the two sorts of young men who lead the life of elegance, the amiable
corporation to which Henri de Marsay belonged. But the observer, who
goes beyond the superficial aspect of things, is soon convinced that
the difference is purely moral, and that nothing is so deceptive as this
pretty outside. Nevertheless, all alike take precedence over everybody
else; speak rightly or wrongly of things, of men, literature, and the
fine arts; have ever in their mouth the Pitt and Coburg of each year;
interrupt a conversation with a pun, turn into ridicule science and the
_savant_; despise all things which they do not know or which they fear;
set themselves above all by constituting themselves the supreme
judges of all. They would all hoax their fathers, and be ready to shed
crocodile tears upon their mothers’ breasts; but generally they believe
in nothing, blaspheme women, or play at modesty, and in reality are led
by some old woman or an evil courtesan. They are all equally eaten
to the bone with calculation, with depravity, with a brutal lust to
succeed, and if you plumbed for their hearts you would find in all a
stone. In their normal state they have the prettiest exterior, stake
their friendship at every turn, are captivating alike. The same badinage
dominates their ever-changing jargon; they seek for oddity in their
toilette, glory in repeating the stupidities of such and such actor who
is in fashion, and commence operations, it matters not with whom, with
contempt and impertinence, in order to have, as it were, the first move
in the game; but, woe betide him who does not know how to take a blow
on one cheek for the sake of rendering two. They resemble, in fine, that
pretty white spray which crests the stormy waves. They dress and dance,
dine and take their pleasure, on the day of Waterloo, in the time of
cholera or revolution. Finally, their expenses are all the same, but
here the contrast comes in. Of this fluctuating fortune, so agreeably
flung away, some possess the capital for which the others wait; they
have the same tailors, but the bills of the latter are still to pay.
Next, if the first, like sieves, take in ideas of all kinds without
retaining any, the latter compare them and assimilate all the good.
If the first believe they know something, know nothing and understand
everything, lend all to those who need nothing and offer nothing to
those who are in need; the latter study secretly others’ thoughts and
place out their money, like their follies, at big interest. The one
class have no more faithful impressions, because their soul, like
a mirror, worn from use, no longer reflects any image; the others
economize their senses and life, even while they seem, like the first,
to be flinging them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope,
devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and tide
against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the first
goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound it, and
see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial integrity,
an element of success. Where the young man of possessions makes a pun or
an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who has nothing makes
a public calculation or a secret reservation, and obtains everything by
giving a handshake to his friends. The one deny every faculty to others,
look upon all their ideas as new, as though the world had been made
yesterday, they have unlimited confidence in themselves, and no crueler
enemy than those same selves. But the others are armed with an incessant
distrust of men, whom they estimate at their value, and are sufficiently
profound to have one thought beyond their friends, whom they exploit;
then of evenings, when they lay their heads on their pillows, they weigh
men as a miser weighs his gold pieces. The one are vexed at an aimless
impertinence, and allow themselves to be ridiculed by the diplomatic,
who make them dance for them by pulling what is the main string of these
puppets--their vanity. Thus, a day comes when those who had nothing have
something, and those who had something have nothing. The latter look
at their comrades who have achieved positions as cunning fellows; their
hearts may be bad, but their heads are strong. “He is very strong!” is
the supreme praise accorded to those who have attained _quibuscumque
viis_, political rank, a woman, or a fortune. Amongst them are to be
found certain young men who play this _role_ by commencing with having
debts. Naturally, these are more dangerous than those who play it
without a farthing.
The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a
rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men then
in fashion were teaching the art of running through an inheritance;
but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in the shape of a
secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had passed without any
transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a month to the entire
paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit enough to perceive that he
was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious to stop short at two-thirds
of his capital. He had learned at Paris, for a consideration of some
thousands of francs, the exact value of harness, the art of not being
too respectful to his gloves, learned to make skilful meditations upon
the right wages to give people, and to seek out what bargain was the
best to close with them. He set store on his capacity to speak in good
terms of his horses, of his Pyrenean hound; to tell by her dress, her
walk, her shoes, to what class a woman belonged; to study _ecarte_,
remember a few fashionable catchwords, and win by his sojourn in
Parisian society the necessary authority to import later into his
province a taste for tea and silver of an English fashion, and to obtain
the right of despising everything around him for the rest of his days.
