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The Collection of Antiquities

by Honoré de Balzac · English · Gutenberg #1405 · 337,014 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Collection of Antiquities

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Translator: Ellen Marriage


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #1405]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES ***

THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Ellen Marriage





DEDICATION

  To Baron Von Hammer-Purgstall, Member of the Aulic Council, Author
  of the History of the Ottoman Empire.

  Dear Baron,--You have taken so warm an interest in my long, vast
  “History of French Manners in the Nineteenth Century,” you have
  given me so much encouragement to persevere with my work, that you
  have given me a right to associate your name with some portion of
  it. Are you not one of the most important representatives of
  conscientious, studious Germany? Will not your approval win for me
  the approval of others, and protect this attempt of mine? So proud
  am I to have gained your good opinion, that I have striven to
  deserve it by continuing my labors with the unflagging courage
  characteristic of your methods of study, and of that exhaustive
  research among documents without which you could never have given
  your monumental work to the world of letters. Your sympathy with
  such labor as you yourself have bestowed upon the most brilliant
  civilization of the East, has often sustained my ardor through
  nights of toil given to the details of our modern civilization.
  And will not you, whose naive kindliness can only be compared with
  that of our own La Fontaine, be glad to know of this?

  May this token of my respect for you and your work find you at
  Dobling, dear Baron, and put you and yours in mind of one of your
  most sincere admirers and friends.


  DE BALZAC.





THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES


There stands a house at a corner of a street, in the middle of a town,
in one of the least important prefectures in France, but the name of the
street and the name of the town must be suppressed here. Every one will
appreciate the motives of this sage reticence demanded by convention;
for if a writer takes upon himself the office of annalist of his own
time, he is bound to touch on many sore subjects. The house was called
the Hotel d’Esgrignon; but let d’Esgrignon be considered a mere
fancy name, neither more nor less connected with real people than
the conventional Belval, Floricour, or Derville of the stage, or
the Adalberts and Mombreuses of romance. After all, the names of the
principal characters will be quite as much disguised; for though in this
history the chronicler would prefer to conceal the facts under a mass
of contradictions, anachronisms, improbabilities, and absurdities, the
truth will out in spite of him. You uproot a vine-stock, as you imagine,
and the stem will send up lusty shoots after you have ploughed your
vineyard over.

The “Hotel d’Esgrignon” was nothing more nor less than the house in
which the old Marquis lived; or, in the style of ancient documents,
Charles Marie Victor Ange Carol, Marquis d’Esgrignon. It was only an
ordinary house, but the townspeople and tradesmen had begun by calling
it the Hotel d’Esgrignon in jest, and ended after a score of years by
giving it that name in earnest.

The name of Carol, or Karawl, as the Thierrys would have spelt it, was
glorious among the names of the most powerful chieftains of the Northmen
who conquered Gaul and established the feudal system there. Never had
Carol bent his head before King or Communes, the Church or Finance.
Intrusted in the days of yore with the keeping of a French March, the
title of marquis in their family meant no shadow of imaginary office; it
had been a post of honor with duties to discharge. Their fief had always
been their domain. Provincial nobles were they in every sense of the
word; they might boast of an unbroken line of great descent; they had
been neglected by the court for two hundred years; they were lords
paramount in the estates of a province where the people looked up to
them with superstitious awe, as to the image of the Holy Virgin that
cures the toothache. The house of d’Esgrignon, buried in its remote
border country, was preserved as the charred piles of one of Caesar’s
bridges are maintained intact in a river bed. For thirteen hundred years
the daughters of the house had been married without a dowry or taken the
veil; the younger sons of every generation had been content with their
share of their mother’s dower and gone forth to be captains or bishops;
some had made a marriage at court; one cadet of the house became an
admiral, a duke, and a peer of France, and died without issue. Never
would the Marquis d’Esgrignon of the elder branch accept the title of
duke.

“I hold my marquisate as His Majesty holds the realm of France, and on
the same conditions,” he told the Constable de Luynes, a very paltry
fellow in his eyes at that time.

You may be sure that d’Esgrignons lost their heads on the scaffold
during the troubles. The old blood showed itself proud and high even in
1789. The Marquis of that day would not emigrate; he was answerable for
his March. The reverence in which he was held by the countryside saved
his head; but the hatred of the genuine sans-culottes was strong enough
to compel him to pretend to fly, and for a while he lived in hiding.
Then, in the name of the Sovereign People, the d’Esgrignon lands were
dishonored by the District, and the woods sold by the Nation in spite
of the personal protest made by the Marquis, then turned forty. Mlle.
d’Esgrignon, his half-sister, saved some portions of the fief, thanks to
the young steward of the family, who claimed on her behalf the partage
de presuccession, which is to say, the right of a relative to a portion
of the emigre’s lands. To Mlle. d’Esgrignon, therefore, the Republic
made over the castle itself and a few farms. Chesnel [Choisnel], the
faithful steward, was obliged to buy in his own name the church, the
parsonage house, the castle gardens, and other places to which his
patron was attached--the Marquis advancing the money.

The slow, swift years of the Terror went by, and the Marquis, whose
character had won the respect of the whole country, decided that he and
his sister ought to return to the castle and improve the property which
Maitre Chesnel--for he was now a notary--had contrived to save for them
out of the wreck. Alas! was not the plundered and dismantled castle all
too vast for a lord of the manor shorn of all his ancient rights; too
large for the landowner whose woods had been sold piecemeal, until he
could scarce draw nine thousand francs of income from the pickings of
his old estates?

It was in the month of October 1800 that Chesnel brought the Marquis
back to the old feudal castle, and saw with deep emotion, almost beyond
his control, his patron standing in the midst of the empty courtyard,
gazing round upon the moat, now filled up with rubbish, and the castle
towers razed to the level of the roof. The descendant of the Franks
looked for the missing Gothic turrets and the picturesque weather vanes
which used to rise above them; and his eyes turned to the sky, as if
asking of heaven the reason of this social upheaval. No one but Chesnel
could understand the profound anguish of the great d’Esgrignon, now
known as Citizen Carol. For a long while the Marquis stood in silence,
drinking in the influences of the place, the ancient home of his
forefathers, with the air that he breathed; then he flung out a most
melancholy exclamation.

“Chesnel,” he said, “we will come back again some day when the troubles
are over; I could not bring myself to live here until the edict of
pacification has been published; _they_ will not allow me to set my
scutcheon on the wall.”

He waved his hand toward the castle, mounted his horse, and rode
back beside his sister, who had driven over in the notary’s shabby
basket-chaise.

The Hotel d’Esgrignon in the town had been demolished; a couple of
factories now stood on the site of the aristocrat’s house. So Maitre
Chesnel spent the Marquis’ last bag of louis on the purchase of the
old-fashioned building in the square, with its gables, weather-vane,
turret, and dovecote. Once it had been the courthouse of the bailiwick,
and subsequently the presidial; it had belonged to the d’Esgrignons
from generation to generation; and now, in consideration of five hundred
louis d’or, the present owner made it over with the title given by the
Nation to its rightful lord. And so, half in jest, half in earnest, the
old house was christened the Hotel d’Esgrignon.

In 1800 little or no difficulty was made over erasing names from the
fatal list, and some few emigres began to return. Among the very first
nobles to come back to the old town were the Baron de Nouastre and his
daughter. They were completely ruined. M. d’Esgrignon generously offered
them the shelter of his roof; and in his house, two months later, the
Baron died, worn out with grief. The Nouastres came of the best blood
in the province; Mlle. de Nouastre was a girl of two-and-twenty; the
Marquis d’Esgrignon married her to continue his line. But she died in
childbirth, a victim to the unskilfulness of her physician, leaving,
most fortunately, a son to bear the name of the d’Esgrignons. The old
Marquis--he was but fifty-three, but adversity and sharp distress had
added months to every year--the poor old Marquis saw the death of the
loveliest of human creatures, a noble woman in whom the charm of the
feminine figures of the sixteenth century lived again, a charm now lost
save to men’s imaginations. With her death the joy died out of his old
age. It was one of those terrible shocks which reverberate through every
moment of the years that follow. For a few moments he stood beside the
bed where his wife lay, with her hands folded like a saint, then he
kissed her on the forehead, turned away, drew out his watch, broke the
mainspring, and hung it up beside the hearth. It was eleven o’clock in
the morning.

“Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” he said, “let us pray God that this hour may not
prove fatal yet again to our house. My uncle the archbishop was murdered
at this hour; at this hour also my father died----”

He knelt down beside the bed and buried his face in the coverlet; his
sister did the same, in another moment they both rose to their feet.
Mlle. d’Esgrignon burst into tears; but the old Marquis looked with dry
eyes at the child, round the room, and again on his dead wife. To the
stubbornness of the Frank he united the fortitude of a Christian.

These things came to pass in the second year of the nineteenth century.
Mlle. d’Esgrignon was then twenty-seven years of age. She was a
beautiful woman. An ex-contractor for forage to the armies of the
Republic, a man of the district, with an income of six thousand francs,
persuaded Chesnel to carry a proposal of marriage to the lady. The
Marquis and his sister were alike indignant with such presumption in
their man of business, and Chesnel was almost heartbroken; he could not
forgive himself for yielding to the Sieur du Croisier’s [du Bousquier]
blandishments. The Marquis’ manner with his old servant changed
somewhat; never again was there quite the old affectionate kindliness,
which might almost have been taken for friendship. From that time forth
the Marquis was grateful, and his magnanimous and sincere gratitude
continually wounded the poor notary’s feelings. To some sublime natures
gratitude seems an excessive payment; they would rather have that sweet
equality of feeling which springs from similar ways of thought, and the
blending of two spirits by their own choice and will. And Maitre Chesnel
had known the delights of such high friendship; the Marquis had raised
him to his own level. The old noble looked on the good notary as
something more than a servant, something less than a child; he was the
voluntary liege man of the house, a serf bound to his lord by all the
ties of affection. There was no balancing of obligations; the sincere
affection on either side put them out of the question.

In the eyes of the Marquis, Chesnel’s official dignity was as nothing;
his old servitor was merely disguised as a notary. As for Chesnel, the
Marquis was now, as always, a being of a divine race; he believed in
nobility; he did not blush to remember that his father had thrown open
the doors of the salon to announce that “My Lord Marquis is served.”
 His devotion to the fallen house was due not so much to his creed as to
egoism; he looked on himself as one of the family. So his vexation was
intense. Once he had ventured to allude to his mistake in spite of the
Marquis’ prohibition, and the old noble answered gravely--“Chesnel,
before the troubles you would not have permitted yourself to entertain
such injurious suppositions. What can these new doctrines be if they
have spoiled _you_?”

Maitre Chesnel had gained the confidence of the whole town; people
looked up to him; his high integrity and considerable fortune
contributed to make him a person of importance. From that time forth he
felt a very decided aversion for the Sieur du Crosier; and though there
was little rancor in his composition, he set others against the sometime
forage-contractor. Du Croisier, on the other hand, was a man to bear a
grudge and nurse a vengeance for a score of years. He hated Chesnel and
the d’Esgrignon family with the smothered, all-absorbing hate only to
be found in a country town. His rebuff had simply ruined him with the
malicious provincials among whom he had come to live, thinking to rule
over them. It was so real a disaster that he was not long in feeling the
consequences of it. He betook himself in desperation to a wealthy old
maid, and met with a second refusal. Thus failed the ambitious schemes
with which he had started. He had lost his hope of a marriage with Mlle.
d’Esgrignon, which would have opened the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the
province to him; and after the second rejection, his credit fell away
to such an extent that it was almost as much as he could do to keep his
position in the second rank.

In 1805, M. de la Roche-Guyon, the oldest son of an ancient family which
had previously intermarried with the d’Esgrignons, made proposals in
form through Maitre Chesnel for Mlle. Marie Armande Clair d’Esgrignon.
She declined to hear the notary.

“You must have guessed before now that I am a mother, dear Chesnel,” she
said; she had just put her nephew, a fine little boy of five, to bed.

The old Marquis rose and went up to his sister, but just returned from
the cradle; he kissed her hand reverently, and as he sat down again,
found words to say:

“My sister, you are a d’Esgrignon.”

A quiver ran through the noble girl; the tears stood in her eyes. M.
d’Esgrignon, the father of the present Marquis, had married a second
wife, the daughter of a farmer of taxes ennobled by Louis XIV. It was
a shocking mesalliance in the eyes of his family, but fortunately of no
importance, since a daughter was the one child of the marriage. Armande
knew this. Kind as her brother had always been, he looked on her as a
stranger in blood. And this speech of his had just recognized her as one
of the family.

And was not her answer the worthy crown of eleven years of her noble
life? Her every action since she came of age had borne the stamp of the
purest devotion; love for her brother was a sort of religion with her.

“I shall die Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” she said simply, turning to the notary.

“For you there could be no fairer title,” returned Chesnel, meaning to
convey a compliment. Poor Mlle. d’Esgrignon reddened.

“You have blundered, Chesnel,” said the Marquis, flattered by the
steward’s words, but vexed that his sister had been hurt. “A d’Esgrignon
may marry a Montmorency; their descent is not so pure as ours. The
d’Esgrignons bear or, two bends, gules,” he continued, “and nothing
during nine hundred years has changed their scutcheon; as it was at
first, so it is to-day. Hence our device, Cil est nostre, taken at
a tournament in the reign of Philip Augustus, with the supporters, a
knight in armor or on the right, and a lion gules on the left.”



“I do not remember that any woman I have ever met has struck my
imagination as Mlle. d’Esgrignon did,” said Emile Blondet, to whom
contemporary literature is indebted for this history among other things.
“Truth to tell, I was a boy, a mere child at the time, and perhaps my
memory-pictures of her owe something of their vivid color to a boy’s
natural turn for the marvelous.

“If I was playing with other children on the Parade, and she came to
walk there with her nephew Victurnien, the sight of her in the distance
thrilled me with very much the effect of galvanism on a dead body. Child
as I was, I felt as though new life had been given me.

“Mlle. Armande had hair of tawny gold; there was a delicate fine down on
her cheek, with a silver gleam upon it which I loved to catch, putting
myself so that I could see the outlines of her face lit up by the
daylight, and feel the fascination of those dreamy emerald eyes, which
sent a flash of fire through me whenever they fell upon my face. I used
to pretend to roll on the grass before her in our games, only to try
to reach her little feet, and admire them on a closer view. The soft
whiteness of her skin, her delicate features, the clearly cut lines of
her forehead, the grace of her slender figure, took me with a sense of
surprise, while as yet I did not know that her shape was graceful,
nor her brows beautiful, nor the outline of her face a perfect oval. I
admired as children pray at that age, without too clearly understanding
why they pray. When my piercing gaze attracted her notice, when she
asked me (in that musical voice of hers, with more volume in it, as it
seemed to me, than all other voices), ‘What are you doing little one?
Why do you look at me?’--I used to come nearer and wriggle and bite my
finger-nails, and redden and say, ‘I do not know.’ And if she chanced
to stroke my hair with her white hand, and ask me how old I was, I would
run away and call from a distance, ‘Eleven!’

“Every princess and fairy of my visions, as I read the Arabian Nights,
looked and walked like Mlle. d’Esgrignon; and afterwards, when my
drawing-master gave me heads from the antique to copy, I noticed that
their hair was braided like Mlle. d’Esgrignon’s. Still later, when the
foolish fancies had vanished one by one, Mlle. Armande remained vaguely
in my memory as a type; that Mlle. Armande for whom men made way
respectfully, following the tall brown-robed figure with their eyes
along the Parade and out of sight. Her exquisitely graceful form, the
rounded curves sometimes revealed by a chance gust of wind, and always
visible to my eyes in spite of the ample folds of stuff, revisited
my young man’s dreams. Later yet, when I came to think seriously over
certain mysteries of human thought, it seemed to me that the feeling
of reverence was first inspired in me by something expressed in Mlle.
d’Esgrignon’s face and bearing. The wonderful calm of her face, the
suppressed passion in it, the dignity of her movements, the saintly life
of duties fulfilled,--all this touched and awed me. Children are more
susceptible than people imagine to the subtle influences of ideas;
they never make game of real dignity; they feel the charm of real
graciousness, and beauty attracts them, for childhood itself is
beautiful, and there are mysterious ties between things of the same
nature.

“Mlle. d’Esgrignon was one of my religions. To this day I can never
climb the staircase of some old manor-house but my foolish imagination
must needs picture Mlle. Armande standing there, like the spirit of
feudalism. I can never read old chronicles but she appears before my
eyes in the shape of some famous woman of old times; she is Agnes Sorel,
Marie Touchet, Gabrielle; and I lend her all the love that was lost in
her heart, all the love that she never expressed. The angel shape seen
in glimpses through the haze of childish fancies visits me now sometimes
across the mists of dreams.”



Keep this portrait in mind; it is a faithful picture and sketch of
character. Mlle. d’Esgrignon is one of the most instructive figures in
this story; she affords an example of the mischief that may be done by
the purest goodness for lack of intelligence.

Two-thirds of the emigres returned to France during 1804 and 1805, and
almost every exile from the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s province came back to
the land of his fathers. There were certainly defections. Men of good
birth entered the service of Napoleon, and went into the army or held
places at the Imperial court, and others made alliances with the upstart
families. All those who cast in their lots with the Empire retrieved
their fortunes and recovered their estates, thanks to the Emperor’s
munificence; and these for the most part went to Paris and stayed there.
But some eight or nine families still remained true to the proscribed
noblesse and loyal to the fallen monarchy. The La Roche-Guyons,
Nouastres, Verneuils, Casterans, Troisvilles, and the rest were some of
them rich, some of them poor; but money, more or less, scarcely counted
for anything among them. They took an antiquarian view of themselves;
for them the age and preservation of the pedigree was the one
all-important matter; precisely as, for an amateur, the weight of
metal in a coin is a small matter in comparison with clean lettering,
a flawless stamp, and high antiquity. Of these families, the Marquis
d’Esgrignon was the acknowledged head. His house became their cenacle.
There His Majesty, Emperor and King, was never anything but “M. de
Bonaparte”; there “the King” meant Louis XVIII., then at Mittau;
there the Department was still the Province, and the prefecture the
intendance.

The Marquis was honored among them for his admirable behavior, his
loyalty as a noble, his undaunted courage; even as he was respected
throughout the town for his misfortunes, his fortitude, his steadfast
adherence to his political convictions. The man so admirable in
adversity was invested with all the majesty of ruined greatness. His
chivalrous fair-mindedness was so well known, that litigants many a
time had referred their disputes to him for arbitration. All gently bred
Imperialists and the authorities themselves showed as much indulgence
for his prejudices as respect for his personal character; but there was
another and a large section of the new society which was destined to
be known after the Restoration as the Liberal party; and these, with du
Croisier as their unacknowledged head, laughed at an aristocratic oasis
which nobody might enter without proof of irreproachable descent. Their
animosity was all the more bitter because honest country squires and the
higher officials, with a good many worthy folk in the town, were of the
opinion that all the best society thereof was to be found in the Marquis
d’Esgrignon’s salon. The prefect himself, the Emperor’s chamberlain,
made overtures to the d’Esgrignons, humbly sending his wife (a
Grandlieu) as ambassadress.

Wherefore, those excluded from the miniature provincial Faubourg
Saint-Germain nicknamed the salon “The Collection of Antiquities,”
 and called the Marquis himself “M. Carol.” The receiver of taxes,
for instance, addressed his applications to “M. Carol (ci-devant des
Grignons),” maliciously adopting the obsolete way of spelling.



“For my own part,” said Emile Blondet, “if I try to recall my childhood
memories, I remember that the nickname of ‘Collection of Antiquities’
always made me laugh, in spite of my respect--my love, I ought to
say--for Mlle. d’Esgrignon. The Hotel d’Esgrignon stood at the angle of
two of the busiest thoroughfares in the town, and not five hundred paces
away from the market place. Two of the drawing-room windows looked upon
the street and two upon the square; the room was like a glass cage,
every one who came past could look through it from side to side. I was
only a boy of twelve at the time, but I thought, even then, that the
salon was one of those rare curiosities which seem, when you come to
think of them afterwards, to lie just on the borderland between reality
and dreams, so that you can scarcely tell to which side they most
belong.

