were gnawing her mind; but she took them gallantly. Of all the various
feminine organizations classified by physiologists, there is one that
has something indescribably terrible about it. Such women combine
strength of soul and clear insight, with a faculty for prompt decision,
and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis which would shake a
man’s nerves. And these powers lie out of sight beneath an appearance of
the most graceful helplessness. Such women only among womankind afford
examples of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in men alone, to wit,
the union, or rather the disunion, of two different natures in one human
being. Other women are wholly women; wholly tender, wholly devoted,
wholly mothers, completely null and completely tiresome; nerves and
brain and blood are all in harmony; but the Duchess, and others like
her, are capable of rising to the highest heights of feelings, or of
showing the most selfish insensibility. It is one of the glories of
Moliere that he has given us a wonderful portrait of such a woman,
from one point of view only, in that greatest of his full-length
figures--Celimene; Celimene is the typical aristocratic woman, as
Figaro, the second edition of Panurge, represents the people.
So, the Duchess, being overwhelmed with debt, laid it upon herself to
give no more than a moment’s thought to the avalanche of cares, and to
take her resolution once and for all; Napoleon could take up or lay
down the burden of his thoughts in precisely the same way. The Duchess
possessed the faculty of standing aloof from herself; she could look on
as a spectator at the crash when it came, instead of submitting to be
buried beneath. This was certainly great, but repulsive in a woman. When
she awoke in the morning she collected her thoughts; and by the time she
had begun to dress she had looked at the danger in its fullest extent
and faced the possibilities of terrific downfall. She pondered. Should
she take refuge in a foreign country? Or should she go to the King and
declare her debts to him? Or again, should she fascinate a du Tillet or
a Nucingen, and gamble on the stock exchange to pay her creditors? The
city man would find the money; he would be intelligent enough to bring
her nothing but the profits, without so much as mentioning the losses, a
piece of delicacy which would gloss all over. The catastrophe, and these
various ways of averting it, had all been reviewed quite coolly, calmly,
and without trepidation.
As a naturalist takes up some king of butterflies and fastens him down
on cotton-wool with a pin, so Mme. de Maufrigneuse had plucked love out
of her heart while she pondered the necessity of the moment, and was
quite ready to replace the beautiful passion on its immaculate setting
so soon as her duchess’ coronet was safe. _She_ knew none of the
hesitation which Cardinal Richelieu hid from all the world but Pere
Joseph; none of the doubts that Napoleon kept at first entirely to
himself. “Either the one or the other,” she told herself.
She was sitting by the fire, giving orders for her toilette for a drive
in the Bois if the weather should be fine, when Victurnien came in.
The Comte d’Esgrignon, with all his stifled capacity, his so keen
intellect, was in exactly the state which might have been looked for in
the woman. His heart was beating violently, the perspiration broke out
over him as he stood in his dandy’s trappings; he was afraid as yet to
lay a hand on the corner-stone which upheld the pyramid of his life with
Diane. So much it cost him to know the truth. The cleverest men are fain
to deceive themselves on one or two points if the truth once known is
likely to humiliate them in their own eyes, and damage themselves with
themselves. Victurnien forced his own irresolution into the field by
committing himself.
“What is the matter with you?” Diane de Maufrigneuse had said at once,
at the sight of her beloved Victurnien’s face.
“Why, dear Diane, I am in such a perplexity; a man gone to the bottom
and at his last gasp is happy in comparison.”
“Pshaw! it is nothing,” said she; “you are a child. Let us see now; tell
me about it.”
“I am hopelessly in debt. I have come to the end of my tether.”
“Is that all?” said she, smiling at him. “Money matters can always be
arranged somehow or other; nothing is irretrievable except disasters in
love.”
Victurnien’s mind being set at rest by this swift comprehension of his
position, he unrolled the bright-colored web of his life for the last
two years and a half; but it was the seamy side of it which he displayed
with something of genius, and still more of wit, to his Diane. He told
his tale with the inspiration of the moment, which fails no one in great
crises; he had sufficient artistic skill to set it off by a varnish of
delicate scorn for men and things. It was an aristocrat who spoke. And
the Duchess listened as she could listen.
