If r*.
/
ySRARY
tV
UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA
NiA 1
®o j
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive
in 2008 witii funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
littp://www.arcliive.org/details/comedieliumaine35balz
/ H. DE BALZAC
COMfiDIE HUMAINEy
Edited by GEORGE SAINTSBURY
A II rights reserved
^^'^/^^/.
^ it %» €..i
■■■■ -^ku
^^fV
j^ i^
EN MARRIAGE
TSBUR-
ILLAN
^-^tr^Af^
li ti'
*Jf b:.
i
ii. *t:ii*
.. iii ^'
H. DE BALZAC
THE THIRTEEN
{Histoire des Treize)
Tramlated by
ELLEN MARRIAGE
•with a Preface by
GEORGE SAINTSBURY
LONDON J M. DENT AND CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY M DCCCXC VIII
Edinburgh : 'l. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
C O N 1 E N T S
PAGE
PREFACE ix
THE THIRTEEN—
author's preface ...... I
I. FERRAGUS . . . . . v . . 9
II. THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS .... I44
LIST OF ETCHINGS
MME. DE LANGEAIS RANG THE BELL (p. 244) . Frontispiece
rAGE
A girl's body STRANDED THAT MORNING ON THE BANK I 37
SOUND YOURSELF ; IF YOU HAVE NOT COURAGE ENOUGH,
HERE IS MY DAGGER ..... I95
Drawn and Etched by W. Boucher.
PREFACE
In its original form the Histoire des Treiz.e consists — or rather, it was originally built up — of three stories : Ferragus or the Rue So/y, La Duchesse de Langeais or Ne touchez-pas a la hache^ and La Fille aux Teux d'Or. The last, in some respects one of Balzac's most brilliant effects, does not appear here, as it contains things that are inconvenient. It may be noted that he had at one time the audacity to think of calling it La Femme aux Teux Rouges.
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'sown 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 j 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.
X Preface
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 elimi- nating 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 honourable 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 any- thing 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. And, indeed, I must confess that I should not think much of any boy who, beginning Balzac with the Histoire des Treize, failed to go rather mad over it. I know there was a time when
Preface
XI
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 fully to appreciate the attractions of crime and criminals, fictitious or real. Certain pleasant and profit- able 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 —
xii Preface
and Balzac might fairly be classed amongst 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 imputations 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 cer- tainly 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 French- man 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 humour. 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
Preface xiii
Histoire des Treize is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they filled three out of the four volumes of Etudes des Mceurs published in 1834-35, and themselves forming part of the first collection of Scenes de la Vie Parisienne. But Ferragus had appeared in parts (vv^ith 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 were divisions in this also. Ferragus and La Duchesse also appeared without La Fille aux Teux d'Or in 1839, published in one volume by Charpentier, before their absorption at the usual time in the Comedie.
G. S.
THE THIRTEEN
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 chanced to clash. They were strong enough to set themselves above all laws j bold enough to shrink from no enterprise ; and lucky enough to succeed in nearly everything that they under- took. 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 them- selves. 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, mys- terious romance of their history, nobody to this day knows who they were. The Thirteen once realised 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
A
2 The Thirteen
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 w^as 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. Rad- clifFe, 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
The Thirteen 3
Paris o 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 good- ness of woman shine out the brighter for the darkness. And, to the honour 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 intro- duce his fragment by a few remarks.
Ferragus^ the first episode, is connected by invisible
4 The Thirteen
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 marvellous, the sober chronicler is bound to forgo such advantage as he may reap from an odd-sounding name, on which many ephemeral successes are founded in these days. Where- fore the present writer gives the following succinct state- ment 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 XXIL, Tutanus XIII.j or Masche-Fer IV. Who are the Devorants^ do you ask ?
The Devorants are one among many tribes of com- pagnons whose origin can be traced to a great mystical association formed among the workmen of Christendom for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem. Com- pagnonnage 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 j and the various organisa- tions 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 ohade^ as they call it, is a kind of lodge with a ' Mother' in charge, an old, half-
The Thirteen 5
gipsy 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 com- pagnons 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 Devoir^ of all the different sects of workmen, their manners and customs and brotherhoods, and of the resemblances between them and the Freemasons ; but here, 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, succour, 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 devo- rants 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
6 The Thirteen
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.^
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 Pier and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the loyalty of the hulks, the honour 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 these 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 organisation 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, admit- ting none of the ideas, recognising none of the laws of
^ A long scries of so-called Memoirs, which appeared about 183c.
The Thirteen 7
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 them- selves 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
8 The Thirteen
theirs. If the author learns the reason of their abdica- tion, 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 flavour of the details or the strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a peculiar attraction for him.
Paris, 1831.
THE THIRTEEN
I
FERRAGUS
CHEF DES DEVORANTS.
lo Hector Berlioz.
There are streets in Paris which have lost their char- acter as hopelessly as a man guilty of some shameful action ; there are likewise noble streets, streets that are simply honest and nothing more, young streets as to whose morality the public as yet has formed no opinion, and streets older than the oldest dowager. Then there are deadly streets, respectable streets, streets that are always clean, and streets that are invariably filthy ; artisan, industrial, and commercial streets. The streets of Paris, in short, possess human qualities, so that you cannot help forming certain ideas of them on a first impression. There are low streets where you would not care to linger, and streets in which you would like to live. Some, like the Rue Montmartre, for instance, turn a fair front on you at the first and end in a fish's tail. The Rue de la Paix is a wide and imposing street, but it arouses none of the nobly gracious thoughts which take a susceptible nature at unawares in the Rue Royale, while it certainly lacks the majesty which pervades the Place Vendome.
U you take your walks abroad through the He Saint-
lo The Thirteen
Louis, the loneliness of the spot, the dreary look of the houses and great empty mansions is enough to account for the melancholy which settles on your nerves. The He Saint-Louis, a corpse no longer tenanted by farmers- general, is the Venice of Paris. The Place de la Bourse is garrulous, bustling, common ; it is only beautiful by moonlight ; an epitomised Paris in broad day, by night a dreamlike vision of ancient Greece.
Is not the Rue Traversiere Saint-Honore plainly a shameless street, vi^ith its villainous little houses a couple of vi^indows in width, and vice, and crime, and misery on every floor ? And there are thoroughfares with a north aspect, visited by the sun only three or four times in the year ; deadly streets are they, vi^here life is taken with impunity, and the law looks on and never inter- feres. In olden days the Parliament would probably have summoned the lieutenant of police to hear a little plain speaking, or at least they would have passed a vote of censure on the street, just as on another occasion they recorded their dissatisfaction with the perukes worn by the Chapter of Beauvais. Yet, M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf has shown conclusively that the mortality in certain streets is twice as high as the normal death- rate ! And to sum up the matter in a single example, what is the Rue Fromenteau but a haunt of vice and murder ?
These observations may be dark sayings for those who live beyond the bounds of Paris ; but they will be apprehended at once by those students, thinkers, poets, and men of pleasure, who know the art of walking the streets of Paris, and reap a harvest of delights borne in on the tides of life that ebb and flow within her walls with every hour. For these, Paris is the most fascinat- ing of monsters ; here she is a pretty woman, there a decrepit pauper; some quarters are spick and span as the coins of a new reign, and a nook here and there is elegant as a woman of fashion.
The Thirteen it
A monster, indeed, is the great city, in every sense of the word ! In the garrets you find, as it were, its brain full of knowledge and genius ; the first floor is a digestive apparatus, and the shops below are unmistakable feet, whence all the busy foot-traffic issues.
Oh ! what a life of incessant activity the monster leads ! The last vibration of the last carriage returning from the ball has scarcely died away before Its arms be- gin to stir a little at the barriers, and the City gives itself a gradual shake. All the gates begin to yawn, turning on their hinges like the membranes of some gigantic lobster invisibly controlled by some thirty thousand men and women. Each one of these thirty thousand must live in the allotted six square feet of space which serves as kitchen, workshop, nursery, bedroom, and garden ; each one is bound to see everything, while there is scarce light enough to see anything. Imperceptibly the monster's joints creak, the stir of life spreads, the street finds a tongue, and by noon it is alive everywhere, the chimneys smoke, the monster feeds, and with a roar It stretches out its myriad paws. 'Tis a wonderful sight ! And yet, oh Paris ! who has not marvelled at thy dark passages, thy fitful gleams of light, thy deep, soundless blind alleys ? They who have not heard thy murmurs between midnight and two o'clock in the morning, know nothing as yet of thy real poetry, of thy bizarre, broad contrasts.
There are a very few amateurs, amateurs are they that can keep a steady head and take their Paris with gusto ; and these know the physiognomy of the city so well, that they know ' even her spots, her blemishes, and her warts.' Others may think of Paris as the monstrous marvel, as an astounding assemblage of brains and machinery in motion, as the City of a Hundred Thousand Romances, the head of the world. But for these who know her, Paris wears a dull or a gay face, she is ugly or fair, alive or dead j
12 The Thirteen
for them she is a living creature. Every room in a house is a lobe of the cellular tissue of the great courtesan, whose heart, and brain, and fantastic life they know to the uttermost. Therefore they are her lovers. They look up at a street corner, knowing that they shall see a clock-face ; they tell a friend with an empty snuff-box to ' take such and such a turning, and you will find a tobacconist's shop to the left, next door to a pastry-cook that has a pretty wife,'
For poets of this order, a walk through Paris is an expensive luxury. How refuse to spend a few minutes in watching the dramas, the accidents, the faces, the picturesque chance effects which importune you in the streets of the restless Queen of Cities that goes clad in placards, yet can boast not one clean corner, so com- placent is she to the vices of the French nation. Who has not left home in the morning for the uttermost ends of Paris, and recognised by dinner-time the futility of his efforts to get away from the centre ? Such as these will pardon these vagrant beginnings, which, after all, may be summed up by one eminently profitable and novel observation (so far as any observation can be novel in Paris where there is nothing new, not even the statue set up yesterday, on which the street urchin has left his mark already).
Well, then — there are certain streets, unknown for the most part by fashionable people, there are certain dis- tricts and certain houses to which a woman of fashion cannot go, unless she wishes that the most cruelly injurious constructions shall be put upon her errand. If she is a wealthy woman with a carriage of her own, and if she chooses to go on foot, or disguised, through one of these slums, her reputation as an honest woman is compromised. If, furthermore, it should so happen that she is seen about nine o'clock in the evening, the con- jectures which an observer may permit himself are like to have appalling consequences. And, finally,- if the
The Thirteen 13
woman is young and pretty ; if she is seen to enter a house in one of these neighbourhoods; if the house has a long, dark, damp, and reeking passage entry ; if, at the end of the passage, a feeble, flickering lamp lights up the features of a hideous crone with bony fingers — then, to tell the truth 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 chances to meet her in these foul ways.
And there is a street in Paris where such an encounter may end in a most dreadful and ghastly tragedy, a tragedy of blood, a tragedy in the modern vein. Un- luckily, the convincingness of the situation and the dramatic element in it will be lost, like the modern drama, upon all save the very few ; and a sad pity it is that the tale must be told to a public that cannot fully appreciate the truth of the local colour. Still, who can flatter himself that he will ever be understood ? We all die unappreciated. It is the lot of women and of men of letters.
At half-past eight one February evening, thirteen years ago, a young man chanced to turn the corner of the Rue Pagevin into the Rue des Vieux-Augustins precisely at the point where the Rue Soly enters it. Now, at that time there was not a wall in the Rue Pagevin but echoed a foul word ; the Rue Soly was one of the narrowest and least practicable thoroughfares in Paris, not excepting the most frequented nooks in the most deserted streets of the city ; and the young man came there by one of those chances that do not come twice in a lifetime. Arrived at this point, he was walk- ing carelessly along when he saw a woman a few paces ahead of him, and fancied that he saw in her a vague resemblance to one of the prettiest women in Paris, a beautiful and modest woman whom he secretly and passionately loved ; loved, too, without hope. She was
14 The Thirteen
married. In a moment his heart gave a bound. An intolerable heat, kindled in his diaphragm, spread through every vein. He felt a cold chill along his spine, a tingling sensation on the surface of his face.
He was young, he vi^as in love, he knew Paris. His perspicacity would not allow him to shut his eyes to all the vile possibilities of the situation — a young, fair, and wealthy woman of fashion stealing along the street with a guilty, furtive step ! That She should be in that filthy neighbourhood at that hour of night !
His love seems romantic, no doubt, and the more so because he was an officer in the Guards. Of a man in an infantry regiment the thing is not inconceivable; but as a cavalry officer high in the service, he belonged to a division of the army that most desires rapid con- quests. The cavalry are vain of their uniform, but they are vainer still of their success with women. Nevertheless, the officer's love was a genuine passion that will seem great to many a young heart. He loved the woman because she was virtuous. Her virtues, her reserved grace, the saintliness that awed him, — these were the most precious treasures of his hidden passion. And she, in truth, was worthy of a Platonic love such as you sometimes find like a rare flower on the chronicler's page among the ruin and bloodshed of the Middle Ages. She was worthy to be the secret spring of all a young man's actions ; the source of a love as high and pure as the blue heavens, a love without hope, to which a man clings because it never disappoints him, a love prodigal of uncontrolled delight, especially at an age when hearts are hot and imaginations poignant, and a man's eyes see very clearly.
There are strange, grotesque, inconceivable night effects to be seen in Paris ; you cannot think, unless you have amused yourself with watching these, how fan- tastic a woman's shape can grow in the dusk. Some-
The Thirteen 15
times the creature whom you follow by accident or design seems graceful and slender j sometimes a glimpse of a stocking, if it is very white, leads you to think that the outlines beneath are dainty and fine ; a figure, muffled up, it may be, in a shawl or a pelisse, develops young luxuriant curves in the shadows ; and as a last touch, the uncertain light from a shop-window or a street lamp lends the stranger a fleeting halo, an illu- sion which stirs and kindles imagination to go beyond the truth. And then, the senses are stirred, colour and life is put into everything, the woman is transfigured ; her outward form grows fairer ; there are moments when she is a woman no longer, she is an evil spirit, a will-of-the-wisp, drawing you further and further by a glowing magnetism until you reach — some decent dwelling, and the poor housewife, terrified by your menacing approach, and quaking at the sound of a man's boots, promptly shuts the door in your face without giving you so much as a glance.
Suddenly the flickering light from a shoemaker's window fell across the woman in front ; it struck just across the hollow of the back. Ah ! surely those curves belonged to Her only among women ! Who else knew that secret of chaste movement which all innocently brings the beauty of the most attractive shape into relief.
It was the same shawl and velvet bonnet that she wore in the morning. Not a speck on her grey stock- ings ; not a trace of mud on her shoes. The shawl clung tightly about the outlines of her bust, vaguely moulding its exquisite contours ; but the young man had seen those white shoulders in the ballroom, and he knew what a wealth of beauty was hidden beneath the shawl.
An intelligent observer can guess by the way in which a Parisienne wraps her shawl about her shoulders, by her manner of lifting her foot, on what mysterious
1 6 The Thirteen
errand she is bent. There is an indescribable tremor and hghtness about her and her movements j she seems to weigh less, she walks on and on, or rather she threads her way like a spinning star, flitting, borne along by a thought, which the folds of her dress, the flutter of her skirts, betray.
The young man quickened his pace, passed, and turned
his head to look at her Presto ! She had disappeared
down an entry, a wicket with a bell attached slammed and tinkled after her. He turned back and caught sight of her as she climbed the staircase at the end of the passage, not without obsequious greetings on the part of an old portress below. It was a crooked staircase, the lamplight fell full on the lowest steps, up which the lady sprang lightly and briskly, as an impatient woman might do.
' Why impatient ? ' he asked himself, as he went back to plant himself against the opposite wall. He gazed up, luckless wight, watching every story as narrowly as if he were a detective on the track of a conspirator.
It was a house like thousands of others in Paris, mean, commonplace, narrow, dingy, with three win- dows on each of the four floors. The shop and the entre-sol belonged to the shoemaker. The first-floor shutters were closed. Whither had the lady gone ? He fancied that he heard the jingling of a door bell on the second floor. And, in fact, a light began to move in a room above, with two brightly illuminated windows, and presently appeared in a third window, hitherto in darkness, which seemed to belong to the parlour or dining-room. In a moment the , vague shadow of a woman's bonnet appeared on the ceiling, the door was closed, the first room relegated to darkness, and the two further windows shone red as before. Just then a voice cried, '■Look out!'' and something struck against the young man's shoulder.
' You don't seem to mind in the least what you are
The Thirteen 17
about,' said the gruff voice. It was a workman, carry- ing a long plank on his shoulder. He went by. The man migiit have been sent as a warning by Providence to ask the prying inquirer, ' What are you meddling for ? Mind your own business, and leave Parisiennes to their own little affairs.'
The officer folded his arms ; and being out of sight of every one, he allowed two angry tears to roll down his cheeks. The sight of these shadows moving across the windows was painful to him ; he looked away up the Rue des Vieux-Augustins, and saw a hackney cab drawn up under a blind wall, at a distance from any house door or shop window.
Is it she ? Or is it not ? Life or death for a lover. And the lover waited in suspense for an age of twenty minutes. Then she came downstairs, and he knew past mistake that this was the woman whom he loved in his secret soul. Yet even now he tried to doubt. The fair stranger went to the cab and stepped into it.
*The house is always there,' thought he; 'I can search it at any time ; ' so he ran after the cab to make quite certain of the lady. Any remaining doubt was soon removed.
The vehicle stopped before a flower shop in the Rue de Richelieu, close to the Rue de Menars. The lady alighted, entered the shop, sent out the fare to the cab- man, and chose some marabouts. Feather plumes for that black hair of hers, with her dark beauty ! She brought the feathers close to her face to judge of the effect. The officer fancied he could hear the shop- woman speaking.
' Nothing more becoming, madam, to a dark com- plexion ; there is someting rather too hard about the contours of a brunette ; the marabouts impart just the fluffy touch which is wanting. Her Grace the Duchesse de Langeais says that the feathers lend something vague and Ossianic, and a great distinction to a face.'
B
1 8 The Thirteen
' Well, send them to me at once.'
With that the lady tripped away round the corner into the Rue de Menars and entered her own house. The door closed upon her, and the young lover, his hopes lost, and double misfortune, his cherished beliefs lost too, went through Paris like a drunken man, till before long he found himself at his own door, with no very clear knowledge how he came there. He flung himself into an easy-chair, rested his feet on the fire- dogs, and sat, with his head in his hands, while his soaked boots first dried and then scorched on the bars. It was a dreadful hour for him ; he had come to one of those crises in a man's life when character is modified ; and the course of action of the best of men depends upon the first lucky or unlucky step that he chances to take ; upon Providence or Fate, whichever you choose.
He came of a good family, not that their nobility was of very ancient date ; but there are so few old houses left in these days, that any young man comes of an old family. One of his ancestors had purchased the post of Councillor to the Parliament of Paris, and in course of time became President. His sons, with a fine fortune apiece, had entered the King's service, made good marriages, and arrived at Court. Then came the Revolution and swept them all away. One of them, however, an old and stubborn dowager, who had no mind to emigrate, remained in Paris, was put in prison, and lay there in danger of her life till the 9th Ther- midor saved her, and finally she recovered her property. Afterwards, at an auspicious moment in 1804, she sent for her grandson Auguste de Maulincour, sole surviving scion of the Carbonnons de Maulincourt, and in the characters of mother, noble, and self-willed dowager brought him up with treble care.
At a later day, after the Restoration, Auguste de Maulincour, aged eighteen, entered the Maison rouge^ followed the Princes to Ghent, received a commission in
The Thirteen 19
the Guards, and at three-and-twenty was a major in a cavalry regiment — a superb position which he owed to his grandmother. And indeed, in spite of her age, the old lady knew her way at Court remarkably well.
This twofold biography, with some variations, is substantially the history of every family of emigres, when blessed with debts and possessions, dowagers and tact.
Mme. la Baronne de Alaulincourt had a friend, the elderly Vidame de Pamiers, a sometime Commander of the Order of Malta. It was an eternal friendship of the kind that grows out of other ties formed sixty years ago, a friendship which nothing can destroy, because down in the depths of it lie secrets of the hearts of man and woman. These, if one had the time, would be well worth guessing ; but such secrets, condensed into a score of lines, lose their savour ; they should furnish forth instead some four volumes that might prove as inter- esting as Le Doyen de Killer ine — a work which young men are wont to discuss and criticise and leave unread.
Auguste de Maulincour was connected, therefore, with the Faubourg Saint-Germain through his grand- mother and the Vidame ; and with a name that dated two centuries back, he could assume the airs and opinions of others who traced their descent from Clovis. Tall, pale, slender, and delicate-looking, a man of honour whose courage, moreover, was undoubted (for he had fought duels without hesitation for the least thing in life) — he had never yet been on a field of battle, and wore the Cross of the Legion of Honour at his buttonhole. He represented, as you see, one of the mistakes of the Restoration, perhaps one of its more pardonable mistakes.
The young manhood of the Restoration period was unlike the youth of any other epoch, in that it was placed between memories of the Empire on the one hand, and of exile on the other ; between the old tradi-
20 The Thirteen
tions of the Court and the conscientious bourgeois system of training for appointments ; between bigotry and fancy dress balls ; between a Louis xviii., who saw nothing but the present moment, and a Charles x., who looked too far ahead. The young generation was always halting between two political creeds ; blind and yet clairvoyant, bound to respect the will of the King, knowing the while that the Crown was entering on a mistaken policy. The older men counted the younger as naught, and jealously kept the reins of govern- ment in their enfeebled hands at a time when the Monarchy might have been saved by their withdrawal and the accession of that young France at whom the old-fashioned doctrinaires and emigres of the Restora- tion are still pleased to laugh.
Auguste de Maulincour was one victim of the ideas that weighed upon the youth of those days. It was in this wise. The Vidame de Pamiers, even at the age of sixty-seven, was still a very lively personage, who had both seen and lived a great deal. He told a story well, he was a man of honour and gallantry, but so far as women were concerned he held the most detestable opinions. He fell in love, but he did not respect women. Women's honour, women's sentiments ? Fiddle-de-dee ! folly and make-believe. In the company of women he believed in them, did this ci-devant 'monster'; he brought out their merits, he never contradicted a lady. But among friends, when women were in ques- tion, the Vidame laid it down as an axiom that the whole duty of a young man was to deceive women and to carry on several intrigues at once ; and that when a young man attempted to meddle with affairs of State, he made a gross mistake.
It is vexatious to be obliged to sketch such a hack- neyed character. Where has he not appeared ? Is he not literally almost as worn out as the Imperial Grenadier ? But over M. de Maulincour the Vidame
The Thirteen 21
exercised an influence which must be recorded ; he was a moralist after his own fashion, and he used to try to convert the young man to the doctrines of the great age of gallantry.
As for the dowager, she was a tender, pious woman, placed between her Vidame and God j a pattern of grace and sweetness, but none the less endowed with a persistence which never went beyond the bounds of good taste, and always triumphed in the end. She had tried to preserve her grandson in all the fair illusions of life ; she had brought him up on the best principles ; she had given him all her own delicacy of feeling, and had made a diffident man of him, and to all appearance an absolute fool. His boy's sensibility, untouched by con- tact with the world, had met with no rubs without ; so modest, so keenly sensitive was it, that actions and maxims to which the world attaches no importance o-rieved him sorely. He felt ashamed of his sensitive- ness, hid it beneath a show of assurance, and suffered in silence, laughing in company at things which he alone in his secret heart admired. And therefore he was mistaken in his choice ; for by a common freak of Fate he, the man of mild melancholy, who saw love in its spiritual aspects, must needs fall in love with a woman who de- tested German sensiblerie. He began to distrust himself. He grew moody, hugged himself on his troubles, and made moan because he was not understood. And then — since we always desire a thing more vehemently because it is hard to win — he continued to worship women with the ingenious tenderness and feline delicacy of which they possess the secret; perhaps, too, they prefer to keep the monopoly of it. And, indeed, though women complain that men love amiss, they have very little taste for the semi-feminine nature in man. Their whole superiority consists in making the man believe that he is their inferior in love ; for which reason they are quite ready to discard a lover when he is experienced
22 The Thirteen
enough to rob them of the fears in which they choose to deck themselves, to relieve them of the delicious tor- ments of feigned jealousy, the troubles of disappointed hopes and vain suspense, and the v^^hole train of dear feminine miseries, in short. Women hold Grandisons in abhorrence. What is more contrary to their nature than a peaceful and perfect love ? They must have emotions. Bliss w^ithout storms for them is not bliss at all. A soul great enough to bring the Infinite into love is as uncommon among w^omen as genius among men. A great passion is as rare as a masterpiece. Outside this love there lies nothing but arrangements and passing excitations, contemptible, like all petty things.
In the midst of the secret disasters of his heart, v/hile he vv^as seeking some one who should understand him (that quest, by the way, is the lover's folly of our time), Auguste found a perfect woman — a woman with that indescribable touch of sacredness and holiness which inspires such reverence that love needs all the support of a long intimacy to declare itself. He found her in a circle as far as possible from his own, in the second sphere of that financial world in which great capitalists take the first place.
Then Auguste gave himself up wholly to the bliss of the most moving and profound of passions j a purely contemplative love — a love made up of uncounted repressed longings, of shades of passion so vague, so deep, so fugitive, so vivid, that it is hard to find a comparison for them ; they are like sweet scents, or sunlight, or cloud shadows, like all things that shine forth for a moment in the outer world to vanish, revive, and die, and leave a long wake of emotion in the heart. When a man is young enough to conceive melancholy and far-off hopes, to see in woman something more than a woman, can any greater happiness befall him than this — of loving so well that the mere contact of a white
The Thirteen 23
glove, the light touch of a woman's hair, the sound of a voice, the chance of one look, fills him with a joy out- passing a fortunate lover's ecstasy of possession ? And for this reason, none but slighted, shy, unattractive, unhappy men and women, unknown lovers, know all that there is in the sound of the voice of the one whom they love. It is because those fire-laden vibrations of the air have their source and origin in the soul itself that they bring hearts into communication with such violence, such lucid thought transference. So little misleading are they, that a single modulation is often a revelation in itself. What enchantment is poured forth upon a poet's heart by the musical resonance of a low voice ! What freshness it spreads through his soul, what visions it summons up ! Love is in the voice before the eyes make confession.
Auguste, a poet after the manner of lovers — for there are poets who feel and poets who express, and the former are the happier — Auguste had known the sweetness of all these early joys, so far-reaching, so abundant. She was the possessor of such an entrancing voice as the most guileful of women might covet, that she might deceive others at her pleasure ; hers were those silver notes, low only to the ear, that peal aloud through the heart, soothing the tumult and unrest that they stir.
And this was the woman who had gone at night to the Rue Soly in the neighbourhood of the Rue Pagevin! He had seen her stealing into a house of ill-fame ; and that most magnificent of passions had been brought low. The Vidame's reasoning triumphed.
* If she is false to her husband, we will both avenge ourselves,' said Auguste. And there was still love left in that if. The suspended judgment of Cartesian philo- sophy is a homage always due to virtue. The clocks struck ten ; and Auguste de MauHncour bethought himself that the woman he loved must surely be going to a dance at a house that he knew. He dressed, went
24 The Thirteen
thither, and made a furtive survey of the rooms. Mme. de Nucingen, seeing him thus intent, came to speak to him.
* You are looking for Mme. Jules ; she has not come yet.'
' Good evening, dear,' said a voice.
Mme. de Nucingen and Auguste both turned. There stood Mme. Jules dressed in white, simple and noble, wearing those very feathers which the Baron had watched her choose in the shop. That voice of Love went to his heart. If he had only known how to assert the slightest claim to be jealous of the woman before him, he would have turned her to stone then and there with the exclamation, ' Rue Soly ! ' But he, a stranger, might have repeated those words a hundred times in Mme. Jules's ear, and she in astonishment would merely aslc him what he meant. He stared at her with dazed eyes.
Ill-natured men who scofFat everything may, perhaps, find it highly amusing to discover a woman's secret, to know that her chastity is a lie, that there are strange thoughts in the depths beneath the quiet surface, and an ugly tragedy behind the pure forehead. But there are others, no doubt, who are saddened at heart by it ; and many of the scoffers, when at home and alone with themselves, curse the world, and despise such a woman. This was how Auguste de Maulincour felt as he confronted Mme. Jules. It was a strange position. He and this woman exchanged a few words seven or eight times in a season — that was all ; yet he was charging her with stolen pleasure of which she knew nothing, and pronouncing judgment without telling her of the accusation.
Many a young man has done the same and gone home broken-hearted because all is over between him and some woman whom he once worshipped in his heart, and now scorns in his inmost soul. Then follow solilo-
The Thirteen 25
quies heard of none, spoken to the walls of some lonely refuge ; storms raised and quieted in the heart's depths, wonderful scenes of man's inner life which still await their painter.
M. Jules Desmarets made the round of the rooms, while his wife took a seat. But she seemed embarrassed in some way ; and as she chatted with her neighbour, she stole a glance now and again at her husband. M. Jules Desmarets was the Baron de Nucingen's stock- broker. And now for the history of the husband and wife.
M. Desmarets, five years before his marriage, was a clerk in a stockbroker's office ; he had nothing in the world but his slender salary. But he was one of those men whom misfortune teaches to know life in a very few lessons, men who strike out their line and keep to it persistently as an insect ; like other obstinate creatures he could sham death if anything stopped him, and weary out the patience of opponents by the patience of the woodlouse. Young as he was, he possessed all the republican virtues of the poor ; he was sober, he never wasted his time, he set his face against pleasure. He was waiting. Nature, besides, had given him the immense advantage of a prepossessing exterior. His calm, pure forehead, the outlines of his placid yet expressive features, the simplicity of his manners, and everything about him, told of a hard-working, uncom- plaining existence, of the high personal dignity which inspires awe in others, and of that quiet nobleness of spirit which is equal to all situations. His modesty impressed those who knew him with a certain respect.
It was a solitary life, however, that he led in the midst of Paris. Society he saw only by glimpses during the few minutes spent on holidays in his employer's drawing-room. And in him, as in most men who lead such a life, there were astonishing depths of passion, inward forces too great to be brought into play by small
26 The Thirteen
occasions. His narrow means compelled him to live like an ascetic, and he subdued his fancies with hard work. After growing pale over figures, he sought relaxation in a dogged effort to acquire the wider knowledge so necessary to any man that would make his mark in these days, whether in business, at the bar, in politics or letters. The one reef in the careers of these finer natures is their very honesty. They come across some penniless girl, fall in love, and marry her, and after- wards wear out their lives in the struggle for existence, with want on the one hand, love on the other. House- keeping bills will extinguish the loftiest ambition. Jules Desmarets went straight ahead upon that reef.
One evening, at his employer's house, he met a young lady of the rarest beauty. Love rapidly made such havoc as a passion can make in a lonely and slighted heart, when an unhappy creature's affections have been starved, and the fair hours of youth consumed by continual work. So certain are they to love in earnest, so swiftly does their whole being centre itself upon the woman to whom they are attracted, that when she is present they are conscious of exquisite sensations, in none of which she shares. This is the most flattering form of egoism for the woman who can see, beneath the apparent immobility of passion, the feeling stirred in depths so remote that it is long before it reappears at the human surface. Such unfortunates as these are anchorites in the heart of Paris ; they know all the joys of anchorites ; sometimes, too, they may yield to their temptations ; but it still more frequently happens that they are thwarted, betrayed, and misinterpreted ; and only very seldom are they per- mitted to gather the sweet fruits of the love that seems to them like a power dropped down from heaven.
A smile from his wife, a mere modulation of her voice, was enough to give Jules Desmarets a conception of the infinite of love. Happily the concentrated fire of passion within revealed itself artlessly to the woman for
The Thirteen 27
whom it burned. And these two human creatures loved each other devoutly. To sum up all in a few words, they took each other by the hand without a blush, and went through the world together as two children, brother and sister, might pass through a crowd that makes way admiringly for them.
The young lady was in the odious position in which selfishness places some children at their birth. She had no recognised status ; her name, Clemence, and her age were attested, not by a certificate of birth, but by a declaration made before a notary. As to her fortune, it was trifling. Jules Desmarets, hearing these bad tidings, was the happiest of men. If Clemence had belonged to some wealthy family, he would have despaired ; but she was a poor love-child, the offspring of a dark, illicit passion. They were married. This was the beginning of a series of pieces of good fortune for Jules. Every- body envied him his luck ; jealous tongues alleged that he succeeded by sheer good fortune, and left his merits and ability out of account,
Clemence's mother, nominally her godmother, bade Jules purchase a stockbroker's connection a few days after the wedding, promising to secure all the necessary capital. Such connections were still to be bought at moderate prices. On thi^ great lady's recommendation, a wealthy capitalist made proposals on the most favour- able terms to Jules Desmarets that evening in the stockbroker's own drawing-room, lent him money enough to exploit his business, and by the next day the fortunate clerk had bought his employer's connec- tion.
In four years Jules Desmarets was one of the wealthiest members of his fraternity. Important clients had been added to the number of those left him by his predecessor. He inspired unbounded confidence ; and from the manner in which business came to him, it was impossible but that he should recognise some occult
2 8 The Thirteen
influence due to his wife's mother, or, as he believed, to the mysterious protection of Providence.
Three years after the marriage Clemence lost her godmother. By that time M. Jules, so called to dis- tinguish him from his elder brother, whom he had established in Paris as a notary, was in receipt of an income of two hundred thousand livres. There was not such another happy couple in Paris. A five years' course of such unwonted love had been troubled but once by a slander, for which M. Jules took a signal vengeance. One of his old associates said that M. Jules owed his success to his wife, and that influence in high places had been dearly bought. The inventor of the slander was killed in the duel. A passionate love so deeply rooted that it stood the test of marriage was much admired in society, though some women were displeased by it. It was pretty to see them together; they were respected, and made much of on all sides. M. and Mme. Jules were really popular, perhaps because there is no pleasanter sight than happy love; but they never stayed long in crowded rooms, and escaped to their nest as soon as they could, like two strayed doves.
The nest, however, was a fine large house in the Rue de Menars, in which artistic feeling tempered the luxury which the city man is always supposed to display. Here, also, M. and Mme. Jules entertained splendidly. Social duties were somewhat irksome to them ; bur, nevertheless, Jules Desmarets submitted to such exac- tions, knowing that sooner or later a family will need acquaintances. He and his wife lived like plants in a hothouse in a stormy world. With very natural delicacy, Jules carefully kept the slander from his wife's knowledge as well as the death of the man that had almost troubled their felicity.
Mme. Jules, with her artistic temper and refinement, had inclinations towards luxury. In spite of the terrible lesson of the duel, there were incautious women to hint
The Thirteen 29
in whispers that Mme. Jules must often be pinched for money. Her husband allowed her twenty thousand francs for her dress and pocket-money, but this could not possibly be enough, they said, for her expenses. And, indeed, she was often more daintily dressed in her own home than in other people's houses. She only cared to adorn herself for her husband's eyes, trying in this way to prove to him that for her he was all the world. This was love indeed, pure love, and more than this, it was happy as clandestine love sanctioned by the world can be. M. Jules was still his wife's lover, and more in love every day. Everything in his wife, even her caprices, made him happy. When she had no new fancy to gratify, he felt as much disturbed as if this had been a symptom of bad health.
It was against this passion that Auguste de Maulin- cour, for his misfortune, had dashed himself. He loved Clemence de Maulincourt to distraction. And yet even with a supreme passion in his heart he was not ridiculous, and he lived the regular garrison life, yet even with a glass of champagne in his hand he wore an abstracted air. His was the quiet scorn of existence, the clouded countenance worn alike on various pretexts by jaded spirits, by men but little satisfied with the hollowness of their lives, and by the victims of pulmonary disease or heart troubles. A hopeless love or a distaste for exist- ence constitutes a sort of social position nowadays.
To take a queen's heart by storm were perhaps a more hopeful enterprise than a madly-conceived passion for a woman happily married. Auguste de Maulincour had sufficient excuse for his gravity and dejection. A queen has always the vanity of her power ; her height above her lover places her at a disadvantage ; but a well- principled bourgeoise, like a hedgehog or an oyster, is encompassed about with awkward defences.
At this particular moment Auguste stood near his undeclared lady. She, certainly, was incapable of carry-
30 The Thirteen
ing on a double intrigue. There sat Mme. Jules in childlike composure, the least guileful of women, gentle, full of queenly serenity. What depths can there be in human nature ? The Baron, before addressing her, kept his eyes on husband and wife in turn. What reflections did he not make ! In a minute's space he recomposed a second version of Young's Night Thoughts. And yet — the rooms were filled with dance music, and the light of hundreds of wax tapers streamed down upon them. It was a banker's ball, one of those insolent fetes by which the world of dull gold attempted to rival that other world of gilded rank and ormolu, the world where the high-born Faubourg Saint-Germain was laughing yet, all unconscious that a day was approach- ing when capitalists would invade the Luxembourg and seat a king on the throne. Conspiracy used to dance in those days, giving as little thought to future bankruptcies of Power as to failures ahead in the financial world. M. le Baron de Nucingen's gilded salons wore that look of animation which a fete in Paris is wont to wear ; there is gaiety, at any rate, on the surface. The wit of the cleverer men infects the fools, while the beaming expression characteristic of the latter spreads over the countenances of their superiors in intellect ; and the whole room is brightened by the exchange. But gaiety in Paris is always a little like a display of fire- works ; pleasure, coquetry, and wit all coruscate, and then die out like spent rockets. To-morrow morning, wit, coquetry, and pleasure are put off and forgotten.
* Heigho ! ' thought Auguste, as he came to a conclu- sion, 'are women really after all as the Vidame sees them ? Certain it is that of all the women dancing here to-night, not one seems so irreproachable as Mme. Jules. And Mme. Jules goes to the Rue Soly ! '
The Rue Soly was like a disease, the mere word made his heart contract.
' Do you never dance, madame ? ' he began.
The Thirteen 31
* This is the third time that you have asked me that question this winter,' she answered, smiHng.
' But perhaps you have never given me an answer.'
' That is true.'
' I knew quite well that you were false, like all
women '
iMme. Jules laughed again.
' Listen to me, monsieur. If I told you my real reason for not dancing, it would seem ridiculous to you. There is no insincerity, I think, in declining to give private reasons at which people usually laugh.'
' Any confidence, madame, impHes a degree of friend- ship of which I, no doubt, am unworthy. But it is impossible that you should have any but noble secrets, and can you think me capable of irreverent jesting ? '
' Yes,' she said. ' You, like the rest of men, laugh at our purest feelings and misconstrue them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have a right to love my husband before all the world ; I am proud of it, I tell you ; and if you laugh at me when I say that I never dance with any one else, I shall have the worst opinion of your heart.'
' Have you never danced with any one but your hus- band since your marriage ? '
' No, monsieur. I have leant on no other arm, no one else has come very close to me.'
' Has not your doctor so much as felt your pulse ? ' 'Ah, well, now you are laughing.' ' No, madame, I admire you because I can under- stand.— But you suffer others to hear your voice, to see you, to . . . In short, you permit our eyes to rest
admiringly on you '
* Ah, these things trouble me,' she broke in. 'If it were possible for husband and wife to live like lover and
mistress, I would have it so ; for in that case '
' In that case, how came you to be out, on foot and disguised, a few hours ago, in the Rue Soly ? '
' What is the Rue Soly ? ' asked she, not a trace of
32 The Thirteen
emotion in her clear voice, not the faintest quiver in her features. She did not redden, she was quite composed.
' What ! You did not go up the stairs to the second floor in a house at the corner of the Rue des Vieux- Augustins and the Rue Soly ? You had not a cab wait- ing for you ten paces away ? and you did not return to a shop in the Rue de Richelieu, where you chose the marabouts in your hair at this moment ? '
' I did not leave my house this evening.' She told the lie with an imperturbable laughing face j she fanned herself as she spoke ; but any one who could have laid a hand on her girdle at the back, might perhaps have felt that it was damp. Auguste bethought himself of the Vidame's teaching.
' Then it was some one extraordinarily like you,' he rejoined with an air of belief.
' Sir,' said she, ' if you are capable of following a woman about to detect her secrets, you will permit me to tell you that such a thing is wrong, very wrong, and I do you the honour of declining to believe it of you.'
The Baron turned away, took up his position before the hearth, and seemed thoughtful. He bent his head, but his eyes were fixed stealthily upon Mme. Jules. She had forgotten the mirrors on the walls, and glanced towards him two or three times with an evident dread in her eyes. Then she beckoned to her husband, laid a hand upon his arm, and rose to go through the rooms. As she passed M. de Maulincour, who was talking with a friend, he said aloud as if in answer to a question —
' A woman that certainly will not sleep quietly to-night '
Mme. Jules stopped, flung him a crushing, disdainful glance, and walked away, all unaware that one more such glance, if her husband chanced to see it, would imperil her happiness and the lives of two men.
Auguste, consumed with rage smouldering in the depths of his soul, soon afterwards left the room, vowing
The Thirteen 33
to get to the bottom of this intrigue. He looked round for Mme. Jules before he went, but she had disappeared. Here were the elements of a tragedy suddenly put into a young head, an eminently romantic head, as is generally the case with those who have not realised their dreamed- of love to the full. He adored Mme. Jules in a new aspect ; he loved her with the fury of jealousy, with the agonised frenzy of despair. The woman was false to her husband ; she had come down to the ordinary level. Auguste might give himself up to all the felicity of success, imagination opened out for him the vast field of the transports of possession. In short, if he had lost an angel, he had found the most tantalising of devils. He lay down to build castles in the air, and to justify Mme. Jules. Some errand of charity had brought her there, he told himself, but he did not beUeve it. He made up his mind to devote himself entirely to the in- vestigation of the causes and motives involved in this mysteriously hidden knot. It was a romance to read ; or rather it was a play to act, and he was cast for a part in it.
It is a very fine thing to play the detective for one's own ends and for passion's sake. Is it not an honest man's chance of enjoying the amusements of the thief? Still, you must be prepared to boil with helpless rage, to growl with impatience, to stand in mud till your feet are frozen, to shiver and burn and choke down false hopes. You must follow up any indication to an end unknown ; and miss your chance, storm, improvise lamentations and dithyrambs for your own benefit, and utter insensate ex- clamations before some harmless passer-by, who stares back at you in amazement. You take to your heels and overturn good souls with their apple-baskets, you wait and hang about under a window, you make guesses by the running hundred. Still it is sport, and Parisian sport ; sport with all its accessories save dogs, and guns, and tally-ho. Nothing, except some moments in the
C
34 The Thirteen
gambler's life, can compare with it. A man's heart must needs be swelling with love and revenge before he will lie in ambush ready to spring like a tiger on his prey ; before he can find enjoyment in watching all that goes on in the quarter ; for interest of many kinds abounds in Paris without the added pleasure of stalking game. How should one soul suffice a man for all this ? What is it but a life made up of a thousand passions, a thousand feelings, and thoughts ?
Auguste de Maulincour flung himself heart and soul into this feverish life, because he felt all its troubles and joys. He went about Paris in disguise ; he watched every corner of the Rue Pagevin and the Rue des Vieux- Augustins. He ran like a lamplighter from the Rue de Menars to the Rue Soly, and back again from the Rue Soly to the Rue de Menars, all unconscious of the punishment or the reward in store for so many pains, such measures, such shifts ! And even so, he had not yet reached the degree of impatience which gnaws the vitals and brings the sweat to a main's brow ; he hung about in hope. It occurred to him that Mme. Jules would scarcely risk another visit for some few days after detection. So he devoted those first few days to an initiation into the mysteries of the street. Being but a novice in the craft, he did not dare to go to the house itself and question the porter and the shoemaker ; but he had hopes of securing a post of observation in rooms exactly opposite that inscrutable second floor. He made a careful survey of the ground ; he was trying to reconcile caution with impatience, his love, and the secret.
