The Chateau of Montplaisir

THE fine weather continued during the afternoon, and the August sun, shining out brilliantly, drove the silvery mists oceanward, turned the sea and shore into a splendour of blue and gold, and made a glory of the fields and woods about the merry little town.

All the world was out of doors, including Monsieur de Latour, Mademoiselle Cheri, and Mélanie, who were having tea in the garden of the Villa Rose—a gardenlike paradise. Mademoiselle Cheri was a comely woman, although past middle age, but in her somewhat plain face was the charm and repose of a sweet nature. Mademoiselle Cheri had remarkably good sense mixed with her sweetness, and by no means shared all of her ex-lover’s projects and ambitions. Mélanie, on the contrary, pretty, pious, and trustful, thought her uncle the wisest of men.

Monsieur de Latour, much elated at the result of his visit to the Chateau of Montplaisir and his recognition as a member of the noble house of De Latour, being unable to keep the cat in the bag, let it escape before he had finished his first cup of tea. He began by announcing with a lofty air to Mademoiselle Cheri that he had spent the morning making the acquaintance of his relative, the head of the house of De Latour, at his Chateau of Montplaisir, and described with perfect truth the rapturous greeting he had received from his new-found relative. He did not, however, mention the three hundred thousand francs which he had offered for the privilege of making Louis his nephew and of putting the De Latour crest upon every one of his personal belongings on which he could stick it. He, however, announced that he had arranged to meet Louis the next morning, in order to trace up their exact relationship. “I,” he said pompously, “being the head of the younger branch of the family.”

At this Mademoiselle Cheri sniffed, if so pleasant a creature could be said to sniff.

“How much, monsieur,” she asked sweetly, “did you pay for your place on the family tree?”

Monsieur de Latour scowled. Mademoiselle Cheri was treating him exactly as if he were still a clerk in the soap-boiling factory of Cheri and Company, and he suspected that she already considered him her own matrimonial prize and hence took liberties beforehand.

“Nothing whatever, mademoiselle,” he answered stiffly, “but I may say that it is extremely likely I may become the owner of the Chateau of Montplaisir and the head of the family.”

And then, determined to impress Mademoiselle Cheri with a sense of his own dignity, he added:

“My connection with my new relative is likely to become closer, because we were so mutually pleased with each other that we have agreed to assume legally the status of uncle and nephew—a common enough arrangement in France, which could be well imitated in other countries.”

“That must have cost you a good many francs,” said Mademoiselle Cheri coolly.

“Only three hundred thousand,” tartly responded Monsieur de Latour, determined to let Mademoiselle Cheri know that three hundred thousand francs was a mere bagatelle with him.

Even Mélanie started at this, and cried:

“O uncle!”

But Mademoiselle Cheri showed not the least surprise, merely saying:

“I thought that, in your craze for family consequence and a crest on your carriage, you would do something of the kind.”

“A great many people would if they could,” said Monsieur de Latour darkly. “Give me another cup of tea, Mélanie.”

“A great many more would not,” replied Mademoiselle Cheri; “I, for example. My father was an honest, respectable soap-boiler, well thought of by all who knew him—a good father, a good friend, a good citizen. That is enough for me. I would not pay three hundred francs to be recognised as sixty-fourth cousin by the greatest family in France.”

Here Mélanie, seeing that her uncle and her friend were fast approaching a quarrel, interposed by taking a letter out of her pocket.

“This letter,” she said hurriedly, “is, I think, an answer to our advertisement.”

Monsieur de Latour opened the letter. It bore, in the fine stationery and elegant, if somewhat illegible, handwriting, all the evidences of refinement. The advertisement, which read as follows, was pinned to it:

Monsieur de Latour, with some difficulty, made out the letter, which was as follows:

The name De Courcey made a great impression on Monsieur de Latour, to whom names and titles were important things.

