THE FOX IN THE FOLD.
Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of
Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude,
which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of
the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who
had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was
rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by
right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with
his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed
and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell,
all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully.
Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.
His odd training helped him. He came from the Polish University into an
unromantic society which, after its stirring up by the Great Revolution,
was so levelled and amalgamated that everybody resembled his neighbor as
well in manners and speech as in attire. Strong characters, heated
passions, black vices, deep prejudices, grievous misfortunes, and even
utterly ridiculous persons had disappeared. The country he had been
reared in still thrilled with patriotism and meant something when it
muttered threats to kill its tyrant--meant so much that the Czar did not
pass through a Polish town until the police and military had "ensured an
enthusiastic reception." But in France, tyrants and love of country were
mere words to draw applause from the country cousins in a popular
theatre.
Felix, though a youth, stood a head and shoulders above the level of the
weaklings excluded as "finished" from these commonplace educational
institutions--schools called colleges and colleges called universities,
resulting necessarily from the proclamation of man's equality. He
sickened at seeing the neutral-tinted lake of society, with
"shallow-swells," more painful to the right-minded than an ocean in a
tempest.
He soon became like the French, but not so his wife. She suffered the
change of her unpronounceable name, being euphonized as "Césarine,"
smilingly, but life at home in a demure and tranquil suburb little
suited the young meteor who had flashed across Germany. Felix saw with
dismay that domestic bliss was not that which she enjoyed. For a while
he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius
of the hearth when a mother.
But maternity had nothing but thorns for her. She chafed under the
burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he
had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined
sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.
But Césarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society's vital
elements. Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious
influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil
to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza's career,
she had perhaps been too Puritanic with Césarine, whose flight from home
at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence.
Césarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family
ties.
In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged
parental despotism for marital tyranny. But soon she perceived that
nothing was changed that would affect her. On the contrary, France, in
the last decade of the Empire, was more corrupt than Russia's chief
towns and the dissoluteness, though not as coarse as at Munich, was more
diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable
appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws
guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the
social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved
her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness
developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her
was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his
devotion to art.
It seemed to her that, after the death of their first-born, his silence
signified some contempt for her; in fact, she had, stupidly frank for
once, expressed relief at this escape from the cares of maternity. Did
he suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its
death? She feared this passionate man who, by strength of will, made
himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved
by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying
had condoned for his father's blow at her ancestress, she tried to
return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a serpent to sting a
rock.
Recovered from the slight eclipse of beauty during her experience as a
mother, she endeavored to make him once again her worshiper. But her
tricks, her tears and her caresses seemed not to count as before when
they fled from Von Sendlingen's vengeance. He remained so strictly the
husband that she could perceive scarcely an atom of the lover. Then she
vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her--not even a
woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him
intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it--not even
lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his
most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be
thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the
muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens
the will and eats away the soul.
Unfortunately for her hideous project, it was in vain that she painted
the lily of her cheeks and the carmine of her lips, studied useless arts
of the toilet harder than a sage muses over nature's secrets to benefit
mankind, and was the peerless darling of three years ago.
He resisted her till she grew mad.
The progression of vice is such that while she believed she was simply
at the degree of passion, she contemplated another crime.
She ruled the little household, for she had brought from Germany the
girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and
superstitious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told
and had never shaken off the bonds; these Césarine took up and drove her
by them. She had led to the entrance of the girl under her roof
ingeniously; Felix was cajoled into believing that she came rather on
the hint of Fraulein Daniels, the Rebecca, of whom he often had
agreeable and soothing memories in his distress.
Ah, she would not have interrupted his studies; she would have
encouraged them; she would never have urged him to accumulate wealth to
expend it in social diversions; while Césarine fretted at her splendid
voice going to waste in this solitude--the house in the suburbs where no
company comes.
She dreamed of holding a Liberty Hall, where her fancies might have
unlicensed play and her freaks have free course. While gliding about the
quiet house in a neat dress, she imagined herself in robes almost regal,
with golden ornaments, diamonds and the pearls and turquoises which
suited her fairness. What if the gems were set in impurities?
Alas! perfect as a husband, denying her nothing which his limited means
allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the
ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path
at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly assured that he
was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he
could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no
faith in him, she did not understand his value, and from the time of his
certainty that they were not the unit of two hearts to which happiness
accrues and where it abides, he merely resigned himself to the
irremediable grief. Having vainly tried to make of her a worthy wife,
and seeing that motherhood had not saved her--earthly redemption though
it is of her sex--he could only watch her and prevent her resuming that
orbit which would no doubt end badly, as her race offered too many
examples.