“The room, the ancient Hall of Audience, stood above a row of cellars
with grated air-holes, once the prison cells of the old court-house,
now converted into a kitchen. I do not know that the magnificent lofty
chimney-piece of the Louvre, with its marvelous carving, seemed more
wonderful to me than the vast open hearth of the salon d’Esgrignon when
I saw it for the first time. It was covered like a melon with a network
of tracery. Over it stood an equestrian portrait of Henri III., under
whom the ancient duchy of appanage reverted to the crown; it was a great
picture executed in low relief, and set in a carved and gilded frame.
The ceiling spaces between the chestnut cross-beams in the fine old
roof were decorated with scroll-work patterns; there was a little faded
gilding still left along the angles. The walls were covered with Flemish
tapestry, six scenes from the Judgment of Solomon, framed in golden
garlands, with satyrs and cupids playing among the leaves. The parquet
floor had been laid down by the present Marquis, and Chesnel had picked
up the furniture at sales of the wreckage of old chateaux between
1793 and 1795; so that there were Louis Quatorze consoles, tables,
clock-cases, andirons, candle-sconces and tapestry-covered chairs, which
marvelously completed a stately room, large out of all proportion to the
house. Luckily, however, there was an equally lofty ante-chamber,
the ancient Salle des Pas Perdus of the presidial, which communicated
likewise with the magistrate’s deliberating chamber, used by the
d’Esgrignons as a dining-room.

“Beneath the old paneling, amid the threadbare braveries of a bygone
day, some eight or ten dowagers were drawn up in state in a quavering
line; some with palsied heads, others dark and shriveled like mummies;
some erect and stiff, others bowed and bent, but all of them tricked out
in more or less fantastic costumes as far as possible removed from
the fashion of the day, with be-ribboned caps above their curled and
powdered ‘heads,’ and old discolored lace. No painter however earnest,
no caricature however wild, ever caught the haunting fascination of
those aged women; they come back to me in dreams; their puckered faces
shape themselves in my memory whenever I meet an old woman who puts
me in mind of them by some faint resemblance of dress or feature. And
whether it is that misfortune has initiated me into the secrets of
irremediable and overwhelming disaster; whether that I have come to
understand the whole range of human feelings, and, best of all, the
thoughts of Old Age and Regret; whatever the reason, nowhere and never
again have I seen among the living or in the faces of the dying the wan
look of certain gray eyes that I remember, nor the dreadful brightness
of others that were black.

“Neither Hoffmann nor Maturin, the two weirdest imaginations of our
time, ever gave me such a thrill of terror as I used to feel when I
watched the automaton movements of those bodies sheathed in whalebone.
The paint on actors’ faces never caused me a shock; I could see below it
the rouge in grain, the rouge de naissance, to quote a comrade at least
as malicious as I can be. Years had leveled those women’s faces, and
at the same time furrowed them with wrinkles, till they looked like the
heads on wooden nutcrackers carved in Germany. Peeping in through the
window-panes, I gazed at the battered bodies, and ill-jointed limbs
(how they were fastened together, and, indeed, their whole anatomy was
a mystery I never attempted to explain); I saw the lantern jaws,
the protuberant bones, the abnormal development of the hips; and the
movements of these figures as they came and went seemed to me no whit
less extraordinary than their sepulchral immobility as they sat round
the card-tables.

“The men looked gray and faded like the ancient tapestries on the wall,
in dress they were much more like the men of the day, but even they
were not altogether convincingly alive. Their white hair, their withered
waxen-hued faces, their devastated foreheads and pale eyes, revealed
their kinship to the women, and neutralized any effects of reality
borrowed from their costume.

“The very certainty of finding all these folk seated at or among the
tables every day at the same hours invested them at length in my eyes
with a sort of spectacular interest as it were; there was something
theatrical, something unearthly about them.

“Whenever, in after times, I have gone through museums of old furniture
in Paris, London, Munich, or Vienna, with the gray-headed custodian
who shows you the splendors of time past, I have peopled the rooms with
figures from the Collection of Antiquities. Often, as little schoolboys
of eight or ten we used to propose to go and take a look at the
curiosities in their glass cage, for the fun of the thing. But as soon
as I caught sight of Mlle. Armande’s sweet face, I used to tremble;
and there was a trace of jealousy in my admiration for the lovely child
Victurnien, who belonged, as we all instinctively felt, to a different
and higher order of being from our own. It struck me as something
indescribably strange that the young fresh creature should be there in
that cemetery awakened before the time. We could not have explained
our thoughts to ourselves, yet we felt that we were bourgeois and
insignificant in the presence of that proud court.”



The disasters of 1813 and 1814, which brought about the downfall of
Napoleon, gave new life to the Collection of Antiquities, and what was
more than life, the hope of recovering their past importance; but
the events of 1815, the troubles of the foreign occupation, and the
vacillating policy of the Government until the fall of M. Decazes,
all contributed to defer the fulfilment of the expectations of the
personages so vividly described by Blondet. This story, therefore, only
begins to shape itself in 1822.

In 1822 the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s fortunes had not improved in spite of
the changes worked by the Restoration in the condition of emigres. Of
all the nobles hardly hit by Revolutionary legislation, his case was the
hardest. Like other great families, the d’Esgrignons before 1789 derived
the greater part of their income from their rights as lords of the manor
in the shape of dues paid by those who held of them; and, naturally, the
old seigneurs had reduced the size of the holdings in order to swell the
amounts paid in quit-rents and heriots. Families in this position were
hopelessly ruined. They were not affected by the ordinance by which
Louis XVIII. put the emigres into possession of such of their lands as
had not been sold; and at a later date it was impossible that the law of
indemnity should indemnify them. Their suppressed rights, as everybody
knows, were revived in the shape of a land tax known by the very name of
domaines, but the money went into the coffers of the State.

The Marquis by his position belonged to that small section of the
Royalist party which would hear of no kind of compromise with those whom
they styled, not Revolutionaries, but revolted subjects, or, in
more parliamentary language, they had no dealings with Liberals or
Constitutionnels. Such Royalists, nicknamed Ultras by the opposition,
took for leaders and heroes those courageous orators of the Right,
who from the very beginning attempted, with M. de Polignac, to protest
against the charter granted by Louis XVIII. This they regarded as
an ill-advised edict extorted from the Crown by the necessity of the
moment, only to be annulled later on. And, therefore, so far from
co-operating with the King to bring about a new condition of things, the
Marquis d’Esgrignon stood aloof, an upholder of the straitest sect of
the Right in politics, until such time as his vast fortune should
be restored to him. Nor did he so much as admit the thought of the
indemnity which filled the minds of the Villele ministry, and formed a
part of a design of strengthening the Crown by putting an end to those
fatal distinctions of ownership which still lingered on in spite of
legislation.

The miracles of the Restoration of 1814, the still greater miracle
of Napoleon’s return in 1815, the portents of a second flight of the
Bourbons, and a second reinstatement (that almost fabulous phase of
contemporary history), all these things took the Marquis by surprise at
the age of sixty-seven. At that time of life, the most high-spirited
men of their age were not so much vanquished as worn out in the
struggle with the Revolution; their activity, in their remote provincial
retreats, had turned into a passionately held and immovable conviction;
and almost all of them were shut in by the enervating, easy round of
daily life in the country. Could worse luck befall a political party
than this--to be represented by old men at a time when its ideas are
already stigmatized as old-fashioned?

When the legitimate sovereign appeared to be firmly seated on the throne
again in 1818, the Marquis asked himself what a man of seventy should
do at court; and what duties, what office he could discharge there?
The noble and high-minded d’Esgrignon was fain to be content with the
triumph of the Monarchy and Religion, while he waited for the results
of that unhoped-for, indecisive victory, which proved to be simply
an armistice. He continued as before, lord-paramount of his salon, so
felicitously named the Collection of Antiquities.

But when the victors of 1793 became the vanquished in their turn, the
nickname given at first in jest began to be used in bitter earnest.
The town was no more free than other country towns from the hatreds
and jealousies bred of party spirit. Du Croisier, contrary to all
expectation, married the old maid who had refused him at first; carrying
her off from his rival, the darling of the aristocratic quarter, a
certain Chevalier whose illustrious name will be sufficiently hidden by
suppressing it altogether, in accordance with the usage formerly adopted
in the place itself, where he was known by his title only. He was “the
Chevalier” in the town, as the Comte d’Artois was “Monsieur” at court.
Now, not only had that marriage produced a war after the provincial
manner, in which all weapons are fair; it had hastened the separation of
the great and little noblesse, of the aristocratic and bourgeois social
elements, which had been united for a little space by the heavy weight
of Napoleonic rule. After the pressure was removed, there followed that
sudden revival of class divisions which did so much harm to the country.

The most national of all sentiments in France is vanity. The wounded
vanity of the many induced a thirst for Equality; though, as the most
ardent innovator will some day discover, Equality is an impossibility.
The Royalists pricked the Liberals in the most sensitive spots, and
this happened specially in the provinces, where either party accused the
other of unspeakable atrocities. In those days the blackest deeds were
done in politics, to secure public opinion on one side or the other, to
catch the votes of that public of fools which holds up hands for those
that are clever enough to serve out weapons to them. Individuals are
identified with their political opinions, and opponents in public life
forthwith became private enemies. It is very difficult in a country town
to avoid a man-to-man conflict of this kind over interests or questions
which in Paris appear in a more general and theoretical form, with
the result that political combatants also rise to a higher level; M.
Laffitte, for example, or M. Casimir-Perier can respect M. de Villele
or M. de Payronnet as a man. M. Laffitte, who drew the fire on the
Ministry, would have given them an asylum in his house if they had fled
thither on the 29th of July 1830. Benjamin Constant sent a copy of his
work on Religion to the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, with a flattering
letter acknowledging benefits received from the former Minister. At
Paris men are systems, whereas in the provinces systems are identified
with men; men, moreover, with restless passions, who must always
confront one another, always spy upon each other in private life, and
pull their opponents’ speeches to pieces, and live generally like two
duelists on the watch for a chance to thrust six inches of steel between
an antagonist’s ribs. Each must do his best to get under his enemy’s
guard, and a political hatred becomes as all-absorbing as a duel to the
death. Epigram and slander are used against individuals to bring the
party into discredit.

In such warfare as this, waged ceremoniously and without rancor on the
side of the Antiquities, while du Croisier’s faction went so far as to
use the poisoned weapons of savages--in this warfare the advantages
of wit and delicate irony lay on the side of the nobles. But it should
never be forgotten that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by
gibe or slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned
his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the Mons Sacer
of the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward were directed at du
Croisier’s salon; he stirred up the fires of war, not knowing how far
the spirit of revenge was to urge the rival faction. None but purists
and loyal gentlemen and women sure one of another entered the Hotel
d’Esgrignon; they committed no indiscretions of any kind; they had
their ideas, true or false, good or bad, noble or trivial, but there
was nothing to laugh at in all this. If the Liberals meant to make the
nobles ridiculous, they were obliged to fasten on the political actions
of their opponents; while the intermediate party, composed of officials
and others who paid court to the higher powers, kept the nobles informed
of all that was done and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was
abundantly laughable. Du Croisier’s adherents smarted under a sense of
inferiority, which increased their thirst for revenge.

In 1822, du Croisier put himself at the head of the manufacturing
interest of the province, as the Marquis d’Esgrignon headed the
noblesse. Each represented his party. But du Croisier, instead of giving
himself out frankly for a man of the extreme Left, ostensibly adopted
the opinions formulated at a later date by the 221 deputies.

By taking up this position, he could keep in touch with the magistrates
and local officials and the capitalists of the department. Du Croisier’s
salon, a power at least equal to the salon d’Esgrignon, larger
numerically, as well as younger and more energetic, made itself felt all
over the countryside; the Collection of Antiquities, on the other hand,
remained inert, a passive appendage, as it were, of a central authority
which was often embarrassed by its own partisans; for not merely did
they encourage the Government in a mistaken policy, but some of its most
fatal blunders were made in consequence of the pressure brought to bear
upon it by the Conservative party.

The Liberals, so far, had never contrived to carry their candidate. The
department declined to obey their command knowing that du Croisier, if
elected, would take his place on the Left Centre benches, and as far
as possible to the Left. Du Croisier was in correspondence with the
Brothers Keller, the bankers, the oldest of whom shone conspicuous among
“the nineteen deputies of the Left,” that phalanx made famous by the
efforts of the entire Liberal press. This same M. Keller, moreover, was
related by marriage to the Comte de Gondreville, a Constitutional
peer who remained in favor with Louis XVIII. For these reasons, the
Constitutional Opposition (as distinct from the Liberal party) was
always prepared to vote at the last moment, not for the candidate whom
they professed to support, but for du Croisier, if that worthy could
succeed in gaining a sufficient number of Royalist votes; but at every
election du Croisier was regularly thrown out by the Royalists. The
leaders of that party, taking their tone from the Marquis d’Esgrignon,
had pretty thoroughly fathomed and gauged their man; and with each
defeat, du Croisier and his party waxed more bitter. Nothing so
effectually stirs up strife as the failure of some snare set with
elaborate pains.

In 1822 there seemed to be a lull in hostilities which had been kept up
with great spirit during the first four years of the Restoration. The
salon du Croisier and the salon d’Esgrignon, having measured their
strength and weakness, were in all probability waiting for opportunity,
that Providence of party strife. Ordinary persons were content with
the surface quiet which deceived the Government; but those who knew du
Croisier better, were well aware that the passion of revenge in him, as
in all men whose whole life consists in mental activity, is implacable,
especially when political ambitions are involved. About this time
du Croisier, who used to turn white and red at the bare mention
of d’Esgrignon or the Chevalier, and shuddered at the name of the
Collection of Antiquities, chose to wear the impassive countenance of
a savage. He smiled upon his enemies, hating them but the more deeply,
watching them the more narrowly from hour to hour. One of his own party,
who seconded him in these calculations of cold wrath, was the President
of the Tribunal, M. du Ronceret, a little country squire, who had vainly
endeavored to gain admittance among the Antiquities.

The d’Esgrignons’ little fortune, carefully administered by Maitre
Chesnel, was barely sufficient for the worthy Marquis’ needs; for though
he lived without the slightest ostentation, he also lived like a noble.
The governor found by his Lordship the Bishop for the hope of the house,
the young Comte Victurnien d’Esgrignon, was an elderly Oratorian who
must be paid a certain salary, although he lived with the family. The
wages of a cook, a waiting-woman for Mlle. Armande, an old valet for
M. le Marquis, and a couple of other servants, together with the daily
expenses of the household, and the cost of an education for which
nothing was spared, absorbed the whole family income, in spite of Mlle.
Armande’s economies, in spite of Chesnel’s careful management, and the
servants’ affection. As yet, Chesnel had not been able to set about
repairs at the ruined castle; he was waiting till the leases fell in to
raise the rent of the farms, for rents had been rising lately, partly
on account of improved methods of agriculture, partly by the fall in
the value of money, of which the landlord would get the benefit at the
expiration of leases granted in 1809.

The Marquis himself knew nothing of the details of the management of
the house or of his property. He would have been thunderstruck if he had
been told of the excessive precautions needed “to make both ends of the
year meet in December,” to use the housewife’s saying, and he was so
near the end of his life, that every one shrank from opening his eyes.
The Marquis and his adherents believed that a House, to which no one at
Court or in the Government gave a thought, a House that was never
heard of beyond the gates of the town, save here and there in the same
department, was about to revive its ancient greatness, to shine forth in
all its glory. The d’Esgrignons’ line should appear with renewed lustre
in the person of Victurnien, just as the despoiled nobles came into
their own again, and the handsome heir to a great estate would be in a
position to go to Court, enter the King’s service, and marry (as other
d’Esgrignons had done before him) a Navarreins, a Cadignan, a d’Uxelles,
a Beausant, a Blamont-Chauvry; a wife, in short, who should unite all
the distinctions of birth and beauty, wit and wealth, and character.

The intimates who came to play their game of cards of an evening--the
Troisvilles (pronounced Treville), the La Roche-Guyons, the Casterans
(pronounced Cateran), and the Duc de Verneuil--had all so long been
accustomed to look up to the Marquis as a person of immense consequence,
that they encouraged him in such notions as these. They were perfectly
sincere in their belief; and indeed, it would have been well founded if
they could have wiped out the history of the last forty years. But the
most honorable and undoubted sanctions of right, such as Louis
XVIII. had tried to set on record when he dated the Charter from the
one-and-twentieth year of his reign, only exist when ratified by the
general consent. The d’Esgrignons not only lacked the very rudiments
of the language of latter-day politics, to wit, money, the great modern
_relief_, or sufficient rehabilitation of nobility; but, in their case,
too, “historical continuity” was lacking, and that is a kind of renown
which tells quite as much at Court as on the battlefield, in diplomatic
circles as in Parliament, with a book, or in connection with an
adventure; it is, as it were, a sacred ampulla poured upon the heads
of each successive generation. Whereas a noble family, inactive
and forgotten, is very much in the position of a hard-featured,
poverty-stricken, simple-minded, and virtuous maid, these qualifications
being the four cardinal points of misfortune. The marriage of a daughter
of the Troisvilles with General Montcornet, so far from opening the
eyes of the Antiquities, very nearly brought about a rupture between
the Troisvilles and the salon d’Esgrignon, the latter declaring that the
Troisvilles were mixing themselves up with all sorts of people.

There was one, and one only, among all these folk who did not share
their illusions. And that one, needless to say, was Chesnel the notary.
Although his devotion, sufficiently proved already, was simply unbounded
for the great house now reduced to three persons; although he accepted
all their ideas, and thought them nothing less than right, he had too
much common sense, he was too good a man of business to more than half
the families in the department, to miss the significance of the great
changes that were taking place in people’s minds, or to be blind to the
different conditions brought about by industrial development and modern
manners. He had watched the Revolution pass through the violent phase
of 1793, when men, women, and children wore arms, and heads fell on the
scaffold, and victories were won in pitched battles with Europe; and now
he saw the same forces quietly at work in men’s minds, in the shape of
ideas which sanctioned the issues. The soil had been cleared, the seed
sown, and now came the harvest. To his thinking, the Revolution had
formed the mind of the younger generation; he touched the hard facts,
and knew that although there were countless unhealed wounds, what had
been done was past recall. The death of a king on the scaffold, the
protracted agony of a queen, the division of the nobles’ lands, in his
eyes were so many binding contracts; and where so many vested interests
were involved, it was not likely that those concerned would allow them
to be attacked. Chesnel saw clearly. His fanatical attachment to the
d’Esgrignons was whole-hearted, but it was not blind, and it was all the
fairer for this. The young monk’s faith that sees heaven laid open and
beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old monk who
points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk; he would
have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine.

He tried to explain the “innovations” to his old master, using a
thousand tactful precautions; sometimes speaking jestingly, sometimes
affecting surprise or sorrow over this or that; but he always met the
same prophetic smile on the Marquis’ lips, the same fixed conviction in
the Marquis’ mind, that these follies would go by like others. Events
contributed in a way which has escaped attention to assist such noble
champions of forlorn hope to cling to their superstitions. What could
Chesnel do when the old Marquis said, with a lordly gesture, “God swept
away Bonaparte with his armies, his new great vassals, his crowned
kings, and his vast conceptions! God will deliver us from the rest.” And
Chesnel hung his head sadly, and did not dare to answer, “It cannot be
God’s will to sweep away France.” Yet both of them were grand figures;
the one, standing out against the torrent of facts like an ancient block
of lichen-covered granite, still upright in the depths of an Alpine
gorge; the other, watching the course of the flood to turn it to
account. Then the good gray-headed notary would groan over the
irreparable havoc which the superstitions were sure to work in the mind,
the habits, and ideas of the Comte Victurnien d’Esgrignon.

Idolized by his father, idolized by his aunt, the young heir was a
spoilt child in every sense of the word; but still a spoilt child who
justified paternal and maternal illusions. Maternal, be it said, for
Victurnien’s aunt was truly a mother to him; and yet, however careful
and tender she may be that never bore a child, there is something
lacking in her motherhood. A mother’s second sight cannot be acquired.
An aunt, bound to her nursling by ties of such pure affection as united
Mlle. Armande to Victurnien, may love as much as a mother might; may be
as careful, as kind, as tender, as indulgent, but she lacks the mother’s
instinctive knowledge when and how to be severe; she has no sudden
warnings, none of the uneasy presentiments of the mother’s heart; for a
mother, bound to her child from the beginnings of life by all the fibres
of her being, still is conscious of the communication, still vibrates
with the shock of every trouble, and thrills with every joy in the
child’s life as if it were her own. If Nature has made of woman,
physically speaking, a neutral ground, it has not been forbidden to
her, under certain conditions, to identify herself completely with her
offspring. When she has not merely given life, but given of her
whole life, you behold that wonderful, unexplained, and inexplicable
thing--the love of a woman for one of her children above the others. The
outcome of this story is one more proof of a proven truth--a mother’s
place cannot be filled. A mother foresees danger long before a Mlle.
Armande can admit the possibility of it, even if the mischief is done.
The one prevents the evil, the other remedies it. And besides, in the
maiden’s motherhood there is an element of blind adoration, she cannot
bring herself to scold a beautiful boy.

