lake.
“Mademoiselle,” Longueville gravely replied, and his face assumed a sort
of stern dignity, “I promise to answer you truly as soon as you shall
have answered in all sincerity a question I will put to you!”--He
released her arm, and the girl suddenly felt alone in the world, as he
said: “What is your object in questioning me as to my birth?”
She stood motionless, cold, and speechless.
“Mademoiselle,” Maximilien went on, “let us go no further if we do not
understand each other. I love you,” he said, in a voice of deep emotion.
“Well, then,” he added, as he heard the joyful exclamation she could not
suppress, “why ask me if I am of noble birth?”
“Could he speak so if he were not?” cried a voice within her, which
Emilie believed came from the depths of her heart. She gracefully raised
her head, seemed to find new life in the young man’s gaze, and held out
her hand as if to renew the alliance.
“You thought I cared very much for dignities?” said she with keen
archness.
“I have no titles to offer my wife,” he replied, in a half-sportive,
half-serious tone. “But if I choose one of high rank, and among women
whom a wealthy home has accustomed to the luxury and pleasures of a
fine fortune, I know what such a choice requires of me. Love gives
everything,” he added lightly, “but only to lovers. Once married,
they need something more than the vault of heaven and the carpet of a
meadow.”
“He is rich,” she reflected. “As to titles, perhaps he only wants to try
me. He has been told that I am mad about titles, and bent on marrying
none but a peer’s son. My priggish sisters have played me that
trick.”--“I assure you, monsieur,” she said aloud, “that I have had
very extravagant ideas about life and the world; but now,” she added
pointedly, looking at him in a perfectly distracting way, “I know where
true riches are to be found for a wife.”
“I must believe that you are speaking from the depths of your heart,”
he said, with gentle gravity. “But this winter, my dear Emilie, in less
than two months perhaps, I may be proud of what I shall have to offer
you if you care for the pleasures of wealth. This is the only secret I
shall keep locked here,” and he laid his hand on his heart, “for on its
success my happiness depends. I dare not say ours.”
“Yes, yes, ours!”
Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their way back to
rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had never found her lover
more amiable or wittier: his light figure, his engaging manners, seemed
to her more charming than ever, since the conversation which had made
her to some extent the possessor of a heart worthy to be the envy of
every woman. They sang an Italian duet with so much expression that the
audience applauded enthusiastically. Their adieux were in a conventional
tone, which concealed their happiness. In short, this day had been to
Emilie like a chain binding her more closely than ever to the Stranger’s
fate. The strength and dignity he had displayed in the scene when they
had confessed their feelings had perhaps impressed Mademoiselle de
Fontaine with the respect without which there is no true love.
When she was left alone in the drawing-room with her father, the old man
went up to her affectionately, held her hands, and asked her whether she
had gained any light at to Monsieur Longueville’s family and fortune.
“Yes, my dear father,” she replied, “and I am happier than I could have
hoped. In short, Monsieur de Longueville is the only man I could ever
marry.”
“Very well, Emilie,” said the Count, “then I know what remains for me to
do.”
“Do you know of any impediment?” she asked, in sincere alarm.
“My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to me; but unless he
is not a man of honor, so long as you love him, he is as dear to me as a
son.”
“Not a man of honor!” exclaimed Emilie. “As to that, I am quite easy.
My uncle, who introduced him to us, will answer for him. Say, my dear
uncle, has he been a filibuster, an outlaw, a pirate?”
“I knew I should find myself in this fix!” cried the old sailor,
waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece had vanished “like
Saint-Elmo’s fires,” to use his favorite expression.
“Well, uncle,” Monsieur de Fontaine went on, “how could you hide from
us all you knew about this young man? You must have seen how anxious we
have been. Is Monsieur de Longueville a man of family?”
“I don’t know him from Adam or Eve,” said the Comte de Kergarouet.
“Trusting to that crazy child’s tact, I got him here by a method of my
own. I know that the boy shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well,
plays wonderfully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles
the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is as good an
arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The devil’s in
it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect gentleman, find me
a bourgeois who knows all this, or any man who lives more nobly than he
does. Does he do anything, I ask you? Does he compromise his dignity
by hanging about an office, bowing down before the upstarts you call
Directors-General? He walks upright. He is a man.--However, I have
just found in my waistcoat pocket the card he gave me when he fancied
I wanted to cut his throat, poor innocent. Young men are very
simple-minded nowadays! Here it is.”
