PROS AND CONS.
The chevalier remained alone; but this time there was, in what had just
passed between himself and the captain, sufficient matter for reflection
to render it unnecessary for him to have recourse either to the poetry
of the Abbe Chaulieu, his harpsichord, or his chalks. Indeed, until
now, he had been only half engaged in the hazardous enterprise of which
the Duchesse de Maine and the Prince de Cellamare had shown him the
happy ending, and of which the captain, in order to try his courage, had
so brutally exhibited to him the bloody catastrophe. As yet he had only
been the end of a chain, and, on breaking away from one side, he would
have been loose. Now he was become an intermediate ring, fastened at
both ends, and attached at the same time to people above and below him
in society. In a word, from this hour he no longer belonged to himself,
and he was like the Alpine traveler, who, having lost his way, stops in
the middle of an unknown road, and measures with his eye, for the first
time, the mountain which rises above him and the gulf which yawns
beneath his feet.
Luckily the chevalier had the calm, cold, and resolute courage of a man
in whom fire and determination--those two opposite forces--instead of
neutralizing, stimulated each other. He engaged in danger with all the
rapidity of a sanguine man; he weighed it with all the consideration of
a phlegmatic one. Madame de Maine was right when she said to Madame de
Launay that she might put out her lantern, and that she believed she had
at last found a man.
But this man was young, twenty-six years of age, with a heart open to
all the illusions and all the poetry of that first part of existence. As
a child he had laid down his playthings at the feet of his mother. As a
young man he had come to exhibit his handsome uniform as colonel to the
eyes of his mistress; indeed, in every enterprise of his life some loved
image had gone before him, and he threw himself into danger with the
certainty that, if he succumbed, there would be some one surviving who
would mourn his fate.
But his mother was dead, the last woman by whom he had believed himself
loved had betrayed him, and he felt alone in the world--bound solely by
interest to men to whom he would become an obstacle as soon as he ceased
to be an instrument, and who, if he broke down, far from mourning his
loss, would only see in it a cause of satisfaction. But this isolated
position, which ought to be the envy of all men in a great danger, is
almost always (such is the egotism of our nature) a cause of the most
profound discouragement. Such is the horror of nothingness in man, that
he believes he still survives in the sentiments which he has inspired,
and he in some measure consoles himself for leaving the world by
thinking of the regrets which will accompany his memory, and of the pity
which will visit his tomb. Thus, at this instant, the chevalier would
have given everything to be loved, if it was only by a dog.
He was plunged in the saddest of these reflections when, passing and
repassing before his window, he noticed that his neighbor's was open. He
stopped suddenly, and shook his head, as if to cast off the most somber
of these thoughts; leaning his elbow on the table, and his head on his
hand, he tried to give a different direction to his thoughts by looking
at exterior objects.
The young girl whom he had seen in the morning was seated near her
window, in order to benefit by the last rays of daylight; she was
working at some kind of embroidery. Behind her the harpsichord was open,
and, on a stool at her feet, her greyhound slept the light sleep of an
animal destined by nature to be the guard of man, waking at every noise
which arose from the street, raising its ears, and stretching out its
elegant head over the window-sill; then it lay down again, placing one
of its little paws upon its mistress's knees. All this was deliciously
lighted up by the rays of the sinking sun, which penetrated into the
room, sparkling on the steel ornaments of the harpsichord and the gold
beading of the picture-frames. The rest was in twilight.
Then it seemed to the chevalier (doubtless on account of the disposition
of mind he was in when this picture had struck his eye) that this young
girl, with the calm and sweet face, entered into his life, like one of
those personages who always remain behind a veil, and make their
entrance on a piece in the second or third act to take part in the
action, and, sometimes, to change the denouement.
Since the age when one sees angels in one's dreams, he had seen no one
like her. She was a mixture of beauty, candor, and simplicity, such as
Greuze has copied, not from nature, but from the reflections in the
mirror of his imagination. Then, forgetting everything, the humble
condition in which without doubt she had been born, the street where he
had found her, the modest room which she had inhabited, seeing nothing
in the woman except the woman herself, he attributed to her a heart
corresponding with her face, and thought what would be the happiness of
the man who should first cause that heart to beat; who should be looked
upon with love by those beautiful eyes, and who, in the words, "I love
you!" should gather from those lips, so fresh and so pure, that flower
of the soul--a first kiss.
