In accordance with the advice of the Abbe Brossette the Duchesse de
Grandlieu asked the Marquis d’Ajuda to bring her that king of political
cut-throats, the celebrated Comte Maxime de Trailles, archduke of
Bohemia, the youngest of young men, though he was now fully fifty years
of age. Monsieur d’Ajuda arranged to dine with Maxime at the club in
the rue de Beuane, and proposed to him after dinner to go and play dummy
whist with the Duc de Grandlieu, who had an attack of gout and was all
alone.
Though the son-in-law of the duke and the cousin of the duchess had
every right to present him in a salon where he had never yet set foot,
Maxime de Trailles did not deceive himself as to the meaning of an
invitation thus given. He felt certain that the duke or the duchess had
some need of him. Club life where men play cards with other men whom
they do not receive in their own houses is by no means one of the most
trifling signs of the present age.
The Duc de Grandlieu did Maxime the honor of appearing to suffer from
his gout. After several games of whist he went to bed, leaving his wife
_tete-a-tete_ with Maxime and d’Ajuda. The duchess, seconded by the
marquis, communicated her project to Monsieur de Trailles, and asked his
assistance, while ostensibly asking only for his advice. Maxime listened
to the end without committing himself, and waited till the duchess
should ask point-blank for his co-operation before replying.
“Madame, I fully understand you,” he then said, casting on her and the
marquis one of those shrewd, penetrating, astute, comprehensive glances
by which such great scamps compromise their interlocutors. “D’Ajuda
will tell you that if any one in Paris can conduct that difficult
negotiation, it is I,--of course without mixing you up in it; without
its being even known that I have come here this evening. Only, before
anything is done, we must settle preliminaries. How much are you willing
to sacrifice?”
“All that is necessary.”
“Very well, then, Madame la duchesse. As the price of my efforts you
must do me the honor to receive in your house and seriously protect
Madame la Comtesse de Trailles.”
“What! are you married?” cried d’Ajuda.
“I shall be married within a fortnight to the heiress of a rich but
extremely bourgeois family,--a sacrifice to opinion! I imbibe the very
spirit of my government, and start upon a new career. Consequently,
Madame la duchesse will understand how important it is to me to have my
wife adopted by her and by her family. I am certain of being made deputy
by the resignation of my father-in-law, and I am promised a diplomatic
post in keeping with my new fortune. I do not see why my wife should not
be as well received as Madame de Portenduere in that society of young
women which includes Mesdames de la Bastie, Georges de Maufrigneuse, de
L’Estorade, du Guenic, d’Ajuda, de Restaud, de Rastignac, de Vandenesse.
My wife is pretty, and I will undertake to _un-cotton-night-cap_ her.
Will this suit you, Madame la duchesse? You are religious, and if you
say yes, your promise, which I know to be sacred, will greatly aid in my
change of life. It will be one more good action to your account. Alas!
I have long been the king of _mauvais sujets_, and I want to make an
end of it. After all, we bear, azure, a wivern or, darting fire, ongle
gules, and scaled vert, a chief ermine, from the time of Francois I.,
who thought proper to ennoble the valet of Louis XI., and we have been
counts since Catherine de’ Medici.”
“I will receive and protect your wife,” said the duchess, solemnly, “and
my family will not turn its back upon her; I give you my word.”
“Ah! Madame la duchesse,” cried Maxime, visibly touched, “if Monsieur
le duc would also deign to treat me with some kindness, I promise you
to make your plan succeed without its costing you very much. But,”
he continued after a pause, “you must take upon yourself to follow my
instructions. This is the last intrigue of my bachelor life; it must
be all the better managed because it concerns a good action,” he added,
smiling.
“Follow your instructions!” said the duchess. “Then I must appear in all
this.”
“Ah! madame, I will not compromise you,” cried Maxime. “I esteem you too
much to demand guarantees. I merely mean that you must follow my advice.
For example, it will be necessary that du Guenic be taken away by his
wife for at least two years; she must show him Switzerland, Italy,
Germany,--in short, all possible countries.”
“Ah! you confirm a fear of my director,” said the duchess, naively,
remembering the judicious objection of the Abbe Brossette.
Maxime and d’Ajuda could not refrain from smiling at the idea of this
agreement between heaven and hell.
“To prevent Madame de Rochefide from ever seeing Calyste again,” she
continued, “we will all travel, Juste and his wife, Calyste, Sabine, and
I. I will leave Clotilde with her father--”
“It is too soon to sing victory, madame,” said Maxime. “I foresee
enormous difficulties; though I shall no doubt vanquish them. Your
esteem and your protection are rewards which would make me commit the
vilest actions, but these will be--”
“The vilest actions!” cried the duchess, interrupting this modern
condottiere, and showing on her countenance as much disgust as
amazement.
