that canvas, which he preserved as a relique. His mother had bequeathed
it to him expressly, in a will made during the last days of the terrible
illness of which she died. Obsessed by the anxiety which consumed him,
he suddenly detested that picture, and hurriedly walked away from it.
That _grande dame_, in her festival costume, who had reigned over that
life of extravagance while bearing her part in it, had no moral aid to
offer him! Nor had the grandfathers and grandmothers, whose old-time
faces covered all the walls of the salons once inhabited by them
according to the same principle of unbridled expenditure. The marquis's
guests were beginning to crowd the rooms, and the young man contemplated
those family portraits over their heads: young women and old women of
bygone centuries, lords and prelates, ambassadors and field-marshals,
commanders of the Saint-Esprit and Grand Crosses of Saint-Louis. Those
faces, by their presence alone, seemed to entreat the inheritor of their
name to labor to spare them that last great outrage--to be carried away
from the ancestral dwelling, to become simply a Rigaud or a
Largillière, a Nattier or a Tocqué, a Drouet or a Vigée-Lebrun, in
some random collection. To spare them that outrage--but how? And Landri
felt that his uncertainty increased.--Yes, what was his duty? But what
if Chaffin were sincere, if his outlook were just, if, in order to save
his father from a final crash, it were necessary, man-fashion, to
sacrifice those portraits and everything else,--the Gobelins and that
series by Boucher, the _Noble Pastorale_, and Natoire's Mark Antony, and
the Beauvais tapestries, and the gilded wainscotings of Foliot and
Cagny, and the carpets from La Savonnerie, and the bronzes, and the
hangings, and all that array of beautiful objects, whose frivolous
magnificence inevitably demanded such assemblages as that of this
evening?
Passing from inanimate things to people, Landri studied one after
another, first in the salons, afterward in the dining-hall, the familiar
faces of M. de Claviers' guests and of M. de Claviers himself. On the
day when those Férussacs and Hautchemins and Traverses and Sicards and
Saint-Larys and all the rest, and Louis de Bressieux and Florimund de
Charlus, should learn of their host's downfall, would they pity him much
more than his secretary did? Their egoisms, their fickleness, their
indifference seemed to become visible to the son's grief-stricken
imagination.
Meanwhile the dinner had begun. The servants in the Claviers-Grandchamp
livery were passing to and fro behind the guests. The light fabrics of
the décolleté gowns alternated with the black coats, eyes shone, lips
laughed, the dishes succeeded one another, wine filled the glasses, and
the marquis, at the centre of his table, contemplated the fête with
eyes sparkling with life. It was as if all the Claviers-Grandchamps were
entertaining in his person, superbly. Hardly more than a suspicion of
dissatisfaction veiled his eyes, when, turning in his son's direction,
he observed his evident preoccupation. "Poor Landri is thinking of his
Madame Olier!" he said to himself; and his magnanimous old heart felt a
vague remorse which he banished by raising his head and gazing at the
portrait of the lieutenant-general, wounded at Fontenoy.
The voices rose higher and higher. The laughter became more and more
uproarious. Complexions tingling with the country air assumed a ruddier
hue in the atmosphere of the dining-hall. Landri's suffering became more
and more acute. Was it possible that this fête was really the last? But
what was he to do? What was he to do? He could scarcely force himself to
talk of indifferent subjects with his two neighbors in turn, one of
whom, at his left, was the pretty, fair-haired and insignificant Madame
de Férussac. The other, clever Marie de Charlus, carried her jovial
humor to ever greater lengths as the dinner proceeded. She realized that
she did not exist, so far as Landri was concerned, and she yielded to
the instinct that has ruined the happiness of so many love-lorn women:
to make an impression at any cost on the man they love, and to disgust
him rather than not be noticed at all by him. Ascribing her conduct to
the atmosphere, she began to run through a long list of satirical
sobriquets, such as it was the fashion in Paris, last winter, to
distribute at random.
"And Bressieux," she said at one moment, "do you know what they call
Bressieux? Monsieur le Vicomte de la Rochebrocante. And poor Jaubourg,
on account of his swell associates among us? Jaubourg-Saint-Germain. For
my part, I call it very amusing!"
"Jaubourg-Saint-Germain?" said Sicard, the spiteful damsel's right-hand
neighbor. "I don't know him. True, it is amusing!"
