THE MASQUERADE.
Three months had elapsed, and Paris was in full carnival. Since the
beginning of the year the town had been kept in a state of unusual
excitement by the anticipation of a ball, for which the rich and
fashionable Countess de M---- had issued invitations to her immense
circle of friends and acquaintances. The position of the countess--who,
herself the daughter of an illustrious house, and reckoning amongst
her ancestors and their alliances more than one sovereign prince and
constable of France, had married a man enriched and ennobled by
Napoleon--gave her peculiar facilities for collecting around her all
that was distinguished and fashionable in Paris, and for blending the
various coteries into which political differences, as much as pride
of descent on the one hand, and pride of purse on the other, split
the higher circles of Parisian society. Her invitations included
stiff-necked Legitimists from the dull but dignified streets of St
Germain's faubourg, noble as a La Tremouille or a Montmorency, and still
sulking against the monarchy of the 7th August; wealthy _parvenus_ from
the Chaussee d'Antin, military nobles of imperial fabrication, Russian
princes, English lords, Spanish grandees, diplomatists by the dozen, and
a prince or two of the reigning family. Under ordinary circumstances,
Madame de M---- might have hesitated to bring together so heterogeneous
an assemblage--to have mingled in the same saloons all these conflicting
vanities, opinions, and prejudices; but the character of her
entertainment removed the inconveniences of such confrontation. It was
no ordinary ball or commonplace rout of which the palatial mansion of
the countess was upon this occasion to be the scene. She had conceived
the bold idea of resuscitating, upon a large scale, an amusement which,
in Paris, has long since degenerated into vulgar license and drunken
saturnalia. Her entertainment was to be a masquerade, to which no one
was to come with uncovered face or in ordinary costume. A mask and a
disguise were as essential to obtain entrance, as was the ticket of
admission sent to each individual invited, and which was to be delivered
up at the door, accompanied by the holder's engraved visiting-card. This
precaution was to guard against the recurrence of an unpleasant incident
that had occurred two years previously at a minor entertainment of
similar character, when two ingenious professors of legerdemain, better
known to the police than to the master of the house, found their way
into the ball-room under the convenient covering of dominoes, and
departed, before their presence was discovered, carrying with them a
varied assortment of watches, purses, and jewellery.
The night of the much-talked-of fete had arrived; the tailors,
milliners, and embroiderers, who for a month past had slaved in the
service of the invited, had brought home the results of their labours:
the fashionable hair-dressers had had a hard day's work--some hundreds
of wreaths and nosegays, which in June would have been beautiful, and in
January seemed miraculous, and whose aggregate cost was a comfortable
year's income, had been composed by the tasteful fingers of the Parisian
flower-girls. The hour was at hand, and many a fair bosom palpitated
with pleasurable anticipations. The hotel of the rich Fatello, as the
successful speculator was usually called, had its share of the bustle of
preparation; but at last knotty questions of costume were satisfactorily
settled, and the ladies committed themselves to the hands of their
tirewomen. In his library sat Sigismund Fatello, opening a pile of notes
and letters that had accumulated there since afternoon. Some he read and
put carefully aside; to others he scarcely vouchsafed a glance; whilst a
third class were placed apart for perusal at greater leisure. At last he
opened one by whose contents he was strangely moved, for, on reading
them, he started and turned pale, as if stung by an adder. Passing his
hand over his eyes, as though to clear his vision, he stood up and
placed the paper in the very strongest glare of the powerful Carcel lamp
illuminating the room. A second time he read, and his agitation visibly
increased. Its cause was a small note, containing but four lines,
written in a feigned hand. It was an anonymous letter, striking him
in his most vulnerable point. Again and again he perused it, striving
to recognise the handwriting, or conjecture the author. All his
efforts were in vain. Once, inspired by his good genius, he crushed the
treacherous paper in his hand, and approached the fireplace to destroy
it in the flames. But as he drew near the logs that glowed and crackled
on the hearth, his pace became slower and slower, until he finally stood
still, smoothed the crumpled paper, and once more devoured its contents.
