discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited young men
rushed about on horseback to make sure that the carriage was standing in
the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in consequence was beyond a doubt in
M. de Montriveau’s rooms, Mme de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses,
was lying hidden away in her boudoir. And Armand?--he had been out all
night, and at that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens
of the Tuileries. The elder members, of Mme de Langeais’ family were
engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a homily
and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a stop to the
scandal.
At three o’clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame de
Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de Grandlieu
were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ drawing-room. To them, as
to all curious inquirers, the servants said that their mistress was not
at home; the Duchess had made no exceptions to her orders. But these
four personages shone conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the
revolutions and hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by
year in the _Almanach de Gotha_, wherefore without some slight sketch of
each of them this picture of society were incomplete.
The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a most
poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In her beautiful prime, so it
was said, she had done her part to win for that monarch his appellation
of _le Bien-aime_. Of her past charms of feature, little remained save
a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now
the principal ornament of a countenance that put you in mind of an old
white glove. Add a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap
with upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for
_ombre_. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that she
appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her
ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her cheeks with Martin’s
classic rouge. An appalling amiability in her wrinkles, a prodigious
brightness in the old lady’s eyes, a profound dignity in her whole
person, together with the triple barbed wit of her tongue, and an
infallible memory in her head, made of her a real power in the land. The
whole Cabinet des Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment
of her brain. She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in
Europe--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the last
descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line. No usurpation of title
could escape the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry.
Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and young
married women paid her assiduous homage. Her salon set the tone of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain. The words of this Talleyrand in petticoats
were taken as final decrees. People came to consult her on questions of
etiquette or usages, or to take lessons in good taste. And, in truth,
no other old woman could put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the
Princess could; while there was a precision and a grace about the
movements of her skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which
drove the finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice
had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she could
not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a
peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and fifty thousand
livres of her great fortune, for Napoleon had generously returned her
woods to her; so that personally and in the matter of possessions she
was a woman of no little consequence.
This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was
chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The Vidame was
a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old school, and had been
a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck had always been so tightly
compressed by a strangulation stock, that his cheeks pouched over it a
little, and he held his head high; to many people this would have given
an air of self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a
Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see everything, and as
a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether,
his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and
slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or
rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake.
The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the Duc de
Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale;
both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned
men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But
for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease
of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial
observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake
would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard
them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they feared,
vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors
whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to
humiliate with an unexpected phrase.
Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that determined to
perish rather than submit to any change. It was a noblesse that deserved
praise and blame in equal measure; a noblesse that will never be judged
impartially until some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles
obeyed the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu’s axe, and how
deeply they scorned the guillotine of ‘89 as a foul revenge.
Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that agreed
peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among themselves, at any
rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. None of them betrayed
any sign of annoyance over the Duchess’s escapade, but all of them had
learned at Court to hide their feelings.
And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the opening of
the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind the reader that
Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords,
renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political
consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation
by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read
it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out
laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the
upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible
when washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank of
society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious observer finds
folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish.
Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and
boeotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher regions they
must perforce talk more, but to make up for it they think the less.
Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the rich like their lives to flow by
easily and without effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of
jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer
of France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de
Talleyrand’s maxim, “The manner is everything”; an elegant rendering of
the legal axiom, “The form is of more consequence than the matter.” In
the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for
they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their
thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility
of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance
felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small
change.
The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him, and
remarked to his neighbour:
“So you have sold Tornthon?”
“No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I should be
uncommonly sorry. He is a very good hunter. Do you know how the Duchesse
de Marigny is?”
“No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to call when
you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yesterday she was very ill
indeed; they had given her up, she took the sacrament.”
“Her death will make a change in your cousin’s position.”
“Not at all. She gave away her property in her lifetime, only keeping
an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate to her niece, Mme de
Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge.”
“It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman. Her family
will miss her; her experience and advice carried weight. Her son Marigny
is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit, he can talk. He is pleasant, very
pleasant. Pleasant? oh, that no one can deny, but--ill regulated to
the last degree. Well, and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is
very acute. He was dining at the club the other day with that moneyed
Chaussee-d’Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for his game
of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if he was a
member. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I don’t go into society now; I am living among
the bankers.’--You know why?” added the Marquis, with a meaning smile.
