right. Cydalise was next to the Brazilian, and beyond her was Bixiou.
Malaga sat by the Duke.
Oysters appeared at seven o'clock; at eight they were drinking iced
punch. Every one is familiar with the bill of fare of such a banquet.
By nine o'clock they were talking as people talk after forty-two
bottles of various wines, drunk by fourteen persons. Dessert was on
the table, the odious dessert of the month of April. Of all the party,
the only one affected by the heady atmosphere was Cydalise, who was
humming a tune. None of the party, with the exception of the poor
country girl, had lost their reason; the drinkers and the women were
the experienced _elite_ of the society that sups. Their wits were
bright, their eyes glistened, but with no loss of intelligence, though
the talk drifted into satire, anecdote, and gossip. Conversation,
hitherto confined to the inevitable circle of racing, horses,
hammerings on the Bourse, the different occupations of the _lions_
themselves, and the scandals of the town, showed a tendency to break
up into intimate _tete-a-tete_, the dialogues of two hearts.
And at this stage, at a signal from Carabine to Leon de Lora, Bixiou,
la Palferine, and du Tillet, love came under discussion.
"A doctor in good society never talks of medicine, true nobles never
speak of their ancestors, men of genius do not discuss their works,"
said Josepha; "why should we talk business? If I got the opera put off
in order to dine here, it was assuredly not to work.--So let us change
the subject, dear children."
"But we are speaking of real love, my beauty," said Malaga, "of the
love that makes a man fling all to the dogs--father, mother, wife,
children--and retire to Clichy."
"Talk away, then, 'don't know yer,'" said the singer.
The slang words, borrowed from the Street Arab, and spoken by these
women, may be a poem on their lips, helped by the expression of the
eyes and face.
"What, do not I love you, Josepha?" said the Duke in a low voice.
"You, perhaps, may love me truly," said she in his ear, and she
smiled. "But I do not love you in the way they describe, with such
love as makes the world dark in the absence of the man beloved. You
are delightful to me, useful--but not indispensable; and if you were
to throw me over to-morrow, I could have three dukes for one."
"Is true love to be found in Paris?" asked Leon de Lora. "Men have not
even time to make a fortune; how can they give themselves over to true
love, which swamps a man as water melts sugar? A man must be
enormously rich to indulge in it, for love annihilates him--for
instance, like our Brazilian friend over there. As I said long ago,
'Extremes defeat--themselves.' A true lover is like an eunuch; women
have ceased to exist for him. He is mystical; he is like the true
Christian, an anchorite of the desert!--See our noble Brazilian."
Every one at table looked at Henri Montes de Montejanos, who was shy
at finding every eye centred on him.
"He has been feeding there for an hour without discovering, any more
than an ox at pasture, that he is sitting next to--I will not say, in
such company, the loveliest--but the freshest woman in all Paris."
"Everything is fresh here, even the fish; it is what the house is
famous for," said Carabine.
Baron Montes looked good-naturedly at the painter, and said:
"Very good! I drink to your very good health," and bowing to Leon de
Lora, he lifted his glass of port wine and drank it with much dignity.
"Are you then truly in love?" asked Malaga of her neighbor, thus
interpreting his toast.
The Brazilian refilled his glass, bowed to Carabine, and drank again.
"To the lady's health then!" said the courtesan, in such a droll tone
that Lora, du Tillet, and Bixiou burst out laughing.
The Brazilian sat like a bronze statue. This impassibility provoked
Carabine. She knew perfectly well that Montes was devoted to Madame
Marneffe, but she had not expected this dogged fidelity, this
obstinate silence of conviction.
A woman is as often gauged by the attitude of her lover as a man is
judged from the tone of his mistress. The Baron was proud of his
attachment to Valerie, and of hers to him; his smile had, to these
experienced connoisseurs, a touch of irony; he was really grand to
look upon; wine had not flushed him; and his eyes, with their peculiar
lustre as of tarnished gold, kept the secrets of his soul. Even
Carabine said to herself:
"What a woman she must be! How she has sealed up that heart!"
"He is a rock!" said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining that the whole
thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting the importance to
Carabine of reducing this fortress.
While this conversation, apparently so frivolous, was going on at
Carabine's right, the discussion of love was continued on her left
between the Duc d'Herouville, Lousteau, Josepha, Jenny Cadine, and
Massol. They were wondering whether such rare phenomena were the
result of passion, obstinacy, or affection. Josepha, bored to death by
it all, tried to change the subject.
