vessels that could waft him
+back to the port he had quitted. But I dare say he has done well for his
+own interests; I doubt if Le Sens Commun can much longer hold its ground
+in the midst of the prevalent lunacy.”
+
+“What! it has lost subscribers?--gone off in sale already, since it
+declared for peace?”
+
+“Of course it has; and after the article which, if I live over to-night,
+will appear to-morrow, I should wonder if it sell enough to cover the
+cost of the print and paper.”
+
+“Martyr to principle! I revere, but I do not envy thee.”
+
+“Martyrdom is not my ambition. If Louis Napoleon be defeated, what then?
+Perhaps he may be the martyr; and the Favres and Gambettas may roast
+their own eggs on the gridiron they heat for his majesty.”
+
+Here an English gentleman, who was the very able correspondent to a
+very eminent journal, and in that capacity had made acquaintance with De
+Mauleon, joined the two Frenchmen; Savarin, however, after an exchange
+of salutations, went his way.
+
+“May I ask a frank answer to a somewhat rude question, M. le Vicomte?”
+ said the Englishman. “Suppose that the Imperial Government had to-day
+given in their adhesion to the peace party, how long would it have been
+before their orators in the Chamber and their organs in the press would
+have said that France was governed by poltrons?”
+
+“Probably for most of the twenty-four hours. But there are a few who are
+honest in their convictions; of that few I am one.”
+
+“And would have supported the Emperor and his Government?”
+
+“No, Monsieur--I do not say that.”
+
+“Then the Emperor would have turned many friends into enemies, and no
+enemies into friends.”
+
+“Monsieur--you in England know that a party in opposition is not
+propitiated when the party in power steals its measures. Ha!--pardon
+me, who is that gentleman, evidently your countryman, whom I see yonder
+talking to the Secretary of your Embassy?”
+
+“He.--Mr. Vane-Graham Vane. Do you not know him? He has been much in
+Paris, attached to our Embassy formerly; a clever man--much is expected
+from him.”
+
+“Ah! I think I have seen him before, but am not quite sure. Did you
+say Vane? I once knew a Monsieur Vane, a distinguished parliamentary
+orator.”
+
+“That gentleman is his son--would you like to be introduced to him?”
+
+“Not to-day--I am in some hurry.” Here Victor lifted his hat in parting
+salutation, and as he walked away cast at Graham another glance keen
+and scrutinising. “I have seen that man before,” he muttered,
+“where?--when?--can it be only a family likeness to the father? No, the
+features are different; the profile is--ha!--Mr. Lamb, Mr. Lamb--but why
+call himself by that name?--why disguised?--what can he have to do
+with poor Louise? Bah--these are not questions I can think of now. This
+war--this war--can it yet be prevented? How it will prostrate all the
+plans my ambition so carefully schemed! Oh!--at least if I were but in
+the Chamber. Perhaps I yet may be before the war is ended--the Clavignys
+have great interest in their department.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Graham had left a note with Rochebriant’s concierge requesting an
+interview on the Marquis’s return to Paris, and on the evening after
+the day just commemorated he received a line, saying that Alain had come
+back, and would be at home at nine o’clock. Graham found himself in the
+Breton’s apartment punctually at the hour indicated.
+
+Alain was in high spirits: he burst at once into enthusiastic
+exclamations on the virtual announcement of war.
+
+“Congratulate me, mon cher!” he cried--“the news was a joyous surprise
+to me. Only so recently as yesterday morning I was under the gloomy
+apprehension that the Imperial Cabinet would continue to back Ollivier’s
+craven declaration ‘that France had not been affronted!’ The Duchesse
+de Tarascon, at whose campagne I was a guest, is (as you doubtless know)
+very much in the confidence of the Tuileries. On the first signs of war,
+I wrote to her, saying that whatever the objections of my pride to enter
+the army as a private in time of peace, such objections ceased on the
+moment when all distinctions of France must vanish in the eyes of sons
+eager to defend her banners. The Duchesse in reply begged me to come to
+her campagne and talk over the matter. I went; she then said that if
+war should break out it was the intention to organise the Mobiles and
+officer them with men of birth and education, irrespective of previous
+military service, and in that case I might count on my epaulets. But
+only two nights ago she received a letter--I know not of course from
+whom--evidently from some high authority--that induced her to think the
+moderation of the Council would avert the war, and leave the swords of
+the Mobiles in their sheaths. I suspect the decision of yesterday must
+have been a very sudden one. Ce cher Gramont! See what it is to have a
+well-born man in a sovereign’s councils.”
+
+“If war must come, I at least wish all renown to yourself. But--”
+
+“Oh! spare me your ‘buts’; the English are always too full of them where
+her own interests do not appeal to her. She had no ‘buts’ for war in
+India or a march into Abyssinia.”
+
+Alain spoke petulantly; at that moment the French were very much
+irritated by the monitory tone of the English journals. Graham prudently
+avoided the chance of rousing the wrath of a young hero yearning for his
+epaulets.
+
+“I am English enough,” said he, with good-humoured courtesy, “to care
+for English interests; and England has no interest abroad dearer to her
+than the welfare and dignity of France. And now let me tell you why
+I presumed on an acquaintance less intimate than I could desire, to
+solicit this interview on a matter which concerns myself, and in which
+you could perhaps render me a considerable service.”
+
+“If I can, count it rendered; move to this sofa--join me in a cigar, and
+let us talk at ease comme de vieux amis, whose fathers or brothers might
+have fought side by side in the Crimea.” Graham removed to the sofa
+beside Rochebriant, and after one or two whiffs laid aside the cigar and
+began:
+
+“Among the correspondence which Monsieur your father has left, are there
+any letters of no distant date signed Marigny--Madame Marigny? Pardon
+me, I should state my motive in putting this question. I am intrusted
+with a charge, the fulfilment of which may prove to the benefit of this
+lady or her child; such fulfilment is a task imposed upon my honour. But
+all the researches to discover this lady which I have instituted stop
+at a certain date, with this information,--viz., that she corresponded
+occasionally with the late Marquis de Rochebriant; that he habitually
+preserved the letters of his correspondents; and that these letters were
+severally transmitted to you at his decease.”
+
+Alain’s face had taken a very grave expression while Graham spoke, and
+he now replied with a mixture of haughtiness and embarrassment:
+
+“The boxes containing the letters my father received and preserved
+were sent to me as you say--the larger portion of them were from
+ladies--sorted and labelled, so that in glancing at any letter in each
+packet I could judge of the general tenor of these in the same packet
+without the necessity of reading them. All packets of that kind,
+Monsieur Vane, I burned. I do not remember any letters signed ‘Marigny!”
+
+“I perfectly understand, my dear Marquis, that you would destroy all
+letters which your father himself would have destroyed if his last
+illness had been sufficiently prolonged. But I do not think the letters
+I mean would have come under that classification; probably they were
+short, and on matters of business relating to some third person--some
+person, for instance, of the name of Louise, or of Duval!”
+
+“Stop! let me think. I have a vague remembrance of one or two letters
+which rather perplexed me, they were labelled, ‘Louise D--. Mem.: to
+make further inquiries as to the fate of her uncle.’”
+
+“Marquis, these are the letters I seek. Thank heaven, you have not
+destroyed them?”
+
+“No; there was no reason why I should destroy, though I really cannot
+state precisely any reason why I kept them. I have a very vague
+recollection of their existence.”
+
+“I entreat you to allow me at least a glance at the handwriting, and
+compare it with that of a letter I have about me; and if the several
+handwritings correspond, I would ask you to let me have the address,
+which, according to your father’s memorandum, will be found in the
+letters you have preserved.”
+
+“To compliance with such a request I not only cannot demur, but perhaps
+it may free me from some responsibility which I might have thought the
+letters devolved upon my executorship. I am sure they did not concern
+the honour of any woman of any family, for in that case I must have
+burned them.”
+
+“Ah, Marquis, shake hands there! In such concord between man and man,
+there is more entente cordiale between England and France than there was
+at Sebastopol. Now let me compare the handwritings.”
+
+“The box that contained the letters is not here--I left it at
+Rochebriant; I will telegraph to my aunt to send it; the day after
+to-morrow it will no doubt arrive. Breakfast with me that day--say at
+one o’clock, and after breakfast the Box!”
+
+“How can I thank you?”
+
+“Thank me! but you said your honour was concerned in your
+request--requests affecting honour between men comma il faut is a
+ceremony of course, like a bow between them. One bows, the other returns
+the bow--no thanks on either side. Now that we have done with that
+matter, let me say that I thought your wish for our interview originated
+in a very different cause.”
+
+“What could that be?”
+
+“Nay, do you not recollect that last talk between us, when with such
+loyalty you spoke to me about Mademoiselle Cicogna, and supposing that
+there might be rivalship between us, retracted all that you might have
+before said to warn me against fostering the sentiment with which she
+had inspired me; even at the first slight glance of a face which cannot
+be lightly forgotten by those who have once seen it.”
+
+“I recollect perfectly every word of that talk, Marquis,” answered
+Graham, calmly, but with his hand concealed within his vest and pressed
+tightly to his heart. The warning of Mrs. Morley flashed upon him. “Was
+this the man to seize the prize he had put aside--this man, younger than
+himself--handsomer than himself--higher in rank?”
+
+“I recollect that talk, Marquis! Well, what then?”
+
+“In my self-conceit I supposed that you might have heard how much I
+admired Mademoiselle Cicogna--how, having not long since met her at the
+house of Duplessis (who by the way writes me word that I shall meet you
+chez lui tomorrow), I have since sought her society wherever there was a
+chance to find it. You may have heard, at our club, or elsewhere, how I
+adore her genius--how, I say, that nothing so Breton--that is, so
+pure and so lofty--has appeared and won readers since the days of
+Chateaubriand,--and--you, knowing that les absents ont toujours tort,
+come to me and ask Monsieur de Rochebriant, Are we rivals? I expected a
+challenge--you relieve my mind--you abandon the field to me?”
+
+At the first I warned the reader how improved from his old mauvaise
+honte a year or so of Paris life would make our beau Marquis. How a year
+or two of London life with its horsey slang and its fast girls of the
+period would have vulgarised an English Rochebriant! Graham gnawed his
+lips and replied quietly, “I do not challenge! Am I to congratulate
+you?”
+
+“No, that brilliant victory is not for me. I thought that was made clear
+in the conversation I have referred to. But if you have done me the
+honour to be jealous I am exceedingly flattered. Speaking, seriously, if
+I admired Mademoiselle Cicogna when you and I last met, the admiration
+is increased by the respect with which I regard a character so simply
+noble. How many women older than she would have been spoiled by the
+adulation that has followed her literary success!--how few women so
+young, placed in a position so critical, having the courage to lead
+a life so independent, would have maintained the dignity of their
+character free from a single indiscretion! I speak not from my own
+knowledge, but from the report of all, who would be pleased enough to
+censure if they could find a cause. Good society is the paradise of
+mauvaises langues.”
+
+Graham caught Alain’s hand and pressed it, but made no answer.
+
+The young Marquis continued:
+
+“You will pardon me for speaking thus freely in the way that I would
+wish any friend to speak of the demoiselle who might become my wife.
+I owe you much, not only for the loyalty with which you address me in
+reference to this young lady, but for words affecting my own position
+in France, which sank deep into my mind--saved me from deeming myself
+a proscrit in my own land--filled me with a manly ambition, not stifled
+amidst the thick of many effeminate follies--and, in fact, led me to the
+career which is about to open before me, and in which my ancestors have
+left me no undistinguished examples. Let us speak, then, a coeur ouvert,
+as one friend to another. Has there been any misunderstanding between
+you and Mademoiselle Cicogna which has delayed your return to Paris? If
+so, is it over now?”
+
+“There has been no such misunderstanding.”
+
+“Do you doubt whether the sentiments you expressed in regard to her when
+we met last year, are returned?”
+
+“I have no right to conjecture her sentiments. You mistake altogether.”
+
+“I do not believe that I am dunce enough to mistake your feelings
+towards Mademoiselle--they may be read in your face at this moment.
+Of course I do not presume to hazard a conjecture as to those of
+Mademoiselle towards yourself. But when I met her not long since at the
+house of Duplessis, with whose daughter she is intimate, I chanced to
+speak to her of you; and if I may judge, by looks and manner, I chose no
+displeasing theme. You turn away--I offend you?”
+
+“Offend!--no, indeed; but on this subject I am not prepared to converse.
+I came to Paris on matters of business much complicated and which ought
+to absorb my attention. I cannot longer trespass on your evening. The
+day after to-morrow, then, I will be with you at one o’clock.”
+
+“Yes, I hope then to have the letters you wish to consult; and,
+meanwhile, we meet to-morrow at the Hotel Duplessis.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Graham had scarcely quitted Alain, and the young Marquis was about to
+saunter forth to his club, when Duplessis was announced.
+
+These two men had naturally seen much of each other since Duplessis had
+returned from Bretagne and delivered Alain from the gripe of Louvier.
+Scarcely a day had passed but what Alain had been summoned to enter into
+the financier’s plans for the aggrandisement of the Rochebriant
+estates, and delicately made to feel that he had become a partner in
+speculations, which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Duplessis
+brought to bear, seemed likely to result in the ultimate freedom of his
+property from all burdens, and the restoration of his inheritance to a
+splendour correspondent with the dignity of his rank.
+
+On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted to professional
+business, Duplessis arranged that these consultations should take place
+in the evenings. From those consultations Valerie was not banished;
+Duplessis took her into the council as a matter of course. “Valerie,”
+ said the financier to Alain, “though so young, has a very clear head for
+business, and she is so interested in all that interests myself, that
+even where I do not take her opinion, I at least feel my own made
+livelier and brighter by her sympathy.”
+
+So the girl was in the habit of taking her work or her book into the
+cabinet de travail, and never obtruding a suggestion unasked, still,
+when appealed to, speaking with a modest good sense which justified her
+father’s confidence and praise; and a propos of her book, she had taken
+Chateaubriand into peculiar favour. Alain had respectfully presented to
+her beautifully bound copies of Atala and Ls Genie du Christianisme;
+it is astonishing, indeed, how he had already contrived to regulate
+her tastes in literature. The charms of those quiet family evenings had
+stolen into the young Breton’s heart.
+
+He yearned for none of the gayer reunions in which he had before sought
+for a pleasure that his nature had not found; for, amidst the amusements
+of Paris, Alain remained intensely Breton--viz., formed eminently for
+the simple joys of domestic life, associating the sacred hearthstone
+with the antique religion of his fathers; gathering round it all the
+images of pure and noble affections which the romance of a poetic
+temperament had evoked from the solitude which had surrounded a
+melancholy boyhood-an uncontaminated youth.
+
+Duplessis entered abruptly, and with a countenance much disturbed from
+its wonted saturnine composure.
+
+“Marquis, what is this I have just heard from the Duchesse de Tarascon?
+Can it be? You ask military service in this ill-omened war?--you?”
+
+“My dear and best friend,” said Alain, very much startled, “I should
+have thought that you, of all men in the world, would have most approved
+of my request--you, so devoted an Imperialist--you, indignant that the
+representative of one of these families, which the First Napoleon
+so eagerly and so vainly courted, should ask for the grade of
+sous-lieutenant in the armies of Napoleon the Third--you, who of all men
+know how ruined are the fortunes of a Rochebriant--you, feel surprised
+that he clings to the noblest heritage his ancestors have left to
+him--their sword! I do not understand you.”
+
+“Marquis,” said Duplessis, seating himself, and regarding Alain with
+a look in which were blended the sort of admiration and the sort of
+contempt with which a practical man of the world, who, having himself
+gone through certain credulous follies, has learned to despise the
+follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they
+bewitch, “Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk
+common sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples
+had allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment
+not unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian,
+to whom France can look for rational liberty combined with established
+order. Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who
+on earth could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw
+a sword hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which
+the madness, I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a
+sovereign against whom you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance of
+placing the descendant of Henry IV. on his throne.”
+
+“I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my country against
+the foreigner.”
+
+“An excellent answer if the foreigner had invaded your country; but
+it seems that your country is going to invade the foreigner--a very
+different thing. Chut! all this discussion is most painful to me. I feel
+for the Emperor a personal loyalty, and for the hazards he is about to
+encounter a prophetic dread, as an ancestor of yours might have felt for
+Francis I. could he have foreseen Pavia. Let us talk of ourselves and
+the effect the war should have upon our individual action. You are
+aware, of course, that, though M. Louvier has had notice of our
+intention to pay off his mortgage, that intention cannot be carried into
+effect for six months; if the money be not then forthcoming his hold on
+Rochebriant remains unshaken--the sum is large.”
+
+“Alas! yes.”
+
+“The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect many speculative
+adventures and operations when at the very moment credit may be most
+needed. It is absolutely necessary that I should be daily at my post
+on the Bourse, and hourly watch the ebb and flow of events. Under these
+circumstances I had counted, permit me to count still, on your presence
+in Bretagne. We have already begun negotiations on a somewhat extensive
+scale, whether as regards the improvement of forests and orchards, or
+the plans for building allotments, as soon as the lands are free for
+disposal--for all these the eye of a master is required. I entreat you,
+then, to take up your residence at Rochebriant.”
+
+“My dear friend, this is but a kindly and delicate mode of relieving me
+from the dangers of war. I have, as you must be conscious, no practical
+knowledge of business. Hebert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry
+out your views with a zeal equal to mine, and with infinitely more
+ability.”
+
+“Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to Hebert; if you wish to get
+your own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder to the wheel.”
+
+Alain coloured high, unaccustomed to be so bluntly addressed, but he
+replied with a kind of dignified meekness: “I shall ever remain grateful
+for what you have done, and wish to do for me. But, assuming that you
+suppose rightly, the estates of Rochebriant would, in your hands, become
+a profitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage, and the sum
+you have paid Louvier on my account, let it pass to you irrespectively
+of me. I shall console myself in the knowledge that the old place will
+be restored, and those who honoured its old owners prosper in hands so
+strong, guided by a heart so generous.”
+
+Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words; they seized him on
+the tenderest side of his character--for his heart was generous, and
+no one, except his lost wife and his loving child, had ever before
+discovered it to be so. Has it ever happened to you, reader, to be
+appreciated on the one point of the good or the great that is in you--on
+which secretly you value yourself most--but for which nobody, not
+admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit? If that
+has happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when the fittest
+representative of that divine chivalry which, if sometimes deficient
+in head, owes all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to the
+professional moneymaker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged
+that a compliment to them would be a hollow impertinence, and whose
+qualities of heart had never yet received a compliment!
+
+Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, “Listen
+to me, I love you--I never had a son--be mine--Rochebriant shall be my
+daughter’s dot.”
+
+Alain returned the embrace, and then recoiling, said: “Father, your
+first desire must be honour for your son. You have guessed my secret--I
+have learned to love Valerie. Seeing her out in the world, she seemed
+like other girls, fair and commonplace--seeing her--at your house, I
+have said to myself, ‘There is the one girl fairer than all others in my
+eyes, and the one individual to whom all other girls are commonplace.’”
+
+“Is that true?--is it?”
+
+“True! does a gentilhomme ever lie? And out of that love for her has
+grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her--something
+that may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to
+ancestors, nothing to themselves. Do you suppose for one moment that I,
+saved from ruin and penury by Valerie’s father, could be base enough
+to say to her, ‘In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant’? Do you
+suppose that I, whom you would love and respect as son, could come
+to you and say: ‘I am oppressed by your favours--I am crippled with
+debts--give me your millions and we are quits.’ No, Duplessis! You, so
+well descended yourself--so superior as man amongst men that you
+would have won name and position had you been born the son of a
+shoeblack,--you would eternally despise the noble who, in days when
+all that we Bretons deem holy in noblesse are subjected to ridicule and
+contempt, should so vilely forget the only motto which the scutcheons
+of all gentilhommes have in common, ‘Noblesse oblige.’ War, with all
+its perils and all its grandeur,--war lifts on high the banners of
+France,--war, in which every ancestor of mine whom I care to recall
+aggrandised the name that descends to me. Let me then do as those before
+me have done; let me prove that I am worth something in myself, and
+then you and I are equals; and I can say with no humbled crest, ‘Your
+benefits are accepted:’ the man who has fought not ignobly for France
+may aspire to the hand of her daughter. Give me Valerie; as to her
+dot,--be it so, Rochebriant,--it will pass to her children.”
+
+“Alain! Alain! my friend! my son!--but if you fall.”
+
+“Valerie will give you a nobler son.”
+
+Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily; but he said no more in
+deprecation of Alain’s martial resolves.
+
+A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, however philosophical
+he may be, who does not sympathise with the follies of honour--who
+does not concede indulgence to the hot blood of youth when he says, “My
+country is insulted and her banner is unfurled,” may certainly be a man
+of excellent common sense; but if such men had been in the majority,
+Gaul would never have been France--Gaul would have been a province of
+Germany.
+
+And as Duplessis walked homeward--he the calmest and most far-seeing of
+all authorities on the Bourse--the man who, excepting only De Mauleon,
+most decidedly deemed the cause of the war a blunder, and most
+forebodingly anticipated its issues, caught the prevalent enthusiasm.
+Everywhere he was stopped by cordial hands, everywhere met by
+congratulating smiles. “How right you have been, Duplessis, when you
+have laughed at those who have said, ‘The Emperor is ill, decrepit, done
+up.’”
+
+“Vive l’Empereur! at least we shall be face to face with those insolent
+Prussians!”
+
+Before he arrived at his home, passing along the Boulevards, greeted by
+all the groups enjoying the cool night air before the cafes, Duplessis
+had caught the war epidemic.
+
+Entering his hotel, he went at once to Valerie’s chamber. “Sleep well
+to-night, child; Alain has told me that he adores thee, and if he will
+go to the war, it is that he may lay his laurels at thy feet. Bless
+thee, my child, thou couldst not have made a nobler choice.”
+
+Whether, after these words, Valerie slept well or not ‘tis not for me
+to say; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess that her dreams were
+rose-coloured.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+All the earlier part of that next day, Graham Vane remained in-doors--a
+lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with that summer day
+all hearts at Paris were in unison. Discontent was charmed into
+enthusiasm--Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism
+and Socialism and other “isms” not to be realised except in some
+undiscovered Atlantis!
+
+The Emperor was the idol of the day--the names of Jules Favre and
+Gambetta were by-words of scorn. Even Armand Monnier, still out of work,
+beginning to feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that
+might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,--even Armand Monnier
+was found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot of the
+column in the Place Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow malcontent,
+with eyes uplifted to the statue of the First Napoleon, “Do you not
+feel at this moment that no Frenchman can be long angry with the Little
+Corporal? He denied La Liberte, but he gave La Gloire.”
+
+Heeding not the stir of the world without, Graham was compelling into
+one resolve the doubts and scruples which had so long warred against the
+heart which they ravaged, but could not wholly subdue.
+
+The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had placed in a light
+in which he had not before regarded it, the image of Isaura.
+
+He had reasoned from the starting-point of his love for her, and had
+sought to convince himself that against that love it was his duty to
+strive.
+
+But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as well as to
+his heart. What though he had never formally declared to her his
+affection--never, in open words, wooed her as his own--never even
+hinted to her the hopes of a union which at one time he had fondly
+entertained,--still was it true that his love had been too transparent
+not to be detected by her, and not to have led her on to return it?
+
+Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not indifferent to
+her: at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps
+interested her fancy.
+
+We know also how he had tried to persuade himself that the artistic
+temperament, especially when developed in women, is too elastic to
+suffer the things of real life to have lasting influence over happiness
+or sorrow,--that in the pursuits in which her thought and imagination
+found employ, in the excitement they sustained, and the fame to which
+they conduced, Isaura would be readily consoled for a momentary pang
+of disappointed affection. And that a man so alien as himself, both by
+nature and by habit, from the artistic world, was the very last person
+who could maintain deep and permanent impression on her actual life or
+her ideal dreams. But what if, as he gathered from the words of the fair
+American--what if, in all these assumptions, she was wholly mistaken?
+What if, in previously revealing his own heart, he had decoyed
+hers--what if, by a desertion she had no right to anticipate, he had
+blighted her future? What if this brilliant child of genius could love
+as warmly, as deeply, as enduringly as any simple village girl to whom
+there is no poetry except love? If this were so--what became the first
+claim on his honour, his conscience, his duty?
+
+The force which but a few days ago his reasonings had given to the
+arguments that forbade him to think of Isaura, became weaker and weaker,
+as now in an altered mood of reflection he resummoned and reweighed
+them.
+
+All those prejudices--which had seemed to him such rational common-sense
+truths, when translated from his own mind into the words of Lady Janet’s
+letter,--was not Mrs. Morley right in denouncing them as the crotchets
+of an insolent egotism? Was it not rather to the favour than to the
+disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man’s narrow-minded view
+of woman’s dignity, that this orphan girl could, with character so
+unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of the public babble, the
+public gaze-command alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley,
+the reverence of a man so chivalrously sensitive to honour as Alain de
+Rochebriant?
+
+Musing thus, Graham’s countenance at last brightened--a glorious joy
+entered into and possessed him. He felt as a man who had burst asunder
+the swathes and trammels which had kept him galled and miserable with
+the sense of captivity, and from which some wizard spell that took
+strength from his own superstition had forbidden to struggle.
+
+He was free!--and that freedom was rapture!--yes, his resolve was taken.
+
+The day was now far advanced. He should have just time before the dinner
+with Duplessis to drive to A------, where he still supposed Isaura
+resided. How, as his fiacre rolled along the well-remembered road--how
+completely he lived in that world of romance of which he denied himself
+to be a denizen.
+
+Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by workmen--it
+was under repair. No one could tell him to what residence the ladies who
+occupied it the last year had removed.
+
+“I shall learn from Mrs. Morley,” thought Graham, and at her house he
+called in going back, but Mrs. Morley was not at home; he had only just
+time, after regaining his apartment, to change his dress for the
+dinner to which he was invited. As it was, he arrived late, and
+while apologising to his host for his want of punctuality, his tongue
+faltered. At the farther end of the room he saw a face, paler and
+thinner than when he had seen it last--a face across which a something
+of grief had gone.
+
+The servant announced that dinner was served.
+
+“Mr. Vane,” said Duplessis, “will you take into dinner Mademoiselle
+Cicogna?”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Amoung the frets and checks to the course that “never did run smooth,”
+ there is one which is sufficiently frequent, for many a reader will
+remember the irritation it caused him. You have counted on a meeting
+with the beloved one unwitnessed by others, an interchange of
+confessions and vows which others may not hear. You have arranged almost
+the words in which your innermost heart is to be expressed; pictured to
+yourself the very looks by which those words will have their sweetest
+reply. The scene you have thus imagined appears to you vivid and
+distinct, as if foreshown in a magic glass. And suddenly, after long
+absence, the meeting takes place in the midst of a common companionship:
+nothing that you wished to say can be said. The scene you pictured is
+painted out by the irony of Chance; and groups and backgrounds of which
+you had never dreamed start forth from the disappointing canvas. Happy
+if that be all! But sometimes, by a strange, subtle intuition, you feel
+that the person herself is changed; and sympathetic with that change, a
+terrible chill comes over your own heart.
+
+Before Graham had taken his seat at the table beside Isaura, he felt
+that she was changed to him. He felt it by her very touch as their hands
+met at the first greeting,--by the tone of her voice in the few words
+that passed between them,--by the absence of all glow in the smile which
+had once lit up her face, as a burst of sunshine lights up a day in
+spring, and gives a richer gladness of colour to all its blooms. Once
+seated side by side they remained for some moments silent. Indeed, it
+would have been rather difficult for anything less than the wonderful
+intelligence of lovers between whom no wall can prevent the stolen
+interchange of tokens, to have ventured private talk of their own amid
+the excited converse which seemed all eyes, all tongues, all ears,
+admitting no one present to abstract himself from the common emotion.
+Englishmen do not recognise the old classic law which limited the number
+of guests, where banquets are meant to be pleasant, to that of the
+Nine-Muses. They invite guests so numerous, and so shy of launching talk
+across the table, that you may talk to the person next to you not less
+secure from listeners than you would be in talking with the stranger
+whom you met at a well in the Sahara. It is not so, except on state
+occasions, at Paris. Difficult there to retire into solitude with your
+next neighbour. The guests collected by Duplessis completed with himself
+the number of the Sacred Nine--the host, Valerie, Rochebriant, Graham,
+Isaura, Signora Venosta, La Duchesse de Tarascon, the wealthy and
+high-born Imperialist, Prince --------, and last and least, one who
+shall be nameless.
+
+I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of the books which American
+superstition dedicates to the mysteries of Spiritualism, how a gifted
+seer, technically styled medium, sees at the opera a box which to other
+eyes appears untenanted and empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well
+dressed in costume de-regle, gazing on the boards and listening to
+the music. Like such ghosts are certain beings whom I call Lookers-on.
+Though still living, they have no share in the life they survey, they
+come as from another world to hear and to see what is passing in ours.
+In ours they lived once, but that troubled sort of life they have
+survived. Still we amuse them as stage-players and puppets amuse
+ourselves. One of these Lookers-on completed the party at the house of
+Duplessis.
+
+How lively, how animated the talk was at the financier’s pleasant table
+that day, the 8th of July! The excitement of the coming war made itself
+loud in every Gallic voice, and kindled in every Gallic eye. Appeals at
+every second minute were made, sometimes courteous, sometimes sarcastic,
+to the Englishman--promising son of an eminent statesman, and native
+of a country in which France is always coveting an ally, and always
+suspecting an enemy. Certainly Graham could not have found a less
+propitious moment for asking Isaura if she really were changed. And
+certainly the honour of Great Britain was never less ably represented
+(that is saying a great deal) than it was on this occasion by the young
+man reared to diplomacy and aspiring to Parliamentary distinction.
+He answered all questions with a constrained voice and an insipid
+smile,--all questions pointedly addressed to him as to what
+demonstrations of admiring sympathy with the gallantry of France
+might be expected from the English Government and people; what his
+acquaintance with the German races led him to suppose would be the
+effect on the Southern States of the first defeat of the Prussians;
+whether the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on paper, a
+crotchety pedant; whether, if Belgium became so enamoured of the glories
+of France as to solicit fusion with her people, England would have a
+right to offer any objection,&c., &c. I do not think that during that
+festival Graham once thought one-millionth so much about the fates of
+Prussia and France as he did think, “Why is that girl so changed to me?
+Merciful heaven! is she lost to my life?”
+
+By training, by habit, even by passion, the man was a genuine
+politician, cosmopolitan as well as patriotic, accustomed to consider
+what effect every vibration in that balance of European power, which
+no deep thinker can despise, must have on the destinies of civilised
+humanity, and on those of the nation to which he belongs. But are
+there not moments in life when the human heart suddenly narrows the
+circumference to which its emotions are extended? As the ebb of a tide,
+it retreats from the shores it had covered on its flow, drawing on with
+contracted waves the treasure-trove it has selected to hoard amid its
+deeps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+On quitting the dining-room, the Duchesse de Tarascon said to her host,
+on whose arm she was leaning, “Of course you and I must go with the
+stream. But is not all the fine talk that has passed to-day at your
+table, and in which we too have joined, a sort of hypocrisy? I may say
+this to you; I would say it to no other.”
+
+“And I say to you, Madame la Duchesse, that which I would say to no
+other. Thinking over it as I sit alone, I find myself making a ‘terrible
+hazard;’ but when I go abroad and become infected by the general
+enthusiasm, I pluck up gaiety of spirit, and whisper to myself, ‘True,
+but it may be an enormous gain.’ To get the left bank of the Rhine is
+a trifle; but to check in our next neighbour a growth which a few years
+hence would overtop us,--that is no trifle. And, be the gain worth the
+hazard or not, could the Emperor, could any Government likely to hold
+its own for a week, have declined to take the chance of the die?”
+
+The Duchesse mused a moment, and meanwhile the two seated themselves on
+a divan in the corner of the salon. Then she said very slowly--
+
+“No Government that held its tenure on popular suffrage could have done
+so. But if the Emperor had retained the personal authority which once
+allowed the intellect of one man to control and direct the passions of
+many, I think the war would have been averted. I have reason to know
+that the Emperor gave his emphatic support to the least bellicose
+members of the Council, and that Gramont’s speech did not contain the
+passage that precipitates hostilities when the Council in which it
+was framed broke up. These fatal Ministers found the Chamber, and the
+reports of the popular excitement which could not be resisted without
+imminent danger of revolution. It is Paris that has forced the war on
+the Emperor. But enough of this subject. What must be, must, and, as you
+say, the gain may be greater than the hazard. I come to something else
+you whispered to me before we went in to dinner,--a sort of complaint
+which wounds me sensibly. You say I had assisted to a choice of danger
+and possibly of death a very distant connection of mine, who might have
+been a very near connection of yours. You mean Alain de Rochebriant?”
+
+“Yes; I accept him as a suitor for the hand of my only daughter.”
+
+“I am so glad, not for your sake so much as for his. No one can know
+him well without appreciating in him the finest qualities of the finest
+order of the French noble; but having known your pretty Valerie so long,
+my congratulations are for the man who can win her. Meanwhile, hear my
+explanation: when I promised Alain any interest I can command for
+the grade of officer in a regiment of Mobiles, I knew not that he had
+formed, or was likely to form, ties or duties to keep him at home. I
+withdraw my promise.”
+
+“No, Duchesse, fulfil it. I should be disloyal indeed if I robbed a
+sovereign under whose tranquil and prosperous reign I have acquired,
+with no dishonour, the fortune which Order proffers to Commerce, of one
+gallant defender in the hour of need. And, speaking frankly, if Alain
+were really my son, I think I am Frenchman enough to remember that
+France is my mother.”
+
+“Say no more, my friend--say no more,” cried the Duchesse, with the
+warm blood of the heart rushing through all the delicate coatings of
+pearl-powder. “If every Frenchman felt as you do; if in this Paris of
+ours all hostilities of class may merge in the one thought of the common
+country; if in French hearts there yet thrills the same sentiment as
+that which, in the terrible days when all other ties were rent asunder,
+revered France as mother, and rallied her sons to her aid against the
+confederacy of Europe,--why, then, we need not grow pale with dismay
+at the sight of a Prussian needle-gun. Hist! look yonder: is not that a
+tableau of Youth in Arcady? Worlds rage around, and Love, unconcerned,
+whispers to Love!” The Duchesse here pointed to a corner of the
+adjoining room in which Alain and Valerie sat apart, he whispering into
+her ear; her cheek downcast, and, even seen at that distance, brightened
+by the delicate tenderness of its blushes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+But in that small assembly there were two who did not attract the notice
+of Duplessis or of the lady of the Imperial Court. While the Prince ----
+and the placid Looker-on were engaged at a contest of ecarte, with the
+lively Venosta, for the gallery, interposing criticisms and admonitions,
+Isaura was listlessly turning over a collection of photographs, strewed
+on a table that stood near to an open window in the remoter angle of the
+room, communicating with a long and wide balcony filled partially
+with flowers and overlooking the Champs Elysees, softly lit up by the
+innumerable summer stars. Suddenly a whisper, the command of which she
+could not resist, thrilled through her ear, and sent the blood rushing
+back to her heart.
+
+“Do you remember that evening at Enghien? how I said that our
+imagination could not carry us beyond the question whether we two should
+be gazing together that night twelve months on that star which each of
+us had singled out from the hosts of heaven? That was the 8th of
+July. It is the 8th of July once more. Come and seek for our chosen
+star--come. I have something to say, which say I must. Come.”
+
+Mechanically, as it were,--mechanically, as they tell us the
+Somnambulist obeys the Mesmeriser,--Isaura obeyed that summons. In a
+kind of dreamy submission she followed his steps, and found herself on
+the balcony, flowers around her and stars above, by the side of the man
+who had been to her that being ever surrounded by flowers and lighted by
+stars,--the ideal of Romance to the heart of virgin Woman.
+
+“Isaura,” said the Englishman, softly. At the sound of her own name for
+the first time heard from those lips, every nerve in her frame quivered.
+“Isaura, I have tried to live without you. I cannot. You are all in all
+to me: without you it seems to me as if earth had no flowers, and
+even heaven had withdrawn its stars. Are there differences between us,
+differences of taste, of sentiments, of habits, of thought? Only let me
+hope that you can love me a tenth part so much as I love you, and such
+differences cease to be discord. Love harmonises all sounds, blends all
+colours into its own divine oneness of heart and soul. Look up! is not
+the star which this time last year invited our gaze above, is it not
+still there? Does it not still invite our gaze? Isaura, speak!”
+
+“Hush, hush, hush,”--the girl could say no more, but she recoiled from
+his side.
+
+The recoil did not wound him: there was no hate in it. He advanced, he
+caught her hand, and continued, in one of those voices which become so
+musical in summer nights under starry skies:
+
+“Isaura, there is one name which I can never utter without a reverence
+due to the religion which binds earth to heaven--a name which to man
+should be the symbol of life cheered and beautified, exalted, hallowed.
+That name is ‘wife.’ Will you take that name from me?”
+
+And still Isaura made no reply. She stood mute, and cold, and rigid as
+a statue of marble. At length, as if consciousness had been arrested
+and was struggling back, she sighed heavily, and passed her hands slowly
+over her forehead.
+
+“Mockery, mockery,” she said then, with a smile half bitter, half
+plaintive, on her colourless lips. “Did you wait to ask me that question
+till you knew what my answer must be? I have pledged the name of wife to
+another.”
+
+“No, no; you say that to rebuke, to punish me! Unsay it! unsay it!”
+
+Isaura beheld the anguish of his face with bewildered eyes. “How can
+my words pain you?” she said, drearily. “Did you not write that I had
+unfitted myself to be wife to you?”
+
+“I?”
+
+“That I had left behind me the peaceful immunities of private life? I
+felt you were so right! Yes! I am affianced to one who thinks that in
+spite of that misfortune--”
+
+“Stop, I command you--stop! You saw my letter to Mrs. Morley. I have
+not had one moment free from torture and remorse since I wrote it. But
+whatever in that letter you might justly resent--”
+
+“I did not resent--”
+
+Graham heard not the interruption, but hurried on. “You would forgive
+could you read my heart. No matter. Every sentiment in that letter,
+except those which conveyed admiration, I retract. Be mine, and instead
+of presuming to check in you the irresistible impulse of genius to the
+first place in the head or the heart of the world, I teach myself to
+encourage, to share, to exult in it. Do you know what a difference there
+is between the absent one and the present one--between the distant image
+against whom our doubts, our fears, our suspicions, raise up hosts of
+imaginary giants, barriers of visionary walls, and the beloved face
+before the sight of which the hosts are fled, the walls are vanished?
+Isaura, we meet again. You know now from my own lips that I love you.
+I think your lips will not deny that you love me. You say that you are
+affianced to another. Tell the man frankly, honestly, that you mistook
+your heart. It is not yours to give. Save yourself, save him, from a
+union in which there can be no happiness.”
+
+“It is too late,” said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with no trace of
+vacillating weakness on her brow and lips. “Did I say now to that other
+one, ‘I break the faith that I pledged to you,’ I should kill him, body
+and soul. Slight thing though I be, to him I am all in all; to you, Mr.
+Vane, to you a memory--the memory of one whom a year, perhaps a month,
+hence, you will rejoice to think you have escaped.”
+
+She passed from him--passed away from the flowers and the starlight; and
+when Graham,--recovering from the stun of her crushing words, and with
+the haughty mien and stop of the man who goes forth from the ruin of his
+hopes, leaning for support upon his pride,--when Graham re-entered
+the room, all the guests had departed save only Alain, who was still
+exchanging whispered words with Valerie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The next day, at the hour appointed, Graham entered Alain’s apartment.
+“I am glad to tell you,” said the Marquis, gaily, “that the box has
+arrived, and we will very soon examine its contents. Breakfast claims
+precedence.” During the meal Alain was in gay spirits, and did not at
+first notice the gloomy countenance and abstracted mood of his guest. At
+length, surprised at the dull response to his lively sallies on the part
+of a man generally so pleasant in the frankness of his speech, and
+the cordial ring of his sympathetic laugh, it occurred to him that the
+change in Graham must be ascribed to something that had gone wrong in
+the meeting with Isaura the evening before; and remembering the curtness
+with which Graham had implied disinclination to converse about the fair
+Italian, he felt perplexed how to reconcile the impulse of his good
+nature with the discretion imposed on his good-breeding. At all events,
+a compliment to the lady whom Graham had so admired could do no harm.
+
+“How well Mademoiselle Cicogna looked last night!”
+
+“Did she? It seemed to me that, in health at least, she did not look
+very well. Have you heard what day M. Thiers will speak on the war?”
+
+“Thiers? No. Who cares about Thiers? Thank heaven his day is past!
+I don’t know any unmarried woman in Paris, not even Valerie--I mean
+Mademoiselle Duplessis--who has so exquisite a taste in dress as
+Mademoiselle Cicogna. Generally speaking, the taste of a female author
+is atrocious.”
+
+“Really--I did not observe her dress. I am no critic on subjects so
+dainty as the dress of ladies, or the tastes of female authors.”
+
+“Pardon me,” said the beau Marquis, gravely. “As to dress, I think that
+so essential a thing in the mind of woman, that no man who cares about
+women ought to disdain critical study of it. In woman, refinement of
+character is never found in vulgarity of dress. I have only observed
+that truth since I came up from Bretagne.”
+
+“I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may have read in Bretagne books
+which very few not being professed scholars have ever read at Paris;
+and possibly you may remember that Horace ascribes the most exquisite
+refinement in dress, denoted by the untranslatable words, ‘simplex
+munditiis,’ to a lady who was not less distinguished by the ease and
+rapidity with which she could change her affection. Of course that
+allusion does not apply to Mademoiselle Cicogna, but there are many
+other exquisitely dressed ladies at Paris of whom an ill-fated admirer
+
+                 ‘fidem
+          Mutatosque deos flebit.’
+
+“Now, with your permission, we will adjourn to the box of letters.”
+
+The box being produced and unlocked, Alain looked with conscientious
+care at its contents before he passed over to Graham’s inspection a
+few epistles, in which the Englishman immediately detected the same
+handwriting as that of the letter from Louise which Richard King had
+bequeathed to him.
+
+They were arranged and numbered chronologically.
+
+   LETTER I.
+
+   DEAR M. LE MARQUIS,--How can I thank you sufficiently for obtaining
+   and remitting to me those certificates? You are too aware of the
+   unhappy episode in my life not to know how inestimable is the
+   service you render me. I am saved all further molestation from the
+   man who had indeed no right over my freedom, but whose persecution
+   might compel me to the scandal and disgrace of an appeal to the law
+   for protection, and the avowal of the illegal marriage into which I
+   was duped. I would rather be torn limb from limb by wild horses,
+   like the Queen in the history books, than dishonour myself and the
+   ancestry which I may at least claim on the mother’s side, by
+   proclaiming that I had lived with that low Englishman as his wife,
+   when I was only--O heavens, I cannot conclude the sentence!
+
+   “No, Mons. le Marquis, I am in no want of the pecuniary aid you so
+   generously wish to press on me. Though I know not where to address
+   my poor dear uncle,--though I doubt, even if I did, whether I could
+   venture to confide to him the secret known only to yourself as to
+   the name I now bear--and if he hear of me at all he must believe me
+   dead,--yet I have enough left of the money he last remitted to me
+   for present support; and when that fails, I think, what with my
+   knowledge of English and such other slender accomplishments as I
+   possess, I could maintain myself as a teacher or governess in some
+   German family. At all events, I will write to you again soon, and I
+   entreat you to let me know all you can learn about my uncle. I feel
+   so grateful to you for your just disbelief of the horrible calumny
+   which must be so intolerably galling to a man so proud, and,
+   whatever his errors, so incapable of a baseness.
+
+   “Direct to me Poste restante, Augsburg.
+
+   “Yours with all consideration,
+LETTER II.
+
+(Seven months after the date of Letter 1.)
+
+   “AUGSBURG.
+
+   “DEAR M. LE MARQUIS,--I thank you for your kind little note
+   informing me of the pains you have taken, as yet with no result, to
+   ascertain what has become of my unfortunate uncle. My life since I
+   last wrote has been a very quiet one. I have been teaching among a
+   few families here; and among my pupils are two little girls of very
+   high birth. They have taken so great a fancy to me that their
+   mother has just asked me to come and reside at their house as
+   governess. What wonderfully kind hearts those Germans have,--so
+   simple, so truthful! They raise no troublesome questions,--accept
+   my own story implicitly.” Here follow a few commonplace sentences
+   about the German character, and a postscript. “I go into my new
+   home next week. When you hear more of my uncle, direct to me at the
+   Countess von Rudesheim, Schloss --------, near Berlin.”
+
+“Rudesheim!” Could this be the relation, possibly the wife, of the Count
+von Rudesheim with whom Graham had formed acquaintance last year? LETTER
+III.
+
+(Between three and four years after the date of the last.)
