The most national of all sentiments in France is vanity. The wounded

vanity of the many induced a thirst for Equality; though, as the most

ardent innovator will some day discover, Equality is an impossibility.

The Royalists pricked the Liberals in the most sensitive spots, and

this happened specially in the provinces, where either party accused

the other of unspeakable atrocities. In those days the blackest deeds

were done in politics, to secure public opinion on one side or the

other, to catch the votes of that public of fools which holds up hands

for those that are clever enough to serve out weapons to them.

Individuals are identified with their political opinions, and

opponents in public life forthwith became private enemies. It is very

difficult in a country town to avoid a man-to-man conflict of this

kind over interests or questions which in Paris appear in a more

general and theoretical form, with the result that political

combatants also rise to a higher level; M. Laffitte, for example, or

M. Casimir-Perier can respect M. de Villele or M. de Payronnet as a

man. M. Laffitte, who drew the fire on the Ministry, would have given

them an asylum in his house if they had fled thither on the 29th of

July 1830. Benjamin Constant sent a copy of his work on Religion to

the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, with a flattering letter acknowledging

benefits received from the former Minister. At Paris men are systems,

whereas in the provinces systems are identified with men; men,

moreover, with restless passions, who must always confront one

another, always spy upon each other in private life, and pull their

opponents' speeches to pieces, and live generally like two duelists

on the watch for a chance to thrust six inches of steel between an

antagonist's ribs. Each must do his best to get under his enemy's

guard, and a political hatred becomes as all-absorbing as a duel to

the death. Epigram and slander are used against individuals to bring

the party into discredit.

In such warfare as this, waged ceremoniously and without rancor on the

side of the Antiquities, while du Croisier's faction went so far as to

use the poisoned weapons of savages--in this warfare the advantages of

wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should

never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by

gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned

his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer of

the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du

Croisier's salon; he stirred up the fires of war, not knowing how far

the spirit of revenge was to urge the rival faction. None but purists

and loyal gentlemen and women sure one of another entered the Hotel

d'Esgrignon; they committed no indiscretions of any kind; they had

their ideas, true or false, good or bad, noble or trivial, but there

was nothing to laugh at in all this. If the Liberals meant to make the

nobles ridiculous, they were obliged to fasten on the political

actions of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of

officials and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the

nobles informed of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and

much of it was abundantly laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted

under a sense of inferiority, which increased their thirst for

revenge.

In 1822, du Croisier put himself at the head of the manufacturing

interest of the province, as the Marquis d'Esgrignon headed the

noblesse. Each represented his party. But du Croisier, instead of

giving himself out frankly for a man of the extreme Left, ostensibly

adopted the opinions formulated at a later date by the 221 deputies.

By taking up this position, he could keep in touch with the

magistrates and local officials and the capitalists of the department.

Du Croisier's salon, a power at least equal to the salon d'Esgrignon,

larger numerically, as well as younger and more energetic, made itself

felt all over the countryside; the Collection of Antiquities, on the

other hand, remained inert, a passive appendage, as it were, of a

central authority which was often embarrassed by its own partisans;

for not merely did they encourage the Government in a mistaken policy,

but some of its most fatal blunders were made in consequence of the

pressure brought to bear upon it by the Conservative party.

The Liberals, so far, had never contrived to carry their candidate.

The department declined to obey their command knowing that du

Croisier, if elected, would take his place on the Left Centre benches,

and as far as possible to the Left. Du Croisier was in correspondence

with the Brothers Keller, the bankers, the oldest of whom shone

conspicuous among "the nineteen deputies of the Left," that phalanx

made famous by the efforts of the entire Liberal press. This same M.

Keller, moreover, was related by marriage to the Comte de Gondreville,

a Constitutional peer who remained in favor with Louis XVIII. For

these reasons, the Constitutional Opposition (as distinct from the

Liberal party) was always prepared to vote at the last moment, not for

the candidate whom they professed to support, but for du Croisier, if

that worthy could succeed in gaining a sufficient number of Royalist

votes; but at every election du Croisier was regularly thrown out by

the Royalists. The leaders of that party, taking their tone from the

Marquis d'Esgrignon, had pretty thoroughly fathomed and gauged their

man; and with each defeat, du Croisier and his party waxed more

bitter. Nothing so effectually stirs up strife as the failure of some

snare set with elaborate pains.

In 1822 there seemed to be a lull in hostilities which had been kept

up with great spirit during the first four years of the Restoration.

The salon du Croisier and the salon d'Esgrignon, having measured their

strength and weakness, were in all probability waiting for

opportunity, that Providence of party strife. Ordinary persons were

content with the surface quiet which deceived the Government; but

those who knew du Croisier better, were well aware that the passion of

revenge in him, as in all men whose whole life consists in mental

activity, is implacable, especially when political ambitions are

involved. About this time du Croisier, who used to turn white and red

at the bare mention of d'Esgrignon or the Chevalier, and shuddered at

the name of the Collection of Antiquities, chose to wear the impassive

countenance of a savage. He smiled upon his enemies, hating them but

the more deeply, watching them the more narrowly from hour to hour.

One of his own party, who seconded him in these calculations of cold

wrath, was the President of the Tribunal, M. du Ronceret, a little

country squire, who had vainly endeavored to gain admittance among the

Antiquities.

The d'Esgrignons' little fortune, carefully administered by Maitre

Chesnel, was barely sufficient for the worthy Marquis' needs; for

though he lived without the slightest ostentation, he also lived like

a noble. The governor found by his Lordship the Bishop for the hope of

the house, the young Comte Victurnien d'Esgrignon, was an elderly

Oratorian who must be paid a certain salary, although he lived with

the family. The wages of a cook, a waiting-woman for Mlle. Armande, an

old valet for M. le Marquis, and a couple of other servants, together

with the daily expenses of the household, and the cost of an education

for which nothing was spared, absorbed the whole family income, in

spite of Mlle. Armande's economies, in spite of Chesnel's careful

management, and the servants' affection. As yet, Chesnel had not been

able to set about repairs at the ruined castle; he was waiting till

the leases fell in to raise the rent of the farms, for rents had been

rising lately, partly on account of improved methods of agriculture,

partly by the fall in the value of money, of which the landlord would

get the benefit at the expiration of leases granted in 1809.

The Marquis himself knew nothing of the details of the management of

the house or of his property. He would have been thunderstruck if he

had been told of the excessive precautions needed "to make both ends

of the year meet in December," to use the housewife's saying, and he

was so near the end of his life, that every one shrank from opening

his eyes. The Marquis and his adherents believed that a House, to

which no one at Court or in the Government gave a thought, a House

that was never heard of beyond the gates of the town, save here and

there in the same department, was about to revive its ancient

greatness, to shine forth in all its glory. The d'Esgrignons' line

should appear with renewed lustre in the person of Victurnien, just as

the despoiled nobles came into their own again, and the handsome heir

to a great estate would be in a position to go to Court, enter the

King's service, and marry (as other d'Esgrignons had done before him)

a Navarreins, a Cadignan, a d'Uxelles, a Beausant, a Blamont-Chauvry;

a wife, in short, who should unite all the distinctions of birth and

beauty, wit and wealth, and character.

The intimates who came to play their game of cards of an evening--the

Troisvilles (pronounced Treville), the La Roche-Guyons, the Casterans

(pronounced Cateran), and the Duc de Verneuil--had all so long been

accustomed to look up to the Marquis as a person of immense

consequence, that they encouraged him in such notions as these. They

were perfectly sincere in their belief; and indeed, it would have been

well founded if they could have wiped out the history of the last

forty years. But the most honorable and undoubted sanctions of right,

such as Louis XVIII. had tried to set on record when he dated the

Charter from the one-and-twentieth year of his reign, only exist when

ratified by the general consent. The d'Esgrignons not only lacked the

very rudiments of the language of latter-day politics, to wit, money,

the great modern /relief/, or sufficient rehabilitation of nobility;

but, in their case, too, "historical continuity" was lacking, and that

is a kind of renown which tells quite as much at Court as on the

battlefield, in diplomatic circles as in Parliament, with a book, or

in connection with an adventure; it is, as it were, a sacred ampulla

poured upon the heads of each successive generation. Whereas a noble

family, inactive and forgotten, is very much in the position of a

hard-featured, poverty-stricken, simple-minded, and virtuous maid,

these qualifications being the four cardinal points of misfortune. The

marriage of a daughter of the Troisvilles with General Montcornet, so

far from opening the eyes of the Antiquities, very nearly brought

about a rupture between the Troisvilles and the salon d'Esgrignon, the

latter declaring that the Troisvilles were mixing themselves up with

all sorts of people.

There was one, and one only, among all these folk who did not share

their illusions. And that one, needless to say, was Chesnel the

notary. Although his devotion, sufficiently proved already, was simply

unbounded for the great house now reduced to three persons; although

he accepted all their ideas, and thought them nothing less than right,

he had too much common sense, he was too good a man of business to

more than half the families in the department, to miss the

significance of the great changes that were taking place in people's

minds, or to be blind to the different conditions brought about by

industrial development and modern manners. He had watched the

Revolution pass through the violent phase of 1793, when men, women,

and children wore arms, and heads fell on the scaffold, and victories

were won in pitched battles with Europe; and now he saw the same

forces quietly at work in men's minds, in the shape of ideas which

sanctioned the issues. The soil had been cleared, the seed sown, and

now came the harvest. To his thinking, the Revolution had formed the

mind of the younger generation; he touched the hard facts, and knew

that although there were countless unhealed wounds, what had been done

was past recall. The death of a king on the scaffold, the protracted

agony of a queen, the division of the nobles' lands, in his eyes were

so many binding contracts; and where so many vested interests were

involved, it was not likely that those concerned would allow them to

be attacked. Chesnel saw clearly. His fanatical attachment to the

d'Esgrignons was whole-hearted, but it was not blind, and it was all

the fairer for this. The young monk's faith that sees heaven laid open

and beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old

monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk;

he would have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine.

He tried to explain the "innovations" to his old master, using a

thousand tactful precautions; sometimes speaking jestingly, sometimes

affecting surprise or sorrow over this or that; but he always met the

same prophetic smile on the Marquis' lips, the same fixed conviction

in the Marquis' mind, that these follies would go by like others.

