THE WEDDING-PLACE.
The day of the opening of the Exhibition was coming near, so was the
day of the nuptials of Miss Eve and Monsieur de Courcy, which had first
been fixed for the 23rd of July, and then, by the nerves and eagerness
of the bride’s groom and friends, fixed for the 5th; and now orders
for the _gâteau de noce_ and other articles had already gone out, and
already the lady and her guardians were at Grönland, a seat of the
Comtesse de Pichegru-Picard near to Orléans, where it was arranged that
the marriage should take place.
In these circumstances Shan Healy observed truly to the Hindoo
Nundcumar, “There be things brewing in his brain, as you’ll see before
too long—at work like six whirlwinds! And there’s a little smile
about’n somehow, and a something somewhere in his eye that spells
pestilence to somebody, I haven’t a doubt.”
Healy was seated in the evening dusk by the Hindoo’s side, who, still
luxuriating in bed with his nose sore in cotton-wools, lay silent
awhile, but then lifting himself to hug his meagre knees, said with
that wagging of his head, “Let him run, let him go along; but one day
the whirlpools of destiny will decapitulate his head.”
“Oh, you go to hell,” Healy muttered; “learn to speak Christian English
first, and then turn prophet.”
The Hindoo’s loose tongue, in these weeks unusually quiet, was anew
silent, his silences as well as his speech filled with that movement
of his head which was as continuous as the neck-movement of Chinese
playthings, and as full of meaning and meditation; and presently he
observed, “And when he is done for, whirled up and filibustered for all
he is worth, I know who will be the doer of it.”
“Who’s that, then?” Healy demanded, and the Hindoo’s bony little face
became animated a moment as he made answer, “The woman who threw the
vitriol in my face!”
“Oh, she,” said the other, “safe enough in chokey for four years
anyway—‘_travaux forcés_’ they d’ name it here; and serves her jolly
well right, too.”
Nundcumar, with his eyes shut and a head that wagged, said, “If she
stops there!”
“Who’s to get her out?” demanded Healy aggressively.
“I—do not know,” remarked the Oriental innocently, with opening palms.
“Look here, you’re a nice one to be speaking in this kind of way,”
Healy suddenly said; “appears to me as if you’d like to see it done!”
“Me?” said Nundcumar; “na, na, not me, my sonnies. What! me? Why, what
was I when he ascended me out of the gutter? A dog, a hungry wretch in
rags, just ready for the hangman to garrot by the throat”—he rushed his
forefinger across his scraggy throat—“and now, what has he made of me?
A king with slaves to ceremony my bathing, and everybody bowing himself
down to make me the how-d’-you-do. And why this? Because he liked while
at his work to listen with one ear to Nundcumar retailing wholesale
his anecdotes of past doings, times, histories, befallings, happenings
and epochs, and to hear Nundcumar speak his ingenious English; he
wanted me for his gas-bag, his gabbling ape! and he gave me garments of
shawl-goat wool, and dancing-girls of Persia with gold bells on their
ankles to play the kitar before my godhood, all because he couldn’t do
without his Nundcumar’s tongue. Na, na, not me. And then he made the
villain woman vituperate her vitriol upon the nose and mouth of his
good old hound-dog.”
“Serves you right,” observed Healy: “what earthly right had you to
admit the woman into the palace without proper inquiries? And who was
to have the vitriol in the chops, you or he, I should like to know?”
“He might have chosen _you_ to have it,” the Oriental quietly replied,
throwing an underlook at Healy, upon which Healy chuckled within
himself, saying, “Ey, but he didn’t choose, you see!”
“No,” said the Hindoo, “he chose his Nundcumar instead. But never mind,
it’s nothing, this. Only that’s bad, Healy, my friend, when the evil
eye is thrown upon a man, for there’s not a god sitting on his throne
of gold can escape——”
“And who’s thrown this evil eye upon him?”
“That woman—that villain woman.”
“Safe, thank God, under lock and key.”