+
+   “You startle me indeed, dear M. le Marquis. My uncle said to have
+   been recognised in Algeria under another name, a soldier in the
+   Algerian army? My dear, proud, luxurious uncle! Ah, I cannot
+   believe it, any more than you do: but I long eagerly for such
+   further news as you can learn of him. For myself, I shall perhaps
+   surprise you when I say I am about to be married. Nothing can
+   exceed the amiable kindness I have received from the Rudesheims
+   since I have been in their house. For the last year especially I
+   have been treated on equal terms as one of the family. Among the
+   habitual visitors at the house is a gentleman of noble birth, but
+   not of rank too high, nor of fortune too great, to make a marriage
+   with the French widowed governess a misalliance. I am sure that he
+   loves me sincerely; and he is the only man I ever met whose love I
+   have cared to win. We are to be married in the course of the year.
+   Of course he is ignorant of my painful history, and will never learn
+   it. And after all, Louise D---- is dead. In the home to which I am
+   about to remove, there is no probability that the wretched
+   Englishman can ever cross my path. My secret is as safe with you as
+   in the grave that holds her whom in the name of Louise D---- you
+   once loved. Henceforth I shall trouble you no more with my letters;
+   but if you hear anything decisively authentic of my uncle’s fate,
+   write me a line at any time, directed as before to Madame ----,
+   enclosed to the Countess von Rudesheim.
+
+   “And accept, for all the kindness you have ever shown me, as to one
+   whom you did not disdain to call a kinswoman, the assurance of my
+   undying gratitude. In the alliance she now makes, your kinswoman
+   does not discredit the name through which she is connected with the
+   yet loftier line of Rochebriant.”
+
+To this letter the late Marquis had appended in pencil. “Of course
+Rochebriant never denies the claim of a kinswoman, even though a
+drawing-master’s daughter. Beautiful creature, Louise, but a termagant.
+I could not love Venus if she were a termagant. L.’s head turned by the
+unlucky discovery that her mother was noble. In one form or other,
+every woman has the same disease--vanity. Name of her intended not
+mentioned--easily found out.”
+
+The next letter was dated May 7, 1859, on black-edged paper, and
+contained but these lines: “I was much comforted by your kind visit
+yesterday, dear Marquis. My affliction has been heavy: but for the last
+two years my poor husband’s conduct has rendered my life unhappy, and I
+am recovering the shock of his sudden death. It is true that I and
+the children are left very ill provided for; but I cannot accept your
+generous offer of aid. Have no fear as to my future fate. Adieu, my
+dear Marquis! This will reach you just before you start for Naples.
+Bon voyage.” There was no address on this note-no postmark on the
+envelope-evidently sent by hand.
+
+The last note, dated 1861, March 20, was briefer than its predecessor.
+“I have taken your advice, dear Marquis; and, overcoming all scruples,
+I have accepted his kind offer, on the condition that I am never to be
+taken to England. I had no option in this marriage. I can now own to you
+that my poverty had become urgent.--Yours, with inalienable gratitude.
+This last note, too, was without postmark, and was evidently sent by
+hand.
+
+“There are no other letters, then, from this writer?” asked Graham; “and
+no further clue as to her existence?”
+
+“None that I have discovered; and I see now why I preserved these
+letters. There is nothing in their contents not creditable to my poor
+father. They show how capable he was of good-natured disinterested
+kindness towards even a distant relation of whom he could certainly not
+have been proud, judging not only by his own pencilled note, or by the
+writer’s condition as a governess, but by her loose sentiments as to the
+marriage tie. I have not the slightest idea who she could be. I never at
+least heard of one connected, however distantly, with my family, whom I
+could identify with the writer of these letters.”
+
+“I may hold them a short time in my possession?”
+
+“Pardon me a preliminary question. If I may venture to form a
+conjecture, the object of your search must be connected with your
+countryman, whom the lady politely calls the ‘wretched Englishman;’ but
+I own I should not like to lend, through these letters, a pretence to
+any steps that may lead to a scandal in which my father’s name or that
+of any member of my family could be mixed up.”
+
+“Marquis, it is to prevent the possibility of all scandal that I ask you
+to trust these letters to my discretion.”
+
+“Foi de gentilhomme?”
+
+“Foi de gentilhomme!”
+
+“Take them. When and where shall we meet again?”
+
+“Soon, I trust; but I must leave Paris this evening. I am bound to
+Berlin in quest of this Countess von Rudesheim: and I fear that in a
+very few days intercourse between France and the German frontier will be
+closed upon travellers.”
+
+After a few more words not worth recording, the two young men shook
+hands and parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+It was with an interest languid and listless indeed, compared with
+that which he would have felt a day before, that Graham mused over the
+remarkable advances towards the discovery of Louise Duval which were
+made in the letters he had perused. She had married, then, first a
+foreigner, whom she spoke of as noble, and whose name and residence
+could be easily found through the Countess von Rudesheim. The marriage
+did not seem to have been a happy one. Left a widow in reduced
+circumstances, she had married again, evidently without affection. She
+was living so late as 1861, and she had children living is 1859: was the
+child referred to by Richard King one of them?
+
+The tone and style of the letters served to throw some light on the
+character of the writer: they evinced pride, stubborn self-will, and
+unamiable hardness of nature; but her rejection of all pecuniary aid
+from a man like the late Marquis de Rochebriant betokened a certain
+dignity of sentiment. She was evidently, whatever her strange ideas
+about her first marriage with Richard King, no vulgar woman of
+gallantry; and there must have been some sort of charm about her to
+have excited a friendly interest in a kinsman so remote, and a man of
+pleasure so selfish, as her high-born correspondent.
+
+But what now, so far as concerned his own happiness, was the hope, the
+probable certainty, of a speedy fulfilment of the trust bequeathed to
+him? Whether the result, in the death of the mother, and more especially
+of the child, left him rich, or, if the last survived, reduced his
+fortune to a modest independence, Isaura was equally lost to him, and
+fortune became valueless. But his first emotions on recovering from the
+shock of hearing from Isaura’s lips that she was irrevocably affianced
+to another, were not those of self-reproach. They were those of intense
+bitterness against her who, if really so much attached to him as he had
+been led to hope, could within so brief a time reconcile her heart
+to marriage with another. This bitterness was no doubt unjust; but I
+believe it to be natural to men of a nature so proud and of affections
+so intense as Graham’s, under similar defeats of hope. Resentment is
+the first impulse in a man loving with the whole ardour of his soul,
+rejected, no matter why or wherefore, by the woman by whom he had cause
+to believe he himself was beloved; and though Graham’s standard of
+honour was certainly the reverse of low, yet man does not view honour in
+the same light as woman does, when involved in analogous difficulties of
+position. Graham conscientiously thought that if Isaura so loved him
+as to render distasteful an engagement to another which could only very
+recently have been contracted, it would be more honourable frankly so to
+tell the accepted suitor than to leave him in ignorance that her heart
+was estranged. But these engagements are very solemn things with girls
+like Isaura, and hers was no ordinary obligation of woman-honour. Had
+the accepted one been superior in rank-fortune--all that flatters the
+ambition of woman in the choice of marriage; had he been resolute, and
+strong, and self-dependent amid the trials and perils of life--then
+possibly the woman’s honour might find excuse in escaping the penalties
+of its pledge. But the poor, ailing, infirm, morbid boy-poet, who looked
+to her as his saving angel in body, in mind, and soul-to say to him,
+“Give me back my freedom,” would be to abandon him to death and to sin.
+But Graham could not of course divine why what he as a man thought right
+was to Isaura as woman impossible: and he returned to his old prejudiced
+notion that there is no real depth and ardour of affection for human
+lovers in the poetess whose mind and heart are devoted to the creation
+of imaginary heroes. Absorbed in reverie, he took his way slowly and
+with downcast looks towards the British embassy, at which it was well to
+ascertain whether the impending war yet necessitated special passports
+for Germany.
+
+“Bon-jour, cher ami,” said a pleasant voice; “and how long have you been
+at Paris?”
+
+“Oh, my dear M. Savarin! charmed to see you looking so well! Madame well
+too, I trust? My kindest regards to her. I have been in Paris but a day
+or two, and I leave this evening.”
+
+“So soon? The war frightens you away, I suppose. Which way are you going
+now?”
+
+“To the British embassy.”
+
+“Well, I will go with you so far--it is in my own direction. I have to
+call at the charming Italian’s with my congratulations--on news I only
+heard this morning.”
+
+“You mean Mademoiselle Cicogna--and the news that demands
+congratulations--her approaching marriage!”
+
+“Mon Dieu! when could you have heard of that?”
+
+“Last night at the house of M. Duplessis.”
+
+“Parbleu! I shall scold her well for confiding to her new friend Valerie
+the secret she kept from her old friends, my wife and myself.”
+
+“By the way,” said Graham, with a tone of admirably-feigned
+indifference, “who is the happy man? That part of the secret I did not
+hear.”
+
+“Can’t you guess?” “NO.”
+
+“Gustave Rameau.”
+
+“Ah!” Graham almost shrieked, so sharp and shrill was his cry. “Ah! I
+ought indeed to have guessed that!”
+
+“Madame Savarin, I fancy, helped to make up the marriage. I hope it may
+turn out well; certainly it will be his salvation. May it be for her
+happiness!”
+
+“No doubt of that! Two poets-born for each other, I dare say. Adieu, my
+dear Savarin! Here we are at the embassy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+That evening Graham found himself in the coupe of the express train to
+Strasbourg. He had sent to engage the whole coupe to himself, but that
+was impossible. One place was bespoken as far as C-------, after which
+Graham might prosecute his journey alone on paying for the three places.
+
+When he took his seat another man was in the further corner whom he
+scarcely noticed. The train shot rapidly on for some leagues. Profound
+silence in the coupe, save at moments those heavy impatient sighs that
+came from the very depths of the heart, and of which he who sighs is
+unconscious, burst from the Englishman’s lips, and drew on him the
+observant side-glance of his fellow-traveller.
+
+At length the fellow-traveller said in very good English, though
+with French accent, “Would you object, sir, to my lighting my little
+carriage-lantern? I am in the habit of reading in the night train, and
+the wretched lamp they give us does not permit that. But if you wish to
+sleep, and my lantern would prevent you doing so, consider my request
+unasked.”
+
+“You are most courteous, sir. Pray light your lantern--that will not
+interfere with my sleep.”
+
+As Graham thus answered, far away from the place and the moment as his
+thoughts were, it yet faintly struck him that he had heard that voice
+before.
+
+The man produced a small lantern, which he attached to the window-sill,
+and drew forth from a small leathern bag sundry newspapers and
+pamphlets. Graham flung himself back, and in a minute or so again came
+his sigh.
+
+“Allow me to offer you those evening journals--you may not have had
+time to read them before starting,” said the fellow-traveller, leaning
+forward, and extending the newspapers with one hand, while with the
+other he lifted his lantern. Graham turned, and the faces of the two men
+were close to each other--Graham with his travelling-cap drawn over his
+brows, the other with head uncovered.
+
+“Monsieur Lebeau!”
+
+“Bon soir, Mr. Lamb!”
+
+Again silence for a moment or so. Monsieur Lebeau then broke it--
+
+“I think, Mr. Lamb, that in better society than that of the Faubourg
+Montmartre you are known under another name.” Graham had no heart then
+for the stage-play of a part, and answered, with quiet haughtiness,
+“Possibly--and what name?”
+
+“Graham Vane. And, sir,” continued Lebeau, with a haughtiness equally
+quiet, but somewhat more menacing, “since we two gentlemen find
+ourselves thus close, do I ask too much if I inquire why you condescend
+to seek my acquaintance in disguise?”
+
+“Monsieur le Vicomte de Mauleon, when you talk of disguise, is it too
+much to inquire why my acquaintance was accepted by Monsieur Lebeau?”
+
+“Ha! Then you confess that it was Victor de Mauleon whom you sought when
+you first visited the cafe Jean Jacques?”
+
+“Frankly I confess it.”
+
+Monsieur Lebeau drew himself back, and seemed to reflect.
+
+“I see! Solely for the purpose of learning whether Victor de Mauleon
+could give you any information about Louise Duval. Is it so?”
+
+“Monsieur le Vicomte, you say truly.”
+
+Again M. Lebeau paused as if in reflection; and Graham, in that state
+of mind when a man who may most despise and detest the practice of
+duelling, may yet feel a thrill of delight if some homicide would be
+good enough to put him out of his misery, flung aside his cap, lifted
+his broad frank forehead, and stamped his foot impatiently as if to
+provoke a quarrel.
+
+M. Lebeau lowered his spectacles, and, with those calm, keen, searching
+eyes of his, gazed at the Englishman.
+
+“It strikes me,” he said, with a smile, the fascination of which not
+even those faded whiskers could disguise--“it strikes me that there are
+two ways in which gentlemen such as you and I are can converse: firstly,
+with reservation and guard against each other; secondly, with perfect
+openness. Perhaps of the two I have more need of reservation and wary
+guard against any stranger than you have. Allow me to propose the
+alternative--perfect openness. What say you?” and he extended his hand.
+
+“Perfect openness,” answered Graham, softened into sudden liking for
+this once terrible swordsman, and shaking, as an Englishman shakes, the
+hand held out to him in peace by the man from whom he had anticipated
+quarrel.
+
+“Permit me now, before you address any questions to me, to put one to
+you. How did you learn that Victor de Mauleon was identical with Jean
+Lebeau?”
+
+“I heard that from an agent of the police.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“Whom I consulted as to the means of ascertaining whether Louise Duval
+was alive,--if so, where she could be found.”
+
+“I thank you very much for your information. I had no notion that the
+police of Paris had divined the original alias of poor Monsieur Lebeau,
+though something occurred at Lyons which made me suspect it. Strange
+that the Government, knowing through the police that Victor de Mauleon,
+a writer they had no reason to favour, had been in so humble a position,
+should never, even in their official journals, have thought it prudent
+to say so! But, now I think of it, what if they had? They could prove
+nothing against Jean Lebeau. They could but say, ‘Jean Lebeau is
+suspected to be too warm a lover of liberty, too earnest a friend of
+the people, and Jean Lebeau is the editor of La Sens Commun.’ Why, that
+assertion would have made Victor de Mauleon the hero of the Reds, the
+last thing a prudent Government could desire. I thank you cordially for
+your frank reply. Now, what question would you put to me?”
+
+“In one word, all you can tell me about Louise Duval.”
+
+“You shall have it. I had heard vaguely in my young days that a
+half-sister of mine by my father’s first marriage with Mademoiselle
+de Beauvilliers had--when in advanced middle life he married a second
+time--conceived a dislike for her mother-in-law, and, being of age, with
+an independent fortune of her own, had quitted the house, taken up her
+residence with an elderly female relative, and there had contracted
+a marriage with a man who gave her lessons in drawing. After that
+marriage, which my father in vain tried to prevent, my sister was
+renounced by her family. That was all I knew till, after I came into my
+inheritance by the death of both my parents, I learned from my father’s
+confidential lawyer that the drawing-master, M. Duval, had soon
+dissipated his wife’s fortune, become a widower with one child--a
+girl--and fallen into great distress. He came to my father, begging for
+pecuniary aid. My father, though by no means rich, consented to allow
+him a yearly pension, on condition that he never revealed to his child
+her connection with our family. The man agreed to the condition, and
+called at my father’s lawyer quarterly for his annuity. But the lawyer
+informed me that this deduction from my income had ceased, that M. Duval
+had not for a year called or sent for the sum due to him, and that he
+must therefore be dead. One day my valet informed me that a young lady
+wished to see me--in those days young ladies very often called on me. I
+desired her to be shown in. There entered a young creature, almost of my
+own age, who, to my amazement saluted me as uncle. This was the child of
+my half-sister. Her father had been dead several months, fulfilling very
+faithfully the condition on which he had held his pension, and the girl
+never dreaming of the claims that, if wise, poor child, she ought not
+to have cared for, viz.,--to that obsolete useless pauper birthright,
+a branch on the family tree of a French noble. But in pinch of
+circumstance, and from female curiosity, hunting among the papers her
+father had left for some clue to the reasons for the pension he had
+received, she found letters from her mother, letters from my father,
+which indisputably proved that she was grandchild to the fue Vicomte de
+Mauleon, and niece to myself. Her story as told to me was very pitiable.
+Conceiving herself to be nothing higher in birth than daughter to this
+drawing-master, at his death, poor, penniless orphan that she was, she
+had accepted the hand of an English student of medicine whom she did not
+care for. Miserable with this man, on finding by the documents I refer
+to that she was my niece, she came to me for comfort and counsel. What
+counsel could I or any man give to her but to make the best of what
+had happened, and live with her husband? But then she started another
+question. It seems that she had been talking with some one, I think her
+landlady, or some other woman with whom she had made acquaintance--was
+she legally married to this man? Had he not entrapped her ignorance into
+a false marriage? This became a grave question, and I sent at once to
+my lawyer. On hearing the circumstances, he at once declared that the
+marriage was not legal according to the laws of France. But, doubtless,
+her English soi-disant husband was not cognisant of the French law, and
+a legal marriage could, with his assent, be at once solemnised. Monsieur
+Vane, I cannot find words to convey to you the joy that poor girl showed
+in her face and in her words when she learned that she was not bound
+to pass her life with that man as his wife. It was in vain to talk and
+reason with her. Then arose the other question, scarcely less important.
+True, the marriage was not legal, but would it not be better on all
+accounts to take steps to have it formally annulled, thus freeing her
+from the harassment of any claim the Englishman might advance, and
+enabling her to establish the facts in a right position, not injurious
+to her honour in the eyes of any future suitor to her hand? She would
+not hear of such a proposal. She declared that she could not bring to
+the family she pined to re-enter the scandal of disgrace. To allow that
+she had made such a misalliance would be bad enough in itself; but to
+proclaim to the world that, though nominally the wife, she had in fact
+been only the mistress of this medical student--she would rather throw
+herself into the Seine. All she desired was to fund some refuge, some
+hiding-place for a time, whence she could write to the man informing him
+that he had no lawful hold on her. Doubtless he would not seek then to
+molest her. He would return to his own country, and be effaced from
+her life. And then, her story unknown, she might form a more suitable
+alliance. Fiery young creature though she was--true De Mauleon in
+being so fiery--she interested me strongly. I should say that she was
+wonderfully handsome; and though imperfectly educated, and brought up in
+circumstances so lowly, there was nothing common about her--a certain je
+ne sais quoi of stateliness and race. At all events she did with me what
+she wished. I agreed to aid her desire of a refuge and hiding-place. Of
+course I could not lodge her in my own apartment, but I induced a female
+relation of her mother’s, an old lady living at Versailles, to receive
+her, stating her birth, but of course concealing her illegal marriage.
+
+“From time to time I went to see her. But one day I found this restless
+bright-plumaged bird flown. Among the ladies who visited at her
+relative’s house was a certain Madame Marigny, a very pretty young
+widow. Madame Marigny and Louise formed a sudden and intimate
+friendship. The widow was moving from Versailles into an apartment at
+Paris, and invited Louise to share it. She had consented. I was
+not pleased at this; for the widow was too young, and too much of a
+coquette, to be a safe companion to Louise. But though professing much
+gratitude and great regard for me, I had no power of controlling the
+poor girl’s actions. Her nominal husband, meanwhile, had left France,
+and nothing more was heard or known of him. I saw that the best thing
+that could possibly befall Louise was marriage with some one rich enough
+to gratify her taste for luxury and pomp; and that if such a marriage
+offered itself, she might be induced to free it from all possible
+embarrassment by procuring the annulment of the former, from which she
+had hitherto shrunk in such revolt. This opportunity presented itself.
+A man already rich, and in a career that promised to make him
+infinitely richer, an associate of mine in those days when I was rapidly
+squandering the remnant of my inheritance--this man saw her at the opera
+in company with Madame Marigny, fell violently in love with her, and
+ascertaining her relationship to me, besought an introduction. I was
+delighted to give it; and, to say the truth, I was then so reduced to
+the bottom of my casket, I felt that it was becoming impossible for me
+to continue the aid I had hitherto given to Louise, and--what then would
+become of her? I thought it fair to tell Louvier--”
+
+“Louvier--the financier?”
+
+“Ah, that was a slip of the tongue, but no matter; there is no reason
+for concealing his name. I thought it right, I say, to tell Louvier
+confidentially the history of the unfortunate illegal marriage. It did
+not damp his ardour. He wooed her to the best of his power, but she
+evidently took him into great dislike. One day she sent for me in much
+excitement, showed me some advertisements in the French journals which,
+though not naming her, evidently pointed at her, and must have been
+dictated by her soi-disant husband. The advertisements might certainly
+lead to her discovery if she remained in Paris. She entreated my consent
+to remove elsewhere. Madame Marigny had her own reason for leaving
+Paris, and would accompany her. I supplied her with the necessary
+means, and a day or two afterwards she and her friend departed, as I
+understood, for Brussels. I received no letter from her; and my own
+affairs so seriously pre-occupied me, that poor Louise might have passed
+altogether out of my thoughts, had it not been for the suitor she had
+left in despair behind. Louvier besought me to ascertain her address;
+but I could give him no, other clue to it than that she said she was
+going to Brussels, but should soon remove to some quiet village. It
+was not for a long time--I can’t remember how long--it might be several
+weeks, perhaps two or three months, that I received a short note from
+her stating that she waited for a small remittance, the last she would
+accept from me, as she was resolved, so soon as her health would permit,
+to find means to maintain herself--and telling me to direct to her,
+Poste restante, Aix-la-Chapelle. I sent her the sum she asked, perhaps a
+little more, but with a confession reluctantly wrung from me that I was
+a ruined man; and I urged her to think very seriously before she refused
+the competence and position which a union with M. Louvier would insure.
+
+“This last consideration so pressed on me that, when Louvier called on
+me, I think that day or the nests I gave him Louise’s note, and told him
+that, if he were still as much in love with her as ever, les absents ont
+toujours tort, and he had better go to Aix-la-Chapelle and find her
+out; that he had my hearty approval of his wooing, and consent to his
+marriage, though I still urged the wisdom and fairness, if she would
+take the preliminary step--which, after all, the French law frees as
+much as possible from pain and scandal--of annulling the irregular
+marriage into which her childlike youth had been decoyed.
+
+“Louvier left me for Aix-la-Chapelle. The very next day came that cruel
+affliction which made me a prey to the most intolerable calumny, which
+robbed me of every friend, which sent me forth from my native country
+penniless, and resolved to be nameless--until--until--well, until my
+hour could come again--every dog, if not hanged, has its day;--when that
+affliction befell me, I quitted France, heard no more of Louvier nor of
+Louise; indeed, no letter addressed to me at Paris would have reached--”
+
+The man paused here, evidently with painful emotion. He resumed in the
+quiet matter-of-fact way in which he had commenced his narrative.
+
+“Louise had altogether faded out of my remembrance until your question
+revived it. As it happened, the question came at the moment when I
+meditated resuming my real name and social position. In so doing, I
+should of course come in contact with my old acquaintance Louvier; and
+the name of Louise was necessarily associated with us. I called on him,
+and made myself known. The slight information I gave you as to my niece
+was gleaned from him.
+
+“I may now say more. It appears that when he arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle
+he found that Louise Duval had left it a day or two previously, and
+according to scandal had been for some time courted by a wealthy and
+noble lover, whom she had gone to Munich to meet. Louvier believed
+this tale: quitted Aix indignantly, and never heard more of her. The
+probability is, M. Vane, that she must have been long dead. But if
+living still, I feel quite sure that she will communicate with me
+some day or other. Now that I have reappeared in Paris in my own
+name--entered into a career that, for good or for evil, must ere long
+bring my name very noisily before the public--Louise cannot fail to hear
+of my existence and my whereabouts; and unless I am utterly mistaken
+as to her character, she will assuredly inform me of her own. Oblige
+me with your address, and in that case I will let you know. Of course
+I take for granted the assurance you gave me last year, that you only
+desire to discover her in order to render her some benefit, not to
+injure or molest her?”
+
+“Certainly. To that assurance I pledge my honour. Any letter with which
+you may favour me had better be directed to my London address; here is
+my card. But, M. le Vicomte, there is one point on which pray pardon me
+if I question you still. Had you no suspicion that there was one reason
+why this lady might have quitted Paris so hastily, and have so shrunk
+from the thought of a marriage so advantageous, in a worldly point
+of view, as that with M. Louvier,--namely, that she anticipated the
+probability of becoming the mother of a child by the man whom she
+refused to acknowledge as a husband?”
+
+“That idea did not strike me until you asked me if she had a child.
+Should your conjecture be correct, it would obviously increase her
+repugnance to apply for the annulment of her illegal marriage. But if
+Louise is still living and comes across me, I do not doubt that, the
+motives for concealment no longer operating, she will confide to me the
+truth. Since we have been talking together thus frankly, I suppose I
+may fairly ask whether I do not guess correctly in supposing that this
+soi-disant husband, whose name I forget,--Mac--something, perhaps,
+Scotch-I think she said he was Ecossais,--is dead and has left by will
+some legacy to Louise and any child she may have borne to him?”
+
+“Not exactly so. The man, as you say, is dead; but he bequeathed no
+legacy to the lady who did not hold herself married to him. But there
+are those connected with him who, knowing the history, think that some
+compensation is due for the wrong so unconsciously done to her, and yet
+more to any issue of a marriage not meant to be irregular or illegal.
+Permit me now to explain why I sought you in another guise and name than
+my own. I could scarcely place in M. Lebeau the confidence which I now
+unreservedly place in the Vicomte de Mauleon.”
+
+“Cela va sans dire. You believed, then, that calumny about the jewels;
+you do not believe it now?”
+
+“Now! my amazement is, that any one who had known you could believe it.”
+
+“Oh, how often, and with tears of rage in my exile--my wanderings--have
+I asked that question of myself! That rage has ceased; and I have but
+one feeling left for that credulous, fickle Paris, of which one day I
+was the idol, the next the byword. Well, a man sometimes plays chess
+more skilfully for having been long a mere bystander. He understands
+better how to move, and when to sacrifice the pieces. Politics, M. Vane,
+is the only exciting game left to me at my years. At yours, there is
+still that of love. How time flies! we are nearing the station at which
+I descend. I have kinsfolk of my mother’s in these districts. They are
+not Imperialists; they are said to be powerful in the department. But
+before I apply to them in my own name, I think it prudent that M. Lebeau
+should quietly ascertain what is their real strength, and what would be
+the prospects of success if Victor de Mauleon offered himself as depute
+at the next election. Wish him joy, M. Vane! If he succeed, you will
+hear of him some day crowned in the Capitol, or hurled from the Tarpeian
+rock.”
+
+Here the train stopped. The false Lebeau gathered up his papers,
+readjusted his spectacles and his bag, descended lightly, and, pressing
+Graham’s hand as he paused at the door, said, “Be sure I will not forget
+your address if I have anything to say. Bon voyage!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Graham continued his journey to Strasbourg. On arriving there he felt
+very unwell. Strong though his frame was, the anguish and self-struggle
+through which he had passed since the day he had received in London
+Mrs. Morley’s letter, till that on which he had finally resolved on
+his course of conduct at Paris, and the shock which had annihilated his
+hopes in Isaura’s rejection, had combined to exhaust its endurance,
+and fever had already commenced when he took his place in the coupe.
+If there be a thing which a man should not do when his system is
+undermined, and his pulse between 90 and 100, it is to travel all night
+by a railway express. Nevertheless, as the Englishman’s will was yet
+stronger than his frame, he would not give himself more than an hour’s
+rest, and again started for Berlin. Long before he got to Berlin,
+the will failed him--as well as the frame. He was lifted out of the
+carriage, taken to a hotel in a small German town, and six hours
+afterwards he was delirious. It was fortunate for him that under such
+circumstances plenty of money and Scott’s circular-notes for some
+hundreds were found in his pocketbook, so that he did not fail to
+receive attentive nursing and skilful medical treatment. There, for
+the present, I must leave him--leave him for how long? But any village
+apothecary could say that fever such as his must run its course. He was
+still in bed, and very dimly--and that but at times--conscious, when the
+German armies were gathering round the penfold of Sedan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+When the news of the disastrous day at Sedan reached Paris, the first
+effect was that of timid consternation. There were a few cries of
+Decheance! fewer still of Vive la Republique among the motley crowds;
+but they were faint, and chiefly by ragged gamins. A small body repaired
+to Trochu and offered him the sceptre, which he politely declined. A
+more important and respectable body--for it comprised the majority
+of the Corps Legislatif--urged Palikao to accept the temporary
+dictatorship, which the War Minister declined with equal politeness. In
+both these overtures it was clear that the impulse of the proposers was
+towards any form of government rather than republican. The sergens de
+ville were sufficient that day to put down riot. They did make a charge
+on a mob, which immediately ran away.
+
+The morning of that day the Council of Ten were summoned by
+Lebeau--minus only Rameau, who was still too unwell to attend, and the
+Belgian, not then at Paris; but their place was supplied by the
+two travelling members, who had been absent from the meeting before
+recorded. These were conspirators better known in history than those I
+have before described; professional conspirators--personages who from
+their youth upwards had done little else but conspire. Following the
+discreet plan pursued elsewhere throughout this humble work, I give
+their names other than they bore. One, a very swarthy and ill-favoured
+man, between forty and fifty, I call Paul Grimm--by origin a German, but
+by rearing and character French; from the hair on his head, staring up
+rough and ragged as a bramblebush, to the soles of small narrow feet,
+shod with dainty care, he was a personal coxcomb, and spent all he
+could spare on his dress. A clever man, not ill-educated--a vehement and
+effective speaker at a club. Vanity and an amorous temperament had made
+him a conspirator, since he fancied he interested the ladies more in
+that capacity than any other. His companion, Edgar Ferrier, would have
+been a journalist, only hitherto his opinions had found no readers; the
+opinions were those of Marat. He rejoiced in thinking that his hour for
+glory, so long deferred, had now arrived. He was thoroughly sincere:
+his father and grandfather had died in a madhouse. Both these men,
+insignificant in ordinary times, were likely to become of terrible
+importance in the crisis of a revolution. They both had great power with
+the elements that form a Parisian mob. The instructions given to these
+members of the Council by Lebeau were brief: they were summed up in the
+one word, Decheance. The formidable nature of a council apparently so
+meanly constituted became strikingly evident at that moment, because it
+was so small in number, while each one of these could put in movement a
+large section of the populace; secondly, because, unlike a revolutionary
+club or a numerous association, no time was wasted in idle speeches, and
+all were under the orders of one man of clear head and resolute purpose;
+and thirdly, and above all, because one man supplied the treasury, and
+money for an object desired was liberally given and promptly at hand.
+The meeting did not last ten minutes, and about two hours afterwards
+its effects were visible. From Montmartre and Belleville and Montretout
+poured streams of ouvriers, with whom Armand Monnier was a chief,
+and the Medecin des Pauvres an oracle. Grimm and Ferrier headed other
+detachments that startled the well-dressed idlers on the Boulevards.
+The stalwart figure of the Pole was seen on the Place de la Concorde,
+towering amidst other refugees, amid which glided the Italian champion
+of humanity. The cry of Decheance became louder. But as yet there were
+only few cries of Vive la Republique!--such a cry was not on the orders
+issued by Lebeau. At midnight the crowd round the hall of the Corps
+Legislatif is large: cries of La Dechaeance loud--a few cries, very
+feeble, of Vive la Republique!
+
+What followed on the 4th--the marvellous audacity with which
+half-a-dozen lawyers belonging to a pitiful minority in a Chamber
+elected by universal suffrage walked into the Hotel de Ville and said,
+“The Republic is established, and we are its Government,” history has
+told too recently for me to narrate. On the evening of the 5th the
+Council of Ten met again: the Pole; the Italian radiant; Grimm
+and Ferrier much excited and rather drunk; the Medecin des Pauvres
+thoughtful; and Armand Monnier gloomy. A rumour has spread that General
+Trochu, in accepting the charge imposed on him, has exacted from the
+Government the solemn assurance of respect for God, and for the rights
+of Family and Property. The Atheist is very indignant at the assent of
+the Government to the first proposition; Monnier equal indignant at the
+assent to the second and third. What has that honest ouvrier conspired
+for?--what has he suffered for?--of late nearly starved for?--but to
+marry another man’s wife, getting rid of his own, and to legalise a
+participation in the property of his employer,--and now he is no better
+off than before. “There must be another revolution,” he whispers to the
+Atheist.
+
+“Certainly,” whispers back the Atheist; “he who desires to better this
+world must destroy all belief in another.” The conclave was assembled
+when Lebeau entered by the private door. He took his place at the head
+of the table; and, fixing on the group eyes that emitted a cold gleam
+through the spectacles, thus spoke:
+
+“Messieurs, or Citoyens, which ye will--I no longer call ye
+confreres--you have disobeyed or blundered my instructions. On such an
+occasion disobedience and blunder are crimes equally heinous.”
+
+Angry murmurs.
+
+“Silence! Do not add mutiny to your other offences. My instructions were
+simple and short. Aid in the abolition of the Empire. Do not aid in any
+senseless cry for a Republic or any other form of government. Leave
+that to the Legislature. What have you done? You swelled the crowd that
+invaded the Corps Ligislatif. You, Dombinsky, not even a Frenchman, dare
+to mount the President’s rostrum, and brawl forth your senseless jargon.
+You, Edgar Ferrier, from whom I expected better, ascend the tribune, and
+invite the ruffians in the crowd to march to the prisons and release
+the convicts; and all of you swell the mob at the Hotel de Ville, and
+inaugurate the reign of folly by creating an oligarchy of lawyers to
+resist the march of triumphal armies. Messieurs, I have done with you.
+You are summoned for the last time: the Council is dissolved.”
+
+With these words Lebeau put on his hat, and turned to depart. But the
+Pole, who was seated near him, sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “Traitor,
+thou shalt not escape! Comrades, he wants to sell us!”
+
+“I have a right to sell you at least, for I bought you, and a very bad
+bargain I made,” said Lebeau, in a tone of withering sarcasm.
+
+“Liar!” cried the Pole, and seized Lebeau by the left hand, while with
+the right he drew forth a revolver. Ferrier and Grimm, shouting, “A
+bas le renegat!” would have rushed forward in support of the Pole, but
+Monnier thrust himself between them and their intended victim, crying
+with a voice that dominated their yell, “Back!--we are not assassins.”
+ Before he had finished the sentence the Pole was on his knees. With a
+vigour which no one could have expected from the seeming sexagenarian,
+Lebeau had caught the right arm of his assailant, twisted it back so
+mercilessly as almost to dislocate elbow and shoulder joint. One barrel
+of the revolver discharged itself harmlessly against the opposite wall,
+and the pistol itself then fell from the unnerved hand of the would-be
+assassin; and what with the pain and the sudden shock, the stalwart
+Dombinsky fell in the attitude of a suppliant at the feet of his
+unlooked-for vanquisher.
+
+Lebeau released his hold, possessed himself of the pistol, pointing the
+barrels towards Edgar Ferrier, who stood with mouth agape and lifted arm
+arrested, and said quietly: “Monsieur, have the goodness to open that
+window.” Ferrier mechanically obeyed. “Now, hireling,” continued
+Lebeau, addressing the vanquished Pole, “choose between the door and the
+window.”
+
+“Go, my friend,” whispered the Italian. The Pole did not utter a word;
+but rising nimbly, and rubbing his arm, stalked to the door. There
+he paused a moment and said, “I retire overpowered by numbers,” and
+vanished.
+
+“Messieurs,” resumed Lebeau, calmly, “I repeat that the Council is
+dissolved. In fact its object is fulfilled more abruptly than any of us
+foresaw, and by means which I at least had been too long out of Paris
+to divine as possible. I now see that every aberration of reason is
+possible to the Parisians. The object that united us was the fall of the
+Empire. As I have always frankly told you, with that object achieved,
+separation commences. Each of us has his own crotchet, which differs
+from the other man’s. Pursue yours as you will--I pursue mine--you will
+find Jean Lebeau no more in Paris: il s’eface. Au plaisir, mais pas au
+revoir.”
+
+He retreated to the masked door and disappeared.
+
+Marc le Roux, the porter or custos of that ruinous council-hall, alarmed
+at the explosion of the pistol, had hurried into the room, and now
+stood unheeded by the door with mouth agape, while Lebeau thus curtly
+dissolved the assembly. But when the president vanished through the
+secret doorway, Le Roux also retreated. Hastily descending the stairs,
+he made as quickly as his legs could carry him for the mouth of the
+alley in the rear of the house, through which he knew that Lebeau must
+pass. He arrived, panting and breathless, in time to catch hold of
+the ex-president’s arm. “Pardon, citizen,” stammered he, “but do I
+understand that you have sent the Council of Ten to the devil?”
+
+“I? Certainly not, my good Paul; I dismiss them to go where they
+like. If they prefer the direction you name, it is their own choice. I
+declined to accompany them, and I advise you not to do so.”
+
+“But, citizen, have you considered what is to become of Madame? Is she
+to be turned out of the lodge? Are my wages to stop, and Madame to be
+left without a crust to put into her soup?”
+
+“Not so bad as that; I have just paid the rent of the baraque for three
+months in advance, and there is your quarter’s pay, in advance also.
+My kind regards to Madame, and tell her to keep your skin safe from the
+schemes of these lunatics.” Thrusting some pieces of gold into the hands
+of the porter, Lebeau nodded his adieu, and hastened along his way.
+
+Absorbed in his own reflections, he did not turn to look behind. But if
+he had, he could not have detected the dark form of the porter, creeping
+in the deep shadow of the streets with distant but watchful footsteps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER, IX.
+
+The conspirators, when left by their president, dispersed in deep, not
+noisy resentment. They were indeed too stunned for loud demonstration;
+and belonging to different grades of life, and entertaining different
+opinions, their confidence in each other seemed lost now that the chief
+who had brought and kept them together was withdrawn from their union.
+The Italian and the Atheist slunk away, whispering to each other. Grimm
+reproached Ferrier for deserting Dombinsky and obeying Lebeau. Ferrier
+accused Grimm of his German origin, and hinted at denouncing him as a
+Prussian spy. Gaspard le Noy linked his arm in Monnier’s, and when they
+had gained the dark street without, leading into a labyrinth of desolate
+lanes, the Medicin des Pauvres said to the mechanic: “You are a brave
+fellow, Monnier. Lebeau owes you a good turn. But for your cry, ‘We are
+not assassins,’ the Pole might not have been left without support. No
+atmosphere is so infectious as that in which we breathe the same air
+of revenge: when the violence of one man puts into action the anger or
+suspicion of others, they become like a pack of hounds, which follow the
+spring of the first hound, whether on the wild boar or their own master.
+Even I, who am by no means hot-headed, had my hand on my case-knife when
+the word ‘assassin’ rebuked and disarmed me.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Monnier, gloomily, “I half repent the impulse which
+made me interfere to save that man. Better he should die than live to
+betray the cause we allowed him to lead.”
+
+“Nay, mon ami, speaking candidly, we must confess that he never from the
+first pretended to advocate the cause for which you conspired. On the
+contrary, he always said that with the fall of the Empire our union
+would cease, and each become free to choose his own way towards his own
+after-objects.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Armand, reluctantly; “he said that to me privately, with
+still greater plainness than he said it to the Council. But I answered
+as plainly.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“I told him that the man who takes the first step in a revolution, and
+persuades others to go along with him, cannot in safety stand still or
+retreat when the next step is to be taken. It is ‘en avant’ or ‘a la
+lanterne.’ So it shall be with him. Shall a fellow-being avail himself
+of the power over my mind which he derives from superior education or
+experience,--break into wild fragments my life, heretofore tranquil,
+orderly, happy,--make use of my opinions, which were then but harmless
+desires, to serve his own purpose, which was hostile to the opinions he
+roused into action,--say to me, ‘Give yourself up to destroy the
+first obstacle in the way of securing a form of society which your
+inclinations prefer,’ and then, that first obstacle destroyed, cry,
+‘Halt! I go with you no further; I will not help you to piece together
+the life I have induced you to shatter; I will not aid you to substitute
+for the society that pained you the society that would please; I leave
+you, struggling, bewildered, maddened, in the midst of chaos within and
+without you’? Shall a fellow-being do this, and vanish with a mocking
+cry: ‘Tool! I have had enough of thee; I cast thee aside as worthless
+lumber’? Ah! let him beware! The tool is of iron, and can be shaped
+to edge and point.” The passion with which this rough eloquence was
+uttered, and the fierce sinister expression that had come over a
+countenance habitually open and manly, even when grave and stern,
+alarmed and startled Le Noy. “Pooh, my friend!” he said, rather
+falteringly, “you are too excited now to think justly. Go home and kiss
+your children. Never do anything that may make them shrink from their
+father. And as to Lebeau, try and forget him. He says he shall disappear
+from Paris. I believe him. It is clear to me that the man is not what
+he seemed to us. No man of sixty could by so easy a sleight of hand have
+brought that giant Pole to his knee. If Lebeau reappear it will be
+in some other form. Did you notice that in the momentary struggle his
+flaxen wig got disturbed, and beneath it I saw a dark curl. I suspect
+that the man is not only younger than he seemed, but of higher rank--a
+conspirator against one throne, perhaps, in order to be minister under
+another. There are such men.”
+
+Before Monnier, who seemed struck by these conjectures, collected his
+thoughts to answer, a tall man in the dress of a sous lieutenant stopped
+under a dim gas-lamp, and, catching sight of the artisan’s face, seized
+him by the hand, exclaiming, “Armand, mon frere! well met; strange
+times, eh? Come and discuss them at the cafe de Lyon yonder over a bowl
+of punch. I’ll stand treat.”
+
+“Agreed, dear Charles.”
+
+“And if this monsieur is a friend of yours, perhaps he will join us.”
+
+“You are too obliging, Monsieur,” answered Le Noy, not ill-pleased to
+get rid of his excited companion; “but it has been a busy day with me,
+and I am only fit for bed. Be abstinent of the punch, Armand. You are
+feverish already. Good-night, Messieurs.”
+
+The cafe de Lyon, in vogue among the National Guard of the quartier, was
+but a few yards off, and the brothers turned towards it arm in arm. “Who
+is the friend?” asked Charles; “I don’t remember to have seen him with
+thee before.”
+
+“He belongs to the medical craft--a good patriot and a kind man--attends
+the poor gratuitously. Yes, Charles, these are strange times; what dost
+thou think will come of them?”
+
+They had now entered the cafe; and Charles had ordered the punch, and
+seated himself at a vacant table before he replied. “What will come of
+these times? I will tell thee. National deliverance and regeneration
+through the ascendency of the National Guard.”
+
+“Eh? I don’t take,” said Armand, bewildered.
+
+“Probably not,” answered Charles, with an air of compassionate conceit;
+“thou art a dreamer, but I am a politician.” He tapped his forehead
+significantly. “At this custom-house, ideas are examined before they are
+passed.”
+
+Armand gazed at his brother wistfully, and with a defence he rarely
+manifested towards any one who disputed his own claims to superior
+intelligence. Charles was a few years older than Monnier; he was of
+large build; he had shaggy lowering eyebrows, a long obstinate
+upper lip, the face of a man who was accustomed to lay down the law.
+Inordinate self-esteem often gives that character to a physiognomy
+otherwise commonplace. Charles passed for a deep thinker in his own
+set, which was a very different set from Armand’s--not among workmen but
+small shopkeepers. He had risen in life to a grade beyond Armand’s; he
+had always looked to the main chance, married the widow of a hosier and
+glover much older than himself, and in her right was a very respectable
+tradesman, comfortably well off; a Liberal, of course, but a Liberal
+bourgeois, equally against those above him and those below. Needless
+to add that he had no sympathy with his brother’s socialistic opinions.
+Still he loved that brother as well as he could love any one except
+himself. And Armand, who was very affectionate, and with whom family
+ties were very strong, returned that love with ample interest; and
+though so fiercely at war with the class to which Charles belonged, was
+secretly proud of having a brother who was of that class. So in
+England I have known the most violent antagonist of the landed
+aristocracy--himself a cobbler--who interrupts a discourse on the crimes
+of the aristocracy by saying, “Though I myself descend from a county
+family.”
+
+In an evil day Charles Monnier, enrolled in the National Guard, had
+received promotion in that patriotic corps. From that date he began to
+neglect his shop, to criticise military matters, and to think that if
+merit had fair play he should be a Cincinnatus or a Washington, he had
+not decided which.
+
+“Yes,” resumed Charles, ladling out the punch, “thou hast wit enough
+to perceive that our generals are imbeciles or traitors; that gredin
+Bonaparte has sold the army for ten millions of francs to Bismarck, and
+I have no doubt that Wimpffen has his share of the bargain. McMahon was
+wounded conveniently, and has his own terms for it. The regular army is
+nowhere. Thou wilt see--thou wilt see--they will not stop the march of
+the Prussians. Trochu will be obliged to come to the National Guard.
+Then we shall say, ‘General, give us our terms, and go to sleep.’
+
+“I shall be summoned to the council of war. I have my plan. I explain
+it--‘tis accepted--it succeeds. I am placed in supreme command--the
+Prussians are chased back to their sour-krout. And I--well--I don’t like
+to boast, but thou’lt see--thou’lt see--what will happen.”
