The next day, when Maxime de Trailles rose, Finot (whom he had summoned
the night before) was announced. Maxime requested his visitor to
arrange, as if by accident, a breakfast at the cafe Anglais, where
Finot, Couture, and Lousteau should gossip beside him. Finot, whose
position toward the Comte de Trailles was that of a sub-lieutenant
before a marshall of France, could refuse him nothing; it was altogether
too dangerous to annoy that lion. Consequently, when Maxime came to
the breakfast, he found Finot and his two friends at table and the
conversation already started on Madame Schontz, about whom Couture, well
manoeuvred by Finot and Lousteau (Lousteau being, though not aware of
it, Finot’s tool), revealed to the Comte de Trailles all that he wanted
to know about her.
About one o’clock, Maxime was chewing a toothpick and talking with du
Tillet on Tortoni’s portico, where speculation held a little Bourse, a
sort of prelude to the great one. He seemed to be engaged in business,
but he was really awaiting the Comte de la Palferine, who, within a
given time, was certain to pass that way. The boulevard des Italiens is
to-day what the Pont Neuf was in 1650; all persons known to fame pass
along it once, at least, in the course of the day. Accordingly, at the
end of about ten minutes, Maxime dropped du Tillet’s arm, and nodding to
the young Prince of Bohemia said, smiling:--
“One word with you, count.”
The two rivals in their own principality, the one orb on its decline,
the other like the rising sun, sat down upon four chairs before the Cafe
de Paris. Maxime took care to place a certain distance between himself
and some old fellows who habitually sunned themselves like wall-fruit
at that hour in the afternoon, to dry out their rheumatic affections. He
had excellent reasons for distrusting old men.
“Have you debts?” said Maxime, to the young count.
“If I had none, should I be worthy of being your successor?” replied La
Palferine.
“In putting that question to you I don’t place the matter in doubt; I
only want to know if the total is reasonable; if it goes to the five or
the six?”
“Six what?”
“Figures; whether you owe fifty or one hundred thousand? I have owed,
myself, as much as six hundred thousand.”
La Palferine raised his hat with an air as respectful as it was
humorous.
“If I had sufficient credit to borrow a hundred thousand francs,”
he replied, “I should forget my creditors and go and pass my life in
Venice, amid masterpieces of painting and pretty women and--”
“And at my age what would you be?” asked Maxime.
“I should never reach it,” replied the young count.
Maxime returned the civility of his rival, and touched his hat lightly
with an air of laughable gravity.
“That’s one way of looking at life,” he replied in the tone of one
connoisseur to another. “You owe--?”
“Oh! a mere trifle, unworthy of being confessed to an uncle; he would
disinherit me for such a paltry sum,--six thousand.”
“One is often more hampered by six thousand than by a hundred thousand,”
said Maxime, sententiously. “La Palferine, you’ve a bold spirit, and you
have even more spirit than boldness; you can go far, and make yourself
a position. Let me tell you that of all those who have rushed into the
career at the close of which I now am, and who have tried to oppose me,
you are the only one who has ever pleased me.”
La Palferine colored, so flattered was he by this avowal made with
gracious good-humor by the leader of Parisian adventurers. This action
of his own vanity was however a recognition of inferiority which wounded
him; but Maxime divined that unpleasant reaction, easy to foresee in so
clever a mind, and he applied a balm instantly by putting himself at the
discretion of the young man.
“Will you do something for me that will facilitate my retreat from the
Olympic circus by a fine marriage? I will do as much for you.”
“You make me very proud; it realizes the fable of the Rat and the Lion,”
said La Palferine.
“I shall begin by lending you twenty thousand francs,” continued Maxime.
“Twenty thousand francs! I knew very well that by dint of walking up and
down this boulevard--” said La Palferine, in the style of a parenthesis.
“My dear fellow, you must put yourself on a certain footing,” said
Maxime, laughing. “Don’t go on your own two feet, have six; do as I do,
I never get out of my tilbury.”
“But you must be going to ask me for something beyond my powers.”