“May be; safe, thank God, under lock and key, may be: but did I never
tell and expostulate you the history and anecdote of the time and epoch
when I and my brother were in the service of the Maharajah of——”
“Oh, I’m ill of your lies,” said the other; “you never had a brother,
nor he nor you never were in the service of any Maharajah in this
world. So help me God, I never heard tell of a nigger the like of
you: other men lie with a view to deceiving people, but you lie like
a lying-machine, just because you needs must, without the least bit
expecting that anybody will be believing you.”
“Do they believe _you_?” the Hindoo demanded; “may be I know one that
doesn’t, since he has had every step of yours spied, vigilised, and
super-inspected ever since his sire has been over.”
At this Healy, eyeing the floor, heaved a sigh, and then getting up
from his seat, said with the dignity of grief, “Well, you are right
there, no doubt,” and walked out.
At that hour Lepsius himself, in an apartment without walls on a lower
floor, was speaking with Mr. E. Reader Meade, who reposed on a couch
at his ease, handing a moustache that rolled down like a weir, while
Lepsius himself, in a sudeyree and trousers of nankeen, stood close
to a telephone hung on one of the columns. In the midst a punkah,
somehow worked, fanned the face; a fountain which span showered whirls
of spray round flowers and ferns; two girls a good way off in corners
continually caused their typewriters to prattle, peering nigh their
work in the dusk; while here and there other species of machines
competed in making their workings heard.
“Well,” Mr. Reader Meade was saying in English, “their scheme of
getting hold of your person, of course, seems to me, too, a bit
absurd—and you say you knew of it?”
“Well?” said Lepsius to someone at the telephone, throwing immediately
to Meade the reply, “Yes, I knew,” and to the telephone-speaker the
words, “Where, then, is Monsieur le Duc de Rey-Drouilhet at present?”
and to Meade again, “Go on.”
“I’ll wait,” said Meade.
“I listen,” said Lepsius.
“Let us take it, then,” said Meade, “that you will scarcely fail to
elude that plot: for that’s the sick spot of your Frenchman, he lacks
humour, is so pre-occupied with _ideas_, that he lacks nice adjustment
to facts, often fails to measure his new man or thing, and so comes a
cropper in practice——”
“Precisely,” said Lepsius, “you are very shrewd—as usual. Say then,” he
added to his telephone-speaker, “that I can receive Monsieur le Duc de
Rey-Drouilhet for seven minutes.”
“The castle to which you are to be inveigled,” said Meade, “is called
Château Egmond, on the Brittany coast, a league from St. Brieuc,
and fourteen from your own Serapis. It is the property of Madame la
Comtesse de Pichegru-Picard, has been leased from her by the League,
I hear, and de Courcy, it is said, means to make it his residence
immediately after his marriage, which takes place at Grönland, near
Orléans, on the 5th—or am I giving you all stale news?”
“I knew,” Lepsius said, as he now flew through the room to drop some
words at the ear of one of the girls, who in turn eagerly spurted out;
and now, returning, he said to Meade, seating himself on the floor with
clasped knees, “Only I don’t quite understand by what means they hope
to get me to go to this Château Egmond.”
“I am not too sure,” said the other, “but Saïd Pasha, who is always
at the bottom of the _dessous de la politique_, asked me at the
Palais-Bourbon last night to tell you that Nuncio _ad interim_ Montijo
will be of the company at the château, and as you are believed to be
eager to gain the Church-party, this may be intended to motive you to
accept their invitation. Then also Marshal Rémy will be there, and
your right hand, Schuré.”
Lepsius was up, speeding off to peer into a little machine hitched
on to the telephone which fretted and roared in fits, saying as he
ran, “But do they imagine that one cannot negotiate with Rémy, Schuré
and Montijo without going down to Brittany? It is conspiracy of—let
us say of Bismarcks, all born on the first of April!” at which word
“Bismarcks” he chuckled maliciously within himself.
“But a conspiracy having this peril,” remarked Meade, “that Isabeau
Thiéry seems to be more or less in it.”
“Oh, Thiéry is a shadow,” said Lepsius, throwing himself flat on a
table, his hands under his head; “his characteristic is that he does
not exist.”
