TO tie a prominent statesman to her train and to lead him about like a
tame bear, is for a young and vivacious woman a more certain amusement
than to tie herself to him and to be dragged about like an Indian
squaw. This fact was Madeleine Lee's first great political discovery in
Washington, and it was worth to her all the German philosophy she had
ever read, with even a complete edition of Herbert Spencer's works into
the bargain. There could be no doubt that the honours and dignities of
a public career were no fair consideration for its pains. She made a
little daily task for herself of reading in succession the lives and
letters of the American Presidents, and of their wives, when she could
find that there was a trace of the latter's existence. What a melancholy
spectacle it was, from George Washington down to the last incumbent;
what vexations, what disappointments, what grievous mistakes, what very
objectionable manners! Not one of them, who had aimed at high purpose,
but had been thwarted, beaten, and habitually insulted! What a gloom lay
on the features of those famous chieftains, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster;
what varied expression of defeat and unsatisfied desire; what a sense
of self-importance and senatorial magniloquence; what a craving for
flattery; what despair at the sentence of fate! And what did they amount
to, after all?
They were practical men, these! they had no great problems of thought to
settle, no questions that rose above the ordinary rules of common
morals and homely duty. How they had managed to befog the subject!
What elaborate show-structures they had built up, with no result but
to obscure the horizon! Would not the country have done better without
them? Could it have done worse? What deeper abyss could have opened
under the nation's feet, than that to whose verge they brought it?
Madeleine's mind wearied with the monotony of the story. She discussed
the subject with Ratcliffe, who told her frankly that the pleasure of
politics lay in the possession of power. He agreed that the country
would do very well without him. “But here I am,” said he, “and here I
mean to stay.” He had very little sympathy for thin moralising, and a
statesmanlike contempt for philosophical politics. He loved power, and
he meant to be President.
That was enough.
Sometimes the tragic and sometimes the comic side was uppermost in her
mind, and sometimes she did not herself know whether to cry or to laugh.
Washington more than any other city in the world swarms with
simple-minded exhibitions of human nature; men and women curiously out
of place, whom it would be cruel to ridicule and ridiculous to weep
over. The sadder exhibitions are fortunately seldom seen by respectable
people; only the little social accidents come under their eyes. One
evening Mrs. Lee went to the President's first evening reception. As
Sybil flatly refused to face the crowd, and Carrington mildly said that
he feared he was not sufficiently reconstructed to appear at home in
that august presence, Mrs. Lee accepted Mr. French for an escort, and
walked across the Square with him to join the throng that was pouring
into the doors of the White House. They took their places in the line
of citizens and were at last able to enter the reception-room. There
Madeleine found herself before two seemingly mechanical figures, which
might be wood or wax, for any sign they showed of life. These two
figures were the President and his wife; they stood stiff and awkward by
the door, both their faces stripped of every sign of intelligence, while
the right hands of both extended themselves to the column of visitors
with the mechanical action of toy dolls. Mrs. Lee for a moment began
to laugh, but the laugh died on her lips. To the President and his
wife this was clearly no laughing matter. There they stood, automata,
representatives of the society which streamed past them. Madeleine
seized Mr. French by the arm.
“Take me somewhere at once,” said she, “where I can look at it. Here! in
the corner. I had no conception how shocking it was!”
Mr. French supposed she was thinking of the queer-looking men and women
who were swarming through the rooms, and he made, after his own delicate
notion of humour, some uncouth jests on those who passed by. Mrs. Lee,
however, was in no humour to explain or even to listen. She stopped him
short:--
“There, Mr. French! Now go away and leave me. I want to be alone for
half an hour. Please come for me then.” And there she stood, with her
eyes fixed on the President and his wife, while the endless stream of
humanity passed them, shaking hands.
What a strange and solemn spectacle it was, and how the deadly
fascination of it burned the image in upon her mind! What a horrid
warning to ambition!
And in all that crowd there was no one besides herself who felt the
mockery of this exhibition. To all the others this task was a regular
part of the President's duty, and there was nothing ridiculous about
it. They thought it a democratic institution, this droll a ping of
monarchical forms. To them the deadly dulness of the show was as natural
and proper as ever to the courtiers of the Philips and Charleses seemed
the ceremonies of the Escurial. To her it had the effect of a nightmare,
or of an opium-eater's vision, She felt a sudden conviction that this
was to be the end of American society; its realisation and dream at
once. She groaned in spirit.
