Orfevres.
That done, he rang the bell and gave orders to put up his carriage, which he had ordered before Maxime’s arrival; after which he went out alone on foot, and threw his singular missive into the first street letter-box that he passed. He had taken care, before he left the house, to see if it were properly sealed.
II. A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ELEVEN O’CLOCK AND MIDNIGHT
As a result of the elections which had just taken place, the ministry, contrary to expectation, maintained a majority in the Chamber,—a doubtful and provisional majority which would give it an uncertain and struggling existence. But, at any rate, it had obtained that merely numerical success which parties seek at any price to prolong their power. The Te Deum was sung in all its camps,—a paean which serves as well to celebrate victorious defeats as honest victories.
On the evening of the day when Colonel Franchessini received the visit from Maxime de Trailles, the general result of the elections was made known. The ministers of the left bank, whose wives received on that day, found their salons crowded, particularly the Comte de Rastignac, the minister of Public Works.
Madame de l’Estorade, too much absorbed in her children to be very exact in the fulfilment of her social duties, had owed a visit to Madame de Rastignac ever since the evening when the minister’s wife had interrupted her conversation with the sculptor apropos of the famous statue. Monsieur de l’Estorade, zealous conservative as we know already, had insisted that politics and politeness now combined to oblige them both to pay this social debt. Arriving early, in order to be rid the sooner of such a bore, Madame de l’Estorade found herself seated at the upper end of a circle of women, while the men stood about them conversing. Her chair was side by side with that of Madame de Rastignac.
In hoping to make her visit short, Madame de l’Estorade had not counted on the allurements of conversation which, under the circumstances of this so-called political victory, laid hold of her husband. A man of more influence by his judgment than by his oratory in the Chamber of Peers, Monsieur de l’Estorade, as he circulated through the salons, was stopped at every turn by the various notabilities of politics, finance, and diplomacy, and requested to give his opinion on the future of the session now about to begin. To all such questions he replied with more or less extended observations, and sometimes he had the pleasure of finding himself the centre of a group respectfully receptive of his opinions. This success rendered him very inattentive to the telegraphy of his wife, who, watching his various evolutions, made him signs whenever she could catch his eye that she wished to go away.
The years that had elapsed since Monsieur de l’Estorade had obtained the hand of the beautiful Renee de Maucombe, while they had scarcely dimmed the splendor of her beauty, had considerably aged her husband. The twenty years’ difference in their ages—he being now fifty-two, she thirty-two—was growing all the more apparent because even at the time of the marriage he was turning gray and his health was failing. An affection of the liver, latent for several years, was now developing, and at the same time the wilful disposition which is noticeable in statesmen and men of ambition made his mouth less sensitive to the conjugal bit. Monsieur de l’Estorade talked so long and so well that after a time the salons thinned, leaving a group of the intimates of the house around his wife and their hostess. At this moment the minister himself slipped an arm through his, and, leading him up to the group surrounding their two wives, Rastignac said to Madame de l’Estorade,—
“I bring you back your husband; I have just found him in criminal conversation with a member of the Zollverin, who would probably have clung to him all night if it had not been for me.”
“I was myself on the point of asking Madame de Rastignac for a bed, that I might release her from the burden of my company, which Monsieur de l’Estorade’s interminable conversations have put upon her.”
Madame de Rastignac protested that, on the contrary, she desired to enjoy as long as possible Madame de l’Estorade’s company, only regretting that she had been so often obliged to interrupt their conversation to receive those strange objects, the newly fledged deputies, who had come in relays to make their bow to her.
“Oh! my dear,” cried Rastignac, “here’s the session about to open, and we really must not take these disdainful airs toward the elect of the nation. Besides which, you will get into difficulties with madame, who, I am told, is the protectress of one of these sovereigns of late date.”
“I?” said Madame de l’Estorade, rather surprised, and blushing a little. She had one of those complexions, still fresh and dazzling, which are predisposed to these flushes of color.
“Ah! true,” said Madame de Rastignac; “I had forgotten that artist who cut out the pretty figures for your children the last time I had the pleasure of paying you a visit. I own I was far from thinking then that he would be one of our masters.”
“And yet, ever since then,” replied Madame de l’Estorade, “his election has been talked about; though it must be owned that until now no one thought seriously of it.”
“I did,” said Monsieur de l’Estorade, rather eagerly, seizing the occasion to put another star to his reputation for prophecy; “from the first political conversation that I had with him I said—and Monsieur de Ronquerolles is here to bear me out—that I was surprised at the ability and the breadth of aim he manifested.”
“Certainly,” said the personage thus interpellated, “he is not an ordinary fellow; but I do not believe in his future. He is a man who goes by the first impulsion, and, as Monsieur de Talleyrand has wisely remarked, the first impulse is the good impulse.”