"You are talking of what you know nothing about. Is there a man among
you who ever loved a woman--a woman beneath him--enough to squander
his fortune and his children's, to sacrifice his future and blight his
past, to risk going to the hulks for robbing the Government, to kill
an uncle and a brother, to let his eye be so effectually blinded that
he did not even perceive that it was done to hinder his seeing the
abyss into which, as a crowning jest, he was being driven? Du Tillet
has a cash-box under his left breast; Leon de Lora has his wit; Bixiou
would laugh at himself for a fool if he loved any one but himself;
Massol has a minister's portfolio in the place of a heart; Lousteau
can have nothing but viscera, since he could endure to be thrown over
by Madame de Baudraye; Monsieur le Duc is too rich to prove his love
by his ruin; Vauvinet is not in it--I do not regard a bill-broker as
one of the human race; and you have never loved, nor I, nor Jenny
Cadine, nor Malaga. For my part, I never but once even saw the
phenomenon I have described. It was," and she turned to Jenny Cadine,
"that poor Baron Hulot, whom I am going to advertise for like a lost
dog, for I want to find him."
"Oh, ho!" said Carabine to herself, and looking keenly at Josepha,
"then Madame Nourrisson has two pictures by Raphael, since Josepha is
playing my hand!"
"Poor fellow," said Vauvinet, "he was a great man! Magnificent! And
what a figure, what a style, the air of Francis I.! What a volcano!
and how full of ingenious ways of getting money! He must be looking
for it now, wherever he is, and I make no doubt he extracts it even
from the walls built of bones that you may see in the suburbs of Paris
near the city gates--"
"And all that," said Bixiou, "for that little Madame Marneffe! There
is a precious hussy for you!"
"She is just going to marry my friend Crevel," said du Tillet.
"And she is madly in love with my friend Steinbock," Leon de Lora put
in.
These three phrases were like so many pistol-shots fired point-blank
at Montes. He turned white, and the shock was so painful that he rose
with difficulty.
"You are a set of blackguards!" cried he. "You have no right to speak
the name of an honest woman in the same breath with those fallen
creatures--above all, not to make it a mark for your slander!"
He was interrupted by unanimous bravos and applause. Bixiou, Leon de
Lora, Vauvinet, du Tillet, and Massol set the example, and there was a
chorus.
"Hurrah for the Emperor!" said Bixiou.
"Crown him! crown him!" cried Vauvinet.
"Three groans for such a good dog! Hurrah for Brazil!" cried Lousteau.
"So, my copper-colored Baron, it is our Valerie that you love; and you
are not disgusted?" said Leon de Lora.
"His remark is not parliamentary, but it is grand!" observed Massol.
"But, my most delightful customer," said du Tillet, "you were
recommended to me; I am your banker; your innocence reflects on my
credit."
"Yes, tell me, you are a reasonable creature----" said the Brazilian
to the banker.
"Thanks on behalf of the company," said Bixiou with a bow.
"Tell me the real facts," Montes went on, heedless of Bixiou's
interjection.
"Well, then," replied du Tillet, "I have the honor to tell you that I
am asked to the Crevel wedding."
"Ah, ha! Combabus holds a brief for Madame Marneffe!" said Josepha,
rising solemnly.
She went round to Montes with a tragic look, patted him kindly on the
head, looked at him for a moment with comical admiration, and nodded
sagely.
"Hulot was the first instance of love through fire and water," said
she; "this is the second. But it ought not to count, as it comes from
the Tropics."
Montes had dropped into his chair again, when Josepha gently touched
his forehead, and looked at du Tillet as he said:
"If I am the victim of a Paris jest, if you only wanted to get at my
secret----" and he sent a flashing look round the table, embracing all
the guests in a flaming glance that blazed with the sun of Brazil,--"I
beg of you as a favor to tell me so," he went on, in a tone of almost
childlike entreaty; "but do not vilify the woman I love."
"Nay, indeed," said Carabine in a low voice; "but if, on the contrary,
you are shamefully betrayed, cheated, tricked by Valerie, if I should
give you the proof in an hour, in my own house, what then?"
"I cannot tell you before all these Iagos," said the Brazilian.
Carabine understood him to say _magots_ (baboons).
