downcast eyes and pensive air. He seemed also to have turned pale and
to be trembling slightly. Presentiments occasionally affected his
mystical nature with great force. And to obviate the necessity of any
immediate determination, he decided to drop the subject. He again
assumed a kindly demeanour; and, referring to the discussion which
had taken place at the council, seemed even inclined to think that
Rougon was right, now that he could speak freely without any danger of
irrevocably committing himself. The country, said he, was certainly not
yet ripe for liberty. For a long time to come an energetic hand would
be necessary to guide matters with resolution and firmness. Then he
concluded by once more assuring the minister of his entire confidence.
He gave him full liberty of action, and confirmed all his previous
instructions. Rougon, however, thought it necessary to add another word
on the subject.
'Sire,' he said, 'I could never allow myself to be at the mercy of
malevolent gossip. I stand in need of stability if I am to accomplish
the great task for which I am now responsible.'
'Monsieur Rougon,' replied the Emperor, 'go on fearlessly; I am with
you.'
Then, bringing the conversation to a close, he stepped towards the
door, followed by the minister. They both went out and crossed several
apartments on their way to the dining-room. Just as they were reaching
it, the Emperor turned round and again took Rougon aside. 'You don't
approve, then,' he asked, in an undertone, 'of that scheme for a new
nobility? I should have been very glad to see you support it. Study the
matter.' Then, without waiting for a reply, he added with that quiet
stubbornness which formed part of his character:[20] 'There's no hurry,
however. I will wait; for ten years, if it be necessary.'
After _déjeuner_, which lasted scarcely half an hour, the ministers
went into a small adjoining drawing-room where coffee was served. They
remained there chatting for a little time, standing round the Emperor.
However, Clorinde, whom the Empress had kept with her all this time,
came to look for her husband, with the easy manner of a woman who mixed
freely with politicians. She shook hands with several of the ministers.
They all clustered round her, and the subject of conversation was
changed. However, his Majesty began to pay the young woman such
marked attention, and kept so close to her, that their excellencies
thought it discreet to take themselves off by degrees. Opening one of
the glass doors which led on to the terrace of the château, four of
them went outside, and these were speedily followed by three others.
Only two remained in the room to keep up an appearance of propriety.
The Minister of State, with a pleasant, cheery expression upon his
aristocratic face, had taken Delestang in tow, and was pointing out
Paris from the terrace. Rougon, likewise standing in the sunshine, also
became absorbed in the spectacle of the great city looming like a mass
of bluish cloud on the horizon beyond the great green carpet of the
Bois de Boulogne.
That morning, Clorinde was looking very beautiful. Clumsily dressed,
as usual, with her gown of pale cherry-coloured silk dragging over the
floor, she appeared to have slipped into her things in all haste, as if
goaded on by some strong desire. She laughed with the Emperor, and her
whole demeanour was very free and unreserved. She had made a conquest
of his Majesty at a ball given by the Naval Minister which she had
attended in the character of the Queen of Hearts, wearing diamond
hearts about her neck and her wrists and her knees; and ever since that
evening she had remained on very friendly terms with Napoleon, jesting
playfully whenever he condescended to compliment her upon her beauty.
'Look, Monsieur Delestang,' the Minister of State was saying to his
colleague on the terrace, 'see yonder on the left, what a wonderfully
soft blue hue there is about the dome of the Panthéon.'
Then, while Delestang gazed admiringly at the prospect, the Minister
of State cast furtive glances into the little drawing-room through the
open window. The Emperor was bending forward, and was speaking with his
lips close to the young woman's face, while she threw herself back with
tightly strained breast as though to escape him. Nothing could be seen
of his Majesty from outside save an indistinct profile, the tip of an
ear, a long red nose, and a heavy mouth half-buried beneath a quivering
moustache. His cheek and eyes were glowing, whilst Clorinde, who looked
irritatingly fascinating, gently swayed her head like a coy young
shepherdess.