De Marsay had admitted him to his society in order to make use of him in
the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. The
friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position for Paul
de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in exploiting,
after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the reflecting
lustre of his friend, walked constantly under his umbrella, wore his
boots, gilded himself with his rays. When he posed in Henri’s company or
walked at his side, he had the air of saying: “Don’t insult us, we are
real dogs.” He often permitted himself to remark fatuously: “If I were
to ask Henri for such and such a thing, he is a good enough friend of
mine to do it.” But he was careful never to ask anything of him. He
feared him, and his fear, although imperceptible, reacted upon the
others, and was of use to De Marsay.
“De Marsay is a man of a thousand,” said Paul. “Ah, you will see, he
will be what he likes. I should not be surprised to find him one of
these days Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nothing can withstand him.”
He made of De Marsay what Corporal Trim made of his cap, a perpetual
instance.
“Ask De Marsay and you will see!”
Or again:
“The other day we were hunting, De Marsay and I, He would not believe
me, but I jumped a hedge without moving on my horse!”
Or again:
“We were with some women, De Marsay and I, and upon my word of honor, I
was----” etc.
Thus Paul de Manerville could not be classed amongst the great,
illustrious, and powerful family of fools who succeed. He would one day
be a deputy. For the time he was not even a young man. His friend, De
Marsay, defined him thus: “You ask me what is Paul? Paul? Why, Paul de
Manerville!”
“I am surprised, my dear fellow,” he said to De Marsay, “to see you here
on a Sunday.”
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
“Is it an intrigue?”
“An intrigue.”
“Bah!”
“I can mention it to you without compromising my passion. Besides,
a woman who comes to the Tuileries on Sundays is of no account,
aristocratically speaking.”
“Ah! ah!”
“Hold your tongue then, or I shall tell you nothing. Your laugh is too
loud, you will make people think that we have lunched too well. Last
Thursday, here on the Terrasse des Feuillants, I was walking along,
thinking of nothing at all, but when I got to the gate of the Rue de
Castiglione, by which I intended to leave, I came face to face with a
woman, or rather a young girl; who, if she did not throw herself at my
head, stopped short, less I think, from human respect, than from one of
those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep down
the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet, to nail
you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this nature, a sort
of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful when the
relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this was not
stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her face
seemed to say: ‘What, is it you, my ideal! The creation of my thoughts,
of my morning and evening dreams! What, are you there? Why this morning?
Why not yesterday? Take me, I am thine, _et cetera_!’ Good, I said to
myself, another one! Then I scrutinize her. Ah, my dear fellow, speaking
physically, my incognita is the most adorable feminine person whom I
ever met. She belongs to that feminine variety which the Romans call
_fulva, flava_--the woman of fire. And in chief, what struck me the
most, what I am still taken with, are her two yellow eyes, like a
tiger’s, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, gold which thinks,
gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge in your pocket.”
“My dear fellow, we are full of her!” cried Paul. “She comes here
sometimes--_the girl with the golden eyes_! That is the name we have
given her. She is a young creature--not more than twenty-two, and I
have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who was
worth a hundred thousand of her.”
“Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she
is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with
ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy
threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks
a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and
loses itself on her neck.”
“Ah, the other, my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never
wept, but which burn; black eyebrows which meet and give her an air of
hardness contradicted by the compact curve of her lips, on which the
kisses do not stay, lips burning and fresh; a Moorish color that warms a
man like the sun. But--upon my word of honor, she is like you!”
“You flatter her!”
“A firm figure, the tapering figure of a corvette built for speed, which
rushes down upon the merchant vessel with French impetuosity, which
grapples with her and sinks her at the same time.”
“After all, my dear fellow,” answered De Marsay, “what has that got
to do with me, since I have never seen her? Ever since I have studied
women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal bosom, whose
ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of
my dreams--of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture
called _La Femme Caressant sa Chimere_, the warmest, the most infernal
inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by those
who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of bourgeois
who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it on their
watch-chains--whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of pleasure into
which one plunges and finds no end; whereas, it is the ideal woman, to
be seen sometimes in reality in Spain or Italy, almost never in France.
Well, I have again seen this girl of the gold eyes, this woman caressing
her chimera. I saw her on Friday. I had a presentiment that on the
following day she would be here at the same hour; I was not mistaken.