“Well, monsieur?” inquired Madame de l’Estorade, ingenuously.
“Well, madame,” replied Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who was vain of his scepticism, “heroism is not of our day; it is heavy baggage, horribly embarrassing, which gets us into mud-holes continually.”
“Nevertheless, I believe that great qualities of heart and mind have some share in the composition of a distinguished man.”
“Qualities of mind? Yes, you are right there, provided always they work in a certain direction. But as for qualities of the heart in political life, what good are they?—to hoist you on stilts with which you can’t walk as well as you can on the ground, and from which you are liable to fall and break your neck at the first push.”
“At that rate,” said Madame de Rastignac, laughing, while Madame de l’Estorade was silent, disdaining to reply, “the political world must be peopled by none but scoundrels.”
“That is so, madame,—ask Lazarille”; and as he made this allusion to a famous stage joke, he laid his hand on the minister’s shoulder.
“My dear fellow,” said Rastignac, “I think your generalities are a little too particular.”
“No, no; but come,” returned Monsieur de Ronquerolles, “let us talk seriously. To my knowledge, this Monsieur de Sallenauve—that is the name I think he has taken in exchange for Dorlange, which he himself called theatrical—has done, within a short time, two fine actions. I, being present and assisting, saw him stand up to be killed by the Duc de Rhetore, on account of certain ill-sounding words said about a friend. Those words, in the first place, he could not help hearing; and having heard them it was, I will not say his duty, but his right to resent them.”
“Ah!” said Madame de Rastignac, “then it was he who fought that duel people said so much about?”
“Yes, madame, and I ought to say—for I understand such matters—that at the meeting he behaved with consummate bravery.”
To avoid the recital of the second fine action, Madame de l’Estorade, at the risk of impolitely cutting short a topic thus begun, rose, and made an almost imperceptible sign to her husband that she wished to go. But Monsieur de l’Estorade took advantage of its faintness to stay where he was.
Monsieur de Ronquerolles continued:—
“His other fine action was to throw himself in front of some runaway horses to save madame’s daughter from imminent death.”
All eyes turned on Madame de l’Estorade, who, this time, blushed deeply; but recovering speech, if only in order to seem composed, she said with feeling,—
“According to your theory of heroism you must think Monsieur de Sallenauve very foolish to have thus risked his life and his future; but I assure you that there is one woman who will never agree with you, and that is—the mother of my child.”
As she said the words, tears were in Madame de l’Estorade’s voice; she pressed Madame de Rastignac’s hand affectionately, and made so decided a movement to leave the room that she finally put in motion her immovable husband.
“Thank you,” said Madame de Rastignac, as she accompanied her to the door, “for having broken a lance with that cynic; Monsieur de Rastignac’s past life has left him with odious acquaintances.”
As she resumed her place, Monsieur de Ronquerolles was saying,—
“Ha! saved her child’s life indeed! The fact is that poor l’Estorade is turning as yellow as a lemon.”
“Ah, monsieur, but that is shocking,” cried Madame de Rastignac. “A woman whom no breath of slander has ever touched; who lives only for her husband and children; whose eyes were full of tears at the mere thought of the danger the child had run!—”
“Heavens! madame,” retorted Monsieur de Ronquerolles, paying no heed to the rebuke, “all I can say is that newfoundlands are always dangerous. If Madame de l’Estorade becomes too much compromised, she has one resource,—she can marry him to the girl he saved.”
Monsieur de Ronquerolles had no sooner said the words than he perceived the horrible blunder he had committed in making such a speech before Mademoiselle de Nucingen. He colored high,—a most unusual sign in him,—and the solemn silence which seemed to wrap all present completed his discomfiture.
“This clock must be slow,” said the minister, catching at any words that would make a sound and break up an evening that was ending unfortunately.
“True,” said de Ronquerolles, looking at his watch; “it is a quarter to twelve.”
He bowed to Madame de Rastignac ceremoniously, and went away, followed by the rest of the company.
“You saw his embarrassment,” said Rastignac to his wife; “he had no malicious intention in what he said.”
“It is of no consequence. I was saying just now to Madame de l’Estorade’s that your past life had given you a number of detestable acquaintances.”
“But, my dear, the King himself is compelled to smile graciously on men he would fain put in the Bastille,—if we still had a Bastille and the Charter permitted him.”
Madame de Rastignac made no reply, and without bidding her husband good-night, she went up to her room. A few moments later the minister went to the private door which led into it, and not finding the key in the lock, he said, “Augusta!” in the tone of voice a simple bourgeois might have used in such a case.
For all answer, he heard a bolt run hastily on the other side of the door.
“Ah!” he thought to himself with a gesture of vexation, “there are some pasts very different from that door,—they are always wide open to the present.”