"Well, well, say no more!" she replied, smiling. "Do not make yourself
a laughing-stock for all the wittiest men in Paris; come to my house,
we will talk it over."
Montes was crushed. "Proofs," he stammered, "consider--"
"Only too many," replied Carabine; "and if the mere suspicion hits you
so hard, I fear for your reason."
"Is this creature obstinate, I ask you? He is worse than the late
lamented King of Holland!--I say, Lousteau, Bixiou, Massol, all the
crew of you, are you not invited to breakfast with Madame Marneffe the
day after to-morrow?" said Leon de Lora.
"_Ya_," said du Tillet; "I have the honor of assuring you, Baron, that
if you had by any chance thought of marrying Madame Marneffe, you are
thrown out like a bill in Parliament, beaten by a blackball called
Crevel. My friend, my old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs a
year; and you, I suppose, did not show such a good hand, for if you
had, you, I imagine, would have been preferred."
Montes listened with a half-absent, half-smiling expression, which
struck them all with terror.
At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to Carabine that a
lady, a relation of hers, was in the drawing-room and wished to speak
to her.
Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson, decently veiled
with black lace.
"Well, child, am I to go to your house? Has he taken the hook?"
"Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded, that my only fear is
that it will burst," said Carabine.
About an hour later, Montes, Cydalise, and Carabine, returning from
the _Rocher de Cancale_, entered Carabine's little sitting-room in the
Rue Saint-Georges. Madame Nourrisson was sitting in an armchair by the
fire.
"Here is my worthy old aunt," said Carabine.
"Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allowance. You would
have forgotten me, though you are kind-hearted, and I have some bills
to pay to-morrow. Buying and selling clothes, I am always short of
cash. Who is this at your heels? The gentleman looks very much put out
about something."
The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so completely disguised
as to look like a respectable old body, rose to embrace Carabine, one
of the hundred and odd courtesans she had launched on their horrible
career of vice.
"He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I have the honor of
introducing to you--Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."
"Oh! I have heard him talked about, and know his name.--You are
nicknamed Combabus, because you love but one woman, and in Paris, that
is the same as loving no one at all. And is it by chance the object of
your affections who is fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel's woman?
I tell you what, my dear sir, you may bless your stars instead of
cursing them. She is a good-for-nothing baggage, is that little woman.
I know her tricks!"
"Get along," said Carabine, into whose hand Madame Nourrisson had
slipped a note while embracing her, "you do not know your Brazilians.
They are wrong-headed creatures that insist on being impaled through
the heart. The more jealous they are, the more jealous they want to
be. Monsieur talks of dealing death all round, but he will kill nobody
because he is in love.--However, I have brought him here to give him
the proofs of his discomfiture, which I have got from that little
Steinbock."
Montes was drunk; he listened as if the women were talking about
somebody else.
Carabine went to take off her velvet wrap, and read a facsimile of a
note, as follows:--
"DEAR PUSS.--He dines with Popinot this evening, and will come
to fetch me from the Opera at eleven. I shall go out at about
half-past five and count on finding you at our paradise. Order
dinner to be sent in from the _Maison d'or_. Dress, so as to be
able to take me to the Opera. We shall have four hours to ourselves.
Return this note to me; not that your Valerie doubts you--I would
give you my life, my fortune, and my honor, but I am afraid of the
tricks of chance."
"Here, Baron, this is the note sent to Count Steinbock this morning;
read the address. The original document is burnt."
Montes turned the note over and over, recognized the writing, and was
struck by a rational idea, which is sufficient evidence of the
disorder of his brain.
"And, pray," said he, looking at Carabine, "what object have you in
torturing my heart, for you must have paid very dear for the privilege
of having the note in your possession long enough to get it
lithographed?"
"Foolish man!" said Carabine, at a nod from Madame Nourrisson, "don't
you see that poor child Cydalise--a girl of sixteen, who has been
pining for you these three months, till she has lost her appetite for
food or drink, and who is heart-broken because you have never even
glanced at her?"
Cydalise put her handkerchief to her eyes with an appearance of
emotion--"She is furious," Carabine went on, "though she looks as if
butter would not melt in her mouth, furious to see the man she adores
duped by a villainous hussy; she would kill Valerie--"
"Oh, as for that," said the Brazilian, "that is my business!"
"What, killing?" said old Nourrisson. "No, my son, we don't do that
here nowadays."
