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.