+
+“And thy plan, Charles--thou hast formed it already?”
+
+“Ay, ay,--the really military genius is prompt, mon petit Armand--a
+flash of the brain. Hark ye! Let the Vandals come to Paris and invest
+it. Whatever their numbers on paper, I don’t care a button; they can
+only have a few thousands at any given point in the vast circumference
+of the capital. Any fool must grant that--thou must grant it eh?”
+
+“It seems just.”
+
+“Of course. Well, then, we proceed by sorties of 200,000 men repeated
+every other day, and in twelve days the Prussians are in full flight.
+The country rises on their flight--they are cut to pieces. I depose
+Trochu--the National Guard elects the Saviour of France. I have a
+place in my eye for thee. Thou art superb as a decorator--thou shalt be
+Minister des Beaux Arts. But keep clear of the canaille. No more strikes
+then--thou wilt be an employer--respect thy future order.”
+
+   [Charles Monnier seems to have indiscreetly blabbed out his “idea,”
+    for it was plagiarised afterwards at a meeting of the National
+   Guards in the Salle de la Bourse by Citizen Rochebrune (slain 19th
+   January, 1871, in the affair of Montretout). The plan, which he
+   developed nearly in the same words as Charles Monnier, was received
+   with lively applause; and at the close of his speech it was proposed
+   to name at once Citizen Rochebrune General of the National Guard, an
+   honour which, unhappily for his country, the citizen had the modesty
+   to decline.]
+
+Armand smiled mournfully. Though of intellect which, had it been
+disciplined, was far superior to his brother’s, it was so estranged
+from practical opinions, so warped, so heated, so flawed and cracked
+in parts, that he did not see the ridicule of Charles’s braggadocio.
+Charles had succeeded in life, Armand had failed; and Armand believed in
+the worldly wisdom of the elder born. But he was far too sincere for any
+bribe to tempt him to forsake his creed and betray his opinions. And
+he knew that it must be a very different revolution from that which his
+brother contemplated, that could allow him to marry another man’s wife,
+and his “order” to confiscate other people’s property.
+
+“Don’t talk of strikes, Charles. What is done is done. I was led into
+heading a strike, not on my own account, for I was well paid and well
+off, but for the sake of my fellow-workmen. I may regret now what I
+did, for the sake of Marie and the little ones. But it is an affair
+of honour, and I cannot withdraw from the cause till my order, as thou
+namest my class, has its rights.”
+
+“Bah! thou wilt think better of it when thou art an employer. Thou hast
+suffered enough already. Remember that I warned thee against that old
+fellow in spectacles whom I met once at thy house. I told thee he would
+lead thee into mischief, and then leave thee to get out of it. I saw
+through him. I have a head! Va!”
+
+“Thou wert a true prophet--he has duped me. But in moving me he has set
+others in movement; and I suspect he will find he has duped himself.
+Time will show.”
+
+Here the brothers were joined by some loungers belonging to the National
+Guard. The talk became general, the potations large. Towards daybreak
+Armand reeled home, drunk for the first time in his life. He was one
+of those whom drink makes violent. Marie had been sitting up for him,
+alarmed at his lengthened absence. But when she would have thrown
+herself on his breast, her pale face and her passionate sobs enraged
+him. He flung her aside roughly. From that night the man’s nature was
+changed. If, as a physiognomist has said, each man has in him a portion
+of the wild beast, which is suppressed by mild civilising circumstances,
+and comes uppermost when self-control is lost, the nature of many an
+honest workman, humane and tender-hearted as the best of us, commenced
+a change into the wild beast that raged through the civil war of the
+Communists, on the day when half-a-dozen Incapables, with no more claim
+to represent the people of Paris than half-a-dozen monkeys would have,
+were allowed to elect themselves to supreme power, and in the very fact
+of that election released all the elements of passion, and destroyed all
+the bulwarks of order.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+No man perhaps had more earnestly sought and more passionately striven
+for the fall of the Empire than Victor de Mauleon; and perhaps no man
+was more dissatisfied and disappointed by the immediate consequences
+of that fall, In first conspiring against the Empire, he had naturally
+enough, in common with all the more intelligent enemies of the dynasty,
+presumed that its fate would be worked out by the normal effect of civil
+causes--the alienation of the educated classes, the discontent of
+the artisans, the eloquence of the press and of popular meetings,
+strengthened in proportion as the Emperor had been compelled to relax
+the former checks upon the license of either. And De Mauleon had no less
+naturally concluded that there would be time given for the preparation
+of a legitimate and rational form of government to succeed that which
+was destroyed. For, as has been hinted or implied, this remarkable man
+was not merely an instigator of revolution through the Secret Council,
+and the turbulent agencies set in movement through the lower strata of
+society;--he was also in confidential communication with men eminent for
+wealth, station, and political repute, from whom he obtained the funds
+necessary for the darker purposes of conspiracy, into the elaboration of
+which they did not inquire; and these men, though belonging like himself
+to the Liberal party, were no hot-blooded democrats. Most of them
+were in favour of constitutional monarchy; all of them for forms of
+government very different from any republic in which socialists or
+communists could find themselves uppermost. Among these politicians were
+persons ambitious and able, who, in scheming for the fall of the Empire,
+had been prepared to undertake the task of conducting to ends compatible
+with modern civilisation the revolution they were willing to allow a mob
+at Paris to commence. The opening of the war necessarily suspended
+their designs. How completely the events of the 4th September mocked the
+calculations of their ablest minds, and paralysed the action of their
+most energetic spirits, will appear in the conversation I am about to
+record. It takes place between Victor de Mauleon and the personage
+to whom he had addressed the letter written on the night before the
+interview with Louvier, in which Victor had announced his intention of
+reappearing in Paris in his proper name and rank. I shall designate this
+correspondent as vaguely as possible; let me call him the Incognito. He
+may yet play so considerable a part in the history of France as a potent
+representative of the political philosophy of De Tocqueville--that is,
+of Liberal principles incompatible with the absolute power either of a
+sovereign or a populace, and resolutely opposed to experiments on the
+foundations of civilised society--that it would be unfair to himself and
+his partisans if, in a work like this, a word were said that could
+lead malignant conjecture to his identity with any special chief of the
+opinions of which I here present him only as a type.
+
+The Incognito, entering Victor’s apartment:
+
+“My dear friend, even if I had not received your telegram, I should have
+hastened hither on the news of this astounding revolution. It is only in
+Paris that such a tragedy could be followed by such a farce. You were on
+the spot--a spectator. Explain it if you can.”
+
+DE MAULEON.--“I was more than a spectator; I was an actor. Hiss me--I
+deserve it. When the terrible news from Sedan reached Paris, in the
+midst of the general stun and bewilderment I noticed a hesitating
+timidity among all those who had wares in their shops and a good coat on
+their backs. They feared that to proclaim the Empire defunct would be to
+install the Red Republic with all its paroxysm of impulsive rage and all
+its theories of wholesale confiscation. But since it was impossible
+for the object we had in view to let slip the occasion of deposing the
+dynasty which stood in its way, it was necessary to lose no time
+in using the revolutionary part of the populace for that purpose. I
+assisted in doing so; my excuse is this--that in a time of crisis a
+man of action must go straight to his immediate object, and in so doing
+employ the instruments at his command. I made, however, one error in
+judgment which admits no excuse: I relied on all I had heard, and all I
+had observed, of the character of Trochu, and I was deceived, in common,
+I believe, with all his admirers, and three parts of the educated
+classes of Paris.”
+
+INCOGNITO.--“I should have been equally deceived! Trochu’s conduct is a
+riddle that I doubt if he himself can ever solve. He was master of the
+position; he had the military force in his hands if he combined with
+Palikao, which, whatever the jealousies between the two, it was his
+absolute duty to do. He had a great prestige--”
+
+DE MAULEON.--“And for the moment a still greater popularity. His ipse
+dixit could have determined the wavering and confused spirits of the
+population. I was prepared for his abandonment of the Emperor--even of
+the Empress and the Regency. But how could I imagine that he, the man of
+moderate politics, of Orleanistic leanings, the clever writer, the fine
+talker, the chivalrous soldier, the religious Breton, could abandon
+everything that was legal, everything that could save France against
+the enemy, and Paris against civil discord; that he would connive at the
+annihilation of the Senate, of the popular Assembly, of every form of
+Government that could be recognised as legitimate at home or abroad,
+accept service under men whose doctrines were opposed to all his
+antecedents, all his professed opinions, and inaugurate a chaos under
+the name of a Republic!”
+
+INCOGNITO.--“How, indeed? How suppose that the National Assembly, just
+elected by a majority of seven millions and a half, could be hurried
+into a conjuring-bog, and reappear as the travesty of a Venetian
+oligarchy, composed of half-a-dozen of its most unpopular members!
+The sole excuse for Trochu is, that he deemed all other considerations
+insignificant compared with the defence of Paris, and the united action
+of the nation against the invaders. But if that were his honest desire
+in siding with this monstrous usurpation of power, he did everything
+by which the desire could be frustrated. Had there been any provisional
+body composed of men known and esteemed, elected by the Chambers,
+supported by Trochu and the troops at his back, there would have been
+a rallying-point for the patriotism of the provinces; and in the wise
+suspense of any constitution to succeed that Government until the enemy
+were chased from the field, all partisans--Imperialists, Legitimists,
+Orleanists, Republicans--would have equally adjourned their differences.
+But a democratic Republic, proclaimed by a Parisian mob for a nation in
+which sincere democratic Republicans are a handful, in contempt of
+an Assembly chosen by the country at large; headed by men in whom the
+provinces have no trust, and for whom their own representatives are
+violently cashiered;--can you conceive such a combination of wet
+blankets supplied by the irony of Fate for the extinction of every spark
+of ardour in the population from which armies are to be gathered in
+haste, at the beck of usupers they distrust and despise? Paris has
+excelled itself in folly. Hungering for peace, it proclaims a Government
+which has no legal power to treat for it. Shrieking out for allies among
+the monarchies, it annihilates the hope of obtaining them; its sole
+chance of escape from siege, famine, and bombardment, is in the
+immediate and impassioned sympathy of the provinces; and it revives
+all the grudges which the provinces have long sullenly felt against
+the domineering pretensions of the capital, and invokes the rural
+populations, which comprise the pith and sinew of armies, in the name
+of men whom I verily believe they detest still more than they do the
+Prussians. Victor, it is enough to make one despair of his country! All
+beyond the hour seems anarchy and ruin.”
+
+“Not so!” exclaimed De Mauleon. “Everything comes to him who knows how
+to wait. The Empire is destroyed; the usurpation that follows it has
+no roots. It will but serve to expedite the establishment of such a
+condition as we have meditated and planned--a constitution adapted to
+our age and our people, not based wholly on untried experiments, taking
+the best from nations that do not allow Freedom and Order to be the
+sport of any popular breeze. From the American Republic we must borrow
+the only safeguards against the fickleness of the universal suffrage
+which, though it was madness to concede in any ancient community, once
+conceded cannot be safely abolished,--viz., the salutary law that no
+article of the Constitution, once settled, can be altered without the
+consent of two-thirds of the legislative body. By this law we insure
+permanence, and that concomitant love for institutions which is
+engendered by time and custom. Secondly, the formation of a senate on
+such principles as may secure to it in all times of danger a confidence
+and respect which counteract in public opinion the rashness and heat of
+the popular assembly. On what principles that senate should be formed,
+with what functions invested, what share of the executive--especially
+in foreign affairs, declarations of war, or treaties of peace--should
+be accorded to it, will no doubt need the most deliberate care of the
+ablest minds. But a senate I thus sketch has alone rescued America from
+the rashness of counsel incident to a democratic Chamber; and it is
+still more essential to France, with still more favourable elements for
+its creation. From England we must borrow the great principle that has
+alone saved her from revolution--that the head of the State can do
+no wrong. He leads no armies, he presides over no Cabinet. All
+responsibility rests with his advisers; and where we upset a dynasty,
+England changes an administration. Whether the head of the State should
+have the title of sovereign or president, whether he be hereditary or
+elected, is a question of minor importance impossible now to determine,
+but on which I heartily concur with you that hereditary monarchy is
+infinitely better adapted to the habits of Frenchmen, to their love
+of show and of honours--and infinitely more preservative from all the
+dangers which result from constant elections to such a dignity, with
+parties so heated, and pretenders to the rank so numerous--than any
+principle by which a popular demagogue or a successful general is
+enabled to destroy the institutions he is elected to guard. On these
+fundamental doctrines for the regeneration of France I think we are
+agreed. And I believe when the moment arrives to promulgate them,
+through an expounder of weight like yourself, they will rapidly commend
+themselves to the intellect of France. For they belong to common sense;
+and in the ultimate prevalence of common-sense I have a faith which I
+refuse to medievalists who would restore the right divine; and still
+more to fanatical quacks, who imagine that the worship of the Deity, the
+ties of family, and the rights of property are errors at variance with
+the progress of society. Qui vivera, verra.”
+
+INCOGNITO.--“In the outlines of the policy you so ably enunciate I
+heartily concur. But if France is, I will not say to be regenerated, but
+to have fair play among the nations of Europe, I add one or two items
+to the programme. France must be saved from Paris, not by subterranean
+barracks and trains, the impotence of which we see to-day with a
+general in command of the military force, but by conceding to France
+its proportionate share of the power now monopolised by Paris. All
+this system of centralisation, equally tyrannical and corrupt, must be
+eradicated. Talk of examples from America, of which I know little--from
+England, of which I know much,--what can we more advantageously borrow
+from England than that diffusion of all her moral and social power
+which forbids the congestion of blood in one vital part? Decentralise!
+decentralise! decentralise! will be my incessant cry, if ever the time
+comes when my cry will be heard. France can never be a genuine France
+until Paris has no more influence over the destinies of France than
+London has over those of England. But on this theme I could go on till
+midnight. Now to the immediate point: what do you advise me to do in
+this crisis, and what do you propose to do yourself?”
+
+De Mauleon put his hand to his brow, and remained a few moments silent
+and thoughtful. At last he looked up with that decided expression of
+face which was not the least among his many attributes for influence
+over those with whom he came into contact.
+
+“For you, on whom so much of the future depends, my advice is
+brief--have nothing to do with the present. All who join this present
+mockery of a Government will share the fall that attends it--a fall from
+which one or two of their body may possibly recover by casting blame on
+their confreres,--you never could. But it is not for you to oppose that
+Government with an enemy on its march to Paris. You are not a soldier;
+military command is not in your rode. The issue of events is uncertain;
+but whatever it be, the men in power cannot conduct a prosperous war nor
+obtain an honourable peace. Hereafter you may be the Deus ex machina. No
+personage of that rank and with that mission appears till the end of
+the play: we are only in the first act. Leave Paris at once, and abstain
+from all action.”
+
+INCOGNITO (dejectedly).--“I cannot deny the soundness of your advice,
+though in accepting it I feel unutterably saddened. Still you, the
+calmest and shrewdest observer among my friends, think there is cause
+for hope, not despair. Victor, I have more than most men to make life
+pleasant, but I would lay down life at this moment with you. You know me
+well enough to be sure that I utter no melodramatic fiction when I
+say that I love my country as a young man loves the ideal of his
+dreams--with my whole mind and heart and soul! and the thought that I
+cannot now aid her in the hour of her mortal trial is--is--”
+
+The man’s voice broke down, and he turned aside, veiling his face with a
+hand that trembled.
+
+DE MAULEON--“Courage--patience! All Frenchmen have the first; set them
+an example they much need in the second. I, too, love my country, though
+I owe to it little enough, heaven knows. I suppose love of country is
+inherent in all who are not Internationalists. They profess only to love
+humanity, by which, if they mean anything practical, they mean a rise in
+wages.”
+
+INCOGNITO (rousing himself, and with a half smile). “Always cynical,
+Victor--always belying yourself. But now that you have advised my
+course, what will be your own? Accompany me, and wait for better times.”
+
+“No, noble friend; our positions are different. Yours is made--mine yet
+to make. But for this war I think I could have secured a seat in the
+Chamber. As I wrote you, I found that my kinsfolk were of much influence
+in their department, and that my restitution to my social grade, and the
+repute I had made as an Orleanist, inclined them to forget my youthful
+errors and to assist my career. But the Chamber ceases to exist. My
+journal I shall drop. I cannot support the Government; it is not a
+moment to oppose it. My prudent course is silence.”
+
+INCOGNITO.--“But is not your journal essential to your support?”
+
+DE MAULEON.--“Fortunately not. Its profits enabled me to lay by for the
+rainy day that has come; and having reimbursed you and all friends
+the sums necessary to start it, I stand clear of all debt, and, for
+my slender wants, a rich man. If I continued the journal I should be
+beggared; for there would be no readers to Common Sense in this interval
+of lunacy. Nevertheless, during this interval, I trust to other ways for
+winning a name that will open my rightful path of ambition whenever we
+again have a legislature in which Common Sense can be heard.”
+
+INCOGNITO.--“But how win that name, silenced as a writer?”
+
+DE MAULEON.--“You forget that I have fought in Algeria. In a few days
+Paris will be in a state of siege; and then--and then,” he added,
+and very quietly dilated on the renown of a patriot or the grave of a
+soldier.
+
+“I envy you the chance of either,” said the Incognito; and after a few
+more brief words he departed, his hat drawn over his brows, and entering
+a hired carriage which he had left at the corner of the quiet street,
+was consigned to the station du --------, just in time for the next
+train.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Victor dressed and went out. The streets were crowded. Workmen were
+everywhere employed in the childish operation of removing all insignia,
+and obliterating all names that showed where an Empire had existed. One
+greasy citizen, mounted on a ladder, was effacing the words “Boulevard
+Haussman,” and substituting for Haussman, “Victor Hugo.”
+
+Suddenly De Mauleon came on a group of blouses, interspersed with
+women holding babies and ragged boys holding stones, collected round a
+well-dressed slender man, at whom they were hooting and gesticulating,
+with menaces of doing something much worse. By an easy effort of his
+strong frame the Vicomte pushed his way through the tormentors, and gave
+his arm to their intended victim.
+
+“Monsieur, allow me to walk home with you.” Therewith the shrieks and
+shouts and gesticulations increased. “Another impertinent! Another
+traitor! Drown him! Drown them both! To the Seine! To the Seine!” A
+burly fellow rushed forward, and the rest made a plunging push. The
+outstretched arm of De Mauleon kept the ringleader at bay. “Mes enfans,”
+ cried Victor with a calm clear voice, “I am not an Imperialist. Many
+of you have read the articles signed Pierre Firmin, written against the
+tyrant Bonaparte when he was at the height of his power. I am Pierre
+Firmin--make way for me.” Probably not one in the crowd had ever read a
+word written by Pierre Firmin, nor even heard of the name. But they
+did not like to own ignorance; and that burly fellow did not like to
+encounter that arm of iron which touched his throat. So he cried out,
+“Oh! if you are the great Pierre Firmin, that alters the case. Make way
+for the patriot Pierre!”
+
+“But,” shrieked a virago, thrusting her baby into De Mauleon’s face,
+“the other is the Imperialist, the capitalist, the vile Duplessis. At
+least we will have him.”
+
+De Mauleon suddenly snatched the baby from her, and said, with
+imperturbable good temper, “Exchange of prisoners. I resign the man, and
+I keep the baby.”
+
+No one who does not know the humours of a Parisian mob can comprehend
+the suddenness of popular change, or the magical mastery over crowds
+which is effected by quiet courage and a ready joke. The group was
+appeased at once. Even the virago laughed; and when De Mauleon restored
+the infant to her arms, with a gold piece thrust into its tiny clasp,
+she eyed the gold, and cried, “God bless you, citizen!” The two
+gentlemen made their way safely now.
+
+“M. de Mauleon,” said Duplessis, “I know not how to thank you. Without
+your seasonable aid I should have been in great danger of life;
+and--would you believe it?--the woman who denounced and set the mob on
+me was one of the objects of a charity which I weekly dispense to the
+poor.”
+
+“Of course I believe that. At the Red clubs no crime is more denounced
+than that of charity. It is the ‘fraud against Egalite’--a vile trick
+of the capitalist to save to himself the millions he ought to share with
+all by giving a sou to one. Meanwhile, take my advice, M. Duplessis,
+and quit Paris with your young daughter. This is no place for rich
+Imperialists at present.”
+
+“I perceived that before to-day’s adventure. I distrust the looks of my
+very servants, and shall depart with Valerie this evening for Bretagne.”
+
+“Ah! I heard from Louvier that you propose to pay off his mortgage on
+Rochebriant, and make yourself sole proprietor of my young kinsman’s
+property.”
+
+“I trust you only believe half what you hear. I mean to save Rochebriant
+from Louvier, and consign it, free of charge, to your kinsman, as the
+dot of his bride, my daughter.”
+
+“I rejoice to learn such good news for the head of my house. But Alain
+himself--is he not with the prisoners of war?”
+
+“No, thank heaven. He went forth an officer of a regiment of Parisian
+Mobiles--went full of sanguine confidence; he came back with his
+regiment in mournful despondency. The undiscipline of his regiment,
+of the Parisian Mobiles generally, appears incredible. Their
+insolent disobedience to their officers, their ribald scoffs at their
+general--oh, it is sickening to speak of it! Alain distinguished himself
+by repressing a mutiny and is honoured by a signal compliment from
+the commander in a letter of recommendation to Palikao. But Palikao is
+nobody now. Alain has already been sent into Bretagne, commissioned to
+assist in organising a corps of Mobiles in his neighbourhood. Trochu,
+as you know, is a Breton. Alain is confident of the good conduct of the
+Bretons. What will Louvier do? He is an arch Republican; is he pleased
+now he has got what he wanted?”
+
+“I suppose he is pleased, for he is terribly frightened. Fright is one
+of the great enjoyments of a Parisian. Good day. Your path to your hotel
+is clear now. Remember me kindly to Alain.”
+
+De Mauleon continued his way through streets sometimes deserted,
+sometimes thronged. At the commencement of the Rue de Florentin he
+encountered the brothers Vandemar walking arm in arm.
+
+“Ha, De Mauleon!” cried Enguerrand; “what is the last minute’s news?”
+
+“I can’t guess. Nobody knows at Paris how soon one folly swallows up
+another. Saturn here is always devouring one or other of his children.”
+
+“They say that Vinoy, after a most masterly retreat, is almost at our
+gates with 80,000 men.”
+
+“And this day twelvemonth we may know what he does with them.”
+
+Here Raoul, who seemed absorbed in gloomy reflections, halted before
+the hotel in which the Contessa di Rimini lodged, and with a nod to his
+brother, and a polite, if not cordial salutation to Victor, entered the
+porte cochere.
+
+“Your brother seems out of spirits,--a pleasing contrast to the
+uproarious mirth with which Parisians welcome the advance of calamity.”
+
+“Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious. He regards the defeat we have
+sustained, and the peril that threatens us, as the beginning of a divine
+chastisement, justly incurred by our sins--I mean, the sins of Paris. In
+vain my father reminds him of Voltaire’s story, in which the ship goes
+down with a fripon on board. In order to punish the fripon, the honest
+folks are drowned.”
+
+“Is your father going to remain on board the ship, and share the fate of
+the other honest folks?”
+
+“Pas si bete. He is off to Dieppe for sea-bathing. He says that Paris
+has grown so dirty since the 4th September, that it is only fit for
+the feet of the Unwashed. He wished my mother to accompany him; but she
+replies, ‘No; there are already too many wounded not to need plenty of
+nurses.’ She is assisting to inaugurate a society of ladies in aid of
+the Soeurs de Charite. Like Raoul, she is devout, but she has not his
+superstitions. Still his superstitions are the natural reaction of a
+singularly earnest and pure nature from the frivolity and corruption
+which, when kneaded well up together with a slice of sarcasm, Paris
+calls philosophy.”
+
+“And what, my dear Enguerrand, do you propose to do?”
+
+“That depends on whether we are really besieged. If so, of course I
+become a soldier.”
+
+“I hope not a National Guard?”
+
+“I care not in what name I fight, so that I fight for France.”
+
+As Enguerrand said these simple words, his whole countenance, seemed
+changed. The crest rose; his eyes sparkled; the fair and delicate
+beauty which had made him the darling of women--the joyous sweetness
+of expression and dainty grace of high breeding which made him the most
+popular companion to men,--were exalted in a masculine nobleness of
+aspect, from which a painter might have taken hints for a study of the
+young Achilles separated for ever from effeminate companionship at the
+sight of the weapons of war. De Mauleon gazed on him admiringly. We have
+seen that he shared the sentiments uttered--had resolved on the same
+course of action. But it was with the tempered warmth of a man who seeks
+to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the ardour of romance,
+and who, in serving his country, calculates on the gains to his own
+ambition. Nevertheless he admired in Enguerrand the image of his own
+impulsive and fiery youth.
+
+“And you, I presume,” resumed Enguerrand, “will fight too, but rather
+with pen than with sword.”
+
+“Pens will now only be dipped in red ink, and commonsense never writes
+in that colour; as for the sword, I have passed the age of forty-five,
+at which military service halts. But if some experience in active
+service, some knowledge of the art by which soldiers are disciplined
+and led, will be deemed sufficient title to a post of command, however
+modest the grade be, I shall not be wanting among the defenders of
+Paris.”
+
+“My brave dear Vicomte, if you are past the age to serve, you are in the
+ripest age to command; and with the testimonials and the cross you
+won in Algeria, your application for employment will be received with
+gratitude by any general so able as Trochu.”
+
+“I don’t know whether I shall apply to Trochu. I would rather be elected
+to command even by the Mobiles or the National Guard, of whom I have
+just spoken disparagingly; and no doubt both corps will soon claim and
+win the right to choose their officers. But if elected, no matter by
+whom, I shall make a preliminary condition; the men under me shall
+train, and drill, and obey,--soldiers of a very different kind from the
+youthful Pekins nourished on absinthe and self-conceit, and applauding
+that Bombastes Furioso, M. Hugo, when he assures the enemy that Paris
+will draw an idea from its scabbard. But here comes Savarin. Bon jour,
+my dear poet.”
+
+“Don’t say good day. An evil day for journalists and writers who do not
+out-Herod Blanqui and Pyat. I know not how I shall get bread and cheese.
+My poor suburban villa is to be pulled down by way of securing Paris;
+my journal will be suppressed by way of establishing the liberty of the
+press. I ventured to suggest that the people of France should have some
+choice in the form of their government.”
+
+“That was very indiscreet, my poor Savarin,” said Victor; “I wonder your
+printing-office has not been pulled down. We are now at the moment when
+wise men hold their tongues.”
+
+“Perhaps so, M. de Mauleon. It might have been wiser for all of us,
+you as well as myself, if we had not allowed our tongues to be so free
+before this moment arrived. We live to learn; and if we ever have what
+may be called a passable government again, in which we may say pretty
+much what we like, there is one thing I will not do, I will not
+undermine that government without seeing a very clear way to the
+government that is to follow it. What say you, Pierre Firmin?”
+
+“Frankly, I say that I deserve your rebuke,” answered De Mauleon
+thoughtfully. “But, of course, you are going to take or send Madame
+Savarin out of Paris.”
+
+“Certainly. We have made a very pleasant party for our hegira this
+evening-among others the Morleys. Morley is terribly disgusted. A Red
+Republican slapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘American, we have
+a republic as well as you.’ ‘Pretty much you know about republics,’
+growled Morley; ‘a French republic is as much like ours as a baboon is
+like a man.’ On which the Red roused the mob, who dragged the American
+off to the nearest station of the National Guard, where he was accused
+of being a Prussian spy. With some difficulty, and lots of brag about
+the sanctity of the stars and stripes, he escaped with a reprimand, and
+caution how to behave himself in future. So he quits a city in which
+there no longer exists freedom of speech. My wife hoped to induce
+Mademoiselle Cicogna to accompany us; I grieve to say she refuses. You
+know she is engaged in marriage to Gustave Rameau; and his mother dreads
+the effect that these Red Clubs and his own vanity may have upon his
+excitable temperament if the influence of Mademoiselle Cicogna be
+withdrawn.”
+
+“How could a creature so exquisite as Isaura Cicogna ever find
+fascination in Gustave Rameau!” exclaimed Enguerrand.
+
+“A woman like her,” answered De Mauleon, “always finds a fascination in
+self-sacrifice.”
+
+“I think you divine the truth,” said Savarin, rather mournfully. “But
+I must bid you good-bye. May we live to shake hands reunis sons des
+meilleurs auspices.”
+
+Here Savarin hurried off, and the other two men strolled into the Champs
+Elysees, which were crowded with loungers, gay and careless, as if there
+had been no disaster at Sedan, no overthrow of an Empire, no enemy on
+its road to Paris.
+
+In fact the Parisians, at once the most incredulous and the most
+credulous of all populations, believed that the Prussians would never be
+so impertinent as to come in sight of the gates. Something would occur
+to stop them! The king had declared he did not war on Frenchmen, but on
+the Emperor: the Emperor gone, the war was over. A democratic republic
+was instituted. A horrible thing in its way, it is true; but how could
+the Pandour tyrant brave the infection of democratic doctrines among
+his own barbarian armies? Were not placards, addressed to our “German
+brethren,” posted upon the walls of Paris, exhorting the Pandours to
+fraternise with their fellow-creatures? Was not Victor Hugo going to
+publish “a letter to the German people”? Had not Jules Favre graciously
+offered peace, with the assurance that “France would not cede a stone of
+her fortresses--an inch of her territory? She would pardon the
+invaders and not march upon Berlin!” To all these, and many more such
+incontestable proofs, that the idea of a siege was moonshine, did
+Enguerrand and Victor listen as they joined group after group of
+their fellow-countrymen: nor did Paris cease to harbour such pleasing
+illusions, amusing itself with piously laying crowns at the foot of the
+statue of Strasbourg, swearing “they would be worthy of their Alsatian
+brethren,” till on the 19th of September the last telegram was received,
+and Paris was cut of from the rest of the world by the iron line of
+the Prussian invaders. “Tranquil and terrible,” says Victor Hugo, “she
+awaits the invasion! A volcano needs no assistance.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+We left Graham Vane slowly recovering from the attack of fever which had
+arrested his journey to Berlin in quest of the Count von Rudesheimn. He
+was, however, saved the prosecution of that journey, and his direction
+turned back to France by a German newspaper which informed him that
+the King of Prussia was at Rheims, and that the Count von Rudesheim was
+among the eminent personages gathered there around their sovereign. In
+conversing the same day with the kindly doctor who attended him, Graham
+ascertained that this German noble held a high command in the German
+armies, and bore a no less distinguished reputation as a wise political
+counsellor than he had earned as a military chief. As soon as he
+was able to travel, and indeed before the good doctor sanctioned his
+departure, Graham took his way to Rheims, uncertain, however, whether
+the Count would still be found there. I spare the details of his
+journey, interesting as they were. On reaching the famous and, in the
+eyes of Legitimists, the sacred city, the Englishman had no difficulty
+in ascertaining the house, not far from the cathedral, in which the
+Count von Rudesheim had taken his temporary abode. Walking towards it
+from the small hotel in which he had been lucky enough to find a room
+disengaged--slowly, for he was still feeble--he was struck by the quiet
+conduct of the German soldiery, and, save in their appearance, the
+peaceful aspect of the streets. Indeed, there was an air of festive
+gaiety about the place, as in an English town in which some popular
+regiment is quartered. The German soldiers thronged the shops, buying
+largely; lounged into the cafes; here and there attempted flirtations
+with the grisettes, who laughed at their French and blushed at their
+compliments; and in their good-humoured, somewhat bashful cheeriness,
+there was no trace of the insolence of conquest.
+
+But as Graham neared the precincts of the cathedral his ear caught a
+grave and solemn music, which he at first supposed to come from within
+the building. But as he paused and looked round, he saw a group of the
+German military, on whose stalwart forms and fair manly earnest faces
+the setting sun cast its calm lingering rays. They were chanting, in
+voices not loud but deep, Luther’s majestic hymn:
+
+“Nun danket alle Gott.” The chant awed even the ragged beggar boys who
+had followed the Englishman, as they followed any stranger, would have
+followed King William himself, whining for alms. “What a type of the
+difference between the two nations!” thought Graham; “the Marseillaise,
+and Luther’s Hymn!” While thus meditating and listening, a man in a
+general’s uniform came slowly out of the cathedral, with his hands
+clasped behind his back, and his head bent slightly downwards. He, too,
+paused on hearing the hymn; then unclasped his hand and beckoned to one
+of the officers, to whom approaching he whispered a word or two, and
+passed on towards the Episcopal palace. The hymn hushed, and the singers
+quietly dispersed. Graham divined rightly that the general had thought
+a hymn thanking the God of battles might wound the feelings of the
+inhabitants of the vanquished city--not, however, that any of them were
+likely to understand the language in which the thanks were uttered.
+Graham followed the measured steps of the general, whose hands were
+again clasped behind his back--the musing habit of Von Moltke, as it
+had been of Napoleon the First. Continuing his way, the Englishman soon
+reached the house in which the Count von Rudesheim was lodged, and,
+sending in his card, was admitted at once through an anteroom in which
+sate two young men, subaltern officers apparently employed in draughting
+maps, into the presence of the Count.
+
+“Pardon me,” said Graham, after the first conventional salutation, “if
+I interrupt you for a moment or so in the midst of events so grave, on a
+matter that must seem to you very trivial.”
+
+“Nay,” answered the Count, “there is nothing so trivial in this world
+but what there will be some one to whom it is important. Say how I can
+serve you.”
+
+“I think, M. le Comte, that you once received in your household, as
+teacher or governess, a French lady, Madame Marigny.”
+
+“Yes, I remember her well--a very handsome woman. My wife and daughter
+took great interest in her. She was married out of my house.”
+
+“Exactly--and to whom?”
+
+“An Italian of good birth, who was then employed by the Austrian
+Government in some minor post, and subsequently promoted to a better one
+in the Italian dominion, which then belonged to the house of Hapsburg,
+after which we lost sight of him and his wife.”
+
+“An Italian--what was his name?”
+
+“Ludovico Cicogna.”
+
+“Cicogna!” exclaimed Graham, turning very pale. “Are you sure that was
+the name?”
+
+“Certainly. He was a cadet of a very noble house, and disowned by
+relations too patriotic to forgive him for accepting employment under
+the Austrian Government.”
+
+“Can you not give me the address of the place in Italy to which he was
+transferred on leaving Austria?”
+
+“No; but if the information be necessary to you, it can be obtained
+easily at Milan, where the head of the family resides, or indeed in
+Vienna, through any ministerial bureau.”
+
+“Pardon me one or two questions more. Had Madame Marigny any children by
+a former husband?”
+
+“Not that I know of: I never heard so. Signor Cicogna was a widower,
+and had, if I remember right, children by his first wife, who was also
+a Frenchwoman. Before he obtained office in Austria, he resided, I
+believe, in France. I do not remember how many children he had by his
+first wife. I never saw them. Our acquaintance began at the baths of
+Toplitz, where he saw and fell violently in love with Madame Marigny.
+After their marriage, they went to his post, which was somewhere, I
+think, in the Tyrol. We saw no more of them; but my wife and daughter
+kept up a correspondence with the Signora Cicogna for a short time. It
+ceased altogether when she removed into Italy.”
+
+“You do not even know if the Signora is still living?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Her husband, I am told, is dead.”
+
+“Indeed! I am concerned to hear it. A good-looking, lively, clever man.
+I fear he must have lost all income when the Austrian dominions passed
+to the house of Savoy.”
+
+“Many thanks for your information. I can detain you no longer,” said
+Graham, rising.
+
+“Nay, I am not very busy at this moment; but I fear we Germans have
+plenty of work on our hands.”
+
+“I had hoped that, now the French Emperor, against whom your king made
+war, was set aside, his Prussian majesty would make peace with the
+French people.”
+
+“Most willingly would he do so if the French people would let him. But
+it must be through a French Government legally chosen by the people.
+And they have chosen none! A mob at Paris sets up a provisional
+administration, that commences by declaring that it will not give up ‘an
+inch of its territory nor a stone of its fortresses.’ No terms of peace
+can be made with such men holding such talk.” After a few words more
+over the state of public affairs,--in which Graham expressed the English
+side of affairs, which was all for generosity to the vanquished; and the
+Count argued much more ably on the German, which was all for security
+against the aggressions of a people that would not admit itself to be
+vanquished,--the short interview closed.
+
+As Graham at night pursued his journey to Vienna, there came into his
+mind Isaura’s song of the Neapolitan fisherman. Had he, too, been blind
+to the image on the rock? Was it possible that all the while he had been
+resisting the impulse of his heart, until the discharge of the mission
+entrusted to him freed his choice and decided his fortunes, the very
+person of whom he was in search had been before him, then to be for
+ever won, lost to him now for ever? Could Isaura Cicogna be the child
+of Louise Duval by Richard King? She could not have been her child by
+Cicogna: the dates forbade that hypothesis. Isaura must have been five
+years old when Louise married the Italian. Arrived at Milan, Graham
+quickly ascertained that the post to which Ludovico Cicogna had been
+removed was in Verona, and that he had there died eight years ago.
+Nothing was to be learned as to his family or his circumstances at the
+time of his death. The people of whose history we know the least are
+the relations we refuse to acknowledge. Graham continued his journey
+to Verona. There he found on inquiry that the Cicognas had occupied an
+apartment in a house which stood at the outskirts of the town and had
+been since pulled down to make way for some public improvements. But
+his closest inquiries could gain him no satisfactory answers to the
+all-important questions as to Ludovico Cicogna’s family. His political
+alienation from the Italian cause, which was nowhere more ardently
+espoused than at Verona, had rendered him very unpopular. He visited at
+no Italian houses. Such society as he had was confined to the Austrian
+military within the Quadrilateral or at Venice, to which city he made
+frequent excursions: was said to lead there a free and gay life, very
+displeasing to the Signora, whom he left in Verona. She was but little
+seen, and faintly remembered as very handsome and proud-looking. Yes,
+there were children--a girl, and a boy several years younger than the
+girl; but whether she was the child of the Signora by a former marriage,
+or whether the Signora was only the child’s stepmother, no one could
+say. The usual clue, in such doubtful matters obtainable through
+servants, was here missing. The Cicognas had only kept two servants, and
+both were Austrian subjects, who had long left the country,--their very
+names forgotten.
+
+Graham now called to mind the Englishman Selby, for whom Isaura had such
+grateful affection, as supplying to her the place of her father. This
+must have been the Englishman whom Louise Duval had married after
+Cicogna’s death. It would be no difficult task, surely, to ascertain
+where he had resided. Easy enough to ascertain all that Graham wanted to
+know from Isaura herself, if a letter could reach her. But, as he knew
+by the journals, Paris was now invested--cut off from all communication
+with the world beyond. Too irritable, anxious, and impatient to wait for
+the close of the siege, though he never suspected it could last so long
+as it did, he hastened to Venice, and there learned through the
+British consul that the late Mr. Selby was a learned antiquarian, an
+accomplished general scholar, a fanatico in music, a man of gentle
+temper though reserved manners; had at one time lived much at Venice:
+after his marriage with the Signora Cicogna he had taken up his abode
+near Florence. To Florence Graham now went. He found the villa on the
+skirts of Fiesole at which Mr. Selby had resided. The peasant who had
+officiated as gardener and shareholder in the profits of vines and
+figs, was still, with his wife, living on the place. Both man and wife
+remembered the Inglese well; spoke of him with great affection, of his
+wife with great dislike. They said her manners were very haughty, her
+temper very violent; that she led the Inglese a very unhappy life; that
+there were a girl and a boy, both hers by a former marriage; but
+when closely questioned whether they were sure that the girl was the
+Signora’s child by the former husband, or whether she was not the child
+of that husband by a former wife, they could not tell; they could only
+say that both were called by the same name--Cicogna; that the boy was
+the Signora’s favourite--that indeed she seemed wrapt up in him; that
+he died of a rapid decline a few months after Mr. Selby had hired the
+place, and that shortly after his death the Signora left the place and
+never returned to it; that it was little more than a year that she had
+lived with her husband before this final separation took place. The girl
+remained with Mr. Selby, who cherished and loved her as his own child.
+Her Christian name was Isaura, the boy’s Luigi. A few years later, Mr.
+Selby left the villa and went to Naples, where they heard he had died.
+They could give no information as to what had become of his wife: Since
+the death of her boy that lady had become very much changed--her spirits
+quite broken, no longer violent. She would sit alone and weep bitterly.
+The only person out of her family she would receive was the priest; till
+the boy’s death she had never seen the priest, nor been known to attend
+divine service.
+
+“Was the priest living?”
+
+“Oh, no; he had been dead two years. A most excellent man--a saint,”
+ said the peasant’s wife.
+
+“Good priests are like good women,” said the peasant, drily; “there are
+plenty of them, but they are all underground.”
+
+On which remark the wife tried to box his ears. The contadino had
+become a freethinker since the accession of the house of Savoy. His wife
+remained a good Catholic. Said the peasant as, escaping from his wife,
+he walked into the high-road with Graham, “My belief, Eccellenza, is,
+that the priest did all the mischief.”
+
+“What mischief?”
+
+“Persuaded the Signora to leave her husband. The Inglese was not a
+Catholic. I heard the priest call him a heretic. And the padre, who,
+though not so bad as some of his cloth, was a meddling bigot, thought it
+perhaps best for her soul that it should part company with a heretic’s
+person. I can’t say for sure, but I think that was it. The padre seemed
+to triumph when the Signora was gone.” Graham mused. The peasant’s
+supposition was not improbable. A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to
+be--of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind--was just one of those
+who, in a moment of great sorrow, and estranged from the ordinary
+household affections, feel, though but imperfectly, the necessity of a
+religion, and, ever in extremes, pass at once from indifferentism into
+superstition.
+
+Arrived at Naples, Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary
+recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But
+he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil
+had shown to her, when left by Selby’s death alone in the world; of the
+interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent as
+the great French writer had created for Isaura in the artistic circles;
+of the intense sensation her appearance, her voice, her universal
+genius, had made in that society, and the brilliant hopes of her
+subsequent career on the stage the cognoscenti had formed. No one knew
+anything of her mother; no one entertained a doubt that Isaura was
+by birth a Cicogna. Graham could not learn the present whereabouts of
+Madame de Grantmesnil. She had long left Naples, and had been last heard
+of at Genoa; was supposed to have returned to France a little before the
+war. In France she had no fixed residence.
+
+The simplest mode of obtaining authentic information whether Isaura
+was the daughter of Ludovico Cicogna by his first wife--namely, by
+registration of her birth--failed him; because, as von Rudesheim had
+said, his first wife was a Frenchwoman. The children had been born
+somewhere in France, no one could even guess where. No one had ever seen
+the first wife, who had never appeared in Italy, nor had even heard what
+was her maiden name.
+
+Graham, meanwhile, was not aware that Isaura was still in the besieged
+city, whether or not already married to Gustave Rameau; so large a
+number of the women had quitted Paris before the siege began, that he
+had reason to hope she was among them. He heard through an American that
+the Morleys had gone to England before the Prussian investment; perhaps
+Isaura had gone with them. He wrote to Mrs. Morley, inclosing his letter
+to the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James’s, and
+while still at Naples received her answer. It was short, and malignantly
+bitter. “Both myself and Madame Savarin, backed by Signora Venosta,
+earnestly entreated Mademoiselle Cicogna to quit Paris, to accompany us
+to England. Her devotion to her affianced husband would not permit
+her to listen to us. It is only an Englishman who could suppose Isaura
+Cicogna to be one of those women who do not insist on sharing the perils
+of those they love. You ask whether she was the daughter of Ludovico
+Cicogna by his former marriage, or of his second wife by him. I cannot
+answer. I don’t even know whether Signor Cicogna ever had a former wife.
+Isaura Cicogna never spoke to me of her parents. Permit me to ask--what
+business is it of yours now? Is it the English pride that makes you
+wish to learn whether on both sides she is of noble family? How can that
+discovery alter your relations towards the affianced bride of another?”
+
+On receipt of this letter, Graham quitted Naples, and shortly afterwards
+found himself at Versailles. He obtained permission to establish himself
+there, though the English were by no means popular. Thus near to Isaura,
+thus sternly separated from her, Graham awaited the close of the siege.
+Few among those at Versailles believed that the Parisians would endure
+it much longer. Surely they would capitulate before the bombardment,
+which the Germans themselves disliked to contemplate as a last resource,
+could commence.