A practical knowledge of life, and the experience of business, had
taught the old notary a habit of distrustful clear-sighted observation
something akin to the mother’s instinct. But Chesnel counted for so
little in the house (especially since he had fallen into something like
disgrace over that unlucky project of a marriage between a d’Esgrignon
and a du Croisier), that he had made up his mind to adhere blindly in
future to the family doctrines. He was a common soldier, faithful to his
post, and ready to give his life; it was never likely that they would
take his advice, even in the height of the storm; unless chance should
bring him, like the King’s bedesman in The Antiquary, to the edge of the
sea, when the old baronet and his daughter were caught by the high tide.

Du Croisier caught a glimpse of his revenge in the anomalous education
given to the lad. He hoped, to quote the expressive words of the author
quoted above, “to drown the lamb in its mother’s milk.” _This_ was the
hope which had produced his taciturn resignation and brought that savage
smile on his lips.

The young Comte Victurnien was taught to believe in his own supremacy as
soon as an idea could enter his head. All the great nobles of the realm
were his peers, his one superior was the King, and the rest of mankind
were his inferiors, people with whom he had nothing in common, towards
whom he had no duties. They were defeated and conquered enemies, whom he
need not take into account for a moment; their opinions could not affect
a noble, and they all owed him respect. Unluckily, with the rigorous
logic of youth, which leads children and young people to proceed to
extremes whether good or bad, Victurnien pushed these conclusions
to their utmost consequences. His own external advantages, moreover,
confirmed him in his beliefs. He had been extraordinarily beautiful as a
child; he became as accomplished a young man as any father could wish.

He was of average height, but well proportioned, slender, and almost
delicate-looking, but muscular. He had the brilliant blue eyes of the
d’Esgrignons, the finely-moulded aquiline nose, the perfect oval of
the face, the auburn hair, the white skin, and the graceful gait of his
family; he had their delicate extremities, their long taper fingers with
the inward curve, and that peculiar distinction of shapeliness of the
wrist and instep, that supple felicity of line, which is as sure a sign
of race in men as in horses. Adroit and alert in all bodily exercises,
and an excellent shot, he handled arms like a St. George, he was a
paladin on horseback. In short, he gratified the pride which parents
take in their children’s appearance; a pride founded, for that matter,
on a just idea of the enormous influence exercised by physical beauty.
Personal beauty has this in common with noble birth; it cannot be
acquired afterwards; it is everywhere recognized, and often is more
valued than either brains or money; beauty has only to appear and
triumph; nobody asks more of beauty than that it should simply exist.

Fate had endowed Victurnien, over and above the privileges of good
looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a wonderful aptitude of
comprehension, and a good memory. His education, therefore, had been
complete. He knew a good deal more than is usually known by young
provincial nobles, who develop into highly-distinguished sportsmen,
owners of land, and consumers of tobacco; and are apt to treat
art, sciences, letters, poetry, or anything offensively above their
intellects, cavalierly enough. Such gifts of nature and education surely
would one day realize the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s ambitions; he already
saw his son a Marshal of France if Victurnien’s tastes were for the
army; an ambassador if diplomacy held any attractions for him; a cabinet
minister if that career seemed good in his eyes; every place in the
state belonged to Victurnien. And, most gratifying thought of all for a
father, the young Count would have made his way in the world by his own
merits even if he had not been a d’Esgrignon.

All through his happy childhood and golden youth, Victurnien had never
met with opposition to his wishes. He had been the king of the house; no
one curbed the little prince’s will; and naturally he grew up
insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most
high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,--defects of character which
any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of the noble.

The Chevalier was a man of the good old times when the Gray Musketeers
were the terror of the Paris theatres, when they horsewhipped the watch
and drubbed servers of writs, and played a host of page’s pranks, at
which Majesty was wont to smile so long as they were amusing. This
charming deceiver and hero of the ruelles had no small share in bringing
about the disasters which afterwards befell. The amiable old gentleman,
with nobody to understand him, was not a little pleased to find a
budding Faublas, who looked the part to admiration, and put him in mind
of his own young days. So, making no allowance for the difference of
the times, he sowed the maxims of a roue of the Encyclopaedic period
broadcast in the boy’s mind. He told wicked anecdotes of the reign of
His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the manners and customs of the
year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites maisons, the follies of
courtesans, the capital tricks played on creditors, the manners, in
short, which furnished forth Dancourt’s comedies and Beaumarchais’
epigrams. And unfortunately, the corruption lurking beneath the utmost
polish tricked itself out in Voltairean wit. If the Chevalier went
rather too far at times, he always added as a corrective that a man must
always behave himself like a gentleman.

Of all this discourse, Victurnien comprehended just so much as flattered
his passions. From the first he saw his old father laughing with
the Chevalier. The two elderly men considered that the pride of a
d’Esgrignon was a sufficient safeguard against anything unbefitting;
as for a dishonorable action, no one in the house imagined that a
d’Esgrignon could be guilty of it. _Honor_, the great principle of
Monarchy, was planted firm like a beacon in the hearts of the family;
it lighted up the least action, it kindled the least thought of a
d’Esgrignon. “A d’Esgrignon ought not to permit himself to do such and
such a thing; he bears a name which pledges him to make a future worthy
of the past”--a noble teaching which should have been sufficient in
itself to keep alive the tradition of noblesse--had been, as it were,
the burden of Victurnien’s cradle song. He heard them from the old
Marquis, from Mlle. Armande, from Chesnel, from the intimates of the
house. And so it came to pass that good and evil met, and in equal
forces, in the boy’s soul.

At the age of eighteen, Victurnien went into society. He noticed some
slight discrepancies between the outer world of the town and the inner
world of the Hotel d’Esgrignon, but he in no wise tried to seek the
causes of them. And, indeed, the causes were to be found in Paris. He
had yet to learn that the men who spoke their minds out so boldly in
evening talk with his father, were extremely careful of what they
said in the presence of the hostile persons with whom their interests
compelled them to mingle. His own father had won the right of freedom
of speech. Nobody dreamed of contradicting an old man of seventy, and
besides, every one was willing to overlook fidelity to the old order of
things in a man who had been violently despoiled.

Victurnien was deceived by appearances, and his behavior set up the
backs of the townspeople. In his impetuous way he tried to carry matters
with too high a hand over some difficulties in the way of sport, which
ended in formidable lawsuits, hushed up by Chesnel for money paid down.
Nobody dared to tell the Marquis of these things. You may judge of
his astonishment if he had heard that his son had been prosecuted for
shooting over his lands, his domains, his covers, under the reign of
a son of St. Louis! People were too much afraid of the possible
consequences to tell him about such trifles, Chesnel said.

The young Count indulged in other escapades in the town. These the
Chevalier regarded as “amourettes,” but they cost Chesnel something
considerable in portions for forsaken damsels seduced under imprudent
promises of marriage: yet other cases there were which came under an
article of the Code as to the abduction of minors; and but for Chesnel’s
timely intervention, the new law would have been allowed to take its
brutal course, and it is hard to say where the Count might have ended.
Victurnien grew the bolder for these victories over bourgeois justice.
He was so accustomed to be pulled out of scrapes, that he never thought
twice before any prank. Courts of law, in his opinion, were bugbears
to frighten people who had no hold on him. Things which he would have
blamed in common people were for him only pardonable amusements. His
disposition to treat the new laws cavalierly while obeying the maxims of
a Code for aristocrats, his behavior and character, were all pondered,
analyzed, and tested by a few adroit persons in du Croisier’s interests.
These folk supported each other in the effort to make the people believe
that Liberal slanders were revelations, and that the Ministerial policy
at bottom meant a return to the old order of things.

What a bit of luck to find something by way of proof of their
assertions! President du Ronceret, and the public prosecutor likewise,
lent themselves admirably, so far as was compatible with their duty
as magistrates, to the design of letting off the offender as easily as
possible; indeed, they went deliberately out of their way to do
this, well pleased to raise a Liberal clamor against their overlarge
concessions. And so, while seeming to serve the interests of the
d’Esgrignons, they stirred up feeling against them. The treacherous de
Ronceret had it in his mind to pose as incorruptible at the right moment
over some serious charge, with public opinion to back him up. The young
Count’s worst tendencies, moreover, were insidiously encouraged by two
or three young men who followed in his train, paid court to him, won
his favor, and flattered and obeyed him, with a view to confirming his
belief in a noble’s supremacy; and all this at a time when a noble’s
one chance of preserving his power lay in using it with the utmost
discretion for half a century to come.

Du Croisier hoped to reduce the d’Esgrignons to the last extremity of
poverty; he hoped to see their castle demolished, and their lands sold
piecemeal by auction, through the follies which this harebrained boy was
pretty certain to commit. This was as far as he went; he did not think,
with President du Ronceret, that Victurnien was likely to give justice
another kind of hold upon him. Both men found an ally for their schemes
of revenge in Victurnien’s overweening vanity and love of pleasure.
President du Ronceret’s son, a lad of seventeen, was admirably fitted
for the part of instigator. He was one of the Count’s companions, a new
kind of spy in du Croisier’s pay; du Croisier taught him his lesson,
set him to track down the noble and beautiful boy through his better
qualities, and sardonically prompted him to encourage his victim in his
worst faults. Fabien du Ronceret was a sophisticated youth, to whom
such a mystification was attractive; he had precisely the keen brain
and envious nature which finds in such a pursuit as this the absorbing
amusement which a man of an ingenious turn lacks in the provinces.

In three years, between the ages of eighteen and one-and-twenty,
Victurnien cost poor Chesnel nearly eighty thousand francs! And this
without the knowledge of Mlle. Armande or the Marquis. More than half of
the money had been spent in buying off lawsuits; the lad’s extravagance
had squandered the rest. Of the Marquis’ income of ten thousand livres,
five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping; two thousand more
represented Mlle. Armande’s allowance (parsimonious though she was) and
the Marquis’ expenses. The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore,
had not a hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man make
on two thousand livres? Victurnien’s tailor’s bills alone absorbed his
whole allowance. He had his linen, his clothes, gloves, and perfumery
from Paris. He wanted a good English saddle-horse, a tilbury, and a
second horse. M. du Croisier had a tilbury and a thoroughbred. Was the
bourgeoisie to cut out the noblesse? Then, the young Count must have a
man in the d’Esgrignon livery. He prided himself on setting the fashion
among young men in the town and the department; he entered that world
of luxuries and fancies which suit youth and good looks and wit so well.
Chesnel paid for it all, not without using, like ancient parliaments,
the right of protest, albeit he spoke with angelic kindness.

“What a pity it is that so good a man should be so tiresome!” Victurnien
would say to himself every time that the notary staunched some wound in
his purse.

Chesnel had been left a widower, and childless; he had taken his old
master’s son to fill the void in his heart. It was a pleasure to him to
watch the lad driving up the High Street, perched aloft on the box-seat
of the tilbury, whip in hand, and a rose in his button-hole, handsome,
well turned out, envied by every one.

Pressing need would bring Victurnien with uneasy eyes and coaxing
manner, but steady voice, to the modest house in the Rue du Bercail;
there had been losses at cards at the Troisvilles, or the Duc de
Verneuil’s, or the prefecture, or the receiver-general’s, and the Count
had come to his providence, the notary. He had only to show himself to
carry the day.

“Well, what is it, M. le Comte? What has happened?” the old man would
ask, with a tremor in his voice.

On great occasions Victurnien would sit down, assume a melancholy,
pensive expression, and submit with little coquetries of voice and
gesture to be questioned. Then when he had thoroughly roused the old
man’s fears (for Chesnel was beginning to fear how such a course of
extravagance would end), he would own up to a peccadillo which a bill
for a thousand francs would absolve. Chesnel possessed a private income
of some twelve thousand livres, but the fund was not inexhaustible.
The eighty thousand francs thus squandered represented his savings,
accumulated for the day when the Marquis should send his son to Paris,
or open negotiations for a wealthy marriage.

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Victurnien was not there before
him. One by one he lost the illusions which the Marquis and his sister
still fondly cherished. He saw that the young fellow could not be
depended upon in the least, and wished to see him married to some
modest, sensible girl of good birth, wondering within himself how a
young man could mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one day
only to break them all on the next.

But there is never any good to be expected of young men who confess
their sins and repent, and straightway fall into them again. A man of
strong character only confesses his faults to himself, and punishes
himself for them; as for the weak, they drop back into the old ruts
when they find that the bank is too steep to climb. The springs of pride
which lie in a great man’s secret soul had been slackened in Victurnien.
With such guardians as he had, such company as he kept, such a life
as he led, he had suddenly became an enervated voluptuary at that
turning-point in his life when a man most stands in need of the harsh
discipline of misfortune and adversity which formed a Prince Eugene, a
Frederick II., a Napoleon. Chesnel saw that Victurnien possessed that
uncontrollable appetite for enjoyments which should be the prerogative
of men endowed with giant powers; the men who feel the need of
counterbalancing their gigantic labors by pleasures which bring
one-sided mortals to the pit.

At times the good man stood aghast; then, again, some profound sally,
some sign of the lad’s remarkable range of intellect, would reassure
him. He would say, as the Marquis said at the rumor of some escapade,
“Boys will be boys.” Chesnel had spoken to the Chevalier, lamenting
the young lord’s propensity for getting into debt; but the Chevalier
manipulated his pinch of snuff, and listened with a smile of amusement.

“My dear Chesnel, just explain to me what a national debt is,” he
answered. “If France has debts, egad! why should not Victurnien have
debts? At this time and at all times princes have debts, every gentleman
has debts. Perhaps you would rather that Victurnien should bring you
his savings?--Do you know that our great Richelieu (not the Cardinal, a
pitiful fellow that put nobles to death, but the Marechal), do you know
what he did once when his grandson the Prince de Chinon, the last of
the line, let him see that he had not spent his pocket-money at the
University?”

“No, M. le Chevalier.”

“Oh, well; he flung the purse out of the window to a sweeper in the
courtyard, and said to his grandson, ‘Then they do not teach you to be a
prince here?’”

Chesnel bent his head and made no answer. But that night, as he lay
awake, he thought that such doctrines as these were fatal in times when
there was one law for everybody, and foresaw the first beginnings of the
ruin of the d’Esgrignons.



But for these explanations which depict one side of provincial life
in the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it would not be easy to
understand the opening scene of this history, an incident which took
place in the great salon one evening towards the end of October 1822.
The card-tables were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities--elderly
nobles, elderly countesses, young marquises, and simple baronesses--had
settled their losses and winnings. The master of the house was pacing
up and down the room, while Mlle. Armande was putting out the candles
on the card-tables. He was not taking exercise alone, the Chevalier was
with him, and the two wrecks of the eighteenth century were talking of
Victurnien. The Chevalier had undertaken to broach the subject with the
Marquis.

“Yes, Marquis,” he was saying, “your son is wasting his time and his
youth; you ought to send him to court.”

“I have always thought,” said the Marquis, “that if my great age
prevents me from going to court--where, between ourselves, I do not know
what I should do among all these new people whom his Majesty receives,
and all that is going on there--that if I could not go myself, I could
at least send my son to present our homage to His Majesty. The King
surely would do something for the Count--give him a company, for
instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in short, for the boy
to win his spurs. My uncle the Archbishop suffered a cruel martyrdom;
I have fought for the cause without deserting the camp with those who
thought it their duty to follow the Princes. I held that while the King
was in France, his nobles should rally round him.--Ah! well, no one
gives us a thought; a Henry IV. would have written before now to the
d’Esgrignons, ‘Come to me, my friends; we have won the day!’--After
all, we are something better than the Troisvilles, yet here are two
Troisvilles made peers of France; and another, I hear, represents
the nobles in the Chamber.” (He took the upper electoral colleges for
assemblies of his own order.) “Really, they think no more of us than if
we did not exist. I was waiting for the Princes to make their journey
through this part of the world; but as the Princes do not come to us, we
must go to the Princes.”

“I am enchanted to learn that you think of introducing our dear
Victurnien into society,” the Chevalier put in adroitly. “He ought not
to bury his talents in a hole like this town. The best fortune that he
can look for here is to come across some Norman girl” (mimicking
the accent), “country-bred, stupid, and rich. What could he make of
her?--his wife? Oh! good Lord!”

“I sincerely hope that he will defer his marriage until he has obtained
some great office or appointment under the Crown,” returned the
gray-haired Marquis. “Still, there are serious difficulties in the way.”

And these were the only difficulties which the Marquis saw at the outset
of his son’s career.

“My son, the Comte d’Esgrignon, cannot make his appearance at court like
a tatterdemalion,” he continued after a pause, marked by a sigh; “he
must be equipped. Alas! for these two hundred years we have had no
retainers. Ah! Chevalier, this demolition from top to bottom always
brings me back to the first hammer stroke delivered by M. de Mirabeau.
The one thing needful nowadays is money; that is all that the Revolution
has done that I can see. The King does not ask you whether you are a
descendant of the Valois or a conquerer of Gaul; he asks whether you pay
a thousand francs in tailles which nobles never used to pay. So I
cannot well send the Count to court without a matter of twenty thousand
crowns----”

“Yes,” assented the Chevalier, “with that trifling sum he could cut a
brave figure.”

“Well,” said Mlle. Armande, “I have asked Chesnel to come to-night.
Would you believe it, Chevalier, ever since the day when Chesnel
proposed that I should marry that miserable du Croisier----”

“Ah! that was truly unworthy, mademoiselle!” cried the Chevalier.

“Unpardonable!” said the Marquis.

“Well, since then my brother has never brought himself to ask anything
whatsoever of Chesnel,” continued Mlle. Armande.

“Of your old household servant? Why, Marquis, you would do Chesnel
honor--an honor which he would gratefully remember till his latest
breath.”

“No,” said the Marquis, “the thing is beneath one’s dignity, it seems to
me.”

“There is not much question of dignity; it is a matter of necessity,”
 said the Chevalier, with the trace of a shrug.

“Never,” said the Marquis, riposting with a gesture which decided the
Chevalier to risk a great stroke to open his old friend’s eyes.

“Very well,” he said, “since you do not know it, I will tell you
myself that Chesnel has let your son have something already, something
like----”

“My son is incapable of accepting anything whatever from Chesnel,” the
Marquis broke in, drawing himself up as he spoke. “He might have come to
_you_ to ask you for twenty-five louis----”

“Something like a hundred thousand livres,” said the Chevalier,
finishing his sentence.

“The Comte d’Esgrignon owes a hundred thousand livres to a Chesnel!”
 cried the Marquis, with every sign of deep pain. “Oh! if he were not
an only son, he should set out to-night for Mexico with a captain’s
commission. A man may be in debt to money-lenders, they charge a heavy
interest, and you are quits; that is right enough; but _Chesnel_! a man
to whom one is attached!----”

“Yes, our adorable Victurnien has run through a hundred thousand livres,
dear Marquis,” resumed the Chevalier, flicking a trace of snuff from his
waistcoat; “it is not much, I know. I myself at his age---- But, after
all, let us let old memories be, Marquis. The Count is living in the
provinces; all things taken into consideration, it is not so much amiss.
He will not go far; these irregularities are common in men who do great
things afterwards----”

“And he is sleeping upstairs, without a word of this to his father,”
 exclaimed the Marquis.

“Sleeping innocently as a child who has merely got five or six little
bourgeoises into trouble, and now must have duchesses,” returned the
Chevalier.

“Why, he deserves a lettre de cachet!”

“‘They’ have done away with lettres de cachet,” said the Chevalier.
“You know what a hubbub there was when they tried to institute a law
for special cases. We could not keep the provost’s courts, which M. _de_
Bonaparte used to call commissions militaires.”

“Well, well; what are we to do if our boys are wild, or turn out
scapegraces? Is there no locking them up in these days?” asked the
Marquis.

The Chevalier looked at the heartbroken father and lacked courage to
answer, “We shall be obliged to bring them up properly.”

“And you have never said a word of this to me, Mlle. d’Esgrignon,”
 added the Marquis, turning suddenly round upon Mlle. Armande. He never
addressed her as Mlle. d’Esgrignon except when he was vexed; usually she
was called “my sister.”

“Why, monsieur, when a young man is full of life and spirits, and leads
an idle life in a town like this, what else can you expect?” asked Mlle.
d’Esgrignon. She could not understand her brother’s anger.

“Debts! eh! why, hang it all!” added the Chevalier. “He plays cards,
he has little adventures, he shoots,--all these things are horribly
expensive nowadays.”

“Come,” said the Marquis, “it is time to send him to the King. I will
spend to-morrow morning in writing to our kinsmen.”

“I have some acquaintance with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Lenoncourt, de
Maufrigneuse, and de Chaulieu,” said the Chevalier, though he knew, as
he spoke, that he was pretty thoroughly forgotten.

