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The Thirteen

by Honoré de Balzac · English · Gutenberg #7416 · 751,233 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Thirteen

Author: Honoré de Balzac

Author of introduction, etc.: George Saintsbury

Translator: Ellen Marriage


        
Release date: September 19, 2004 [eBook #7416]
                Most recently updated: November 23, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7416

Credits: Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala, and Dagny, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THIRTEEN ***




Produced by John Bickers, Bonnie Sala, and Dagny





THE THIRTEEN


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Ellen Marriage




     DEDICATION

     To Hector Berlioz.




INTRODUCTION

The _Histoire des Treize_ consists--or rather is built up--of three
stories: _Ferragus_ or the _Rue Soly_, _La Duchesse de Langeais_ or _Ne
touchez-paz a la hache_, and _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_.


To tell the truth, there is more power than taste throughout the
_Histoire des Treize_, and perhaps not very much less unreality than
power. Balzac is very much better than Eugene Sue, though Eugene Sue
also is better than it is the fashion to think him just now. But he is
here, to a certain extent competing with Sue on the latter’s own ground.
The notion of the “Devorants”--of a secret society of men devoted to
each other’s interests, entirely free from any moral or legal scruple,
possessed of considerable means in wealth, ability, and position, all
working together, by fair means or foul, for good ends or bad--is,
no doubt, rather seducing to the imagination at all times; and it so
happened that it was particularly seducing to the imagination of
that time. And its example has been powerful since; it gave us Mr.
Stevenson’s _New Arabian Nights_ only, as it were, the other day.

But there is something a little schoolboyish in it; and I do not know
that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating this something. The
pathos of the death, under persecution, of the innocent Clemence does
not entirely make up for the unreasonableness of the whole situation.
Nobody can say that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour--who is a
hopeless “cad”--is too much punished, though an Englishman may think
that Dr. Johnson’s receipt of three or four footmen with cudgels,
applied repeatedly and unsparingly, would have been better than
elaborately prepared accidents and duels, which were too honorable for a
Peeping Tom of this kind; and poisonings, which reduced the avengers to
the level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid; these
fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere stage properties,
and should never be fetched out of the theatrical lumber-room by
literature.

_La Duchesse de Langeais_ is, I think, a better story, with more
romantic attraction, free from the objections just made to _Ferragus_,
and furnished with a powerful, if slightly theatrical catastrophe. It
is as good as anything that its author has done of the kind, subject
to those general considerations of probability and otherwise which
have been already hinted at. For those who are not troubled by any such
critical reflections, both, no doubt, will be highly satisfactory.

The third of the series, _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_, in some respects one
of Balzac’s most brilliant effects, has been looked at askance by many
of his English readers. At one time he had the audacity to think of
calling it _La Femme aux Yeux Rouges_. To those who consider the story
morbid or, one may say, _bizarre_, one word of justification, hardly of
apology, may be offered. It was in the scheme of the _Comedie Humaine_
to survey social life in its entirety by a minute analysis of its most
diverse constituents. It included all the pursuits and passions, was
large and patient, and unafraid. And the patience, the curiosity, of the
artist which made Cesar Birotteau and his bankrupt ledgers matters of
high import to us, which did not shrink from creating a Vautrin and a
Lucien de Rubempre, would have been incomplete had it stopped short of a
Marquise de San-Real, of a Paquita Valdes. And in the great mass of the
_Comedie Humaine_, with its largeness and reality of life, as in life
itself; the figure of Paquita justifies its presence.

Considering the _Histoire des Treize_ as a whole, it is of engrossing
interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who,
beginning Balzac with this series, failed to go rather mad over it. I
know there was a time when I used to like it best of all, and thought
not merely _Eugenie Grandet_, but _Le Pere Goriot_ (though not the _Peau
de Chagrin_), dull in comparison. Some attention, however, must be paid
to two remarkable characters, on whom it is quite clear that Balzac
expended a great deal of pains, and one of whom he seems to have
“caressed,” as the French say, with a curious admixture of dislike and
admiration.

The first, Bourignard or Ferragus, is, of course, another, though a
somewhat minor example--Collin or Vautrin being the chief--of that
strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals, which seems to
be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds, and which laid an
extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac’s time. I must
confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that I have never
been able to fully appreciate the attractions of crime and criminals,
fictitious or real. Certain pleasant and profitable things, no doubt,
retain their pleasure and their profit, to some extent, when they are
done in the manner which is technically called criminal; but they seem
to me to acquire no additional interest by being so. As the criminal of
fact is, in the vast majority of cases, an exceedingly commonplace and
dull person, the criminal of fiction seems to me only, or usually, to
escape these curses by being absolutely improbable and unreal. But I
know this is a terrible heresy.

Henri de Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more interesting
figure. In him are combined the attractions of criminality, beauty,
brains, success, and, last of all, dandyism. It is a well-known and
delightful fact that the most Anglophobe Frenchmen--and Balzac might
fairly be classed among them--have always regarded the English dandy
with half-jealous, half-awful admiration. Indeed, our novelist, it will
be seen, found it necessary to give Marsay English blood. But there is
a tradition that this young Don Juan--not such a good fellow as Byron’s,
nor such a _grand seigneur_ as Moliere’s--was partly intended to
represent Charles de Remusat, who is best known to this generation
by very sober and serious philosophical works, and by his part in
his mother’s correspondence. I do not know that there ever were any
imputation on M. de Remusat’s morals; but in memoirs of the time, he
is, I think, accused of a certain selfishness and _hauteur_, and he
certainly made his way, partly by journalism, partly by society, to
power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay would certainly not have
written _Abelard_ and the rest, or have returned to Ministerial rank in
our own time. Marsay, in fact, more fortunate than Rubempre, and of a
higher stamp and flight than Rastignac, makes with them Balzac’s trinity
of sketches of the kind of personage whose part, in his day and since,
every young Frenchman has aspired to play, and some have played. It
cannot be said that “a moral man is Marsay”; it cannot be said that he
has the element of good-nature which redeems Rastignac. But he bears
a blame and a burden for which we Britons are responsible in part--the
Byronic ideal of the guilty hero coming to cross and blacken the old
French model of unscrupulous good humor. It is not a very pretty mixture
or a very worthy ideal; but I am not so sure that it is not still a
pretty common one.

The association of the three stories forming the _Histoire des Treize_
is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the
four volumes of _Etudes des Moeurs_ published in 1834-35, and themselves
forming part of the first collection of _Scenes de la Vie Parisienne_.
But _Ferragus_ had appeared in parts (with titles to each) in the
_Revue de Paris_ for March and April 1833, and part of _La Duchesse de
Langeais_ in the _Echo de la Jeune France_ almost contemporaneously.
There are divisions in this also. _Ferragus_ and _La Duchesse_ also
appeared without _La Fille aux Yeux d’Or_ in 1839, published in one
volume by Charpentier, before their absorption at the usual time in the
_Comedie_.

George Saintsbury




AUTHOR’S PREFACE

In the Paris of the Empire there were found Thirteen men equally
impressed with the same idea, equally endowed with energy enough to keep
them true to it, while among themselves they were loyal enough to keep
faith even when their interests seemed to clash. They were strong
enough to set themselves above all laws; bold enough to shrink from no
enterprise; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they
undertook. So profoundly politic were they, that they could dissemble
the tie which bound them together. They ran the greatest risks, and
kept their failures to themselves. Fear never entered into their
calculations; not one of them had trembled before princes, before the
executioner’s axe, before innocence. They had taken each other as they
were, regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they doubtless were,
yet none the less were they all remarkable for some one of the virtues
which go to the making of great men, and their numbers were filled up
only from among picked recruits. Finally, that nothing should be lacking
to complete the dark, mysterious romance of their history, nobody to
this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realized all the wildest
ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of a Manfred, a
Faust, or a Melmoth; and to-day the band is broken up or, at any rate,
dispersed. Its members have quietly returned beneath the yoke of the
Civil Code; much as Morgan, the Achilles of piracy, gave up buccaneering
to be a peaceable planter; and, untroubled by qualms of conscience, sat
himself down by the fireside to dispose of blood-stained booty acquired
by the red light of blazing towns.

After Napoleon’s death, the band was dissolved by a chance event which
the author is bound for the present to pass over in silence, and its
mysterious existence, as curious, it may be, as the darkest novel by
Mrs. Radcliffe, came to an end.

It was only lately that the present writer, detecting, as he fancied,
a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous heroes to whom
the whole band once owed an occult allegiance, received the somewhat
singular permission to make public certain of the adventures which
befell that band, provided that, while telling the story in his own
fashion, he observed certain limits.

The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man with fair hair
and blue eyes, and a soft, thin voice which might seem to indicate a
feminine temperament. His face was pale, his ways mysterious. He chatted
pleasantly, and told me that he was only just turned of forty. He might
have belonged to any one of the upper classes. The name which he gave
was probably assumed, and no one answering to his description was known
in society. Who is he, do you ask? No one knows.

Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the present
writer, he wished to see them in some sort reproduced; to enjoy the
effect of the sensation on the multitude; to feel as Macpherson might
have felt when the name of Ossian, his creation, passed into all
languages. And, in truth, that Scottish advocate knew one of the
keenest, or, at any rate, one of the rarest sensations in human
experience. What was this but the incognito of genius? To write an
_Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_ is to take one’s share in the glory
of a century, but to give a Homer to one’s country--this surely is a
usurpation of the rights of God.

The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be
unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but,
at the same time, he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to feel
confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by the
programme. Tragedies dripping with gore, comedies piled up with horrors,
tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him. If any
reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the public
for some time past, he has only to express his wish; the author is in
a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets of a
gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen those
pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by purer
scenes, where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the brighter
for the darkness. And, to the honor of the Thirteen, such episodes as
these are not wanting. Some day perhaps it may be thought worth while
to give their whole history to the world; in which case it might form a
pendant to the history of the buccaneers--that race apart so curiously
energetic, so attractive in spite of their crimes.

When a writer has a true story to tell, he should scorn to turn it into
a sort of puzzle toy, after the manner of those novelists who take
their reader for a walk through one cavern after another to show him a
dried-up corpse at the end of the fourth volume, and inform him, by way
of conclusion, that he has been frightened all along by a door hidden
somewhere or other behind some tapestry; or a dead body, left by
inadvertence, under the floor. So the present chronicler, in spite of
his objection to prefaces, felt bound to introduce his fragment by a few
remarks.

_Ferragus_, the first episode, is connected by invisible links with the
history of the Thirteen, for the power which they acquired in a natural
manner provides the apparently supernatural machinery.

Again, although a certain literary coquetry may be permissible to
retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is bound to forego
such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many
ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Wherefore the present
writer gives the following succinct statement of the reasons which
induced him to adopt the unlikely sounding title and sub-title.

In accordance with old-established custom, _Ferragus_ is a name taken by
the head of a guild of _Devorants_, _id est Devoirants_ or journeymen.
Every chief on the day of his election chooses a pseudonym and continues
a dynasty of _Devorants_ precisely as a pope changes his name on his
accession to the triple tiara; and as the Church has its Clement XIV.,
Gregory XII., Julius II., or Alexander VI., so the workmen have their
Trempe-la-Soupe IX., Ferragus XXII., Tutanus XIII., or Masche-Fer IV.
Who are the _Devorants_, do you ask?

The _Devorants_ are one among many tribes of _compagnons_ whose origin
can be traced to a great mystical association formed among the
workmen of Christendom for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem.
_Compagnonnage_ is still a popular institution in France. Its traditions
still exert a power over little enlightened minds, over men so
uneducated that they have not learned to break their oaths; and the
various organizations might be turned to formidable account even yet
if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to make use of them, for his
instruments would be, for the most part, almost blind.

Wherever journeymen travel, they find a hostel for _compagnons_ which
has been in existence in the town from time immemorial. The _obade_,
as they call it, is a kind of lodge with a “Mother” in charge, an old,
half-gypsy wife who has nothing to lose. She hears all that goes on in
the countryside; and, either from fear or from long habit, is devoted to
the interests of the tribe boarded and lodged by her. And as a result,
this shifting population, subject as it is to an unalterable law of
custom, has eyes in every place, and will carry out an order anywhere
without asking questions; for the oldest journeyman is still at an age
when a man has some beliefs left. What is more, the whole fraternity
professes doctrines which, if unfolded never so little, are both
true enough and mysterious enough to electrify all the adepts with
patriotism; and the _compagnons_ are so attached to their rules, that
there have been bloody battles between different fraternities on a
question of principle. Fortunately, however, for peace and public order;
if a _Devorant_ is ambitious, he takes to building houses, makes a
fortune, and leaves the guild.

A great many curious things might be told of their rivals, the
_Compagnons du Devior_, of all the different sects of workmen, their
manners and customs and brotherhoods, and of the resemblances between
them and the Freemasons; but there, these particulars would be out
of place. The author will merely add, that before the Revolution a
Trempe-la-Soupe had been known in the King’s service, which is to say,
that he had the tenure of a place in His Majesty’s galleys for one
hundred and one years; but even thence he ruled his guild, and was
religiously consulted on all matters, and if he escaped from the hulks
he met with help, succor, and respect wherever he went. To have a
chief in the hulks is one of those misfortunes for which Providence is
responsible; but a faithful lodge of _devorants_ is bound, as before, to
obey a power created by and set above themselves. Their lawful sovereign
is in exile for the time being, but none the less is he their king.
And now any romantic mystery hanging about the words _Ferragus_ and the
_devorants_ is completely dispelled.

As for the Thirteen, the author feels that, on the strength of the
details of this almost fantastic story, he can afford to give away yet
another prerogative, though it is one of the greatest on record, and
would possibly fetch a high price if brought into a literary auction
mart; for the owner might inflict as many volumes on the public as La
Contemporaine.[*]

   [*] A long series of so-called Memoirs, which appeared about 1830.

The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron’s friend
Trelawney, the original (so it is said) of _The Corsair_. All of them
were fatalists, men of spirit and poetic temperament; all of them were
tired of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted towards
Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly awakened
and long dormant forces. One of these, chancing to take up _Venice
Preserved_ for the second time, admired the sublime friendship between
Pierre and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the
loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and the immense power that
a few men can wield if they bring their whole minds to bear upon the
carrying out of a single will. It struck him that the individual man
rose higher than men. Then he began to think that if a few picked men
should band themselves together; and if, to natural wit, and education,
and money, they could join a fanaticism hot enough to fuse, as it were,
all those separate forces into a single one, then the whole world would
be at their feet. From that time forth, with a tremendous power of
concentration, they could wield an occult power against which the
organization of society would be helpless; a power which would push
obstacles aside and defeat the will of others; and the diabolical power
of all would be at the service of each. A hostile world apart within the
world, admitting none of the ideas, recognizing none of the laws of the
world; submitting only to the sense of necessity, obedient only from
devotion; acting all as one man in the interests of the comrade who
should claim the aid of the rest; a band of buccaneers with carriages
and yellow kid gloves; a close confederacy of men of extraordinary
power, of amused and cool spectators of an artificial and petty world
which they cursed with smiling lips; conscious as they were that they
could make all things bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of
revenge, and live with the life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing
of the unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden
misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, and could
retire into themselves with one idea which the most remarkable men had
not,--all this constituted a religion of pleasure and egoism which
made fanatics of the Thirteen. The history of the Society of Jesus was
repeated for the Devil’s benefit. It was hideous and sublime.

The pact was made; and it lasted, precisely because it seemed
impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris there was a fraternity
of thirteen men, each one bound, body and soul, to the rest, and all
of them strangers to each other in the sight of the world. But evening
found them gathered together like conspirators, and then they had no
thoughts apart; riches, like the wealth of the Old Man of the Mountain,
they possessed in common; they had their feet in every salon, their
hands in every strong box, their elbows in the streets, their heads upon
all pillows, they did not scruple to help themselves at their pleasure.
No chief commanded them, nobody was strong enough. The liveliest
passion, the most urgent need took precedence--that was all. They were
thirteen unknown kings; unknown, but with all the power and more than
the power of kings; for they were both judges and executioners, they had
taken wings that they might traverse the heights and depths of society,
scorning to take any place in it, since all was theirs. If the author
learns the reason of their abdication, he will communicate it.

And now the author is free to give those episodes in the History of the
Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor of the details or the
strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.

Paris





THE THIRTEEN




I. FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS



CHAPTER I. MADAME JULES

Certain streets in Paris are as degraded as a man covered with infamy;
also, there are noble streets, streets simply respectable, young streets
on the morality of which the public has not yet formed an opinion; also
cut-throat streets, streets older than the age of the oldest dowagers,
estimable streets, streets always clean, streets always dirty, working,
laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris
have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their
physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There
are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not
be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your
abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, have a charming head,
and end in a fish’s tail. The rue de la Paix is a wide street, a fine
street, yet it wakens none of those gracefully noble thoughts which come
to an impressible mind in the middle of the rue Royale, and it certainly
lacks the majesty which reigns in the Place Vendome.

If you walk the streets of the Ile Saint-Louis, do not seek the reason
of the nervous sadness that lays hold upon you save in the solitude
of the spot, the gloomy look of the houses, and the great deserted
mansions. This island, the ghost of _fermiers-generaux_, is the Venice
of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is voluble, busy, degraded; it is
never fine except by moonlight at two in the morning. By day it is
Paris epitomized; by night it is a dream of Greece. The rue
Traversiere-Saint-Honore--is not that a villainous street? Look at the
wretched little houses with two windows on a floor, where vice, crime,
and misery abound. The narrow streets exposed to the north, where the
sun never comes more than three or four times a year, are the cut-throat
streets which murder with impunity; the authorities of the present
day do not meddle with them; but in former times the Parliament might
perhaps have summoned the lieutenant of police and reprimanded him for
the state of things; and it would, at least, have issued some decree
against such streets, as it once did against the wigs of the Chapter of
Beauvais. And yet Monsieur Benoiston de Chateauneuf has proved that
the mortality of these streets is double that of others! To sum up such
theories by a single example: is not the rue Fromentin both murderous
and profligate!

These observations, incomprehensible out of Paris, will doubtless be
understood by musing men of thought and poesy and pleasure, who
know, while rambling about Paris, how to harvest the mass of floating
interests which may be gathered at all hours within her walls; to them
Paris is the most delightful and varied of monsters: here, a pretty
woman; farther on, a haggard pauper; here, new as the coinage of a new
reign; there, in this corner, elegant as a fashionable woman. A monster,
moreover, complete! Its garrets, as it were, a head full of knowledge
and genius; its first storeys stomachs repleted; its shops, actual feet,
where the busy ambulating crowds are moving. Ah! what an ever-active
life the monster leads! Hardly has the last vibration of the last
carriage coming from a ball ceased at its heart before its arms are
moving at the barriers and it shakes itself slowly into motion. Doors
open; turning on their hinges like the membrane of some huge lobster,
invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women, of whom each
individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a kitchen, a
workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see by, but
must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack; motion
communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is alive; the
chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his thousand paws
begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who has not admired
your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of light, your deep and
silent _cul-de-sacs_, who has not listened to your murmurings between
midnight and two in the morning, knows nothing as yet of your true
poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts.