One knee was raised, for she sat with her foot on a stool. She rested
her elbow on her knee and leant her face on her hand so that her fingers
closed daintily over her shapely chin. Her eyes never left his; but
thoughts by myriads flitted under the blue surface, like gleams of
stormy light between two clouds. Her forehead was calm, her mouth
gravely intent--grave with love; her lips were knotted fast by
Victurnien’s lips. To have her listening thus was to believe that
a divine love flowed from her heart. Wherefore, when the Count had
proposed flight to this soul, so closely knit to his own, he could not
help crying, “You are an angel!”
The fair Maufrigneuse made silent answer; but she had not spoken as yet.
“Good, very good,” she said at last. (She had not given herself up to
the love expressed in her face; her mind had been entirely absorbed by
deep-laid schemes which she kept to herself.) “But _that_ is not the
question, dear.” (The “angel” was only “that” by this time.) “Let us
think of your affairs. Yes, we will go, and the sooner the better.
Arrange it all; I will follow you. It is glorious to leave Paris and the
world behind. I will set about my preparations in such a way that no one
can suspect anything.”
_I will follow you_! Just so Mlle. Mars might have spoken those words
to send a thrill through two thousand listening men and women. When a
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse offers, in such words, to make such a sacrifice
to love, she has paid her debt. How should Victurnien speak of sordid
details after that? He could so much the better hide his schemes,
because Diane was particularly careful not to inquire into them. She
was now, and always, as de Marsay said, an invited guest at a banquet
wreathed with roses, a banquet which mankind, as in duty bound, made
ready for her.
Victurnien would not go till the promise had been sealed. He must draw
courage from his happiness before he could bring himself to do a deed on
which, as he inwardly told himself, people would be certain to put a
bad construction. Still (and this was the thought that decided him) he
counted on his aunt and father to hush up the affair; he even counted
on Chesnel. Chesnel would think of one more compromise. Besides, “this
business,” as he called it in his thoughts, was the only way of raising
money on the family estate. With three hundred thousand francs, he and
Diane would lead a happy life hidden in some palace in Venice; and there
they would forget the world. They went through their romance in advance.
Next day Victurnien made out a bill for three hundred thousand francs,
and took it to the Kellers. The Kellers advanced the money, for du
Croisier happened to have a balance at the time; but they wrote to let
him know that he must not draw again on them without giving them notice.
Du Croisier, much astonished, asked for a statement of accounts. It was
sent. Everything was explained. The day of his vengeance had arrived.
When Victurnien had drawn “his” money, he took it to Mme. de
Maufrigneuse. She locked up the banknotes in her desk, and proposed
to bid the world farewell by going to the Opera to see it for the last
time. Victurnien was thoughtful, absent, and uneasy. He was beginning
to reflect. He thought that his seat in the Duchess’ box might cost him
dear; that perhaps, when he had put the three hundred thousand francs
in safety, it would be better to travel post, to fall at Chesnel’s feet,
and tell him all. But before they left the opera-house, the Duchess,
in spite of herself, gave Victurnien an adorable glance, her eyes were
shining with the desire to go back once more to bid farewell to the nest
which she loved so much. And boy that he was, he lost a night.
The next day, at three o’clock, he was back again at the Hotel de
Maufrigneuse; he had come to take the Duchess’ orders for that night’s
escape. And, “Why should we go?” asked she; “I have thought it all out.
The Vicomtesse de Beauseant and the Duchesse de Langeais disappeared.
If I go too, it will be something quite commonplace. We will brave
the storm. It will be a far finer thing to do. I am sure of success.”
Victurnien’s eyes dazzled; he felt as if his skin were dissolving and
the blood oozing out all over him.
“What is the matter with you?” cried the fair Diane, noticing a
hesitation which a woman never forgives. Your truly adroit lover will
hasten to agree with any fancy that Woman may take into her head, and
suggest reasons for doing otherwise, while leaving her free exercise of
her right to change her mind, her intentions, and sentiments generally
as often as she pleases. Victurnien was angry for the first time, angry
with the wrath of a weak man of poetic temperament; it was a storm of
rain and lightning flashes, but no thunder followed. The angel on whose
faith he had risked more than his life, the honor of his house, was very
roughly handled.