“My dear Chevalier, there is no need of such formalities to present
a d’Esgrignon at court,” the Marquis broke in.--“A hundred thousand
livres,” he muttered; “this Chesnel makes very free. This is what comes
of these accursed troubles. M. Chesnel protects my son. And now I must
ask him.... No, sister, you must undertake this business. Chesnel shall
secure himself for the whole amount by a mortgage on our lands. And
just give this harebrained boy a good scolding; he will end by ruining
himself if he goes on like this.”

The Chevalier and Mlle. d’Esgrignon thought these words perfectly simple
and natural, absurd as they would have sounded to any other listener. So
far from seeing anything ridiculous in the speech, they were both very
much touched by a look of something like anguish in the old noble’s
face. Some dark premonition seemed to weigh upon M. d’Esgrignon at that
moment, some glimmering of an insight into the changed times. He went to
the settee by the fireside and sat down, forgetting that Chesnel would
be there before long; that Chesnel, of whom he could not bring himself
to ask anything.

Just then the Marquis d’Esgrignon looked exactly as any imagination
with a touch of romance could wish. He was almost bald, but a fringe of
silken, white locks, curled at the tips, covered the back of his head.
All the pride of race might be seen in a noble forehead, such as you may
admire in a Louis XV., a Beaumarchais, a Marechal de Richelieu, it was
not the square, broad brow of the portraits of the Marechal de Saxe; nor
yet the small hard circle of Voltaire, compact to overfulness; it was
graciously rounded and finely moulded, the temples were ivory tinted
and soft; and mettle and spirit, unquenched by age, flashed from the
brilliant eyes. The Marquis had the Conde nose and the lovable Bourbon
mouth, from which, as they used to say of the Comte d’Artois, only witty
and urbane words proceed. His cheeks, sloping rather than foolishly
rounded to the chin, were in keeping with his spare frame, thin legs,
and plump hands. The strangulation cravat at his throat was of the kind
which every marquis wears in all the portraits which adorn eighteenth
century literature; it is common alike to Saint-Preux and to Lovelace,
to the elegant Montesquieu’s heroes and to Diderot’s homespun characters
(see the first editions of those writers’ works).

The Marquis always wore a white, gold-embroidered, high waistcoat, with
the red ribbon of a commander of the Order of St. Louis blazing upon his
breast; and a blue coat with wide skirts, and fleur-de-lys on the flaps,
which were turned back--an odd costume which the King had adopted.
But the Marquis could not bring himself to give up the Frenchman’s
knee-breeches nor yet the white silk stockings or the buckles at the
knees. After six o’clock in the evening he appeared in full dress.

He read no newspapers but the Quotidienne and the Gazette de France, two
journals accused by the Constitutional press of obscurantist views and
uncounted “monarchical and religious” enormities; while the Marquis
d’Esgrignon, on the other hand, found heresies and revolutionary
doctrines in every issue. No matter to what extremes the organs of this
or that opinion may go, they will never go quite far enough to please
the purists on their own side; even as the portrayer of this magnificent
personage is pretty certain to be accused of exaggeration, whereas he
has done his best to soften down some of the cruder tones and dim the
more startling tints of the original.

The Marquis d’Esgrignon rested his elbows on his knees and leant
his head on his hands. During his meditations Mlle. Armande and the
Chevalier looked at one another without uttering the thoughts in their
minds. Was he pained by the discovery that his son’s future must
depend upon his sometime land steward? Was he doubtful of the reception
awaiting the young Count? Did he regret that he had made no preparation
for launching his heir into that brilliant world of court? Poverty had
kept him in the depths of his province; how should he have appeared at
court? He sighed heavily as he raised his head.

That sigh, in those days, came from the real aristocracy all over
France; from the loyal provincial noblesse, consigned to neglect with
most of those who had drawn sword and braved the storm for the cause.

“What have the Princes done for the du Guenics, or the Fontaines, or
the Bauvans, who never submitted?” he muttered to himself. “They fling
miserable pensions to the men who fought most bravely, and give them
a royal lieutenancy in a fortress somewhere on the outskirts of the
kingdom.”

Evidently the Marquis doubted the reigning dynasty. Mlle. d’Esgrignon
was trying to reassure her brother as to the prospects of the journey,
when a step outside on the dry narrow footway gave them notice of
Chesnel’s coming. In another moment Chesnel appeared; Josephin, the
Count’s gray-aired valet, admitted the notary without announcing him.

“Chesnel, my boy----” (Chesnel was a white-haired man of sixty-nine,
with a square-jawed, venerable countenance; he wore knee-breeches, ample
enough to fill several chapters of dissertation in the manner of Sterne,
ribbed stockings, shoes with silver clasps, an ecclesiastical-looking
coat and a high waistcoat of scholastic cut.)

“Chesnel, my boy, it was very presumptuous of you to lend money to the
Comte d’Esgrignon! If I repaid you at once and we never saw each other
again, it would be no more than you deserve for giving wings to his
vices.”

There was a pause, a silence such as there falls at court when the
King publicly reprimands a courtier. The old notary looked humble and
contrite.

“I am anxious about that boy, Chesnel,” continued the Marquis in a
kindly tone; “I should like to send him to Paris to serve His Majesty.
Make arrangements with my sister for his suitable appearance at
court.--And we will settle accounts----”

The Marquis looked grave as he left the room with a friendly gesture of
farewell to Chesnel.

“I thank M. le Marquis for all his goodness,” returned the old man, who
still remained standing.

Mlle. Armande rose to go to the door with her brother; she had rung the
bell, old Josephin was in readiness to light his master to his room.

“Take a seat, Chesnel,” said the lady, as she returned, and with womanly
tact she explained away and softened the Marquis’ harshness. And yet
beneath that harshness Chesnel saw a great affection. The Marquis’
attachment for his old servant was something of the same order as a
man’s affection for his dog; he will fight any one who kicks the animal,
the dog is like a part of his existence, a something which, if
not exactly himself, represents him in that which is nearest and
dearest--his sensibilities.

“It is quite time that M. le Comte should be sent away from the town,
mademoiselle,” he said sententiously.

“Yes,” returned she. “Has he been indulging in some new escapade?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Well, why do you blame him?”

“I am not blaming him, mademoiselle. No, I am not blaming him. I am
very far from blaming him. I will even say that I shall never blame him,
whatever he may do.”

There was a pause. The Chevalier, nothing if not quick to take in a
situation, began to yawn like a sleep-ridden mortal. Gracefully he made
his excuses and went, with as little mind to sleep as to go and drown
himself. The imp Curiosity kept the Chevalier wide awake, and with airy
fingers plucked away the cotton wool from his ears.

“Well, Chesnel, is it something new?” Mlle. Armande began anxiously.

“Yes, things that cannot be told to M. le Marquis; he would drop down in
an apoplectic fit.”

“Speak out,” she said. With her beautiful head leant on the back of her
low chair, and her arms extended listlessly by her side, she looked as
if she were waiting passively for her deathblow.

“Mademoiselle, M. le Comte, with all his cleverness, is a plaything in
the hands of mean creatures, petty natures on the lookout for a crushing
revenge. They want to ruin us and bring us low! There is the President
of the Tribunal, M. de Ronceret; he has, as you know, a very great
notion of his descent----”

“His grandfather was an attorney,” interposed Mlle. Armande.

“I know he was. And for that reason you have not received him; nor does
he go to M. de Troisville’s, nor to M. le Duc de Verneuil’s, nor to the
Marquis de Casteran’s; but he is one of the pillars of du Croisier’s
salon. Your nephew may rub shoulders with young M. Fabien du Ronceret
without condescending too far, for he must have companions of his own
age. Well and good. That young fellow is at the bottom of all M. le
Comte’s follies; he and two or three of the rest of them belong to the
other side, the side of M. le Chevalier’s enemy, who does nothing but
breathe threats of vengeance against you and all the nobles together.
They all hope to ruin you through your nephew. The ringleader of the
conspiracy is this sycophant of a du Croisier, the pretended Royalist.
Du Croisier’s wife, poor thing, knows nothing about it; you know her,
I should have heard of it before this if she had ears to hear evil.
For some time these wild young fellows were not in the secret, nor was
anybody else; but the ringleaders let something drop in jest, and then
the fools got to know about it, and after the Count’s recent escapades
they let fall some words while they were drunk. And those words were
carried to me by others who are sorry to see such a fine, handsome,
noble, charming lad ruining himself with pleasure. So far people feel
sorry for him; before many days are over they will--I am afraid to say
what----”

“They will despise him; say it out, Chesnel!” Mlle. Armande cried
piteously.

“Ah! How can you keep the best people in the town from finding out
faults in their neighbors? They do not know what to do with themselves
from morning to night. And so M. le Comte’s losses at play are all
reckoned up. Thirty thousand francs have taken flight during these two
months, and everybody wonders where he gets the money. If they mention
it when I am present, I just call them to order. Ah! but--‘Do you
suppose’ (I told them this morning), ‘do you suppose that if the
d’Esgrignon family have lost their manorial rights, that therefore they
have been robbed of their hoard of treasure? The young Count has a right
to do as he pleases; and so long as he does not owe you a half-penny,
you have no right to say a word.’”

Mlle, Armande held out her hand, and the notary kissed it respectfully.

“Good Chesnel!... But, my friend, how shall we find the money for this
journey? Victurnien must appear as befits his rank at court.”

“Oh! I have borrowed money on Le Jard, mademoiselle.”

“What? You have nothing left! Ah, heaven! what can we do to reward you?”

“You can take the hundred thousand francs which I hold at your disposal.
You can understand that the loan was negotiated in confidence, so that
it might not reflect on you; for it is known in the town that I am
closely connected with the d’Esgrignon family.”

Tears came into Mlle. Armande’s eyes. Chesnel saw them, took a fold of
the noble woman’s dress in his hands, and kissed it.

“Never mind,” he said, “a lad must sow his wild oats. In great salons in
Paris his boyish ideas will take a new turn. And, really, though our old
friends here are the worthiest folk in the world, and no one could have
nobler hearts than they, they are not amusing. If M. le Comte wants
amusement, he is obliged to look below his rank, and he will end by
getting into low company.”

Next day the old traveling coach saw the light, and was sent to be put
in repair. In a solemn interview after breakfast, the hope of the house
was duly informed of his father’s intentions regarding him--he was to
go to court and ask to serve His Majesty. He would have time during the
journey to make up his mind about his career. The navy or the army, the
privy council, an embassy, or the Royal Household,--all were open to a
d’Esgrignon, a d’Esgrignon had only to choose. The King would certainly
look favorably upon the d’Esgrignons, because they had asked nothing of
him, and had sent the youngest representative of their house to receive
the recognition of Majesty.

But young d’Esgrignon, with all his wild pranks, had guessed
instinctively what society in Paris meant, and formed his own opinions
of life. So when they talked of his leaving the country and the paternal
roof, he listened with a grave countenance to his revered parent’s
lecture, and refrained from giving him a good deal of information in
reply. As, for instance, that young men no longer went into the army
or the navy as they used to do; that if a man had a mind to be a second
lieutenant in a cavalry regiment without passing through a special
training in the Ecoles, he must first serve in the Pages; that sons of
the greatest houses went exactly like commoners to Saint-Cyr and the
Ecole polytechnique, and took their chances of being beaten by base
blood. If he had enlightened his relatives on these points, funds might
not have been forthcoming for a stay in Paris; so he allowed his father
and Aunt Armande to believe that he would be permitted a seat in the
King’s carriages, that he must support his dignity at court as the
d’Esgrignon of the time, and rub shoulders with great lords of the
realm.

It grieved the Marquis that he could send but one servant with his son;
but he gave him his own valet Josephin, a man who can be trusted to take
care of his young master, and to watch faithfully over his interests.
The poor father must do without Josephin, and hope to replace him with a
young lad.

“Remember that you are a Carol, my boy,” he said; “remember that you
come of an unalloyed descent, and that your scutcheon bears the motto
Cil est nostre; with such arms you may hold your head high everywhere,
and aspire to queens. Render grace to your father, as I to mine. We owe
it to the honor of our ancestors, kept stainless until now, that we
can look all men in the face, and need bend the knee to none save a
mistress, the King, and God. This is the greatest of your privileges.”

Chesnel, good man, was breakfasting with the family. He took no part in
counsels based on heraldry, nor in the inditing of letters addressed
to divers mighty personages of the day; but he had spent the night in
writing to an old friend of his, one of the oldest established notaries
of Paris. Without this letter it is not possible to understand Chesnel’s
real and assumed fatherhood. It almost recalls Daedalus’ address to
Icarus; for where, save in old mythology, can you look for comparisons
worthy of this man of antique mould?



  “MY DEAR AND ESTIMABLE SORBIER,--I remember with no little
  pleasure that I made my first campaign in our honorable profession
  under your father, and that you had a liking for me, poor little
  clerk that I was. And now I appeal to old memories of the days
  when we worked in the same office, old pleasant memories for our
  hearts, to ask you to do me the one service that I have ever asked
  of you in the course of our long lives, crossed as they have been
  by political catastrophes, to which, perhaps, I owe it that I have
  the honor to be your colleague. And now I ask this service of you,
  my friend, and my white hairs will be brought with sorrow to the
  grave if you should refuse my entreaty. It is no question of
  myself or of mine, Sorbier, for I lost poor Mme. Chesnel, and I
  have no child of my own. Something more to me than my own family
  (if I had one) is involved--it is the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s only
  son. I have had the honor to be the Marquis’ land steward ever
  since I left the office to which his father sent me at his own
  expense, with the idea of providing for me. The house which
  nurtured me has passed through all the troubles of the Revolution.
  I have managed to save some of their property; but what is it,
  after all, in comparison with the wealth that they have lost? I
  cannot tell you, Sorbier, how deeply I am attached to the great
  house, which has been all but swallowed up under my eyes by the
  abyss of time. M. le Marquis was proscribed, and his lands
  confiscated, he was getting on in years, he had no child.
  Misfortunes upon misfortunes! Then M. le Marquis married, and his
  wife died when the young Count was born, and to-day this noble,
  dear, and precious child is all the life of the d’Esgrignon
  family; the fate of the house hangs upon him. He has got into debt
  here with amusing himself. What else should he do in the provinces
  with an allowance of a miserable hundred louis? Yes, my friend, a
  hundred louis, the great house has come to this.

  “In this extremity his father thinks it necessary to send the
  Count to Paris to ask for the King’s favor at court. Paris is a
  very dangerous place for a lad; if he is to keep steady there, he
  must have the grain of sense which makes notaries of us. Besides,
  I should be heartbroken to think of the poor boy living amid such
  hardships as we have known.--Do you remember the pleasure with
  which we spent a day and a night there waiting to see The Marriage
  of Figaro? Oh, blind that we were!--We were happy and poor, but a
  noble cannot be happy in poverty. A noble in want--it is a thing
  against nature! Ah! Sorbier, when one has known the satisfaction
  of propping one of the grandest genealogical trees in the kingdom
  in its fall, it is so natural to interest oneself in it and to
  grow fond of it, and love it and water it and look to see it
  blossom. So you will not be surprised at so many precautions on my
  part; you will not wonder when I beg the help of your lights, so
  that all may go well with our young man.

  “Keep yourself informed of his movements and doings, of the
  company which he keeps, and watch over his connections with women.
  M. le Chevalier says that an opera dancer often costs less than a
  court lady. Obtain information on that point and let me know. If
  you are too busy, perhaps Mme. Sorbier might know what becomes of
  the young man, and where he goes. The idea of playing the part of
  guardian angel to such a noble and charming boy might have
  attractions for her. God will remember her for accepting the
  sacred trust. Perhaps when you see M. le Comte Victurnien, her
  heart may tremble at the thought of all the dangers awaiting him
  in Paris; he is very young, and handsome; clever, and at the same
  time disposed to trust others. If he forms a connection with some
  designing woman, Mme. Sorbier could counsel him better than you
  yourself could do. The old man-servant who is with him can tell
  you many things; sound Josephin, I have told him to go to you in
  delicate matters.

  “But why should I say more? We once were clerks together, and a
  pair of scamps; remember our escapades, and be a little bit young
  again, my old friend, in your dealings with him. The sixty
  thousand francs will be remitted to you in the shape of a bill on
  the Treasury by a gentlemen who is going to Paris,” and so forth.



If the old couple to whom this epistle was addressed had followed out
Chesnel’s instructions, they would have been compelled to take three
private detectives into their pay. And yet there was ample wisdom shown
in Chesnel’s choice of a depositary. A banker pays money to any one
accredited to him so long as the money lasts; whereas, Victurnien was
obliged, every time that he was in want of money, to make a
personal visit to the notary, who was quite sure to use the right of
remonstrance.

Victurnien heard that he was to be allowed two thousand francs every
month, and thought that he betrayed his joy. He knew nothing of Paris.
He fancied that he could keep up princely state on such a sum.

Next day he started on his journey. All the benedictions of the
Collection of Antiquities went with him; he was kissed by the dowagers;
good wishes were heaped on his head; his old father, his aunt, and
Chesnel went with him out of the town, tears filling the eyes of all
three. The sudden departure supplied material for conversation for
several evenings; and what was more, it stirred the rancorous minds
of the salon du Croisier to the depths. The forage-contractor, the
president, and others who had vowed to ruin the d’Esgrignons, saw
their prey escaping out of their hands. They had based their schemes of
revenge on a young man’s follies, and now he was beyond their reach.

The tendency in human nature, which often gives a bigot a rake for a
daughter, and makes a frivolous woman the mother of a narrow pietist;
that rule of contraries, which, in all probability, is the “resultant”
 of the law of similarities, drew Victurnien to Paris by a desire to
which he must sooner or later have yielded. Brought up as he had been in
the old-fashioned provincial house, among the quiet, gentle faces
that smiled upon him, among sober servants attached to the family, and
surroundings tinged with a general color of age, the boy had only seen
friends worthy of respect. All of those about him, with the exception of
the Chevalier, had example of venerable age, were elderly men and women,
sedate of manner, decorous and sententious of speech. He had been
petted by those women in gray gowns and embroidered mittens described by
Blondet. The antiquated splendors of his father’s house were as little
calculated as possible to suggest frivolous thoughts; and lastly, he had
been educated by a sincerely religious abbe, possessed of all the charm
of old age, which has dwelt in two centuries, and brings to the Present
its gifts of the dried roses of experience, the faded flowers of the
old customs of its youth. Everything should have combined to fashion
Victurnien to serious habits; his whole surroundings from childhood
bade him continue the glory of a historic name, by taking his life as
something noble and great; and yet Victurnien listened to dangerous
promptings.

For him, his noble birth was a stepping-stone which raised him above
other men. He felt that the idol of Noblesse, before which they burned
incense at home, was hollow; he had come to be one of the commonest as
well as one of the worst types from a social point of view--a consistent
egoist. The aristocratic cult of the _ego_ simply taught him to follow
his own fancies; he had been idolized by those who had the care of him
in childhood, and adored by the companions who shared in his boyish
escapades, and so he had formed a habit of looking and judging
everything as it affected his own pleasure; he took it as a matter of
course when good souls saved him from the consequences of his follies,
a piece of mistaken kindness which could only lead to his ruin.
Victurnien’s early training, noble and pious though it was, had isolated
him too much. He was out of the current of the life of the time, for the
life of a provincial town is certainly not in the main current of the
age; Victurnien’s true destiny lifted him above it. He had learned
to think of an action, not as it affected others, nor relatively, but
absolutely from his own point of view. Like despots, he made the law
to suit the circumstance, a system which works in the lives of prodigal
sons the same confusion which fancy brings into art.

Victurnien was quick-sighted, he saw clearly and without illusion, but
he acted on impulse, and unwisely. An indefinable flaw of character,
often seen in young men, but impossible to explain, led him to will one
thing and do another. In spite of an active mind, which showed itself
in unexpected ways, the senses had but to assert themselves, and the
darkened brain seemed to exist no longer. He might have astonished wise
men; he was capable of setting fools agape. His desires, like a sudden
squall of bad weather, overclouded all the clear and lucid spaces of his
brain in a moment; and then, after the dissipations which he could not
resist, he sank, utterly exhausted in body, heart, and mind, into a
collapsed condition bordering upon imbecility. Such a character will
drag a man down into the mire if he is left to himself, or bring him to
the highest heights of political power if he has some stern friend
to keep him in hand. Neither Chesnel, nor the lad’s father, nor Aunt
Armande had fathomed the depths of a nature so nearly akin on many sides
to the poetic temperament, yet smitten with a terrible weakness at its
core.