There are a few amateurs who never go their way heedlessly; who savor
their Paris, so to speak; who know its physiognomy so well that they
see every wart, and pimple, and redness. To others, Paris is always that
monstrous marvel, that amazing assemblage of activities, of schemes,
of thoughts; the city of a hundred thousand tales, the head of the
universe. But to those few, Paris is sad or gay, ugly or beautiful,
living or dead; to them Paris is a creature; every man, every fraction
of a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of that great courtesan
whose head and heart and fantastic customs they know so well. These men
are lovers of Paris; they lift their noses at such or such a corner of
a street, certain that they can see the face of a clock; they tell a
friend whose tobacco-pouch is empty, “Go down that passage and turn
to the left; there’s a tobacconist next door to a confectioner, where
there’s a pretty girl.” Rambling about Paris is, to these poets, a
costly luxury. How can they help spending precious minutes before
the dramas, disasters, faces, and picturesque events which meet us
everywhere amid this heaving queen of cities, clothed in posters,--who
has, nevertheless, not a single clean corner, so complying is she to the
vices of the French nation! Who has not chanced to leave his home early
in the morning, intending to go to some extremity of Paris, and found
himself unable to get away from the centre of it by the dinner-hour?
Such a man will know how to excuse this vagabondizing start upon our
tale; which, however, we here sum up in an observation both useful and
novel, as far as any observation can be novel in Paris, where there is
nothing new,--not even the statue erected yesterday, on which some young
gamin has already scribbled his name.

Well, then! there are streets, or ends of streets, there are houses,
unknown for the most part to persons of social distinction, to which a
woman of that class cannot go without causing cruel and very wounding
things to be thought of her. Whether the woman be rich and has a
carriage, whether she is on foot, or is disguised, if she enters one
of these Parisian defiles at any hour of the day, she compromises her
reputation as a virtuous woman. If, by chance, she is there at nine in
the evening the conjectures that an observer permits himself to make
upon her may prove fearful in their consequences. But if the woman is
young and pretty, if she enters a house in one of those streets, if the
house has a long, dark, damp, and evil-smelling passage-way, at the end
of which flickers the pallid gleam of an oil lamp, and if beneath that
gleam appears the horrid face of a withered old woman with fleshless
fingers, ah, then! and we say it in the interests of young and pretty
women, that woman is lost. She is at the mercy of the first man of her
acquaintance who sees her in that Parisian slough. There is more than
one street in Paris where such a meeting may lead to a frightful drama,
a bloody drama of death and love, a drama of the modern school.

Unhappily, this scene, this modern drama itself, will be comprehended by
only a small number of persons; and it is a pity to tell the tale to
a public which cannot enter into its local merit. But who can flatter
himself that he will ever be understood? We all die unknown--‘tis the
saying of women and of authors.

At half-past eight o’clock one evening, in the rue Pagevin, in the days
when that street had no wall which did not echo some infamous word, and
was, in the direction of the rue Soly, the narrowest and most impassable
street in Paris (not excepting the least frequented corner of the most
deserted street),--at the beginning of the month of February about
thirteen years ago, a young man, by one of those chances which come but
once in life, turned the corner of the rue Pagevin to enter the rue des
Vieux-Augustins, close to the rue Soly. There, this young man, who lived
himself in the rue de Bourbon, saw in a woman near whom he had been
unconsciously walking, a vague resemblance to the prettiest woman in
Paris; a chaste and delightful person, with whom he was secretly and
passionately in love,--a love without hope; she was married. In a moment
his heart leaped, an intolerable heat surged from his centre and flowed
through all his veins; his back turned cold, the skin of his head crept.
He loved, he was young, he knew Paris; and his knowledge did not permit
him to be ignorant of all there was of possible infamy in an elegant,
rich, young, and beautiful woman walking there, alone, with a furtively
criminal step. _She_ in that mud! at that hour!

The love that this young man felt for that woman may seem romantic, and
all the more so because he was an officer in the Royal Guard. If he had
been in the infantry, the affair might have seemed more likely; but, as
an officer of rank in the cavalry, he belonged to that French arm which
demands rapidity in its conquests and derives as much vanity from its
amorous exploits as from its dashing uniform. But the passion of this
officer was a true love, and many young hearts will think it noble.
He loved this woman because she was virtuous; he loved her virtue, her
modest grace, her imposing saintliness, as the dearest treasures of his
hidden passion. This woman was indeed worthy to inspire one of those
platonic loves which are found, like flowers amid bloody ruins, in the
history of the middle-ages; worthy to be the hidden principle of all the
actions of a young man’s life; a love as high, as pure as the skies when
blue; a love without hope and to which men bind themselves because
it can never deceive; a love that is prodigal of unchecked enjoyment,
especially at an age when the heart is ardent, the imagination keen, and
the eyes of a man see very clearly.

Strange, weird, inconceivable effects may be met with at night in Paris.
Only those who have amused themselves by watching those effects have
any idea how fantastic a woman may appear there at dusk. At times the
creature whom you are following, by accident or design, seems to you
light and slender; the stockings, if they are white, make you fancy that
the legs must be slim and elegant; the figure though wrapped in a shawl,
or concealed by a pelisse, defines itself gracefully and seductively
among the shadows; anon, the uncertain gleam thrown from a shop-window
or a street lamp bestows a fleeting lustre, nearly always deceptive, on
the unknown woman, and fires the imagination, carrying it far beyond
the truth. The senses then bestir themselves; everything takes color and
animation; the woman appears in an altogether novel aspect; her person
becomes beautiful. Behold! she is not a woman, she is a demon, a siren,
who is drawing you by magnetic attraction to some respectable house,
where the worthy _bourgeoise_, frightened by your threatening step and
the clack of your boots, shuts the door in your face without looking at
you.

A vacillating gleam, thrown from the shop-window of a shoemaker,
suddenly illuminated from the waist down the figure of the woman who was
before the young man. Ah! surely, _she_ alone had that swaying figure;
she alone knew the secret of that chaste gait which innocently set into
relief the many beauties of that attractive form. Yes, that was the
shawl, and that the velvet bonnet which she wore in the mornings. On
her gray silk stockings not a spot, on her shoes not a splash. The shawl
held tightly round the bust disclosed, vaguely, its charming lines; and
the young man, who had often seen those shoulders at a ball, knew well
the treasures that the shawl concealed. By the way a Parisian woman
wraps a shawl around her, and the way she lifts her feet in the street,
a man of intelligence in such studies can divine the secret of her
mysterious errand. There is something, I know not what, of quivering
buoyancy in the person, in the gait; the woman seems to weigh less; she
steps, or rather, she glides like a star, and floats onward led by a
thought which exhales from the folds and motion of her dress. The young
man hastened his step, passed the woman, and then turned back to look
at her. Pst! she had disappeared into a passage-way, the grated door of
which and its bell still rattled and sounded. The young man walked back
to the alley and saw the woman reach the farther end, where she began
to mount--not without receiving the obsequious bow of an old portress--a
winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly lighted; she
went up buoyantly, eagerly, as though impatient.

“Impatient for what?” said the young man to himself, drawing back to
lean against a wooden railing on the other side of the street. He
gazed, unhappy man, at the different storeys of the house, with the keen
attention of a detective searching for a conspirator.

It was one of those houses of which there are thousands in Paris,
ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three
windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed.
Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell
on the second floor. As if in answer to it, a light began to move in a
room with two windows strongly illuminated, which presently lit up the
third window, evidently that of a first room, either the salon or the
dining-room of the apartment. Instantly the outline of a woman’s bonnet
showed vaguely on the window, and a door between the two rooms must
have closed, for the first was dark again, while the two other windows
resumed their ruddy glow. At this moment a voice said, “Hi, there!” and
the young man was conscious of a blow on his shoulder.

“Why don’t you pay attention?” said the rough voice of a workman,
carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of
Providence saying to the watcher: “What are you meddling with? Think of
your own duty; and leave these Parisians to their own affairs.”

The young man crossed his arms; then, as no one beheld him, he suffered
tears of rage to flow down his cheeks unchecked. At last the sight of
the shadows moving behind the lighted windows gave him such pain that he
looked elsewhere and noticed a hackney-coach, standing against a wall
in the upper part of the rue des Vieux-Augustins, at a place where there
was neither the door of a house, nor the light of a shop-window.

Was it she? Was it not she? Life or death to a lover! This lover waited.
He stood there during a century of twenty minutes. After that the woman
came down, and he then recognized her as the one whom he secretly loved.
Nevertheless, he wanted still to doubt. She went to the hackney-coach,
and got into it.

“The house will always be there and I can search it later,” thought the
young man, following the carriage at a run, to solve his last doubts;
and soon he did so.

The carriage stopped in the rue de Richelieu before a shop for
artificial flowers, close to the rue de Menars. The lady got out,
entered the shop, sent out the money to pay the coachman, and presently
left the shop herself, on foot, after buying a bunch of marabouts.
Marabouts for her black hair! The officer beheld her, through the
window-panes, placing the feathers to her head to see the effect, and
he fancied he could hear the conversation between herself and the
shop-woman.

“Oh! madame, nothing is more suitable for brunettes: brunettes have
something a little too strongly marked in their lines, and marabouts
give them just that _flow_ which they lack. Madame la Duchesse de
Langeais says they give a woman something vague, Ossianic, and very
high-bred.”

“Very good; send them to me at once.”

Then the lady turned quickly toward the rue de Menars, and entered her
own house. When the door closed on her, the young lover, having lost
his hopes, and worse, far worse, his dearest beliefs, walked through the
streets like a drunken man, and presently found himself in his own room
without knowing how he came there. He flung himself into an arm-chair,
put his head in his hands and his feet on the andirons, drying his boots
until he burned them. It was an awful moment,--one of those moments in
human life when the character is moulded, and the future conduct of the
best of men depends on the good or evil fortune of his first action.
Providence or fatality?--choose which you will.

This young man belonged to a good family, whose nobility was not very
ancient; but there are so few really old families in these days, that
all men of rank are ancient without dispute. His grandfather had bought
the office of counsellor to the Parliament of Paris, where he afterwards
became president. His sons, each provided with a handsome fortune,
entered the army, and through their marriages became attached to the
court. The Revolution swept the family away; but one old dowager, too
obstinate to emigrate, was left; she was put in prison, threatened with
death, but was saved by the 9th Thermidor and recovered her property.
When the proper time came, about the year 1804, she recalled her
grandson to France. Auguste de Maulincour, the only scion of the
Carbonnon de Maulincour, was brought up by the good dowager with the
triple care of a mother, a woman of rank, and an obstinate dowager. When
the Restoration came, the young man, then eighteen years of age, entered
the Maison-Rouge, followed the princes to Ghent, was made an officer in
the body-guard, left it to serve in the line, but was recalled later to
the Royal Guard, where, at twenty-three years of age, he found
himself major of a cavalry regiment,--a splendid position, due to his
grandmother, who had played her cards well to obtain it, in spite of his
youth. This double biography is a compendium of the general and special
history, barring variations, of all the noble families who emigrated
having debts and property, dowagers and tact.

Madame la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de
Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of
those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing
can weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain
secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the
time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the text
of a work in four volumes as amusing as the Doyen de Killerine,--a work
about which young men talk and judge without having read it.

Auguste de Maulincour belonged therefore to the faubourg Saint-Germain
through his grandmother and the vidame, and it sufficed him to date back
two centuries to take the tone and opinions of those who assume to
go back to Clovis. This young man, pale, slender, and delicate in
appearance, a man of honor and true courage, who would fight a duel for
a yes or a no, had never yet fought upon a battle-field, though he wore
in his button-hole the cross of the Legion of honor. He was, as you
perceive, one of the blunders of the Restoration, perhaps the most
excusable of them. The youth of those days was the youth of no epoch.
It came between the memories of the Empire and those of the Emigration,
between the old traditions of the court and the conscientious education
of the _bourgeoisie_; between religion and fancy-balls; between two
political faiths, between Louis XVIII., who saw only the present, and
Charles X., who looked too far into the future; it was moreover bound to
accept the will of the king, though the king was deceiving and tricking
it. This unfortunate youth, blind and yet clear-sighted, was counted
as nothing by old men jealously keeping the reins of the State in
their feeble hands, while the monarchy could have been saved by their
retirement and the accession of this Young France, which the old
doctrinaires, the _emigres_ of the Restoration, still speak of
slightingly. Auguste de Maulincour was a victim to the ideas which
weighed in those days upon French youth, and we must here explain why.

The Vidame de Pamiers was still, at sixty-seven years of age, a very
brilliant man, having seen much and lived much; a good talker, a man of
honor and a gallant man, but who held as to women the most detestable
opinions; he loved them, and he despised them. _Their_ honor! _their_
feelings! Ta-ra-ra, rubbish and shams! When he was with them, he
believed in them, the ci-devant “monstre”; he never contradicted them,
and he made them shine. But among his male friends, when the topic of
the sex came up, he laid down the principle that to deceive women, and
to carry on several intrigues at once, should be the occupation of those
young men who were so misguided as to wish to meddle in the affairs of
the State. It is sad to have to sketch so hackneyed a portrait, for has
it not figured everywhere and become, literally, as threadbare as
that of a grenadier of the Empire? But the vidame had an influence
on Monsieur de Maulincour’s destiny which obliges us to preserve his
portrait; he lectured the young man after his fashion, and did his best
to convert him to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry.

The dowager, a tender-hearted, pious woman, sitting between God and her
vidame, a model of grace and sweetness, but gifted with that well-bred
persistency which triumphs in the long run, had longed to preserve for
her grandson the beautiful illusions of life, and had therefore brought
him up in the highest principles; she instilled into him her own
delicacy of feeling and made him, to outward appearance, a timid man, if
not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were
not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that
he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached
no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to
conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the
while scoffing with others at the things he reverenced.

It came to pass that he was deceived; because, in accordance with a not
uncommon whim of destiny, he, a man of gentle melancholy, and spiritual
in love, encountered in the object of his first passion a woman who
held in horror all German sentimentalism. The young man, in consequence,
distrusted himself, became dreamy, absorbed in his griefs, complaining
of not being understood. Then, as we desire all the more violently the
things we find difficult to obtain, he continued to adore women with
that ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy the secret of which
belongs to women themselves, who may, perhaps, prefer to keep the
monopoly of it. In point of fact, though women of the world complain
of the way men love them, they have little liking themselves for those
whose soul is half feminine. Their own superiority consists in making
men believe they are their inferiors in love; therefore they will
readily leave a lover if he is inexperienced enough to rob them of those
fears with which they seek to deck themselves, those delightful tortures
of feigned jealousy, those troubles of hope betrayed, those futile
expectations,--in short, the whole procession of their feminine
miseries. They hold Sir Charles Grandison in horror. What can be more
contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect love? They want
emotions; happiness without storms is not happiness to them. Women with
souls that are strong enough to bring infinitude into love are angelic
exceptions; they are among women what noble geniuses are among men.
Their great passions are rare as masterpieces. Below the level of
such love come compromises, conventions, passing and contemptible
irritations, as in all things petty and perishable.

Amid the hidden disasters of his heart, and while he was still seeking
the woman who could comprehend him (a search which, let us remark in
passing, is one of the amorous follies of our epoch), Auguste met, in
the rank of society that was farthest from his own, in the secondary
sphere of money, where banking holds the first place, a perfect being,
one of those women who have I know not what about them that is saintly
and sacred,--women who inspire such reverence that love has need of the
help of a long familiarity to declare itself.

Auguste then gave himself up wholly to the delights of the deepest and
most moving of passions, to a love that was purely adoring. Innumerable
repressed desires there were, shadows of passion so vague yet so
profound, so fugitive and yet so actual, that one scarcely knows to what
we may compare them. They are like perfumes, or clouds, or rays of the
sun, or shadows, or whatever there is in nature that shines for a moment
and disappears, that springs to life and dies, leaving in the heart long
echoes of emotion. When the soul is young enough to nurture melancholy
and far-off hope, to find in woman more than a woman, is it not the
greatest happiness that can befall a man when he loves enough to feel
more joy in touching a gloved hand, or a lock of hair, in listening to
a word, in casting a single look, than in all the ardor of possession
given by happy love? Thus it is that rejected persons, those rebuffed by
fate, the ugly and unfortunate, lovers unrevealed, women and timid men,
alone know the treasures contained in the voice of the beloved. Taking
their source and their element from the soul itself, the vibrations
of the air, charged with passion, put our hearts so powerfully into
communion, carrying thought between them so lucidly, and being, above
all, so incapable of falsehood, that a single inflection of a voice is
often a revelation. What enchantments the intonations of a tender
voice can bestow upon the heart of a poet! What ideas they awaken! What
freshness they shed there! Love is in the voice before the glance avows
it. Auguste, poet after the manner of lovers (there are poets who feel,
and poets who express; the first are the happiest), Auguste had tasted
all these early joys, so vast, so fecund. SHE possessed the most winning
organ that the most artful woman of the world could have desired in
order to deceive at her ease; _she_ had that silvery voice which is soft
to the ear, and ringing only for the heart which it stirs and troubles,
caresses and subjugates.

And this woman went by night to the rue Soly through the rue Pagevin!
and her furtive apparition in an infamous house had just destroyed the
grandest of passions! The vidame’s logic triumphed.

“If she is betraying her husband we will avenge ourselves,” said
Auguste.

There was still faith in that “if”. The philosophic doubt of Descartes
is a politeness with which we should always honor virtue. Ten o’clock
sounded. The Baron de Maulincour remembered that this woman was going to
a ball that evening at a house to which he had access. He dressed, went
there, and searched for her through all the salons. The mistress of the
house, Madame de Nucingen, seeing him thus occupied, said:--

“You are looking for Madame Jules; but she has not yet come.”

“Good evening, dear,” said a voice.

Auguste and Madame de Nucingen turned round. Madame Jules had arrived,
dressed in white, looking simple and noble, wearing in her hair the
marabouts the young baron had seen her choose in the flower-shop. That
voice of love now pierced his heart. Had he won the slightest right to
be jealous of her he would have petrified her then and there by saying
the words, “Rue Soly!” But if he, an alien to her life, had said those
words in her ear a thousand times, Madame Jules would have asked him in
astonishment what he meant. He looked at her stupidly.

For those sarcastic persons who scoff at all things it may be a great
amusement to detect the secret of a woman, to know that her chastity is
a lie, that her calm face hides some anxious thought, that under that
pure brow is a dreadful drama. But there are other souls to whom
the sight is saddening; and many of those who laugh in public, when
withdrawn into themselves and alone with their conscience, curse the
world while they despise the woman. Such was the case with Auguste de
Maulincour, as he stood there in presence of Madame Jules. Singular
situation! There was no other relation between them than that which
social life establishes between persons who exchange a few words seven
or eight times in the course of a winter, and yet he was calling her
to account on behalf of a happiness unknown to her; he was judging her,
without letting her know of his accusation.

Many young men find themselves thus in despair at having broken forever
with a woman adored in secret, condemned and despised in secret. There
are many hidden monologues told to the walls of some solitary lodging;
storms roused and calmed without ever leaving the depths of hearts;
amazing scenes of the moral world, for which a painter is wanted. Madame
Jules sat down, leaving her husband to make a turn around the salon.
After she was seated she seemed uneasy, and, while talking with her
neighbor, she kept a furtive eye on Monsieur Jules Desmarets, her
husband, a broker chiefly employed by the Baron de Nucingen. The
following is the history of their home life.

