During the last visits which Daniel had paid to Henrietta, he had not
concealed from her the fact that Maxime de Brevan had formerly been
quite intimate with Sarah Brandon and her friends. But still, in
explaining his reasons for trying to renew these relations, M. de Brevan
had acted with his usual diplomacy.
But for this, she might have conceived some vague suspicions when she
saw him, soon after he had left her, enter into a long conversation
with the countess, then speak with Sir Thorn, and finally chat most
confidentially with austere Mrs. Brian. But now, if she noticed it all,
she was not surprised. Her mind was, in fact, thousands of miles away.
She thought only of that letter which she had in her pocket, and which
was burning her fingers, so to say. She could think of nothing else.
What would she not have given for the right to run away and read it at
once? But adversity was teaching her gradually circumspection; and she
felt it would be unwise to leave the room before the last guests had
departed. Thus it was past two o’clock in the morning before she could
open the precious letter, after having dismissed her faithful Clarissa.
Alas! she did not find what she had hoped for,--advice, or, better than
that, directions how she should conduct herself. The fact is, that
in his terrible distress, Daniel no longer was sufficiently master of
himself to look calmly at the future, and to weigh the probabilities. In
his despair he had filled three pages with assurances of his love, with
promises that his last thoughts would be for her, and with prayers
that she would not forget him. There were hardly twenty lines left for
recommendations, which ought to have contained the most precise and
minute details.
All his suggestions, moreover, amounted to this,--arm yourself with
patience and resignation till my return. Do not leave your father’s
house unless in the last extremity, in case of pressing danger, and
under no circumstances without first consulting Maxime.
And to fill up the measure, from excessive delicacy, and fearing to
wound his friend’s oversensitive feelings, Daniel had omitted to inform
Henrietta of certain most important circumstances. Thus he only told
her, that, if flight became her only means of escape from actual
danger, she need not hesitate from pecuniary considerations; that he had
foreseen every thing, and made the needful preparations.
How could she guess from this, that the unlucky man, carried away and
blinded by passion, had intrusted fifty or sixty thousand dollars, his
entire fortune, to his friend Maxime? Still the two friends agreed too
fully on the same opinion to allow her to hesitate. Thus, when she fell
asleep, she had formed a decision. She had vowed to herself that she
would meet all the torments they might inflict upon her, with the
stoicism of the Indian who is bound to the stake, and to be, among
her enemies, like a dead person, whom no insult can galvanize into the
semblance of life.
During the following weeks it was not so difficult for her to keep
her promises. Whether it were weariness or calculation, they seemed to
forget her. Except at meals, they took no more notice of her than if she
had not been in existence.
That sudden access of affection which had moved Count Ville-Handry
on that evening when he thought his daughter in danger had long since
passed away. He only honored her with ironical glances, and never
addressed a word to her. The countess observed a kind of affectionate
reserve, like a well-disposed person who has seen all her advances
repelled, and who is hurt, but quite ready to be friends at the first
sign. Mrs. Brian never opened her thin lips but to growl out some
unpleasant remark, of which a single word was intelligible: shocking!
There remained the Hon. M. Elgin, whose sympathetic pity showed itself
daily more clearly. But, since Maxime’s warning, Henrietta avoided him
anxiously.
She was thus leading a truly wretched life in this magnificent palace,
in which she was kept a prisoner by her father’s orders; for such she
was; she could no longer disguise it from herself. She felt at every
moment that she was watched, and overlooked most jealously, even when
they seemed to forget her most completely. The great gates, formerly
almost always open, were now kept carefully closed; and, when they were
opened to admit a carriage, the concierge mounted guard before them, as
if he were the keeper of a jail. The little garden-gate had been secured
by two additional enormous locks; and whenever Henrietta, during her
walks in the garden, came near it, she saw one of the gardeners watch
her with anxious eyes. They were apparently afraid, not only that she
might escape, but that she might keep up secret communications with
the outer world. She wanted to be clear about that; and one morning she
asked her father’s permission to send to the Duchess of Champdoce,
and beg her to come and spend the day with her. But Count Ville-Handry
brutally replied that he did not want to see the Duchess of Champdoce;
and that, besides, she was not in Paris, as her husband had taken her
south to hasten her recovery.
On another occasion, toward the end of February, and when several days
of fine spring weather had succeeded each other, the poor child could
not help expressing a desire to go out and breathe a little fresh air.