In spite of all the unpleasantness at the council, Rougon returned to
Paris with Delestang and Clorinde. On the journey home the young woman
appeared anxious to make her peace with him. She no longer manifested
that nervous restlessness which in the morning had impelled her to
choose disagreeable subjects of conversation, but even occasionally
looked at Rougon with an air of smiling compassion. When the landau,
passing through the Bois de Boulogne, now steeped in sunshine, rolled
gently alongside the lakes, she murmured with a sigh of enjoyment:
'What a lovely day it is!' Then, after a moment's reverie, she said to
her husband: 'Tell me, is your sister, Madame de Combelot, still in
love with the Emperor?'
'Henriette is mad!' replied Delestang, shrugging his shoulders.
But Rougon intervened: 'Yes, indeed, she's still in love,' said he:
'people assert that she actually threw herself at his Majesty's feet
one day. He raised her and advised her to be patient.'
'Ah, yes, indeed,' cried Clorinde gaily, '_She'll_ have a long time to
wait!'
XII
DEFECTION
Clorinde was now revelling in a florescence of fantasy and power. In
character she was still the big eccentric girl who had scoured Paris
on a livery-stable hack in search of a husband; but the big girl had
developed into a woman, who calmly performed the most extraordinary
actions, having at length realised her long-cherished dream of becoming
a power. Her everlasting prowlings in out-of-the-way neighbourhoods,
her correspondence which inundated the four corners of France and
Italy with letters, her continued contact with politicians, into
whose intimacy she managed to insinuate herself, and all her erratic
schemings, full of gaps and illogical as they were, had ended in the
acquirement of real and indisputable influence. She still indulged in
strange eccentricities, and propounded wild schemes and extravagant
hopes, even when she was talking seriously. And when she went out,
she still took her tattered portfolio with her, carrying it in her
arms like a baby, and with such an air of earnestness that people
in the streets smiled as she passed them in her dirty, draggling
skirts. However, she was consulted now, and even feared. No one could
have exactly told the origin of her power, which seemed to come from
numerous distant and invisible sources, now difficult to trace. Folks
knew nothing but a few scraps of gossip, anecdotes that were whispered
from ear to ear. There was something to mystify one in the young
woman's strangely compound character, in which wild imagination was
linked to common sense which commanded attention and obedience, while
apart from all mental attributes there was her magnificent person, in
which, perhaps, lay the true secret of her power. It mattered little,
however, upon what foundations Clorinde's throne was reared. It was
sufficient that she did reign, though it were in a whimsical, erratic
fashion, and that people bowed down before her.
This was a real period of power for the young woman. In her
dressing-room, amidst a litter of dirty basins, she contrived to
centralise the policy of all the courts of Europe. She received
information, even detailed reports, in which the slightest pulsations
of governmental life were carefully noted, before the embassies did,
and without anyone knowing whence her news was derived. As a natural
consequence she was surrounded by a court of bankers, and diplomatists,
and friends, who came to her in the hope of obtaining information. The
bankers showed her particular attention. She had enabled one of them
to gain a hundred million francs in a single haul by merely telling
him of an approaching change of ministry in a neighbouring state.
Truth to tell, however, she disdained to employ her knowledge for
purposes of gain, and she readily told all that she knew--the gossip
of diplomatists, and the talk of the different capitals--for the mere
pleasure of hearing herself speak, and of showing that she had her eyes
upon Turin, Vienna, Madrid, and London, as well as on Berlin and St.
Petersburg. She could supply endless information concerning the health
of the different sovereigns, their amours and habits, the politicians
of the various states, and all the scandals of even the smallest German
duchies. She judged statesmen in a single phrase; jumped from north
to south without the slightest transition; spoke as carelessly of the
different countries of Europe as if they had been her own, as if,
indeed, the whole wide world, with its cities and nations, had formed
part of a box of playthings, whose little cardboard houses and wooden
men she could set up, and move about as she pleased. And, when at last
her tongue ceased wagging, and she was tired of chattering, she would
snap her fingers, as though to say that this was quite as much as all
these things were worth.