“And you would share them, madame, inasmuch as I am only your agent. But
are you ignorant of the degree of blindness to which Madame de Rochefide
has brought your son-in-law? I know it from Canalis and Nathan, between
whom she was hesitating when Calyste threw himself into the lioness’s
jaws. Beatrix has contrived to persuade that serious Breton that she has
never loved any one but him; that she is virtuous; that Conti was merely
a sentimental head-love in which neither the heart nor the rest of it
had any part,--a musical love, in short! As for Rochefide, that
was duty. So, you understand, she is virgin!--a fact she proves by
forgetting her son, whom for more than a year she has not made the
slightest attempt to see. The truth is, the little count will soon be
twelve years old, and he finds in Madame Schontz a mother who is all the
more a mother because maternity is, as you know, a passion with women of
that sort. Du Guenic would let himself be cut in pieces, and would chop
up his wife for Beatrix; and you think it is an easy matter to drag a
man from the depths of such credulity! Ah! madame, Shakespeare’s Iago
would lose all his handkerchiefs. People think that Othello, or his
younger brother, Orosmanes, or Saint-Preux, Rene, Werther, and other
lovers now in possession of fame, represented love! Never did their
frosty-hearted fathers know what absolute love is; Moliere alone
conceived it. Love, Madame la duchesse, is not loving a noble woman, a
Clarissa--a great effort, faith! Love is to say to one’s self: ‘She
whom I love is infamous; she deceives me, she will deceive me; she is an
abandoned creature, she smells of the frying of hell-fire;’ but we rush
to her, we find there the blue of heaven, the flowers of Paradise. That
is how Moliere loved, and how we, scamps that we are! how we love. As
for me, I weep at the great scene of Arnolphe. Now, that is how your
son-in-law loves Beatrix. I shall have trouble separating Rochefide from
Madame Schontz; but Madame Schontz will no doubt lend herself to the
plot; I shall study her interior. But as for Calyste and Beatrix, they
will need the blows of an axe, far deeper treachery, and so base an
infamy that your virtuous imagination could never descend to it--unless
indeed your director gave you a hand. You have asked the impossible, you
shall be obeyed. But in spite of my settled intention to war with fire
and sword, I cannot absolutely promise you success. I have known lovers
who did not recoil before the most awful disillusions. You are too
virtuous to know the full power of women who are not virtuous.”
“Do not enter upon those infamous actions until I have consulted the
Abbe Brossette to know how far I may be your accomplice,” cried the
duchess, with a naivete which disclosed what selfishness there is in
piety.
“You shall be ignorant of everything, my dear mother,” interposed
d’Ajuda.
On the portico, while the carriage of the marquis was drawing up,
d’Ajuda said to Maxime:--
“You frightened that good duchess.”
“But she has no idea of the difficulty of what she asks. Let us go to
the Jockey Club; Rochefide must invite me to dine with Madame Schontz
to-morrow, for to-night my plan will be made, and I shall have chosen
the pawns on my chess-board to carry it out. In the days of her splendor
Beatrix refused to receive me; I intend to pay off that score, and I
will avenge your sister-in-law so cruelly that perhaps she will find
herself too well revenged.”
The next day Rochefide told Madame Schontz that Maxime de Trailles was
coming to dinner. That meant notifying her to display all her luxury,
and prepare the choicest food for this connoisseur emeritus, whom all
the women of the Madame Schontz type were in awe of. Madame Schontz
herself thought as much of her toilet as of putting her house in a state
to receive this personage.
In Paris there are as many royalties as there are varieties of art,
mental and moral specialties, sciences, professions; the strongest and
most capable of the men who practise them has a majesty which is all
his own; he is appreciated, respected by his peers, who know the
difficulties of his art or profession, and whose admiration is given
to the man who surmounts them. Maxime was, in the eyes of _rats_ and
courtesans, an extremely powerful and capable man, who had known how to
make himself excessively loved. He was also admired by men who knew how
difficult it is to live in Paris on good terms with creditors; in short,
he had never had any other rival in elegance, deportment, and wit than
the illustrious de Marsay, who frequently employed him on political
missions. All this will suffice to explain his interview with the
duchess, his prestige with Madame Schontz, and the authority of his
words in a conference which he intended to have on the boulevard des
Italiens with a young man already well-known, though lately arrived, in
the Bohemia of Paris.