Such are the different aspects which the same objects borrow from the
situation of him who looks at them. A week before, in the midst of his
gayety, in his life which no danger menaced, between a breakfast at the
tavern and a stag-hunt, between a wager at tennis and a supper at La
Fillon's, if D'Harmental had met this young girl, he would doubtless
have seen in her nothing but a charming grisette, whom he would have had
followed by his valet-de-chambre, and to whom, the next day, he would
have outrageously offered a present of some twenty-five louis.
But the D'Harmental of a week ago existed no more. In the place of the
handsome seigneur--elegant, wild, dissipated, and certain of life--was
an insulated young man, walking in the shade, alone, and self-reliant,
without a star to guide him, who might suddenly feel the earth open
under his feet, and the heavens burst above his head. He had need of a
support, so feeble was he; he had need of love, he had need of poetry.
It was not then wonderful that, searching for a Madonna to whom to
address his prayers, he raised in his imagination this young and
beautiful girl from the material and prosaic sphere in which he found
her, and that, drawing her into his own, he placed her, not such as she
was, doubtless, but such as he wished her to be, on the empty pedestal
of his past adorations.
All at once the young girl raised her head, and happened to look in his
direction, and saw the pensive figure of the chevalier through the
glass. It appeared evident to her that the young man remained there for
her, and that it was at her he was looking. Then a bright blush spread
over her face. Still she pretended she had seen nothing, and bent her
head once more over her embroidery. But a minute afterward she rose,
took a few turns round her room; then, without affectation, without
false prudery, but nevertheless with a certain embarrassment, she
returned and shut the window. D'Harmental remained where he was, and as
he was; continuing, in spite of the shutting of the window, to advance
into the imaginary country where his thoughts were straying.
Once or twice he thought that he saw the curtain of his neighbor's
window raised, as if she wished to know whether he whose indiscretion
had driven her from her place was still at his. At last a few masterly
chords were heard; a sweet harmony followed; and it was then D'Harmental
who opened his window in his turn.
He had not been mistaken, his neighbor was an admirable musician; she
executed two or three little pieces, but without blending her voice with
the sound of the instrument; and D'Harmental found almost as much
pleasure in listening to her as he had found in looking at her. Suddenly
she stopped in the midst of a passage. D'Harmental supposed either that
she had seen him at his window, and wished to punish him for his
curiosity, or that some one had come in and interrupted her. He retired
into his room, but so as not to lose sight of the window, and soon
discovered that his last supposition was the true one.
A man came to the window, raised the curtain, and pressed his fat,
good-natured face against the glass, while with one hand he beat a march
against the panes. The chevalier recognized, in spite of a sensible
difference which there was in his toilet, the man of the water-jet whom
he had seen on the terrace in the morning, and who, with a perfect air
of familiarity, had twice pronounced the name of "Bathilde."
This apparition, more than prosaic, produced the effect which might
naturally have been expected; that is to say, it brought D'Harmental
back from imaginary to real life. He had forgotten this man, who made
such a strange and perfect contrast with the young girl, and who must
doubtless be either her father, her lover, or her husband. But in either
of these cases, what could there be in common between the daughter, the
wife, or the mistress of such a man, and the noble and aristocratic
chevalier? The wife! It is a misfortune of her dependent situation that
she rises and falls according to the grandeur or vulgarity of him on
whose arm she leans; and it must be confessed that the gardener was not
formed to maintain poor Bathilde at the height to which the chevalier
had raised her in his dreams.
Then he began to laugh at his own folly; and the night having arrived,
and as he had not been outside the door since the day before, he
determined to take a walk through the town, in order to assure himself
of the truth of the Prince de Cellamare's reports. He wrapped himself in
his cloak, descended the four stories, and bent his steps toward the
Luxembourg, where the note which the Abbe Brigaud had brought him in the
morning said that the regent was going to supper without guards.
Arrived opposite the palace of the Luxembourg, the chevalier saw none of
those signs which should announce that the Duc d'Orleans was at his
daughter's house: there was only one sentinel at the door, while from
the moment that the regent entered a second was generally placed there.
