The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard. "Well," he cried, when
that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him, "chance has favoured
me."
"I always counted on chance, Monsieur. Chance has more wit in its little
finger than the Paris police in its whole body."
"I have ascertained the relations, on the mother's side, of Louise Duval,
and the only question is how to get at them." Here Graham related what
he had heard, and ended by saying, "This Victor de Mauleon is therefore
my Louise Duval's uncle. He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in the
year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight of her in
Paris; and surely he must know what became of her afterwards."
"Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the discovery of Victor
de Mauleon. You seem not to know the particulars of that story about the
jewels which brought him into some connection with the police, and
resulted in his disappearance from Paris."
"No; tell me the particulars."
"Victor de Mauleon was heir to some 60,000 or 70,000 francs a year,
chiefly on the mother's side; for his father, though the representative
of one of the most ancient houses in Normandy, was very poor, having
little of his own except the emoluments of an appointment in the Court of
Louis Philippe.
"But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into that
inheritance, he very largely forestalled it. His tastes were
magnificent. He took to 'sport,' kept a famous stud, was a great
favourite with the English, and spoke their language fluently. Indeed he
was considered very accomplished, and of considerable intellectual
powers. It was generally said that some day or other, when he had sown
his wild oats, he would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man.
Altogether he was a very strong creature. That was a very strong age
under Louis Philippe. The _viveurs_ of Paris were fine types for the
heroes of Dumas and Sue,--full of animal life and spirits. Victor de
Mauleon was a romance of Dumas, incarnated."
"Monsieur Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to your
taste in polite literature."
"Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to my humble
eminence if he be not something else than a professional. He must study
mankind wherever they are described, even in _les romans_. To return to
Victor de Mauleon. Though he was a 'sportman,' a gambler, a Don Juan, a
duel list, nothing was ever said against his honour. On the contrary, on
matters of honour he was a received oracle; and even though he had fought
several duels (that was the age of duels), and was reported without a
superior, almost without an equal, in either weapon, the sword or the
pistol, he is said never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to
have so used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely
to wound, an antagonist.
"I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect; for it was
much talked of at the time. One of your countrymen, who had never
handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something
M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and
called him out. Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his
pistol, not in the air--that might have been an affront--but so as to be
wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot at, and when missed,
said, 'Excuse the susceptibility of a Frenchman loath to believe that his
countryman can be beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one
gentleman can make to another for having forgotten the respect due to one
of the most renowned of your national heroes.' The Englishman's name was
Vane. Could it have been your father?"
"Very probably; just like my father to call out any man who insulted the
honour of his country, as represented by its men. I hope the two
combatants became friends?"
"That I never heard; the duel was over; there my story ends."
"Pray go on."
"One day--it was in the midst of political events which would have
silenced most subjects of private gossip--the _beau monde_ was startled
by the news that the Vicomte (he was then, by his father's death,
Vicomte) de Mauleon had been given into the custody of the police on the
charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a
distinguished foreigner). It seems that some days before this event, the
Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had
resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of
setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her
birthday. He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron
safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more
valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace. Imagine his
dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it
recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had
some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a
Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at that
time in delicate health; and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell on
the servants, especially on the _femme de chambre_, who was in great
favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to
put the servants on their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the
matter in the hands of the famous --------, who was then the pride and
ornament of the Parisian police. And the very night afterwards the
Vicomte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the
jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at
least a duplicate key, found in his possession. I should observe that
M. de Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper
rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite. As soon as
this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next
morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before
scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the medium
of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which
he was accused. We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most
startling reactions of feeling. The men we adore one day we execrate the
next. The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one bestows
on a hero to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty
larcener. Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into
its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan. However, one
compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society for
the grave injuries he had done it. Society would attend his trial,
witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his face
when he was sentenced to the, galleys. But, Monsieur, this wretch
completed the measure of his iniquities. He was not tried at all. The
Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his
lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's
complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had
confessed."
"What did the Vicomte confess? You omitted to state that."
"The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane
passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it,
met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the
same house to admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her dressing-room
by means of a key which he had procured, made from an impression of the
key-hole taken in wax.
"No evidence in support of any other charge against the Vicomte was
forthcoming,--nothing, in short, beyond the _infraction du domicile_
caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no
prosecution. The law, therefore, could have little to say against him.
But society was more rigid; and exceedingly angry to find that a man who
had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted
on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the meaner, though not
perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the
two offences. I presume that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a
dilemma from which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he
left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared. The sale of his stud
and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for I will do him the
justice to say that they were paid."
"But though the Vicomte de Mauleon has disappeared, he must have left
relations at Paris, who would perhaps know what has become of him and of
his niece."
"I doubt it. He had no very near relations. The nearest was an old
_celibataire_ of the same name, from whom he had some expectations, but
who died shortly after this esclandre, and did not name the Vicomte in
his will. M. Victor had numerous connections among the highest families,
the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Passys, Beauvilliers; but they
are not likely to have retained any connection with a ruined _vaurien_,
and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a drawing-master.
But now you have given me a clew, I will try to follow it up. We must
find the Vicomte, and I am not without hope of doing so. Pardon me if I
decline to say more at present. I would not raise false expectations;
but in a week or two I will have the honour to call again upon Monsieur."
"Wait one instant. You have really a hope of discovering M. de Mauleon?"
"Yes. I cannot say more at present."
M. Renard departed. Still that hope, however faint it might prove,
served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load
had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the
thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the
commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring
Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning desire to see
more of her, to understand her better. Faded into thin air was the vague
jealousy of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreasonably conceived; he
felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the "Ondine of Paris"
claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope to win an Isaura. He even
forgot the friendship with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond,
which a little while ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offence. He
remembered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent; only
the sweet voice, which had for the first time breathed music into his own
soul; only the gentle hand, whose touch had for the first time sent
through his veins the thrill which distinguishes from all her sex the
woman whom we love. He went forth elated and joyous, and took his way to
Isaura's villa. As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he
passed seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own
delight. Perhaps it was rather the reverse: his own silent delight
sympathized with all delight in awakening Nature. The lover seeking
reconciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle has unreasonably
estranged him, in a cloudless day of May,--if he be not happy enough to
feel a brotherhood in all things happy,--a leaf in bloom, a bird in
song,--then indeed he may call himself lover, but he does not know what
is love.