The most amusing part of it was that the Sicard couple had their own
nick-name--unknown to the parties concerned, of course:--"The three
halves." This wretched pun signified that the very diminutive Madame de
Sicard, married to the very diminutive M. de Sicard, was supposed to
have a tender penchant for the very diminutive M. de Travers. The
historian of contemporary manners would apologize for noting, even
cursorily, such trifles, were it not that they have a slight documentary
value. This innocent fooling of a society so threatened measured the
degree of its heedlessness.
Ordinarily these idiocies of the prevailing mode annoyed Landri de
Claviers. That refined and intelligent youth lacked, it must be
confessed, the precious gift of smiling, which the marquis had, and
which the English call by an untranslatable phrase, "the sense of
humor." He took everything alike too much _au sérieux_. However, he did
not think at that moment of taking offence at Marie's wretched taste.
The epigram concerning Bressieux had suddenly reminded him that his
father and himself had surprised the gentleman-broker in conversation
with Chaffin. He looked at him across the table and saw that the other
was looking at him. Was Bressieux mixed up in the schemes of the Altona
gang? Was that possible, too?--Oh! what to do? what to do? And, above
all, how to learn the truth?
The second of the sobriquets mentioned by Mademoiselle de Charlus
started Landri's mind upon another scent.--Jaubourg? But he was to see
Jaubourg to-morrow. Suppose Jaubourg, who knew everybody in their
circle, as that absurd name indicated, suppose that Jaubourg, too, knew
that imminent peril menaced their house? Suppose that was what he wanted
to speak about to his friend's son, being unable to induce that friend
himself to listen? And in the event that he knew nothing, why should not
Landri tell him the truth, in order to obtain the advice for which his
longing became more and more intense? Jaubourg was really fond of M. de
Claviers-Grandchamp. The young man's mind fastened upon this idea, which
he did nothing but turn over and over all the evening.
How long it seemed to him before the last carriage, rumbling over the
pavement of the courtyard, had borne away the last guest! And no less
long the beginning of the night, when, having gone up to his room, and
being left to himself, he tried to formulate an appeal to the experience
and affection of a man with whom he had never felt at his ease! He had
too often encountered M. Jaubourg's interference, always concealed, in
matters that concerned only M. de Claviers and himself. He had never
learned anything of it except by chance. So it was to-day with this
Charlus project. And with it all, Jaubourg had never manifested to
Landri that good-humored affection which is the privilege of old family
friends who have seen us grow up. He had kept the child, and, later, the
young man, at a distance, by an attitude of constant criticism,
courteous and scornful at the same time. There had always been an
atmosphere of constraint between them. Chaffin's prevision was accurate
on this first point. Nor had he gone astray upon the second. The more
Landri dwelt on the idea of relying upon Jaubourg, the more the wonted
antipathy revived. "Besides," he concluded, "sick as he is, incapable of
taking any active step, ignorant of the Code, of what assistance can he
be to me, if there's a conspiracy to be foiled and legal precautions to
be taken?"
Then it was, as the thought of possible litigation came to his mind,
that he remembered Métivier, the notary. "Where were my wits?" he
thought. "Métivier's the man I must see. One can appeal from a
judgment. One can resist. A notary knows how to do it. He knows the ways
to borrow money. My fortune is still intact. Chaffin admitted as much.
Métivier will tell me if I can use it to save Grandchamp, and how to go
about it."
He reflected that, as he was to pass only half a day in Paris, he had
not time to make an appointment with Maître Métivier, a very busy man,
who, perhaps, would not be at his office. He did not go to bed until he
had written a long and very succinct letter, which he proposed to leave
at the notary's in case of his absence. He set forth in detail the whole
story that Chaffin had told him, giving the names of Madame Müller and
Altona, the figures given to him, the advice insinuated by his former
tutor, his determination to sacrifice his personal interests absolutely
in order that the château might be kept intact. He added that, being
obliged to return to Saint-Mihiel, he would arrange to be at Paris as
soon as his presence was necessary.
As he read the letter over he was amazed to notice how easy it seemed to
him, now, to apply to his colonel for another leave, which had seemed to
him impossible that morning, in view of the prospective inventories.