“Rue du Sentier, No. 5,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall
among all the information he had received, something which might concern
the stranger. “What the devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust &
Co., wholesale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods,
live there.--Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has an interest in
their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longueville has but one son
of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like our man, and to whom he gave
fifty thousand francs a year that he might marry a minister’s daughter;
he wants to be made a peer like the rest of ‘em.--I never heard him
mention this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this girl Clara?
Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call himself Longueville.
But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust & Co. half ruined by some
speculation in Mexico or the Indies? I will clear all this up.”
“You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and seem to account
me a cipher,” said the old admiral suddenly. “Don’t you know that if he
is a gentleman, I have more than one bag in my hold that will stop any
leak in his fortune?”
“As to that, if he is a son of Longueville’s, he will want nothing;
but,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head from side to side,
“his father has not even washed off the stains of his origin. Before the
Revolution he was an attorney, and the DE he has since assumed no more
belongs to him than half of his fortune.”
“Pooh! pooh! happy those whose fathers were hanged!” cried the admiral
gaily.
Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of those fine
mornings in the month of November, which show the boulevards cleaned by
the sharp cold of an early frost, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a
new style of fur cape, of which she wished to set the fashion, went out
with two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to discharge
her most cutting remarks. The three women were tempted to the drive,
less by their desire to try a very elegant carriage, and wear gowns
which were to set the fashion for the winter, than by their wish to see
a cape which a friend had observed in a handsome lace and linen shop at
the corner of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were in the shop the
Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and pointed out to her
Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk, and engaged in paying out
the change for a gold piece to one of the workwomen with whom he seemed
to be in consultation. The “handsome stranger” held in his hand a parcel
of patterns, which left no doubt as to his honorable profession.
Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. Thanks to the
good breeding of the best society, she completely concealed the rage in
her heart, and answered her sister-in-law with the words, “I knew it,”
with a fulness of intonation and inimitable decision which the most
famous actress of the time might have envied her. She went straight up
to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the patterns in his pocket
with distracting coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and came
forward, looking at her keenly.
“Mademoiselle,” he said to the shopgirl, who followed him, looking very
much disturbed, “I will send to settle that account; my house deals
in that way. But here,” he whispered into her ear, as he gave her a
thousand-franc note, “take this--it is between ourselves.--You will
forgive me, I trust, mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Emilie. “You
will kindly excuse the tyranny of business matters.”
“Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern of mine,”
replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him with a bold expression
of sarcastic indifference which might have made any one believe that she
now saw him for the first time.
“Do you really mean it?” asked Maximilien in a broken voice.
Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. These words,
spoken in an undertone, had escaped the ears of her two sisters-in-law.
When, after buying the cape, the three ladies got into the carriage
again, Emilie, seated with her back to the horses, could not resist one
last comprehensive glance into the depths of the odious shop, where she
saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, in the attitude of a man
superior to the disaster that has so suddenly fallen on him. Their eyes
met and flashed implacable looks. Each hoped to inflict a cruel wound
on the heart of a lover. In one instant they were as far apart as if one
had been in China and the other in Greenland.
Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Mademoiselle de
Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that can torture the heart
of a young girl, reaped the richest harvest of anguish that prejudice
and narrow-mindedness ever sowed in a human soul. Her face, but just now
fresh and velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red patches; the
paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn green. Hoping
to hide her despair from her sisters, she would laugh as she pointed out
some ridiculous dress or passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She
was more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by any satirical
comments for which she might have revenged herself. She exhausted her
wit in trying to engage them in a conversation, in which she tried to
expend her fury in senseless paradoxes, heaping on all men engaged in
trade the bitterest insults and witticisms in the worst taste.
On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at first assumed
a somewhat serious character. By the end of a month the care of her
parents and of the physician restored her to her family.
Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough to subdue
Emilie’s nature; but she insensibly fell into her old habits and threw
herself again into the world of fashion. She declared that there was no
disgrace in making a mistake. If she, like her father, had a vote in the
Chamber, she would move for an edict, she said, by which all merchants,
and especially dealers in calico, should be branded on the forehead,
like Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She wished that none but
nobles should have the right to wear the antique French costume, which
was so becoming to the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear her, it was a
misfortune for France, perhaps, that there was no outward and visible
difference between a merchant and a peer of France. And a hundred more
such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were rapidly poured out when any
accident brought up the subject.