Then, after a moment’s silence, he added, to cover his retreat, “Augusta, I wanted to ask you what hour Madame de l’Estorade receives. I ought to call upon her to-morrow, after what happened here to-night.”
“At four o’clock,” said the young wife through the door,—“on her return from the Tuileries, where she takes the children to walk every day.”
One of the questions that were frequently put by Parisian society after the marriage of Madame de Rastignac was: “Does she love her husband?”
The doubt was permissible. The marriage of Mademoiselle de Nucingen was the unpleasant and scarcely moral product of one of those immoral unions which find their issue in the life of a daughter, after years and satiety have brought them to a condition of dry-rot and paralysis. In such marriages of convenience the husband is satisfied, for he escapes a happiness which has turned rancid to him, and he profits by a speculation like that of the magician in the “Arabian Nights” who exchanges old lamps for new. But the wife, on the contrary, must ever feel a living memory between herself and her husband; a memory which may revive, and while wholly outside of the empire of the senses, has the force of an old authority antagonistic to her young influence. In such a position the wife is a victim.
During the short time we have taken to give this brief analysis of a situation too frequently existing, Rastignac lingered at the door.
“Well,” he said at last, deciding to retire, “good-night, Augusta.”
As he said the words, rather piteously, the door opened suddenly, and his wife, throwing herself into his arms, laid her head upon his shoulder sobbing.
The question was answered: Madame de Rastignac loved her husband; but for all that, the distant muttering of a subterranean fire might be heard beneath the flowers of their garden.
III. A MINISTER’S MORNING
The next day, when Rastignac entered his office, the adjoining waiting-room was already occupied by eleven persons waiting with letters of introduction to solicit favors, also two peers of France and several deputies.
Presently a bell rang. The usher, with an eagerness which communicated itself to all present, entered the sanctum; an instant later he came out, bearing this stereotyped message:—
“The minister is obliged to attend a Council. He will, however, have the honor to receive the gentlemen of the two Chambers. As for the others, they can call again at another time.”
“What other time?” asked one of the postponed; “this is the third time in three days that I have come here uselessly.”
The usher made a gesture which meant, “It is not my affair; I follow my orders.” But hearing certain murmurs as to the privilege granted to honorable members, he said, with a certain solemnity,—
“The honorable gentlemen came to discuss affairs of public interest with his Excellency.”
The office-seekers, being compelled to accept this fib, departed. After which the bell rang again. The usher then assumed his most gracious expression of face. By natural affinity, the lucky ones had gathered in a group at one end of the room. Though they had never seen one another before, most of them being the offspring of the late national lying-in, they seemed to recognize a certain representative air which is very difficult to define, though it can never be mistaken. The usher, not venturing to choose among so many eminent personages, turned a mute, caressing glance on all, as if to say,—
“Whom shall I have the honor of first announcing?”
“Gentlemen,” said Colonel Franchessini, “I believe I have seen you all arrive.”
And he walked to the closed door, which the usher threw open, announcing in a loud, clear voice,—
“Monsieur le Colonel Franchessini!”
“Ha! so you are the first this morning,” said the minister, making a few steps towards the colonel, and giving him his hand. “What have you come for, my dear fellow?—a railroad, a canal, a suspension bridge?”
“I have come, my good-natured minister, on private business in which you are more interested than I.”
“That is not a judicious way of urging it, for I warn you I pay little or no attention to my own business.”
“I had a visit from Maxime this morning, on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube,” said the colonel, coming to the point. “He gave me all the particulars of that election. He thinks a spoke might be put in the wheel of it. Now, if you have time to let me make a few explanations—”
The minister, who was sitting before his desk with his back to the fireplace, turned round to look at the clock.
“Look here, my dear fellow,” he said, “I’m afraid you will be long, and I have a hungry pack outside there waiting for me. I shouldn’t listen to you comfortably. Do me the favor to go and take a walk and come back at twelve o’clock to breakfast. I’ll present you to Madame de Rastignac, whom you don’t know, I think, and after breakfast we will take a few turns in the garden; then I can listen to you in peace.”
“Very good, I accept that arrangement,” said the colonel, rising.
As he crossed the waiting-room, he said,—
“Messieurs, I have not delayed you long, I hope.”
Then, after distributing a few grasps of the hand, he departed.
Three hours later, when the colonel entered the salon where he was presented to Madame de Rastignac, he found there the Baron de Nucingen, who came nearly every day to breakfast with his son-in-law before the Bourse hour, Emile Blondet of the “Debats,” Messieurs Moreau (de l’Oise), Dionis, and Camusot, three deputies madly loquacious, and two newly elected deputies whose names it is doubtful if Rastignac knew himself. Franchessini also recognized Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the minister’s brother-in-law, and the inevitable des Lupeaulx, peer of France. As for another figure, who stood talking with the minister for some time in the recess of a window, the colonel learned, after inquiring of Emile Blondet, that it was that of a former functionary of the upper police, who continued, as an amateur, to do part of his former business, going daily to each minister under all administrations with as much zeal and regularity as if he were still charged with his official duties.