Chaffin's revelation had changed the whole course of his thought. Other
revelations, more tragical, were about to supervene, and to lead him in
still another direction. He had no more suspicion of them than he had
had of these the night before, when he deemed himself so unfortunate,
and when the whole drama of his life seemed to him to be comprised in
those two desires: not to quit his profession as a soldier, and not to
lose the woman he loved. He had not, however, forgotten her, that friend
who was so dear to him. As he fell asleep, at the close of that day so
full of events, which preceded another day of even more cruel trial, he
reverted mentally to his conversation of the morning in the little salon
on Rue Monsieur. He marvelled at the unexpected détours of life, which
keeps such surprises in store for us, and he reproached himself, like a
true lover, for having given Valentine no place in his thoughts during
the last few hours.
"But it is for her, too, that I shall go to see Métivier to-morrow," he
said to himself. "This disaster to my father, which should part me from
her, will draw me nearer to her, if I prove to him how devoted I am to
him. Let me save Grandchamp, and he will no longer oppose my marriage.
If we are ruined, Mademoiselle de Charlus's great fortune will become an
argument.--And even if he should persist in saying no, my conscience
would be at rest, having sacrificed myself to him, as I wish, as I am
determined to do."
IV
THE TRAGIC UNDERSIDE OF A GRAND EXISTENCE
(_Concluded_)
This sweet and tender image of the adorable woman upon whom Landri had
formed the pious habit of letting his thoughts rest every night, for
years past, before closing his eyes, was there again when he woke. Such
is the sorcery of a passionate love in youth. To be sure, he was much
engrossed by the step he was arranging to take with respect to Maître
Métivier; the confusion in their financial affairs disclosed by Chaffin
was most serious, and brought with it threatening consequences in the
future. Moreover, none of the obstacles against which he had bruised
himself the night before had disappeared. He was still likely to
receive, before the end of the week, an order to proceed to take one of
the two church inventories announced as about to be taken in the
neighborhood of Saint-Mihiel. He knew too well, despite the sophistical
reasoning of his desire, that his father's opposition to a mésalliance
would not readily give way. But he was to see Valentine Olier at two
o'clock, and in spite of everything, an intimate joy had possession of
him. While he was dressing and breakfasting, he constantly interrupted
himself to gaze admiringly at the depths of the blue sky, at the forest
bronzed by the autumn, at the garden _à la française_ spreading
beneath his windows, and at the statues, whose white lines stood out
against the dense dark foliage of the yews, trimmed in the shape of
balls and pyramids.
That same blue sky enveloped the château as with an aureole when he
turned to look at it once more, in the carriage that was taking him to
the Clermont station. He had had the good fortune not to fall in with
Chaffin as he was leaving,--he had dreaded such a meeting a little,--and
he had the additional good fortune to meet his father in person at a
turn in the road, mounted, as he had said, on his new horse.
"I was determined to introduce him to you," cried the old nobleman as
soon as his son was within earshot, "and also to bid you good-morning.
Did you rest well? Good!--My farmer has hoodwinked me--he was sure to.
He'll have his repairs. Chaffin will scold me.--As for this old fellow,"
and he patted the arched neck of the powerful Irish horse which was
dancing nervously, "he tried hard to unseat his new rider.--Whoa! whoa!
I am not in favor of divorce, my boy.--I have taken him down a little
all the same, by giving him a chance to gallop. As for the trot, we
shall not say anything about that for some time. But I'll show you what
he can do."
Riding at a ditch near-by, he raised the beast, which leaped readily to
the other side. There was a low stone wall a short distance away, at
which M. de Claviers drove the roan straight, with no less daring and
grace than if he had been five-and-twenty instead of five-and-sixty. The
horse leaped the obstacle. The marquis waved his hat triumphantly.
"A second Toby!" he cried exultantly to his son. "And he's shrewd too,
the beast! Oh, he is!--Adieu, my son, and don't forget Jaubourg. A
despatch at once!"
He disappeared. How often Landri was destined to see again in memory
that horseman, so proud of mien, riding away across the fields! "Adieu,
father!" he cried in response; and it was indeed an adieu that they
exchanged,--although they were to meet again,--adieu of the father to
the son, of the son to the father. And neither knew it!