On one occasion, fatigued with watching that she did not take a faulty
step, he had written to Russia to see if she would find a harbor there,
but the answer came from her father and sealed up that outlet. Her
elopement had caused her mother fatal sorrow, and her father said
plainly that he regarded her as dead. Though she came to his gates,
begging her bread, he would bid his janitor drive her away. Her mother
had been a good wife, but her grandmother had extorted a mint of money
and, after all, nearly ruined him in the good graces of his Emperor out
of spite, from her blackmail failing at last to remunerate her.
Since in Césarine, Felix found no intelligent and sympathetic companion,
he took into intimacy a kind of apprentice whom he had literally picked
up on the road. A slender lad of southern origin, whom a band of
vagrants, making for the sea to embark to South America, had cast off to
die in the ditch. Clemenceau gave him shelter, nursed him--for his wife
would have nothing to do with a beggar--and to cover the hospitality and
soothe the Italian's pride, paid him liberally to be his model. He was
named Antonino and might have been a descendant of the Emperor from his
lofty features, burning eye and fine sentiments. Healed, able to resume
his journey and offered a loan to make it smooth, he effusively uttered
a declaration of gratitude and devotion, and vowed to remain the slave
of the man who had saved him from a miserable death.
A good work rarely goes unrewarded. Antonino, who had never touched a
piece of colored chalk to a black stone, soon revealed strong gift as a
draftsman and served his new master with brightness and taste.
Left lonely by his wife, each day more and more estranged, Felix loved
to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That Césarine
should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt
toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her
vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful
impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate
artistic craving which had at the first sight lifted her on a pedestal
as his ideal of the woman to be idolized.
Nevertheless, the vagabond had a stronger spirit than she anticipated,
and the emotion which she set down as timidity, and which protected him
from the baseness of deceiving his benefactor, was due to honor. She
flattered herself that she could pluck the fruit at any time, and, since
this moneyless youth could not in the least appease her yearning for
inordinate luxury, she cast about for another conquest.
Clemenceau would not hear of his home being turned into the pandemonium
of a country-house receiving all "the society that amuses," and rigidly
restricted his wife from visiting where she would meet the odd medley in
the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a
fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected
libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the
dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is constituted,
it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused
her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de
Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his
pastoral calls. This was a neighbor.
In her old Louis XIV. mansion, conspicuous among the new structures, the
old dame, in silvered hair which needed no powder, welcomed the "best
people" in the neighborhood and a surprising number of visitors who "ran
down" from the city. Considering her age, her activity in playing the
hostess was remarkable. On the other hand, the "at homes" were most
respectable, and the music remained "classical;" not an echo of
Offenbach or Strauss; the conversation was restrained and decorous and
the scandal delicately dressed to offend no ear.
Not all were old who came to the château, and the foreigners were
numerous to give variety to the gatherings; but the white neck-cloth and
black coat suppressed gaiety in even the rising youth, who were destined
for places under government or on boards of finance and commerce.
It may be judged that an afternoon spent in such company was little
change to Madame Clemenceau, and that the five o'clock tea, initiated
from the English, was a kind of penitential drink. But she became a
habitué, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes
indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood
and early girlhood had passed.
One evening, she arrived late. She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed
his master's imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with
rebuking chilliness. A marked gravity governed them both of late; they
shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence
becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the
chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason
to complain.
"A fresh craze!" thought Césarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.
Dull and decorous though the marchioness' salon was, it might be an
ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of
science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.
The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with Césarine at Munich and
was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a
companionship had not been accepted. "All her pets had married well,"
she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty
in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.
Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the château; and,
tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved
chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty
drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with
funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was
struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a
vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the marchioness
conceitedly installed herself.
He was singing in German, and he accompanied himself on a zither. He had
an excellent baritone voice, and the ballad, simple and unfinished,
became a tragic _scena_ from his skill in repeating some exceptionally
talented teacher's instructions.
To Césarine, the strains awakened dormant meditations; aspirations
frozen in her placid home, began to melt; a curtain was gradually drawn
aside to reveal a world where woman reigned over all. What she had heard
from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and
Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in
the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this
melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling
of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the
best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia
at the plate-glass window reviews an army of faultlessly-clad gentlemen
filing before her, and sweetly calls out:
"This, gentlemen, is the spot where you can be amused!"
Yes, Césarine was intended to entertain men! She longed to be the
central figure in the scene, however brief, of that apotheosis where
Cupid is proclaimed superior to all the high interests of human
conscience; this glittering stage sufficed for her, although it would
have limited Felix's ideal of man's function.
In a struggle between duty and passion, she expected passion to
overcome, and she concurred beforehand with this troubadour who
protested that the gentler sex really held the under one in its
dependence.
Radiant with pleasure and farther delighted to recognize a well-known
face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give
him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight
with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second
thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a
viscount's rank in France, and his aunt, the marchioness, presented him
as the last of the Terremondes.