Events contributed in a way which has escaped attention to assist such

noble champions of forlorn hope to cling to their superstitions. What

could Chesnel do when the old Marquis said, with a lordly gesture,

"God swept away Bonaparte with his armies, his new great vassals, his

crowned kings, and his vast conceptions! God will deliver us from the

rest." And Chesnel hung his head sadly, and did not dare to answer,

"It cannot be God's will to sweep away France." Yet both of them were

grand figures; the one, standing out against the torrent of facts like

an ancient block of lichen-covered granite, still upright in the

depths of an Alpine gorge; the other, watching the course of the flood

to turn it to account. Then the good gray-headed notary would groan

over the irreparable havoc which the superstitions were sure to work

in the mind, the habits, and ideas of the Comte Victurnien

d'Esgrignon.

Idolized by his father, idolized by his aunt, the young heir was a

spoilt child in every sense of the word; but still a spoilt child who

justified paternal and maternal illusions. Maternal, be it said, for

Victurnien's aunt was truly a mother to him; and yet, however careful

and tender she may be that never bore a child, there is something

lacking in her motherhood. A mother's second sight cannot be acquired.

An aunt, bound to her nursling by ties of such pure affection as

united Mlle. Armande to Victurnien, may love as much as a mother

might; may be as careful, as kind, as tender, as indulgent, but she

lacks the mother's instinctive knowledge when and how to be severe;

she has no sudden warnings, none of the uneasy presentiments of the

mother's heart; for a mother, bound to her child from the beginnings

of life by all the fibres of her being, still is conscious of the

communication, still vibrates with the shock of every trouble, and

thrills with every joy in the child's life as if it were her own. If

Nature has made of woman, physically speaking, a neutral ground, it

has not been forbidden to her, under certain conditions, to identify

herself completely with her offspring. When she has not merely given

life, but given of her whole life, you behold that wonderful,

unexplained, and inexplicable thing--the love of a woman for one of

her children above the others. The outcome of this story is one more

proof of a proven truth--a mother's place cannot be filled. A mother

foresees danger long before a Mlle. Armande can admit the possibility

of it, even if the mischief is done. The one prevents the evil, the

other remedies it. And besides, in the maiden's motherhood there is an

element of blind adoration, she cannot bring herself to scold a

beautiful boy.

A practical knowledge of life, and the experience of business, had

taught the old notary a habit of distrustful clear-sighted observation

something akin to the mother's instinct. But Chesnel counted for so

little in the house (especially since he had fallen into something

like disgrace over that unlucky project of a marriage between a

d'Esgrignon and a du Croisier), that he had made up his mind to adhere

blindly in future to the family doctrines. He was a common soldier,

faithful to his post, and ready to give his life; it was never likely

that they would take his advice, even in the height of the storm;

unless chance should bring him, like the King's bedesman in The

Antiquary, to the edge of the sea, when the old baronet and his

daughter were caught by the high tide.

Du Croisier caught a glimpse of his revenge in the anomalous education

given to the lad. He hoped, to quote the expressive words of the

author quoted above, "to drown the lamb in its mother's milk." /This/

was the hope which had produced his taciturn resignation and brought

that savage smile on his lips.

The young Comte Victurnien was taught to believe in his own supremacy

as soon as an idea could enter his head. All the great nobles of the

realm were his peers, his one superior was the King, and the rest of

mankind were his inferiors, people with whom he had nothing in common,

towards whom he had no duties. They were defeated and conquered

enemies, whom he need not take into account for a moment; their

opinions could not affect a noble, and they all owed him respect.

Unluckily, with the rigorous logic of youth, which leads children and

young people to proceed to extremes whether good or bad, Victurnien

pushed these conclusions to their utmost consequences. His own

external advantages, moreover, confirmed him in his beliefs. He had

been extraordinarily beautiful as a child; he became as accomplished a

young man as any father could wish.

He was of average height, but well proportioned, slender, and almost

delicate-looking, but muscular. He had the brilliant blue eyes of the

d'Esgrignons, the finely-moulded aquiline nose, the perfect oval of

the face, the auburn hair, the white skin, and the graceful gait of

his family; he had their delicate extremities, their long taper

fingers with the inward curve, and that peculiar distinction of

shapeliness of the wrist and instep, that supple felicity of line,

which is as sure a sign of race in men as in horses. Adroit and alert

in all bodily exercises, and an excellent shot, he handled arms like a

St. George, he was a paladin on horseback. In short, he gratified the

pride which parents take in their children's appearance; a pride

founded, for that matter, on a just idea of the enormous influence

exercised by physical beauty. Personal beauty has this in common with

noble birth; it cannot be acquired afterwards; it is everywhere

recognized, and often is more valued than either brains or money;

beauty has only to appear and triumph; nobody asks more of beauty than

that it should simply exist.

Fate had endowed Victurnien, over and above the privileges of good

looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a wonderful aptitude of

comprehension, and a good memory. His education, therefore, had been

complete. He knew a good deal more than is usually known by young

provincial nobles, who develop into highly-distinguished sportsmen,

owners of land, and consumers of tobacco; and are apt to treat art,

sciences, letters, poetry, or anything offensively above their

intellects, cavalierly enough. Such gifts of nature and education

surely would one day realize the Marquis d'Esgrignon's ambitions; he

already saw his son a Marshal of France if Victurnien's tastes were

for the army; an ambassador if diplomacy held any attractions for him;

a cabinet minister if that career seemed good in his eyes; every place

in the state belonged to Victurnien. And, most gratifying thought of

all for a father, the young Count would have made his way in the world

by his own merits even if he had not been a d'Esgrignon.

All through his happy childhood and golden youth, Victurnien had never

met with opposition to his wishes. He had been the king of the house;

no one curbed the little prince's will; and naturally he grew up

insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most

high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,--defects of character which

any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of the

noble.

The Chevalier was a man of the good old times when the Gray Musketeers

were the terror of the Paris theatres, when they horsewhipped the

watch and drubbed servers of writs, and played a host of page's

pranks, at which Majesty was wont to smile so long as they were

amusing. This charming deceiver and hero of the ruelles had no small

share in bringing about the disasters which afterwards befell. The

amiable old gentleman, with nobody to understand him, was not a little

pleased to find a budding Faublas, who looked the part to admiration,

and put him in mind of his own young days. So, making no allowance for

the difference of the times, he sowed the maxims of a roue of the

Encyclopaedic period broadcast in the boy's mind. He told wicked

anecdotes of the reign of His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the

manners and customs of the year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites

maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on

creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's

comedies and Beaumarchais' epigrams. And unfortunately, the corruption

lurking beneath the utmost polish tricked itself out in Voltairean

wit. If the Chevalier went rather too far at times, he always added as

a corrective that a man must always behave himself like a gentleman.

Of all this discourse, Victurnien comprehended just so much as

flattered his passions. From the first he saw his old father laughing

with the Chevalier. The two elderly men considered that the pride of a

d'Esgrignon was a sufficient safeguard against anything unbefitting;

as for a dishonorable action, no one in the house imagined that a

d'Esgrignon could be guilty of it. /Honor/, the great principle of

Monarchy, was planted firm like a beacon in the hearts of the family;

it lighted up the least action, it kindled the least thought of a

d'Esgrignon. "A d'Esgrignon ought not to permit himself to do such and

such a thing; he bears a name which pledges him to make a future

worthy of the past"--a noble teaching which should have been

sufficient in itself to keep alive the tradition of noblesse--had

been, as it were, the burden of Victurnien's cradle song. He heard

them from the old Marquis, from Mlle. Armande, from Chesnel, from the

intimates of the house. And so it came to pass that good and evil met,

and in equal forces, in the boy's soul.

At the age of eighteen, Victurnien went into society. He noticed some

slight discrepancies between the outer world of the town and the inner

world of the Hotel d'Esgrignon, but he in no wise tried to seek the

causes of them. And, indeed, the causes were to be found in Paris. He

had yet to learn that the men who spoke their minds out so boldly in

evening talk with his father, were extremely careful of what they said

in the presence of the hostile persons with whom their interests

compelled them to mingle. His own father had won the right of freedom

of speech. Nobody dreamed of contradicting an old man of seventy, and

besides, every one was willing to overlook fidelity to the old order

of things in a man who had been violently despoiled.

Victurnien was deceived by appearances, and his behavior set up the

backs of the townspeople. In his impetuous way he tried to carry

matters with too high a hand over some difficulties in the way of

sport, which ended in formidable lawsuits, hushed up by Chesnel for

money paid down. Nobody dared to tell the Marquis of these things. You

may judge of his astonishment if he had heard that his son had been

prosecuted for shooting over his lands, his domains, his covers, under

the reign of a son of St. Louis! People were too much afraid of the

possible consequences to tell him about such trifles, Chesnel said.

The young Count indulged in other escapades in the town. These the

Chevalier regarded as "amourettes," but they cost Chesnel something

considerable in portions for forsaken damsels seduced under imprudent

promises of marriage: yet other cases there were which came under an

article of the Code as to the abduction of minors; and but for

Chesnel's timely intervention, the new law would have been allowed to

take its brutal course, and it is hard to say where the Count might

have ended. Victurnien grew the bolder for these victories over

bourgeois justice. He was so accustomed to be pulled out of scrapes,

that he never thought twice before any prank. Courts of law, in his

opinion, were bugbears to frighten people who had no hold on him.

Things which he would have blamed in common people were for him only

pardonable amusements. His disposition to treat the new laws

cavalierly while obeying the maxims of a Code for aristocrats, his

behavior and character, were all pondered, analyzed, and tested by a

few adroit persons in du Croisier's interests. These folk supported

each other in the effort to make the people believe that Liberal

slanders were revelations, and that the Ministerial policy at bottom

meant a return to the old order of things.

What a bit of luck to find something by way of proof of their

assertions! President du Ronceret, and the public prosecutor likewise,

lent themselves admirably, so far as was compatible with their duty as

magistrates, to the design of letting off the offender as easily as

possible; indeed, they went deliberately out of their way to do this,

well pleased to raise a Liberal clamor against their overlarge

concessions. And so, while seeming to serve the interests of the

d'Esgrignons, they stirred up feeling against them. The treacherous de

Ronceret had it in his mind to pose as incorruptible at the right

moment over some serious charge, with public opinion to back him up.

The young Count's worst tendencies, moreover, were insidiously

encouraged by two or three young men who followed in his train, paid

court to him, won his favor, and flattered and obeyed him, with a view

to confirming his belief in a noble's supremacy; and all this at a

time when a noble's one chance of preserving his power lay in using it

with the utmost discretion for half a century to come.