By the beginning of March he was in the midst of his preparations for making a great decisive move, when official duties summoned him from his chessboard one afternoon about four o'clock, after an assiduous course of sentry-duty, for which he was not a whit the wiser. In the Rue Coquilliere he was caught by one of the
The Thirteen
35
heavy showers which swell the stream in the kennels in a moment, while every drop falling into the roadside puddles, raises a bell-shaped splash. A foot-passenger in such a predicament is driven to take refuge in a shop or cafe if he can afford to pay for shelter ; or, at urgent need, to hurry into some entry, the asylum of the poor and shabbily dressed. How is it that as yet no French painter has tried to give us that characteristic group, a crowd of Parisians weatherbound under an archway ? Where will you find better material for a picture ?
To begin with, is there not the pensive or philo- sophical pedestrian who finds a pleasure in watching the slantwise streaks of rain in the air against the grey back- ground of sky — a fine chased work something like the whimsical shapes taken by spun glass? Or he looks up at the whirlpools of white water, blown by the wind like a luminous dust over the house-roofs, or at the fitful discharges of the wet, foaming stack-pipes. There are, in fact, a thousand nothings to wonder at, and the idlers are studying them with keen relish although the owner of the premises treats them to occasional thumps from the broom-handle.
There is the chatty person who grumbles and talks with the porter's wife, while she rests on her broom as a grenadier leans on his gun ; there is the poverty-stricken individual glued fantastically to the wall — he has nothing to dread from such contact; for his rags, they are already so well acquainted with the street ; there is the man of education who studies, spells out, qr even reads the advertisements, and never gets to the end of them ; there is the humorous person who laughs at mud- bedraggled women, and makes eyes at the people in the windows opposite ; there is the mute refugee that scans every casement on every floor, and the working man or woman with a mallet or a bundle, as the case may be, translating the shower into probable losses or gains. Then there is the amiable man, who bounces in like a
36
The Thirteen
bombshell with an ' Oh ! what weather, gentlemen ! ' and raises his hat to the company ; and, finally, there is your true Parisian bourgeois, a weatherwise citizen who never comes out without his umbrella ; he knew before- hand that it was going to rain, but he came out in spite of his wife's advice, and now he is sitting in the porter's chair.
Each member of this chance assembled group watches the sky in his own characteristic fashion, and then skips away for fear of splashing his boots, or goes because he is in a hurry and sees other citizens walking past in spite of wind and weather, or because the courtyard is damp and fit to give you your death of cold — the selvedge, as the saying goes, being worse than the cloth. Every one has his own reasons for going, until no one is left but the prudent pedestrian, who waits to see a few blue chinks among the clouds before he goes on his way.
M. de Maulincour, therefore, took refuge with a tribe of foot-passengers under the porch of an old-fashioned house with a courtyard not unlike a gigantic chimney shaft. There were so many stories rising to a height on all sides, and the four plastered walls, covered with greenish stains and saltpetre ooze, were traversed by such a multitude of gutters and spouts, that they would have put you in mind of the cascades of St. Cloud. From every direction came the sound of falling water ; it foamed, splashed, and gurgled ; it gushed forth in streams, or black, or white, or blue, or green ; it hissed and gathered volume under the broom wielded by the porter's wife, a toothless crone of great experience in storms, who seemed to bless the waters as she swept down a host of odds and ends into the street. A curious inventory of the rubbish would have told vou a good deal about the lives and habits of the lodgers on every floor. There were tea-leaves, cuttings of chintz, discoloured and spoilt petals of artificial flowers, vegetable refuse, paper and scraps of metal. Every stroke of the old woman's broom laid
The Thirteen 37
bare the heart of the gutter, that black channel paved with chessboard squares, on which every porter wages desperate war. The luckless lover gazed intently at this picture, one of the many thousands which bust- ling Paris composes every day ; but he saw it all with unseeing eyes, until he looked up and found himself face to face with a man that had just come in.
This man was, at any rate to all appearance, a beggar. Not a Parisian beggar, that human creature for which human speech has found no name as yet ; but a novel type, a beggar cast in some different mould, and apart from all the associations called up by that word. The stranger was not by any means remarkable for that peculiarly Parisian character, which frequently startles us in those unfortunates whom Charlet drew, and often enough with a rare felicity ; the Paris beggar with the coarse face plastered with mud, the red bulbous nose, the toothless but menacing mouth, the eyes lighted up by a profound intelligence which seems out of place — a servile, terrific figure. Some of the impudent vagabonds have mottled, chapped, and veined countenances, rugged foreheads, and thin, dirty locks that put you in mind of a worn-out wig lying in the gutter. Jolly in their degradation and degraded amid their jollity, debauchery has set its unmistakable mark on them, they hurl their silence at you like a reproach, their attitude expresses appalling thoughts. They are ruthless, are these dwellers between beggary and crime ; they circle at a safe dis- tance round the gallows, steering clear of the law in the midst of vice, and vicious within the bounds of law. While they often provoke a smile, they set you thinking.
One, for instance, represents stunted civilisation ; he comprehends it all, thieves' honour, patriotism, and manhood, with the perverse ingenuity of the common criminal and the subtlety of kid-gloved rascality. Another is resigned to his lot ; he is past master in
38 The Thirteen
mimicry, but a dull creature. None of them are exempt from passing fancies for work and thrift ; but the social machinery thrusts them down into their filth, with- out caring to discover whether there may not be poets, or great men, or brave men, or a whole wonderful organisation among the beggars in the streets, those gipsies of Paris. Like all masses of men who have suffered, the beggar tribes are supremely good and superlatively wicked ; they are accustomed to endure nameless ills, and a fatal power keeps them on a level with the mud of the streets. And every one of them has a dream, a hope, a happiness of his own, which takes the shape of gambling, or the lottery, or drink.
There was nothing of this strange life about the man who was propping himself, very much at his ease, against the wall opposite M. de Maulincour ; he looked like a fancy portrait sketched by an ingenious artist on the back of some canvas returned to the studio.
He was lank and lean ; his leaden-hued visage revealed glacial depths of thought ; his ironical bearing, and a dark look, which plainly conveyed his claim to treat every man as his equal, dried up any feeling of compassion in the hearts of the curious. His complexion was a dingy white ; his wrinkled, hairless head bore a vague resem- blance to a block of granite. A few grizzled, lank locks on either side of his face straggled over the collar of a filthy greatcoat buttoned up to the chin. There was something of a Voltaire about him, something too of a Don Quixote ; melancholy, scornful, sarcastic, full of philosophical ideas, but half insane. Apparently he wore no shirt. His beard was long. His shabby black cravat was so slit and worn, that it left his neck on exhibition, and a protuberant, deeply furrowed throat, on which the thick veins stood out like cords. There were wide, dark bruised circles about his eyes. He must have been at least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His shoes were full of holes, and
The Thirteen 39
trodden down at the heels. A pair of much mended blue trousers, covered with a kind of pale fluff, added to the squalor of his appearance.
Perhaps the man's wet clothes exhaled a nauseous smell ; perhaps at any time he had about him that odour of poverty peculiar to Paris slums — for slums, like offices, vestries, and hospitals, have a special smell, and a stale, fetid, unimaginable reek it is. At any rate, the man's neighbours edged away and left him alone. He glanced round at them, and then at the officer; it was an unmoved, expressionless look, the look for which M. de Talleyrand was so famous, a survey made by lack- lustre eyes with no warmth in them. Such a look is an inscrutable veil beneath which a strong mind can hide deep feeling, and the most accurate calculations as to men, affairs, and events. Not a wrinkle deepened in his countenance. Mouth and forehead were alike im- passive, but his eyes fell, and there was something noble, almost tragic, in their slow movement. A whole drama lay in that droop of the withered eyelids.
The sight of this stoical face started M. de Maulincour upon those musings that begin with some common- place question and wander off into a whole world of ideas before they end. The storm was over and gone. M. de Maulincour saw no more of the man than the skirts of his greatcoat trailing on the kerb-stone ; but as he turned to go, he saw that a letter had just dropped at his feet, and guessed that it belonged to the stranger, for he had noticed that he put a bandana handkerchief back into his pocket. M. de Maulincour picked up the letter to return it to its owner, and unthinkingly read the address — ,
A MOSIEUR.
MosiEUR Ferragusse,
Rue des Grands-Augustins, au coing de la Rue Soly.
Paris.
40 The Thirteen
There was no stamp on the letter, and at sight of the direction M. de Maulincour hesitated to return it ; for there are few passions which will not turn base in the long length. Some presentiment of the opportuneness of the treasure trove crossed the Baron's mind. He would keep the letter, and so acquire a right to enter the mysterious house, never doubting but that the man lived therein. Even now a suspicion, vague as the beginnings of daylight, connected the stranger with Mme. Jules. Jealous lovers will suppose anything ; and it is by this very process of supposing everything and selecting the more probable conjectures that examining magistrates, spies, lovers, and observers get at the truth which they have an interest in discovering.
' Does the letter belong to him ? Is it from Mme. Jules ? '
His uneasy imagination flung a host of questions to him at once, but at the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it follows word for word in the glory of its artless phrases ; it was impossible to add anything to it, and short of omitting the letter itself, nothing could be taken away. It has been necessary, however, to revise the orthography and the punctuation ; for in the ori- ginal there are neither commas nor stops, nor so much as a note of exclamation, a fact that strikes at the root of the system by which modern authors endeavour to render the efFect of the great disasters of every kind of passion : —
* Henry' (so it ran), 'of all the things that I have had to give up for your sake, this is the hardest, that I mayn't give you news of myself. There is a voice that I must obey, which tells me I ought to let you know all the wrong you 've done me. I know beforehand that you are that hardened by vice that you will not stoop to pity me. Your heart must be deaf to all feeling ; is it not deaf to the cry of nature ? Not that it matters much. I am bound to let you know the
The Thirteen 41
degree to which you are to blame, and the horror of the position in which you have put me. You knew how I suffered for my first fall, Henry, yet you could bring me to the same pass again, and leave me in my pain and despair. Yes, I own I used to think you loved and respected me, and that helped me to bear up. And now what is left to me ? I have lost all that I cared most about, all that I lived for, friends, and relations, and character, and all through you. I have given up every- thing for you, and now I have nothing before me but shame and disgrace and, I don't blush to say it, want. It only needed your scorn and hatred to make my misery complete ; and now I have that as well, I shall have courage to carry out my plans. I have made up my mind — it 's for the credit of my family — I shall put an end to my troubles. You must not think hardly of the thing that I am going to do, Henry. It is wicked, I know, but I can help myself. No help, no money, no sweetheart to comfort me — can I live ? No, I can't. What must be, must. So in two days, Henry, two days from now, your Ida will not be worthy of your respect ; but take back the solemn promise I made you, so as I may have an easy conscience, for I shall not be unworthy of your friendship. Oh, Henry, my friend, for I shall never change to you, promise to forgive me for the life I'm going to lead. It is love that gives me courage, and it is love that will keep me right. My heart will be so full of your image, that I shall still be true to you. I pray Heaven on my bended knees not to punish you for all the wrong you have done, for I feel that there is only one thing wanting among my troubles, and that is the pain of knowing that you are unhappy. In spite of my plight, I will not take any help from you. If you had cared about me, I might have taken anything as coming from friendship ; but my soul rises up against a kindness as comes from pity, and I should demean my- self more by taking it than him that offered it. I have
42 The Thirteen
one favour to ask. I don't know how long 1 shall have to stop with Mme. Meynardie, but be generous enough to keep out of my sight there. Your last two visits hurt me so that it was a long time before I got over it ; but I don't mean to go into any particulars of your be- haviour in that respect. You hate me ; the words are written on my heart, and freeze it with cold. Alas ! just when I want all my courage, my wits desert me. Henry dear, before I put this bar between us, let me know for the last time that you respect me still ; write to me, send me an answer, say that you respect me if you don't love me any more. I shall always be able to look you in the face, but I don't ask for a sight of you ; I am so weak, and I love you so, that I don't know what I might do. But, for pity's sake, write me a line at once ; it will give me courage to bear my misery. Farewell, you have brought all my troubles upon me, but you are the one friend that my heart chose, and will never forget.
'Ida.'
This girl's life, her disappointed love, her ill-starred joys, her grief, her dreadful resignation to her lot, the story summed up in so few words, produced a moment's effect upon M. de Maulincour. He asked himself, as he read the obscure but essentially Parisian tragedy written upon the soiled sheet, whether this Ida might not be connected in some way with Mme. Jules; whether the assignation that he chanced to witness that evening was not some charitable effort on her part. Could that aged, poverty-stricken man be Ida's betrayer ? . . . The thing bordered on the marvellous. Amusing himself in a maze of involved and incompatible ideas, the Baron reached the neighbourhood of the Rue Pagevin just in time to see a cab stop at the end of the Rue des Vieux- Augustins nearest the Rue Montmartre. Every cabman on the stand had something to say to the new arrival.
' Can she be in it ? ' he thought.
The Thirteen 43
His heart beat with hot, feverish throbs. He pushed open the wicket with the tinkling bell, but he lowered his head as he entered ; he felt ashamed of himself, a voice in his inmost soul cried, 'Why meddle in this mystery ? '
At the top of a short flight of steps he confronted the old woman.
'M. Ferragus?'
* Don't know the name '
' What ! Doesn't M. Ferragus live here ? '
' No name of the sort in the house.'
' But, my good woman '
'I'm not a "good woman," sir, I am a portress.'
' But, madame, I have a letter here for M. Ferragus.'
' Oh ! if you have a letter, sir,' said she, with a change of tone, ' that is quite another thing. Will you just let me look at your letter ?'
Auguste produced the folded sheet. The old woman shook her head dubiously over it, hesitated, and seemed on the point of leaving her lodge to acquaint the mys- terious Ferragus with this unexpected incident. At last she said, ' Very well, go upstairs, sir. You ought to know your way up '
Without staying to answer a remark which the cun- ning crone possibly meant as a trap, M. de Maulincour bounded up the stairs and rang loudly at the second- floor door. His lover's instinct told him, ''She is here.'
The stranger of the archway, the man who ' had brought Ida's troubles upon her,' answered the door himself, and showed a clean countenance, a flowered gown, a pair of white flannel trousers, and a neat pair of carpet slippers. Mme. Jules's face appeared behind him in the doorway of the inner room ; she grew white, and dropped into a chair.
' What is the matter, madame ? ' exclaimed Auguste, as he sprang towards her.
But Ferragus stretched out an arm and stopped the
44 The Thirteen
young man short with such a well-delivered blow, that Auguste reeled as if an iron bar had struck him on the chest.
' Stand back, sir ! What do you want with us ? You have been prowling about the quarter these five or six days. Perhaps you are a detective ? '
* Are you M. Ferragus ? ' retorted the Baron.
* No, sir.'
' At any rate, it is my duty to return this paper which you dropped under an archway where we both took shelter from the rain.'
As he spoke and held out the letter, he glanced round the room in spite of himself. Ferragus's room was well but plainly furnished. There was a fire in the grate. A table was set, more sumptuously than the man's apparent position and the low rent of the house seemed to warrant. And lastly, he caught a glimpse of a heap of gold coins on a settee just inside the next room, and heard a sound from thence which could only be a woman's sobbing.
'The letter is mine, thank you,' said the stranger, turning round in a way intended to convey the hint that the Baron had better go, and that at once.
Too inquisitive to notice that he himself was being submitted to a thorough scrutiny, Auguste did not see the semi-magnetic glances, the devouring gaze which the stranger turned on him. If he had met those basilisk eyes, he would have seen his danger, but he was too violently in love to think of himself. He raised his hat, went downstairs, and back to his own home. What could a meeting of three such persons as Ida, Ferragus, and Mme. Jules mean ? He might as well have taken up a Chinese puzzle, and tried to fit the odd-shaped bits of wood together without a clue.
But Mme. Jules had seen him ; Mme. Jules went to the house ; Mme. Jules had lied to him. Next day he would call upon her j she would not dare to refuse to
The Thirteen 45
see him ; he was now her accompHce ; he was hand and foot in this shady intrigue. Already he began to play the sultan, and thought how he would summon Mme. Jules to deliver up all her secrets.
Paris was afflicted in those days with a rage for build- ing. If Paris is a monster, it is assuredly of all monsters the most subject to sudden rage. The city takes up with a thousand whimsies. Sometimes Paris begins to build like some great lord with a passion for bricks and mortar ; then the trowel is dropped in an attack of military fever, every one turns out in a National Guard's uniform, and goes through the drill and smokes cigars, but the fit does not last ; martial exercises are suddenly abandoned, and the cigar is thrown away. Then Paris begins to feel low, becomes insolvent, sells its effects in the Place du Chatelet, and files its petition ; but in a few days all is straight again, and the city puts on festival array and dances. One day the city fills hands and mouth with barley sugar, yesterday it bought Papier Weynen ; to-day the monster has the toothache, and plasters every wall with advertisements of Alexiphar- maques^ and to-morrow it will lay in a store of cough lozenges. Paris has the craze of the season or of the month as well as the rage of the day ; and at this particular time everybody was building or pulling down something. What they built or pulled down no one knows to this day, but there was scarce a street in which you did not see erections of scaffolding, poles, planks, and cross bars lashed together at every story. The fragile structures, covered with white plaster dust, quivered under the tread of the Limousin bricklayers and shook with the vibrations of every passing carriage in spite of the pro- tection of wooden hoardings, which people are bound to erect round the monumental buildings that never rise above their foundations. There is a nautical suggestion about the mast-like poles and ladders and rigging and the shouts of the bricklayers.
46 The Thirteen
One of these temporary erections stood not a dozen paces away from the Hotel Maulincour, in front of a house that was being built of blocks of free-stone. Next day, just as the Baron de Maulincour's cab passed by the scatFolding on the way to Mme. Jules, a block two feet square slipped from its rope cradle at the top of the pole, turned a somersault, fell, and killed the man- servant at the back of the vehicle. A cry of terror shook the scaffolding and the bricklayers. One of the two, in peril of his neck, could scarcely cling to the pole ; it seemed that the block struck him in passing. A crowd quickly gathered. The men came down in a body, with shouts and oaths, declaring that M. de Maulincour's cab had shaken their crane. Two inches more, and the stone would have fallen on the Baron's head. It was an event in the quarter. It got into the newspapers.
M. de Maulincour, sure that he had touched nothing, brought an action for damages. The law stepped in. It turned out upon inquiry that a boy with a wooden bath had mounted guard to warn passengers to give the building a wide berth, and with that the affair came to an end. M. de Maulincour must even put up with the loss of his manservant and the fright that he had had. He kept his bed for several days, for he had been bruised by the breakage of the cab, and he was feverish after the shock to his nerves. So there was no visit paid to Mme. Jules.
Ten days later, when he went out of doors for the first time, he drove to the Bois de Boulogne in the now repaired cab. He turned down the Rue de Bourgogne, and had reached the sewer just opposite the Chamber of Deputies, when the axle snapped in the middle. The Baron was driving so fast that the two wheels swerved and met with a shock that must have fractured his skull if it had not been for the hood of the vehicle, and, as it was, he sustained serious injury to the ribs.
The Thirteen 47
So for the second time in ten days he was brought home more dead than alive to the weeping dowager.
This second accident aroused his suspicions. He thought, vaguely however, of Mme. Jules and Fer- ragus ; and by way of clearing up his suspicions, he had the broken axle brought into his bedroom, and sent for his coachbuilder. The man inspected the fracture, and proved two things to M. Maulincour's mind. First, that the axle never came from his establishment, for he made a practice of cutting his initials roughly on every one that he supplied. How this axle had been exchanged for the previous one he was at a loss to explain. And secondly, he found that there was a very ingeniously contrived flaw in the iron bar, a kind of cavity made by a blowpipe while the metal was hot.
* Eh ! M. le Baron, a man had need to be pretty clever to turn out an axle-bar on that pattern ; you could swear it was natural '
M. de Maulincour asked the man to keep his own counsel, and considered that he had had a sufficient warn- ing. The two attempts on his life had been plotted with a skill w^hich showed that his vv^ere no common enemies.
' It is a war of extermination,' said he, turning rest- lessly on his bed, ' a warfare of savages, ambushes, and treachery, a war declared in the name of Mme. Jules. In whose hands is she ? And what power can this Ferragus wield ? '
M. de Maulincour, brave man and soldier though he was, could not help shivering when all was done and said. Among the thoughts that beset him, there was one which found him defenceless and afraid. How if these mysterious enemies of his should resort next to poison ? Terror, exaggerated by fever and low diet, got the better of him in his weak condition. He sent for an old attached servant of his grandmother's, a woman who loved him with that almost motherly affection through which an ordinary nature reaches the
48 The Thirteen
sublime. Without telling her all that was in his mind, he bade her buy all necessary articles of food for him, secretly, and every day at a fresh place ; and at the same time, he warned her to keep everything under lock and key, and to allow no one whatsoever to be present while she prepared his meals. In short, he took the most minute precautions against this kind of death. He was lying ill in bed • he had therefore full leisure to consider his best way of defending himself, and love of life is the only craving sufficiently clairvoyant to allow human egoism to forget nothing. But the luckless patient had himself poisoned his own life with dread. Every hour was overshadowed by a gloomy suspicion that he could not throw off. Still, the two lessons in murder had taught him one qualification indispensable to a politic man ; he understood how greatly dissimulation is needed in the complex action of the great interests of life. To keep a secret is nothing ; but to be silent beforehand, to forget, if necessary, for thirty years, like Ali Pasha, the better to ensure a revenge pondered during those thirty years, — this is a fine study in a country where few men can dissemble for thirty days together.
By this time Mme. Jules was Augusta de Maulin- cour's whole life. His mind was always intently examin- ing the means by which he might win a triumph in his mysterious duel with unknown antagonists. His desire for this woman grew the greater by every obstacle. Amid all his thoughts Mme. Jules was always present in his heart of hearts ; there she stood more irresistible now in her imputed sin than she used to be with all the undoubted virtues for which he once had worshipped her.
The sick man, wishing to reconnoitre the enemy's position, thought there could be no danger in letting the old Vidame into the secret. The Vidame loved Auguste as a father loves his wife's children; he was shrewd and adroit, he was of a diplomatic turn of mind.
The Thirteen 49
So the Vidame came, heard the Baron's story, and shook his head, and the two held counsel. Auguste maintained that in the days in which they lived, the detective force and the powers that be were equal to finding out any mysteries, and that if there was abso- lutely no other way, the police would prove powerful auxiliaries. The Vidame did not share his young friend's confidence or his convictions.
' The police are the biggest bunglers on earth, dear boy, and the powers that be are the feeblest of all things where individuals are concerned. Neither the authorities nor the police can get to the bottom of people's minds. If they discover the causes of a fact, that is all that can reasonably be expected of them. Now the authorities and the police are eminently unsuited to a business of this kind ; the personal interest which is not satisfied till everything is found out is essentially lacking in them. No human power can pre- vent a murderer or a poisoner from reaching a prince's heart or an honest man's stomach. It is passion that makes the complete detective.'
With that the Vidame strongly advised his young friend the Baron to travel. Let him go to Italy, and from Italy to Greece, and from Greece to Syria and Asia, and come back only when his mysterious enemies should be convinced of his repentance. In his way he would conclude a tacit peace with them. Or, if he stayed, he had better keep to his house, and even to his room, since there he could secure himself against the attacks of this Ferragus, and never leave it except to crush the enemy once for all,
' A man should never touch his enemy except to smite off his head,' the Vidame said gravely.
Nevertheless, the old man promised his favourite that he would bring all the astuteness with which Heaven had gifted him to bear on the case, and that, without committing any one, he would send a reconnoitring
D
50 The Thirteen
party into the enemy's campj know all that went on there, and prepare a victory.
The Vidame had in his service a retired Figaro, as mischievous a monkey as ever took human shape. In former times the man had been diabolically clever, and a convict's physical frame could not have responded better to all demands made upon it ; he was agile as a thief, and subtle as a v^^oman, but he had fallen into the decadence of genius for w^ant of practice. New social conditions in Paris have reformed away the old valets of comedy. This emeritus Scapin was attached to his master as to a being of superior order ; but the crafty Vidame used to increase the annual wage of his some- time provost of gallantry by a tolerably substantial sum, in such sort that the natural ties of goodwill were strengthened by the bond of interest, and the old Vidame received in return such watchful attention as the tenderest of mistresses could scarcely devise in a lover's illness. In this relic of the eighteenth century, this pearl of old world stage servants, this minister in- corruptible (since all his desires were gratified) — the Vidame and M. de Maulincour both put their trust.
' M. le Baron would spoil it all,' said the great man in livery, summoned to the council. ' Let Monsieur cat and drink and sleep in peace. I will take it all upon myself.'
And indeed, a week afterwards, when M. de Maulin- cour, now perfectly recovered, was breakfasting with his grandmother and the Vidame, Justin appeared to make his report. The dowager went back to her rooms, and he began with that false modesty which men of genius affect—
* Ferragus is not the real name of the enemy in pur- suit of M. le Baron. The man, the devil rather, is called Gratien Henri Victor Jean Joseph Bourignard. The said Gratien Bourignard used to be a builder and con-
The Thirteen 51
tractor ; he was a very rich man at one time ; and most of all, he was one of the prettiest fellows in Paris, a Lovelace that might have led Grandison himself astray. My information goes no further. He once was a com- mon workman ; the journeymen of the order of Devorants elected him as their head, with the name of Ferragus xxiii. The police should know that, if they are there to know anything. The man has moved, and at present is lodging in the Rue Joquelet, Mme. Jules Desmarets often goes to see him. Her husband pretty often sets her down in the Rue Vivienne on his way to the Bourse ; or she leaves her husband at the Bourse, and comes back that way. M. le Vidame knows so much in these matters, that he will not expect me to tell him whether the husband rules the wife, or the wife rules her husband, but Mme. Jules is so pretty that 1 should bet on her. All this is absolutely certain. My Bourignard often goes to gamble at number 129. He is a gay dog, with a liking for women, saving your presence, and has his amours like a man of condition. As for the rest, he is frequently in luck, he makes up like an actor, and can make any grimace he likes ; he just leads the queerest life you ever heard of. He has several addresses, I have no doubt, for he nearly always escapes what M. le Vidame calls " parliamentary investigation." If monsieur wishes, however, the man can be got rid of decently, leading such a life as he does. It is always easy to get rid of a man with a weakness for women. Still the capitalist is talking of moving again. — Now, have M. le Vidame and M. le Baron any orders to give ? '
* I am pleased with you, Justin. Go no further in the afFair without instructions, but keep an eye on every- thing here, so that M. le Baron shall have nothing to fear.' He turned to Maulincour. ' Live as before, dear boy,' he said, ' and forget Mme. Jules.'
' No, no,' said Auguste, ' I will not give her up to
52 The Thirteen
Gratien Bourignard j I meant to have him bound hand and foot and Mme. Jules as well.'
That evening Auguste de Maulincour, recently pro- moted to a higher rank in the Guards, went to a ball in Mme. la Duchesse de Berri's apartment at the Elysee- Bourbon. There, surely, there was no fear of the slightest danger; and yet, the Baron de Maulincour came away with an affair of honour on his hands, and no hope of arranging it. His antagonist, the Marquis de RonqueroUes, had the strongest reasons for complain- ing of him ; the quarrel arose out of an old flirtation with M. de RonqueroUes's sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. This lady, who could not endure high-flown German sentiment, was all the more particular with regard to every detail of the prude's costume in which she appeared in public. Some fatal inexplicable prompt- ing moved Auguste to make a harmless joke, Mme. de Serizy took it in very bad part, and her brother took offence. Explanations took place in whispers in a corner of the room. Both behaved like men of the world, there was no fuss of any kind ; and not till next day did the Faubourg Saint-Honore, the Faubourg Saint- Germain, and the Chateau hear what had happened. Mme. de Serizy was warmly defended ; all the blame was thrown on Maulincour. August persons intervened. Seconds of the highest rank were imposed on M. de Maulincour and M. de RonqueroUes ; every precaution was taken on the ground to prevent a fatal termina- tion.
Auguste's antagonist was a man of pleasure, not wanting, as every one admitted, in a sense of honour; it was impossible to think of the Marquis as a tool in the hands of Ferragus, Chef des Dcvorants ; and yet as Auguste de Maulincour stood up before his man, in his own mind he felt a wish to obey an unaccountable instinct, and to put a question to him.
' Gentlemen,' he said, addressing his seconds, * I
The Thirteen 53
emphatically do not refuse to stand M. de Ronquerolles's fire ; but, first, I own that I was in fault, I will make the apology which he is sure to require, and even in public if he wishes it ; for when a lady is in the case, there is nothing, I think, dishonouring to a gentleman in such an apology. So I appeal to his common-sense and generosity, isn't there something rather senseless in fighting a duel when the better cause may happen to get the worst of it ? '
But M. de Ronquerolles would not hear of such a way out of the affair. The Baron's suspicions were confirmed. He went across to his opponent.
* Well, M. le Marquis,' he said, ' will you pledge me your word as a noble, before these gentlemen, that you bear me no grudge save the one for which ostensibly we are to fight ? '
'■ Monsieur, that is a question which ought not to be put to me.'
M. de Ronquerolles returned to his place. It was agreed beforehand that only one shot should be fired on either side. The antagonists were so far apart, that a fatal end for M. de Maulincour seemed problematical, not to say impossible ; but Auguste dropped. The bullet had passed through his ribs, missing the heart by two finger- breadths. Luckily, the extent of the injury was not great.
' This was no question of revenge for a dead passion ; you aimed too well, monsieur, for that,' said a Guards- man.
M. de Ronquerolles, thinking that he had killed his man, could not keep back a sardonic smile.
'Julius Caesar's sister, monsieur, must be above suspicion.'
*■ Mme. Jules again ! ' exclaimed Auguste, and he fainted away before he could finish the caustic sarcasm that died on his lips. He had lost a good deal of blood, but his wound was not dangerous. For a fortnight his
54 The Thirteen
grandmother and the Vidame nursed him with the lavish care which none but the old, wise with the experience of a lifetime, can give. Then one morning he received a rude shock. It came from his grand- mother. She told him that her old age, the last days of her life, were filled with deadly anxiety. A letter addressed to her and signed ' F.' gave her the history of the espionage to which her grandson had stooped ; it was given in full from point to point. M. de Maulincour was accused of conduct unworthy of a man of honour. He had posted an old woman (so it was stated) near the cabstand in the Rue de Menars. Nominally his wrinkled spy supplied water to the cabmen, but really she was stationed there to watch Mme. Jules Desmarets. He had deliberately set himself to play the detective on one of the most harmless men in the world, and tried to find out all about him when secrets which concerned the lives of three persons were involved. Of his own accord he had entered upon a pitiless struggle, in which he had been wounded three times already, and must inevitably succumb at last ; for his death had been sworn ; every human power would be exerted to com- pass it. It was too late for M. de Maulincour to escape his doom by a promise to respect the mysterious life of these three persons ; for it was impossible to believe the word of a gentleman who could sink so low as to make himself an agent of police. And for what reason ? To disturb, without cause, the existence of an innocent woman and a respectable old man.
The letter was as nothing to Auguste compared with the Baronne de Maulincour's loving reproaches. How could he fail to trust and respect a woman ? How could he play the spy on her when he had no right to do so ? Had any man a right to spy on the woman who loved him ? There followed a torrent of excellent reasoning which never proves anything. It put the young man for the first time of his life into one of
The Thirteen 55
those towering passions from which the most decisive actions of Hfe are apt to spring.
' If this is to be a duel to the death ' (so he concluded), ' I am justified in using every means in my power to kill my enemy.'
Forthwith the Vidame, on behalf of M. de Maulin- cour, waited on the superintendent of the detective force in Paris, and gave him a full account of the adven- ture, without bringing Mme. Jules's name into the story, although she was the secret knot of all the threads. He told him, in confidence, of the fears of the Maulincour family, thus threatened by some unknown person, an enemy daring enough to vow such vengeance on an officer in the Guards, in the teeth of the law and the police. He of the police was so much surprised, that he raised his green spectacles, blew his nose two or three times, and offered his mull to the Vidame, who said, to save his dignity, that he never took snuff, though his countenance was bedabbled with rappee. The head of the department took his notes, and promised that, with the help of Vidocq and his sleuth hounds, the enemy of the Maulincour family should be accounted for in a very short time ; there were no mysteries, so he was pleased to say, for the Paris police.
A few days afterwards, the superintendent came to the Hotel Maulincour to see M. le Vidame, and found the Baron perfectly recovered from his last injuries. He thanked the family in formal style for the particulars which they had been so good as to communicate, and informed them that the man Bourignard was a convict sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, and that in some miraculous way he made his escape from the gang on the way from Bicetre to Toulon. The police had made fruitless efforts to catch him for the past fifteen years ; they learned that he had very recklessly come back to live in Paris ; and there, though he was constantly implicated in all sorts of shady affairs, hitherto he had
56 The Thirteen
eluded the most active search. To cut it short, the man, whose Hfe presented a great many most curious details, was certain to be seized at one of his numerous addresses and given up to justice. This red-tape per- sonage concluded his official report with the remark that if M. de Maulincour attached sufficient importance to the affair to care to be present at Bourignard's capture, he might repair to such and such a number in the Rue Sainte-Foi at eight o'clock next morning. M. de Maulincour, however, felt that he could dispense with this method of making certain ; he shared the feeling of awe which the police inspires in Paris ; he felt every confidence in the diligence of the local authorities.
Three days afterwards, as he saw nothing in the newspapers about an arrest which surely would have supplied material for an interesting article, M. de Maulin- cour was beginning to feel uncomfortable, when the following letter relieved his mind : —
'Monsieur le Baron, — I have the honour to announce that you need no longer entertain any fears whatsoever with regard to the matter in hand. The man Gratien Bourignard, alias Ferragus, died yesterday at his address, number 7 Rue Joquelet. The suspicions which we were bound to raise as to his identity were completely set at rest by facts. The doctor of the prefecture was specially sent by us to act in concert with the doctor of the mayor's office, and the super- intendent of the preventice police made all the necessary verifications, so that the identity of the body might be established beyond question. The personal character, moreover, of the witnesses who signed the certificate of death, and the confirmatory evidence of those who were present at the time of the said Bourignard's death — including that of the cure of the Bonne-Nouvelle, to whom he made a last confession (for he made a Christian
The Thirteen 57
end) — all these things taken together do not permit us to retain the slightest doubt.
'Permit me, M. le Baron, to remain, etc'
M. de Maulincour, the dowager, and the Vidame drew a breath of unspeakable relief. She, good woman, kissed her grandson while a tear stole down her cheeks, and then crept away to give thanks to God. The dear dowager had made a nine days' prayer for Auguste's safety, and believed that she had been heard.
' Well,' said the Vidame, ' now you can go to that ball that you were speaking about ; I have no more objections to make.'
M. de Maulincour was the more eager to go to this ball since Mme. Jules was sure to be there. It was an entertainment given by the Prefect of the Seine in whose house the two worlds of Paris society met as on a neutral ground. Auguste de Maulincour went quickly through the rooms, but the woman who exerted so great an influence on his life was not to be seen. He went into a still empty card-room, where the tables awaited players, sat himself down on a sofa, and gave himself up to the most contradictory thoughts of Mme. Jules, when some one grasped him by the arm ; and, to his utter amazement, he beheld the beggar of the Rue Coquilliere, Ida's Ferragus, the man w^ho lived in the Rue Soly, Justin's Bourignard, the convict that had died the day before.
' Not a sound, not a word, sir ! ' said Bourignard. Auguste knew that voice, though to any other it would surely have seemed unrecognisable.
The man was very well dressed ; he wore the insignia of the Golden Fleece and the star of the Legion of Honour.
' Sir,' he hissed out like a hyena, 'you warrant all my attempts on your life by allying yourself with the police. You shall die, sir. There is no help for it. Are you in
58 The Thirteen
love with Mme. Jules ? Did she once love you ? What right have you to trouble her peace and smirch her reputation ? '
Somebody else came up. Ferragus rose to go.
' Do you know this man ? ' asked M. de Maulincour, seizing Ferragus by the collar.
But Ferragus slipped briskly out of his grasp, caught M. de Maulincour by the hair, and shook him playfully several times.
' Is there absolutely nothing but a dose of lead that will bring you to your senses ? ' he replied.
' I am not personally acquainted with him,' said de Marsay, who had witnessed this scene, ' but I know that this gentleman is M. de Funcal, a very rich Portuguese.'
M. de Funcal had vanished. The Baron went off in pursuit, he could not overtake him, but he reached the peristyle in time to see a splendid equipage and the sneer on Ferragus's face, before he was whirled away out of sight.
' For pity's sake, tell me where M. de Funcal lives,' said Auguste, betaking himself to de Marsay, who happened to be an acquaintance.
* I do not know, but somebody here no doubt can tell you.'
In answer to a question put to the Prefect, Auguste learned that the Comte de Funcal's address was at the Portuguese embassy. At that moment, while he fancied that he could still feel those ice-cold fingers in his hair, he saw Mme. Jules, in all the splendour of that beauty, fresh, graceful, unaffected, radiant with the sanctity of womanhood, which drew him to her at the first. For him this creature was infernal ; Auguste felt nothing for her now but hate — hate that overflowed in murderous terrible glances. He watched for an opportunity of speaking to her alone.
' Madame,' he said, ' three times already your bravoes have missed me '
The Thirteen 59
' What do you mean, sir ? ' she answered, reddening. ' I heard with much concern that several bad accidents had befallen you ; but how can I have had anything to do with them ? '
' Then you know that the man in the Rue Soly has hired ruffians on my track ? '
' Sir ! '
* Madame, henceforth I must call you to account not only for my happiness, but also for my life- blood '
Jules Desmarets came up at that moment.
' What are you saying to my wife, sir ? '
'Come to my house to inquire if you are curious to know.' And Maulincour went. Mme. Jules looked white and ready to faint.
There are very few women who have not been called upon, once in their lives, to face a definite, pointed, trenchant question with regard to some undeniable fact, one of those questions which a husband puts in a pitiless way. The bare thought of it sends a cold shiver through a woman ; the first word pierces her heart like a steel blade. Hence the axiom, ' All women are liars.' They tell lies to spare the feelings of others, white lies, heroic lies, hideous lies ; but falsehood is incumbent upon them. Once admit this, does it not follow of necessity that the lies ought to be well told ? Women tell lies to admiration in France. Our manners are an excellent school for dissimulation. And, after all, women are so artlessly insolent, so charming, so grace- ful, so true amid falsehood, so perfectly well aware of the value of insincerity as a means of avoiding the rude shocks which put happiness in peril, that falsehood is as indispensable to them as cotton wool for their jewellery. Insincerity furnishes forth the staple of their talk, and truth is only brought out occasionally. They speak truth, as they are virtuous, from caprice or specu- lation. The methods vary with the individual char-
6o The Thirteen
acter. Some women laugh and lie, others weep, or grow grave, or put themselves in a passion.
They begin life with a feigned indifference to the homage which gratifies them most ; they often end by insincerity with themselves. Who has not admired their seeming loftiness when they are trembling the while for the mysterious treasure of love ? Who has not studied the ease, the ready wit, the mental dis- engagement with which they confront the greatest embarrassments of life ? Everything is quite natural ; deceit flows out as snowflakes fall from the sky.
And yet what skill women have to discover the truth in another ! How subtly they can use the hardest logic, in answer to the passionately uttered question that never fails to yield up some heart secret belonging to their interlocutor, if a man is so guileless as to begin with questioning a woman. If a man begins to ques- tion a woman, he delivers himself into her hand. Will she not find out anything that he means to hide, while she talks and says nothing ? And yet there are men that have the audacity to enter upon a contest of wits with a Parisienne — a woman who can put herself out of reach of a thrust with 'You are very inquisitive!' — 'What does it matter to you ? ' — ' Oh ! you are jealous ! '- — * And how if I do not choose to answer you ? ' A Parisienne, in short, has a hundred and thirty-seven thousand ways of saying No, while her variations on the word Yes surpass computation. Surely one of the finest diplomatic, philosophic, logographic, and moral performances which remain to be made would be a treatise on No and Yes. But who save an androgynous being could accomplish the diabolical feat ? Eor which reason it will never be attempted. Yet of all unpub- lished works, is there one better known or more con- stantly in use among women ?
Have you ever studied the conduct, the pose, the disinvoltura of a lie ? Look at it now. Mme. Jules
The Thirteen 6i
was sitting in the right-hand corner of her carriage, and her husband to her left. She had contrived to repress her emotion as she left the ballroom, and by this time her face was quite composed. Her husband had said nothing to her then ; he said nothing now. Jules was staring out of the window at the dark walls of the silent houses as they drove past ; but suddenly, just as they turned the corner of a street, he seemed to come to some determination, he looked intently at his wife. She seemed to feel cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was wrapped ; she looked pensive, he thought, and perhaps she really was pensive. Of all subtly communicable moods, gravity and reflection are the most contagious.
' What can M. de Maulincour have said to move you so deeply ? ' began Jules. ' And what is this that he wishes me to hear at his house ? '
'Why, he can tell you nothing at his house that I cannot tell you now,' she replied.
And with that woman's subtlety, which is always slightly dishonouring to virtue, Mme. Jules waited for another question. But her husband turned his head away and resumed his study of arched gateways. Would it not mean suspicion and distrust if he asked any more ? It is a crime in love to suspect a woman ; and Jules had already killed a man, without a doubt of his wife. Clemence did not know how much deep passion and reflection lay beneath her husband's silence ; and little did Jules imagine the extraordinary drama which locked his wife's heart from him. And the carriage went on and on through silent Paris, and the husband and wife, two lovers who idolised each other, nestled softly and closely together among the silken cushions, a deep gulf yawning between them all the while.
How many strange scenes take place in the elegant broughams which pass through the streets between mid- night and one o'clock in the morning after a ball ! The
62 The Thirteen
carnages alluded to, be it understood, are fitted with transparent panes of glass, and lanterns that not merely light up the brougham itself, but the whole street as well on either side ; they belong to law-sanctioned love, and the law gives a man a right to sulk and fall out with his wife, and kiss and make it up again, in a brougham or anywhere else. So married couples are at liberty to quarrel without fear of being seen by passers-by. And how many secrets are revealed to foot- passengers in the dark streets, to the young bachelors who drove to the ball and, for some reason or other, are walking home afterwards 1 For the first time in their lives, Jules and Clemence leant back in their corners ; usually Desmarcts pressed close to his wife's side.
'It is very cold,' said Mme. Jules. But her husband heard nothing ; he was intent on reading all the dark signs above the shops.
'Clemence,' he began at last, 'forgive me for this question that I am about to ask ? '
He came nearer, put his arm about her waist, and drew her towards him.
' Oh, dear I here it comes ! ' thought poor Clemence.
'Well,' she said aloud, anticipating the question, 'you wish to know what M. de Maulincour was saying to me ? I will tell you, Jules ; but, I am afraid. Ah, God ! can we have secrets from each other ? A moment ago I knew that you were struggling between the conscious- ness that we love each other and a vague dread ; but that consciousness that we love each other is unclouded, is it not ? and do not your doubts seem very shadowy to you ? Why not stay in the light that you love ? When I have told you everything, you will wish to know more ; and, after all, I myself do not know what is lurking under that man's strange words. And then, perhaps, there would be a duel, ending in a death. I would far rather that we both put that unpleasant
The Thirteen 6 2
moment out of our minds. But in any case, give me your word to wait till this extraordinary adventure is cleared up in some natural way.