Besides, he saw no carriage waiting in the court, no footmen or
outriders; it was evident, then, that he had not come. The chevalier
waited to see him pass, for, as the regent never breakfasted, and took
nothing but a cup of chocolate at two o'clock in the afternoon, he
rarely supped later than six o'clock; but a quarter to six had struck at
the St. Surplice at the moment when the chevalier turned the corner of
the Rue de Conde, and the Rue de Vaugirard.
The chevalier waited an hour and a half in the Rue de Tournon, going
from the Rue du Petit-Lion to the palace, without seeing what he had
come to look for. At a quarter to eight he saw some movement in the
Luxembourg. A carriage, with outriders armed with torches, came to the
foot of the steps. A minute after three women got in; he heard the
coachman call to the outriders, "To the Palais Royal;" and the outriders
set off at a gallop, the carriage followed, the sentinel presented arms;
and, quickly as the elegant equipage with the royal arms of France
passed, the chevalier recognized the Duchesse de Berry, Madame de
Mouchy, her lady of honor, and Madame de Pons, her tire-woman.
There had been an important error in the report sent to the chevalier;
it was the daughter who went to the father, not the father who came to
the daughter.
Nevertheless, the chevalier still waited, for some accident might have
happened to the regent, which detained him at home. An hour after he saw
the carriage repass. The Duchesse de Berry was laughing at a story which
Broglie was telling her. There had not then been any serious accident;
it was the police of the Prince de Cellamare, then, that were at fault.
The chevalier returned home about ten o'clock without having been met or
recognized. He had some trouble to get the door opened, for, according
to the patriarchal habits of Madame Denis's house, the porter had gone
to bed, and came out grumbling to unfasten the bolts. D'Harmental
slipped a crown into his hand, saying to him, once for all, that he
should sometimes return late, but that each time that he did so he would
give him the same; upon which the porter thanked him, and assured him
that he was perfectly welcome to come home at any time he liked, or even
not to return at all.
On returning to his room, D'Harmental saw that his neighbor's was
lighted up; he placed his candle behind a piece of furniture, and
approached the window, so that, as much as the muslin curtains allowed,
he could see into her room, while she could not see into his.
She was seated near a table, drawing, probably, on a card which she held
on her knees, for he saw her profile standing out black against the
light behind her. Shortly another shadow, which the chevalier recognized
as that of the good man of the terrace, passed twice between the light
and the window. At last the shade approached the young girl, she offered
her forehead, the shadow imprinted a kiss on it, and went away, with his
candle in his hand. Directly afterward the windows of the fifth story
were lighted up. All these little circumstances spoke a language which
it was impossible not to understand. The man of the terrace was not the
husband of Bathilde, he must be her father.
D'Harmental, without knowing why, felt overjoyed at this discovery; he
opened his window as softly as he could, and leaned on the bar, which
served him as a support, with his eyes fixed on the shadow. He fell into
the same reverie out of which he had been startled that morning by the
grotesque apparition of his neighbor. In about an hour the girl rose,
put down her card and crayons on the table, advanced toward the alcove,
knelt on a chair before the second window, and offered up her prayers.
D'Harmental understood that her laborious watch was finished, but
remembering the curiosity of his beautiful neighbor, when he had begun
to play the first time, he wished to see if he could prolong that watch,
and he sat down to his spinet. What he had foreseen happened; at the
first notes which reached her, the young girl, not knowing that from the
position of the light he could see her shadow through the curtains,
approached the window on tiptoe, and thinking herself hidden, she
listened to the melodious instrument, which, like the nightingale, awoke
to sing in the middle of the night.
The concert would have probably continued thus for some hours, for
D'Harmental, encouraged by the result produced, felt an energy and an
ease of execution such as he had never known before. Unluckily, the
occupier of the third floor was undoubtedly some clown, no lover of
music, for D'Harmental heard suddenly, just below his feet, the noise of
a stick knocking on the ceiling with such violence that he could not
doubt that it was a warning to him to put off his melodious occupation
till a more suitable period. Under other circumstances, D'Harmental
would have sent the impertinent adviser to the devil, but reflecting
that any ill-feeling on the lodger's part would injure his own
reputation with Madame Denis, and that he was playing too heavy a game
to risk being recognized, and not to submit philosophically to all the
inconveniences of the new position which he had adopted, instead of
setting himself in opposition to the rules established without doubt
between Madame Denis and her lodgers, he obeyed the intimation,
forgetting in what manner that intimation had been given him.