Du Croisier hoped to reduce the d'Esgrignons to the last extremity of

poverty; he hoped to see their castle demolished, and their lands sold

piecemeal by auction, through the follies which this harebrained boy

was pretty certain to commit. This was as far as he went; he did not

think, with President du Ronceret, that Victurnien was likely to give

justice another kind of hold upon him. Both men found an ally for

their schemes of revenge in Victurnien's overweening vanity and love

of pleasure. President du Ronceret's son, a lad of seventeen, was

admirably fitted for the part of instigator. He was one of the Count's

companions, a new kind of spy in du Croisier's pay; du Croisier taught

him his lesson, set him to track down the noble and beautiful boy

through his better qualities, and sardonically prompted him to

encourage his victim in his worst faults. Fabien du Ronceret was a

sophisticated youth, to whom such a mystification was attractive; he

had precisely the keen brain and envious nature which finds in such a

pursuit as this the absorbing amusement which a man of an ingenious

turn lacks in the provinces.

In three years, between the ages of eighteen and one-and-twenty,

Victurnien cost poor Chesnel nearly eighty thousand francs! And this

without the knowledge of Mlle. Armande or the Marquis. More than half

of the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad's

extravagance had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten

thousand livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping;

two thousand more represented Mlle. Armande's allowance (parsimonious

though she was) and the Marquis' expenses. The handsome young

heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a hundred louis to spend. And what

sort of figure can a man make on two thousand livres? Victurnien's

tailor's bills alone absorbed his whole allowance. He had his linen,

his clothes, gloves, and perfumery from Paris. He wanted a good

English saddle-horse, a tilbury, and a second horse. M. du Croisier

had a tilbury and a thoroughbred. Was the bourgeoisie to cut out the

noblesse? Then, the young Count must have a man in the d'Esgrignon

livery. He prided himself on setting the fashion among young men in

the town and the department; he entered that world of luxuries and

fancies which suit youth and good looks and wit so well. Chesnel paid

for it all, not without using, like ancient parliaments, the right of

protest, albeit he spoke with angelic kindness.

"What a pity it is that so good a man should be so tiresome!"

Victurnien would say to himself every time that the notary staunched

some wound in his purse.

Chesnel had been left a widower, and childless; he had taken his old

master's son to fill the void in his heart. It was a pleasure to him

to watch the lad driving up the High Street, perched aloft on the

box-seat of the tilbury, whip in hand, and a rose in his button-hole,

handsome, well turned out, envied by every one.

Pressing need would bring Victurnien with uneasy eyes and coaxing

manner, but steady voice, to the modest house in the Rue du Bercail;

there had been losses at cards at the Troisvilles, or the Duc de

Verneuil's, or the prefecture, or the receiver-general's, and the

Count had come to his providence, the notary. He had only to show

himself to carry the day.

"Well, what is it, M. le Comte? What has happened?" the old man would

ask, with a tremor in his voice.

On great occasions Victurnien would sit down, assume a melancholy,

pensive expression, and submit with little coquetries of voice and

gesture to be questioned. Then when he had thoroughly roused the old

man's fears (for Chesnel was beginning to fear how such a course of

extravagance would end), he would own up to a peccadillo which a bill

for a thousand francs would absolve. Chesnel possessed a private

income of some twelve thousand livres, but the fund was not

inexhaustible. The eighty thousand francs thus squandered represented

his savings, accumulated for the day when the Marquis should send his

son to Paris, or open negotiations for a wealthy marriage.

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Victurnien was not there before

him. One by one he lost the illusions which the Marquis and his sister

still fondly cherished. He saw that the young fellow could not be

depended upon in the least, and wished to see him married to some

modest, sensible girl of good birth, wondering within himself how a

young man could mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one

day only to break them all on the next.

But there is never any good to be expected of young men who confess

their sins and repent, and straightway fall into them again. A man of

strong character only confesses his faults to himself, and punishes

himself for them; as for the weak, they drop back into the old ruts

when they find that the bank is too steep to climb. The springs of

pride which lie in a great man's secret soul had been slackened in

Victurnien. With such guardians as he had, such company as he kept,

such a life as he led, he had suddenly became an enervated voluptuary

at that turning-point in his life when a man most stands in need of

the harsh discipline of misfortune and adversity which formed a Prince

Eugene, a Frederick II., a Napoleon. Chesnel saw that Victurnien

possessed that uncontrollable appetite for enjoyments which should be

the prerogative of men endowed with giant powers; the men who feel the

need of counterbalancing their gigantic labors by pleasures which

bring one-sided mortals to the pit.

At times the good man stood aghast; then, again, some profound sally,

some sign of the lad's remarkable range of intellect, would reassure

him. He would say, as the Marquis said at the rumor of some escapade,

"Boys will be boys." Chesnel had spoken to the Chevalier, lamenting

the young lord's propensity for getting into debt; but the Chevalier

manipulated his pinch of snuff, and listened with a smile of

amusement.

"My dear Chesnel, just explain to me what a national debt is," he

answered. "If France has debts, egad! why should not Victurnien have

debts? At this time and at all times princes have debts, every

gentleman has debts. Perhaps you would rather that Victurnien should

bring you his savings?--Do you know that our great Richelieu (not the

Cardinal, a pitiful fellow that put nobles to death, but the

Marechal), do you know what he did once when his grandson the Prince

de Chinon, the last of the line, let him see that he had not spent his

pocket-money at the University?"

"No, M. le Chevalier."

"Oh, well; he flung the purse out of the window to a sweeper in the

courtyard, and said to his grandson, 'Then they do not teach you to be

a prince here?'"

Chesnel bent his head and made no answer. But that night, as he lay

awake, he thought that such doctrines as these were fatal in times

when there was one law for everybody, and foresaw the first beginnings

of the ruin of the d'Esgrignons.

But for these explanations which depict one side of provincial life in

the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it would not be easy to

understand the opening scene of this history, an incident which took

place in the great salon one evening towards the end of October 1822.

The card-tables were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities--elderly

nobles, elderly countesses, young marquises, and simple baronesses

--had settled their losses and winnings. The master of the house was

pacing up and down the room, while Mlle. Armande was putting out the

candles on the card-tables. He was not taking exercise alone, the

Chevalier was with him, and the two wrecks of the eighteenth century

were talking of Victurnien. The Chevalier had undertaken to broach the

subject with the Marquis.

"Yes, Marquis," he was saying, "your son is wasting his time and his

youth; you ought to send him to court."

"I have always thought," said the Marquis, "that if my great age

prevents me from going to court--where, between ourselves, I do not

know what I should do among all these new people whom his Majesty

receives, and all that is going on there--that if I could not go

myself, I could at least send my son to present our homage to His

Majesty. The King surely would do something for the Count--give him a

company, for instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in

short, for the boy to win his spurs. My uncle the Archbishop suffered

a cruel martyrdom; I have fought for the cause without deserting the

camp with those who thought it their duty to follow the Princes. I

held that while the King was in France, his nobles should rally round

him.--Ah! well, no one gives us a thought; a Henry IV. would have

written before now to the d'Esgrignons, 'Come to me, my friends; we

have won the day!'--After all, we are something better than the

Troisvilles, yet here are two Troisvilles made peers of France; and

another, I hear, represents the nobles in the Chamber." (He took the

upper electoral colleges for assemblies of his own order.) "Really,

they think no more of us than if we did not exist. I was waiting for

the Princes to make their journey through this part of the world; but

as the Princes do not come to us, we must go to the Princes."

"I am enchanted to learn that you think of introducing our dear

Victurnien into society," the Chevalier put in adroitly. "He ought not

to bury his talents in a hole like this town. The best fortune that he

can look for here is to come across some Norman girl" (mimicking the

accent), "country-bred, stupid, and rich. What could he make of

her?--his wife? Oh! good Lord!"

"I sincerely hope that he will defer his marriage until he has

obtained some great office or appointment under the Crown," returned

the gray-haired Marquis. "Still, there are serious difficulties in the

way."

And these were the only difficulties which the Marquis saw at the

outset of his son's career.

"My son, the Comte d'Esgrignon, cannot make his appearance at court

like a tatterdemalion," he continued after a pause, marked by a sigh;

"he must be equipped. Alas! for these two hundred years we have had no

retainers. Ah! Chevalier, this demolition from top to bottom always

brings me back to the first hammer stroke delivered by M. de Mirabeau.

The one thing needful nowadays is money; that is all that the

Revolution has done that I can see. The King does not ask you whether

you are a descendant of the Valois or a conquerer of Gaul; he asks

whether you pay a thousand francs in tailles which nobles never used

to pay. So I cannot well send the Count to court without a matter of

twenty thousand crowns----"

"Yes," assented the Chevalier, "with that trifling sum he could cut a

brave figure."

"Well," said Mlle. Armande, "I have asked Chesnel to come to-night.

Would you believe it, Chevalier, ever since the day when Chesnel

proposed that I should marry that miserable du Croisier----"

"Ah! that was truly unworthy, mademoiselle!" cried the Chevalier.

"Unpardonable!" said the Marquis.

"Well, since then my brother has never brought himself to ask anything

whatsoever of Chesnel," continued Mlle. Armande.

"Of your old household servant? Why, Marquis, you would do Chesnel

honor--an honor which he would gratefully remember till his latest

breath."

"No," said the Marquis, "the thing is beneath one's dignity, it seems

to me."

"There is not much question of dignity; it is a matter of necessity,"

said the Chevalier, with the trace of a shrug.

"Never," said the Marquis, riposting with a gesture which decided the

Chevalier to risk a great stroke to open his old friend's eyes.

"Very well," he said, "since you do not know it, I will tell you

myself that Chesnel has let your son have something already, something

like----"

"My son is incapable of accepting anything whatever from Chesnel," the

Marquis broke in, drawing himself up as he spoke. "He might have come

to /you/ to ask you for twenty-five louis----"

"Something like a hundred thousand livres," said the Chevalier,

finishing his sentence.

"The Comte d'Esgrignon owes a hundred thousand livres to a Chesnel!"

cried the Marquis, with every sign of deep pain. "Oh! if he were not

an only son, he should set out to-night for Mexico with a captain's

commission. A man may be in debt to money-lenders, they charge a heavy

interest, and you are quits; that is right enough; but /Chesnel/! a man

to whom one is attached!----"

"Yes, our adorable Victurnien has run through a hundred thousand

livres, dear Marquis," resumed the Chevalier, flicking a trace of

snuff from his waistcoat; "it is not much, I know. I myself at his

age---- But, after all, let us let old memories be, Marquis. The Count

is living in the provinces; all things taken into consideration, it is

not so much amiss. He will not go far; these irregularities are common

in men who do great things afterwards----"

"And he is sleeping upstairs, without a word of this to his father,"

exclaimed the Marquis.