'M. deMaulincour declared that those three accidents of which you heard — the block of stone that killed his servant, the carriage accident, and the duel about Mme. de Serizy — were all brought upon him by a plot which / had woven against him. And he threatened to explain my reasons for wishing to murder him to you.
' Can you make anything out of all this ? It was his face that disturbed me; there was madness in it; his eyes were haggard ; he was so excited that he could not bring out his words. I felt sure that he was mad. That was all. Now, I should not be a woman if I did not know that, for a year past, M. de Maulincour has been, as they say, quite wild about me. He has never met me except at dances ; we have never exchanged any words but ballroom small talk. Perhaps he wants to separate us, so that I may be left defenceless and alone some day. You see how it is ! You are frowning already. Oh, I detest the world with all my heart ! We are so happy without it, why should we go in search of society ? — Jules, I beg of you, promise me that you will forget all this ! I expect we shall hear to-morrow that M. de Maulincour has gone out of his mind.'
'What an extraordinary thing!' said Jules to him- self, as he stepped out into the peristyle of his own abode.
And here, if this story is to be developed by giving it in all its truth of detail, by following its course through all its intricacies, there must be a revelation of some of the secrets of love — secrets learned by slipping under the canopy of a bed-chamber, not brazenly, but after the manner of Puck, without startling either Jeanie or Dougal, or anybody else. For this venture, one had needs be chaste as our noble French language consents
64 The Thirteen
to be, and daring as Gerard's brush in his picture of Daphnis and Chloe.
Mme. Jules's bedroom was a sacred place. No one but her husband and her maid was allowed to enter it. Wealth has great privileges, and the most enviable of them all is the power of carrying out thoughts and feelings to the uttermost ; of quickening sensibility by fulfilling its myriad caprices ; of encompassing that inner life with a splendour that exalts it, elegance that refines, and the subtle shades of expression that enhance the charm of love.
If you particularly detest picnic dinners and meals badly served ; if you feel a certain pleasure at the sight of dazzling white damask, silver plate, exquisite porce- lain, and richly carved and gilded tables lit up by translucent tapers; if you have a taste for miracles of the most refined culinary art beneath silver covers with armorial bearings ; — then, if you have a mind to be con- sistent, you must come down from the heights of your garret, and you must leave the grisettes in the street. Garrets and grisettes, like umbrellas and hinged clogs, must be left to people who take tickets at the doors of restaurants to pay for their dinners ; and you must think of love as something rudimentary, only to be developed in all its charm by a gilded fireside, in a room made deaf to all sound from without by drawn blinds and closed shutters and thick curtain folds, while the opal light of a Parian lamp falls over soft carpets from the Savonnerie and the silken hangings on the walls. You must have mirrors to reflect each other, to give you an infinite series of pictures of the woman in whom you would fain find many women, of her to whom Love gives so many forms. There should be long, low sofas, and a couch like a secret which you guess before it is revealed; and soft furs spread for bare feet on the floor of the dainty chamber, and wax tapers under glass shades, and white gauze draperies, so that you can see to read at any
The Thirteen 6^
hour of the night ; and flowers without too heavy- sweet a scent, and linen fine enough to satisfy Anne of Austria.
This delicious scheme had been carried out by Mme. Jules. But that is nothing ; any woman of taste might do as much ; though nevertheless, there is a certain touch of personality in the arrangement of these things, a something which stamps this ornament or that detail with a character of its own. The fanatical cult of in- dividuality is more prevalent than ever in these days. Rich people in France are beginning to grow more and more exclusive in their tastes and belongings than they have been for the past thirty years. Mme. Jules knew that her programme must be carried out consistently ; that everything about her must be part of a harmonious whole of luxury which made a fit setting for love.
' Fifteen hundred francs and my Sophie,' or ' Love in a Cottage,' is the sort of talk to expect from famished creatures, and brown bread does very well at first ; but if the pair are really in love, their palates grow nicer, and in the end they sigh for the riches of the kitchen. Love holds toil and want in abhorrence, and would rather die at once than live a miserable life of hand to mouth.
Most women after a ball are impatient for sleep. Their rooms are strewn with limp flowers, scentless bouquets, and ball gowns. Their little thick shoes are left under an armchair, they totter across the floor in their high-heeled slippers, take the combs out of their hair, and shake down their tresses without a thought of their appearance. Little do they care if they disclose to their husbands' eyes the clasps and pins and cunning con- trivances which maintained the dainty fabric in erection. All mystery is laid aside, all pretence dropped for the husband — there is no make-up for him. The corset, fearfully and wonderfully made, is left lying about if the sleepy waiting-woman forgets to put it away. Whale-
E
66 The Thirteen
bone stiffening, sleeves encased in buckram, delusive finery, hair supplied by the coiffeur, the whole factitious woman, in fact, lies scattered about. Disjecta membra poetiE^ the artificial poetry so much admired by those for whose benefit the whole was conceived and elaborated, the remains of the pretty woman of an hour ago, encumber every corner, while the genuine woman in slatternly disorder, and the crumpled nightcap of yester- day, to-day, and to-morrow, presents herself yawning to the arms of a husband who yawns likewise.
' For, after all, monsieur, if you want a pretty nightcap to crumple every night, you must increase my allow- ance.'
Such is life as it is. A woman is always old and unattractive to her husband ; always smart, dainty, and dressed in her best for that Other, every husband's rival, the world that slanders women or picks them to pieces.
Mme. Jules did quite otherwise. Love, like all other beings, has its own instinct of self-preservation. Inspired by love, constantly rewarded by happiness, she never failed in the scrupulous performance of little duties in which no one can grow slack, for by such means love is kept unimpaired by time. Are not these pains, these tasks imposed by a self-respect which becomes her pass- ing well ? What are they but sweet flatteries, a way of reverencing the beloved in one's own person ?
So Mme. Jules had closed the door of her dressing- room on her husband ; there she changed her ball gown and came out dressed for the night, mysteriously adorned for the mysterious festival of her heart. The chamber was always exquisite and dainty; Jules, when he entered it, found a woman coquettishly wrapped in a graceful loose gown, with her thick hair twisted simply about her head. She had nothing to fear from dishevelment ; she robbed Love's sight and touch of nothing. This woman was always simpler and more beautiful for him than for the world — a woman revived bv her toilet, a
The Thirteen 67
woman whose whole art consisted in being whiter than the cambrics that she wore, fresher than the freshest scent, more irresistible than the wiliest courtesan. In a word, she was always loving, and therefore always beloved. In this admirable skill in le metier defemme — in the art and mystery of being a woman — lay the great secret of Josephine's charm for Napoleon, of Cesonia's influence over Caligula in older times, of the ascendency of Diane de Poitiers over Henri 11. And if this secret is so potent in the hands of women who have counted seven or eight lustres, what a weapon is it for a young wife ! The prescribed happiness of fidelity becomes rapture.
Mme. Jules had been particularly careful of her toilet for the night. After that conversation which froze the blood in her veins with terror, and still caused her the liveliest anxiety, she meant to be exquisitely charming, and she succeeded. She fastened her cam- bric dressing-gown, leaving it loose at the throat, and let her dark hair fall loosely over her shoulders. An intoxicating fragrance clung about her after the scented bath, her bare feet were thrust into velvet slippers. Jules in his dressing-gown was standing meditatively by the fire, with his elbow on the mantelpiece, and one foot on the fender. Feeling strong on her vantage ground, she tripped across to him and laid a hand over his eyes. Then she whispered, close to his ear, so closely that he could feel her warm breath on him and the tips of her teeth, 'What are you thinking about, monsieur?'
With quick tact, she held him closely to her and put her arms about him to snatch him away from his gloomy thoughts, A woman who loves knows well how to use her power ; and the better the woman, the more irre- sistible is her coquetry.
* Of you,' said he,
'Only of me.'
' Yes ! '
68 The Thirteen
* Oh ! that was a very venturesome " Yes ! " ' They went to bed. As Mme. Jules fell asleep she
thought, ' Decidedly, M. de Maulincour will bring about some misfortune. Jules is preoccupied and absent- minded ; he has thoughts which he does not tell me.'
Towards three o'clock in the morning Mme. Jules was awakened by a foreboding that knocked at her heart while she slept. She felt, physically and mentally, that her husband was not beside her. She missed Jules's arm, on which her head had lain nightly for five years, while she slept happily and peacefully, an arm that never wearied of the weight. A voice cried, 'Jules is in pain ! Jules is weeping ! ' She lifted her head, sat upright, felt that her husband's place was cold, and saw him sitting by the fire, his feet on the fender, his head leant back in the great armchair. There were tears on his cheeks. Poor Clemence was out of bed in a moment, and sprang to her husband's knee.
* Jules, what is it ? Are you not feeling well ? SpeaTc, tell me ; oh, speak to me, if you love me.'
She poured out a hundred words of the deepest ten- derness. Jules, at his wife's feet, kissed her knees, her hands. The tears flowed afresh as he answered —
* Clemence, dear, I am very wretched. It is not love if you cannot trust your mistress, and you are my mis- tress. I worship you, Clemence, even while I doubt you. . . . The things that man said last night went to my heart ; and in spite of me, they stay there to trouble me. There is some mystery underneath this. Indeed, I blush to say it, but your explanation did not satisfy me. Common-sense sheds a light on it which love bids me reject. It is a dreadful struggle. How could I lie there with your head on my shoulder and think that there were thoughts in your mind that I did not know ? — Oh, I believe you, I believe you,' he exclaimed, as she smiled sadly and seemed about to speak. ' Say not a
The Thirteen 69
word, reproach me with nothing. The least Httle word from you would break my heart. And besides, could you say a single thing that I have not said to myself for the last three hours ? Yes, for three hours I lay, watch- ing you as you slept, so beautiful you were, your forehead looked so quiet and pure. — Ah ! yes, you have always told me all your thoughts, have you not ? I am alone in your inmost heart. When I look into the depths of your eyes, I read all that lies there. Your life is always as pure as those clear eyes. Ah ! no, there is no secret beneath their transparent gaze.'
He rose and kissed her eyelids.
' Let me confess it to you, beloved ; all through these five years one thing has made me happier day by day, I have been glad that you should have none of the natural affections which always encroach a little upon love. You had neither sister nor father nor mother nor friend ; I was neither above nor below any other in thy heart ; I was there alone. Clemence, say over again for me all the intimate sweet words that you have spoken so often; do not scold me ; comfort me, I am very wretched. I have a hateful suspicion to reproach myself with, while you have nothing burning in your heart. Tell me, my darling, may I stay by your side? How should two that are so truly one rest their heads on the same pillov/, when one is at peace and the other in pain ? . . . What can you be thinking of? ' he cried abruptly, as Clemence looked meditative and confused, and could not keep back the tears.
' I am thinking of my mother,' she said gravely. ' You could not know, Jules, how it hurt your Clemence to recall her mother's last farewells, while your voice, the sweetest of all music, was sounding in her ears ; to remember the solemn pressure of the chill hand of a dying woman, while I felt your caresses, and the over- powering sense of the sweetness of your love.'
She made him rise, and held him tightly, with far
yo The Thirteen
more than man's strength, in her arms ; she kissed his hair, her tears fell over him.
' Oh ! I could be hewed into pieces for you ! Tell me, beyond doubt, that I make you happy, that for you I am the fairest of women, that I am a thousand women for you. But you are loved as no other man can ever be loved. I do not know what the words "duty," " virtue " mean. Jules, I love you for your own sake ; it makes me happy to love you ; I shall always love you ; better and better, till my last sigh. I take a kind of pride in my love. I am sure that I am fated to know but the one great love in my life. Perhaps this that I am going to say is wicked, but I am glad to have no children, I wish for none. I feel that I am more a wife than a mother. — Have you any fears ? Listen to me, my love; promise me to forget, not this hour of mingled love and doubt, but that madman's words. I ask it, Jules. Promise me not to see him again, to keep away from his house. I have a feeling that if you go a single step further in that labyrinth, we shall both sink into depths where I shall die, with your name still on my lips, your heart in my heart. Why do you put me so high in your inmost life, and so low in the outer ? You can take so many men's fortunes on trust, and you cannot give me the alms of one doubt ? And when, for the first time in your life, you can prove that your faith in me is unbounded, would you dethrone me in your heart ? Between a lunatic and your wife, you believe the lunatic's word ? Oh ! Jules '
She broke off, flung back the hair that fell over her forehead and throat, and in heartrending tones she added, ' I have said too much. A word should be enough. If there is still a shadow across your mind and your forehead, however faint it may be, mind, it will kill me.'
She shivered in spite of herself, and her face grew white.
The Thirteen 71
' Oh ! 1 will kill that man,' said Jules to himself, as he caught up his wife and carried her to the bed. ' Let us sleep in peace, dear angel,' he said aloud ; ' I have put it all out of my mind, I give you my word.'
The loving words were repeated more lovingly, and Clemence slept. Jules, watching his sleeping wife, told himself — ' She is right. When love is so pure, a suspicion is like a blight. Yes, and a blight on so innocent a soul, so delicate a flower, is certain death.'
If between two human creatures, each full of love for the other, with a common life at every moment, there should arise a cloud, the cloud will vanish away, but not without leaving some trace of its passage behind. Perhaps their love grows deeper, as earth is fairer after the rain ; or perhaps the shock reverberates like distant thunder in a blue sky ; but, at any rate, they cannot take up life where it was before, love must increase or diminish. At breakfast, M. and Mme. Jules showed each other an exaggerated attention. In their glances there was an almost forced gaiety which might have been expected of people eager to be deceived. Jules had involuntary suspicions; his wife, a definite dread. And yet, feeling sure of each other, they had slept. Was the embarrassment due to want of trust ? to the recollection of the scene in the night ? They them- selves could not tell. But they loved each other, and were loved so sincerely, that the bitter-sweet impression could not fail to leave its traces ; and each, besides, was so anxious to be the first to eff'ace them, to be the first to return, that they could not but remember the original cause of a first discord. For those who love, vexation is out of the question, and pain is still afar off, but the feeling is a kind of mourning difficult to describe. If there is a parallel between colours and the moods of the mind ; if, as Locke's blind man said, scarlet produces the same effect on the eyes as the blast of a trumpet on
72 The Thirteen
the ears, then this melancholy reaction may be com- pared with sober grey tints. Yet saddened love, love conscious of its real happiness beneath the momentary trouble, know^s a vi^hoUy nev/ luxurious blending of pain and pleasure. Jules dwelt on the tones of his wife's voice, and watched for her glances with the young passion that stirred him in the early days of their love ; and memories of five perfectly happy years, Clemence's beauty, her artless love, soon effaced (for the time) the last pangs of an intolerable ache.
It was Sunday. There was no Bourse and no busi- ness. Husband and wife could spend the whole day together, and each made more progress in the other's heart than ever before, as two children in a moment's terror cling closely and tightly together, instinctively united against danger. Where two have but one life, they know such hours of perfect happiness sent by chance, flowers of a day, which have nothing to do with yesterday or to-morrow.
To Jules and Clemence it was a day of exquisite enjoyment. They might almost have felt a dim foreboding that this was to be the last day of their life as lovers. What name can be given to the mysterious impulse which hastens the traveller's steps before the storm has given warning ? — it fills the dying with a glow of life and beauty a few days before the end, and sets them making the most joyous plans; it counsels the learned man to raise the flame of the mid- night lamp when it burns most brightly ; it wakens a mother's fears when some keen-sighted observer looks too intently at her child. We all feel this influence in great crises in our lives, yet we have neither studied it nor found a name for it. It is something more than a presentiment, something less than vision.
All went well till the next day. It was Monday, Jules Desmarets was obliged to be at the Bourse at the usual time ; and, according to his custom, he asked his
The Thirteen 73
wife before he went if she would take the opportunity of driving with him.
' No,' she said ; ' the weather is too bad.'
And, indeed, it was pouring with rain. It was about half-past two o'clock. M. Desmarets went on the market, and thence to the Treasury. At four o'clock, when he came out, he confronted M. de Maulincour, who was waiting for him with the pertinacity bred of hate and revenge.
' I have some important information to give you, sir,' he said, taking Desmarets by the arm. ' Listen to me. I am an honourable man ; I do not wish to send anony- mous letters which would trouble your peace of mind ; I prefer to speak directly. In short, you may believe that if my life were not at stake, I should never inter- fere between husband and wife, even if I believed that I had a right to do so.'
' If you are going to say anything that concerns Mme. Desmarets,' answered Jules, ' I beg you to be silent, sir.'
' If I keep silence, sir, you may see Mme. Jules in the dock beside a convict before very long. Now, am I to be silent ? '
Jules's handsome face grew white, but seemingly he was calm again in a moment. He drew Maulincour under one of the porches of the temporary building then frequented by stockbrokers, and spoke, his voice unsteady with deep emotion —
' I am listening, sir, but there will be a duel to the death between us if '
' Oh ! I am quite willing,' exclaimed M. de Maulin- cour. * I have the greatest respect for you. Do you speak of death, sir ? You are not aware, I expect, that your wife probably emploved somebody to poison me on Saturday evening ? Yes, sir, since the day before yesterday, some extraordinary change has taken place in me. All the hairs of my head distil a fever and mortal
74 The Thirteen
languor that pierces through the bone ; and I know perfectly well what man it was that touched my head at the dance.'
M. de Maulincour told the whole story of his Platonic love for Mme. Jules and the details of the adventure with which this Scene opens. Anybody would have listened to him as attentively as Desmarets, but Mme. Jules's husband might be expected to be more astonished than anybody else in the world. And here his character showed itself — he was more surprised than overwhelmed. Thus constituted a judge, and the judge of an adored wife, in his inmost mind he assumed a judicial direct- ness and inflexibility of mind. He was a lover still ; he thought less of his own broken life than of the woman ; he heard, not his own grief, but a far-ofF voice crying to him, ' Clemence could not lie ! Why should she be false to you ? '
'I felt certain that in M. de Funcal I recognised this Ferragus, whom the police believe to be dead,' concluded M. de Maulincour, ' so I put an intelligent man on his track at once. As I went home, I fortunately chanced to call to mind a Mme. Meynardie, mentioned in this Ida's letter, Ida being apparently my persecutor's mistress. With this one bit of information, my emissary speedily cleared up this ghastly adventure, for he is more skilled at finding out the truth than the police themselves.'
' I am unable to thank you, sir, for your confidence,' said Desmarets. 'You speak of proof and witnesses ; I am waiting for them. I shall not flinch from tracking down the truth in this extraordinary business ; but you will permit me to suspend my judgment until the case is proved by circumstantial evidence. In any case, you shall have satisfaction, for you must understand that we both require it.'
Jules went home.
' What is it ? ' asked his wife. ' You look dreadfully pale.'
The Thirteen 75
' It is a cold day,' he said, as he walked slowly away to the bedroom, where everything spoke of happiness and love, the so quiet chamber where a deadly storm was brewing.
' Have you been out to-day ? ' he asked, with seeming carelessness. The question, no doubt, was prompted by the last of a thousand thoughts, which had gathered unconsciously in his mind, till they took the shape of a single lucid reflection, which jealousy brought out on the spur of the moment.
' No,' she answered, and her voice sounded frank.
Even as she spoke, Jules, glancing through the dressing- room door, noticed drops of rain on the bonnet which his wife used to wear in the morning. Jules was a violent tempered man, but he was likewise extremely sensitive ; he shrank from confronting his wife with a He. And yet those drops of water shed, as it were, a gleam of light which tortured his brain. He went downstairs to the porter's room.
' Fouquereau,' he said, when he had made sure that they were alone, 'three hundred francs per annum to you if you tell me the truth ; if you deceive me, out you go ; and if you mention my question and your answer to any one else, you will get nothing at all.'
He stopped, looked steadily at the man, and then drawing him to the light of the window, he asked —
' Did your mistress go out this morning ? '
'Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw her come in again half-an-hour ago.'
' Is that true, upon your honour ? '
' Yes, sir.'
' You shall have the annual sum I promised you. But if you mention it, remember what I said ; for if you do, you lose it all.'
Jules went back to his wife.
' Clemence,' he said, 'I want to put my house accounts a bit straight, so do not be vexed if I ask you
76 The Thirteen
something. I have let you have forty thousand francs this year, have I not ? '
'More than that,' she answered. 'Forty-seven.' ' Could you tell me exactly how it was spent ? ' ' Why, yes. First of all, there were several outstand- ing bills from last year '
' I shall find out nothing in this way,' thought Jules. ' I have gone the wrong way to work.'
Just at that moment the man brought in a note. Jules opened it for the sake of appearances, but seeing the signature at the foot, he read it eagerly : —
'Monsieur, — To set your mind and our minds at rest, I take the step of writing to you, although I have not the privilege of being known to you ; but my position, my age, and the fear that some misfortune may befall, compels me to beseech your forbearance in the dis- tressing situation in which our afflicted family is placed. For some days past, M. Auguste de Maulincour has shown unmistakable symptoms of mental derangement; and we are afraid that he may disturb your happiness with the wild fancies of which he spoke to M. le Com- mandeur de Pamiers and to me, in the first fit of fever. We desire to give you warning of a malady which is still curable, no doubt ; and as it might have very serious consequences for the honour of the family and my grandson's future, I count upon your discretion. If M. le Commandeur or I, monsieur, had been able to make the journey to your house, we should have dispensed with a written communication ; but you v/ill comply, I do not doubt, with the request of a mother who beseeches you to burn this letter.
' Permit me to add that I am with the highest regard,
' Baronne de Maulincour nee de Rieux.' ' What tortures ! ' exclaimed Jules.
The Thirteen 77
* What can be passing in your thoughts ?' asked his wife, with intense anxiety in her face.
'I have come to this ! ' cried Jules ; 'I ask myself whether you have had this note sent to me to dispel my suspicions. So judge what I am suffering,' he added, tossing the letter to her.
* The unhappy man,' said Mme. Jules, letting the sheet fall ; ' I am sorry for him, though he has given me a great deal of pain.'
' You know that he spoke to me ? '
' Oh ! Did you go to see him when you had given your word ? ' was her terror-stricken answer.
' Clemence, our love is in danger ; we are outside all the ordinary laws of life, so let us leave minor considera- tions in great perils. Now, tell me, why did you go out this morning ? Women think they are privileged to tell us fibs nov.' and again. You often amuse your- selves with preparing pleasant surprises for us, do you not ? Just now you said one thing and meant another no doubt ; you said a " No " for a " Yes." '
He brought her bonnet out of the dressing-room.
' Look here ! Without meaning to play the Bartholo here, your bonnet has betrayed you. Are these not rain-drops ? Then you must have gone out and caught the drops of rain as you looked about for a cab, or in coming in or out of the house to which you drove. Still, a woman can go out even if she has told her husband that she means to stay indoors ; there is no harm in that. There are so many reasons for changing one's mind. A whim, a woman has a right to be whimsical, is that not so ? You are not bound to be consistent with yourselves. Perhaps you forgot some- thing ; something to be done for somebody else, or a call, or a charitable errand? But there can be nothing to prevent a wife from telling her husband what she has done. How should one ever blush on a friend's breast ? And it is not a jealous husband who speaks, my Clemence ; it is the friend, the lover, the comrade.'
78 The Thirteen
He flung himself passionately at her feet.
* Speak, not to justify yourself, but to soothe an intoler- able pain. I know for certain that you left the house. Well, what did you do ? Where did you go ? '
' Yes, Jules, I left the house,' she said, and though her voice shook, her face was composed. ' But do not ask me anything more. Wait and trust me, or you may lay up lifelong regrets for yourself. Jules, my Jules, trust is love's great virtue. I confess it, I am too much troubled to answer you at this moment j I am a woman unapt at lying, and I love you, you know I love you.'
'With all that shakes a man's belief and rouses his jealousy — for I am not the first in your heart, Clemence, it seems; I am not your very self? — well, with it all, I would still rather trust you, Clemence, trust your voice and those eyes of yours. If you are deceiving me, you would deserve '
' Oh ! a thousand deaths,' she broke in.
' And I have not one thought hidden from you, while '
' Hush,' she cried, ' our happiness depends upon silence between us.'
' Ah ! I will know all ! ' he shouted, with a burst of violent anger.
As he spoke a sound reached them, a shrill-tongued woman's voice raised to a scream in the ante-chamber,
' I will come in, I tell you ! Yes, I will come in, I want to see her, I will see her ! ' somebody cried.
Jules and Clemence hurried into the drawing-room, and in another moment the door was flung open. A young woman suddenly appeared with two servants behind her.
' This woman would come in, sir, in spite of us. We told her once before that madame was not at home. She said she knew quite well that madame had gone out, but she had just seen her come in. She threatens to stop at the house door until she has spoken to madame.'
The Thirteen 79
* You can go,' said M. Desmarets, addressing the servants.
' What do you want, mademoiselle ? ' he added, turning to the visitor.
The ' young lady ' was a feminine type known only in Paris ; a type as much a product of the city as the mud or the kerbstones in the streets, or the Seine water which is filtered through half a score of great reservoirs before it sparkles clear and pure in cut-glass decanters, all its muddy sediment left behind. She is, moreover, a truly characteristic product. Pencil and pen and char- coal, painter and caricaturist and draughtsman, have caught her likeness repeatedly ; yet she eludes analysis, because you can no more grasp her in all her moods than you can grasp Nature, or the fantastic city herself. Her circle has but one point of contact with vice, from which the rest of its circumference is far removed. Yet the one flaw in her character is the only trait that reveals her; all her fine qualities lie out of sight while she flaunts her ingenuous shamelessness. The plays and books that bring her before the public, with all the illusion that clings about her, give but a very inadequate idea of her ; she never is, and never will be, herself except in her garret ; elsewhere she is either worse or better than she really is. Give her wealth, she degenerates ; in poverty she is misconstrued. How should it be otherwise ? She has so many faults and so many virtues ; she lives too close to a tragic end in the river on the one hand, and a branding laugh upon the other ; she is too fair and too foul ; too much like a personification of that Paris which she provides with toothless old portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, and beggars ; sometimes too with insolent comtesses and admired and applauded actress and opera singer. Twice in former times she even gave two queens, in all but name, to the Monarchy. Who could seize such a Protean woman- shape ?
8o The Thirteen
She is a very woman, less than a woman, and more than a woman. The painter of contemporary Hfe can only give a few details, the general effect of so vast a subject, and some idea of its boundlessness.
This was a Paris grisette — a grisette, however, in her glory. She was the grisette that drives about in a cab ; a happy, handsome, and fresh young person, but still a grisette, a grisette with claws and scissors ; bold as a Spaniard, quarrelsome as an English prude instituting a suit for restitution of conjugal rights, coquettish as a great lady, and more outspoken ; equal to all occasions, a typical ' lioness,' issuing from her little apartment.
Many and many a time she had dreamed of that establishment with its red cotton curtains and its furni- ture covered with Utrecht velvet, of the tea-table and the hand-painted china tea-service and the settee ; the small square of velvet pile carpet, the alabaster time- piece and vases under glass shades, the yellow bedroom, the soft eiderdown quilt, — of all the joys of a grisette's life, in short. Now she had a servant, a superannuated member of her own profession, a veteran grisette with moustaches and good-conduct stripes. Now she went to the theatres and had as many sweetmeats as she liked ; she had silk dresses and finery to soil and draggle, and all the joys of life from the point of view of the milliner's assistant, except a carriage of her own, a carriage being to the milliner's assistant's dreams what the marshal's baton is for the private soldier. Yes, all these things this particular grisette possessed in return for a real affection, or perhaps in spite of a real affection on her part ; for others of her class will often exact as much for one hour in the day, a sort of toll carelessly paid for by a brief space in some old man's clutches.
The young person now confronting M. and Mme. Jules wore shoes, which displayed so much white stock- ing that they looked like an almost invisible black boundary line against the carpet. The kind of foot-
The Thirteen 8i
gear, very neatly rendered by French comic drawings, is one of the Parisian grisette's pecuHar charms of dress ; but a still more unmistakable sign for observant eyes is the precision with which her gown is moulded to her figure, which is very clearly outlined. Moreover, the visitor was 'turned out' in a green dress, to use the picturesque expression coined by the French soldier, a dress with a chemisette, which revealed a fine figure, fully displayed, for her Ternaux shawl would have slipped down to the floor if she had not held the two loosely-knotted ends in her grasp. She had a delicate face, a white skin and colour in her cheeks, sparkling grey eyes, a very prominent rounded forehead, and care- fully waved hair, which escaped from under a little bonnet, and fell in large curls about her neck.
' My name is Ida, sir. And if that is Mme. Jules whom I have the privilege of addressing, I have come to tell her all that I have against her on my mind. It is a shame, when she has made her bargain, and has such furniture as you have here, to try to take away the man to whom a poor girl is as good as married, and him talking of making it all right by marrying me at the registry office. There 's quite plenty nice young men in the world — isn't there, sir ? — for her to fancy without her coming and taking a man well on in years away from me when I am happy with him. ^uie?t^ I haven't a fine house, I haven't, I have my love ! I distest your fine- looking men and money; I am all heart and '
Mme. Jules turned to her husband —
' You will permit me, sir, to hear no more of this,' said she, and went back to her room.
' If the lady is living with you, I have made a hash of it, as far as I can see ; but so much the worser,' con- tinued Ida. 'What business has she to come and see M. Ferragus every day ? '
' You are mistaken, mademoiselle,' said Jules, in dull amazement ; ' my wife could not possibly '
F
82 The Thirteen
* Oh ! so you are married, are you, the two of you ? ' said the grisette, evidently rather surprised. ' Then it 's far worse, sir, is it not, when a woman has a lawful husband of her own to have anything to do with a man like Henri '
'But what Henri ? ' said Jules, taking Ida aside into another room lest his wife should overhear anything further.
'Well, then, M. Ferragus.'
' But he is dead,' protested Jules.
' What stuff ! I went to Franconi's yesterday even- ing, and he brought me home again, as he ought to do. Your lady too can give you news of him. Didn't she go to see him at three o'clock ? That she did, I know, for I was waiting for her in the street ; being as a very nice man, M. Justin — perhaps you know him ? a little old fogey that wears stays and has seals on his watch- chain — it was he that told me that I had a Mme. Jules for my rival. That name, sir, is well known among fancy names; asking your pardon, since it's your own, but Mme. Jules might be a duchess at court, Henri is so rich he can afford all his whims. It is my business to look after my own, as I have a right to do ; for I love Henri, I do. He was my first fancy, and my love and the rest of my life is at stake. I am afraid of nothing, sir ; I am honest, and I never told a lie yet, nor took a thing belonging to anybody whatever. If I had an empress for my rival I should go right straight to her, and if she took my husband that is to be from me, I feel that I could kill her, was she never so much an empress, for one fine woman is as good as another, sir '
'That will do, that will do!' interrupted Jules. ' Where do you live ? '
'Number 14 Rue de la Corderie du Temple, sir. Ida Gruget, corset-maker at your service, sir ; for we make a good many corsets for gentlemen.'
The Thirteen 83
* And this man Ferragus, as you call him, where does he live ? '
'Why, sir' (tightening her lips), 'in the first place, he is not just " a man " — he is a gentleman, and better off than you are, maybe. But what makes you ask me for his address, when your wife knows where he hves ? He told me I was not to give it to anybody. Am I bound to give you an answer ? I am not in the police court nor the confessional, the Lord be thanked, and 1 am not beholden to any one.'
' And how if I offer you twenty, thirty, forty thou- sand francs to tell me his address ? '
' Oh, not quite, my little dear ; it 's no go,' said she, with a gesture learned in the streets, as accompaniment to her singular answer. ' No amount of money would get that out of me. I have the honour to wish you good evening. — Which way do you get out of this ? '
Jules allowed her to go. He was stricken to earth. The whole world seemed to be crumbling away under him, the sky above had fallen with a crash.
'Dinner is ready, sir,' said the footman.
For fifteen minutes the footman and Desmarets' manservant waited in the dining-room, but no one appeared. The maid came in to say that 'the mistress would not take dinner.'
'Why, what is the matter, Josephine?' asked the footman.
' I don't know. The mistress is crying, and she is going to bed. The master has a fancy somewhere else, I expect, and it has been found out at an awkward time ; do you understand ? I would not answer for the mis- tress's life. Men are all so clumsy, always making scenes without thinking in the least.'
'Not a bit of it,' said the man, lowering his voice; ' on the contrary, it is the mistress who — in short, you understand. What time could the master have for gadding about, when he hasn't spent a night out these
84 The Thirteen
hve years, and goes down to his office at ten o'clock, and only comes up to lunch at twelve ? In fact, his life is open and regular, while the mistress goes off pretty nearly every day at three o'clock, no one knows where.'
'So does the master,' said the maid, taking her mis- tress's part.
' But he goes to the Bourse, the master does. — This is the third time I have told him that dinner is ready,' he added, after a pause; 'you might as well talk to a statute.'
Jules came in.
' Where is your mistress ? ' asked he.
'Madame has gone to bed, she has a sick headache,' said the maid, assuming an important air.
'You can take the dinner away,' said Jules, with much cool self-possession. ' I shall keep madame com- pany.' And he went to his wife. She was crying, and stifling her sobs with her handkerchief.
' Why do you cry ? ' said Jules, using the formal vous. ' You have no violence, no reproaches to expect from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been faithful to my love, it is because you were not worthy of it '
' Not worthy ! '
The words repeated amid her sobs, and the tone in which they were spoken, would have softened any man but Jules.
' To kill you, a man must love more, perhaps, than I,' he resumed ; ' but I have not the heart to do it, I would sooner make away with myself and leave you to your — your happiness — and to — whom ? '
He broke off.
' Make away with yourself ! ' cried Clemence. She flung herself at Jules's feet and clung about them ; but he tried to shake her off, and dragged her to the bed.
' Leave me alone,' said he.
The Thirteen 85
' No, no, Jules ! If you love me no longer, I shall die. Do you wish to know all ? '
' Yes.' He took her, held her forcibly in his grasp, sat down on the bedside, and held her between his knees ; then he gazed dry-eyed at the fair face, now red as fire, and seamed with tear-stains. ' Now, tell me,' he said for the second time.
Clemence began to sob afresh.
'I cannot. It is a secret of life and death. If I told you, I , . . No, I cannot. Have pity, Jules ! '
* You are deceiving me still,' he said, but he replaced the formal vous by tu.
* Ah ! ' she cried, at this sign of relenting. 'Yes, Jules, you may believe that I am deceiving you, now you shall know everything very soon.'
' But this Ferragus, this convict that you go to see, this man enriched by crime, if he is not your lover, if you are not his '
' Oh, Jules ! '
' Well, is he your unknown benefactor, the man to whom we owe our success, as people have said before this ? '
' Who said so ? '
'A man whom I killed in a duel.'
' Oh, God ! one man dead already.'
' If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, and you take money to him, is he your brother ? '
' Well,' she said, ' and if he were ? '
M. Desmarets folded his arms.
' Why should this have been kept from my know- ledge ? ' returned he. ' Did you both deceive me — you and your mother ? And do people go to see their brothers every day, or nearly every day, eh ? '
But his wife fell swooning at his feet.
He pulled the bell ropes, summoned Josephine, and laid Clemence on the bed.
86 The Thirteen
'She is dead,' he thought, *and how if I am wrong ? '
'This will kill me,' murmured Mme. Jules, as she came to herself.
'Josephine,' exclaimed M. Desmarets, 'go for M. Desplein ; and then go to my brother's house and ask him to come as soon as possible.'
'Why your brother?' asked Clemence. But Jules had already left the room. For the first time in five years Mme. Jules slept alone in her bed, and was obliged to allow a doctor to enter the sanctuary, two troubles that she felt keenly.
Desplein found Mme. Jules very ill ; never had violent emotion been worse timed. He postponed his decision on the case till the morrow, and left diverse prescriptions which were not carried out, all physical suffering was forgotten in heart distress. Daylight was at hand, and still Clemence lay awake. Her thoughts were busy with the murmur of conversation, which lasted for several hours, between the brothers, but no single word reached her through the thickness of the walls to give a clue to the meaning of the prolonged conference. M. Desmarets, the notary, went at length ; and then, in the stillness of the night, with that strange stimulation of the senses that comes with passion, Clemence could hear the squeaking of a pen and the unconscious movements made by some one busily writing. Those who are accustomed to sit up through the night, and have noticed the effect of deep silence on the laws of acoustics, know that a faint sound at inter- vals is easily heard, when a continuous and even murmur is scarcely distinguishable.
Clemence rose, anxious and trembling. She forgot her condition, forgot that she was damp with perspira- tion, and, barefooted and without a dressing-gown, went across and opened the door. Luckily it turned noise- lessly on its hinges. She saw her husband, pen in hand, sitting fast asleep in his easy-chair. The candles were
The Thirteen 87
burning low in the sockets. She crept forward, and on an envelope that lay sealed already, she saw the words, ' My Will.'
She knelt down, as if at a graveside, and kissed her husband's hand. He woke at once.
'Jules, dear, even criminals condemned to death are given a few days' respite,' she said, looking at him with eyes shining with love and fever. 'Your innocent wife asks for two days — only two days. Leave me free for
two days, and wait. After that I shall die happy ;
at any rate, you will be sorry.'
' You shall have the delay, Clcmence.'
And while she kissed her husband's hands in a pathetic outpouring of her heart, Jules, fascinated by that cry of innocence, took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead, utterly ashamed that he should still submit to the power of that noble beauty.
Next morning, after a few hours of sleep, Jules went to his wife's room, mechanically obedient to his custom of never leaving home without first seeing her. Cle- mence was asleep. A ray of light from a chink in the highest window fell on the face of a woman worn out with grief. Sorrow had left traces on her brow already, and faded the fresh red of her lips. A lover's eyes could not mistake the significance of the dark marbled streaks and the pallor of illness, which took the place of the even colour in her cheeks and the white velvet of her skin, the transparent surface over which all the feelings that stirred that fair soul so unconsciously flitted.
'She is not well,' thought Jules. 'Poor Clemence, may God protect us ! '
He kissed her very gently on the forehead ; she awoke, looked into her husband's face, and understood. She could not speak, but she took his hand, and her eyes grew soft with tears.
' I am innocent,' she said, finishing her dream.
88 The Thirteen
* You will not go out to-day, will you ? ' said Jules.
' No ; I feel too weak to get up.'
* If you change your mind, wait till I come home,' said Jules, and he went down to the porter's lodge.
' Fouquereau, you must keep a strict watch to-day,' he said. ' I wish to know every one who comes in or out.'
With that, Jules sprang into a cab, bade the man drive to the Hotel de Maulincour, and asked for the Baron.
' Monsieur is ill,' was the reply.
Jules insisted, and sent in his name. If he could not see M. de Mauhncour, he would see the Vidame or the dowager. He waited for some time in the old Baroness's drawing-room j she came at last, however, to say that her grandson was far too ill to see him.
'I know the nature of his illness, madame,' said Jules, * from the letter which you did me the honour to send, and I entreat you to believe '
' A letter, monsieur ? A letter that I sent to you ? ' broke in the Baroness. ' I have not written a word. And what am I supposed to say, monsieur, in this letter ? '
' Madame, as I meant to call on M. de Maulincour this very dav, and to return the note to you, I thought I need not destroy it in spite of the request at the end. Here it is.'
The dowager rang for her double-strength spectacles, and glanced down the sheet with every sign of the greatest astonishment.
'The handwriting is so exactly like mine, monsieur, that if we were not speaking of a quite recent event, I should be deceived by it myself. My grandson cer- tainly is ill, monsieur, but his mind has not been affected the least bit in the world. We are puppets in the hands of wicked people ; still, I cannot guess the object of this piece of impertinence. . . . You shall see my grand-
The Thirteen 89
son, monsieur, and you will admit that he is perfectly sane.'
She rang the bell again to ask if it were possible for the Baron to receive a visit from M. Desmarets. The footman brought an answer in the affirmative. Jules went up to Auguste de Maulincour's room, and found that young officer seated in an armchair by the fireside. He was too weak to rise, and greeted his visitor with a melancholy inclination of the head. The Vidame de Pamiers was keeping him company.
' M. le Baron,' began Jules, ' I have something to say of so private a nature that I should wish to speak with you alone.'
' Monsieur,' said Auguste, ' M. le Commandeur knows all about this affair ; you need not fear to speak before him.'
' M. le Baron, you have disturbed and almost destroyed my happiness ; and you had no right to do so. Until we know which of us must ask, or give satisfaction to the other, you are bound to give me your assistance in the dark ways to which you have suddenly brought me. So I have come to inquire the present address of this mysterious being who exercises such an unlucky influ- ence on our lives, and seems to have some supernatural power at his orders. I received this letter yesterday, just as I came in after hearing your account of your- self.'
Jules handed the forged letter.
' This Ferragus or Bourignard or M. de Funcal is a fiend incarnate ! ' shouted Maulincour. ' In what hideous labyrinth have I set foot ? Whither am I going ? — I was wrong, monsieur,' he added, looking full at Jules, ' but death surely is the greatest expiation of all, and I am dying. So you can ask me anything you wish ; I am at your service.'
'You should know where this strange man lives; I absolutely must get to the bottom of this mystery, if it
90 The Thirteen
costs me all that I have ; and with such a cruelly ingenious enemy, every moment is precious.'
* Justin will tell us all about it directly,' replied the Baron. The Vidame fidgeted upon his chair. Auguste rang the bell.
'Justin is not in the house,' exclaimed the Vidame in a hasty fashion, which said a good deal more than the words.
'Well,' Auguste said quickly, 'and if he is not, our servants here know where he is. A man on horseback shall go at once to find him. Your servant is in Paris, is he not ? They will find him somewhere.'
The old Vidame de Pamiers was visibly troubled.
'Justin will not come, dear fellow,' he said. 'I wanted to keep the accident from your knowledge, but '
' Is he dead ? ' exclaimed M. de Maulincour. ' And when ? and how ? '
' It happened yesterday night. He went out to supper with some old friends, and got drunk no doubt ; his friends, being also the worse for wine, must have left him to lie in the street ; a heavy carriage drove right over him '
'The convict did not fail that time; he killed his man at the first attempt,' said Auguste. ' He was not so lucky with me ; he had to try four times.'
Jules grew moody and thoughtful.
'So I shall find out nothing, it seems,' he exclaimed, after a long pause. ' Perhaps your man was rightly served ; he went beyond your orders when he slandered Mme. Desmarets to one "Ida," to stir up the girl's jealousy and let her loose upon us.'
' Ah, monsieur, in my fury I gave over Mme. Jules to him.'
'Sir ! ' exclaimed Mme. Jules's husband, stung to the quick ; but Maulincour silenced him with a wave of the hand.
The Thirteen 91
' Oh ! now I am prepared for all that may happen. What is done is done, and you will do no better ; nor can you say anything that my own conscience has not told me already. I am expecting the most famous specialist in toxicology to know my fate. If the pain is likely to be intolerable, I have made up my mind ; I shall blow my brains out.'
' You are talking like a boy,' cried the old Vidame, aghast at the Baron's coolness. ' Your grandmother would die of grief ! '
' And so, monsieur, there is no way of finding out in what part of Paris this extraordinary man lives ? ' asked Jules.
'I think, monsieur, that I heard this poor Justin say that M. de Funcal was to be found at the Portuguese or else the Brazilian Embassy,' said the Vidame. * M. de Funcal is of a good family ; he belongs to both countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your perse- cutor, whoever he may be, is so powerful, it seems to me, that you had better accept him in his new meta- morphosis until you are in a position to overwhelm him with confusion and crush him ; but set about it prudently, my dear sir. If M. de Maulincour had taken my advice, nothing of all this would have happened.'