“Yes! at last I have reached the end! We shall grow to be wax images,
and our talk will be like the squeaking of toy dolls. We shall all
wander round and round the earth and shake hands. No one will have
any object in this world, and there will be no other. It is worse than
anything in the 'Inferno.' What an awful vision of eternity!”
Suddenly, as through a mist, she saw the melancholy face of Lord Skye
approaching. He came to her side, and his voice recalled her to reality.
“Does it amuse you, this sort of thing?” he asked in a vague way.
“We take our amusement sadly, after the manner of our people,” she
replied; “but it certainly interests me.”
They stood for a time in silence, watching the slowly eddying dance of
Democracy, until he resumed:
“Whom do you take that man to be--the long, lean one, with a long woman
on each arm?”
“That man,” she replied, “I take to be a Washington department-clerk, or
perhaps a member of Congress from Iowa, with a wife and wife's sister.
Do they shock your nobility?”
He looked at her with comical resignation. “You mean to tell me
that they are quite as good as dowager-countesses. I grant it. My
aristocratic spirit is broken, Mrs. Lee. I will even ask them to dinner
if you bid me, and if you will come to meet them. But the last time I
asked a member of Congress to dine, he sent me back a note in pencil on
my own envelope that he would bring two of his friends with him, very
respectable constituents from Yahoo city, or some such place; nature's
noblemen, he said.”
“You should have welcomed them.”
“I did. I wanted to see two of nature's noblemen, and I knew they would
probably be pleasanter company than their representative. They came;
very respectable persons, one with a blue necktie, the other with a red
one: both had diamond pins in their shirts, and were carefully brushed
in respect to their hair. They said nothing, ate little, drank less,
and were much better behaved than I am. When they went away, they
unanimously asked me to stay with them when I visited Yahoo city.”
“You will not want guests if you always do that.”
“I don't know. I think it was pure ignorance on their part. They knew
no better, and they seemed modest enough. My only complaint was that I
could get nothing out of them. I wonder whether their wives would have
been more amusing.”
“Would they be so in England, Lord Skye?”
He looked down at her with half-shut eyes, and drawled: “You know my
countrywomen?”
“Hardly at all.”
“Then let us discuss some less serious subject.”
“Willingly. I have waited for you to explain to me why you have to-night
an expression of such melancholy.”
“Is that quite friendly, Mrs. Lee? Do I really look melancholy?”
“Unutterably, as I feel. I am consumed with curiosity to know the
reason.”
The British minister coolly took a complete survey of the whole room,
ending with a prolonged stare at the President and his wife, who were
still mechanically shaking hands; then he looked back into her face, and
said never a word.
She insisted: “I must have this riddle answered. It suffocates me. I
should not be sad at seeing these same people at work or at play, if
they ever do play; or in a church or a lecture-room. Why do they weigh
on me like a horrid phantom here?”
“I see no riddle, Mrs. Lee. You have answered your own question; they
are neither at work nor at play.”
“Then please take me home at once. I shall have hysterics. The sight of
those two suffering images at the door is too mournful to be borne. I am
dizzy with looking at these stalking figures. I don't believe they're
real. I wish the house would take fire. I want an earthquake. I wish
some one would pinch the President, or pull his wife's hair.”
Mrs. Lee did not repeat the experiment of visiting the White House, and
indeed for some time afterwards she spoke with little enthusiasm of the
presidential office. To Senator Ratcliffe she expressed her opinions
strongly. The Senator tried in vain to argue that the people had a right
to call upon their chief magistrate, and that he was bound to receive
them; this being so, there was no less objectionable way of proceeding
than the one which had been chosen. “Who gave the people any such
right?” asked Mrs. Lee. “Where does it come from? What do they want it
for? You know better, Mr. Ratcliffe! Our chief magistrate is a citizen
like any one else. What puts it into his foolish head to cease being a
citizen and to ape royalty? Our governors never make themselves
ridiculous. Why cannot the wretched being content himself with living
like the rest of us, and minding his own business? Does he know what a
figure of fun he is?” And Mrs. Lee went so far as to declare that she
would like to be the President's wife only to put an end to this folly;
nothing should ever induce her to go through such a performance; and if
the public did not approve of this, Congress might impeach her, and
remove her from office; all she demanded was the right to be heard
before the Senate in her own defence.
Nevertheless, there was a very general impression in Washington that
Mrs.