“No, it is only to make a woman love you within a fortnight.”
“Is it a lorette?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s impossible; but if it concerns a woman, and a well-bred
one who is also clever--”
“She is a very illustrious marquise.”
“You want her letters?” said the young count.
“Ah! you are after my own heart!” cried Maxime. “No, that’s not it.”
“Then you want me to love her?”
“Yes, in the real sense--”
“If I am to abandon the aesthetic, it is utterly impossible,” said La
Palferine. “I have, don’t you see, as to women a certain honor; we may
play the fool with them, but not--”
“Ah! I was not mistaken!” cried Maxime. “Do you think I’m a man to
propose mere twopenny infamies to you? No, you must go, and dazzle, and
conquer. My good mate, I give you twenty thousand francs, and ten days
in which to triumph. Meet me to-night at Madame Schontz’.”
“I dine there.”
“Very good,” returned Maxime. “Later, when you have need of me, Monsieur
le comte, you will find me,” he added in the tone of a king who binds
himself, but promises nothing.
“This poor woman must have done you some deadly harm,” said La
Palferine.
“Don’t try to throw a plummet-line into my waters, my boy; and let me
tell you that in case of success you will obtain such powerful influence
that you will be able, like me, to retire upon a fine marriage when you
are bored with your bohemian life.”
“Comes there a time when it is a bore to amuse one’s self,” said La
Palferine, “to be nothing, to live like the birds, to hunt the fields of
Paris like a savage, and laugh at everything?”
“All things weary, even hell,” said de Trailles, laughing. “Well, this
evening.”
The two _roues_, the old and the young, rose. As Maxime got into his
one-horse equipage, he thought to himself: “Madame d’Espard can’t endure
Beatrix; she will help me. Hotel de Grandlieu,” he called out to the
coachman, observing that Rastignac was just passing him.
Find a great man without some weakness!
The duchess, Madame du Guenic, and Clotilde were evidently weeping.
“What is the matter?” he asked the duchess.
“Calyste did not come home; this is the first time; my poor daughter is
in despair.”
“Madame la duchesse,” said Maxime, drawing the pious lady into the
embrasure of a window, “for Heaven’s sake keep the utmost secrecy as to
my efforts, and ask d’Ajuda to do the same; for if Calyste ever hears
of our plot there will be a duel between him and me to the death. When I
told you that the affair would not cost much, I meant that you would not
be obliged to spend enormous sums; but I do want twenty thousand francs;
the rest is my affair; there may be important places to be given, a
receiver-generalship possibly.”
The duchess and Maxime left the room. When Madame de Grandlieu returned
to her daughter, she again listened to Sabine’s dithyrambics inlaid with
family facts even more cruel than those which had already crushed the
young wife’s happiness.
“Don’t be so troubled, my darling,” said the duchess. “Beatrix will pay
dear for your tears and sufferings; the hand of Satan is upon her; she
will meet with ten humiliations for every one she has inflicted upon
you.”
Madame Schontz had invited Claude Vignon, who, on several occasions, had
expressed a wish to know Maxime de Trailles personally. She also invited
Couture, Fabien, Bixiou, Leon de Lora, La Palferine, and Nathan.
The latter was asked by Rochefide on account of Maxime. Aurelie thus
expected nine guests, all men of the first ability, with the exception
of du Ronceret; but the Norman vanity and the brutal ambition of the
Heir were fully on a par with Claude Vignon’s literary power, Nathan’s
poetic gift, La Palferine’s _finesse_, Couture’s financial eye, Bixiou’s
wit, Finot’s shrewdness, Maxime’s profound diplomacy, and Leon de Lora’s
genius.
Madame Schontz, anxious to appear both young and beautiful, armed
herself with a toilet which that sort of woman has the art of making.