But those who loved Emilie could see through all her banter a tinge of
melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longueville still reigned over
that inexorable heart. Sometimes she would be as gentle as she had been
during the brief summer that had seen the birth of her love; sometimes,
again, she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her inequality of
temper, which had its source in sufferings at once secret and known to
all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some influence over her, thanks to his
increased prodigality, a kind of consolation which rarely fails of its
effect on a Parisian girl.
The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared was at the
Neapolitan ambassador’s. As she took her place in the first quadrille
she saw, a few yards away from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded
slightly to her partner.
“Is that young man a friend of yours?” she asked, with a scornful air.
“Only my brother,” he replied.
Emilie could not help starting. “Ah!” he continued, “and he is the
noblest soul living----”
“Do you know my name?” asked Emilie, eagerly interrupting him.
“No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to remember a name
which is on every lip--I ought to say in every heart. But I have a valid
excuse. I have but just arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who is in
Paris on leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his amiable
wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner.”
“A perfect tragic mask!” said Emilie, after looking at the ambassadress.
“And yet that is her ballroom face!” said the young man, laughing.
“I shall have to dance with her! So I thought I might have some
compensation.” Mademoiselle de Fontaine courtesied. “I was very much
surprised,” the voluble young secretary went on, “to find my brother
here. On arriving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in bed;
and I counted on seeing him before coming to this ball; but good policy
will always allow us to indulge family affection. The Padrona della case
would not give me time to call on my poor Maximilien.”
“Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplomatic
employment.”
“No,” said the attache, with a sigh, “the poor fellow sacrificed himself
for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced their share of my father’s
fortune to make an eldest son of me. My father dreams of a peerage, like
all who vote for the ministry. Indeed, it is promised him,” he added
in an undertone. “After saving up a little capital my brother joined a
banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a speculation in Brazil
which may make him a millionaire. You see me in the highest spirits at
having been able, by my diplomatic connections, to contribute to his
success. I am impatiently expecting a dispatch from the Brazilian
Legation, which will help to lift the cloud from his brow. What do you
think of him?”
“Well, your brother’s face does not look to me like that of a man busied
with money matters.”
The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the apparently calm face
of his partner.
“What!” he exclaimed, with a smile, “can young ladies read the thoughts
of love behind the silent brow?”
“Your brother is in love, then?” she asked, betrayed into a movement of
curiosity.
“Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a mother, wrote to
me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but I
have had no further news of the affair. Would you believe that the poor
boy used to get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle his
business that he might be back by four o’clock in the country where the
lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I had just
given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just come home
from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I have been
weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such a degree
that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the chimeras on
a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve unbecoming
in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it not you who
pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become inexhaustible. I
should like to proclaim to all the world how good and generous he is. He
gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a year, the income from
the Longueville property.”
If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these important
revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which she continued to
question her confiding partner from the moment when she found that he
was the brother of her scorned lover.
“And could you, without being grieved, see your brother selling muslin
and calico?” asked Emilie, at the end of the third figure of the
quadrille.
“How do you know that?” asked the attache. “Thank God, though I pour out
a flood of words, I have already acquired the art of not telling more
than I intend, like all the other diplomatic apprentices I know.”
“You told me, I assure you.”
Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with a
surprise that was full of perspicacity. A suspicion flashed upon him. He
glanced inquiringly from his brother to his partner, guessed everything,
clasped his hands, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and began to laugh,
saying, “I am an idiot! You are the handsomest person here; my brother
keeps stealing glances at you; he is dancing in spite of his illness,
and you pretend not to see him. Make him happy,” he added, as he led
her back to her old uncle. “I shall not be jealous, but I shall always
shiver a little at calling you my sister----”
The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to each other as they
were to themselves. At about two in the morning, refreshments were
served in an immense corridor, where, to leave persons of the same
coterie free to meet each other, the tables were arranged as in a
restaurant. By one of those accidents which always happen to lovers,
Mademoiselle de Fontaine found herself at a table next to that at which
the more important guests were seated. Maximilien was of the group.