"Sleeping innocently as a child who has merely got five or six little

bourgeoises into trouble, and now must have duchesses," returned the

Chevalier.

"Why, he deserves a lettre de cachet!"

"'They' have done away with lettres de cachet," said the Chevalier.

"You know what a hubbub there was when they tried to institute a law

for special cases. We could not keep the provost's courts, which

M. /de/ Bonaparte used to call commissions militaires."

"Well, well; what are we to do if our boys are wild, or turn out

scapegraces? Is there no locking them up in these days?" asked the

Marquis.

The Chevalier looked at the heartbroken father and lacked courage to

answer, "We shall be obliged to bring them up properly."

"And you have never said a word of this to me, Mlle. d'Esgrignon,"

added the Marquis, turning suddenly round upon Mlle. Armande. He never

addressed her as Mlle. d'Esgrignon except when he was vexed; usually

she was called "my sister."

"Why, monsieur, when a young man is full of life and spirits, and

leads an idle life in a town like this, what else can you expect?"

asked Mlle. d'Esgrignon. She could not understand her brother's anger.

"Debts! eh! why, hang it all!" added the Chevalier. "He plays cards,

he has little adventures, he shoots,--all these things are horribly

expensive nowadays."

"Come," said the Marquis, "it is time to send him to the King. I will

spend to-morrow morning in writing to our kinsmen."

"I have some acquaintance with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Lenoncourt,

de Maufrigneuse, and de Chaulieu," said the Chevalier, though he knew,

as he spoke, that he was pretty thoroughly forgotten.

"My dear Chevalier, there is no need of such formalities to present a

d'Esgrignon at court," the Marquis broke in.--"A hundred thousand

livres," he muttered; "this Chesnel makes very free. This is what

comes of these accursed troubles. M. Chesnel protects my son. And now

I must ask him. . . . No, sister, you must undertake this business.

Chesnel shall secure himself for the whole amount by a mortgage on our

lands. And just give this harebrained boy a good scolding; he will end

by ruining himself if he goes on like this."

The Chevalier and Mlle. d'Esgrignon thought these words perfectly

simple and natural, absurd as they would have sounded to any other

listener. So far from seeing anything ridiculous in the speech, they

were both very much touched by a look of something like anguish in the

old noble's face. Some dark premonition seemed to weigh upon M.

d'Esgrignon at that moment, some glimmering of an insight into the

changed times. He went to the settee by the fireside and sat down,

forgetting that Chesnel would be there before long; that Chesnel, of

whom he could not bring himself to ask anything.

Just then the Marquis d'Esgrignon looked exactly as any imagination

with a touch of romance could wish. He was almost bald, but a fringe

of silken, white locks, curled at the tips, covered the back of his

head. All the pride of race might be seen in a noble forehead, such as

you may admire in a Louis XV., a Beaumarchais, a Marechal de

Richelieu, it was not the square, broad brow of the portraits of the

Marechal de Saxe; nor yet the small hard circle of Voltaire, compact

to overfulness; it was graciously rounded and finely moulded, the

temples were ivory tinted and soft; and mettle and spirit, unquenched

by age, flashed from the brilliant eyes. The Marquis had the Conde

nose and the lovable Bourbon mouth, from which, as they used to say of

the Comte d'Artois, only witty and urbane words proceed. His cheeks,

sloping rather than foolishly rounded to the chin, were in keeping

with his spare frame, thin legs, and plump hands. The strangulation

cravat at his throat was of the kind which every marquis wears in all

the portraits which adorn eighteenth century literature; it is common

alike to Saint-Preux and to Lovelace, to the elegant Montesquieu's

heroes and to Diderot's homespun characters (see the first editions of

those writers' works).

The Marquis always wore a white, gold-embroidered, high waistcoat,

with the red ribbon of a commander of the Order of St. Louis blazing

upon his breast; and a blue coat with wide skirts, and fleur-de-lys on

the flaps, which were turned back--an odd costume which the King had

adopted. But the Marquis could not bring himself to give up the

Frenchman's knee-breeches nor yet the white silk stockings or the

buckles at the knees. After six o'clock in the evening he appeared in

full dress.

He read no newspapers but the Quotidienne and the Gazette de France,

two journals accused by the Constitutional press of obscurantist views

and uncounted "monarchical and religious" enormities; while the

Marquis d'Esgrignon, on the other hand, found heresies and

revolutionary doctrines in every issue. No matter to what extremes the

organs of this or that opinion may go, they will never go quite far

enough to please the purists on their own side; even as the portrayer

of this magnificent personage is pretty certain to be accused of

exaggeration, whereas he has done his best to soften down some of the

cruder tones and dim the more startling tints of the original.

The Marquis d'Esgrignon rested his elbows on his knees and leant his

head on his hands. During his meditations Mlle. Armande and the

Chevalier looked at one another without uttering the thoughts in their

minds. Was he pained by the discovery that his son's future must

depend upon his sometime land steward? Was he doubtful of the

reception awaiting the young Count? Did he regret that he had made no

preparation for launching his heir into that brilliant world of court?

Poverty had kept him in the depths of his province; how should he have

appeared at court? He sighed heavily as he raised his head.

That sigh, in those days, came from the real aristocracy all over

France; from the loyal provincial noblesse, consigned to neglect with

most of those who had drawn sword and braved the storm for the cause.

"What have the Princes done for the du Guenics, or the Fontaines, or

the Bauvans, who never submitted?" he muttered to himself. "They fling

miserable pensions to the men who fought most bravely, and give them a

royal lieutenancy in a fortress somewhere on the outskirts of the

kingdom."

Evidently the Marquis doubted the reigning dynasty. Mlle. d'Esgrignon

was trying to reassure her brother as to the prospects of the journey,

when a step outside on the dry narrow footway gave them notice of

Chesnel's coming. In another moment Chesnel appeared; Josephin, the

Count's gray-aired valet, admitted the notary without announcing him.

"Chesnel, my boy----" (Chesnel was a white-haired man of sixty-nine,

with a square-jawed, venerable countenance; he wore knee-breeches,

ample enough to fill several chapters of dissertation in the manner

of Sterne, ribbed stockings, shoes with silver clasps, an

ecclesiastical-looking coat and a high waistcoat of scholastic cut.)

"Chesnel, my boy, it was very presumptuous of you to lend money to the

Comte d'Esgrignon! If I repaid you at once and we never saw each other

again, it would be no more than you deserve for giving wings to his

vices."

There was a pause, a silence such as there falls at court when the

King publicly reprimands a courtier. The old notary looked humble and

contrite.

"I am anxious about that boy, Chesnel," continued the Marquis in a

kindly tone; "I should like to send him to Paris to serve His Majesty.

Make arrangements with my sister for his suitable appearance at

court.--And we will settle accounts----"

The Marquis looked grave as he left the room with a friendly gesture

of farewell to Chesnel.

"I thank M. le Marquis for all his goodness," returned the old man,

who still remained standing.

Mlle. Armande rose to go to the door with her brother; she had rung

the bell, old Josephin was in readiness to light his master to his

room.

"Take a seat, Chesnel," said the lady, as she returned, and with

womanly tact she explained away and softened the Marquis' harshness.

And yet beneath that harshness Chesnel saw a great affection. The

Marquis' attachment for his old servant was something of the same

order as a man's affection for his dog; he will fight any one who

kicks the animal, the dog is like a part of his existence, a something

which, if not exactly himself, represents him in that which is nearest

and dearest--his sensibilities.

"It is quite time that M. le Comte should be sent away from the town,

mademoiselle," he said sententiously.

"Yes," returned she. "Has he been indulging in some new escapade?"

"No, mademoiselle."

"Well, why do you blame him?"

"I am not blaming him, mademoiselle. No, I am not blaming him. I am

very far from blaming him. I will even say that I shall never blame

him, whatever he may do."

There was a pause. The Chevalier, nothing if not quick to take in a

situation, began to yawn like a sleep-ridden mortal. Gracefully he

made his excuses and went, with as little mind to sleep as to go and

drown himself. The imp Curiosity kept the Chevalier wide awake, and

with airy fingers plucked away the cotton wool from his ears.

"Well, Chesnel, is it something new?" Mlle. Armande began anxiously.

"Yes, things that cannot be told to M. le Marquis; he would drop down

in an apoplectic fit."

"Speak out," she said. With her beautiful head leant on the back of

her low chair, and her arms extended listlessly by her side, she

looked as if she were waiting passively for her deathblow.

"Mademoiselle, M. le Comte, with all his cleverness, is a plaything in

the hands of mean creatures, petty natures on the lookout for a

crushing revenge. They want to ruin us and bring us low! There is the

President of the Tribunal, M. de Ronceret; he has, as you know, a very

great notion of his descent----"

"His grandfather was an attorney," interposed Mlle. Armande.

"I know he was. And for that reason you have not received him; nor

does he go to M. de Troisville's, nor to M. le Duc de Verneuil's, nor

to the Marquis de Casteran's; but he is one of the pillars of du

Croisier's salon. Your nephew may rub shoulders with young M. Fabien

du Ronceret without condescending too far, for he must have companions

of his own age. Well and good. That young fellow is at the bottom of

all M. le Comte's follies; he and two or three of the rest of them

belong to the other side, the side of M. le Chevalier's enemy, who

does nothing but breathe threats of vengeance against you and all the

nobles together. They all hope to ruin you through your nephew. The

ringleader of the conspiracy is this sycophant of a du Croisier, the

pretended Royalist. Du Croisier's wife, poor thing, knows nothing

about it; you know her, I should have heard of it before this if she

had ears to hear evil. For some time these wild young fellows were not

in the secret, nor was anybody else; but the ringleaders let something

drop in jest, and then the fools got to know about it, and after the

Count's recent escapades they let fall some words while they were

drunk. And those words were carried to me by others who are sorry to

see such a fine, handsome, noble, charming lad ruining himself with

pleasure. So far people feel sorry for him; before many days are over

they will--I am afraid to say what----"

"They will despise him; say it out, Chesnel!" Mlle. Armande cried

piteously.