She wore a guipure pelerine of spidery texture, a gown of blue velvet,
the graceful corsage of which was buttoned with opals, and her hair in
bands as smooth and shining as ebony. Madame Schontz owed her celebrity
as a pretty woman to the brilliancy and freshness of a complexion as
white and warm as that of Creoles, to a face full of spirited details,
the features of which were clearly and firmly drawn,--a type long
presented in perennial youth by the Comtesse Merlin, and which is
perhaps peculiar to Southern races. Unhappily, little Madame Schontz
had tended towards ebonpoint ever since her life had become so happy and
calm. Her neck, of exquisite roundness, was beginning to take on flesh
about the shoulders; but in France the heads of women are principally
treasured; so that fine heads will often keep an ill-formed body
unobserved.
“My dear child,” said Maxime, coming in and kissing Madame Schontz on
the forehead, “Rochefide wanted me to see your establishment; why, it
is almost in keeping with his four hundred thousand francs a year. Well,
well, he would never have had them if he hadn’t known you. In less than
five years you have made him save what others--Antonia, Malaga, Cadine,
or Florentine--would have made him lose.”
“I am not a lorette, I am an artist,” said Madame Schontz, with a sort
of dignity, “I hope to end, as they say on the stage, as the progenitrix
of honest men.”
“It is dreadful, but we are all marrying,” returned Maxime, throwing
himself into an arm-chair beside the fire. “Here am I, on the point of
making a Comtesse Maxime.”
“Oh, how I should like to see her!” exclaimed Madame Schontz. “But
permit me to present to you Monsieur Claude Vignon--Monsieur Claude
Vignon, Monsieur de Trailles.”
“Ah, so you are the man who allowed Camille Maupin, the innkeeper of
literature, to go into a convent?” cried Maxime. “After you, God. I
never received such an honor. Mademoiselle des Touches treated you,
monsieur, as though you were Louis XIV.”
“That is how history is written!” replied Claude Vignon. “Don’t you know
that her fortune was used to free the Baron du Guenic’s estates? Ah! if
she only knew that Calyste now belongs to her ex-friend,” (Maxime pushed
the critic’s foot, motioning to Rochefide), “she would issue from her
convent, I do believe, to tear him from her.”
“Upon my word, Rochefide, if I were you,” said Maxime, finding that his
warning did not stop Vignon, “I should give back my wife’s fortune,
so that the world couldn’t say she attached herself to Calyste from
necessity.”
“Maxime is right,” remarked Madame Schontz, looking at Arthur, who
colored high. “If I have helped you to gain several thousand francs a
year, you couldn’t better employ them. I shall have made the happiness
of husband _and_ wife; what a feather in my cap!”
“I never thought of it,” replied the marquis; “but a man should be a
gentleman before he’s a husband.”
“Let me tell you when is the time to be generous,” said Maxime.
“Arthur,” said Aurelie, “Maxime is right. Don’t you see, old fellow,
that generous actions are like Couture’s investments?--you should make
them in the nick of time.”
At that moment Couture, followed by Finot, came in; and, soon after, all
the guests were assembled in the beautiful blue and gold salon of the
hotel Schontz, a title which the various artists had given to their
inn after Rochefide purchased it for his Ninon II. When Maxime saw La
Palferine, the last to arrive, enter, he walked up to his lieutenant,
and taking him aside into the recess of a window, gave him notes for
twenty thousand francs.
“Remember, my boy, you needn’t economize them,” he said, with the
particular grace of a true scamp.
“There’s none but you who can double the value of what you seem to
give,” replied La Palferine.
“Have you decided?”
“Surely, inasmuch as I take the money,” said the count, with a mixture
of haughtiness and jest.
“Well, then, Nathan, who is here to-night, will present you two days
hence at the house of Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.”
La Palferine started when he heard the name.
“You are to be madly in love with her, and, not to rouse suspicion,
drink heavily, wines, liqueurs! I’ll tell Aurelie to place you beside
Nathan at dinner. One thing more, my boy: you and I must meet every
night, on the boulevard de la Madeleine at one in the morning,--you to
give me an account of progress, I to give you instructions.”
“I shall be there, my master,” said the young count, bowing.