“I should rather say,” said Meade, “that his characteristic is that he
is the half-brother of Fanny Schuré, who is the wife of Schuré, who is
the engineer-in-chief of the moon-machine.”
“And that matters in your judgment, I see,” said Lepsius.
“Much in my judgment,” the other answered very impressively; “you
don’t, I think, know the Thiérys well; they are one of those French
families who regard each of their members as something between a god, a
genius, and a pet-dog to be pampered; and Isabeau Thiéry in particular,
with his three volumes of Victor Hugo verse, is to Fanny dear no less
than Hermes Trismegistus. I tell you so, Lepsius. He is a ghost, you
say, and I say ditto; but his influence with this grande dame of a
Fanny must be great enough: if he is against you, Fanny is against
you. And you won’t undervalue this woman’s sway? A bit Brantômesque in
tone as the girl may be, with her ambition to say things worthy of
Esther Guimont, if not of Ninon de l’Enclos, she has quite earnestly
this further ambition, to revive the _alcove_, and, by pulling the
wires in the political drama, to be called a Chateauroux or a Genlis.
As to Schuré himself, you know him: _au fond_ he is a viveur living in
the _odor di femina_; his guts is his God, and his ‘fafemme’[C] is his
Devil. If she tempts, he attempts; she says go, and he goeth. And I say
that, if Isabeau Thiéry goes against you, then, through Fanny, Schuré
would agree to yield to the immense pressure of your enemies to tamper
with the moon-construction; and if there’s the smallest failure as to
the moon—ah! well, you know the consequence of that.”
[C] Wifie.
“You are always very shrewd,” said Lepsius, lying on his back with shut
eyes, “and but for your judgment I should surely miscarry in everything
that I attempt. All this that you say is quite true, and I have always
intended to bribe Isabeau Thiéry at the right moment.”
“With money? Isabeau Thiéry?”
“Why the surprise?”
The Englishman got his limbs together, and sitting now on his
couch-edge, stared, saying, “You cannot do that, you know.... Bribe any
of them, the brokers, popes, emperors; but you cannot bribe a poet,
man! Don’t you know that for a fact, Lepsius? Frankly, you occasionally
bring your friends’ admiration of your brain to some sudden cropper...!
You, too, having that French fixity of idea and lack of humour, knowing
the human clock so minutely in everything, except just its divine
trick, its ‘eccentricity,’ as mechanicians say. You couldn’t bribe
Thiéry!”
“Abundantly, I meant,” observed Lepsius.
“But that’s worse! If you send him five hundred francs, there’s just
the millionth fraction of a chance that it might influence him, since
he is so jolly poor; but if you send him five millions, don’t you know,
really, what will happen? He’ll throw up the melodramatic right-hand
that crumples the cheque, cry ‘Cato!’ and rush off to Sister Fanny to
crush you. It’s the ‘eccentricity’ in the earth’s yearly journey: you
count ill if you leave it out.”
At this Lepsius, springing up, looked at the other in the way of one
who is struck by what has been said, and he had begun to say, “What
grounds, now, have you——” when a negro, coming in between two of the
columns, announced, “Monsieur le Duc de Rey-Drouilhet,” and now Meade
said, “Well, I’ll be away,” adding, “you can bribe _him_, Lepsius.”
“And all of you,” thought Lepsius within himself with a somewhat sullen
eye askance on his friend.
The friendly Englishman and Lepsius, looking rather like cow and
calf together, now exchanged a hand-shake, and in soon stepped the
aged little duke, diffusing smells of perfumery, showing a youthful
streak of teeth which shook, to seat himself finically on the couch
which Meade had left, while anew Lepsius flew hither and thither, for
some time paying no heed to the fop’s presence, who meantime secretly
touched his teeth, lips, cheeks, and sucked a cachou; till at last
Lepsius, casting a look at one of a quartette of clocks, cheque-book in
hand, dashed to sit by his side, remarking, “Six minutes and a half,
Monsieur le Duc, and my admirable friend: tell.”