"He is too anxious about his friend," said Landri to himself as he left
the train, an hour later, on the platform of the Gare du Nord. "I will
go there first. Then to Métivier's. Place de la Madeleine--that's on my
way to luncheon at the club. My father will have his telegram all the
earlier. Mon Dieu! if only I have no terrible news to send him!"
As so often happens, the unhappy youth dreaded the very thing that he
ought most earnestly to have desired. He had a slight sense of relief
when he noticed, on reaching Rue de Solferino, that the straw was still
spread in front of the house. M. de Claviers' friend was still alive.
But the bulletin, posted in the concierge's lodge, contained one line,
more ominous than that of the preceding day: "A very restless night.
Increasing weakness." Beside it was a register on which were inscribed
long columns of signatures "with currents of air," as the
free-mason-colonel was wont to say in his coarse and picturesque
"_fichards_'" slang. Our death-beds and our burials sum up, in a
synopsis, as it were, our whole social individuality.
"Jaubourg-Saint-Germain" was taking his departure as if he really
deserved that biting epigram. Who, pray, in Paris is sufficiently
interested in the real motives of our actions to seek them beyond our
gestures? The son of a stock-broker, Jaubourg had frequented a circle
very different from that of his birth, for reasons which were not
vanity. All his shrewdness had exerted itself to dissemble them.
Moreover, if he had been a great lover he had been this also,--the
social status makes itself felt even in the tender passion,--a wealthy
bourgeois training among patricians. All sorts of little indications
adjusted themselves to that rôle in his case. He had chosen for his
abode the first floor of an old parliamentary house, spared when
Boulevard Saint-Germain was laid out. The immeasurably high-studded
rooms presented a seignorial aspect, in harmony with the very beautiful
furniture and the tapestries that Charles Jaubourg had collected
therein,--as at Grandchamp. But the furniture and tapestries did not
constitute a true ensemble. The aristocratic stage-setting, which was so
alive in the château de Claviers, took on here the factitious aspect of
a museum. It was the work of a man who had employed the leisure acquired
by the toil of his parents in not resembling them. He proceeded thus
from the small to the great.
The servant who opened the door to Landri was the old maître-d'hôtel
who had carried the dying man's message the night before. Jaubourg's
relations with him were very analogous to those of M. de Claviers with
the Mauchaussées and their like. But the châtelain knew his men "plant
and root," to use again one of his favorite expressions. They were of
the soil, of the neighborhood of Grandchamp; their fathers and mothers
doffed their caps on the road to the defunct marquis, as they called
Landri's grandfather; whereas Joseph, Jaubourg's servant, had entered
his service by chance, on the recommendation of the secretary of a club.
He had become attached to his master, however, with the affection that
shrewd servants conceive for bachelors. He had made himself a home
there. His devotion was genuine, but to a master whom he could not
replace. This sentiment, composed largely of selfishness, bore no
resemblance whatever to the familiar and hereditarily feudal deference
with which the marquis's retainers enveloped him. There was something of
the confederate in Joseph, of the safe witness, who has entered into a
tacit contract of discreet silence with a rich and independent Parisian.
Jaubourg had never said a word or made a motion which authorized any
person whomsoever, especially his servant, even to suspect the nature of
the interest that Landri aroused in him; and yet it was with a
semi-reproachful air that the wily and zealous Joseph greeted the young
man. He had anticipated the ringing of the bell, a sign that he was
watching for his arrival.
"Ah! how much Monsieur would have liked to see Monsieur le Comte
yesterday! To-day--" He compressed his lips and touched his forehead.
"Will Monsieur le Comte allow me to ask him not to contradict Monsieur
in anything? Monsieur was so sick last night! The head! the head! I was
afraid he'd go mad! He's better since morning. But if Monsieur le Comte
would like to speak with Monsieur le Docteur Chaffin, while I go to
prepare Monsieur for his visit--"
The son of the ex-tutor, who had been since the conversation of the
preceding evening an object of such suspicion to Landri, occupied the
room that Jaubourg, a gentleman of leisure, used for a study. A library
of some size justified that title. It exhibited on its shelves the backs
of rare volumes, which the collector had bought for the editions and for
the bindings, and seldom opened. Pierre Chaffin had seated himself in
front of a magnificent Riesener desk. The morocco top of that regal
piece had certainly never before been used for such tasks as those in
which he was engaged. He was correcting the proofs of a medical
pamphlet, in order not to waste his time in the interval between his
sittings by the bedside of the invalid, who, for his part, had written
nothing at that desk, for many years, except notes accepting or
declining invitations to dinner!