“Why do you make us dine with that queer fellow dressed like the
head-waiter of a restaurant?” whispered Maxime to Madame Schontz, with a
sign toward Fabien du Ronceret.
“Have you never met the Heir? Du Ronceret of Alencon.”
“Monsieur,” said Maxime to Fabien, “I think you must know my friend
d’Esgrignon?”
“Victurnien has ceased to know me for some time,” replied Fabien, “but
we used to be very intimate in our youth.”
The dinner was one of those which are given nowhere but in Paris
by these great female spendthrifts, for the choiceness of their
preparations often surprise the most fastidious of guests. It was at
just such a supper, at the house of a courtesan as handsome and rich as
Madame Schontz, that Paganini declared he had never eaten such fare at
the table of any sovereign, nor drunk such wines with any prince, nor
heard such witty conversation, nor seen the glitter of such coquettish
luxury.
Maxime and Madame Schontz were the first to re-enter the salon, about
ten o’clock, leaving the other guests, who had ceased to tell anecdotes
and were now boasting of their various good qualities, with their
viscous lips glued to the glasses which they could not drain.
“Well, my dear,” said Maxime, “you are not mistaken; yes, I have come
for your _beaux yeux_ and for help in a great affair. You must leave
Arthur; but I pledge myself to make him give you two hundred thousand
francs.”
“Why should I leave the poor fellow?”
“To marry that idiot, who seems to have been sent from Alencon
expressly for the purpose. He has been a judge, and I’ll have him made
chief-justice in place of Emile Blondet’s father, who is getting to be
eighty years old. Now, if you know how to sail your boat, your husband
can be elected deputy. You will both be personages, and you can then
look down on Madame la Comtesse du Bruel.”
“Never!” said Madame Schontz; “she’s a countess.”
“Hasn’t he condition enough to be made a count?”
“By the bye, he bears arms,” cried Aurelie, hunting for a letter in an
elegant bag hanging at the corner of the fireplace, and giving it to
Maxime. “What do they mean? Here are combs.”
“He bears: per fesse argent and azure; on the first, three combs gules,
two and one, crossed by three bunches grapes purpure, leaved vert, one
and two; on the second, four feathers or, placed fretwise, with _Servir_
for motto, and a squire’s helmet. It is not much; it seems they were
ennobled under Louis XIV.; some mercer was doubtless their grandfather,
and the maternal line must have made its money in wines; the du Ronceret
whom the king ennobled was probably an usher. But if you get rid of
Arthur and marry du Ronceret, I promise you he shall be a baron at the
very least. But you see, my dear, you’ll have to soak yourself for
five or six years in the provinces if you want to bury La Schontz in a
baroness. That queer creature has been casting looks at you, the meaning
of which is perfectly clear. You’ve got him.”
“No,” replied Aurelie, “when my hand was offered to him he remained,
like the brandies I read of to-day in the market reports, _dull_.”
“I will undertake to decide him--if he is drunk. Go and see where they
all are.”
“It is not worth while to go; I hear no one but Bixiou, who is making
jokes to which nobody listens. But I know my Arthur; he feels bound to
be polite, and he is probably looking at Bixiou with his eyes shut.”
“Let us go back, then.”
“_Ah ca!_” said Madame Schontz, suddenly stopping short, “in whose
interest shall I be working?”
“In that of Madame de Rochefide,” replied Maxime, promptly. “It is
impossible to reconcile her with Rochefide as long as you hold him.
Her object is to recover her place as head of his household and the
enjoyment of four hundred thousand francs a year.”
“And she offers me only two hundred thousand! I want three hundred
thousand, since the affair concerns her. What! haven’t I taken care of
her brat and her husband? I have filled her place in every way--and does
she think to bargain with me? With that, my dear Maxime, I shall have
a million; and if you’ll promise me the chief-justiceship at Alencon, I
can hold my own as Madame du Ronceret.”
“That’s settled,” said Maxime.
“Oh! won’t it be dull to live in that little town!” cried Aurelie,
philosophically. “I have heard so much of that province from d’Esgrignon
and the Val-Noble that I seem to have lived there already.”