“So,” said she, “we have come to this after eighteen months of
tenderness! You are unkind, very unkind. Go away!--I do not want to see
you again. I thought that you loved me. You do not.”
“_I do not love you_?” repeated he, thunderstruck by the reproach.
“No, monsieur.”
“And yet----” he cried. “Ah! if you but knew what I have just done for
your sake!”
“And how have you done so much for me, monsieur? As if a man ought not
to do anything for a woman that has done so much for him.”
“You are not worthy to know it!” Victurnien cried in a passion of anger.
“Oh!”
After that sublime, “Oh!” Diane bowed her head on her hand and sat,
still, cold, and implacable as angels naturally may be expected to do,
seeing that they share none of the passions of humanity. At the sight
of the woman he loved in this terrible attitude, Victurnien forgot his
danger. Had he not just that moment wronged the most angelic creature on
earth? He longed for forgiveness, he threw himself before her, he kissed
her feet, he pleaded, he wept. Two whole hours the unhappy young man
spent in all kinds of follies, only to meet the same cold face, while
the great silent tears dropping one by one, were dried as soon as they
fell lest the unworthy lover should try to wipe them away. The Duchess
was acting a great agony, one of those hours which stamp the woman who
passes through them as something august and sacred.
Two more hours went by. By this time the Count had gained possession of
Diane’s hand; it felt cold and spiritless. The beautiful hand, with
all the treasures in its grasp, might have been supple wood; there was
nothing of Diane in it; he had taken it, it had not been given to him.
As for Victurnien, the spirit had ebbed out of his frame, he had ceased
to think. He would not have seen the sun in heaven. What was to be done?
What course should he take? What resolution should he make? The man who
can keep his head in such circumstances must be made of the same stuff
as the convict who spent the night in robbing the Bibliotheque Royale of
its gold medals, and repaired to his honest brother in the morning with
a request to melt down the plunder. “What is to be done?” cried the
brother. “Make me some coffee,” replied the thief. Victurnien sank into
a bewildered stupor, darkness settled down over his brain. Visions
of past rapture flitted across the misty gloom like the figures that
Raphael painted against a black background; to these he must bid
farewell. Inexorable and disdainful, the Duchess played with the tip of
her scarf. She looked in irritation at Victurnien from time to time;
she coquetted with memories, she spoke to her lover of his rivals as if
anger had finally decided her to prefer one of them to a man who could
so change in one moment after twenty-eight months of love.
“Ah! that charming young Felix de Vandenesse, so faithful as he was to
Mme. de Mortsauf, would never have permitted himself such a scene! He
can love, can de Vandenesse! De Marsay, that terrible de Marsay, such
a tiger as everyone thought him, was rough with other men; but like all
strong men, he kept his gentleness for women. Montriveau trampled the
Duchesse de Langeais under foot, as Othello killed Desdemona, in a burst
of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love. It was
not like a paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so crushed.
Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment women; they
could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased them to have some
ground for believing that they were men. The tyranny of love was their
one chance of asserting their power. She did not know why she had put
herself at the mercy of fair hair. Such men as de Marsay, Montriveau,
and Vandenesse, dark-haired and well grown, had a ray of sunlight in
their eyes.”
It was a storm of epigrams. Her speeches, like bullets, came hissing
past his ears. Every word that Diane hurled at him was triple-barbed;
she humiliated, stung, and wounded him with an art that was all her own,
as half a score of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.
“You are mad!” he cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out
he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he had never handled
the reins before, locked his wheels in the wheels of other vehicles,
collided with the curbstone in the Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not
whither. The horse, left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable
along the Quai d’Orsay; but as he turned into the Rue de l’Universite,
Josephin appeared to stop the runaway.
“You cannot go home, sir,” the old man said, with a scared face; “they
have come with a warrant to arrest you.”
Victurnien thought that he had been arrested on the criminal charge,
albeit there had not been time for the public prosecutor to receive
his instructions. He had forgotten the matter of the bills of exchange,
which had been stirred up again for some days past in the form of orders
to pay, brought by the officers of the court with accompaniments in
the shape of bailiffs, men in possession, magistrates, commissaries,
policemen, and other representatives of social order. Like most guilty
creatures, Victurnien had forgotten everything but his crime.
“It is all over with me,” he cried.