"Ah! How can you keep the best people in the town from finding out

faults in their neighbors? They do not know what to do with themselves

from morning to night. And so M. le Comte's losses at play are all

reckoned up. Thirty thousand francs have taken flight during these two

months, and everybody wonders where he gets the money. If they mention

it when I am present, I just call them to order. Ah! but--'Do you

suppose' (I told them this morning), 'do you suppose that if the

d'Esgrignon family have lost their manorial rights, that therefore

they have been robbed of their hoard of treasure? The young Count has

a right to do as he pleases; and so long as he does not owe you a

half-penny, you have no right to say a word.'"

Mlle, Armande held out her hand, and the notary kissed it

respectfully.

"Good Chesnel! . . . But, my friend, how shall we find the money for

this journey? Victurnien must appear as befits his rank at court."

"Oh! I have borrowed money on Le Jard, mademoiselle."

"What? You have nothing left! Ah, heaven! what can we do to reward

you?"

"You can take the hundred thousand francs which I hold at your

disposal. You can understand that the loan was negotiated in

confidence, so that it might not reflect on you; for it is known in

the town that I am closely connected with the d'Esgrignon family."

Tears came into Mlle. Armande's eyes. Chesnel saw them, took a fold of

the noble woman's dress in his hands, and kissed it.

"Never mind," he said, "a lad must sow his wild oats. In great salons

in Paris his boyish ideas will take a new turn. And, really, though

our old friends here are the worthiest folk in the world, and no one

could have nobler hearts than they, they are not amusing. If M. le

Comte wants amusement, he is obliged to look below his rank, and he

will end by getting into low company."

Next day the old traveling coach saw the light, and was sent to be put

in repair. In a solemn interview after breakfast, the hope of the

house was duly informed of his father's intentions regarding him--he

was to go to court and ask to serve His Majesty. He would have time

during the journey to make up his mind about his career. The navy or

the army, the privy council, an embassy, or the Royal Household,--all

were open to a d'Esgrignon, a d'Esgrignon had only to choose. The King

would certainly look favorably upon the d'Esgrignons, because they had

asked nothing of him, and had sent the youngest representative of

their house to receive the recognition of Majesty.

But young d'Esgrignon, with all his wild pranks, had guessed

instinctively what society in Paris meant, and formed his own opinions

of life. So when they talked of his leaving the country and the

paternal roof, he listened with a grave countenance to his revered

parent's lecture, and refrained from giving him a good deal of

information in reply. As, for instance, that young men no longer went

into the army or the navy as they used to do; that if a man had a mind

to be a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment without passing

through a special training in the Ecoles, he must first serve in the

Pages; that sons of the greatest houses went exactly like commoners to

Saint-Cyr and the Ecole polytechnique, and took their chances of being

beaten by base blood. If he had enlightened his relatives on these

points, funds might not have been forthcoming for a stay in Paris; so

he allowed his father and Aunt Armande to believe that he would be

permitted a seat in the King's carriages, that he must support his

dignity at court as the d'Esgrignon of the time, and rub shoulders

with great lords of the realm.

It grieved the Marquis that he could send but one servant with his

son; but he gave him his own valet Josephin, a man who can be trusted

to take care of his young master, and to watch faithfully over his

interests. The poor father must do without Josephin, and hope to

replace him with a young lad.

"Remember that you are a Carol, my boy," he said; "remember that you

come of an unalloyed descent, and that your scutcheon bears the motto

Cil est nostre; with such arms you may hold your head high everywhere,

and aspire to queens. Render grace to your father, as I to mine. We

owe it to the honor of our ancestors, kept stainless until now, that

we can look all men in the face, and need bend the knee to none save a

mistress, the King, and God. This is the greatest of your privileges."

Chesnel, good man, was breakfasting with the family. He took no part

in counsels based on heraldry, nor in the inditing of letters

addressed to divers mighty personages of the day; but he had spent the

night in writing to an old friend of his, one of the oldest

established notaries of Paris. Without this letter it is not possible

to understand Chesnel's real and assumed fatherhood. It almost recalls

Daedalus' address to Icarus; for where, save in old mythology, can you

look for comparisons worthy of this man of antique mould?

"MY DEAR AND ESTIMABLE SORBIER,--I remember with no little

pleasure that I made my first campaign in our honorable profession

under your father, and that you had a liking for me, poor little

clerk that I was. And now I appeal to old memories of the days

when we worked in the same office, old pleasant memories for our

hearts, to ask you to do me the one service that I have ever asked

of you in the course of our long lives, crossed as they have been

by political catastrophes, to which, perhaps, I owe it that I have

the honor to be your colleague. And now I ask this service of you,

my friend, and my white hairs will be brought with sorrow to the

grave if you should refuse my entreaty. It is no question of

myself or of mine, Sorbier, for I lost poor Mme. Chesnel, and I

have no child of my own. Something more to me than my own family

(if I had one) is involved--it is the Marquis d'Esgrignon's only

son. I have had the honor to be the Marquis' land steward ever

since I left the office to which his father sent me at his own

expense, with the idea of providing for me. The house which

nurtured me has passed through all the troubles of the Revolution.

I have managed to save some of their property; but what is it,

after all, in comparison with the wealth that they have lost? I

cannot tell you, Sorbier, how deeply I am attached to the great

house, which has been all but swallowed up under my eyes by the

abyss of time. M. le Marquis was proscribed, and his lands

confiscated, he was getting on in years, he had no child.

Misfortunes upon misfortunes! Then M. le Marquis married, and his

wife died when the young Count was born, and to-day this noble,

dear, and precious child is all the life of the d'Esgrignon

family; the fate of the house hangs upon him. He has got into debt

here with amusing himself. What else should he do in the provinces

with an allowance of a miserable hundred louis? Yes, my friend, a

hundred louis, the great house has come to this.

"In this extremity his father thinks it necessary to send the

Count to Paris to ask for the King's favor at court. Paris is a

very dangerous place for a lad; if he is to keep steady there, he

must have the grain of sense which makes notaries of us. Besides,

I should be heartbroken to think of the poor boy living amid such

hardships as we have known.--Do you remember the pleasure with

which we spent a day and a night there waiting to see The Marriage

of Figaro? Oh, blind that we were!--We were happy and poor, but a

noble cannot be happy in poverty. A noble in want--it is a thing

against nature! Ah! Sorbier, when one has known the satisfaction

of propping one of the grandest genealogical trees in the kingdom

in its fall, it is so natural to interest oneself in it and to

grow fond of it, and love it and water it and look to see it

blossom. So you will not be surprised at so many precautions on my

part; you will not wonder when I beg the help of your lights, so

that all may go well with our young man.

"Keep yourself informed of his movements and doings, of the

company which he keeps, and watch over his connections with women.

M. le Chevalier says that an opera dancer often costs less than a

court lady. Obtain information on that point and let me know. If

you are too busy, perhaps Mme. Sorbier might know what becomes of

the young man, and where he goes. The idea of playing the part of

guardian angel to such a noble and charming boy might have

attractions for her. God will remember her for accepting the

sacred trust. Perhaps when you see M. le Comte Victurnien, her

heart may tremble at the thought of all the dangers awaiting him

in Paris; he is very young, and handsome; clever, and at the same

time disposed to trust others. If he forms a connection with some

designing woman, Mme. Sorbier could counsel him better than you

yourself could do. The old man-servant who is with him can tell

you many things; sound Josephin, I have told him to go to you in

delicate matters.

"But why should I say more? We once were clerks together, and a

pair of scamps; remember our escapades, and be a little bit young

again, my old friend, in your dealings with him. The sixty

thousand francs will be remitted to you in the shape of a bill on

the Treasury by a gentlemen who is going to Paris," and so forth.

If the old couple to whom this epistle was addressed had followed out

Chesnel's instructions, they would have been compelled to take three

private detectives into their pay. And yet there was ample wisdom

shown in Chesnel's choice of a depositary. A banker pays money to any

one accredited to him so long as the money lasts; whereas, Victurnien

was obliged, every time that he was in want of money, to make a

personal visit to the notary, who was quite sure to use the right of

remonstrance.

Victurnien heard that he was to be allowed two thousand francs every

month, and thought that he betrayed his joy. He knew nothing of Paris.

He fancied that he could keep up princely state on such a sum.

Next day he started on his journey. All the benedictions of the

Collection of Antiquities went with him; he was kissed by the

dowagers; good wishes were heaped on his head; his old father, his

aunt, and Chesnel went with him out of the town, tears filling the

eyes of all three. The sudden departure supplied material for

conversation for several evenings; and what was more, it stirred the

rancorous minds of the salon du Croisier to the depths. The

forage-contractor, the president, and others who had vowed to ruin

the d'Esgrignons, saw their prey escaping out of their hands. They

had based their schemes of revenge on a young man's follies, and now

he was beyond their reach.

The tendency in human nature, which often gives a bigot a rake for a

daughter, and makes a frivolous woman the mother of a narrow pietist;

that rule of contraries, which, in all probability, is the "resultant"

of the law of similarities, drew Victurnien to Paris by a desire to

which he must sooner or later have yielded. Brought up as he had been

in the old-fashioned provincial house, among the quiet, gentle faces

that smiled upon him, among sober servants attached to the family, and

surroundings tinged with a general color of age, the boy had only seen

friends worthy of respect. All of those about him, with the exception

of the Chevalier, had example of venerable age, were elderly men and

women, sedate of manner, decorous and sententious of speech. He had

been petted by those women in gray gowns and embroidered mittens

described by Blondet. The antiquated splendors of his father's house

were as little calculated as possible to suggest frivolous thoughts;

and lastly, he had been educated by a sincerely religious abbe,

possessed of all the charm of old age, which has dwelt in two

centuries, and brings to the Present its gifts of the dried roses of

experience, the faded flowers of the old customs of its youth.

Everything should have combined to fashion Victurnien to serious

habits; his whole surroundings from childhood bade him continue the

glory of a historic name, by taking his life as something noble and

great; and yet Victurnien listened to dangerous promptings.

For him, his noble birth was a stepping-stone which raised him above

other men. He felt that the idol of Noblesse, before which they burned

incense at home, was hollow; he had come to be one of the commonest as

well as one of the worst types from a social point of view--a

consistent egoist. The aristocratic cult of the /ego/ simply taught him

to follow his own fancies; he had been idolized by those who had the

care of him in childhood, and adored by the companions who shared in

his boyish escapades, and so he had formed a habit of looking and

judging everything as it affected his own pleasure; he took it as a

matter of course when good souls saved him from the consequences of

his follies, a piece of mistaken kindness which could only lead to his

ruin. Victurnien's early training, noble and pious though it was, had

isolated him too much. He was out of the current of the life of the

time, for the life of a provincial town is certainly not in the main

current of the age; Victurnien's true destiny lifted him above it. He

had learned to think of an action, not as it affected others, nor

relatively, but absolutely from his own point of view. Like despots,

he made the law to suit the circumstance, a system which works in the

lives of prodigal sons the same confusion which fancy brings into art.