Monsieur Desmarets was, five years before his marriage, in a broker’s
office, with no other means than the meagre salary of a clerk. But he
was a man to whom misfortune had early taught the truths of life, and he
followed the strait path with the tenacity of an insect making for its
nest; he was one of those dogged young men who feign death before an
obstacle and wear out everybody’s patience with their own beetle-like
perseverance. Thus, young as he was, he had all the republican virtue of
poor peoples; he was sober, saving of his time, an enemy to pleasure.
He waited. Nature had given him the immense advantage of an agreeable
exterior. His calm, pure brow, the shape of his placid, but expressive
face, his simple manners,--all revealed in him a laborious and resigned
existence, that lofty personal dignity which is imposing to others,
and the secret nobility of heart which can meet all events. His modesty
inspired a sort of respect in those who knew him. Solitary in the midst
of Paris, he knew the social world only by glimpses during the brief
moments which he spent in his patron’s salon on holidays.

There were passions in this young man, as in most of the men who live
in that way, of amazing profundity,--passions too vast to be drawn into
petty incidents. His want of means compelled him to lead an ascetic
life, and he conquered his fancies by hard work. After paling all day
over figures, he found his recreation in striving obstinately to acquire
that wide general knowledge so necessary in these days to every man who
wants to make his mark, whether in society, or in commerce, at the bar,
or in politics or literature. The only peril these fine souls have to
fear comes from their own uprightness. They see some poor girl; they
love her; they marry her, and wear out their lives in a struggle between
poverty and love. The noblest ambition is quenched perforce by the
household account-book. Jules Desmarets went headlong into this peril.

He met one evening at his patron’s house a girl of the rarest beauty.
Unfortunate men who are deprived of affection, and who consume the
finest hours of youth in work and study, alone know the rapid ravages
that passion makes in their lonely, misconceived hearts. They are so
certain of loving truly, all their forces are concentrated so quickly on
the object of their love, that they receive, while beside her, the most
delightful sensations, when, as often happens, they inspire none at
all. Nothing is more flattering to a woman’s egotism than to divine this
passion, apparently immovable, and these emotions so deep that they have
needed a great length of time to reach the human surface. These poor
men, anchorites in the midst of Paris, have all the enjoyments of
anchorites; and may sometimes succumb to temptations. But, more often
deceived, betrayed, and misunderstood, they are rarely able to gather
the sweet fruits of a love which, to them, is like a flower dropped from
heaven.

One smile from his wife, a single inflection of her voice sufficed to
make Jules Desmarets conceive a passion which was boundless. Happily,
the concentrated fire of that secret passion revealed itself artlessly
to the woman who inspired it. These two beings then loved each other
religiously. To express all in a word, they clasped hands without shame
before the eyes of the world and went their way like two children,
brother and sister, passing serenely through a crowd where all made way
for them and admired them.

The young girl was in one of those unfortunate positions which human
selfishness entails upon children. She had no civil status; her name of
“Clemence” and her age were recorded only by a notary public. As for
her fortune, that was small indeed. Jules Desmarets was a happy man
on hearing these particulars. If Clemence had belonged to an opulent
family, he might have despaired of obtaining her; but she was only the
poor child of love, the fruit of some terrible adulterous passion; and
they were married. Then began for Jules Desmarets a series of fortunate
events. Every one envied his happiness; and henceforth talked only of
his luck, without recalling either his virtues or his courage.

Some days after their marriage, the mother of Clemence, who passed in
society for her godmother, told Jules Desmarets to buy the office and
good-will of a broker, promising to provide him with the necessary
capital. In those days, such offices could still be bought at a modest
price. That evening, in the salon as it happened of his patron, a
wealthy capitalist proposed, on the recommendation of the mother, a very
advantageous transaction for Jules Desmarets, and the next day the happy
clerk was able to buy out his patron. In four years Desmarets became one
of the most prosperous men in his business; new clients increased the
number his predecessor had left to him; he inspired confidence in all;
and it was impossible for him not to feel, by the way business came
to him, that some hidden influence, due to his mother-in-law, or to
Providence, was secretly protecting him.

At the end of the third year Clemence lost her godmother. By that time
Monsieur Jules (so called to distinguish him from an elder brother, whom
he had set up as a notary in Paris) possessed an income from invested
property of two hundred thousand francs. There was not in all Paris
another instance of the domestic happiness enjoyed by this couple.
For five years their exceptional love had been troubled by only one
event,--a calumny for which Monsieur Jules exacted vengeance. One of his
former comrades attributed to Madame Jules the fortune of her husband,
explaining that it came from a high protection dearly paid for. The man
who uttered the calumny was killed in the duel that followed it.

The profound passion of this couple, which survived marriage, obtained
a great success in society, though some women were annoyed by it. The
charming household was respected; everybody feted it. Monsieur and
Madame Jules were sincerely liked, perhaps because there is nothing more
delightful to see than happy people; but they never stayed long at any
festivity. They slipped away early, as impatient to regain their nest
as wandering pigeons. This nest was a large and beautiful mansion in the
rue de Menars, where a true feeling for art tempered the luxury which
the financial world continues, traditionally, to display. Here the happy
pair received their society magnificently, although the obligations of
social life suited them but little.

Nevertheless, Jules submitted to the demands of the world, knowing
that, sooner or later, a family has need of it; but he and his wife felt
themselves, in its midst, like green-house plants in a tempest. With a
delicacy that was very natural, Jules had concealed from his wife the
calumny and the death of the calumniator. Madame Jules, herself, was
inclined, through her sensitive and artistic nature, to desire luxury.
In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, some imprudent women
whispered to each other that Madame Jules must sometimes be pressed for
money. They often found her more elegantly dressed in her own home than
when she went into society. She loved to adorn herself to please her
husband, wishing to show him that to her he was more than any social
life. A true love, a pure love, above all, a happy love! Jules, always a
lover, and more in love as time went by, was happy in all things beside
his wife, even in her caprices; in fact, he would have been uneasy if
she had none, thinking it a symptom of some illness.

Auguste de Maulincour had the personal misfortune of running against
this passion, and falling in love with the wife beyond recovery.
Nevertheless, though he carried in his heart so intense a love, he was
not ridiculous; he complied with all the demands of society, and of
military manners and customs. And yet his face wore constantly, even
though he might be drinking a glass of champagne, that dreamy look, that
air of silently despising life, that nebulous expression which belongs,
though for other reasons, to _blases_ men,--men dissatisfied with hollow
lives. To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in
these days, a social position. The enterprise of winning the heart of
a sovereign might give, perhaps, more hope than a love rashly conceived
for a happy woman. Therefore Maulincour had sufficient reason to be
grave and gloomy. A queen has the vanity of her power; the height of her
elevation protects her. But a pious _bourgeoise_ is like a hedgehog, or
an oyster, in its rough wrappings.

At this moment the young officer was beside his unconscious mistress,
who certainly was unaware that she was doubly faithless. Madame
Jules was seated, in a naive attitude, like the least artful woman in
existence, soft and gentle, full of a majestic serenity. What an abyss
is human nature! Before beginning a conversation, the baron looked
alternately at the wife and at the husband. How many were the
reflections he made! He recomposed the “Night Thoughts” of Young in a
second. And yet the music was sounding through the salons, the light was
pouring from a thousand candles. It was a banker’s ball,--one of those
insolent festivals by means of which the world of solid gold endeavored
to sneer at the gold-embossed salons where the faubourg Saint-Germain
met and laughed, not foreseeing the day when the bank would invade the
Luxembourg and take its seat upon the throne. The conspirators were now
dancing, indifferent to coming bankruptcies, whether of Power or of
the Bank. The gilded salons of the Baron de Nucingen were gay with that
peculiar animation that the world of Paris, apparently joyous at any
rate, gives to its fetes. There, men of talent communicate their wit to
fools, and fools communicate that air of enjoyment that characterizes
them. By means of this exchange all is liveliness. But a ball in Paris
always resembles fireworks to a certain extent; wit, coquetry, and
pleasure sparkle and go out like rockets. The next day all present have
forgotten their wit, their coquetry, their pleasure.

“Ah!” thought Auguste, by way of conclusion, “women are what the vidame
says they are. Certainly all those dancing here are less irreproachable
actually than Madame Jules appears to be, and yet Madame Jules went to
the rue Soly!”

The rue Soly was like an illness to him; the very word shrivelled his
heart.

“Madame, do you ever dance?” he said to her.

“This is the third time you have asked me that question this winter,”
 she answered, smiling.

“But perhaps you have never answered it.”

“That is true.”

“I knew very well that you were false, like other women.”

Madame Jules continued to smile.

“Listen, monsieur,” she said; “if I told you the real reason, you would
think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain from telling
things that the world would laugh at.”

“All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am no
doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do
you think me capable of jesting on noble things?”

“Yes,” she said, “you, like all the rest, laugh at our purest
sentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have the
right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I say so,--I
am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that I dance only
with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart.”

“Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but your
husband?”

“Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have never
felt the touch of another man.”

“Has your physician never felt your pulse?”

“Now you are laughing at me.”

“No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a man
hear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you--in short, you permit our
eyes to admire you--”

“Ah!” she said, interrupting him, “that is one of my griefs. Yes, I wish
it were possible for a married woman to live secluded with her husband,
as a mistress lives with her lover, for then--”

“Then why were you, two hours ago, on foot, disguised, in the rue Soly?”

“The rue Soly, where is that?”

And her pure voice gave no sign of any emotion; no feature of her face
quivered; she did not blush; she remained calm.

“What! you did not go up to the second floor of a house in the rue
des Vieux-Augustins at the corner of the rue Soly? You did not have
a hackney-coach waiting near by? You did not return in it to the
flower-shop in the rue Richelieu, where you bought the feathers that are
now in your hair?”

“I did not leave my house this evening.”

As she uttered that lie she was smiling and imperturbable; she played
with her fan; but if any one had passed a hand down her back they would,
perhaps, have found it moist. At that instant Auguste remembered the
instructions of the vidame.

“Then it was some one who strangely resembled you,” he said, with a
credulous air.

“Monsieur,” she replied, “if you are capable of following a woman and
detecting her secrets, you will allow me to say that it is a wrong, a
very wrong thing, and I do you the honor to say that I disbelieve you.”

The baron turned away, placed himself before the fireplace and seemed
thoughtful. He bent his head; but his eyes were covertly fixed on Madame
Jules, who, not remembering the reflections in the mirror, cast two or
three glances at him that were full of terror. Presently she made a sign
to her husband and rising took his arm to walk about the salon. As she
passed before Monsieur de Maulincour, who at that moment was speaking
to a friend, he said in a loud voice, as if in reply to a remark:
“That woman will certainly not sleep quietly this night.” Madame
Jules stopped, gave him an imposing look which expressed contempt,
and continued her way, unaware that another look, if surprised by her
husband, might endanger not only her happiness but the lives of two men.
Auguste, frantic with anger, which he tried to smother in the depths of
his soul, presently left the house, swearing to penetrate to the heart
of the mystery. Before leaving, he sought Madame Jules, to look at her
again; but she had disappeared.

What a drama cast into that young head so eminently romantic, like all
who have not known love in the wide extent which they give to it. He
adored Madame Jules under a new aspect; he loved her now with the fury
of jealousy and the frenzied anguish of hope. Unfaithful to her husband,
the woman became common. Auguste could now give himself up to the
joys of successful love, and his imagination opened to him a career
of pleasures. Yes, he had lost the angel, but he had found the most
delightful of demons. He went to bed, building castles in the air,
excusing Madame Jules by some romantic fiction in which he did not
believe. He resolved to devote himself wholly, from that day forth, to
a search for the causes, motives, and keynote of this mystery. It was a
tale to read, or better still, a drama to be played, in which he had a
part.




CHAPTER II. FERRAGUS

A fine thing is the task of a spy, when performed for one’s own benefit
and in the interests of a passion. Is it not giving ourselves the
pleasure of a thief and a rascal while continuing honest men? But there
is another side to it; we must resign ourselves to boil with anger, to
roar with impatience, to freeze our feet in the mud, to be numbed, and
roasted, and torn by false hopes. We must go, on the faith of a mere
indication, to a vague object, miss our end, curse our luck, improvise
to ourselves elegies, dithyrambics, exclaim idiotically before
inoffensive pedestrians who observe us, knock over old apple-women and
their baskets, run hither and thither, stand on guard beneath a window,
make a thousand suppositions. But, after all, it is a chase, a hunt; a
hunt in Paris, a hunt with all its chances, minus dogs and guns and
the tally-ho! Nothing compares with it but the life of gamblers. But
it needs a heart big with love and vengeance to ambush itself in Paris,
like a tiger waiting to spring upon its prey, and to enjoy the chances
and contingencies of Paris, by adding one special interest to the many
that abound there. But for this we need a many-sided soul--for must we
not live in a thousand passions, a thousand sentiments?

Auguste de Maulincour flung himself into this ardent existence
passionately, for he felt all its pleasures and all its misery. He went
disguised about Paris, watching at the corners of the rue Pagevin and
the rue des Vieux-Augustins. He hurried like a hunter from the rue de
Menars to the rue Soly, and back from the rue Soly to the rue de Menars,
without obtaining either the vengeance or the knowledge which would
punish or reward such cares, such efforts, such wiles. But he had not
yet reached that impatience which wrings our very entrails and makes us
sweat; he roamed in hope, believing that Madame Jules would only refrain
for a few days from revisiting the place where she knew she had been
detected. He devoted the first days therefore, to a careful study of
the secrets of the street. A novice at such work, he dared not question
either the porter or the shoemaker of the house to which Madame Jules
had gone; but he managed to obtain a post of observation in a house
directly opposite to the mysterious apartment. He studied the ground,
trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of prudence, impatience,
love, and secrecy.

Early in the month of March, while busy with plans by which he expected
to strike a decisive blow, he left his post about four in the afternoon,
after one of those patient watches from which he had learned nothing.
He was on his way to his own house whither a matter relating to
his military service called him, when he was overtaken in the rue
Coquilliere by one of those heavy showers which instantly flood the
gutters, while each drop of rain rings loudly in the puddles of the
roadway. A pedestrian under these circumstances is forced to stop short
and take refuge in a shop or cafe if he is rich enough to pay for
the forced hospitality, or, if in poorer circumstances, under a
_porte-cochere_, that haven of paupers or shabbily dressed persons. Why
have none of our painters ever attempted to reproduce the physiognomies
of a swarm of Parisians, grouped, under stress of weather, in the damp
_porte-cochere_ of a building? First, there’s the musing philosophical
pedestrian, who observes with interest all he sees,--whether it be the
stripes made by the rain on the gray background of the atmosphere (a
species of chasing not unlike the capricious threads of spun glass), or
the whirl of white water which the wind is driving like a luminous
dust along the roofs, or the fitful disgorgements of the gutter-pipes,
sparkling and foaming; in short, the thousand nothings to be admired and
studied with delight by loungers, in spite of the porter’s broom which
pretends to be sweeping out the gateway. Then there’s the talkative
refugee, who complains and converses with the porter while he rests on
his broom like a grenadier on his musket; or the pauper wayfarer, curled
against the wall indifferent to the condition of his rags, long used,
alas, to contact with the streets; or the learned pedestrian who
studies, spells, and reads the posters on the walls without finishing
them; or the smiling pedestrian who makes fun of others to whom some
street fatality has happened, who laughs at the muddy women, and makes
grimaces at those of either sex who are looking from the windows; and
the silent being who gazes from floor to floor; and the working-man,
armed with a satchel or a paper bundle, who is estimating the rain as a
profit or loss; and the good-natured fugitive, who arrives like a shot
exclaiming, “Ah! what weather, messieurs, what weather!” and bows
to every one; and, finally, the true _bourgeois_ of Paris, with his
unfailing umbrella, an expert in showers, who foresaw this particular
one, but would come out in spite of his wife; this one takes a seat in
the porter’s chair. According to individual character, each member of
this fortuitous society contemplates the skies, and departs, skipping
to avoid the mud,--because he is in a hurry, or because he sees other
citizens walking along in spite of wind and slush, or because, the
archway being damp and mortally catarrhal, the bed’s edge, as the
proverb says, is better than the sheets. Each one has his motive. No one
is left but the prudent pedestrian, the man who, before he sets forth,
makes sure of a scrap of blue sky through the rifting clouds.

Monsieur de Maulincour took refuge, as we have said, with a whole family
of fugitives, under the porch of an old house, the court-yard of
which looked like the flue of a chimney. The sides of its plastered,
nitrified, and mouldy walls were so covered with pipes and conduits from
all the many floors of its four elevations, that it might have been
said to resemble at that moment the _cascatelles_ of Saint-Cloud. Water
flowed everywhere; it boiled, it leaped, it murmured; it was black,
white, blue, and green; it shrieked, it bubbled under the broom of the
portress, a toothless old woman used to storms, who seemed to bless them
as she swept into the street a mass of scraps an intelligent inventory
of which would have revealed the lives and habits of every dweller
in the house,--bits of printed cottons, tea-leaves, artificial
flower-petals faded and worthless, vegetable parings, papers, scraps of
metal. At every sweep of her broom the old woman bared the soul of the
gutter, that black fissure on which a porter’s mind is ever bent. The
poor lover examined this scene, like a thousand others which our heaving
Paris presents daily; but he examined it mechanically, as a man absorbed
in thought, when, happening to look up, he found himself all but nose to
nose with a man who had just entered the gateway.

In appearance this man was a beggar, but not the Parisian beggar,--that
creation without a name in human language; no, this man formed another
type, while presenting on the outside all the ideas suggested by
the word “beggar.” He was not marked by those original Parisian
characteristics which strike us so forcibly in the paupers whom Charlet
was fond of representing, with his rare luck in observation,--coarse
faces reeking of mud, hoarse voices, reddened and bulbous noses, mouths
devoid of teeth but menacing; humble yet terrible beings, in whom a
profound intelligence shining in their eyes seems like a contradiction.
Some of these bold vagabonds have blotched, cracked, veiny skins; their
foreheads are covered with wrinkles, their hair scanty and dirty, like
a wig thrown on a dust-heap. All are gay in their degradation, and
degraded in their joys; all are marked with the stamp of debauchery,
casting their silence as a reproach; their very attitude revealing
fearful thoughts. Placed between crime and beggary they have no
compunctions, and circle prudently around the scaffold without mounting
it, innocent in the midst of crime, and vicious in their innocence. They
often cause a laugh, but they always cause reflection. One represents
to you civilization stunted, repressed; he comprehends everything, the
honor of the galleys, patriotism, virtue, the malice of a vulgar crime,
or the fine astuteness of elegant wickedness. Another is resigned, a
perfect mimer, but stupid. All have slight yearnings after order and
work, but they are pushed back into their mire by society, which makes
no inquiry as to what there may be of great men, poets, intrepid souls,
and splendid organizations among these vagrants, these gypsies of Paris;
a people eminently good and eminently evil--like all the masses who
suffer--accustomed to endure unspeakable woes, and whom a fatal power
holds ever down to the level of the mire. They all have a dream, a hope,
a happiness,--cards, lottery, or wine.