Lee would like nothing better than to be in the White House. Known
to comparatively few people, and rarely discussing even with them the
subjects which deeply interested her, Madeleine passed for a clever,
intriguing woman who had her own objects to gain. True it is, beyond
peradventure, that all residents of Washington may be assumed to be in
office or candidates for office; unless they avow their object, they are
guilty of an attempt--and a stupid one--to deceive; yet there is a small
class of apparent exceptions destined at last to fall within the rule.
Mrs. Lee was properly assumed to be a candidate for office. To the
Washingtonians it was a matter of course that Mrs. Lee should marry
Silas P. Ratcliffe. That he should be glad to get a fashionable and
intelligent wife, with twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year, was not
surprising. That she should accept the first public man of the day, with
a flattering chance for the Presidency--a man still comparatively
young and not without good looks--was perfectly natural, and in her
undertaking she had the sympathy of all well-regulated Washington women
who were not possible rivals; for to them the President's wife is of
more consequence than the President; and, indeed, if America only knew
it, they are not very far from the truth.
Some there were, however, who did not assent to this good-natured though
worldly view of the proposed match. These ladies were severe in their
comments upon Mrs. Lee's conduct, and did not hesitate to declare their
opinion that she was the calmest and most ambitious minx who had ever
come within their observation. Unfortunately it happened that the
respectable and proper Mrs. Schuyler Clinton took this view of the case,
and made little attempt to conceal her opinion. She was justly indignant
at her cousin's gross worldliness, and possible promotion in rank.
“If Madeleine Ross marries that coarse, horrid old Illinois politician,”
said she to her husband, “I never will forgive her so long as I live.”
Mr. Clinton tried to excuse Madeleine, and even went so far as to
suggest that the difference of age was no greater than in their own
case; but his wife trampled ruthlessly on his argument.
“At any rate,” said she, “I never came to Washington as a widow on
purpose to set my cap for the first candidate for the Presidency, and
I never made a public spectacle of my indecent eagerness in the very
galleries of the Senate; and Mrs. Lee ought to be ashamed of herself.
She is a cold-blooded, heartless, unfeminine cat.”
Little Victoria Dare, who babbled like the winds and streams, with utter
indifference as to what she said or whom she addressed, used to bring
choice bits of this gossip to Mrs. Lee. She always affected a little
stammer when she said anything uncommonly impudent, and put on a manner
of languid simplicity. She felt keenly the satisfaction of seeing
Madeleine charged with her own besetting sins. For years all Washington
had agreed that Victoria was little better than one of the wicked; she
had done nothing but violate every rule of propriety and scandalise
every well-regulated family in the city, and there was no good in her.
Yet it could not be denied that Victoria was amusing, and had a sort of
irregular fascination; consequently she was universally tolerated. To
see Mrs. Lee thrust down to her own level was an unmixed pleasure to
her, and she carefully repeated to Madeleine the choice bits of dialogue
which she picked up in her wanderings.
“Your cousin, Mrs. Clinton, says you are a ca-ca-cat, Mrs. Lee.”
“I don't believe it, Victoria. Mrs. Clinton never said anything of the
sort.”
“Mrs. Marston says it is because you have caught a ra-ra-rat, and
Senator Clinton was only a m-m-mouse!”
Naturally all this unexpected publicity irritated Mrs. Lee not a little,
especially when short and vague paragraphs, soon followed by longer
and more positive ones, in regard to Senator Ratcliffe's matrimonial
prospects, began to appear in newspapers, along with descriptions of
herself from the pens of enterprising female correspondents for the
press, who had never so much as seen her. At the first sight of one of
these newspaper articles, Madeleine fairly cried with mortification and
anger. She wanted to leave Washington the next day, and she hated the
very thought of Ratcliffe. There was something in the newspaper style so
inscrutably vulgar, something so inexplicably revolting to the sense of
feminine decency, that she shrank under it as though it were a poisonous
spider. But after the first acute shame had passed, her temper was
roused, and she vowed that she would pursue her own path just as she
had begun, without regard to all the malignity and vulgarity in the wide
United States. She did not care to marry Senator Ratcliffe; she liked
his society and was flattered by his confidence; she rather hoped to
prevent him from ever making a formal offer, and if not, she would at
least push it off to the last possible moment; but she was not to be
frightened from marrying him by any amount of spitefulness or gossip,
and she did not mean to refuse him except for stronger reasons than
these. She even went so far in her desperate courage as to laugh at her
cousin, Mrs.
