"The Duc generously gave me better means of righting myself. Three days after he quitted Paris I received a letter from him, very politely written, expressing his great regret that any words implying the suspicion too monstrous and absurd to need refutation should have escaped him in the surprise of the moment; but stating that since the offence I had owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under the necessity of asking the only reparation I could make. That if it 'deranged' me to quit Paris, he would return to it for the purpose required; but that if I would give him the additional satisfaction of suiting his convenience, he should prefer to await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was detained by the indisposition of the Duchesse."
"You have still that letter?" asked Louvier, quickly. "Yes; with other more important documents constituting what I may call my pieces justificatives.
"I need not say that I replied stating the time at which I should arrive at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should await the Duc's command. Accordingly I set out that same day, gained the hotel named, despatched to the Duc the announcement of my arrival, and was considering how I should obtain a second in some officer quartered in the town—for my soreness and resentment at the marked coldness of my former acquaintances at Paris had forbidden me to seek a second among any of that faithless number—when the Due himself entered my room. Judge of my amaze at seeing him in person; judge how much greater the amaze became when he advanced with a grave but cordial smile, offering me his hand!
"'Monsieur de Mauleon,' said he, 'since I wrote to you, facts have become known to me which would induce me rather to ask your friendship than call on you to defend your life. Madame la Duchesse has been seriously ill since we left Paris, and I refrained from all explanations likely to add to the hysterical excitement under which she was suffering. It is only this day that her mind became collected, and she herself then gave me her entire confidence. Monsieur, she insisted on my reading the letters that you addressed to her. Those letters, Monsieur, suffice to prove your innocence of any design against my peace. The Duchesse has so candidly avowed her own indiscretion, has so clearly established the distinction between indiscretion and guilt, that I have granted her my pardon with a lightened heart and a firm belief that we shall be happier together than we have been yet.'
"The Due continued his journey the next day, but he subsequently honoured me with two or three letters written as friend to friend, and in which you will find repeated the substance of what I have stated him to say by word of mouth."
"But why not then have returned to Paris? Such letters, at least, you might have shown, and in braving your calumniators you would have soon lived them down."
"You forget that I was a ruined man. When, by the sale of my horses, etc., my debts, including what was owed to the Duchesse, and which I remitted to the Duc, were discharged, the balance left to me would not have maintained me a week at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so indignant. Paris and the Parisians had become to me so hateful. And to crown all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose fidelity I had so counted—well, I received a letter from her, gently but coldly bidding me farewell forever. I do not think she believed me guilty of theft; but doubtless the offence I had confessed, in order to save the honour of the Duchesse, could but seem to her all sufficient! Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very core, still self- destruction was no longer to be thought of. I would not die till I could once more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon."
"What then became of you, my poor Victor?"
"Ah! that is a tale too long for recital. I have played so many parts that I am puzzled to recognize my own identity with the Victor de Mauleon whose name I abandoned. I have been a soldier in Algeria, and won my cross on the field of battle,—that cross and my colonel's letter are among my pieces justificatives; I have been a gold-digger in California, a speculator in New York, of late in callings obscure and humble. But in all my adventures, under whatever name, I have earned testimonials of probity, could manifestations of so vulgar a virtue be held of account by the enlightened people of Paris. I come now to a close. The Vicomte de Mauleon is about to re-appear in Paris, and the first to whom he announces that sublime avatar is Paul Louvier. When settled in some modest apartment, I shall place in your hands my pieces justificatives. I shall ask you to summon my surviving relations or connections, among which are the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De Passy, and the Marquis de Rochebriant, with any friends of your own who sway the opinions of the Great World. You will place my justification before them, expressing your own opinion that it suffices; in a word, you will give me the sanction of your countenance. For the rest, I trust to myself to propitiate the kindly and to silence the calumnious. I have spoken; what say you?"
"You overrate my power in society. Why not appeal yourself to your high- born relations?"
"No, Louvier; I have too well considered the case to alter my decision. It is through you, and you alone, that I shall approach my relations. My vindicator must be a man of whom the vulgar cannot say, 'Oh, he is a relation,—a fellow-noble; those aristocrats whitewash each other.' It must be an authority with the public at large,—a bourgeois, a millionaire, a roi de la Bourse. I choose you, and that ends the discussion."
Louvier could not help laughing good-humouredly at the sang froid of the Vicomte. He was once more under the domination of a man who had for a time dominated all with whom he lived.