By the time the old town lay several miles away, Victurnien felt not the
slightest regret; he thought no more about the father, who had loved ten
generations in his son, nor of the aunt, and her almost insane devotion.
He was looking forward to Paris with vehement ill-starred longings; in
thought he had lived in that fairyland, it had been the background of
his brightest dreams. He imagined that he would be first in Paris, as
he had been in the town and the department where his father’s name was
potent; but it was vanity, not pride, that filled his soul, and in his
dreams his pleasures were to be magnified by all the greatness of
Paris. The distance was soon crossed. The traveling coach, like his own
thoughts, left the narrow horizon of the province for the vast world of
the great city, without a break in the journey. He stayed in the Rue de
Richelieu, in a handsome hotel close to the boulevard, and hastened to
take possession of Paris as a famished horse rushes into a meadow.

He was not long in finding out the difference between country and
town, and was rather surprised than abashed by the change. His mental
quickness soon discovered how small an entity he was in the midst of
this all-comprehending Babylon; how insane it would be to attempt
to stem the torrent of new ideas and new ways. A single incident was
enough. He delivered his father’s letter of introduction to the Duc de
Lenoncourt, a noble who stood high in favor with the King. He saw the
duke in his splendid mansion, among surroundings befitting his rank.
Next day he met him again. This time the Peer of France was lounging
on foot along the boulevard, just like any ordinary mortal, with an
umbrella in his hand; he did not even wear the Blue Ribbon, without
which no knight of the order could have appeared in public in other
times. And, duke and peer and first gentleman of the bedchamber though
he was, M. de Lenoncourt, in spite of his high courtesy, could not
repress a smile as he read his relative’s letter; and that smile told
Victurnien that the Collection of Antiquities and the Tuileries were
separated by more than sixty leagues of road; the distance of several
centuries lay between them.

The names of the families grouped about the throne are quite different
in each successive reign, and the characters change with the names. It
would seem that, in the sphere of court, the same thing happens over and
over again in each generation; but each time there is a quite different
set of personages. If history did not prove that this is so, it would
seem incredible. The prominent men at the court of Louis XVIII.,
for instance, had scarcely any connection with the Rivieres, Blacas,
d’Avarays, Vitrolles, d’Autichamps, Pasquiers, Larochejaqueleins,
Decazes, Dambrays, Laines, de Villeles, La Bourdonnayes, and others who
shone at the court of Louis XV. Compare the courtiers of Henri IV. with
those of Louis XIV.; you will hardly find five great families of the
former time still in existence. The nephew of the great Richelieu was
a very insignificant person at the court of Louis XIV.; while His
Majesty’s favorite, Villeroi, was the grandson of a secretary ennobled
by Charles IX. And so it befell that the d’Esgrignons, all but princes
under the Valois, and all-powerful in the time of Henri IV., had no
fortune whatever at the court of Louis XVIII., which gave them not so
much as a thought. At this day there are names as famous as those
of royal houses--the Foix-Graillys, for instance, or the
d’Herouvilles--left to obscurity tantamount to extinction for want of
money, the one power of the time.

All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own point of view;
he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a personal wrong. The
monster Equality was swallowing down the last fragments of social
distinction in the Restoration. Having made up his mind on this head, he
immediately proceeded to try to win back his place with such dangerous,
if blunted weapons, as the age left to the noblesse. It is an expensive
matter to gain the attention of Paris. To this end, Victurnien adopted
some of the ways then in vogue. He felt that it was a necessity to have
horses and fine carriages, and all the accessories of modern luxury;
he felt, in short, “that a man must keep abreast of the times,” as de
Marsay said--de Marsay, the first dandy that he came across in the first
drawing-room to which he was introduced. For his misfortune, he fell
in with a set of roues, with de Marsay, de Ronquerolles, Maxime de
Trailles, des Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Ajuda-Pinto, Beaudenord, de la
Roche-Hugon, de Manerville, and the Vandenesses, whom he met wherever he
went, and a great many houses were open to a young man with his ancient
name and reputation for wealth. He went to the Marquise d’Espard’s,
to the Duchesses de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, and de Chaulieu, to the
Marquises d’Aiglemont and de Listomere, to Mme. de Serizy’s, to the
Opera, to the embassies and elsewhere. The Faubourg Saint-Germain has
its provincial genealogies at its fingers’ ends; a great name once
recognized and adopted therein is a passport which opens many a door
that will scarcely turn on its hinges for unknown names or the lions of
a lower rank.

Victurnien found his relatives both amiable and ready to welcome him so
long as he did not appear as a suppliant; he saw at once that the surest
way of obtaining nothing was to ask for something. At Paris, if the
first impulse moves people to protect, second thoughts (which last
a good deal longer) impel them to despise the protege. Independence,
vanity, and pride, all the young Count’s better and worse feelings
combined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive attitude.
And therefore the Ducs de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt, de Chaulieu, de
Navarreins, d’Herouville, de Grandlieu, and de Maufrigneuse, the Princes
de Cadignan and de Blamont-Chauvry, were delighted to present the
charming survivor of the wreck of an ancient family at court.

Victurnien went to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage with his
armorial bearings on the panels; but his presentation to His Majesty
made it abundantly clear to him that the people occupied the royal
mind so much that his nobility was like to be forgotten. The restored
dynasty, moreover, was surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men
and gray-headed courtiers; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher,
and this Victurnien guessed at once. He saw that there was no suitable
place for him at court, nor in the government, nor the army, nor,
indeed, anywhere else. So he launched out into the world of pleasure.
Introduced at the Elyess-Bourbon, at the Duchesse d’Angouleme’s, at the
Pavillon Marsan, he met on all sides with the surface civilities due to
the heir of an old family, not so old but it could be called to mind by
the sight of a living member. And, after all, it was not a small thing
to be remembered. In the distinction with which Victurnien was honored
lay the way to the peerage and a splendid marriage; he had taken the
field with a false appearance of wealth, and his vanity would not
allow him to declare his real position. Besides, he had been so much
complimented on the figure that he made, he was so pleased with his
first success, that, like many other young men, he felt ashamed to draw
back. He took a suite of rooms in the Rue du Bac, with stables and a
complete equipment for the fashionable life to which he had committed
himself. These preliminaries cost him fifty thousand francs, which
money, moreover, the young gentleman managed to draw in spite of all
Chesnel’s wise precautions, thanks to a series of unforeseen events.

Chesnel’s letter certainly reached his friend’s office, but Maitre
Sorbier was dead; and Mme. Sorbier, a matter-of-fact person, seeing it
was a business letter, handed it on to her husband’s successor. Maitre
Cardot, the new notary, informed the young Count that a draft on the
Treasury made payable to the deceased would be useless; and by way of
reply to the letter, which had cost the old provincial notary so much
thought, Cardot despatched four lines intended not to reach Chesnel’s
heart, but to produce the money. Chesnel made the draft payable
to Sorbier’s young successor; and the latter, feeling but little
inclination to adopt his correspondent’s sentimentality, was delighted
to put himself at the Count’s orders, and gave Victurnien as much money
as he wanted.

Now those who know what life in Paris means, know that fifty thousand
francs will not go very far in furniture, horses, carriages, and
elegance generally; but it must be borne in mind that Victurnien
immediately contracted some twenty thousand francs’ worth of debts
besides, and his tradespeople at first were not at all anxious to be
paid, for our young gentleman’s fortune had been prodigiously increased,
partly by rumor, partly by Josephin, that Chesnel in livery.

Victurnien had not been in town a month before he was obliged to repair
to his man of business for ten thousand francs; he had only been playing
whist with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Chaulieu, and de Lenoncourt, and
now and again at his club. He had begun by winning some thousands of
francs but pretty soon lost five or six thousand, which brought home to
him the necessity of a purse for play. Victurnien had the spirit that
gains goodwill everywhere, and puts a young man of a great family on a
level with the very highest. He was not merely admitted at once into
the band of patrician youth, but was even envied by the rest. It was
intoxicating to him to feel that he was envied, nor was he in this mood
very likely to think of reform. Indeed, he had completely lost his head.
He would not think of the means; he dipped into his money-bags as if
they could be refilled indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to
the inevitable results of the system. In that dissipated set, in the
continual whirl of gaiety, people take the actors in their brilliant
costumes as they find them, no one inquires whether a man can afford to
make the figure he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries
as to ways and means. A man ought to renew his wealth perpetually,
and as Nature does--below the surface and out of sight. People talk if
somebody comes to grief; they joke about a newcomer’s fortune till
their minds are set at rest, and at this they draw the line. Victurnien
d’Esgrignon, with all the Faubourg Saint-Germain to back him, with all
his protectors exaggerating the amount of his fortune (were it only to
rid themselves of responsibility), and magnifying his possessions in the
most refined and well-bred way, with a hint or a word; with all these
advantages--to repeat--Victurnien was, in fact, an eligible Count. He
was handsome, witty, sound in politics; his father still possessed the
ancestral castle and the lands of the marquisate. Such a young fellow
is sure of an admirable reception in houses where there are marriageable
daughters, fair but portionless partners at dances, and young married
women who find that time hangs heavy on their hands. So the world,
smiling, beckoned him to the foremost benches in its booth; the seats
reserved for marquises are still in the same place in Paris; and if the
names are changed, the things are the same as ever.

In the most exclusive circle of society in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
Victurnien found the Chevalier’s double in the person of the Vidame de
Pamiers. The Vidame was a Chevalier de Valois raised to the tenth power,
invested with all the prestige of wealth, enjoying all the advantages of
high position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for everybody’s secrets,
and the gazette of the Faubourg besides; nevertheless, he was discreet,
and, like other gazettes, only said things that might safely be
published. Again Victurnien listened to the Chevalier’s esoteric
doctrines. The Vidame told young d’Esgrignon, without mincing matters,
to make conquests among women of quality, supplementing the advice with
anecdotes from his own experience. The Vicomte de Pamiers, it seemed,
had permitted himself much that it would serve no purpose to relate
here; so remote was it all from our modern manners, in which soul and
passion play so large a part, that nobody would believe it. But the
excellent Vidame did more than this.

“Dine with me at a tavern to-morrow,” said he, by way of conclusion. “We
will digest our dinner at the Opera, and afterwards I will take you to a
house where several people have the greatest wish to meet you.”

The Vidame gave a delightful little dinner at the Rocher de Cancale;
three guests only were asked to meet Victurnien--de Marsay, Rastignac,
and Blondet. Emile Blondet, the young Count’s fellow-townsman, was a man
of letters on the outskirts of society to which he had been introduced
by a charming woman from the same province. This was one of the Vicomte
de Troisville’s daughters, now married to the Comte de Montcornet,
one of those of Napoleon’s generals who went over to the Bourbons. The
Vidame held that a dinner-party of more than six persons was beneath
contempt. In that case, according to him, there was an end alike of
cookery and conversation, and a man could not sip his wine in a proper
frame of mind.

“I have not yet told you, my dear boy, where I mean to take you
to-night,” he said, taking Victurnien’s hands and tapping on them.
“You are going to see Mlle. des Touches; all the pretty women with any
pretensions to wit will be at her house en petit comite. Literature,
art, poetry, any sort of genius, in short, is held in great esteem
there. It is one of our old-world bureaux d’esprit, with a veneer of
monarchical doctrine, the livery of this present age.”

“It is sometimes as tiresome and tedious there as a pair of new boots,
but there are women with whom you cannot meet anywhere else,” said de
Marsay.

“If all the poets who went there to rub up their muse were like
our friend here,” said Rastignac, tapping Blondet familiarly on the
shoulder, “we should have some fun. But a plague of odes, and ballads,
and driveling meditations, and novels with wide margins, pervades the
sofas and the atmosphere.”

“I don’t dislike them,” said de Marsay, “so long as they corrupt girls’
minds, and don’t spoil women.”

“Gentlemen,” smiled Blondet, “you are encroaching on my field of
literature.”

“You need not talk. You have robbed us of the most charming woman in the
world, you lucky rogue; we may be allowed to steal your less brilliant
ideas,” cried Rastignac.

“Yes, he is a lucky rascal,” said the Vidame, and he twitched
Blondet’s ear. “But perhaps Victurnien here will be luckier still this
evening----”

“_Already_!” exclaimed de Marsay. “Why, he only came here a month ago;
he has scarcely had time to shake the dust of his old manor house off
his feet, to wipe off the brine in which his aunt kept him preserved;
he has only just set up a decent horse, a tilbury in the latest style, a
groom----”

“No, no, not a groom,” interrupted Rastignac; “he has some sort of an
agricultural laborer that he brought with him ‘from his place.’ Buisson,
who understands a livery as well as most, declared that the man was
physically incapable of wearing a jacket.”

“I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled yourself on
Beaudenord,” the Vidame said seriously. “He has this advantage over
all of you, my young friends, he has a genuine specimen of the English
tiger----”

“Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in France!” cried
Victurnien. “For them the one important thing is to have a tiger, a
thoroughbred, and baubles----”

“Bless me!” said Blondet. “‘This gentleman’s good sense at times appalls
me.’--Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles have come to that. You have
not even left to you that lustre of lavish expenditure for which the
dear Vidame was famous fifty years ago. We revel on a second floor in
the Rue Montorgueil. There are no more wars with the Cardinal, no Field
of the Cloth of Gold. You, Comte d’Esgrignon, in short, are supping
in the company of one Blondet, younger son of a miserable provincial
magistrate, with whom you would not shake hands down yonder; and in ten
years’ time you may sit beside him among peers of the realm. Believe in
yourself after that, if you can.”

“Ah, well,” said Rastignac, “we have passed from action to thought, from
brute force to force of intellect, we are talking----”

“Let us not talk of our reverses,” protested the Vidame; “I have made
up my mind to die merrily. If our friend here has not a tiger as yet, he
comes of a race of lions, and can dispense with one.”

“He cannot do without a tiger,” said Blondet; “he is too newly come to
town.”

“His elegance may be new as yet,” returned de Marsay, “but we are
adopting it. He is worthy of us, he understands his age, he has brains,
he is nobly born and gently bred; we are going to like him, and serve
him, and push him----”

“Whither?” inquired Blondet.

“Inquisitive soul!” said Rastignac.

“With whom will he take up to-night?” de Marsay asked.

“With a whole seraglio,” said the Vidame.

“Plague take it! What can we have done that the dear Vidame is punishing
us by keeping his word to the infanta? I should be pitiable indeed if I
did not know her----”

“And I was once a coxcomb even as he,” said the Vidame, indicating de
Marsay.

The conversation continued pitched in the same key, charmingly
scandalous, and agreeably corrupt. The dinner went off very pleasantly.
Rastignac and de Marsay went to the Opera with the Vidame and
Victurnien, with a view to following them afterwards to Mlle. des
Touches’ salon. And thither, accordingly, this pair of rakes betook
themselves, calculating that by that time the tragedy would have been
read; for of all things to be taken between eleven and twelve o’clock at
night, a tragedy in their opinion was the most unwholesome. They went to
keep a watch on Victurnien and to embarrass him, a piece of schoolboys’s
mischief embittered by a jealous dandy’s spite. But Victurnien was
gifted with that page’s effrontery which is a great help to ease
of manner; and Rastignac, watching him as he made his entrance, was
surprised to see how quickly he caught the tone of the moment.

“That young d’Esgrignon will go far, will he not?” he said, addressing
his companion.

“That is as may be,” returned de Marsay, “but he is in a fair way.”



The Vidame introduced his young friend to one of the most amiable
and frivolous duchesses of the day, a lady whose adventures caused an
explosion five years later. Just then, however, she was in the full
blaze of her glory; she had been suspected, it is true, of equivocal
conduct; but suspicion, while it is still suspicion and not proof, marks
a woman out with the kind of distinction which slander gives to a man.
Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are left in
peace. This woman was, in fact, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, a daughter
of the d’Uxelles; her father-in-law was still alive; she was not to
be the Princesse de Cadignan for some years to come. A friend of the
Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, two glories
departed, she was likewise intimate with the Marquise d’Espard, with
whom she disputed her fragile sovereignty as queen of fashion. Great
relations lent her countenance for a long while, but the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse was one of those women who, in some way, nobody knows how,
or why, or where, will spend the rents of all the lands of earth, and of
the moon likewise, if they were not out of reach. The general outline of
her character was scarcely known as yet; de Marsay, and de Marsay only,
really had read her. That redoubtable dandy now watched the Vidame de
Pamiers’ introduction of his young friend to that lovely woman, and bent
over to say in Rastignac’s ear:

“My dear fellow, he will go up _whizz_! like a rocket, and come down
like a stick,” an atrociously vulgar saying which was remarkably
fulfilled.

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had lost her heart to Victurnien after
first giving her mind to a serious study of him. Any lover who should
have caught the glance by which she expressed her gratitude to the
Vidame might well have been jealous of such friendship. Women are like
horses let loose on a steppe when they feel, as the Duchess felt with
the Vidame de Pamiers, that the ground is safe; at such moments they
are themselves; perhaps it pleases them to give, as it were, samples
of their tenderness in intimacy in this way. It was a guarded glance,
nothing was lost between eye and eye; there was no possibility of
reflection in any mirror. Nobody intercepted it.

“See how she has prepared herself,” Rastignac said, turning to de
Marsay. “What a virginal toilette; what swan’s grace in that snow-white
throat of hers! How white her gown is, and she is wearing a sash like a
little girl; she looks round like a madonna inviolate. Who would think
that you had passed that way?”

“The very reason why she looks as she does,” returned de Marsay, with a
triumphant air.

The two young men exchanged a smile. Mme. de Maufrigneuse saw the smile
and guessed at their conversation, and gave the pair a broadside of her
eyes, an art acquired by Frenchwomen since the Peace, when Englishwomen
imported it into this country, together with the shape of their silver
plate, their horses and harness, and the piles of insular ice which
impart a refreshing coolness to the atmosphere of any room in which a
certain number of British females are gathered together. The young
men grew serious as a couple of clerks at the end of a homily from
headquarters before the receipt of an expected bonus.

The Duchess when she lost her heart to Victurnien had made up her
mind to play the part of romantic Innocence, a role much understudied
subsequently by other women, for the misfortune of modern youth. Her
Grace of Maufrigneuse had just come out as an angel at a moment’s
notice, precisely as she meant to turn to literature and science
somewhere about her fortieth year instead of taking to devotion. She
made a point of being like nobody else. Her parts, her dresses, her
caps, opinions, toilettes, and manner of acting were all entirely new
and original. Soon after her marriage, when she was scarcely more than
a girl, she had played the part of a knowing and almost depraved woman;
she ventured on risky repartees with shallow people, and betrayed her
ignorance to those who knew better. As the date of that marriage made
it impossible to abstract one little year from her age without the
knowledge of Time, she had taken it into her head to be immaculate. She
scarcely seemed to belong to earth; she shook out her wide sleeves as
if they had been wings. Her eyes fled to heaven at too warm a glance, or
word, or thought.

There is a madonna painted by Piola, the great Genoese painter, who bade
fair to bring out a second edition of Raphael till his career was
cut short by jealousy and murder; his madonna, however, you may dimly
discern through a pane of glass in a little street in Genoa.

A more chaste-eyed madonna than Piola’s does not exist but compared
with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that heavenly creature was a Messalina.
Women wondered among themselves how such a giddy young thing had been
transformed by a change of dress into the fair veiled seraph who seemed
(to use an expression now in vogue) to have a soul as white as new
fallen snow on the highest Alpine crests. How had she solved in such
short space the Jesuitical problem how to display a bosom whiter than
her soul by hiding it in gauze? How could she look so ethereal while her
eyes drooped so murderously? Those almost wanton glances seemed to give
promise of untold languorous delight, while by an ascetic’s sigh of
aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to add that none of
those promises would be fulfilled. Ingenuous youths (for there were a
few to be found in the Guards of that day) privately wondered whether,
in the most intimate moments, it were possible to speak familiarly to
this White Lady, this starry vapor slidden down from the Milky Way.
This system, which answered completely for some years at a stretch, was
turned to good account by women of fashion, whose breasts were lined
with a stout philosophy, for they could cloak no inconsiderable
exactions with these little airs from the sacristy. Not one of the
celestial creatures but was quite well aware of the possibilities of
less ethereal love which lay in the longing of every well-conditioned
male to recall such beings to earth. It was a fashion which permitted
them to abide in a semi-religious, semi-Ossianic empyrean; they could,
and did, ignore all the practical details of daily life, a short and
easy method of disposing of many questions. De Marsay, foreseeing the
future developments of the system, added a last word, for he saw that
Rastignac was jealous of Victurnien.

“My boy,” said he, “stay as you are. Our Nucingen will make your
fortune, whereas the Duchess would ruin you. She is too expensive.”

Rastignac allowed de Marsay to go without asking further questions. He
knew Paris. He knew that the most refined and noble and disinterested
of women--a woman who cannot be induced to accept anything but a
bouquet--can be as dangerous an acquaintance for a young man as any
opera girl of former days. As a matter of fact, the opera girl is an
almost mythical being. As things are now at the theatres, dancers and
actresses are about as amusing as a declaration of the rights of woman,
they are puppets that go abroad in the morning in the character of
respected and respectable mothers of families, and act men’s parts in
tight-fitting garments at night.