“No, M. le Comte, drive as fast as you can to the Hotel du Bon la
Fontaine, in the Rue de Grenelle. Mlle. Armande is waiting there for
you, the horses have been put in, she will take you with her.”
Victurnien, in his trouble, caught like a drowning man at the branch
that came to his hand; he rushed off to the inn, reached the place, and
flung his arms about his aunt. Mlle. Armande cried as if her heart would
break; any one might have thought that she had a share in her nephew’s
guilt. They stepped into the carriage. A few minutes later they were on
the road to Brest, and Paris lay behind them. Victurnien uttered not a
sound; he was paralyzed. And when aunt and nephew began to speak, they
talked at cross purposes; Victurnien, still laboring under the unlucky
misapprehension which flung him into Mlle. Armande’s arms, was thinking
of his forgery; his aunt had the debts and the bills on her mind.
“You know all, aunt,” he had said.
“Poor boy, yes, but we are here. I am not going to scold you just yet.
Take heart.”
“I must hide somewhere.”
“Perhaps.... Yes, it is a very good idea.”
“Perhaps I might get into Chesnel’s house without being seen if we timed
ourselves to arrive in the middle of the night?”
“That will be best. We shall be better able to hide this from my
brother.--Poor angel! how unhappy he is!” said she, petting the unworthy
child.
“Ah! now I begin to know what dishonor means; it has chilled my love.”
“Unhappy boy; what bliss and what misery!” And Mlle. Armande drew his
fevered face to her breast and kissed his forehead, cold and damp though
it was, as the holy women might have kissed the brow of the dead Christ
when they laid Him in His grave clothes. Following out the excellent
scheme suggested by the prodigal son, he was brought by night to the
quiet house in the Rue du Bercail; but chance ordered it that by so
doing he ran straight into the wolf’s jaws, as the saying goes. That
evening Chesnel had been making arrangements to sell his connection to
M. Lepressoir’s head-clerk. M. Lepressoir was the notary employed by
the Liberals, just as Chesnel’s practice lay among the aristocratic
families. The young fellow’s relatives were rich enough to pay Chesnel
the considerable sum of a hundred thousand francs in cash.
Chesnel was rubbing his hands. “A hundred thousand francs will go a long
way in buying up debts,” he thought. “The young man is paying a high
rate of interest on his loans. We will lock him up down here. I will go
yonder myself and bring those curs to terms.”
Chesnel, honest Chesnel, upright, worthy Chesnel, called his darling
Comte Victurnien’s creditors “curs.”
Meanwhile his successor was making his way along the Rue du Bercail
just as Mlle. Armande’s traveling carriage turned into it. Any young man
might be expected to feel some curiosity if he saw a traveling carriage
stop at a notary’s door in such a town and at such an hour of the night;
the young man in question was sufficiently inquisitive to stand in a
doorway and watch. He saw Mlle. Armande alight.
“Mlle. Armande d’Esgrignon at this time of night!” said he to himself.
“What can be going forward at the d’Esgrignons’?”
At the sight of mademoiselle, Chesnel opened the door circumspectly and
set down the light which he was carrying; but when he looked out and saw
Victurnien, Mlle. Armande’s first whispered word made the whole
thing plain to him. He looked up and down the street; it seemed quite
deserted; he beckoned, and the young Count sprang out of the carriage
and entered the courtyard. All was lost. Chesnel’s successor had
discovered Victurnien’s hiding place.
Victurnien was hurried into the house and installed in a room beyond
Chesnel’s private office. No one could enter it except across the old
man’s dead body.
“Ah! M. le Comte!” exclaimed Chesnel, notary no longer.
“Yes, monsieur,” the Count answered, understanding his old friend’s
exclamation. “I did not listen to you; and now I have fallen into the
depths, and I must perish.”
“No, no,” the good man answered, looking triumphantly from Mlle. Armande
to the Count. “I have sold my connection. I have been working for a very
long time now, and am thinking of retiring. By noon to-morrow I shall
have a hundred thousand francs; many things can be settled with that.
Mademoiselle, you are tired,” he added; “go back to the carriage and go
home and sleep. Business to-morrow.”
“Is he safe?” returned she, looking at Victurnien.
“Yes.”