There was nothing of all this in the personage who now leaned carelessly
against the wall in front of Monsieur de Maulincour, like some fantastic
idea drawn by an artist on the back of a canvas the front of which is
turned to the wall. This tall, spare man, whose leaden visage expressed
some deep but chilling thought, dried up all pity in the hearts of those
who looked at him by the scowling look and the sarcastic attitude which
announced an intention of treating every man as an equal. His face was
of a dirty white, and his wrinkled skull, denuded of hair, bore a vague
resemblance to a block of granite. A few gray locks on either side
of his head fell straight to the collar of his greasy coat, which was
buttoned to the chin. He resembled both Voltaire and Don Quixote;
he was, apparently, scoffing but melancholy, full of disdain and
philosophy, but half-crazy. He seemed to have no shirt. His beard was
long. A rusty black cravat, much worn and ragged, exposed a protuberant
neck deeply furrowed, with veins as thick as cords. A large brown circle
like a bruise was strongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at
least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were
trodden down at the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers,
mended in various places, were covered with a species of fluff which
made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes
exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the “poor
smell” which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies,
and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which
no words can give the least idea, or whether some other reason affected
them, those in the vicinity of this man immediately moved away and
left him alone. He cast upon them and also upon the officer a calm,
expressionless look, the celebrated look of Monsieur de Talleyrand,
a dull, wan glance, without warmth, a species of impenetrable veil,
beneath which a strong soul hides profound emotions and close estimation
of men and things and events. Not a fold of his face quivered. His mouth
and forehead were impassible; but his eyes moved and lowered themselves
with a noble, almost tragic slowness. There was, in fact, a whole drama
in the motion of those withered eyelids.

The aspect of this stoical figure gave rise in Monsieur de Maulincour
to one of those vagabond reveries which begin with a common question and
end by comprising a world of thought. The storm was past. Monsieur de
Maulincour presently saw no more of the man than the tail of his coat
as it brushed the gate-post, but as he turned to leave his own place
he noticed at his feet a letter which must have fallen from the unknown
beggar when he took, as the baron had seen him take, a handkerchief from
his pocket. The young man picked it up, and read, involuntarily, the
address: “To Monsieur Ferragusse, Rue des Grands-Augustains, corner of
rue Soly.”

The letter bore no postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur de
Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are few
passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. The baron
had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall. He
determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to enter
the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not doubting that
he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faint gleams of daylight,
made him fancy relations between this man and Madame Jules. A jealous
lover supposes everything; and it is by supposing everything and
selecting the most probable of their conjectures that judges, spies,
lovers, and observers get at the truth they are looking for.

“Is the letter for him? Is it from Madame Jules?”

His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him;
but when he read the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it
is, textually, in all the simplicity of its artless phrases and its
miserable orthography,--a letter to which it would be impossible to add
anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letter itself.
But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the original
there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of
exclamation,--a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes
and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great
disasters of all the passions:--


  Henry,--Among the manny sacrifisis I imposed upon myself for your
  sake was that of not giving you anny news of me; but an
  iresistible voise now compells me to let you know the wrong you
  have done me. I know beforehand that your soul hardened in vise
  will not pitty me. Your heart is deaf to feeling. Is it deaf to
  the cries of nature? But what matter? I must tell you to what a
  dredful point you are gilty, and the horror of the position to
  which you have brought me. Henry, you knew what I sufered from my
  first wrong-doing, and yet you plunged me into the same misery,
  and then abbandoned me to my dispair and sufering. Yes, I will say
  it, the belif I had that you loved me and esteemed me gave me
  corage to bare my fate. But now, what have I left? Have you not
  made me loose all that was dear to me, all that held me to life;
  parents, frends, onor, reputation,--all, I have sacrifised all to
  you, and nothing is left me but shame, oprobrum, and--I say this
  without blushing--poverty. Nothing was wanting to my misfortunes
  but the sertainty of your contempt and hatred; and now I have them
  I find the corage that my project requires. My decision is made;
  the onor of my famly commands it. I must put an end to my
  suferins. Make no remarks upon my conduct, Henry; it is orful, I
  know, but my condition obliges me. Without help, without suport,
  without one frend to comfort me, can I live? No. Fate has desided
  for me. So in two days, Henry, two days, Ida will have seased to
  be worthy of your regard. Oh, Henry! oh, my frend! for I can never
  change to you, promise me to forgive me for what I am going to do.
  Do not forget that you have driven me to it; it is your work, and
  you must judge it. May heven not punish you for all your crimes. I
  ask your pardon on my knees, for I feel nothing is wanting to my
  misery but the sorow of knowing you unhappy. In spite of the
  poverty I am in I shall refuse all help from you. If you had loved
  me I would have taken all from your friendship; but a benfit given
  by pitty _my soul refussis_. I would be baser to take it than he
  who offered it. I have one favor to ask of you. I don’t know how
  long I must stay at Madame Meynardie’s; be genrous enough not to
  come there. Your last two vissits did me a harm I cannot get ofer.
  I cannot enter into particlers about that conduct of yours. You
  hate me,--you said so; that word is writen on my heart, and
  freeses it with fear. Alas! it is now, when I need all my corage,
  all my strength, that my faculties abandon me. Henry, my frend,
  before I put a barrier forever between us, give me a last pruf of
  your esteem. Write me, answer me, say you respect me still, though
  you have seased to love me. My eyes are worthy still to look into
  yours, but I do not ask an interfew; I fear my weakness and my
  love. But for pitty’s sake write me a line at once; it will give
  me the corage I need to meet my trubbles. Farewell, orther of all
  my woes, but the only frend my heart has chosen and will never
  forget.

Ida.


This life of a young girl, with its love betrayed, its fatal joys, its
pangs, its miseries, and its horrible resignation, summed up in a few
words, this humble poem, essentially Parisian, written on dirty paper,
influenced for a passing moment Monsieur de Maulincour. He asked himself
whether this Ida might not be some poor relation of Madame Jules, and
that strange rendezvous, which he had witnessed by chance, the mere
necessity of a charitable effort. But could that old pauper have seduced
this Ida? There was something impossible in the very idea. Wandering in
this labyrinth of reflections, which crossed, recrossed, and obliterated
one another, the baron reached the rue Pagevin, and saw a hackney-coach
standing at the end of the rue des Vieux-Augustins where it enters the
rue Montmartre. All waiting hackney-coaches now had an interest for him.

“Can she be there?” he thought to himself, and his heart beat fast with
a hot and feverish throbbing.

He pushed the little door with the bell, but he lowered his head as he
did so, obeying a sense of shame, for a voice said to him secretly:--

“Why are you putting your foot into this mystery?”

He went up a few steps, and found himself face to face with the old
portress.

“Monsieur Ferragus?” he said.

“Don’t know him.”

“Doesn’t Monsieur Ferragus live here?”

“Haven’t such a name in the house.”

“But, my good woman--”

“I’m not your good woman, monsieur, I’m the portress.”

“But, madame,” persisted the baron, “I have a letter for Monsieur
Ferragus.”

“Ah! if monsieur has a letter,” she said, changing her tone, “that’s
another matter. Will you let me see it--that letter?”

Auguste showed the folded letter. The old woman shook her head with a
doubtful air, hesitated, seemed to wish to leave the lodge and inform
the mysterious Ferragus of his unexpected visitor, but finally said:--

“Very good; go up, monsieur. I suppose you know the way?”

Without replying to this remark, which he thought might be a trap, the
young officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the door
of the second floor. His lover’s instinct told him, “She is there.”

The beggar of the porch, Ferragus, the “orther” of Ida’s woes, opened
the door himself. He appeared in a flowered dressing-gown, white flannel
trousers, his feet in embroidered slippers, and his face washed clean of
stains. Madame Jules, whose head projected beyond the casing of the door
in the next room, turned pale and dropped into a chair.

“What is the matter, madame?” cried the officer, springing toward her.

But Ferragus stretched forth an arm and flung the intruder back with so
sharp a thrust that Auguste fancied he had received a blow with an iron
bar full on his chest.

“Back! monsieur,” said the man. “What do you want there? For five or six
days you have been roaming about the neighborhood. Are you a spy?”

“Are you Monsieur Ferragus?” said the baron.

“No, monsieur.”

“Nevertheless,” continued Auguste, “it is to you that I must return this
paper which you dropped in the gateway beneath which we both took refuge
from the rain.”

While speaking and offering the letter to the man, Auguste did not
refrain from casting an eye around the room where Ferragus received him.
It was very well arranged, though simply. A fire burned on the hearth;
and near it was a table with food upon it, which was served more
sumptuously than agreed with the apparent conditions of the man and the
poorness of his lodging. On a sofa in the next room, which he could
see through the doorway, lay a heap of gold, and he heard a sound which
could be no other than that of a woman weeping.

“The paper belongs to me; I am much obliged to you,” said the mysterious
man, turning away as if to make the baron understand that he must go.

Too curious himself to take much note of the deep examination of which
he was himself the object, Auguste did not see the half-magnetic glance
with which this strange being seemed to pierce him; had he encountered
that basilisk eye he might have felt the danger that encompassed him.
Too passionately excited to think of himself, Auguste bowed, went
down the stairs, and returned home, striving to find a meaning in the
connection of these three persons,--Ida, Ferragus, and Madame Jules;
an occupation equivalent to that of trying to arrange the many-cornered
bits of a Chinese puzzle without possessing the key to the game. But
Madame Jules had seen him, Madame Jules went there, Madame Jules had
lied to him. Maulincour determined to go and see her the next day. She
could not refuse his visit, for he was now her accomplice; he was hands
and feet in the mysterious affair, and she knew it. Already he
felt himself a sultan, and thought of demanding from Madame Jules,
imperiously, all her secrets.

In those days Paris was seized with a building-fever. If Paris is
a monster, it is certainly a most mania-ridden monster. It becomes
enamored of a thousand fancies: sometimes it has a mania for building,
like a great seigneur who loves a trowel; soon it abandons the trowel
and becomes all military; it arrays itself from head to foot as a
national guard, and drills and smokes; suddenly, it abandons military
manoeuvres and flings away cigars; it is commercial, care-worn, falls
into bankruptcy, sells its furniture on the place de Chatelet, files its
schedule; but a few days later, lo! it has arranged its affairs and is
giving fetes and dances. One day it eats barley-sugar by the mouthful,
by the handful; yesterday it bought “papier Weymen”; to-day the
monster’s teeth ache, and it applies to its walls an alexipharmatic
to mitigate their dampness; to-morrow it will lay in a provision of
pectoral paste. It has its manias for the month, for the season, for the
year, like its manias of a day.

So, at the moment of which we speak, all the world was building or
pulling down something,--people hardly knew what as yet. There were very
few streets in which high scaffoldings on long poles could not be seen,
fastened from floor to floor with transverse blocks inserted into holes
in the walls on which the planks were laid,--a frail construction,
shaken by the brick-layers, but held together by ropes, white with
plaster, and insecurely protected from the wheels of carriages by the
breastwork of planks which the law requires round all such buildings.
There is something maritime in these masts, and ladders, and cordage,
even in the shouts of the masons. About a dozen yards from the hotel
Maulincour, one of these ephemeral barriers was erected before a house
which was then being built of blocks of free-stone. The day after the
event we have just related, at the moment when the Baron de Maulincour
was passing this scaffolding in his cabriolet on his way to see Madame
Jules, a stone, two feet square, which was being raised to the upper
storey of this building, got loose from the ropes and fell, crushing the
baron’s servant who was behind the cabriolet. A cry of horror shook both
the scaffold and the masons; one of them, apparently unable to keep his
grasp on a pole, was in danger of death, and seemed to have been touched
by the stone as it passed him.

A crowd collected rapidly; the masons came down the ladders swearing
and insisting that Monsieur de Maulincour’s cabriolet had been driven
against the boarding and so had shaken their crane. Two inches more and
the stone would have fallen on the baron’s head. The groom was dead,
the carriage shattered. ‘Twas an event for the whole neighborhood, the
newspapers told of it. Monsieur de Maulincour, certain that he had not
touched the boarding, complained; the case went to court. Inquiry being
made, it was shown that a small boy, armed with a lath, had mounted
guard and called to all foot-passengers to keep away. The affair ended
there. Monsieur de Maulincour obtained no redress. He had lost his
servant, and was confined to his bed for some days, for the back of the
carriage when shattered had bruised him severely, and the nervous shock
of the sudden surprise gave him a fever. He did not, therefore, go to
see Madame Jules.

Ten days after this event, he left the house for the first time, in his
repaired cabriolet, when, as he drove down the rue de Bourgogne and was
close to the sewer opposite to the Chamber of Deputies, the axle-tree
broke in two, and the baron was driving so rapidly that the breakage
would have caused the two wheels to come together with force enough to
break his head, had it not been for the resistance of the leather hood.
Nevertheless, he was badly wounded in the side. For the second time in
ten days he was carried home in a fainting condition to his terrified
grandmother. This second accident gave him a feeling of distrust; he
thought, though vaguely, of Ferragus and Madame Jules. To throw light on
these suspicions he had the broken axle brought to his room and sent
for his carriage-maker. The man examined the axle and the fracture,
and proved two things: First, the axle was not made in his workshop; he
furnished none that did not bear the initials of his name on the iron.
But he could not explain by what means this axle had been substituted
for the other. Secondly, the breakage of the suspicious axle was caused
by a hollow space having been blown in it and a straw very cleverly
inserted.

“Eh! Monsieur le baron, whoever did that was malicious!” he said; “any
one would swear, to look at it, that the axle was sound.”

Monsieur de Maulincour begged the carriage-maker to say nothing of the
affair; but he felt himself warned. These two attempts at murder were
planned with an ability which denoted the enmity of intelligent minds.

“It is war to the death,” he said to himself, as he tossed in his
bed,--“a war of savages, skulking in ambush, of trickery and treachery,
declared in the name of Madame Jules. What sort of man is this to whom
she belongs? What species of power does this Ferragus wield?”

Monsieur de Maulincour, though a soldier and brave man, could not
repress a shudder. In the midst of many thoughts that now assailed him,
there was one against which he felt he had neither defence nor courage:
might not poison be employed ere long by his secret enemies? Under the
influence of fears, which his momentary weakness and fever and low diet
increased, he sent for an old woman long attached to the service of his
grandmother, whose affection for himself was one of those semi-maternal
sentiments which are the sublime of the commonplace. Without confiding
in her wholly, he charged her to buy secretly and daily, in different
localities, the food he needed; telling her to keep it under lock and
key and bring it to him herself, not allowing any one, no matter who, to
approach her while preparing it. He took the most minute precautions to
protect himself against that form of death. He was ill in his bed
and alone, and he had therefore the leisure to think of his own
security,--the one necessity clear-sighted enough to enable human
egotism to forget nothing!

But the unfortunate man had poisoned his own life by this dread, and,
in spite of himself, suspicion dyed all his hours with its gloomy tints.
These two lessons of attempted assassination did teach him, however, the
value of one of the virtues most necessary to a public man; he saw the
wise dissimulation that must be practised in dealing with the great
interests of life. To be silent about our own secret is nothing; but to
be silent from the start, to forget a fact as Ali Pacha did for thirty
years in order to be sure of a vengeance waited for for thirty years,
is a fine study in a land where there are few men who can keep their
own counsel for thirty days. Monsieur de Maulincour literally lived only
through Madame Jules. He was perpetually absorbed in a sober examination
into the means he ought to employ to triumph in this mysterious struggle
with these mysterious persons. His secret passion for that woman grew
by reason of all these obstacles. Madame Jules was ever there, erect, in
the midst of his thoughts, in the centre of his heart, more seductive by
her presumable vices than by the positive virtues for which he had made
her his idol.

At last, anxious to reconnoitre the position of the enemy, he thought
he might without danger initiate the vidame into the secrets of his
situation. The old commander loved Auguste as a father loves his wife’s
children; he was shrewd, dexterous, and very diplomatic. He listened to
the baron, shook his head, and they both held counsel. The worthy vidame
did not share his young friend’s confidence when Auguste declared that
in the time in which they now lived, the police and the government were
able to lay bare all mysteries, and that if it were absolutely necessary
to have recourse to those powers, he should find them most powerful
auxiliaries.

The old man replied, gravely: “The police, my dear boy, is the most
incompetent thing on this earth, and government the feeblest in all
matters concerning individuals. Neither the police nor the government
can read hearts. What we might reasonably ask of them is to search
for the causes of an act. But the police and the government are both
eminently unfitted for that; they lack, essentially, the personal
interest which reveals all to him who wants to know all. No human power
can prevent an assassin or a poisoner from reaching the heart of a
prince or the stomach of an honest man. Passions are the best police.”

The vidame strongly advised the baron to go to Italy, and from Italy
to Greece, from Greece to Syria, from Syria to Asia, and not to return
until his secret enemies were convinced of his repentance, and would so
make tacit peace with him. But if he did not take that course, then the
vidame advised him to stay in the house, and even in his own room, where
he would be safe from the attempts of this man Ferragus, and not to
leave it until he could be certain of crushing him.

“We should never touch an enemy until we can be sure of taking his head
off,” he said, gravely.

The old man, however, promised his favorite to employ all the astuteness
with which Heaven had provided him (without compromising any one)
in reconnoitring the enemy’s ground, and laying his plans for future
victory. The Commander had in his service a retired Figaro, the wiliest
monkey that ever walked in human form; in earlier days as clever as a
devil, working his body like a galley-slave, alert as a thief, sly as a
woman, but now fallen into the decadence of genius for want of practice
since the new constitution of Parisian society, which has reformed even
the valets of comedy. This Scapin emeritus was attached to his master
as to a superior being; but the shrewd old vidame added a good round
sum yearly to the wages of his former provost of gallantry,
which strengthened the ties of natural affection by the bonds of
self-interest, and obtained for the old gentleman as much care as the
most loving mistress could bestow on a sick friend. It was this pearl
of the old-fashioned comedy-valets, relic of the last century, auxiliary
incorruptible from lack of passions to satisfy, on whom the old vidame
and Monsieur de Maulincour now relied.

“Monsieur le baron will spoil all,” said the great man in livery, when
called into counsel. “Monsieur should eat, drink, and sleep in peace. I
take the whole matter upon myself.”

Accordingly, eight days after the conference, when Monsieur de
Maulincour, perfectly restored to health, was breakfasting with his
grandmother and the vidame, Justin entered to make his report. As soon
as the dowager had returned to her own apartments he said, with that
mock modesty which men of talent are so apt to affect:--

“Ferragus is not the name of the enemy who is pursuing Monsieur le
baron. This man--this devil, rather--is called Gratien, Henri, Victor,
Jean-Joseph Bourignard. The Sieur Gratien Bourignard is a former
ship-builder, once very rich, and, above all, one of the handsomest
men of his day in Paris,--a Lovelace, capable of seducing Grandison.
My information stops short there. He has been a simple workman; and the
Companions of the Order of the Devorants did, at one time, elect him as
their chief, under the title of Ferragus XXIII. The police ought to know
that, if the police were instituted to know anything. The man has moved
from the rue des Vieux-Augustins, and now roosts rue Joquelet, where
Madame Jules Desmarets goes frequently to see him; sometimes her
husband, on his way to the Bourse, drives her as far as the rue
Vivienne, or she drives her husband to the Bourse. Monsieur le vidame
knows about these things too well to want me to tell him if it is the
husband who takes the wife, or the wife who takes the husband; but
Madame Jules is so pretty, I’d bet on her. All that I have told you is
positive. Bourignard often plays at number 129. Saving your presence,
monsieur, he’s a rogue who loves women, and he has his little ways
like a man of condition. As for the rest, he wins sometimes, disguises
himself like an actor, paints his face to look like anything he chooses,
and lives, I may say, the most original life in the world. I don’t doubt
he has a good many lodgings, for most of the time he manages to evade
what Monsieur le vidame calls ‘parliamentary investigations.’ If
monsieur wishes, he could be disposed of honorably, seeing what his
habits are. It is always easy to get rid of a man who loves women.
However, this capitalist talks about moving again. Have Monsieur le
vidame and Monsieur le baron any other commands to give me?”