+
+In his own mind Graham was convinced that Isaura was the child of
+Richard King. It seemed to him probable that Louise Duval, unable
+to assign any real name to the daughter of the marriage she
+disowned,--neither the name borne by the repudiated husband, nor her
+own maiden name,--would, on taking her daughter to her new home, have
+induced Cicogna to give the child his name, or that after Cicogna’s
+death she herself had so designated the girl. A dispassionate confidant,
+could Graham have admitted any confidant whatever, might have suggested
+the more than equal probability that Isaura was Cicogna’s daughter by
+his former espousal. But then what could have become of Richard King’s
+child? To part with the fortune in his hands, to relinquish all the
+ambitious dreams which belonged to it, cost Graham Vane no pang: but he
+writhed with indignant grief when he thought that the wealth of Richard
+King’s heiress was to pass to the hands of Gustave Rameau,--that this
+was to be the end of his researches--this the result of the sacrifice
+his sense of honour imposed on him. And now that there was the
+probability that he must convey to Isaura this large inheritance, the
+practical difficulty of inventing some reason for such a donation, which
+he had, while at a distance made light of, became seriously apparent.
+How could he say to Isaura that he had L200,000. in trust for her,
+without naming any one so devising it? Still more, how constitute
+himself her guardian, so as to secure it to herself, independently
+of her husband? Perhaps Isaura was too infatuated with Rameau, or too
+romantically unselfish, to permit the fortune so mysteriously conveyed
+being exclusively appropriated to herself. And if she were already
+married to Rameau, and if he were armed with the right to inquire into
+the source of this fortune, how exposed to the risks of disclosure would
+become the secret Graham sought to conceal. Such a secret affecting
+the memory of the sacred dead, affixing a shame on the scutcheon of
+the living, in the irreverent hands of a Gustave Rameau,--it was too
+dreadful to contemplate such a hazard. And yet, if Isaura were
+the missing heiress, could Graham Vane admit any excuse for basely
+withholding from her, for coolly retaining to himself the wealth for
+which he was responsible? Yet, torturing as were these communings with
+himself, they were mild in their torture compared to the ever-growing
+anguish of the thought that in any case the only woman he had ever
+loved--ever could love,--who might but for his own scruples and
+prejudices have been the partner of his life, was perhaps now actually
+the wife of another, and, as such, in what terrible danger! Famine
+within the walls of the doomed city: without, the engines of death
+waiting for a signal. So near to her, and yet so far! So willing to die
+for her, if for her he could not live: and with all his devotion, all
+his intellect, all his wealth, so powerless!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+It is now the middle of November-a Sunday. The day has been mild, and
+is drawing towards its close. The Parisians have been enjoying the
+sunshine. Under the leafless trees in the public gardens and the Champs
+Elysees children have been at play. On the Boulevards the old elegance
+of gaiety is succeeded by a livelier animation. Itinerant musicians
+gather round them ragged groups. Fortune-tellers are in great request,
+especially among the once brilliant Laises and Thaises, now looking
+more shabby, to whom they predict the speedy restoration of Nabobs and
+Russians, and golden joys. Yonder Punch is achieving a victory over the
+Evil One, who wears the Prussian spiked helmet, and whose face has been
+recently beautified into a resemblance to Bismarck. Punch draws to his
+show a laughing audience of Moblots and recruits to the new companies
+of the National Guard. Members of the once formidable police, now
+threadbare and hunger-pinched, stand side by side with unfortunate
+beggars and sinister-looking patriots who have served their time in the
+jails or galleys.
+
+Uniforms of all variety are conspicuous--the only evidence visible of
+an enemy at the walls. But the aspects of the wearers of warlike
+accoutrements are debonnaire and smiling, as of revellers on a holiday
+of peace. Among these defenders of their country, at the door of
+a crowded cafe, stands Frederic Lemercier, superb in the costume,
+bran-new, of a National Guard,--his dog Fox tranquilly reposing on its
+haunches, with eyes fixed upon its fellow-dog philosophically musing on
+the edge of Punch’s show, whose master is engaged in the conquest of the
+Bismarck fiend.
+
+“Lemercier,” cried the Vicomte de Breze, approaching the cafe, “I
+scarcely recognise you in that martial guise. You look magnifique--the
+galons become you. Peste! an officer already?”
+
+“The National Guards and Mobiles are permitted to choose their own
+officers, as you are aware. I have been elected, but to subaltern grade,
+by the warlike patriots of my department. Enguerrand de Vandemar is
+elected a captain of the Mobiles in his, and Victor de Mauleon is
+appointed to the command of a battalion of the National Guards. But I
+soar above jealousy at such a moment,--
+
+        “‘Rome a choisi mon bras; je n’examine rien.’”
+
+“You have no right to be jealous. De Mauldon has had experience and won
+distinction in actual service, and from all I hear is doing wonders with
+his men--has got them not only to keep but to love drill. I heard no
+less an authority than General V---- say that if all the officers of the
+National Guard were like De Mauleon, that body would give an example of
+discipline to the line.”
+
+“I say nothing as to the promotion of a real soldier like the
+Vicomte--but a Parisian dandy like Euguerrand de Vande--”
+
+“You forget that Enguerrand received a military education--an advantage
+denied to you.”
+
+“What does that matter? Who cares for education nowadays? Besides, have
+I not been training ever since the 4th of September, to say nothing of
+the hard work on the ramparts?”
+
+“Parlez moi de cela it is indeed hard work on the ramparts. Infandum
+dolorem quorum pars magna fui. Take the day duty. What with rising at
+seven o’clock, and being drilled between a middle-aged and corpulent
+grocer on one side and a meagre beardless barber’s apprentice on the
+other; what with going to the bastions at eleven, and seeing half one’s
+companions drunk before twelve; what with trying to keep their fists
+off one’s face when one politely asks them not to call one’s general a
+traitor or a poltroon,--the work of the ramparts would be insupportable,
+if I did not take a pack of cards with me, and enjoy a quiet rubber
+with three other heroes in some sequestered corner. As for night work,
+nothing short of the indomitable fortitude of a Parisian could sustain
+it; the tents made expressly not to be waterproof, like the groves of
+the Muses,
+
+                      “’ per
+          Quos et aquea subeant et aurae.’
+
+A fellow-companion of mine tucks himself up on my rug, and pillows his
+head on my knapsack. I remonstrate--he swears--the other heroes wake
+up and threaten to thrash us both; and just when peace is made, and one
+hopes for a wink of sleep, a detachment of spectators, chiefly gamins,
+coming to see that all is safe in the camp, strike up the Marseillaise.
+Ah, the world will ring to the end of time with the sublime attitude of
+Paris in the face of the Vandal invaders, especially when it learns that
+the very shoes we stand in are made of cardboard. In vain we complain.
+The contractor for shoes is a staunch Republican, and jobs by right
+divine. May I ask if you have dined yet?”
+
+“Heavens! no, it is too early. But I am excessively hungry. I had only
+a quarter of jugged cat for breakfast, and the brute was tough. In reply
+to your question, may I put another--Did you lay in plenty of stores?”
+
+“Stores? no; I am a bachelor, and rely on the stores of my married
+friends.”
+
+“Poor De Breze! I sympathise with you, for I am in the same boat, and
+dinner invitations have become monstrous rare.”
+
+“Oh, but you are so confoundedly rich! What to you are forty francs for
+a rabbit, or eighty francs for a turkey?”
+
+“Well, I suppose I am rich, but I have no money, and the ungrateful
+restaurants will not give me credit. They don’t believe in better days.”
+
+“How can you want money?”
+
+“Very naturally. I had invested my capital famously-the best
+speculations--partly in house rents, partly in company shares; and
+houses pay no rents, and nobody will buy company shares. I had 1,000
+napoleons on hand, it is true, when Duplessis left Paris--much more, I
+thought, than I could possibly need, for I never believed in the siege.
+But during the first few weeks I played at whist with bad luck, and
+since then so many old friends have borrowed of me that I doubt if I
+have 200 francs left. I have despatched four letters to Duplessis by
+pigeon and balloon, entreating him to send me 25,000 francs by some
+trusty fellow who will pierce the Prussian lines. I have had two
+answers: 1st, that he will find a man; 2nd, that the man is found and
+on his way. Trust to that man, my dear friend, and meanwhile lend me 200
+francs.”
+
+“Mon cher, desole to refuse; but I was about to ask you to share your
+200 francs with me who live chiefly by my pen; and that resource is cut
+off. Still, il faut vivre--one must dine.”
+
+“That is a fact, and we will dine together to-day at my expense; limited
+liability, though--eight francs a head.”
+
+“Generous Monsieur, I accept. Meanwhile let us take a turn towards the
+Madeleine.”
+
+The two Parisians quit the cafe, and proceed up the Boulevard. On their
+way they encounter Savarin. “Why,” said De Breze, “I thought you had
+left Paris with Madame.”
+
+“So I did, and deposited her safely with the Morleys at Boulogne. These
+kind Americans were going to England, and they took her with them. But
+I quit Paris! No: I am old; I am growing obese. I have always been
+short-sighted. I can neither wield a sword nor handle a musket. But
+Paris needs defenders; and every moment I was away from her I sighed to
+myself, ‘il faut etre la!’ I returned before the Vandals had possessed
+themselves of our railways, the convoi overcrowded with men like myself,
+who had removed wives and families; and when we asked each other why we
+went back, every answer was the same, ‘il faut etre la.’ No, poor child,
+no--I have nothing to give you.”
+
+These last words were addressed to a woman young and handsome, with
+a dress that a few weeks ago might have been admired for taste and
+elegance by the lady leaders of the ton, but was now darned, and dirty,
+and draggled.
+
+“Monsieur, I did not stop you to ask for alms. You do not seem to
+remember me, M. Savarin.”
+
+“But I do,” said Lemercier, “surely I address Mademoiselle Julie
+Caumartin.”
+
+“Ah, excuse me, le petit Frederic,” said Julie with a sickly attempt at
+coquettish sprightliness; “I had no eyes except for M. Savarin.”
+
+“And why only for me, my poor child?” asked the kindhearted author.
+
+“Hush!” She drew him aside. “Because you can give me news of that
+monster Gustave. It is not true, it cannot be true, that he is going to
+be married?”
+
+“Nay, surely, Mademoiselle, all connection between you and young Rameau
+has ceased for months--ceased from the date of that illness in July
+which nearly carried him off.”
+
+“I resigned him to the care of his mother,” said the girl; “but when he
+no longer needs a mother, he belongs to me. Oh, consider, M. Savarin,
+for his sake I refused the most splendid offers! When he sought me, I
+had my coupe, my opera-box, my cachemires, my jewels. The Russians--the
+English--vied for my smiles. But I loved the man. I never loved before:
+I shall never love again; and after the sacrifices I have made for him,
+nothing shall induce me to give him up. Tell me, I entreat, my dear M.
+Savarin, where he is hiding. He has left the parental roof, and they
+refused there to give me his address.”
+
+“My poor girl, don’t be mechante. It is quite true that Gustave Rameau
+is engaged to be married; and any attempt of yours to create scandal--”
+
+“Monsieur,” interrupted Julie, vehemently, “don’t talk to me about
+scandal! The man is mine, and no one else shall have him. His address?”
+
+“Mademoiselle,” cried Savarin, angrily, “find it out for yourself.”
+ Then--repentant of rudeness to one so young and so desolate--he
+added, in mild expostulatory accents: “Come, come, ma belle enfant, be
+reasonable: Gustave is no loss. He is reduced to poverty.”
+
+“So much the better. When he was well off I never cost him more than a
+supper at the Maison Doree; and if he is poor he shall marry me, and I
+will support him!”
+
+“You!--and how?”
+
+“By my profession when peace comes; and meanwhile I have offers from a
+cafe to recite warlike songs. Ah! you shake your head incredulously. The
+ballet-dancer recite verses? Yes! he taught me to recite his own Soyez
+bon pour moi. M. Savarin! do say where I can find mon homme.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“That is your last word?”
+
+“It is.”
+
+The girl drew her thin shawl round her and hurried off. Savarin rejoined
+his friends. “Is that the way you console yourself for the absence of
+Madame?” asked De Breze, drily.
+
+“Fie!” cried Savarin, indignantly; “such bad jokes are ill-timed. What
+strange mixtures of good and bad, of noble and base, every stratum of
+Paris life contains! There is that poor girl, in one way contemptible,
+no doubt, and yet in another way she has an element of grandeur. On the
+whole, at Paris, the women, with all their faults, are of finer mould
+than the men.”
+
+“French gallantry has always admitted that truth,” said Lemercier. “Fox,
+Fox, Fox.” Uttering this cry, he darted forward after the dog, who had
+strayed a few yards to salute another dog led by a string, and caught
+the animal in his arms. “Pardon me,” he exclaimed, returning to his
+friends, “but there are so many snares for dogs at present. They are
+just coming into fashion for roasts, and Fox is so plump.”
+
+“I thought,” said Savarin, “that it was resolved at all the sporting
+clubs that, be the pinch of famine ever so keen, the friend of man
+should not be eaten.”
+
+“That was while the beef lasted; but since we have come to cats, who
+shall predict immunity to dogs? Quid intactum nefasti linquimus? Nothing
+is sacred from the hand of rapine.”
+
+The church of the Madeleine now stood before them. Moblots were playing
+pitch-and-toss on its steps.
+
+“I don’t wish you to accompany me, Messieurs,” said Lemercier,
+apologetically, “but I am going to enter the church.”
+
+“To pray?” asked De Breze, in profound astonishment. “Not exactly; but
+I want to speak to my friend Rochebriant, and I know I shall find him
+there.”
+
+“Praying?” again asked De Breze.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That is curious--a young Parisian exquisite at prayer--that is worth
+seeing. Let us enter, too, Savarin.”
+
+They enter the church. It is filled, and even the sceptical De Breze
+is impressed and awed by the sight. An intense fervour pervades the
+congregation. The majority, it is true, are women, many of them in
+deep mourning, and many of their faces mourning deeper than the dress.
+Everywhere may be seen gushing tears, and everywhere faintly heard the
+sound of stifled sighs. Besides the women are men of all ages--young,
+middle-aged, old, with heads bowed and hands clasped, pale, grave,
+and earnest. Most of them were evidently of the superior grade of
+life--nobles, and the higher bourgeoisie: few of the ouvrier class, very
+few, and these were of an earlier generation. I except soldiers, of whom
+there were many, from the provincial Mobiles, chiefly Bretons; you know
+the Breton soldiers by the little cross worn on their kepis.
+
+Among them Lemercier at once distinguished the noble countenance of
+Alain de Rochebriant. De Breze and Savarin looked at each other with
+solemn eyes. I know not when either had last been within a church;
+perhaps both were startled to find that religion still existed in
+Paris--and largely exist it does, though little seen on the surface
+of society, little to be estimated by the articles of journals and the
+reports of foreigners. Unhappily, those among whom it exists are not the
+ruling class--are of the classes that are dominated over and obscured in
+every country the moment the populace becomes master. And at that moment
+the journals chiefly read were warring more against the Deity than
+the Prussians--were denouncing soldiers who attended mass. “The Gospel
+certainly makes a bad soldier,” writes the patriot Pyat.
+
+Lemercier knelt down quietly. The other two men crept noiselessly out,
+and stood waiting for him on the steps, watching the Moblots (Parisian
+Moblots) at play.
+
+“I should not wait for the roturier if he had not promised me a roti,”
+ said the Vicomte de Breze, with a pitiful attempt at the patrician wit
+of the ancien regime.
+
+Savarin shrugged his shoulders. “I am not included in the invitation,”
+ said he, “and therefore free to depart. I must go and look up a former
+confrere who was an enthusiastic Red Republican, and I fear does not get
+so much to eat since he has no longer an Emperor to abuse.”
+
+So Savarin went away. A few minutes afterwards Lemercier emerged from
+the church with Alain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+“I knew I should find you in the Madeleine,” said Lemercier, “and I
+wished much to know when you had news from Duplessis. He and your fair
+fiancee are with your aunt still staying at Rochebriant?”
+
+“Certainly. A pigeon arrived this morning with a few lines. All well
+there.”
+
+“And Duplessis thinks, despite the war, that he shall be able, when the
+time comes, to pay Louvier the mortgage-sum?”
+
+“He never doubts that. His credit in London is so good. But of course
+all works of improvement are stopped.”
+
+“Pray did he mention me?--anything about the messenger who was to pierce
+the Prussian lines?”
+
+“What! has the man not arrived? It is two weeks since he left.”
+
+“The Uhlans have no doubt shot him--the assassins, and drunk up my
+25,000 francs--the thieves.”
+
+“I hope not. But in case of delay, Duplessis tells me I am to remit to
+you 2,000 francs for your present wants. I will send them to you this
+evening.”
+
+“How the deuce do you possess such a sum?”
+
+“I came from Brittany with a purse well filled. Of course I could have
+no scruples in accepting money from my destined father-in-law.”
+
+“And you can spare this sum?”
+
+“Certainly--the State now provides for me; I am in command of a Breton
+company.”
+
+“True. Come and dine with me and De Breze.”
+
+“Alas! I cannot. I have to see both the Vandemars before I return to
+the camp for the night. And now-hush--come this way (drawing Frederic
+further from De Breze), I have famous news for you. A sortie on a grand
+scale is imminent; in a few days we may hope for it.”
+
+“I have heard that so often that I am incredulous.”
+
+“Take it as a fact now.”
+
+“What! Trochu has at last matured his plan?”
+
+“He has changed its original design, which was to cut through the
+Prussian lines to Rouen, occupying there the richest country for
+supplies, guarding the left bank of the Seine and a watercourse to
+convoy them to Paris. The incidents of war prevented that: he has a
+better plan now. The victory of the army of the Loire at Orleans opens
+a new enterprise. We shall cut our way through the Prussians, join that
+army, and with united forces fall on the enemy at the rear. Keep this a
+secret as yet, but rejoice with me that we shall prove to the invaders
+what men who fight for their native soil can do under the protection of
+Heaven.”
+
+“Fox, Fox, mon cheri,” said Lemercier, as he walked towards the cafe
+Riche with De Breze; “thou shalt have a festin de Balthazar under the
+protection of Heaven.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+On leaving Lemercier and De Breze, Savarin regained the Boulevard,
+and pausing every now and then to exchange a few words with
+acquaintances--the acquaintances of the genial author were
+numerous--turned into the quartier Chaussee d’Antin, and gaining a
+small neat house, with a richly-ornamented facade, mounted very
+clean, well-kept stairs to a third story. On one of the doors on the
+landing-place was nailed a card, inscribed, “Gustave Rameau, homme de
+lettres.” Certainly it is not usual in Paris thus to afficher one’s self
+as a “man of letters”? But Genius scorns what is usual. Had not Victor
+Hugo left in the hotel-books on the Rhine his designation “homme de
+lettres”? Did not the heir to one of the loftiest houses in the peerage
+of England, and who was also a first-rate amateur in painting, inscribe
+on his studio when in Italy, “--artiste”? Such examples, no doubt, were
+familiar to Gustave Rameau, and “homme de lettres” was on the scrap of
+pasteboard nailed to his door.
+
+Savarin rang; the door opened, and Gustave appeared. The poet was, of
+course, picturesquely attired. In his day of fashion he had worn within
+doors a very pretty fanciful costume, designed after portraits of the
+young Raffaelle; that costume he had preserved--he wore it now. It
+looked very threadbare, and the pourpoint very soiled. But the beauty of
+the poet’s face had survived the lustre of the garments. True, thanks
+to absinthe, the cheeks had become somewhat puffy and bloated. Grey was
+distinctly visible in the long ebon tresses. But still the beauty of
+the face was of that rare type which a Thorwaldsen or a Gibson seeking a
+model for a Narcissus would have longed to fix into marble.
+
+Gustave received his former chief with a certain air of reserved
+dignity; led him into his chamber, only divided by a curtain from his
+accommodation for washing and slumber, and placed him in an arm-chair
+beside a drowsy fire--fuel had already become very dear.
+
+“Gustave,” said Savarin, “are you in a mood favourable to a little
+serious talk?”
+
+“Serious talk from M. Savarin is a novelty too great not to command my
+profoundest interest.”
+
+“Thank you,--and to begin: I who know the world and mankind advise you,
+who do not, never to meet a man who wishes to do you a kindness with
+an ungracious sarcasm. Irony is a weapon I ought to be skilled in, but
+weapons are used against enemies, and it is only a tyro who flourishes
+his rapier in the face of his friends.”
+
+“I was not aware that M. Savarin still permitted me to regard him as a
+friend.”
+
+“Because I discharged the duties of friend--remonstrated, advised, and
+warned. However, let bygones be bygones. I entreated you not to quit the
+safe shelter of the paternal roof. You insisted on doing so. I entreated
+you not to send to one of the most ferocious of the Red, or rather,
+the Communistic, journals, articles, very eloquent, no doubt, but which
+would most seriously injure you in the eyes of quiet, orderly people,
+and compromise your future literary career for the sake of a temporary
+flash in the pan during a very evanescent period of revolutionary
+excitement. You scorned my adjurations, but at all events you had the
+grace not to append your true name to those truculent effusions. In
+literature, if literature revive in France, we two are henceforth
+separated. But I do not forego the friendly interest I took in you in
+the days when you were so continually in my house. My wife, who liked
+you so cordially, implored me to look after you during her absence from
+Paris, and, enfin, mon pauvre garcon, it would grieve me very much if,
+when she comes back, I had to say to her, ‘Gustave Rameau has thrown
+away the chance of redemption and of happiness which you deemed was
+secure to him.’ A l’oeil malade, la lumiere nuit.”
+
+So saying, he held out his hand kindly.
+
+Gustave, who was far from deficient in affectionate or tender impulses,
+took the hand respectfully, and pressed it warmly.
+
+“Forgive me if I have been ungracious, M. Savarin, and vouchsafe to hear
+my explanation.”
+
+“Willingly, mon garcon.”
+
+“When I became convalescent, well enough to leave my father’s house,
+there were circumstances which compelled me to do so. A young man
+accustomed to the life of a garcon can’t be always tied to his mother’s
+apron-strings.”
+
+“Especially if the apron-pocket does not contain a bottle of absinthe,”
+ said Savarin, drily. “You may well colour and try to look angry; but I
+know that the doctor strictly forbade the use of that deadly liqueur,
+and enjoined your mother to keep strict watch on your liability to its
+temptations. And hence one cause of your ennui under the paternal roof.
+But if there you could not imbibe absinthe, you were privileged to
+enjoy a much diviner intoxication. There you could have the foretaste of
+domestic bliss,--the society of the girl you loved, and who was pledged
+to become your wife. Speak frankly. Did not that society itself begin to
+be wearisome?”
+
+“No,” cried Gustave, eagerly, “it was not wearisome--”
+
+“Yes, but--”
+
+“But it could not be all-sufficing to a soul of fire like mine.”
+
+“Hem,” murmured Savarin--“a soul of fire! This is very interesting; pray
+go on.”
+
+“The calm, cold, sister-like affection of a childish undeveloped
+nature, which knew no passion except for art, and was really so little
+emancipated from the nursery as to take for serious truth all the old
+myths of religion--such companionship may be very soothing and pleasant
+when one is lying on one’s sofa, and must live by rule, but when one
+regains the vigour of youth and health--”
+
+“Do not pause,” said Savarin, gazing with more compassion than envy on
+that melancholy impersonation of youth and health. “When one regains
+that vigour of which I myself have no recollection, what happens?”
+
+“The thirst for excitement, the goads of ambition, the irresistible
+claims which the world urges upon genius, return.”
+
+“And that genius, finding itself at the North Pole amid Cimmerian
+darkness in the atmosphere of a childish intellect--in other words,
+the society of a pure-minded virgin, who, though a good romance-writer,
+writes nothing but what a virgin may read, and, though a bel esprit,
+says her prayers and goes to church--then genius--well, pardon my
+ignorance, what does genius do?”
+
+“Oh, M. Savarin, M. Savarin! don’t let us talk any more. There is no
+sympathy between us. I cannot bear that bloodless, mocking, cynical mode
+of dealing with grand emotions, which belongs to the generation of the
+Doctrinaires. I am not a Thiers or a Guizot.”
+
+“Good heavens! who ever accused you of being either? I did not mean
+to be cynical. Mademoiselle Cicogna has often said I am, but I did
+not think you would. Pardon me. I quite agree with the philosopher who
+asserted that the wisdom of the past was an imposture, that the meanest
+intellect now living is wiser than the greatest intellect which is
+buried in Pere la Chaise; because the dwarf who follows the giant, when
+perched on the shoulders of the giant, sees farther than the giant ever
+could. Allez. I go in for your generation. I abandon Guizot and Thiers.
+Do condescend and explain to my dull understanding, as the inferior
+mortal of a former age, what are the grand emotions which impel a
+soul of fire in your wiser generation. The thirst of excitement--what
+excitement? The goads of ambition--what ambition?”
+
+“A new social system is struggling from the dissolving elements of the
+old one, as, in the fables of priestcraft, the soul frees itself from
+the body which has become ripe for the grave. Of that new system I
+aspire to be a champion--a leader. Behold the excitement that allures
+me, the ambition that goads.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Savarin, meekly; “I am answered. I recognise the dwarf
+perched on the back of the giant. Quitting these lofty themes, I venture
+to address to you now one simple matter-of-fact question: How about
+Mademoiselle Cicogna? Do you think you can induce her to transplant
+herself to the new social system, which I presume will abolish, among
+other obsolete myths, the institution of marriage?”
+
+“M. Savarin, your question offends me. Theoretically I am opposed to the
+existing superstitions that encumber the very simple principle by
+which may be united two persons so long as they desire the union, and
+separated so soon as the union becomes distasteful to either. But I
+am perfectly aware that such theories would revolt a young lady like
+Mademoiselle Cicogna. I have never even named them to her, and our
+engagement holds good.”
+
+“Engagement of marriage? No period for the ceremony fixed?”
+
+“That is not my fault. I urged it on Isaura with all earnestness before
+I left my father’s house.”
+
+“That was long after the siege had begun. Listen to me, Gustave. No
+persuasion of mine or my wife’s, nor Mrs. Morley’s, could induce Isaura
+to quit Paris while it was yet time. She said very simply that, having
+pledged her truth and hand to you, it would be treason to honour and
+duty if she should allow any considerations for herself to be even
+discussed so long as you needed her presence. You were then still
+suffering, and, though convalescent, not without danger of a relapse.
+And your mother said to her--I heard the words: ‘‘Tis not for his bodily
+health I could dare to ask you to stay, when every man who can afford
+it is sending away his wife, sisters, daughters. As for that, I should
+suffice to tend him; but if you go, I resign all hope for the health of
+his mind and his soul.’ I think at Paris there may be female poets and
+artists whom that sort of argument would not have much influenced. But
+it so happens that Isaura is not a Parisienne. She believes in those old
+myths which you think fatal to sympathies with yourself; and those old
+myths also lead her to believe that where a woman has promised she will
+devote her life to a man, she cannot forsake him when told by his mother
+that she is necessary to the health of his mind and his soul. Stay.
+Before you interrupt me, let me finish what I have to say. It appears
+that, so soon as your bodily health was improved, you felt that your
+mind and your soul could take care of themselves; and certainly it seems
+to me that Isaura Cicogna is no longer of the smallest use to either.”
+
+Rameau was evidently much disconcerted by this speech. He saw what
+Savarin was driving at--the renunciation of all bond between Isaura and
+himself. He was not prepared for such renunciation. He still felt for
+the Italian as much of love as he could feel for any woman who did not
+kneel at his feet, as at those of Apollo condescending to the homage of
+Arcadian maids. But on the one hand, he felt that many circumstances had
+occurred since the disaster at Sedan to render Isaura a very much less
+desirable partie than she had been when he had first wrung from her
+the pledge of betrothal. In the palmy times of a Government in which
+literature and art commanded station and insured fortune, Isaura,
+whether as authoress or singer, was a brilliant marriage for Gustave
+Rameau. She had also then an assured and competent, if modest, income.
+But when times change, people change with them. As the income for
+the moment (and Heaven only can say how long that moment might last),
+Isaura’s income had disappeared. It will be recollected that Louvier
+had invested her whole fortune in the houses to be built in the street
+called after his name. No houses, even when built, paid any rent now.
+Louvier had quitted Paris; and Isaura could only be subsisting upon such
+small sum as she might have had in hand before the siege commenced. All
+career in such literature and art as Isaura adorned was at a dead stop.
+Now, to do Rameau justice, he was by no means an avaricious or mercenary
+man. But he yearned for modes of life to which money was essential. He
+liked his “comforts;” and his comforts included the luxuries of elegance
+and show-comforts not to be attained by marriage with Isaura under
+existing circumstances.
+
+Nevertheless it is quite true that he had urged her to marry him at
+once, before he had quitted his father’s house; and her modest shrinking
+from such proposal, however excellent the reasons for delay in the
+national calamities of the time, as well as the poverty which the
+calamity threatened, had greatly wounded his amour propre. He had
+always felt that her affection for him was not love; and though he could
+reconcile himself to that conviction when many solid advantages were
+attached to the prize of her love, and when he was ill, and penitent,
+and maudlin, and the calm affection of a saint seemed to him infinitely
+preferable to the vehement passion of a sinner,--yet when Isaura
+was only Isaura by herself--Isaura minus all the et cetera which had
+previously been taken into account--the want of adoration for himself
+very much lessened her value.
+
+Still, though he acquiesced in the delayed fulfilment of the engagement
+with Isaura, he had no thought of withdrawing from the engagement
+itself, and after a slight pause he replied: “You do me great injustice
+if you suppose that the occupations to which I devote myself render me
+less sensible to the merits of Mademoiselle Cicogna, or less eager
+for our union. On the contrary, I will confide to you--as a man of the
+world--one main reason why I quitted my father’s house, and why I desire
+to keep my present address a secret. Mademoiselle Caumartin conceived
+for me a passion--a caprice--which was very flattering for a time, but
+which latterly became very troublesome. Figure to yourself--she
+daily came to our house while I was lying ill, and with the greatest
+difficulty my mother got her out of it. That was not all. She pestered
+me with letters containing all sorts of threats--nay, actually kept
+watch at the house; and one day when I entered the carriage with my
+mother and Signora Venosta for a drive in the Bois (meaning to call for
+Isaura by the way), she darted to the carriage-door, caught my hand, and
+would have made a scene if the coachman had given her leave to do so.
+Luckily he had the tact to whip on his horses, and we escaped. I had
+some little difficulty in convincing the Signora Venosta that the girl
+was crazed. But I felt the danger I incurred of her coming upon me some
+moment when in company with Isaura, and so I left my father’s house; and
+naturally wishing to steer clear of this vehement little demon till I
+am safely married, I keep my address a secret from all who are likely to
+tell her of it.”
+
+“You do wisely if you are really afraid of her, and cannot trust your
+nerves to say to her plainly, ‘I am engaged to be married; all is at an
+end between us. Do not force me to employ the police to protect myself
+from unwelcome importunities.’”
+
+“Honestly speaking, I doubt if I have the nerve to do that, and I doubt
+still more if it would be of any avail. It is very ennuayant to be so
+passionately loved; but, que voulez vous? It is my fate.”
+
+“Poor martyr! I condole with you: and, to say truth, it was chiefly
+to warn you of Mademoiselle Caumartin’s pertinacity that I call this
+evening.”
+
+Here Savarin related the particulars of his rencontre with Julie, and
+concluded by saying: “I suppose I may take your word of honour that you
+will firmly resist all temptation to renew a connection which would be
+so incompatible with the respect due to your fiancee? Fatherless and
+protectorless as Isaura is, I feel bound to act as a virtual guardian
+to one in whom my wife takes so deep an interest, and to whom, as she
+thinks, she had some hand in bringing about your engagement: she is
+committed to no small responsibilities. Do not allow poor Julie, whom
+I sincerely pity, to force on me the unpleasant duty of warning your
+fiancee of the dangers to which she might be subjected by marriage with
+an Adonis whose fate it is to be so profoundly beloved by the sex in
+general, and ballet nymphs in particular.”
+
+“There is no chance of so disagreeable a duty being incumbent on you,
+M. Savarin. Of course, what I myself have told you in confidence is
+sacred.”
+
+“Certainly. There are things in the life of a garcon before marriage
+which would be an affront to the modesty of his fiancee to communicate
+and discuss. But then those things must belong exclusively to the past
+and cast no shadow over the future. I will not interrupt you further. No
+doubt you have work for the night before you. Do the Red journalists for
+whom you write pay enough to support you in these terribly dear times?”
+
+“Scarcely. But I look forward to wealth and fame in the future. And
+you?”
+
+“I just escape starvation. If the siege last much longer, it is not of
+the gout I shall die. Good-night to you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Isaura had, as we have seen, been hitherto saved by the siege and its
+consequences from the fulfilment of her engagement to Gustave Rameau;
+and since he had quitted his father’s house she had not only seen less
+of him, but a certain chill crept into his converse in the visits
+he paid to her. The compassionate feeling his illness had excited,
+confirmed by the unwonted gentleness of his mood, and the short-lived
+remorse with which he spoke of his past faults and follies, necessarily
+faded away in proportion as he regained that kind of febrile strength
+which was his normal state of health, and with it the arrogant
+self-assertion which was ingrained in his character. But it was now
+more than ever that she became aware of the antagonism between all that
+constituted his inner life and her own. It was not that he volunteered
+in her presence the express utterance of those opinions, social or
+religious, which he addressed to the public in the truculent journal to
+which, under a nom de plume, he was the most inflammatory contributor.
+Whether it was that he shrank from insulting the ears of the pure virgin
+whom he had wooed as wife with avowals of his disdain of marriage bonds,
+or perhaps from shocking yet more her womanly humanity and her religious
+faith by cries for the blood of anti-republican traitors and the
+downfall of Christian altars; or whether he yet clung, though with
+relapsing affection, to the hold which her promise had imposed on him,
+and felt that that hold would be for ever gone, and that she would
+recoil from his side in terror and dismay, if she once learned that the
+man who had implored her to be his saving angel from the comparatively
+mild errors of youth, had so belied his assurance, so mocked her
+credulity, as deliberately to enter into active warfare against all that
+he knew her sentiments regarded as noble and her conscience received
+as divine: despite the suppression of avowed doctrine on his part, the
+total want of sympathy between these antagonistic natures made itself
+felt by both--more promptly felt by Isaura. If Gustave did not frankly
+announce to her in that terrible time (when all that a little later
+broke out on the side of the Communists was more or less forcing ominous
+way to the lips of those who talked with confidence to each other,
+whether to approve or to condemn) the associates with whom he was
+leagued, the path to which he had committed his career--still for her
+instincts for genuine Art--which for its development needs the
+serenity of peace, which for its ideal needs dreams that soar into the
+Infinite--Gustave had only the scornful sneer of the man who identifies
+with his ambition the violent upset of all that civilisation has
+established in this world, and the blank negation of all that patient
+hope and heroic aspiration which humanity carries on into the next.
+
+On his side, Gustave Rameau, who was not without certain fine and
+delicate attributes in a complicated nature over which the personal
+vanity and the mobile temperament of the Parisian reigned supreme,
+chafed at the restraints imposed on him. No matter what a man’s
+doctrines may be--however abominable you and I may deem them--man
+desires to find, in the dearest fellowship he can establish, that
+sympathy in the woman his choice singles out from her sex-deference
+to his opinions, sympathy with his objects, as man. So, too, Gustave’s
+sense of honour and according to his own Parisian code that sense was
+keen--became exquisitely stung by the thought that he was compelled to
+play the part of a mean dissimulator to the girl for whose opinions he
+had the profoundest contempt. How could these two, betrothed to each
+other, not feel, though without coming to open dissension, that between
+them had flowed the inlet of water by which they had been riven asunder?
+What man, if he can imagine himself a Gustave Rameau, can blame the
+revolutionist absorbed in ambitious projects for turning the pyramid of
+society topsy-turvy, if he shrank more and more from the companionship
+of a betrothed with whom he could not venture to exchange three words
+without caution and reserve? And what woman can blame an Isaura if she
+felt a sensation of relief at the very neglect of the affianced whom she
+had compassionated and could never love?
+
+Possibly the reader may best judge of the state of Isaura’s mind at this
+time by a few brief extracts from an imperfect fragmentary journal, in
+which, amid saddened and lonely hours, she held converse with herself.
+
+“One day at Enghien I listened silently to a conversation between M.
+Savarin and the Englishman, who sought to explain the conception of duty
+in which the German poet has given such noble utterance to the thoughts
+of the German philosopher--viz., that moral aspiration has the same goal
+as the artistic,--the attainment to the calm delight wherein the pain
+of effort disappears in the content of achievement. Thus in life, as in
+art, it is through discipline that we arrive at freedom, and duty only
+completes itself when all motives, all actions, are attuned into one
+harmonious whole, and it is not striven for as duty, but enjoyed as
+happiness. M. Savarin treated this theory with the mockery with which
+the French wit is ever apt to treat what it terms German mysticism.
+According to him, duty must always be a hard and difficult struggle; and
+he said laughingly, ‘Whenever a man says, “I have done my duty,” it is
+with a long face and a mournful sigh.’
+
+“Ah, how devoutly I listened to the Englishman! how harshly the
+Frenchman’s irony jarred upon my ears! And yet now, in the duty that
+life imposes on me, to fulfil which I strain every power vouchsafed to
+my nature, and seek to crush down every impulse that rebels, where is
+the promised calm, where any approach to the content of achievement?
+Contemplating the way before me, the Beautiful even of Art has vanished.
+I see but cloud and desert. Can this which I assume to be duty really be
+so? Ah, is it not sin even to ask my heart that question?
+
+“Madame Rameau is very angry with her son for his neglect both of his
+parents and of me. I have had to take his part against her. I would not
+have him lose their love. Poor Gustave! But when Madame Rameau suddenly
+said to-day: ‘I erred in seeking the union between thee and Gustave.
+Retract thy promise; in doing so thou wilt be justified,’--oh, the
+strange joy that flashed upon me as she spoke. Am I justified? Am I? Oh,
+if that Englishman had never crossed my path! Oh, if I had never
+loved! or if in the last time we met he had not asked for my love,
+and confessed his own! Then, I think, I could honestly reconcile my
+conscience with my longings, and say to Gustave, ‘We do not suit each
+other; be we both released!’ But now-is it that Gustave is really
+changed from what he was, when in despondence at my own lot, and in
+pitying belief that I might brighten and exalt his, I plighted my troth
+to him? or is it not rather that the choice I thus voluntarily made
+became so intolerable a thought the moment I knew I was beloved and
+sought by another; and from that moment I lost the strength I had
+before,--strength to silence the voice at my own heart? What! is it
+the image of that other one which is persuading me to be false?--to
+exaggerate the failings, to be blind to the merits of him who has a
+right to say, ‘I am what I was when thou didst pledge thyself to take me
+for better or for worse’?
+
+“Gustave has been here after an absence of several days. He was not
+alone. The good Abbe Vertpre and Madame de Vandemar, with her son,
+M. Raoul, were present. They had come on matters connected with our
+ambulance. They do not know of my engagement to Gustave; and seeing him
+in the uniform of a National Guard, the Abbe courteously addressed
+to him some questions as to the possibility of checking the terrible
+increase of the vice of intoxication, so alien till of late to the
+habits of the Parisians, and becoming fatal to discipline and bodily
+endurance,--could the number of the cantines on the ramparts be more
+limited? Gustave answered with rudeness and bitter sarcasm, ‘Before
+priests could be critics in military matters they must undertake
+military service themselves.’
+
+“The Abbe replied with unalterable good-humour, ‘But, in order to
+criticise the effects of drunkenness, must one get drunk one’s self?’
+Gustave was put out, and retired into a corner of the room, keeping
+sullen silence till my other visitors left.
+
+“Then before I could myself express the pain his words and manner
+had given me, he said abruptly, ‘I wonder how you can tolerate the
+tartuferie which may amuse on the comic stage, but in the tragedy
+of these times is revolting.’ This speech roused my anger, and the
+conversation that ensued was the gravest that had ever passed between
+us.
+
+“If Gustave were of stronger nature and more concentrated will, I
+believe that the only feelings I should have for him would be antipathy
+and dread. But it is his very weaknesses and inconsistencies that secure
+to him a certain tenderness of interest. I think he could never be
+judged without great indulgence by women; there is in him so much of
+the child,--wayward, irritating one moment, and the next penitent,
+affectionate. One feels as if persistence in evil were impossible to
+one so delicate both in mind and form. That peculiar order of genius
+to which he belongs seems as if it ought to be so estranged from all
+directions, violent or coarse. When in poetry he seeks to utter some
+audacious and defying sentiment, the substance melts away in daintiness
+of expression, in soft, lute-like strains of slender music. And when
+he has stung, angered, revolted my heart the most, suddenly he subsides
+into such pathetic gentleness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if
+resentment to one so helpless, desertion of one who must fall without
+the support of a friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me
+as if I were dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child clinging to
+my robe.
+
+“But in this last conversation with him, his language in regard to
+subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me words which startled
+him, and which may avail to save him from that worst insanity of human
+minds,--the mimicry of the Titans who would have dethroned a God to
+restore a Chaos. I told him frankly that I had only promised to
+share his fate on my faith in his assurance of my power to guide
+it heavenward; and that if the opinions he announced were seriously
+entertained, and put forth in defiance of heaven itself, we were
+separated for ever. I told him how earnestly, in the calamities of the
+time, my own soul had sought to take refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond
+the earth; and how deeply many a sentiment that in former days passed
+by me with a smile in the light talk of the salons, now shocked me as
+an outrage on the reverence which the mortal child owes to the Divine
+Father. I owned to him how much of comfort, of sustainment, of thought
+and aspiration, elevated beyond the sphere of Art in which I had
+hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest goal, I owed to intercourse
+with minds like those of the Abbe de Vertpre; and how painfully I felt
+as if I were guilty of ingratitude when he compelled me to listen to
+insults on those whom I recognised as benefactors.
+
+“I wished to speak sternly; but it is my great misfortune, my prevalent
+weakness, that I cannot be stern when I ought to be. It is with me in
+life as in art. I never could on the stage have taken the part of a
+Norma or a Medea. If I attempt in fiction a character which deserves
+condemnation, I am untrue to poetic justice. I cannot condemn and
+execute; I can but compassionate and pardon the creature I myself have
+created. I was never in the real world stern but to one; and then, alas!
+it was because I loved where I could no longer love with honour; and I,
+knowing my weakness, had terror lest I should yield.
+
+“So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my manner, how gravely I
+was in earnest. But, himself softened, affected to tears, he confessed
+his own faults--ceased to argue in order to praise; and--and--uttering
+protestations seemingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him
+still--bound to him still--woe is me!”
+
+It is true that Isaura had come more directly under the influence of
+religion than she had been in the earlier dates of this narrative. There
+is a time in the lives of most of us, and especially in the lives of
+women, when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by
+conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and
+fervour of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the Divine
+Love; seeking to rebaptise ourselves in the fountain of its mercy,
+taking thence the only hopes that can cheer, the only strength that can
+sustain us. Such a time had come to Isaura. Formerly she had escaped
+from the griefs of the work-a-day world into the garden-land of Art.
+Now, Art had grown unwelcome to her, almost hateful. Gone was the spell
+from the garden-land; its flowers were faded, its paths were stony, its
+sunshine had vanished in mist and rain. There are two voices of Nature
+in the soul of the genuine artist,--that is, of him who, because he can
+create, comprehends the necessity of the great Creator. Those voices
+are never both silent. When one is hushed, the other becomes distinctly
+audible. The one speaks to him of Art, the other of Religion.
+
+At that period several societies for the relief and tendance of the
+wounded had been formed by the women of Paris,--the earliest, if I
+mistake not, by ladies of the highest rank--amongst whom were the
+Comtesse de Vandemar and the Contessa di Rimini--though it necessarily
+included others of stations less elevated. To this society, at the
+request of Alain de Rochebriant and of Enguerrand, Isaura had eagerly
+attached herself. It occupied much of her time; and in connection with
+it she was brought much into sympathetic acquaintance with Raoul de
+Vandemar--the most zealous and active member of that Society of
+St. Francois de Sales, to which belonged other young nobles of the
+Legitimist creed. The passion of Raoul’s life was the relief of human
+suffering. In him was personified the ideal of Christian charity.
+I think all, or most of us, have known what it is to pass under the
+influence of a nature that is so far akin to ours that it desires
+to become something better and higher than it is--that desire being
+paramount in ourselves--but seeks to be that something in ways not akin
+to, but remote from, the ways in which we seek it. When this contact
+happens, either one nature, by the mere force of will, subjugates and
+absorbs the other, or both, while preserving their own individuality,
+apart and independent, enrich themselves by mutual interchange, and
+the asperities which differences of taste and sentiment in detail might
+otherwise provoke melt in the sympathy which unites spirits striving
+with equal earnestness to rise nearer to the unseen and unattainable
+Source, which they equally recognise as Divine.