De Mauleon continued: "Your task will be easy enough. Society changes rapidly at Paris. Few persons now exist who have more than a vague recollection of the circumstances which can be so easily explained to my complete vindication when the vindication comes from a man of your solid respectability and social influence. Besides, I have political objects in view. You are a Liberal; the Vandemars and Rochebriants are Legitimists. I prefer a godfather on the Liberal side. Pardieu, mon ami, why such coquettish hesitation? Said and done. Your hand on it."
"There is my hand then. I will do all I can to help you."
"I know you will, old friend; and you do both kindly and wisely." Here De Mauleon cordially pressed the hand he held, and departed.
On gaining the street, the Vicomte glided into a neighbouring courtyard, in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the coachman drive towards the Boulevard Sebastopol. On the way, he took from a small bag that he had left in the carriage the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which distinguished M. Lebeau, and mantled his elegant habiliments in an immense cloak, which he had also left in the fiacre. Arrived at the Boulevard Sebastopol, he drew up the collar of the cloak so as to conceal much of his face, stopped the driver, paid him quickly, and, bag in hand, hurried on to another stand of fiacres at a little distance, entered one, drove to the Faubourg Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle at the mouth of a street not far from M. Lebeau's office, and gained on foot the private side-door of the house, let himself in with his latchkey, entered the private room on the inner side of his office, locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to exchange the brilliant appearance which the Vicomte de Mauleon had borne on his visit to the millionaire for the sober raiment and bourgeois air of M. Lebeau, the letter-writer.
Then after locking up his former costume in a drawer of his secretaire, he sat himself down and wrote the following lines:—
DEAR MONSIEUR GEORGES,—I advise you strongly, from information that has just reached me, to lose no time in pressing M. Savarin to repay the sum I recommended you to lend him, and for which you hold his bill due this day. The scandal of legal measures against a writer so distinguished should be avoided if possible. He will avoid it and get the money somehow; but he must be urgently pressed. If you neglect this warning, my responsibility is past. Agreez mes sentimens les plus sinceres. J. L.
CHAPTER II
The Marquis de Rochebriant is no longer domiciled in an attic in the gloomy Faubourg. See him now in a charming appartement de garcon an premier in the Rue du Helder, close by the promenades and haunts of the mode. It had been furnished and inhabited by a brilliant young provincial from Bordeaux, who, coming into an inheritance of one hundred thousand francs, had rushed up to Paris to enjoy himself, and make his million at the Bourse. He had enjoyed himself thoroughly,—he had been a darling of the demi monde; he had been a successful and an inconstant gallant. Zelie had listened to his vows of eternal love, and his offers of unlimited cachemires; Desiree, succeeding Zelie, had assigned to him her whole heart—or all that was left of it—in gratitude for the ardour of his passion, and the diamonds and coupe which accompanied and attested the ardour; the superb Hortense, supplanting Desiree, received his visits in the charming apartment he furnished for her, and entertained him and his friends at the most delicate little suppers, for the moderate sum of four thousand francs a month. Yes, he had enjoyed himself thoroughly, but he had not made a million at the Bourse. Before the year was out, the one hundred thousand francs were gone. Compelled to return to his province, and by his hard-hearted relations ordained, on penalty of starvation, to marry the daughter of an avoue, for the sake of her dot and a share in the hated drudgery of the avoue's business,—his apartment was to be had for a tenth part of the original cost of its furniture. A certain Chevalier de Finisterre, to whom Louvier had introduced the Marquis as a useful fellow who knew Paris, and would save him from being cheated, had secured this bijou of an apartment for Alain, and concluded the bargain for the bagatelle of L500. The Chevalier took the same advantageous occasion to purchase the English well-bred hack and the neat coupe and horses which the Bordelais was also necessitated to dispose of. These purchases made, the Marquis had some five thousand francs (L200) left out of Louvier's premium of L1,000. The Marquis, however, did not seem alarmed or dejected by the sudden diminution of capital so expeditiously effected. The easy life thus commenced seemed to him too natural to be fraught with danger; and easy though it was, it was a very simple and modest sort of life compared with that of many other men of his age to whom Enguerrand had introduced him, though most of them had an income less than his, and few, indeed, of them were his equals in dignity of birth. Could a Marquis de Rochebriant, if he lived at Paris at all, give less than three thousand francs a year for his apartment, or mount a more humble establishment than that confined to a valet and a tiger, two horses for his coupe and one for the saddle? "Impossible," said the Chevalier de Finisterre, decidedly; and the Marquis bowed to so high an authority. He thought within himself, "If I find in a few months that I am exceeding my means, I can but dispose of my rooms and my horses, and return to Rochebriant a richer man by far than I left it."
