CIRCE AND ULYSSES
“And do you ask what game she plays?
With me ’tis lost or won;
With thee ’tis playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But ’tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway of the sun.
“Thou seest the card that falls—she knows
The card that followeth;
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath;
When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue,
And know she calls it Death.”
—D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Card-dealer_.
No woman like Madame d’Espaze, with her notoriety, her lovers, her
political intriguery, her secret power (how great, a matter for
speculation), had ever crossed Gilbert’s path in life. He had time
this morning, as he threaded the streets, to make some picture of
her to himself. Two types of beauty presented themselves to his
imagination; the one dark, voluptuous, imperious, a sort of empress
of vice, the other of that fair and child-like mould which rules
by cajolery. At the door of the Comtesse’s salon he was still
speculating which class would claim her, for his success might
depend upon it.
But she belonged to neither. The Marquis beheld, on a small sofa
covered with yellow damask, a woman—a girl almost—wearing a simple
virginal gown of light Indian muslin, made after the new mode. She
rose as Château-Foix was announced, and he was struck with her grace,
her height, and the grave, nunlike style of her beauty. Here were no
meretricious enhancements; she was not painted, and her beautiful
brown hair, gathered simply into a knot, was innocent of powder or of
any sort of adornment. The trailing folds of white fell from breast to
foot. Gilbert was taken aback, he scarcely knew why. The Comtesse
threw him a look of calm enquiry out of her long placid eyes, ere she
responded to his bow.
“You have come to see me on business, Monsieur, I understand,” she
said, as she rose from her curtsy. “I regret that I could not receive
you last night. Be seated, I pray.”
Gilbert bowed again slightly, but remained standing. “I have come,
Madame,” he said, with great directness, “to know if you can give me
any news of my unfortunate cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”
Madame d’Espaze’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Mon Dieu! Monsieur le
Marquis, you take away my breath,” she said. “Is M. de Saint-Ermay
lost, then?”
“He has been arrested,” replied Château-Foix shortly. Little versed as
he was in the ways of women, he saw that she was going to play with
him, and the prospect was not alluring.
“Ah, he has been arrested, the poor Saint-Ermay?” queried the
Comtesse. “I am desolated, but what would you have? Politics is a
dangerous game.” She breathed out a light little sigh, and sank down
on the sofa. “You should have kept him out of it, Monsieur le
Marquis.”
To this remark, delivered with an indescribable airy malice, Gilbert
made no answer for the moment. But he took the chair which his hostess
had previously indicated to him, and, once seated, he observed coldly:
“You will pardon me for saying, Madame, that this is not a case for
levity.”
“But, Monsieur,” retorted the lady, “I am all seriousness. Though I
do not quite see,” she added, pursing her lips, “why it should be
demanded of me.”
“You did not know then, Madame, that M. de Saint-Ermay was in prison?”
asked Gilbert, looking at her steadily.
Madame d’Espaze shrugged her shoulders. “How should I?”
“Then I must tell you about it,” replied Château-Foix. “I found, a
short time ago, that my cousin was becoming entangled in a scheme
which did not commend itself to me—a scheme which I need not
particularise to you, Madame, and one in which, to be frank, I
suspected a trap. I therefore came to Paris; I endeavoured to dissuade
him from further compromising himself, and especially from continuing
his visits to the chief meeting-place of the two parties—your house. I
failed; and the Vicomte attended your salon last Saturday night, as he
had intended. This morning he was arrested, and I am ignorant even of
the place of his imprisonment.”
Madame d’Espaze had listened quite gravely to this recital, and now
said, without any particular expression in her lazy voice: “I do not
know, Monsieur le Marquis, why you are telling me all this.”
“You do not, then,” retorted her guest, “see any connection between
the constant meetings of Vergniaud and his followers with these young
men at your house, his denunciation of them yesterday in the Manège,
and their almost simultaneous arrest? I do.”
The attack was so direct, and in all probability so unexpected, that
the Comtesse for the first time showed signs of discomposure. She got
up and moved away, her white robe trailing softly on the shining
floor. Half over her shoulder she said: “You talk very strangely, M.
de Château-Foix.”
“Yet I think that what I say is just,” replied Gilbert, on his feet.
“I wonder——” said the Comtesse. Then she turned and faced him. “But
even if it were, it is not a way in which I should allow many people
to speak to me in my house.”
“But not many people come on my mission.”
“Mon Dieu, no, fortunately!” exclaimed Madame d’Espaze with vivacity.
“Fortunately, people do not often come to me and expect me to make
myself responsible for every young hothead who gets himself into
trouble with the authorities. Fortunately, that chair has not often
served as a pulpit nor this sofa as a bench for the congregation.
. . . Never mind, Monsieur le Marquis, but resume your sermon!”
“I was not aware, Madame, that I was preaching,” said Château-Foix
a trifle stiffly. “It was not my intention. I come rather as a
suppliant.”
“With what a menacing tone!” exclaimed the Comtesse, with a little
laugh and a shrug of her beautiful shoulders. She trailed slowly back
to the sofa and sank on the cushions. “And for what, pray, are you
supplicating?”
“For my cousin’s release,” said the Marquis.