+
+Perhaps, had these two persons met a year ago in the ordinary
+intercourse of the world, neither would have detected the sympathy of
+which I speak. Raoul was not without the prejudice against artists and
+writers of romance, that is shared by many who cherish the persuasion
+that all is vanity which does not concentrate imagination and intellect
+in the destinies of the soul hereafter; and Isaura might have excited
+his compassion, certainly not his reverence. While to her, his views
+on all that seeks to render the actual life attractive and embellished,
+through the accomplishments of Muse and Grace, would have seemed
+the narrow-minded asceticism of a bigot. But now, amid the direful
+calamities of the time, the beauty of both natures became visible
+to each. To the eyes of Isaura tenderness became predominant in the
+monastic self-denial of Raoul. To the eyes of Raoul, devotion became
+predominant in the gentle thoughtfulness of Isaura. Their intercourse
+was in ambulance and hospital-in care for the wounded, in prayer for the
+dying. Ah! it is easy to declaim against the frivolities and vices of
+Parisian society as they appear on the surface; and, in revolutionary
+times, it is the very worst of Paris that ascends in scum to the top.
+But descend below the surface, even in that demoralising suspense of
+order, and nowhere on earth might the angel have beheld the image of
+humanity more amply vindicating its claim to the heritage of heaven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The warning announcement of some great effort on the part of the
+besieged, which Alain had given to Lemercier, was soon to be fulfilled.
+
+For some days the principal thoroughfares were ominously lined with
+military convois. The loungers on the Boulevards stopped to gaze on
+the long defiles of troops and cannons, commissariat conveyances, and,
+saddening accompaniments! the vehicles of various ambulances for the
+removal of the wounded. With what glee the loungers said to each other
+“Enfin!” Among all the troops that Paris sent forth, none were so
+popular as those which Paris had not nurtured--the sailors. From the
+moment they arrived, the sailors had been the pets of the capital. They
+soon proved themselves the most notable contrast to that force which
+Paris herself had produced--the National Guard. Their frames were hardy,
+their habits active, their discipline perfect, their manners mild
+and polite. “Oh, if all our troops were like these!” was the common
+exclamation of the Parisians.
+
+At last burst forth upon Paris the proclamations of General Trochu and
+General Ducrot; the first brief, calm, and Breton-like, ending with
+“Putting our trust in God. March on for our country:” the second more
+detailed, more candidly stating obstacles and difficulties, but fiery
+with eloquent enthusiasm, not unsupported by military statistics, in
+the 400 cannon, two-thirds of which were of the largest calibre, that
+no material object could resist; more than 150,000 soldiers, all well
+armed, well equipped, abundantly provided with munitions, and all (j’en
+a l’espoir) animated by an irresistible ardour. “For me,” concludes the
+General, “I am resolved. I swear before you, before the whole nation,
+that I will not re-enter Paris except as dead or victorious.”
+
+At these proclamations, who then at Paris does not recall the burst of
+enthusiasm that stirred the surface? Trochu became once more popular;
+even the Communistic or atheistic journals refrained from complaining
+that he attended mass, and invited his countrymen to trust in God.
+Ducrot was more than popular--he was adored.
+
+The several companies in which De Mauleon and Enguerrand served departed
+towards their post early on the same morning, that of the 28th. All the
+previous night, while Enguerrand was buried in profound slumber, Raoul
+remained in his brother’s room; sometimes on his knees before the
+ivory crucifix which had been their mother’s last birthday gift to her
+youngest son--sometimes seated beside the bed in profound and devout
+meditation. At daybreak, Madame de Vandemar stole into the chamber.
+Unconscious of his brother’s watch, he had asked her to wake him in good
+time, for the young man was a sound sleeper. Shading the candle she bore
+with one hand, with the other she drew aside the curtain, and looked at
+Enguerrand’s calm fair face, its lips parted in the happy smile which
+seemed to carry joy with it wherever its sunshine played. Her tears fell
+noiselessly on her darling’s cheek; she then knelt down and prayed for
+strength. As she rose she felt Raoul’s arm around her; they looked at
+each other in silence; then she bowed her head and wakened Enguerrand
+with her lips. “Pas de querelle, mes amis,” he murmured, opening his
+sweet blue eyes drowsily. “Ah, it was a dream! I thought Jules and Emile
+[two young friends of his] were worrying each other; and you know, dear
+Raoul, that I am the most officious of peacemakers. Time to rise, is it?
+No peacemaking to-day. Kiss me again, mother, and say ‘Bless thee.’”
+
+“Bless thee, bless thee, my child,” cried the mother, wrapping her arms
+passionately round him, and in tones choked with sobs.
+
+“Now leave me, maman,” said Enguerrand, resorting to the infantine
+ordinary name, which he had not used for years. “Raoul, stay and help
+me to dress. I must be tres beau to-day. I shall join thee at breakfast,
+maman. Early for such repast, but l’appetit vient en mangeant. Mind the
+coffee is hot.”
+
+Enguerrand, always careful of each detail of dress, was especially so
+that morning, and especially gay, humming the old air, “Partant pour la
+Syrie.” But his gaiety was checked when Raoul, taking from his breast a
+holy talisman, which he habitually wore there, suspended it with loving
+hands round his brother’s neck. It was a small crystal set in Byzantine
+filigree; imbedded in it was a small splinter of wood, said by pious
+tradition to be a relic of the Divine Cross. It had been for centuries
+in the family of the Contessa di Rimini, and was given by her to Raoul,
+the only gift she had ever made him, as an emblem of the sinless
+purity of the affection that united those two souls in the bonds of the
+beautiful belief.
+
+“She bade me transfer it to thee to-day, my brother,” said Raoul,
+simply; “and now without a pang I can gird on thee thy soldier’s sword.”
+
+Enguerrand clasped his brother in his arms, and kissed him with
+passionate fervour. “Oh, Raoul, how I love thee! how good thou hast ever
+been to me! how many sins thou hast saved me from! how indulgent thou
+hast been to those from which thou couldst not save! Think on that, my
+brother, in case we do not meet again on earth.”
+
+“Hush, hush, Enguerrand! No gloomy forebodings now! Come, come hither,
+my half of life, my sunny half of life!” and uttering these words,
+he led Enguerrand towards the crucifix, and there, in deeper and more
+solemn voice, said, “Let us pray.” So the brothers knelt side by side,
+and Raoul prayed aloud as only such souls can pray.
+
+When they descended into the salon where breakfast was set out, they
+found assembled several of their relations, and some of Enguerrand’s
+young friends not engaged in the sortie. One or two of the latter,
+indeed, were disabled from fighting by wounds in former fields; they
+left their sick-beds to bid him good-bye. Unspeakable was the affection
+this genial nature inspired in all who came into the circle of its
+winning magic; and when, tearing himself from them, he descended the
+stair, and passed with light step through the Porte cochere, there was
+a crowd around the house--so widely had his popularity spread among even
+the lower classes, from which the Mobiles in his regiment were chiefly
+composed. He departed to the place of rendezvous amid a chorus of
+exhilarating cheers.
+
+Not thus lovingly tended on, not thus cordially greeted, was that equal
+idol of a former generation, Victor de Mauleon. No pious friend prayed
+beside his couch, no loving kiss waked him from his slumbers. At the
+grey of the November dawn he rose from a sleep which had no smiling
+dreams, with that mysterious instinct of punctual will which cannot even
+go to sleep without fixing beforehand the exact moment in which sleep
+shall end. He, too, like Enguerrand, dressed himself with care--unlike
+Enguerrand, with care strictly soldier-like. Then, seeing he had some
+little time yet before him, he rapidly revisited the pigeonholes and
+drawers in which might be found by prying eyes anything he would deny
+to them curiosity. All that he found of this sort were some letters in
+female handwriting, tied together with faded ribbon, relics of earlier
+days, and treasured throughout later vicissitudes; letters from the
+English girl to whom he had briefly referred in his confession to
+Louvier,--the only girl he had ever wooed as his wife. She was the only
+daughter of highborn Roman Catholics, residing at the time of his youth
+in Paris. Reluctantly they had assented to his proposals; joyfully they
+had retracted their assent when his affairs had become so involved;
+yet possibly the motive that led him to his most ruinous excesses--the
+gambling of the turf--had been caused by the wild hope of a nature, then
+fatally sanguine, to retrieve the fortune that might suffice to
+satisfy the parents. But during his permitted courtship the lovers
+had corresponded. Her letters were full of warm, if innocent,
+tenderness--till came the last cold farewell. The family had long ago
+returned to England; he concluded, of course, that she had married
+another.
+
+Near to these letters lay the papers which had served to vindicate his
+honour in that old affair, in which the unsought love of another had
+brought on him shame and affliction. As his eye fell on the last, he
+muttered to him self, “I kept these, to clear my repute. Can I keep
+those, when, if found, they might compromise the repute of her who
+might have been my wife had I been worthy of her? She is doubtless now
+another’s; or, if dead,--honour never dies.” He pressed his lips to the
+letters with a passionate, lingering, mournful kiss; then, raking up the
+ashes of yesterday’s fire, and rekindling them, he placed thereon those
+leaves of a melancholy romance in his past, and watched them slowly,
+reluctantly smoulder away into tinder. Then he opened a drawer in which
+lay the only paper of a political character which he had preserved. All
+that related to plots or conspiracies in which his agency had committed
+others, it was his habit to destroy as soon as received. For the sole
+document thus treasured he alone was responsible; it was an outline
+of his ideal for the future constitution of France, accompanied with
+elaborate arguments, the heads of which his conversation with the
+Incognito made known to the reader. Of the soundness of this political
+programme, whatever its merits or faults (a question on which I presume
+no judgment), he had an intense conviction. He glanced rapidly over its
+contents, did not alter a word, sealed it up in an envelope, inscribed,
+“My Legacy to my Countrymen.” The papers refuting a calumny relating
+solely to himself he carried into the battle-field, placed next to his
+heart,--significant of a Frenchman’s love of honour in this world--as
+the relic placed round the neck of Enguerrand by his pious brother was
+emblematic of the Christian hope of mercy in the next.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The streets swarmed with the populace troops as they passed to their
+destination. Among those of the Mobiles who especially caught the eye
+were two companies in which Enguerrand de Vandemar and Victor de Mauleon
+commanded. In the first were many young men of good family, or in the
+higher ranks of the bourgeoisie, known to numerous lookers-on; there was
+something inspiriting in their gay aspects, and in the easy carelessness
+of their march. Mixed with this company, however, and forming of course
+the bulk of it, were those who belonged to the lower classes of the
+population; and though they too might seem gay to an ordinary observer,
+the gaiety was forced. Many of them were evidently not quite sober; and
+there was a disorderly want of soldiership in their mien and armament
+which inspired distrust among such vieux moustaches as, too old for
+other service than that of the ramparts, mixed here and there among the
+crowd.
+
+But when De Mauleon’s company passed, the vieux moustaches impulsively
+touched each other. They recognised the march of well-drilled men; the
+countenances grave and severe, the eyes not looking on this side and
+that for admiration, the step regularly timed; and conspicuous among
+these men the tall stature and calm front of the leader.
+
+“These fellows will fight well,” growled a vieux moustache, “where did
+they fish out their leader?”
+
+“Don’t you know?” said a bourgeois. “Victor de Mauleon. He won the cross
+in Algeria for bravery. I recollect him when I was very young; the very
+devil for women and fighting.”
+
+“I wish there were more such devils for fighting and fewer for women,”
+ growled again le vieux moustache.
+
+One incessant roar of cannon all the night of the 29th. The populace
+had learned the names of the French cannons, and fancied they
+could distinguish the several sounds of their thunder. “There
+spits ‘Josephine’!” shouts an invalid sailor. “There howls our own
+‘Populace’!” cries a Red Republican from Belleville.
+
+   [The “Populace” had been contributed to the artillery,
+   sou a sou, by the working class.]
+
+“There sings ‘Le Chatiment’!” laughed Gustave Rameau, who was now become
+an enthusiastic admirer of the Victor Hugo he had before affected to
+despise. And all the while, mingled with the roar of the cannon,
+came, far and near from the streets, from the ramparts, the gusts of
+song--song sometimes heroic, sometimes obscene, more often carelessly
+joyous. The news of General Vinoy’s success during the early part of the
+day had been damped by the evening report of Ducrot’s delay in crossing
+the swollen Marne. But the spirits of the Parisians rallied from a
+momentary depression on the excitement at night of that concert of
+martial music.
+
+During that night, close under the guns of the double redoubt of
+Gravelle and La Faisanderie, eight pontoon-bridges were thrown over
+the Marne; and at daybreak the first column of the third army under
+Blanchard and Renoult crossed with all their artillery, and, covered
+by the fire of the double redoubts, of the forts of Vincennes, Nogent,
+Rossuey, and the batteries of Mont Avron, had an hour before noon
+carried the village of Champingy, and the first echelon of the
+important plateau of Villiers, and were already commencing the work
+of intrenchment, when, rallying from the amaze of a defeat, the German
+forces burst upon them, sustained by fresh batteries. The Prussian
+pieces of artillery established at Chennevieres and at Neuilly opened
+fire with deadly execution; while a numerous infantry, descending from
+the intrenchments of Villiers, charged upon the troops under Renoult.
+Among the French in that strife were Enguerrand and the Mobiles of which
+he was in command. Dismayed by the unexpected fire, these Mobiles gave
+way, as indeed did many of the line. Enguerrand rushed forward to the
+front: “On, mes enfans, on! What will our mothers and wives say of us
+if we fly? Vive la France!--On!” Among those of the better class in that
+company there rose a shout of applause, but it found no sympathy among
+the rest. They wavered, they turned. “Will you suffer me to go on
+alone, countrymen?” cried Enguerrand; and alone he rushed on towards
+the Prussian line--rushed, and fell, mortally wounded, by a musket-ball.
+“Revenge, revenge!” shouted some of the foremost; “Revenge!” shouted
+those in the rear; and, so shouting, turned on their heels and fled.
+But ere they could disperse they encountered the march, steadfast though
+rapid, of the troop led by Victor de Mauleon. “Poltroons!” he thundered,
+with the sonorous depth of his strong voice, “halt and turn, or my men
+shall fire on you as deserters.”
+
+“Va, citoyen,” said one fugitive, an officer-popularly elected, because
+he was the loudest brawler in the club of the Salle Favre,--we have seen
+him before--Charles, the brother of Armand Monnier;--“men can’t fight
+when they despise their generals. It is our generals who are poltroons
+and fools both.”
+
+“Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards,” cried De Mauldon, and shot
+the man dead.
+
+His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and the voice and the
+look of the death-giver, halted. The officers, who had at first yielded
+to the panic of their men, took fresh courage, and finally led the bulk
+of the troop back to their post “enlevis a la baionette,” to use the
+phrase of a candid historian of that day.
+
+Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France. It was the first, if it
+was the last, really important success of the besieged. They remained
+masters of the ground, the Prussians leaving to them the wounded and the
+dead.
+
+That night what crowds thronged from Paris to the top of the Montmartre
+heights, from the observatory on which the celebrated inventor Bazin
+had lighted up, with some magical electric machine, all the plain of
+Gennevilliers from Mont Valerien to the Fort de la Briche! The splendour
+of the blaze wrapped the great city;--distinctly above the roofs of
+the houses soared the Dome des Invalides, the spires of Notre Dame, the
+giant turrets of the Tuileries;--and died away on resting on the infames
+scapulos Acroceraunia, the “thunder crags” of the heights occupied by
+the invading army.
+
+Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Rameau--who, despite his peaceful
+habits and grey hairs, insisted on joining in the aid of la patrie--were
+among the National Guards attached to the Fort de la Briche and the
+neighbouring eminence, and they met in conversation.
+
+“What a victory we have had!” said the old Rameau.
+
+“Rather mortifying to your son, M. Rameau,” said LeMercier.
+
+“Mortifying to my son, sir!--the victory of his countrymen. What do you
+mean?”
+
+“I had the honour to hear M. Gustave the other night at the club de la
+Vengeance.”
+
+“Bon Dieu! do you frequent those tragic reunions?” asked De Breze.
+
+“They are not at all tragic: they are the only comedies left us, as one
+must amuse one’s self somewhere, and the club de la Vengeance is the
+prettiest thing of the sort going. I quite understand why it should
+fascinate a poet like your son, M. Rameau. It is held in a salle de
+cafe chantant--style Louis Quinze--decorated with a pastoral scene from
+Watteau. I and my dog Fox drop in. We hear your son haranguing. In what
+poetical sentences he despaired of the Republic! The Government (he
+called them les charlatans de l’Hotel de Ville) were imbeciles. They
+pretended to inaugurate a revolution, and did not employ the most
+obvious of revolutionary means. There Fox and I pricked up our ears:
+what were those means? Your son proceeded to explain: ‘All mankind were
+to be appealed to against individual interests. The commerce of luxury
+was to be abolished. Clearly luxury was not at the command of all
+mankind. Cafes and theatres were to be closed for ever--all mankind
+could not go to cafes and theatres. It was idle to expect the masses to
+combine for anything in which the masses had not an interest in common.
+The masses had no interest in any property that did not belong to
+the masses. Programmes of the society to be founded, called the Ligue
+Cosmopolite Democratique, should be sent at once into all the States of
+the civilised world--how? by balloons. Money corrupts the world as now
+composed: but the money at the command of the masses could buy all the
+monarchs and courtiers and priests of the universe.’ At that sentiment,
+vehemently delivered, the applauses were frantic, and Fox in his
+excitement began to bark. At the sound of his bark one man cried out,
+‘That’s a Prussian!’ another, ‘Down with the spy!’ another, ‘There’s an
+aristo present--he keeps alive a dog which would be a week’s meal for
+a family!’ I snatch up Fox at the last cry, and clasp him to a bosom
+protected by the uniform of the National Guard.
+
+“When the hubbub had subsided, your son, M. Rameau, proceeded, quitting
+mankind in general, and arriving at the question in particular most
+interesting to his audience--the mobilisation of the National Guard;
+that is, the call upon men who like talking and hate fighting to talk
+less and fight more. ‘It was the sheerest tyranny to select a certain
+number of free citizens to be butchered. If the fight was for the mass,
+there ought to be la levee en masse. If one did not compel everybody
+to fight, why should anybody fight?’ Here the applause again became
+vehement, and Fox again became indiscreet. I subdued Fox’s bark into a
+squeak by pulling his ears. ‘What!’ cries your poet-son, ‘la levee en
+masse gives us fifteen millions of soldiers, with which we could crush,
+not Prussia alone, but the whole of Europe. (Immense sensation.) Let us,
+then, resolve that the charlatans of the Hotel de Ville are incapable of
+delivering us from the Prussians; that they are deposed; that the Ligue
+of the Democratie Cosmopolite is installed; that meanwhile the Commune
+shall be voted the Provisional Government, and shall order the Prussians
+to retire within three days from the soil of Paris.’
+
+“Pardon me this long description, my dear M. Rameau, but I trust I
+have satisfactorily explained why victory obtained in the teeth of
+his eloquent opinions, if gratifying to him as a Frenchman, must be
+mortifying to him as a politician.”
+
+The old Rameau sighed, hung his head, and crept away. While, amid this
+holiday illumination, the Parisians enjoyed the panorama before them,
+the Freres Chretiens and the attendants of the various ambulances were
+moving along the battle-plains; the first in their large-brimmed hats
+and sable garbs, the last in strange motley costume, many of them in
+glittering uniform--all alike in their serene indifference to danger;
+often pausing to pick up among the dead their own brethren who had
+been slaughtered in the midst of their task. Now and then they came
+on sinister forms apparently engaged in the same duty of tending the
+wounded and dead, but in truth murderous plunderers, to whom the dead
+and the dying were equal harvests. Did the wounded man attempt to resist
+the foul hands searching for their spoil, they added another wound more
+immediately mortal, grinning as they completed on the dead the robbery
+they had commenced on the dying.
+
+Raoul de Vandemar had been all the earlier part of the day with the
+assistants of the ambulance over which he presided, attached to the
+battalions of the National Guard in a quarter remote from that in which
+his brother had fought and fallen. When those troops, later in the day,
+were driven from the Montmedy plateau, which they had at first carried,
+Raoul repassed towards the plateau at Villiers, on which the dead lay
+thickest. On the way he heard a vague report of the panic which
+had dispersed the Mobiles of whom Enguerrand was in command, and of
+Enguerrand’s vain attempt to inspirit them. But his fate was not known.
+There, at midnight, Raoul is still searching among the ghastly heaps and
+pools of blood, lighted from afar by the blaze from the observatory of
+Montmartre, and more near at hand by the bivouac fires extended along
+the banks to the left of the Marne, while everywhere about the field
+flitted the lanterns of the Frere Chretiens. Suddenly, in the dimness of
+a spot cast into shadow by an incompleted earthwork, he observed a small
+sinister figure perched on the breast of some wounded soldier, evidently
+not to succour. He sprang forward and seized a hideous-looking urchin,
+scarcely twelve years old, who held in one hand a small crystal locket,
+set in filigree gold, torn from the soldier’s breast, and lifted high in
+the other a long case-knife. At a glance Raoul recognised the holy relic
+he had given to Enguerrand, and, flinging the precocious murderer to be
+seized by his assistants, he cast himself beside his brother. Enguerrand
+still breathed, and his languid eyes brightened as he knew the dear
+familiar face. He tried to speak, but his voice failed, and he shook his
+head sadly, but still with a faint smile on his lips. They lifted him
+tenderly, and placed him on a litter. The movement, gentle as it was,
+brought back pain, and with the pain strength to mutter, “My mother---I
+would see her once more.”
+
+As at daybreak the loungers on Montmartre and the ramparts descended
+into the streets--most windows in which were open, as they had been
+all night, with anxious female faces peering palely down-they saw the
+conveyances of the ambulances coming dismally along, and many an
+eye turned wistfully towards the litter on which lay the idol of the
+pleasure-loving Paris, with the dark, bareheaded figure walking beside
+it,--onwards, onwards, till it reached the Hotel de Vandemar, and a
+woman’s cry was heard at the entrance--the mother’s cry, “My son! my
+son!”
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK XII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The last book closed with the success of the Parisian sortie on the
+30th of November, to be followed by the terrible engagements no less
+honourable to French valour, on the 2nd of December. There was the
+sanguine belief that deliverance was at hand; that Trochu would break
+through the circle of iron, and effect that junction with the army
+of Aurelles de Paladine which would compel the Germans to raise the
+investment;--belief rudely shaken by Ducrot’s proclamation of the 4th,
+to explain the recrossing of the Marne, and the abandonment of the
+positions conquered, but not altogether dispelled till von Moltke’s
+letter to Trochu on the 5th announcing the defeat of the army of the
+Loire and the recapture of Orleans. Even then the Parisians did not
+lose hope of succour; and even after the desperate and fruitless sortie
+against Le Bourget on the 21st, it was not without witticisms on defeat
+and predictions of triumph, that Winter and Famine settled sullenly on
+the city.
+
+Our narrative reopens with the last period of the siege.
+
+It was during these dreadful days, that if the vilest and the most
+hideous aspects of the Parisian population showed themselves at
+the worst, so all its loveliest, its noblest, its holiest
+characteristics--unnoticed by ordinary observers in the prosperous days
+of the capital--became conspicuously prominent. The higher classes,
+including the remnant of the old noblesse, had, during the whole siege,
+exhibited qualities in notable contrast to those assigned them by
+the enemies of aristocracy. Their sons had been foremost among those
+soldiers who never calumniated a leader, never fled before a foe; their
+women had been among the most zealous and the most tender nurses of the
+ambulances they had founded and served; their houses had been freely
+opened, whether to the families exiled from the suburbs, or in
+supplement to the hospitals. The amount of relief they afforded
+unostentatiously, out of means that shared the general failure of
+accustomed resource, when the famine commenced, would be scarcely
+credible if stated. Admirable, too, were the fortitude and resignation
+of the genuine Parisian bourgeoisie,--the thrifty tradesfolk and small
+rentiers,--that class in which, to judge of its timidity when opposed
+to a mob, courage is not the most conspicuous virtue. Courage became so
+now--courage to bear hourly increasing privation, and to suppress every
+murmur of suffering that would discredit their patriotism, and invoke
+“peace at any price.” It was on this class that the calamities of the
+siege now pressed the most heavily. The stagnation of trade, and the
+stoppage of the rents, in which they had invested their savings, reduced
+many of them to actual want. Those only of their number who obtained the
+pay of one-and-a-half franc a day as National Guards, could be sure to
+escape from starvation. But this pay had already begun to demoralise the
+receivers. Scanty for supply of food, it was ample for supply of drink.
+And drunkenness, hitherto rare in that rank of the Parisians, became
+a prevalent vice, aggravated in the case of a National Guard, when
+it wholly unfitted him for the duties he undertook, especially such
+National Guards as were raised from the most turbulent democracy of the
+working class.
+
+But of all that population; there were two sections in which the
+most beautiful elements of our human nature were most touchingly
+manifest--the women and the priesthood, including in the latter
+denomination all the various brotherhoods and societies which religion
+formed and inspired.
+
+It was on the 27th of December that Frederic Lemercier stood gazing
+wistfully on a military report affixed to a blank wall, which stated
+that “the enemy, worn out by a resistance of over one hundred days,”
+ had commenced the bombardment. Poor Frederic was sadly altered; he had
+escaped the Prussian’s guns, but not the Parisian winter--the severest
+known for twenty years. He was one of the many frozen at their
+posts--brought back to the ambulance with Fox in his bosom trying
+to keep him warm. He had only lately been sent forth as
+convalescent,--ambulances were too crowded to retain a patient longer
+than absolutely needful,--and had been hunger-pinched and frost-pinched
+ever since. The luxurious Frederic had still, somewhere or other, a
+capital yielding above three thousand a year, and of which he could not
+now realise a franc, the title-deeds to various investments being in the
+hands of Duplessis, the most trustworthy of friends, the most upright of
+men, but who was in Bretagne, and could not be got at. And the time had
+come at Paris when you could not get trust for a pound of horse-flesh,
+or a daily supply of fuel. And Frederic Lemercier, who had long since
+spent the 2000 francs borrowed from Alain (not ignobly, but somewhat
+ostentatiously, in feasting any acquaintance who wanted a feast), and
+who had sold to any one who could afford to speculate on such dainty
+luxuries,--clocks, bronzes, amber-mounted pipes,--all that had made the
+envied garniture of his bachelor’s apartment--Frederic Lemercier was,
+so far as the task of keeping body and soul together, worse off than
+any English pauper who can apply to the Union. Of course he might have
+claimed his half-pay of thirty sous as a National Guard. But he little
+knows the true Parisian who imagines a seigneur of the Chaussee d’Antin,
+the oracle of those with whom he lived, and one who knew life so well
+that he had preached prudence to a seigneur of the Faubourg like Alain
+de Rochebriant, stooping to apply for the wages of thirty sons. Rations
+were only obtained by the wonderful patience of women, who had children
+to whom they were both saints and martyrs. The hours, the weary hours,
+one had to wait before one could get one’s place on the line for the
+distribution of that atrocious black bread, defeated men,--defeated most
+wives if only for husbands, were defied only by mothers and daughters.
+Literally speaking, Lemercier was starving. Alain had been badly wounded
+in the sortie of the 21st, and was laid up in an ambulance. Even if
+he could have been got at, he had probably nothing left to bestow upon
+Lemercier.
+
+Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the bombardment, and the
+Parisian gaiety, which some French historian of the siege calls douce
+philosophie, lingering on him still, he said, audibly, turning round
+to any stranger who heard: “Happiest of mortals that we are! Under the
+present Government we are never warned of anything disagreeable that can
+happen; we are only told of it when it has happened, and then as rather
+pleasant than otherwise. I get up. I meet a civil gendarme. ‘What is
+that firing? which of our provincial armies is taking Prussia in the
+rear? ‘Monsieur,’ says the gendarme, ‘it is the Prussian Krupp guns.’ I
+look at the proclamation, and my fears varnish,--my heart is relieved. I
+read that the bombardment is a sure sign that the enemy is worn out.”
+
+Some of the men grouped round Frederic ducked their heads in terror;
+others, who knew that the thunderbolt launched from the plateau of Avron
+would not fall on the pavements of Paris, laughed and joked. But in
+front, with no sign of terror, no sound of laughter, stretched, moving
+inch by inch, the female procession towards the bakery in which the
+morsel of bread for their infants was doled out.
+
+“Hist, mon ami,” said a deep voice beside Lemercier. “Look at those
+women, and do not wound their ears by a jest.”
+
+Lemercier, offended by that rebuke, though too susceptible to good
+emotions not to recognise its justice, tried with feeble fingers to turn
+up his moustache, and to turn a defiant crest upon the rebuker. He
+was rather startled to see the tall martial form at his side, and to
+recognise Victor de Mauleon. “Don’t you think, M. Lemercier,” resumed
+the Vicomte, half sadly, “that these women are worthy of better husbands
+and sons than are commonly found among the soldiers whose uniform we
+wear?”
+
+“The National Guard! You ought not to sneer at them, Vicomte,--you
+whose troop covered itself with glory on the great days of Villiers
+and Champigny,--you in whose praise even the grumblers of Paris became
+eloquent, and in whom a future Marshal of France is foretold.”
+
+“But, alas! more than half of my poor troop was left on the
+battle-field, or is now wrestling for mangled remains of life in the
+ambulances. And the new recruits with which I took the field on the
+21st are not likely to cover themselves with glory, or to insure their
+commander the baton of a marshal.”
+
+“Ay, I heard when I was in the hospital that you had publicly shamed
+some of these recruits, and declared that you would rather resign than
+lead them again to battle.”
+
+“True; and at this moment, for so doing, I am the man most hated by the
+rabble who supplied those recruits.” The men, while thus conversing,
+had moved slowly on, and were now in front of a large cafe, from the
+interior of which came the sound of loud bravos and clappings of hands.
+Lemercier’s curiosity was excited. “For what can be that applause?” he
+said; “let us look in and see.” The room was thronged. In the distance,
+on a small raised platform, stood a girl dressed in faded theatrical
+finery, making her obeisance to the crowd.
+
+“Heavens!” exclaimed Frederic--“can I trust my eyes? Surely that is the
+once superb Julie: has she been dancing here?”
+
+One of the loungers, evidently belonging to the same world as Lemercier,
+overheard the question and answered politely: “No, Monsieur: she has
+been reciting verses, and really declaims very well, considering it
+is not her vocation. She has given us extracts from Victor Hugo and De
+Musset: and crowned all with a patriotic hymn by Gustave Rameau,--her
+old lover, if gossip be true.” Meanwhile De Mauleon, who at first had
+glanced over the scene with his usual air of calm and cold indifference,
+became suddenly struck by the girl’s beautiful face, and gazed on it
+with a look of startled surprise.
+
+“Who and what did you say that poor fair creature is, M. Lemercier?”
+
+“She is a Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, and was a very popular coryphee.
+She has hereditary right to be a good dancer, as the daughter of a once
+more famous ornament of the ballet, la belle Leonie--whom you must have
+seen in your young days.”
+
+“Of course. Leonie--she married a M. Surville, a silly bourgeois
+gentilhomme, who earned the hatred of Paris by taking her off the stage.
+So that is her daughter I see no likeness to her mother--much handsomer.
+Why does she call herself Caumartin?”
+
+“Oh,” said Frederic, “a melancholy but trite story.”
+
+“Leonie was left a widow, and died in want. What could the poor young
+daughter do? She found a rich protector, who had influence to get her
+an appointment in the ballet: and there she did as most girls so
+circumstanced do--appeared under an assumed name, which she has since
+kept.”
+
+“I understand,” said Victor, compassionately. “Poor thing! she has
+quitted the platform, and is coming this way, evidently to speak to you.
+I saw her eyes brighten as she caught sight of your face.”
+
+Lemercier attempted a languid air of modest self-complacency as the girl
+now approached him. “Bonjour, M. Frederic! Ah, mon Dieu! how thin you
+have grown! You have been ill?”
+
+“The hardships of a military life, Mademoiselle. Ah, for the beaux
+fours and the peace we insisted on destroying under the Empire which we
+destroyed for listening to us! But you thrive well, I trust. I have seen
+you better dressed, but never in greater beauty.”
+
+The girl blushed as she replied, “Do you really think as you speak?”
+
+“I could not speak more sincerely if I lived in the legendary House of
+Glass.”
+
+The girl clutched his arm, and said in suppressed tones, “Where is
+Gustave?”
+
+“Gustave Rameau? I have no idea. Do you never see him now?”
+
+“Never,--perhaps I never shall see him again; but when you do meet
+him, say that Julie owes to him her livelihood. An honest livelihood,
+Monsieur. He taught her to love verses--told her how to recite them. I
+am engaged at this cafe--you will find me here the same hour every day,
+in case--in case--You are good and kind, and will come and tell me that
+Gustave is well and happy even if he forgets me. Au revoir! Stop, you do
+look, my poor Frederic, as if--as if--pardon me, Monsieur Lemercier, is
+there anything I can do? Will you condescend to borrow from me? I am in
+funds.”
+
+Lemercier at that offer was nearly moved to tears. Famished though he
+was, he could not, however, have touched that girl’s earnings.
+
+“You are an angel of goodness, Mademoiselle! Ah, how I envy Gustave
+Rameau! No, I don’t want aid. I am always a--rentier.”
+
+“Bien! and if you see Gustave, you will not forget.”
+
+“Rely on me. Come away,” he said to De Mauleon; “I don’t want to hear
+that girl repeat the sort of bombast the poets indite nowadays. It is
+fustian; and that girl may have a brain of feather, but she has a heart
+of gold.”
+
+“True,” said Victor, as they regained the street. “I overheard what
+she said to you. What an incomprehensible thing is a woman! how more
+incomprehensible still is a woman’s love! Ah, pardon me; I must leave
+you. I see in the procession a poor woman known to me in better days.”
+
+De Mauleon walked towards the woman he spoke of--one of the long
+procession to the bakery--a child clinging to her robe. A pale
+grief-worn woman, still young, but with the weariness of age on her
+face, and the shadow of death on her child’s.
+
+“I think I see Madame Monnier,” said De Mauleon, softly.
+
+She turned and looked at him drearily. A year ago, she would have
+blushed if addressed by a stranger in a name not lawfully hers.
+
+“Well,” she said, in hollow accents broken by cough; “I don’t know you,
+Monsieur.”
+
+“Poor woman!” he resumed, walking beside her as she moved slowly on,
+while the eyes of other women in the procession stared at him hungrily.
+“And your child looks ill too. It is your youngest?”
+
+“My only one! The others are in Pere la Chaise. There are but few
+children alive in my street now. God has been very merciful, and taken
+them to Himself.”
+
+De Mauleon recalled the scene of a neat comfortable apartment, and the
+healthful happy children at play on the floor. The mortality among the
+little ones, especially in the quartier occupied by the working classes,
+had of late been terrible. The want of food, of fuel, the intense
+severity of the weather, had swept them off as by a pestilence.
+
+“And Monnier--what of him? No doubt he is a National Guard, and has his
+pay?”
+
+The woman made no answer, but hung down her head. She was stifling a
+sob. Till then her eyes seemed to have exhausted the last source of
+tears.
+
+“He lives still?” continued Victor, pityingly: “he is not wounded?”
+
+“No: he is well--in health; thank you kindly, Monsieur.”
+
+“But his pay is not enough to help you, and of course he can get no
+work. Excuse me if I stopped you. It is because I owed Armand Monnier a
+little debt for work, and I am ashamed to say that it quite escaped my
+memory in these terrible events. Allow me, Madame, to pay it to you,”
+ and he thrust his purse into her hand. “I think this contains about the
+sum I owed; if more or less, we will settle the difference later. Take
+care of yourself.”
+
+He was turning away when the woman caught hold of him.
+
+“Stay, Monsieur. May Heaven bless you!--but--but tell me what name I am
+to give to Armand. I can’t think of any one who owed him money. It must
+have been before that dreadful strike, the beginning of all our woes.
+Ah, if it were allowed to curse any one, I fear my last breath would not
+be a prayer.”
+
+“You would curse the strike, or the master who did not forgive Armand’s
+share in it?”
+
+“No, no,--the cruel man who talked him into it--into all that has
+changed the best workman, the kindest heart--the--the--” again her voice
+died in sobs.
+
+“And who was that man?” asked De Mauleon, falteringly.
+
+“His name was Lebeau. If you were a poor man, I should say ‘Shun him.’”
+
+“I have heard of the name you mention; but if we mean the same person,
+Monnier cannot have met him lately. He has not been in Paris since the
+siege.”
+
+“I suppose not, the coward! He ruined us--us who were so happy before;
+and then, as Armand says, cast us away as instruments he had done with.
+But--but if you do know him, and do see him again, tell him--tell him
+not to complete his wrong--not to bring murder on Armand’s soul. For
+Armand isn’t what he was--and has become, oh, so violent! I dare not
+take this money without saying who gave it. He would not take money as
+alms from an aristocrat. Hush! he beat me for taking money from the good
+Monsieur Raoul de Vandemar--my poor Armand beat me!”
+
+De Mauleon shuddered. “Say that it is from a customer whose rooms
+he decorated in his spare hours on his own account before the
+strike,--Monsieur --------;” here he uttered indistinctly some
+unpronounceable name and hurried off, soon lost as the streets grew
+darker. Amid groups of a higher order of men-military men, nobles,
+ci-devant deputies--among such ones his name stood very high. Not only
+his bravery in the recent sorties had been signal, but a strong belief
+in his military talents had become prevalent; and conjoined with
+the name he had before established as a political writer, and the
+remembrance of the vigour and sagacity with which he had opposed the
+war, he seemed certain, when peace and order became established, of
+a brilliant position and career in a future administration: not less
+because he had steadfastly kept aloof from the existing Government,
+which it was rumoured, rightly or erroneously, that he had been
+solicited to join; and from every combination of the various democratic
+or discontented factions.
+
+Quitting these more distinguished associates, he took his way alone
+towards the ramparts. The day was closing; the thunders of the cannon
+were dying down.
+
+He passed by a wine-shop round which were gathered many of the worse
+specimens of the Moblots and National Guards, mostly drunk, and loudly
+talking in vehement abuse of generals and officers and commissariat. By
+one of the men, as he came under the glare of a petroleum lamp (there
+was gas no longer in the dismal city), he was recognised as the
+commander who had dared to insist on discipline, and disgrace honest
+patriots who claimed to themselves the sole option between fight and
+flight. The man was one of those patriots--one of the new recruits whom
+Victor had shamed and dismissed for mutiny and cowardice. He made a
+drunken plunge at his former chief, shouting, “A bas Pai-isto! Comrades,
+this is the coquin De Mauleon who is paid by the Prussians for getting
+us killed: a la lanterne!” “A la lanterne!” stammered and hiccupped
+others of the group; but they did not stir to execute their threat.
+Dimly seen as the stern face and sinewy form of the threatened man was
+by their drowsied eyes, the name of De Mauleon, the man without fear
+of a foe, and without ruth for a mutineer, sufficed to protect him from
+outrage; and with a slight movement of his arm that sent his denouncer
+reeling against the lamp-post, De Mauleon passed on:--when another man,
+in the uniform of a National Guard, bounded from the door of the tavern,
+crying with a loud voice, “Who said De Mauleon?--let me look on him:”
+ and Victor, who had strode on with slow lion-like steps, cleaving the
+crowd, turned, and saw before him in the gleaming light a face, in which
+the bold frank, intelligent aspect of former days was lost in a wild,
+reckless, savage expression--the face of Armand Monnier.
+
+“Ha! are you really Victor de Mauleon?” asked Monnier, not fiercely, but
+under his breath,--in that sort of stage whisper which is the natural
+utterance of excited men under the mingled influence of potent drink and
+hoarded rage.
+
+“Certainly; I am Victor de Mauleon.”
+
+“And you were in command of the--company of the National Guard on the
+30th of November at Champigny and Villiers?”
+
+“I was.”
+
+“And you shot with your own hand an officer belonging to another company
+who refused to join yours?”
+
+“I shot a cowardly soldier who ran away from the enemy, and seemed a
+ringleader of other runaways; and in so doing, I saved from dishonour
+the best part of his comrades.”
+
+“The man was no coward. He was an enlightened Frenchman, and worth fifty
+of such aristos as you; and he knew better than his officers that he was
+to be led to an idle slaughter. Idle--I say idle. What was France the
+better, how was Paris the safer, for the senseless butchery of that day?
+You mutinied against a wiser general than Saint Trochu when you murdered
+that mutineer.”
+
+“Armand Monnier, you are not quite sober to-night, or I would argue with
+you that question. But you no doubt are brave: how and why do you take
+the part of a runaway?”
+
+“How and why? He was my brother, and you own you murdered him: my
+brother--the sagest head in Paris. If I had listened to him, I should
+not be,--bah!--no matter now what I am.”
+
+“I could not know he was your brother; but if he had been mine I would
+have done the same.”
+
+Here Victor’s lip quivered, for Monnier griped him by the arm, and
+looked him in the face with wild stony eyes. “I recollect that voice!
+Yet--yet--you say you are a noble, a Vicomte--Victor de Mauleon, and you
+shot my brother!”
+
+Here he passed his left hand rapidly over his forehead. The fumes of
+wine still clouded his mind, but rays of intelligence broke through the
+cloud. Suddenly he said in a loud, and calm, and natural voice:
+
+“Mons. le Vicomte, you accost me as Armand Monnier--pray how do you know
+my name?”
+
+“How should I not know it? I have looked into the meetings of the ‘Clubs
+rouges.’ I have heard you speak, and naturally asked your name. Bon soir
+M. Monnier! When you reflect in cooler moments, you will see that if
+patriots excuse Brutus for first dishonouring and then executing his own
+son, an officer charged to defend his country may be surely pardoned for
+slaying a runaway to whom he was no relation, when in slaying he saved
+the man’s name and kindred from dishonour--unless, indeed, you insist on
+telling the world why he was slain.”
+
+“I know your voice--I know it. Every sound becomes clearer to my ear.
+And if--”
+
+But while Monnier thus spoke, De Mauleon had hastened on. Monnier looked
+round, saw him gone, but did not pursue. He was just intoxicated enough
+to know that his footsteps were not steady, and he turned back to the
+wine-shop and asked surlily for more wine. Could you have seen him then
+as he leant swinging himself to and fro against the wall,--had you known
+the man two years ago, you would have been a brute if you felt disgust.
+You could only have felt that profound compassion with which we gaze on
+a great royalty fallen. For the grandest of all royalties is that which
+takes its crown from Nature, needing no accident of birth. And Nature
+made the mind of Armand Monnier king-like; endowed it with lofty scorn
+of meanness and falsehood and dishonour, with warmth and tenderness of
+heart which had glow enough to spare from ties of kindred and hearth and
+home, to extend to those distant circles of humanity over which royal
+natures would fain extend the shadow of their sceptre.
+
+How had the royalty of the man’s nature fallen thus? Royalty rarely
+falls from its own constitutional faults. It falls when, ceasing to be
+royal, it becomes subservient to bad advisers. And what bad advisers,
+always appealing to his better qualities and so enlisting his worser,
+had discrowned this mechanic?
+
+“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” says the old-fashioned poet.
+
+“Not so,” says the modern philosopher; “a little knowledge; is safer
+than no knowledge.” Possibly, as all individuals and all communities
+must go through the stage of a little knowledge before they can arrive
+at that of much knowledge, the philosopher’s assertion may be right
+in the long-run, and applied to humankind in general. But there is
+a period, as there is a class, in which a little knowledge tends to
+terrible demoralisation. And Armand Monnier lived in that period and
+was one of that class. The little knowledge that his mind, impulsive
+and ardent, had picked up out of books that warred with the great
+foundations of existing society, had originated in ill advices. A man
+stored with much knowledge would never have let Madame de Grantmesnil’s
+denunciations of marriage rites, or Louis Blane’s vindication of
+Robespierre as the representative of the working against the middle
+class, influence his practical life. He would have assessed such
+opinions at their real worth; and whatever that worth might seem to
+him, would not to such opinions have committed the conduct of his
+life. Opinion is not fateful: conduct is. A little knowledge crazes
+an earnest, warm-blooded, powerful creature like Armand Monnier into a
+fanatic. He takes an opinion which pleases him as a revelation from the
+gods; that opinion shapes his conduct; that conduct is his fate. Woe to
+the philosopher who serenely flings before the little knowledge of
+the artisan dogmas as harmless as the Atlantis of Plato if only to be
+discussed by philosophers, and deadly as the torches of Ate if seized as
+articles of a creed by fanatics! But thrice woe to the artisan who makes
+himself the zealot of the Dogma!