“Justin, I am satisfied with you; don’t go any farther in the matter
without my orders, but keep a close watch here, so that Monsieur le
baron may have nothing to fear.”

“My dear boy,” continued the vidame, when they were alone, “go back to
your old life, and forget Madame Jules.”

“No, no,” said Auguste; “I will never yield to Gratien Bourignard. I
will have him bound hand and foot, and Madame Jules also.”

That evening the Baron Auguste de Maulincour, recently promoted to
higher rank in the company of the Body-Guard of the king, went to a
ball given by Madame la Duchesse de Berry at the Elysee-Bourbon. There,
certainly, no danger could lurk for him; and yet, before he left the
palace, he had an affair of honor on his hands,--an affair it was
impossible to settle except by a duel.

His adversary, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, considered that he had
strong reasons to complain of Monsieur de Maulincour, who had given some
ground for it during his former intimacy with Monsieur de Ronquerolles’
sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. That lady, the one who detested German
sentimentality, was all the more exacting in the matter of prudery. By
one of those inexplicable fatalities, Auguste now uttered a harmless
jest which Madame de Serizy took amiss, and her brother resented it. The
discussion took place in the corner of a room, in a low voice. In good
society, adversaries never raise their voices. The next day the faubourg
Saint-Germain and the Chateau talked over the affair. Madame de Serizy
was warmly defended, and all the blame was laid on Maulincour. August
personages interfered. Seconds of the highest distinction were imposed
on Messieurs de Maulincour and de Ronquerolles and every precaution was
taken on the ground that no one should be killed.

When Auguste found himself face to face with his antagonist, a man of
pleasure, to whom no one could possibly deny sentiments of the highest
honor, he felt it was impossible to believe him the instrument of
Ferragus, chief of the Devorants; and yet he was compelled, as it were,
by an inexplicable presentiment, to question the marquis.

“Messieurs,” he said to the seconds, “I certainly do not refuse to
meet the fire of Monsieur de Ronquerolles; but before doing so, I here
declare that I was to blame, and I offer him whatever excuses he may
desire, and publicly if he wishes it; because when the matter concerns a
woman, nothing, I think, can degrade a man of honor. I therefore appeal
to his generosity and good sense; is there not something rather silly in
fighting without a cause?”

Monsieur de Ronquerolles would not allow of this way of ending the
affair, and then the baron, his suspicions revived, walked up to him.

“Well, then! Monsieur le marquis,” he said, “pledge me, in presence of
these gentlemen, your word as a gentleman that you have no other reason
for vengeance than that you have chosen to put forward.”

“Monsieur, that is a question you have no right to ask.”

So saying, Monsieur de Ronquerolles took his place. It was agreed, in
advance, that the adversaries were to be satisfied with one exchange
of shots. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, in spite of the great distance
determined by the seconds, which seemed to make the death of either
party problematical, if not impossible, brought down the baron. The ball
went through the latter’s body just below the heart, but fortunately
without doing vital injury.

“You aimed too well, monsieur,” said the baron, “to be avenging only a
paltry quarrel.”

And he fainted. Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who believed him to be a dead
man, smiled sardonically as he heard those words.

After a fortnight, during which time the dowager and the vidame gave
him those cares of old age the secret of which is in the hands of long
experience only, the baron began to return to life. But one morning his
grandmother dealt him a crushing blow, by revealing anxieties to which,
in her last days, she was now subjected. She showed him a letter signed
F, in which the history of her grandson’s secret espionage was recounted
step by step. The letter accused Monsieur de Maulincour of actions that
were unworthy of a man of honor. He had, it said, placed an old woman
at the stand of hackney-coaches in the rue de Menars; an old spy, who
pretended to sell water from her cask to the coachmen, but who was
really there to watch the actions of Madame Jules Desmarets. He had
spied upon the daily life of a most inoffensive man, in order to detect
his secrets,--secrets on which depended the lives of three persons. He
had brought upon himself a relentless struggle, in which, although he
had escaped with life three times, he must inevitably succumb, because
his death had been sworn and would be compassed if all human means were
employed upon it. Monsieur de Maulincour could no longer escape his fate
by even promising to respect the mysterious life of these three persons,
because it was impossible to believe the word of a gentleman who had
fallen to the level of a police-spy; and for what reason? Merely to
trouble the respectable life of an innocent woman and a harmless old
man.

The letter itself was nothing to Auguste in comparison to the tender
reproaches of his grandmother. To lack respect to a woman! to spy upon
her actions without a right to do so! Ought a man ever to spy upon
a woman whom he loved?--in short, she poured out a torrent of those
excellent reasons which prove nothing; and they put the young baron,
for the first time in his life, into one of those great human furies in
which are born, and from which issue the most vital actions of a man’s
life.

“Since it is war to the knife,” he said in conclusion, “I shall kill my
enemy by any means that I can lay hold of.”

The vidame went immediately, at Auguste’s request, to the chief of the
private police of Paris, and without bringing Madame Jules’ name or
person into the narrative, although they were really the gist of it, he
made the official aware of the fears of the family of Maulincour about
this mysterious person who was bold enough to swear the death of an
officer of the Guards, in defiance of the law and the police. The chief
pushed up his green spectacles in amazement, blew his nose several
times, and offered snuff to the vidame, who, to save his dignity,
pretended not to use tobacco, although his own nose was discolored with
it. Then the chief took notes and promised, Vidocq and his spies aiding,
to send in a report within a few days to the Maulincour family, assuring
them meantime that there were no secrets for the police of Paris.

A few days after this the police official called to see the vidame at
the Hotel de Maulincour, where he found the young baron quite recovered
from his last wound. He gave them in bureaucratic style his thanks for
the indications they had afforded him, and told them that Bourignard was
a convict, condemned to twenty years’ hard labor, who had miraculously
escaped from a gang which was being transported from Bicetre to Toulon.
For thirteen years the police had been endeavoring to recapture him,
knowing that he had boldly returned to Paris; but so far this convict
had escaped the most active search, although he was known to be mixed up
in many nefarious deeds. However, the man, whose life was full of very
curious incidents, would certainly be captured now in one or other of
his several domiciles and delivered up to justice. The bureaucrat ended
his report by saying to Monsieur de Maulincour that if he attached
enough importance to the matter to wish to witness the capture of
Bourignard, he might come the next day at eight in the morning to a
house in the rue Sainte-Foi, of which he gave him the number. Monsieur
de Maulincour excused himself from going personally in search of
certainty,--trusting, with the sacred respect inspired by the police of
Paris, in the capability of the authorities.

Three days later, hearing nothing, and seeing nothing in the newspapers
about the projected arrest, which was certainly of enough importance to
have furnished an article, Monsieur de Maulincour was beginning to feel
anxieties which were presently allayed by the following letter:--


  Monsieur le Baron,--I have the honor to announce to you that you
  need have no further uneasiness touching the affair in question.
  The man named Gratien Bourignard, otherwise called Ferragus, died
  yesterday, at his lodgings, rue Joquelet No. 7. The suspicions we
  naturally conceived as to the identity of the dead body have been
  completely set at rest by the facts. The physician of the
  Prefecture of police was despatched by us to assist the physician
  of the arrondissement, and the chief of the detective police made
  all the necessary verifications to obtain absolute certainty.
  Moreover, the character of the persons who signed the certificate
  of death, and the affidavits of those who took care of the said
  Bourignard in his last illness, among others that of the worthy
  vicar of the church of the Bonne-Nouvelle (to whom he made his
  last confession, for he died a Christian), do not permit us to
  entertain any sort of doubt.

  Accept, Monsieur le baron, etc., etc.


Monsieur de Maulincour, the dowager, and the vidame breathed again with
joy unspeakable. The good old woman kissed her grandson leaving a tear
upon his cheek, and went away to thank God in prayer. The dear soul,
who was making a novena for Auguste’s safety, believed her prayers were
answered.

“Well,” said the vidame, “now you had better show yourself at the ball
you were speaking of. I oppose no further objections.”




CHAPTER III. THE WIFE ACCUSED

Monsieur de Maulincour was all the more anxious to go to this ball
because he knew that Madame Jules would be present. The fete was given
by the Prefect of the Seine, in whose salons the two social worlds of
Paris met as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the rooms without
finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate.
He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting
players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most
contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer
by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper
of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly,
the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the police, and the dead man of
the day before.

“Monsieur, not a sound, not a word,” said Bourignard, whose voice he
recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the
Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. “Monsieur,” he continued, and
his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, “you increase my efforts
against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur;
it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved
by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful life, and blacken her
virtue?”

Some one entered the card-room. Ferragus rose to go.

“Do you know this man?” asked Monsieur de Maulincour of the new-comer,
seizing Ferragus by the collar. But Ferragus quickly disengaged himself,
took Monsieur de Maulincour by the hair, and shook his head rapidly.

“Must you have lead in it to make it steady?” he said.

“I do not know him personally,” replied Henri de Marsay, the spectator
of this scene, “but I know that he is Monsieur de Funcal, a rich
Portuguese.”

Monsieur de Funcal had disappeared. The baron followed but without
being able to overtake him until he reached the peristyle, where he
saw Ferragus, who looked at him with a jeering laugh from a brilliant
equipage which was driven away at high speed.

“Monsieur,” said Auguste, re-entering the salon and addressing de
Marsay, whom he knew, “I entreat you to tell me where Monsieur de Funcal
lives.”

“I do not know; but some one here can no doubt tell you.”

The baron, having questioned the prefect, ascertained that the Comte de
Funcal lived at the Portuguese embassy. At this moment, while he still
felt the icy fingers of that strange man in his hair, he saw Madame
Jules in all her dazzling beauty, fresh, gracious, artless, resplendent
with the sanctity of womanhood which had won his love. This creature,
now infernal to him, excited no emotion in his soul but that of hatred;
and this hatred shone in a savage, terrible look from his eyes. He
watched for a moment when he could speak to her unheard, and then he
said:--

“Madame, your _bravi_ have missed me three times.”

“What do you mean, monsieur?” she said, flushing. “I know that you
have had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatly
regretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?”

“You knew that _bravi_ were employed against me by that man of the rue
Soly?”

“Monsieur!”

“Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but for
my blood--”

At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them.

“What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?”

“Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious,” said
Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almost fainting
condition.

There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least in
their lives, _a propos_ of some undeniable fact, confronted with
a direct, sharp, uncompromising question,--one of those questions
pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives
a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a
dagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, “All women
lie.” Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood,
horrible falsehood,--but always the necessity to lie. This necessity
admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it
admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception! Besides,
women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true
in lying,--they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order
to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not
resist,--that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as the
cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomes to
them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if
they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to individual
character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep; others are
grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning indifference
to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end by lying to
themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority to everything
at the very moment when they are trembling for the secret treasures of
their love? Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their
freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments of life? In them, nothing
is put on. Deception comes as the snow from heaven. And then, with what
art they discover the truth in others! With what shrewdness they employ
a direct logic in answer to some passionate question which has revealed
to them the secret of the heart of a man who was guileless enough to
proceed by questioning! To question a woman! why, that is delivering
one’s self up to her; does she not learn in that way all that we seek to
hide from her? Does she not know also how to be dumb, through speaking?
What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman?--a woman
who knows how to hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: “You are
very inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you
are jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?”--in short, a
woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying _No_,
and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not a treatise on
the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic,
and moral work, still waiting to be written? But to accomplish this
work, which we may also call diabolic, isn’t an androgynous genius
necessary? For that reason, probably, it will never be attempted. And
besides, of all unpublished works isn’t it the best known and the best
practised among women? Have you studied the behavior, the pose, the
_disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it.

Madame Desmarets was seated in the right-hand corner of her carriage,
her husband in the left. Having forced herself to recover from her
emotion in the ballroom, she now affected a calm demeanor. Her husband
had then said nothing to her, and he still said nothing. Jules looked
out of the carriage window at the black walls of the silent houses
before which they passed; but suddenly, as if driven by a determining
thought, when turning the corner of a street he examined his wife, who
appeared to be cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was
wrapped. He thought she seemed pensive, and perhaps she really was
so. Of all communicable things, reflection and gravity are the most
contagious.

“What could Monsieur de Maulincour have said to affect you so keenly?”
 said Jules; “and why does he wish me to go to his house and find out?”

“He can tell you nothing in his house that I cannot tell you here,” she
replied.

Then, with that feminine craft which always slightly degrades virtue,
Madame Jules waited for another question. Her husband turned his face
back to the houses, and continued his study of their walls. Another
question would imply suspicion, distrust. To suspect a woman is a crime
in love. Jules had already killed a man for doubting his wife. Clemence
did not know all there was of true passion, of loyal reflection, in her
husband’s silence; just as Jules was ignorant of the generous drama that
was wringing the heart of his Clemence.

The carriage rolled on through a silent Paris, bearing the couple,--two
lovers who adored each other, and who, gently leaning on the same
silken cushion, were being parted by an abyss. In these elegant coupes
returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how
many curious and singular scenes must pass,--meaning those coupes with
lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, those with their
windows unshaded; in short, legitimate coupes, in which couples can
quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil
code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage
or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How many secrets must be revealed in
this way to nocturnal pedestrians,--to those young fellows who have gone
to a ball in a carriage, but are obliged, for whatever cause it may be,
to return on foot. It was the first time that Jules and Clemence had
been together thus,--each in a corner; usually the husband pressed close
to his wife.

“It is very cold,” remarked Madame Jules.

But her husband did not hear her; he was studying the signs above the
shop windows.

“Clemence,” he said at last, “forgive me the question I am about to ask
you.”

He came closer, took her by the waist, and drew her to him.

“My God, it is coming!” thought the poor woman. “Well,” she said aloud,
anticipating the question, “you want to know what Monsieur de Maulincour
said to me. I will tell you, Jules; but not without fear. Good God! how
is it possible that you and I should have secrets from one another? For
the last few moments I have seen you struggling between a conviction of
our love and vague fears. But that conviction is clear within us, is
it not? And these doubts and fears, do they not seem to you dark and
unnatural? Why not stay in that clear light of love you cannot doubt?
When I have told you all, you will still desire to know more; and yet I
myself do not know what the extraordinary words of that man meant. What
I fear is that this may lead to some fatal affair between you. I would
rather that we both forget this unpleasant moment. But, in any case,
swear to me that you will let this singular adventure explain itself
naturally. Here are the facts. Monsieur de Maulincour declared to me
that the three accidents you have heard mentioned--the falling of a
stone on his servant, the breaking down of his cabriolet, and his duel
about Madame de Serizy--were the result of some plot I had laid against
him. He also threatened to reveal to you the cause of my desire to
destroy him. Can you imagine what all this means? My emotion came from
the sight of his face convulsed with madness, his haggard eyes, and also
his words, broken by some violent inward emotion. I thought him mad.
That is all that took place. Now, I should be less than a woman if I had
not perceived that for over a year I have become, as they call it, the
passion of Monsieur de Maulincour. He has never seen me except at a
ball; and our intercourse has been most insignificant,--merely that
which every one shares at a ball. Perhaps he wants to disunite us, so
that he may find me at some future time alone and unprotected. There,
see! already you are frowning! Oh, how cordially I hate society! We were
so happy without him; why take any notice of him? Jules, I entreat you,
forget all this! To-morrow we shall, no doubt, hear that Monsieur de
Maulincour has gone mad.”

“What a singular affair!” thought Jules, as the carriage stopped under
the peristyle of their house. He gave his arm to his wife and together
they went up to their apartments.

To develop this history in all its truth of detail, and to follow its
course through many windings, it is necessary here to divulge some of
love’s secrets, to glide beneath the ceilings of a marriage chamber, not
shamelessly, but like Trilby, frightening neither Dougal nor Jeannie,
alarming no one,--being as chaste as our noble French language requires,
and as bold as the pencil of Gerard in his picture of Daphnis and Chloe.

The bedroom of Madame Jules was a sacred plot. Herself, her husband,
and her maid alone entered it. Opulence has glorious privileges, and the
most enviable are those which enable the development of sentiments to
their fullest extent,--fertilizing them by the accomplishment of even
their caprices, and surrounding them with a brilliancy that enlarges
them, with refinements that purify them, with a thousand delicacies that
make them still more alluring. If you hate dinners on the grass, and
meals ill-served, if you feel a pleasure in seeing a damask cloth that
is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service, and porcelain of
exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles, where miracles of
cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats of arms, you must,
to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of the houses, and the
grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and
overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets; and you must
also comprehend Love to be a principle which develops in all its grace
only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath the opal gleams of an alabaster
lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers
deadened to all outward sounds by shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors
must be there to show the play of form and repeat the woman we would
multiply as love itself multiplies and magnifies her; next low
divans, and a bed which, like a secret, is divined, not shown. In this
coquettish chamber are fur-lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles
under glass with muslin draperies, by which to read at all hours of the
night, and flowers, not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the
fineness of which might have satisfied Anne of Austria.

Madame Jules had realized this charming programme, but that was nothing.
All women of taste can do as much, though there is always in the
arrangement of these details a stamp of personality which gives to this
decoration or that detail a character that cannot be imitated. To-day,
more than ever, reigns the fanaticism of individuality. The more our
laws tend to an impossible equality, the more we shall get away from it
in our manners and customs. Thus, rich people are beginning, in France,
to become more exclusive in their tastes and their belongings, than they
have been for the last thirty years. Madame Jules knew very well how
to carry out this programme; and everything about her was arranged in
harmony with a luxury that suits so well with love. Love in a cottage,
or “Fifteen hundred francs and my Sophy,” is the dream of starvelings to
whom black bread suffices in their present state; but when love
really comes, they grow fastidious and end by craving the luxuries of
gastronomy. Love holds toil and poverty in horror. It would rather die
than merely live on from hand to mouth.

Many women, returning from a ball, impatient for their beds, throw off
their gowns, their faded flowers, their bouquets, the fragrance of which
has now departed. They leave their little shoes beneath a chair, the
white strings trailing; they take out their combs and let their hair
roll down as it will. Little they care if their husbands see the puffs,
the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices
of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more
mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration
for him. The corset--half the time it is a corset of a reparative
kind--lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away
with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the
sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false woman
is there, scattered about in open sight. _Disjecta membra poetae_, the
artificial poesy, so much admired by those for whom it is conceived and
elaborated, the fragments of a pretty woman, litter every corner of the
room. To the love of a yawning husband, the actual presents herself,
also yawning, in a dishabille without elegance, and a tumbled night-cap,
that of last night and that of to-morrow night also,--“For really,
monsieur, if you want a pretty cap to rumple every night, increase my
pin-money.”