For the time being, amidst her many tangled schemes, there was one very
serious matter which excited her warmest enthusiasm, and on which she
tried her best to keep silent, though, occasionally, she could not deny
herself the pleasure of alluding to it. She wanted Venice. Whenever she
spoke of the great Italian minister, she referred to him familiarly as
'Cavour.' 'Cavour,' said she, 'did not want it, but I want it, and he
has understood.' Morning and night she shut herself up at the embassy
with Chevalier Rusconi. And tranquilly lounging, throwing back her
narrow, but goddess-like brow, as if in a sort of somnambulism, she
would utter scraps of disconnected sentences, shreds of revelations;
a hint of a secret interview between the Emperor and some foreign
statesman; a projected treaty of alliance, some clauses of which were
still under discussion; a war which would take place in the coming
spring. On other days she became excited and angry, kicked the chairs
about her room and knocked the basins over at the risk of breaking
them. On these occasions she looked like some angry queen who has been
betrayed by imbecile ministers, and sees her kingdom going from bad to
worse; and, with a tragic air, she would stretch her bare majestic arm
in the direction of Italy and clench her fist, exclaiming: 'Ah! if I
were over yonder there would be none of this folly!'
However, the worries of high politics did not prevent Clorinde from
engaging in all sorts of other businesses, in which she seemed to get
quite lost. She was often to be found sitting on her bed with the
contents of her large portfolio spread over the counterpane, while
she plunged her arms into the papers, distracted and crying with
irritation. She would be unable to find anything amidst such a chaos of
documents; or else, after long hunting for some lost batch of papers,
she would at length discover it behind some piece of furniture or
amongst her old boots or dirty linen. When she went out to conclude
any particular piece of business, she generally contrived to involve
herself in two or three fresh affairs on her way. She was for ever
rushing about to all sorts of places, lived in a perfect whirl of
ideas, a state of perpetual excitement; while beneath her lay the mazy
depths of mysterious, unfathomable intrigues. When she came home again
in the evening, after a day's scouring of Paris, tired out by climbing
so many flights of stairs, and carrying in the folds of her skirts an
odour of all the strange haunts which she had visited, no one would
have guessed one half of the errands that she had been engaged upon.
And if anyone happened to question her, she only laughed; she herself
did not always remember what she had been doing.
It was about this time that she had the extraordinary whim of engaging
a private room at one of the great restaurants on the boulevard. The
house in the Rue du Colisée was so far away from everything, she said;
she wanted a place in some central position; so she turned the private
room at the restaurant into an office. For two months she received
there all who wanted to see her, simply attended by the waiters, who
had to usher in persons of the highest position. Great functionaries,
ambassadors, and ministers presented themselves at the restaurant.
Clorinde, entirely at her ease there, made them sit down on the couch,
damaged by the supper parties of the Carnival, while she herself
remained in front of the table, the cloth of which was always laid,
strewn with bread-crumbs and littered with papers. She camped there
like a general officer. One day, however, when she did not feel very
well, she calmly went upstairs to the top of the house and lay down on
the bed of the _maître d'hôtel_ who usually waited upon her, and she
could not be induced to go home till it was nearly midnight.
Delestang, in spite of everything, was a happy man. He appeared to be
quite ignorant of his wife's eccentricities. She was now completely
master of him, and treated him as she liked, while he never made the
least complaint. His natural temperament predisposed him to this kind
of servitude. He found far too much happiness in the secret surrender
of his authority to attempt any revolt. In the privacy of their
domestic life, it was he who rendered Clorinde all kinds of little
services. He hunted about for her lost boots, or went through all the
linen in the wardrobe to find a chemise that was not in holes. He was
quite satisfied with preserving a serene appearance of superiority when
he was at other people's houses. The unruffled air of loving protection
with which he then spoke of his wife almost won him public respect.