+
+Poor Armand acts on the opinions he adopts; proves his contempt for the
+marriage state by living with the wife of another; resents, as natures
+so inherently manly must do, the Society that visits on her his defiance
+of its laws; throws himself, head foremost, against that society
+altogether; necessarily joins all who have other reasons for
+hostility to Society; he himself having every inducement not to join
+indiscriminate strikes--high wages, a liberal employer, ample savings,
+the certainty of soon becoming employer himself. No; that is not enough
+to the fanatic: he persists on being dupe and victim. He, this great
+king of labour, crowned by Nature, and cursed with that degree of little
+knowledge which does not comprehend how much more is required before
+a schoolboy would admit it to be knowledge at all,--he rushes into the
+maddest of all speculations--that of the artisan with little knowledge
+and enormous faith--that which intrusts the safety and repose and
+dignity of life to some ambitious adventurer, who uses his warm heart
+for the adventurer’s frigid purpose, much as the lawyer-government of
+September used the Communists,--much as, in every revolution of France,
+a Bertrand has used a Raton--much as, till the sound of the last
+trumpet, men very much worse than Victor de Mauleon will use men very
+much better than Armand Monnier, if the Armand Monniers disdain the
+modesty of an Isaac Newton on hearing that a theorem to which he had
+given all the strength of his patient intellect was disputed: “It may be
+so;” meaning, I suppose, that it requires a large amount of experience
+ascertained before a man of much knowledge becomes that which a man of
+little knowledge is at a jump-the fanatic of an experiment untried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Scarcely had De Mauleon quitted Lemercier before the latter was joined
+by two loungers scarcely less famished than himself--Savarin and De
+Breze. Like himself, too, both had been sufferers from illness, though
+not of a nature to be consigned to an hospital. All manner of diseases
+then had combined to form the pestilence which filled the streets with
+unregarded hearses--bronchitis, pneumonia, smallpox, a strange sort of
+spurious dysentery much more speedily fatal than the genuine. The three
+men, a year before so sleek, looked like ghosts under the withering sky;
+yet all three retained embers of the native Parisian humour, which their
+very breath on meeting sufficed to kindle up into jubilant sparks or
+rapid flashes.
+
+“There are two consolations,” said Savarin, as the friends strolled or
+rather crawled towards the Boulevards--“two consolations for the gourmet
+and for the proprietor in these days of trial for the gourmand, because
+the price of truffles is come down.”
+
+“Truffles!” gasped De Breze, with watering mouth; “impossible! They are
+gone with the age of gold.”
+
+“Not so. I speak on the best authority--my laundress; for she attends
+the succursale in the Rue de Chateaudun; and if the poor woman, being,
+luckily for me, a childless widow, gets a morsel she can spare, she
+sells it to me.”
+
+“Sells it!” feebly exclaimed Lemercier. “Croesus! you have money then,
+and can buy?”
+
+“Sells it--on credit! I am to pension her for life if I live to have
+money again. Don’t interrupt me. This honest woman goes this morning to
+the succursale. I promise myself a delicious bifteck of horse. She gains
+the succursale, and the employee informs her that there is nothing left
+in his store except--truffles. A glut of those in the market allows him
+to offer her a bargain-seven francs la boite. Send me seven francs, De
+Breze, and you shall share the banquet.”
+
+De Breze shook his head expressively.
+
+“But,” resumed Savarin, “though credit exists no more except with my
+laundress, upon terms of which the usury is necessarily proportioned to
+the risk, yet, as I had the honour before to observe, there is comfort
+for the proprietor. The instinct of property is imperishable.”
+
+“Not in the house where I lodge,” said Lemercier. “Two soldiers were
+billeted there; and during my stay in the ambulance they enter my rooms,
+and cart away all of the little furniture left there, except a bed and a
+table. Brought before a court-martial, they defend themselves by saying,
+‘The rooms were abandoned.’ The excuse was held valid. They were let off
+with a reprimand and a promise to restore what was not already disposed
+of. They have restored me another table and four chairs.”
+
+“Nevertheless, they had the instinct of property, though erroneously
+developed, otherwise they would not have deemed any excuse for their
+act necessary. Now for my instance of the inherent tenacity of that
+instinct. A worthy citizen in want of fuel sees a door in a garden wall,
+and naturally carries off the door. He is apprehended by a gendarme who
+sees the act. ‘Voleur,’ he cries to the gendarme, ‘do you want to rob me
+of my property?’ ‘That door your property? I saw you take it away.’ ‘You
+confess,’ cries the citizen, triumphantly--‘you confess that it is my
+property; for you saw me appropriate it.’ Thus you see how imperishable
+is the instinct of property. No sooner does it disappear as yours than
+it reappears as mine.”
+
+“I would laugh if I could,” said Lemercier, “but such a convulsion would
+be fatal. Dieu des dieux, how empty I am!” He reeled as he spoke, and
+clung to De Breze for support. De Breze had the reputation of being the
+most selfish of men. But at that moment, when a generous man might be
+excused for being selfish enough to desire to keep the little that he
+had for his own reprieve from starvation, this egotist became superb.
+“Friends,” he cried, with enthusiasm, “I have something yet in my
+pocket; we will dine, all three of us.”
+
+“Dine!” faltered Lemercier. “Dine! I have not dined since I left the
+hospital. I breakfasted yesterday--on two mice upon toast. Dainty, but
+not nutritious. And I shared them with Fox.”
+
+“Fox! Fox lives still, then?” cried De Breze, startled.
+
+“In a sort of way he does. But one mouse since yesterday morning is not
+much; and he can’t expect that every day.”
+
+“Why don’t you take him out?” asked Savarin. “Give him a chance of
+picking up a bone somewhere.”
+
+“I dare not; he would be picked up himself. Dogs are getting very
+valuable: they sell for 50 francs apiece. Come, De Breze, where are we
+to dine?”
+
+“I and Savarin can dine at the London Tavern upon rat pate or jugged
+cat. But it would be impertinence to invite a satrap like yourself who
+has a whole dog in his larder--a dish of 50 francs--a dish for a king.
+Adieu, my dear Frederic. Allons, Savarin.”
+
+“I feasted you on better meats than dog when I could afford it,” said
+Frederic, plaintively; “and the first time you invite me you retract the
+invitation. Be it so. Bon appetit.”
+
+“Bah!” said De Breze, catching Frederic’s arm as he turned to depart.
+“Of course I was but jesting. Only another day, when my pockets will be
+empty, do think what an excellent thing a roasted dog is, and make up
+your mind while Fox has still some little flesh on his bones.”
+
+“Flesh!” said Savarin, detaining them. “Look! See how right Voltaire was
+in saying, ‘Amusement is the first necessity of civilised man.’ Paris
+can do without bread Paris still retains Polichinello.”
+
+He pointed to the puppet-show, round which a crowd, not of children
+alone, but of men-middle-aged and old-were collected; while sous were
+dropped into the tin handed round by a squalid boy.
+
+“And, mon ami,” whispered De Breze to Lemercier, with the voice of a
+tempting fiend, “observe how Punch is without his dog.”
+
+It was true. The dog was gone,--its place supplied by a melancholy
+emaciated cat.
+
+Frederic crawled towards the squalid boy. “What has become of Punch’s
+dog?”
+
+“We ate him last Sunday. Next Sunday we shall have the cat in a pie,”
+ said the urchin, with a sensual smack of the lips.
+
+“O Fox! Fox!” murmured Frederic, as the three men went slowly down
+through the darkening streets--the roar of the Prussian guns heard afar,
+while distinct and near rang the laugh of the idlers round the Punch
+without a dog.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+While De Breze and his friends were feasting at the cafe Anglais, and
+faring better than the host had promised--for the bill of fare comprised
+such luxuries as ass, mule, peas, fried potatoes, and champagne
+(champagne in some mysterious way was inexhaustible during the time of
+famine)--a very different group had assembled in the rooms of
+Isaura Cicogna. She and the Venosta had hitherto escaped the extreme
+destitution to which many richer persons had been reduced. It is true
+that Isaura’s fortune placed in the hands of the absent Louvier, and
+invested in the new street that was to have been, brought no return. It
+was true that in that street the Venosta, dreaming of cent. per cent.,
+had invested all her savings. But the Venosta, at the first announcement
+of war, had insisted on retaining in hand a small sum from the amount
+Isaura had received from her “roman,” that might suffice for current
+expenses, and with yet more acute foresight had laid in stores of
+provisions and fuel immediately after the probability of a siege became
+apparent. But even the provident mind of the Venosta had never foreseen
+that the siege would endure so long, or that the prices of all articles
+of necessity would rise so high. And meanwhile all resources--money,
+fuel, provisions--had been largely drawn upon by the charity and
+benevolence of Isaura, without much remonstrance on the part of the
+Venosta, whose nature was very accessible to pity. Unfortunately, too,
+of late money and provisions had failed to Monsieur and Madame Rameau,
+their income consisting partly of rents no longer paid, and the profits
+of a sleeping partnership in the old shop, from which custom had
+departed; so that they came to share the fireside and meals at the rooms
+of their son’s fiancee with little scruple, because utterly unaware that
+the money retained and the provisions stored by the Venosta were now
+nearly exhausted.
+
+The patriotic ardour which had first induced the elder Rameau to
+volunteer his services as a National Guard had been ere this cooled
+if not suppressed, first by the hardships of the duty, and then by the
+disorderly conduct of his associates, and their ribald talk and obscene
+songs. He was much beyond the age at which he could be registered. His
+son was, however, compelled to become his substitute, though from
+his sickly health and delicate frame attached to that portion of
+the National Guard which took no part in actual engagements, and was
+supposed to do work on the ramparts and maintain order in the city.
+
+In that duty, so opposed to his tastes and habits, Gustave signalised
+himself as one of the loudest declaimers against the imbecility of the
+Government, and in the demand for immediate and energetic action, no
+matter at what loss of life, on the part of all--except the heroic force
+to which he himself was attached. Still, despite his military
+labours, Gustave found leisure to contribute to Red journals, and his
+contributions paid him tolerably well. To do him justice, his parents
+concealed from him the extent of their destitution; they, on their part,
+not aware that he was so able to assist them, rather fearing that he
+himself had nothing else for support but his scanty pay as a National
+Guard. In fact, of late the parents and son had seen little of each
+other. M. Rameau, though a Liberal politician, was Liberal as a
+tradesman, not as a Red Republican or a Socialist. And, though little
+heeding his son’s theories while the Empire secured him from the
+practical effect of them, he was now as sincerely frightened at the
+chance of the Communists becoming rampant as most of the Parisian
+tradesmen were. Madame Rameau, on her side, though she had the dislike
+to aristocrats which was prevalent with her class, was a stanch Roman
+Catholic; and seeing in the disasters that had befallen her country the
+punishment justly incurred by its sins, could not but be shocked by the
+opinions of Gustave, though she little knew that he was the author
+of certain articles in certain journals, in which these opinions were
+proclaimed with a vehemence far exceeding that which they assumed in
+his conversation. She had spoken to him with warm anger, mixed with
+passionate tears, on his irreligious principles; and from that moment
+Gustave shunned to give her another opportunity of insulting his pride
+and depreciating his wisdom.
+
+Partly to avoid meeting his parents, partly because he recoiled
+almost as much from the ennui of meeting the other visitors at her
+apartments--the Paris ladies associated with her in the ambulance, Raoul
+de Vandeniar, whom he especially hated, and the Abbe Vertpre, who had
+recently come into intimate friendship with both the Italian ladies--his
+visits to Isaura had become exceedingly rare. He made his incessant
+military duties the pretext for absenting himself; and now, on this
+evening, there were gathered round Isaura’s hearth--on which burned
+almost the last of the hoarded fuel--the Venosta, the two Rameaus, the
+Abbe Vertpre, who was attached as confessor to the society of which
+Isaura was so zealous a member. The old priest and the young poetess had
+become dear friends. There is in the nature of a woman (and especially
+of a woman at once so gifted and so childlike as Isaura, combining
+an innate tendency towards faith with a restless inquisitiveness of
+intellect, which is always suggesting query or doubt) a craving for
+something afar from the sphere of her sorrow, which can only be obtained
+through that “bridal of the earth and sky” which we call religion. And
+hence, to natures like Isaura’s, that link between the woman and the
+priest, which the philosophy of France has never been able to dissever.
+
+“It is growing late,” said Madame Rameau; “I am beginning to feel
+uneasy. Our dear Isaura is not yet returned.”
+
+“You need be under no apprehension,” said the Abby. “The ladies attached
+to the ambulance of which she is so tender and zealous a sister incur no
+risk. There are always brave men related to the sick and wounded who
+see to the safe return of the women. My poor Raoul visits that ambulance
+daily. His kinsman, M. de Rochebriant, is there among the wounded.”
+
+“Not seriously hurt, I hope,” said the Venosta; “not disfigured? He
+was so handsome; it is only the ugly warrior whom a scar on the face
+improves.”
+
+“Don’t be alarmed, Signora; the Prussian guns spared his face. His
+wounds in themselves were not dangerous, but he lost a good deal of
+blood. Raoul and the Christian brothers found him insensible among a
+heap of the slain.”
+
+“M. de Vandemar seems to have very soon recovered the shock of his poor
+brother’s death,” said Madame Rameau. “There is very little heart in an
+aristocrat.”
+
+The Abbe’s mild brow contracted. “Have more charity, my daughter. It is
+because Raoul’s sorrow for his lost brother is so deep and so holy that
+he devotes himself more than ever to the service of the Father which
+is in heaven. He said, a day or two after the burial, when plans for
+a monument to Enguerrand were submitted to him: ‘May my prayer be
+vouchsafed, and my life be a memorial of him more acceptable to his
+gentle spirit than monuments of bronze or marble. May I be divinely
+guided and sustained in my desire to do such good acts as he would have
+done had he been spared longer to earth. And whenever tempted to weary,
+may my conscience whisper, Betray not the trust left to thee by thy
+brother, lest thou be not reunited to him at last.”’
+
+“Pardon me, pardon!” murmured Madame Rameau humbly, while the Venosta
+burst into tears.
+
+The Abbe, though a most sincere and earnest ecclesiastic, was a cheery
+and genial man of the world; and, in order to relieve Madame Rameau
+from the painful self-reproach he had before excited, he turned the
+conversation. “I must beware, however,” he said, with his pleasant
+laugh, “as to the company in which I interfere in family questions;
+and especially in which I defend my poor Raoul from any charge brought
+against him. For some good friend this day sent me a terrible organ
+of communistic philosophy, in which we humble priests are very roughly
+handled, and I myself am especially singled out by name as a pestilent
+intermeddler in the affairs of private households. I am said to set
+the women against the brave men who are friends of the people, and
+am cautioned by very truculent threats to cease from such villainous
+practices.” And here, with a dry humour that turned into ridicule
+what would otherwise have excited disgust and indignation among his
+listeners, he read aloud passages replete with the sort of false
+eloquence which was then the vogue among the Red journals. In these
+passages, not only the Abbe was pointed out for popular execration, but
+Raoul de Vandemar, though not expressly named, was clearly indicated as
+a pupil of the Abbe’s, the type of a lay Jesuit.
+
+The Venosta alone did not share in the contemptuous laughter with which
+the inflated style of these diatribes inspired the Rameaus. Her simple
+Italian mind was horror-stricken by language which the Abbe treated with
+ridicule.
+
+“Ah!” said M. Rameau, “I guess the author--that firebrand Felix Pyat.”
+
+“No,” answered the Abbe; “the writer signs himself by the name of a
+more learned atheist--Diderot le jeune.” Here the door opened, and Raoul
+entered, accompanying Isaura. A change had come over the face of the
+young Vandemar since his brother’s death. The lines about the mouth had
+deepened, the cheeks had lost their rounded contour and grown somewhat
+hollow. But the expression was as serene as ever, perhaps even less
+pensively melancholy. His whole aspect was that of a man who
+has sorrowed, but been supported in sorrow; perhaps it was more
+sweet-certainly it was more lofty.
+
+And, as if there were in the atmosphere of his presence something that
+communicated the likeness of his own soul to others, since Isaura had
+been brought into his companionship, her own lovely face had caught
+the expression that prevailed in his--that, too, had become more
+sweet--that, too, had become more lofty.
+
+The friendship that had grown up between these two young mourners was of
+a very rare nature. It had in it no sentiment that could ever warm into
+the passion of human love. Indeed, had Isaura’s heart been free to give
+away, love for Raoul de Vandemar would have seemed to her a profanation.
+He was never more priestly than when he was most tender. And the
+tenderness of Raoul towards her was that of some saint-like nature
+towards the acolyte whom it attracted upwards. He had once, just before
+Enguerrand’s death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his
+own predilection for a monastic life. “The worldly avocations that open
+useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me. I care
+not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame. The austerities of the
+conventual life have no terror for me; on the contrary, they have
+a charm, for with them are abstraction from earth and meditation on
+heaven. In earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished
+dreams of human love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort
+of veneration with which I regarded one to whom I owe--humanly
+speaking--whatever of good there may be in me. Just when first taking
+my place among the society of young men who banish from their life all
+thought of another, I came under the influence of a woman who taught me
+to see that holiness was beauty. She gradually associated me with her
+acts of benevolence, and from her I learned to love God too well not to
+be indulgent to his creatures. I know not whether the attachment I
+felt to her could have been inspired in one who had not from childhood
+conceived a romance, not perhaps justified by history, for the ideal
+images of chivalry. My feeling for her at first was that of the pure
+and poetic homage which a young knight was permitted, sans reproche, to
+render to some fair queen or chatelaine, whose colours he wore in the
+lists, whose spotless repute he would have perilled his life to defend.
+But soon even that sentiment, pure as it was, became chastened from all
+breath of earthly love, in proportion as the admiration refined itself
+into reverence. She has often urged me to marry, but I have no bride on
+this earth. I do but want to see Enguerrand happily married, and then I
+quit the world for the cloister.”
+
+But after Enguerrand’s death, Raoul resigned all idea of the convent.
+That evening, as he attended to their homes Isaura and the other ladies
+at to the ambulance, he said, in answer to inquiries about his mother,
+“She is resigned and calm. I have promised her I will not, while she
+lives, bury her other son: I renounce my dreams of the monastery.”
+
+Raoul did not remain many minutes at Isaura’s. The Abbe accompanied him
+on his way home. “I have a request to make to you,” said the former;
+“you know, of course, your distant cousin the Vicomte de Mauleon?”
+
+“Yes. Not so well as I ought, for Enguerrand liked him.”
+
+“Well enough, at all events, to call on him with a request which I am
+commissioned to make, but it might come better from you as a kinsman.
+I am a stranger to him, and I know not whether a man of that sort would
+not regard as an officious intermeddling any communication made to him
+by a priest. The matter, however, is a very simple one. At the convent
+of ------- there is a poor nun who is, I fear, dying. She has an intense
+desire to see M. de Mauleon, whom she declares to be her uncle, and her
+only surviving relative. The laws of the convent are not too austere to
+prevent the interview she seeks in such a case. I should add that I am
+not acquainted with her previous history. I am not the confessor of the
+sisterhood; he, poor man, was badly wounded by a chance ball a few
+days ago when attached to an ambulance on the ramparts. As soon as the
+surgeon would allow him to see any one, he sent for me, and bade me go
+to the nun I speak of--Sister Ursula. It seems that he had informed
+her that M. de Mauleon was at Paris, and had promised to ascertain his
+address. His wound had prevented his doing so, but he trusted to me to
+procure the information. I am well acquainted with the Superieure of
+the convent, and I flatter myself that she holds me in esteem. I had
+therefore no difficulty to obtain her permission to see this poor nun,
+which I did this evening. She implored me for the peace of her soul to
+lose no time in finding out M. de Mauleon’s address, and entreating him
+to visit her. Lest he should demur, I was to give him the name by which
+he had known her in the world--Louise Duval. Of course I obeyed. The
+address of a man who has so distinguished himself in this unhappy
+siege I very easily obtained, and repaired at once to M. de Mauleon’s
+apartment. I there learned that he was from home, and it was uncertain
+whether he would not spend the night on the ramparts.”
+
+“I will not fail to see him early in the morning,” said Raoul, “and
+execute your commission.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+M. Mauleon was somewhat surprised by Raoul’s visit the next morning. He
+had no great liking for a kinsman whose politely distant reserve towards
+him, in contrast to poor Euguerrand’s genial heartiness, had much
+wounded his sensitive self-respect; nor could he comprehend the
+religious scruples which forbade Raoul to take a soldier’s share in the
+battle-field, though in seeking there to save the lives of others so
+fearlessly hazarding his own life.
+
+“Pardon,” said Raoul, with his sweet mournful smile, “the unseasonable
+hour at which I disturb you. But your duties on the ramparts and mine
+in the hospital begin early, and I have promised the Abbe Vertpre to
+communicate a message of a nature which perhaps you may deem pressing.”
+ He proceeded at once to repeat what the Abbe had communicated to him the
+night before relative to the illness and the request of the nun.
+
+“Louise Duval!” exclaimed the Vicomte, “discovered at last, and a
+religieuse! Ah! I now understand why she never sought me out when I
+reappeared at Paris. Tidings of that sort do not penetrate the walls of
+a convent. I am greatly obliged to you, M. de Vandemar, for the trouble
+you have so kindly taken. This poor nun is related to me, and I will at
+once obey the summons. But this convent des ------- I am ashamed to say
+I know not where it is. A long way off, I suppose?”
+
+“Allow me to be your guide,” said Raoul; “I should take it as a favour
+to be allowed to see a little more of a man whom my lost brother held in
+such esteem.”
+
+Victor was touched by this conciliatory speech, and in a few minutes
+more the two men were on their way to the convent on the other side of
+the Seine.
+
+Victor commenced the conversation by a warm and heartfelt tribute to
+Euguerrand’s character and memory. “I never,” he said, “knew a nature
+more rich in the most endearing qualities of youth; so gentle, so
+high-spirited, rendering every virtue more attractive, and redeeming
+such few faults or foibles as youth so situated and so tempted cannot
+wholly escape, with an urbanity not conventional, not artificial, but
+reflected from the frankness of a genial temper and the tenderness of a
+generous heart. Be comforted for his loss, my kinsman. A brave death was
+the proper crown of that beautiful life.”
+
+Raoul made no answer, but pressed gratefully the arm now linked within
+his own. The companions walked on in silence; Victor’s mind settling on
+the visit he was about to make to the niece so long mysteriously lost,
+and now so unexpectedly found. Louise had inspired him with a certain
+interest from her beauty and force of character, but never with any warm
+affection. He felt relieved to find that her life had found its close in
+the sanctuary of the convent. He had never divested himself of a certain
+fear, inspired by Louvier’s statement that she might live to bring
+scandal and disgrace on the name he had with so much difficulty, and
+after so lengthened an anguish, partially cleared in his own person.
+
+Raoul left De Mauleon at the gate of the convent, and took his way
+towards the hospitals where he visited, and the poor whom he relieved.
+
+Victor was conducted silently into the convent parloir; and, after
+waiting there several minutes, the door opened, and the Superieure
+entered. As she advanced towards him, with stately step and solemn
+visage, De Mauleon recoiled, and uttered a half-suppressed exclamation
+that partook both of amaze and awe. Could it be possible? Was this
+majestic woman, with the grave impassible aspect, once the ardent girl
+whose tender letters he had cherished through stormy years, and only
+burned on the night before the most perilous of his battle-fields? This
+the one, the sole one, whom in his younger dreams he had seen as his
+destined wife? It was so--it was. Doubt vanished when he heard her
+voice; and yet how different every tone, every accent, from those of the
+low, soft, thrilling music that had breathed in the voice of old!
+
+“M. de Mauleon,” said the Superieure, calmly, “I grieve to sadden you by
+very mournful intelligence. Yesterday evening, when the Abbe undertook
+to convey to you the request of our Sister Ursula, although she was
+beyond mortal hope of recovery--as otherwise you will conceive that I
+could not have relaxed the rules of this house so as to sanction your
+visit--there was no apprehension of immediate danger. It was believed
+that her sufferings would be prolonged for some days. I saw her late
+last night before retiring to my cell, and she seemed even stronger than
+she had been for the last week. A sister remained at watch in her cell.
+Towards morning she fell into apparently quiet sleep, and in that sleep
+she passed away.” The Superieure here crossed herself, and murmured
+pious words in Latin. “Dead! my poor niece!” said Victor, feelingly,
+roused from his stun at the first sight of the Superieure by her
+measured tones, and the melancholy information she so composedly
+conveyed to him. “I cannot, then, even learn why she so wished to see me
+once more,--or what she might have requested at my hands!”
+
+“Pardon, M. le Vicomte. Such sorrowful consolation I have resolved to
+afford you, not without scruples of conscience, but not without sanction
+of the excellent Abbe Vertpre, whom I summoned early this morning to
+decide my duties in the sacred office I hold. As soon as Sister Ursula
+heard of your return to Paris, she obtained my permission to address to
+you a letter, subjected, when finished, to my perusal and sanction. She
+felt that she had much on her mind which her feeble state might forbid
+her to make known to you in conversation with ‘sufficient fulness; and
+as she could only have seen you in presence of one of the sisters
+she imagined that there would also be less restraint in a written
+communication. In fine, her request was that, when you called, I might
+first place this letter in your hands, and allow you time to read it,
+before being admitted to her presence; when a few words conveying your
+promise to attend to the wishes with which you would then be acquainted,
+would suffice for an interview in her exhausted condition. Do I make
+myself understood?”
+
+“Certainly, Madame,--and the letter?”
+
+“She had concluded last evening; and when I took leave of her later in
+the night, she placed it in my hands for approval. M. le Vicomte, it
+pains me to say that there is much in the tone of that letter which I
+grieve for and condemn. And it was my intention to point this out to our
+sister at morning, and tell her that passages must be altered before
+I could give to you the letter. Her sudden decease deprived me of this
+opportunity. I could not, of course, alter or erase a line--a word.
+My only option was to suppress the letter altogether, or give it you
+intact. The Abbe thinks that, on the whole, my duty does not forbid the
+dictate of my own impulse--my own feelings; and I now place this letter
+in your hands.”
+
+De Mauleon took a packet, unsealed, from the thin white fingers of
+the Superieure; and as he bent to receive it, lifted towards her eyes
+eloquent with sorrowful, humble pathos, in which it was impossible for
+the heart of a woman who had loved not to see a reference to the past
+which the lips did not dare to utter.
+
+A faint, scarce-perceptible blush stole over the marble cheek of the
+nun. But, with an exquisite delicacy, in which survived the woman while
+reigned the nun, she replied to the appeal.
+
+“M. Victor de Mauleon, before, having thus met, we part for ever, permit
+a poor religieuse to say with what joy--a joy rendered happier because
+it was tearful--I have learned through the Abbe Vertpre that the honour
+which, as between man and man, no one who had once known you could ever
+doubt, you have lived to vindicate from calumny.”
+
+“Ah; you have heard that--at last, at last!”
+
+“I repeat--of the honour thus deferred, I never doubted.” The Superieure
+hurried on. “Greater joy it has been to me to hear from the same
+venerable source that, while found bravest among the defenders of your
+country, you are clear from all alliance with the assailants of your
+God. Continue so, continue so, Victor de Mauleon.”
+
+She retreated to the door, and then turned towards him with a look in
+which all the marble had melted away, adding, with words more formally
+nunlike, yet unmistakably womanlike, than those which had gone before,
+“That to the last you may be true to God, is a prayer never by me
+omitted.”
+
+She spoke, and vanished.
+
+In a kind of dim and dreamlike bewilderment, Victor de Mauleon found
+himself without the walls of the convent. Mechanically, as a man
+does when the routine of his life is presented to him, from the first
+Minister of State to the poor clown at a suburban theatre, doomed
+to appear at their posts, to prose on a Beer Bill, or grin through a
+horse-collar, though their hearts are bleeding at every pore with some
+household or secret affliction,--mechanically De Mauldon went his way
+towards the ramparts, at a section of which he daily drilled his raw
+recruits. Proverbial for his severity towards those who offended,
+for the cordiality of his praise of those who pleased his soldierly
+judgment, no change of his demeanour was visible that morning, save
+that he might be somewhat milder to the one, somewhat less hearty to the
+other. This routine duty done, he passed slowly towards a more deserted
+because a more exposed part of the defences, and seated himself on
+the frozen sward alone. The cannon thundered around him. He heard
+unconsciously: from time to time an obus hissed and splintered close at
+his feet;--he saw with abstracted eye. His soul was with the past; and,
+brooding over all that in the past lay buried there, came over him a
+conviction of the vanity of the human earth-bounded objects for which
+we burn or freeze, far more absolute than had grown out of the worldly
+cynicism connected with his worldly ambition. The sight of that face,
+associated with the one pure romance of his reckless youth, the face
+of one so estranged, so serenely aloft from all memories of youth, of
+romance, of passion, smote him in the midst of the new hopes of the new
+career, as the look on the skull of the woman he had so loved and so
+mourned, when disburied from her grave, smote the brilliant noble
+who became the stern reformer of La Trappe. And while thus gloomily
+meditating, the letter of the poor Louise Duval was forgotten. She whose
+existence had so troubled, and crossed, and partly marred the lives of
+others,--she, scarcely dead, and already forgotten by her nearest kin.
+Well--had she not forgotten, put wholly out of her mind, all that was
+due to those much nearer to her than is an uncle to a niece?
+
+The short, bitter, sunless day was advancing towards its decline before
+Victor roused himself with a quick impatient start from his reverie, and
+took forth the letter from the dead nun.
+
+It began with expressions of gratitude, of joy at the thought that she
+should see him again before she died, thank him for his past kindness,
+and receive, she trusted, his assurance that he would attend to her
+last remorseful injunctions. I pass over much that followed in the
+explanation of events in her life sufficiently known to the reader. She
+stated, as the strongest reason why she had refused the hand of Louvier,
+her knowledge that she should in due time become a mother--a fact
+concealed from Victor, secure that he would then urge her not to annul
+her informal marriage, but rather insist on the ceremonies that would
+render it valid. She touched briefly on her confidential intimacy with
+Madame Marigny, the exchange of name and papers, her confinement in
+the neighbourhood of Aix, the child left to the care of the nurse,
+the journey to Munich to find the false Louise Duval was no more. The
+documents obtained through the agency of her easy-tempered kinsman, the
+late Marquis de Rochebriant, and her subsequent domestication in the
+house of the von Rudesheims,--all this it is needless to do more here
+than briefly recapitulate. The letter then went on: “While thus kindly
+treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, I was on the
+terms of a friend with Signor Ludovico Cicogna, an Italian of noble
+birth. He was the only man I ever cared for. I loved him with frail
+human passion. I could not tell him, my true history. I could not tell
+him that I had a child; such intelligence would have made him renounce
+me at once. He had a daughter, still but an infant, by a former
+marriage, then brought up in France. He wished to take her to his house,
+and his second wife to supply the place of her mother. What was I to
+do with the child I had left near Aix? While doubtful and distracted, I
+read an advertisement in the journals to the effect that a French lady,
+then staying in Coblentz, wished to adopt a female child not exceeding
+the age of six: the child to be wholly resigned to her by the parents,
+she undertaking to rear and provide for it as her own. I resolved to go
+to Coblentz at once. I did so. I saw this lady. She seemed in affluent
+circumstances, yet young, but a confirmed invalid, confined the greater
+part of the day to her sofa by some malady of the spine. She told me
+very frankly her story. She had been a professional dancer on the stage,
+had married respectably, quitted the stage, become a widow, and shortly
+afterwards been seized with the complaint that would probably for life
+keep her a secluded prisoner in her room. Thus afflicted, and without
+tie, interest, or object in the world, she conceived the idea of
+adopting a child that she might bring up to tend and cherish her as a
+daughter. In this, the imperative condition was that the child should
+never be sought by the parents. She was pleased by my manner and
+appearance: she did not wish her adopted daughter to be the child of
+peasants. She asked me for no references,--made no inquiries. She
+said cordially that she wished for no knowledge that, through any
+indiscretion of her own, communicated to the child might lead her to
+seek the discovery of her real parents. In fine, I left Coblentz on the
+understanding that I was to bring the infant, and if it pleased Madame
+Surville, the agreement was concluded.
+
+“I then repaired to Aix. I saw the child. Alas! unnatural mother that I
+was, the sight only more vividly brought before me the sense of my own
+perilous position. Yet the child was lovely! a likeness of myself, but
+lovelier far, for it was a pure, innocent, gentle loveliness. And they
+told her to call me ‘Maman.’ Oh, did I not relent when I heard that
+name? No; it jarred on my ear as a word of reproach and shame. In
+walking with the infant towards the railway station, imagine my dismay
+when suddenly I met the man who had been taught to believe me dead. I
+soon discovered that his dismay was equal to my own,--that I had nothing
+to fear from his desire to claim me. It did occur to me for a moment
+to resign his child to him. But when he shrank reluctantly from a half
+suggestion to that effect, my pride was wounded, my conscience absolved.
+And, after all, it might be unsafe to my future to leave with him any
+motive for tracing me. I left him hastily. I have never seen nor heard
+of him more. I took the child to Coblentz. Madame Surville was charmed
+with its prettiness and prattle,--charmed still more when I rebuked the
+poor infant for calling me ‘Maman,’ and said, ‘Thy real mother is here.’
+Freed from my trouble, I returned to the kind German roof I had quitted,
+and shortly after became the wife of Ludovico Cicogna.
+
+“My punishment soon began. His was a light, fickle, pleasure-hunting
+nature. He soon grew weary of me. My very love made me unamiable to him.
+I became irritable, jealous, exacting. His daughter, who now came to
+live with us, was another subject of discord. I knew that he loved her
+better than me. I became a harsh step-mother; and Ludovico’s reproaches,
+vehemently made, nursed all my angriest passions. But a son of this new
+marriage was born to myself. My pretty Luigi! how my heart became wrapt
+up in him! Nursing him, I forgot resentment against his father. Well,
+poor Cicogna fell ill and died. I mourned him sincerely; but my boy was
+left. Poverty then fell on me,--poverty extreme. Cicogna’s sole income
+was derived from a post in the Austrian dominion in Italy, and ceased
+with it. He received a small pension in compensation; that died with
+him.
+
+“At this time, an Englishman, with whom Ludovico had made acquaintance
+in Venice, and who visited often at our house in Verona, offered me his
+hand. He had taken an extraordinary liking to Isaura, Cicogna’s daughter
+by his first marriage. But I think his proposal was dictated partly by
+compassion for me, and more by affection for her. For the sake of my boy
+Luigi I married him. He was a good man, of retired learned habits with
+which I had no sympathy. His companionship overwhelmed me with ennui.
+But I bore it patiently for Luigi’s sake. God saw that my heart was as
+much as ever estranged from Him, and He took away my all on earth--my
+boy. Then in my desolation I turned to our Holy Church for comfort. I
+found a friend in the priest, my confessor. I was startled to learn
+from him how guilty I had been--was still. Pushing to an extreme the
+doctrines of the Church, he would not allow that my first marriage,
+though null by law, was void in the eyes of Heaven. Was not the death of
+the child I so cherished a penalty due to my sin towards the child I had
+abandoned?
+
+“These thoughts pressed on me night and day. With the consent and
+approval of the good priest, I determined to quit the roof of M. Selby,
+and to devote myself to the discovery of my forsaken Julie.
+
+“I had a painful interview with M. Selby. I announced my intention to
+separate from him. I alleged as a reason my conscientious repugnance
+to live with a professed heretic--an enemy to our Holy Church. When M.
+Selby found that he could not shake my resolution, he lent himself to
+it with the forbearance and generosity which he had always exhibited. On
+our marriage he had settled on me five thousand pounds, to be absolutely
+mine in the event of his death. He now proposed to concede to me the
+interest on that capital during his life, and he undertook the charge
+of my step-daughter Isaura, and secured to her all the rest he had to
+leave; such landed property as he possessed in England passing to a
+distant relative.
+
+“So we parted, not with hostility--tears were shed on both sides. I
+set out for Coblentz. Madame Surville had long since quitted that town,
+devoting some years to the round of various mineral spas in vain hope of
+cure. Not without some difficulty I traced her to her last residence
+in the neighbourhood of Paris, but she was then no more--her death
+accelerated by the shock occasioned by the loss of her whole fortune,
+which she had been induced to place in one of the numerous fraudulent
+companies by which so many have been ruined. Julie, who was with her at
+the time of her death, had disappeared shortly after it--none could tell
+me whither; but from such hints as I could gather, the poor child, thus
+left destitute, had been betrayed into sinful courses.
+
+“Probably I might yet by searching inquiry have found her out; you will
+say it was my duty at least to institute such inquiry. No doubt; I
+now remorsefully feel that it was. I did not think so at the time. The
+Italian priest had given me a few letters of introduction to French
+ladies with whom, when they had sojourned at Florence, he had made
+acquaintance. These ladies were very strict devotees, formal observers
+of those decorums by which devotion proclaims itself to the world. They
+had received me not only with kindness but with marked respect. They
+chose to exalt into the noblest self-sacrifice the act of my leaving
+M. Selby’s house. Exaggerating the simple cause assigned to it in the
+priest’s letter, they represented me as quitting a luxurious home and
+an idolising husband rather than continue intimate intercourse with the
+enemy of my religion. This new sort of flattery intoxicated me with its
+fumes. I recoiled from the thought of shattering the pedestal to which I
+had found myself elevated. What if I should discover my daughter in one
+from the touch of whose robe these holy women would recoil as from
+the rags of a leper! No; it would be impossible for me to own
+her--impossible for me to give her the shelter of my roof. Nay, if
+discovered to hold any commune with such an outcast, no explanation, no
+excuse short of the actual truth, would avail with these austere judges
+of human error. And the actual truth would be yet deeper disgrace. I
+reasoned away my conscience. If I looked for example in the circles
+in which I had obtained reverential place, I could find no instance
+in which a girl who had fallen from virtue was not repudiated by her
+nearest relatives. Nay, when I thought of my own mother, had not her
+father refused to see her, to acknowledge her child, from no other
+offence than that of a misalliance which wounded the family pride? That
+pride, alas! was in my blood--my sole inheritance from the family I
+sprang from.
+
+“Thus it went on, till I had grave symptoms of a disease which rendered
+the duration of my life uncertain. My conscience awoke and tortured me.
+I resolved to take the veil. Vanity and pride again! My resolution was
+applauded by those whose opinion had so swayed my mind and my conduct.
+Before I retired into the convent from which I write, I made legal
+provision as to the bulk of the fortune which, by the death of M. Selby,
+has become absolutely at my disposal. One thousand pounds amply sufficed
+for dotation to the convent: the other four thousand pounds are given in
+trust to the eminent notary, M. Nadaud, Rue -------. On applying to him,
+you will find that the sum, with the accumulated interest, is bequeathed
+to you,--a tribute of gratitude for the assistance you afforded me in
+the time of your own need, and the kindness with which you acknowledged
+our relationship and commiserated my misfortunes.
+
+“But oh, my uncle, find out--a man can do so with a facility not
+accorded to a woman--what has become of this poor Julie, and devote
+what you may deem right and just of the sum thus bequeathed to place her
+above want and temptation. In doing so, I know you will respect my name:
+I would not have it dishonour you, indeed.
+
+“I have been employed in writing this long letter since the day I heard
+you were in Paris. It has exhausted the feeble remnants of my strength.
+It will be given to you before the interview I at once dread and long
+for, and in that interview you will not rebuke me. Will you, my kind
+uncle? No, you will only soothe and pity!
+
+“Would that I were worthy to pray for others, that I might add, ‘May
+the Saints have you in their keeping and lead you to faith in the Holy
+Church, which has power to absolve from sins those who repent as I do.’”
+
+The letter dropped from Victor’s hand. He took it up, smoothed it
+mechanically, and with a dim, abstracted, be wildered, pitiful wonder.
+Well might the Superieure have hesitated to allow confessions, betraying
+a mind so little regulated by genuine religious faith, to pass into
+other hands. Evidently it was the paramount duty of rescuing from want
+or from sin the writer’s forsaken child, that had overborne all other
+considerations in the mind of the Woman and the Priest she consulted.
+
+Throughout that letter, what a strange perversion of understanding! what
+a half-unconscious confusion of wrong and right!--the duty marked out so
+obvious and so neglected; even the religious sentiment awakened by the
+conscience so dividing itself from the moral instinct! the dread of
+being thought less religious by obscure comparative strangers stronger
+than the moral obligation to discover and reclaim the child for whose
+errors, if she had erred, the mother who so selfishly forsook her was
+alone responsible! even at the last, at the approach of death, the love
+for a name she had never made a self-sacrifice to preserve unstained;
+and that concluding exhortation,--that reliance on a repentance in which
+there was so qualified a reparation!
+
+More would Victor de Mauldon have wondered had he known those points
+of similarity in character, and in the nature of their final bequests,
+between Louise Duval and the husband she had deserted. By one of those
+singular coincidences which, if this work be judged by the ordinary
+rules presented to the ordinary novel-reader, a critic would not
+unjustly impute to defective invention in the author, the provision for
+this child, deprived of its natural parents during their lives, is left
+to the discretion and honour of trustees, accompanied on the part of
+the consecrated Louise and “the blameless King,” with the injunction
+of respect to their worldly reputations--two parents so opposite in
+condition, in creed, in disposition, yet assimilating in that point of
+individual character in which it touches the wide vague circle of human
+opinion. For this, indeed, the excuses of Richard King are strong,
+inasmuch as the secrecy he sought was for the sake, not of his own
+memory, but that of her whom the world knew only as his honoured wife.
+The conduct of Louise admits no such excuse; she dies as she had lived;
+an Egotist. But, whatever the motives of the parents, what is the fate
+of the deserted child? What revenge does the worldly opinion, which the
+parents would escape for themselves, inflict on the innocent infant
+to whom the bulk of their worldly possessions is to be clandestinely
+conveyed? Would all the gold of Ophir be compensation enough for her?
+
+Slowly De Mauleon roused himself, and turned from the solitary place
+where he had been seated to a more crowded part of the ramparts. He
+passed a group of young Moblots, with flowers wreathed round their
+gun-barrels. “If,” said one of them gaily, “Paris wants bread, it never
+wants flowers.” His companions laughed merrily, and burst out into a
+scurrile song in ridicule of St. Trochu. Just then an obus fell a few
+yards before the group. The sound only for a moment drowned the song,
+but the splinters struck a man in a coarse, ragged dress, who had
+stopped to listen to the singers. At his sharp cry, two men hastened
+to his side: one was Victor de Mauleon; the other was a surgeon, who
+quitted another group of idlers--National Guards--attracted by the
+shriek that summoned his professional aid. The poor man was terribly
+wounded. The surgeon, glancing at De Mauleon, shrugged his shoulders,
+and muttered, “Past help!” The sufferer turned his haggard eyes on the
+Vicomte, and gasped out, “M. de Mauleon?”
+
+“That is my name,” answered Victor, surprised, and not immediately
+recognising the sufferer.
+
+“Hist, Jean Lebeau!--look at me: you recollect me now,--Mart le Roux,
+concierge to the Secret Council. Ay, I found out who you were long
+ago--followed you home from the last meeting you broke up. But I did not
+betray you, or you would have been murdered long since. Beware of
+the old set--beware of--of--” Here his voice broke off into shrill
+exclamations of pain. Curbing his last agonies with a powerful effort,
+he faltered forth, “You owe me a service--see to the little one at
+home--she is starving.” The death-rale came on; in a few moments he was
+no more.
+
+Victor gave orders for the removal of the corpse, and hurried away. The
+surgeon, who had changed countenance when he overheard the name in
+which the dying man had addressed De Mauleon, gazed silently after De
+Mauleon’s retreating form, and then, also quitting the dead, rejoined
+the group he had quitted. Some of those who composed it acquired evil
+renown later in the war of the Communists, and came to disastrous ends:
+among that number the Pole Loubinsky and other members of the Secret
+Council. The Italian Raselli was there too, but, subtler than his
+French confreres, he divined the fate of the Communists, and glided
+from it--safe now in his native land, destined there, no doubt, to the
+funereal honours and lasting renown which Italy bestows on the dust
+of her sons who have advocated assassination out of love for the human
+race.
+
+Amid this group, too, was a National Guard, strayed from his proper
+post, and stretched on the frozen ground; and, early though the hour, in
+the profound sleep of intoxication.
+
+“So,” said Loubinsky, “you have found your errand in vain, Citizen le
+Noy; another victim to the imbecility of our generals.”
+
+“And partly one of us,” replied the Medecin des Pauvres. “You remember
+poor le Roux, who kept the old baraque where the Council of Ten used to
+meet? Yonder he lies.”
+
+“Don’t talk of the Council of Ten. What fools and dupes we were made by
+that vieux gredin, Jean Lebeau! How I wish I could meet him again!”
+
+Gaspard le Noy smiled sarcastically. “So much the worse for you, if you
+did. A muscular and a ruthless fellow is that Jean Lebeau!” Therewith he
+turned to the drunken sleeper and woke him up with a shake and a kick.
+“Armand--Armand Monnier, I say, rise, rub your eyes. What if you are
+called to your post? What if you are shamed as a deserter and a coward?”
+
+Armand turned, rose with an effort from the recumbent to the sitting
+posture, and stared dizzily in the face of the Medecin des Pauvres.
+
+“I was dreaming that I had caught by the throat,” said Armand, wildly,
+“the aristo who shot my brother; and lo, there were two men, Victor de
+Mauleon and Jean Lebeau.”
+
+“Ah! there is something in dreams,” said the surgeon. “Once in a
+thousand times a dream comes true.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The time now came when all provision of food or of fuel failed the
+modest household of Isaura; and there was not only herself and the
+Venosta to feed and warm--there were the servants whom they had brought
+from Italy, and had not the heart now to dismiss to the ‘certainty of
+famine. True, one of the three, the man, had returned to his native land
+before the commencement of the siege; but the two women had remained.