Clinton, whose venerable husband she allowed and even encouraged to pay
her such public attention and to express sentiments of such youthful
ardour as she well knew would inflame and exasperate the excellent lady
his wife.
Carrington was the person most unpleasantly affected by the course which
this affair had taken. He could no longer conceal from himself the fact
that he was as much m love as a dignified Virginian could be. With
him, at all events, she had shown no coquetry, nor had she ever either
flattered or encouraged him. But Carrington, m his solitary struggle
against fate, had found her a warm friend; always ready to assist where
assistance was needed, generous with her money in any cause which he
was willing to vouch for, full of sympathy where sympathy was more than
money, and full of resource and suggestion where money and sympathy
failed. Carrington knew her better than she knew herself. He selected
her books; he brought the last speech or the last report from the
Capitol or the departments; he knew her doubts and her vagaries, and as
far as he understood them at all, helped her to solve them.
Carrington was too modest, and perhaps too shy, to act the part of a
declared lover, and he was too proud to let it be thought that he wanted
to exchange his poverty for her wealth. But he was all the more anxious
when he saw the evident attraction which Ratcliffe's strong will and
unscrupulous energy exercised over her. He saw that Ratcliffe was
steadily pushing his advances; that he flattered all Mrs. Lee's
weaknesses by the confidence and deference with which he treated her;
and that in a very short time, Madeleine must either marry him or find
herself looked upon as a heartless coquette. He had his own reasons for
thinking ill of Senator Ratcliffe, and he meant to prevent a marriage;
but he had an enemy to deal with not easily driven from the path, and
quite capable of routing any number of rivals.
Ratcliffe was afraid of no one. He had not fought his own way in
life for nothing, and he knew all the value of a cold head and dogged
self-assurance.
Nothing but this robust Americanism and his strong will carried him
safely through the snares and pitfalls of Mrs. Lee's society, where
rivals and enemies beset him on every hand. He was little better than a
schoolboy, when he ventured on their ground, but when he could draw
them over upon his own territory of practical life he rarely failed to
trample on his assailants.
It was this practical sense and cool will that won over Mrs. Lee, who
was woman enough to assume that all the graces were well enough
employed in decorating her, and it was enough if the other sex felt her
superiority. Men were valuable only in proportion to their strength and
their appreciation of women. If the senator had only been strong enough
always to control his temper, he would have done very well, but his
temper was under a great strain in these times, and his incessant effort
to control it in politics made him less watchful in private life.
Mrs. Lee's tacit assumption of superior refinement irritated him,
and sometimes made him show his teeth like a bull-dog, at the cost of
receiving from Mrs. Lee a quick stroke in return such as a well-bred
tortoise-shell cat administers to check over-familiarity; innocent to
the eye, but drawing blood. One evening when he was more than commonly
out of sorts, after sitting some time in moody silence, he roused
himself, and, taking up a book that lay on her table, he glanced at its
title and turned over the leaves. It happened by ill luck to be a volume
of Darwin that Mrs. Lee had just borrowed from the library of Congress.
“Do you understand this sort of thing?” asked the Senator abruptly, in a
tone that suggested a sneer.
“Not very well,” replied Mrs. Lee, rather curtly.
“Why do you want to understand it?” persisted the Senator. “What good
will it do you?”
“Perhaps it will teach us to be modest,” answered Madeleine, quite equal
to the occasion.
“Because it says we descend from monkeys?” rejoined the Senator,
roughly.
“Do you think you are descended from monkeys?”
“Why not?” said Madeleine.
“Why not?” repeated Ratcliffe, laughing harshly. “I don't like the
connection. Do you mean to introduce your distant relations into
society?”
“They would bring more amusement into it than most of its present
members,” rejoined Mrs. Lee, with a gentle smile that threatened
mischief. But Ratcliffe would not be warned; on the contrary, the only
effect of Mrs. Lee's defiance was to exasperate his ill-temper, and
whenever he lost his temper he became senatorial and Websterian. “Such
books,” he began, “disgrace our civilization; they degrade and stultify
our divine nature; they are only suited for Asiatic despotisms where men
are reduced to the level of brutes; that they should be accepted by a
man like Baron Jacobi, I can understand; he and his masters have nothing
to do in the world but to trample on human rights. Mr. Carrington, of
course, would approve those ideas; he believes in the divine doctrine
of flogging negroes; but that you, who profess philanthropy and free
principles, should go with them, is astonishing; it is incredible; it is
unworthy of you.”