Between the doctor and Landri de Claviers-Grandchamp the relations had
always been rather peculiar. As children they played together. Then the
difference in their ranks had separated them. Old Chaffin's surly
temperament--which he turned to account as knaves do their failings, by
exaggerating it--reappeared in Pierre, without artifice or hidden
motive. Very intelligent and energetic, taking life by its only good
side, work, the head of the clinical staff affected the rough manner of
the pure professional who is incessantly irritated by incompetence and
pretentiousness. In his eyes all the people in society--and Landri was
included in that category--were useless and incapable. Strange as such
an anomaly may seem, many physicians, albeit very shrewd observers in
respect to physiological symptoms, form such judgments of matters
relating to the life of the mind, with the simplicity of primary-school
children. Literally, they do not see it. Never had Pierre Chaffin
suspected the inward drama through which the young noble was passing,
torn asunder between his caste and his epoch. As his proud uncourtliness
kept him away from the luxury and the festivities of Grandchamp, he was
wholly ignorant of the reverse side of a society of which his father
never spoke except in phrases of the most conventional and the most
hypocritical respect. He was equally ignorant that he inspired in Landri
a deep interest blended with generous envy. Yes, ever since their youth,
the heir of the Claviers-Grandchamps had envied the student his
independence in the struggle of life, and the reality of his activity.
Unknown to his playmate, he had followed him through the successes of
his service as intern, recommending him again and again to the
illustrious Professor Louvet, his family physician. To these advances,
to that regard which goes forth to meet friendship half-way, Pierre
Chaffin never responded save by a stubborn coldness, in which there was
some embarrassment, a defence, at once brutal and alarmed, against a
sympathy of which he could not fathom the cause. There entered into it
also a little of another, less generous, sort of envy,--that of the son
of a salaried employee for the son of the employer, of the plebeian for
the aristocrat.
He displayed no more amenity than usual on this occasion, in
acknowledging Landri's greeting and his questions concerning Jaubourg's
illness.
"It's acute pneumonia in its classic form," he said, raising from his
proofs his broad face, surrounded by a reddish beard, to which a pair of
gold-bowed spectacles imparted the expression of a German scholar. "A
cold contracted by imprudence, fatigue for several days, lame back,
headache. Then the peculiar chill, so characteristic of the disease,
that cry of agony of the whole organism attacked, and, immediately
after, thirty-nine degrees of fever. That's the first day. The second, a
hundred and ten pulsations a minute, and forty respirations, instead of
fourteen or eighteen. Last night, delirium. This evening or to-morrow,
judgment will be pronounced on the pneumonia, and I fear it will be very
harsh, considering the patient's age."
"Do you think that he will still know me?" asked Landri. "Joseph used
the word madness."
"Joseph doesn't know what that word means," interposed the physician
abruptly, with a shrug of the shoulders which was not far from
signifying, "Nor you, either."--"I myself," he continued, "used almost
the same word, which one should never do. It was not delirium that
Monsieur Jaubourg had last night, it was subdelirium. The upper parts of
the brain were under the influence of toxins, and the others, the
unconscious parts, were free and wandering. It's a sort of poisoning
peculiar to pneumonia, and which sometimes indicates its coming. It is
very analogous to alcoholic poisoning. It manifests itself by a dream
which expresses itself in speech and is incoherent to us. Probably, if
we knew the past life of a person intoxicated in this way, we should
discover that his incoherence is logical and true. Most frequently, he
lives over past events. It's a phenomenon that has been carefully
observed. We have given it one of those names of which society folk make
sport, I know, I know. Since Molière's time we are used to such
sarcasms. We call it an _ecmnésique_ state, when the depths of the
memory come to the surface, as we call this delirious dream _onirique_.
Why does a certain microbe produce this effect when it attacks the
meninges? This problem would lead us on to define what the mind is, and
it is probable that you and I would not agree!--But let us drop this,
which is scarcely interesting to you. I wanted simply to explain to you
that Monsieur Jaubourg has never been mad, and that he has all his wits
this morning. You can see him. Not for very long, and don't tire him."