+They supported themselves now as they could on the meagre rations
+accorded by the Government. Still Isaura attended the ambulance to which
+she was attached. From the ladies associated with her she could readily
+have obtained ample supplies: but they had no conception of her real
+state of destitution; and there was a false pride generally prevalent
+among the respectable classes, which Isaura shared, that concealed
+distress lest alms should be proffered.
+
+The destitution of the household had been carefully concealed from the
+parents of Gustave Rameau, until, one day, Madame Rameau, entering at
+the hour at which she generally, and her husband sometimes, came for
+a place by the fireside and a seat at the board, found on the one only
+ashes, on the other a ration of the black nauseous compound which had
+become the substitute for bread.
+
+Isaura was absent on her duties at the ambulance hospital,--purposely
+absent, for she shrank from the bitter task of making clear to the
+friends of her betrothed the impossibility of continuing the aid to
+their support which their son had neglected to contribute; and still
+more from the comment which she knew they would make on his conduct, in
+absenting himself so wholly of late, and in the time of such trial and
+pressure, both from them and from herself. Truly, she rejoiced at
+that absence so far as it affected herself. Every hour of the day she
+silently asked her conscience whether she were not now absolved from
+a promise won from her only by an assurance that she had power to
+influence for good the life that now voluntarily separated itself from
+her own. As she had never loved Gustave, so she felt no resentment at
+the indifference his conduct manifested. On the contrary, she hailed it
+as a sign that the annulment of their betrothal would be as welcome
+to him as to herself. And if so, she could restore to him the sort of
+compassionate friendship she had learned to cherish in the hour of his
+illness and repentance. She had resolved to seize the first opportunity
+he afforded to her of speaking to him with frank and truthful plainness.
+But, meanwhile, her gentle nature recoiled from the confession of
+her resolve to appeal to Gustave himself for the rupture of their
+engagement.
+
+Thus the Venosta alone received Madame Rameau; and while that lady was
+still gazing round her with an emotion too deep for immediate utterance,
+her husband entered with an expression of face new to him--the look of
+a man who has been stung to anger, and who has braced his mind to some
+stern determination. This altered countenance of the good-tempered
+bourgeois was not, however, noticed by the two women. The Venosta
+did not even raise her eyes to it, as with humbled accents she said,
+“Pardon, dear Monsieur, pardon, Madame, our want of hospitality; it
+is not our hearts that fail. We kept our state from you as long as we
+could. Now it speaks for itself; ‘la fame e una bretta festin.’”
+
+“Oh, Madame! and oh, my poor Isaura!” cried Madame Rameau, bursting into
+tears. “So we have been all this time a burden on you,--aided to bring
+such want on you! How can we ever be forgiven? And my son--to leave us
+thus,--not even to tell us where to find him!”
+
+“Do not degrade us, my wife,” said M. Rameau, with unexpected dignity,
+“by a word to imply that we would stoop to sue for support to our
+ungrateful child. No, we will not starve! I am strong enough still to
+find food for you. I will apply for restoration to the National Guard.
+They have augmented the pay to married men; it is now nearly two francs
+and a half a-day to a pere de famille, and on that pay we all can at
+least live. Courage, my wife! I will go at once for employment. Many
+men older than I am are at watch on the ramparts, and will march to the
+battle on the next sortie.”
+
+“It shall not be so,” exclaimed Madame Rameau, vehemently, and winding
+her arm round her husband’s neck. “I loved my son better than thee
+once--more shame to me. Now, I would rather lose twenty such sons than
+peril thy life, my Jacques! Madame,” she continued, turning to the
+Venosta, “thou wert wiser than I. Thou wert ever opposed to the union
+between thy young friend and my son. I felt sore with thee for it--a
+mother is so selfish when she puts herself in the place of her child. I
+thought that only through marriage with one so pure, so noble, so
+holy, Gustave could be saved from sin and evil. I am deceived. A man so
+heartless to his parents, so neglectful of his affianced, is not to be
+redeemed. I brought about this betrothal: tell Isaura that I release her
+from it. I have watched her closely since she was entrapped into it.
+I know how miserable the thought of it has made her, though, in her
+sublime devotion to her plighted word, she sought to conceal from me the
+real state of her heart. If the betrothal bring such sorrow, what would
+the union do! Tell her this from me. Come, Jacques, come away!”
+
+“Stay, Madame!” exclaimed the Venosta, her excitable nature much
+affected by this honest outburst of feeling. “It is true that I did
+oppose, so far as I could, my poor Piccola’s engagement with M. Gustave.
+But I dare not do your bidding. Isaura would not listen to me. And let
+us be just! M. Gustave may be able satisfactorily to explain his seeming
+indifference and neglect. His health is always very delicate; perhaps
+he may be again dangerously ill. He serves in the National Guard;
+perhaps--” she paused, but the mother conjectured the word left unsaid,
+and, clasping her hands, cried out in anguish, “Perhaps dead!--and
+we have wronged him! Oh, Jacques, Jacques! how shall we find out-how
+discover our boy? Who can tell us where to search? at the hospital--or
+in the cemeteries?” At the last word she dropped into a seat, and her
+whole frame shook with her sobs.
+
+Jacques approached her tenderly, and kneeling by her side, said:
+
+“No, m’amie, comfort thyself, if it be indeed comfort to learn that thy
+son is alive and well. For my part, I know not if I would not rather he
+had died in his innocent childhood. I have seen him--spoken to him. I
+know where he is to be found.”
+
+“You do, and concealed it from me? Oh, Jacques!”
+
+“Listen to me, wife, and you, too, Madame; for what I have to say should
+be made known to Mademoiselle Cicogna. Some time since, on the night
+of the famous sortie, when at my post on the ramparts, I was told that
+Gustave had joined himself to the most violent of the Red Republicans,
+and had uttered at the Club de la Vengeance sentiments, of which I will
+only say that I, his father and a Frenchman, hung my head with shame
+when they were repeated to me. I resolved to go to the club myself.
+I did. I heard him speak--heard him denounce Christianity as the
+instrument of tyrants.”
+
+“Ah!” cried the two women, with a simultaneous shudder.
+
+“When the assembly broke up, I waylaid him at the door. I spoke to him
+seriously. I told him what anguish such announcement of blasphemous
+opinions would inflict on his pious mother. I told him I should deem it
+my duty to inform Mademoiselle Cicogna, and warn her against the union
+on which he had told us his heart was bent. He appeared sincerely moved
+by what I said; implored me to keep silence towards his mother and his
+betrothed; and promised, on that condition, to relinquish at once
+what he called ‘his career as an orator,’ and appear no more at such
+execrable clubs. On this understanding I held my tongue. Why, with such
+other causes of grief and suffering, should I tell thee, poor wife, of a
+sin that I hoped thy son had repented and would not repeat? And Gustave
+kept his word. He has never, so far as I know, attended, at least
+spoken, at the Red clubs since that evening.”
+
+“Thank heaven so far,” murmured Madame Rameau.
+
+“So far, yes; but hear more. A little time after I thus met him he
+changed his lodging, and did not confide to us his new address, giving
+as a reason to us that he wished to avoid a clue to his discovery by
+that pertinacious Mademoiselle Julie.”
+
+Rameau had here sunk his voice into a whisper, intended only for his
+wife, but the ear of the Venosta was fine enough to catch the sound, and
+she repeated, “Mademoiselle Julie! Santa Maria! who is she?”
+
+“Oh!” said M. Rameau, with a shrug of his shoulders, and with true
+Parisian sangfroid as to such matters of morality, “a trifle not worth
+considering. Of course, a good-looking garcon like Gustave must have
+his little affairs of the heart before he settles for life. Unluckily,
+amongst those of Gustave was one with a violent-tempered girl who
+persecuted him when he left her, and he naturally wished to avoid all
+chance of a silly scandal, if only out of respect to the dignity of his
+fiancee. But I found that was not the true motive, or at least the only
+one, for concealment. Prepare yourself, my poor wife. Thou hast heard of
+these terrible journals which the decheance has let loose upon us. Our
+unhappy boy is the principal writer of one of the worst of them, under
+the name of ‘Diderot le Jeune.”’
+
+“What!” cried the Venosta. “That monster! The good Abbe Vertpre was
+telling us of the writings with that name attached to them. The Abbe
+himself is denounced by name as one of those meddling priests who are to
+be constrained to serve as soldiers or pointed out to the vengeance of
+the canaille. Isaura’s fiancee a blasphemer!”
+
+“Hush, hush!” said Madame Rameau, rising, very pale but self-collected.
+“How do you know this, Jacques?”
+
+“From the lips of Gustave himself. I heard first of it yesterday from
+one of the young reprobates with whom he used to be familiar, and who
+even complimented me on the rising fame of my son, and praised the
+eloquence of his article that day. But I would not believe him. I bought
+the journal--here it is; saw the name and address of the printer--went
+this morning to the office--was there told that ‘Diderot le Jeune’ was
+within revising the press--stationed myself by the street door, and when
+Gustave came out I seized his arm, and asked him to say Yes or No if he
+was the author of this infamous article,--this, which I now hold in my
+hand. He owned the authorship with pride; talked wildly of the great
+man he was--of the great things he was to do; said that, in hitherto
+concealing his true name, he had done all he could to defer to the
+bigoted prejudices of his parents and his fiancee; and that if genius,
+like fire, would find its way out, he could not help it; that a time was
+rapidly coming when his opinions would be uppermost; that since October
+the Communists were gaining ascendancy, and only waited the end of the
+siege to put down the present Government, and with it all hypocrisies
+and shams, religious or social. My wife, he was rude to me, insulting!
+but he had been drinking--that made him incautious: and he continued to
+walk by my side towards his own lodging, on reaching which he ironically
+invited me to enter, saying, ‘I should meet there men who would soon
+argue me out of my obsolete notions.’ You may go to him, wife, now, if
+you please. I will not, nor will I take from him a crust of bread. I
+came hither, determined to tell the young lady all this, if I found her
+at home. I should be a dishonoured man if I suffered her to be cheated
+into misery.
+
+“There, Madame Venosta, there! Take that journal, show it to
+Mademoiselle; and report to her all I have said.”
+
+M. Rameau, habitually the mildest of men, had, in talking, worked
+himself up into positive fury.
+
+His wife, calmer but more deeply affected, made a piteous sign to the
+Venosta not to say more; and without other salutation or adieu took her
+husband’s arm, and led him from the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Obtaining from her husband Gustave’s address, Madame Rameau hastened
+to her son’s apartment alone through the darkling streets. The house in
+which he lodged was in a different quarter from that in which Isaura had
+visited him. Then, the street selected was still in the centre of the
+beau monde--now, it was within the precincts of that section of the
+many-faced capital in which the beau monde was held in detestation or
+scorn; still the house had certain pretensions, boasting a courtyard and
+a porter’s lodge. Madame Rameau, instructed to mount au second, found
+the door ajar, and, entering, perceived on the table of the little salon
+the remains of a feast which, however untempting it might have been
+in happier times, contrasted strongly with the meagre fare of which
+Gustave’s parents had deemed themselves fortunate to partake at the
+board of his betrothed; remnants of those viands which offered to
+the inquisitive epicure an experiment in food much too costly for the
+popular stomach--dainty morsels of elephant, hippopotamus, and wolf,
+interspersed with half-emptied bottles of varied and high-priced
+wines. Passing these evidences of unseasonable extravagance with a mute
+sentiment of anger and disgust, Madame Rameau penetrated into a small
+cabinet, the door of which was also ajar, and saw her son stretched
+on his bed half dressed, breathing heavily in the sleep which follows
+intoxication. She did not attempt to disturb him. She placed herself
+quietly by his side, gazing mournfully on the face which she had once so
+proudly contemplated, now haggard and faded,--still strangely beautiful,
+though it was the beauty of ruin.
+
+From time to time he stirred uneasily, and muttered broken words, in
+which fragments of his own delicately-worded verse were incoherently
+mixed up with ribald slang, addressed to imaginary companions. In
+his dreams he was evidently living over again his late revel, with
+episodical diversions into the poet-world, of which he was rather a
+vagrant nomad than a settled cultivator. Then she would silently
+bathe his feverish temples with the perfumed water she found on his
+dressing-table. And so she watched till, in the middle of the night,
+he woke up, and recovered the possession of his reason with a quickness
+that surprised Madame Rameau. He was, indeed, one of those men in whom
+excess of drink, when slept off, is succeeded by extreme mildness, the
+effect of nervous exhaustion, and by a dejected repentance, which, to
+his mother, seemed a propitious lucidity of the moral sense.
+
+Certainly on seeing her he threw himself on her breast, and began to
+shed tears. Madame Rameau had not the heart to reproach him sternly. But
+by gentle degrees she made him comprehend the pain he had given to his
+father, and the destitution in which he had deserted his parents and
+his affianced. In his present mood Gustave was deeply affected by these
+representations. He excused himself feebly by dwelling on the excitement
+of the times, the preoccupation of his mind, the example of his
+companions; but with his excuses he mingled passionate expressions of
+remorse, and before daybreak mother and son were completely reconciled.
+Then he fell into a tranquil sleep; and Madame Rameau, quite worn out,
+slept also in the chair beside him, her arm around his neck. He awoke
+before she did at a late hour in the morning; and stealing from her arm,
+went to his escritoire, and took forth what money he found there, half
+of which he poured into her lap, kissing her till she awoke.
+
+“Mother,” he said, “henceforth I will work for thee and my father. Take
+this trifle now; the rest I reserve for Isaura.”
+
+“Joy! I have found my boy again. But Isaura, I fear that she will not
+take thy money, and all thought of her must also be abandoned.”
+
+Gustave had already turned to his looking-glass, and was arranging with
+care his dark ringlets: his personal vanity--his remorse appeased by
+this pecuniary oblation--had revived.
+
+“No,” he said gaily, “I don’t think I shall abandon her; and it is not
+likely, when she sees and hears me, that she can wish to abandon me! Now
+let us breakfast, and then I will go at once to her.”
+
+In the mean while, Isaura, on her return to her apartment at the wintry
+nightfall, found a cart stationed at the door, and the Venosta on
+the threshold, superintending the removal of various articles of
+furniture--indeed, all such articles as were not absolutely required.
+
+“Oh, Piccola!” she said, with an attempt at cheerfulness, “I did not
+expect thee back so soon. Hush! I have made a famous bargain. I have
+found a broker to buy these things which we don’t want just at present,
+and can replace by new and prettier things when the siege is over and we
+get our money. The broker pays down on the nail and thou wilt not go
+to bed without supper. There are no ills which are not more supportable
+after food.”
+
+Isaura smiled faintly, kissed the Venosta’s cheek, and ascended with
+weary steps to the sitting-room. There she seated herself quietly,
+looking with abstracted eyes round the bare dismantled space by the
+light of the single candle.
+
+When the Venosta re-entered, she was followed by the servants, bringing
+in a daintier meal than they had known for days--a genuine rabbit,
+potatoes, marrons glaces, a bottle of wine, and a pannier of wood. The
+fire was soon lighted, the Venosta plying the bellows. It was not till
+this banquet, of which Isaura, faint as she was, scarcely partook, had
+been remitted to the two Italian women-servants, and another log been
+thrown on the hearth, that the Venosta opened the subject which was
+pressing on her heart. She did this with a joyous smile, taking both
+Isaura’s hands in her own, and stroking them fondly.
+
+“My child, I have such good news for thee! Thou hast escaped--thou art
+free!” and then she related all that M. Rameau had said, and finished by
+producing the copy of Gustave’s unhallowed journal.
+
+When she had read the latter, which she did with compressed lips and
+varying colour, the girl fell on her knees--not to thank Heaven that she
+would now escape a union from which her soul so recoiled--not that she
+was indeed free, but to pray, with tears rolling down her cheeks, that
+God would yet save to Himself, and to good ends, the soul that she had
+failed to bring to Him. All previous irritation against Gustave was
+gone: all had melted into an ineffable compassion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+When, a little before noon, Gustave was admitted by the servant into
+Isaura’s salon, its desolate condition, stripped of all its pretty
+feminine elegancies, struck him with a sense of discomfort to himself
+which superseded any more remorseful sentiment. The day was intensely
+cold: the single log on the hearth did not burn; there were only two
+or three chairs in the room; even the carpet, which had been of gaily
+coloured Aubusson, was gone. His teeth chattered; and he only replied
+by a dreary nod to the servant who informed him that Madame Venosta was
+gone out, and Mademoiselle had not yet quitted her own room.
+
+If there be a thing which a true Parisian of Rameau’s stamp associates
+with love of woman, it is a certain sort of elegant surroundings, a
+pretty boudoir, a cheery hearth, an easy fauteuil. In the absence of
+such attributes, “fuyit retro Venus.” If the Englishman invented the
+word comfort, it is the Parisian who most thoroughly comprehends the
+thing. And he resents the loss of it in any house where he has been
+accustomed to look for it, as a personal wrong to his feelings.
+
+Left for some minutes alone, Gustave occupied himself with kindling the
+log, and muttering, “Par tous les diables, quel chien de rhume je vais
+attraper?” He turned as he heard the rustle of a robe and a light slow
+step. Isaura stood before him. Her aspect startled him. He had come
+prepared to expect grave displeasure and a frigid reception. But the
+expression of Isaura’s face was more kindly, more gentle, more tender,
+than he had seen it since the day she had accepted his suit.
+
+Knowing from his mother what his father had said to his prejudice, he
+thought within himself, “After all, the poor girl loves me better than I
+thought. She is sensible and enlightened; she cannot pretend to dictate
+an opinion to a man like me.”
+
+He approached with a complacent self-assured mien, and took her
+hand, which she yielded to him quietly, leading her to one of the few
+remaining chairs, and seating himself beside her.
+
+“Dear Isaura,” he said, talking rapidly all the while he performed this
+ceremony, “I need not assure you of my utter ignorance of the state to
+which the imbecility of our Government, and the cowardice, or rather
+the treachery, of our generals, has reduced you. I only heard of it late
+last night from my mother. I hasten to claim my right to share with you
+the humble resources which I have saved by the intellectual labours that
+have absorbed all such moments as my military drudgeries left to the
+talents which, even at such a moment, paralysing minds less energetic,
+have sustained me:”--and therewith he poured several pieces of gold and
+silver on the table beside her chair.
+
+“Gustave,” then said Isaura, “I am well pleased that you thus prove
+that I was not mistaken when I thought and said that, despite all
+appearances, all errors, your heart was good. Oh, do but follow its true
+impulses, and--”
+
+“Its impulses lead me ever to thy feet,” interrupted Gustave, with a
+fervour which sounded somewhat theatrical and hollow.
+
+The girl smiled, not bitterly, not mockingly; but Gustave did not like
+the smile.
+
+“Poor Gustave,” she said, with a melancholy pathos in her soft voice,
+“do you not understand that the time has come when such commonplace
+compliments ill suit our altered positions to each other? Nay, listen
+to me patiently; and let not my words in this last interview pain you
+to recall. If either of us be to blame in the engagement hastily
+contracted, it is I. Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagination
+the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such earnestness that
+on my consent to our union depended your health, your life, your career;
+that if I withheld that consent you were lost, and in despair would seek
+distraction from thought in all from which your friends, your mother,
+the duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the ends of God,
+should withhold and save you--when you said all this, and I believed it,
+I felt as if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul which appealed
+to me in the crisis of its struggle and peril. Gustave, I repent; I was
+to blame.”
+
+“How to blame?”
+
+“I overrated my power over your heart: I overrated still more, perhaps,
+my power over my own.”
+
+“Ah, your own! I understand now. You did not love me?”
+
+“I never said that I loved you in the sense in which you use the word.
+I told you that the love which you have described in your verse, and
+which,” she added, falteringly, with heightened colour and with hands
+tightly clasped, “I have conceived possible in my dreams, it was not
+mine to give. You declared you were satisfied with such affection as
+I could bestow. Hush! let me go on. You said that affection would
+increase, would become love, in proportion as I knew you more. It has
+not done so. Nay, it passed away; even before this time of trial and of
+grief, I became aware how different from the love you professed was the
+neglect which needs no excuse, for it did not pain me.”
+
+“You are cruel indeed, Mademoiselle.”
+
+“No, indeed, I am kind. I wish you to feel no pang at our parting. Truly
+I had resolved, when the siege terminated, and the time to speak frankly
+of our engagement came, to tell you that I shrank from the thought of
+a union between us; and that it was for the happiness of both that our
+promises should be mutually cancelled. The moment has come sooner than
+I thought. Even had I loved you, Gustave, as deeply as--as well as
+the beings of Romance love, I would not dare to wed one who calls upon
+mortals to deny God, demolish His altars, treat His worship as a crime.
+No; I would sooner die of a broken heart, that I might the sooner be one
+of those souls privileged to pray the Divine Intercessor for merciful
+light on those beloved and left dark on earth.”
+
+“Isaura!” exclaimed Gustave, his mobile temperament impressed, not by
+the words of Isaura, but by the passionate earnestness with which they
+were uttered, and by the exquisite spiritual beauty which her face
+took from the combined sweetness and fervour of its devout
+expression,--“Isaura, I merit your censure, your sentence of
+condemnation; but do not ask me to give back your plighted troth. I have
+not the strength to do so. More than ever, more than when first pledged
+to me, I need the aid, the companionship, of my guardian angel. You
+were that to me once; abandon me not now. In these terrible times of
+revolution, excitable natures catch madness from each other. A writer in
+the heat of his passion says much that he does not mean to be literally
+taken, which in cooler moments he repents and retracts. Consider, too,
+the pressure of want, of hunger. It is the opinions that you so condemn
+which alone at this moment supply bread to the writer. But say you will
+yet pardon me,--yet give me trial if I offend no more--if I withdraw
+my aid to any attacks on your views, your religion--if I say, ‘Thy God
+shall be my God, and thy people shall be my people.’”
+
+“Alas!” said Isaura, softly, “ask thyself if those be words which I can
+believe again. Hush!” she continued, checking his answer with a more
+kindling countenance and more impassioned voice. “Are they, after all,
+the words that man should address to woman? Is it on the strength of
+Woman that Man should rely? Is it to her that he should say, ‘Dictate
+my opinions on all that belongs to the Mind of man; change the doctrines
+that I have thoughtfully formed and honestly advocate; teach me how
+to act on earth, clear all my doubts as to my hopes of heaven’? No,
+Gustave; in this task man never should repose on woman. Thou are honest
+at this moment, my poor friend; but could I believe thee to-day, thou
+wouldst laugh tomorrow at what woman can be made to believe.”
+
+Stung to the quick by the truth of Isaura’s accusation, Gustave
+exclaimed with vehemence: “All that thou sayest is false, and thou
+knowest it. The influence of woman on man for good or for evil defies
+reasoning. It does mould his deeds on earth; it does either make or mar
+all that future which lies between his life and his gravestone, and
+of whatsoever may lie beyond the grave. Give me up now, and thou art
+responsible for me, for all I do, it may be against all that thou
+deemest holy. Keep thy troth yet awhile, and test me. If I come to
+thee showing how I could have injured, and how for thy dear sake I have
+spared, nay, aided, all that thou dost believe and reverence, then wilt
+thou dare to say, ‘Go thy ways alone--I forsake thee!’”
+
+Isaura turned aside her face, but she held out her hand--it was as cold
+as death. He knew that she had so far yielded, and his vanity exulted:
+he smiled in secret triumph as he pressed his kiss on that icy hand and
+was gone.
+
+“This is duty--it must be duty,” said Isaura to herself. “But where is
+the buoyant delight that belongs to a duty achieved?--where? oh where?”
+ And then she stole with drooping head and heavy step into her own room,
+fell on her knees, and prayed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+In vain persons, be they male or female, there is a complacent
+self-satisfaction in any momentary personal success, however little that
+success may conduce to--nay, however much it may militate against--the
+objects to which their vanity itself devotes its more permanent desires.
+A vain woman may be very anxious to win A------, the magnificent, as a
+partner for life; and yet feel a certain triumph when a glance of her
+eye has made an evening’s conquest of the pitiful B-------, although
+by that achievement she incurs the imminent hazard of losing A------
+altogether. So, when Gustave Rameau quitted Isaura, his first feeling
+was that of triumph. His eloquence had subdued her will; she had not
+finally discarded him. But as he wandered abstractedly in the biting
+air, his self-complacency was succeeded by mortification and discontent.
+He felt that he had committed himself to promises which he was by no
+means prepared to keep. True, the promises were vague in words; but in
+substance they were perfectly clear--“to spare, nay, to aid all that
+Isaura esteemed and reverenced.” How was this possible to him? How could
+he suddenly change the whole character of his writings?--how become the
+defender of marriage and property, of church and religion?--how proclaim
+himself so utter an apostate? If he did, how become a leader of
+the fresh revolution? how escape being its victim? Cease to write
+altogether?
+
+But then how live? His pen was his sole subsistence, save 30 sous a-day
+as a National Guard--30 sous a day to him, who, in order to be Sybarite
+in tastes, was Spartan in doctrine. Nothing better just at that moment
+than Spartan doctrine, “Live on black broth and fight the enemy.” And
+the journalists in vogue so thrived upon that patriotic sentiment, that
+they were the last persons compelled to drink the black broth or to
+fight the enemy.
+
+“Those women are such idiots when they meddle in politics,” grumbled
+between his teeth the enthusiastic advocate of Woman’s Rights on all
+matters of love. “And,” he continued, soliloquising, “it is not as if
+the girl had any large or decent dot; it is not as if she said, ‘In
+return for the sacrifice of your popularity, your prospects, your
+opinions, I give you not only a devoted heart, but an excellent table
+and a capital fire and plenty of pocket-money.’ Sacre bleu! when I think
+of that frozen salon, and possibly the leg of a mouse for dinner, and a
+virtuous homily by way of grace, the prospect is not alluring; and the
+girl herself is not so pretty as she was--grown very thin. Sur mon ame,
+I think she asks too much--far more than she is worth. No, No; I had
+better have accepted her dismissal. Elle n’est pas digne de moi.”
+
+Just as he arrived at that conclusion, Gustave Rameau felt the touch of
+a light, a soft, a warm, yet a firm hand, on his aria. He turned, and
+beheld the face of the woman whom, through so many dreary weeks, he had
+sought to shun--the face of Julie Caumartin. Julie was not, as Savarin
+had seen her, looking pinched and wan, with faded robes, nor, as when
+met in the cafe by Lemercier, in the faded robes of a theatre. Julie
+never looked more beautiful, more radiant, than she did now; and there
+was a wonderful heartfelt fondness in her voice when she cried, “Mon
+homme! mon homme! seul homme au monde a mon coeur, Gustave, cheri adore!
+I have found thee-at last--at last!” Gustave gazed upon her, stupefied.
+Involuntarily his eye glanced from the freshness of bloom in her face
+which the intense cold of the atmosphere only seemed to heighten into
+purer health, to her dress, which was new and handsome--black--he did
+not know that it was mourning--the cloak trimmed with costly sables.
+Certainly it was no mendicant for alms who thus reminded the shivering
+Adonis of the claims of a pristine Venus. He stammered out her naive,
+“Julie!”--and then he stopped.
+
+“Oui, ta Julie! Petit ingrat! how I have sought for thee! how I have
+hungered for the sight of thee! That monster Savarin! he would not give
+me any news of thee. That is ages ago. But at least Frederic Lemercier,
+whom I saw since, promised to remind thee that I lived still. He did not
+do so, or I should have seen thee--n’est ce, pas?”
+
+“Certainly, certainly--only--chere amie--you know that--that--as I
+before announced to thee, I--I--was engaged in marriage--and--and--”
+
+“But are you married?”
+
+“No, no. Hark! Take care--is not that the hiss of an obus?”
+
+“What then? Let it come! Would it might slay us both while my hand is in
+thine!”
+
+“Ah!” muttered Gustave, inwardly, “what a difference! This is love! No
+preaching here! Elle est plus digne de moi que d’autre.”
+
+“No,” he said, aloud, “I am not married. Marriage is at best a pitiful
+ceremony. But if you wished for news of me, surely you must have heard
+of my effect as an orator not despised in the Salle Favre. Since, I have
+withdrawn from that arena. But as a journalist I flatter myself that I
+have had a beau succes.”
+
+“Doubtless, doubtless, my Gustave, my Poet! Wherever thou art, thou must
+be first among men. But, alas it is my fault--my misfortune. I have not
+been in the midst of a world that perhaps rings of thy name.”
+
+“Not my name. Prudence compelled me to conceal that. Still, Genius
+pierces under any name. You might have discovered me under my nom de
+plume.”
+
+“Pardon me--I was always bete. But, oh! for so many weeks I was so
+poor--so destitute. I could go nowhere, except--don’t be ashamed of
+me--except--”
+
+“Yes? Go on.”
+
+“Except where I could get some money. At first to dance--you remember
+my bolero. Then I got a better engagement. Do you not remember that you
+taught me to recite verses? Had it been for myself alone, I might have
+been contented to starve. Without thee, what was life? But thou wilt
+recollect Madeleine, the old bonne who lived with me. Well, she had
+attended and cherished me since I was so high-lived with my mother.
+Mother! no; it seems that Madame Surville was not my mother after all.
+But, of course, I could not let my old Madeleine starve; and therefore,
+with a heart as heavy as lead, I danced and declaimed. My heart was not
+so heavy when I recited thy songs.”
+
+“My songs! Pauvre ange!” exclaimed the Poet.
+
+“And then, too, I thought, ‘Ah, this dreadful siege! He, too, may
+be poor--he may know want and hunger;’ and so all I could save from
+Madeleine I put into a box for thee, in case thou shouldst come back to
+me some day. Mon homme, how could I go to the Salle Favre? How could
+I read journals, Gustave? But thou art not married, Gustave? Parole
+d’honneur?”
+
+“Parole d’honneur! What does that matter?”
+
+“Everything! Ah! I am not so mechante, so mauvaise tete as I was some
+months ago. If thou went married, I should say, ‘Blessed and sacred be
+thy wife! Forget me.’ But as it is, one word more. Dost thou love the
+young lady, whoever she be? or does she love thee so well that it would
+be sin in thee to talk trifles to Julie? Speak as honestly as if thou
+wert not a poet.”
+
+“Honestly, she never said she loved me. I never thought she did. But,
+you see, I was very ill, and my parents and friends and my physician
+said that it was right for me to arrange my life, and marry, and so
+forth. And the girl had money, and was a good match. In short, the thing
+was settled. But oh, Julie, she never learned my songs by heart! She did
+not love as thou mayst, and still dost. And--ah! well--now that we meet
+again--now that I look in thy face--now that I hear thy voice--No, I do
+not love her as I loved, and might yet love thee. But--but--”
+
+“Well, but? oh, I guess. Thou seest me well dressed, no longer dancing
+and declaiming at cafes: and thou thinkest that Julie has disgraced
+herself? she is unfaithful?”
+
+Gustave had not anticipated that frankness, nor was the idea which it
+expressed uppermost in his mind when he said, “but, but--” There were
+many buts all very confused, struggling through his mind as he spoke.
+However, he answered as a Parisian sceptic, not ill-bred, naturally
+would answer:
+
+“My dear friend, my dear child” (the Parisian is very fond of the word
+child or enfant in addressing a woman), “I have never seen thee so
+beautiful as thou art now; and when thou tellest me that thou are no
+longer poor, and the proof of what thou sayest is visible in the furs,
+which, alas’. I cannot give thee, what am I to think?”
+
+“Oh, mon homme, mon homme! thou art very spirituel, and that is why I
+loved thee. I am very bete, and that is excuse enough for thee if thou
+couldst not love me. But canst thou look me in the face and not know
+that my eyes could not meet thine as they do, if I had been faithless to
+thee even in a thought, when I so boldly touched thine arm? Viens chez
+moi, come and let me explain all. Only--only let me repeat, if another
+has rights over thee which forbid thee to come, say so kindly, and I
+will never trouble thee again.”
+
+Gustave had been hitherto walking slowly by the side of Julie, amidst
+the distant boom of the besiegers’ cannon, while the short day began to
+close; and along the dreary boulevards sauntered idlers turning to look
+at the young, beautiful, well-dressed woman who seemed in such contrast
+to the capital whose former luxuries the “Ondine” of imperial Paris
+represented. He now offered his arm to Julie; and, quickening his pace,
+said, “There is no reason why I should refuse to attend thee home,
+and listen to the explanations thou dost generously condescend to
+volunteer.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+“Ah, indeed! what a difference! what a difference!” said Gustave to
+himself when he entered Julie’s apartment. In her palmier days, when
+he had first made her acquaintance, the apartment no doubt had been
+infinitely more splendid, more abundant in silks and fringes and flowers
+and nicknacks; but never had it seemed so cheery and comfortable and
+home-like as now. What a contrast to Isaura’s dismantled chilly salon!
+She drew him towards the hearth, on which, blazing though it was, she
+piled fresh billets, seated him in the easiest of easy-chairs, knelt
+beside him, and chafed his numbed hands in hers; and as her bright eyes
+fixed tenderly on his, she looked so young and so innocent! You would
+not then have called her the “Ondine of Paris.”
+
+But when, a little while after, revived by the genial warmth and moved
+by the charm of her beauty, Gustave passed his arm round her neck and
+sought to draw her on his lap, she slid from his embrace, shaking
+her head gently, and seated herself, with a pretty air of ceremonious
+decorum, at a little distance.
+
+Gustave looked at her amazed.
+
+“Causons,” said she, gravely, “thou wouldst know why I am so well
+dressed, so comfortably lodged, and I am longing to explain to thee all.
+Some days ago I had just finished my performance at the cafe--, and was
+putting on my shawl, when a tall Monsieur, fort bel homme, with the
+air of a grand seigneur, entered the cafe, and approaching me politely,
+said, ‘I think I have the honour to address Mademoiselle Julie
+Caumartin?’ ‘That is my name,’ I said, surprised; and, looking at him
+more intently, I recognised his face. He had come into the cafe a few
+days before with thine old acquaintance Frederic Lemercier, and stood
+by when I asked Frederic to give me news of thee. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he
+continued, with a serious melancholy smile, ‘I shall startle you when I
+say that I am appointed to act as your guardian by the last request of
+your mother.’ ‘Of Madame Surville?’ ‘Madame Surville adopted you, but
+was not your mother. We cannot talk at ease here. Allow me to request
+that you will accompany me to Monsieur -----, the avoue. It is not
+very far from this--and by the way--I will tell you some news that may
+sadden, and some news that may rejoice.’
+
+“There was an earnestness in the voice and look of this Monsieur that
+impressed me. He did not offer me his arm; but I walked by his side in
+the direction he chose. As we walked he told me in very few words that
+my mother had been separated from her husband, and for certain family
+reasons had found it so difficult to rear and provide for me herself,
+that she had accepted the offer of Madame Surville to adopt me as her
+own child. While he spoke, there came dimly back to me the remembrance
+of a lady who had taken me from my first home, when I had been, as
+I understood, at nurse, and left me with poor dear Madame Surville,
+saying, ‘This is henceforth your mamma.’
+
+“I never again saw that lady. It seems that many years afterwards my
+true mother desired to regain me. Madame Surville was then dead. She
+failed to trace me out, owing, alas! to my own faults and change of
+name. She then entered a nunnery, but, before doing so, assigned a sum
+of 100,000 francs to this gentleman, who was distantly connected with
+her, with full power to him to take it to himself, or give it to my use
+should he discover me, at his discretion. ‘I ask you,’ continued the
+Monsieur, ‘to go with me to Mons. N------‘s, because the sum is still in
+his hands. He will confirm my statement. All that I have now to say is
+this, If you accept my guardianship, if you obey implicitly my advice,
+I shall consider the interest of this sum which has accumulated since
+deposited with M. ----- due to you; and the capital will be your dot on
+marriage, if the marriage be with my consent.’”
+
+Gustave had listened very attentively, and without interruption, until
+now; when he looked up, and said with his customary sneer, “Did your
+Monsieur, fort bel homme, you say, inform you of the value of the
+advice, rather of the commands, you were implicitly to obey?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Julie, “not then, but later. Let me go on. We arrived at
+M. N-----‘s, an elderly grave man. He said that all he knew was that he
+held the money in trust for the Monsieur with me, to be given to him,
+with the accumulations of interest, on the death of the lady who had
+deposited it. If that Monsieur had instructions how to dispose of the
+money, they were not known to him. All he had to do was to transfer it
+absolutely to him on the proper certificate of the lady’s death. So you
+see, Gustave, that the Monsieur could have kept all from me if he had
+liked.”
+
+“Your Monsieur is very generous. Perhaps you will now tell me his name.”
+
+“No; he forbids me to do it yet.”
+
+“And he took this apartment for you, and gave you money to buy that
+smart dress and these furs. Bah! mon enfant, why try to deceive me? Do I
+not know my Paris? A fort bel homme does not make himself guardian to
+a fort belle fine so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin
+without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like himself.”
+
+Julie’s eyes flashed. “Ah, Gustave! ah, Monsieur!” she said, half
+angrily, half plaintively, “I see that my guardian knew you better than
+I did. Never mind; I will not reproach. Thou halt the right to despise
+me.”
+
+“Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee,” said Gustave, somewhat
+disconcerted. “But own that thy story is strange; and this guardian, who
+knows me better than thou--does he know me at all? Didst thou speak to
+him of me?”
+
+“How could I help it? He says that this terrible war, in which he takes
+an active part, makes his life uncertain from day to day. He wished to
+complete the trust bequeathed to him by seeing me safe in the love of
+some worthy man who”--she paused for a moment with an expression of
+compressed anguish, and then hurried on--“who would recognise what was
+good in me,--would never reproach me for--for--the past. I then said
+that my heart was thine: I could never marry any one but thee.”
+
+“Marry me,” faltered Gustave--“marry!”
+
+“And,” continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, “he said thou
+wert not the husband he would choose for me: that thou wert not--no, I
+cannot wound thee by repeating what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade
+me think of thee no more. I said again, that is impossible.”
+
+“But,” resumed Rameau, with an affected laugh, “why think of anything
+so formidable as marriage? Thou lovest me, and--” He approached again,
+seeking to embrace her. She recoiled. “No, Gustave, no. I have sworn
+solemnly by the memory of my lost mother--O--that I will never sin
+again. I will never be to thee other than thy friend--or thy wife.”
+
+Before Gustave could reply to these words, which took him wholly by
+surprise, there was a ring at the outer door, and the old bonne
+ushered in Victor de Mauleon. He halted at the threshold, and his brow
+contracted.
+
+“So you have already broken faith with me, Mademoiselle?”
+
+“No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith,” cried Julie; passionately. “I
+told you that I would not seek to find out Monsieur Rameau. I did
+not seek, but I met him unexpectedly. I owed to him an explanation. I
+invited him here to give that explanation. Without it, what would he
+have thought of me? Now he may go, and I will never admit him again
+without your sanction.”
+
+The Vicomte turned his stern look upon Gustave, who though, as we know,
+not wanting in personal courage, felt cowed by his false position; and
+his eye fell, quailed before De Mauleon’s gaze.
+
+“Leave us for a few minutes alone, Mademoiselle,” said the Vicomte.
+“Nay, Julie,” he added, in softened tones, “fear nothing. I, too, owe
+explanation--friendly explanation--to M. Rameau.”
+
+With his habitual courtesy towards women, he extended his hand to Julie,
+and led her from the room. Then, closing the door, he seated himself,
+and made a sign to Gustave to do the same.
+
+“Monsieur,” said De Mauleon, “excuse me if I detain you. A very few
+words will suffice for our present interview. I take it for granted that
+Mademoiselle has told you that she is no child of Madame Surville’s:
+that her own mother bequeathed her to my protection and guardianship
+with a modest fortune which is at my disposal to give or withhold. The
+little I have seen already of Mademoiselle impresses me with sincere
+interest in her fate. I look with compassion on what she may have been
+in the past; I anticipate with hope what she may be in the future. I do
+not ask you to see her in either with my eyes. I say frankly that it is
+my intention, and I may add, my resolve, that the ward thus left to my
+charge shall be henceforth safe from the temptations that have seduced
+her poverty, her inexperience, her vanity, if you will, but have not yet
+corrupted her heart. Bref, I must request you to give me your word of
+honour that you will hold no further communication with her. I can allow
+no sinister influence to stand between her fate and honour.”
+
+“You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte,” said Rameau, “and I give the
+promise you exact.” He added, feelingly: “It is true her heart has never
+been corrupted that is good, affectionate, unselfish as a child’s. J’ai
+l’honneur de vous saluer, M. le Vicomte.”
+
+He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and tears were in his eyes as he
+passed by De Mauleon and gained the anteroom. There a side-door suddenly
+opened, and Julie’s face, anxious, eager, looked forth.
+
+Gustave paused: “Adieu, Mademoiselle! Adieu, though we may never meet
+again,--though our fates divide us,--believe me that I shall ever
+cherish your memory--and--”
+
+The girl interrupted him, impulsively seizing his arm, and looking him
+in the face with a wild fixed stare. “Hush! dost thou mean to say that
+we are parted,--parted forever?”
+
+“Alas!” said Gustave, “what option is before us? Your guardian rightly
+forbids my visits; and even were I free to offer you my hand, you
+yourself say that I am not a suitor he would approve.”
+
+Julie turned her eyes towards De Mauleon, who, following Gustave into
+the ante-room, stood silent and impassive, leaning against the wall.
+
+He now understood and replied to the pathetic appeal in the girl’s eyes.
+
+“My young ward,” he said, “M. Rameau expresses himself with propriety
+and truth. Suffer him to depart. He belongs to the former life;
+reconcile yourself to the new.”
+
+He advanced to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave to depart. But
+as he approached Julie, she uttered a weak piteous wail, and fell at his
+feet senseless. De Mauleon raised and carried her into her room, where
+he left her to the care of the old bonne. On re-entering the anteroom,
+he found Gustave still lingering by the outer door. “You will pardon
+me, Monsieur,” he said to the Vicomte, “but in fact I feel so uneasy, so
+unhappy. Has she--? You see, you see that there is danger to her health,
+perhaps to her reason, in so abrupt a separation, so cruel a rupture
+between us. Let me call again, or I may not have strength to keep my
+promise.”
+
+De Mauleon remained a few minutes musing. Then he said in a whisper,
+“Come back into the salon. Let us talk frankly.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+“M. Rameau,” said De Mauleon, when the two men had reseated themselves
+in the salon, “I will honestly say that my desire is to rid myself as
+soon as I can of the trust of guardian to this young lady. Playing as I
+do with fortune, my only stake against her favours is my life. I feel
+as if it were my duty to see that Mademoiselle is not left alone and
+friendless in the world at my decease. I have in my mind for her a
+husband that I think in every way suitable: a handsome and brave
+young fellow in my battalion, of respectable birth, without any living
+relations to consult as to his choice. I have reason to believe that if
+Julie married him, she need never fear as a reproach to her antecedents.
+Her dot would suffice to enable him to realise his own wish of a country
+town in Normandy. And in that station, Paris and its temptations would
+soon pass from the poor child’s thoughts, as an evil dream. But I
+cannot dispose of her hand without her own consent; and if she is to be
+reasoned out of her fancy for you, I have no time to devote to the task.
+I come to the point, You are not the man I would choose for her husband.
+But, evidently, you are the man she would choose. Are you disposed to
+marry her? You hesitate, very naturally; I have no right to demand an
+immediate answer to a question so serious. Perhaps you will think over
+it, and let me know in a day or two? I take it for granted that if you
+were, as I heard, engaged before the siege to marry the Signora Cicogna,
+that engagement is annulled?”
+
+“Why take it for granted?” asked Gustave, perplexed. “Simply because I
+find you here. Nay, spare explanations and excuses. I quite understand
+that you were invited to come. But a man solemnly betrothed to a
+mademoiselle like the Signora Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity
+and peril, could scarcely allow himself to be tempted to accept the
+invitation of one so beautiful, and so warmly attached to him, as is
+Mademoiselle Julie; and on witnessing the passionate strength of that
+attachment, say that he cannot keep a promise not to repeat his visits.
+But if I mistake, and you are still betrothed to the Signorina, of
+course all discussion is at an end.”
+
+Gustave hung his head in some shame, and in much bewildered doubt.
+
+The practised observer of men’s characters, and of shifting phases of
+mind, glanced at the poor poet’s perturbed countenance with a half-smile
+of disdain.
+
+“It is for you to judge how far the very love to you so ingenuously
+evinced by my ward--how far the reasons against marriage with one
+whose antecedents expose her to reproach--should influence one of your
+advanced opinions upon social ties. Such reasons do not appear to have
+with artists the same weight they have with the bourgeoisie. I have but
+to add that the husband of Julie will receive with her hand a dot of
+nearly 120,000 francs; and I have reason to believe that that fortune
+will be increased--how much, I cannot guess-when the cessation of the
+siege will allow communication with England. One word more. I should
+wish to rank the husband of my ward in the number of my friends. If
+he did not oppose the political opinions with which I identify my own
+career, I should be pleased to make any rise in the world achieved by me
+assist to the raising of himself. But my opinions, as during the time we
+were brought together you were made aware, are those of a practical man
+of the world, and have nothing in common with Communists, Socialists,
+Internationalists, or whatever sect would place the aged societies
+of Europe in Medea’s caldron of youth. At a moment like the present,
+fanatics and dreamers so abound that the number of such sinners will
+necessitate a general amnesty when order is restored. What a poet so
+young as you may have written or said at such a time will be readily
+forgotten and forgiven a year or two hence, provided he does not put his
+notions into violent action. But if you choose to persevere in the
+views you now advocate, so be it. They will not make poor Julie less a
+believer in your wisdom and genius. Only they will separate you from me,
+and a day may come when I should have the painful duty of ordering you
+to be shot--Die meliora. Think over all I have thus frankly said.