“You are very hard on the monkeys,” replied Madeleine, rather sternly,
when the Senator's oration was ended. “The monkeys never did you any
harm; they are not in public life; they are not even voters; if they
were, you would be enthusiastic about their intelligence and virtue.
After all, we ought to be grateful to them, for what would men do
in this melancholy world if they had not inherited gaiety from the
monkeys--as well as oratory.”
Ratcliffe, to do him justice, took punishment well, at least when
it came from Mrs. Lee's hands, and his occasional outbursts of
insubordination were sure to be followed by improved discipline; but if
he allowed Mrs. Lee to correct his faults, he had no notion of letting
himself be instructed by her friends, and he lost no chance of telling
them so. But to do this was not always enough. Whether it were that he
had few ideas outside of his own experience, or that he would not
trust himself on doubtful ground, he seemed compelled to bring every
discussion down to his own level. Madeleine puzzled herself in vain to
find out whether he did this because he knew no better, or because he
meant to cover his own ignorance.
“The Baron has amused me very much with his account of Bucharest
society,” Mrs. Lee would say: “I had no idea it was so gay.”
“I would like to show him our society in Peonia,” was Ratcliffe's reply;
“he would find a very brilliant circle there of nature's true noblemen.”
“The Baron says their politicians are precious sharp chaps,” added Mr.
French.
“Oh, there are politicians in Bulgaria, are there?” asked the Senator,
whose ideas of the Roumanian and Bulgarian neighbourhood were vague,
and who had a general notion that all such people lived in tents,
wore sheepskins with the wool inside, and ate curds: “Oh, they have
politicians there! I would like to see them try their sharpness in the
west.”
“Really!” said Mrs. Lee. “Think of Attila and his hordes running an
Indiana caucus?”
“Anyhow,” cried French with a loud laugh, “the Baron said that a set of
bigger political scoundrels than his friends couldn't be found in all
Illinois.”
“Did he say that?” exclaimed Ratcliffe angrily.
“Didn't he, Mrs. Lee? but I don't believe it; do you? What's your candid
opinion, Ratcliffe? What you don't know about Illinois politics isn't
worth knowing; do you really think those Bulgrascals couldn't run an
Illinois state convention?”
Ratcliffe did not like to be chaffed, especially on this subject, but he
could not resent French's liberty which was only a moderate return
for the wooden nutmeg. To get the conversation away from Europe, from
literature, from art, was his great object, and chaff was a way of
escape.
Carrington was very well aware that the weak side of the Senator lay in
his blind ignorance of morals. He flattered himself that Mrs. Lee must
see this and be shocked by it sooner or later, so that nothing more was
necessary than to let Ratcliffe expose himself. Without talking very
much, Carrington always aimed at drawing him out. He soon found,
however, that Ratcliffe understood such tactics perfectly, and instead
of injuring, he rather improved his position. At times the man's
audacity was startling, and even when Carrington thought him hopelessly
entangled, he would sweep away all the hunter's nets with a sheer effort
of strength, and walk off bolder and more dangerous than ever.
When Mrs. Lee pressed him too closely, he frankly admitted her charges.
“What you say is in great part true. There is much in politics that
disgusts and disheartens; much that is coarse and bad. I grant you there
is dishonesty and corruption. We must try to make the amount as small as
possible.”
“You should be able to tell Mrs. Lee how she must go to work,” said
Carrington; “you have had experience. I have heard, it seems to me, that
you were once driven to very hard measures against corruption.”
Ratcliffe looked ill-pleased at this compliment, and gave Carrington one
of his cold glances that meant mischief. But he took up the challenge on
the spot:--
“Yes, I was, and am very sorry for it. The story is this, Mrs. Lee;
and it is well-known to every man, woman, and child in the State of
Illinois, so that I have no reason for softening it. In the worst days
of the war there was almost a certainty that my State would be carried
by the peace party, by fraud, as we thought, although, fraud or not, we
were bound to save it. Had Illinois been lost then, we should certainly
have lost the Presidential election, and with it probably the Union. At
any rate, I believed the fate of the war to depend on the result. I
was then Governor, and upon me the responsibility rested. We had entire
control of the northern counties and of their returns. We ordered the
returning officers in a certain number of counties to make no returns
until they heard from us, and when we had received the votes of all the
southern counties and learned the precise number of votes we needed to
give us a majority, we telegraphed to our northern returning officers
to make the vote of their districts such and such, thereby overbalancing
the adverse returns and giving the State to us. This was done, and as I
am now senator I have a right to suppose that what I did was approved. I
am not proud of the transaction, but I would do it again, and worse than
that, if I thought it would save this country from disunion. But of
course I did not expect Mr. Carrington to approve it. I believe he was
then carrying out his reform principles by bearing arms against the
government.”