I have taken a pleasure in following her without being observed, in
studying her indolent walk, the walk of the woman without occupation,
but in the movements of which one devines all the pleasure that lies
asleep. Well, she turned back again, she saw me, once more she adored
me, once more trembled, shivered. It was then I noticed the genuine
Spanish duenna who looked after her, a hyena upon whom some jealous
man has put a dress, a she-devil well paid, no doubt, to guard this
delicious creature.... Ah, then the duenna made me deeper in love. I
grew curious. On Saturday, nobody. And here I am to-day waiting for
this girl whose chimera I am, asking nothing better than to pose as the
monster in the fresco.”
“There she is,” said Paul. “Every one is turning round to look at her.”
The unknown blushed, her eyes shone; she saw Henri, she shut them and
passed by.
“You say that she notices you?” cried Paul, facetiously.
The duenna looked fixedly and attentively at the two young men. When the
unknown and Henri passed each other again, the young girl touched him,
and with her hand pressed the hand of the young man. Then she turned her
head and smiled with passion, but the duenna led her away very quickly
to the gate of the Rue de Castiglione.
The two friends followed the young girl, admiring the magnificent grace
of the neck which met her head in a harmony of vigorous lines, and upon
which a few coils of hair were tightly wound. The girl with the golden
eyes had that well-knitted, arched, slender foot which presents so
many attractions to the dainty imagination. Moreover, she was shod with
elegance, and wore a short skirt. During her course she turned from
time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the old woman
regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she
could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was
perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let
down the step of a tasteful _coupe_ emblazoned with armorial bearings.
The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat
at the side where she could be best seen when the carriage turned,
put her hand on the door, and waved her handkerchief in the duennna’s
despite. In contempt of what might be said by the curious, her
handkerchief cried to Henri openly: “Follow me!”
“Have you ever seen a handkerchief better thrown?” said Henri to Paul de
Manerville.
Then, observing a fiacre on the point of departure, having just set down
a fare, he made a sign to the driver to wait.
“Follow that carriage, notice the house and the street where it
stops--you shall have ten francs.... Paul, adieu.”
The cab followed the _coupe_. The _coupe_ stopped in the Rue Saint
Lazare before one of the finest houses of the neighborhood.
De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his
impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized so
fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry
of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had
told his coachman to continue along the Rue Saint Lazare and carry him
back to his house. The next day, his confidential valet, Laurent by
name, as cunning a fellow as the Frontin of the old comedy, waited in
the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which
letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and
hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police
officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of
an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the
postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare that morning, passed
by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a
person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted the postman.
Deceived at first by appearances, this personage, so picturesque in the
midst of Parisian civilization, informed him that the house in which
the girl with the golden eyes dwelt belonged to Don Hijos, Marquis de
San-Real, grandee of Spain. Naturally, it was not with the Marquis that
the Auvergnat was concerned.
“My parcel,” he said, “is for the marquise.”
“She is away,” replied the postman. “Her letters are forwarded to
London.”
“Then the marquise is not a young girl who...?”
“Ah!” said the postman, interrupting the _valet de chambre_ and
observing him attentively, “you are as much a porter as I’m...”
Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began to
smile.
“Come, here’s the name of your quarry,” he said, taking from his leather
wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the address, “To
Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, Rue Saint Lazare, Hotel San-Real, Paris,”
was written in long, fine characters, which spoke of a woman’s hand.
“Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a
_filet saute_ with mushrooms to follow it?” said Laurent, who wished to
win the postman’s valuable friendship.
“At half-past nine, when my round is finished---- Where?”
“At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin and the Rue
Neuve-des-Mathurins, at the _Puits sans Vin_,” said Laurent.
“Hark ye, my friend,” said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an
hour after this encounter, “if your master is in love with the girl, he
is in for a famous task. I doubt you’ll not succeed in seeing her. In
the ten years that I’ve been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty of
different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being
called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
mysterious as M. de San-Real’s. No one can get into the house without
the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication with
other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a word
of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they are not
thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons--could get
the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall, which is shut
by a glazed door, you would run across a butler surrounded by lackeys,
an old joker more savage and surly even than the porter. If any one
gets past the porter’s lodge, my butler comes out, waits for you at the
entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That
has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in
disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don’t
hope to get aught out of them; I think they are mutes, no one in the
neighborhood knows the color of their speech; I don’t know what wages
they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, they
are not to be got at, whether because they are afraid of being shot, or
that they have some enormous sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion.