There’s life as it is! A woman makes herself old and unpleasing to her
husband; but dainty and elegant and adorned for others, for the rival of
all husbands,--for that world which calumniates and tears to shreds her
sex.

Inspired by true love, for Love has, like other creations, its instinct
of preservation, Madame Jules did very differently; she found in the
constant blessing of her love the necessary impulse to fulfil all those
minute personal cares which ought never to be relaxed, because they
perpetuate love. Besides, such personal cares and duties proceed from a
personal dignity which becomes all women, and are among the sweetest of
flatteries, for is it not respecting in themselves the man they love?

So Madame Jules denied to her husband all access to her dressing-room,
where she left the accessories of her toilet, and whence she issued
mysteriously adorned for the mysterious fetes of her heart. Entering
their chamber, which was always graceful and elegant, Jules found a
woman coquettishly wrapped in a charming _peignoir_, her hair simply
wound in heavy coils around her head; a woman always more simple, more
beautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshed in
water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than her muslins,
sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving
and therefore always loved. This admirable understanding of a wife’s
business was the secret of Josephine’s charm for Napoleon, as in former
times it was that of Caesonia for Caius Caligula, of Diane de Poitiers
for Henri II. If it was largely productive to women of seven or eight
lustres what a weapon is it in the hands of young women! A husband
gathers with delight the rewards of his fidelity.

Returning home after the conversation which had chilled her with fear,
and still gave her the keenest anxiety, Madame Jules took particular
pains with her toilet for the night. She wanted to make herself, and she
did make herself enchanting. She belted the cambric of her dressing-gown
round her waist, defining the lines of her bust; she allowed her hair to
fall upon her beautifully modelled shoulders. A perfumed bath had given
her a delightful fragrance, and her little bare feet were in velvet
slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantages she came in stepping
softly, and put her hands over her husband’s eyes. She thought him
pensive; he was standing in his dressing-gown before the fire, his elbow
on the mantel and one foot on the fender. She said in his ear, warming
it with her breath, and nibbling the tip of it with her teeth:--

“What are you thinking about, monsieur?”

Then she pressed him in her arms as if to tear him away from all evil
thoughts. The woman who loves has a full knowledge of her power; the
more virtuous she is, the more effectual her coquetry.

“About you,” he answered.

“Only about me?”

“Yes.”

“Ah! that’s a very doubtful ‘yes.’”

They went to bed. As she fell asleep, Madame Jules said to herself:--

“Monsieur de Maulincour will certainly cause some evil. Jules’ mind is
preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he does not tell me.”

It was three in the morning when Madame Jules was awakened by a
presentiment which struck her heart as she slept. She had a sense both
physical and moral of her husband’s absence. She did not feel the
arm Jules passed beneath her head,--that arm in which she had slept,
peacefully and happy, for five years; an arm she had never wearied. A
voice said to her, “Jules suffers, Jules is weeping.” She raised her
head, and then sat up; felt that her husband’s place was cold, and saw
him sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, his head resting
against the back of an arm-chair. Tears were on his cheeks. The poor
woman threw herself hastily from her bed and sprang at a bound to her
husband’s knees.

“Jules! what is it? Are you ill? Speak, tell me! Speak to me, if you
love me!” and she poured out a hundred words expressing the deepest
tenderness.

Jules knelt at her feet, kissed her hands and knees, and answered with
fresh tears:--

“Dear Clemence, I am most unhappy! It is not loving to distrust the
one we love. I adore you and suspect you. The words that man said to me
to-night have struck to my heart; they stay there in spite of myself,
and confound me. There is some mystery here. In short, and I blush to
say it, your explanations do not satisfy me. My reason casts gleams
into my soul which my love rejects. It is an awful combat. Could I
stay there, holding your head, and suspecting thoughts within it to me
unknown? Oh! I believe in you, I believe in you!” he cried, seeing her
smile sadly and open her mouth as if to speak. “Say nothing; do not
reproach me. Besides, could you say anything I have not said myself for
the last three hours? Yes, for three hours, I have been here, watching
you as you slept, so beautiful! admiring that pure, peaceful brow. Yes,
yes! you have always told me your thoughts, have you not? I alone am in
that soul. While I look at you, while my eyes can plunge into yours I
see all plainly. Your life is as pure as your glance is clear. No, there
is no secret behind those transparent eyes.” He rose and kissed their
lids. “Let me avow to you, dearest soul,” he said, “that for the last
five years each day has increased my happiness, through the knowledge
that you are all mine, and that no natural affection even can take any
of your love. Having no sister, no father, no mother, no companion, I
am neither above nor below any living being in your heart; I am alone
there. Clemence, repeat to me those sweet things of the spirit you have
so often said to me; do not blame me; comfort me, I am so unhappy. I
have an odious suspicion on my conscience, and you have nothing in your
heart to sear it. My beloved, tell me, could I stay there beside you?
Could two heads united as ours have been lie on the same pillow when
one was suffering and the other tranquil? What are you thinking of?”
 he cried abruptly, observing that Clemence was anxious, confused, and
seemed unable to restrain her tears.

“I am thinking of my mother,” she answered, in a grave voice. “You
will never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother’s dying
farewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling the
solemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me with
those assurances of your precious love.”

She raised her husband, strained him to her with a nervous force greater
than that of men, and kissed his hair, covering it with tears.

“Ah! I would be hacked in pieces for you! Tell me that I make you happy;
that I am to you the most beautiful of women--a thousand women to you.
Oh! you are loved as no other man ever was or will be. I don’t know the
meaning of those words ‘duty,’ ‘virtue.’ Jules, I love you for yourself;
I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more to my dying
day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to have one sole
emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is dreadful, I know--but
I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for any. I feel I am more wife
than mother. Well, then, can you fear? Listen to me, my own beloved,
promise to forget, not this hour of mingled tenderness and doubt, but
the words of that madman. Jules, you _must_. Promise me not to see him,
not to go to him. I have a deep conviction that if you set one foot in
that maze we shall both roll down a precipice where I shall perish--but
with your name upon my lips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high
in that heart and yet so low in reality? What! you who give credit to so
many as to money, can you not give me the charity of faith? And on the
first occasion in our lives when you might prove to me your boundless
trust, do you cast me from my throne in your heart? Between a madman
and me, it is the madman whom you choose to believe? oh, Jules!” She
stopped, threw back the hair that fell about her brow and neck, and
then, in a heart-rending tone, she added: “I have said too much; one
word should suffice. If your soul and your forehead still keep this
cloud, however light it be, I tell you now that I shall die of it.”

She could not repress a shudder, and turned pale.

“Oh! I will kill that man,” thought Jules, as he lifted his wife in his
arms and carried her to her bed.

“Let us sleep in peace, my angel,” he said. “I have forgotten all, I
swear it!”

Clemence fell asleep to the music of those sweet words, softly repeated.
Jules, as he watched her sleeping, said in his heart:--

“She is right; when love is so pure, suspicion blights it. To that young
soul, that tender flower, a blight--yes, a blight means death.”

When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for each
other and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though it
may disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Either
love gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still
echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible
to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or
diminish.

At breakfast, Monsieur and Madame Jules showed to each other those
particular attentions in which there is always something of affectation.
There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed the efforts of persons
endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules had involuntary doubts, his
wife had positive fears. Still, sure of each other, they had slept. Was
this strained condition the effect of a want of faith, or was it only a
memory of their nocturnal scene? They did not know themselves. But they
loved each other so purely that the impression of that scene, both cruel
and beneficent, could not fail to leave its traces in their souls; both
were eager to make those traces disappear, each striving to be the first
to return to the other, and thus they could not fail to think of the
cause of their first variance. To loving souls, this is not grief; pain
is still far-off; but it is a sort of mourning, which is difficult to
depict. If there are, indeed, relations between colors and the emotions
of the soul, if, as Locke’s blind man said, scarlet produces on the
sight the effect produced upon the hearing by a blast of trumpets, it is
permissible to compare this reaction of melancholy to mourning tones of
gray.

But even so, love saddened, love in which remains a true sentiment
of its happiness, momentarily troubled though it be, gives enjoyments
derived from pain and pleasure both, which are all novel. Jules studied
his wife’s voice; he watched her glances with the freshness of feeling
that inspired him in the earliest days of his passion for her. The
memory of five absolutely happy years, her beauty, the candor of her
love, quickly effaced in her husband’s mind the last vestiges of an
intolerable pain.

The day was Sunday,--a day on which there was no Bourse and no business
to be done. The reunited pair passed the whole day together, getting
farther into each other’s hearts than they ever yet had done, like two
children who in a moment of fear, hold each other closely and cling
together, united by an instinct. There are in this life of two-in-one
completely happy days, the gift of chance, ephemeral flowers, born
neither of yesterday nor belonging to the morrow. Jules and Clemence
now enjoyed this day as though they forboded it to be the last of their
loving life. What name shall we give to that mysterious power which
hastens the steps of travellers before the storm is visible; which makes
the life and beauty of the dying so resplendent, and fills the parting
soul with joyous projects for days before death comes; which tells the
midnight student to fill his lamp when it shines brightest; and makes
the mother fear the thoughtful look cast upon her infant by an observing
man? We all are affected by this influence in the great catastrophes of
life; but it has never yet been named or studied; it is something more
than presentiment, but not as yet clear vision.

All went well till the following day. On Monday, Jules Desmarets,
obliged to go to the Bourse on his usual business, asked his wife, as
usual, if she would take advantage of his carriage and let him drive her
anywhere.

“No,” she said, “the day is too unpleasant to go out.”

It was raining in torrents. At half-past two o’clock Monsieur Desmarets
reached the Treasury. At four o’clock, as he left the Bourse, he came
face to face with Monsieur de Maulincour, who was waiting for him with
the nervous pertinacity of hatred and vengeance.

“Monsieur,” he said, taking Monsieur Desmarets by the arm, “I have
important information to give you. Listen to me. I am too loyal a man to
have recourse to anonymous letters with which to trouble your peace of
mind; I prefer to speak to you in person. Believe me, if my very life
were not concerned, I should not meddle with the private affairs of any
household, even if I thought I had the right to do so.”

“If what you have to say to me concerns Madame Desmarets,” replied
Jules, “I request you to be silent, monsieur.”

“If I am silent, monsieur, you may before long see Madame Jules on the
prisoner’s bench at the court of assizes beside a convict. Now, do you
wish me to be silent?”

Jules turned pale; but his noble face instantly resumed its calmness,
though it was now a false calmness. Drawing the baron under one of the
temporary sheds of the Bourse, near which they were standing, he said to
him in a voice which concealed his intense inward emotion:--

“Monsieur, I will listen to you; but there will be a duel to the death
between us if--”

“Oh, to that I consent!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour. “I have the
greatest esteem for your character. You speak of death. You are unaware
that your wife may have assisted in poisoning me last Saturday night.
Yes, monsieur, since then some extraordinary evil has developed in me.
My hair appears to distil an inward fever and a deadly languor through
my skull; I know who clutched my hair at that ball.”

Monsieur de Maulincour then related, without omitting a single fact, his
platonic love for Madame Jules, and the details of the affair in the rue
Soly which began this narrative. Any one would have listened to him with
attention; but Madame Jules’ husband had good reason to be more amazed
than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he
was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an
adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the
inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life
than of his wife’s life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to
some far-off voice that cried to him, “Clemence cannot lie! Why should
she betray you?”

“Monsieur,” said the baron, as he ended, “being absolutely certain
of having recognized in Monsieur de Funcal the same Ferragus whom the
police declared dead, I have put upon his traces an intelligent man. As
I returned that night I remembered, by a fortunate chance, the name of
Madame Meynardie, mentioned in that letter of Ida, the presumed mistress
of my persecutor. Supplied with this clue, my emissary will soon get to
the bottom of this horrible affair; for he is far more able to discover
the truth than the police themselves.”

“Monsieur,” replied Desmarets, “I know not how to thank you for this
confidence. You say that you can obtain proofs and witnesses; I shall
await them. I shall seek the truth of this strange affair courageously;
but you must permit me to doubt everything until the evidence of
the facts you state is proved to me. In any case you shall have
satisfaction, for, as you will certainly understand, we both require
it.”

Jules returned home.

“What is the matter, Jules?” asked his wife, when she saw him. “You look
so pale you frighten me!”

“The day is cold,” he answered, walking with slow steps across the room
where all things spoke to him of love and happiness,--that room so calm
and peaceful where a deadly storm was gathering.

“Did you go out to-day?” he asked, as though mechanically.

He was impelled to ask the question by the last of a myriad of thoughts
which had gathered themselves together into a lucid meditation, though
jealousy was actively prompting them.

“No,” she answered, in a tone that was falsely candid.

At that instant Jules saw through the open door of the dressing-room the
velvet bonnet which his wife wore in the mornings; on it were drops of
rain. Jules was a passionate man, but he was also full of delicacy. It
was repugnant to him to bring his wife face to face with a lie. When
such a situation occurs, all has come to an end forever between certain
beings. And yet those drops of rain were like a flash tearing through
his brain.

He left the room, went down to the porter’s lodge, and said to the
porter, after making sure that they were alone:--

“Fouguereau, a hundred crowns if you tell me the truth; dismissal if you
deceive me; and nothing at all if you ever speak of my question and your
answer.”

He stopped to examine the man’s face, leading him under the window. Then
he continued:--

“Did madame go out this morning?”

“Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw her come in
about half an hour ago.”

“That is true, upon your honor?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“You will have the money; but if you speak of this, remember, you will
lose all.”

Jules returned to his wife.

“Clemence,” he said, “I find I must put my accounts in order. Do not be
offended at the inquiry I am going to make. Have I not given you forty
thousand francs since the beginning of the year?”

“More,” she said,--“forty-seven.”

“Have you spent them?”

“Nearly,” she replied. “In the first place, I had to pay several of our
last year’s bills--”

“I shall never find out anything in this way,” thought Jules. “I am not
taking the best course.”

At this moment Jules’ own valet entered the room with a letter for his
master, who opened it indifferently, but as soon as his eyes had lighted
on the signature he read it eagerly. The letter was as follows:--


  Monsieur,--For the sake of your peace of mind as well as ours, I
  take the course of writing you this letter without possessing the
  advantage of being known to you; but my position, my age, and the
  fear of some misfortune compel me to entreat you to show
  indulgence in the trying circumstances under which our afflicted
  family is placed. Monsieur Auguste de Maulincour has for the last
  few days shown signs of mental derangement, and we fear that he
  may trouble your happiness by fancies which he confided to
  Monsieur le Vidame de Pamiers and myself during his first attack
  of frenzy. We think it right, therefore, to warn you of his
  malady, which is, we hope, curable; but it will have such serious
  and important effects on the honor of our family and the career of
  my grandson that we must rely, monsieur, on your entire
  discretion.

  If Monsieur le Vidame or I could have gone to see you we would not
  have written. But I make no doubt that you will regard this prayer
  of a mother, who begs you to destroy this letter.

  Accept the assurance of my perfect consideration.

Baronne de Maulincour, _nee_ de Rieux.


“Oh! what torture!” cried Jules.

“What is it? what is in your mind?” asked his wife, exhibiting the
deepest anxiety.

“I have come,” he answered, slowly, as he threw her the letter, “to
ask myself whether it can be you who have sent me that to avert my
suspicions. Judge, therefore, what I suffer.”

“Unhappy man!” said Madame Jules, letting fall the paper. “I pity him;
though he has done me great harm.”

“Are you aware that he has spoken to me?”

“Oh! have you been to see him, in spite of your promise?” she cried in
terror.

“Clemence, our love is in danger of perishing; we stand outside of the
ordinary rules of life; let us lay aside all petty considerations
in presence of this great peril. Explain to me why you went out this
morning. Women think they have the right to tell us little falsehoods.
Sometimes they like to hide a pleasure they are preparing for us. Just
now you said a word to me, by mistake, no doubt, a no for a yes.”

He went into the dressing-room and brought out the bonnet.

“See,” he said, “your bonnet has betrayed you; these spots are
raindrops. You must, therefore, have gone out in a street cab, and these
drops fell upon it as you went to find one, or as you entered or left
the house where you went. But a woman can leave her own home for many
innocent purposes, even after she has told her husband that she did
not mean to go out. There are so many reasons for changing our plans!
Caprices, whims, are they not your right? Women are not required to be
consistent with themselves. You had forgotten something,--a service
to render, a visit, some kind action. But nothing hinders a woman from
telling her husband what she does. Can we ever blush on the breast of a
friend? It is not a jealous husband who speaks to you, my Clemence; it
is your lover, your friend, your brother.” He flung himself passionately
at her feet. “Speak, not to justify yourself, but to calm my horrible
sufferings. I know that you went out. Well--what did you do? where did
you go?”

“Yes, I went out, Jules,” she answered in a strained voice, though her
face was calm. “But ask me nothing more. Wait; have confidence; without
which you will lay up for yourself terrible remorse. Jules, my Jules,
trust is the virtue of love. I owe to you that I am at this moment too
troubled to answer you: but I am not a false woman; I love you, and you
know it.”

“In the midst of all that can shake the faith of man and rouse his
jealousy, for I see I am not first in your heart, I am no longer thine
own self--well, Clemence, even so, I prefer to believe you, to believe
that voice, to believe those eyes. If you deceive me, you deserve--”

“Ten thousand deaths!” she cried, interrupting him.

“I have never hidden a thought from you, but you--”

“Hush!” she said, “our happiness depends upon our mutual silence.”

“Ha! I _will_ know all!” he exclaimed, with sudden violence.

At that moment the cries of a woman were heard,--the yelping of a shrill
little voice came from the antechamber.

“I tell you I will go in!” it cried. “Yes, I shall go in; I will see
her! I shall see her!”

Jules and Clemence both ran to the salon as the door from the
antechamber was violently burst open. A young woman entered hastily,
followed by two servants, who said to their master:--

“Monsieur, this person would come in in spite of us. We told her that
madame was not at home. She answered that she knew very well madame had
been out, but she saw her come in. She threatened to stay at the door of
the house till she could speak to madame.”

“You can go,” said Monsieur Desmarets to the two men. “What do you want,
mademoiselle?” he added, turning to the strange woman.

This “demoiselle” was the type of a woman who is never to be met with
except in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like the pavement,
like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Paris before human
industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glass decanters and
sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. She is therefore a
being who is truly original. Depicted scores of times by the painter’s
brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal of the etcher, she
still escapes analysis, because she cannot be caught and rendered in all
her moods, like Nature, like this fantastic Paris itself. She holds to
vice by one thread only, and she breaks away from it at a thousand other
points of the social circumference. Besides, she lets only one trait
of her character be known, and that the only one which renders her
blamable; her noble virtues are hidden; she prefers to glory in her
naive libertinism. Most incompletely rendered in dramas and tales where
she is put upon the scene with all her poesy, she is nowhere really
true but in her garret; elsewhere she is invariably calumniated or
over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates; poor, she is misunderstood. She
has too many vices, and too many good qualities; she is too near to
pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolute laugh; too beautiful and too
hideous. She personifies Paris, to which, in the long run, she supplies
the toothless portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, beggars,
occasionally insolent countesses, admired actresses, applauded singers;
she has even given, in the olden time, two quasi-queens to the monarchy.
Who can grasp such a Proteus? She is all woman, less than woman, more
than woman. From this vast portrait the painter of manners and morals
can take but a feature here and there; the _ensemble_ is infinite.