“Now, I like that letter,” he said. “It’s very businesslike. It is evidently written by a mature and experienced woman. That is clearly shown in the letter—nothing superfluous, a plain statement of fact and desires an interview. Mélanie, my love, you may write in my name and suggest an appointment at this villa at five o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Of course, mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Mademoiselle Cheri, “I appreciate more than I can express your kindness to Mélanie, and as long as you will allow her to remain with you she will, I know, be very happy to do so. I shall feel most grateful to you, but I do not wish to impose upon you. If this lady is all that she appears to be, I could engage her on trial and establish her in this villa, so that I could have the benefit of your judgment upon her qualifications.”

Monsieur de Latour said this much, for after all he had a soft spot in his heart for Mademoiselle Cheri. He could not forget when he had been a clerk in her father’s factory and sweet Séline Cheri had been the star of his existence; but that was before he became the prospective uncle of the head of the house of De Latour.

“Certainly. I think the arrangement an admirable one,” replied Mademoiselle Cheri; “and, by the way, monsieur, do you know that your friend the Comtesse de Beauregard is at Dinard? I saw her going into her hotel this morning. She had her whole retinue with her. There was our poor, dear Eugène”—for Mademoiselle Cheri was in the confidence of the lovers—“her advocate and man of business, Monsieur Bertoux, two valets, and three maids.”

There was not a suspicion of jealousy in Mademoiselle Cheri’s voice as she said this, which very much annoyed Monsieur de Latour. He therefore smiled significantly.

“Oh,” he said, “I fancied Madame de Beauregard would turn up at Dinard about this time! In my last communication to her concerning her niece I mentioned that I would be at Dinard for the month of August.”

“And you think she came here to see you?” asked Mademoiselle Cheri, with a suspicious innocence.

“Oh, no, no, no, I never said that! But she is a very fascinating woman, and the man who marries her will get an ancestral seat which carries with it a title.”

“I think,” responded Mademoiselle Cheri calmly, “that you are likely to have one ancestral seat too many now.”

Meanwhile Mélanie, at the mention of Eugène, leaned her head pensively on her hand. Two tears gathered in her pretty blue eyes and dropped down upon her cheeks. She had not seen Eugène de Contiac for months, nor had she heard from him, and by his appearing at Dinard with his aunt, Mélanie knew well enough that he was leading a gay life, and a gay life modelled upon Madame de Beauregard’s pattern was terrifying to the pious and innocent Mélanie.

“I think,” said Monsieur de Latour, after finishing his second cup of tea, “that I shall call to see Madame de Beauregard this afternoon,” and then, answering the unspoken wish in Mélanie’s face, he added:

“I shall also inquire about our friend, Eugène de Contiac.”

“I wonder,” remarked Mademoiselle Cheri, “why that dreadful old scapegrace, Madame de Beauregard——”

Here Monsieur de Latour gave such a start that he almost upset the tea-table. The idea of speaking of so great a personage as Madame de Beauregard as “that dreadful old scapegrace” electrified him. But Mademoiselle Cheri coolly repeated the words.

“—dreadful old scapegrace, I say, should wish to make so correct and prudent a young man as Eugène de Contiac into a rake as wild as herself. It is more than I can understand.”

Monsieur de Latour fell back into his garden-chair. A comtesse of one of the greatest families in France being called a rake! But, he reflected, jealousy was at the bottom of all of Mademoiselle Cheri’s remarks, and the notion so tickled him that he grew quite gay under it and beamed on Mademoiselle Cheri, whom he supposed to be cherishing an ardent passion for himself. By way of punishing her, however, for her disrespectful attitude toward Madame de Beauregard, he rose and said:

“I think I may as well go and make my call now upon Madame de Beauregard. It is a very good visiting hour.”

“Do,” replied Mademoiselle Cheri, helping herself to bread and butter, “and say to Eugène de Contiac that I shall be happy if he will call to see me. There is a man who is as well born as any in France, but quite democratic, and has always paid me as many kind attentions as if I were the youngest and prettiest girl of his acquaintance and the daughter of a duke instead of a respectable soap-boiler.”

Monsieur de Latour in a huff flung out of the garden. He decided that Mademoiselle Cheri was getting old—there was no doubt about that—and when people grew old they grew cranky. He regarded himself, however, as steadily growing younger, and began to be disturbed, in the event that Madame de Beauregard should marry him, whether the fact that they were exactly the same age, sixty years, might not be against him.