"Oh!" said Montes, "I am not a native of this country. I live in a
parish where I can laugh at your laws; and if you give me proof--"
"Well, that note. Is that nothing?"
"No," said the Brazilian. "I do not believe in the writing. I must see
for myself."
"See!" cried Carabine, taking the hint at once from a gesture of her
supposed aunt. "You shall see, my dear Tiger, all you wish to see--on
one condition."
"And that is?"
"Look at Cydalise."
At a wink from Madame Nourrisson, Cydalise cast a tender look at the
Baron.
"Will you be good to her? Will you make her a home?" asked Carabine.
"A girl of such beauty is well worth a house and a carriage! It would
be a monstrous shame to leave her to walk the streets. And besides
--she is in debt.--How much do you owe?" asked Carabine, nipping
Cydalise's arm.
"She is worth all she can get," said the old woman. "The point is that
she can find a buyer."
"Listen!" cried Montes, fully aware at last of this masterpiece of
womankind "you will show me Valerie--"
"And Count Steinbock.--Certainly!" said Madame Nourrisson.
For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watching the
Brazilian; she saw that he was an instrument tuned up to the murderous
pitch she needed; and, above all, so effectually blinded, that he
would never heed who had led him on to it, and she spoke:--
"Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her concerns are partly
mine. All this catastrophe will be the work of a few minutes, for a
friend of mine lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock where
Valerie is at this moment taking coffee--a queer sort of coffee, but
she calls it her coffee. So let us understand each other, Brazil!--I
like Brazil, it is a hot country.--What is to become of my niece?"
"You old ostrich," said Montes, the plumes in the woman's bonnet
catching his eye, "you interrupted me.--If you show me--if I see
Valerie and that artist together--"
"As you would wish to be--" said Carabine; "that is understood."
"Then I will take this girl and carry her away--"
"Where?" asked Carabine.
"To Brazil," replied the Baron. "I will make her my wife. My uncle
left me ten leagues square of entailed estate; that is how I still
have that house and home. I have a hundred negroes--nothing but
negroes and negresses and negro brats, all bought by my uncle--"
"Nephew to a nigger-driver," said Carabine, with a grimace. "That
needs some consideration.--Cydalise, child, are you fond of the
blacks?"
"Pooh! Carabine, no nonsense," said the old woman. "The deuce is in
it! Monsieur and I are doing business."
"If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to myself," the
Brazilian went on. "I warn you, mademoiselle, I am king there, and not
a constitutional king. I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase,
and no one can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from
any human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and
divided from the sea by a wilderness as wide as France."
"I should prefer a garret here."
"So thought I," said Montes, "since I sold all my land and possessions
at Rio to come back to Madame Marneffe."
"A man does not make such a voyage for nothing," remarked Madame
Nourrisson. "You have a right to look for love for your own sake,
particularly being so good-looking.--Oh, he is very handsome!" said
she to Carabine.
"Very handsome, handsomer than the _Postillon de Longjumeau_," replied
the courtesan.
Cydalise took the Brazilian's hand, but he released it as politely as
he could.
"I came back for Madame Marneffe," the man went on where he had left
off, "but you do not know why I was three years thinking about it."
"No, savage!" said Carabine.
"Well, she had so repeatedly told me that she longed to live with me
alone in a desert--"
"Oh, ho! he is not a savage after all," cried Carabine, with a shout
of laughter. "He is of the highly-civilized tribe of Flats!"
"She had told me this so often," Montes went on, regardless of the
courtesan's mockery, "that I had a lovely house fitted up in the heart
of that vast estate. I came back to France to fetch Valerie, and the
first evening I saw her--"
"Saw her is very proper!" said Carabine. "I will remember it."
"She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I
agreed, and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot.
Whether the devil had her in hand I don't know, but from that instant
that woman has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands
--never for one moment has she given me cause to suspect her!--"
"That is supremely clever!" said Carabine to Madame Nourrisson, who
nodded in sign of assent.
"My faith in that woman," said Montes, and he shed a tear, "was a
match for my love. Just now, I was ready to fight everybody at
table--"
"So I saw," said Carabine.
"And if I am cheated, if she is going to be married, if she is at this
moment in Steinbock's arms, she deserves a thousand deaths! I will
kill her as I would smash a fly--"
"And how about the gendarmes, my son?" said Madame Nourrisson, with a
smile that made your flesh creep.