Madame de Rastignac seen at close quarters seemed to the colonel a handsome blonde, not at all languishing. She was strikingly like her mother, but with that shade of greater distinction which in the descendants of parvenus increases from generation to generation as they advance from their source. The last drop of the primitive Goriot blood had evaporated in this charming young woman, who was particularly remarkable for the high-bred delicacy of all her extremities, the absence of which in Madame de Nucingen had shown the daughter of Pere Goriot.
As the colonel wished to retain a footing in the house he now entered for the first time, he talked about his wife.
“She lived,” he said, “in the old English fashion, in her home; but he should be most glad to bring her out of her retreat in order to present her to Madame de Rastignac if the latter would graciously consent.”
“Now,” said the minister, dropping the arm of Emile Blondet, with whom he had been conversing, “let us go into the garden,”—adding, as soon as they were alone, “We want no ears about us in this matter.”
“Maxime came to see me, as I told you,” said the colonel, “on his return from Arcis-sur-Aube, and he is full of an idea of discovering something about the pretended parentage of this sculptor by which to oust him—”
“I know,” interrupted Rastignac; “he spoke to me about that idea, and there’s neither rhyme nor reason in it. Either this Sallenauve has some value, or he is a mere cipher. If the latter, it is useless to employ such a dangerous instrument as the man Maxime proposes to neutralize a power that does not exist. If, on the other hand, this new deputy proves really an orator, we can deal with him in the tribune and in the newspapers without the help of such underground measures. General rule: in a land of unbridled publicity like ours, wherever the hand of the police appears, if even to lay bare the most shameful villany, there’s always a hue and cry against the government. Public opinion behaves like the man to whom another man sang an air of Mozart to prove that Mozart was a great musician. Was he vanquished by evidence? ‘Mozart,’ he replied to the singer, ‘may have been a great musician, but you, my dear fellow, have a cold in your head.’”
“There’s a great deal of truth in what you say,” replied Franchessini; “but the man whom Maxime wants to unmask may be one of those honest mediocrities who make themselves a thorn in the side of all administrations; your most dangerous adversaries are not the giants of oratory.”
“I expect to find out the real weight of the man before long,” replied Rastignac, “from a source I have more confidence in than I have in Monsieur de Trailles. On this very occasion he has allowed himself to be tripped up, and now wants to compensate by heroic measures for his own lack of ability. As for your other man, I shall not employ him for the purpose Maxime suggests, but you may tell him from me—”
“Yes!” said Franchessini, with redoubled attention.
“—that if he meddles in politics, as he shows an inclination to do, there are certain deplorable memories in his life—”
“But they are only memories now; he has made himself a new skin.”
“I know all about him,” replied Rastignac; “do you suppose there are no other detectives in Paris? I know that since 1830, when he took Bibi-Lupin’s place as chief of the detective police, he has given his life a most respectable bourgeois character; the only fault I find is that he overdoes it.”
“And yet—” said the colonel.
“He is rich,” continued Rastignac, not heeding the interruption. “His salary is twelve thousand francs, and he has the three hundred thousand Lucien de Rubempre left him,—also the proceeds of a manufactory of varnished leather which he started at Gentilly; it pays him a large profit. His aunt, Jacqueline Collin, who lives with him, still does a shady business secretly, which of course brings in large fees, and I have the best of reasons for believing that they both gamble at the Bourse. He is so anxious to keep out of the mud that he has gone to the other extreme. Every evening he plays dominoes, like any bourgeois, in a cafe near the Prefecture, and Sundays he goes out to a little box of a place he has bought near the forest of Romainville, in the Saint-Gervais meadows; there he cultivates blue dahlias, and talked, last year, of crowning a Rosiere. All that, my dear colonel, is too bucolic to allow of my employing him on any political police-work.”
“I think myself,” said Franchessini, “that in order not to attract attention, he rolls himself too much into a ball.”
“Make him unwind, and then, if he wants to return to active life and take a hand in politics, he may find some honest way of doing so. He’ll never make a Saint Vincent de Paul,—though the saint was at the galleys once upon a time; but there are plenty of ways in which he could get a third or fourth class reputation. If Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, as he now calls himself, takes that course, and I am still in power, tell him to come and see me; I might employ him then.”
“That is something, certainly,” said Franchessini, aloud; but he thought to himself that since the days of the pension Vauquer the minister had taken long strides and that roles had changed between himself and Vautrin.
“You can tell him what I say,” continued Rastignac, going up the steps of the portico, “but be cautious how you word it.”