“Why, it was you who sent for me,” the duke said, tittering in his
fluttering and fussy manner, “it is you, Monsieur Lepsius, whose rôle
it is to tell!”
To this Lepsius made no answer, but stamping a cheque with a number of
francs, furiously wrote the duke’s name on it, and now threw the cheque
askew to the duke’s knees, without looking at him; upon which the duke
sprang up somewhat pallid under his rouge, muttering in a protesting
manner, “No, Monsieur Lepsius—your manner—I cannot accept—you forget,
monsieur——”
Lepsius groaned. “We are such old cronies! And surely time is ever a
thing of some value. Can you _not_ see it? Tell, tell.”
“I am aware that your time is valuable——”
“Yes, of course: tell.”
“But——”
“No, tell.”
“But are there to be no preliminaries? No pourparlers? You have handed
me a cheque, monsieur—I know not for what amount, since positively I
decline to inspect it——”
“Twenty thousand, that being the first of several, the others to be
written out as you proceed in amounts proportioned to the worth of your
words.”
“The figures will be big in that event!”
“They shall be; you know that I am immense in generosity.”
“But it is a bribe!—if you consider it. I was never, however, to be
bribed! You forget, monsieur, that I bear a name which I never have,
nor ever shall, stain by any real meanness; nor, if I have accepted
money of you in the past——”
“It was not a bribe, it was a gratuity; a meanness, but not a ‘real’
meanness, because of your secret ardour for my person and service. I
know it all, nor should ever dream of insulting that name you bear with
a ‘real’ bribe: tell.”
“Well, provided we do thoroughly understand each other’s tone, monsieur
...” the duke now said, sitting down anew with a twitching up of
his trousers’ knees, “though in the present instance I absolutely
do not feel that I could touch your cheque with honour, since,
really, if you consider it, monsieur, it is a betrayal of comrades,
this, in which I am engaged—you cannot get rid of the fact by any
sophistry!—it—is—a—betrayal; nothing less!”
“Not a betrayal, only an exposure,” said Lepsius drearily, “nor need
you actually touch the cheque,” and picking it up, he put it into the
peer’s pocket.
“Well, say an ‘exposure,’ since everything, after all, depends on
the tone of an act, and everything is right that is done by the
right-minded.... At any rate, let me tell you, monsieur, that you stand
in a situation of even the extremist danger!”
“I know; and Isabeau Thiéry is in it.”
“Why, yes.”
“Tell—deeply?”
“Deeply enough, although not whole-heartedly, I know. Moreover, he
hasn’t a sou, so can at any moment be opened to you by the golden key.”
“And Dr. Lepsius?”
“He also ... I am in the dark, by the way, as to whether the doctor is
a relative of yours, although the question is being asked——”
“No relative. But that man is actually in the inside of the inner plot
to kidnap and imprison me? Yes?”
“Why, yes. He has attended each of the recent councils in the house of
Monseigneur Piscari, has even made suggestions as to the means of your
capture.”
The left cheek of Lepsius went ashen a second or two, and all at once
he was up to fly with an eye on fire to a speaking-tube some distance
off, through which, when he had whistled, he murmured low, “33, you?”
The answer was, “Yes.”
“Telephone to P.,” said Lepsius, “asking if all is ready on his side,
in which case let him now wire to B13 to burn within an hour.” At the
same time, without looking round, he cried out to the duke, “You see
the amount is as I stated it, Monsieur le Duc!” for the duke was taking
the chance to scrutinise his cheque narrowly in the twilight.
“I will see to it,” was the answer of the speaking-tube to Lepsius, who
then sped back to the duke, saying, “Two minutes more, monsieur; tell
details.”