Half leaning back among the yellow cushions the Comtesse d’Espaze
surveyed him indolently as he stood before her, very straight, his
hand on the back of his chair. “Why not ask for the moon, Monsieur le
Marquis?” she said at last.
“I do not admit the suitability of the metaphor,” retorted Gilbert,
controlling himself with difficulty. “I am asking for the life of a
friend of your own, Madame. Surely my request is not a very strange
one.”
“And what makes you think that M. de Saint-Ermay is a friend of mine?”
she asked at that. “You abound in strange suppositions, Monsieur.”
“Because I know my cousin rather well, Madame,” answered the Marquis.
“And since I have seen you——” he concluded, bowing.
“Merci, Monsieur!” cried the lady. “And because, as I am to understand,
Monsieur le Vicomte has done me the honour to admire me, I am to feel
that his blood is on my head?”
“If not responsibility, I should expect you to feel interest,”
retorted Gilbert sternly. “But if you have no concern for the boy, I
am only wasting your time and my own.” He made a movement as if to
take his leave.
Madame d’Espaze put out her hand. “Stay a moment, M. de Château-Foix.
I am not as insensible as you think to the fate of my friends. But you
must see that I cannot afford to sacrifice my party to my personal
friendships. You will say that politics is not a game for a woman—I am
sure that is one of your ideas—but since I have taken it up I must
play it. And these people are not friends; they only come here to pay
me compliments, and I have had my fill of those for more years than I
should care to acknowledge to you. Those are not the stakes for which
I play now. . . . I wonder why I am saying these things to you. . . .
You have come to the wrong person; it is nothing to me—not the snap of
a finger—if all these young fools pay the penalty of their folly.” She
was on her feet by now, walking rapidly about. “You have come to the
wrong person,” she reiterated.
“Madame, I do not think I have,” said Gilbert quietly.
Suddenly she turned on him. “You credit me, I suppose, with being
Louis’ mistress?”
“That is not a matter which concerns or interests me, Madame. I want
my cousin’s life, not an account of the way in which he spends it.”
The Comtesse stopped in her restless walk as if struck by a sudden
idea. “Then you do not know—you do not consider yourself his mentor?”
“Most certainly not.”
She looked at him with an interest which, undisguised as it was, held
something more concealed behind it.
“Have you seen much of him lately?—No, I know that you have not. Do
you know that he fought the Comte de Bercy the morning after you came
to Paris?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert, wondering whither this was tending, “I do know
it.”
“But do you know why?”
“No.”
“You are a singular person, M. de Château-Foix,” said his hostess
slowly. “If you will take my advice—but of course you will not—do not
try to find out!” She turned away again and said, after a moment’s
pause: “And now, if I cannot help you, what will you do?”
“Ah, no, Madame,” returned Gilbert, shaking his head with the glimmer
of a smile. “If you will not help me, I dare not reveal to you such
poor resources as I may have, independent of your aid.”
“In other words, I must be ally or enemy? You have no liking for
half-measures, I see, Monsieur le Marquis. . . . Well, no more have I.
And I am convinced, from what I have already seen, that I prefer you
when you smile to when you frown at me. So . . . let us be allies.
Will that satisfy you?”
“Madame——” began Gilbert, scarcely daring to believe her words,
accompanied by that brilliant and half-mocking smile.
Madame d’Espaze held up both her slim hands. “No thanks, Monsieur, I
beg. But instead of them, tell me, since you are so clear-sighted, how
I am to set about this business of Monsieur le Vicomte?”
And under her malicious gaze Château-Foix had the certain conviction
that she meant to see how he would avoid saying in so many words: “You
have but to ask your lover for his release.” He began a careful phrase
full of generalities about influence, but ere he had finished it she
seemed to have lost interest in the reply to her question, and he
stopped and looked at her, as she stood in the middle of the white and
gold room with her head bent and a hand to her cheek. It seemed to him
quite a long time that she stood thus, till she said reflectively:
“Yes, I think I can do it. It will not be easy, however. You shall
have an order of release to-day if I can possibly procure it. Do I
know where you are staying?”
The Marquis told her.
“There is one condition—one thing you must promise me—both for Louis’
sake and . . . that of others. Once he is out of prison he must leave
Paris immediately.”
It was the least that could be expected, and a condition that did not
displease Gilbert at all—or would not have done so two days ago. “I
promise it on my honour,” he said. “What can I do—what can I possibly
do—to show my gratitude?”
The Comtesse spread out her hands. “You can keep a better eye on your
scapegrace of a cousin,” she said lightly. “I make him over to
you. . . . Next time, too, that you are in Paris, my friend, come and
see me on your own account. You have just seen how amenable I am to
good influence.” She floated nearer to him, and gave him her hand,
bare of rings and incredibly small and white.
Gilbert raised it to his lips. “I shall be only too happy, Comtesse.
There is no means by which I can thank you sufficiently.”
“You have only yourself to thank, M. de Château-Foix, for I assure you
that I have not that good heart to which I have been afraid you would
refer. Yet if it is any consolation to you, Marquis, reflect that, in
this changing world, I may some day be needing help from you. . . .
But that is not why I am your ally now.” She smiled at him charmingly.