“Yes!” said Carrington drily; “you got the better of me, too. Like the
old Scotchman, you didn't care who made the people's wars provided you
made its ballots.”
Carrington had missed his point. The man who has committed a murder for
his country, is a patriot and not an assassin, even when he receives a
seat in the Senate as his share of the plunder. Women cannot be expected
to go behind the motives of that patriot who saves his country and his
election in times of revolution.
Carrington's hostility to Ratcliffe was, however, mild, when compared
with that felt by old Baron Jacobi. Why the baron should have taken so
violent a prejudice it is not easy to explain, but a diplomatist and a
senator are natural enemies, and Jacobi, as an avowed admirer of
Mrs. Lee, found Ratcliffe in his way. This prejudiced and immoral old
diplomatist despised and loathed an American senator as the type
which, to his bleared European eyes, combined the utmost pragmatical
self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and
the meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable
government. As Baron Jacobi's country had no special relations with that
of the United States, and its Legation at Washington was a mere job to
create a place for Jacobi to fill, he had no occasion to disguise his
personal antipathies, and he considered himself in some degree as having
a mission to express that diplomatic contempt for the Senate which his
colleagues, if they felt it, were obliged to conceal. He performed his
duties with conscientious precision. He never missed an opportunity to
thrust the sharp point of his dialectic rapier through the joints of the
clumsy and hide-bound senatorial self-esteem. He delighted in skilfully
exposing to Madeleine's eyes some new side of Ratcliffe's ignorance.
His conversation at such times sparkled with historical allusions,
quotations in half a dozen different languages, references to well-known
facts which an old man's memory could not recall with precision in all
their details, but with which the Honourable Senator was familiarly
acquainted, and which he could readily supply. And his Voltairian
face leered politely as he listened to Ratcliffe's reply, which showed
invariable ignorance of common literature, art, and history. The climax
of his triumph came one evening when Ratcliffe unluckily, tempted by
some allusion to Molière which he thought he understood, made reference
to the unfortunate influence of that great man on the religious opinions
of his time. Jacobi, by a flash of inspiration, divined that he had
confused Molière with Voltaire, and assuming a manner of extreme
suavity, he put his victim on the rack, and tortured him with affected
explanations and interrogations, until Madeleine was in a manner forced
to interrupt and end the scene. But even when the senator was not to be
lured into a trap, he could not escape assault. The baron in such a
case would cross the lines and attack him on his own ground, as on one
occasion, when Ratcliffe was defending his doctrine of party allegiance,
Jacobi silenced him by sneering somewhat thus:
“Your principle is quite correct, Mr. Senator. I, too, like yourself,
was once a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was
ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church;
your National Convention is our OEcumenic Council; you abdicate reason,
as we do, before its decisions; and you yourself, Mr. Ratcliffe, you are
a Cardinal. They are able men, those cardinals; I have known many; they
were our best friends, but they were not reformers. Are you a reformer,
Mr. Senator?”
Ratcliffe grew to dread and hate the old man, but all his ordinary
tactics were powerless against this impenetrable eighteenth century
cynic. If he resorted to his Congressional practise of browbeating
and dogmatism, the Baron only smiled and turned his back, or made some
remark in French which galled his enemy all the more, because, while
he did not understand it, he knew well that Madeleine did, and that she
tried to repress her smile.
Ratcliffe's grey eyes grew colder and stonier than ever as he gradually
perceived that Baron Jacobi was carrying on a set scheme with malignant
ingenuity, to drive him out of Madeleine's house, and he swore
a terrible oath that he would not be beaten by that monkey-faced
foreigner. On the other hand Jacobi had little hope of success: “What
can an old man do?” said he with perfect sincerity to Carrington; “If
I were forty years younger, that great oaf should not have his own way.
Ah! I wish I were young again and we were in Vienna!” From which it was
rightly inferred by Carrington that the venerable diplomatist would, if
such acts were still in fashion, have coolly insulted the Senator, and
put a bullet through his heart.