Clorinde, having now become all-powerful at home, had decided to bring
her mother back from Turin. She intended, she said, that Countess Balbi
should henceforth spend six months of each year with her. She seemed
to be suddenly overwhelmed by an outburst of filial affection. She
threw a whole floor of the house into confusion so as so instal the
old lady as near as possible to her own apartments. She even provided
a door of communication between her dressing-room and her mother's
bedchamber. In Rougon's presence especially she made an excessive
parade of her affection, indulging in the most exaggerated Italian
expressions of endearment. How had she ever been able, she wondered,
to resign herself to such a long separation from her mother, she who,
before her marriage, had never left her for an hour? She accused
herself of want of heart. But it was not her fault, she protested; she
had been forced to yield to other people's advice, to give way before
pretended necessities, in which even now she could see no force. Rougon
remained quite unmoved by this rebellion. He had altogether ceased
to lecture her, and no longer attempted to make her one of the most
distinguished women in Paris. In former times she had filled up a gap
in his life, but now that he was in the forefront of the battle with
fourteen hours' work to get through every day, he gave little thought
to love and passion. Nevertheless, he continued to treat her with an
air of affection, mingled with that kind of contempt which he usually
manifested for women. He came to see her from time to time, and then
his eyes would occasionally gleam as in the days of old. She was still
his one weakness; the one woman who perturbed him.
Since Rougon had gone to live at the official residence of the Minister
of the Interior where his friends complained that they could no longer
see him in intimate fashion, Clorinde had thought of receiving the band
at her own house, and it had gradually become a custom for the others
to go there. To mark more plainly the fact that these receptions took
the place of those in the Rue Marbeuf, she fixed the same evenings
as Rougon had chosen, namely Sundays and Thursdays. There was this
difference, however, that in the Rue du Colisée the guests remained
till one o'clock in the morning. Clorinde received them in her boudoir,
as Delestang still kept the keys of the big drawing-room for fear of
it being damaged by grease-spots. And as the boudoir was a very small
apartment, Clorinde left the doors of her dressing-room and bedroom
open; so that, very frequently, the friends were to be found crowding
together in the sleeping-chamber amid a litter of feminine finery.
On Thursdays and Sundays, Clorinde usually made a point of hastening
home early so as to get through her dinner in time to receive her
guests. But, in spite of all her efforts to remember these evening
receptions, she twice forgot all about them, and was taken quite aback
on finding a crowd of people in her bedroom when she returned home
after midnight. One Thursday, towards the end of May, she got home
at the unusually early hour of five. She had been out on foot and
had preferred to walk all the way from the Place de la Concorde in
a heavy fall of rain rather than pay thirty sous for a cab. She was
quite soaked when she reached the house, and she went straight to her
dressing-room where her maid, Antonia, whose mouth was smeared with
jam, undressed her, laughing merrily the while at the stream of water
which poured from her mistress's clothes on to the floor.
'There is a gentleman come to see you,' said the servant, presently,
as she sat down on the floor to take off Clorinde's boots. 'He has been
waiting for an hour.'
Clorinde asked her what he was like. The maid, with her greasy dress
and unkempt hair, and her white teeth gleaming in her dusky face,
remained sitting on the floor. The gentleman, she said, was fat and
pale, and stern-looking.
'Oh, it must be Monsieur de Reuthlinguer the banker,' cried Clorinde.
'I remember now, he was to come at four o'clock. Well, let him wait.
You have the bath ready for me, haven't you?'
Then she quietly got into the bath which was concealed behind a curtain
in a corner of the room, and while in it, she read the letters which
had arrived during her absence. Half an hour went by when Antonia,
after leaving the room for a few minutes, came back again and said to
her mistress: 'The gentleman saw you come in and would very much like
to speak to you, madame.'
'Oh, dear, I'd forgotten all about him!' cried Clorinde. 'Come and
dress me, quickly.'
However, the young woman showed much capriciousness over her toilette
that evening. In spite of the neglect with which she usually treated
her person, she was occasionally seized with a sudden idolatry for
it. At these times she would indulge in the most elaborate toilette;
even having her limbs rubbed with ointments and balms and aromatic
oils, of a nature known only to herself, which had been bought at
Constantinople, so she said, from the perfumer to the Seraglio, by an
Italian diplomatist, a friend of hers. While Antonia was rubbing her,
she threw herself into statuesque attitudes. This anointing made her
skin white and soft, and beautiful as marble. One of the oils, of which
she herself carefully counted the drops as she let them fall on to a
small piece of flannel, had the miraculous quality of at once effacing
every wrinkle. And when this business was over, she would commence a
minute examination of her hands and feet. She could have spent a whole
day in adoring herself.