“No,” said the Duke.
“He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville’s daughter; she
is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they say, in that set.”
“Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it seems,”
remarked the Vidame.
“My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a singular
pastime,” replied the Princess, as she returned her snuff-box to her
pocket.
“Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed,” said the Duke, stopping short in his
walk. “Nobody but one of Bonaparte’s men could ask such an indecorous
thing of a woman of fashion. Between ourselves, Antoinette might have
made a better choice.”
“The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected, my
dear,” replied the Princess; “they are related to all the noblest houses
of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should
come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus would succeed to the Arschoot
title and estates. They inherit through their great-grandfather.
“Are you sure?”
“I know it better than this Montriveau’s father did. I told him about
it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of several orders
though he was, he only laughed; he was an encyclopaedist. But his
brother turned the relationship to good account during the emigration.
I have heard it said that his northern kinsfolk were most kind in every
way----”
“Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St. Petersburg,”
said the Vidame. “I met him there. He was a big man with an incredible
passion for oysters.”
“However many did he eat?” asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
“Ten dozen every day.”
“And did they not disagree with him?”
“Not the least bit in the world.”
“Why, that is extraordinary! Had he neither the stone nor gout, nor any
other complaint, in consequence?”
“No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an accident.”
“By accident! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably he
required them; for up to a certain point our predominant tastes are
conditions of our existence.”
“I am of your opinion,” said the Princess, with a smile.
“Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,” returned
the Marquis.
“I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a wrong
impression on a young woman’s mind,” said she, and interrupted herself
to exclaim, “But this niece, this niece of mine!”
“Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to M. de
Montriveau,” said the Duc de Navarreins.
“Bah!” returned the Princess.
“What do you think, Vidame?” asked the Marquis.
“If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think that----”
“But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,” retorted
the Princess. “Really, my poor Vidame, you must be getting older.”
“After all, what is to be done?” asked the Duke.
“If my dear niece is wise,” said the Princess, “she will go to Court
this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception day--and you
must see that we all rally round her and give the lie to this absurd
rumour. There are hundreds of ways of explaining things; and if the
Marquis de Montriveau is a gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We
will bring these children to listen to reason----”
“But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the truth to
his face. He is one of Bonaparte’s pupils, and he has a position. Why,
he is one of the great men of the day; he is high up in the Guards, and
very useful there. He has not a spark of ambition. He is just the man to
say, ‘Here is my commission, leave me in peace,’ if the King should say
a word that he did not like.”
“Then, pray, what are his opinions?”
“Very unsound.”
“Really,” sighed the Princess, “the King is, as he always has been, a
Jacobin under the Lilies of France.”
“Oh! not quite so bad,” said the Vidame.
“Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that pointed out the
Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state dinner in public
with, ‘These are our people,’ could only be a black-hearted scoundrel.
I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother
who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was
sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk.
This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger
brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little
mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor
is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in
abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he lay dying, ‘He will not
reign very long----’”
“Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his service----”
“But does your post take away your right of free speech, my dear? You
come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. If the Guises had shown a
little more resolution, His Majesty would be a nobody at this day. It is
time I went out of this world, the noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all
over with you, my children,” she continued, looking as she spoke at the
Vidame. “What has my niece done that the whole town should be talking
about her? She is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless
scandal is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want
of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know that----”
Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir. She had
recognised her aunt’s voice and heard the name of Montriveau. She
was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in, M.
de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his niece’s
carriage driving back along the street. The Duke took his daughter’s
face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.
“So, dear girl,” he said, “you do not know what is going on?”
“Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?”
“Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau.”
“My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you not?”
said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess kissed with
affectionate respect.
“Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And,” she added, as she
turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, “I wished that all Paris
should think that I was with M. de Montriveau.”
The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and folded
his arms.
“Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?” he asked at
last.
But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking steadily
at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes fell. Mme de
Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, “My little angel, let me kiss
you!”
She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and continued
smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.