Then he walked several times up and down the apartment with a hurried
step. The three months that had elapsed since Arthur de Mellay and
Baron Steinfeld had met in the stalls in the opera, had not passed
over the head of Fatello without producing a certain change in his
appearance. He was thinner and paler, his eyes were more sunken, and
a dark line was pencilled beneath them. The change, however, was not
such as an indifferent person would notice; it might proceed from many
causes--from mental labour, uneasiness, or grief, as well as from bodily
disease--the idea of which latter was unlikely to enter the head of
a careless observer of his massive frame and features, and of the
general appearance of great muscular strength, still remarkable in
the ill-favoured financier. Now, however, he was unusually pale and
haggard. The letter he still held in his hand had worked upon him like a
malevolent charm, hollowing his cheek and wrinkling his brow. For nearly
half an hour he continued his monotonous walk, alternately slackening
and accelerating his pace. At times he would come to a momentary halt,
with the absent air of one absorbed in working out a puzzling problem.
At last he opened a secretaire, touched a spring which made a secret
drawer fly open, placed in this drawer the letter that had so greatly
disturbed him, closed the desk, and, lighting a taper, took the
direction of his wife's sitting-room, in the opposite wing of the hotel.
Madame Fatello and Mademoiselle Sebastiana Gonfalon were equipped for
the ball and in readiness to depart. Between the two sisters, in whose
ages there was a difference of two years, so strong a resemblance
existed that they frequently were taken for twins. Exactly of the same
stature, they had the same large dark eyes, abundant hair, and brown
tint of skin, and the same mouth, not very small, but beautiful in form,
and adorned with teeth of dazzling whiteness. Both had the grace and
fascination for which their countrywomen are renowned. The chief
difference between them was in expression. Catalina was the more serious
of the two: her gravity sometimes verged upon sullenness, and this was
especially observable since she had been compelled to a marriage
repugnant to her feelings, but which she had lacked energy and courage
to resist. Her father would have found it a far less easy task to force
Sebastiana to a union opposed to her inclinations. As high-spirited
as her sister was irresolute, Mademoiselle Gonfalon was one of those
persons whose obstinacy is increased by every attempt at coercion.
Laughing and lively amidst all her gay coquetries, there still was a
decision in her classically moulded chin and slightly compressed
lip, and a something clandestine but resolute in her eye, which a
physiognomist would have interpreted as denoting a degree of
intelligence and a passionate strength of character denied by nature to
her feebler sister. Upon this evening, however, it might have been
thought the two young women had exchanged characters. Sebastiana, in
general all smiles and sprightliness, was thoughtful and preoccupied,
almost anxious; whilst the listless and melancholy Catalina had an
unusual appearance of gaiety and animation. Her cheek was flushed,
her eyes were brilliant, and she looked repeatedly at a jewelled
bijou-watch, as though she would fain have advanced the hour at which
she could with propriety make her entrance into Madame de M----'s
saloons.
The door opened and Fatello came in. By a powerful exertion of that
self-command which he possessed in no ordinary degree, he had banished
from his countenance nearly every trace of recent agitation. He was
perhaps a shade paler than usual, but his brow was unclouded, and his
uncouth countenance was lighted up by the most agreeable smile it could
assume.
"So, ladies," he said, with a liveliness that sat but clumsily upon him,
"you are armed for conquest. Accept my compliments on the excellent
taste of your costumes. They are really charming. If you are detected,
it will hardly be by your dress. Those loose robes and that convenient
cowl are the best possible disguises."
"All the better!" cried Sebastiana. "Nothing like the dear black
domino, under which you can be impertinent as you like, with scarce
a possibility of discovery. There will be fifty such dresses as ours
in the room."