On her part, as soon as she heard nothing more, the young girl left the
window, and as she let the inner curtains fall behind her, she
disappeared from D'Harmental's eyes. For some time longer he could still
see a light in her room; then the light was extinguished. As to the
window on the fifth floor, for some time that had been in the most
perfect darkness. D'Harmental also went to bed, joyous to think that
there existed a point of sympathy between himself and his neighbor.
The next day the Abbe Brigaud entered the room with his accustomed
punctuality. The chevalier had already been up more than an hour; he had
gone twenty times to his window, but without seeing his neighbor,
although it was evident that she was up, even before himself; indeed, on
waking he had seen the large curtains put up in their bands. Thus he was
disposed to let out his ill-humor on any one.
"Ah! pardieu! my dear abbe," said he, as soon as the door was shut;
"congratulate the prince for me on his police; it is perfectly
arranged, on my honor!"
"What have you got against them?" asked the abbe, with the half-smile
which was habitual to him.
"What have I! I have, that, wishing to judge for myself, last evening,
of its truth, I went and hid myself in the Rue Tournon. I remained there
four hours, and it was not the regent who came to his daughter, but
Madame de Berry who went to her father."
"Well, we know that."
"Ah! you know that!" said D'Harmental.
"Yes, and by this token, that she left the Luxembourg at five minutes to
eight, with Madame de Mouchy and Madame de Pons, and that she returned
at half-past nine, bringing Broglie with her, who came to take the
regent's place at table."
"And where was the regent?"
"The regent?"
"Yes."
"That is another story; you shall learn. Listen, and do not lose a word;
then we shall see if you will say that the prince's police is badly
arranged."
"I attend."
"Our report announced that at three o'clock the duke-regent would go to
play tennis in the Rue de Seine."
"Yes."
"He went. In about half an hour he left holding his handkerchief over
his eyes. He had hit himself on the brow with the racket, and with such
violence that he had torn the skin of his forehead."
"Ah, this then was the accident!"
"Listen. Then the regent, instead of returning to the Palais Royal, was
driven to the house of Madame de Sabran. You know where Madame de Sabran
lives?"
"She lived in the Rue de Tournon, but since her husband has become
maitre d'hotel to the regent, she lives in the Rue des Bons Enfants,
near the Palais Royal."
"Exactly; but it seems that Madame de Sabran, who until now was faithful
to Richelieu, was touched by the pitiable state in which she saw the
prince, and wished to justify the proverb, 'Unlucky at play, lucky at
love.' The prince, by a little note, dated half-past seven, from the
drawing-room of Madame de Sabran, with whom he supped, announced to
Broglie that he should not go to the Luxembourg, and charged him to go
in his stead, and make his excuses to the Duchesse de Berry."
"Ah, this then was the story which Broglie was telling, and at which the
ladies were laughing."
"It is probable; now do you understand?"
"Yes; I understand that the regent is not possessed of ubiquity, and
could not be at the house of Madame de Sabran and at his daughter's at
the same time."
"And you only understand that?"
"My dear abbe, you speak like an oracle; explain yourself."
"This evening, at eight o'clock, I will come for you; we will go to the
Rue des Bons Enfants together. To me the locality is eloquent."
"Ah! ah!" said D'Harmental, "I see; so near the Palais Royal, he will go
on foot. The hotel which Madame de Sabran inhabits has an entrance from
the Rue des Bons Enfants; after a certain hour they shut the passage
from the Palais Royal, which opens on the Rue des Bons Enfants: and he
will be obliged, on his return, to follow either the Cour des Fontaines,
or the Rue Neuve des Bons Enfants, and then we shall have him. Mordieu!
you are a great man, and if Monsieur de Maine does not make you
cardinal, or at least archbishop, there will be no justice done."
"I think, therefore, that now you must hold yourself in readiness."