Jules withdrew, coolly but politely. He was at his wits' end to find Ferragus. As he came in, the porter came out to inform him that Madame had gone out to put a letter into the box opposite the Rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by the profound intelligence with which the man aided and abetted his scheme, and by the very skill w^ith which he found means to serve him. The zeal and peculiar ingenuity which inferiors will show to compromise their betters, when their betters compromise themselves, were well known to Jules, and he appreciated the danger of having such accomplices in any affair whatsoever; but he had forgotten his personal dignity till he suddenly saw how far he had fallen. What a
92 The Thirteen
triumph for a serf, unable to rise to his master, to bring that master down to his own level !
Jules was stern and abrupt with the man. Another blunder. But he was so wretched ! His life, till then so straight and clean, had grown crooked ; and now there was nothing for it but to use craft and lies. And Clemence, too, was using lies and craft with him. It was a sickening moment. Lost in depths of bitter thought, he stood forgetful of himself and motionless on the door step. Sometimes he gave way to despair which counselled flight ; he would leave France and carry with him his love and all the illusions of unproved guilt ; and then again, never doubting but that Clemence's letter was addressed to Ferragus, he cast about for ways of intercepting the reply sent by that mysterious being. Again, examining into his singular success since his marriage, he asked himself whether that slander which he had avenged was not after all a truth. At length, returning to Ferragus's answer, he reasoned with himself on this wise —
' But will this Ferragus, so profoundly astute as he is, so consequent in the least things that he does ; this man who sees, and foresees, and calculates, and even guesses our thoughts, will he send an answer ? Is he not sure to employ some means in keeping with his power ? Can he not send a reply by some ingenious scoundrel, or, more likely still, in a jewel case brought by some unsuspecting, honest creature, or in a parcel with a pair of shoes which some working-girl, in all innocence, brings home for my wife ? Suppose that there should be an understanding between him and Clemence ? '
He could trust nothing and nobody. He made a hurried survey of the boundless field, the shoreless sea of conjec- ture ; and after drifting hither and thither, and in every possible direction, it occurred to him that he was stronger in his own house than anywhere else ; so he resolved to
The Thirteen 93
stay at home and watch Hke an ant-Hon at the bottom of its funnel in the sand.
' Fouquereau,' he said, 'if any one asks for me, I am not at home. But if any one wishes to speak with madame, or brings anything for her, ring twice. And you must let me see every letter left here, no matter to whom it is addressed. — And so,' he thought within him- self, as he went into his office on the entresol, 'and so I shall outwit Master Ferragus. And if his messenger is cunning enough to ask for me, so as to find out whether madame is alone, at any rate I shall not be gulled like a fool.'
His office windows looked into the street. As he stood with his face pressed against the panes, jealousy inspired him with a final stratagem. He determined to send his head-clerk to the Bourse in his carriage ; the clerk should take a letter to a friend of his, another stockbroker, to whom he would explain his business transactions — he would beg his friend to take his place. His most difficult business he put off till the morrow, regardless of the rise and fall of stocks, and all the funds of Europe. Fair prerogative of love ! Love eclipses all things else. The rest of the world fades away before it ; and altar,-throne, and government securities are as though they were not. At half-past three o'clock, just when the Bourse is all agog with rates and premiums, rises and falls, current accounts, and the rest of it, Jules looked up and saw Fouquereau with a beaming countenance.
' An old woman has just been here, sir; she is as sharp as they make them. Oh ! she is an artful one, I can tell you. She asked for you, and seemed put out to find you were not at home ; then she gave me this letter here for madame.'
Jules broke the seal with fevered anguish, but he dropped exhausted into his chair. The letter was a string of meaningless words, and quite unintelligible without a key. It was written in cipher.
94 The Thirteen
' You can go, Fouquereau.'
The man went.
' This mystery is deeper than the unplumbed sea. Oh, this is love beyond a doubt. Love, and love only, could be as sagacious, as ingenious as the vi^riter of this letter. Oh, God ! I w^ill kill Clemence.'
Even at that moment a bright idea burst upon his brain, and struck him so forcibly, that it seemed almost like the breaking out of light. In the old days of poverty and hard vi^ork before his marriage, Jules had made a real friend. The excessive delicacy with which Jules spared the susceptibilities of a poor and shy comrade, the respect that he paid his friend, the tactful ingenuity with which he made that friend accept a share of his good fortune without a blush, — all these things had increased their friendship since those days. In spite of Desmarets' prosperity, Jacquet was faithful to him.
Jacquet, an honest man, and a toiler of austere life, had slowly made his way in that Department which of all others employs most rascality and most honesty. He was in the Foreign Office; the most delicate part of its archives was in his charge. He was a kind of departmental glow-worm, shedding light during his working hours on secret correspondence, deciphering and classifying despatches. Rather above the rank and file of the middle classes, he held the highest (subaltern) posts at the Foreign Office, and lived unrecognised ; rejoicing in an obscurity which put him beyond reverses of fortune, and content to pay his debt to his fatherland in small coin. A born assistant-registrar, he enjoyed the respect that was due to him, in newspaper language. And, as an unknown patriot in a Government Depart- ment, he resigned himself to groan, by his fireside, over the aberrations of the Government that he served. His position, thanks to Jules, had been improved by a suitable marriage. In his own home, Jacquet was a debonair king, a ' man with an umbrella ' ; his wife had
The Thirteen 95
a jobbed carriage which he never used himself: and as a final touch to this portrait of an unconscious philoso- pher, it should be added that he had never yet suspected, and never vv'ould suspect, how much he might make out of his position, with a stockbroker for his intimate friend, and a knowledge of State secrets. A hero after the manner of that unknown private soldier who died to save Napoleon with a cry of ' Who goes there ? ' he was faithful to his Department.
In another ten minutes Jules stood in Jacquet's private office. His friend brought forward a chair, laid his green silk eye-shade down methodically upon the table, rubbed his hands, took out his snufF-box, rose to his feet, threw out his chest with a crack of the shoulder- blades, and said —
' What chance brings you here, Mos'ieur Desmarets ? What do you want with me ? '
' I want you to find out a secret for me, Jacquet ; it is a matter of life and death.'
' It is not about politics ? '
' You are not the man I should come to if I wanted to know anything of that kind,' said Jules. ' No, it is a private affair, and I must ask you to keep it as secret as possible.'
' Claude Joseph Jacquet, professional mute. Why, don't you know me ? ' laughed he. ' My line of busi- ness is discretion.'
Jules put the letter before him.
* This is addressed to my wife; I must have it read to me,' he said.
' The devil ! the devil ! a bad business,' said Jacquet, scrutinising the document as a money-lender examines a negotiable bill. ' Aha ! a stencil cipher. Wait.'
He left Jules alone in the office, but came back pretty soon.
'Tomfoolery, my friend. It is written with an old stencil cipher which the Portuguese ambassador used in
96 The Thirteen
M. de Choiseul's time after the expulsion of the Jesuits. Stay, look here.'
Jacquet took up a sheet of paper with holes cut in it at regular intervals ; it looked rather like the lace paper which confectioners put over their sugar-plums. When this was set over the sheet below, Jules could easily make sense of the words left uncovered.
*My dear Clemence, — Do not trouble yourself any more ; no one shall trouble our happiness again, and your husband will put his suspicions aside. I cannot go to see you. However ill you may be, you must gather up your courage to come to me ; summon up your strength, love will give it you. I have been through a most cruel operation for your sake, and I cannot stir out of bed. Moxas were applied yesterday evening to the nape of the neck and across the shoulders ; it was necessary to cauterise pretty deeply. Do you under- stand ? But I thought of you, and found the pain not intolerable. I have left the sheltering roof of the Embassy to baffle Maulincour, who shall not persecute us much longer ; and here I am safe from all search at Number 1 2,Rue des Enfants-Rouges, with an old woman, one Mme. Etienne Gruget, mother of that Ida, who shall shortly pay dear for her silly prank. Come to-morrow at nine o'clock. My room can only be reached by an inner staircase. Ask for M. Camuset. Good-bye till to-morrow. A kiss on thy forehead, my darling.'
Jacquet gazed at Jules with a kind of shocked expres- sion with a very real sympathy in it, and brought out his favourite invocation, 'The devil! the devil!' in two distinct intonations.
' It seems clear to you, doesn't it ? ' said Jules. ' Well, and yet, in the bottom of my heart a voice pleads for my wife, and that voice rises above all the pangs of jealousy. I shall endure the most horrid torture until to-morrow ;
The Thirteen 97
but- at last, to-morrow between nine and ten, I shall know all. I shall either be wretched or happy for life. Think of me, Jacquet.'
* I will be at your house at eight o'clock. We will go yonder together. I will wait outside in the street for you, if you like. There may be risks to run ; you ought to have some one you can trust within call, a sure hand that can take a hint. Count upon me.' ' Even to help me to kill a man ? ' ' The devil ! the devil ! ' Jacquet said quickly, repeat- ing, so to speak, the same musical note. 'I have two
children and a wife '
Jules squeezed Claude Jacquet's hand and went out. But he came back in haste.
' I am forgetting the letter,' said he. ' And that is not all ; it must be sealed again.'
' The devil ! the devil ! you opened it without taking an impression ; but, luckily, the edge of the fracture is pretty clean. There, let me have it, I will give it you back again secundum scripturam. ' When ? '
' By half-past five '
' If I am not in, simply give it to the porter, and tell him to send it up to madame.' ' Do you want me to-morrow ? ' ' No. Good-bye.'
Jules soon reached the Place de la Rotonde du Temple, dismissed his cabriolet, and walked down to the Rue des Enfants-Rouges, to take a look at Mme. Etienne Gruget's abode. The mystery on which so many lives hung was to be cleared up there. Ferragus was there, and Ferragus held all the ends of the threads in this obscure business. — Was not the connection between Mme. Jules, her husband, and this man the Gordian knot of a tragedy stained even now with blood? Nor should the sword be wanting to cut asunder the tightest of all bonds.
G
98 The Thirteen
The house belonged to the class commonly known as cabajoutis — an expressive name given by working people in Paris to patchwork buildings, as they may be called. Several houses, originally separate, have sometimes been run into one, according to the fancy of the various pro- prietors who successively enlarged them ; or they were begun and left unfinished for a time, and afterwards resumed and completed. Unlucky dwellings are they that have passed, like sundry nations, under the rule of several dynasties of capricious rulers. The various stories and the windows do not belong to each other, to borrow one of the most picturesque of painter's words ; every detail, even the decoration outside, clashes with the rest of the building. The cabajoutis is to Parisian street architecture what the capharnaiim^ or lumber-room, is to the house — a regular rubbish-heap where the most unlikely things are shot down together pell-mell. ,
' Mme. Etienne ? ' Jules asked of the portress.
That functionary was installed in the great centre doorway in a sort of hencoop, a little wooden house on wheels, not unlike the cabins which the police authorities put up at every cabstand,
* Eh ?' said the portress, laying down the stocking which she was knitting. The living accessories which contribute to the general effect of any portion of the great monster Paris, fit in, as a rule, remarkably well with the character of their surroundings. The porter, concierge, Swiss, or whatever you may choose to call this indispensable muscle in the monster's economy, is always in keeping with the quarter of which he is an integral part ; very often he is the Quarter incarnate. The concierge of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, an idle being embroidered at every seam, speculates in stocks and shares ; in the Chaussee d'Antin, the porter is a comfortable personage ; in the neighbourhood of the Bourse, he reads the newspaper; in the Faubourg Mont-
The Thirteen 99
martre, he carries on some industry or other. In low neighbourhoods the portress is a worn-out prostitute j in the Marais she keeps herself respectable, she is apt to be peevish, she has her 'ways.'
At sight of Jules, the portress of the Rue des Enfants- Rouges stirred up the dying embers of block fuel in her foot-warmer, taking a knife /or the purpose. Then she said, ' You want Mme. Etienne j do you mean Mme. Etienne Gruget ? '
* Yes,' said Jules Desmarets, with a touch of vexation.
' She that works at trimmings ? '
'Yes.'
' Very well, sir,' and emerging from her cage, she laid a hand on Jules's arm and drew him to the further end of a long narrow passage, vaulted like a cellar ; ' you go up the second staircase opposite, just across the yard. Do you see the windows with the gillyflowers ? That 's where Mme. Etienne lives.'
' Thank you, madame. Is she alone, do you think ? '
' Why shouldn't she be alone when she is a lone woman ? '
Jules sprang noiselessly up a very dark staircase, every step incrusted with dried lumps of mud deposited by the lodgers' boots. He found three doors on the second floor, but no sign of gillyflowers. Luckily for him, some words were written in chalk on the grimiest and greasiest of the three — Ida will be back at nine o'clock to-night.
' Here it is,' said Jules to himself.
He tugged at an old blackened bell-pull, with a fawn's foot attached, and heard the smothered tinkle of a little cracked bell, and the yapping of an asthmatic little dog. He could tell by the sound that the bell made inside that the room was so lumbered up with things that there was no room for an echo — a characteristic trait of work- men's lodgings and little households generally, where there is neither space nor air. Jules looked about
lOO The Thirteen
involuntarily for the gillyflowers, and found them at last on the window-sill, between two pestiferous sinks. Here were flowers, a garden two feet long and six inches wide, and a sprouting grain of wheat — all life condensed into that narrow space, and not one of life's miseries lacking ! A ray of sunlight shone down, as if in pity on the sickly blossoms and the superb green column of wheat-stalk, bringing out the indescribable colour peculiar to Paris slums; dust, grease, and inconceiv- able filth incrusted and corroded the rubbed, discoloured, damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the gaping window-sashes, the doors that once had been painted red. In another moment he heard an old woman's cough and the sound of heavy feet dragging painfully along in list slippers. This must be Ida Gruget's mother. She opened the door, came out upon the landing, raised her face to his, and said —
'Ah! it's M. Bocquillon ! Why, no it isn't. My word ! how like you are to M. Bocquillon ! You are a brother of his perhaps ? What can I do for you, sir ? Just step inside.'
Jules followed her into the first room, and caught a general impression of bird-cages, pots and pans, stoves, furniture, little earthenware dishes full of broken meat, or milk for the dog and the cats ; a wooden clock-case, blankets, Eisen's engravings, and a heap of old iron- mongery piled up with the most curiously grotesque effect. It was a genuine Parisian capharnaum ; nothing was lacking, not even a few odd numbers of the Constitutionnel,
'Just come in here and warm yourself,' said the widow Gruget, but prudence prevailed. Jules was afraid that Ferragus might overhear, and wondered whether the bargain which he proposed to make had not better be concluded in the outer room ; just then, however, a hen came cackling down a staircase and cut short his inward conference. He made up his mind and followed Ida's
The Thirteen loi
mother into the next room, where a fire was burning. A wheezy little pug-dog, a dumb spectator, followed them, and scrambled up on an old stool. Mme. Gruget's request to come in and get warm was prompted by the very coxcombry of poverty on the brink of destitution. Her stock-pot completely hid a couple of smouldering sticks which ostentatiously shunned each other. A skimmer lay on the floor, with the handle among the ashes. On the wooden ledge above the fireplace, amid a litter of wools, cotton- reels, and odds and ends, needed for the manufacture of trimmings, stood a little waxen crucifix under a shade made of pieces of glass joined together with strips of bluish paper. Jules looked round at the furniture with a curiosity in which self-interest was blended, and in spite of himself he showed his secret satisfaction.
* Well, sir, do you think you can do with my furni- ture ? ' inquired the widow, sitting down in a yellow cane-seated armchair, her headquarters apparently ; for it contained her pocket-handkerchief, her snuff- box, some half-peeled vegetables, her spectacles, an almanack, a length of galoon on which she was at work, a pack of greasy playing-cards, and a couple of novels. All this sounded hollow. The piece of furni- ture on which the widow was 'descending the river of life' was something like the comprehensive bag which women take on a journey, a sort of house in miniature, containing everything from the husband's portrait to the drop of balm tea in case she feels faint, from the sugar- plums for the little ones to sticking-plaster for cut fingers.
Jules made a careful survey of it all. He looked very closely at Mme. Gruget herself, with her grey eyes, denuded of lashes and eyebrows, at her toothless mouth, at the dark shades in her wrinkles, at her rusty net cap, with its yet more rusty frill, at her tattered cotton petticoats, her worn slippers, and charred foot-warmer.
I02 The Thirteen
and then at the table covered with crockery, silks, and patterns of work in worsted and cotton, with the neck of a wine-bottle rising out of the middle of the litter, and said within himself, ' This woman has some passion, some failing that she keeps quiet ; she is in my power.' — Aloud he said with a significant gesture, 'I have come to order some galoon of you, madame ; ' then lowered his voice to add, ' I know that you have a lodger here, a man that goes by the name of Camuset.'
The old woman looked up at once, but there was not a sign of surprise in her countenance.
' Look here, can he overhear us ? There is a fortune involved for you, mind you.'
'You can speak, sir, there is nothing to be afraid of; there is nobody here. There is somebody upstairs, but it is quite impossible that he should hear you.'
' Ah ! cunning old thing ! She can give you a Norman's answer,' thought Jules. ' We may come to terms. — You need not trouble yourself to tell a lie, madame. To begin with, bear in mind that I mean no harm whatever to you, nor your invalid lodger with his blisters, nor to your daughter Ida the stay-maker, Ferragus's sweetheart. You see, I know all about it. Never mind, I have nothing to do with the police, and I want nothing that is likely to hurt your conscience.
' A young lady will come here to-morrow between nine and ten to have some talk with your daughter's sweetheart. I want to be somewhere near, so that I can hear and see everything without being heard or seen. You must arrange this for me, and I will give you two thousand francs down, and an annuity of six hundred francs. My notary shall draw up the agreement this evening in your presence, and I will give the money into his hands to pay over to you to-morrow after this meeting at which I wish to be present, when I shall have proof of your good faith.'
'It will not do any harm to my daughter, will it, my
The Thirteen 103
dear gentleman ? ' she returned, on the watch Hke a suspicious cat.
* None whatever, madame. But, at the same time, your daughter is behaving very badly to you, it seems to me. When a man as rich and powerful as Ferragus is fond of her, it ought to be easy to make you more comfortable than you appear to be.'
' Ah, my dear gentleman, not so much as a miserable ticket for the Ambigu or the Gaiete, where she can go whenever she likes. It is shameful. And I that sold my silver spoons, and am eating now off German silver in my old age, all to apprentice that girl, and give her a business where she could coin gold if she chose. For as to that, she takes after her mother ; she is as neat fingered as a fairy, it must be said in justice to her. At any rate, she might as well hand over her old silk dresses to me, so fond as I am of wearing silk ; but no, sir. She goes to the Cadran bleu^ to dine at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriage like a princess, and doesn't care a rap for her mother. God Almighty ! we bring these scatter-brained girls into the world, and it is not the best that could be said for us. A mother, sir, and a good mother too, for I have hidden her giddiness, and cosseted her to that degree that I took the bread out of my mouth to stuffs her with all that I had ! Well, and that is not enough, but she must come and coax you, and then wish you " Good day, mother!" That is the way they do their duty to them that brought them into the world ! Just let them go their ways. But she will have children some day or other, and then she will know what it is for herself; bad bargains they are, but one loves them, all the same.'
' What, does she do nothing for you ? '
' Nothing ? Oh, no, sir, I don't say that. If she did nothing at all for me, it would be rather too bad. She pays the rent, and she gives me firewood and thirty-six francs a month. But is it right, sir, that I should have
I04 The Thirteen
to go on working at my age ; I am fifty-two, and my eyes are weak of an evening ? And what is more, why won't she have me with her ? If she is ashamed of me, she may as well say so at once. You had need to bury yourself, and that is the truth, for these beastly children that forget all about you before they have so much as shut the door.'
She drew her handkerchief from her pocket, and a lottery ticket fell out, but she picked it up in a moment.
* ^uien ! ' that is the rate-collector's receipt.'
Jules suddenly guessed the reason of the prudent parsimony of which the mother complained, and felt the more sure that the Widow Gruget would agree to his proposal.
* Very well, madame,' he said, ' in that case you will accept my offer.'
' Two thousand francs down, did you say, sir ? and six hundred francs a year ? '
' I have changed my mind, madame. I will promise you only three hundred francs of annuity. The arrange- ment suits me better. But I will pay you five thousand francs down. You would rather have it so, would you not ? '
' Lord, yes, sir.'
' You will be more comfortable, you can go to the Ambigu Comique, or Franconi's, or anywhere else, and go comfortably in a cab.'
' Oh, I do not care about Franconi's at all, being as you don't hear talk of it. And if I agree to take the money, sir, it is because it will be a fine thing for my child. And I shall not be living on her. Poor little thing, after all, I don't grudge her such pleasure as she gets. Young things must have amusement, sir. And so, if you will assure me that I shall be doing nobody any harm '
' Nobody,' repeated Jules. ' But see now, how are you going to set about it ? '
The Thirteen 105
' Oh, well, sir, if M. Ferragus has just a little drink of poppy water to-night, he will sleep sound, the dear man ! And much he stands in need of sleep, in such pain as he is, for he suffers so that it makes you sorry to see it. And by the bye, just tell me what sort of a notion it is for a healthy man to have his back burnt to cure the neuralgia that does not trouble him once in two years ? — But to go back to our business, sir. My neighbour that lives just above has left her key with me ; her room is next door to M. Ferragus's bedroom. She has gone to the country for ten days. So if you have a hole m?de to-night in the partition wall, you can look , in and hear at your ease. There is a locksmith, a great friend of mine, a very nice man, that talks like an angel ; he will do that for me, and nobody any the wiser.'
' Here are a hundred francs for him. You must come this evening to M. Desmarets' ; he is a notary ; here is his address. The paper will be ready at nine o'clock, but — mum ! '
' Right ; mum, as you say. Good-day, sir.'
Jules went home again, almost soothed by the cer- tainty of knowing everything to-morrow. He found the letter, sealed flawlessly again, in the porter's room.
* How are you ? ' he asked his wife, in spite of the coolness between them, so difficult is it to break from the old habits of affection.
* Rather better, Jules,' she answered in winning tones ; * will you dine here with me ? '
' Yes. Stay, here is something that Fouquereau gave me for you,' and he handed her the letter. At the sight of it Clemence's white face flushed a deep red ; the sudden crimson sent an intolerable pang through her husband.
' Is that joy ? ' laughed he, ' or relief from suspense ? '
* Oh ! many things,' she said, as she looked at the seal.
* I will leave you, madame.'
He went down to his office and wrote to his brother
io6 The Thirteen
about the annuity for the Widow Gruget. When he came back again, dinner was ready on a little table by Clemence's bedside, and Josephine waited upon them.
'If I were not lying in bed, what a pleasure it would be to me to serve you ! ' she said, when Josephine had gone. ' Oh, and even on my knees,' she went on, passing her white fingers through Jules's hair. ' Dear noble heart ! you were very merciful and good to me just now. You have done me more good by your trust in me than all the doctors in the world could do with their prescriptions. Your woman's delicacy — for you can love as a woman can — shed balm in my soul j I feel almost well again. There is a truce. Jules, come closer, let me kiss you.'
Jules could not forgo the joy of Clemence's kiss, and yet it was not without something like remorse in his heart. He felt small before this woman, in whose innocence he was always tempted to believe. There was a sort of sorrowful gladness about Clemence. A chastened hope shone through the troubled expression of her face. They seemed both alike unhappy that the deceit must be kept up ; another kiss, and they must tell each other all ; they could endure their pain no longer.
* To-morrow evening, Clemence ? '
' No, monsieur, to-morrow at noon you shall know everything, and you will kneel before your wife. Ah ! no, you shall not humble yourself. No, all is forgiven you. — No, you have done no wrong. Listen. Yester- day you shattered me very ruthlessly, but life perhaps might not have been complete if I had not known that anguish ; it is a dark shadow to bring out the brightness of days like heaven.'
'You are bewitching me,' Jules exclaimed, ' and you would give me remorse.'
' Poor love, fate overrules us, and I cannot help my destiny. I am going out to-morrow.'
'When?'
The Thirteen 107
' At half-past nine.'
'Clemence, you must be very careful. You must consult Dr. Desplein and old Haudry.'
' I shall consult my own heart and courage only.'
' I will leave you free. I shall not come to see you till noon.'
* Will you not stay with me a little while to-night ? I am not ill now '
Jules finished his work and came back to sit with her. He could not keep away. Love was stronger in him than all his griefs.
Next morning, at nine o'clock, Jules slipped out of the house, hurried to the Rue des Enfants -Rouges, climbed the stairs, and rang the bell at the Widow Gruget's door.
' Ah ! You are a man of your word, punctual as sunrise,' was old Mme. Gruget's greeting. * Come in, sir. — I have a cup of coffee and cream ready for you in
case ' she added, when the door was closed. ' Oh !
and genuine cream, a little jar that I saw them fill with my own eyes at the cowkeeper's near by in the Marche des Enfants-Rouges.'
' Thank you, no, madame, nothing. Show me upstairs '
*Very good, my dear gentleman. Step this way.'
She showed Jules into a room just above her own, and pointed triumphantly to a hole about as large as a two-franc piece, cut during the night so as to correspond with a rose in the pattern of the paper in Ferragus's room. The opening had been made above a cupboard on either side the wall ; the locksmith had left no trace of his handiwork ; and from below it was very difficult to see this improvised loophole in a dark corner. If Jules meant to see or hear anything, he was obliged to stay there in a tolerably cramped position, perched on the top of a step which the Widow Gruget had thought- fully placed for him.
io8 The Thirteen
* There 's a gentleman with him,' she said, as she went. And, in fact, Jules saw that some one was busy dressing a line of blisters raised on Ferragus's shoulders. He recognised Ferragus from M. de Maulincour's description of the qian.
'When shall I be all right, do you think ? ' asked the patient.
' I do not know,' said the other ; ' but from what the doctors say, seven or eight more dressings will be needed at least.'
' Very well, see you again this evening,' returned Ferragus, holding out a hand to the man as he adjusted the last bandage.
* This evening,' returned the other, shaking Ferragus cordially by the hand. 'I should be glad to see you out of your pain.'
' At last M. de Funcal's papers are to be handed over to-morrow, and Henri Bourignard is really dead,' con- tinued Ferragus. Those two unlucky letters that cost us so dear have been destroyed, so I shall be somebody, socially speaking ; a man among men again, and I am quite as good as the sailor whom the fishes have eaten. God knows whether it is for my own sake that I have taken a count's title.'
*■ Poor Gratien ! you are the best head among us, our beloved brother, the Benjamin of the band. You know that.'
' Good-bye ; take good care of my Maulincour.'
' You can set your mind at rest on that score.'
' Hey, Marquis ! ' cried the convict.
' What ? '
' Ida is capable of anything after the scene yesterday evening. If she flings herself into the river, I certainly shall not fish her out ; she will the better keep the secret of my name, the only secret she knows ; but look after her, for, after all, she is a kind creature.'
' Very well.'
The Thirteen 109
The stranger went. Ten minutes afterwards Jules heard the unmistakable rustle of silk, and almost knew the sound of his wife's footsteps, not without a fevered shiver.
' Well, father, poor father, how are you ? How brave you are ! ' It was Clemence who spoke.
'Come here, child,' said Ferragus, holding out his hand.
And Clemence bent her forehead for his kiss.
' Let us see you, what is it, poor little girl ? What new troubles ? '
'Troubles, father? It is killing me, killing the daughter who loves you so. As I wrote to tell you yesterday, you absolutely must use that fertile brain of yours to find some way of seeing poor Jules this very day. If you only knew how good he has been to me in spite of suspicions that seemed so well founded ! Love is my life, father. Do you wish to see me die ? Oh ! I have been through so much as it is, and my life is in danger, I feel it.'
' To lose you, my child ! to lose you for a miserable Parisian's curiosity ! I would set Paris on fire. Ah ! you know what a lover is, but what a father is you do not know.'
' You frighten me, father, when you look like that. Do not put two such different sentiments in the balance. I had my husband before I knew that my father was living '
' If your husband was the first to set a kiss upon your forehead, I was the first to let tears fall there,' said Ferragus. ' Reassure yourself, Clemence, open your heart to me. I love you well enough to be happy in the knowledge that you are happy ; although your father is almost nothing in your heart, while you fill his.'
' Ah, God ! such words make me too happy. You make me love you more than ever, and it seems to me
no The Thirteen
that I am robbing Jules. But just think that he is in despair, my good father. What shall I tell him in two hours' time ? '
' Child, do you think that I waited for your letter to save you from this threatened unhappiness ? What came to those who took it into their heads to meddle with your happy life, or to come between us ? Why, have you never recognised a second Providence watching over you ? And you do not know that twelve men, full of vigour in mind and body, are like an escort about your love and your life, always ready to do any deed to save you ? And the father who used to risk his life to see you as you took your walks ; or came at night to see you in your little cot in your mother's room ; that father who, from the memory of your childish kisses, and from these alone, drew strength to live when a man of honour must take his own life to escape a shameful fate ; — how should not he — how should not /, in short, that draw breath only through your lips — see only with your eyes, feel through your heart, how should not I defend you with a lion's claws and a father's soul, when you are all that I have, my life, my daughter ? . . . Why, since the angel died, that was your mother once, I have dreamed only one dream — of the joy of calling you my daughter openly, of clasping you in my arms before heaven and earth, of killing the convict . . .' (he paused for a moment) — of giving you a father,' he continued ; * I saw a time when I could grasp your husband's hand without a blush, and live fearlessly in both your hearts, and say to the world, " This is my child ! " — in short, I had visions of being a father at my ease.'
' Oh ! father, father ! '
' After many efforts, after searching the world over, my friends have found me a man's shape to fill,' con- tinued Ferragus. ' In a few days' time I shall be M. de Funcal, a Portuguese count. There, dear child,
The Thirteen 1 1 1
there are few men of my age that would have patience to learn Portuguese and English, with which that con- founded naval officer was perfectly acquainted.' ' My dear father ! '
* Every contingency is provided for. In a few days His Majesty, John vi,, King of Portugal, will be my accomplice. So you only need a little patience when your father had much. But for me it was quite natural. What would I not do to reward your devotion during these three years ? To come so dutifully to see your old father, risking your happiness as you did.'
' Father ! ' Clemence took Ferragus's hands and kissed them.
' Come ! a little more courage, Clemence ; let us keep the fatal secret to the end. Jules is not an ordinary man ; and yet, do we know whether with his lofty character and great love he will not feel something like disrespect for the daughter of '
' Ah ! you have read your child's soul,' cried Clemence; ' I have no fear but that,' she added, in a heartrending tone. 'The thought freezes my blood. But remem- ber, father, I have promised him the truth in two hours.'
' Well, my child, tell him to go to the Portuguese Embassy to see the Comte de Funcal, your father ; I will be there.'
* And how about M. de Maulincour who talked about Ferragus ? Ah, dear ! to tell lie upon lie, what torture, father ! '
* To whom are you speaking ? Yet a few days, and no man alive can give me the lie. And besides, M. de Maulincour is in no condition to remember anything by
this time There, there, silly child, dry your tears,
and bear in mind that '
A dreadful cry rang through the next room, where Jules Desmarets was hiding.
' My girl, my poor girl ! ' The wail came through
112 The Thirteen
the loophole above the cupboard ; Ferragus and Mme. Jules were terror-stricken by it.
' Go and see what it is, Clemence.'
Clemence fled down the narrow staircase, found the door of Mme. Gruget's room standing wide open, and heard her voice ring out overhead. The sound of sobbing attracted her to the fatal room, and these words reached her ears as she entered —
' It is you, sir, with your notions, that have been the death of her ! '
' Hush, wretched woman ! ' exclaimed Jules, trying to stop her cries with his pocket-handkerchief.
' Murder ! Help ! ' cried the Widow Gruget. At that moment Clemence came in, saw her husband, shrieked aloud, and fled.
There was a long pause. ' Who will save my daughter ? ' asked Mme. Gruget. ' You have murdered her.'
' And how ? ' asked Jules mechanically, stupefied by the thought that his wife had recognised him.
' Read that, sir,' said she, bursting into tears. * Will any money comfort me for this ? ' and she held out a letter : —
* Good-bye, mother. I leave you all I have. I ask your pardon for my faults, and for this last grief I am bringing on you by making away with myself. Henry, that I love better than myself, said that I had done him harm, and he would have no more to do with me after- wards ; I have lost all hopes of establishing myself, and I shall go and throw myself into the river. I am going down below Neuilly, so as they shall never put me in the Morgue. If Henry doesn't hate me after I 've punished myself with death, ask him to bury a poor girl whose heart only beat for him, and to forgive me, for I did wrong to meddle with what was no concern of mine. Dress his blisters carefully. He has suffered a deal, the
The Thirteen 113
poor dear. But I shall have as much courage to drown myself as he had to have himself burnt. There are some corsets ready ; see that they are sent home. And pray God for your daughter. Ida.'
* Take the letter to M. de Funcal, in the next room. He is the only man that can save your daughter, if it is not too late.' And Jules vanished, flying like a criminal when the deed is done. His legs shook under him. His swelling heart was sending a hotter and fuller tide through his veins, with a mightier pulse than he had ever known before. The most conflicting thoughts filled his mind, and yet one idea prevailed above them all. He had been disloyal to the one whom he loved best in the world ; he could not compound with his conscience, its voice grew in proportion to the extent of the wrong that he had done, till the clamour filled him, as passion had filled his inmost being during the bitterest hours of the suspense which had shaken him but a short while ago. He dared not go home, and spent most of the day in wandering about Paris. Upright as he was, he shrank from confronting the blameless brows of the wife he had not rightly valued. The sin is in pro- portion to the purity of the conscience ; and an act which for some is scarcely a mistake will weigh like a crime upon a few white souls. Is there not, indeed, a divine significance in that word white ? and does not the slightest spot on maiden garments degrade them at once to the level of the beggar's rags ? Between the two there is but the difference between misfortune and error. Repentance is not proportioned to the sin ; God makes no distinctions; it is as hard to wipe out one stain as to wash away the sins of a lifetime.
These thoughts lay heavily on Jules's soul. Justice is not more inexorable than passion, nor more ruthless in its reasoning ; for passion has a conscience of its own, infallible as instinct. He went home again in despair,
H
114 The Thirteen
overwhelmed with a sense of the wrong he had done ; but, in spite of himself, joy in his wife's innocence was visible in his pale face. He went to her room with a fast-throbbing heart, and found her lying in bed. She was in a high fever. He sat down by the bedside, took her hand, and kissed it and covered it with tears.
* Dear angel, they are tears of repentance,' he said, when they were alone.
' What is there to repent of? ' she asked.
She bent her head down on the pillow as she spoke, and shut her eyes, and lay quite still, fearing, with a mother's, an angel's delicacy, to betray her pain and alarm her husband. The whole woman was summed up in those words. There was a long silence. Jules, fancying that Clemence was asleep, stole out to ask Josephine about her mistress.
' Madame came in half dead, sir. We sent for M. Haudry.'
* Has he been ? What did he say ? '
' Nothing, sir. He did not seem satisfied, he said that no one was to be allowed in the room except the nurse, and he would come again in the course of the evening.
Jules stole softly back to his wife, and sat down in an armchair by the bedside. He did not move ; his eyes never left hers. Whenever Clemence looked up she met their gaze, and from under her lashes there escaped a tender, sorrowful, impassioned glance — a glance that fell like a fiery dart in the inmost soul of the man thus generously absolved, and loved through everything by her whom he had done to death. Forebodings of death lay between them ; death was a presence felt alike by both. Their looks were blended in the same agony, as their two hearts had been made one through love equally felt and shared. There were no questions now, but a dreadful certainty. In the wife, a perfect generosity; in the husband, a hideous remorse ; and in both their
The Thirteen 115
souls one vision of the End, and the same consciousness of the inevitable.
There was a moment when Jules, thinking that his wife was asleep, kissed her softly on the forehead, gazed long at her, and said to himself, ' Ah, God ! leave this angel with me yet a while longer, that I may expiate my sins by long adoration. . . . Heroic as a daughter ; what word could describe her as a wife ? '
Clemence opened her eyes ; they were full of tears.
' You hurt me,' she said in a weak voice.
It was growing late. Dr. Haudry came and asked Jules to leave the room while he saw his patient ; and when he came out afterwards there was no need to ask any questions — a gesture told all.
'Send for any of my colleagues in whom you have most confidence,' said the doctor ; 'I may be mistaken.'
' But, doctor, tell me the truth. I am not a child, I can hear it ; and besides, I have the strongest reasons for wishing to know it, there are accounts to settle '
' Mme. Jules is death stricken,' said the doctor. ' There is something on her mind which complicates the physical illness ; the situation was dangerous as it
was, and repeated imprudence has made it worse
Getting out of bed in the night with bare feet ; going out on foot yesterday, and in the carriage to-day, when I forbade it, she has done her best to kill herself. Still my verdict is not final ; there is youth, and astonishing nervous strength — it might be worth while to risk all to save all by some violent reagent ; but I could not take it upon myself to prescribe the treatment, I should not even advise it. I should oppose it in consul- tation.'
Jules went back to the room again. For eleven days he stayed night and day by his wife's bedside, sleeping only in the daytime, with his head on the bedfoot. Never did any man carry the ambition of devotion so far as Jules Desmarets. In a jealous anxiety to do
1 1 6 The Thirteen
everything himself, he would not allow any one else to perform the least service for his wife ; he sat with her hand in his, as if in this way he could give of his own vitality to her. There were times of doubt and falla- cious joy, good days, and an improvement, and crises, and the dreadful reverberations of the coming death, that hesitates while life hangs in the balance, but strikes at last. Mme. Jules was never too weak to smile ; she was sorry for her husband, knowing that very soon he would be left alone. It was the twofold agony of life and love ; but as life ebbed, love grew stronger.
Then came a dreadful night, when Clemence suffered from the delirium that always comes before death in young creatures. She talked aloud of her happy love, of her father, of her mother's deathbed revelations, and the charge she had laid upon her daughter. Clemence was struggling, not for life, but for the passionate love that she could not let go.
'God in Heaven!' she cried out, 'do not let him know how I want to have him die with me.'
Jules, unable to bear the sight, happened to be in the next room, and so did not hear the wish that he would have fulfilled.
When the crisis was over, Mme. Jules found strength. Next day she looked lovely and peaceful once more ; she talked, she began to hope, and made a pretty invalid's toilet. She wanted to be alone all day, and entreated her husband to leave her so earnestly, that he was fain to grant her wish, as a child's pleading is always grantea. Jules, moreover, had need of the day. He went to M de Maulincour to claim the duel to which both had agreed. He obtained an interview with the cause of his troubles, not without great difficulty ; but the Vidame, informed that it was an affair of honour, gave way in obedience to the prejudices which had always ruled his life, and brought Jules up to the Baron de Maulincour.
The Thirteen 117
* Oh, it really is he,' said the Commander, indicating the figure in the armchair by the fireside.
' He ? who ? Jules ? ' asked the dying man, in a broken voice.
Auguste had lost the one central faculty by which we live — memory. At sight of him M. Desmarets shrank back in horror. He could not recognise the youthful, fine gentleman in this Thing, for which there was no name in any language, to quote Bossuet's saying. It was, in truth, a white-haired corpse, a skeleton scarcely covered by the wrinkled, shrivelled, withered skin. The eyes were pale and fixed, the mouth gaped hideously, like the mouth of an imbecile, or of some debauchee dying of excess. Not the faintest spark of intelligence was left to the forehead, nor indeed to any other feature ; nor was there any appearance of colour or of circulating blood in the flabby flesh. These were the shrunken, dissolving remains of what had been a human being, a man reduced to the condition of the monstrosities pre- served in spirits at the Museum. Jules fancied he could see Ferragus's terrible head rising above that visage, and his hate shrank appalled at the completeness of the vengeance. Clemence's husband could find it in his heart to pity the unrecognisable wreck of what had been so lately a young man.
'The duel has taken place,' said the Vidame.
'Monsieur de Maulincour has taken many lives,' Jules exclaimed in distress.
' And the lives of his nearest and dearest,' added the old noble. ' His grandmother is dying of grief, and I perhaps shall follow her to the tomb.'
Mme. Jules grew worse from hour to hour on the day after the visit. She took advantage of a momentary strength to draw a letter from her pillow, and gave it quickly to Jules with a sign which no one could mistake ; she wished to spend her last breath of life in a kiss. He took it, and she died.
ii8 The Thirteen
Jules dropped down half dead, and was taken away to his brother's house. There, as in the midst of tears and ravings he bewailed his absence of the day before, his brother told him how anxious Clemence had been that he should not be present during the Church's adminis- tration of the last sacrament to the dying, that rite so terribly impressive for a sensitive imagination.
' You could not have borne it,' said his brother. ' I myself could scarcely endure to see it, and every one broke out into weeping. Clemence looked like a saint. She summoned up her strength to bid us good-bye ; it was heartrending to hear that voice for the last time. And when she asked pardon for any involuntary unkind- ness to those who had served her, a wail went up among the sobs, a wail '
' Enough, that will do.'
He wanted to be alone to read his wife's last thoughts, now that she, the woman whom the world had admired, had faded away like a flower : —
*This is my will, my dearest. Why should not people dispose of their heart's treasures, as of everything else that is theirs ? The love in my heart — was it not all that I had ? And here I want to think of nothing but love ; it was all that your Clemence brought you, it is all that she can leave you when she dies. Jules, I am loved again, I can die a happy woman. The doctors will have their theories of my death ; but no one knows the real cause but I. I will tell you about it, in spite of the pain it may give you. I am dying because I kept a secret that could not be told, but I will not carry away a secret unsaid in the heart that is wholly yours.
' I was nurtured and brought up in complete solitude, far away from the vices and deceits of the world, by the amiable woman whom you knew, Jules. Society did justice to the conventional qualities by which a woman gains social popularity ; but I, in secret, enjoyed com-
The Thirteen 1 1 9
munion with an angel's soul ; I could love the mother who gave me a childhood of joy without bitterness, knowing well why I loved her. Which means, does it not, that she was twice loved ? Yes. I loved and feared and respected her, yet neither the fear nor the respect oppressed my heart. I was all in all to her ; she was all in all to me. Through nineteen years of happiness known to the full, nineteen years without a care, my soul, lonely amid the world which murmured about me, mirrored nothing but the one most pure vision of my mother, and my heart beat for her alone. I was con- scientiously devout. I was glad to lead a pure life in the sight of God. My mother cultivated all noble and lofty feelings and thoughts in me. Ah ! it gladdens me to own it, Jules. I know now that my girlhood was complete, that I came to you with a maiden heart.
' When I came out of the profound solitude ; when for the first time I smoothed my hair beneath a wreath of almond blossom, and added a few knots of satin ribbon to my white gown, thinking how pretty they looked, and wondering about this world that I was to see, and felt curious to see ; well, Jules, even then, that simple girlish coquetry was for you ; at my first entrance
into that new world I saw yon I saw your face ; it
stood out from all the others ; you were handsome, I thought ; your voice and your manner prepossessed me in your favour ; and when you came up and spoke to me, and your forehead flushed and yovir voice was tremulous — the memory of that moment sets my heart throbbing even now as I write to you to-day, when I think of it for the last time. Our love has been from the first the keenest of sympathies, and it was not long before we divined each other, and began to share, as we have shared ever since, the uncounted joys of love.
' From that day my mother had but the second place in my heart. I told her so, and she smiled, my adorable mother ! And since then I have been yours — yours
I20 The Thirteen
wholly. That is my life, my whole life, my dear husband.
' And this is what remains to be said.