"And the police agents, and the judges, and the assizes, and all the
set-out?" added Carabine.
"You are bragging, my dear fellow," said the old woman, who wanted to
know all the Brazilian's schemes of vengeance.
"I will kill her," he calmly repeated. "You called me a savage.--Do
you imagine that I am fool enough to go, like a Frenchman, and buy
poison at the chemist's shop?--During the time while we were driving
her, I thought out my means of revenge, if you should prove to be
right as concerns Valerie. One of my negroes has the most deadly of
animal poisons, and incurable anywhere but in Brazil. I will
administer it to Cydalise, who will give it to me; then by the time
when death is a certainty to Crevel and his wife, I shall be beyond
the Azores with your cousin, who will be cured, and I will marry her.
We have our own little tricks, we savages!--Cydalise," said he,
looking at the country girl, "is the animal I need.--How much does she
owe?"
"A hundred thousand francs," said Cydalise.
"She says little--but to the purpose," said Carabine, in a low tone to
Madame Nourrisson.
"I am going mad!" cried the Brazilian, in a husky voice, dropping on
to a sofa. "I shall die of this! But I must see, for it is impossible!
--A lithographed note! What is to assure me that it is not a forgery?
--Baron Hulot was in love with Valerie?" said he, recalling Josepha's
harangue. "Nay; the proof that he did not love is that she is still
alive--I will not leave her living for anybody else, if she is not
wholly mine."
Montes was terrible to behold. He bellowed, he stormed; he broke
everything he touched; rosewood was as brittle as glass.
"How he destroys things!" said Carabine, looking at the old woman. "My
good boy," said she, giving the Brazilian a little slap, "Roland the
Furious is very fine in a poem; but in a drawing-room he is prosaic
and expensive."
"My son," said old Nourrisson, rising to stand in front of the
crestfallen Baron, "I am of your way of thinking. When you love in
that way, and are joined 'till death does you part,' life must answer
for love. The one who first goes, carries everything away; it is a
general wreck. You command my esteem, my admiration, my consent,
especially for your inoculation, which will make me a Friend of the
Negro.--But you love her! You will hark back?"
"I?--If she is so infamous, I--"
"Well, come now, you are talking too much, it strikes me. A man who
means to be avenged, and who says he has the ways and means of a
savage, doesn't do that.--If you want to see your 'object' in her
paradise, you must take Cydalise and walk straight in with her on your
arm, as if the servant had made a mistake. But no scandal! If you mean
to be revenged, you must eat the leek, seem to be in despair, and
allow her to bully you.--Do you see?" said Madame Nourrisson, finding
the Brazilian quite amazed by so subtle a scheme.
"All right, old ostrich," he replied. "Come along: I understand."
"Good-bye, little one!" said the old woman to Carabine.
She signed to Cydalise to go on with Montes, and remained a minute
with Carabine.
"Now, child, I have but one fear, and that is that he will strangle
her! I should be in a very tight place; we must do everything gently.
I believe you have won your picture by Raphael; but they tell me it is
only a Mignard. Never mind, it is much prettier; all the Raphaels are
gone black, I am told, whereas this one is as bright as a Girodet."
"All I want is to crow over Josepha; and it is all the same to me
whether I have a Mignard or a Raphael!--That thief had on such pearls
this evening!--you would sell your soul for them."
Cydalise, Montes, and Madame Nourrisson got into a hackney coach that
was waiting at the door. Madame Nourrisson whispered to the driver the
address of a house in the same block as the Italian Opera House, which
they could have reached in five or six minutes from the Rue
Saint-Georges; but Madame Nourrisson desired the man to drive along
the Rue le Peletier, and to go very slowly, so as to be able to examine
the carriages in waiting.
"Brazilian," said the old woman, "look out for your angel's carriage
and servants."
The Baron pointed out Valerie's carriage as they passed it.
"She has told them to come for her at ten o'clock, and she is gone in
a cab to the house where she visits Count Steinbock. She has dined
there, and will come to the Opera in half an hour.--It is well
contrived!" said Madame Nourrisson. "Thus you see how she has kept you
so long in the dark."
The Brazilian made no reply. He had become the tiger, and had
recovered the imperturbable cool ferocity that had been so striking at
dinner. He was as calm as a bankrupt the day after he has stopped
payment.
At the door of the house stood a hackney coach with two horses, of the
kind known as a _Compagnie Generale_, from the Company that runs them.