Worthy M. Chesnel, in his country notary’s office, was right; he had
foreseen one of the reefs on which the Count might shipwreck. Victurnien
was dazzled by the poetic aureole which Mme. de Maufrigneuse chose to
assume; he was chained and padlocked from the first hour in her company,
bound captive by that girlish sash, and caught by the curls twined round
fairy fingers. Far corrupted the boy was already, but he really believed
in that farrago of maidenliness and muslin, in sweet looks as much
studied as an Act of Parliament. And if the one man, who is in duty
bound to believe in feminine fibs, is deceived by them, is not that
enough?

For a pair of lovers, the rest of their species are about as much alive
as figures on the tapestry. The Duchess, flattery apart, was avowedly
and admittedly one of the ten handsomest women in society. “The
loveliest woman in Paris” is, as you know, as often met with in the
world of love-making as “the finest book that has appeared in this
generation,” in the world of letters.

The converse which Victurnien held with the Duchess can be kept up at
his age without too great a strain. He was young enough and ignorant
enough of life in Paris to feel no necessity to be upon his guard, no
need to keep a watch over his lightest words and glances. The religious
sentimentalism, which finds a broadly humorous commentary in the
after-thoughts of either speaker, puts the old-world French chat of men
and women, with its pleasant familiarity, its lively ease, quite out of
the question; they make love in a mist nowadays.

Victurnien was just sufficient of an unsophisticated provincial to
remain suspended in a highly appropriate and unfeigned rapture which
pleased the Duchess; for women are no more to be deceived by the
comedies which men play than by their own. Mme. de Maufrigneuse
calculated, not without dismay, that the young Count’s infatuation was
likely to hold good for six whole months of disinterested love. She
looked so lovely in this dove’s mood, quenching the light in her eyes by
the golden fringe of their lashes, that when the Marquise d’Espard bade
her friend good-night, she whispered, “Good! very good, dear!” And with
those farewell words, the fair Marquise left her rival to make the tour
of the modern Pays du Tendre; which, by the way, is not so absurd a
conception as some appear to think. New maps of the country are engraved
for each generation; and if the names of the routes are different, they
still lead to the same capital city.

In the course of an hour’s tete-a-tete, on a corner sofa, under the eyes
of the world, the Duchess brought young d’Esgrignon as far as Scipio’s
Generosity, the Devotion of Amadis, and Chivalrous Self-abnegation
(for the Middle Ages were just coming into fashion, with their daggers,
machicolations, hauberks, chain-mail, peaked shoes, and romantic painted
card-board properties). She had an admirable turn, moreover, for leaving
things unsaid, for leaving ideas in a discreet, seeming careless way, to
work their way down, one by one, into Victurnien’s heart, like needles
into a cushion. She possessed a marvelous skill in reticence; she was
charming in hypocrisy, lavish of subtle promises, which revived hope and
then melted away like ice in the sun if you looked at them closely, and
most treacherous in the desire which she felt and inspired. At the
close of this charming encounter she produced the running noose of an
invitation to call, and flung it over him with a dainty demureness which
the printed page can never set forth.

“You will forget me,” she said. “You will find so many women eager to
pay court to you instead of enlightening you.... But you will come back
to me undeceived. Are you coming to me first?... No. As you will.--For
my own part, I tell you frankly that your visits will be a great
pleasure to me. People of soul are so rare, and I think that you are one
of them.--Come, good-bye; people will begin to talk about us if we talk
together any longer.”

She made good her words and took flight. Victurnien went soon
afterwards, but not before others had guessed his ecstatic condition;
his face wore the expression peculiar to happy men, something between
an Inquisitor’s calm discretion and the self-contained beatitude of a
devotee, fresh from the confessional and absolution.

“Mme. de Maufrigneuse went pretty briskly to the point this evening,”
 said the Duchesse de Grandlieu, when only half-a-dozen persons were
left in Mlle. des Touches’ little drawing-room--to wit, des Lupeaulx,
a Master of Requests, who at that time stood very well at court,
Vandenesse, the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, Canalis, and Mme. de Serizy.

“D’Esgrignon and Maufrigneuse are two names that are sure to cling
together,” said Mme. de Serizy, who aspired to epigram.

“For some days past she has been out at grass on Platonism,” said des
Lupeaulx.

“She will ruin that poor innocent,” added Charles de Vandenesse.

“What do you mean?” asked Mlle. des Touches.

“Oh, morally and financially, beyond all doubt,” said the Vicomtesse,
rising.

The cruel words were cruelly true for young d’Esgrignon.

Next morning he wrote to his aunt describing his introduction into the
high world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in bright colors flung by the
prism of love, explaining the reception which met him everywhere in a
way which gratified his father’s family pride. The Marquis would have
the whole long letter read to him twice; he rubbed his hands when
he heard of the Vidame de Pamiers’ dinner--the Vidame was an old
acquaintance--and of the subsequent introduction to the Duchess; but at
Blondet’s name he lost himself in conjectures. What could the younger
son of a judge, a public prosecutor during the Revolution, have been
doing there?

There was joy that evening among the Collection of Antiquities. They
talked over the young Count’s success. So discreet were they with regard
to Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that the one man who heard the secret was the
Chevalier. There was no financial postscript at the end of the letter,
no unpleasant reference to the sinews of war, which every young man
makes in such a case. Mlle. Armande showed it to Chesnel. Chesnel was
pleased and raised not a single objection. It was clear, as the Marquis
and the Chevalier agreed, that a young man in favor with the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse would shortly be a hero at court, where in the old
days women were all-powerful. The Count had not made a bad choice. The
dowagers told over all the gallant adventures of the Maufrigneuses
from Louis XIII. to Louis XVI.--they spared to inquire into preceding
reigns--and when all was done they were enchanted.--Mme. de Maufrigneuse
was much praised for interesting herself in Victurnien. Any writer of
plays in search of a piece of pure comedy would have found it well worth
his while to listen to the Antiquities in conclave.



Victurnien received charming letters from his father and aunt, and also
from the Chevalier. That gentleman recalled himself to the Vidame’s
memory. He had been at Spa with M. de Pamiers in 1778, after a certain
journey made by a celebrated Hungarian princess. And Chesnel also wrote.
The fond flattery to which the unhappy boy was only too well accustomed
shone out of every page; and Mlle. Armande seemed to share half of Mme.
de Maufrigneuse’s happiness.

Thus happy in the approval of his family, the young Count made a
spirited beginning in the perilous and costly ways of dandyism. He had
five horses--he was moderate--de Marsay had fourteen! He returned the
Vidame’s hospitality, even including Blondet in the invitation, as well
as de Marsay and Rastignac. The dinner cost five hundred francs, and the
noble provincial was feted on the same scale. Victurnien played a good
deal, and, for his misfortune, at the fashionable game of whist.

He laid out his days in busy idleness. Every day between twelve and
three o’clock he was with the Duchess; afterwards he went to meet her
in the Bois de Boulogne and ride beside her carriage. Sometimes the
charming couple rode together, but this was early in fine summer
mornings. Society, balls, the theatre, and gaiety filled the Count’s
evening hours. Everywhere Victurnien made a brilliant figure, everywhere
he flung the pearls of his wit broadcast. He gave his opinion on men,
affairs, and events in profound sayings; he would have put you in
mind of a fruit-tree putting forth all its strength in blossom. He
was leading an enervating life wasteful of money, and even yet more
wasteful, it may be of a man’s soul; in that life the fairest talents
are buried out of sight, the most incorruptible honesty perishes, the
best-tempered springs of will are slackened.

The Duchess, so white and fragile and angel-like, felt attracted to
the dissipations of bachelor life; she enjoyed first nights, she liked
anything amusing, anything improvised. Bohemian restaurants lay outside
her experience; so d’Esgrignon got up a charming little party at the
Rocher de Cancale for her benefit, asked all the amiable scamps whom
she cultivated and sermonized, and there was a vast amount of merriment,
wit, and gaiety, and a corresponding bill to pay. That supper led to
others. And through it all Victurnien worshiped her as an angel. Mme.
de Maufrigneuse for him was still an angel, untouched by any taint of
earth; an angel at the Varietes, where she sat out the half-obscene,
vulgar farces, which made her laugh; an angel through the cross-fire of
highly-flavored jests and scandalous anecdotes, which enlivened a stolen
frolic; a languishing angel in the latticed box at the Vaudeville;
an angel while she criticised the postures of opera dancers with the
experience of an elderly habitue of le coin de la reine; an angel at
the Porte Saint-Martin, at the little boulevard theatres, at the masked
balls, which she enjoyed like any schoolboy. She was an angel who
asked him for the love that lives by self-abnegation and heroism and
self-sacrifice; an angel who would have her lover live like an English
lord, with an income of a million francs. D’Esgrignon once exchanged a
horse because the animal’s coat did not satisfy her notions. At play
she was an angel, and certainly no bourgeoise that ever lived could have
bidden d’Esgrignon “Stake for me!” in such an angelic way. She was so
divinely reckless in her folly, that a man might well have sold his
soul to the devil lest this angel should lose her taste for earthly
pleasures.



The first winter went by. The Count had drawn on M. Cardot for the
trifling sum of thirty thousand francs over and above Chesnel’s
remittance. As Cardot very carefully refrained from using his right
of remonstrance, Victurnien now learned for the first time that he had
overdrawn his account. He was the more offended by an extremely polite
refusal to make any further advance, since it so happened that he had
just lost six thousand francs at play at the club, and he could not very
well show himself there until they were paid.

After growing indignant with Maitre Cardot, who had trusted him with
thirty thousand francs (Cardot had written to Chesnel, but to the fair
Duchess’ favorite he made the most of his so-called confidence in him),
after all this, d’Esgrignon was obliged to ask the lawyer to tell
him how to set about raising the money, since debts of honor were in
question.

“Draw bills on your father’s banker, and take them to his correspondent;
he, no doubt, will discount them for you. Then write to your family, and
tell them to remit the amount to the banker.”

An inner voice seemed to suggest du Croisier’s name in this predicament.
He had seen du Croisier on his knees to the aristocracy, and of the
man’s real disposition he was entirely ignorant. So to du Croisier he
wrote a very offhand letter, informing him that he had drawn a bill of
exchange on him for ten thousand francs, adding that the amount would be
repaid on receipt of the letter either by M. Chesnel or by Mlle. Armande
d’Esgrignon. Then he indited two touching epistles--one to Chesnel,
another to his aunt. In the matter of going headlong to ruin, a young
man often shows singular ingenuity and ability, and fortune favors him.
In the morning Victurnien happened on the name of the Paris bankers in
correspondence with du Croisier, and de Marsay furnished him with the
Kellers’ address. De Marsay knew everything in Paris. The Kellers
took the bill and gave him the sum without a word, after deducting the
discount. The balance of the account was in du Croisier’s favor.

But the gaming debt was as nothing in comparison with the state of
things at home. Invoices showered in upon Victurnien.

“I say! Do you trouble yourself about that sort of thing?” Rastignac
said, laughing. “Are you putting them in order, my dear boy? I did not
think you were so business-like.”

“My dear fellow, it is quite time I thought about it; there are twenty
odd thousand francs there.”

De Marsay, coming in to look up d’Esgrignon for a steeplechase, produced
a dainty little pocket-book, took out twenty thousand francs, and handed
them to him.

“It is the best way of keeping the money safe,” said he; “I am twice
enchanted to have won it yesterday from my honored father, Milord
Dudley.”

Such French grace completely fascinated d’Esgrignon; he took it for
friendship; and as to the money, punctually forgot to pay his debts
with it, and spent it on his pleasures. The fact was that de Marsay was
looking on with an unspeakable pleasure while young d’Esgrignon “got out
of his depth,” in dandy’s idiom; it pleased de Marsay in all sorts of
fondling ways to lay an arm on the lad’s shoulder; by and by he should
feel its weight, and disappear the sooner. For de Marsay was jealous;
the Duchess flaunted her love affair; she was not at home to other
visitors when d’Esgrignon was with her. And besides, de Marsay was one
of those savage humorists who delight in mischief, as Turkish women in
the bath. So when he had carried off the prize, and bets were settled at
the tavern where they breakfasted, and a bottle or two of good wine had
appeared, de Marsay turned to d’Esgrignon with a laugh:

“Those bills that you are worrying over are not yours, I am sure.”

“Eh! if they weren’t, why should he worry himself?” asked Rastignac.

“And whose should they be?” d’Esgrignon inquired.

“Then you do not know the Duchess’ position?” queried de Marsay, as he
sprang into the saddle.

“No,” said d’Esgrignon, his curiosity aroused.

“Well, dear fellow, it is like this,” returned de Marsay--“thirty
thousand francs to Victorine, eighteen thousand francs to Houbigaut,
lesser amounts to Herbault, Nattier, Nourtier, and those Latour
people,--altogether a hundred thousand francs.”

“An angel!” cried d’Esgrignon, with eyes uplifted to heaven.

“This is the bill for her wings,” Rastignac cried facetiously.

“She owes all that, my dear boy,” continued de Marsay, “precisely
because she is an angel. But we have all seen angels in this position,”
 he added, glancing at Rastignac; “there is this about women that is
sublime: they understand nothing of money; they do not meddle with it,
it is no affair of theirs; they are invited guests at the ‘banquet of
life,’ as some poet or other said that came to an end in the workhouse.”

“How do you know this when I do not?” d’Esgrignon artlessly returned.

“You are sure to be the last to know it, just as she is sure to be the
last to hear that you are in debt.”

“I thought she had a hundred thousand livres a year,” said d’Esgrignon.

“Her husband,” replied de Marsay, “lives apart from her. He stays with
his regiment and practises economy, for he has one or two little debts
of his own as well, has our dear Duke. Where do you come from? Just
learn to do as we do and keep our friends’ accounts for them. Mlle.
Diane (I fell in love with her for the name’s sake), Mlle. Diane
d’Uxelles brought her husband sixty thousand livres of income; for the
last eight years she has lived as if she had two hundred thousand. It is
perfectly plain that at this moment her lands are mortgaged up to their
full value; some fine morning the crash must come, and the angel will be
put to flight by--must it be said?--by sheriff’s officers that have the
effrontery to lay hands on an angel just as they might take hold of one
of us.”

“Poor angel!”

“Lord! it costs a great deal to dwell in a Parisian heaven; you must
whiten your wings and your complexion every morning,” said Rastignac.

Now as the thought of confessing his debts to his beloved Diane had
passed through d’Esgrignon’s mind, something like a shudder ran through
him when he remembered that he still owed sixty thousand francs, to
say nothing of bills to come for another ten thousand. He went back
melancholy enough. His friends remarked his ill-disguised preoccupation,
and spoke of it among themselves at dinner.

“Young d’Esgrignon is getting out of his depth. He is not up to Paris.
He will blow his brains out. A little fool!” and so on and so on.

D’Esgrignon, however, promptly took comfort. His servant brought him two
letters. The first was from Chesnel. A letter from Chesnel smacked
of the stale grumbling faithfulness of honesty and its consecrated
formulas. With all respect he put it aside till the evening. But the
second letter he read with unspeakable pleasure. In Ciceronian phrases,
du Croisier groveled before him, like a Sganarelle before a Geronte,
begging the young Count in future to spare him the affront of first
depositing the amount of the bills which he should condescend to draw.
The concluding phrase seemed meant to convey the idea that here was
an open cashbox full of coin at the service of the noble d’Esgrignon
family. So strong was the impression that Victurnien, like Sganarelle
or Mascarille in the play, like everybody else who feels a twinge of
conscience at his finger-tips, made an involuntary gesture.

Now that he was sure of unlimited credit with the Kellers, he opened
Chesnel’s letter gaily. He had expected four full pages, full of
expostulation to the brim; he glanced down the sheet for the familiar
words “prudence,” “honor,” “determination to do right,” and the like,
and saw something else instead which made his head swim.

  “MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--Of all my fortune I have now but two hundred
  thousand francs left. I beg of you not to exceed that amount, if
  you should do one of the most devoted servants of your family the
  honor of taking it. I present my respects to you.

                                                   “CHESNEL.”


“He is one of Plutarch’s men,” Victurnien said to himself, as he tossed
the letter on the table. He felt chagrined; such magnanimity made him
feel very small.

“There! one must reform,” he thought; and instead of going to a
restaurant and spending fifty or sixty francs over his dinner, he
retrenched by dining with the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and told her
about the letter.

“I should like to see that man,” she said, letting her eyes shine like
two fixed stars.

“What would you do?”

“Why, he should manage my affairs for me.”

Diane de Maufrigneuse was divinely dressed; she meant her toilet to do
honor to Victurnien. The levity with which she treated his affairs or,
more properly speaking, his debts fascinated him.

The charming pair went to the Italiens. Never had that beautiful and
enchanting woman looked more seraphic, more ethereal. Nobody in the
house could have believed that she had debts which reached the sum total
mentioned by de Marsay that very morning. No single one of the cares of
earth had touched that sublime forehead of hers, full of woman’s pride
of the highest kind. In her, a pensive air seemed to be some gleam of
an earthly love, nobly extinguished. The men for the most part were
wagering that Victurnien, with his handsome figure, laid her under
contribution; while the women, sure of their rival’s subterfuge, admired
her as Michael Angelo admired Raphael, in petto. Victurnien loved Diane,
according to one of these ladies, for the sake of her hair--she had
the most beautiful fair hair in France; another maintained that Diane’s
pallor was her principal merit, for she was not really well shaped, her
dress made the most of her figure; yet others thought that Victurnien
loved her for her foot, her one good point, for she had a flat figure.
But (and this brings the present-day manner of Paris before you in
an astonishing manner) whereas all the men said that the Duchess was
subsidizing Victurnien’s splendor, the women, on the other hand, gave
people to understand that it was Victurnien who paid for the angel’s
wings, as Rastignac said.

As they drove back again, Victurnien had it on the tip of his tongue a
score of times to open this chapter, for the Duchess’ debts weighed more
heavily upon his mind than his own; and a score of times his purpose
died away before the attitude of the divine creature beside him. He
could see her by the light of the carriage lamps; she was bewitching in
the love-languor which always seemed to be extorted by the violence of
passion from her madonna’s purity. The Duchess did not fall into the
mistake of talking of her virtue, of her angel’s estate, as provincial
women, her imitators, do. She was far too clever. She made him, for whom
she made such great sacrifices, think these things for himself. At the
end of six months she could make him feel that a harmless kiss on her
hand was a deadly sin; she contrived that every grace should be extorted
from her, and this with such consummate art, that it was impossible not
to feel that she was more an angel than ever when she yielded.

None but Parisian women are clever enough always to give a new charm to
the moon, to romanticize the stars, to roll in the same sack of charcoal
and emerge each time whiter than ever. This is the highest refinement
of intellectual and Parisian civilization. Women beyond the Rhine or the
English Channel believe nonsense of this sort when they utter it; while
your Parisienne makes her lover believe that she is an angel, the better
to add to his bliss by flattering his vanity on both sides--temporal and
spiritual. Certain persons, detractors of the Duchess, maintain that she
was the first dupe of her own white magic. A wicked slander. The Duchess
believed in nothing but herself.

By the end of the year 1823 the Kellers had supplied Victurnien with
two hundred thousand francs, and neither Chesnel nor Mlle. Armande knew
anything about it. He had had, besides, two thousand crowns from Chesnel
at one time and another, the better to hide the sources on which he was
drawing. He wrote lying letters to his poor father and aunt, who lived
on, happy and deceived, like most happy people under the sun. The
insidious current of life in Paris was bringing a dreadful catastrophe
upon the great and noble house; and only one person was in the secret of
it. This was du Croisier. He rubbed his hands gleefully as he went
past in the dark and looked in at the Antiquities. He had good hope of
attaining his ends; and his ends were not, as heretofore, the simple
ruin of the d’Esgrignons, but the dishonor of their house. He felt
instinctively at such times that his revenge was at hand; he scented
it in the wind! He had been sure of it indeed from the day when he
discovered that the young Count’s burden of debt was growing too heavy
for the boy to bear.

Du Croisier’s first step was to rid himself of his most hated enemy, the
venerable Chesnel. The good old man lived in the Rue du Bercail, in a
house with a steep-pitched roof. There was a little paved courtyard in
front, where the rose-bushes grew and clambered up to the windows of
the upper story. Behind lay a little country garden, with its box-edged
borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls. The prim, gray-painted
street door, with its wicket opening and bell attached, announced quite
as plainly as the official scutcheon that “a notary lives here.”