“Suppose I promise you the support of the nobility?”
“Ah! Maxime, you don’t mean that?--but the pigeon won’t fly.”
“And he is very ugly with his purple skin and bristles for whiskers; he
looks like a wild boar with the eyes of a bird of prey. But he’ll make
the finest chief-justice of a provincial court. Now don’t be uneasy! in
ten minutes he shall be singing to you Isabelle’s air in the fourth act
of Robert le Diable: ‘At thy feet I kneel’--you promise, don’t you? to
send Arthur back to Beatrix?”
“It will be difficult; but perseverance wins.”
About half-past ten o’clock the guests returned to the salon for
coffee. Under the circumstances in which Madame Schontz, Couture, and du
Ronceret were placed, it is easy to imagine the effect produced upon the
Heir by the following conversation which Maxime held with Couture in
a corner and in a low voice, but so placed that Fabien could listen to
them.
“My dear Couture, if you want to lead a steady life you had better
accept a receiver-generalship which Madame de Rochefide will obtain for
you. Aurelie’s million will furnish the security, and you’ll share the
property in marrying her. You can be made deputy, if you know how to
trim your sails; and the premium I want for thus saving you is your vote
in the chamber.”
“I shall always be proud to be a follower of yours.”
“Ah! my dear fellow, you have had quite an escape. Just imagine! Aurelie
took a fancy for that Norman from Alencon; she asked to have him made a
baron, and chief-justice in his native town, and officer of the Legion
of honor! The fool never guessed her value, and you will owe your
fortune to her disappointment. You had better not leave that clever
creature time for reflection. As for me, I am already putting the irons
in the fire.”
And Maxime left Couture at the summit of happiness, saying to La
Palferine, “Shall I drive you home, my boy?”
By eleven o’clock Aurelie was alone with Couture, Fabien, and Rochefide.
Arthur was asleep on a sofa. Couture and Fabien each tried to outstay
the other, without success; and Madame Schontz finally terminated the
struggle by saying to Couture,--
“Good-night, I shall see you to-morrow.”
A dismissal which he took in good part.
“Mademoiselle,” said Fabien, in a low voice, “because you saw me
thoughtful at the offer which you indirectly made to me, do not think
there was the slightest hesitation on my part. But you do not know my
mother; she would never consent to my happiness.”
“You have reached an age for respectful summons,” retorted Aurelie,
insolently. “But if you are afraid of mamma you won’t do for me.”
“Josephine!” said the Heir, tenderly, passing his arm audaciously round
Madame Schontz’ waist, “I thought you loved me!”
“Well?”
“Perhaps I could appease my mother, and obtain her consent.”
“How?”
“If you would employ your influence--”
“To have you made baron, officer of the Legion of honor, and
chief-justice at Alencon,--is that it, my friend? Listen to me: I have
done so many things in my life that I am capable of virtue. I can be an
honest woman and a loyal wife; and I can push my husband very high. But
I wish to be loved by him without one look or one thought being turned
away from me. Does that suit you? Don’t bind yourself imprudently; it
concerns your whole life, my little man.”
“With a woman like you I can do it blind,” cried Fabien, intoxicated by
the glance she gave him as much as by the liqueurs des Iles.
“You shall never repent that word, my dear; you shall be peer of France.
As for that poor old fellow,” she continued, looking at Rochefide, who
was sound asleep, “after to-day I have d-o-n-e with him.”
Fabien caught Madame Schontz around the waist and kissed her with an
impulse of fury and joy, in which the double intoxication of wine and
love was secondary to ambition.
“Remember, my dear child,” she said, “the respect you ought to show
to your wife; don’t play the lover; leave me free to retire from my
mud-hole in a proper manner. Poor Couture, who thought himself sure of
wealth and a receiver-generalship!”
“I have a horror of that man,” said Fabien; “I wish I might never see
him again.”
“I will not receive him any more,” replied Madame Schontz, with a
prudish little air. “Now that we have come to an understanding, my
Fabien, you must go; it is one o’clock.”