She had not expected to meet in this coterie a gentleman who patronized
the singers of a beer-hall, but the frock does not make the monk, and
Baron Gratian von Linden-Hohen-Linden, Viscount de Terremonde in France,
was of another species than the frequenters of Latour château.
From his income in both countries, he had the means to maintain what
would have been ruinous establishments; he had the racing stud which no
English peer would be ashamed of, a gallery of masterpieces acquired
from living painters, an unrivaled hot-house of orchids, wolf-hounds and
fox-hounds and other dogs, and the rumor went that the famous Caroline
Birchoffstein, in consideration of his being a fellow-countryman, was
more often seen in his box at the Grand Opera House than in her own.
The imperial court, also, not averse to being on good terms with South
Germany, since Prussia was supposed to be France's greatest opponent in
case Luxembourg were clutched, petted the Franco-Teuton, and regretted
that he was so pleasure-loving.
To continue her thraldom over him, Césarine left not a word unsaid or a
glance undelivered. In this attack, she was met halfway, for, had she
been less eager, she must have seen that the viscount-baron's joy at
seeing her again was sincere.
"You hesitate to ask what happened after your fortunate escape with that
young student," he said, when they were allowed a few minutes together
by the artful management of the hostess. "I can tell you that I had to
pass through a fiery ordeal and I hope you preserved a kindly memory of
one who suffered tremendously for you. Major Von Sendlingen was not an
undetached person whose quarrel could be kept among private ones. On the
contrary, he moved the authorities like a chess-player does the pieces,
and he moved them against me. At the first, they talked of nothing less
than trying me for treason, since the projected arrest of the Polish
conspirator and yourself--kinswoman of the Dobronowska inscribed in the
black book of the Russian and Polish police--was foiled on my territory.
The major affirmed that he had seen me not only looking on at the defeat
of his posse, but holding my farmers in check not to hasten to their
assistance. He alleged that I had lent racehorses to you and your
accomplice, for your continued flight. This Polander--"
"You can say Frenchman, now," returned Madame Clemenceau; "he is one,
and my cousin. The story is long and involved and will keep to another
day. It is he I married."
"Your husband!" he exclaimed, and she nodded apologetically.
"Then," sighed he, "my dream ends here--on that day when we last met."
"A learned man has said, in a lecture here, that dreams can be repeated
and continued, by an effort of the will. My advice to you is to try it."
"Do not jest with me! You can see--you can be sure if you will but
question--that I narrowly escaped the State's prison for helping you.
Spite of all, I can love no other woman but you--"
She held up her closed fan and touched his lips with the feathery
edging.
"You must not talk so--at least--here," she said, with her glance in
contradiction to her words. "I am happy, or contented, strictly
speaking, in my home, and as soon as my husband realizes one or two of
the ideas over which he is musing, happiness must be mine. A success in
art will drag him forth; he must go to Paris to be feasted in the salons
and lionized in the conversaziones."
And her eyes blazed as she figured herself presiding at an assemblage of
artists and patrons.
"Pardon me," said the viscount-baron. "I am afraid I add to your worry.
I see that you are pining for the sphere to which your grace and charms
entice you. I will do anything you order; but yet, since I, too, am an
exile, and for your sake, pray do not ask me not to see you and speak of
love."
"It must be thus," she replied, with half-closed eyes, turning away
abruptly, as if she feared her virtuous resolution were failing. "Let
our parting be forever!"
"Forever!" he repeated, following her into the window alcove, although
thirty pairs of eyes regarded them. "You cannot mean that. At least, I
deserve--have earned--your friendship by what I have undergone for you.
Let me have a word of hope! Though divorce is not allowed in this
country, death befalls any man, for while your statisticians figure out
that the married live longest, they do not assert that they are
immortal. Clemenceau dead, his widow may remarry. You say he is an
enthusiast--one of those college-growths which run to seed without any
fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled
the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything
but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore
fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists
are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their
cooks. But I--though they have tied up my German revenue, and I have
been practically banished--enjoy a tolerable return from my property in
this Empire. I have been offered a very handsome present if I wholly
transfer allegiance to the Napoleons. Would you not like to have the
_entré_ to the Empress's coterie and shine among the acknowledged
beauties? I give you my word that your peer is not among them, and the
leader would be enchanted with you. Come, suppose a little fatal
accident to Monsieur--may he not suck poison off his paint brush or cut
an artery with his sculptor's chisel? And, after a sojourn at Bravitz,
you might return to Paris a viscountess--a countess, perhaps, and rule
in a pretty court of your own!"
For a woman who had said adieu! she had lingered still listening much
too long. They continued the conversation, turned into this ominous
channel, in the same low key.
