THE RUINED ONES
"Go home!" said my father, putting me into the carriage. "I will return
on foot. You have disgraced yourself; you have disgraced me. Hand
yourself over to Joubert. You are to be a prisoner under lock and key
until I devise some punishment to meet your case." Then, to the
coachman: "Home, Lubin!" He clapped the door on me, and I was driven
off, with his speech ringing in my ears, a speech which I believe was
meant as much for the gallery as for me. This was my first encounter
with the Comte de Coigny, and I believe I had the worst of it. But I was
not thinking of De Coigny--I was thinking of little Eloise, of the
Countess whose beauty haunted me, and of the Count, that noble-looking
gentleman, now in prison.
Eloise had told me that their house in Paris was situated in the
Faubourg St. Germain, and, as we turned out of the Rue de Lille, an
inspiration came to me. I pulled the check-string, the carriage stopped,
and I put my head out of the window.
"Lubin!"
"Well?"
"Drive me to the Faubourg St. Germain."
"Likely, indeed! and lose my place. Ma foi!--Faubourg St. Germain!"
"Lubin! I have a napoleon in my pocket, and I'll give it you if----"
But the carriage drove on.
I sank back on the cushions, but I was not defeated yet. There was a
block of traffic in the Rue de Trône. I put my hand out, opened the door
on the left side, and the next moment I was standing upon the pavement,
and the heavy old carriage was driving on, with the door swinging open.
Then I ran, ran till I was out of breath, and in a broad street full of
shops.
A barrel-organ was playing in the sunshine; a herd of she-asses were
trotting along, followed by an Auvergnat in sabots, and a cabriolet
plying for hire was approaching on the opposite side of the way.
I hailed the driver, and told him to take me to the Faubourg St.
Germain.
"Where to in the Faubourg St. Germain?" asked the man.
"I want to go to the Count Feliciani's," I replied.
"The Hôtel Feliciani?"
"Yes"
"Get in." He drove off. He knew the Hôtel Feliciani, did this driver.
All Paris was ringing with the disgrace of the man who, from his throne
in the kingdom of finance, had fallen to the gutter, involving a
thousand others in his ruin. But I knew nothing of this; and from the
man's unconcerned manner I began to hope that De Coigny had told me a
lie.
The cabriolet drove in through the gates of a huge hôtel in the
Faubourg St. Germain. The courtyard was crowded with people--and such
people! Jews, porters, female furniture dealers with heavy earrings,
silken skirts, and ungloved, unwashed hands--all the sharks that ruin
attracts; and in the portico, on the steps, on the very gravel of the
drive, furniture, crystal chandeliers, tables, mirrors, lying like the
débris left by the wave of misfortune.
It was as if one were looking at a lee shore the morning after the wreck
of some palatial ship: cabin-furniture, stores, the sailor's sea-chest
and the passengers' baggage, tossed up on the sands in horrible
incongruity, and speaking louder than a thousand trumpets of the fury of
the storm.
There was a sale in progress at the Hôtel Feliciani. I knew nothing of
sales, I knew nothing of finance, speculation, or commercial ruin, but I
knew that what I saw was disaster.
Getting out of the cabriolet, and telling the driver to wait for me, I
went up the steps and mixed with the throng in the hall. I wanted to
find the Felicianis, and some instinct told me they were not here; also,
that it was useless to ask any of these people their whereabouts. I
looked about me for someone in authority; and, as I looked, a voice from
the large salon adjoining the hall came:
"Thirty thousand francs! Thirty thousand francs! Any advance on thirty
thousand francs? Gone!" Then followed the blow of a little hammer.
They were selling the pictures. I turned to the doorway of the great
salon and squeezed my way in. The place was filled with people--all
Paris was there. Men who had shaken the Count Feliciani by the hand,
women who had kissed the Countess on the cheek, men and women of the
highest nobility, of the greatest intelligence--très propre, to use the
words of the old fool in De Morny's ante-chamber--were here, battening
on the sight, and trying to snatch bargains from the ruin of their
one-time friends. The Felicianis, as I afterwards learned, all but
beggared, had been cast adrift, mother and daughter, by society; cast
out like lepers from the pure precincts of the Court circle and the
buckramed salons of the Royalist clique.
M. Hamard, the auctioneer, on his estrade, before his desk, a man in
steel spectacles, the living image of the late unlamented Procurator of
the Holy Synod, was clearing his throat before offering the next lot, a
Gerard Dow, eighteen inches by twelve.