Emilie, who lent an attentive ear to her neighbors’ conversation,
overheard one of those dialogues into which a young woman so easily
falls with a young man who has the grace and style of Maximilien
Longueville. The lady talking to the young banker was a Neapolitan
duchess, whose eyes shot lightning flashes, and whose skin had the sheen
of satin. The intimate terms on which Longueville affected to be with
her stung Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more because she had just
given her lover back twenty times as much tenderness as she had ever
felt for him before.
“Yes, monsieur, in my country true love can make every kind of
sacrifice,” the Duchess was saying, in a simper.
“You have more passion than Frenchwomen,” said Maximilien, whose burning
gaze fell on Emilie. “They are all vanity.”
“Monsieur,” Emilie eagerly interposed, “is it not very wrong to
calumniate your own country? Devotion is to be found in every nation.”
“Do you imagine, mademoiselle,” retorted the Italian, with a sardonic
smile, “that a Parisian would be capable of following her lover all over
the world?”
“Oh, madame, let us understand each other. She would follow him to a
desert and live in a tent but not to sit in a shop.”
A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under the influence of
her disastrous education, Emile for the second time killed her budding
happiness, and destroyed its prospects of life. Maximilien’s apparent
indifference, and a woman’s smile, had wrung from her one of those
sarcasms whose treacherous zest always let her astray.
“Mademoiselle,” said Longueville, in a low voice, under cover of the
noise made by the ladies as they rose from the table, “no one will ever
more ardently desire your happiness than I; permit me to assure you
of this, as I am taking leave of you. I am starting for Italy in a few
days.”
“With a Duchess, no doubt?”
“No, but perhaps with a mortal blow.”
“Is not that pure fancy?” asked Emilie, with an anxious glance.
“No,” he replied. “There are wounds which never heal.”
“You are not to go,” said the girl, imperiously, and she smiled.
“I shall go,” replied Maximilien, gravely.
“You will find me married on your return, I warn you,” she said
coquettishly.
“I hope so.”
“Impertinent wretch!” she exclaimed. “How cruel a revenge!”
A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara for the warm
and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving Mademoiselle de Fontaine
a prey to the most vehement regret. The young Secretary to the Embassy
took up his brother’s quarrel, and contrived to take signal vengeance on
Emilie’s disdain by making known the occasion of the lovers’ separation.
He repaid his fair partner with interest all the sarcasm with which
she had formerly attacked Maximilien, and often made more than one
Excellency smile by describing the fair foe of the counting-house, the
amazon who preached a crusade against bankers, the young girl whose
love had evaporated before a bale of muslin. The Comte de Fontaine was
obliged to use his influence to procure an appointment to Russia for
Auguste Longueville in order to protect his daughter from the ridicule
heaped upon her by this dangerous young persecutor.
Not long after, the Ministry being compelled to raise a levy of peers to
support the aristocratic party, trembling in the Upper Chamber under the
lash of an illustrious writer, gave Monsieur Guiraudin de Longueville a
peerage, with the title of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine also obtained
a peerage, the reward due as much to his fidelity in evil days as to his
name, which claimed a place in the hereditary Chamber.
About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, some serious
reflections on life, for her tone and manners changed perceptibly.
Instead of amusing herself by saying spiteful things to her uncle, she
lavished on him the most affectionate attentions; she brought him his
stick with a persevering devotion that made the cynical smile, she
gave him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his
drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco, and
read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in the midst of clouds of
smoke, which the malicious old sailor intentionally blew over her;
she learned piquet to be a match for the old count; and this fantastic
damsel even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives of
the battles of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de Paris, M.
de Suffren’s first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir.
Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longitude and
latitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a young corvette,
one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms heard the news of the marriage of
Mademoiselle de Fontaine to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young Countess
gave splendid entertainments to drown thought; but she, no doubt,
found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool; luxury was ineffectual to
disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrowing soul; for the most
part, in spite of the flashes of assumed gaiety, her beautiful face
expressed unspoken melancholy. Emilie appeared, however, full of
attentions and consideration for her old husband, who, on retiring to
his rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively band, would often say, “I
do not know myself. Was I to wait till the age of seventy-two to embark
as pilot on board the Belle Emilie after twenty years of matrimonial
galleys?”