It was half-past five o’clock in the afternoon, at which hour the
old man usually sat digesting his dinner. He had drawn his black
leather-covered armchair before the fire, and put on his armor, a
painted pasteboard contrivance shaped like a top boot, which protected
his stockinged legs from the heat of the fire; for it was one of the
good man’s habits to sit for a while after dinner with his feet on the
dogs and to stir up the glowing coals. He always ate too much; he was
fond of good living. Alas! if it had not been for that little failing,
would he not have been more perfect than it is permitted to mortal man
to be? Chesnel had finished his cup of coffee. His old housekeeper had
just taken away the tray which had been used for the purpose for the
last twenty years. He was waiting for his clerks to go before he himself
went out for his game at cards, and meanwhile he was thinking--no need
to ask of whom or what. A day seldom passed but he asked himself, “Where
is _he_? What is _he_ doing?” He thought that the Count was in Italy
with the fair Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.

When every franc of a man’s fortune has come to him, not by inheritance,
but through his own earning and saving, it is one of his sweetest
pleasures to look back upon the pains that have gone to the making
of it, and then to plan out a future for his crowns. This it is to
conjugate the verb “to enjoy” in every tense. And the old lawyer, whose
affections were all bound up in a single attachment, was thinking that
all the carefully-chosen, well-tilled land which he had pinched and
scraped to buy would one day go to round the d’Esgrignon estates, and
the thought doubled his pleasure. His pride swelled as he sat at his
ease in the old armchair; and the building of glowing coals, which he
raised with the tongs, sometimes seemed to him to be the old noble
house built up again, thanks to his care. He pictured the young Count’s
prosperity, and told himself that he had done well to live for such an
aim. Chesnel was not lacking in intelligence; sheer goodness was not
the sole source of his great devotion; he had a pride of his own; he was
like the nobles who used to rebuild a pillar in a cathedral to inscribe
their name upon it; he meant his name to be remembered by the great
house which he had restored. Future generations of d’Esgrignons should
speak of old Chesnel. Just at this point his old housekeeper came in
with signs of alarm in her countenance.

“Is the house on fire, Brigitte?”

“Something of the sort,” said she. “Here is M. du Croisier wanting to
speak to you----”

“M. du Croisier,” repeated the old lawyer. A stab of cold misgiving
gave him so sharp a pang at the heart that he dropped the tongs. “M. du
Croisier here!” thought he, “our chief enemy!”

Du Croisier came in at that moment, like a cat that scents milk in a
dairy. He made a bow, seated himself quietly in the easy-chair which
the lawyer brought forward, and produced a bill for two hundred and
twenty-seven thousand francs, principal and interest, the total amount
of sums advanced to M. Victurnien in bills of exchange drawn upon du
Croisier, and duly honored by him. Of these, he now demanded
immediate payment, with a threat of proceeding to extremities with the
heir-presumptive of the house. Chesnel turned the unlucky letters over
one by one, and asked the enemy to keep the secret. This he engaged to
do if he were paid within forty-eight hours. He was pressed for money
he had obliged various manufacturers; and there followed a series of the
financial fictions by which neither notaries nor borrowers are deceived.
Chesnel’s eyes were dim; he could scarcely keep back the tears. There
was but one way of raising the money; he must mortgage his own lands up
to their full value. But when du Croisier learned the difficulty in
the way of repayment, he forgot that he was hard pressed; he no longer
wanted ready money, and suddenly came out with a proposal to buy the old
lawyer’s property. The sale was completed within two days. Poor Chesnel
could not bear the thought of the son of the house undergoing a five
years’ imprisonment for debt. So in a few days’ time nothing remained
to him but his practice, the sums that were due to him, and the house in
which he lived. Chesnel, stripped of all his lands, paced to and fro in
his private office, paneled with dark oak, his eyes fixed on the beveled
edges of the chestnut cross-beams of the ceiling, or on the trellised
vines in the garden outside. He was not thinking of his farms now, or of
Le Jard, his dear house in the country; not he.

“What will become of him? He ought to come back; they must marry him to
some rich heiress,” he said to himself; and his eyes were dim, his head
heavy.

How to approach Mlle. Armande, and in what words to break the news to
her, he did not know. The man who had just paid the debts of the family
quaked at the thought of confessing these things. He went from the Rue
du Bercail to the Hotel d’Esgrignon with pulses throbbing like some
girl’s heart when she leaves her father’s roof by stealth, not to return
again till she is a mother and her heart is broken.

Mlle. Armande had just received a charming letter, charming in its
hypocrisy. Her nephew was the happiest man under the sun. He had been to
the baths, he had been traveling in Italy with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, and
now sent his journal to his aunt. Every sentence was instinct with
love. There were enchanting descriptions of Venice, and fascinating
appreciations of the great works of Venetian art; there were most
wonderful pages full of the Duomo at Milan, and again of Florence; he
described the Apennines, and how they differed from the Alps, and how in
some village like Chiavari happiness lay all around you, ready made.

The poor aunt was under the spell. She saw the far-off country of love,
she saw, hovering above the land, the angel whose tenderness gave to
all that beauty a burning glow. She was drinking in the letter at long
draughts; how should it have been otherwise? The girl who had put love
from her was now a woman ripened by repressed and pent-up passion, by
all the longings continually and gladly offered up as a sacrifice on the
altar of the hearth. Mlle. Armande was not like the Duchess. She did not
look like an angel. She was rather like the little, straight, slim and
slender, ivory-tinted statues, which those wonderful sculptors, the
builders of cathedrals, placed here and there about the buildings. Wild
plants sometimes find a hold in the damp niches, and weave a crown of
beautiful bluebell flowers about the carved stone. At this moment the
blue buds were unfolding in the fair saint’s eyes. Mlle. Armande loved
the charming couple as if they stood apart from real life; she saw
nothing wrong in a married woman’s love for Victurnien; any other woman
she would have judged harshly; but in this case, not to have loved her
nephew would have been the unpardonable sin. Aunts, mothers, and sisters
have a code of their own for nephews and sons and brothers.

Mlle. Armande was in Venice; she saw the lines of fairy palaces that
stand on either side of the Grand Canal; she was sitting in Victurnien’s
gondola; he was telling her what happiness it had been to feel that the
Duchess’ beautiful hand lay in his own, to know that she loved him as
they floated together on the breast of the amorous Queen of Italian
seas. But even in that moment of bliss, such as angels know, some one
appeared in the garden walk. It was Chesnel! Alas! the sound of his
tread on the gravel might have been the sound of the sands running from
Death’s hour-glass to be trodden under his unshod feet. The sound,
the sight of a dreadful hopelessness in Chesnel’s face, gave her that
painful shock which follows a sudden recall of the senses when the soul
has sent them forth into the world of dreams.

“What is it?” she cried, as if some stab had pierced to her heart.

“All is lost!” said Chesnel. “M. le Comte will bring dishonor upon
the house if we do not set it in order.” He held out the bills, and
described the agony of the last few days in a few simple but vigorous
and touching words.

“He is deceiving us! The miserable boy!” cried Mlle. Armande, her heart
swelling as the blood surged back to it in heavy throbs.

“Let us both say mea culpa, mademoiselle,” the old lawyer said stoutly;
“we have always allowed him to have his own way; he needed stern
guidance; he could not have it from you with your inexperience of life;
nor from me, for he would not listen to me. He has had no mother.”

“Fate sometimes deals terribly with a noble house in decay,” said Mlle.
Armande, with tears in her eyes.

The Marquis came up as she spoke. He had been walking up and down
the garden while he read the letter sent by his son after his return.
Victurnien gave his itinerary from an aristocrat’s point of view;
telling how he had been welcomed by the greatest Italian families of
Genoa, Turin, Milan, Florence, Venice, Rome, and Naples. This flattering
reception he owed to his name, he said, and partly, perhaps, to the
Duchess as well. In short, he had made his appearance magnificently, and
as befitted a d’Esgrignon.

“Have you been at your old tricks, Chesnel?” asked the Marquis.

Mlle. Armande made Chesnel an eager sign, dreadful to see. They
understood each other. The poor father, the flower of feudal honor,
must die with all his illusions. A compact of silence and devotion was
ratified between the two noble hearts by a simple inclination of the
head.

“Ah! Chesnel, it was not exactly in this way that the d’Esgrignons went
into Italy at the end of the fourteenth century, when Marshal Trivulzio,
in the service of the King of France, served under a d’Esgrignon, who
had a Bayard too under his orders. Other times, other pleasures. And,
for that matter, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is at least the equal of a
Marchesa di Spinola.”

And, on the strength of his genealogical tree, the old man swung himself
off with a coxcomb’s air, as if he himself had once made a conquest of
the Marchesa di Spinola, and still possessed the Duchess of to-day.

The two companions in unhappiness were left together on the garden
bench, with the same thought for a bond of union. They sat for a long
time, saying little save vague, unmeaning words, watching the father
walk away in his happiness, gesticulating as if he were talking to
himself.

“What will become of him now?” Mlle. Armande asked after a while.

“Du Croisier has sent instructions to the MM. Keller; he is not to be
allowed to draw any more without authorization.”

“And there are debts,” continued Mlle. Armande.

“I am afraid so.”

“If he is left without resources, what will he do?”

“I dare not answer that question to myself.”

“But he must be drawn out of that life, he must come back to us, or he
will have nothing left.”

“And nothing else left to him,” Chesnel said gloomily. But Mlle. Armande
as yet did not and could not understand the full force of those words.

“Is there any hope of getting him away from that woman, that Duchess?
Perhaps she leads him on.”

“He would not stick at a crime to be with her,” said Chesnel, trying to
pave the way to an intolerable thought by others less intolerable.

“Crime,” repeated Mlle. Armande. “Oh, Chesnel, no one but you would
think of such a thing!” she added, with a withering look; before such
a look from a woman’s eyes no mortal can stand. “There is but one crime
that a noble can commit--the crime of high treason; and when he is
beheaded, the block is covered with a black cloth, as it is for kings.”

“The times have changed very much,” said Chesnel, shaking his head.
Victurnien had thinned his last thin, white hairs. “Our Martyr-King did
not die like the English King Charles.”

That thought soothed Mlle. Armande’s splendid indignation; a shudder ran
through her; but still she did not realize what Chesnel meant.

“To-morrow we will decide what we must do,” she said; “it needs thought.
At the worst, we have our lands.”

“Yes,” said Chesnel. “You and M. le Marquis own the estate conjointly;
but the larger part of it is yours. You can raise money upon it without
saying a word to him.”

The players at whist, reversis, boston, and backgammon noticed that
evening that Mlle. Armande’s features, usually so serene and pure,
showed signs of agitation.

“That poor heroic child!” said the old Marquise de Casteran, “she must
be suffering still. A woman never knows what her sacrifices to her
family may cost her.”

Next day it was arranged with Chesnel that Mlle. Armande should go to
Paris to snatch her nephew from perdition. If any one could carry off
Victurnien, was it not the woman whose motherly heart yearned over him?
Mlle. Armande made up her mind that she would go to the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse and tell her all. Still, some sort of pretext was necessary
to explain the journey to the Marquis and the whole town. At some cost
to her maidenly delicacy, Mlle. Armande allowed it to be thought that
she was suffering from a complaint which called for a consultation
of skilled and celebrated physicians. Goodness knows whether the town
talked of this or no! But Mlle. Armande saw that something far more than
her own reputation was at stake. She set out. Chesnel brought her his
last bag of louis; she took it, without paying any attention to it, as
she took her white capuchine and thread mittens.

“Generous girl! What grace!” he said, as he put her into the carriage
with her maid, a woman who looked like a gray sister.

Du Croisier had thought out his revenge, as provincials think out
everything. For studying out a question in all its bearings, there are
no folk in this world like savages, peasants, and provincials; and
this is how, when they proceed from thought to action, you find every
contingency provided for from beginning to end. Diplomatists are
children compared with these classes of mammals; they have time before
them, an element which is lacking to those people who are obliged to
think about a great many things, to superintend the progress of all
kinds of schemes, to look forward for all sorts of contingencies in
the wider interests of human affairs. Had de Croisier sounded poor
Victurnien’s nature so well, that he foresaw how easily the young Count
would lend himself to his schemes of revenge? Or was he merely profiting
by an opportunity for which he had been on the watch for years? One
circumstance there was, to be sure, in his manner of preparing his
stroke, which shows a certain skill. Who was it that gave du Croisier
warning of the moment? Was it the Kellers? Or could it have been
President du Ronceret’s son, then finishing his law studies in Paris?

Du Croisier wrote to Victurnien, telling him that the Kellers had been
instructed to advance no more money; and that letter was timed to arrive
just as the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was in the utmost perplexity, and
the Comte d’Esgrignon consumed by the sense of poverty as dreadful as
it was cunningly hidden. The wretched young man was exerting all his
ingenuity to seem as if he were wealthy!

Now in the letter which informed the victim that in future the Kellers
would make no further advances without security, there was a tolerably
wide space left between the forms of an exaggerated respect and the
signature. It was quite easy to tear off the best part of the letter
and convert it into a bill of exchange for any amount. The diabolical
missive had been enclosed in an envelope, so that the other side of the
sheet was blank. When it arrived, Victurnien was writhing in the lowest
depths of despair. After two years of the most prosperous, sensual,
thoughtless, and luxurious life, he found himself face to face with the
most inexorable poverty; it was an absolute impossibility to procure
money. There had been some throes of crisis before the journey came to
an end. With the Duchess’ help he had managed to extort various sums
from bankers; but it had been with the greatest difficulty, and,
moreover, those very amounts were about to start up again before him as
overdue bills of exchange in all their rigor, with a stern summons to
pay from the Bank of France and the commercial court. All through the
enjoyments of those last weeks the unhappy boy had felt the point of the
Commander’s sword; at every supper-party he heard, like Don Juan,
the heavy tread of the statue outside upon the stairs. He felt an
unaccountable creeping of the flesh, a warning that the sirocco of debt
is nigh at hand. He reckoned on chance. For five years he had never
turned up a blank in the lottery, his purse had always been replenished.
After Chesnel had come du Croisier (he told himself), after du Croisier
surely another gold mine would pour out its wealth. And besides, he
was winning great sums at play; his luck at play had saved him several
unpleasant steps already; and often a wild hope sent him to the Salon
des Etrangers only to lose his winnings afterwards at whist at the club.
His life for the past two months had been like the immortal finale of
Mozart’s Don Giovanni; and of a truth, if a young man has come to such
a plight as Victurnien’s, that finale is enough to make him shudder.
Can anything better prove the enormous power of music than that sublime
rendering of the disorder and confusion arising out of a life wholly
give up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture of a deliberate
effort to shut out the thought of debts and duels, deceit and evil
luck? In that music Mozart disputes the palm with Moliere. The terrific
finale, with its glow, its power, its despair and laughter, its grisly
spectres and elfish women, centres about the prodigal’s last effort made
in the after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends the
drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal poem, and alone.
He saw visions of himself--a friendless, solitary outcast, reading the
words carved on the stone, the last words on the last page of the book
that had held him spellbound--THE END!

Yes; for him all would be at an end, and that soon. Already he saw the
cold, ironical eyes which his associates would turn upon him, and their
amusement over his downfall. Some of them he knew were playing high on
that gambling-table kept open all day long at the Bourse, or in private
houses at the clubs, and anywhere and everywhere in Paris; but not one
of these men could spare a banknote to save an intimate. There was no
help for it--Chesnel must be ruined. He had devoured Chesnel’s living.

He sat with the Duchess in their box at the Italiens, the whole house
envying them their happiness, and while he smiled at her, all the Furies
were tearing at his heart. Indeed, to give some idea of the depths of
doubt, despair, and incredulity in which the boy was groveling; he who
so clung to life--the life which the angel had made so fair--who so
loved it, that he would have stooped to baseness merely to live; he, the
pleasure-loving scapegrace, the degenerate d’Esgrignon, had even taken
out his pistols, had gone so far as to think of suicide. He who would
never have brooked the appearance of an insult was abusing himself in
language which no man is likely to hear except from himself.

He left du Croisier’s letter lying open on the bed. Josephin had brought
it in at nine o’clock. Victurnien’s furniture had been seized, but
he slept none the less. After he came back from the Opera, he and the
Duchess had gone to a voluptuous retreat, where they often spent a few
hours together after the most brilliant court balls and evening parties
and gaieties. Appearances were very cleverly saved. Their love-nest
was a garret like any other to all appearance; Mme. de Maufrigneuse was
obliged to bow her head with its court feathers or wreath of flowers to
enter in at the door; but within all the peris of the East had made the
chamber fair. And now that the Count was on the brink of ruin, he had
longed to bid farewell to the dainty nest, which he had built to realize
a day-dream worthy of his angel. Presently adversity would break the
enchanted eggs; there would be no brood of white doves, no brilliant
tropical birds, no more of the thousand bright-winged fancies which
hover above our heads even to the last days of our lives. Alas! alas! in
three days he must be gone; his bills had fallen into the hands of the
money-lenders, the law proceedings had reached the last stage.

An evil thought crossed his brain. He would fly with the Duchess; they
would live in some undiscovered nook in the wilds of North or South
America; but--he would fly with a fortune, and leave his creditors to
confront their bills. To carry out the plan, he had only to cut off the
lower portion of that letter with du Croisier’s signature, and to fill
in the figures to turn it into a bill, and present it to the Kellers.
There was a dreadful struggle with temptation; tears shed, but the honor
of the family triumphed, subject to one condition. Victurnien wanted to
be sure of his beautiful Diane; he would do nothing unless she should
consent to their flight. So he went to the Duchess in the Rue Faubourg
Saint-Honore, and found her in coquettish morning dress, which cost as
much in thought as in money, a fit dress in which to begin to play the
part of Angel at eleven o’clock in the morning.

Mme. de Maufrigneuse was somewhat pensive. Cares of a similar kind
were gnawing her mind; but she took them gallantly. Of all the various
feminine organizations classified by physiologists, there is one that
has something indescribably terrible about it. Such women combine
strength of soul and clear insight, with a faculty for prompt decision,
and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis which would shake a
man’s nerves. And these powers lie out of sight beneath an appearance of
the most graceful helplessness. Such women only among womankind afford
examples of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in men alone, to wit,
the union, or rather the disunion, of two different natures in one human
being. Other women are wholly women; wholly tender, wholly devoted,
wholly mothers, completely null and completely tiresome; nerves and
brain and blood are all in harmony; but the Duchess, and others like
her, are capable of rising to the highest heights of feelings, or of
showing the most selfish insensibility. It is one of the glories of
Moliere that he has given us a wonderful portrait of such a woman,
from one point of view only, in that greatest of his full-length
figures--Celimene; Celimene is the typical aristocratic woman, as
Figaro, the second edition of Panurge, represents the people.

So, the Duchess, being overwhelmed with debt, laid it upon herself to
give no more than a moment’s thought to the avalanche of cares, and to
take her resolution once and for all; Napoleon could take up or lay
down the burden of his thoughts in precisely the same way. The Duchess
possessed the faculty of standing aloof from herself; she could look on
as a spectator at the crash when it came, instead of submitting to be
buried beneath. This was certainly great, but repulsive in a woman. When
she awoke in the morning she collected her thoughts; and by the time she
had begun to dress she had looked at the danger in its fullest extent
and faced the possibilities of terrific downfall. She pondered. Should
she take refuge in a foreign country? Or should she go to the King and
declare her debts to him? Or again, should she fascinate a du Tillet or
a Nucingen, and gamble on the stock exchange to pay her creditors? The
city man would find the money; he would be intelligent enough to bring
her nothing but the profits, without so much as mentioning the losses, a
piece of delicacy which would gloss all over. The catastrophe, and these
various ways of averting it, had all been reviewed quite coolly, calmly,
and without trepidation.

As a naturalist takes up some king of butterflies and fastens him down
on cotton-wool with a pin, so Mme. de Maufrigneuse had plucked love out
of her heart while she pondered the necessity of the moment, and was
quite ready to replace the beautiful passion on its immaculate setting
so soon as her duchess’ coronet was safe. _She_ knew none of the
hesitation which Cardinal Richelieu hid from all the world but Pere
Joseph; none of the doubts that Napoleon kept at first entirely to
himself. “Either the one or the other,” she told herself.

She was sitting by the fire, giving orders for her toilette for a drive
in the Bois if the weather should be fine, when Victurnien came in.

The Comte d’Esgrignon, with all his stifled capacity, his so keen
intellect, was in exactly the state which might have been looked for in
the woman. His heart was beating violently, the perspiration broke out
over him as he stood in his dandy’s trappings; he was afraid as yet to
lay a hand on the corner-stone which upheld the pyramid of his life with
Diane. So much it cost him to know the truth. The cleverest men are fain
to deceive themselves on one or two points if the truth once known is
likely to humiliate them in their own eyes, and damage themselves with
themselves. Victurnien forced his own irresolution into the field by
committing himself.

“What is the matter with you?” Diane de Maufrigneuse had said at once,
at the sight of her beloved Victurnien’s face.