' One evening, a few days before my mother died, she told me the secret of her life, not without hot tears. I loved her more, far more, when I heard in the presence of the priest who absolved her that there was such a thing as passion condemned by the world and the Church. Yet, surely, God must be merciful when love is the sin of souls as loving as hers, even though that angel could not bring herself to repent of it. She loved with all her heart, Jules, for all her heart was love. And so I prayed for her every day, without judging her. From that time I knew why her mother's love had been so deep and tender; from that time I knew too that in Paris there was some one living for whom I was every- thing— life and love. I knew, besides, that your success was due to him, and that he liked you, and that he was an outlaw with a blighted name, and that these things troubled him less for his own sake than for mine — for both our sakes. — My mother had been his one com- fort ; I promised to take her place now that she was dead. With all the enthusiasm of an unsophisticated nature, I thought of nothing but the joy of sweetening the bitterness of her last moments, so I pledged myself to continue her work of secret charity — the charity of the heart.
' I saw my father for the first time by the bed on which my m.other had just drawn her last breath. When he raised his tear-filled eyes, it was to find all his dead hopes once more in me. I vowed, not to lie, but to keep silence ; and what woman could have broken that silence ? Therein lay my mistake, a mistake expiated by death — I could not trust you, Jules. But fear is so natural to a woman, especially to a wife who knows all that she has to lose. I was afraid for my love. It seemed to me that my father's secret might cost me
The Thirteen 121
my happiness; and the more I loved, the more I dreaded the ioss of love. I dared not confess this to my father ; it would have hurt him, and in his position any wound smarts keenly. But while he said not a word to me, he felt my fears. The true father's heart trembled for my happiness, as I trembled for myself, and shrank from speak- ing of it with the same delicacy which kept me mute.
*■ Yes, Jules, I thought that some day you might not love Gratien's daughter as you loved your Clemence. But for that dread in the depths of my heart, could I have hidden anything from you — from you that filled even this inmost recess ?
' When that odious, miserable officer spoke to you, I was forced to tell a lie. That day I knew sorrow for the second time in my life, and that sorrow has grown day by day till this last moment of converse with you. What does my father's position matter now ? You know everything. With love to aid me, I might have wrestled with disease and borne any pain ; but I cannot smother the voice of doubt. Is it not possible that the knowledge of my origin may take something from your love, Jules, and weaken it, and spoil its purity ? And this fear nothing can extinguish in me. This is the cause of my death.
'I could not live in continual dread of a word or a look, one word which might never be uttered, one glance that would never be given ; but, I cannot help it — / am afraid / I have your love till I die, that comforts me. I have known for four years past that my father and his friends have all but turned the world upside down to act a lie to the world. They have bought a dead man, a reputation, and a fortune, and all to give a new life to a living man, and a social position to me — all this for your sake, for our sakes ! We were to know nothing about it. Well, my death will probably save my father from the necessity of lying any longer, for he will die when I am dead.
122 The Thirteen
' So, farewell, Jules. I have put my whole heart here in this letter. When I show you my love in the innocence of its dread, do I not leave you my very soul? I should not have had strength to tell you this, but I could write it for you.
'I have just made confession of the sins of my lifetime to God ; I have promised, it is true, to think of nothing now but the Father in Heaven ; but I could not resist the pleasure of confession to you, that are all to me upon earth. Alas ! who would not forgive me this last sigh between the life that is no more and the life to come. So, farewell, Jules, my beloved ; I am going to God, with whom there is love unclouded for evermore, to whom you also will come one day. There, at the foot of the Throne of God, together for evermore, we shall love through all the ages. That hope alone can comfort me. If I am worthy to go first, I shall follow you through your life, my spirit will be with you and around you, for you must live on here below awhile. Lead a holy life, to rejoin me the more surely. You can do so much good here on this earth ! Is it not an angel's mission for a stricken soul to spread happiness around, to give that which he has not ?
' I leave the unhappy to your care ; how should I be jealous of their smiles, their tears ? We shall find a great charm in these sweet charities. Cannot we be together still, if you will associate my name, your Clemence's name, with every kindly deed ? When two have loved as we have loved, Jules, there is nothing left but God ; God does not lie, God does not fail. Give all your love to Him, I ask it of you. Cultivate good in those who suffer, comfort the afflicted among the Church on earth.
' Adieu, dear heart that I have filled. I know you, I know that you will not love twice ; and I can die happy in a thought that would make any wife glad. Yes, I shall lie buried in your heart. Now that I have told
The Thirteen 123
you the story of my childhood, is not my whole life poured into your heart ? I shall never be driven from it after I am dead. You have only known me in the flower of my youth ; I shall leave nothing but regrets behind, and no disenchantment. Jules, that is a very happy death.
*May I ask one thing of you that have understood me so well, one thing needless to ask, no doubt — the fulfilment of a woman's fancy, of a wish prompted by a jealousy to which all women are subject. I beg of you to burn all that belonged to us, to destroy our room., and everything that may recall our love.
' Once again, farewell, a last farewell full of love, as my last thought will be, and my latest breath.'
Jules finished the letter, and a frantic grief came upon his heart in terrible paroxysms which cannot be described. Every agony takes its own course, and obeys no fixed rule ; some men stop their ears to hear no sound, and women sometimes close their eyes to shut out all sights ; and here and there a great and powerful soul plunges into sorrow as into an abyss. Despair makes an end of all insincerities. Jules escaped from his brother's house, and returned to the Rue de Menars, meaning to spend the night at his wife's side, and to keep that divine creature in sight till the last. As he went, with the recklessness of a man brought to the lowest depths of misery, he began to understand why Asiatic laws forbid widows to survive their husbands. He wanted to die. He was in the fever of sorrow ; the collapse had not yet set in.
He reached the sacred chamber without hindrance, saw Clemence lying on her deathbed, fair as a saint, her hair smoothed over her brows, her hands folded. She had been laid already in her shroud. The light of the tall candles fell upon a priest at his prayers, on Josephine, who was crying in a corner, and on two men by the
124 The Thirteen
bed. One of these was Ferragus. He stood upright and motionless, gazing dry-eyed at his daughter, you might have taken his face for a bronze statue ; he did not see Jules. The other was Jacquet — ^Jacquet, to whom Mme. Jules had always been kind. He had felt for her the respectful friendship that brings warmth to the heart without troubling it, a softened passion, love without its longings and its tumult, and now he had come religiously to pay his debt of tears, to bid a long adieu to his friend's wife, and set a first and last kiss on the forehead of the woman of whom he had tacitly made a sister.
All was silent there. This was not the Terrible Death of the Church, nor the pageantry of Death that passes through the streets ; it was Death that glides in under the roof, Death in his pathetic aspects ; this was a lying in state for the heart amid tears shed in secret.
Jules sat down beside Jacquet, squeezed his friend's hand, and thus without a word they stayed till the morning. When the candles burnt faintly in the dawn, Jacquet thought of the painful scenes to come, and led Jules away into the next room. For a moment Cle- mence's husband looked full at her father, and Ferragus looked at Jules. Anguish questioned and sounded the depths of anguish, and both understood at a glance. A flash of rage glittered for an instant in Ferragus's eyes.
* It is your doing ! ' he thought.
' Why not have trusted me ? ' the other seemed to retort.
So might two tigers have seen the uselessness of a conflict, after eyeing each other during a moment of hesi- tation, without so much as a growl.
'Jacquet, did you see to everything ? ' asked Jules. ' Yes, to everything ; and everywhere some one else had been before me and given orders and paid.'
The Thirteen 125
' He is snatching his daughter from me ! ' shouted Jules, in a paroxsym of despair.
He dashed into the bedroom. The father had gone. Clemence had been laid in her leaden coffin. One or two workmen were preparing to solder down the lid, and Jules retreated aghast. At the sound of the hammer he broke out into dull weeping.
' Jacquet,' he said at length, ' one idea stays with me after this dreadful night, just one thought, but I must realise it, cost what it may. Clemence shall not lie in a Paris cemetery. She shall be cremated, and I will keep her ashes beside me. Do not say a word about it to me, but just arrange to have it done. I shall shut myself up in her room and stay there till I am ready to go. No one shall come in but you to tell me what you have done. There, spare for nothing.'
That morning Mme. Jules's coffin lay under the arch- way with lighted candles round it, and afterwards was removed to St. Roch. The whole church was hung with black. The kind of display made for the funeral service had attracted a great many people. Everything, even the most heartfelt anguish, is a theatrical spectacle in Paris. There are people who will stand at the win- dows to watch curiously while a son weeps in his mother's funeral procession, just as there are others who want good seats to see an execution. No people in the world have such voracious eyes. But the curious in St. Roch were particularly astonished to find the six side chapels in the church likewise draped with black, and two men in mourning attending a mass for the dead in each. In the choir there were but two persons present at the funeral — M. Desmarets the notary, and Jacquet — the servants were beyond the screen. The hangers-on of the church were puzzled by the splendour of the funeral and the insignificant number of mourners. Jules would have no indifferent persons.
High mass was celebrated with all the sombre
126 The Thirteen
grandeur of the funeral service. Thirteen priests from various parishes v/ere there beside the officiating clergy of St. Roch. The sound of blended voices rose as the eight chanters, the priests, and the child-choristers sang alternately ; and never perhaps vsras the Dies ires more deeply impressive than at that moment, never did it strike an icier chill to the nerves of Christians by accident of birth, assembled there by chance, curiosity, and greed of sensation. From the side chapels chil- dren's voices, shrill with grief, rose vi^ailing in the chorus. A dull note of dismay reverberated through the church ; cries of anguish answered wails of terror on every side. That awful music spoke of agony unknown on earth, of secret friendship weeping for the dead. Never has any known religion given so powerful a rendering of the terrors of the soul, stripped violently of the body, and tossed as by tempest into the presence of the intolerable Majesty of God, Before that clamour of clamours, artists and their most impassioned work must shrink abashed. No, nothing can stand beside that music which gathers up all human passions, galvanising them into a life beyond the grave, bringing them, yet palpitating, into the presence of the living God, the Avenger. Man's life, with all its developments, is embraced by that Canticle of Death ; for the cries of children, mingled with the notes of deeper voices, recall the pains of cradled infancy, swelled by the sum of all the pain of life's later stages, by the full-toned bass, and the quavering notes of old men and of priests. Does not the volume of strident harmony, full of thunder and lightnings, speak to the most undaunted imagination, to the ice-bound heart, nay, to philosophists themselves ? As you hear it, it seems that God thunders. The vaults of every church are cold no longer; they quiver, and find a voice, and pour forth fear with all the might of their echoes. You seem to see visions of the un- counted dead rising and holding up their hands. It is
The Thirteen 127
not a father, a wife or child, that lies beneath the black drapery ; it is Humanity emerging from the dust. It is impossible to be just to the Apostolic and Roman Catholic Church until you have passed through a supreme sorrow, and wept for the beloved dead lying beneath the cenotaph ; until you have heard all the emotion which fills your heart, interpreted by that hymn of despair, by those cries that overwhelm the soul, by the religious awe that rises from strophe to strophe, eddying up to heaven, appalling, diminishing, exalting the soul, till as the last verse comes to an end you are left with the sense of Eternity. You have been wrestling with the great idea of the Infinite ; and now all is hushed in the church. Not a word is uttered there. Unbelievers themselves ' know not what ails them.' Spanish genius alone could invest unspeakable sorrow with such trans- cendent majesty.
When the supreme ceremony was over, twelve men in mourning emerged from the chapels, and stood grouped around the coffin to hear the chant of hope which the Church raises for the Christian's soul before the human form is committed to earth. Then each of them entered a mourning coach, Jacquet and M. Des- marets took the thirteenth, and the servants followed on foot.
An hour afterwards the twelve strangers were gathered about a grave, dug at the highest point of the cemetery familiarly known as Pere-Lachaise ; the coffin had just been lowered ; a curious crowd had gathered from all parts of that public garden. The priest recited a short prayer, and flung a handful of earth over the mortal remains ; and the sexton and his men having claimed their fee, hastily began to fill up the grave before going to another.
And here this story would seem to finish. Yet per- haps it would be incomplete if the practical effects of death should be forgotten at the close of a slight sketch
128 The Thirteen
of Parisian life, and its capricious undulations. Death in Paris is unlike death in any other great city ; few people know what it is to bring a heartfelt sorrow into conflict with civilisation in the shape of the municipal authorities of Paris. Perhaps, too, the reader may feel sufficient interest in Ferragus xxiii. and Jules Desmarets to care to know what became of them. And in any case, there are plenty of people who like to know all about everything ; and, as the most ingenious of French critics once said, would find out the chemistry of the combustion of the oil in Aladdin's lamp if they could.
Jacquet, being a civil servant, naturally applied to the authorities for permission to exhume and cremate Mme. Jules's body. The dead sleep under the protection of the Prefect of Police ; to the Prefect of Police, therefore, Jacquet betook himself. That functionary required a formal application. A sheet of stamped paper must be purchased, sorrow must appear in the regulation form ; and when a man is so overwhelmed with grief that words fail him, he must express himself in the peculiar idiom of red-tape, and translate his wishes into business- like phrases with a marginal note.
The petitioner prays permission to cremate the body of his wife.
The head of the department, whose duty it was to draw up a report for the Prefect of Police, a member of the Council of State, glanced over the apostille, in which the object of the request was clearly stated by his own recommendation, and said —
' But ^ this is a serious question. It is impossible to draw up a report in less than a week.'
Jacquet was obliged to explain the delay, and Jules thought of the words he had heard Ferragus utter, ' Set Paris on fire ! ' Nothing seemed more natural than a thorough destruction of that receptacle of monstrous things.
The Thirteen 129
* Why, there is nothing for it but to apply to the Home Office and set your Minister on to the Home Secretary,' he told Jacquet.
Jacquet accordingly applied to the Home Office, and asked for an audience, which he obtained — for that day fortnight. Jacquet was naturally persistent. He went, therefore, from department to department, and succeeded in reaching the private secretary of the Minister of Foreign AfFairs. With such influence he received a promise of a private interview with the Pasha of the Home Office, and a few lines written by the Autocrat of Foreign Affairs by way of passport. Jacquet now had hopes of carrying his point by storm. He was ready for every emergency with arguments and categorical answers. All ended in failure.
'This is no affair of mine,' said the Minister. 'The thing concerns the Prefect of Police. And what is more : no law gives a husband the custody of his wife's body, nor has a father a right to a child's corpse. It is a serious matter. It ought to be looked into, besides, in the interests of the public. The city of Paris might suffer. In short, if the matter were referred directly to me, I could not give a decision hie et nunc ; a report would be required.'
In the administrative system a ' report ' answers much the same ends as limbo in theology. Jacquet had met with the ' report ' craze before ; nor had he neglected previous opportunities of groaning over the absurdities of red tape. He knew that since the administrative Revolution of 1804, when the report had carried all before it in Government departments, the Minister had not yet been found that would take it upon himself to have an opinion, or give a decision on any matter, how- ever small, until the thing had been winnowed, sifted, and thoroughly scrutinised by the scribblers and scratchers and sublime official intelligences of his department.
130 The Thirteen
Jacquet — the man deserved to have a Plutarch for his biographer — Jacquet saw^ that he had set off on the wrong track, and defeated his own ends by trying to proceed by the proper forms. He should simply have removed Mme. Jules's coffin after the service to one of the Desmarets' houses in the country. There the mayor of the village would have made no difficulty about gratifying the sorrowing widower's request. Constitutional and administrative legalismw^ sterile ; it is a barren monster for nations and kings and the interests of private individuals ; but the nations as yet have only learned to spell those principles that are written in blood ; and as the evils of ruling by the letter of the law are never accompanied by strife and bloodshed, legalism reduces a nation to a dead level, and there is an end of it.
Jacquet, being a stickler for liberty, returned home, meditating by the way on the blessings of arbitrary government ; for a man only criticises the law of the land by the light of his own passions. But when he came to talk to Jules, there was nothing for it but to deceive his friend ; the unhappy man was in a high fever, and for a couple of days he stayed in bed.
That evening at dinner the Minister chanced to mention that the fancy had taken some one in Paris to have his wife's body cremated in the Roman fashion. And for a moment classical funeral rites were the talk of the clubs. As things ancient were coming into fashion, several people were of the opinion that it would be a fine thing to revive the funeral pyre for distin- guished personages. Some were for, and others against, the idea. Some held that there were so many great men, that the practice would raise the price of fuel ; they opined that with a nation so fond of the mental exercise of changing its opinions, it would be a ridiculous thing to see a whole Longchamp of ancestors trotted out in their urns at the expiration of a lease j while if the urns
The Thirteen 131
happened to be valuable, creditors (a race that never respect anything) would seize upon them, and they, V(rith their contents of honourable dust, would be put up to public auction. Others retorted that it was scarcely possible for a man to insure a permanent residence for his grandparents in Pere Lachaise ; for that in time the city of Paris would be compelled to order a St. Bartholomew of its dead. The cemeteries were invading the open country, and threatened to encroach upon the corn land of Brie. In short, the question raised one of the futile and ingenious discussions which, in Paris, too often aggravates deep-seated evils. Happily for Jules, he knew nothing of the conversation, jokes, and epigrams with which his sorrow supplied the town.
The Prefect of Police took offence because M. Jacquet had gone straight to the Minister to avoid the delays and matured wisdom of the Board of Works. The exhumation of Mme. Jules's body was a question within the jurisdiction of the municipal police. Wherefore the Police Department was elaborating a sharp answer to the petition. A single demand is enough, the admin- istration has a tight hold, and a thing once in its grasp is like to go a long way. Any matter, moreover, may be referred to the Council of State, another piece of machinery verv hard to set in motion. Another day went by, and Jacquet made his friend understand that the idea must be given up ; that in a city where the number of 'tears' embroidered on the black trappings are prescribed, where the law recognises seven classes of funerals, where land in which to bury the dead is sold by its weight in silver, where grief is exploited on a system of double entry, and the prayers of the Church are sold dear, or the vestry puts in a claim for a few extra voices in the Dies trae — any deviation from the beaten rut traced out for grief by the authorities was impossible.
' It would have been one joy in my misery,' said Jules;
132 The Thirteen
' I meant to go somewhere, a long way off, to die, and I wished when I lay in the grave to have Clemence in my arms. I did not know that officialdom could put out its claws to reach us even in our coffins.'
He would go to see whether there was a little room for him beside his wife. So the friends went together to Pere Lachaise. At the gateway they found a crowd of ciceroni waiting to guide sight-seers through the labyrinth, as if Pere Lachaise were a museum or the Cour des Diligences or some other sight. It was impossible that Jules or Jacquet should find Clemence's tomb. Terrible agony ! They went to consult the gate- keeper.
The dead have a concierge, and there are hours at which the dead cannot receive visitors. Only by shaking all the rules and regulations from top to bottom can any one obtain the right to go thither in the dark- ness to weep in silence and solitude over the grave which holds his beloved dead. There are summer regulations and winter regulations. Of all the concierges of Paris, the gatekeeper of Pere Lachaise is the best off. There is no cord to pull, to begin with. Instead of a single room, he has a house, an establishment that cannot exactly be described as a government department, although there is a considerable staff attached, and the jurisdiction is wide, and the governor of the dead draws a salary and wields an immense power over a population who cannot possibly complain of him ; he plays the despot at his ease. Neither is his abode exactly a place of business, albeit there are offices and books to be kept, and clerks to keep them, and receipts and expenditure and profits. And the gatekeeper himself is neither a Swiss nor a concierge nor a porter, for the door is always yawning wide for the dead; and though there certainly are monu- ments to be kept in order, he is not there to look after them. He is, in short, an anomaly which cannot be defined ; his office is akin in one way or another to
The Thirteen 133
every power in existence, and yet he is a nobody, for his authority, hke Death, by which it lives, lies com- pletely beyond the pale. Nevertheless, exception as he is, he holds his tenure from the City of Paris, a creature as chimerical as the emblematical vessel on her coat-of- arms ; an imaginary being swayed by hundreds of paws and claws which seldom move in concert ; and as a result, her public servants are, to all intents and pur- poses, fixtures. The cemetery-keeper, therefore, is the concierge promoted to the rank of a public servant, a permanent element amid dissolution.
His place, for that matter, is no sinecure. No one can be buried till the gatekeeper has seen the permit ; and he is bound to give account of his dead. He can lay his finger on a spot in that huge burying ground to point out the six feet of earth in which some day you will lay all that you love, or hate, as the case may be — the woman you love or your unloved cousin. For, mind you, to this lodge all loves and hates must come at the last, and are duly docketed and passed through the office. The man keeps a register of sleeping-places for the dead ; they go down on his list when they go down into the grave.
The gatekeeper has custodians under him, and gardeners and grave-diggers and assistants. He is a personage. Mourners are not brought into direct contact with him as a rule ; he only comes forward if something serious occurs, if one dead man is mistaken for another, or if a body is exhumed for a murder case, or a corpse comes to life again. The bust of the reigning sovereign presides in his room. Possibly he keeps other busts of departed monarchs, with various royal, imperial, or semi-royal persons, in a cupboard somewhere, a sort of miniature Pere Lachaise for changes in the Government. In other respects, he is a public servant ; an excellent man, a good husband and father, epitaphs apart ; but — so much varied emotion has passed under his eyes in the shape of
134 The Thirteen
hearses ! he has seen so many tears shed, both sham and real, and been acquainted with grief in so many shapes and in so many faces — with six millions of eternal sorrows, in short ! For him, grief means a stone slab an inch thick, four feet high by twenty-two inches wide. As for regrets, they are one of the things to be put up with in his profession, and he never dines but he has witnessed torrents of tears shed by inconsolable affliction. Every other emotion finds him kindly and sympathetic ; he too can shed tears over the tragic end of a stage hero like M. Germeuil in U Auherge des Adrets^ he is moved when the man in the butter-coloured breeches is mur- dered by Robert Macaire ; but when it comes to a real genuine death, his heart is ossified. Deaths mean rows of figures for him ; it is his business to tabulate statistics of the dead. And, as a last word, twice, or perhaps thrice in a century, it may happen that he has a sublime part to play, and then he is a hero at every hour — in time of Pestilence.
When Jacquet went in search of this absolute monarch, his majesty's temper had suffered somewhat.
' I told you,' he cried, ' to water all the flowers from the Rue Massena to the Place Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely ! You fellows simply took not the least notice of what I told you. My patience ! if the relatives take it into their heads to come, as it is a fine day, they will be throwing all the blame on me. They will call out as if they had been burnt, and say frightful things about us up here, and our characters will be taken away '
' Sir,' put in Jacquet, ' we should like to know where Mme. Jules was buried.'
' Mme. Jules who ? We have had three Jules this week. . . . Ah !' (interrupting himself as he glanced at the gate), 'here comes Colonel de Maulincour's funeral, go out for the permit. — My v/ord ! it is a fine funeral,' he added. ' He has not been long about follow-
The Thirteen 135
ing his grandmother. Some families seem to drop off for a wager. They have such bad blood, have those Parisians ! '
Jacquet tapped him on the arm.
'Sir, the person of vv^hom I am speaking vi^as Mme. Jules Desmarets, the stockbroker's v^^ife.'
' Oh, I know ! ' returned he, looking at Jacquet. ' Thirteen mourning coaches at the funeral, weren't there ? and only one relation apiece in the first dozen. It was so queer that we noticed it '
' Take care, sir ; M. Jules is with me, he might over- hear you J and you ought not to talk like that.'
* I beg your pardon, sir, you are right. Excuse me, I took you for the next-of-kin. — Mme. Jules is in the Rue du Marechal Lcfebvre, side walk Number 4,' he continued, after consulting a plan of the ground ; ' she lies between Mile. Raucourt of the Comedie Fran^aise and M. Moreau-Malvin, a butcher in a big way of business. There is a white marble monument on order for him ; it will be one of the finest things in the cemetery here, and that 's a fact.'
* We are no nearer, sir,' Jacquet broke in.
* And that is true,' said the other, looking round. *Jean ! ' he called, as a man came in sight. 'Show
these gentlemen the way to Mme. Jules's grave, the stockbroker's wife. You know ! Next to Mile. Rau- court's, where there is a bust.'
And the friends set out with their conductor ; but before they reached the steep path which leads to the higher part of the cemetery, they must run the gauntlet of a score or more of stone-cutters, carvers, and makers of wrought-iron work, who came up to insinuate in honeyed accents, that ' if monsieur would like to have something put up, we could do it for him very reason- ably '
Jacquet was glad enough to be there to stand between his friend and words intolerable for bleeding hearts.
136 The Thirteen
They reached the spot where she lay. At the sight of the rough sods and the row of pegs driven in by the labourers to mark out the space for the iron railings, Jules leant upon Jacquet's shoulder, raising his head at intervals to give a long look at the little patch of clay where he must leave all that remained of her for whom and through whom he still lived.
' How hard for her to lie there ! '
' But she is not there ! ' protested Jacquet ; ' she lives in your memory. Come away ; let us leave this horrid place, where the dead are tricked out like women at a ball.'
* How if we took her out of it ? ' ' Is it possible ? '
* Anything is possible ! ' cried Jules. Then, after a pause, ' So I shall come here some day ; there is room for me.'
Jacquet succeeded in getting him out of the in- closure. The tombs inclosed in those sprucely-kept chessboard compartments marked out by iron railings are covered with inscriptions and sculptured palms, and tears as cold as the marble on which survivors record their regrets and their coats-of-arms. You may read jests there, carved in black letters, epigrams at the expense of the curious, pompous biographies, and ingeniously worded farewells. Here some one bides tryst, and, as usual in such cases, bides alone. Here you behold a thyrsus, there a lance-head railing; further on there are Egyptian vases and now and again cannon ; while spangles, tinsel, and trash meet your eyes wherever you turn them. You see trade-signs in every direction. Every style — Moorish, Grecian, and Gothic — is repre- sented, together with every variety of decoration — friezes, egg-mouldings, paintings, urns, genii, and temples, among any quantity of dead rose-bushes and faded immortelles. It is a scandalous comedy ! Here is Paris over again — streets, trade-signs, industries, houses
■M ^
'M'^M^:m \i
^mm^
-tjm
»j 'JT
1 ■ w ', f ft .,~
% 'm ^i->^,.°^r r
z\x in everything
mose o
V thous
'i: M. i K .
i/'-^^
V<'x
'^''fft
%
^ ml
vi/^^^S^
.**. A*»:^..^Tv.v;'
l:»:tir
1 1
!i.
,1
I.-
The Thirteen 137
and all complete ; but it is a Paris seen through the wrong end of the perspective glass, a microscopic city, a Paris diminished to a shadow of itself, and shrunk to the measure of these chrysalids of the dead, this human species that has dwindled so much in everything save vanity.
Jules caught a glimpse of the view. At his feet, in the long valley of the Seine, between the low ridges of Vaugirard and Meudon, Belleville and Montmartre, lay the real Paris, in a blue haze of its own smoke, now sunlit and transparent. He glanced from under his eyelids over the forty thousand houses of the city, and waved his hand towards the space between the column of the Place Vendome and the cupola of the Invalides.
'There she was taken from me,' he cried, 'by the fatal curiosity of a world which seeks bustle and excite- ment for the sake of excitement and bustle.'
Eight or nine miles further away down the Seine valley, in a little village on one of the lower slopes of those ridges of hill, between which the great restless city lies, like a child in its cradle ; another sad death scene was taking place ; but here there was none of the funeral pomp of Paris — there were no torches, no tall candle, no mourning coaches hung with black, no prayers of the Church ; this was death reduced to the bare fact. And this was the fact. A girl's body stranded that morning on the bank, among the reeds that grow in the Seine mud. Some dredgers on their way to work caught sight of it as they went up the river in their crazy boat.
' Hullo ! fifty francs for us ! ' cried one.
' Right you are ! ' said the other.
They came close up to the dead body.
'She is a very fine girl.'
' Let us go and give notice.'
And the two dredgers, first covering the corpse with
138 The Thirteen
their jackets, went ofF to the mayor ; and that worthy was not a little puzzled to know how to draw up an official report of the discovery.
The rumour spread with the telegraphic speed peculiar to neighbourhoods where communications are uninterrupted; the gossip on which the world battens, and scandal, tittle-tattle, and slander, rush in to fill the vacuum between any given points. In a very short time people came to the mayor's office to relieve that gentleman of any difficulty, and among them they converted the official report into an ordinary certificate of death. Through their assiduity the girl's body was identified ; she was proved to be Mile. Ida Gruget, staymaker, of No. 14 Rue de la Corderie du Temple. At this stage of the proceedings the police intervened, and the Widow Gruget, the girl's mother, appeared with her daughter's farewell letter. While the mother sighed and groaned, a medical man ascertained that death had ensued from asphyxia and an access of venous blood to the pulmonary organs. That was all.
The inquest being over, and particulars filled in, the authorities gave permission for the burial of the body. The cure of the place declined to allow the procession to enter the church or to pray for the repose of the dead. So an old peasant woman sewed Ida Gruget in her shroud, she was laid in a rough coffin made of deal boards, and carried to the churchyard on four men's shoulders. Some few country women had the curiosity to follow, telling the story of the death with comments of pitying surprise. An old lady charitably kept the widow, and would not allow her to join the sad little procession. A man, who fulfilled the threefold office of sexton, beadle, and bell-ringer, dug a grave in the churchyard, a half acre of ground at the back of the well-known church, a classical building with a square tower buttressed at the corners, and a slate-covered spire. The churchyard, bounded by crumbling walls, lies
The Thirteen 139
behind the round apse ; there are no marble headstones there, and no visitors ; but not one, surely, of all the mounds that furrow the space, lacked the tears and heartfelt regrets which no one gave to Ida Gruget. They put her down out of sight in a corner among the brambles and tall grasses ; the bier was lowered into its place in that field so idyllic in its simplicity, and in another moment the gravedigger was left alone to fill in the grave in the gathering dusk. He stopped now and again to look over into the road below the wall ; once, with his hand on his pickaxe, he gazed intently at the Seine which had brought this body for him to bury.
' Poor girl ! ' exclaimed a voice ; and suddenly a man came up.
* How you startled me, sir ! ' said the sexton.
' Was there any service for this woman that you are burying ? '
' No, sir. M. le Cure would not allow it. She is the first person buried here that is not of this parish. Everybody knows everybody else hereabouts. Does monsieur ? Hullo ! he is gone ! '
Several days slipped by. A man in black came to the house in the Rue de Menars ; the stranger did not wish to speak to Jules ; he went to Mme. Jules's room and left a large porphyry vase there, bearing the inscription —
INVITA LEGE,
CONJUGI MCERENTI
FILIOLiE CINERES
RESTITUIT
AMICIS XII JUVANTIBUS
MORIBUNDUS PATER.
* What a man ! ' exclaimed Jules, bursting into tears. In one week Jules had carried out all his wife's wishes.
140 The Thirteen
and set his own affairs in order. He sold his pro- fessional connection to a brother of Martin Falleix's, and left Paris behind him, while the municipality was still debating whether or no a citizen had any legal claim to his wife's dead body.
Who has not met on the Paris boulevards, at a street corner, under the arcades of the Palais Royal — anywhere, in short, as chance may determine — some stranger, man or woman, whose face sets a host of confused thoughts springing up in his brain ? It grows suddenly interesting at sight, perhaps because some per- sonal singularity suggests a stormy life; perhaps gestures, gait, air, and costume all combine to present a curious whole; perhaps because a searching glance or an indescrib- able something makes a sudden, strong impression before you can explain the cause very clearly to yourself. On the morrow, other thoughts, other pictures of Paris life sweep away the passing dream. But if you happen to meet the same person again ; if he is always passing along the street at the same hour (like a clerk at the registrar's office, for instance, whose presence is required at marriages eight hours daily) ; if he is one of those wandering mortals who seem to be a part of the furniture of the streets of Paris, and you see him again and again in public places, on first nights, or in those
restaurants of which he is the fairest ornament then
that figure becomes a tenant in your memory, and stays there like an odd volume of a novel without a con- clusion.
You are tempted to go up to the stranger and ask, ' Who are you ? — Why are you sauntering about the streets ? — What right have you to wear a crumpled collar, a cane with an ivory knob, and a seedy waistcoat ? — Why those blue spectacles with double glasses ? ' or ' What makes you cling to that muscadin's cravat ?'
Some among these errant creatures belong to the
The Thirteen 141
progeny of Terminus, god of boundaries j they say nothing to your soul. There they are ; that is all. Why are they there ? Nobody knows. They are conventional signs, like the hackneyed figures used by sculptors to represent the Four Seasons, or Commerce, or Plenty. Others, again, retired attorneys, or shopkeepers, or antique generals, walk about, and always appear to be much the same. They never seem to be a part of the torrent of Paris, with its throng of young bustling men ; rather, they remind you of half-uprooted trees by a river-side. It is impossible to say whether other people forgot to bury them, or whether they escaped out of their coffins. They have reached a semi-fossil condition.
One of these Paris Melmoths had come for several days past to make one of a sedate, self-contained little crowd which never fails to fill the space between the southern gate of the Luxembourg Gardens and the north gate of the Observatory, whenever the weather is bright. It is a place by itself, a neutral space in Paris. It lies out of the city, as it were, and yet the city is all about it. It partakes of the nature of a square, a thoroughfare, a boulevard, a fortification, a garden, an avenue, and a highway ; it is provincial and Parisian ; it is every one of these things, and not one of them ; it is a desert. All about that nameless spot rise the walls of the Foundling Hospital, the Hopital Cochin, the Capucins, La Bourbe, the Hospice de la Rochefoucauld, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and the hospital of the Val-de-Grace. All the sin and suffering of Paris, in fact, finds a refuge in its neighbourhood ; and that nothing may be wanting in so philanthropic a quarter, students of science repair thither to study the ebb and flow of the tides and latitude and longitude. M. de Chateaubriand too established the Infirmerie Marie Thercse not very far away, and the Carmelites founded a convent near by. In that desert the sound of bells never ceases, every stroke represents one of the solemn
142 The Thirteen
moments in man's life ; the mother in travail, the new- born babe, the dying labourer, the nun at prayer, perish- ing vice, shivering age, disappointed genius. Only a few paces away lies the Cimetiere du Mont Parnasse, whither shabby funerals go all day long from the crowded Faubourg Saint-Marceau.
Players at bowls have monopolised this esplanade with its view of Paris, — grey-headed, homely, good-natured worthies are they, who continue the line of our ancestors, and can only be compared as to externals with their public, the moving gallery which follows them about. The man before alluded to as new to this deserted quarter was an assiduous spectator of the game, and certainly might be said to be the most striking figure in these groups ; for if it is permissible to classify Parisians zoologically, the other bystanders unmistak- ably belonged to the mollusc species. The newcomer would walk sympathetically with the jack, the small ball at which the others are aimed, the centre of interest in the game ; and when it came to a stand, he would lean against a tree, and watch as a dog watches his master, while the bowls flew or rolled past. You might have taken him for the fantastic tutelar spirit of the jack. He never uttered a word. The players themselves, as zealous fanatics as could be found in any religious sect, had never taken him to task for his per- sistent silence, though some free-thinkers among them held that the man was deaf and dumb. Whenever there was occasion to measure the distance between the bowls and the jack, the stranger's cane was taken as the standard of measurement. The players used to take it from his ice-cold fingers without a word, or even a friendly nod. The loan of the cane was a kind of ^easement' which he tacitly permitted. If a shower came on he stayed beside the jack — the slave of the bowls, the guardian of the unfinished game. He took rain and fine weather equally as a matter of course ;
The Thirteen 143
like the players, he was a sort of intermediate species between the stupidest Parisian and the most intelligent of brutes. In other respects he was pale and withered- looking, absent-minded, and careless of his dress. He often came without his hat. His square-shaped head and bald, sallow cranium showed through his white hair, like a beggar's knee thrust through a hole in his breeches. He shambled uncertainly about with his mouth open ; his vacant eyes were never turned to the sky, he never raised them indeed, and always seemed to be looking for something on the ground. At four o'clock an old woman would come for him and take him away some- where or other, towing him after her as a girl tugs a capricious goat which insists on browsing when it is time to go back to the shed. It was something dread- ful to see the old man.
It was afternoon. Jules, sitting alone in his travelling carriage, was driven lightly along the Rue de I'Est, and came out upon the Carrefour de I'Observatoire, just as the old man, leaning against a tree, allowed himself to be despoiled of his cane amid vociferous clamour of players, in pacific dispute over their game. Jules, fancy- ing that he knew the face, called to the postillion to stop, and the carriage came to a stand there and then. As a matter of fact, the postillion, wedged in among heavy carts, was in nowise anxious to ask the insurgent players at bowls to allow him to pass ; he had too much respect for emeutes^ had that postillion.
* It is he ! ' Jules exclaimed, finally recognising Ferragus xxiii., Chef des Devorants, in that human wreck. — ' How he loved her ! ' he added after a pause. — ' Go on, postillion ! ' he shouted.
Paris, February 1833.
144 The Thirteen
II
THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS
To Franz Liszt.
In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean, there stands a convent of the Order of Barefoot CarmeHtes, where the rule instituted by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the first rigour of the reformation brought about by that illustrious woman. Extraordinary as this may seem, it is none the less true. Almost every religious house in the Peninsula, or in Europe for that matter, was either destroyed or disorganised by the out- break of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars ; but as this island was protected through those times by the English fleet, its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants were secure from the general trouble and spoliation. The storms of many kinds which shook the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century spent their force before they reached those cliffs at so short a distance from the coast of Andalusia.
If the rumour of the Emperor's name so much as reached the shore of the island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in the cloisters grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of glory, or the majesty that blazed in flame across kingdom after kingdom during his meteor life.
In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the con- vent stood out pre-eminent for a stern discipline which
The Thirteen 145
nothing had changed ; the purity of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest parts of Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after the long suicide accomplished in the breast of God. No convent, indeed, was so well fitted for that complete detachment of the soul from all earthly things, which is demanded by the religious life, albeit on the continent of Europe there are many convents magnificently adapted to the purpose of their existence. Buried away in the loneHest valleys, hanging in mid-air on the steepest mountain sides, set down on the brink of preci- pices, in every place man has sought for the poetry of the Infinite, the solemn awe of Silence ; in every place man has striven to draw closer to God, seeking Him on mountain peaks, in the depths below the crags, at the cliff's edge ; and everywhere man has found God. But nowhere, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of rock could you find so many different harmonies, com- bining so to raise the soul, that the sharpest pain comes to be like other memories ; the strongest impressions are dulled, till the sorrows of life are laid to rest in the depths.
The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the uttermost end of the island. On the side towards the sea the rock was once rent sheer away in some globe- cataclysm ; it rises up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at the stone below high- water mark. Any assault is made impossible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. So, only from the sea can you discern the square mass of the convent built conformably to the minute rules laid down as to the shape, height, doors, and windows of monastic buildings. From the side of the town, the church completely hides the solid structure of the cloisters and their roofs, covered with broad slabs of stone impervious to sun or storm or gales of wind.
K
146 The Thirteen
The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish family, is the crowning edifice of the town. Its fine, bold front gives an imposing and picturesque look to the little city in the sea. The sight of such a city, with its close-huddled roofs, arranged for the most part amphitheatre- wise above a picturesque harbour, and crowned by a glorious cathedral front with triple-arched Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and filigree spires, is a spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on earth. Religion towering above daily life, to put men continu- ally in mind of the End and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish conception. But now surround this picture by the Mediterranean, and a burning sky, imagine a few palms here and there, a few stunted ever- green trees mingling their waving leaves with the motionless flowers and foliage of carved stone ; look out over the reef with its white fringes of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea ; and then turn to the city, with its galleries and terraces whither the towns- folk come to take the air among their flowers of an evening, above the houses and the tops of the trees in their little gardens ; add a few sails down in the harbour; and lastly, in the stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music, the chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells pealing out over the open sea. There is sound and silence everywhere ; oftener still there is silence over all.
The church is divided within into a sombre mysterious nave and narrow aisles. For some reason, probably because the winds are so high, the architect was unable to build the flying buttresses and intervening chapels which adorn almost all cathedrals, nor are there open- ings of any kind in the walls which support the weight of the roof. Outside there is simply the heavy wall structure, a solid mass of grey stone further strength- ened by huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the nave and its little side galleries are lighted entirely by the
The Thirteen 147
' great stained-glass rose-window suspended by a miracle
of art above the centre doorway ; for upon that side the exposure permits of the display of lacework in stone and of other beauties peculiar to the style improperly called Gothic.
The larger part of the nave and aisles was left for the townsfolk, who came and went and heard mass there. The choir was shut off from the rest of the church by a grating and thick folds of brown curtain, left slightly apart in the middle in such a way that nothing of the choir could be seen from the church except the high altar and the officiating priest. The grating itself was divided up by the pillars which supported the organ loft ; and this part of the structure, with its carved wooden columns, completed the line of the arcading in the gallery carried by the shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive person, therefore, had been bold enough to climb upon the narrow balustrade in the gallery to look down into the choir, he could have seen nothing but the tall eight-sided windows of stained glass beyond the high altar.
At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish Ferdinand vii. once more on the throne, a French general came to the island after the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to require the recognition of the King's government, really to see the convent and to find some means of entering it. The undertaking was certainly a delicate one ; but a man of passionate temper, whose life had been, as it were, but one series of poems in action, a man who all his life long had lived romances instead of writing them, a man pre-eminently a Doer, was sure to be tempted by a deed which seemed to be impossible.
To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means ! The metropolitan or the Pope would scarcely have permitted it ! And as for force or stratagem — might not any indiscretion cost him his position, his whole
148 The Thirteen
career as a soldier, and the end in view to boot ? The Due d'Angouleme was still in Spain ; and of all the crimes which a man in favour with the Commander-in- Chief might commit, this one alone was certain to find him inexorable. The General had asked for the mission to gratify private motives of curiosity, though never was curiosity more hopeless. This final attempt was a matter of conscience. The Carmelite convent on the island was the only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his search.
As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour's distance, he felt a presentiment that his hopes were to be fulfilled ; and afterwards, when as yet he had seen nothing of the convent but its walls, and of the nuns not so much as their robes ; while he had merely heard the chanting of the service, there were dim auguries under the walls and in the sound of the voices to justify his frail hope. And, indeed, however faint those so un- accountable presentiments might be, never was human passion more vehemently excited than the General's curiosity at that moment. There are no small events for the heart ; the heart exaggerates everything ; the heart weighs the fall of a fourteen-year-old Empire and the dropping of a woman's glove in the same scales, and the glove is nearly always the heavier of the two. So here are the facts in all their prosaic simplicity. The facts first, the emotions will follow.
An hour after the General landed on the island, the royal authority was re-established there. Some few Constitutional Spaniards who had found their way thither after the fall of Cadiz were allowed to charter a vessel and sail for London. So there was neither resistance nor reaction. But the change of govern- ment could not be effected in the little town without a mass, at which the two divisions under the General's command were obliged to be present. Now, it was upon this mass that the General had built his hopes
j The Thirteen 149
' of gaining some information as to the sisters in the convent ; he was quite unaware how absolutely the Carmelites were cut ofF from the world ; but he knew that there might be among them one whom he held dearer than life, dearer than honour.
His hopes were cruelly dashed at once. Mass, it is true, was celebrated in state. In honour of such a solemnity, the curtains which always hid the choir were drawn back to display its riches, its valuable paintings and shrines so bright with gems that they eclipsed the glories of the ex-votos of gold and silver hung up by sailors of the port on the columns in the nave. But all the nuns had taken refuge in the organ-loft. And yet, in spite of this first check, during this very mass of thanks- giving, the most intimately thrilling drama that ever set a man's heart beating opened out widely before him.