To say truth, the brilliant seductions of Paris had already produced their effect, not only on the habits, but on the character and cast of thought, which the young noble had brought with him from the feudal and melancholy Bretagne.
Warmed by the kindness with which, once introduced by his popular kinsmen, he was everywhere received, the reserve or shyness which is the compromise between the haughtiness of self-esteem and the painful doubt of appreciation by others rapidly melted away. He caught insensibly the polished tone, at once so light and so cordial, of his new-made friends. With all the efforts of the democrats to establish equality and fraternity, it is among the aristocrats that equality and fraternity are most to be found. All gentilshommes in the best society are equals; and whether they embrace or fight each other, they embrace or fight as brothers of the same family. But with the tone of manners Alain de Rochebriant imbibed still more insensibly the lore of that philosophy which young idlers in pursuit of pleasure teach to each other. Probably in all civilized and luxurious capitals that philosophy is very much the same among the same class of idlers at the same age; probably it flourishes in Pekin not less than at Paris. If Paris has the credit, or discredit, of it more than any other capital, it is because in Paris more than in any other capital it charms the eye by grace and amuses the ear by wit. A philosophy which takes the things of this life very easily; which has a smile and a shrug of the shoulders for any pretender to the Heroic; which subdivides the wealth of passion into the pocket-money of caprices, is always in or out of love ankle-deep, never venturing a plunge; which, light of heart as of tongue, turns "the solemn plausibilities" of earth into subjects for epigrams and bons mots,— jests at loyalty to kings and turns up its nose at enthusiasm for commonwealths, abjures all grave studies and shuns all profound emotions. We have crowds of such philosophers in London; but there they are less noticed, because the agreeable attributes of the sect are there dimmed and obfuscated. It is not a philosophy that flowers richly in the reek of fogs and in the teeth of east winds; it wants for full development the light atmosphere of Paris. Now this philosophy began rapidly to exercise its charms upon Alain de Rochebriant. Even in the society of professed Legitimists, he felt that faith had deserted the Legitimist creed or taken refuge only as a companion of religion in the hearts of high-born women and a small minority of priests. His chivalrous loyalty still struggled to keep its ground, but its roots were very much loosened. He saw—for his natural intellect was keen—that the cause of the Bourbon was hopeless, at least for the present, because it had ceased, at least for the present, to be a cause. His political creed thus shaken, with it was shaken also that adherence to the past which had stifled his ambition of a future. That ambition began to breathe and to stir, though he owned it not to others, though, as yet, he scarce distinguished its whispers, much less directed its movements towards any definite object. Meanwhile, all that he knew of his ambition was the new-born desire for social success.
We see him, then, under the quick operation of this change in sentiments and habits, reclined on the fauteuil before his fireside, and listening to his college friend, of whom we have so long lost sight, Frederic Lemercier. Frederic had breakfasted with Alain,—a breakfast such as might have contented the author of the "Almanach des Gourmands," and provided from the cafe Anglais. Frederic has just thrown aside his regalia.
"Pardieu! my dear Alain. If Louvier has no sinister object in the generosity of his dealings with you, he will have raised himself prodigiously in my estimation. I shall forsake, in his favour, my allegiance to Duplessis, though that clever fellow has just made a wondrous coup in the Egyptians, and I gain forty thousand francs by having followed his advice. But if Duplessis has a head as long as Louvier's, he certainly has not an equal greatness of soul. Still, my dear friend, will you pardon me if I speak frankly, and in the way of a warning homily?"
"Speak; you cannot oblige me more."
"Well, then, I know that you can no more live at Paris in the way you are doing, or mean to do, without some fresh addition to your income, than a lion could live in the Jardin des Plantes upon an allowance of two mice a week."
"I don't see that. Deducting what I pay to my aunt,—and I cannot get her to take more than six thousand francs a year,—I have seven hundred napoleons left, net and clear. My rooms and stables are equipped, and I have twenty-five hundred francs in hand. On seven hundred napoleons a year, I calculate that I can very easily live as I do; and if I fail— well, I must return to Pochebriant. Seven hundred napoleons a year will be a magnificent rental there."