Monsieur de Latour, in the August afternoon, walked along the grand promenade, gay with elegant-looking women and well-dressed men sitting at tables, chatting, drinking tea, and eating ices, the blue air vibrant with music from the band, and over all that atmosphere of pleasurable excitement which seems to belong to Dinard. It occurred to him that he might find Madame de Beauregard among the crowd of pleasure-seekers.

He did not, however, see her until a well-directed chocolate bonbon hit him in the back. He turned around, and there at a table sat Madame de Beauregard, Eugène de Contiac, and a small, sunburned military man, whom Monsieur de Latour recognised at once as General Granier, who had been a lady-killer fifty years before at the republican court of Louis Napoleon. He was beautifully dyed and made up, elaborately and very youthfully dressed, and wore an orchid in his buttonhole. It occurred to Monsieur de Latour that the old general and Madame de Beauregard matched each other as well as the Dresden figures of Daphnis, the shepherd, and Chloe, the shepherdess. But there was nothing rural about either of them, especially Madame de Beauregard. She was much nearer Chloe’s age than Monsieur de Latour; that is, if she could be said to be of any age, for the brightness of her eye, the quickness of her hand, the overflowing vitality which bubbled forth, were more like sixteen than sixty.

She was evidently in the midst of a roaring flirtation with the general, and their remarks were so free that poor Eugène de Contiac, by nature as pious and modest as a girl, sat and hung his head in embarrassment. Eugène was neat, precise, clean-shaven, and not ill-looking, but persons not so gay even as Madame de Beauregard might have seen in him a slight superfluity of goodness and correctness.

Monsieur de Latour, considering the chocolate bonbon thrown at him as an invitation, advanced, and Madame de Beauregard greeted him rapturously. Eugène de Contiac, thinking this a good moment to escape from bad company, promptly offered Monsieur de Latour his chair and was sneaking off, but was caught by Madame de Beauregard and dragged back by his coat-tails.

“Oh, you delicious old soap-boiler!” she cried to Monsieur de Latour, holding on meanwhile with one hand to Eugène de Contiac, “I am so glad to see you. Now, Eugène, sit down. Monsieur de Latour will fetch himself a chair”—which he promptly did—“and try to learn something from the conversation of two such men as General Granier and Monsieur de Latour, who, I dare say, only wants a chance to kick up his heels with the rest of us at Dinard. You see,” cried this terrible old lady, whisking herself into an attitude by which she thoroughly displayed her small and pretty feet in a pair of silk stockings more daring than those she had worn in the morning, and flouncing out her skirts so as to show a wonderful lace and chiffon petticoat, “you see, Eugène still has pious inclinations. I can’t get that out of him, but if he ever becomes permanently pious and correct he sha’n’t have a franc of my money, and he knows it. I like a man with life in him, like you, General Granier, and you, my rural friend.” And at this she actually pinched Monsieur de Latour on the arm in full sight of a thousand persons.

But to be pinched publicly by a comtesse of one of the greatest families in France was an honour that flooded Monsieur de Latour’s soul with joy. He wished to say something impudent in reply, but could think of nothing more original than to ask after Madame de Beauregard’s health.

“It is perfect, thank you,” replied the old lady. “My back is not a day over twenty-five, my head is about fifteen, and as for my le— What are you winking and blinking at me for, Eugène?” she snapped, turning around on that unfortunate young man.

Monsieur de Latour, apprehending what Madame de Beauregard meant to say, hastened to interrupt.

“And Mademoiselle de Brésac, whom I reckon it a privilege to call my ward?”

“Oh, she’s in the country!” Madame de Beauregard answered, again falling foul of the luckless Eugène. “This fellow has been doing rather better in the last few months. He has been tipsy three or four times, has been going to some of the gayest theatres in Paris, and has given up reading Bossuet’s sermons. I thought I should never cure him of that abominable practice of sermon-reading, but the last time I caught him at it I cut down his allowance five hundred francs the month, and it acted like a charm. Money is a great persuader. I brought him down here for the benefit of General Granier’s society, who has promised to teach him a few things; and, as neither one of them returned to the hotel until two o’clock this morning, I am in hopes that Eugène is reforming.”