The sister who played the organ aroused such intense enthusiasm, that not a single man regretted that he had come to the service. Even the men in the ranks were delighted, and the officers were in ecstasy. As for the General, he was seemingly calm and indifferent. The sensations stirred in him as the sister played one piece after another belong to the small number of things which it is not lawful to utter ; words are powerless to express them ; like Death, God, Eternity, they can only be realised through their one point of contact with humanity. Strangely enough, the organ music seemed to belong to the school of Rossini, the musician who brings most human passion into his art. Some day his works, by their number and extent, will receive the reverence due to the Homer of music. From among all the scores that we owe to his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen Moses in Egypt for special study, doubtless because the spirit of sacred music finds therein its supreme expression. Perhaps the soul of the great musician, so gloriously known to Europe, and the soul of this unknown executant had met in the intuitive
150 The Thirteen
apprehension of the same poetry. So at least thought two dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart in Spain.
At last in the Te Deum no one could fail to discern a French soul in the sudden change that came over the music. Joy for the victory of the Most Christian King evidently stirred this nun's heart to the depths. She was a Frenchwoman beyond mistake. Soon the love of country shone out, breaking forth like shafts of light from the fugue, as the sister introduced variations with all a Parisienne's fastidious taste, and blended vague suggestions of our grandest national airs with her music. A Spaniard's fingers would not have brought this warmth into a graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms of France. The musician's nationality was revealed.
' We find France everywhere, it seems,' said one of the men.
The General had left the church during the Te Deum ; he could not listen any longer. The nun's music had been a revelation of a woman loved to frenzy ; a woman so carefully hidden from the world's eyes, so deeply buried in the bosom of the Church, that hitherto the most ingenious and persistent efforts made by men who brought great influence and unusual powers to bear upon the search had failed to find her. The suspicion aroused in the General's heart became all but a certainty with the vague reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, the air of Fleuve du Tage. The woman he loved had played the prelude to the ballad in a boudoir in Paris, how often ! and now this nun had chosen the song to express an exile's longing, amid the joy of those that triumphed. Terrible sensation ! To hope for the resurrection of a lost love, to find her only to know that she was lost, to catch a mysterious glimpse of her after five years — five years, in which the pent-up passion, chafing in an empty life, had grown the mightier for every fruitless effort to satisfy it !
The Thirteen 151
Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to lose some precious thing ; and after hunting through his papers, ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside down ; after one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, and despair ; after a prodigious expenditure of the liveliest irritation of soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of finding that all- important nothing which had come to be a kind of mono- mania ? Very good. Now, spread that fury of search over five years ; put a woman, put a heart, put Love in the place of the trifle ; transpose the monomania into the key of high passion ; and, furthermore, let the seeker be a man of ardent temper, with a lion's heart and a leonine head and mane, a man to inspire awe and fear in those who come in contact with him — realise this, and you may, perhaps, understand why the General walked abruptly out of the church when the first notes of a ballad, which he used to hear with a rapture of delight in a gilt-panelled boudoir, began to vibrate along the aisles of the church in the sea.
The General walked away down the steep street which led to the port, and only stopped when he could not hear the deep notes of the organ. Unable to think of anything but the love which broke out in volcanic eruption, filling his heart with fire, he only knew that the Te Deum was over when the Spanish congregation came pouring out of the church. Feeling that his behaviour and attitude might seem ridiculous, he went back to head the procession, telling the alcalde and the governor that, feeling suddenly faint, he had gone out into the air. Casting about for a plea for prolonging his stay, it at once occurred to him to make the most of this excuse, framed on the spur of the moment. He declined, on a plea of increasing indisposition, to preside at the banquet given by the town to the French officers, betook himself to his bed, and sent a message to the Major-General, to the effect that temporary illness
152
The Thirteen
obliged him to leave the Colonel in command of the troops for the time being. This commonplace but very plausible stratagem relieved him of all responsibility for the time necessary to carry out his plans. The General, nothing if not ' catholic and monarchical,' took occasion to inform himself of the hours of the services, and manifested the greatest zeal for the performance of his religious duties, piety v^^hich caused no remark in Spain.
The very next day, while the division vv^as marching out of the towrn, the General vv^ent to the convent to be present at vespers. He found an empty church. The tov^^nsfolk, devout though they w^ere, had all gone dovi^n to the quay to w^atch the embarkation of the troops. He felt glad to be the only man there. He tramped noisily up the nave, clanking his spurs till the vaulted roof rang with the sound ; he coughed, he talked aloud to himself to let the nuns know, and more particularly to let the organist know that if the troops were gone, one French- man was left behind. Was this singular warning heard and understood ? He thought so. It seemed to him that in the Magnificat the organ made response which was borne to him on the vibrating air. The nun's spirit found wings in music and fled towards him, throbbing with the rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in all its might, the music burst forth and filled the church with warmth. The Song of Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christianity to express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of the glory of the Ever-living God, became the utterance of a heart almost terrified by its gladness in the presence of the glory of a mortal love ; a love that yet lived, a love that had risen to trouble her even beyond the grave in which the nun is laid, that she may rise again as the bride of Christ.
The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the most magnificent of all instruments invented by
The Thirteen 153
human genius. It is a whole orchestra in itself. It can express anything in response to a skilled touch. Surely it is in some sort a pedestal on which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, essaying on her course to draw picture after picture in an endless series, to paint human life, to cross the Infinite that separates heaven from earth ? And the longer a dreamer listens to those giant harmonies, the better he realises that nothing save this hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space between kneeling men, and a God hidden by the blinding light of the Sanctuary. The music is the one interpreter strong enough to bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, prayer in its omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melancholy of many dif- ferent natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspring- ing with the impulse of repentance, — blended with the myriad fancies of every creed. Yes. In those long vaulted aisles the melodies inspired by the sense of things divine are blent with a grandeur unknown before, are decked with new glory and might. Out of the dim daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the choir in response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven for God, and the brightness of His attributes shines through it.
And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down like a grain of incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love beneath the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging God. Indeed, in the joy of the nun there was little of that awe and gravity which should har- monise with the solemnities of the Magnificat. She had en- riched the music with graceful variations, earthly gladness throbbing through the rhythm of each. In such brilliant quivering notes some great singer might strive to find a voice for her love, her melodies fluttered as a bird flutters about her mate. There were moments when she seemed to leap back into the past, to dally there now with laughter, now with tears. Her changing moods,
154 The Thirteen
as it were, ran riot. She was like a woman excited and happy over her lover's return.
But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after the marvellous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion swept over the soul that thus found utterance for itself. With a swift transition from the major to the minor, the organist told her hearer of her present lot. She gave the story of long melancholy broodings, of the slow course of her moral malady. How day by day she deadened the senses, how every night cut off one more thought, how her heart was slowly reduced to ashes. The sadness deepened shade after shade through languid modulations, and in a little while the echoes were pouring out a torrent of grief. Then on a sudden, high notes rang out like the voices of angels singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover that their spirits now could only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope ! Then followed the Amen. No more joy, no more tears in the air, no sadness, no regrets. The Jmen was the return to God. The final chord was deep, solemn, even terrible ; for the last rumblings of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that raised the hair on their heads ; the nun shook out her veiling of crape, and seemed to sink again into the grave from which she had risen for a moment. Slowly the rever- berations died away ; it seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned to thick dark- ness.
The General had been caught up and borne swiftly away by this strong-winged spirit; he had followed the course of its flight from beginning to end. He under- stood to the fullest extent the imagery of that burning symphony ; for him the chords reached deep and far. For him, as for the sister, the poem meant future, present, and past. Is not music, and even opera music, a sort of text, which a susceptible or poetic temper, or a sore and stricken heart, may expand as memories shall determine ?
The Thirteen 155
If a musician must needs have the heart of a poet, must not the listener too be in a manner a poet and a lover to hear all that lies in great music ? Religion, love, and music — v^^hat are they but a threefold expression of the same fact, of that craving for expansion w^hich stirs in every noble soul. And these three forms of poetry ascend to God, in whom all passion on earth finds its end. Wherefore the holy human trinity finds a place amid the infinite glories of God ; of God, whom we always repre- sent surrounded with the fires of love and seistrons of gold — music and light and harmony. Is not He the Cause and the End of all our strivings ?
The French General guessed rightly that here in the desert, on this bare rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music as an outpouring of the passion that still consumed her. Was this her manner of offering up her love as a sacrifice to God ? Or was it Love exultant in triumph over God ? The questions were hard to answer. But one thing at least the General could not mistake — in this heart, dead to the world, the fire of passion burned as fiercely as in his own.
Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde with whom he was staying. In the all-absorbing joy which comes in such full measure when a satisfaction sought long and painfully is attained at last, he could see nothing beyond this — he was still loved ! In her heart love had grown in loneliness, even as his love had grown stronger as he surmounted one barrier after another which this woman had set between them ! The glow of soul came to its natural end. There followed a longing to see her again, to contend with God for her, to snatch her away — a rash scheme, which appealed to a daring nature. He went to bed, when the meal was over, to avoid questions ; to be alone and think at his ease ; and he lay absorbed by deep thought till day broke.
He rose only to go to mass. He went to the church and knelt close to the screen, with his forehead touching
156 The Thirteen
the curtain ; he would have torn a hole in it if he had been alone, but his host had come with him out of politeness, and the least imprudence might compromise the whole future of his love, and ruin the new hopes.
The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the nun of the last two days whose hands touched the keys. It was all colourless and cold for the General. Was the woman he loved prostrated by emotion which well nigh overcame a strong man's heart ? Had she so fully realised and shared an un- changed, longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed in her cell ? While innumerable thoughts of this kind perplexed his mind, the voice of the woman he worshipped rang out close beside him ; he knew its clear resonant soprano. It was her voice, with that faint tremor in it which gave it all the charm that shyness and diffidence gives to a young girl ; her voice, distinct from the mass of singing as a prima donna's in the chorus of a finale. It was like a golden or silver thread in dark frieze.
It was she ! There could be no mistake. Parisienne now as ever, she had not laid coquetry aside when she threw ofF worldly adornments for the veil and the Carmelite's coarse serge. She who had affirmed her love last evening in the praise sent up to God, seemed now to say to her lover, * Yes, it is I. I am here. My love is unchanged, but I am beyond the reach of love. You will hear my voice, my soul shall enfold you, and I shall abide here under the brown shroud in the choir from which no power on earth can tear me. You shall never see me more ! '
' It is she indeed ! ' the General said to himself, raising his head. He had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to bear the intolerable emotion that surged like a whirlpool in his heart, when that well-known voice vibrated under the arcading, with the sound of the sea for accompaniment.
Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary.
The Thirteen 157
Still that rich voice poured out all its caressing notes ; it fell like balm on the lover's burning heart ; it blossomed upon the air — the air that a man would fain breathe more deeply to receive the effluence of a soul breathed forth with love in the words of the prayer. The alcalde coming to join his guest found him in tears during the elevation, while the nun was singing, and brought him back to his house. Surprised to find so much piety in a French military man, the worthy magistrate invited the confessor of the convent to meet his guest. Never had news given the General more pleasure ; he paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention at supper, and con- firmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they had formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect. He inquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the convent, and asked for particulars of its endowment and revenues, as if from courtesy he wished to hear the good priest discourse on the subject most interesting to him. He informed himself as to the manner of life led by the holy women. Were they allowed to go out of the convent, or to see visitors ?
' Seiior,' replied the venerable churchman, ' the rule is strict. A woman cannot enter a monastery of the order of St. Bruno without a special permission from His Holiness, and the rule here is equally stringent. No man may enter a convent of Barefoot Carmelites unless he is a priest specially attached to the services of the house by the Archbishop. None of the nuns may leave the con- vent ; though the great Saint, St. Theresa, often left her cell. The Visitor or the Mothers Superior can alone alone give permission, subject to an authorisation from the Archbishop, for a nun to see a visitor, and then especially in a case of illness. Now we are one of the principal houses, and consequently we have a Mother Superior here. Among other foreign sisters there is one Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa ; she it is who directs the music in the chapel.'
' Oh ! ' said the General, with feigned surprise. ' She
158 The Thirteen
must have rejoiced over the victory of the House of Bourbon.'
* I told them the reason of the mass ; they are always a little bit inquisitive.*
*But Sister Theresa may have interests in France. Perhaps she would like to send some message or to hear news.'
'I do not think so. She would have come to ask me.'
'As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see her,' said the General. ' If it is possible, if the Lady Superior consents, if '
* Even at the grating and in the Reverend Mother's presence, an interview would be quite impossible for anybody whatsoever ; but, strict as the Mother is, for a deliverer of our holy religion and the throne of his Catholic Majesty, the rule might be relaxed for a moment,' said the confessor, blinking. 'I will speak about it.'
' How old is Sister Theresa ? ' inquired the lover. He dared not ask any questions of the priest as to the nun's beauty.
' She does not reckon years now,' the good man answered, with a simplicity that made the General shudder.
Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the French General that Sister Theresa and the Mother consented to receive him at the grating in the parlour before vespers. The General spent the siesta in pacing to and fro along the quay in the noonday heat. Thither the priest came to find him, and brought him to the convent by way of the gallery round the cemetery. Fountains, green trees, and rows of arcading maintained a cool freshness in keeping with the place.
At the further end of the long gallery the priest led the way into a large room divided in two by a grating covered with a brown curtain. In the first, and in some
The Thirteen 159
sort public half of the apartment, where the confessor left the newcomer, a wooden bench ran round the wall, and two or three chairs, also of wood, were placed near the grating. The ceiling consisted of bare unorna- mcnted joists and cross-beams of ilex wood. As the two windows were both on the inner side of the grating, and the dark surface of the wood was a bad reflector, the light in the place was so dim that you could scarcely see the great black crucifix, the portrait of Saint Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which adorned the grey parlour walls. Tumultuous as the General's feelings were, they took something of the melancholy of the place. He grew calm in that homely quiet. A sense of something vast as the tomb took possession of him beneath the chill unceiled roof. Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal silence, deep peace — the sense of the Infinite ? And besides this there was the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister — a thought which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in the dim dusk of the room ; an all-pervasive thought nowhere definitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination; for in the cloister the great saying, ' Peace in the Lord,' enters the least religious soul as a living force.
The monk's life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems confessed a weakling in a monastery ; he was born to act, to live out a life of work ; he is evading a man's destiny in his cell. But what man's strength, blended with pathetic weakness, is implied by a woman's choice of the convent life ! A man may have any number of motives for burying himself in a monastery ; for him it is the leap over the precipice. A woman has but one motive — she is a woman still ; she betrothes herself to a Heavenly Bridegroom. Of the monk you may ask, ' Why did you not fight your battle ? ' But if a woman immures herself in the cloister, is there not always a sublime battle fought first ?
i6o The Thirteen
At length it seemed to the General that that still room, and the lonely convent in the sea, were full of thoughts of him. Love seldom attains to solemnity ; yet surely a love still faithful in the breast of God was something solemn, something more than a man had a right to look for as things are in this nineteenth century ? The infinite grandeur of the situation might well produce an effect upon the General's mind ; he had precisely enough elevation of soul to forget politics, honours, Spain, and society in Paris, and to rise to the height of this lofty climax. And what in truth could be more tragic ? How much must pass in the souls of these two lovers, brought together in a place of strangers, on a ledge of granite in the sea ; yet held apart by an intangible, unsurmountable barrier ! Try to imagine the man saying within himself, 'Shall I triumph over God in her heart ? ' when a faint rustling sound made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside.
Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was hidden by the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head ; she was dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown of the colour become proverbial. Her bare feet were hidden ; if the General could have seen them, he would have known how appallingly thin she had grown ; and yet in spite of the thick folds of her coarse gown, a mere covering and no ornament, he could guess how tears, and prayer, and passion, and lone- liness had wasted the woman before him.
An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the Mother Superior, held back the curtain. The General gave the enforced witness of their interview a searching glance, and met the dark, inscrutable gaze of an aged recluse. The Mother might have been a century old, but the bright, youthful eyes belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.
' Mme. la Duchesse,' he began, his voice shaken with
The Thirteen i6i
emotion, ' does your companion understand French ? ' The veiled figure bowed her head at the sound of his voice.
' There is no duchess here,' she replied. *It is Sister Theresa whom you see before you. She whom you call my companion is my mother in God, my superior here on earth.'
The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded in other years amid harmonious surroundings of refined luxury, the voice of a queen of fashion in Paris. Such words from the lips that once spoke so lightly and flippantly struck the General dumb with amazement.
' The Holy Mother only speaks Latin and Spanish,' she added.
'I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make my excuses to her.'
The light fell full upon the nun's figure ; a thrill of deep emotion betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she heard her name softly spoken by the man who had been so hard in the past.
' My brother,' she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil, perhaps to brush tears away, * I am Sister Theresa.'
Then, turning to the Superior, she spoke in Spanish ; the General knew enough of the language to understand what she said perfectly well; possibly he could have spoken it had he chosen to do so.
*Dear Mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, and begs you to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, but he knows neither of the languages which you speak '
The a2;ed nun bent her head slowly, with an expres- sion of angelic sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the consciousness of her power and dignity.
*• Do you know this gentleman ? ' she asked, with a keen glance.
' Yes, Mother.'
L
1 62 The Thirteen
* Go back to your cell, my daughter ! ' said the Mother imperiously.
The General slipped aside behind the curtain lest the dreadful tumult within him should appear in his face ; even in the shadow it seemed to him that he could still see the Superior's piercing eyes. He was afraid of her ; she held his little, frail, hardly-won happiness in her hands ; and he, who had never quailed under a triple row of guns, now trembled before this nun. The Duchess went towards the door, but she turned back.
' Mother,' she said, with dreadful calmness, * the Frenchman is one of my brothers.'
'Then stay,my daughter,' said theSuperior,afterapause.
The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret, that a man less strongly constituted might have broken down under the keen delight in the midst of a great and, for him, an entirely novel peril. Oh ! how precious words, looks, and gestures became when love must baffle lynx eyes and tiger's claws ! Sister Theresa came back.
' You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to speak to you for a moment of your salvation and of the prayers that my soul puts up for your soul daily. I am committing mortal sin. I have told a lie. How many days of penance must expiate that lie ! But I shall endure it for your sake. My brother, you do not know what happiness it is to love in heaven ; to feel that you can confess love purified by religion, love trans- ported into the highest heights of all, so that we are permitted to lose sight of all but the soul. If the doctrine and the spirit of the Saint to whom we owe this refuge had not raised me above earth's anguish, and caught me up and set me, far indeed beneath the Sphere wherein she dwells, yet truly above this world, I should not have seen you again. But now I can see you, and hear your voice, and remain calm '
The General broke in, 'But, Antoinette, let me see
The Thirteen 163
you, you whom I love passionately, desperately, as you could have wished me to love you.'
'Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you. Memories of the past hurt me. You must see no one here but Sister Theresa, a creature who trusts in the Divine mercy.' She paused for a little, and then added, 'You must control yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us without pity if there is any worldly passion in your face, or if you allow the tears to fall from your eyes.'
The General bowed his head to regain self-control ; when he looked up again he saw her face beyond the grating — the thin, white, but still impassioned face of the nun. All the magic charm of youth that once bloomed there, all the fair contrast of velvet white- ness and the colour of the Bengal rose, had given place to a burning glow, as of a porcelain jar with a faint light shining through it. The wonderful hair in which she took such pride had been shaven ; there was a bandage round her forehead and about her face. An ascetic life had left dark traces about the eyes, which still sometimes shot out fevered glances ; their ordinary calm expression was but a veil. In a few words, she was but the ghost of her former self.
'Ah! you that have come to be my life, you must come out of this tomb ! You were mine ; you had no right to give yourself, even to God. Did you not promise me to give up all at the least command from me ? You may perhaps think me worthy of that promise now when you hear what I have done for you. I have sought you all through the world. You have been in my thoughts at every moment for five years ; my life has been given to you. My friends, very powerful friends, as you know, have helped with all their might to search every convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily, and America. Love burned more brightly for every vain search. Again and again I made long
164 The Thirteen
journeys with a false hope ; I have wasted my life and the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under many a dark convent wall. I am not speaking of a faithful- ness that knows no bounds, for what is it ? — nothing compared with the infinite longings of my love. If your remorse long ago was sincere, you ought not to hesitate to follow me to-day.'
' You forget that I am not free.'
' The Duke is dead,' he answered quickly.
Sister Theresa flushed red.
' May heaven be open to him ! ' she cried with a quick rush of feeling. ' He was generous to me. — But I did not mean such ties ; it was one of my sins that I was ready to break them all without scruple — for you.'
'Are you speaking of your vows?' the General asked, frowning. ' I did not think that anything weighed heavier with your heart than love. But do not think twice of it, Antoinette ; the Holy Father himself shall absolve you of your oath. I will surely go to Rome, I will entreat all the powers of earth ; if God could come down from heaven, 1 would '
' Do not blaspheme.'
' So do not fear the anger of God. Ah ! I would far rather hear that you would leave your prison for me ; that this very night you would let yourself down into a boat at the foot of the cliffs. And we would go away to be happy somewhere at the world's end, I know not where. And with me at your side, you should come back to life and health under the wings of love.'
' You must not talk like this,' said Sister Theresa ; 'you do not know what you are to me now. I love you far better than I ever loved you before. Every day I pray for you; I see you with other eyes. Armand, if you but knew the happiness of giving yourself up, with- out shame, to a pure friendship which God watches over ! You do not know what joy it is to me to pray for heaven's blessing on you. I never pray for myself:
The Thirteen 165
God will do with me according to His will j but, at the price of my soul, I wish I could be sure that you are happy here on earth, and that you will be happy here- after throughout all ages. My eternal life is all that trouble has left me to offer up to you. I am old now with weeping ; I am neither young nor fair j and in any case, you could not respect the nun who became a wife ; no love, not ev^en motherhood, could give me absolution. . . . What can you say to outweigh the uncounted thoughts that have gathered in my heart during the past five years, thoughts that have changed, and worn, and blighted it ? I ought to have given a heart less sorrow- ful to God.'
' What can I say ? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I love you ; that affection, love, a great love, the joy of living in another heart that is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so rare a thing and so hard to find, that I doubted you, and put you to sharp proof; but now, to-day, I love you, Antoinette, with all my soul's strength. ... If you will follow me into solitude, I will hear no voice but yours, 1 will see no other face.'
' Hush, Armand ! You are shortening the little time that we may be together here on earth.'
'Antoinette, will you come with me ?'
*I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, not through the selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, or enjoyment ; pale and withered as I am, I live here for you, in the breast of God. As God is just, you shall be happy '
' Words, words all of it ! Pale and withered ? How if I want you ? Hov/ if I cannot be happy without you ? Do you still think of nothing but duty with your lover before you ? Is he never to come first and above all things else in your heart ? In time past you put social success, yourself, heaven knows what, before him ; now it is God, it is the welfare of my soul ! In Sister Theresa I find the Duchess over again, ignorant of the happiness
1 66 The Thirteen
of love, insensible as ever, beneath the semblance of sensibility. You do not love me ; you have never loved me '
' Oh, my brother ! '
' You do not vv^ish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, do you say ? Very well, through you it will be lost for ever. I shall make away with myself '
'Mother!' Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, ' I have lied to you ; this man is my lover ! '
The curtain fell at once. The General, in his stupor, scarcely heard the doors within as they clanged.
* Ah ! she loves me still ! ' he cried, understanding all the sublimity of that cry of hers. 'She loves me still. She must be carried off. . . .'
The General left the island, returned to head- quarters, pleaded ill-health, asked for leave of absence, and forthwith took his departure for France.
And now for the incidents which brought the two personages in this Scene into their present relation to each other.
The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint- Germain is neither a Quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor anything else that admits of a precise definition. There are great houses in the Place Royale, the Faubourg Saint-Honore, and the Chaussee d'Antin, in any one of which you may breathe the same atmo- sphere of Faubourg Saint-Germain. So, to begin with, the whole Faubourg is not within the Faubourg. There are men and women born far enough away from its influences who respond to them and take their place in the circle ; and again there are others, born within its limits, who may yet be driven forth for ever. For the last forty years the manners, and customs, and speech, in a word, the tradition of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has been to Paris what the Court used to be in other
The Thirteen 167
times ; it is what the Hotel Saint-Paul was to the Four- teenth Century ; the Louvre to the Fifteenth ; the Palais, the Hotel Rambouillet, and the Place Royale to the Sixteenth ; and lastly, as Versailles was to the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth.
Just as the ordinary work-a-day Paris will always centre about some point ; so, through all periods of history, the Paris of the nobles and the upper classes converges towards some particular spot. It is a periodi- cally recurrent phenomenon which presents ample matter for reflection to those who are fain to observe or describe the various social zones ; and possibly an in- quiry into the causes that bring about this centralisation may do more than merely justify the probability of this episode ; it may be of service to serious interests which some day will be more deeply rooted in the common- wealth, unless, indeed, experience is as meaningless for political parties as it is for youth.
In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape the great nobles, build their houses as far as possible from crowded streets. When the Due d'Uzes built his splendid hotel in the Rue Montmartre in the reign of Louis XIV., and set the fountain at his gates — for which beneficent action, to say nothing of his other virtues, he was held in such veneration that the whole quarter turned out in a body to follow his funeral — when the Duke, I say, chose this site for his house, he did so because that part of Paris was almost deserted in those days. But when the fortifications were pulled down, and the market gardens beyond the line of the boulevards began to fill with houses, then the d'Uzes family left their fine mansion, and in our time it was occupied by a banker. Later still, the noblesse began to find them- selves out of their element among shopkeepers, left the Place Royale and the centre of Paris for good, and crossed the river to breathe freely in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where palaces were reared already about
1 68 The Thirteen
the great hotel built by Louis xiv. for the Due de Maine — the Benjamin among his legitimated offspring. And indeed, for people accustomed to a stately life, can there be more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud, the street cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of a populous quarter ? The very habits of life in a mercantile or manufacturing district are com- pletely at variance u^ith the lives of nobles. The shop- keeper and artisan are just going to bed when the great world is thinking of dinner j and the noisy stir of life begins among the former when the latter have gone to rest. Their day's calculations never coincide ; the one class represents the expenditure, the other the receipts. Consequently their manners and customs are diametrically opposed.
Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement. An aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, as the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its organising and working power. It naturally follows that these forces are differently situa- ted ; and of their antagonism there is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of different functions, all of them, however, existing for one common end.
Such social dissonances are so inevitably the outcome of any charter of the constitution, that however much a Liberal may be disposed to complain of them, as of treason against those sublime ideas with which the ambitious plebeian is apt to cover his designs, he would none the less think it a preposterous notion that M. le Prince de Montmorency, for instance, should continue to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the corner of the street which bears that nobleman's name; or that M. le Due de Fitz- James, descendant of the royal house of Scotland, should have his hotel at the angle of the Rue Marie Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil. Sint ut sunt^ aut non sinty the grand words of the Jesuit, might be taken
The Thirteen 169
as a motto by the great in all countries. These social differences are patent in all ages ; the fact is always accepted by the people; its ' reasons of state' are self- evident ; it is at once cause and effect, a principle and a law. The common sense of the masses never deserts them until demagogues stir them up to gain ends of their own ; that common sense is based on the verities of social order; and the social order is the same everywhere, in Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta. Given a certain number of families of unequal fortune in any given space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes ; there will be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other ranks below them. Equality may be a right^ but no power on earth can convert it \nto fact. It would be a good thing for France if this idea could be popularised. The benefits of political harmony are obvious to the least intelligent classes. Harmony is, as it were, the poetry of order, and order is a matter of vital importance to the working population. And what is order, reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement of things among them- selves— unity, in short ? Architecture, music, and poetry, everything in France, and in France more than in any other country, is based upon this principle ; it is written upon the very foundations of her clear accurate language, and a language must always be the most infallible index of national character. In the same way you may note that the French popular airs are those most calculated to strike the imagination, the best- modulated melodies are taken over by the people ; clear- ness of thought, the intellectual simplicity of an idea attracts them ; they like the incisive sayings that hold the g;reatest number of ideas. France is the one country in the world where a little phrase may brnig about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have risen, it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agreement. No nation has a clearer conception of
lyo The Thirteen
that idea of unity which should permeate the life of an aristocracy ; possibly no other nation has so intelligent a comprehension of a political necessity ; history will never find her behind the time. France has been led astray many a time, but she is deluded, woman-like, by generous ideas, by a glow of enthusiasm which at first outstrips sober reason.
So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the Faubourg is the splendour of its great mansions, its great gardens, and a surrounding quiet in keeping with princely revenues drawn from great estates. And what is this distance set between a class and a whole metro- polis but the visible and outward expression of the widely different attitude of mind which must inevitably keep them apart ? The position of the head is well defined in every organism. If by any chance a nation allows its head to fall at its feet, it is pretty sure sooner or later to discover that this is a suicidal measure ; and since nations have no desire to perish, they set to work at once to grow a new head. If they lack the strength for this, they perish as Rome perished, and Venice, and so many other states.
This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of social activity, emphasised by differences in their manner of living, necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there is real worth and some distinguishing merit. In any State, no matter what form of ' govern- ment ' is affected, so soon as the patrician class fails to maintain that complete superiority which is the condi- tion of its existence, it ceases to be a force, and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people always wish to see monev, power, and initiative in their leaders, hands, hearts, and heads ; they must be the spokesmen, they must represent the intelligence and the glory of the nation. Nations, like women, love strength in those who rule them ; they cannot give love without respect ; they refuse utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand
The Thirteen 171
in awe. An aristocracy fallen into contempt is a roi faineant^ a husband in petticoats ; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be.
And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply marked distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the general custom of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a real power, and their destruction so soon as that power is lost. The Faubourg Saint-Germain failed to recognise the conditions of its being, while it would still have been easy to perpetuate its existence, and there- fore was brought low for a time. The Faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the face, as the English aristocracy did before them ; they should have seen that every institution has its climacteric periods, when words lose their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new guise, and the whole conditions of politics wear a changed aspect, while the underlying realities undergo no essen- tial alteration.
These ideas demand further developments which form an essential part of this episode ; they are given here both as a succinct statement of the causes, and an explanation of the things which happen in the course of the story.
The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles dwell ; the luxury of the details ; the constantly maintained sumptuousness of the furniture; the 'atmo- sphere ' in which the fortunate owner of landed estates (a rich man before he was born) lives and moves easily and without friction ; the habit of mind which never descends to calculate the petty work-a-day gains of existence ; the leisure ; the higher education attainable at a much earlier age ; and lastly, the aristocratic tradition that makes of him a social force, for which his opponents, by dint of study and a strong will and tenacity of vocation, are scarcely a match — all these things should contribute to form a lofty spirit in a man, possessed of such privileges from his youth up ; they should stamp his character
172 The Thirteen
with that high self-respect, of which the least conse- quence is a nobleness of heart in harmony with the noble name that he bears. And in some few families all this is realised. There are noble characters here and there in the Faubourg, but they are marked exceptions to a general rule of egoism which has been the ruin of this world within a world. The privileges above enumerated are the birthright of the French noblesse, as of every patrician efflorescence ever formed on the sur- face of a nation ; and will continue to be theirs so long as their existence is based upon real estate, or money ; domaine-sol and domaine-argent alike, the only solid bases of an organised society ; but such privileges are held upon the understanding that the patricians must con- tinue to justify their existence. There is a sort of moral ^^ held on a tenure of service rendered to the sovereign, and here in France the people are undoubtedly the sovereigns nowadays. The times are changed, and so are the weapons. The knight-banneret of old wore a coat of chain armour and a hauberk ; he could handle a lance well and display his pennon, and no more was required of him ; to-day he is bound to give proof of his intelligence. A stout heart was enough in the days of old; in our days he is required to have a capacious brain-pan. Skill and knowledge and capital — these three points mark out a social triangle on which the scutcheon of power is blazoned ; our modern aristocracy must take its stand on these.
A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Rothschilds, the Fuggers of the nineteenth century, are princes de facto. A great artist is in reality an oligarch ; he represents a whole century, and almost always he is a law to others. And the art of words, the high pressure machinery of the writer, the poet's genius, the merchant's steady endurance, the strong will of the statesman who concentrates a thousand dazzling qualities in himself, the general's sword, — all these
The Thirteen 173
victories, in short, which a single individual will win, that he may tower above the rest of the world, the patrician class is now bound to win and keep exclusively. They must head the new forces as they once headed the material forces ; how should they keep the position unless they are worthy of it ? How, unless they are the soul and brain of a nation, shall they set its hands moving ? How lead a people without the power of command ? And what is the marshal's baton without the innate power of the captain in the man who wields it ? The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to playing with batons, and fancied that all the power was in its hands. It inverted the terms of the proposition which called it into existence. And instead of flinging away the insignia which ofFended the people, and quietly grasping the power, it allowed the bourgeoisie to seize the authority, clung with fatal obstinacy to its shadow, and over and over again forgot the laws which a minority must observe if it would live. When an aristocracy is scarce a thousandth part of the body social, it is bound to-day, as of old, to multiply its points of action, so as to counterbalance the weight of the masses in a great crisis. And in our days those means of action must be living forces, and not historical memories.
In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up with the notion of their vanished power, that it was difficult to contend against a kind of innate presump- tion in themselves. Perhaps this is a national defect. The Frenchman is less given than any one else to undervalue himself; it comes natural to him to go from his degree to the one above it ; and while it is a rare thing for him to pity the unfortunates over whose heads he rises, he always groans in spirit to see so many fortunate people above him. He is very far from heartless, but too often he prefers to listen to his intellect. The national instinct which brings the Frenchman to the front, the vanity that wastes his substance, is as much
174 The Thirteen
a dominant passion as thrift in the Dutch. For three centuries it swayed the noblesse, who, in this respect, were certainly pre-eminently French. The scion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, beholding his material superiority, was fully persuaded of his intellectual superiority. And everything contributed to confirm him in his belief; for ever since the Faubourg Saint- Germain existed at all — which is to say, ever since Ver- sailles ceased to be the royal residence — the Faubourg, with some few gaps in continuity, was always backed up by the central power, which in France seldom fails to support that side. Thence its downfall in 1830.
At that time the party of the Faubourg Saint-Ger- main was rather like an army without a base of opera- tion. It had utterly failed to take advantage of the peace to plant itself in the heart of the nation. It sinned for want of learning its lesson, and through an utter incapability of regarding its interests as a whole. A future certainty was sacrificed to a doubtful present gain. This blunder in policy may perhaps be attributed to the following cause.
The class-isolation so strenuously kept up by the noblesse brought about fatal results during the last forty years ; even caste-patriotism was extinguished by it, and rivalry fostered among themselves. When the French noblesse of other times were rich and powerful, the nobles [gefitilhommes] could choose their chiefs and obey them in the hour of danger. As their power diminished, they grew less amenable to discipline ; and as in the last days of the Byzantine Empire, every one wished to be emperor. They mistook their uniform weakness for uniform strength.
Each family ruined by the Revolution and the abolition of the law of primogeniture thought only of itself, and not at all of the great family of the noblesse. It seemed to them that as each individual grew rich, the party as a whole would gain in strength. And herein lay their
The Thirteen
175
mistake. Money, likewise, is only the outward and visible sign of power. All these families were made up of persons who preserved a high tradition of courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined speech, with a family pride, and a squeamish sense of noblesse oblige which suited well with the kind of life they led ; a life wholly filled with occupations which become contemptible so soon as they cease to be accessories and take the chief place in existence. There was a certain intrinsic merit in all these people, but the merit was on the surface, and none of them were worth their face-value.
Not a single one among those families had courage to ask itself the question, ' Are we strong enough for the responsibility of power?' They were cast on the top, like the lawyers of 1830 ; and instead of taking the patron's place, like a great man, the Faubourg Saint- Germain showed itself greedy as an upstart. The most intelligent nation in the world perceived clearly that the restored nobles were organising everything for their own particular benefit. From that day the noblesse was doomed. The Faubourg Saint-Germain tried to be an aristocracy when it could only be an oligarchy — two very different systems, as any man may see for himself if he gives an intelligent perusal to the list of the patronymics of the House of Peers.
The King's Government certainly meant well; but the maxim that the people must be made to will everything, even their own welfare, was prettv constantly forgotten, nor did they bear in mind that La France is a woman and capricious, and must be happy or chastised at her own good pleasure. If there had been many dukes like the Due de Laval, whose modesty made him worthy of the name he bore, the elder branch would have been as securely seated on the throne as the House of Hanover at this day.
In 1 8 14 the noblesse of France were called upon to assert their superiority over the most aristocratic hour-
176 The Thirteen
geoisie in the most feminine of all countries, to take the lead in the most highly educated epoch the world had yet seen. And this was even more notably the case in 1820. The Faubourg Saint-Germain might very easily have led and amused the middle classes in days when people's heads were turned with distinctions, and art and science were all the rage. But the narrow-minded leaders of a time of great intellectual progress all of them detested art and science. They had not even the wit to present religion in attractive colours, though they needed its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais, Mon- talembert, and other writers were putting new life and elevation into men's ideas of religion, and gilding it with poetry, these bunglers in the Government chose to make the harshness of their creed felt all over the country. Never was nation in a more tractable humour ; La France, like a tired woman, was ready to agree to anything ; never was mismanagement so clumsy ; and La France, like a woman, would have forgiven wrongs more easily than bungling.
If the noblesse meant to reinstate themselves, the better to found a strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and diligently searched their Houses for men of the stamp that Napoleon used ; they should have turned themselves inside out to see if peradventure there was a Constitutionalist Richelieu lurking in the entrails of the Faubourg ; and if that genius was not forthcoming from among them, they should have set out to find him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen to be perish- ing of cold ; they should have assimilated him, as the English House of Lords continually assimilates aristo- crats made by chance ; and finally ordered him to be ruthless, to lop away the old wood, and cut the tree down to the living shoots. But, in the first place, the great system of English Toryism was far too large for narrow minds ; the importation required time, and in France a tardy success is no better than a fiasco. So
The Thirteen 177
far, moreover, from adopting a policy of redemption, and looking for new forces where God puts them, these petty great folk took a dislike to any capacity that did not issue from their midst ; and, lastly, instead of growing young again, the Faubourg Saint-Germain grew positively older.
Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might have been maintained if it had appeared only on state occasions, but as it was, there was a daily wrangle over precedence ; it ceased to be a matter of art or court ceremonial, it became a question of power. And if from the outset the Crown lacked an adviser equal to so great a crisis, the aristocracy was still more lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an instinct which might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about M. de Talleyrand's marriage, when M. de Talley- rand was the one man among them with the steel- encompassed brains that can forge a new political system and begin a new career of glory for a nation. The Faubourg scoffed at a minister if he was not gently born, and produced no one of gentle birth that was fit to be a minister. There were plenty of nobles fitted to serve their country by raising the dignity of justices of the peace, by improving the land, by opening out roads and canals, and taking an active and lead- ing part as country gentlemen; but these had sold their estates to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Again the Faubourg might have absorbed the energetic men among the bourgeoisie, and opened their ranks to the ambition which was undermining authoritv ; thev pre- ferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed, for of all that they once possessed there was nothing left but tradition. For their misfortune there was just precisely enough of their former wealth left them as a class to keep up their bitter pride. They were content with their past. Not one of them seriously thought of bidding the son of the house take up arms from the pile of weapons which the
M
178 The Thirteen
Nineteenth Century flings down in the market-place. Young men, shut out from office, were dancing at Madame's balls, while they should have been doing the work done under the Republic and the Empire by young, conscientious, harmlessly employed energies. It was their place to carry out at Paris the programme which their seniors should have been following in the country. The heads of houses might have won back recognition of their titles by unremitting attention to local interests, by falling in with the spirit of the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of the times.
But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where the spirit of the ancient court and traditions of bygone feuds between the nobles and the Crown still lingered on, the aristocracy was not whole-hearted in its allegiance to the Tuileries, and so much the more easily defeated because it was concentrated in the Chamber of Peers, and badly organised even there. If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network over the country, they could have held their own ; but cooped up in their Faubourg, with their backs against the Chateau, or spread at full length over the Budget, a single blow cut the thread of a fast-expiring life, and a petty, smug- faced lawyer came forward with the axe. In spite of M. Royer-Collard's admirable discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of entail fell before the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he had adroitly argued some few heads out of the executioner's clutches, and now forsooth must clumsily proceed to the slaying of old institutions.
There are examples and lessons for the future in all this. For if there were not still a future before the French aristocracy, there would be no need to do more than find a suitable sarcophagus ; it were something pitilessly cruel to burn the dead body of it with fire of Tophet. But though the surgeon's scalpel is ruthless, it sometimes gives back life to a dying man ; and the
The Thirteen 179
Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax more powerful under persecution than in its day of triumph, if it but chooses to organise itself under a leader.
And now it is easy to give a summary of this semi- political survey. The wish to re-establish a large fortune was uppermost in every one's mind ; a lack of broad views, and a mass of small defects, a real need of religion as a political factor, combined with a thirst for pleasure which damaged the cause of religion and necessitated a good deal of hypocrisy ; a certain attitude of protest on the part of loftier and clearer-sighted men who set their faces against Court jealousies; and the disaffection of the provincial families, who often came of purer descent than the nobles of the Court which alienated them from itself, — all these things combined to bring about a most discordant state of things in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was neither compact in its organisation, nor consequent in its action ; neither completely moral, nor frankly dissolute ; it did not corrupt, nor was it corrupted ; it would neither wholly abandon the disputed points which damaged its cause, nor yet adopt the policy that might have saved it. In short, however effete individuals might be, the party as a whole was none the less armed with all the great principles which lie at the roots of national existence. What was there in the Faubourg that it should perish in its strength ?
It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates ; the Faubourg had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there was nothing very glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall.
In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a loftier feeling ; but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into the country there was nothing discernible but self-interest. A few famous men of letters, a few oratorical triumphs in the Chambers, M. de Talley- rand's attitude in the Congress, the taking of Algiers,
i8o The Thirteen
and not a few names that found their way from the battlefield into the pages of history, — all these things were so many examples set before the French noblesse to show that it was still open to them to take their part in the national existence, and to win recognition of their claims, if, indeed, they could condescend thus far. In every living organism the work of bringing the whole into harmony within itself is always going on. If a man is indolent, the indolence shows itself in every- thing that he does ; and, in the same manner, the general spirit of a class is pretty plainly manifested in the face it turns on the world, and the soul informs the body.
The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud disregard of public opinion shown by the court ladies of olden time in their wantonness, nor yet the simple grandeur of the tardy virtues by which they expiated their sins and shed so bright a glory about their names. There was nothing either very frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restoration. She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and compounded, so to speak, with its pleasures. Some (ew families led the domestic life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer women with something like disgust. The great lady of the new school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the time ; and yet she might have done much. She might, at worst, have presented as dignified a spectacle as Englishwomen of the same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old precedents, became a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed nothing of herself to appear, not even her better qualities.
Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the ability to create a salon whither leaders of fashion might come to take lessons in taste and elegance. Their voices, which once laid down the law to litera-
The Thirteen i8i
ture, that living expression of a time, now counted absolutely for nought. Now when a literature lacks a general system, it fails to shape a body for itself, and dies out with its period.
When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus constituted, the historian is pretty certain to find some representative figure, some central personage who embodies the qualities and the defects of the whole party to which he belongs ; there is Coligny, for instance, among the Huguenots, the Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de Richelieu under Louis XV., Danton during the Terror. It is in the nature of things that the man should be identified with the company in which history finds him. How is it possible to lead a party without conforming to its ideas ? or to shine in any epoch unless a man represents the ideas of his time ? The wise and prudent head of a party is continually obliged to bow to the prejudices and follies of its rear ; and this is the cause of actions for which he is afterwards criticised by this or that historian sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular explosions, coolly judging the passion and ferment without which the great struggles of the world could not be carried on at all. And if this is true of the Historical Comedy of the Centuries, it is equally true in a more restricted sphere in the detached scenes of the national drama known as the Manners of the Age.