This little scene gave birth in the household of Arthur and Aurelie (so
completely happy until now) to a phase of domestic warfare produced in
the bosom of all homes by some secret and alien interest in one of the
partners. The next day when Arthur awoke he found Madame Schontz as
frigid as that class of woman knows how to make herself.
“What happened last night?” he said, as he breakfasted, looking at
Aurelie.
“What often happens in Paris,” she replied, “one goes to bed in damp
weather and the next morning the pavements are dry and frozen so hard
that they are dusty. Do you want a brush?”
“What’s the matter with you, dearest?”
“Go and find your great scarecrow of a wife!”
“My wife!” exclaimed the poor marquis.
“Don’t I know why you brought Maxime here? You mean to make up with
Madame de Rochefide, who wants you perhaps for some indiscreet brat. And
I, whom you call so clever, I advised you to give back her fortune! Oh!
I see your scheme. At the end of five years Monsieur is tired of me. I’m
getting fat, Beatrix is all bones--it will be a change for you! You are
not the first I’ve known to like skeletons. Your Beatrix knows how to
dress herself, that’s true; and you are man who likes figure-heads.
Besides, you want to send Monsieur du Guenic to the right-about. It will
be a triumph! You’ll cut quite an appearance in the world! How people
will talk of it! Why! you’ll be a hero!”
Madame Schontz did not make an end of her sarcasms for two hours after
mid-day, in spite of Arthur’s protestations. She then said she was
invited out to dinner, and advised her “faithless one” to go without her
to the Opera, for she herself was going to the Ambigu-Comique to meet
Madame de la Baudraye, a charming woman, a friend of Lousteau. Arthur
proposed, as proof of his eternal attachment to his little Aurelie and
his detestation of his wife, to start the next day for Italy, and live
as a married couple in Rome, Naples, Florence,--in short, wherever she
liked, offering her a gift of sixty thousand francs.
“All that is nonsense,” she said. “It won’t prevent you from making up
with your wife, and you’ll do a wise thing.”
Arthur and Aurelie parted on this formidable dialogue, he to play cards
and dine at the club, she to dress and spend the evening _tete-a-tete_
with Fabien.
Monsieur de Rochefide found Maxime at the club, and complained to him
like a man who feels that his happiness is being torn from his heart
by the roots, every fibre of which clung to it. Maxime listened to his
moans, as persons of social politeness are accustomed to listen, while
thinking of other things.
“I’m a man of good counsel in such matters, my dear fellow,” he
answered. “Well, let me tell you, you are on the wrong road in letting
Aurelie see how dear she is to you. Allow me to present you to Madame
Antonia. There’s a heart to let. You’ll soon see La Schontz with other
eyes. She is thirty-seven years old, that Schontz of yours, and Madame
Antonia is only twenty-six! And what a woman! I may say she is my pupil.
If Madame Schontz persists in keeping on the hind heels of her pride,
don’t you know what that means?”
“Faith, no!”
“That she wants to marry, and if that’s the case, nothing can hinder her
from leaving you. After a lease of six years a woman has a right to do
so. Now, if you will only listen to me, you can do a better thing for
yourself. Your wife is to-day worth more than all the Schontzes
and Antonias of the quartier Saint-Georges. I admit the conquest is
difficult, but it is not impossible; and after all that has happened she
will make you as happy as an Orgon. In any case, you mustn’t look like a
fool; come and sup to-night with Antonia.”
“No, I love Aurelie too well; I won’t give her any reason to complain of
me.”
“Ah! my dear fellow, what a future you are preparing for yourself!”
cried Maxime.
“It is eleven o’clock; she must have returned from the Ambigu,” said
Rochefide, leaving the club.
And he called out his coachman to drive at top speed to the rue de la
Bruyere.
Madame Schontz had given precise directions; monsieur could enter as
master with the fullest understanding of madame; but, warned by the
noise of monsieur’s arrival, madame had so arranged that the sound
of her dressing-door closing as women’s doors do close when they are
surprised, was to reach monsieur’s ears. Then, at a corner of the piano,
Fabien’s hat, forgotten intentionally, was removed very awkwardly by a
maid the moment after monsieur had entered the room.