Eugène, with a hangdog countenance, listened to all of this, apprehending that every word would be repeated to Mélanie.

“But I had a very difficult time of it,” put in General Granier. “I took him to the theatre, and I almost had to drag him behind the scenes, and when one of the young ladies of the ballet made at him, out he ran for his life, and much too fast for a man with an artificial leg, like myself, to catch him.”

Madame de Beauregard whirled around on Eugène.

“And is that the way you see life?” she cried indignantly. “Well, I always said I was the only man in the family. All of my brothers and nephews are like boarding-school misses. My husband, poor man, was entirely too good for this world.”

“Not a gay dog in the lot except yourself,” impudently remarked General Granier, and was rewarded by a kiss airily blown at him from Madame de Beauregard’s little withered hand.

Monsieur de Latour, although somewhat frightened, enjoyed this extremely. It was a great deal more lively than drinking tea in the garden with Mademoiselle Cheri and Mélanie.

“I don’t see,” he said, “why our young friend objects to dancing the quadrille of life to a lively air. Perhaps I can assist you, madame, in educating him.”

Poor Eugène shuddered.

“I shall be a million times obliged to you, my dear man,” promptly replied Madame de Beauregard, pulling up her skirt higher and showing so much of her chiffon petticoat that Monsieur de Latour was seriously alarmed. “But I know what ails Eugène. He is in love with your niece—charming girl, and I should not have the least objection to her if she would only be as gay as I am. But she won’t, and won’t let Eugène be. So I have told him frankly—for I am a very frank person, as you know—that he may have Mélanie and be pious and not get a single sou from me, or he can be a man, as I reckon men to be, and I will leave him five hundred thousand francs. No proposition could be fairer.”

“I wish I could get five hundred thousand francs on the same terms,” remarked the old general, with a couple of winks.

“Oh, I should not have the slightest trouble with you!” replied Madame de Beauregard gaily.

“Really, it seems to me,” said Monsieur de Latour, jealous of the attentions which the general was receiving, “it would be easy enough for anybody. I always liked a gay life myself, and I could tell you some of my experiences, madame”—here old De Latour assumed a mysterious air—“which I am afraid would frighten you very much.”

“Then pray go on,” cried this terrible old lady, “and tell us the worst.”

But Monsieur de Latour, whose experiences were really exceedingly mild, felt ashamed to speak of them before two such accomplished sinners as Madame de Beauregard and General Granier. They were, however, a pair of merry old grigs, but Monsieur de Latour felt, as well as saw, that Madame de Beauregard, for all her kittenishness, was really a very great lady and not without kindness of heart.

Poor Eugène sat, the image of woe, his countenance lighted up by an occasional sickly grin at the daring sallies of Madame de Beauregard, to which General Granier promptly responded in kind, and which Monsieur de Latour vainly endeavoured to surpass. He hit upon a lucky subject, however. Madame de Beauregard speaking of her possible intention to buy a villa at Dinard, Monsieur de Latour, mentioned, with a magniloquent air, his recently acquired relationship to Louis Victor de Latour, of the Chateau of Montplaisir.

“I think I know that young man,” cried Madame de Beauregard. “A delightful young scamp, as impudent as they make them. He came near kissing me at Algiers, a couple of years ago. Now, Monsieur de Latour, I think it would be a good idea for you to repair and refurnish the Chateau of Montplaisir. Oh, what a name! What pleasure we could have there!”

This plan, recommended by a woman of Madame de Beauregard’s rank and consequence, immediately appeared highly desirable to Monsieur de Latour.

“It would be quite possible,” he said, meditating, “to patch up the roof of the best wing, put in windows, and get some furniture into the place in a week or two. Money can annihilate time and distance.”

“Then do it!” cried Madame de Beauregard, pinching his ear, to the delight of the passers-by, who reckoned Madame de Beauregard as among the peep-shows of Dinard.