At the end of three quarters of an hour, however, when Antonia had
slipped some wraps over her, she suddenly seemed to recollect her
visitor. 'Oh, dear, the Baron!' she cried. 'Well, never mind, show him
in here!'
M. de Reuthlinguer had been patiently sitting in Clorinde's boudoir,
with his hands clasped over his knees for more than two hours. He was a
pale frigid man of austere morals, the possessor of one of the largest
fortunes in Europe, and for some time past he had been in the habit of
thus dancing attendance upon Clorinde twice or thrice a week. He even
invited her to his own house, that abode of rigid decorum and glacial
strictness, where the young woman's startling eccentricities quite
shocked the footmen.
'Good day, baron!' Clorinde exclaimed as he came in. 'I'm having my
hair dressed, so don't look.'
An indulgent smile played round the baron's pale lips. After bowing
with the most respectful courtesy, he remained standing quite close to
her, without a quiver of his eyelids.
'You've come for news, haven't you?' she asked. 'Well, I've just heard
something.'
Then she got up and dismissed Antonia, who went away leaving the comb
stuck in her mistress's hair. Clorinde was doubtless afraid of being
overheard, for laying her hand on the banker's shoulder and, standing
on tip-toe, she whispered something in his ear. As he listened to her,
he nodded his head briskly.
'There!' concluded the young woman, raising her voice. 'You can go now.'
But the banker took hold of her bare arm and brought her back towards
him to ask for certain explanations. He could not have been more at his
ease if he had been talking to one of his clerks, instead of to this
beautiful woman in deshabille. When he left her, he invited her to dine
at his house on the following day. His wife was very anxious to see
her again, he said. She accompanied him to the door, but all at once
crossed her arms over her bosom and turned very red as she exclaimed:
'Good gracious! I was actually about to go out with you like this!'
She now began to scold Antonia for being so slow. She would never get
finished! she cried; and then she scarcely gave the girl time to dress
her hair, saying that she hated being so long over her toilette. In
spite of the time of the year, she insisted upon wearing a long robe of
black velvet, a sort of loose blouse, drawn in at the waist with a red
silk girdle. Twice already, a servant had come to tell her that dinner
was served. However, as she passed through her bedroom, she found three
gentlemen there, of whose presence no one had had the slightest idea.
They were the three political refugees, Signori Brambilla, Staderino,
and Viscardi. Clorinde, however, showed no surprise at meeting them.
'Have you been waiting for me long?' she asked.
'Yes, yes,' they replied, gently nodding their heads.
They had arrived before the banker, but had remained extremely quiet,
for political misfortunes had made them taciturn and reflective. They
were seated side by side on the same couch, all three lolling in much
the same position, with big extinguished cigars between their lips. But
they now rose and clustered round Clorinde, and a rapid muttering in
Italian ensued. The young woman seemed to be giving them instructions.
One of the refugees took notes in cipher in a pocket-book, while the
others, appearing much excited by what they heard, stifled slight cries
with their gloved hands. Then they all three went off in single file,
with quite impenetrable faces.
That Thursday evening it had been arranged that several of the
ministers should confer together on a very important financial matter.
When Delestang went off after dinner, he told Clorinde that he would
bring Rougon back with him, at which his wife made a little grimace
which seemed to imply that she was not very anxious to see her whilom
master. There was as yet no positive break in their friendship, but the
young woman showed an increasing coldness towards Rougon.
Towards nine o'clock, M. Kahn and M. Béjuin arrived together. They were
the first of the band to put in an appearance, but were soon followed
by Madame Correur. Clorinde was found in her bedroom, stretched upon
a couch there. She complained of one of those extraordinary and
unheard-of troubles which suddenly came upon her every now and then.
She must have swallowed a fly, she said, while drinking, for she
could feel it flying about inside her stomach. Draped in her long
black velvet robe, her shoulders supported by three pillows, she none
the less looked superbly beautiful with her pale face and bare arms,
recalling indeed one of those reclining, dreaming figures, which
sculptors portray on monuments. At her feet was Luigi Pozzo, gently
twanging the strings of a guitar. He had deserted painting for music.
'Sit down, won't you?' she said to the others. 'Please excuse me. A
wretched little insect has got inside me somehow.'