The old fop laid one forefinger on the other, and with much animation
of manner gave the details. Lepsius was to be got to Château Egmond,
a league from St. Brieuc, by means of an accumulation of inducements,
the chief being that Schuré, the engineer, without speaking with whom
it was assumed that Lepsius could not exist a week, would be present:
for Schuré, though not of the conspiracy—at all events not formally,
so far—had, however, promised to be of the house-party for two or
three days; and it was proposed that Schuré should fall more or less
indisposed while there through unwholesomeness in his wine for, at
any rate, eight or nine days, until Lepsius should be impelled to hie
to his bedside. Then Lepsius was to be shut up in the château some
days, until he could be taken to the bastille on the Ile de Bas, named
Château Labîme, which, too, the League had got on lease; and it was
moreover hoped to reduce Lepsius to penury by seizing a minute key
which Lepsius was believed to carry continually on his body.
Lepsius threw a new cheque when this had been said, saying, “Their
names,” on which the duke, taking a leaf of paper out of his pocket,
and speaking now eagerly with a mean secrecy of voice, galloped out
a string of names, “Thiéry you know, Dr. Lepsius you know, and, of
course, Sauriau, de Courcy, Leflô, Piscari, General-of-Brigade Rabot,
Grand-Almoner Persigny; then there is Maspéro and Gustave Ghéon;
the big bresseur d’affaires Brückner, Aly of gas, and Huguette of
electricity; Captain Pertius; Pichot of Justice and Public Worship;
Léonce Pettit; Director of Fine Arts Rémy-Rehaut; and Maître Sorel—with
some provincials.”
“Their names,” said Lepsius, smiling a little, toying under his vest
with that half a coin whose sister-half he had sent to Miss Eve Vickery
two years previously.
“The provincials,” said the duke, “are obscure rich persons, not worth
your resentment, monsieur; there is a Monsieur Louis Jammes of Lyons,
a chocolate-maker, then a Monsieur Flammarion of Tours, a Monsieur
Brisson of Rouen—who, by the way, is booked to go to the conference at
Château Egmond.”
“I do not know these people,” remarked Lepsius with no little alertness
of thought in his eyes which stirred fleetly from side to side like
sheet-lightning. He then asked if the provincials had attended the
Paris conferences, to which the other replied that they had not, being
but “associates” by correspondence with Sauriau, their secretary.
Lepsius stamped yet a cheque, saying, “Make it your work to-morrow,
Monsieur le Duc, to discover whether this Monsieur Brisson of Rouen,
who is to go to the Egmond conference, is known by sight to any of
the Paris conspirators, and you become affluent for six months, as
already you are for three,” in saying which he threw the new cheque to
the duke, and dashed away to peer steadily at the picture of a château
colouring itself as by miracle in one of the electric machines. The
duke’s arm had half started out for a hand-shake of farewell, but drew
back without it; and now, after waiting some time, at last with a
raising of the shoulders in a shrug which lingered long, he first with
a grimace murmured to the four winds, “Is the interview, then, at an
end?” and now, doing a very exquisite bow to Lepsius’ back, withdrew
with bows.
As he departed, Lepsius threw half a look at one of four clocks, their
staring faces of a largeness so exaggerated that they concealed, each
of them, four of the columns’ mass, and afflicted the air with the
click of their tick-tack; and with one tap of impatience on a chair he
went muttering, “Come, Sauriau.”
Some seconds afterwards the name of the Abbé Sauriau was called.
“Admit him!” called Lepsius in reply, at the same time darting behind a
screen, whence in scarce more than forty seconds he came out “dressed”
in clothes made for quickness, without any buttons about them, and a
second before the abbé came in had caught up, and was casting his eye
over, a page of a book of the abbé’s just published.
“Monsieur l’Abbé Sauriau,” he murmured, shaking hands, “I was at this
moment deep in _Hellenic Idylls_.... But what are you, then, Monsieur
l’Abbé Sauriau. A re-incarnation of Plato? For surely, only a Greek
could so utterly know the soul of Greece!”
Monsieur l’Abbé Sauriau had shy eyelids. “I am glad.... Ah! you have
seen _Hellenic Idylls_.”
“Seen and devoured ... and what charm! How airy! What daintiness of
manner! Oh, truly, those gross fingers of the Abbé Sauriau know how to
engrave with a fairy’s grace.”
“Why, this is well,” said the abbé; “have you, by chance—finished the
book?”
“Not quite, yet, monsieur: I am now at the myth of Leda.”