“Don’t be uneasy,” replied the colonel. “I will speak to him judiciously, for he’s a man who must not be pushed too far; there are some old scores in life one can’t wipe out.”
The minister, by making no reply to this remark, seemed to admit the truth of it.
“You must be in the Chamber when the king opens it; we shall want all the enthusiasm we can muster,” said Rastignac to the colonel, as they parted.
The latter, when he took leave of Madame de Rastignac, asked on what day he might have the honor of presenting his wife.
“Why, any day,” replied the countess, “but particularly on Fridays.”
IV. A CATECHISM
Rastignac called on Madame de l’Estorade the next day at the hour named to him by his wife. Like all those present at the scene produced by Monsieur de Ronquerolles, the minister had been struck by the emotion shown by the countess, and, without stopping to analyze the nature of the sentiment she might feel for the man who had saved her child, he was convinced of her serious interest in him.
By the suddenness and the masterly stroke of his election, Sallenauve had become an object of strong interest to the minister,—all the more because up to the last moment his candidacy was not seriously considered. It was now known that in the preparatory meeting he had given proofs of talent. To his active and dangerous party, which had but few representatives in the Chamber, he might become an organ that would echo far. By his peculiar position of birth and fortune, whatever might be the truth of it, he was one who could do without the favors of government; and all information obtained about him went to show that he was a man of grave character and opinions, who could not be turned from his chosen way.
On the other hand, the cloud upon his life might at a given moment serve to neutralize his honor; and Rastignac, while rejecting the proposal of de Trailles and Franchessini to put the mystery into the hands of the police, did not himself renounce a means which, dangerous as it seemed to him, he might use if occasion warranted.
In this situation Madame de l’Estorade could be useful to him in two ways. Through her he could meet the new deputy accidentally, without appearing to seek him, and thus study him at his ease, in order to know if he had a vulnerable point accessible to persuasion. And, secondly, if he found him unpersuadable, he could let Madame de l’Estorade know in confidence of the secret inquiry about to be carried on into Sallenauve’s antecedents, which, conveyed by her to the deputy, would have the effect of making him cautious and, consequently, less aggressive.
However, his immediate plan suffered some modification; for Madame de l’Estorade was not at home, and he was just leaving the house when Monsieur de l’Estorade returned on foot.
“My wife will be here soon,” he said; “she has gone to Ville d’Avray with her daughter, and Monsieur and Madame Octave de Camps. Monsieur Marie-Gaston, one of our good friends,—you know, the charming poet who married Louise de Chaulieu,—has a country-house in that neighborhood, where his wife died. He returned there to-day for the first time since his misfortune; and these ladies have had the charity to meet him there, and so lessen the first shock of his recollections.”
“I can therefore hardly hope to see her to-day; and it was to her, and not to you, my dear count, that I came to offer my excuses for the scene of last night which seemed to annoy her much. Say to her, if you please, that I will take another opportunity of doing so,—By the bye,” he added, “the election of your friend Sallenauve is making a devilish talk; the king spoke to me about it this morning, and I did not please him by repeating the favorable opinion you expressed of the new deputy last night.”
“Well, but you know the tribune is a reef on which reputations are often wrecked. I am sorry you represented Sallenauve to the king as being on intimate terms with us. I have nothing to do with elections; but I may say that I did all I could to dissuade this objectionable candidate from presenting himself.”
“Of course the king cannot blame you for merely knowing an Opposition deputy.”
“No; but last night, in your salon, you seemed to imply that my wife was much interested in him. I did not wish to contradict you before witnesses; besides, really, one can’t repudiate a man to whom we are under a great obligation. But my wife, ever since the day he was nominated, feels that our gratitude has become a burden. She was saying to me the other day that we had better let the acquaintance die out.”
“Not, I hope, until you have done me a service by means of it,” said Rastignac.
“At your orders, my dear minister, in all things.”
“I want to meet this man and judge him for myself. To send him an invitation to dinner would be useless; under the eye of his party, he would not dare accept it, or if he did, he would be on his guard, and I should not see him as he is. But if I met him accidentally, I should find him without armor, and I could feel for his vulnerable spots.”
“To invite you both to dine with me might be open to the same objection; but I could, one of these evenings, make sure of a visit from him, and let you know—Stop!” cried Monsieur de l’Estorade; “a bright idea has come to me.”
“If it is really bright,” thought Rastignac, “it is fortunate I did not meet the wife.”
“We are just about to give a children’s ball,—a fancy of my little girl, to which Madame de l’Estorade, weary of refusing, has at last consented; the child wishes it to be given in celebration of her rescue. Of course, therefore, the rescuer is a necessary and integral part of the affair. Come to the ball, and I promise you noise enough to cover all investigations of your man; and certainly premeditation will never be suspected at such a meeting.”