"No doubt of it," replied her brother-in-law, thoughtfully. And his
piercing green-grey eye scanned the dominoes that shrouded the graceful
figures of his wife and her sister. They were of plain black satin; but
the art of the maker had contrived to impart elegance to the costume
which, of all others, generally possesses it the least. The two dresses
were exactly alike, except that Catalina's was tied at the wrists
with lilac ribbons, whilst nothing broke the uniform blackness of her
sister's garb. Black gloves and masks, and two bouquets of choice
exotics, the masterpieces of the celebrated bouquetiere of the Madeleine
boulevard, completed the ladies' equipment.
"I am sorry," said Fatello, "to deny myself the pleasure of accompanying
you to the Countess's fete, but I am behindhand with my correspondence,
and have received important letters, which I must answer by the
morning's post. My night, a part of it at least, will be passed at the
desk instead of in the ball-room."
There was nothing in this announcement to excite surprise; the tone and
manner in which it was made were perfectly natural; but, nevertheless,
Sebastiana Gonfalon darted a keen quick glance at her brother-in-law,
as though seeking in his words a double meaning or disguised purpose.
Madame Fatello showed neither surprise nor disappointment, but,
approaching a table, she took from a costly basket of gold filagree,
overflowing with cards and invitations, an envelope containing three
tickets for the masquerade. Selecting two of them, she threw the third
into the basket, and again looked at her watch. At that moment the door
opened, and her carriage was announced.
"Come, Sebastiana," said Madame Fatello, impatiently. "Good-night, M.
Fatello." And, with a slight bow to her husband, she passed into the
anteroom.
"Good-night, Sigismund," said Sebastiana. "Change your mind and follow
us."
"Impossible," said Fatello, with the same smiling countenance as before.
Sebastiana followed her sister. Fatello lingered a few moments in the
drawing-room, and then returned to his study. As he entered it, he
heard the roll of the carriage-wheels driving out of the court.
The masquerade given by the Countess de M---- was that kind of
magnificent and extraordinary entertainment which forms _the_ event
of the year in which it occurs; which is long held up as a pattern to
gala-givers, and as marking a red-letter epoch in the annals of fashion
and pleasure. Nothing was spared to make it in all respects perfect. An
entire floor of the Countess's vast mansion had been cleared, for the
occasion, of all superfluous furniture; three splendid saloons were
appropriated to dancing: two others, equally spacious, to refreshments.
In these, the appetites of the guests had been richly catered for. One
was the coffee-house, the other the _restaurant_. In the former, on a
multitude of small marble tables, a regiment of attentive waiters served
ices and sherbets, wine and chocolate, coffee and liqueurs. In the
latter, tables were laid for supper, and upon each of them lay a printed
bill of fare, where the hungry made their selection from a list of
the most delicate dishes, whose appearance followed the order with a
celerity that would have done honour to the best-appointed hotel in
Paris. A long, wide gallery, and some smaller rooms, were used as a
promenade, where the company freely circulated. In a music-hall, a
strong party of professional singers kept up an unceasing concert for
the entertainment of all comers; and in a chamber fitted up as a tent,
an Italian juggler, with peaked beard, and in antique costume of black
velvet, performed tricks of extraordinary novelty and ingenuity. Every
part and corner of this magnificent suite of apartments was lighted _a
giorno_, draped with coloured silks and muslins, and enlivened by a
profusion of tall mirrors, multiplying tenfold the fantastical figures
of the maskers and the flame of the countless _bougies_. Many hundreds
of porcelain vases, containing the choicest plants forced prematurely
into flower, and all remarkable for brilliancy of colour or fragrance
of perfume, lined the broad corridors and the recesses of the windows,
which latter were further filled by admirably executed transparencies,
forming a series of views from the Italian lakes. The whole resembled a
scene from fairyland, or an enchanted palace, raised by the wand of
some benevolent gnome for the delectation of the sons and daughters of
mortality. If the entertainment was of unparalleled magnificence, the
appearance of the guests did it no discredit. Tasteful and ingeniously
devised costumes crowded the apartments; history and romance had been
ransacked for characters; the most costly materials had been lavishly
employed in the composition of dresses for that one night's diversion.