Césarine returned home with the sentiment of loneliness which had
oppressed her almost utterly removed. She did not love Gratian, but one
need not be a prisoner to understand how admirable the jailer with the
outer door-key may appear. She saw in him a precious friend and ally--a
worshiper who would obey a hint like a fanatic. Cautiously, at the
marchioness's, and more deeply than at Munich, she made inquiries upon
his pecuniary standing and was rejoiced to learn that he had not
deceived her in that respect. It was left to him to be a favorite in the
court, which, not succeeding in weaning away the scions of the
Legitimist nobility, greeted the foreign nobles cordially and sought to
attach them to its standard in foresight of a European war. One thing
was certain: Gratian had illimitable resources, and the sharp-witted,
who had sharp tongues, did not hesitate to aver that he was one of those
spoilt children of politics who are fed from State treasuries--not such
a shallow-brain as he pretended. The new type of diplomatist was like
him, the Morny's, not the effete Metternich's, gentlemen who settled
affairs of the State in the boudoir not in the cabinet.
Brave, gallant, dashing, craftier than his manner indicated, he was
destined to play no inconsiderable part in the conflict impending; such
an one might emerge from the smoke a lieutenant of an emperor and
holding a large slice of territory which neither of the two contestants
cared yet to rule.
Compared with a sculptor who had produced nothing--an architect whose
buildings had appeared only on paper--this young noble was to be run
away with, if not to be run after.
The marchioness favored their future and less public meetings, and her
gardens were their scene. But while the relations of the treacherous
wife with her cavalier became closer, a singular change took place in
him. Instead of growing bolder, he seemed to hold aloof, and he fixed
each new appointment at a longer interval. He was gloomy and absent,
and she began to feel that her charm was weakening. She reproached him,
and tried to find excuses for him. Everybody knew what he had lost at
the races or over the baccarat-board; and she knew, according to a
rhymed saying, that "lucky at love is unlucky at gambling."
"It is not that," he answered slowly, with an anxious glance around in
the green avenues of trimmed trees. "I do not know why I should speak of
politics to a woman; but you and I are as one: you should know the
worst. I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate
my course as regards my heart. Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall
feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to _la haute
politique_."
"Sacrifice your love! That would be odious--that must not be! Do you
mean that they want you to marry? How cruel!"
He did not smile at the absurdity of her protest, it was so sincere.
"Well, Césarine, they are blind here, and deaf to the signs along their
own frontier. The French rely on a Russian alliance, when already Herr
von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg, long ago
secured its suspension. Besides, the Crimean War will always be
remembered against Napoleon--it is so easy not to ally oneself with
England, and, considering her proverbial ingratitude, so rarely
profitable. I spoke of Bismarck! This man of a million, with deep, dark
eyes, fixed and unreadable, with a cold, mocking mouth, iron will and
mighty brain, is soon to be pitted against Napoleon, the shadow whom you
have seen. I am no soothsayer, but I can tell which must go down in the
charge, and never to hold up his head again. I am one of the flies on
the common wheel who will be carried into the action and smashed,
whoever is the victor. I am unwilling to perish thus, when I can find in
love of you a paradise on earth wherever you consent to dwell with me.
Listen: I am entrusted with a prodigious sum in cash by a political
organization, the headquarters of which in France are here, at the old
marchioness's--a veteran puller of the wires that move the European
puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I
retake them at the head of a column of victorious French, I may as well
say good-bye to them. As for Terremonde, the revenue is falling every
quarter. If it were not for this secret service, I should be bankrupt,
for the Tuileries, perhaps, suspecting my good faith, pay me only in
pretty words--_a la française_. This bank which I hold tempts me sorely,
Césarine, but only if you will dip into it with me. Only once in a life
does a man have his great opportunity. Mine is the present. A fortune--a
beauty! Never will I have such an opportunity again to found a
principality in Florida or the South Seas or South America--wherever we
choose to come to a rest. Speak, Césarine, are you with me? After a
while, when the modern Attila has swept over France, perhaps we will
like to come and view the ruins and fill our gallery with the
art-treasures which the impoverished defeated ones will gladly sell."
"A large sum!" repeated the woman, frowning as her thoughts
concentrated.
"Enormous! I have been changing it into sight-drafts, and we can put on
our wings at a moment's notice."
"It belongs to a political organization, you say?"
"Have no qualms--it is a few drops out of a reptilian fund! No one can
claim what was handed over to me without witnesses, and no receipt
demanded. I make no secret: I am offering for your love the price of my
honor. Only let us flee to a distance for a while. The money could not
be claimed of me in a public court, but they might punish me with an
assassin's bullet."
"And for me, for my happiness, you would do this? I cannot doubt you any
longer, if ever I did. Enough, Gratian, I will go to the world's end
with you!"