If your master is fond enough of Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes to surmount
all these obstacles, he certainly won’t triumph over Dona Concha
Marialva, the duenna who accompanies her and would put her under her
petticoats sooner than leave her. The two women look as if they were
sewn to one another.”
“All that you say, worthy postman,” went on Laurent, after having drunk
off his wine, “confirms me in what I have learned before. Upon my word,
I thought they were making fun of me! The fruiterer opposite told me
that of nights they let loose dogs whose food is hung up on stakes just
out of their reach. These cursed animals think, therefore, that any one
likely to come in has designs on their victuals, and would tear one to
pieces. You will tell me one might throw them down pieces, but it seems
they have been trained to touch nothing except from the hand of the
porter.”
“The porter of the Baron de Nucingen, whose garden joins at the top that
of the Hotel San-Real, told me the same thing,” replied the postman.
“Good! my master knows him,” said Laurent, to himself. “Do you know,”
he went on, leering at the postman, “I serve a master who is a rare
man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the sole of the foot of an
empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, which
is what I wish for you, for he is generous, could one count on you?”
“Lord, Monsieur Laurent, my name is Moinot. My name is written exactly
like _Moineau_, magpie: M-o-i-n-o-t, Moinot.”
“Exactly,” said Laurent.
“I live at No. 11, Rue des Trois Freres, on the fifth floor,” went on
Moinot; “I have a wife and four children. If what you want of me doesn’t
transgress the limits of my conscience and my official duties, you
understand! I am your man.”
“You are an honest fellow,” said Laurent, shaking his hand....
“Paquita Valdes is, no doubt, the mistress of the Marquis de San-Real,
the friend of King Ferdinand. Only an old Spanish mummy of eighty years
is capable of taking such precautions,” said Henri, when his _valet de
chambre_ had related the result of his researches.
“Monsieur,” said Laurent, “unless he takes a balloon no one can get into
that hotel.”
“You are a fool! Is it necessary to get into the hotel to have Paquita,
when Paquita can get out of it?”
“But, sir, the duenna?”
“We will shut her up for a day or two, your duenna.”
“So, we shall have Paquita!” said Laurent, rubbing his hands.
“Rascal!” answered Henri, “I shall condemn you to the Concha, if you
carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has
become mine.... Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out.”
Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections. Let us say it
to the praise of women, he obtained all those whom he deigned to desire.
And what could one think of a woman, having no lover, who should
have known how to resist a young man armed with beauty which is the
intelligence of the body, with intelligence which is a grace of the
soul, armed with moral force and fortune, which are the only two real
powers? Yet, in triumphing with such ease, De Marsay was bound to grow
weary of his triumphs; thus, for about two years he had grown very weary
indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures he brought back more
grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, to implore of
Chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which should ask the
employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. Although Paquita
Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration of perfections which
he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost
_nil_ with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment
of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer
anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which,
once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young
people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul
blossom, it nourishes by its solar power the finest inspirations and
their great thoughts; the first fruits in all things have a delicious
savor. Amongst men love becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse.
Amongst old men it turns to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was
at once an old man, a man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of
a real love, he needed like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without
the magic lustre of that unattainable pearl he could only have either
passions rendered acute by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations
with himself to bring such and such a woman to such and such a point of
corruption, or else adventures which stimulated his curiosity.
The report of Laurent, his _valet de chambre_ had just given an enormous
value to the girl with the golden eyes. It was a question of doing
battle with some secret enemy who seemed as dangerous as he was cunning;
and to carry off the victory, all the forces which Henri could dispose
of would be useful. He was about to play in that eternal old comedy
which will be always fresh, and the characters in which are an old man,
a young girl, and a lover: Don Hijos, Paquita, De Marsay. If Laurent was
the equal of Figaro, the duenna seemed incorruptible. Thus, the living
play was supplied by Chance with a stronger plot than it had ever been
by dramatic author! But then is not Chance too, a man of genius?
“It must be a cautious game,” said Henri, to himself.
“Well,” said Paul de Manerville, as he entered the room. “How are we
getting on? I have come to breakfast with you.”
“So be it,” said Henri. “You won’t be shocked if I make my toilette
before you?”
“How absurd!”
“We take so many things from the English just now that we might well
become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves,” said Henri.