“We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have compromised your
husband and your position. Still, we will arrange to make everything
right.”
“But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It is my wish
that all Paris should say that I was with M. de Montriveau this morning.
If you destroy that belief, however ill grounded it may be, you will do
me a singular disservice.”
“Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your family?”
“My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable
misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You may,
perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will certainly feel
for me.”
“After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters
suitably!” muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.
The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. “My dear
little girl,” she said, “be happy, if you can. We are not talking of
troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with social usages. We
all of us here assembled know that marriage is a defective institution
tempered by love. But when you take a lover, is there any need to make
your bed in the Place du Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable,
and hear what we have to say.”
“I am listening.”
“Mme la Duchesse,” began the Duc de Grandlieu, “if it were any part of
an uncle’s duty to look after his nieces, he ought to have a position;
society would owe him honours and rewards and a salary, exactly as if
he were in the King’s service. So I am not here to talk about my nephew,
but of your own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in
making a scandal--I have seen the animal before, and I own that I have
no great liking for him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care
a rap for anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick
to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a
nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just
inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his
mistresses’ amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law;
you will have to say _Amen_ to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de
Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a
passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman while she is young
and pretty; still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate,
even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all but
impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that
he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your
husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a
woman’s parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I
am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving
unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This
being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are
they to be? Montriveaus? Very well; they certainly will not succeed to
their father’s whole fortune. You will want to give them all that you
have; he will wish to do the same. Nothing more natural, dear me!
And you will find the law against you. How many times have we
seen heirs-at-law bringing a law-suit to recover the property from
illegitimate children? Every court of law rings with such actions all
over the world. You will create a _fidei commissum_ perhaps; and if the
trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy against
him; and they are ruined. So choose carefully. You see the perplexities
of the position. In every possible way your children will be sacrificed
of necessity to the fancies of your heart; they will have no recognised
status. While they are little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day
they will reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves. We
old gentlemen know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and men
are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not hear young de
Horn say, after supper, ‘If my mother had been an honest woman, I should
be prince-regnant!’ _If_?’ We have spent our lives in hearing plebeians
say _if_. _If_ brought about the Revolution. When a man cannot lay the
blame on his father or mother, he holds God responsible for his hard
lot. In short, dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I will say all
I have to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate: A woman
ought never to put her husband in the right.”
“Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I looked at
interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel.”
“But, my dear little girl,” remonstrated the Vidame, “life is simply a
complication of interests and feelings; to be happy, more particularly
in your position, one must try to reconcile one’s feelings with
one’s interests. A grisette may love according to her fancy, that is
intelligible enough, but you have a pretty fortune, a family, a name and
a place at Court, and you ought not to fling them out of the window.
And what have we been asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre
carefully instead of falling foul of social conventions. Lord! I shall
very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any regime,
a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for the love of this
lucky young man.”
The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could have
seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.
“It would be very effective on the stage,” remarked the Duc de
Grandlieu, “but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and
position and independence is concerned. You are not grateful, my dear
niece. You will not find many families where the relatives have courage
enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and to make rash young
heads listen to reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if it
pleases you to damn yourself; well and good; but reflect well beforehand
when it comes to renouncing your income. I know of no confessor who
remits the pains of poverty. I have a right, I think, to speak in this
way to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer you
a refuge. I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have a right to
put him in the wrong.”
The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.
“Since you speak of feeling, my child,” he said, “let me remind you that
a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do
not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the
Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre’s that are doing all they
can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do
without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your
dishonor----”
“Come, come!” said the Princess. “Dishonor? Do not make such a fuss
about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and leave me alone
with Antoinette. All three of you come and dine with me. I will
undertake to arrange matters suitably. You men understand nothing;
you are beginning to talk sourly already, and I have no wish to see a
quarrel between you and my dear child. Do me the pleasure to go.”
The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess’s intentions; they
took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on the forehead
with, “Come, be good, dear child. It is not too late yet if you choose.”
“Couldn’t we find some good fellow in the family to pick a quarrel with
this Montriveau?” said the Vidame, as they went downstairs.
When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to a
little low chair by her side.