"I am ready."
"Have you the means of execution prepared?"----"I have."
"Then you can correspond with your men?"
"By a sign."
"And that sign cannot betray you?"
"Impossible."
"Then all goes well, and we may have breakfast; for I was in such haste
to tell you the good news that I came out fasting."
"Breakfast, my dear abbe! you speak coolly; I have nothing to offer you,
except the remains of the pate and two or three bottles of wine, which,
I believe, survived the battle."
"Hum! hum," murmured the abbe; "we will do better than that, my dear
chevalier."
"I am at your orders."
"Let us go down and breakfast with our good hostess, Madame Denis."
"And why do you want me to breakfast with her? Do I know her?"
"That concerns me. I shall present you as my pupil."
"But we shall get a detestable breakfast."
"Comfort yourself. I know her table."
"But this breakfast will be tiresome."
"But you will make a friend of a woman much known in the neighborhood
for her good conduct, for her devotion to the government--a woman
incapable of harboring a conspirator. Do you understand that?"
"If it be for the good of the cause, abbe, I sacrifice myself."
"Moreover, it is a very agreeable house, where there are two young
people who play--one on the spinet, and the other on the guitar--and a
young man who is an attorney's clerk; a house where you may go down on
Sunday evenings to play lots."
"Go to the devil with your Madame Denis. Ah! pardon, abbe, perhaps you
are her friend. In that case, imagine that I have said nothing."
"I am her confessor," replied the Abbe Brigaud, with a modest air.
"Then a thousand excuses, my dear abbe; but you are right indeed. Madame
Denis is still a beautiful woman, perfectly well preserved, with superb
hands and very pretty feet. Peste! I remember that. Go down first; I
will follow."
"Why not together?"
"But my toilet, abbe. Would you have me appear before the Demoiselles
Denis with my hair in its present state? One must try to look one's
best--que diable! Besides, it is better that you should announce me: I
have not a confessor's privilege."
"You are right. I will go down and announce you, and in ten minutes you
will arrive--will you not?"
"In ten minutes."
"Adieu!"----"Au revoir!"
The chevalier had only told half the truth. He might have remained
partly to dress, but also in the hope of seeing his beautiful neighbor,
of whom he had dreamed all the night, but in vain. He remained hidden
behind the curtains of his window: those of the young girl with the fair
hair and the beautiful black eyes remained closed. It is true that, in
exchange, he could perceive his neighbor, who, opening his door, passed
out, with the same precaution as the day before, first his hand, then
his head; but this time his boldness went no further, for there was a
slight fog, and fog is essentially contrary to the organization of the
Parisian bourgeois. Our friend coughed twice, and then, drawing in his
head and his arm, re-entered his room like a tortoise into his shell.
D'Harmental saw with pleasure that he might dispense with buying a
barometer, and that this neighbor would render him the same service as
the butterflies which come out in the sunshine, and remain obstinately
shut up in their hermitages on the days when it rains.
The apparition had its ordinary effect, and reacted on poor Bathilde.
Every time that D'Harmental perceived the young girl, there was in her
such a sweet attraction that he saw nothing but the woman--young,
beautiful, and graceful, a musician and painter--that is to say, the
most delicious and complete creature he had ever met. But when, in his
turn, the man of the terrace presented himself to the chevalier's gaze,
with his common face, his insignificant figure--that indelible type of
vulgarity which attaches to certain individuals--directly a sort of
miraculous transition took place in the chevalier's mind. All the poetry
disappeared, as a machinist's whistle causes the disappearance of a
fairy palace. Everything was seen by a different light. D'Harmental's
native aristocracy regained the ascendency. Bathilde was then nothing
but the daughter of this man--that is to say, a grisette: her beauty,
her grace, her elegance, even her talents, were but an accident--an
error of nature--something like a rose flowering on a cabbage-stalk. The
chevalier shrugged his shoulders as he stood before the glass, began to
laugh, and to wonder at the impression which he had received. He
attributed it to the preoccupation of his mind, to the strange and
solitary situation, to everything, in fact, except its true cause--the
sovereign and irresistible power of distinction and beauty. D'Harmental
went down to his hostess disposed to find the Demoiselles Denis
charming.