All was glitter of jewels, wave of plumes, and rustle of rich brocades.
In diamonds alone an emperor's ransom was displayed; and more than one
fair masker bore upon her neck and arms, and graceful head, the annual
revenue of half-a-dozen German princes.
As Sebastiana had predicted, there was a considerable sprinkling of
dominoes amongst the motley throng; and as usual, of those who had
selected that dress, more favourable to concealment and intrigue than to
display of personal graces or costly ornaments, at least one-half had
preferred black to any other colour. These latter seemed the subject of
the particular attention of one of their number, who, soon after twelve
o'clock, made his appearance in the ball-room. Impatience to share in
the much-talked-of fete had rendered the invited punctual; by that hour
nearly all had arrived, and in such numbers that the rooms, though so
large and numerous, were crowded at least as much as was convenient
and consistent with circulation. Hence the black domino was frequently
impeded in the rapid movements he commenced whenever one of his own
species--that is to say, a domino of the same colour--caught his eye,
movements which had for their object to meet or overtake the person of
garb similar to his own. On such occasions, so great was his impatience,
that in a public ball-room he would surely have incurred a quarrel by
the somewhat too vigorous use he made of his elbows. But Madame de
M----'s well-bred guests merely shrugged their shoulders, and wondered
who the _manant_ could be who thus imported into their elite society
the unceremonious usages of an opera-house masquerade. The black domino
heeded not their mute wonderment, nor cared for the unfavourable
impression he might leave upon the ribs and the minds of those he
jostled. He was evidently looking for somebody, and however discouraging
the task of seeking one particular black domino in a crowded masquerade,
where there were two or three score of them, he persevered, in spite of
repeated disappointments. At last it seemed as if success had rewarded
his constancy. With the suddenness and certainty of a well-broken
pointer, he came to a dead stop at sight of a black satin domino leaning
on the arm of an elegant Hungarian hussar. To the steps of this couple
he thenceforward attached himself. Whithersoever they went he followed,
keeping at sufficient distance to prevent their noticing his pursuit;
regulating his pace by theirs, but occasionally accelerating it so as to
pass them, and lingering for a second when close at their side, as if
trying to distinguish the tones of their voices, or to catch a few words
of their discourse. Whilst thus engaged, he did not observe that he had
himself become an object of attention to a third black domino, who,
previously to him, had been dogging, but at greater distance, and with
still more precaution than he observed, the steps of the hussar and his
companion. The curiosity and caution of domino No. 3 appeared to receive
fresh stimulus from the apparition of a rival observer, over whose
movements he kept careful watch, but from afar, and concealed as much as
possible amongst the crowd, somewhat after the fashion in which the Red
Indian observes, from his shelter amidst the trees of the forest, the
movements of the hunter, who himself watches from an ambush the course
of a herd of deer.
The only portion of the apartments thrown open to the maskers that was
not rendered light as day by a profusion of wax candles, was a vast
conservatory, the entrance to which was through two large French
windows, opening out of one of the dancing-rooms. Paved with a mosaic
of divers coloured marbles and fanciful device, it contained a choice
collection of exotics and evergreens, of such remarkable size and beauty
that the topmost leaves of many of them rustled against the elevated
glass roof. These trees and shrubs were so arranged as to form a sort of
miniature labyrinth, upon whose paths a mild light was thrown by lamps
of coloured glass suspended to the branches. This illumination, although
ample to guide the steps of the promenaders between the verdant and
flowering hedges, seemed but a twilight, from its contrast with the
broad glare of the adjoining apartments. The change from a strong to a
subdued light had been purposely contrived by the judicious arrangers
of the fete, as a relief for eyes wearied by the brilliancy of the
ball-room. As yet, however, few persons seemed eager for the transition,
and the conservatory was little resorted to except at the close of a
dance, when its comparatively fresh atmosphere was gladly sought.