“It is the end that is the best,” breathed the abbé with downbent lids.
“Let us sit here, monsieur, and speak about it,” and now he led to
the couch a spirit so bludgeoned and kidnapped by the scoop of this
typhoon of flattery, that Lepsius might possibly then and there have
made the abbé his slave for ever. This, may be, was actually his aim:
for the Abbé Sauriau, owing to his amiable personality, his learning,
and his well-deserved celebrity through the whole world of letters,
was an individual of no slight influence in the under-currents of the
life of the Paris of his time, both within and without the sound of
the Palais-Bourbon bell; and not only was his brother, Louis Sauriau,
a general-of-division, but the engineer Schuré himself was believed to
be deeply under the influence of the abbé’s fascination. This being
so, Lepsius, in his gross way, continued with a smile of amusement to
eulogise to the skies the volume of which he had perused only one page,
nor found any praise too gross for the poet to gulp down, while the
poet eyed his right red sock which continually shook up, and struck the
crossed leg with his glove. Unfortunately, Lepsius never knew more than
forty-nine of the fifty parts of man, and as for man’s vanity, he was
himself so exempt from any iota of it—his tone being that of a broker,
wholly pre-occupied with the facts of things—that he little recognised
to what a degree vanity, in its government of the soul, may famish
such grosser passions as avarice. Hence, not content with praising the
abbé’s book, he went on to mention his intention of buying an immense
number of copies, and at once was aware of change in the abbé’s air,
for at once the abbé was offended, reflecting within himself, “It is a
bribe; and since he has a desire to bribe, _perhaps_ what he has said
as to the worth of the ‘Idylls’ is just humbug with a purpose?” and his
bush began to burn.
Lepsius, who did not much care, leapt up just then to answer the
telephone, and before he came back to the abbé peered into the machine
in which a château was slowly painting its shape on a pane of paper:
upon which his visitor called to him, “What a fuss of mechanism you
have squalling in this hall!”
“Come, I’ll let you see them,” said Lepsius in a humour of devilry, to
humiliate the spirit that he had lately praised; and he led the priest
from little machine to little machine, teaching him something of the
meaning of each—things of steel acting in the manner of rational and
ingenious creatures—into which those bushy eyes of the Abbé Sauriau
peered near-sightedly, and though he uttered hardly a word, from
time to time a “humph!” would start from him. When, however, they
came to the one where the château was coming out in colours, Lepsius
nonchalantly said, “This one you could not comprehend, however much I
explained it,” and dropped a handkerchief on it.
In this manner, half by carelessness, half in malice, he made for
himself many enemies, by contempt; and in the abbé’s eyes came a flame.
“However, to come to details, monsieur,” he said as he sat down
anew.... “I have bound myself to sound you in advance on behalf of
Monseigneur Piscari, who met me last night in the Salle des Pas Perdus,
as to whether you would be likely to feel inclined to make one of a
party, mainly political, to meet in the country in a fortnight’s time.”
Lepsius span round to the abbé, saying, “I wonder?... Whereabouts?”
“The name is Château Egmond——”
“I didn’t know that the prelate had a palace of that name.”
“He has lately taken it on a——”
“Where is it?”
“In Brittany, not twenty leagues from your own Palace Serapis, and a
league from——”
“Ah, too far. Time, Monsieur l’Abbé,” and off Lepsius dashed anew to
the machine of the château-picture, snatched the handkerchief from
it, peered, and now beheld midget people rushing about it, and the
château at four places wrapt in flames; upon which he flew back to
the abbé, who was observing, “Well, certainly, it is a long way off,
but then everywhere is near to Dædalus; moreover, everybody will be
there—Schuré, Montijo—many charming dames——”
“Ah! Who, for instance?”
“Madame Schuré for one,” replied the abbé with a flash of the eye.
“Unfortunately, monsieur,” remarked Lepsius very rashly, “I can’t be
expected to make love to a _rat d’opéra_ like Fanny Schuré when it is
well known that I am already in love, and with a sovereign lady. If,
now, you had informed me that the Comtesse de Pichegru-Picard and her
charming relatives would be there, that to a great extent would have
abolished the distance.”