Frederic shook his head. "You do not know how one expense leads to another. Above all, you do not calculate the chief part of one's expenditure,—the unforeseen. You will play at the Jockey Club, and lose half your income in a night."
"I shall never touch a card."
"So you say now, innocent as a lamb of the force of example. At all events, beau seigneur, I presume you are not going to resuscitate the part of the Ermite de la Chaussee d'Antin; and the fair Parisiennes are demons of extravagance."
"Demons whom I shall not court."
"Did I say you would? They will court you. Before another month has flown you will be inundated with billets-doux."
"It is not a shower that will devastate my humble harvest. But, mon cher, we are falling upon very gloomy topics. Laissez-moi tranquille in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you cannot conceive what a new life opens to the man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of his youth in privation and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and hope. If it lasts only a year, it will be something to say 'Vixi.'"
"Alain," said Frederic; very earnestly, "believe me, I should not have assumed the ungracious and inappropriate task of Mentor, if it were only a year's experience at stake, or if you were in the position of men like myself,—free from the encumbrance of a great name and heavily mortgaged lands. Should you fail to pay regularly the interest due to Louvier, he has the power to put up at public auction, and there to buy in for himself, your chateau and domain."
"I am aware that in strict law he would have such power, though I doubt if he would use it. Louvier is certainly a much better and more generous fellow than I could have expected; and if I believe De Finisterre, he has taken a sincere liking to me on account of affection to my poor father. But why should not the interest be paid regularly? The revenues from Rochebriant are not likely to decrease, and the charge on them is lightened by the contract with Louvier. And I will confide to you a hope I entertain of a very large addition to my rental."
"How?"
"A chief part of my rental is derived from forests, and De Finisterre has heard of a capitalist who is disposed to make a contract for their sale at the fall this year, and may probably extend it to future years, at a price far exceeding that which I have hitherto obtained."
"Pray be cautious. De Finisterre is not a man I should implicitly trust in such matters."
"Why? Do you know anything against him? He is in the best society,— perfect gentilhomme,—and, as his name may tell you, a fellow-Breton. You yourself allow, and so does Enguerrand, that the purchases he made for me—in this apartment, my horses, etc.—are singularly advantageous."
"Quite true; the Chevalier is reputed sharp and clever, is said to be very amusing, and a first-rate piquet-player. I don't know him personally,—I am not in his set. I have no valid reason to disparage his character, nor do I conjecture any motive he could have to injure or mislead you. Still, I say, be cautious how far you trust to his advice or recommendation."
"Again I ask why?"
"He is unlucky to his friends. He attaches himself much to men younger than himself; and somehow or other I have observed that most of them have come to grief. Besides, a person in whose sagacity I have great confidence warned me against making the Chevalier's acquaintance, and said to me, in his blunt way, 'De Finisterre came to Paris with nothing; he has succeeded to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profession by which anything can be made. But evidently now he has picked up a good deal; and in proportion as any young associate of his becomes poorer, De Finisterre seems mysteriously to become richer. Shun that sort of acquaintance.'"
"Who is your sagacious adviser!"
"Duplessis."
"Ah, I thought so. That bird of prey fancies every other bird looking out for pigeons. I fancy that Duplessis is, like all those money- getters, a seeker after fashion, and De Finisterre has not returned his bow."
"My dear Alain, I am to blame; nothing is so irritating as a dispute about the worth of the men we like. I began it, now let it be dropped; only make me one promise,—that if you should be in arrear, or if need presses, you will come at once to me. It was very well to be absurdly proud in an attic, but that pride will be out of place in your appartement au premier."
"You are the best fellow in the world, Frederic, and I make you the promise you ask," said Alain, cheerfully, but yet with a secret emotion of tenderness and gratitude. "And now, mon cher, what day will you dine with me to meet Raoul and Enguerrand, and some others whom you would like to know?"
"Thanks, and hearty ones, but we move now in different spheres, and I shall not trespass on yours. Je suis trop bourgeois to incur the ridicule of le bourgeois gentilhomme."
"Frederic, how dare you speak thus? My dear fellow, my friends shall honour you as I do."