“You are too good,” replied Rastignac, pressing the peer’s hand affectionately. “Perhaps we had better say nothing about it to Madame de l’Estorade; a mere hint given to our man would put him on his guard, and I want to spring upon him suddenly, like a tiger on his prey.”
“That’s understood—complete surprise to everybody.”
“Adieu, then,” said Rastignac; “I shall make the king laugh to-morrow at the notion of children plotting politics.”
“Ah!” replied Monsieur de l’Estorade, philosophically, “but isn’t that how life itself is carried on?—great effects from little causes.”
Rastignac had scarcely departed before Madame de l’Estorade returned with Nais and Monsieur and Madame de Camps.
“My dear,” said her husband, “you have just missed a charming visitor.”
“Who was it?” asked the countess, indifferently.
“The minister of Public Works, who came to make you his excuses. He noticed with regret the disagreeable impression made upon you by the theories of that scamp de Ronquerolles.”
“He has taken a good deal of trouble for a very small matter,” said Madame de l’Estorade, not sharing her husband’s enthusiasm.
“But all the same,” he replied, “it was very gracious of him to think of your feelings.” Then, in order to change the conversation, he asked Madame de Camps about their visit.
“Oh!” she replied, “the place is enchanting; you have no idea of its elegance and comfort.”
“How about Gaston?” asked Monsieur de l’Estorade.
“He was, I won’t say very calm,” replied Madame de l’Estorade, “but at any rate master of himself. His condition satisfied me all the more because the day had begun by a serious annoyance to him.”
“What was it?”
“Monsieur de Sallenauve could not come with him,” replied Nais, taking upon herself to reply.
She was one of those children brought up in a hot-house, who put themselves forward much oftener than they ought to do.
“Nais,” said Madame de l’Estorade, “go to Mary and tell her to do up your hair.”
The child understood perfectly well that she was sent away for speaking improperly, and she made a face as she left the room.
“This morning,” said Madame de l’Estorade as soon as Nais had shut the door, “Monsieur Gaston and Monsieur de Sallenauve were to start together for Ville d’Avray, and meet us there, as agreed upon. But last night they had a visit from that organist who took such an active part in the election. He came to hear the Italian housekeeper sing and judge if she were ready to go upon the stage.”
“Yes, yes,” said Monsieur de l’Estorade; “of course Sallenauve wants to get rid of her now that he has ceased to make statues.”
“Just so,” replied Madame de l’Estorade, with a slight tone of asperity. “In order to put a stop to all calumny Monsieur de Sallenauve wishes her to carry out her idea of going on the stage; but he wanted, in the first place, an opinion he could trust. Monsieur Gaston and Monsieur de Sallenauve accompanied the organist to Saint-Sulpice, where, during the services of the Month of Mary, the Italian woman sings every evening. After hearing her, the organist said she had a fine contralto that was worth, at the lowest, sixty thousand francs a year.”
“Just the revenue of my iron-works,” remarked Monsieur de Camps.
“That evening,” continued Madame de l’Estorade, “Monsieur de Sallenauve told his housekeeper the opinion given of her talent, and with great kindness and delicacy let her know that she must now carry out her intention of supporting herself in that way. ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I think the time has come. We will talk of it later’; and she stopped the conversation. This morning when the breakfast hour came, there was no sign of her. Thinking she must be ill, Monsieur de Sallenauve sent an old charwoman who does the rough work of the house to her room. No answer. Much disturbed, Monsieur Gaston and Monsieur de Sallenauve went themselves to see what it meant. After knocking and calling in vain, they determined to open the door, the key of which was outside. In the room no housekeeper! but in place of her a letter addressed to Monsieur de Sallenauve, in which she said that finding herself an embarrassment to him, she had retired to the house of one of her friends, thanking him for all his goodness to her.”
“The bird has found its wings,” said Monsieur de l’Estorade, “and takes flight.”
“That is not Monsieur de Sallenauve’s idea,” replied the countess; “he does not believe in such ingratitude. He is confident that, feeling herself a burden to him and yielding to the desperation which is natural to her, she felt obliged to leave his house without giving him a chance in any manner to provide for her future.”
“A good riddance!” remarked Monsieur de l’Estorade.
“Neither Monsieur de Sallenauve nor Monsieur Gaston takes that stoical view of it. In view of the headstrong nature of the woman, they fear some violence to herself, which, as we know, she once attempted. Or else they dread some evil adviser. The charwoman states that two or three visits have been lately made at the house by a lady of middle age, richly dressed, in a carriage, whose manner was singular, and who seemed to desire secrecy in speaking with Luigia.”
“Some charitable woman, of course,” said Monsieur de l’Estorade; “the runaway is given to piety.”
“At any rate the truth must be discovered, and it was that which kept Monsieur de Sallenauve from accompanying Monsieur Gaston to Ville d’Avray.”