“Why, dear Diane, I am in such a perplexity; a man gone to the bottom
and at his last gasp is happy in comparison.”

“Pshaw! it is nothing,” said she; “you are a child. Let us see now; tell
me about it.”

“I am hopelessly in debt. I have come to the end of my tether.”

“Is that all?” said she, smiling at him. “Money matters can always be
arranged somehow or other; nothing is irretrievable except disasters in
love.”

Victurnien’s mind being set at rest by this swift comprehension of his
position, he unrolled the bright-colored web of his life for the last
two years and a half; but it was the seamy side of it which he displayed
with something of genius, and still more of wit, to his Diane. He told
his tale with the inspiration of the moment, which fails no one in great
crises; he had sufficient artistic skill to set it off by a varnish of
delicate scorn for men and things. It was an aristocrat who spoke. And
the Duchess listened as she could listen.

One knee was raised, for she sat with her foot on a stool. She rested
her elbow on her knee and leant her face on her hand so that her fingers
closed daintily over her shapely chin. Her eyes never left his; but
thoughts by myriads flitted under the blue surface, like gleams of
stormy light between two clouds. Her forehead was calm, her mouth
gravely intent--grave with love; her lips were knotted fast by
Victurnien’s lips. To have her listening thus was to believe that
a divine love flowed from her heart. Wherefore, when the Count had
proposed flight to this soul, so closely knit to his own, he could not
help crying, “You are an angel!”

The fair Maufrigneuse made silent answer; but she had not spoken as yet.

“Good, very good,” she said at last. (She had not given herself up to
the love expressed in her face; her mind had been entirely absorbed by
deep-laid schemes which she kept to herself.) “But _that_ is not the
question, dear.” (The “angel” was only “that” by this time.) “Let us
think of your affairs. Yes, we will go, and the sooner the better.
Arrange it all; I will follow you. It is glorious to leave Paris and the
world behind. I will set about my preparations in such a way that no one
can suspect anything.”

_I will follow you_! Just so Mlle. Mars might have spoken those words
to send a thrill through two thousand listening men and women. When a
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse offers, in such words, to make such a sacrifice
to love, she has paid her debt. How should Victurnien speak of sordid
details after that? He could so much the better hide his schemes,
because Diane was particularly careful not to inquire into them. She
was now, and always, as de Marsay said, an invited guest at a banquet
wreathed with roses, a banquet which mankind, as in duty bound, made
ready for her.

Victurnien would not go till the promise had been sealed. He must draw
courage from his happiness before he could bring himself to do a deed on
which, as he inwardly told himself, people would be certain to put a
bad construction. Still (and this was the thought that decided him) he
counted on his aunt and father to hush up the affair; he even counted
on Chesnel. Chesnel would think of one more compromise. Besides, “this
business,” as he called it in his thoughts, was the only way of raising
money on the family estate. With three hundred thousand francs, he and
Diane would lead a happy life hidden in some palace in Venice; and there
they would forget the world. They went through their romance in advance.

Next day Victurnien made out a bill for three hundred thousand francs,
and took it to the Kellers. The Kellers advanced the money, for du
Croisier happened to have a balance at the time; but they wrote to let
him know that he must not draw again on them without giving them notice.
Du Croisier, much astonished, asked for a statement of accounts. It was
sent. Everything was explained. The day of his vengeance had arrived.



When Victurnien had drawn “his” money, he took it to Mme. de
Maufrigneuse. She locked up the banknotes in her desk, and proposed
to bid the world farewell by going to the Opera to see it for the last
time. Victurnien was thoughtful, absent, and uneasy. He was beginning
to reflect. He thought that his seat in the Duchess’ box might cost him
dear; that perhaps, when he had put the three hundred thousand francs
in safety, it would be better to travel post, to fall at Chesnel’s feet,
and tell him all. But before they left the opera-house, the Duchess,
in spite of herself, gave Victurnien an adorable glance, her eyes were
shining with the desire to go back once more to bid farewell to the nest
which she loved so much. And boy that he was, he lost a night.

The next day, at three o’clock, he was back again at the Hotel de
Maufrigneuse; he had come to take the Duchess’ orders for that night’s
escape. And, “Why should we go?” asked she; “I have thought it all out.
The Vicomtesse de Beauseant and the Duchesse de Langeais disappeared.
If I go too, it will be something quite commonplace. We will brave
the storm. It will be a far finer thing to do. I am sure of success.”
 Victurnien’s eyes dazzled; he felt as if his skin were dissolving and
the blood oozing out all over him.

“What is the matter with you?” cried the fair Diane, noticing a
hesitation which a woman never forgives. Your truly adroit lover will
hasten to agree with any fancy that Woman may take into her head, and
suggest reasons for doing otherwise, while leaving her free exercise of
her right to change her mind, her intentions, and sentiments generally
as often as she pleases. Victurnien was angry for the first time, angry
with the wrath of a weak man of poetic temperament; it was a storm of
rain and lightning flashes, but no thunder followed. The angel on whose
faith he had risked more than his life, the honor of his house, was very
roughly handled.

“So,” said she, “we have come to this after eighteen months of
tenderness! You are unkind, very unkind. Go away!--I do not want to see
you again. I thought that you loved me. You do not.”

“_I do not love you_?” repeated he, thunderstruck by the reproach.

“No, monsieur.”

“And yet----” he cried. “Ah! if you but knew what I have just done for
your sake!”

“And how have you done so much for me, monsieur? As if a man ought not
to do anything for a woman that has done so much for him.”

“You are not worthy to know it!” Victurnien cried in a passion of anger.

“Oh!”

After that sublime, “Oh!” Diane bowed her head on her hand and sat,
still, cold, and implacable as angels naturally may be expected to do,
seeing that they share none of the passions of humanity. At the sight
of the woman he loved in this terrible attitude, Victurnien forgot his
danger. Had he not just that moment wronged the most angelic creature on
earth? He longed for forgiveness, he threw himself before her, he kissed
her feet, he pleaded, he wept. Two whole hours the unhappy young man
spent in all kinds of follies, only to meet the same cold face, while
the great silent tears dropping one by one, were dried as soon as they
fell lest the unworthy lover should try to wipe them away. The Duchess
was acting a great agony, one of those hours which stamp the woman who
passes through them as something august and sacred.

Two more hours went by. By this time the Count had gained possession of
Diane’s hand; it felt cold and spiritless. The beautiful hand, with
all the treasures in its grasp, might have been supple wood; there was
nothing of Diane in it; he had taken it, it had not been given to him.
As for Victurnien, the spirit had ebbed out of his frame, he had ceased
to think. He would not have seen the sun in heaven. What was to be done?
What course should he take? What resolution should he make? The man who
can keep his head in such circumstances must be made of the same stuff
as the convict who spent the night in robbing the Bibliotheque Royale of
its gold medals, and repaired to his honest brother in the morning with
a request to melt down the plunder. “What is to be done?” cried the
brother. “Make me some coffee,” replied the thief. Victurnien sank into
a bewildered stupor, darkness settled down over his brain. Visions
of past rapture flitted across the misty gloom like the figures that
Raphael painted against a black background; to these he must bid
farewell. Inexorable and disdainful, the Duchess played with the tip of
her scarf. She looked in irritation at Victurnien from time to time;
she coquetted with memories, she spoke to her lover of his rivals as if
anger had finally decided her to prefer one of them to a man who could
so change in one moment after twenty-eight months of love.

“Ah! that charming young Felix de Vandenesse, so faithful as he was to
Mme. de Mortsauf, would never have permitted himself such a scene! He
can love, can de Vandenesse! De Marsay, that terrible de Marsay, such
a tiger as everyone thought him, was rough with other men; but like all
strong men, he kept his gentleness for women. Montriveau trampled the
Duchesse de Langeais under foot, as Othello killed Desdemona, in a burst
of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love. It was
not like a paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so crushed.
Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment women; they
could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased them to have some
ground for believing that they were men. The tyranny of love was their
one chance of asserting their power. She did not know why she had put
herself at the mercy of fair hair. Such men as de Marsay, Montriveau,
and Vandenesse, dark-haired and well grown, had a ray of sunlight in
their eyes.”

It was a storm of epigrams. Her speeches, like bullets, came hissing
past his ears. Every word that Diane hurled at him was triple-barbed;
she humiliated, stung, and wounded him with an art that was all her own,
as half a score of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.

“You are mad!” he cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out
he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he had never handled
the reins before, locked his wheels in the wheels of other vehicles,
collided with the curbstone in the Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not
whither. The horse, left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable
along the Quai d’Orsay; but as he turned into the Rue de l’Universite,
Josephin appeared to stop the runaway.

“You cannot go home, sir,” the old man said, with a scared face; “they
have come with a warrant to arrest you.”

Victurnien thought that he had been arrested on the criminal charge,
albeit there had not been time for the public prosecutor to receive
his instructions. He had forgotten the matter of the bills of exchange,
which had been stirred up again for some days past in the form of orders
to pay, brought by the officers of the court with accompaniments in
the shape of bailiffs, men in possession, magistrates, commissaries,
policemen, and other representatives of social order. Like most guilty
creatures, Victurnien had forgotten everything but his crime.

“It is all over with me,” he cried.

“No, M. le Comte, drive as fast as you can to the Hotel du Bon la
Fontaine, in the Rue de Grenelle. Mlle. Armande is waiting there for
you, the horses have been put in, she will take you with her.”

Victurnien, in his trouble, caught like a drowning man at the branch
that came to his hand; he rushed off to the inn, reached the place, and
flung his arms about his aunt. Mlle. Armande cried as if her heart would
break; any one might have thought that she had a share in her nephew’s
guilt. They stepped into the carriage. A few minutes later they were on
the road to Brest, and Paris lay behind them. Victurnien uttered not a
sound; he was paralyzed. And when aunt and nephew began to speak, they
talked at cross purposes; Victurnien, still laboring under the unlucky
misapprehension which flung him into Mlle. Armande’s arms, was thinking
of his forgery; his aunt had the debts and the bills on her mind.

“You know all, aunt,” he had said.

“Poor boy, yes, but we are here. I am not going to scold you just yet.
Take heart.”

“I must hide somewhere.”

“Perhaps.... Yes, it is a very good idea.”

“Perhaps I might get into Chesnel’s house without being seen if we timed
ourselves to arrive in the middle of the night?”

“That will be best. We shall be better able to hide this from my
brother.--Poor angel! how unhappy he is!” said she, petting the unworthy
child.

“Ah! now I begin to know what dishonor means; it has chilled my love.”

“Unhappy boy; what bliss and what misery!” And Mlle. Armande drew his
fevered face to her breast and kissed his forehead, cold and damp though
it was, as the holy women might have kissed the brow of the dead Christ
when they laid Him in His grave clothes. Following out the excellent
scheme suggested by the prodigal son, he was brought by night to the
quiet house in the Rue du Bercail; but chance ordered it that by so
doing he ran straight into the wolf’s jaws, as the saying goes. That
evening Chesnel had been making arrangements to sell his connection to
M. Lepressoir’s head-clerk. M. Lepressoir was the notary employed by
the Liberals, just as Chesnel’s practice lay among the aristocratic
families. The young fellow’s relatives were rich enough to pay Chesnel
the considerable sum of a hundred thousand francs in cash.

Chesnel was rubbing his hands. “A hundred thousand francs will go a long
way in buying up debts,” he thought. “The young man is paying a high
rate of interest on his loans. We will lock him up down here. I will go
yonder myself and bring those curs to terms.”

Chesnel, honest Chesnel, upright, worthy Chesnel, called his darling
Comte Victurnien’s creditors “curs.”

Meanwhile his successor was making his way along the Rue du Bercail
just as Mlle. Armande’s traveling carriage turned into it. Any young man
might be expected to feel some curiosity if he saw a traveling carriage
stop at a notary’s door in such a town and at such an hour of the night;
the young man in question was sufficiently inquisitive to stand in a
doorway and watch. He saw Mlle. Armande alight.

“Mlle. Armande d’Esgrignon at this time of night!” said he to himself.
“What can be going forward at the d’Esgrignons’?”

At the sight of mademoiselle, Chesnel opened the door circumspectly and
set down the light which he was carrying; but when he looked out and saw
Victurnien, Mlle. Armande’s first whispered word made the whole
thing plain to him. He looked up and down the street; it seemed quite
deserted; he beckoned, and the young Count sprang out of the carriage
and entered the courtyard. All was lost. Chesnel’s successor had
discovered Victurnien’s hiding place.

Victurnien was hurried into the house and installed in a room beyond
Chesnel’s private office. No one could enter it except across the old
man’s dead body.

“Ah! M. le Comte!” exclaimed Chesnel, notary no longer.

“Yes, monsieur,” the Count answered, understanding his old friend’s
exclamation. “I did not listen to you; and now I have fallen into the
depths, and I must perish.”

“No, no,” the good man answered, looking triumphantly from Mlle. Armande
to the Count. “I have sold my connection. I have been working for a very
long time now, and am thinking of retiring. By noon to-morrow I shall
have a hundred thousand francs; many things can be settled with that.
Mademoiselle, you are tired,” he added; “go back to the carriage and go
home and sleep. Business to-morrow.”

“Is he safe?” returned she, looking at Victurnien.

“Yes.”

She kissed her nephew; a few tears fell on his forehead. Then she went.

“My good Chesnel,” said the Count, when they began to talk of business,
“what are your hundred thousand francs in such a position as mine? You
do not know the full extent of my troubles, I think.”

Victurnien explained the situation. Chesnel was thunderstruck. But for
the strength of his devotion, he would have succumbed to this blow.
Tears streamed from the eyes that might well have had no tears left to
shed. For a few moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was
bereft of his senses; he stood like a man who should find his own house
on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze and hear the hiss
of the flames on his children’s curls. He rose to his full height--il se
dressa en pied, as Amyot would have said; he seemed to grow taller; he
raised his withered hands and wrung them despairingly and wildly.

“If only your father may die and never know this, young man! To be a
forger is enough; a parricide you must not be. Fly, you say? No. They
would condemn you for contempt of court! Oh, wretched boy! Why did you
not forge _my_ signature? _I_ would have paid; I should not have taken
the bill to the public prosecutor.--Now I can do nothing. You have
brought me to a stand in the lowest pit in hell!--Du Croisier! What will
come of it? What is to be done?--If you had killed a man, there might be
some help for it. But forgery--_forgery_! And time--the time is flying,”
 he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock. “You will want a
sham passport now. One crime leads to another. First,” he added, after a
pause, “first of all we must save the house of d’Esgrignon.”

“But the money is still in Mme. de Maufrigneuse’s keeping,” exclaimed
Victurnien.

“Ah!” exclaimed Chesnel. “Well, there is some hope left--a faint hope.
Could we soften du Croisier, I wonder, or buy him over? He shall have
all the lands if he likes. I will go to him; I will wake him and offer
him all we have.--Besides, it was not you who forged that bill; it was
I. I will go to jail; I am too old for the hulks, they can only put me
in prison.”

“But the body of the bill is in my handwriting,” objected Victurnien,
without a sign of surprise at this reckless devotion.

“Idiot!... that is, pardon, M. le Comte. Josephin should have been made
to write it,” the old notary cried wrathfully. “He is a good creature;
he would have taken it all on his shoulders. But there is an end of
it; the world is falling to pieces,” the old man continued, sinking
exhausted into a chair. “Du Croisier is a tiger; we must be careful not
to rouse him. What time is it? Where is the draft? If it is at Paris,
it might be bought back from the Kellers; they might accommodate us.
Ah! but there are dangers on all sides; a single false step means ruin.
Money is wanted in any case. But there! nobody knows you are here, you
must live buried away in the cellar if needs must. I will go at once to
Paris as fast as I can; I can hear the mail coach from Brest.”

In a moment the old man recovered the faculties of his youth--his
agility and vigor. He packed up clothes for the journey, took money,
brought a six-pound loaf to the little room beyond the office, and
turned the key on his child by adoption.

“Not a sound in here,” he said, “no light at night; and stop here till I
come back, or you will go to the hulks. Do you understand, M. le Comte?
Yes, _to the hulks_! if anybody in a town like this knows that you are
here.”

With that Chesnel went out, first telling his housekeeper to give
out that he was ill, to allow no one to come into the house, to send
everybody away, and to postpone business of every kind for three days.
He wheedled the manager of the coach-office, made up a tale for his
benefit--he had the makings of an ingenious novelist in him--and
obtained a promise that if there should be a place, he should have
it, passport or no passport, as well as a further promise to keep
the hurried departure a secret. Luckily, the coach was empty when it
arrived.

In the middle of the following night Chesnel was set down in Paris. At
nine o’clock in the morning he waited on the Kellers, and learned that
the fatal draft had returned to du Croisier three days since; but while
obtaining this information, he in no way committed himself. Before he
went away he inquired whether the draft could be recovered if the amount
were refunded. Francois Keller’s answer was to the effect that the
document was du Croisier’s property, and that it was entirely in his
power to keep or return it. Then, in desperation, the old man went to
the Duchess.

Mme. de Maufrigneuse was not at home to any visitor at that hour.
Chesnel, feeling that every moment was precious, sat down in the hall,
wrote a few lines, and succeeded in sending them to the lady by dint of
wheedling, fascinating, bribing, and commanding the most insolent and
inaccessible servants in the world. The Duchess was still in bed;
but, to the great astonishment of her household, the old man in black
knee-breeches, ribbed stockings, and shoes with buckles to them, was
shown into her room.

“What is it, monsieur?” she asked, posing in her disorder. “What does he
want of me, ungrateful that he is?”

“It is this, Mme. la Duchesse,” the good man exclaimed, “you have a
hundred thousand crowns belonging to us.”

“Yes,” began she. “What does it signify----?”

“The money was gained by a forgery, for which we are going to the hulks,
a forgery which we committed for love of you,” Chesnel said quickly.
“How is it that you did not guess it, so clever as you are? Instead
of scolding the boy, you ought to have had the truth out of him, and
stopped him while there was time, and saved him.”

At the first words the Duchess understood; she felt ashamed of her
behavior to so impassioned a lover, and afraid besides that she might be
suspected of complicity. In her wish to prove that she had not touched
the money left in her keeping, she lost all regard for appearances; and
besides, it did not occur to her that the notary was a man. She flung
off the eider-down quilt, sprang to her desk (flitting past the lawyer
like an angel out of one of the vignettes which illustrate Lamartine’s
books), held out the notes, and went back in confusion to bed.

“You are an angel, madame.” (She was to be an angel for all the world,
it seemed.) “But this will not be the end of it. I count upon your
influence to save us.”

“To save you! I will do it or die! Love that will not shrink from a
crime must be love indeed. Is there a woman in the world for whom such a
thing has been done? Poor boy! Come, do not lose time, dear M. Chesnel;
and count upon me as upon yourself.”

“Mme. la Duchesse! Mme. la Duchesse!” It was all that he could say, so
overcome was he. He cried, he could have danced; but he was afraid of
losing his senses, and refrained.

“Between us, we will save him,” she said, as he left the room.

Chesnel went straight to Josephin. Josephin unlocked the young Count’s
desk and writing-table. Very luckily, the notary found letters which
might be useful, letters from du Croisier and the Kellers. Then he took
a place in a diligence which was just about to start; and by dint of
fees to the postilions, the lumbering vehicle went as quickly as the
coach. His two fellow-passengers on the journey happened to be in as
great a hurry as himself, and readily agreed to take their meals in
the carriage. Thus swept over the road, the notary reached the Rue du
Bercail, after three days of absence, an hour before midnight. And
yet he was too late. He saw the gendarmes at the gate, crossed the
threshold, and met the young Count in the courtyard. Victurnien had been
arrested. If Chesnel had had the power, he would beyond a doubt
have killed the officers and men; as it was, he could only fall on
Victurnien’s neck.

“If I cannot hush this matter up, you must kill yourself before the
indictment is made out,” he whispered. But Victurnien had sunk into such
stupor, that he stared back uncomprehendingly.

“Kill myself?” he repeated.

“Yes. If your courage should fail, my boy, count upon me,” said Chesnel,
squeezing Victurnien’s hand.

In spite of the anguish of mind and tottering limbs, he stood firmly
planted, to watch the son of his heart, the Comte d’Esgrignon, go out of
the courtyard between two gendarmes, with the commissary, the justice
of the peace, and the clerk of the court; and not until the figures had
disappeared, and the sound of footsteps had died away into silence, did
he recover his firmness and presence of mind.

“You will catch cold, sir,” Brigitte remonstrated.

“The devil take you!” cried her exasperated master.

Never in the nine-and-twenty years that Brigitte had been in his service
had she heard such words from him! Her candle fell out of her hands, but
Chesnel neither heeded his housekeeper’s alarm nor heard her exclaim. He
hurried off towards the Val-Noble.

“He is out of his mi

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