At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any truth in the above reflections, they failed to give stability, the most perfect type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness and strength, its greatness and littleness, might have been found for a brief space in a young married woman who belonged to it. This was a woman artificially educated, but in reality ignorant 3 a woman whose instincts and feelings
1 82 The Thirteen
were lofty, while the thought which should have con- trolled them was wanting. She squandered the wealth of her nature in obedience to social conventions ; she was ready to brave society, yet she hesitated till her scruples degenerated into artifice. With more wilfulness than real force of character, impressionable rather than enthusias- tic, gifted with more brain than heart ; she was supremely a woman, supremely a coquette, and above all things a Parisienne, loving a brilliant life and gaiety, reflecting never, or too hte ; imprudent to the verge of poetry, and humble in the depths of her heart, in spite of her charming insolence. Like some straight-growing reed, she made a show of independence ; yet, like the reed, she was ready to bend to a strong hand. She talked much of religion, and had it not at heart, though she was prepared to find in it a solution of her life. How explain a creature so complex ? Capable of heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic heights to utter a spiteful word; young and sweet-natured, not so much old at heart as aged by the maxims of those about her ; versed in a selfish philosophy in which she was all un- practised, she had all the vices of a courtier, all the nobleness of developing womanhood. She trusted nothing and no one, yet there were times when she quitted her sceptical attitude for a submissive credulity. How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in whom the play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to produce a poetic confusion ? for in her there shone a divine brightness, a radiance of youth that blended all her bewildering characteristics in a certain completeness and unity informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The passion or semi- passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, were all spontaneous and unaffected, and as much the outcome of her own position as of the position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She was
The Thirteen 183
wholly self-contained ; she put herself proudly above the world and beneath the shelter of her name. There was something of the egoism of Medea in her life, as in the life of the aristocracy that lay a-dying, and would not so much as raise itself or stretch out a hand to any political physician ; so well aware of its feebleness, or so conscious that it was already dust, that it refused to touch or be touched.
The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had been married for about four years when the Restora- tion was finally consummated, which is to say, in 181 6. By that time the revolution of the Hundred Days had let in the light on the mind of Louis xviii. In spite of his surroundings, he comprehended the situation and the age in which he was living ; and it was only later, when this Louis xi., without the axe, lay stricken down by disease, that those about him got the upper hand. The Duchesse de Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which had made a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis xiv. Every daughter of the house must sooner or later take a tabouret at Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the age of eighteen, came out of the profound solitude in which her girlhood had been spent to marry the Due de Langeais's eldest son. The two families at that time were living quite out of the world ; but after the invasion of France, the return of the Bourbons seemed to every Royalist mind the only possible way of putting an end to the miseries of the war.
The Dues de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful throughout to the exiled Princes, nobly resist- ing all the temptations of glory under the Empire. Under the circumstances they naturally followed out the old family policy; and Mile. Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl, was married to M. le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the death of the Duke his father.
184 The Thirteen
After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their rank, offices, and dignity at Court ; once more they entered public life, from which hitherto they held aloof, and took their place high on the sun-lit summits of the new political world. In that time of general baseness and sham political conversions, the public conscience was glad to recognise the unstained loyalty of the two houses, and a consistency in political and private life for which all parties involuntarily respected them. But, unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and wise principles would have gained the confidence of the French nation and led them to believe in the generosity of a novel and spirited policy ; — these men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs, and public business was allowed to fall into the hands of others, who found it to their interest to push principles to their extreme consequences by way of proving their devotion.
The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about the Court, condemned to perform the duties required by Court ceremonial amid the reproaches and sneers of the Liberal party. They were accused of gorging themselves with riches and honours, and all the while their family estates were no larger than before, and liberal allowances from the civil list were wholly expended in keeping up the state necessary for any European government, even if it be a Republic.
In 1818, M. le Due de Langeais commanded a division of the army, and the Duchess held a post about one of the Princesses, in virtue of which she was free to live in Paris and apart from her husband without scandal. The Duke, moreover, besides his military duties, had a place at Court, to which he came during his term of waiting, leaving his major-general in command. The Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the world none the wiser. Their marriage of conven-
The Thirteen 185
tion shared the fate of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more antipathetic dispositions could not well have been found ; they were brought together; they jarred upon each other ; there was soreness on either side ; then they were divided once for all. Then they went their separate ways, with a due regard for appearances. The Due de Langeais, by nature as methodical as the Chevalier de Folard himself, gave himself up methodically to his own tastes and amuse- ments, and left his wife at liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of her character. He recognised in her a spirit pre-eminently proud, a cold heart, a profound submissiveness to the usages of the world, and a youth- ful loyalty. Under the eyes of great relations, with the light of a prudish and bigoted Court turned full upon the Duchess, his honour was safe.
So the Duke calmly did as the grands seigneurs of the eighteenth century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and-twenty to her own devices. He had deeply offended that wife, and in her nature there was one appalling characteristic — she would never forgive an offence when woman's vanity and self-love, with all that was best in her nature perhaps, had been slighted, wounded in secret. Insult and injury in the face of the world a woman loves to forget ; there is a way open to her of showing herself great ; she is a woman in her forgiveness ; but a secret offence women never pardon ; for secret baseness, as for hidden virtues and hidden love, they have no kindness.
This was Mme. la Duchesse de Langeais's real posi- tion, unknown to the world. She herself did not reflect upon it. It was the time of the rejoicings over the Due de Berri's marriage. The Court and the Faubourg roused itself from its listlessness and reserve. This was the real beginning of that unheard-of splendour which the Government of the Restoration carried too far. At that time the Duchess, whether for reasons of her own.
1 86 The Thirteen
or from vanity, never appeared in public without a fol- lovv^ing of women equally distinguished by name and fortune. As queen of fashion she had her dames d'atours^ her ladies, who modelled their manner and their wit on hers. They had been cleverly chosen. None of her satellites belonged to the inmost Court circle, nor to the highest level of the Faubourg Saint-Germain ; but they had set their minds upon admission to those inner sanc- tuaries. Being as yet simple dominations, they wished to rise to the neighbourhood of the throne, and mingle with the seraphic powers in the high sphere known as le petit chateau. Thus surrounded, the Duchess's position was stronger and more commanding and secure. Her ' ladies ' defended her character and helped her to play her detestable part of a woman of fashion. She could laugh at men at her ease, play with fire, receive the homage on which the feminine nature is nourished, and remain mistress of herself.
At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman still ; she lives on incense, adulation, and honours. No beauty, however undoubted, no face, however fair, is anything without admiration. Flattery and a lover are proofs of power. And what is power without recog- nition ? Nothing. If the prettiest of women were left alone in a corner of a drawing-room, she would droop. Put her in the very centre and summit of social grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over all hearts — often because it is out of her power to be the happy queen of one. Dress and manner and coquetry are all meant to please one of the poorest creatures extant — the brainless coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit ; it was for such as these that women threw themselves away. The gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither more nor less, had neither the ante- cedents of the petits maitres of the time of the Fronde, nor the rough sterling worth of Napoleon's heroes, not the wit and fine manners of their grandsires ; but some-
The Thirteen 187
thing of all three they meant to be without any trouble to themselves. Brave they were, like all young French- men ; ability they possessed, no doubt, if they had had a chance of proving it, but their places were filled up by the old worn-out men, who kept them in leading strings. It was a day of small things, a cold prosaic era. Per- haps it takes a long time for a Restoration to become a Monarchy.
For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Lan- geais had been leading this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits, objectless triumphs, and the tran- sient loves that spring up and die in an evening's space. All eyes were turned on her when she entered a room ; she reaped her harvest of flatteries and some few words of warmer admiration, which she encouraged by a gesture or a glance, but never suff'ered to penetrate deeper than the skin. Her tone and bearing and everything else about her imposed her will upon others. Her life was a sort of fever of vanity and perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head. She was daring enough in conversation ; she would listen to anything, corrupting the surface, as it were, of her heart. Yet when she returned home, she often blushed at the story that had made her laugh ; at the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of which she analysed the love that she had never known, and marked the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on the part of complacent hypocrites. For women know how to say everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each other than corrupted by men.
There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is loved will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit. What does a husband prove ? Simply that a girl or woman was endowed with wealth, or well brought up ; that her mother managed cleverly ; that in some way she satisfied a man's ambitions. A lover constantly bears witness to her personal perfec-
1 88 The Thirteen
tions. Then followed the discovery, still in Mme. de Langeais's early womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without committing herself, without permission, without vouchsafing any satisfaction beyond the most meagre dues. There was more than one demure feminine hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such dangerous comedies.
So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and courtiers guaranteed her virtue. She was amiable and fascinating ; she flirted till the ball or the evening's gaiety was at an end. Then the curtain dropped. She was cold, indifferent, self-contained again, till the next day brought its renewed sensations, super- ficial as before. Two or three men were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest. She laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. 'I am loved ! ' she told herself. ' He loves me ! ' The certainty sufficed her. It is enough for the miser to know that his every whim might be fulfilled if he chose ; so it was with the Duchess, and perhaps she did not even go so far as to form a wish.
One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend, Mme. la Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who cordially detested her, and went with her everywhere. In a ' friendship ' of this sort both sides are on their guard, and never lay their armour aside ; confidences are ingeniously indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous. Mme, de Langeais had distributed her little patronising, friendly, or freezing bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her smiles, when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Something in the man's large gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a feeling almost like dread, she turned to Mme. de Maufrigneuse with, ' Who is the new-comer, dear ? '
'Some one that you have heard of, no doubt. The Marquis de Montriveau.'
The Thirteen 189
*Oh! is it he?'
She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent scrutiny, as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances, not to return them.
' Do introduce him ; he ought to be interesting.'
* Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear. But he is the fashion.'
M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unw^ittingly the object of general curiosity, better deserved attention than any of the idols that Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief space, for the city is vexed by periodical fits of craving, a passion for engoue- ment and sham enthusiasm, vi'hich must be satisfied. The Marquis vi^as the only son of General de Montriveau, one of the ci-devants who served the Republic nobly, and fell byjoubert's side at Novi. Bonaparte had placed his son at tlie school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who fell on the battlefield, leaving their chil- dren under the protection of the Republic. Armand de Montriveau left school with his way to make, entered the artillery, and had only reached a major's rank at the time of the Fontainebleau disaster. In his section of the service the chances of advancement were not many. There are fewer officers, in the first place, among the gunners than in any other corps ; and in the second place, the feeling in the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican ; and the Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly educated men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion grudg- ingly in the service. In the artillery, accordingly, the general rule of the army did not apply ; the command- ing officers were not invariably the most remarkable men in their department, because there was less to be feared from mediocrities. The artillery was a separate corps in those days, and only came under Napoleon in action.
Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent
190 The Thirteen
in Armand de Montriveau's character, were sufficient in themselves to account for his tardy promotion. He was alone in the world. He had been thrown at the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men directed by Napoleon ; his interests were bounded by himself, any day he might lose his life ; it became a habit of mind with him to live by his own self-respect and the con- sciousness that he had done his duty. Like all shy men, he was habitually silent ; but his shyness sprang by no means from timidity ; it was a kind of modesty in him ; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable. There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action ; nothing escaped his eyes ; he could give sensible advice to his chums with unshaken coolness ; he could go under fire, and duck upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly ; but his expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him this character. In every- thing he was rigorous as arithmetic ; he never permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact. He would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed ; he never asked anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of many great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to despise it ; living with- out attaching themselves to life, because they have not found their opportunity of developing to the full their power to do and feel.
People were afraid of Montriveau ; they respected him, but he was not very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise above them, but to decline to descend as low as they can do is the one unpardonable sin. In their feeling towards loftier natures, there is a trace of hate and fear. Too much honour with them implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the living nor to the dead.
After the Emperor's farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble though he was, was put on half-pay.
The Thirteen 191
Perhaps the heads of the War Office took fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of antiquity, or perhaps it was known that he felt bound by his oath to the Imperial Eagle. During the Hundred Days he was made a Colonel of the Guard, and left on the field of Waterloo. His wounds kept him in Belgium ; he was not present at the disbanding of the Army of the Loire, but the King's government declined to recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de Montriveau left France.
An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied by the hazards of war, drove him on an explor- ing expedition through Upper Egypt ; his sanity or impulse directed his enthusiasm to a project of great importance, he turned his attention to that unexplored Central Africa which occupies the learned of to-day. The scientific expedition was long and unfortunate. He had made a valuable collection of notes bearing on various geographical and commercial problems, of which solutions are still eagerly sought ; and succeeded, after surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the continent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile native tribe. Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years he led a wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages, threatened with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children. Physical strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive the horrors of that captivity ; but his miraculous escape well nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his memories of his former life were dim and shapeless. The great sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his studies of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations. One story will give an idea of all that he passed through. Once for several days the children of the sheikh of the tribe
192 The Thirteen
amused themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging horses' knuckle-bones at his head.
Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man. He had no interest, and wished for none. He would have died twenty times over sooner than ask a favour of any one ; he would not even press the recogni- tion of his claims. Adversity and hardship had developed his energy even in trifles, while the habit of preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures became known, however, through his acquaintances, among the principal men of science in Paris, and some few well-read military men. The incidents of his slavery and subsequent escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence, and coolness which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though the artist that fain would keep it must make untold efforts.
Montriveau's position suddenly changed towards the end of that year. He had been a poor man, he was now rich ; or, externally at any rate, he had all the advantages of wealth. The King's government, trying to attach capable men to itself and to strengthen the army, made concessions about that time to Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and character ofi'ered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau's name once more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel ; he received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All these favours, one after another, came to seek the Marquis de Montriveau ; he had asked for nothing however small. Friends had taken the steps for him which he would have refused to take for himself.
After this, his habits were modified all at once ; con- trary to his custom, he went into society. He was well received, everywhere he met with great deference and respect. He seemed to have found some end in life ;
The Thirteen 193
but everything passed within the man, there were no external signs ; in society he was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved face. His social success was great, precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. Terse of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau ; his nature only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for the men who cried him up behind his back ; but for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman who was to fill his thoughts.
For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais's curiosity was no less lively than natural. Chance had so ordered it that her interest in the man before her had been aroused only the day before, when she heard the story of one of M. de Montriveau's adventures, a story calcu- lated to make the strongest impression upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.
During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely the most extraordinary debate in the annals of travel. The district that he wished to explore could only be reached on foot across a tract of desert. Only one of his guides knew the way ; no traveller had penetrated before into that part of the country, where the undaunted officer hoped to find a solution of several scientific problems. In spite of the
N
194 The Thirteen
representations made to him by the guide and the older men of the place, he started upon the formidable journey. Summoning up courage, already highly strung by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in the morning.
The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step ; and when, at the end of a long day's march, he lay down to sleep on the ground, he had never been so tired in his life. He knew, however, that he must be up and on his way before dawn next day, and his guide assured him that they should reach the end of their journey towards noon. That promise kept up his courage and gave him new strength. In spite of his sufferings, he continued his march, with some blasphemings against science ; he was ashamed to complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself. After marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing, his feet were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place soon. 'In an hour's time,' said the guide. Armand braced himself for another hour's march, and they went on.
The hour slipped by ; he could not so much as see against the sky the palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of the journey near at hand ; the horizon line of sand was vast as the circle of the open sea.
He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the guide — he had deceived him, murdered him ; tears of rage and weariness flowed over his fevered cheeks ; he was bowed down with fatigue upon fatigue, his throat seemed to be glued by the desert thirst. The guide meanwhile stood motionless, listen- ing to these complaints with an ironical expression, studying the while, with the apparent indifference of an Oriental, the scarcely perceptible indications in the lie of the sands, which looked almost black, like burnished gold.
' I have made a mistake,' he remarked coolly. * I
^L
$. AM-,
mj*.,i%^<j^r'^:
m.uj*.
i»i.»*^>**^:'%-'V
s ,*.
5 guide by
*/ If 1^ '" '
^^VSf
/V
ijn and
MX
n'J^'^y
n^'ifn :
.f^-Aif^/^-^'
«% m* X
■.4: %it:-
'^Q^mm
^^f^r^^^g'/.F.ii^^
'yVf/K'i
' i > ft
Hi 9
\M
-A ■?•
y^i
li
fti tt. ** a'
The Thirteen 1^5
could not make out the track, it is so long since I came this way ; we are surely on it now, but we must push on for two hours.'
'The man is right,' thought M. de Montriveau.
So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. It seemed as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like the invisible tie between the con- demned man and the headsman. But the two hours went by, Montriveau had spent his last drops of energy, and the sky-line was a blank, there were no palm-trees, no hills. He could neither cry out nor groan, he lay down on the sand to die, but his eyes would have frightened the boldest ; something in his face seemed to say that he would not die alone. His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool glance like a man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept at a safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim. At last M. Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse. The guide came nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said, 'Was it not your own will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all ? You say that I have lied to you. If I had not, you would not be even here. Do you want the truth ? Here it is. We have still another five hours' march before us^ and we cannot go back. Sound yourself; if you have not courage enough, here is my dagger.'
Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength, M. de Montriveau would not be behind a savage ; he drew a fresh stock of courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet, and followed his guide. The five hours were at an end, and still M. de Mon- triveau saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his guide ; but the Nubian hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed him a wide pool of water with greenness all about it, and a noble forest lighted up by the sunset. It lay only a hundred paces away ; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious landscape. It seemed to Armand that
196 The Thirteen
he had taken a new lease of life. His guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work of devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely discernible track on the granite. Behind him lay the hell of burning sand, before him the earthly paradise of the most beautiful oasis in the desert.
The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this romantic figure, was even more impressed when she learned that this was that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed during the night. She had been with him among the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of her nightmare wanderings ; for such a woman was not this a delightful presage of a new interest in her life ? And never was a man's exterior a better exponent of his character ; never were curious glances so well justified. The principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head was the thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him a strik- ingly close resemblance to General Kleber ; and the likeness still held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his face, the quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery vehemence expressed by strongly marked features. He was short, deep-chested, and muscular as a lion. There was something of the despot about him, and an indescribable suggestion of the security of strength in his gait, bearing, and slightest movements. He seemed to know that his will was irresistible, perhaps because he wished for nothing unjust. And yet, like all really strong men, he was mild of speech, simple in his manners, and kindly natured ; although it seemed as if, in the stress of a great crisis, all these finer qualities must disappear, and the man would show himself im- placable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in action. There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.
The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting
The Thirteen 197
glory was to be won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in Armand de Montriveau during the brief interval before the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse brought him to be introduced. She would prefer him above the others ; she would attach him to herself, dis- play all her powers of coquetry for him. It was a fancy, such a merest Duchess's whim as furnished a Lope or a Calderon with the plot of the Dog in the Manger. She would not suffer another woman to engross him ; but she had not the remotest intention of being his.
Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of coquette, and education had perfected her. Women envied her, and men fell in love with her, not without reason. Nothing that can inspire love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting in her. Her style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing, all combined to give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to be the consciousness of power. Her shape was graceful ; perhaps there was a trace of self-conscious- ness in her changes of movement, the one affectation that could be laid to her charge j but everything about her was a part of her personality, from her least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady's grace, her most striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination in her swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and the encum- bering costume of her part was laid aside. All the rapture of love surely was latent in the freedom of her expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the charm of her words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within her, vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.
You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like
198 The Thirteen
her sadness, seemed spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or confiding at will. Her apparent good nature was real ; she had no temptation to descend to malignity. But at each moment her mood changed; she was full of confidence or craft ; her moving tender- ness would give place to a heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she was, without bringing together all the extremes of feminine nature ? In a word, the Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem. Her face was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages. Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred, as it were, by an excess of delicacy.
M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be intro- duced to the Duchesse de Langeais ; and she, after the manner of persons whose sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from overwhelming him with questions and compliments. She received him with a gracious deference which could not fail to flatter a man of more than ordinary powers, for the fact that a man rises above the ordinary level implies that he possesses something of that tact which makes women quick to read feeling. If the Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances ; her compliments were conveyed in her manner ; there was a winning grace displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to please which she of all women knew the art of manifesting. Yet her whole conversation was but, in a manner, the body of the letter; the postscript with the principal thought in it was still to come. After half an hour spent in ordinary talk, in which the words gained all their value from her tone and smiles, M. de Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the Duchess stopped him with an expressive gesture.
* I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which I have hid the pleasure of talking to you
The Thirteen 199
proved so sufficiently attractive, that I may venture to ask you to call upon me ; I am afraid that it may be very selfish of me to wish to have you all to myself. If I should be so fortunate as to find that my house is agreeable to you, you w^ill alw^ays find me at home in the evening until ten o'clock.'
The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de Montriveau could not refuse to accept it. When he fell back again among the groups of men gathered at a distance from the women, his friends con- gratulated him, half laughingly, half in earnest, on the ex- traordinary reception vouchsafed him by the Duchesse de Langeais. The difficult and brilliant conquest had been made beyond a doubt, and the glory of it was reserved for the Artillery of the Guard. It is easy to imagine the jests, good and bad, when this topic had once been started ; the world of Paris salons is so eager for amuse- ment, and a joke lasts for such a short time, that every one is eager to make the most of it while it is fresh.
All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense. From his place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn again and again to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections. He could not help admitting to himself that of all the women whose beauty had captivated his eyes, not one had seemed to be a more exquisite embodiment of faults and fair qualities blended in a completeness that might realise the dreams of earliest manhood. Is there a man in any rank of life that has not felt indefinable rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled out (if only in his dreams) to be his own ; when she, in body, soul, and social aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman ? And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argument for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great inducements to the sentiment. Love would soon be convalescent, as the
200 The Thirteen
eighteenth century moralist remarked, were it not for vanity. And it is certainly true that for every one, man or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of the beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a con- temptuous glance can never wound her ? is she wealthy enough to surround herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty of kings of finance during their short reign of splendour ? is she so ready-witted that a keen- edged jest never brings her into confusion ? beautiful enough to rival any woman ? — Is it such a small thing to know that your self-love will never suffer through her ? A man makes these reflections in the twinkling of an eye. And how if, in the future opened out by early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the change- ful delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, the perils of love's voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of coquetry ? Is not this enough to move the coldest man's heart ?
This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau's position with regard to woman ; his past life in some measure explain- ing the extraordinary fact. He had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the hurricane of Napoleon's wars ; his life had been spent on fields of battle. Of women he knew just so much as a traveller knows of a country when he travels across it in haste from one inn to another. The verdict which Voltaire passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, have been applied by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years of existence ; had he not thirty-seven follies with which to reproach himself? At his age he was as much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively reading Faublas. Of women he had nothing to learn ; of love he knew nothing; and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang from this virginity of feeling.
There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work demanded of them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de Montriveau by war and a life of
The Thirteen 201
adventure, — these know what it is to be in this unusual position if they very seldom confess to it. Every man in Paris is supposed to have been in love. No woman in Paris cares to take what other women have passed over. The dread of being taken for a fool is the source of the coxcomb's bragging so common in France ; for in France to have the reputation of a fool is to be a foreigner in one's own country. Vehement desire seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered strength from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence. A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery over himself; but as he talked or indifferent things, he retired within himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that thought lay the only way to love for him. Desire became a solemn compact made with himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived ; for among them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny, a man's whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfil it, and everything, even his own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one end.
A younger man would have said to himself, ' I should very much like to have the Duchess for my mistress ! ' or, ' If the Duchesse de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal ! ' But the General said, *I will have Mme. de Langeais for my mistress.' And if a man takes such an idea into his head when his heart has never been touched before, and love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a hell he has set his foot.
Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it were, to stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires ; a little later he realises that there is a gulf set between them, and that it
202 The Thirteen
is all but impossible to cross it. A sort of childish im- patience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and trembles or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage made the heavier by his love.
The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his world, his life, from this time forth. The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew colourless before the bare recollection of the least sensation stirred in him by her. The swiftest revolutions in a man's outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, rather than by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete revolution. In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau wiped out his whole past life.
A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, 'Shall I go, or shall I not ? ' and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted. He was to see the woman — ah ! not the woman — the idol that he had seen yesterday, among lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling. He burst in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of firing the first shot on a field of battle.
Poor novice ! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown cashmere dressing-gown ingeni- ously befrilled, lying languidly stretched out upon a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir. Mme. de Langeais did not so much as rise, nothing was visible of her but her face, her hair was loose but confined by a scarf. A hand indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white as marble to
The Thirteen 203
Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at the further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said —
'If it had been any one else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I could dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I felt but slight interest, I should have closed my door. I am exceedingly unwell.' 'I will go,' Armand said to himself. 'But I do not know how it is,' she continued (and the simple warrior attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), ' perhaps it was a presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more sensible of the prompt attention than I), but the vapours have left my head.' ' Then may I stay ? '
' Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go. I told myself this morning that it was impossible that I should have made the slightest impression on your mind, and that in all probability you took my request for one of the commonplaces of which Parisians are lavish on every occasion. And I forgave your ingratitude in advance. An explorer from the deserts is not supposed to know how exclusive we are in our friendships in the Faubourg.'
The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they had been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them to her lips. The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her headache, and her speculation was fully successful. The General, poor man, was really distressed by the lady's simulated distress. Like Crillon listening to the story of the Crucifixion, he was ready to draw his sword against the vapours. How could a man dare to speak just then to this suffering woman of the love that she inspired ? Armand had already felt that it would be absurd to fire ofF a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above other women. With a single thought came understanding of the delicacies of feeling, of the
204 The Thirteen
soul's requirements. To love : what was that but to know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait ? And as for the love that he felt, must he not prove it ? His tongue was mute, it was frozen by the conventions of the noble Faubourg, the majesty of a sick headache, the bashfulness of love. But no power on earth could veil his glances; the heat and the Infinite of the Desert blazed in eyes, calm as a panther's, beneath the lids that fell so seldom. The Duchess enjoyed the steady gaze that enveloped her in light and warmth.
' Mme. la Duchesse,' he answered, 'I am afraid I express my gratitude for your goodness very badly. At this moment I have but one desire — I wish it were in my power to cure the pain.'
' Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now,' she said, gracefully tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.
' Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand sequins.'
' A traveller's compliment ! ' smiled she.
It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a labyrinth of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in which he manoeuvred, in military language, as Prince Charles might have done at close quarters with Napoleon. She took a mischievous amusement in reconnoitring the extent of his infatua- tion by the number of foolish speeches extracted from a novice whom she led step by step into a hopeless maze, meaning to leave him therein confusion. She began by laughing at him, but nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how time went.
The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but Armand was innocent of any such intent. The famous explorer spent an hour in chat on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that he meant to say, and was feeling that he was only an instrument on whom this woman played, when she rose, sat upright, drew the
The Thirteen 205
scarf from her hair, and wrapped it about her throat, leant her elbow on the cushions, did him the honour of a complete cure, and rang for lights. The most graceful movement succeeded to complete repose. She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom she had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her deeply, and said —
' You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that you have never loved. It is a man's great pretension with us. And we always believe it ! Out of pure politeness. Do we not know what to expect from it for ourselves ? Where is the man that has found but a single opportunity of losing his heart ? But you love to deceive us, and we submit to be deceived, poor foolish creatures that we are ; for your hypocrisy is, after all, a homage paid to the superiority of our sentiments, which are all purity.'
The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the novice in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep, while the Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular heaven.
'Confound it!' thought Armand de Montriveau, * how am I to tell this wild thing that I love her ? '
He had told her already a score of times ; or rather, the Duchess had a score of times read his secret in his eyes ; and the passion in this unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an interest in her empty life. So she prepared with no little dexterity to raise a certain number of redoubts for him to carry by storm before he should gain an entrance into her heart. Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after another; he should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect teased by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its mischievous tormentor. And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible happiness to see that this strong man had told her the truth. Armand had never loved,
2o6 The Thirteen
as he had said. He was about to go, in a bad humour with himself, and still more out of humour with her ; but it delighted her to see a sullenness that she could conjure away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.
' Will you come to-morrow evening r ' she asked. * I am going to a ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten o'clock.'
Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais. To any one who had known the magnificent worth of the man, it would have been grievous to see him grown so small, so distrustful of himself; the mind that might have shed light over undiscovered worlds shrunk to the proportions of a she- coxcomb's boudoir. Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low already in his happiness that to save his life he could not have told his love to one of his closest friends. Is there not always a trace of shame in the lover's bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain exultation over diminished masculine stature ? Indeed, but for a host of motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly always the first to betray the secret ? — a secret of which, perhaps, they soon weary.
'Mme. la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur,' said the man ; 'she is dressing, she begs you to wait for her here.'
Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in the least details. He admired Mme. de Langeais herself in the objects of her choosing ; they revealed her life before he could grasp her per- sonality and ideas. About an hour later the Duchess came noiselessly out of her chamber. Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room, and trembled. She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise's inquiry, ' How do I look ? ' She was sure of herself j her steady eyes said plainly, * I am adorned to please you,'
The Thirteen 207
No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty throat, so that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam through the gleaming folds. The Duchess was dazzling. The pale blue colour of her gown, repeated in the flowers in her hair, appeared by the richness of its hue to lend substance to a fragile form grown too wholly ethereal ; for as she glided towards Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about her, putting that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies that hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem to mingle and blend.
' I have kept you waiting,' she said, with the tone that a woman can always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to please.
' I would wait patiently through an eternity,' said he, ' if I were sure of finding a divinity so fair ; but it is no compliment to speak of your beauty to you ; nothing save worship could touch you. Suffer me only to kiss your scarf.'
'Oh, fie !' she said, with a commanding gesture, 'I esteem you enough to give you my hand.'
She held it out for his kiss. A woman's hand, still moist from the scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that sends a tingling thrill from the lips to the soul. And if a man is attracted to a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel pleasure as his heart is full of love, such a kiss, though chaste in appearance, may conjure up a terrific storm.
' Will you always give it me like this ? ' the General asked humbly, when he had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to his lips.
'Yes, but there we must stop,' she said, smiling. She sat down, and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to slip the unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she watched M. de Montriveau ;
2o8 The Thirteen
and he was lost in admiration of the Duchess and those repeated graceful movements of hers.
'Ah! you were punctual,' she said; 'that is right. I like punctuality. It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says ; but to my thinking, from you men it is the most respectful flattery of all. Now, is it not ? Just tell me.'
Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious friendship, for he was dumb with happiness — sheer happiness through such nothings as these ! Oh, the Duchess understood son metier de femme — the art and mystery of being a woman — most marvellously well ; she knew, to admiration, how to raise a man in his own esteem as he humbled himself to her ; how to reward every step of the descent to sentimental folly with hollow flatteries.
' You will never forget to come at nine o'clock.'
' No ; but are you going to a ball every night ? '
'Do I know?' she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the shoulders ; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if not capricious, and that a lover must take her as she was. — 'Besides,' she added, 'what is that to you ? You shall be my escort.'
'That would be difficult to-night,' he objected; 'I am not properly dressed.'
' It seems to me,' she returned loftily, ' that if any one has a right to complain of your costume, it is I. Know, therefore, monsieur le voyageur^ that if I accept a man's arm, he is forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would venture to criticise him. You do not know the world, I see ; I like you the better for it.'
And even as she spoke she swept him into the petti- ness of that world by the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman of fashion.
' If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a simpleton to prevent her,' said Armand to himself. ' She has a liking for me beyond a doubt ; and as for the
The Thirteen 209
world, she cannot despise it more than I do. So, now for the ball if she likes.'
The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her and appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would hesitate to believe that he was violently in love with her. And the General was well pleased that the queen of fashion should think of com- promising herself for him ; hope gave him wit. He had gained confidence, he brought out his thoughts and views ; he felt nothing of the restraint that weighed on his spirits yesterday. His talk was interesting and animated, and full of those first confidences so sweet to make and to receive.
Was JVIme. de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she devised this charming piece of coquetry ? At any rate, she looked up mischievously as the clock struck twelve.
' Ah ! you have made me too late for the ball ! ' she exclaimed, surprised and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.
The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a smile that made Armand's heart give a sudden leap.
'I certainly promised Mme. de Beauseant,' she added. 'They are all expecting me.'
' Very well — go.'
' No — go on. I will stay. Your Eastern adventures fascinate me. Tell me the whole story of your life. I love to share in a brave man's hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do ! '
She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to pieces, with jerkv, impatient movements that seemed to tell of inward dissatisfaction and deep reflec- tion.
* We are fit for nothing,' she went on. ' Ah ! we are contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures. We can bore ourselves with amusements, and that is all we can do.
2IO The Thirteen
Not one of us that understands that she has a part lo play in life. In old days in France, women were bene- ficent lights ; they lived to comfort those that mourned, to encourage high virtues, to reward artists and stir new life with noble thoughts. If the world has grown so petty, ours is the fault. You make me loathe the ball and this world in which I live. No, I am not giving up much for you.'
She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a flower, pulling away all the petals one by one ; and now she crushed it into a ball, and flung it away. She could show her swan's neck.
She rang the bell. 'I shall not go out to-night,' she told the footman. Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand ; and by the look of misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take the order for a confes- sion, for a first and great favour. There was a pause, filled with many thoughts, before she spoke with that tenderness which is often in women's voices, and not so often in their hearts. ' You have had a hard life,' she said.
' No,' returned Armand. ' Until to-day I did not know what happiness was.'
' Then you know it now ? ' she asked, looking at him with a demure, keen glance.
' What is happiness for me henceforth but this — to see you, to hear you ? . . . Until now I have only known privation j now I know that I can be un- happy '
'That will do, that will do/ she said. 'You must go; it is past midnight. Let us regard appearances. People must not talk about us. I do not know quite what I shall say ; but the headache is a good-natured friend, and tells no tales.'
' Is there to be a ball to-morrow night ? '
' You would grow accustomed to the life, I think. Very well. Yes, we will go again to-morrow night.'
The Thirteen 211
There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went out from her. Every evening he came to Mme. de Langeais's at the hour kept for him by a tacit understanding.
It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a redundance of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were superfluous to follow the story step by step — the progress of a romance growing in those hours spent together, a romance controlled entirely by a woman's will. If sentiment went too fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when words flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings. Per- haps the only way of following such Penelope's progress is by marking its outward and visible signs.
As, for instance, within a few days of their first meet- ing, the assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady's insatiable hands. Wherever Mme. de Langeais went, M. de Montriveau was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called him *■ Her Grace's orderly.' And already he had made enemies ; others were jealous, and envied him his position. Mme. de Langeais had attained her end. The Marquis de Mont- riveau was among her numerous train of adorers, and a means of humiliating those who boasted of their pro- gress in her good graces, for she publicly gave him preference over them all.
'Decidedly, M. de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess shows a preference,' pronounced Mme. de Serizy.
And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman 'shows a preference'? All went on there- fore according to prescribed rule. The anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate concerning the General put that warrior in so formidable a light, that the more adroit quietly dropped their pretensions to the Duchess, and remained in her train merely to turn the position to account, and to use her name and personality to make
212 The Thirteen
better terms for themselves with certain stars of the second magnitude. And those lesser powers were delighted to take a lover away from Mme. de Langeais. The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to see these desertions and treaties with the enemy ; and her pride would not suffer her to be the dupe of them. As M. de Talleyrand, one of her great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition of revenge, laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the pairs in these ' morganatic' unions. Her mocking disdain con- tributed not a little to increase her reputation as an extremely clever woman and a person to be feared. Her character for virtue was consolidated while she amused herself with other people's secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet, after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg Saint- Germain ; he was taking a Parisienne's coquetry in earnest.
' You will not tame him^ dear Duchess,' the old Vidame de Pamiers had said. * Tis a first cousin to the eagle ; he will carry you off to his eyrie if you do not take care.'
Then Mme. de Langeais felt afraid. The shrewd old noble's words sounded like a prophecy. The next day she tried to turn love to hate. She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable ; Montriveau disarmed her with angelic sweetness. She so little knew the great genero- sity of a large nature, that the kindly jests with which her first complaints were met went to her heart. She sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection. She persisted.
' When a man idolises you, how can he have vexed you ? ' asked Armand.
' You do not vex me,' she answered, suddenly grown gentle and submissive. ' But why do you wish to com-
The Thirteen 213
promise me ? For me you ought to be nothing but a friend. Do you not know it ? I wish I could see that you had the instincts, the delicacy of real friendship, so that I might lose neither your respect nor the pleasure that your presence gives me.'
* Nothing but your friend ! ' he cried out. The terrible word sent an electric shock through his brain. ' On the faith of these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your heart. And now to-day, for no reason, you are pleased to destroy all the secret hopes by which I live. You have required promises of such constancy in me, you have said so much of your horror of women made up of nothing but caprice ; and now do you wish me to understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have passions, and know nothing of love ? If so, why did vou ask my life of me? why did you accept it ? '
'I was wrong, my friend. Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to such intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return.'
'I understand. You have merely been coquetting with me, and '
'Coquetting? ' she repeated. 'I detest coquetry. A coquette, Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none ; and a woman who keeps such promises is a libertine. This much I believed I had grasped of our code. But to be melancholy with humourists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with philan- thropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each one his little dole of flattery, — it seems to me that this is as much a matter of necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or flowers in one's hair. Such talk is the moral counterpart of the toilette. You take it up and lay it aside with the plumed head-dress. Do you call this coquetry ? Why, I have never treated you as I
214 The Thirteen
treat every one else. With you, my friend, I am sincere. Have I not always shared your views, and when you convinced me after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad ? In short, I love you, but only as a devout and pure woman may love. I have thought it over. I am a married woman, Armand. My way of life with M. de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my heart ; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of my person. If a woman loses her honour, she is an outcast in any rank of life ; and I have yet to meet with a single example of a man that realises all that our sacri- fices demand of him in such a case. Quite otherwise. Any one can foresee the rupture between Mme. de Beauseant and M. d'Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mile, de Rochefide, it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that these very sacrifices on the woman's part are almost always the cause of the man's desertion. If you had loved me sincerely, you would have kept away for a time. — Now, I will lay aside all vanity for you ; is not that something ? What will not people say of a woman to whom no man attaches himself? Oh, she is heartless, brainless, soulless ; and what is more, devoid of charm ! Coquettes will not spare me. They will rob me of the very qualities that mortify them. So long as my reputation is safe, what do I care if my rivals deny my merits ? They certainly will not inherit them. Come, my friend ; give up something for her who sacri- fices so much for you. Do not come quite so often ; I shall love you none the less.'
* Ah ! ' said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart in his words and tone. 'Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds on illusions. Nothing could be truer, I see ; I am expected to imagine that I am loved. But, there ! — there are some thoughts like wounds, from which there is no recovery. My belief in you was one of the last left to me, and now I see that there is nothing left to believe in this earth.'
The Thirteen 215
She began to smile.
' Yes,' Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, ' this Catholic faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for themselves ; hope is a lie at the expense of the future ; pride, a lie between us and our fellows ; and pity, and prudence, and terror are cunning lies. And now my happiness is to be one more lying delusion ; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the end. If you can so easily dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither as your friend nor your lover, you do not care for me ! And I, poor fool that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you ! '
' But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion ! '
' I flying into a passion ? '
* Yes. You think that the whole question is opened because I ask you to be careful.'
In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that leapt out in her lover's eyes. Even as she tortured him, she was criticising him, watching every slightest change that passed over his face. If the General had been so unluckily inspired as to show himself generous without discussion (as happens occa- sionally with some artless souls), he would have been a banished man for ever, accused and convicted of not knowing how to love. Most women are not displeased to have their code of right and wrong broken through. Do they not flatter themselves that they never yield except to force ? But Armand was not learned enough in this kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the Duchess. So much of the child was there in the strong man in love.
'If all you want is to preserve appearances,' he began in his simplicity, ' I am willing to '
' Simply to preserve appearances ! ' the lady broke in ; ' why, what idea can you have of me ? Have I
2i6 The Thirteen
given you the slightest reason to suppose that I can be yours ? '
' Why, what else are we talking about ? ' demanded Montriveau.
' Monsieur, you frighten me ! . . . No, pardon me. Thank you,' she added, coldly; 'thank you, Armand. You have given me timely warning of imprudence ; committed quite unconsciously, believe it, my friend. You know how to endure, you say. I also know how to endure. We will not see each other for a time; and then, when both of us have contrived to recover calm- ness to some extent, we will think about arrangements for a happiness sanctioned by the world. I am young, Armand ; a man with no delicacy might tempt a woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild things for his sake. But you ! You will be my friend, promise me that you will ? '
' The woman of four-and-twenty,' returned he, ' knows what she is about.'
He sat down on the sofa in the boudoir, and leant his head on his hands.
' Do you love me, madame ? ' he asked at length, raising his head, and turning a face full of resolution upon her. ' Say it straight out ; Yes or No ! '
His direct question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of suicide could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth century is not to be frightened by that stale stratagem, the sword has ceased to be a part of the masculine costume. But in the effect of eyelids and lashes, in the contraction of the gaze, in the twitching of the lips, is there not some influence that communicates the terror which they express with such vivid magnetic power ?
' Ah, if I were free, if '
' Oh ! is it only your husband that stands in the way?' the General exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the boudoir. ' Dear Antoinette, I wield a
The Thirteen 217
more absolute power than the Autocrat of all the Russias. I have a compact with Fate ; I can advance or retard destiny, so far as men are concerned, at my fancy, as you alter the hands of a watch. If you can direct the course of fate in our political machinery, it simply means (does it not ?) that you understand the ins and outs of it. You shall be free before very long, and then you must remember your promise.'
' Armand ! ' she cried. What do you mean ? Great heavens ! Can you imagine that I am to be the prize of a crime ? Do you want to kill me ? Why ! you cannot have any religion in you ! For my own part, I fear God. M. de Langeais may have given me reason to hate him, but I wish him no manner of harm.'
M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble chimneypiece, and only looked composedly at the lady.
'Dear,' continued she, 'respect him. He does not love me, he is not kind to me, but I have duties to fulfil with regard to him. What would I not do to avert the calamities with which you threaten him? — Listen,' she continued after a pause, ' I will not say another word about separation ; you shall come here as in the past, and I will still give you my forehead to kiss. If I refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry, indeed it was. But let us understand each other,' she added as he came closer. ' You will permit me to add to the number of my satellites ; to receive even more visitors in the morning than heretofore ; I mean to be twice as frivolous ; I mean to use you to all appearance very badly ; to feign a rupture ; you must come not quite so often, and then, afterwards '
While she spoke, she had allowed him to put an arm about her waist, Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she seemed to feel the exceeding pleasure that women usually feel in that close contact, an earnest of the bliss of a closer union. And then, doubtless she meant to elicit some confidence, for she raised herself
21 8 The Thirteen
on tiptoe, and laid her forehead against Armand's burn- ing lips.
'And then,' Montriveau finished her sentence for her, ' you shall not speak to me of your husband. You ought not to think of him again.'
Mme. de Langeais was silent awhile.
' At least,' she said, after a significant pause, * at least you will do all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be naughty ; tell me so, my friend ? You wanted to frighten me, did you not ? Come, now, confess it? . . . You are too good ever to think of crimes. But is it possible that you can have secrets that I do not know ? How can you control Fate ? '
' Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you have already given me, I am far too happy to know exactly how to answer you. I can trust you, Antoinette ; I shall have no suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of you. But if accident should set you free, we shall be one '
' Accident, Armand ? ' (with that little dainty turn of the head that seems to say so many things, a gesture that such women as the Duchess can use on light occa- sions, as a great singer can act with her voice). ' Pure accident,' she repeated. ' Mind that. If anything should happen to M. de Langeais by your fault, I should never be yours.'