Victurnien was quick-sighted, he saw clearly and without illusion, but

he acted on impulse, and unwisely. An indefinable flaw of character,

often seen in young men, but impossible to explain, led him to will

one thing and do another. In spite of an active mind, which showed

itself in unexpected ways, the senses had but to assert themselves,

and the darkened brain seemed to exist no longer. He might have

astonished wise men; he was capable of setting fools agape. His

desires, like a sudden squall of bad weather, overclouded all the

clear and lucid spaces of his brain in a moment; and then, after the

dissipations which he could not resist, he sank, utterly exhausted in

body, heart, and mind, into a collapsed condition bordering upon

imbecility. Such a character will drag a man down into the mire if he

is left to himself, or bring him to the highest heights of political

power if he has some stern friend to keep him in hand. Neither

Chesnel, nor the lad's father, nor Aunt Armande had fathomed the

depths of a nature so nearly akin on many sides to the poetic

temperament, yet smitten with a terrible weakness at its core.

By the time the old town lay several miles away, Victurnien felt not

the slightest regret; he thought no more about the father, who had

loved ten generations in his son, nor of the aunt, and her almost

insane devotion. He was looking forward to Paris with vehement

ill-starred longings; in thought he had lived in that fairyland, it

had been the background of his brightest dreams. He imagined that he

would be first in Paris, as he had been in the town and the department

where his father's name was potent; but it was vanity, not pride, that

filled his soul, and in his dreams his pleasures were to be magnified

by all the greatness of Paris. The distance was soon crossed. The

traveling coach, like his own thoughts, left the narrow horizon of the

province for the vast world of the great city, without a break in the

journey. He stayed in the Rue de Richelieu, in a handsome hotel close

to the boulevard, and hastened to take possession of Paris as a

famished horse rushes into a meadow.

He was not long in finding out the difference between country and

town, and was rather surprised than abashed by the change. His mental

quickness soon discovered how small an entity he was in the midst of

this all-comprehending Babylon; how insane it would be to attempt to

stem the torrent of new ideas and new ways. A single incident was

enough. He delivered his father's letter of introduction to the Duc de

Lenoncourt, a noble who stood high in favor with the King. He saw the

duke in his splendid mansion, among surroundings befitting his rank.

Next day he met him again. This time the Peer of France was lounging

on foot along the boulevard, just like any ordinary mortal, with an

umbrella in his hand; he did not even wear the Blue Ribbon, without

which no knight of the order could have appeared in public in other

times. And, duke and peer and first gentleman of the bedchamber though

he was, M. de Lenoncourt, in spite of his high courtesy, could not

repress a smile as he read his relative's letter; and that smile told

Victurnien that the Collection of Antiquities and the Tuileries were

separated by more than sixty leagues of road; the distance of several

centuries lay between them.

The names of the families grouped about the throne are quite different

in each successive reign, and the characters change with the names. It

would seem that, in the sphere of court, the same thing happens over

and over again in each generation; but each time there is a quite

different set of personages. If history did not prove that this is so,

it would seem incredible. The prominent men at the court of Louis

XVIII., for instance, had scarcely any connection with the

Rivieres, Blacas, d'Avarays, Vitrolles, d'Autichamps, Pasquiers,

Larochejaqueleins, Decazes, Dambrays, Laines, de Villeles, La

Bourdonnayes, and others who shone at the court of Louis XV. Compare

the courtiers of Henri IV. with those of Louis XIV.; you will hardly

find five great families of the former time still in existence. The

nephew of the great Richelieu was a very insignificant person at the

court of Louis XIV.; while His Majesty's favorite, Villeroi, was the

grandson of a secretary ennobled by Charles IX. And so it befell that

the d'Esgrignons, all but princes under the Valois, and all-powerful

in the time of Henri IV., had no fortune whatever at the court of

Louis XVIII., which gave them not so much as a thought. At this day

there are names as famous as those of royal houses--the Foix-Graillys,

for instance, or the d'Herouvilles--left to obscurity tantamount to

extinction for want of money, the one power of the time.

All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own point of

view; he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a personal wrong.

The monster Equality was swallowing down the last fragments of social

distinction in the Restoration. Having made up his mind on this head,

he immediately proceeded to try to win back his place with such

dangerous, if blunted weapons, as the age left to the noblesse. It is

an expensive matter to gain the attention of Paris. To this end,

Victurnien adopted some of the ways then in vogue. He felt that it was

a necessity to have horses and fine carriages, and all the accessories

of modern luxury; he felt, in short, "that a man must keep abreast of

the times," as de Marsay said--de Marsay, the first dandy that he came

across in the first drawing-room to which he was introduced. For his

misfortune, he fell in with a set of roues, with de Marsay, de

Ronquerolles, Maxime de Trailles, des Lupeaulx, Rastignac,

Ajuda-Pinto, Beaudenord, de la Roche-Hugon, de Manerville, and the

Vandenesses, whom he met wherever he went, and a great many houses

were open to a young man with his ancient name and reputation for

wealth. He went to the Marquise d'Espard's, to the Duchesses de

Grandlieu, de Carigliano, and de Chaulieu, to the Marquises

d'Aiglemont and de Listomere, to Mme. de Serizy's, to the Opera, to

the embassies and elsewhere. The Faubourg Saint-Germain has its

provincial genealogies at its fingers' ends; a great name once

recognized and adopted therein is a passport which opens many a door

that will scarcely turn on its hinges for unknown names or the lions

of a lower rank.

Victurnien found his relatives both amiable and ready to welcome him

so long as he did not appear as a suppliant; he saw at once that the

surest way of obtaining nothing was to ask for something. At Paris, if

the first impulse moves people to protect, second thoughts (which last

a good deal longer) impel them to despise the protege. Independence,

vanity, and pride, all the young Count's better and worse feelings

combined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive attitude.

And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de

Navarreins, d'Herouville, de Grandlieu, and de Maufrigneuse, the

Princes de Cadignan and de Blamont-Chauvry, were delighted to present

the charming survivor of the wreck of an ancient family at court.

Victurnien went to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage with his

armorial bearings on the panels; but his presentation to His Majesty

made it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal

mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten. The restored

dynasty, moreover, was surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men

and gray-headed courtiers; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher,

and this Victurnien guessed at once. He saw that there was no suitable

place for him at court, nor in the government, nor the army, nor,

indeed, anywhere else. So he launched out into the world of pleasure.

Introduced at the Elyess-Bourbon, at the Duchesse d'Angouleme's, at

the Pavillon Marsan, he met on all sides with the surface civilities

due to the heir of an old family, not so old but it could be called to

mind by the sight of a living member. And, after all, it was not a

small thing to be remembered. In the distinction with which Victurnien

was honored lay the way to the peerage and a splendid marriage; he had

taken the field with a false appearance of wealth, and his vanity

would not allow him to declare his real position. Besides, he had been

so much complimented on the figure that he made, he was so pleased

with his first success, that, like many other young men, he felt

ashamed to draw back. He took a suite of rooms in the Rue du Bac, with

stables and a complete equipment for the fashionable life to which he

had committed himself. These preliminaries cost him fifty thousand

francs, which money, moreover, the young gentleman managed to draw in

spite of all Chesnel's wise precautions, thanks to a series of

unforeseen events.

Chesnel's letter certainly reached his friend's office, but Maitre

Sorbier was dead; and Mme. Sorbier, a matter-of-fact person, seeing it

was a business letter, handed it on to her husband's successor. Maitre

Cardot, the new notary, informed the young Count that a draft on the

Treasury made payable to the deceased would be useless; and by way of

reply to the letter, which had cost the old provincial notary so much

thought, Cardot despatched four lines intended not to reach Chesnel's

heart, but to produce the money. Chesnel made the draft payable to

Sorbier's young successor; and the latter, feeling but little

inclination to adopt his correspondent's sentimentality, was delighted

to put himself at the Count's orders, and gave Victurnien as much

money as he wanted.

Now those who know what life in Paris means, know that fifty thousand

francs will not go very far in furniture, horses, carriages, and

elegance generally; but it must be borne in mind that Victurnien

immediately contracted some twenty thousand francs' worth of debts

besides, and his tradespeople at first were not at all anxious to be

paid, for our young gentleman's fortune had been prodigiously

increased, partly by rumor, partly by Josephin, that Chesnel in

livery.

Victurnien had not been in town a month before he was obliged to

repair to his man of business for ten thousand francs; he had only

been playing whist with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Chaulieu, and de

Lenoncourt, and now and again at his club. He had begun by winning

some thousands of francs but pretty soon lost five or six thousand,

which brought home to him the necessity of a purse for play.

Victurnien had the spirit that gains goodwill everywhere, and puts a

young man of a great family on a level with the very highest. He was

not merely admitted at once into the band of patrician youth, but was

even envied by the rest. It was intoxicating to him to feel that he

was envied, nor was he in this mood very likely to think of reform.

Indeed, he had completely lost his head. He would not think of the

means; he dipped into his money-bags as if they could be refilled

indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to the inevitable results

of the system. In that dissipated set, in the continual whirl of

gaiety, people take the actors in their brilliant costumes as they

find them, no one inquires whether a man can afford to make the figure

he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries as to ways and

means. A man ought to renew his wealth perpetually, and as Nature does

--below the surface and out of sight. People talk if somebody comes to

grief; they joke about a newcomer's fortune till their minds are set

at rest, and at this they draw the line. Victurnien d'Esgrignon, with

all the Faubourg Saint-Germain to back him, with all his protectors

exaggerating the amount of his fortune (were it only to rid themselves

of responsibility), and magnifying his possessions in the most refined

and well-bred way, with a hint or a word; with all these advantages

--to repeat--Victurnien was, in fact, an eligible Count. He was

handsome, witty, sound in politics; his father still possessed the

ancestral castle and the lands of the marquisate. Such a young fellow

is sure of an admirable reception in houses where there are

marriageable daughters, fair but portionless partners at dances, and

young married women who find that time hangs heavy on their hands. So

the world, smiling, beckoned him to the foremost benches in its booth;

the seats reserved for marquises are still in the same place in Paris;

and if the names are changed, the things are the same as ever.