She kissed her nephew; a few tears fell on his forehead. Then she went.
“My good Chesnel,” said the Count, when they began to talk of business,
“what are your hundred thousand francs in such a position as mine? You
do not know the full extent of my troubles, I think.”
Victurnien explained the situation. Chesnel was thunderstruck. But for
the strength of his devotion, he would have succumbed to this blow.
Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to
shed. For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was
bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own house
on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the hiss
of the flames on his children’s curls. He rose to his full height--il se
dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow taller; he
raised his withered hands and wrung them despairingly and wildly.
“If only your father may die and never know this, young man! To be a
forger is enough; a parricide you must not be. Fly, you say? No. They
would condemn you for contempt of court! Oh, wretched boy! Why did you
not forge _my_ signature? _I_ would have paid; I should not have taken
the bill to the public prosecutor.--Now I can do nothing. You have
brought me to a stand in the lowest pit in hell!--Du Croisier! What will
come of it? What is to be done?--If you had killed a man, there might be
some help for it. But forgery--_forgery_! And time--the time is flying,”
he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock. “You will want a
sham passport now. One crime leads to another. First,” he added, after a
pause, “first of all we must save the house of d’Esgrignon.”
“But the money is still in Mme. de Maufrigneuse’s keeping,” exclaimed
Victurnien.
“Ah!” exclaimed Chesnel. “Well, there is some hope left--a faint hope.
Could we soften du Croisier, I wonder, or buy him over? He shall have
all the lands if he likes. I will go to him; I will wake him and offer
him all we have.--Besides, it was not you who forged that bill; it was
I. I will go to jail; I am too old for the hulks, they can only put me
in prison.”
“But the body of the bill is in my handwriting,” objected Victurnien,
without a sign of surprise at this reckless devotion.
“Idiot!... that is, pardon, M. le Comte. Josephin should have been made
to write it,” the old notary cried wrathfully. “He is a good creature;
he would have taken it all on his shoulders. But there is an end of
it; the world is falling to pieces,” the old man continued, sinking
exhausted into a chair. “Du Croisier is a tiger; we must be careful not
to rouse him. What time is it? Where is the draft? If it is at Paris,
it might be bought back from the Kellers; they might accommodate us.
Ah! but there are dangers on all sides; a single false step means ruin.
Money is wanted in any case. But there! nobody knows you are here, you
must live buried away in the cellar if needs must. I will go at once to
Paris as fast as I can; I can hear the mail coach from Brest.”
In a moment the old man recovered the faculties of his youth--his
agility and vigor. He packed up clothes for the journey, took money,
brought a six-pound loaf to the little room beyond the office, and
turned the key on his child by adoption.
“Not a sound in here,” he said, “no light at night; and stop here till I
come back, or you will go to the hulks. Do you understand, M. le Comte?
Yes, _to the hulks_! if anybody in a town like this knows that you are
here.”
With that Chesnel went out, first telling his housekeeper to give
out that he was ill, to allow no one to come into the house, to send
everybody away, and to postpone business of every kind for three days.
He wheedled the manager of the coach-office, made up a tale for his
benefit--he had the makings of an ingenious novelist in him--and
obtained a promise that if there should be a place, he should have
it, passport or no passport, as well as a further promise to keep
the hurried departure a secret. Luckily, the coach was empty when it
arrived.
In the middle of the following night Chesnel was set down in Paris. At
nine o’clock in the morning he waited on the Kellers, and learned that
the fatal draft had returned to du Croisier three days since; but while
obtaining this information, he in no way committed himself. Before he
went away he inquired whether the draft could be recovered if the amount
were refunded. Francois Keller’s answer was to the effect that the
document was du Croisier’s property, and that it was entirely in his
power to keep or return it. Then, in desperation, the old man went to
the Duchess.
Mme. de Maufrigneuse was not at home to any visitor at that hour.
Chesnel, feeling that every moment was precious, sat down in the hall,
wrote a few lines, and succeeded in sending them to the lady by dint of
wheedling, fascinating, bribing, and commanding the most insolent and
inaccessible servants in the world. The Duchess was still in bed;
but, to the great astonishment of her household, the old man in black
knee-breeches, ribbed stockings, and shoes with buckles to them, was
shown into her room.