She was a grisette of Paris; a grisette in all her glory; a grisette
in a hackney-coach,--happy, young, handsome, fresh, but a grisette; a
grisette with claws, scissors, impudent as a Spanish woman, snarling as
a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as
a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect
_lionne_ in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she
had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet
furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the
sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks
(under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,--in
short, all the domestic joys of a grisette’s life; and in addition,
the woman-of-all-work (a former grisette herself, now the owner of a
moustache), theatre-parties, unlimited bonbons, silk dresses, bonnets to
spoil,--in fact, all the felicities coveted by the grisette heart except
a carriage, which only enters her imagination as a marshal’s baton into
the dreams of a soldier. Yes, this grisette had all these things in
return for a true affection, or in spite of a true affection, as some
others obtain it for an hour a day,--a sort of tax carelessly paid under
the claws of an old man.

The young woman who now entered the presence of Monsieur and Madame
Jules had a pair of feet so little covered by her shoes that only a slim
black line was visible between the carpet and her white stockings. This
peculiar foot-gear, which Parisian caricaturists have well-rendered,
is a special attribute of the grisette of Paris; but she is even more
distinctive to the eyes of an observer by the care with which her
garments are made to adhere to her form, which they clearly define.
On this occasion she was trigly dressed in a green gown, with a white
chemisette, which allowed the beauty of her bust to be seen; her shawl,
of Ternaux cashmere, had fallen from her shoulders, and was held by its
two corners, which were twisted round her wrists. She had a delicate
face, rosy cheeks, a white skin, sparkling gray eyes, a round, very
promising forehead, hair carefully smoothed beneath her little bonnet,
and heavy curls upon her neck.

“My name is Ida,” she said, “and if that’s Madame Jules to whom I have
the advantage of speaking, I’ve come to tell her all I have in my
heart against her. It is very wrong, when a woman is set up and in her
furniture, as you are here, to come and take from a poor girl a man
with whom I’m as good as married, morally, and who did talk of making it
right by marrying me before the municipality. There’s plenty of handsome
young men in the world--ain’t there, monsieur?--to take your fancy,
without going after a man of middle age, who makes my happiness. Yah! I
haven’t got a fine hotel like this, but I’ve got my love, I have. I hate
handsome men and money; I’m all heart, and--”

Madame Jules turned to her husband.

“You will allow me, monsieur, to hear no more of all this,” she said,
retreating to her bedroom.

“If the lady lives with you, I’ve made a mess of it; but I can’t help
that,” resumed Ida. “Why does she come after Monsieur Ferragus every
day?”

“You are mistaken, mademoiselle,” said Jules, stupefied; “my wife is
incapable--”

“Ha! so you’re married, you two,” said the grisette showing some
surprise. “Then it’s very wrong, monsieur,--isn’t it?--for a woman who
has the happiness of being married in legal marriage to have relations
with a man like Henri--”

“Henri! who is Henri?” said Jules, taking Ida by the arm and pulling her
into an adjoining room that his wife might hear no more.

“Why, Monsieur Ferragus.”

“But he is dead,” said Jules.

“Nonsense; I went to Franconi’s with him last night, and he brought me
home--as he ought. Besides, your wife can tell you about him; didn’t
she go there this very afternoon at three o’clock? I know she did, for
I waited in the street, and saw her,--all because that good-natured
fellow, Monsieur Justin, whom you know perhaps,--a little old man with
jewelry who wears corsets,--told me that Madame Jules was my rival. That
name, monsieur, sounds mighty like a feigned one; but if it is yours,
excuse me. But this I say, if Madame Jules was a court duchess, Henri is
rich enough to satisfy all her fancies, and it is my business to protect
my property; I’ve a right to, for I love him, that I do. He is my
_first_ inclination; my happiness and all my future fate depends on
it. I fear nothing, monsieur; I am honest; I never lied, or stole the
property of any living soul, no matter who. If an empress was my rival,
I’d go straight to her, empress as she was; because all pretty women are
equals, monsieur--”

“Enough! enough!” said Jules. “Where do you live?”

“Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14, monsieur,--Ida Gruget,
corset-maker, at your service,--for we make lots of corsets for men.”

“Where does the man whom you call Ferragus live?”

“Monsieur,” she said, pursing up her lips, “in the first place, he’s not
a man; he is a rich monsieur, much richer, perhaps, than you are. But
why do you ask me his address when your wife knows it? He told me not
to give it. Am I obliged to answer you? I’m not, thank God, in a
confessional or a police-court; I’m responsible only to myself.”

“If I were to offer you ten thousand francs to tell me where Monsieur
Ferragus lives, how then?”

“Ha! n, o, _no_, my little friend, and that ends the matter,” she said,
emphasizing this singular reply with a popular gesture. “There’s no
sum in the world could make me tell you. I have the honor to bid you
good-day. How do I get out of here?”

Jules, horror-struck, allowed her to go without further notice. The
whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the
heavens were falling with a crash.

“Monsieur is served,” said his valet.

The valet and the footman waited in the dining-room a quarter of an hour
without seeing master or mistress.

“Madame will not dine to-day,” said the waiting-maid, coming in.

“What’s the matter, Josephine?” asked the valet.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Madame is crying, and is going to bed.
Monsieur has no doubt got some love-affair on hand, and it has been
discovered at a very bad time. I wouldn’t answer for madame’s life. Men
are so clumsy; they’ll make you scenes without any precaution.”

“That’s not so,” said the valet, in a low voice. “On the contrary,
madame is the one who--you understand? What times does monsieur have to
go after pleasures, he, who hasn’t slept out of madame’s room for five
years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it till breakfast,
at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereas madame goes out
nearly every day at three o’clock, Heaven knows where.”

“And monsieur too,” said the maid, taking her mistress’s part.

“Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times that
dinner was ready,” continued the valet, after a pause. “You might as
well talk to a post.”

Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room.

“Where is madame?” he said.

“Madame is going to bed; her head aches,” replied the maid, assuming an
air of importance.

Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: “You can take away;
I shall go and sit with madame.”

He went to his wife’s room and found her weeping, but endeavoring to
smother her sobs with her handkerchief.

“Why do you weep?” said Jules; “you need expect no violence and no
reproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been
faithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it.”

“Not worthy?” The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent in
which they were said would have moved any other man than Jules.

“To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you,” he
continued. “But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill
myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--”

He did not end his sentence.

“Kill yourself!” she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping
them.

But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging
her in so doing toward the bed.

“Let me alone,” he said.

“No, no, Jules!” she cried. “If you love me no longer I shall die. Do
you wish to know all?”

“Yes.”

He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the bed,
holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautiful face now
red as fire and furrowed with tears,--

“Speak,” he said.

Her sobs began again.

“No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I--No, I cannot.
Have mercy, Jules!”

“You have betrayed me--”

“Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all.”

“But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched by
crime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him--”

“Oh, Jules!”

“Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor?--the man to whom we owe our
fortune, as persons have said already?”

“Who said that?”

“A man whom I killed in a duel.”

“Oh, God! one death already!”

“If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it
is you, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he your
brother?”

“What if he were?” she said.

Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms.

“Why should that have been concealed from me?” he said. “Then you and
your mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see her
brother every day, or nearly every day?”

His wife had fainted at his feet.

“Dead,” he said. “And suppose I am mistaken?”

He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence to the
bed.

“I shall die of this,” said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness.

“Josephine,” cried Monsieur Desmarets. “Send for Monsieur Desplein; send
also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately.”

“Why your brother?” asked Clemence.

But Jules had already left the room.




CHAPTER IV. WHERE GO TO DIE?

For the first time in five years Madame Jules slept alone in her bed,
and was compelled to admit a physician into that sacred chamber. These
in themselves were two keen pangs. Desplein found Madame Jules very
ill. Never was a violent emotion more untimely. He would say nothing
definite, and postponed till the morrow giving any opinion, after
leaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of the
heart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten.

When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbed
in the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours between
the brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word which could
betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears. Monsieur
Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness of the night,
and the singular activity of the senses given by powerful emotion,
enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen and the
involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those who are
habitually up at night, and who observe the different acoustic effects
produced in absolute silence, know that a slight echo can be readily
perceived in the very places where louder but more equable and continued
murmurs are not distinct. At four o’clock the sound ceased. Clemence
rose, anxious and trembling. Then, with bare feet and without a wrapper,
forgetting her illness and her moist condition, the poor woman opened
the door softly without noise and looked into the next room. She saw her
husband sitting, with a pen in his hand, asleep in his arm-chair. The
candles had burned to the sockets. She slowly advanced and read on an
envelope, already sealed, the words, “This is my will.”

She knelt down as if before an open grave and kissed her husband’s hand.
He woke instantly.

“Jules, my friend, they grant some days to criminals condemned to
death,” she said, looking at him with eyes that blazed with fever and
with love. “Your innocent wife asks only two. Leave me free for two
days, and--wait! After that, I shall die happy--at least, you will
regret me.”

“Clemence, I grant them.”

Then, as she kissed her husband’s hands in the tender transport of her
heart, Jules, under the spell of that cry of innocence, took her in his
arms and kissed her forehead, though ashamed to feel himself still under
subjection to the power of that noble beauty.

On the morrow, after taking a few hours’ rest, Jules entered his wife’s
room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the
house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light
passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the
face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead
and the freshness of her lips. A lover’s eye could not fail to notice
the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor in place of
the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whiteness of the
skin,--two points at which the sentiments of her noble soul were
artlessly wont to show themselves.

“She suffers,” thought Jules. “Poor Clemence! May God protect us!”

He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband,
and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes filling
with tears.

“I am innocent,” she said, ending her dream.

“You will not go out to-day, will you?” asked Jules.

“No, I feel too weak to leave my bed.”

“If you should change your mind, wait till I return,” said Jules.

Then he went down to the porter’s lodge.

“Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know
exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it.”

Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the hotel
de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.

“Monsieur is ill,” they told him.

Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the
baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time
in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told
him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.

“I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me
the honor to write, and I beg you to believe--”

“A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!” cried the dowager,
interrupting him. “I have written you no letter. What was I made to say
in that letter, monsieur?”

“Madame,” replied Jules, “intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour
to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its
injunction to destroy it. There it is.”

Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast her
eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.

“Monsieur,” she said, “my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if the
matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandson is
ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment been affected. We
are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons; and yet I cannot
imagine the object of a trick like this. You shall see my grandson,
monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he is perfectly sound in
mind.”

She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receive
Monsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer.
Jules went to the baron’s room, where he found him in an arm-chair near
the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowed his head
with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sitting with him.

“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, “I have something to say which makes it
desirable that I should see you alone.”

“Monsieur,” replied Auguste, “Monsieur le vidame knows about this
affair; you can speak fearlessly before him.”

“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, in a grave voice, “you have troubled
and well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to do so.
Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us should demand, or
grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me in following
the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. I have now
come to ascertain from you the present residence of the extraordinary
being who exercises such a baneful effect on your life and mine. On my
return home yesterday, after listening to your avowals, I received that
letter.”

Jules gave him the forged letter.

“This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is a
demon!” cried Maulincour, after having read it. “Oh, what a frightful
maze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am I going?
I did wrong, monsieur,” he continued, looking at Jules; “but death is
the greatest of all expiations, and my death is now approaching. You can
ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders.”

“Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I must
know it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. In
presence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious.”

“Justin shall tell you all,” replied the baron.

At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang the bell.

“Justin is not in the house!” cried the vidame, in a hasty manner that
told much.

“Well, then,” said Auguste, excitedly, “the other servants must know
where he is; send a man on horseback to fetch him. Your valet is in
Paris, isn’t he? He can be found.”

The vidame was visibly distressed.

“Justin can’t come, my dear boy,” said the old man; “he is dead. I
wanted to conceal the accident from you, but--”

“Dead!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour,--“dead! When and how?”

“Last night. He had been supping with some old friends, and, I dare say,
was drunk; his friends--no doubt they were drunk, too--left him lying in
the street, and a heavy vehicle ran over him.”

“The convict did not miss _him_; at the first stroke he killed,” said
Auguste. “He has had less luck with me; it has taken four blows to put
me out of the way.”

Jules was gloomy and thoughtful.

“Am I to know nothing, then?” he cried, after a long pause. “Your valet
seems to have been justly punished. Did he not exceed your orders in
calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whose jealousy he
roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?”

“Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules,” said
Auguste.

“Monsieur!” cried the husband, keenly irritated.

“Oh, monsieur!” replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, “I am
prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience has
not already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of all
professors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destined
to intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow my brains
out.”

“You talk like a child!” cried the vidame, horrified by the coolness
with which the baron said these words. “Your grandmother would die of
grief.”

“Then, monsieur,” said Jules, “am I to understand that there exist
no means of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary man
resides?”

“I think, monsieur,” said the old vidame, “from what I have heard poor
Justin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese or
the Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging to
both those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your
persecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would be
well to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way of
confounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dear
monsieur. Had Monsieur de Maulincour followed my advice, nothing of all
this would have happened.”

Jules coldly but politely withdrew. He was now at a total loss to know
how to reach Ferragus. As he passed into his own house, the porter told
him that Madame had just been out to throw a letter into the post box
at the head of the rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by this proof of
the insight with which the porter espoused his cause, and the cleverness
by which he guessed the way to serve him. The eagerness of servants, and
their shrewdness in compromising masters who compromised themselves,
was known to him, and he fully appreciated the danger of having them as
accomplices, no matter for what purpose. But he could not think of his
personal dignity until the moment when he found himself thus suddenly
degraded. What a triumph for the slave who could not raise himself to
his master, to compel his master to come down to his level! Jules was
harsh and hard to him. Another fault. But he suffered so deeply! His
life till then so upright, so pure, was becoming crafty; he was to
scheme and lie. Clemence was scheming and lying. This to him was a
moment of horrible disgust. Lost in a flood of bitter feelings, Jules
stood motionless at the door of his house. Yielding to despair, he
thought of fleeing, of leaving France forever, carrying with him the
illusions of uncertainty. Then, again, not doubting that the letter
Clemence had just posted was addressed to Ferragus, his mind searched
for a means of obtaining the answer that mysterious being was certain
to send. Then his thoughts began to analyze the singular good fortune
of his life since his marriage, and he asked himself whether the calumny
for which he had taken such signal vengeance was not a truth. Finally,
reverting to the coming answer, he said to himself:--

“But this man, so profoundly capable, so logical in his every act, who
sees and foresees, who calculates, and even divines, our very thoughts,
is he likely to make an answer? Will he not employ some other means more
in keeping with his power? He may send his answer by some beggar; or in
a carton brought by an honest man, who does not suspect what he brings;
or in some parcel of shoes, which a shop-girl may innocently deliver to
my wife. If Clemence and he have agreed upon such means--”

He distrusted all things; his mind ran over vast tracts and shoreless
oceans of conjecture. Then, after floating for a time among a thousand
contradictory ideas, he felt he was strongest in his own house, and he
resolved to watch it as the ant-lion watches his sandy labyrinth.

“Fouguereau,” he said to the porter, “I am not at home to any one who
comes to see me. If any one calls to see madame, or brings her anything,
ring twice. Bring all letters addressed here to me, no matter for whom
they are intended.”

“Thus,” thought he, as he entered his study, which was in the entresol,
“I forestall the schemes of this Ferragus. If he sends some one to ask
for me so as to find out if Clemence is alone, at least I shall not be
tricked like a fool.”

He stood by the window of his study, which looked upon the street,
and then a final scheme, inspired by jealousy, came into his mind. He
resolved to send his head-clerk in his own carriage to the Bourse with
a letter to another broker, explaining his sales and purchases and
requesting him to do his business for that day. He postponed his more
delicate transactions till the morrow, indifferent to the fall or
rise of stocks or the debts of all Europe. High privilege of love!--it
crushes all things, all interests fall before it: altar, throne,
consols!

At half-past three, just the hour at which the Bourse is in full blast
of reports, monthly settlements, premiums, etc., Fouguereau entered the
study, quite radiant with his news.

“Monsieur, an old woman has come, but very cautiously; I think she’s a
sly one. She asked for monsieur, and seemed much annoyed when I told her
he was out; then she gave me a letter for madame, and here it is.”

Fevered with anxiety, Jules opened the letter; then he dropped into a
chair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and needed a
key. It was virtually in cipher.

“Go away, Fouguereau.” The porter left him. “It is a mystery deeper than
the sea below the plummet line! Ah! it must be love; love only is so
sagacious, so inventive as this. Ah! I shall kill her.”

At this moment an idea flashed through his brain with such force that
he felt almost physically illuminated by it. In the days of his toilsome
poverty before his marriage, Jules had made for himself a true friend.
The extreme delicacy with which he had managed the susceptibilities of a
man both poor and modest; the respect with which he had surrounded him;
the ingenious cleverness he had employed to nobly compel him to share
his opulence without permitting it to make him blush, increased their
friendship. Jacquet continued faithful to Desmarets in spite of his
wealth.

Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had
slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both
honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of Foreign
Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its archives.
Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon
those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying despatches.
Ranking higher than a mere _bourgeois_, his position at the ministry was
superior to that of the other subalterns. He lived obscurely, glad
to feel that such obscurity sheltered him from reverses and
disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in the lowest coin
his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much
ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in
actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at
the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going
king,--an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his
wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a
philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in
all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from
his position,--that of having for his intimate friend a broker, and of
knowing every morning all the secrets of the State. This man, sublime
after the manner of that nameless soldier who died in saving Napoleon by
a “qui vive,” lived at the ministry.

In ten minutes Jules was in his friend’s office. Jacquet gave him a
chair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed his
hands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till his
shoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said:--

“What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?”

“Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret,--a secret of life and death.”

“It doesn’t concern politics?”

“If it did, I shouldn’t come to you for information,” said Jules.
“No, it is a family matter, about which I require you to be absolutely
silent.”

“Claude-Joseph Jacquet, dumb by profession. Don’t you know me by this
time?” he said, laughing. “Discretion is my lot.”

Jules showed him the letter.

“You must read me this letter, addressed to my wife.”

“The deuce! the deuce! a bad business!” said Jacquet, examining the
letter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. “Ha! that’s a
gridiron letter! Wait a minute.”

He left Jules alone for a moment, but returned immediately.

“Easy enough to read, my friend! It is written on the gridiron plan,
used by the Portuguese minister under Monsieur de Choiseul, at the time
of the dismissal of the Jesuits. Here, see!”