In the most exclusive circle of society in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,

Victurnien found the Chevalier's double in the person of the Vidame de

Pamiers. The Vidame was a Chevalier de Valois raised to the tenth

power, invested with all the prestige of wealth, enjoying all the

advantages of high position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for

everybody's secrets, and the gazette of the Faubourg besides;

nevertheless, he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said

things that might safely be published. Again Victurnien listened to

the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young d'Esgrignon,

without mincing matters, to make conquests among women of quality,

supplementing the advice with anecdotes from his own experience. The

Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed, had permitted himself much that it

would serve no purpose to relate here; so remote was it all from our

modern manners, in which soul and passion play so large a part, that

nobody would believe it. But the excellent Vidame did more than this.

"Dine with me at a tavern to-morrow," said he, by way of conclusion.

"We will digest our dinner at the Opera, and afterwards I will take

you to a house where several people have the greatest wish to meet

you."

The Vidame gave a delightful little dinner at the Rocher de Cancale;

three guests only were asked to meet Victurnien--de Marsay, Rastignac,

and Blondet. Emile Blondet, the young Count's fellow-townsman, was a

man of letters on the outskirts of society to which he had been

introduced by a charming woman from the same province. This was one of

the Vicomte de Troisville's daughters, now married to the Comte de

Montcornet, one of those of Napoleon's generals who went over to the

Bourbons. The Vidame held that a dinner-party of more than six persons

was beneath contempt. In that case, according to him, there was an end

alike of cookery and conversation, and a man could not sip his wine in

a proper frame of mind.

"I have not yet told you, my dear boy, where I mean to take you

to-night," he said, taking Victurnien's hands and tapping on them.

"You are going to see Mlle. des Touches; all the pretty women with any

pretensions to wit will be at her house en petit comite. Literature,

art, poetry, any sort of genius, in short, is held in great esteem

there. It is one of our old-world bureaux d'esprit, with a veneer of

monarchical doctrine, the livery of this present age."

"It is sometimes as tiresome and tedious there as a pair of new boots,

but there are women with whom you cannot meet anywhere else," said de

Marsay.

"If all the poets who went there to rub up their muse were like our

friend here," said Rastignac, tapping Blondet familiarly on the

shoulder, "we should have some fun. But a plague of odes, and ballads,

and driveling meditations, and novels with wide margins, pervades the

sofas and the atmosphere."

"I don't dislike them," said de Marsay, "so long as they corrupt

girls' minds, and don't spoil women."

"Gentlemen," smiled Blondet, "you are encroaching on my field of

literature."

"You need not talk. You have robbed us of the most charming woman in

the world, you lucky rogue; we may be allowed to steal your less

brilliant ideas," cried Rastignac.

"Yes, he is a lucky rascal," said the Vidame, and he twitched

Blondet's ear. "But perhaps Victurnien here will be luckier still this

evening----"

"/Already/!" exclaimed de Marsay. "Why, he only came here a month ago;

he has scarcely had time to shake the dust of his old manor house off

his feet, to wipe off the brine in which his aunt kept him preserved;

he has only just set up a decent horse, a tilbury in the latest style,

a groom----"

"No, no, not a groom," interrupted Rastignac; "he has some sort of an

agricultural laborer that he brought with him 'from his place.'

Buisson, who understands a livery as well as most, declared that the

man was physically incapable of wearing a jacket."

"I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled yourself on

Beaudenord," the Vidame said seriously. "He has this advantage over

all of you, my young friends, he has a genuine specimen of the English

tiger----"

"Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in France!" cried

Victurnien. "For them the one important thing is to have a tiger, a

thoroughbred, and baubles----"

"Bless me!" said Blondet. "'This gentleman's good sense at times

appalls me.'--Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles have come to that.

You have not even left to you that lustre of lavish expenditure for

which the dear Vidame was famous fifty years ago. We revel on a second

floor in the Rue Montorgueil. There are no more wars with the

Cardinal, no Field of the Cloth of Gold. You, Comte d'Esgrignon, in

short, are supping in the company of one Blondet, younger son of a

miserable provincial magistrate, with whom you would not shake hands

down yonder; and in ten years' time you may sit beside him among peers

of the realm. Believe in yourself after that, if you can."

"Ah, well," said Rastignac, "we have passed from action to thought,

from brute force to force of intellect, we are talking----"

"Let us not talk of our reverses," protested the Vidame; "I have made

up my mind to die merrily. If our friend here has not a tiger as yet,

he comes of a race of lions, and can dispense with one."

"He cannot do without a tiger," said Blondet; "he is too newly come to

town."

"His elegance may be new as yet," returned de Marsay, "but we are

adopting it. He is worthy of us, he understands his age, he has

brains, he is nobly born and gently bred; we are going to like him,

and serve him, and push him----"

"Whither?" inquired Blondet.

"Inquisitive soul!" said Rastignac.

"With whom will he take up to-night?" de Marsay asked.

"With a whole seraglio," said the Vidame.

"Plague take it! What can we have done that the dear Vidame is

punishing us by keeping his word to the infanta? I should be pitiable

indeed if I did not know her----"

"And I was once a coxcomb even as he," said the Vidame, indicating de

Marsay.

The conversation continued pitched in the same key, charmingly

scandalous, and agreeably corrupt. The dinner went off very

pleasantly. Rastignac and de Marsay went to the Opera with the Vidame

and Victurnien, with a view to following them afterwards to Mlle. des

Touches' salon. And thither, accordingly, this pair of rakes betook

themselves, calculating that by that time the tragedy would have been

read; for of all things to be taken between eleven and twelve o'clock

at night, a tragedy in their opinion was the most unwholesome. They

went to keep a watch on Victurnien and to embarrass him, a piece of

schoolboys's mischief embittered by a jealous dandy's spite. But

Victurnien was gifted with that page's effrontery which is a great

help to ease of manner; and Rastignac, watching him as he made his

entrance, was surprised to see how quickly he caught the tone of the

moment.

"That young d'Esgrignon will go far, will he not?" he said, addressing

his companion.

"That is as may be," returned de Marsay, "but he is in a fair way."

The Vidame introduced his young friend to one of the most amiable and

frivolous duchesses of the day, a lady whose adventures caused an

explosion five years later. Just then, however, she was in the full

blaze of her glory; she had been suspected, it is true, of equivocal

conduct; but suspicion, while it is still suspicion and not proof,

marks a woman out with the kind of distinction which slander gives to

a man. Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are

left in peace. This woman was, in fact, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,

a daughter of the d'Uxelles; her father-in-law was still alive; she

was not to be the Princesse de Cadignan for some years to come. A

friend of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant,

two glories departed, she was likewise intimate with the Marquise

d'Espard, with whom she disputed her fragile sovereignty as queen of

fashion. Great relations lent her countenance for a long while, but

the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was one of those women who, in some way,

nobody knows how, or why, or where, will spend the rents of all the

lands of earth, and of the moon likewise, if they were not out of

reach. The general outline of her character was scarcely known as yet;

de Marsay, and de Marsay only, really had read her. That redoubtable

dandy now watched the Vidame de Pamiers' introduction of his young

friend to that lovely woman, and bent over to say in Rastignac's ear:

"My dear fellow, he will go up /whizz/! like a rocket, and come down

like a stick," an atrociously vulgar saying which was remarkably

fulfilled.

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had lost her heart to Victurnien after

first giving her mind to a serious study of him. Any lover who should

have caught the glance by which she expressed her gratitude to the

Vidame might well have been jealous of such friendship. Women are like

horses let loose on a steppe when they feel, as the Duchess felt with

the Vidame de Pamiers, that the ground is safe; at such moments they

are themselves; perhaps it pleases them to give, as it were, samples

of their tenderness in intimacy in this way. It was a guarded glance,

nothing was lost between eye and eye; there was no possibility of

reflection in any mirror. Nobody intercepted it.

"See how she has prepared herself," Rastignac said, turning to de

Marsay. "What a virginal toilette; what swan's grace in that

snow-white throat of hers! How white her gown is, and she is wearing

a sash like a little girl; she looks round like a madonna inviolate.

Who would think that you had passed that way?"

"The very reason why she looks as she does," returned de Marsay, with

a triumphant air.

The two young men exchanged a smile. Mme. de Maufrigneuse saw the

smile and guessed at their conversation, and gave the pair a broadside

of her eyes, an art acquired by Frenchwomen since the Peace, when

Englishwomen imported it into this country, together with the shape of

their silver plate, their horses and harness, and the piles of insular

ice which impart a refreshing coolness to the atmosphere of any room

in which a certain number of British females are gathered together.

The young men grew serious as a couple of clerks at the end of a

homily from headquarters before the receipt of an expected bonus.

The Duchess when she lost her heart to Victurnien had made up her mind

to play the part of romantic Innocence, a role much understudied

subsequently by other women, for the misfortune of modern youth. Her

Grace of Maufrigneuse had just come out as an angel at a moment's

notice, precisely as she meant to turn to literature and science

somewhere about her fortieth year instead of taking to devotion. She

made a point of being like nobody else. Her parts, her dresses, her

caps, opinions, toilettes, and manner of acting were all entirely new

and original. Soon after her marriage, when she was scarcely more than

a girl, she had played the part of a knowing and almost depraved

woman; she ventured on risky repartees with shallow people, and

betrayed her ignorance to those who knew better. As the date of that

marriage made it impossible to abstract one little year from her age

without the knowledge of Time, she had taken it into her head to be

immaculate. She scarcely seemed to belong to earth; she shook out her

wide sleeves as if they had been wings. Her eyes fled to heaven at too

warm a glance, or word, or thought.

There is a madonna painted by Piola, the great Genoese painter, who

bade fair to bring out a second edition of Raphael till his career was

cut short by jealousy and murder; his madonna, however, you may dimly

discern through a pane of glass in a little street in Genoa.

A more chaste-eyed madonna than Piola's does not exist but compared

with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that heavenly creature was a Messalina.

Women wondered among themselves how such a giddy young thing had been

transformed by a change of dress into the fair veiled seraph who

seemed (to use an expression now in vogue) to have a soul as white as

new fallen snow on the highest Alpine crests. How had she solved in

such short space the Jesuitical problem how to display a bosom whiter

than her soul by hiding it in gauze? How could she look so ethereal

while her eyes drooped so murderously? Those almost wanton glances

seemed to give promise of untold languorous delight, while by an

ascetic's sigh of aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to

add that none of those promises would be fulfilled. Ingenuous youths

(for there were a few to be found in the Guards of that day) privately

wondered whether, in the most intimate moments, it were possible to

speak familiarly to this White Lady, this starry vapor slidden down

from the Milky Way. This system, which answered completely for some

years at a stretch, was turned to good account by women of fashion,

whose breasts were lined with a stout philosophy, for they could cloak

no inconsiderable exactions with these little airs from the sacristy.