Quadrilles had just commenced in all the dancing-rooms, when the
Hungarian hussar and his domino, making their way slowly and with some
difficulty in rear of the dancers, took refuge in the conservatory from
the din of music and pressure of the crowd. They were evidently so
absorbed in their conversation, so much alone in the midst of the
multitude, that their eternal pursuer ventured unusually near to them,
and was close at their heels when they passed through the glass door.
Then, instead of continuing to follow them, he struck into another path,
which ran nearly parallel to the one they took. On reaching a circle of
beautiful arbutus, whose white bells and bright strawberries gleamed
like pearls and blood-drops in the light of the purple lamps that hung
amongst them, the hussar and his companion paused beside a porphyry
basin, supported by a sculptured pedestal of the same material. For a
few moments they stood silent, gazing at the gold-fish that swam their
monotonous circle in the basin; and at the little fountain that spouted
up in its centre. Then, leaning upon the edge of the vase, they resumed
their conversation in tones less guarded than before, for here they
might almost consider themselves alone--the few groups and couples
sauntering in the conservatory being too much engrossed in their own
discourse to heed that of others. The Hungarian removed his mask, still,
however, holding it ready to apply to his face in case of intrusion;
whilst the domino contented herself with raising the silken beard of
hers, to allow the musical tones proceeding from a pair of rosy and
youthful lips to fall more clearly upon her companion's ear. Thus they
continued a conversation apparently of deep interest to both, and which
they suspended only when some passing party of masks lingered for an
instant beside the fountain, until the end of the quadrille brought a
throng of dancers into the conservatory. Then they left the place, and
sauntered back into the ball-room.
Meanwhile the third domino watched the conservatory doors with a
lynx-eyed vigilance worthy a pupil of the celebrated Vidocq. Although
the loose black dress might have covered either a short man or a woman
of the middle stature, the delicacy of the gloved fingers, and of the
tiny foot that peeped from below its border, left little doubt as to the
sex of its wearer. From a convenient position on the steps leading up to
an orchestra, the fringe of her mask confined by her hand, so as to
prohibit even a glimpse of her ivory chin, she subjected to a rigid
scrutiny all who issued from the conservatory. Suddenly, from the door
nearest to her, the hussar and his companion made their appearance, and,
as they passed, she shrouded herself behind the portly figure and
sumptuous embroideries of a Venetian doge. Then she resumed her watch,
and a minute had not elapsed when she saw the tall black domino, whom
she had observed during the evening, re-enter the dancing-room and make
his way as fast as the crowd would allow him to the nearest door of
exit, with a hurried and irregular step, hardly to be explained
otherwise than by sudden illness or violent emotion. She followed him
to the head of the staircase, down which he rushed, disappearing at its
foot through the crowd of lackeys in the hall. Having seen this, she
re-entered the ball-room, sought out the hussar and his companion, and
soon afterwards was whirling with the former in the giddy circles of a
waltz.
Some hours later, as the Hungarian retired from the ball, almost borne
along in the dense stream of masks that now flowed through the rooms,
he felt a momentary pressure of his hand. A paper remained in its palm,
upon which his fingers mechanically closed. Amidst the ever-moving
throng it was impossible to detect the person from whom he had received
it. By this time a large portion of the company, oppressed by the heat,
had unmasked, but he knew none of the faces he saw around him, whilst
of those who had preserved their vizards he could fix on none as object
of suspicion. So soon as he could extricate himself from the crowd, he
unfolded the paper. It contained the following mysterious words, hastily
scrawled with a pencil:--
"One whom you think asleep wakes and watches. He is here; has
followed and overheard you, and will seek revenge. Be prepared.
Proof is difficult: denial may be safety. Adopt it at all risks.
Masked, the sisters are undistinguishable. Credit this warning
from a sincere friend."
Thrice the Hungarian perused this mysterious billet; and then, thrusting
it into the breast of his richly braided jacket, slowly left the house.