The abbé sat up at this, staring like one who is struck by a new
idea, then muttered with some spite, “I was wondering if that could
be managed, just to please you. It seems, however, to be out of the
question, since one of those relatives of the countess is to be married
on the 5th to Monsieur de Courcy at Grönland, in the centre.”
“And Monsieur de Courcy has not asked me to be a guest!” crowed Lepsius
with gross sarcasm, adding, “Forgive me—forty seconds,” and anew he
flew to the machine of the château-picture, a “living” picture, in
which could be seen the leaping of flames that now surrounded all the
place, and crowds rushing all about, and fire-engines spouting out
waters in the night, all such mites as are the images which walk tiny
in the eye of an ox. Lepsius gazed at it through a magnifying-glass,
and when in a group of eight moving down a terrace in disarray from the
house of flame he could make out the faces and shapes of the Misses
Vickery, back he rushed to the abbé, saying, “That, then, must be my
answer, Monsieur l’Abbé, to Monseigneur Piscari, with my thanks; nor
will anything earthly alter my decision—unless, perhaps, it be some
temptation in the shape of the eternal feminine.... You see, Monsieur
l’Abbé, I become dissipated in mind like the rest, and oh, believe me,
it is a relaxing thing to live among men.... What’s the time?”
The abbé stood smartly up at the hint, and, as always after being
with Lepsius, hobbled away brisker than he came, braced in spirit and
pricked to be a man of the same height and stride as that model that
he yet disliked; and with that baggy skin of his brow twitching with
cogitation, gazing at the ground, he went quick of gait, galvanic-young
again, making sounds with his great stick, down to a carriage, where
he gave an address in the Rue Jean Gougeon.
It was the home of the Count de Courcy. The count, however, was out,
but might be found, the abbé was told, at the Ministère, or else at a
house in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.
To the Ministère drove the abbé; no de Courcy was there; so thence
he drove to the Faubourg, where the Comte de Courcy rose from dinner
to go to him at the head of a stair, and there the abbé said, with
a scantness of breath, “I have been chasing you—am fresh from the
individual whom—that is, from the young Lepsius, and shall be surprised
from his mood at present if anything which we can devise will get him
to step into the Egmond trap.... Would you believe? he is love-struck
with _Hellenic Idylls_; it appears, my friend, that the young man
dreams of it at night!”
“_C’est vrai?_” said Monsieur de Courcy (i.e., “By Jove,” touched with
irony).
“Yes, you will find him turning author before long in order to vie with
us others! But, believe me, monsieur, he is destined to discover that
it needs a deeper brain to create a true and poetical book than to
imagine machines of steel.”
“As Phœbus beats Hephæstus; but—you see—I am being awaited——”
“Yes, forgive me—only to tell you that it will be most difficult, as
I can already see, to get him to go to Egmond, unless—may I express
myself? it is delicate....”
“I even pray you to do so.”
“Unless Madame de Pichegru-Picard and her—nieces are of the party, in
which event he will agree——”
The Comte de Courcy’s neck stiffened. “My friend, the suggestion would
be ingenious, if it were not impossible.”
“I see that,” breathed the Abbé Sauriau, “especially its ingeniousness.”
“To me its impossibility is no less obvious, monsieur,” said Monsieur
de Courcy.
But now steps were mounting the stair, and a man bearing a document
and a telegram came up to give them to the count, who, having read the
telegram, grew pale, and every second paler, and presently observed to
the abbé, “My God! Grönland house burned to the ground!”
“Burned!” exclaimed the abbé; “why, accept my sym—— But where, then,
monsieur, will your wedding take place?”
“It may now _have_ to be at Egmond,” the count said slowly, with
meditation dwelling in his underlook.
“Why, then, this may be a Providence in view of the individual whom we
have in our mind!” cried out the Abbé Sauriau.
“We will see how Heaven works it,” the count observed, now suddenly
holding out his hand to bid _bon soir_.