“Well,” remarked Monsieur de l’Estorade, “in spite of their respective virtue, it is my opinion he holds by her.”
“In any case,” returned Madame de l’Estorade, emphasizing the word, “she does not hold by him.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Madame de Camps; “to avoid a man is often the greatest proof of love.”
Madame de l’Estorade looked at her friend with a vexed air, and a slight tinge of color came into her cheeks. But no one took notice of it, for at this moment the servant threw open the door and announced dinner.
After dinner, the theatre was proposed; that is one of the amusements that Parisians miss the most in the provinces. Monsieur Octave de Camps, coming from his “villanous iron-works,” as Madame de l’Estorade called them, had arrived in Paris eager for this pleasure, which his wife, more serious and sober, did not enjoy to the same extent. Therefore, when Monsieur de Camps proposed going to the Porte-Saint-Martin to see a fairy piece then much in vogue, Madame Octave replied:—
“Neither Madame de l’Estorade nor I have the least desire to go out this evening; we are very tired with our expedition. Take Rene and Nais; they will enjoy the fairies far more than we.”
The two children awaited in deep anxiety the permission which Madame de l’Estorade finally granted; and a few moments later the two friends, left to themselves, prepared for an evening of comfortable talk.
“I am not at home to any one,” said Madame de l’Estorade to Lucas, as soon as her family had departed.
“Now that we are alone,” said Madame de Camps, “I shall proceed to blows; I have not travelled two hundred miles to wrap up in cotton-wool the truth I have come to tell you.”
“Ready to hear it,” said Madame de l’Estorade, laughing.
“Your last letter, my dear, simply frightened me.”
“Why? Because I told you I was trying to keep a man at a distance?”
“Yes. Why keep him at a distance? If Monsieur de Camps or Monsieur Gaston or Monsieur de Rastignac were to make a practice of coming here habitually, would you trouble yourself about them?”
“No; but they have not the same claim upon me: it is that I fear.”
“Tell me, do you think Monsieur de Sallenauve loves you?”
“No; I am now quite sure to the contrary; and I also think that on my side—”
“We’ll talk about that presently; now I want to ask if you desire Monsieur de Sallenauve to love you?”
“Heaven forbid!”
“Well, then, the best possible way to make him do so is to wound his self-love, and show yourself unjust and ungrateful to him; you will only force him to think the more of you.”
“But, my dear friend, isn’t that a very far-fetched observation?”
“Did you never observe that men are more taken by our snubs than by our caresses? Severity fixes their attention upon us.”
“If that were so, all the men we disdain and never think of would sigh for us.”
“Oh! my dear, don’t make me talk such nonsense. To take fire, a man must have some degree of combustibility; and if that other person is lost to him forever, why shouldn’t he, as you said yourself, ricochet upon you?”
“That other person is not lost to him; he expects, more than ever, to find her by the help of a very clever seeker, the mother-superior of a convent at Arcis.”
“Very good; then why employ the delay in holding him at arm’s-length,—a proceeding which will only draw him towards you?”
“My dear moralist, I don’t admit your theory in the least. As for Monsieur de Sallenauve, he will be much too busy with his duties in the Chamber to think of me. Besides, he is a man who is full of self-respect; he will be mortified by my manner, which will seem to him both ungrateful and unjust. If I try to put two feet of distance between us, he will put four; you may rely on that.”
“And you, my dear?” asked Madame de Camps.
“How do you mean?—I?”
“You who are not busy, who have no Chamber to occupy your mind; you who have, I will agree, a great deal of self-respect, but who know as little about the things of the heart as the veriest school-girl,—what will become of you under the dangerous system you are imposing upon yourself?”
“If I don’t love him when near, I shall certainly love him still less at a distance.”
“So that when you see him take his ostracism coolly, your self-love as a woman will not be piqued.”
“Certainly not; that is precisely the result I desire.”
“And if you find, on the contrary, that he complains of you, or if he does not complain, that he suffers from your treatment, will your conscience tell you absolutely nothing?”
“It will tell me that I am doing right, and that I could not do otherwise.”
“And if success attends him and fame with its hundred voices talks of him, how will you think of him?”
“As I think of Monsieur Thiers and Monsieur Berryer.”
“And Nais, who adores him and will probably say, the first time he dines with you, ‘Ah! mamma, how well he talks!’—”
“If you are going to argue on the chatter of a child—”
“And Monsieur de l’Estorade, who already irritates you? He is beginning to-day to sacrifice him to the spirit of party; shall you silence him every time he makes some malevolent insinuation about Monsieur de Sallenauve, and denies his honor and his talent?—you know the judgment people make on those who do not think as we do.”
“In short,” said Madame de l’Estorade, “you are trying to make me admit that the surest way to think of a person is to put him out of sight.”