“And if I can make the place habitable, you will probably do me and my kinsman the honour of becoming our guest?” Monsieur de Latour said grandly. “And may I also count upon the presence of Mademoiselle de Brésac? By the way, is she in the neighbourhood of Dinard?”

“Oh, yes!” answered Madame de Beauregard, suddenly becoming interested in poor Eugène de Contiac’s hair. “She is staying at a convent at Saint Malo. Eugène, why do you wear your hair plastered down in that sanctimonious manner?”

“But I thought you said Mademoiselle de Brésac was in the country?” inquired Monsieur de Latour, anxious to establish his association with such great people as the De Brésacs and De Beauregards.

“So she is! so she is! The next thing, Eugène, you will be taken for a clergyman, and I shall be forever disgraced. I have had a great many milksops in my family, but so far I have been spared a clergyman.”

The party remained together a half-hour longer, and consumed several ices and some very expensive wine before they rose from the table, and Madame de Beauregard made a triumphal circuit of the grand promenade, with Monsieur de Latour on one side of her and General Granier on the other, while the unfortunate Eugène, with a carriage-load of wraps, parasol, fan, books, and other impedimenta, brought up the rear. For a man with an artificial leg, General Granier walked remarkably well, and Monsieur de Latour was electrified by Madame de Beauregard making minute inquiries as to how the chassepot rifle in the general’s leg worked.

“Beautifully!” cried the old gentleman with enthusiasm. “I keep a record of my target practice and can hit the bull’s-eye five times out of seven at forty paces.”

Then, seeing Monsieur de Latour was completely mystified, General Granier continued, lifting up his right leg, which, apparently, was a perfectly normal right leg with correctly fitting trousers and a well-made shoe.

“Do you see that leg?” he asked critically. “The real one is buried on the field of Gravelotte, but this one is twice as good. I had it fitted with a rifle-barrel and trigger here in my pocket.”

The general slapped his pocket, and Monsieur de Latour then noticed, as General Granier lifted up the heel of the boot, a small round hole which was evidently the end of the rifle-barrel.

“Well, every man must have his hobby, and mine is to shoot as well with my right leg as most men can do with their right hands. Come to see me some morning, monsieur, and I will give an exhibition that will make your hair stand on end.”

Monsieur de Latour’s hair already stood on end at this.

“Now,” cried Madame de Beauregard triumphantly, “are you surprised that I adore General Granier? Think of a man having the pluck and ingenuity to make a gun out of his leg!”

General Granier showed his appreciation of this compliment by pirouetting on his left leg, without any regard to the crowd of laughing sightseers, for he, like Madame de Beauregard, had been one of the monuments at Dinard for years.

“You see how delightfully gay we are,” cried Madame de Beauregard to Monsieur de Latour, when they resumed their walk. “Now, do have that old rookery of Montplaisir done up, and then we will all come and pay you a visit.”

“I shall endeavour to do so,” replied Monsieur de Latour gallantly.

The party escorted Madame de Beauregard to her hotel. Once or twice more Monsieur de Latour tried to find out something about Julie de Brésac, but as every mention of her name brought down maledictions upon the unlucky Eugène, Monsieur de Latour abandoned the subject after Madame de Beauregard had informed him that Julie had all the life, spirit, and gaiety which her cousin, Eugène de Contiac, ought to have had but hadn’t.

Monsieur de Latour took his way home meditating deeply. These two persons, Madame de Beauregard and General Granier, were of his period, though actually older than he, and yet life was full of gaiety and sparkling pleasures for them. He began to think that in the higher classes youth lasted longer than in the middle classes. He had been reckoned an old fogy even at Brionville, and Mademoiselle Cheri had a way of assuming that he was an antiquated person who had no longer any right to the fantasies or the follies of youth, and this was extremely distasteful to Monsieur de Latour, who had a taste for both fantasies and follies. He almost decided to marry Madame de Beauregard, provided, of course, that she would take him; but what man lives who does not in his secret heart believe that he can get any woman he wants, for the asking?