“Did you go to the Ambigu, my little girl?”
“No, I changed my mind, and stayed at home to play music.”
“Who came to see you?” asked the marquis, good-humoredly, seeing the hat
carried off by the maid.
“No one.”
At that audacious falsehood Arthur bowed his head; he passed beneath
the Caudine forks of submission. A real love descends at times to these
sublime meannesses. Arthur behaved with Madame Schontz as Sabine with
Calyste, and Calyste with Beatrix.
Within a week the transition from larva to butterfly took place in
the young, handsome, and clever Charles-Edouard, Comte Rusticoli de
la Palferine. Until this moment of his life he had lived miserably,
covering his deficits with an audacity equal to that of Danton. But he
now paid his debts; he now, by advice of Maxime, had a little carriage;
he was admitted to the Jockey Club and to the club of the rue de
Gramont; he became supremely elegant, and he published in the “Journal
des Debats” a novelette which won him in a few days a reputation which
authors by profession obtain after years of toil and successes only;
for there is nothing so usurping in Paris as that which ought to be
ephemeral. Nathan, very certain that the count would never publish
anything else, lauded the graceful and presuming young man so highly to
Beatrix that she, spurred by the praise of the poet, expressed a strong
desire to see this king of the vagabonds of good society.
“He will be all the more delighted to come here,” replied Nathan,
“because, as I happen to know, he has fallen in love with you to the
point of committing all sorts of follies.”
“But I am told he has already committed them.”
“No, not all; he has not yet committed that of falling in love with a
virtuous woman.”
Some ten days after the scheme plotted on the boulevard between Maxime
and his henchman, the seductive Charles-Edouard, the latter, to whom
Nature had given, no doubt sarcastically, a face of charming melancholy,
made his first irruption into the nest of the dove of the rue de
Chartres, who took for his reception an evening when Calyste was obliged
to go to a party with his wife.
If you should ever meet La Palferine you will understand perfectly
the success obtained in a single evening by that sparkling mind, that
animated fancy, especially if you take into consideration the admirable
adroitness of the showman who consented to superintend this debut.
Nathan was a good comrade, and he made the young count shine, as a
jeweller showing off an ornament in hopes to sell it, makes the diamonds
glitter. La Palferine was, discreetly, the first to withdraw; he left
Nathan and the marquise together, relying on the collaboration of the
celebrated author, which was admirable. Seeing that Beatrix was quite
astounded, Raoul put fire into her heart by pretended reticences which
stirred the fibres of a curiosity she did not know she possessed. Nathan
hinted that La Palferine’s wit was not so much the cause of his success
with women as his superiority in the art of love; a statement which
magnified the count immensely.
This is the place to record a new effect of that great law of
contraries, which produces so many crises in the human heart and
accounts for such varied eccentricities that we are forced to remember
it sometimes as well as its counterpart, the law of similitudes. All
courtesans preserve in the depths of their heart a perennial desire to
recover their liberty; to this they would sacrifice everything. They
feel this antithetical need with such intensity that it is rare to meet
with one of these women who has not aspired several times to a return
to virtue through love. They are not discouraged by the most cruel
deceptions. On the other hand, women restrained by their education, by
the station they occupy, chained by the rank of their families, living
in the midst of opulence, and wearing a halo of virtue, are drawn at
times, secretly be it understood, toward the tropical regions of love.
These two natures of woman, so opposed to each other, have at the bottom
of their hearts, the one that faint desire for virtue, the other that
faint desire for libertinism which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first
to have the courage to diagnose. In one, it is a last reflexion of the
ray divine that is not extinct; in the other, it is the last remains of
our primitive clay.
This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled
by Nathan with extreme cleverness. The marquise began to ask herself
seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her
head, and whether her education was complete. Vice--what is it? Possibly
only the desire to know everything.