"But that will be on your account, not mine. No; honestly that kind of society neither tempts nor suits me. I am a sort of king in my own walk; and I prefer my Bohemian royalty to vassalage in higher regions. Say no more of it. It will flatter my vanity enough if you will now and then descend to my coteries, and allow me to parade a Rochebriant as my familiar crony, slap him on the shoulder, and call him Alain."
"Fie! you who stopped me and the English aristocrat in the Champs Elysees, to humble us with your boast of having fascinated une grande dame,—I think you said a duchesse."
"Oh," said Lemercier, conceitedly, and passing his hand through his scented locks, "women are different; love levels all ranks. I don't blame Ruy Blas for accepting the love of a queen, but I do blame him for passing himself off as a noble,—a plagiarism, by the by, from an English play. I do not love the English enough to copy them. A propos, what has become of ce beau Grarm Varn? I have not seen him of late."
"Neither have I."
"Nor the belle Italienne?"
"Nor her," said Alain, slightly blushing.
At this moment Enguerrand lounged into the room. Alain stopped Lemercier to introduce him to his kinsman. "Enguerrand, I present to you M. Lemercier, my earliest and one of my dearest friends."
The young noble held out his hand with the bright and joyous grace which accompanied all his movements, and expressed in cordial words his delight to make M. Lemercier's acquaintance. Bold and assured as Frederic was in his own circles, he was more discomposed than set at ease by the gracious accost of a lion, whom he felt at once to be of a breed superior to his own. He muttered some confused phrases, in which ravi and flatte were alone audible, and evanished.
"I know M. Lemercier by sight very well," said Enguerrand, seating himself. "One sees him very often in the Bois; and I have met him in the Coulisses and the Bal Mabille. I think, too, that he plays at the Bourse, and is lie with M. Duplessis, who bids fair to rival Louvier one of these days. Is Duplessis also one of your dearest friends?"
"No, indeed. I once met him, and was not prepossessed in his favour."
"Nevertheless, he is a man much to be admired and respected."
"Why so?"
"Because he understands so well the art of making what we all covet,— money. I will introduce you to him."
"I have been already introduced."
"Then I will re-introduce you. He is much courted in a society which I have recently been permitted by my father to frequent,—the society, of the Imperial Court."
"You frequent that society, and the Count permits it?"
"Yes; better the Imperialists than the Republicans; and my father begins to own that truth, though he is too old or too indolent to act on it."
"And Raoul?"
"Oh, Raoul, the melancholy and philosophical Raoul, has no ambition of any kind, so long as—thanks somewhat to me—his purse is always replenished for the wants of his stately existence, among the foremost of which wants are the means to supply the wants of others. That is the true reason why he consents to our glove-shop. Raoul belongs, with some other young men of the Faubourg, to a society enrolled under the name of Saint Francois de Sales, for the relief of the poor. He visits their houses, and is at home by their sickbeds as at their stinted boards. Nor does he confine his visitations to the limits of our Faubourg; he extends his travels to Montmartre and Belleville. As to our upper world, he does not concern himself much with its changes. He says that we have destroyed too much ever to rebuild solidly; and that whatever we do build could be upset any day by a Paris mob, which he declares to be the only institution we have left. A wonderful fellow is Raoul,—full of mind, though he does little with it; full of heart, which he devotes to suffering humanity, and to a poetic, knightly reverence (not to be confounded with earthly love, and not to be degraded into that sickly sentiment called Platonic affection) for the Comtesse di Rimini, who is six years older than himself, and who is very faithfully attached to her husband, Raoul's intimate friend, whose honour he would guard as his own. It is an episode in the drama of Parisian life, and one not so uncommon as the malignant may suppose. Di Rimini knows and approves of his veneration; my mother, the best of women, sanctions it, and deems truly that it preserves Raoul safe from all the temptations to which ignobler youth is exposed. I mention this lest you should imagine there was anything in Raoul's worship of his star less pure than it is. For the rest, Raoul, to the grief and amazement of that disciple of Voltaire, my respected father, is one of the very few men I know in our circles who is sincerely religious,—an orthodox Catholic,—and the only man I know who practises the religion he professes; charitable, chaste, benevolent; and no bigot, no intolerant ascetic. His only weakness is his entire submission to the worldly common-sense of his good-for-nothing, covetous, ambitious brother Enguerrand. I cannot say how I love him for that. If he had not such a weakness, his excellence would gall me, and I believe I should hate him."