Jacquet placed upon the writing a piece of paper cut out in regular
squares, like the paper laces which confectioners wrap round their
sugarplums; and Jules then read with perfect ease the words that were
visible in the interstices. They were as follows:--

  “Don’t be uneasy, my dear Clemence; our happiness cannot again be
  troubled; and your husband will soon lay aside his suspicions.
  However ill you may be, you must have the courage to come here
  to-morrow; find strength in your love for me. Mine for you has
  induced me to submit to a cruel operation, and I cannot leave my
  bed. I have had the actual cautery applied to my back, and it was
  necessary to burn it in a long time; you understand me? But I
  thought of you, and I did not suffer.

  “To baffle Maulincour (who will not persecute us much longer), I
  have left the protecting roof of the embassy, and am now safe from
  all inquiry in the rue des Enfants-Rouges, number 12, with an old
  woman, Madame Etienne Gruget, mother of that Ida, who shall pay
  dear for her folly. Come to-morrow, at nine in the morning. I am
  in a room which is reached only by an interior staircase. Ask for
  Monsieur Camuset. Adieu; I kiss your forehead, my darling.”

Jacquet looked at Jules with a sort of honest terror, the sign of a
true compassion, as he made his favorite exclamation in two separate and
distinct tones,--

“The deuce! the deuce!”

“That seems clear to you, doesn’t it?” said Jules. “Well, in the depths
of my heart there is a voice that pleads for my wife, and makes itself
heard above the pangs of jealousy. I must endure the worst of all agony
until to-morrow; but to-morrow, between nine and ten I shall know all; I
shall be happy or wretched for all my life. Think of me then, Jacquet.”

“I shall be at your house to-morrow at eight o’clock. We will go
together; I’ll wait for you, if you like, in the street. You may run
some danger, and you ought to have near you some devoted person who’ll
understand a mere sign, and whom you can safely trust. Count on me.”

“Even to help me in killing some one?”

“The deuce! the deuce!” said Jacquet, repeating, as it were, the same
musical note. “I have two children and a wife.”

Jules pressed his friend’s hand and went away; but returned immediately.

“I forgot the letter,” he said. “But that’s not all, I must reseal it.”

“The deuce! the deuce! you opened it without saving the seal; however,
it is still possible to restore it. Leave it with me and I’ll bring it
to you _secundum scripturam_.”

“At what time?”

“Half-past five.”

“If I am not yet in, give it to the porter and tell him to send it up to
madame.”

“Do you want me to-morrow?”

“No. Adieu.”

Jules drove at once to the place de la Rotonde du Temple, where he left
his cabriolet and went on foot to the rue des Enfants-Rouges. He found
the house of Madame Etienne Gruget and examined it. There, the mystery
on which depended the fate of so many persons would be cleared up;
there, at this moment, was Ferragus, and to Ferragus all the threads of
this strange plot led. The Gordian knot of the drama, already so bloody,
was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, her husband, and that man;
and a blade able to cut the closest of such knots would not be wanting.

The house was one of those which belong to the class called
_cabajoutis_. This significant name is given by the populace of Paris
to houses which are built, as it were, piecemeal. They are nearly
always composed of buildings originally separate but afterwards united
according to the fancy of the various proprietors who successively
enlarge them; or else they are houses begun, left unfinished, again
built upon, and completed,--unfortunate structures which have passed,
like certain peoples, under many dynasties of capricious masters.
Neither the floors nor the windows have an _ensemble_,--to borrow one of
the most picturesque terms of the art of painting; all is discord, even
the external decoration. The _cabajoutis_ is to Parisian architecture
what the _capharnaum_ is to the apartment,--a poke-hole, where the most
heterogeneous articles are flung pell-mell.

“Madame Etienne?” asked Jules of the portress.

This portress had her lodge under the main entrance, in a sort of
chicken coop, or wooden house on rollers, not unlike those sentry-boxes
which the police have lately set up by the stands of hackney-coaches.

“Hein?” said the portress, without laying down the stocking she was
knitting.

In Paris the various component parts which make up the physiognomy of
any given portion of the monstrous city, are admirably in keeping with
its general character. Thus porter, concierge, or Suisse, whatever name
may be given to that essential muscle of the Parisian monster, is always
in conformity with the neighborhood of which he is a part; in fact,
he is often an epitome of it. The lazy porter of the faubourg
Saint-Germain, with lace on every seam of his coat, dabbles in stocks;
he of the Chaussee d’Antin takes his ease, reads the money-articles
in the newspapers, and has a business of his own in the faubourg
Montmartre. The portress in the quarter of prostitution was formerly a
prostitute; in the Marais, she has morals, is cross-grained, and full of
crotchets.

On seeing Monsieur Jules this particular portress, holding her knitting
in one hand, took a knife and stirred the half-extinguished peat in her
foot-warmer; then she said:--

“You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame Etienne Gruget?”

“Yes,” said Jules, assuming a vexed air.

“Who makes trimmings?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, monsieur,” she said, issuing from her cage, and laying her
hand on Jules’ arm and leading him to the end of a long passage-way,
vaulted like a cellar, “go up the second staircase at the end of the
court-yard--where you will see the windows with the pots of pinks;
that’s where Madame Etienne lives.”

“Thank you, madame. Do you think she is alone?”

“Why shouldn’t she be alone? she’s a widow.”

Jules hastened up a dark stairway, the steps of which were knobby with
hardened mud left by the feet of those who came and went. On the second
floor he saw three doors but no signs of pinks. Fortunately, on one of
the doors, the oiliest and darkest of the three, he read these words,
chalked on a panel: “Ida will come to-night at nine o’clock.”

“This is the place,” thought Jules.

He pulled an old bellrope, black with age, and heard the smothered sound
of a cracked bell and the barking of an asthmatic little dog. By the
way the sounds echoed from the interior he knew that the rooms were
encumbered with articles which left no space for reverberation,--a
characteristic feature of the homes of workmen and humble households,
where space and air are always lacking.

Jules looked out mechanically for the pinks, and found them on the
outer sill of a sash window between two filthy drain-pipes. So here were
flowers; here, a garden, two yards long and six inches wide; here,
a wheat-ear; here, a whole life epitomized; but here, too, all the
miseries of that life. A ray of light falling from heaven as if by
special favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear brought
out in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color,
peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spotted
the damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointed window-casings,
and the door originally red. Presently the cough of an old woman, and a
heavy female step, shuffling painfully in list slippers, announced the
coming of the mother of Ida Gruget. The creature opened the door and
came out upon the landing, looked up, and said:--

“Ah! is this Monsieur Bocquillon? Why, no? But perhaps you’re his
brother. What can I do for you? Come in, monsieur.”

Jules followed her into the first room, where he saw, huddled together,
cages, household utensils, ovens, furniture, little earthenware
dishes full of food or water for the dog and the cats, a wooden clock,
bed-quilts, engravings of Eisen, heaps of old iron, all these things
mingled and massed together in a way that produced a most grotesque
effect,--a true Parisian dusthole, in which were not lacking a few old
numbers of the “Constitutionel.”

Jules, impelled by a sense of prudence, paid no attention to the widow’s
invitation when she said civilly, showing him an inner room:--

“Come in here, monsieur, and warm yourself.”

Fearing to be overheard by Ferragus, Jules asked himself whether it were
not wisest to conclude the arrangement he had come to make with the old
woman in the crowded antechamber. A hen, which descended cackling from
a loft, roused him from this inward meditation. He came to a resolution,
and followed Ida’s mother into the inner room, whither they were
accompanied by the wheezy pug, a personage otherwise mute, who jumped
upon a stool. Madame Gruget showed the assumption of semi-pauperism
when she invited her visitor to warm himself. Her fire-pot contained, or
rather concealed two bits of sticks, which lay apart: the grating was
on the ground, its handle in the ashes. The mantel-shelf, adorned with
a little wax Jesus under a shade of squares of glass held together with
blue paper, was piled with wools, bobbins, and tools used in the making
of gimps and trimmings. Jules examined everything in the room with a
curiosity that was full of interest, and showed, in spite of himself, an
inward satisfaction.

“Well, monsieur, tell me, do you want to buy any of my things?” said the
old woman, seating herself in a cane arm-chair, which appeared to be
her headquarters. In it she kept her handkerchief, snuffbox, knitting,
half-peeled vegetables, spectacles, calendar, a bit of livery gold lace
just begun, a greasy pack of cards, and two volumes of novels, all stuck
into the hollow of the back. This article of furniture, in which the
old creature was floating down the river of life, was not unlike the
encyclopedic bag which a woman carries with her when she travels; in
which may be found a compendium of her household belongings, from the
portrait of her husband to _eau de Melisse_ for faintness, sugarplums
for the children, and English court-plaster in case of cuts.

Jules studied all. He looked attentively at Madame Gruget’s yellow
visage, at her gray eyes without either brows or lashes, her toothless
mouth, her wrinkles marked in black, her rusty cap, her still more rusty
ruffles, her cotton petticoat full of holes, her worn-out slippers, her
disabled fire-pot, her table heaped with dishes and silks and work begun
or finished, in wool or cotton, in the midst of which stood a bottle of
wine. Then he said to himself: “This old woman has some passion, some
strong liking or vice; I can make her do my will.”

“Madame,” he said aloud, with a private sign of intelligence, “I have
come to order some livery trimmings.” Then he lowered his voice. “I
know,” he continued, “that you have a lodger who has taken the name of
Camuset.” The old woman looked at him suddenly, but without any sign of
astonishment. “Now, tell me, can we come to an understanding? This is a
question which means fortune for you.”

“Monsieur,” she replied, “speak out, and don’t be afraid. There’s no one
here. But if I had any one above, it would be impossible for him to hear
you.”

“Ha! the sly old creature, she answers like a Norman,” thought Jules,
“We shall agree. Do not give yourself the trouble to tell falsehoods,
madame,” he resumed, “In the first place, let me tell you that I mean no
harm either to you or to your lodger who is suffering from cautery, or
to your daughter Ida, a stay-maker, the friend of Ferragus. You see, I
know all your affairs. Do not be uneasy; I am not a detective policeman,
nor do I desire anything that can hurt your conscience. A young lady
will come here to-morrow-morning at half-past nine o’clock, to talk with
this lover of your daughter. I want to be where I can see all and hear
all, without being seen or heard by them. If you will furnish me with
the means of doing so, I will reward that service with the gift of two
thousand francs and a yearly stipend of six hundred. My notary shall
prepare a deed before you this evening, and I will give him the money to
hold; he will pay the two thousand to you to-morrow after the conference
at which I desire to be present, as you will then have given proofs of
your good faith.”

“Will it injure my daughter, my good monsieur?” she asked, casting a
cat-like glance of doubt and uneasiness upon him.

“In no way, madame. But, in any case, it seems to me that your daughter
does not treat you well. A girl who is loved by so rich a man as
Ferragus ought to make you more comfortable than you seem to be.”

“Ah, my dear monsieur, just think, not so much as one poor ticket to
the Ambigu, or the Gaiete, where she can go as much as she likes. It’s
shameful! A girl for whom I sold my silver forks and spoons! and now
I eat, at my age, with German metal,--and all to pay for her
apprenticeship, and give her a trade, where she could coin money if she
chose. As for that, she’s like me, clever as a witch; I must do her that
justice. But, I will say, she might give me her old silk gowns,--I,
who am so fond of wearing silk. But no! Monsieur, she dines at the
Cadran-Bleu at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriage as if she
were a princess, and despises her mother for a Colin-Lampon. Heavens and
earth! what heedless young ones we’ve brought into the world; we have
nothing to boast of there. A mother, monsieur, can’t be anything else
but a good mother; and I’ve concealed that girl’s ways, and kept her in
my bosom, to take the bread out of my mouth and cram everything into her
own. Well, well! and now she comes and fondles one a little, and says,
‘How d’ye do, mother?’ And that’s all the duty she thinks of paying. But
she’ll have children one of these days, and then she’ll find out what it
is to have such baggage,--which one can’t help loving all the same.”

“Do you mean that she does nothing for you?”

“Ah, nothing? No, monsieur, I didn’t say that; if she did nothing, that
would be a little too much. She gives me my rent and thirty-six francs a
month. But, monsieur, at my age,--and I’m fifty-two years old, with
eyes that feel the strain at night,--ought I to be working in this way?
Besides, why won’t she have me to live with her? I should shame her,
should I? Then let her say so. Faith, one ought to be buried out of the
way of such dogs of children, who forget you before they’ve even shut
the door.”

She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket, and with it a lottery
ticket that dropped on the floor; but she hastily picked it up, saying,
“Hi! that’s the receipt for my taxes.”

Jules at once perceived the reason of the sagacious parsimony of which
the mother complained; and he was the more certain that the widow Gruget
would agree to the proposed bargain.

“Well, then, madame,” he said, “accept what I offer you.”

“Did you say two thousand francs in ready money, and six hundred
annuity, monsieur?”

“Madame, I’ve changed my mind; I will promise you only three hundred
annuity. This way seems more to my own interests. But I will give you
five thousand francs in ready money. Wouldn’t you like that as well?”

“Bless me, yes, monsieur!”

“You’ll get more comfort out of it; and you can go to the Ambigu and
Franconi’s at your ease in a coach.”

“As for Franconi, I don’t like that, for they don’t talk there.
Monsieur, if I accept, it is because it will be very advantageous for
my child. I sha’n’t be a drag on her any longer. Poor little thing!
I’m glad she has her pleasures, after all. Ah, monsieur, youth must be
amused! And so, if you assure me that no harm will come to anybody--”

“Not to anybody,” replied Jules. “But now, how will you manage it?”

“Well, monsieur, if I give Monsieur Ferragus a little tea made of
poppy-heads to-night, he’ll sleep sound, the dear man; and he needs it,
too, because of his sufferings, for he does suffer, I can tell you, and
more’s the pity. But I’d like to know what a healthy man like him wants
to burn his back for, just to get rid of a tic douleureux which troubles
him once in two years. However, to come back to our business. I have my
neighbor’s key; her lodging is just above mine, and in it there’s a
room adjoining the one where Monsieur Ferragus is, with only a
partition between them. My neighbor is away in the country for ten days.
Therefore, if I make a hole to-night while Monsieur Ferragus is sound
asleep, you can see and hear them to-morrow at your ease. I’m on good
terms with a locksmith,--a very friendly man, who talks like an angel,
and he’ll do the work for me and say nothing about it.”

“Then here’s a hundred francs for him. Come to-night to Monsieur
Desmaret’s office; he’s a notary, and here’s his address. At nine
o’clock the deed will be ready, but--silence!”

“Enough, monsieur; as you say--silence! Au revoir, monsieur.”

Jules went home, almost calmed by the certainty that he should know the
truth on the morrow. As he entered the house, the porter gave him the
letter properly resealed.

“How do you feel now?” he said to his wife, in spite of the coldness
that separated them.

“Pretty well, Jules,” she answered in a coaxing voice, “do come and dine
beside me.”

“Very good,” he said, giving her the letter. “Here is something
Fouguereau gave me for you.”

Clemence, who was very pale, colored high when she saw the letter, and
that sudden redness was a fresh blow to her husband.

“Is that joy,” he said, laughing, “or the effect of expectation?”

“Oh, of many things!” she said, examining the seal.

“I leave you now for a few moments.”

He went down to his study, and wrote to his brother, giving him
directions about the payment to the widow Gruget. When he returned, he
found his dinner served on a little table by his wife’s bedside, and
Josephine ready to wait on him.

“If I were up how I should like to serve you myself,” said Clemence,
when Josephine had left them. “Oh, yes, on my knees!” she added, passing
her white hands through her husband’s hair. “Dear, noble heart, you were
very kind and gracious to me just now. You did me more good by showing
me such confidence than all the doctors on earth could do me with their
prescriptions. That feminine delicacy of yours--for you do know how
to love like a woman--well, it has shed a balm into my heart which has
almost cured me. There’s truce between us, Jules; lower your head, that
I may kiss it.”

Jules could not deny himself the pleasure of that embrace. But it was
not without a feeling of remorse in his heart; he felt himself small
before this woman whom he was still tempted to think innocent. A sort
of melancholy joy possessed him. A tender hope shone on her features
in spite of their grieved expression. They both were equally unhappy
in deceiving each other; another caress, and, unable to resist their
suffering, all would then have been avowed.

“To-morrow evening, Clemence.”

“No, no; to-morrow morning, by twelve o’clock, you will know all, and
you’ll kneel down before your wife--Oh, no! you shall not be humiliated;
you are all forgiven now; you have done no wrong. Listen, Jules;
yesterday you did crush me--harshly; but perhaps my life would not have
been complete without that agony; it may be a shadow that will make our
coming days celestial.”

“You lay a spell upon me,” cried Jules; “you fill me with remorse.”

“Poor love! destiny is stronger than we, and I am not the accomplice of
mine. I shall go out to-morrow.”

“At what hour?” asked Jules.

“At half-past nine.”

“Clemence,” he said, “take every precaution; consult Doctor Desplein and
old Haudry.”

“I shall consult nothing but my heart and my courage.”

“I shall leave you free; you will not see me till twelve o’clock.”

“Won’t you keep me company this evening? I feel so much better.”

After attending to some business, Jules returned to his wife,--recalled
by her invincible attraction. His passion was stronger than his anguish.

The next day, at nine o’clock Jules left home, hurried to the rue des
Enfants-Rouges, went upstairs, and rang the bell of the widow Gruget’s
lodgings.

“Ah! you’ve kept your word, as true as the dawn. Come in, monsieur,”
 said the old woman when she saw him. “I’ve made you a cup of coffee with
cream,” she added, when the door was closed. “Oh! real cream; I saw it
milked myself at the dairy we have in this very street.”

“Thank you, no, madame, nothing. Take me at once--”

“Very good, monsieur. Follow me, this way.”

She led him up into the room above her own, where she showed him,
triumphantly, an opening about the size of a two-franc piece, made
during the night, in a place, which, in each room, was above a wardrobe.
In order to look through it, Jules was forced to maintain himself in
rather a fatiguing attitude, by standing on a step-ladder which the
widow had been careful to place there.

“There’s a gentleman with him,” she whispered, as she retired.

Jules then beheld a man employed in dressing a number of wounds on the
shoulders of Ferragus, whose head he recognized from the description
given to him by Monsieur de Maulincour.

“When do you think those wounds will heal?” asked Ferragus.

“I don’t know,” said the other man. “The doctors say those wounds will
require seven or eight more dressings.”

“Well, then, good-bye until to-night,” said Ferragus, holding out his
hand to the man, who had just replaced the bandage.

“Yes, to-night,” said the other, pressing his hand cordially. “I wish I
could see you past your sufferings.”

“To-morrow Monsieur de Funcal’s papers will be delivered to us, and
Henri Bourignard will be dead forever,” said Ferragus. “Those fatal
marks which have cost us so dear no longer exist. I shall become once
more a social being, a man among men, and more of a man than the sailor
whom the fishes are eating. God knows it is not for my own sake I have
made myself a Portuguese count!”

“Poor Gratien!--you, the wisest of us all, our beloved brother, the
Benjamin of the band; as you very well know.”

“Adieu; keep an eye on Maulincour.”

“You can rest easy on that score.”

“Ho! stay, marquis,” cried the convict.

“What is it?”

“Ida is capable of everything after the scene of last night. If she
should throw herself into the river, I would not fish her out. She knows
the secret of my name, and she’ll keep it better there. But still, look
after her; for she is, in her way, a good 

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