+Give me your answer within forty-eight hours; and meanwhile hold no
+communication with my ward. I have the honour to wish you good-day.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting Julie’s apartment,
+again found himself in the streets. His thoughts were troubled and
+confused. He was the more affected by Julie’s impassioned love for
+him, by the contrast with Isaura’s words and manner in their recent
+interview. His own ancient fancy for the “Ondine of Paris” became
+revived by the difficulties between their ancient intercourse which her
+unexpected scruples and De Mauleon’s guardianship interposed. A
+witty writer thus defines une passion, “une caprice inflamme par des
+obstacles.” In the ordinary times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring
+to reputable position in the beau monde, would not have admitted any
+considerations to compromise his station by marriage with a fagurante.
+But now the wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his
+ambition from that beau monde, and combined it with ascendancy over the
+revolutionists of the populace--a direction which he must abandon if
+he continued his suit to Isaura. Then, too, the immediate possession of
+Julie’s dot was not without temptation to a man who was so fond of his
+personal comforts, and who did not see where to turn for a dinner, if,
+obedient to Isaura’s “prejudices,” he abandoned his profits as a writer
+in the revolutionary press. The inducements for withdrawal from the
+cause he had espoused, held out to him with so haughty a coldness by
+De Mauleon, were not wholly without force, though they irritated his
+self-esteem. He was dimly aware of the Vicomte’s masculine talents
+for public life; and the high reputation he had already acquired
+among military authorities, and even among experienced and thoughtful
+civilians, had weight upon Gustave’s impressionable temperament. But
+though De Mauleon’s implied advice here coincided in much with the
+tacit compact he had made with Isaura, it alienated him more from Isaura
+herself, for Isaura did not bring to him the fortune which would enable
+him to suspend his lucubrations, watch the turn of events, and live at
+ease in the meanwhile; and the dot to be received with De Mauleon’s ward
+had those advantages.
+
+While thus meditating Gustave turned into one of the cantines still
+open, to brighten his intellect with a petit verre, and there he found
+the two colleagues in the extinct Council of Ten, Paul Grimm and Edgar
+Ferrier. With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become
+intimately lie. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly
+accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in
+a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no
+exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed
+confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a
+girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected
+heritage? “Es-tu fou d’en douter?” cried Edgar. “What a sublime occasion
+to manifest thy scorn of the miserable banalities of the bourgeoisie! It
+will but increase thy moral power over the people. And then think of the
+money. What an aid to the cause! What a capital for the launch!--journal
+all thine own! Besides, when our principles triumph--as triumph they
+must--what would be marriage but a brief and futile ceremony, to be
+broken the moment thou hast cause to complain of thy wife or chafe at
+the bond? Only get the dot into thine own hands. L’amour passe--reste la
+cassette.”
+
+Though there was enough of good in the son of Madame Rameau to revolt at
+the precise words in which the counsel was given, still, as the fumes of
+the punch yet more addled his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable;
+and in that sort of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some
+excitable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night leaning on
+the arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on going out of his way
+to pass the house in which Isaura lived, and, pausing under her window,
+gasped out some verses of a wild song, then much in vogue among the
+votaries of Felix Pyat, in which everything that existent society deems
+sacred was reviled in the grossest ribaldry. Happily Isaura’s ear heard
+it not. The girl was kneeling by her bedside absorbed in prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Three days after the evening thus spent by Gustave Rameau, Isaura was
+startled by a visit from M. de Mauleon. She had not seen him since the
+commencement of the siege, and she did not recognise him at first glance
+in his military uniform.
+
+“I trust you will pardon my intrusion, Mademoiselle,” he said, in the
+low sweet voice habitual to him in his gentler moods, “but I thought
+it became me to announce to you the decease of one who, I fear, did not
+discharge with much kindness the duties her connection with you imposed.
+Your father’s second wife, afterwards Madame Selby, is no more. She died
+some days since in a convent to which she had retired.”
+
+Isaura had no cause to mourn the dead, but she felt a shock in the
+suddenness of this information; and in that sweet spirit of womanly
+compassion which entered so largely into her character, and made a part
+of her genius itself, she murmured tearfully, “The poor Signora! Why
+could I not have been with her in illness? She might then have learned
+to love me. And she died in a convent, you say? Ah, her religion was
+then sincere! Her end was peaceful?”
+
+“Let us not doubt that, Mademoiselle. Certainly she lived to regret any
+former errors, and her last thought was directed towards such atonement
+as might be in her power. And it is that desire of atonement which now
+strangely mixes me up, Mademoiselle, in your destinies. In that desire
+for atonement, she left to my charge, as a kinsman distant indeed, but
+still, perhaps, the nearest with whom she was personally acquainted--a
+young ward. In accepting that trust, I find myself strangely compelled
+to hazard the risk of offending you.”
+
+“Offending me? How? Pray speak openly.”
+
+“In so doing, I must utter the name of Gustave Rameau.”
+
+Isaura turned pale and recoiled, but she did not speak. “Did he inform
+me rightly that, in the last interview with him three days ago, you
+expressed a strong desire that the engagement between him and yourself
+should cease; and that you only, and with reluctance, suspended your
+rejection of the suit he had pressed on you, in consequence of his
+entreaties, and of certain assurances as to the changed direction of the
+talents of which we will assume that he is possessed?”
+
+“Well, well, Monsieur,” exclaimed Isaura, her whole face brightening;
+“and you come on the part of Gustave Rameau to say that on reflection he
+does not hold me to our engagement--that in honour and in conscience I
+am free?”
+
+“I see,” answered De Mauleon, smiling, “that I am pardoned already.
+It would not pain you if such were my instructions in the embassy I
+undertake?”
+
+“Pain me? No. But--”
+
+“But what?”
+
+“Must he persist in a course which will break his mother’s heart, and
+make his father deplore the hour that he was born? Have you influence
+over him, M. de Mauleon? If so, will you not exert it for his good?”
+
+“You interest yourself still in his fate, Mademoiselle?”
+
+“How can I do otherwise? Did I not consent to share it when my heart
+shrank from the thought of our union? And now when, if I understand you
+rightly, I am free, I cannot but think of what was best in him.”
+
+“Alas! Mademoiselle, he is but one of many--a spoilt child of that
+Circe, imperial Paris. Everywhere I look around, I see but corruption.
+It was hidden by the halo which corruption itself engenders. The halo
+is gone, the corruption is visible. Where is the old French manhood?
+Banished from the heart, it comes out only at the tongue. Were our
+deeds like our words, Prussia would beg on her knee to be a province of
+France. Gustave is the fit poet for this generation. Vanity--desire to
+be known for something, no matter what, no matter by whom--that is the
+Parisian’s leading motive power;--orator, soldier, poet, all alike.
+Utterers of fine phrases; despising knowledge, and toil, and discipline;
+railing against the Germans as barbarians, against their generals as
+traitors; against God for not taking their part. What can be done to
+weld this mass of hollow bubbles into the solid form of a nation--the
+nation it affects to be? What generation can be born out of the unmanly
+race, inebriate with brag and absinthe? Forgive me this tirade; I have
+been reviewing the battalion I command. As for Gustave Rameau,--if
+we survive the siege, and see once more a Government that can enforce
+order, and a public that will refuse renown for balderdash,--I should
+not be surprised if Gustave Rameau were among the prettiest imitators
+of Lamartine’s early Meditations. Had he been born under Louis XIV. how
+loyal he would have been! What sacred tragedies in the style of Athalie
+he would have written, in the hope of an audience at Versailles! But I
+detain you from the letter I was charged to deliver you. I have done so
+purposely, that I might convince myself that you welcome that release
+which your too delicate sense of honour shrank too long from demanding.”
+
+Here he took forth and placed a letter in Isaura’s hand; and, as if to
+allow her to read it unobserved, retired to the window recess.
+
+Isaura glanced over the letter. It ran thus:
+
+“I feel that it was only to your compassion that I owed your consent to
+my suit. Could I have doubted that before, your words when we last met
+sufficed to convince me. In my selfish pain at the moment, I committed
+a great wrong. I would have held you bound to a promise from which you
+desired to be free. Grant me pardon for that; and for all the faults
+by which I have offended you. In cancelling our engagement, let me hope
+that I may rejoice in your friendship, your remembrance of me, some
+gentle and kindly thought. My life may henceforth pass out of contact
+with yours; but you will ever dwell in my heart, an image pure and
+holy as the saints in whom you may well believe-they are of your own
+kindred.”
+
+“May I convey to Gustave Rameau any verbal reply to his letter?” asked
+De Mauleon, turning as she replaced the letter on the table.
+
+“Only my wishes for his welfare. It might wound him if I added, my
+gratitude for the generous manner in which he has interpreted my heart,
+and acceded to its desires.”
+
+“Mademoiselle, accept my congratulations. My condolences are for the
+poor girl left to my guardianship. Unhappily she loves this man; and
+there are reasons why I cannot withhold my consent to her union with
+him, should he demand it, now that, in the letter remitted to you, he
+has accepted your dismissal. If I can keep him out of all the follies
+and all the evils into which he suffers his vanity to mislead his
+reason, I will do so;--would I might say, only in compliance with your
+compassionate injunctions. But henceforth the infatuation of my ward
+compels me to take some interest in his career. Adieu, Mademoiselle! I
+have no fear for your happiness now.”
+
+Left alone, Isaura stood as one transfigured. All the bloom of her
+youth seemed suddenly restored. Round her red lips the dimples opened,
+countless mirrors of one happy smile. “I am free, I am free,” she
+murmured--“joy, joy!” and she passed from the room to seek the Venosta,
+singing clear, singing loud, as a bird that escapes from the cage and
+warbles to the heaven it regains the blissful tale of its release.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+In proportion to the nearer roar of the besiegers’ cannon, and the
+sharper gripe of famine within the walls, the Parisians seemed to
+increase their scorn for the skill of the enemy, and their faith in
+the sanctity of the capital. All false news was believed as truth; all
+truthful news abhorred as falsehood. Listen to the groups round the
+cafes. “The Prussian funds have fallen three per cent. at Berlin,” says
+a threadbare ghost of the Bourse (he had been a clerk of Louvier’s).
+“Ay,” cries a National Guard, “read extracts from La Liberte. The
+barbarians are in despair. Nancy is threatened, Belfort is freed.
+Bourbaki is invading Baden. Our fleets are pointing their cannon upon
+Hamburg. Their country endangered, their retreat cut off, the sole hope
+of Bismarck and his trembling legions is to find a refuge in Paris. The
+increasing fury of the bombardment is a proof of their despair.”
+
+“In that case,” whispered Savarin to De Breze, “suppose we send a flag
+of truce to Versailles with a message from Trochu that, on disgorging
+their conquests, ceding the left bank of the Rhine, and paying the
+expenses of the war, Paris, ever magnanimous to the vanquished; will
+allow the Prussians to retire.”
+
+“The Prussians! Retire!” cried Edgar Ferrier, catching the last word and
+glancing fiercely at Savarin. “What Prussian spy have we among us? Not
+one of the barbarians shall escape. We have but to dismiss the traitors
+who have usurped the government, proclaim the Commune and the rights
+of labour, and we give birth to a Hercules that even in its cradle can
+strangle the vipers.”
+
+Edgar Ferrier was the sole member of his political party among the group
+which he thus addressed; but such was the terror which the Communists
+already began to inspire among the bourgeoisie that no one volunteered a
+reply.
+
+Savarin linked his arm in De Breze’s, and prudently drew him off.
+
+“I suspect,” said the former, “that we shall soon have worse calamities
+to endure than the Prussian obus and the black loaf. The Communists will
+have their day.”
+
+“I shall be in my grave before then,” said De Breze, in hollow accents.
+“It is twenty-four hours since I spent my last fifty sous on the
+purchase of a rat, and I burnt the legs of my bedstead for the fuel by
+which that quadruped was roasted.”
+
+“Entre nous, my poor friend, I am much in the same condition,” said
+Savarin, with a ghastly attempt at his old pleasant laugh. “See how I
+am shrunken! My wife would be unfaithful to the Savarin of her dreams
+if she accepted a kiss from the slender gallant you behold in me. But I
+thought you were in the National Guard, and therefore had not to vanish
+into air.”
+
+“I was a National Guard, but I could not stand the hardships, and being
+above the age, I obtained my exemption. As to pay, I was then too proud
+to claim my wage of 1 franc 25 centimes. I should not be too proud now.
+Ah, blessed be Heaven! here comes Lemercier; he owes me a dinner--he
+shall pay it.”
+
+“Bon jour, my dear Frederic! How handsome you look in your kepi! Your
+uniform is brilliantly fresh from the soil of powder. What a contrast to
+the tatterdemalions of the Line!”
+
+“I fear,” said Lemercier, ruefully, “that my costume will not look so
+well a day or two hence. I have just had news that will no doubt seem
+very glorious--in the news papers. But then newspapers are not subjected
+to cannonballs.”
+
+“What do you mean?” answered De Breze.
+
+“I met, as I emerged from my apartment a few minutes ago, that
+fire-eater, Victor de Mauleon, who always contrives to know what passes
+at headquarters. He told me that preparations are being made for a great
+sortie. Most probably the announcement will appear in a proclamation
+tomorrow, and our troops march forth to-morrow night. The National Guard
+(fools and asses who have been yelling out for decisive action) are to
+have their wish, and to be placed in the van of battle,--amongst the
+foremost, the battalion in which I am enrolled. Should this be our last
+meeting on earth, say that Frederic Lemercier has finished his part in
+life with eclat.”
+
+“Gallant friend,” said De Breze, feebly seizing him by the arm, “if it
+be true that thy mortal career is menaced, die as thou hast lived. An
+honest man leaves no debt unpaid. Thou owest me a dinner.”
+
+“Alas! ask of me what is possible. I will give thee three, however, if I
+survive and regain my rentes. But today I have not even a mouse to share
+with Fox.”
+
+“Fox lives then?” cried De Breze, with sparkling hungry eyes.
+
+“Yes. At present he is making the experiment how long an animal can live
+without food.”
+
+“Have mercy upon him, poor beast! Terminate his pangs by a noble death.
+Let him save thy friends and thyself from starving. For myself alone I
+do not plead; I am but an amateur in polite literature. But Savarin, the
+illustrious Savarin,--in criticism the French Longinus--in poetry
+the Parisian Horace--in social life the genius of gaiety in
+pantaloons,--contemplate his attenuated frame! Shall he perish for want
+of food while thou hast such superfluity in thy larder? I appeal to thy
+heart, thy conscience, thy patriotism. What, in the eyes of France, are
+a thousand Foxes compared to a single Savarin?”
+
+“At this moment,” sighed Savarin, “I could swallow anything, however
+nauseous, even thy flattery, De Breze. But, my friend Frederic, thou
+goest into battle--what will become of Fox if thou fall? Will he not be
+devoured by strangers? Surely it were a sweeter thought to his faithful
+heart to furnish a repast to thy friends?--his virtues acknowledged, his
+memory blest!”
+
+“Thou dost look very lean, my poor Savarin! And how hospitable thou wert
+when yet plump!” said Frederic, pathetically. “And certainly, if I live,
+Fox will starve; if I am slain, Fox will be eaten. Yet, poor Fox, dear
+Fox, who lay on my breast when I was frostbitten. No; I have not the
+heart to order him to the spit for you. Urge it not.”
+
+“I will save thee that pang,” cried De Breze. “We are close by thy
+rooms. Excuse me for a moment: I will run in and instruct thy bonne.”
+
+So saying, he sprang forward with an elasticity of step which no one
+could have anticipated from his previous languor. Frederic would have
+followed, but Savarin clung to him, whimpering: “Stay; I shall fall like
+an empty sack, without the support of thine arm, young hero. Pooh! of
+course De Breze is only joking--a pleasant joke. Hist! a secret: he
+has moneys, and means to give us once more a dinner at his own cost,
+pretending that we dine on thy dog. He was planning this when thou
+camest up. Let him have his joke, and we shall have a festin de
+Balthazar.”
+
+“Hein!” said Frederic, doubtfully; “thou art sure he has no designs upon
+Fox?”
+
+“Certainly not, except in regaling us. Donkey is not bad, but it is 14
+francs a pound. A pullet is excellent, but it is 30 francs. Trust to
+De Breze; we shall have donkey and pullet, and Fox shall feast upon the
+remains.”
+
+Before Frederic could reply, the two men were jostled and swept on by a
+sudden rush of a noisy crowd in their rear. They could but distinguish
+the words--Glorious news--victory--Faidherbe--Chanzy. But these words
+were sufficient to induce them to join willingly in the rush. They
+forgot their hunger; they forget Fox. As they were hurried on, they
+learned that there was a report of a complete defeat of the Prussians
+by Faidherbe near Amiens, of a still more decided one on the Loire by
+Chanzy. These generals, with armies flushed with triumph, were pressing
+on towards Paris to accelerate the destruction of the hated Germans. How
+the report arose no one exactly knew.
+
+All believed it, and were making their way to the Hotel de Ville to hear
+it formally confirmed.
+
+Alas! before, they got there they were met by another crowd returning,
+dejected but angry. No such news had reached the Government. Chanzy and
+Faidherbe were no doubt fighting bravely,--with every probability of
+success; but--
+
+The Parisian imagination required no more. “We should always be
+defeating the enemy,” said Savarin, “if there were not always a but;”
+ and his audience, who, had he so expressed himself ten minutes before,
+would have torn him to pieces, now applauded the epigram; and with
+execrations on Trochu, mingled with many a peal of painful sarcastic
+laughter, vociferated and dispersed.
+
+As the two friends sauntered back towards the part of the Boulevards on
+which De Breze had parted company with them, Savarin quitted Lemercier
+suddenly, and crossed the street to accost a small party of two ladies
+and two men who were on their way to the Madeleine. While he was
+exchanging a few words with them, a young couple, arm in arm, passed
+by Lemercier,--the man in the uniform of the National Guard-uniform as
+unsullied as Frederic’s, but with as little of a military air as can
+well be conceived. His gait was slouching; his head bent downwards. He
+did not seem to listen to his companion, who was talking with quickness
+and vivacity, her fair face radiant with smiles. Lemercier looked at
+them as they passed by. “Sur mon ame,” muttered Frederic to himself,
+“surely that is la belle Julie; and she has got back her truant poet at
+last.”
+
+While Lemercier thus soliloquised, Gustave, still looking down, was
+led across the street by his fair companion, and into the midst of
+the little group with whom Savarin had paused to speak. Accidentally
+brushing against Savarin himself, he raised his eyes with a start, about
+to mutter some conventional apology, when Julie felt the arm on which
+she leant tremble nervously. Before him stood Isaura, the Countess
+de Vandemar by her side; her two other companions, Raoul and the Abbe
+Vertpre, a step or two behind.
+
+Gustave uncovered, bowed low, and stood mute and still for a moment,
+paralysed by surprise and the chill of a painful shame.
+
+Julie’s watchful eyes, following his, fixed themselves on the same face.
+On the instant she divined the truth. She beheld her to whom she had
+owed months of jealous agony, and over whom, poor child, she thought she
+had achieved a triumph. But the girl’s heart was so instinctively good
+that the sense of triumph was merged in a sense of compassion. Her rival
+had lost Gustave. To Julie the loss of Gustave was the loss of all that
+makes life worth having. On her part, Isaura was moved not only by
+the beauty of Julie’s countenance, but still more by the childlike
+ingenuousness of its expression.
+
+So, for the first time in their lives, met the child and the stepchild
+of Louise Duval. Each so deserted, each so left alone and inexperienced
+amid the perils of the world, with fates so different, typifying orders
+of womanhood so opposed. Isaura was naturally the first to break the
+silence that weighed like a sensible load on all present.
+
+She advanced towards Rameau, with sincere kindness in her look and tone.
+
+“Accept my congratulations,” she said, with a grave smile. “Your mother
+informed me last evening of your nuptials. Without doubt I see Madame
+Gustave Rameau;”--and she extended her hand towards Julie. The poor
+Ondine shrank back for a moment, blushing up to her temples. It was the
+first hand which a woman of spotless character had extended to her since
+she had lost the protection of Madame Surville. She touched it timidly,
+humbly, then drew her bridegroom on; and with head more downcast than
+Gustave, passed through the group without a word.
+
+She did not speak to Gustave till they were out of sight and hearing of
+those they had left. Then, pressing his arm passionately, she said: “And
+that is the demoiselle thou halt resigned for me! Do not deny it. I
+am so glad to have seen her; it has done me so much good. How it has
+deepened, purified, my love for thee! I have but one return to make;
+but that is my whole life. Thou shalt never have cause to blame
+me--never--never!”
+
+Savarin looked very grave and thoughtful when he rejoined Lemercier.
+
+“Can I believe my eyes?” said Frederic. “Surely that was Julie
+Caumartin leaning on Gustave Rameau’s arm! And had he the assurance, so
+accompanied, to salute Madame de Vandemar, and Mademoiselle Cicogna,
+to whom I understood he was affianced? Nay, did I not see Mademoiselle
+shake hands with the Ondine? or am I under one of the illusions which
+famine is said to engender in the brain?”
+
+“I have not strength now to answer all these interrogatives. I have a
+story to tell; but I keep it for dinner. Let us hasten to thy apartment.
+De Breze is doubtless there waiting us.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Unprescient of the perils that awaited him, absorbed in the sense of
+existing discomfort, cold, and hunger, Fox lifted his mournful visage
+from his master’s dressing-gown, in which he had encoiled his shivering
+frame, on the entrance of De Breze and the concierge of the house in
+which Lemercier had his apartment. Recognising the Vicomte as one of his
+master’s acquaintances, he checked the first impulse that prompted him
+to essay a feeble bark, and permitted himself, with a petulant whine,
+to be extracted from his covering, and held in the arms of the murderous
+visitor.
+
+“Dieu des dieux!” ejaculated De Breze, “how light the poor beast has
+become!” Here he pinched the sides and thighs of the victim. “Still,” he
+said, “there is some flesh yet on these bones. You may grill the paws,
+fricassee the shoulders, and roast the rest. The rognons and the head
+accept for yourself as a perquisite.” Here he transferred Fox to the
+arms of the concierge, adding, “Vite au besogne, mon ami.”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur. I must be quick about it while my wife is absent.
+She has a faiblesse for the brute. He must be on the spit before she
+returns.”
+
+“Be it so; and on the table in an hour--five o’clock precisely--I am
+famished.”
+
+The concierge disappeared with Fox. De Breze then amused himself by
+searching into Frederic’s cupboards and buffets, from which he produced
+a cloth and utensils necessary for the repast. These he arranged with
+great neatness, and awaited in patience the moment of participation in
+the feast.
+
+The hour of five had struck before Savarin and Frederio entered the
+salon; and at their sight De Breze dashed to the staircase and called
+out to the concierge to serve the dinner.
+
+Frederic, though unconscious of the Thyestean nature of the banquet,
+still looked round for the dog; and, not perceiving him, began to call
+out, “Fox! Fox! where hast thou hidden thyself?”
+
+“Tranquillise yourself,” said De Breze. “Do not suppose that I have
+not....”
+
+NOTE BY THE AUTHOR’S SON.--[See also Prefatory Note]--The hand that
+wrote thus far has left unwritten the last scene of the tragedy of poor
+Fox. In the deep where Prospero has dropped his wand are now irrevocably
+buried the humour and the pathos of this cynophagous banquet. One
+detail of it, however, which the author imparted to his son, may here
+be faintly indicated. Let the sympathising reader recognise all that is
+dramatic in the conflict between hunger and affection; let him recall
+to mind the lachrymose loving-kindness of his own post-prandial emotions
+after blissfully breaking some fast, less mercilessly prolonged, we will
+hope, than that of these besieged banqueters, and then, though unaided
+by the fancy which conceived so quaint a situation, he may perhaps
+imagine what tearful tenderness would fill the eyes of the kind-hearted
+Frederic, as they contemplate the well-picked bones of his sacrificed
+favourite on the plate before him; which he pushes away, sighing, “Ah,
+poor Fox! how he would have enjoyed those bones!”
+
+The chapter immediately following this one also remains unfinished. It
+was not intended to close the narrative thus left uncompleted; but of
+those many and so various works which have not unworthily associated
+with almost every department of literature the name of a single English
+writer, it is CHAPTER THE LAST. Had the author lived to finish it, he
+would doubtless have added to his Iliad of the Siege of Paris its most
+epic episode, by here describing the mighty combat between those two
+princes of the Parisian Bourse, the magnanimous Duplessis and the
+redoubtable Louvier. Amongst the few other pages of the book which
+have been left unwritten, we must also reckon with regret some pages
+descriptive of the reconciliation between Graham Vane and Isaura
+Cicogna; but, fortunately for the satisfaction of every reader who
+may have followed thus far the fortunes of Die Parisians, all that our
+curiosity is chiefly interested to learn has been recorded in the Envoi,
+which was written before the completion of the novel.
+
+We know not, indeed, what has become of these two Parisian types of
+a Beauty not of Holiness, the poor vain Poet of the Pave, and the
+good-hearted Ondine of the Gutter. It is obvious, from the absence of
+all allusion to them in Lemercier’s letter to Vane, that they had passed
+out of the narrative before that letter was written. We must suppose
+the catastrophe of their fates to have been described, in some preceding
+chapter, by the author himself; who would assuredly not have left
+141. Gustave Rameau in permanent pos session of his ill-merited and
+ill-ministered fortune. That French representative of the appropriately
+popular poetry of modern ideas, which prefers “the roses and raptures
+of vice” to “the lilies and languors of virtue,” cannot have been
+irredeemably reconciled by the sweet savours of the domestic pot-au jeu,
+even when spiced with pungent whiffs of repudiated disreputability, to
+any selfish betrayal of the cause of universal social emancipation from
+the personal proprieties. If poor Julie Caumartin has perished in the
+siege of Paris, with all the grace of a self-wrought redemption still
+upon her, we shall doubtless deem her fate a happier one than any she
+could have found in prolonged existence as Madame Rameau; and a certain
+modicum of this world’s good things will, in that case, have been
+rescued for worthier employment by Graham Vane. To that assurance
+nothing but Lemercier’s description of the fate of Victor de Mauleon
+(which will be found in the Envoi) need be added for the satisfaction of
+our sense of poetic justice and if on the mimic stage, from which they
+now disappear, all these puppets have rightly played their parts in the
+drama of an empire’s fall, each will have helped to “point a moral” as
+well as to “adorn a tale.” Valete et plaudite!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+Among the refugees which the convoi from Versailles disgorged on the
+Paris station were two men, who, in pushing through the crowd, came
+suddenly face to face with each other.
+
+“Aha! Bon jour, M. Duplessis,” said a burly voice. “Bon jour, M.
+Louvier,” replied Duplessis.
+
+“How long have you left Bretagne?”
+
+“On the day that the news of the armistice reached it, in order to be
+able to enter Paris the first day its gates were open. And you--where
+have you been?”
+
+“In London.”
+
+“Ah! in London!” said Duplessis, paling. “I knew I had an enemy there.”
+
+“Enemy! I? Bah! my dear Monsieur. What makes you think me your enemy?”
+
+“I remember your threats.”
+
+“A propos of Rochebriant. By the way, when would it be convenient to you
+and the dear Marquis to let me into prompt possession of that property?
+You can no longer pretend to buy it as a dot for Mademoiselle Valerie.”
+
+“I know not that yet. It is true that all the financial operations
+attempted by my agent in London have failed. But I may recover myself
+yet, now that I re-enter Paris. In the mean time, we have still six
+months before us; for, as you will find--if you know it not already--the
+interest due to you has been lodged with Messrs. ---- of ------, and you
+cannot foreclose, even if the law did not take into consideration the
+national calamities as between debtor and creditor.”
+
+“Quite true. But if you cannot buy the property it must pass into my
+hands in a very short time. And you and the Marquis had better come to
+an amicable arrangement with me. Apropos, I read in the Times newspaper
+that Alain was among the wounded in the sortie of December.”
+
+“Yes; we learnt that through a pigeon-post. We were afraid....”
+
+
+
+
+L’ENVOI.
+
+The intelligent reader will perceive that the story I relate is
+virtually closed with the preceding chapter; though I rejoice to think
+that what may be called its plot does not find its denouement amidst the
+crimes and the frenzy of the Guerre des Communeaux. Fit subjects these,
+indeed, for the social annalist in times to come. When crimes that
+outrage humanity have their motive or their excuse in principles that
+demand the demolition of all upon which the civilisation of Europe has
+its basis-worship, property, and marriage--in order to reconstruct a new
+civilisation adapted to a new humanity, it is scarcely possible for
+the serenest contemporary to keep his mind in that state of abstract
+reasoning with which Philosophy deduces from some past evil some
+existent good. For my part, I believe that throughout the whole known
+history of mankind, even in epochs when reason is most misled and
+conscience most perverted, there runs visible, though fine and
+threadlike, the chain of destiny, which has its roots in the throne
+of an All-wise and an All-good; that in the wildest illusions by which
+muititudes are frenzied, there may be detected gleams of prophetic
+truths; that in the fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an
+epidemic, characterise a peculiar epoch under abnormal circumstances,
+there might be found instincts or aspirations towards some social
+virtues to be realised ages afterwards by happier generations, all
+tending to save man from despair of the future, were the whole society
+to unite for the joyless hour of his race in the abjuration of soul and
+the denial of God, because all irresistibly establishing that yearning
+towards an unseen future which is the leading attribute of soul,
+evincing the government of a divine Thought which evolves out of the
+discords of one age the harmonies of another, and, in the world within
+us as in the world without, enforces upon every unclouded reason the
+distinction between Providence and chance.
+
+The account subjoined may suffice to say all that rests to be said of
+those individuals in whose fate, apart from the events or personages
+that belong to graver history, the reader of this work may have
+conceived an interest. It is translated from the letter of Frederic
+Lemercier to Graham Vane, dated June ----, a month after the defeat of
+the Communists.
+
+“Dear and distinguished Englishman, whose name I honour but fail to
+pronounce, accept my cordial thanks for your interests in such remains
+of Frederic Lemercier as yet survive the ravages of Famine, Equality,
+Brotherhood, Petroleum, and the Rights of Labour. I did not desert my
+Paris when M. Thiers, ‘parmula non bene relicta,’ led his sagacious
+friends and his valiant troops to the groves of Versailles, and confided
+to us unarmed citizens the preservation of order and property from the
+insurgents whom he left in possession of our forts and cannon. I felt
+spellbound by the interest of the sinistoe melodrame, with its quick
+succession of scenic effects and the metropolis of the world for its
+stage. Taught by experience, I did not aspire to be an actor; and even
+as a spectator, I took care neither to hiss nor applaud. Imitating your
+happy England, I observed a strict neutrality; and, safe myself from
+danger, left my best friends to the care of the gods.
+
+“As to political questions, I dare not commit myself to a conjecture.
+At this rouge et noir table, all I can say is, that whichever card turns
+up, it is either a red or a black one. One gamester gains for the moment
+by the loss of the other; the table eventually ruins both.
+
+“No one believes that the present form of government can last; every one
+differs as to that which can. Raoul de Vandemar is immovably convinced
+of the restoration of the Bourbons. Savarin is meditating a new journal
+devoted to the cause of the Count of Paris. De Brew and the old Count
+de Passy, having in turn espoused and opposed every previous form of
+government, naturally go in for a perfectly novel experiment, and are
+for constitutional dictatorship under the Duc d’Aumale, which he is to
+hold at his own pleasure, and ultimately resign to his nephew the Count,
+under the mild title of a constitutional king;--that is, if it ever
+suits the pleasure of a dictator to depose himself. To me this seems
+the wildest of notions. If the Duc’s administration were successful, the
+French would insist on keeping it; and if the uncle were unsuccessful,
+the nephew would not have a chance. Duplessis retains his faith in the
+Imperial dynasty; and that Imperialist party is much stronger than it
+appears on the surface. So many of the bourgeoisie recall with a sigh
+eighteen years of prosperous trade; so many of the military officers, so
+many of the civil officials, identify their career with the Napoleonic
+favour; and so many of the Priesthood, abhorring the Republic, always
+liable to pass into the hands of those who assail religion,--unwilling
+to admit the claim of the Orleanists, are at heart for the Empire.
+
+“But I will tell you one secret. I and all the quiet folks like me (we
+are more numerous than any one violent faction) are willing to accept
+any form of government by which we have the best chance of keeping our
+coats on our backs. Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity, are gone quite out
+of fashion; and Mademoiselle--has abandoned her great chant of the
+Marseillaise, and is drawing tears from enlightened audiences by her
+pathetic delivery of ‘O Richard! O mon roi!’”
+
+“Now about the other friends of whom you ask for news.
+
+“Wonders will never cease. Louvier and Duplessis are no longer deadly
+rivals. They have become sworn friends, and are meditating a great
+speculation in common, to commence as soon as the Prussian debt is paid
+off. Victor de Mauleon brought about this reconciliation in a single
+interview during the brief interregnum between the Peace and the Guerre
+des Communeaux. You know how sternly Louvier was bent upon seizing
+Alain de Rochebriant’s estates. Can you conceive the true cause? Can you
+imagine it possible that a hardened money-maker like Louvier should ever
+allow himself to be actuated, one way or the other, by the romance of
+a sentimental wrong? Yet so it was. It seems that many years ago he was
+desperately in love with a girl who disappeared from his life, and whom
+he believed to have been seduced by the late Marquis de Rochebriant.
+It was in revenge for this supposed crime that he had made himself the
+principal mortgagee of the late Marquis; and, visiting the sins of
+the father on the son, had, under the infernal disguise of friendly
+interest, made himself sole mortgagee to Alain, upon terms apparently
+the most generous. The demon soon showed his griffe, and was about to
+foreclose, when Duplessis came to Alain’s relief; and Rochebriant was
+to be Valerie’s dot on her marriage with Alain. The Prussian war, of
+course, suspended all such plans, pecuniary and matrimonial. Duplessis,
+whose resources were terribly crippled by the war, attempted operations
+in London with a view of raising the sum necessary to pay off the
+mortgage;--found himself strangely frustrated and baffled. Louvier
+was in London, and defeated his rival’s agent in every speculation. It
+became impossible for Duplessis to redeem the mortgage. The two men came
+to Paris with the peace. Louvier determined both to seize the Breton
+lands and to complete the ruin of Duplessis, when he learned from De
+Mauleon that he had spent half his life in a baseless illusion; that
+Alain’s father was innocent of the crime for which his son was to
+suffer;--and Victor, with that strange power over men’s minds which was
+so peculiar to him, talked Louvier into mercy if not into repentance. In
+short, the mortgage is to be paid off by instalments at the convenience
+of Duplessis. Alain’s marriage with Valerie is to take place in a few
+weeks. The fournisseurs are already gone to fit up the old chateau for
+the bride, and Louvier is invited to the wedding.
+
+“I have all this story from Alain, and from Duplessis himself. I tell
+the tale as ‘twas told to me, with all the gloss of sentiment upon its
+woof. But between ourselves, I am too Parisian not to be sceptical as
+to the unalloyed amiability of sudden conversions. And I suspect that
+Louvier was no longer in a condition to indulge in the unprofitable whim
+of turning rural seigneur. He had sunk large sums and incurred great
+liabilities in the new street to be called after his name; and that
+street has been twice ravaged, first by the Prussian siege, and next
+by the Guerre des Communeaux; and I can detect many reasons why Louvier
+should deem it prudent not only to withdraw from the Rochebriant
+seizure, and make sure of peacefully recovering the capital lent on it,
+but establishing joint interest and quasi partnership with a financier
+so brilliant and successful as Armand Duplessis has hitherto been.
+
+“Alain himself is not quite recovered from his wound, and is now at
+Rochebriant, nursed by his aunt and Valerie. I have promised to visit
+him next week. Raoul de Vandemar is still at Paris with his mother,
+saying, there is no place where one Christian man can be of such
+service. The old Count declines to come back, saying there is no place
+where a philosopher can be in such danger.
+
+“I reserve as my last communication, in reply to your questions, that
+which is the gravest. You say that you saw in the public journals brief
+notice of the assassination of Victor de Mauleon; and you ask for such
+authentic particulars as I can give of that event, and of the motives of
+the assassin.
+
+“I need not, of course, tell you how bravely the poor Vicomte behaved
+throughout the siege; but he made many enemies among the worst members
+of the National Guard by the severity of his discipline; and had he been
+caught by the mob the same day as Clement Thomas, who committed the same
+offence, would have certainly shared the fate of that general. Though
+elected a depute, he remained at Paris a few days after Thiers & Co.
+left it, in the hope of persuading the party of Order, including then
+no small portion of the National Guards, to take prompt and vigorous
+measures to defend the city against the Communists. Indignant at
+their pusillanimity, he then escaped to Versailles. There he more than
+confirmed the high reputation he had acquired during the siege, and
+impressed the ablest public men with the belief that he was destined
+to take a very leading part in the strife of party. When the Versailles
+troops entered Paris, he was, of course, among them in command of a
+battalion.
+
+“He escaped safe through that horrible war of barricades, though no man
+more courted danger. He inspired his men with his own courage. It was
+not till the revolt was quenched on the evening of the 28th May that he
+met his death. The Versailles soldiers, naturally exasperated, were very
+prompt in seizing and shooting at once every passenger who looked like a
+foe. Some men under De Mauleon had seized upon one of these victims,
+and were hurrying him into the next street for execution, when, catching
+sight of the Vicomte, he screamed out, ‘Lebeau, save me!’
+
+“At that cry De Mauleon rushed forward, arrested his soldiers, cried,
+‘This man is innocent--a harmless physician. I answer for him.’ As he
+thus spoke, a wounded Communist, lying in the gutter amidst a heap of
+the slain, dragged himself up, reeled towards De Mauleon, plunged a
+knife between his shoulders, and dropped down dead.
+
+“The Vicomte was carried into a neighbouring house, from all the windows
+of which the tricolour was suspended; and the Medecin whom he had just
+saved from summary execution examined and dressed his wound. The Vicomte
+lingered for more than an hour, but expired in the effort to utter some
+words, the sense of which those about him endeavoured in vain to seize.
+
+“It was from the Medecin that the name of the assassin and the motive
+for the crime were ascertained. The miscreant was a Red Republican and
+Socialist named Armand Monnier. He had been a very skilful workman, and
+earning, as such, high wages. But he thought fit to become an active
+revolutionary politician, first led into schemes for upsetting the world
+by the existing laws of marriage, which had inflicted on him one woman
+who ran away from him, but being still legally his wife, forbade him
+to marry another woman with whom he lived, and to whom he seems to have
+been passionately attached.
+
+“These schemes, however, he did not put into any positive practice till
+he fell in with a certain Jean Lebeau, who exercised great influence
+over him, and by whom he was admitted into one of the secret
+revolutionary societies which had for their object the overthrow of the
+Empire. After that time his head became turned. The fall of the Empire
+put an end to the society he had joined: Lebeau dissolved it. During
+the siege Monnier was a sort of leader among the ouvriers; but as it
+advanced and famine commenced, he contracted the habit of intoxication.
+His children died of cold and hunger. The woman he lived with followed
+them to the grave. Then he seems to have become a ferocious madman,
+and to have been implicated in the worst crimes of the Communists. He
+cherished a wild desire of revenge against this Jean Lebeau, to whom
+he attributed all his calamities, and by whom, he said, his brother had
+been shot in the sortie of December.
+
+“Here comes the strange part of the story. This Jean Lebeau is alleged
+to have been one and the same person with Victor de Mauleon. The Medecin
+I have named, and who is well known in Belleville and Montmartre as the
+Medecin des Pauvres, confesses that he belonged to the secret society
+organised by Lebeau; that the disguise the Vicomte assumed was so
+complete, that he should not have recognised his identity with
+the conspirator but for an accident. During the latter time of the
+bombardment, he, the _Medecin des Pauvres_, was on the eastern ramparts,
+and his attention was suddenly called to a man mortally wounded by
+the splinter of a shell. While examining the nature of the wound; De
+Mauleon, who was also on the ramparts, came to the spot. The dying man
+said, ‘M. le Vicomte, you owe me a service. My name is Marc le Roux.
+I was on the police before the war. When M. de. Mauleon reassumed his
+station, and was making himself obnoxious to the Emperor, I might have
+denounced him as Jean Lebeau the conspirator. I did not. The siege
+has reduced me to want. I have a child at home--a pet. Don’t let her
+starve.’ ‘I will see to her,’ said the Vicomte. Before we could get the
+man into the ambulance cart he expired.
+
+“The Medecin who told this story I had the curiosity to see myself, and
+cross-question. I own I believe his statement. Whether De Mauleon did
+or did not conspire against a fallen dynasty, to which he owed no
+allegiance, can little, if at all, injure the reputation he has left
+behind of a very remarkable man--of great courage and great ability--who
+might have had a splendid career if he had survived. But, as Savarin
+says truly, the first bodies which the car of revolution crushes down
+are those which first harness themselves to it.
+
+“Among De Mauleon’s papers is the programme of a constitution fitted for
+France. How it got into Savarin’s hands I know not. De Mauleon left no
+will, and no relations came forward to claim his papers. I asked Savarin
+to give me the heads of the plan, which he did. They are as follows:
+
+“The American republic is the sole one worth studying, for it has
+lasted. The causes of its duration are in the checks to democratic
+fickleness and disorder. 1st. No law affecting the Constitution can
+be altered without the consent of two-thirds of Congress. 2nd. To
+counteract the impulses natural to a popular Assembly chosen by
+universal suffrage, the greater legislative powers, especially in
+foreign affairs, are vested in the Senate, which has even executive
+as well as legislative functions. 3rd. The Chief of the State,
+having elected his government, can maintain it independent of hostile
+majorities in either Assembly.
+
+“‘These three principles of safety to form the basis of any new
+constitution for France.
+
+“‘For France it is essential that the chief magistrate, under whatever
+title he assume, should be as irresponsible as an English sovereign.
+Therefore he should not preside at his councils; he should not lead his
+armies. The day for personal government is gone, even in Prussia. The
+safety for order in a State is that, when things go wrong, the Ministry
+changes, the State remains the same. In Europe, Republican institutions
+are safer where the chief magistrate is hereditary than where elective.’
+
+“Savarin says these axioms are carried out at length, and argued with
+great ability.
+
+“I am very grateful for your proffered hospitalities in England. Some
+day I shall accept them-viz., whenever I decide on domestic life, and
+the calm of the conjugal foyer. I have a penchant for an English Mees,
+and am not exacting as to the dot. Thirty thousand livres sterling would
+satisfy me--a trifle, I believe, to you rich islanders.
+
+“Meanwhile I am naturally compelled to make up for the miseries of that
+horrible siege. Certain moralising journals tell us that, sobered by
+misfortunes, the Parisians are going to turn over a new leaf, become
+studious and reflective, despise pleasure and luxury, and live like
+German professors. Don’t believe a word of it. My conviction is that,
+whatever may be said as to our frivolity, extravagance, &c., under the
+Empire, we shall be just the same under any form of government--the
+bravest, the most timid, the most ferocious, the kindest-hearted, the
+most irrational, the most intelligent, the most contradictory, the most
+consistent people whom Jove, taking counsel of Venus and the Graces,
+Mars and the Furies, ever created for the delight and terror of
+the world;--in a word, the Parisians.--Votre tout divoue, ‘FREDERIC
+LEMERCIER.’”
+
+It is a lovely noon on the bay of Sorrento, towards the close of the
+autumn of 1871. Upon the part of the craggy shore, to the left of the
+town, on which her first perusal of the loveliest poem in which the
+romance of Christian heroism has ever combined elevation of thought with
+silvery delicacies of speech, had charmed her childhood, reclined
+the young bride of Graham Vane. They were in the first month of their
+marriage. Isaura had not yet recovered from the effects of all that had
+preyed upon her life, from the hour in which she had deemed that in her
+pursuit of fame she had lost the love that had coloured her genius and
+inspired her dreams, to that in which....
+
+The physicians consulted agreed in insisting on her passing the winter
+in a southern climate; and after their wedding, which took place in
+Florence, they thus came to Sorrento.
+
+As Isaura is seated on the small smoothed rock, Graham reclines at her
+feet, his face upturned to hers with an inexpressible wistful anxiety in
+his impassioned tenderness. “You are sure you feel better and stronger
+since we have been here?”
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The Parisians, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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