“Listen to me, my dear,” said Madame de Camps, with a slight touch of gravity. “I have read and re-read your letters. You were there your own self, more natural and less quibbling than you are now, and an impression has remained upon my mind: it is that Monsieur de Sallenauve has touched your heart, though he may not have entered it.”
Madame de l’Estorade made a gesture of denial, but the confessor went on:—
“I know that idea provokes you; you can’t very well admit to me what you have studiously denied to yourself. But what is, is. We don’t say of a man, ‘A sort of magnetism issues from him, one feels his eye without meeting it’; we don’t cry out, ‘I am invulnerable on the side of love,’ without having had some prickings of it.”
“But so many things have happened since I wrote that nonsense.”
“True, he was only a sculptor then, and before long he may be a minister,—not like Monsieur de Rastignac, but like our great poet, Canalis.”
“I like sermons with definite deductions,” said Madame de l’Estorade, with a touch of impatience.
“That is what Vergniaud said to Robespierre on the 31st of May, and I reply, with Robespierre, Yes, I’ll draw my conclusion; and it is against your self-confidence as a woman, who, having reached the age of thirty-two without a suspicion of what love is, cannot admit that at this late date she may be subjected to the common law.”
“But what I want is a practical conclusion,” said Madame de l’Estorade, tapping her foot.
“My practical conclusion,—here it is,” replied Madame Octave. “If you will not persist in the folly of swimming against the current, I see no danger whatever in your being submerged. You are strong; you have principles and religion; you adore your children; you love Monsieur de l’Estorade, their father, in them. With all that ballast you cannot sink.”
“Well?” said Madame de l’Estorade, interrogatively.
“Well, there is no need to have recourse to violent measures, the success of which is very problematical. Remain as you are; build no barricades when no one attacks you. Don’t excite tempests of heart and conscience merely to pacify your conscience and quiet your heart, now ruffled only by a tiny breeze. No doubt between a man and a woman the sentiment of friendship does take something of the character ordinarily given to love; but such friendship is neither an impossible illusion nor is it a yawning gulf.”
“Then,” said Madame de l’Estorade, with a thoughtful air, “do you wish me to make a friend of Monsieur de Sallenauve?”
“Yes, dear, in order not to make him a fixed idea, a regret, a struggle,—three things which poison life.”
“But my husband, who has already had a touch of jealousy?”
“As for your husband, I find him somewhat changed, and not for the better. I miss that deference he always showed to you personally, to your ideas and impressions,—a deference which honored him more than he thought, because there is true greatness in the power to admire. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that public life is spoiling him a little. As you cannot be with him in the Chamber of peers, he is beginning to suspect that he can have a life without you. If I were you, I should watch these symptoms of independence, and not let the work of your lifetime come to nought.”
“Do you know, my dear,” said Madame de l’Estorade, laughing, “that you are giving me advice that may end in fire and slaughter?”
“Not at all. I am a woman forty-five years of age, who has always seen things on their practical side. I did not marry my husband, whom I loved, until I had convinced myself, by putting him to the test, that he was worthy of my esteem. I don’t make life; I take it as it comes,—trying to put order and possibility into all the occurrences it brings to me. I an neither the frenzied passion of Louise de Chaulieu, nor the insensible reason of Renee de Maucombe. I am a Jesuit in petticoats, persuaded that rather wide sleeves are better than sleeves that are tight to the wrist; and I have never gone in search of the philosopher’s stone—”
At this instant Lucas opened the door of the salon and announced,—
“Monsieur le Comte de Sallenauve.”
His mistress gave him a look inquiring why he had disobeyed her orders, to which Lucas replied by a sign implying that he did not suppose the prohibition applied in this instance.
Madame de Camps, who had never yet seen the new deputy, now gave her closest attention to a study of him.
Sallenauve explained his visit by his great desire to know how matters had gone at Ville d’Avray, and whether Marie-Gaston had been deeply affected by his return there. As for the business which detained him in Paris, he said he had so far met with no success. He had seen the prefect of police, who had given him a letter to Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, the chief of the detective police. Aware of the antecedents of that man, Monsieur de Sallenauve expressed himself as much surprised to find a functionary with extremely good manners and bearing; but he held out faint hope of success. “A woman hiding in Paris,” he said, “is an eel in its safest hole.” He (Sallenauve) should continue the search the next day with the help of Jacques Bricheteau; but if nothing came of it, he should go in the evening to Ville d’Avray, for he did not, he said, share Madame de l’Estorade’s security as to Gaston’s state of mind.
As he was taking leave, Madame de l’Estorade said to him,—
“Do not forget Nais’ ball which takes place the day after to-morrow. You will affront her mortally if you fail to be present. Try to bring Monsieur Gaston with you. It might divert his mind a little.”