On quitting the sorry apartment of the false M. Lamb, Lebeau walked on
with slow steps and bended head, like a man absorbed in thought. He
threaded a labyrinth of obscure streets, no longer in the Faubourg
Montmartre, and dived at last into one of the few courts which preserve
the cachet of the moyen age untouched by the ruthless spirit of
improvement which during the second empire has so altered the face of
Paris. At the bottom of the court stood a large house, much dilapidated,
but bearing the trace of former grandeur in pilasters and fretwork in the
style of the Renaissance, and a defaced coat of arms, surmounted with a
ducal coronet, over the doorway. The house had the aspect of desertion:
many of the windows were broken; others were jealously closed with
mouldering shutters. The door stood ajar; Lebeau pushed it open, and the
action set in movement a bell within a porter's lodge. The house, then,
was not uninhabited; it retained the dignity of a concierge. A man with
a large grizzled beard cut square, and holding a journal in his hand,
emerged from the lodge, and moved his cap with a certain bluff and surly
reverence on recognizing Lebeau.
"What! so early, citizen?"
"Is it too early?" said Lebeau, glancing at his watch. "So it is; I was
not aware of the time. But I am tired with waiting; let me into the
salon. I will wait for the rest; I shall not be sorry for a little
repose."
"Bon," said the porter, sententiously; "while man reposes men advance."
"A profound truth, citizen Le Roux; though if they advance on a reposing
foe, they have blundering leaders unless they march through unguarded
by-paths and with noiseless tread."
Following the porter up a dingy broad staircase, Lebeau was admitted into
a large room, void of all other furniture than a table, two benches at
its sides, and a fauteuil at its head. On the mantelpiece there was a
huge clock, and some iron sconces were fixed on the panelled walls.
Lebeau flung himself, with a wearied air, into the fauteuil. The porter
looked at him with a kindly expression. He had a liking to Lebeau, whom
he had served in his proper profession of messenger or commissionnaire
before being placed by that courteous employer in the easy post he now
held. Lebeau, indeed, had the art, when he pleased, of charming
inferiors; his knowledge of mankind allowed him to distinguish
peculiarities in each individual, and flatter the amour propre by
deference to such eccentricities. Marc le Roux, the roughest of "red
caps," had a wife of whom he was very proud. He would have called the
empress Citoyenne Eugenie, but he always spoke of his wife as Madame.
Lebeau won his heart by always asking after Madame.
"You look tired, citizen," said the porter; "let me bring you a glass of
wine."
"Thank you, mon ami, no. Perhaps later, if I have time, after we break
up, to pay my respects to Madame."
The porter smiled, bowed, and retired muttering, "Nom d'un petit
bonhomme; il n'y a rien de tel que les belles manieres."
Left alone, Lebeau leaned his elbow on the table, resting his chin on his
hand, and gazing into the dim space,--for it was now, indeed, night, and
little light came through the grimy panes of the one window left unclosed
by shutters. He was musing deeply. This man was, in much, an enigma to
himself. Was he seeking to unriddle it? A strange compound of
contradictory elements. In his stormy youth there had been lightning-
like flashes of good instincts, of irregular honour, of inconsistent
generosity,--a puissant wild nature, with strong passions of love and of
hate, without fear, but not without shame. In other forms of society
that love of applause which had made him seek and exult in the notoriety
which he mistook for fame might have settled down into some solid and
useful ambition. He might have become great in the world's eye, for at
the service of his desires there were no ordinary talents. Though too
true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, on the whole, he had
acquired much general information, partly from books, partly from varied
commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both by tongue and by pen, of
expressing himself with force and warmth; time and necessity had improved
that gift. Coveting, during his brief career of fashion, the
distinctions which necessitate lavish expenditure, he had been the most
reckless of spendthrifts; but the neediness which follows waste had never
destroyed his original sense of personal honour. Certainly Victor de
Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom the thought of
accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him
could have occurred as a possible question of casuistry between honour
and temptation. Nor could that sort of question have, throughout the
sternest trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been
subjected, forced admission into his brain. He was one of those men,
perhaps the most terrible though unconscious criminals, who are the
offsprings produced by intellectual power and egotistical ambition. If
you had offered to Victor de Mauleon the crown of the Caesars, on
condition of his doing one of those base things which "a gentleman"
cannot do, pick a pocket, cheat at cards,--Victor de Mauleon would have
refused the crown. He would not have refused on account of any laws of
morality affecting the foundations of the social system, but from the
pride of his own personality. "I, Victor de Mauleon! I pick a pocket!
I cheat at cards! I!" But when something incalculably worse for the
interests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards was
concerned; when for the sake either of private ambition or political
experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very doubtful, the peace and
order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the
most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre,
then this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous as any
English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough might elect as its
representative. The system of the empire was in the way of Victor de
Mauleon,--in the way of his private ambition, in the way of his political
dogmas; and therefore it must be destroyed, no matter what nor whom it
crushed beneath its ruins. He was one of those plotters of revolutions
not uncommon in democracies, ancient and modern, who invoke popular
agencies with the less scruple because they have a supreme contempt for
the populace. A man with mental powers equal to De Mauleon's, and who
sincerely loves the people and respects the grandeur of aspiration with
which, in the great upheaving of their masses, they so often contrast the
irrational credulities of their ignorance and the blind fury of their
wrath, is always exceedingly loath to pass the terrible gulf that divides
reform from revolution. He knows how rarely it happens that genuine
liberty is not disarmed in the passage, and what sufferings must be
undergone by those who live by their labour during the dismal intervals
between the sudden destruction of one form of society and the gradual
settlement of another. Such a man, however, has no type in a Victor de
Mauleon. The circumstances of his life had placed this strong nature at
war with society, and corrupted into misanthropy affections that had once
been ardent. That misanthropy made his ambition more intense, because it
increased his scorn for the human instruments it employed.
Victor de Mauleon knew that however innocent of the charges that had so
long darkened his name, and however--thanks to his rank, his manners, his
savoir vivre, the aid of Louvier's countenance and the support of his own
high-born connections--he might restore himself to his rightful grade in
private life, the higher prizes in public life would scarcely be within
reach, to a man of his antecedents and stinted means, in the existent
form and conditions of established political order. Perforce, the
aristocrat must make himself democrat if he would become a political
chief. Could he assist in turning upside down the actual state of
things, he trusted to his individual force of character to find himself
among the uppermost in the general _bouleversement_. And in the first
stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater darling than the noble
who deserts his order, though in the second stage it may guillotine him
at the denunciation of his cobbler. A mind so sanguine and so audacious
as that of Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second step if it sees a
way to the first.