Her father said, in reply to her request,--“Every day, your mother and
I go out and drive for an hour or two in the Bois de Boulogne. Why don’t
you go with us?”
She said nothing. She would sooner have allowed herself to be cut to
pieces than to appear in public seated by the side of the young countess
and in the same carriage with her.
Months passed thus without her having put a foot outside of the palace,
except her daily attendance at mass at eight o’clock on Sunday mornings.
Count Ville-Handry had not dared to refuse her that; but he had added
the most painful and most humiliating conditions. On these occasions M.
Ernest, his valet, accompanied her, with express orders not to let
her speak to any one whatsoever, and to “apprehend” her (this was the
count’s own expression), and to bring her back forcibly, if needs be, if
she should try to escape.
But in vain they multiplied the insults; they did not extort a single
complaint. Her unalterable patience would have touched ordinary
executioners. And yet she had no other encouragement, no other support,
but what she received from M. de Brevan.
Faithful to the plan which he had mentioned to her, he had managed so
well as gradually to secure the right to come frequently to the house.
He was on the best terms with Mrs. Brian; and the count invited him
to dinner. At this time Henrietta had entirely overcome her prejudice
against him. She had discovered in M. de Brevan such a respectful
interest in her welfare, such almost womanly delicacy, and so much
prudence and discretion, that she blessed Daniel for having left her
this friend, and counted upon his devotion as upon that of a brother.
Was it not he, who, on certain evenings, when she was well-nigh overcome
by despair, whispered to her,--
“Courage; here is another day gone! Daniel will soon be back!”
But the more Henrietta was left to the inspirations of solitude, and
compelled to live within herself only, the more she observed all that
was going on around her. And she thought she noticed some very strange
changes. Never would Count Ville-Handry’s first wife have been able to
recognize her reception-rooms. Where was that select society which had
been attracted by her, and which she had fashioned into something like a
court, in which her husband was king? The palace had become, so to say,
the headquarters of that motley society which forms the “Foreign Legion”
of pleasure and of scandal.
Sarah Brandon, now Countess Ville-Handry, was surrounded by that strange
aristocracy which has risen upon the ruins of old Paris,--a contraband
aristocracy, a dangerous kind of high life, which, by its unheard-of
extravagance and mysterious splendor, dazzles the multitude, and puzzles
the police.
The young countess did not exactly receive people notoriously tainted.
She was too clever to commit such a blunder; but she bestowed her
sweetest smiles upon all those equivocal Bohemians who represent all
races, and whose revenues come much less from good acres in the broad
sunlight than from the credulity and stupidity of mankind.
At first Count Ville-Handry had been rather shocked by this new world,
whose manners and customs were unknown to him, and whose language even
he hardly understood. But it had not taken long to acclimatize him.
He was the firm, the receiver of the fortune, the flag that covers the
merchandise, the master, in fine, although he exercised no authority.
All these titles secured to him the appearance of profound respect; and
all vied with each other in flattering him to the utmost, and paying
him court in the most abject manner. This led him to imagine that he
had recovered the prestige he had enjoyed in former days, thanks to
the skilful management of his first wife; and he assumed a new kind of
grotesque importance commensurate with his revived vanity.
He had, besides, gone to work once more most industriously. All the
business men who had called upon him before his marriage already
reappeared now, accompanied by that legion of famished speculators, whom
the mere report of a great enterprise attracts, like the flies settling
upon a lump of sugar. The count shut himself up with these men in his
study, and often spent the whole afternoon with them there.
“Most probably something is going on there,” thought Henrietta.
She was quite sure of it when she saw her father unhesitatingly give up
the splendid suite of apartments in the lower story of the palace, which
were cut up into an infinite number of small rooms. On the doors there
appeared, one by one, signs not usually found in such houses; as,
“Office,” “Board Room,” “Secretary,” “Cashier’s Room.”
Then office-furniture appeared in loads,--tables, desks, chairs; then
mountains of huge volumes; and at last two immense safes, as large as a
bachelor’s-lodging.
Henrietta was seriously alarmed, and knowing beforehand that no one in
the house would answer her questions, she turned to M. de Brevan. In the
most off-hand manner he assured her that he knew nothing about it, but
promised to inquire, and to let her know soon.
There was no necessity; for one morning, when Henrietta was wandering
about listlessly around the offices, which began to be filled with
clerks, she noticed an immense advertisement on one of the doors.