Not one of the celestial creatures but was quite well aware of the

possibilities of less ethereal love which lay in the longing of every

well-conditioned male to recall such beings to earth. It was a fashion

which permitted them to abide in a semi-religious, semi-Ossianic

empyrean; they could, and did, ignore all the practical details of

daily life, a short and easy method of disposing of many questions. De

Marsay, foreseeing the future developments of the system, added a last

word, for he saw that Rastignac was jealous of Victurnien.

"My boy," said he, "stay as you are. Our Nucingen will make your

fortune, whereas the Duchess would ruin you. She is too expensive."

Rastignac allowed de Marsay to go without asking further questions. He

knew Paris. He knew that the most refined and noble and disinterested

of women--a woman who cannot be induced to accept anything but a

bouquet--can be as dangerous an acquaintance for a young man as any

opera girl of former days. As a matter of fact, the opera girl is an

almost mythical being. As things are now at the theatres, dancers and

actresses are about as amusing as a declaration of the rights of

woman, they are puppets that go abroad in the morning in the character

of respected and respectable mothers of families, and act men's parts

in tight-fitting garments at night.

Worthy M. Chesnel, in his country notary's office, was right; he had

foreseen one of the reefs on which the Count might shipwreck.

Victurnien was dazzled by the poetic aureole which Mme. de

Maufrigneuse chose to assume; he was chained and padlocked from the

first hour in her company, bound captive by that girlish sash, and

caught by the curls twined round fairy fingers. Far corrupted the boy

was already, but he really believed in that farrago of maidenliness

and muslin, in sweet looks as much studied as an Act of Parliament.

And if the one man, who is in duty bound to believe in feminine fibs,

is deceived by them, is not that enough?

For a pair of lovers, the rest of their species are about as much

alive as figures on the tapestry. The Duchess, flattery apart, was

avowedly and admittedly one of the ten handsomest women in society.

"The loveliest woman in Paris" is, as you know, as often met with in

the world of love-making as "the finest book that has appeared in this

generation," in the world of letters.

The converse which Victurnien held with the Duchess can be kept up at

his age without too great a strain. He was young enough and ignorant

enough of life in Paris to feel no necessity to be upon his guard, no

need to keep a watch over his lightest words and glances. The

religious sentimentalism, which finds a broadly humorous commentary in

the after-thoughts of either speaker, puts the old-world French chat

of men and women, with its pleasant familiarity, its lively ease,

quite out of the question; they make love in a mist nowadays.

Victurnien was just sufficient of an unsophisticated provincial to

remain suspended in a highly appropriate and unfeigned rapture which

pleased the Duchess; for women are no more to be deceived by the

comedies which men play than by their own. Mme. de Maufrigneuse

calculated, not without dismay, that the young Count's infatuation was

likely to hold good for six whole months of disinterested love. She

looked so lovely in this dove's mood, quenching the light in her eyes

by the golden fringe of their lashes, that when the Marquise d'Espard

bade her friend good-night, she whispered, "Good! very good, dear!"

And with those farewell words, the fair Marquise left her rival to

make the tour of the modern Pays du Tendre; which, by the way, is not

so absurd a conception as some appear to think. New maps of the

country are engraved for each generation; and if the names of the

routes are different, they still lead to the same capital city.

In the course of an hour's tete-a-tete, on a corner sofa, under the

eyes of the world, the Duchess brought young d'Esgrignon as far as

Scipio's Generosity, the Devotion of Amadis, and Chivalrous

Self-abnegation (for the Middle Ages were just coming into fashion,

with their daggers, machicolations, hauberks, chain-mail, peaked shoes,

and romantic painted card-board properties). She had an admirable turn,

moreover, for leaving things unsaid, for leaving ideas in a discreet,

seeming careless way, to work their way down, one by one, into

Victurnien's heart, like needles into a cushion. She possessed a

marvelous skill in reticence; she was charming in hypocrisy, lavish of

subtle promises, which revived hope and then melted away like ice in

the sun if you looked at them closely, and most treacherous in the

desire which she felt and inspired. At the close of this charming

encounter she produced the running noose of an invitation to call, and

flung it over him with a dainty demureness which the printed page can

never set forth.

"You will forget me," she said. "You will find so many women eager to

pay court to you instead of enlightening you. . . . But you will come

back to me undeceived. Are you coming to me first? . . . No. As you

will.--For my own part, I tell you frankly that your visits will be a

great pleasure to me. People of soul are so rare, and I think that you

are one of them.--Come, good-bye; people will begin to talk about us

if we talk together any longer."

She made good her words and took flight. Victurnien went soon

afterwards, but not before others had guessed his ecstatic condition;

his face wore the expression peculiar to happy men, something between

an Inquisitor's calm discretion and the self-contained beatitude of a

devotee, fresh from the confessional and absolution.

"Mme. de Maufrigneuse went pretty briskly to the point this evening,"

said the Duchesse de Grandlieu, when only half-a-dozen persons were

left in Mlle. des Touches' little drawing-room--to wit, des Lupeaulx,

a Master of Requests, who at that time stood very well at court,

Vandenesse, the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, Canalis, and Mme. de Serizy.

"D'Esgrignon and Maufrigneuse are two names that are sure to cling

together," said Mme. de Serizy, who aspired to epigram.

"For some days past she has been out at grass on Platonism," said des

Lupeaulx.

"She will ruin that poor innocent," added Charles de Vandenesse.

"What do you mean?" asked Mlle. des Touches.

"Oh, morally and financially, beyond all doubt," said the Vicomtesse,

rising.

The cruel words were cruelly true for young d'Esgrignon.

Next morning he wrote to his aunt describing his introduction into the

high world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in bright colors flung by the

prism of love, explaining the reception which met him everywhere in a

way which gratified his father's family pride. The Marquis would have

the whole long letter read to him twice; he rubbed his hands when he

heard of the Vidame de Pamiers' dinner--the Vidame was an old

acquaintance--and of the subsequent introduction to the Duchess; but

at Blondet's name he lost himself in conjectures. What could the

younger son of a judge, a public prosecutor during the Revolution,

have been doing there?

There was joy that evening among the Collection of Antiquities. They

talked over the young Count's success. So discreet were they with

regard to Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that the one man who heard the secret

was the Chevalier. There was no financial postscript at the end of the

letter, no unpleasant reference to the sinews of war, which every

young man makes in such a case. Mlle. Armande showed it to Chesnel.

Chesnel was pleased and raised not a single objection. It was clear,

as the Marquis and the Chevalier agreed, that a young man in favor

with the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse would shortly be a hero at court,

where in the old days women were all-powerful. The Count had not made

a bad choice. The dowagers told over all the gallant adventures of the

Maufrigneuses from Louis XIII. to Louis XVI.--they spared to inquire

into preceding reigns--and when all was done they were enchanted.

--Mme. de Maufrigneuse was much praised for interesting herself in

Victurnien. Any writer of plays in search of a piece of pure comedy

would have found it well worth his while to listen to the Antiquities

in conclave.

Victurnien received charming letters from his father and aunt, and

also from the Chevalier. That gentleman recalled himself to the

Vidame's memory. He had been at Spa with M. de Pamiers in 1778, after

a certain journey made by a celebrated Hungarian princess. And Chesnel

also wrote. The fond flattery to which the unhappy boy was only too

well accustomed shone out of every page; and Mlle. Armande seemed to

share half of Mme. de Maufrigneuse's happiness.

Thus happy in the approval of his family, the young Count made a

spirited beginning in the perilous and costly ways of dandyism. He had

five horses--he was moderate--de Marsay had fourteen! He returned the

Vidame's hospitality, even including Blondet in the invitation, as

well as de Marsay and Rastignac. The dinner cost five hundred francs,

and the noble provincial was feted on the same scale. Victurnien

played a good deal, and, for his misfortune, at the fashionable game

of whist.

He laid out his days in busy idleness. Every day between twelve and

three o'clock he was with the Duchess; afterwards he went to meet her

in the Bois de Boulogne and ride beside her carriage. Sometimes the

charming couple rode together, but this was early in fine summer

mornings. Society, balls, the theatre, and gaiety filled the Count's

evening hours. Everywhere Victurnien made a brilliant figure,

everywhere he flung the pearls of his wit broadcast. He gave his

opinion on men, affairs, and events in profound sayings; he would have

put you in mind of a fruit-tree putting forth all its strength in

blossom. He was leading an enervating life wasteful of money, and even

yet more wasteful, it may be of a man's soul; in that life the fairest

talents are buried out of sight, the most incorruptible honesty

perishes, the best-tempered springs of will are slackened.

The Duchess, so white and fragile and angel-like, felt attracted to

the dissipations of bachelor life; she enjoyed first nights, she liked

anything amusing, anything improvised. Bohemian restaurants lay

outside her experience; so d'Esgrignon got up a charming little party

at the Rocher de Cancale for her benefit, asked all the amiable scamps

whom she cultivated and sermonized, and there was a vast amount of

merriment, wit, and gaiety, and a corresponding bill to pay. That

supper led to others. And through it all Victurnien worshiped her as

an angel. Mme. de Maufrigneuse for him was still an angel, untouched

by any taint of earth; an angel at the Varietes, where she sat out the

half-obscene, vulgar farces, which made her laugh; an angel through

the cross-fire of highly-flavored jests and scandalous anecdotes,

which enlivened a stolen frolic; a languishing angel in the latticed

box at the Vaudeville; an angel while she criticised the postures of

opera dancers with the experience of an elderly habitue of le coin de

la reine; an angel at the Porte Saint-Martin, at the little boulevard

theatres, at the masked balls, which she enjoyed like any schoolboy.

She was an angel who asked him for the love that lives by

self-abnegation and heroism and self-sacrifice; an angel who would have

her lover live like an English lord, with an income of a million francs.

D'Esgrignon once exchanged a horse because the animal's coat did not

satisfy her notions. At play she was an angel, and certainly no

bourgeoise that ever lived could have bidden d'Esgrignon "Stake for

me!" in such an angelic way. She was so divinely reckless in her

folly, that a man might well have sold his soul to the devil lest this

angel should lose her taste for earthly pleasures.