As the bidding leaped up by a thousand francs at a time, I edged my way
through the throng closer and closer to the auctioneer, treading on
dainty toes, wedging myself in between whispering acquaintances,
regardless of grumbles and muttered imprecations, till I was right
beside the estrade and within plucking distance of the auctioneer's
coat.
"Sixty-five thousand francs!" cried M. Hamard. "This priceless Gerard
Dow--sixty-five thousand francs. Any advance on sixty-five thousand
francs? Gone! Well, what is it, little boy?"
"Please," said I, "can you tell me where I can find the Countess
Feliciani?"
A dead silence took the room, for my nervousness had made me speak
louder than I intended. People looked at one another; an awkward silence
it must have been following the voice of the enfant terrible flinging
the name of the woman they had cast out and deserted into the face of
these worldlings who had come to examine her effects and snatch bargains
from her ruin.
M. Hamard, aghast, stared down at me through his spectacles.
"You---- Who are you?" said he.
"I am her friend. My name is Patrick Mahon. My father is General Count
Mahon, and I wish to see the Countess Feliciani."
M. Hamard seized a pen from the desk, scribbled some words on a piece of
paper, and handed it to me.
"Go," he said. "That is the address. You are interrupting the sale."
Then, with the paper in my hand, I came back through the crush without
difficulty, for the crowd made a lane for me down which I walked, paper
in hand, a child of nine, the last and only friend of the once great and
powerful Felicianis.
I read the address on the piece of paper to the driver of the cabriolet.
"Ma foi!" said he, "but that is a long way from here."
"Drive me there," said I.
"Yes; that is all very well, but how about my fare?"
I showed him my napoleon, got into the vehicle, and we drove off.
It was indeed a long way from there. We retook the route by which we
had come, we drove through the broad streets, through the great
boulevards, and then we plunged into a quarter of the city where the
streets were shrunken and mean, where the people were in keeping with
the streets, and the light of the bright September day seemed dull as
the light of December.
At the Hôtel de Mayence in the Rue Ancelot we drew up. It was a
respectable, third-rate hotel. A black cat was crouched in the doorway,
watching the street with imperturbable yellow eyes, and a waiter with a
stained serviette in his hand made his appearance at the sound of the
vehicle drawing up.
Yes; Madame Feliciani was in: he would go up and see whether she could
receive visitors. I waited, trying to make friends with the sphinx-like
cat; then I was shown upstairs, and into a shabby sitting-room
overlooking the street.
By the window, stitching at a child's small garment, sat an old lady
with snow-white hair. It was the Countess Feliciani.
It was as if I had seen by some horrible enchantment a woman of
thirty-five, happy and beautiful, surrounded by the wealth and luxury of
life, suddenly withered, touched by the wand of some malevolent fairy
and transformed into a woman old and poor.
It was my first lesson in the realities of life, this fairy tale, which,
for hidden terror, put Vogel's story of the old woman who made the
whistles completely in the shade.
Next moment I was at her knee, blubbering, with my nose rubbing the
bombazine of her black skirt--for she was in mourning--and next moment
little Eloise was in her room, looking just the same as ever, and I was
being comforted as if all the misfortune were mine; and Madame
Feliciani, for so she chose to be styled, was smiling for the first
time, I am sure, since the disaster. A late déjeûner was brought in, and
I was given a place at the table. It is all misty and strange in my
mind. A few things of absolute unimportance stand out--the coat of the
waiter, shiny at the elbows; the hotel dog that came in for scraps; the
knives and forks, worn and second-rate--but of what we said to each
other I remember nothing.
"And you will come and see us?" said I as I took my departure.
"Some day," replied the Countess, with a smile, the significance of
which I now understand, as I understand the horrible mockery of my
innocent invitation.
Eloise ran down to see me off; and the last I saw of her was a small
figure standing at the door of the hotel, and holding in its arms the
black cat with the imperturbable yellow eyes.
When we arrived at the Champs Elysées I was so frightened with my doings
that I gave the driver the whole napoleon without waiting for change,
and then I went to meet my doom like a man, and confessed the whole
business to my father.
The sentence was expulsion from Paris to the pavilion in the grounds of
the Château de Saluce, whither, accordingly, I was transported next day
with Joubert for a gaoler.