And so they parted, mutually content. The Duchess had made a pact that left her free to prove to the world by words and deeds that M. de Montriveau was no lover of hers. And as for him, the wily Duchess vowed to tire him out. He should have nothing of her beyond the little concessions snatched in the course of contests that she could stop at her pleasure. She had so pretty an art of revoking the grant of yesterday, she was so much in earnest in her purpose to remain technically virtuous, that she felt that there was not the slightest danger for her in preliminaries fraught with peril for
The Thirteen 219
a woman less sure of her self-command. After all, the Duchess was practically separated ftom her husband ; a marriage long since annulled was no great sacrifice to make to her love.
Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest promise, glad once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of conjugal fidelity, her stock of excuses for refusing herself to his love. He had gained ground a little, and congratulated himself. And so for a time he took unfair advantage of the rights so hardly v/on. More a boy than he had ever been in his life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first love the flower of life. He was a child again as he poured out all his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him, upon her hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to his eyes; upon her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips were pressed. And the Duchess, on whom his love was poured like a flood, was vanquished by the magnetic influence of her lover's warmth ; she hesitated to begin the quarrel that must part them for ever. She was more a woman than she thought, this slight creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands of religion with the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of pleasure which turns a Parisienne's head. Every Sunday she went to Mass ; she never missed a service ; then, when evening came, she was steeped in the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire. Armand and Mme. de Langeais, like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward of their continence in the temptations to which it gave rise. Possibly, the Duchess had ended by resolving love into fraternal caresses, harmless enough, as it might have seemed to the rest of the world, while they borrowed extremes of degradation from the license of her thoughts. How else explain the incomprehensible mystery of her continual fluctuations? Every morning she proposed to herself to shut her door on the Marquis de Montriveau ; every evening.
220 The Thirteen
at the appointed hour, she fell under the charm of his presence. There was a languid defence ; then she grew less unkind. Her words were sweet and soothing. They were lovers — lovers only could have been thus. For him the Duchess would display her most sparkling wit, her most captivating wiles ; and when at last she had wrought upon his senses and his soul, she might submit herself passively to his fierce caresses, but she had her nee plus ultra of passion ; and when once it was reached, she grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and made as though he would pass beyond. No woman on earth can brave the consequences of refusal without some motive ; nothing is more natural than to yield to love ; wherefore Mme. de Langeais promptly raised a second line of fortification, a stronghold less easy to carry than the first. She evoked the terrors of religion. Never did Father of the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of God better than the Duchess. Never was the wrath of the Most High better justified than by her voice. She used no preacher's commonplaces, no rhetorical amplifications. No. She had a ' pulpit-tremor' of her own. To Armand's most passionate entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture in which a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression. She stopped his mouth with an appeal for mercy. She would not hear another word; if she did, she must succumb ; and better death than criminal happiness.
'Is it nothing to disobey God?' she asked him, recovering a voice grown faint in the crises of inward struggles, through which the fair actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her self-control. ' I would sacrifice society, I would give up the whole world for you, gladly ; but it is very selfish of you to ask my whole after-life of me for a moment of pleasure. Come, now ! are you not happv ? ' she added, holding out her hand ; and certainly in her careless toilette the sight of
The Thirteen 221
her afforded consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.
Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent passion gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness, she suffered him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in feigned terror, she flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa so soon as the sofa became dangerous ground.
' Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand ; they are paid for by penitence and remorse,' she cried.
And Montriveau, now at two chairs' distance from that aristocratic petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed against Providence. The Duchess grew angry at such times.
' My friend,' she said drily, ' I do not understand why you decline to believe in God, for it is impossible to believe in man. Hush, do not talk like that. You have too great a nature to take up their Liberal non- sense with its pretension to abolish God.'
Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche on Montriveau ; he calmed down ; he could not return to love when the Duchess stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting him down a thousand miles away from the boudoir, discussing theories of absolute monarchy, which she defended to admiration. Few women venture to be democrats ; the attitude of democratic champion is scarcely compatible with tyrannous feminine sway. But often, on the other hand, the General shook out his mane, dropped politics with a leonine growling and lashing of the flanks, and sprang upon his prey ; he was no longer capable of carrying a heart and brain at such variance for very far ; he came back, terrible with love, to his mistress. And she, if she felt the prick of fancy stimulated to a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave her boudoir ; she came out of the atmosphere surcharged with desires that she drew in with her breath, sat down to the piano,
222 The Thirteen
and sang the most exquisite songs of modern music, and so baffled the physical attraction which at times showed her no mercy, though she was strong enough to fight it down.
At such times she was something subhme in Armand's eyes ; she was not acting, she was genuine ; the un- happy lover was convinced that she loved him. Her egoistic resistance deluded him into a belief that she was a pure and sainted woman ; he resigned himself; he talked of Platonic love, did this artillery officer !
When Mme. de Langeais had played with religion sufficiently to suit her own purposes, she played with it again for Armand's benefit. She wanted to bring him back to a Christian frame of mind ; she brought out her edition of Le Genie du Christianisme^ adapted for the use of military men. Montriveau chafed ; his yoke was heavy. Oh ! at that, possessed by the spirit of con- tradiction, she dinned religion into his ears, to see whether God might not rid her of this suitor, for the man's persistence was beginning to frighten her. And in any case she was glad to prolong any quarrel, if it bade fair to keep the dispute on moral grounds for an indefinite period ; the material struggle which followed it was more dangerous.
But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage law might be said to be the epoque civile of this sentimental warfare, the ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the epoque religieuse had also its crisis and consequent decline of severity.
Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M. I'Abbe Gondrand, the Duchess's spiritual director, established in an armchair by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director might be expected to look while digesting his dinner and the charming sins of his penitent. In the ecclesiastic's bearing there was a stateliness befitting a dignitary of the Church ; and the episcopal violet hue already appeared in his
The Thirteen 223
dress. At sight of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, smooth forehead, and ascetic's mouth, Montriveau's countenance grew uncommonly dark ; he said not a word under the malicious scrutiny of the other's gaze, and greeted neither the lady nor the priest.. The lover apart, Montriveau was not wanting in tact ; so a few glances exchanged with the bishop-designate told him that here was the real forger of the Duchess's armoury of scruples.
That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a man of Montriveau's temper, and by underhand ways 1 The thought burst in a furious tide over his face, clenched his fists, and set him chafing and pacing to and fro ; but when he came back to his place intend- ing to make a scene, a single look from the Duchess was enough. He was quiet.
Any other woman would have been put out by her lover's gloomy silence ; it was quite otherwise with Mme. de Langeais. She continued her conversation with M. de Gondrand on the necessity of re-establish- ing the Church in its ancient splendour. And she talked brilliantly. The Church, she maintained, ought to be a temporal as well as a spiritual power, stating her case better than the Abbe had done, and regretting that the Chamber of Peers, unlike the English House of Lords, had no bench of bishops. Nevertheless, the Abbe rose, yielded his place to the General, and took his leave, knowing that in Lent he could play a return game. As for the Duchess, Montriveau's behaviour had excited her curiosity to such a pitch that she scarcely rose to return her director's low bow. ' What is the matter with you, my friend ?' 'Why, I cannot stomach that Abbe of yours.' 'Why did you not take a book ? ' she asked, careless whether the Abbe, then closing the door, heard her or no.
The General paused, for the gesture which accom-
224 '^^^ Thirteen
panied the Duchess's speech further increased the exceeding insolence of her words.
' My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love precedence of the Church ; but, for pity's sake, allow me to ask one question.'
' Oh ! you are questioning me ! I am quite willing. You are my friend, are you not ? I certainly can open the bottom of my heart to you ; you will see only one image there.'
' Do you talk about our love to that man ? '
' He is my confessor.'
' Does he know that I love you ? '
' M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the secrets of the confessional ? '
'Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for you ? '
'That man, monsieur; say God !'
'God again ! / ought to be alone in your heart. But leave God alone where He is, for the love of God and me. Madame, you shall not go to confession again, or
' Or ? ' she repeated sweetly.
' Or I will never come back here.'
'Then go, Armand. Good-bye, good-bye for ever.'
She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at Armand, as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair. How long he stood there motionless he himself never knew. The soul within has the mysterious power of expanding as of contracting space.
He opened the door of the boudoir. It was dark within. A faint voice was raised to say sharply —
'I did not ring. What made you come in without orders ? Go away, Suzette.'
'Then you are ill,' exclaimed Montriveau.
' Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any rate,' she said, ringing the bell.
' Mme. la Duchesse rang for lights ? ' said the footman,
The Thirteen 225
coming in with the candles. When the lovers were alone together, Mme. de Langeais still lay on her couch ; she was just as silent and motionless as if Montriveau had not been there.
* Dear, I was wrong,' he began, a note of pain and a sublime kindness in his voice. ' Indeed, I would not have you without religion '
' It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a conscience,' she said in a hard voice, without look- ing at him. ' I thank you in God's name.'
The General was broken down by her harshness ; this woman seemed as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. He made one despairing stride towards the door. He would leave her for ever without another word. He was wretched ; and the Duchess was laughing within herself over mental anguish far more cruel than the old judicial torture. But as for going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any sort of crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity of things to say ; so long as she has not delivered herself of them, she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of something incomplete. Mme. de Langeais had not said all that was in her mind. She took up her parable and said —
' We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to think. It would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a religion which permits us to love beyond the grave, I set Christian sentiments aside ; you cannot understand them. Let me simply speak to you of expediency. Would you forbid a woman at court the table of the Lord when it is customary to take the sacrament at Easter ? People must certainly do some- thing for their party. The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be a political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a nation of logic-choppers ? Napoleon was afraid to try ; he persecuted ideologists.
P
226 The Thirteen
If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must give them something to feel. So let us accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its consequences. And if we would have France go to mass, ought we not to begin by going ourselves ? Religion, you see, Armand, is a bond uniting all the conservative principles which enable the rich to live in tranquillity. Religion and the rights of property are intimately connected. It is certainly a finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of morality than by fear of the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror — the one method by which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience. The priest and the king — that means you, and me, and the Princess my neighbour ; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to your party, you that might be its Sylla if you had the slightest ambition that way. I know nothing about politics myself; I argue from my own feelings ; but still I know enough to guess that society would be overturned if people were always calling its
foundations in question '
'If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry for you,' broke in Montriveau. ' The Restoration, madam, ought to say, like Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle of Dreux was lost, "Very well; now we will go to the meeting- house." Now 1815 was your battle of Dreux. Like the royal power of those daySj'you won in fact, while you lost in right. Political Protestantism has gained an ascendency over people's minds. If you have no mind to issue your Edict of Nantes ; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation ; if you should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the Charter, which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests established under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise again, terrible in her strength, and strike but a single blow, It will not be the Revolution that will go
The Thirteen 227
into exile ; she is the very soil of France. Men die, but people's interests do not die. . . . Eh, great Heavens ! what are France and the crown and rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to us ? Idle words com- pared with my happiness. Let them reign or be hurled from the throne, little do I care. Where am I now ? '
'In the Duchesse de Langeais's boudoir, my friend.'
' No, no. No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais ; I am with my dear Antoinette.'
' Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are,' she said, laughing and pushing him back, gently however.
' So you have never loved me,' he retorted, and anger flashed in lightning from his eyes.
' No, dear ; ' but the ' No ' was equivalent to ' Yes.'
*I am a great ass,' he said, kissing her hands. The terrible queen was a woman once more. — ' Antoinette,' he went on, laying his head on her feet, 'you are too chastely tender to speak of our happiness to any one in this world.'
' Oh ! ' she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful spring, 'you are a great simpleton.' And without another word she fled into the drawing-room.
'What is it now?' wondered the General, little knowing that the touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill through her from foot to head.
In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear divinely sweet chords. The Duchess was at the piano. If the man of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood and copper wire under the hands of the executant. For the poet and the man of science there is a music existing apart, underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit and senses. Andiamo mio hen can draw tears of joy or pitying laughter at the will of the
228 The Thirteen
singer ; and not unfrequently one here and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo ! heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world.
The General was listening now to such a song ; a mysterious music unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.
'Great Heavens! what are you playing there?' he asked in an unsteady voice.
* The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, Flcuve du Tage:
'I did not know that there was such music in a piano,' he returned.
' Ah ! ' she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a woman looks at the man she loves, ' nor do you know, my friend, that I love you, and that you cause me horrible suffering ; and that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain without putting it too plainly into words. If I did not, I should yield But you see nothing.'
' And you will not make me happy ! '
' Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day.'
The General turned abruptly from her and went. But out in the street he brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.
The religious phase lasted for three months. At the end of that time the Duchess grew weary of vain repe- titions ; the Deity, bound hand and foot, was delivered up to her lover. Possibly she may have feared that by sheer dint of talking of eternity she might perpetuate his love in this world and the next. For her own sake, it must be believed that no man had touched her heart, or her conduct would be inexcusable. She was young ; the time when men and women feel that they cannot
The Thirteen 229
afFord to lose time or to quibble over their joys was still far ofF. She, no doubt, was on the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the bliss of love. And from inexperience, for want of the painful lessons which would have taught her to value the treasure poured out at her feet, she was playing with it. Knowing nothing of the glory and rapture of the light, she was fain to stay in the shadow.
Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation ; he put his hope in the first word spoken by nature. Every evening, as he came away from Mme. de Langeais's, he told himself that no woman would accept the tenderest, most delicate proofs of a man's love during seven months, nor yield passively to the slighter demands of passion, only to cheat love at the last. He was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power, not doubting but that he should receive the earliest fruits. The married woman's hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty ; and he would not have had her otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising obstacles ; was he not gradually triumphing over them ? Did not every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love ? Still, he had had such leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small successive conquest on which a lover feeds his love, that these had come to be matters of use and wont. So far as obstacles went, there were none now save his own awe of her ; nothing else left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to demand more, to demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for a long time. He passed through the experience of terrible reactions within himself. A
230 The Thirteen
set purpose was annihilated by a word, and definite re- solves died within him on the threshold. He despised himself for his weakness, and still his desire remained unuttered.
Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting in gloomy melancholy, he brought out a fierce demand for his illegally legitimate rights. The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's request to guess his desire. When was a man's desire a secret ? And have not women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain changes of countenance ?
' What ! you wish to be my friend no longer ? ' she broke in at the first words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the transparent skin, lent brightness to her eyes. ' As a reward for my generosity, you would dishonour me ? Just reflect a little. I myself have thought much over this ; and I think always for us both. There is such a thing as a woman's loyalty, and we can no more fail in it than you can fail in honour. / cannot blind myself. If I am yours, how, in any sense, can I be M. de Langeais's wife ? Can you require the sacrifice of my position, my rank, my whole life in return for a doubtful love that could not wait patiently for seven months ? What ! already you would rob me of my right to dispose of myself? No, no ; you must not talk like this again. No, not another word. I will not, I cannot listen to you.'
Mme. de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push back the tufted curls from her hot forehead ; she seemed very much excited.
* You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely planned out. You say — " For a certain length of time she will talk to me of her husband, then of God, and then of the inevitable consequences. But I will use and abuse the ascendency I shall gain over her ; I will make myself indispensable ; all the bonds of habit, all the misconstructions of outsiders, will make for mej
The Thirteen 231
and at length, when our liaison is taken for granted by all the world, I shall be this woman's master." — Now, be frank ; these are your thoughts ! Oh ! you calculate, and you say that you love. Shame on you ! You are enamoured ? Ah ! that I well believe ! You wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all ! Very well then, No ! The Duchesse de Langeais will not descend so far. Simple bourgeoises may be the vic- tims of your treachery — I, never ! Nothing gives me assurance of your love. You speak of my beauty ; I may lose every trace of it in six months, like the dear Princess, my neighbour. You are captivated by my wit, my grace. Great Heavens ! you would soon grow used to them and to the pleasures of possession. Have not the little concessions that I was weak enough to make come to be'a matter of course in the last few months? Some day, when ruin comes, you will give me no reason for the change in you beyond a curt, '*I have ceased to care for you." — Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that was the Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one disappointed hope. I shall have children to bear
witness to my shame, and ' With an involuntary
gesture she interrupted herself, and continued : ' But I am too good-natured to explain all this to you when you know it better than I. Come ! let us stay as we are. I am only too fortunate in that I can still break these bonds which you think so strong. Is there anything so very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an evening with a woman whose prattle amuses you ? — a woman whom you take for a plaything ? Why, half-a-dozen young coxcombs comehere just as regularly every afternoon between three and five. They, too, are very generous, I am to suppose ? I make fun of them ; they stand my petulance and insolence pretty quietly, and make me laugh ; but as for you, I give all the treasures of my soul to you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my patience in endless ways. Hush, that
232 The Thirteen
will do, that will do,' she continued, seeing that he was about to speak, ' you have no heart, no soul, no delicacy. I know what you want to tell me. Very well, then — yes. I would rather you should take me for a cold, insensible woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart even, than be taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be condemned to your so-called pleasures, of which you would most certainly tire, and to everlasting punishment for it afterwards. Your selfish love is not worth so many sacrifices . . . '
The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which the Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a bird-organ. Nor, truly, was there any- thing to prevent her from talking on for some time to come, for poor Armand's only reply to the torrent of flute notes was a silence filled with cruelly painful thoughts. He was just beginning to see that this woman was playing with him ; he divined instinctively that a devoted love, a responsive love, does not reason and count the consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her reproach him with detestable motives, he felt some- thing like shame as he remembered that unconsciously he had made those very calculations. With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within, and self-examina- tion found nothing but selfishness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could not utter. He was self-convicted. In his despair he longed to fling himself from the window. The egoism of it was intolerable.
What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love ? — Let me prove how much I love you. — The / is always there.
The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the example of the primitive logician who pre- ceded the Pyrrhonists and denied movement. Mont- riveau was not equal to this feat. With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never deserts an adept
The Thirteen 233
in the formulas of feminine algebra. If so many women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps because the said experts are great provers^ and love, in spite of its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more geometry than people are wont to think.
Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this — they were both equally unversed in love lore. The lady's knowledge of theory was but scanty ; in practice she knew nothing whatever ; she felt nothing, and reflected over everything. Montriveau had had but little experience, was absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt too much to reflect at all. Both therefore were enduring the consequences of the singular situation. At that supreme moment the myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the formula — 'Submit
to be mine ' words which seem horribly selfish to a
woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no ideas. Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more, though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the short phrases that she dis- charged at him one by one were very keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should lose all by an outbreak of anger.
'Mme. la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of her person. The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance to it. If you have gi\en me vour inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels humiliated at being taken for a spaniel.'
The tone in which the last remark was uttered might
i^4 The Thirteen
perhaps have frightened another woman ; but when the wearer of a petticoat has allowed herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set herself above all other mortals, no power on earth can be so haughty.
'M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented some nobler way for a man to con- firm the gift of his heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last ? The very love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be a second edition of Mme. de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an unfailing passion in some of you ; other men ask for an untiring devotion, to be idolised at every moment ; some for gentleness, others for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of man's heart.'
There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.
* After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling at the question, " Will this love last always ? " Hard though my words may be, the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth. Oh, me ! it is not I who speak, dear, it is reason ; and how should any one so mad as I be reasonable ? In truth, I am nothing of the sort.'
The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into the most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance for ingenuous love. To listen to her words was to pass in a moment from martyrdom to heaven. Montriveau grew pale ; and for the first time in his life, he fell on his knees before a woman. He kissed the Duchess's skirt hem, her knees, her feet j but
The Thirteen 235
for the credit of the Faubourg Saint- Germain it is necessary to respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain to take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love in return.
The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to be adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her complete surrender of the position.
*Dear Antoinette,' he cried. ' Yes, you are right; I will not have you doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this moment — lest the angel of my life should leave me ; I wish I could invent some tie that might bind us to each other irrevocably.'
' Ah ! ' she said, under her breath, ' so I was right, you see.'
* Let me say all that I have to say ; I will scatter all your fears with a word. Listen ! if I deserted you, I should deserve to die a thousand deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you the right to kill me if I am false. I myself will write a letter explaining certain reasons for taking my own life ; I will make my final arrangements, in short. You shall have the letter in your keeping ; in the eye of the law it will be a sufficient explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear nothing from God or men.'
' What good would the letter be to me ? What would life be if I had lost your love ? If I wished to kill you, should I not be ready to follow ? No ; thank you for the thought, but I do not want the letter. Should I not begin to dread that you were faithful to me through fear ? And if a man knows that he must risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not seem more tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing to do.'
' Then what is it that you wish ? '
' Your obedience and my liberty.'
' Ah, God ! ' cried he, ' I am a child.'
236 The Thirteen
' A wayward, much spoilt child,' she said, stroking the thick hair, for his head still lay on her knee. ' Ah ! and loved far more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not stay as we are ? Why not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt me ? Why not take what I can give, when it is all that I can honestly grant ? Are you not happy ? '
* Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette, doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not ? '
In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the influence of that hot fever ; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And the Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her conscience by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own ; Armand's love gave her a thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made as necessary to her as society, or the Opera. To feel that she was adored by this man, who rose above other men, whose character frightened her ; to treat him like a child ; to play with him as Poppsea played with Nero — many women, like the wives of King Henry viii., have paid for such a perilous delight with all the blood in their veins. Grim presentiment ! Even as she surrendered the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness she could not mistake ; even as she herself played with his dark, thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen, the Duchess would say to herself —
'This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I am playing with him.'
Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the morning. From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a Navarreins ; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what the world calls 'a slip'i in spite of all her
The Thirteen 237
affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul ; that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her divine loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple and girlish mistress ; she was the one woman in the world for him ; and he went away quite happy in that at last he had brought her to give him such pledges of love, that it seemed to him impossible but that he should be but her husband henceforth in secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.
Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with the impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the responsibilities that love lays on him while he tastes the sweetness of its joys. He went along the Quais to see the widest possible space of sky ; his heart had grown in him ; he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath. In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet stirrings of life when life is at the full ! The man that is strong enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no diminution of passion to the end ; even so it is permitted to certain mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. Love would be naught without the belief that it would last for ever ; love grows great through constancy. It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness, Montriveau understood passion.
'We belong to each other for ever ! '
The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life. He did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might not last. No, for he
238 The Thirteen
had faith. Without that virtue there is no future for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society. A conception of hfe as feeling occurred to him for the first time ; hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.
Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direc- tion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house not far from the Hotel de Langeais ; and the business over, he went thither as if to his own home. The General's companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses. This was the Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more — courageous ; he set the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his success and experience were equally matters of envy ; and neither fortune nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.
' Where are you going ? ' asked M. de Ronquerolles.
* To Mme. de Langeais's.'
* Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you. You are wasting your aft'ections on her when they might be much better employed elsewhere. I could have told you of half-a-score of women in the financial world, any one of them a thousand times better worth your while than that titled courtesan, who does with her brains what less artificial women do with *
'What is this, my dear fellow?' Armand broke in. *The Duchess is an angel of innocence.' Ronquerolles began to laugh.
* Things being thus, dear boy,' said he, ' it is my duty to enlighten you. Just a word ; there is no harm in it between ourselves. Has the Duchess surrendered ? If so, I have nothing more to say. Come, give me your
The Thirteen 239
confidence. There is no occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation will come to nothing.'
Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position, enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly won. RonqueroUes burst into a peal of laughter so heartless, that it would have cost any other man his life. But from their manner of speaking and looking at each other during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner almost as remote from intrusion as the desert itself, it was easy to imagine the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that no power on earth could estrange them.
* My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle to you ? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought your flirtation properly through. You must know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in love ; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed. They have made a sort of compromise with human nature. The code of their parish gives them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression. The sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial sins to be washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you had the impertinence to ask in earnest for the mortal sin to which naturally you are sure to attach the highest im- portance, you would see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be incontinently shut upon you. The tender Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory ; you would be less than a cipher for her. She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she would perform her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks as she washes ofF rouge. We know women of that sort — the thorough-bred Parisienne. Have you ever noticed
240 The Thirteen
a grisette tripping along the street ? Her face is as good as a picture. A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair, a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected. Is not this true to the life ? Well, that is the Parisienne. She knows that her face is all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity to her head. The Duchess is the same ; the head is everything with her. She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her brain, she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice. We call that kind of poor creature a Lais of the intellect. You have been taken in like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have proof of it to-night, this morning, this instant. Go up to her, try the demand as an experiment, insist peremptorily if it is refused. You might set about it like the late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for your pains.'
Armand was dumb with amazement.
' Has your desire reached the point of infatuation ? '
'I want her at any cost!' Montriveau cried out despairingly.
' Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is herself. Try to humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do not try to move her heart, nor her soul, but the woman's nerves and temperament, for she is both nervous and lymphatic. If you can once awaken desire in her, you are safe. But you must drop these romantic boyish notions of yours. If when once you have her in your eagle's talons you yield a point or draw back, if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her ascendency over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand ; there is a sort of feminine nature that is only softened
The Thirteen 24 1
by repeated blows ; and as suffering develops a heart in women of that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod. Do you persevere. Ah ! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and yielding ; when a shrivelled heart has learned to expand and contract and to beat under this discipline ; when the brain has capitu- lated— then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affec- tations and languors and melting phrases ; then you shall see a most magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney takes fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like iron in the forge ; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other, and the glow of it may possibly turn to love.
'Still,' he continued, 'I have my doubts. And, after all, is it worth while to take so much trouble with the Duchess ? Between ourselves, a man of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in ; I would make a charming woman of her ; she is a thoroughbred j whereas, you two left to yourselves will never get beyond the ABC. But you are in love with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views
on this subject A pleasant time to you, my children,'
added Ronquerolles, after a pause. Then with a laugh : ' I have decided myself for facile beauties ; they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in their love without any of your social seasonings. A woman that haggles over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love ! Well, have her like an extra horse — for show. The match between the sofa and confessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious scruples and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of chess. And if a man knows the game, let him be never so little of a rake, he wins in three moves. Now, if I undertook a woman of that sort, I should start with the deliberate purpose of ' His voice sank to a whisper
242 The Thirteen
over the last words in Armand's ear, and he went before there was time to reply.
As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of the Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to the Duchess's bedroom.
'This is an unheard-of thing,' she said, hastily wrapping her dressing-gown about her. ' Armand ! this is abominable of you ! Come, leave the room, I beg. Just go out of the room, and go at once. Wait for me in the drawing-room. — Come now ! '
' Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever ? '
'But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted lover or a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife.'
He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her tightly to him.
'Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are fermenting in my heart,'
' Doubts ? Fie ! — Oh, fie on you ! '
'Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you make this quarrel ? Would you not be glad to see me ? Would you not have felt a something stir in your heart ? For I, that am not a woman, feel a thrill in my inmost self at the mere sound of your voice. Often in a ballroom a longing has come upon me to spring to your side and put my arms about your neck.'
' Oh ! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to spring to your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all my life long, I suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child compared vi^ith you ! '
'Ah!' he cried despairingly, ' you have no love for me '
'Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable.'
'Then I have still to find favour in your sight ? '
' Oh, I should think so. Come,' added she, with a little
The Thirteen 243
imperious air, ' go out of the room, Itave me. I am not like you ; I wish always to find favour in your eyes.'
Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into insolence, and does not the charm double the effect ? is it not enough to infuriate the coolest of men ? There was a sort of untrammelled freedom about Mme. de Langeais ; a something in her eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is never seen in a woman who loves when she stands face to face with him at the mere sight of whom her heart must needs begin to beat. The Marquis de Ronquerolles's counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness ; and further, there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition which passion will develop at moments in the least wise among mortals, while a great man at such a time possesses it to the full. He guessed the terrible truth revealed by the Duchess's nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the storm like a lake rising in flood.
'If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,' he cried ; ' you shall '
' In the first place,' said she composedly, thrusting him back as he came nearer — 'in the first place, you arc not to compromise me. My woman might over- hear you. Respect me, I beg of you. Your familiarity is all very well in my boudoir in an evening ; here it is quite different. Besides, what may your "you shall" mean ? " You shall." No one as yet has ever used that word to me. It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me, absolutely ridiculous.'
' Will you surrender nothing to me on this point ? '
' Oh ! do you call a woman's right to dispose of herself a "point"? A capital point indeed ^ you will permit me to be entirely my own mistress on that "point."'
' And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should absolutely require it ? '
' Oh ! then you would prove that I made the greatest
244 The Thirteen
possible mistake when I made you a promise of any kind ; and I should beg you to leave me in peace.'
The General's face grew white ; he was about to spring to her side, when Mme. de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and, smiling with a mocking grace, the Duchess added, ' Be so good as to return when I am visible.'
Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as a steel blade ; she was crushing in her scorn. In one moment she had snapped the bonds which held firm only for her lover. She had read Armand's intention in his face, and held that the moment had come for teaching the Imperial soldier his lesson. He was to be made to feel that though duchesses may lend themselves to love, they do not give themselves, and that the conquest of one of them would prove a harder matter than the conquest of Europe.
'Madame,' returned Armand, *I have not time to wait. I am a spoilt child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously resolve to have that of which we have been speaking, I shall have it.'
'You will have it?' queried she, and there was a trace of surprise in her loftiness.
' I shall have it.'
' Oh ! you would do me a great pleasure by " re- solving" to have it. For curiosity's sake, I should be delighted to know how you would set about it '
'I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,' interrupted Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the Duchess. 'Will you permit me to take you to the ball to-night ? '
' A thousand thanks. M. de Marsay has been before- hand with you. I gave him my promise.'
Montriveau bowed gravely and went.
'So RonqueroUes was right,' thought he, 'and now for a game of chess.'
The Thirteen 245
Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. No man is strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height of happiness to the depths of wretchedness. So he had caught a glimpse of happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his previous existence? There was a terrible storm within him; but he had learned to endure, and bore the shock of tumultuous thoughts as a granite clifF stands out against the surge of an angry sea.
'I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert me. She does not know how vile and contemptible she is. Nobody has ventured to bring her face to face with herself. She has played with many a man, no doubt ; I will avenge them all.'
For the first time, it may be, in a man's heart, revenge and love were blended so equally that Mont- riveau himself could not know whether love or revenge would carry all before it. That very evening he went to the ball at which he was sure of seeing the Duchesse de Langeais, and almost despaired of reaching her heart. He inclined to think that there was something diabolical about this woman, who was gracious to him and radiant with charming smiles ; probably because she had no wish to allow the world to think that she had compromised herself with M. de Montriveau. Coolness on both sides is a sign of love ; but so long as the Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing? Onlookers know the rejected lover bv various signs and tokens ; they never mistake the genuine symptoms for a coolness such as some women command their adorers to feign, in the hope of concealing their love. Every one laughed at Montriveau ; and he, having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted and ill at ease. M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness by passionate demonstrations j but as it was,
246 The Thirteen
Armand de Montriveau came away from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then scarcely ready to believe in such complete depravity.
' If there is no executioner for such crimes,' he said, as he looked up at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most enchanting women in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting, ' I will take you by the nape of the neck, Mme. la Duchesse, and make you feel something that bites more deeply than the knife in the Place de la Greve. Steel against steel ; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper mark.'
For a week or so Mme. de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de Montriveau again ; but he contented him- self with sending his card every morning to the Hotel de Langeais. The Duchess could not help shuddering each time that the card was brought in, and a dim fore- boding crossed her mind, but the thought was vague as a presentiment of disaster. When her eyes fell on the name, it seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable man's strong hand in her hair ; sometimes the words seemed like a prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect invented in the most shocking forms. She had studied him too well not to dread him. Would he murder her, she wondered ? Would that bull-necked man dash out her vitals by flinging her over his head ? Would he trample her body under his feet ? When, where, and how would he get her into his power ? Would he make her suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he inflict ? She repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he had come, she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.
Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau's face ; every night it wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his bitter smile, sometimes the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his leonine look, or some disdainful movement of the shoulders made him terrible for her. Next day the card seemed stained with blood. The
The Thirteen 247
name of Montriveau stirred her now as the presence of the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never done. Her apprehensions gathered strength in the silence. She was forced, without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel of which she could not speak. Her proud hard nature was more responsive to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the caresses of love. Ah ! if the General could but have seen her, as she sat with her forehead drawn into folds between her brows ; immersed in bitter thoughts in that boudoir where he had enjoyed such happy moments, he might perhaps have conceived high hopes. Of all human passions, is not pride alone incapable of engendering anything base ? Mme. de Langeais kept her thoughts to herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her ? And has not a man gained ground immensely when a woman thinks about him ? He is bound to make progress with her either one way or the other afterwards.
Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or other fearsome beast ; she will certainly drop on her knees and look for death : but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not utterly slay her, she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what not, and will speak of him quite at her ease. The Duchess felt that she was under the lion's paws; she quaked, but she did not hate him.
The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each other met three times in society during the course of that week. Each time, in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the Duchess received a respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such savage irony, that all her apprehensions over the card in the morning were revived at night. Our lives are simply such as our feelings shape them for us; and the feelings of these two had hollowed out a great gulf between them.
The Comtesse de Serizy,the Marquis de Ronquerolles's
248 The Thirteen
sister, gave a great ball at the beginning of the follow- ing week, and Mme. de Langeais was sure to go to it. Armand was the first person whom the Duchess saw when she came into the room, and this time Armand was looking out for her, or so she thought at least. The two exchanged a look, and suddenly the woman felt a cold perspiration break from every pore. She had thought all along that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in some unheard-of way proportioned to their condition ; and now the revenge had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling. Lightnings flashed from the foiled lover's eyes, his face was radiant with exultant vengeance. And the Duchess ? Her eyes were haggard in spite of her resolution to be cool and insolent. She went to take her place beside the Comt- esse de Serizy, who could not help exclaiming, ' Dear Antoinette ! what is the matter with you ? You are enough to frighten one.'
' I shall be all right after a quadrille,' she answered, giving a hand to a young man who came up at that moment.
Mme. de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement and transport which redoubled Mont- riveau's lowering looks. He stood in front of the line of spectators, who were amusing themselves by looking on. Every time that she came past him, his eyes darted down upon her eddying face; he might have been a tiger with the prey in his grasp. The waltz came to an end, Mme. de Langeais went back to her place beside the Countess, and Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the while with a stranger.
* One of the things that struck me most on the journey,' he was saying (and the Duchess listened with all her ears), ' was the remark which the man makes at Westminster when you are shown the axe with which a man in a mask cut off Charles the First's head, so they tell you. The King made it first of all to some
The Thirteen 249
inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in memory of him.'
' What does the man say ? ' asked Mme. de Serizy.
'" Do not touch the axe ! " ' replied Montriveau, and there was menace in the sound of his voice.
* Really, my Lord Marquis,' said Mme. de Langeais, * you tell this old story that everybody knows if they have been to London, and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to me to have an axe in your hand.'
The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as she spoke the last words.
* But circumstances give the story a quite new appli- cation,' returned he.
* How so ; pray tell me, for pity's sake ? '
' In this way, madame — you have touched the axe,' said Montriveau, lowering his voice.
' What an enchanting prophecy ! ' returned she, smiling with assumed grace. ' And when is my head to fall ? '
' I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I only fear some great misfortune for you. If your head were clipped close, would you feel no regrets for the dainty golden hair that you turn to such good account ? '
' There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a sacrifice ; even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man who cannot make allowances for an outbreak of temper.'
' Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a sudden by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen for us, were to be a hundred years old ? '
' Why, the small-pox is our battle of Waterloo, monsieur,' she interrupted. 'After it is over we find out those who love us sincerely.'
' Would you not regret the lovely face that ? '
' Oh ! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than
250
The Thirteen
for the sake of some one else whose dehght it might have been. And, after all, if I were loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would my beauty matter to me ? — What do you say, Clara ? '
*It is a dangerous speculation,' replied Mme. de Serizy.
' Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when I made the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to London as yet ? '
' Not so^^ he answered in English, with a burst of ironical laughter.
* And when will the punishment begin ? '
At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the hour with a truly appalling air of con- viction.
* A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out.'
* I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a child ignorant of danger,' said the Duchess. 'I shall dance now without fear on the edge of the precipice.'
'I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of character,' he answered, as he watched her go to take her place in a square dance.
But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand's dark prophecies, was really frightened. Her late lover's presence weighed upon her morally and physically with a sense of oppression that scarcely ceased when he left the ballroom. And yet when she had drawn freer breath, and enjoyed the relief for a moment, she found herself regretting the sensation of dread, so greedy of extreme sensations is the feminine nature. The regret was not love, but it was certainly akin to other feelings which prepare the way for love. And then — as if the impression which Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived — she recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and in a sudden spasm of dread she went out.
The Thirteen 251
By this time it was about midnight. One of her servants, waiting with her pelisse, went down to order her carriage. On her way home she fell naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau's prediction. Arrived in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she entered a vestibule almost like that of her own hotel, and suddenly saw that the staircase was different. She was in a strange house. Turning to call her servants, she was attacked by several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her mouth, bound her hand and foot, and carried her off. She shrieked aloud.
'Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream,' a voice said in her ear.
So great was the Duchess's terror, that she could never recollect how nor by whom she was transported. When she came to herself, she was lying on a couch in a bachelor's lodging, her hands and feet tied with silken cords. In spite of herself, she shrieked aloud as she looked round and met Armand de Montriveau's eyes. He was sitting in his dressing-gown, quietly smoking a cigar in his armchair.
' Do not cry out, Mme. la Duchesse,' he said, coolly taking the cigar out of his mouth ; 'I have a headache. Besides, I will untie you. But listen attentively to what I have the honour to say to you.'
Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.
' What would be the use of calling out ? Nobody can hear your cries. You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss. If you do not stay quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I shall tie your hands and feet again. All things considered, I think that you have self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as if you were lying on your own at home ; cold as ever, if you will. You have made me shed many tears on this couch, tears that I hid from all other eyes.'
While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her ; it was a woman's glance, a stolen look that
252 The Thirteen
saw all things and seemed to see nothing. She was much pleased with the room. It was rather like a monk's cell. The man's character and thoughts seemed to pervade it. No decoration of any kind broke the grey painted surface of the walls. A green carpet covered the floor. A black sofa, a table littered with papers, two big easy-chairs, a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it — a red cloth with a black key border, — all these things made part of a whole that told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple candle- sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled the vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau's long wanderings ; a huge sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the bed-foot ; and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and scarlet border was suspended by large rings from a spear handle above a door near one corner of the room. The other door by which the band had entered was likewise curtained, but the drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod. As the Duchess finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she saw that the door at the bedfoot stood open ; gleams of ruddy light from the room beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally, the ominous light roused her curiosity ; she fancied she could distinguish strange shapes in the shadows ; but as it did not occur to her at the time that danger could come from that quarter, she tried to gratify a more ardent curiosity.
* Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to do with me ? ' The insolence and irony of the tone stung through the words. The Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant love in Montriveau's speech. He had carried her off^; was not that in itself an acknowledgment of her power ?
' Nothing whatever, madame,' he returned, gracefully pufiing the last whifl^ of cigar smoke. ' You will remain here for a short time. First of all, I should like
The Thirteen 253
to explain to you what you are, and what I am. I cannot put my thoughts into words whilst you are twisting on the sofa in your boudoir ; and besides, in your own house you take offence at the slightest hint, you ring the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover out at the door as if he were the basest of wretches. Here my mind is unfettered. Here nobody can turn me out. Here you shall be my victim for a few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to listen to me. You need fear nothing. I did not carry you off to insult you, nor yet to take by force what you refused to grant of your own will to my unworthiness. I could not stoop so low. You pos- sibly think of outrage ; for myself, I have no such thoughts.'
He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.
' The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame ? ' he said, and rising at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt perfumes, and purified the air. The Duchess's astonishment was only equalled by her humiliation. She was in this man's power ; and he would not abuse his power. The eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet and steady as stars. She trembled. Her dread of Armand was increased by a nightmare sensa- tion of restlessness and utter inability to move; she felt as if she were turned to stone. She lay passive in the grip of fear. She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows ; in another moment the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly flashed out ; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion.
'Madame,' Armand continued with cold contempt, ' one minute, just one minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it afterwards at every moment through- out your lifetime, the one eternity over which I have
2 54 The Thirteen
power. I am not God. Listen carefully to me,' he continued, pausing to add solemnity to his words. ' Love will always come at your call. You have bound- less power over men : but remember that once you called love, and love came to you ; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth, and as reverent as it was passionate ; fond as a devoted woman's, as a mother's love ; a love so great indeed, that it was past the bounds of reason. You played with it, and you committed a crime. Every woman has a right to refuse herself to love which she feels she cannot share ; and if a man loves and cannot win love in return, he is not to be pitied, he has no right to complain. But with a sem- blance of love to attract an unfortunate creature cut off from all affection ; to teach him to understand happi- ness to the full, only to snatch it from him ; to rob him of his future of felicity ; to slay his happi- ness not merely to-day, but as long as his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every thought — this I call a fearful crime ! '
' Monsieur '
' I cannot allow you to answer me yet. So listen to me still. In any case I have rights over you ; but 1 only choose to exercise one — the right of the judge over the criminal, so that I may arouse your conscience. If you had no conscience left, I should not reproach you at all ; but you are so young ! You must feel some life still in your heart ; or so I like to believe. While I think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which the law does not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume.'
As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of bellows. Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were blowing up the fire, no doubt ; the glow shone through the curtain. But Montriveau's lurid face was turned upon her ; she could not choose
The Thirteen 255
but wait with a fast-beating heart and eyes fixed in a stare. However curious she fek, the heat in Armand's words interested her even more than the craclcHng of the mysterious flames.
' Madame,' he went on after a pause, ' if some poor wretch commits a murder in Paris, it is the executioner's duty, you know, to lay hands on him and stretch him on the plank, where murderers pay for their crimes with their heads. Then the newspapers inform every one, rich and poor, so that the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter are warned that they must be on the watch if they would live. Well, you that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses said for such a man's soul. You both belong to the same family, but yours is the elder branch ; and the elder branch may occupy high places in peace and live happily and without cares. Want or anger may drive your brother the convict to take a man's life ; you have taken more, you have taken the joy out of a man's life, you have killed all that was best in his life — his dearest beHefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his victim, and killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold ; hut you . . . ! You heaped up every sin that weak- ness can commit against strength that suspected no evil ; you tamed a passive victim, the better to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, long- ing for the bliss of love. You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, only to refuse to make any in return. He should see the light indeed before you put out his eyes ! It is wonderful how you found the heart to do it ! Such villanies demand a display of resource quite above the comprehension of those bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive ; they know how to love and suffer. The grandeur of their devotion dwarfs us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as much mud as at the lower end ;
256 The Thirteen
but with this difference, at the upper end it is hard and gilded over.
* Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot fall lower than the lowest unless you are set high above the rest of the world. — I express my thoughts badly j the wounds you dealt me are too painful as yet, but do not think that I complain. My words are not the expression of any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them. Know this, madame, for a certainty — I forgive you. My forgiveness is so complete that you need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither to find it against your will. . . . But you might take advantage of other hearts as child- like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish. So you have inspired the thought of justice. Expiate your sin here on earth ; God may perhaps forgive you ; I wish that He may, but He is inexorable, and will strike.'
The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes filled with tears.
' Why do you cry ? Be true to your nature. You could look on indifferently at the torture of a heart as you broke it. That will do, madame, do not cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other men will tell you that you have given them life ; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that I am bound to live for my friends, that from this time forth I must endure the cold chill of death, as well as the burden of life ? Is it possible that there can be so much kindness in you ? Are you like the desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted ? '
The Duchess burst out sobbing.
* Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all, it would merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your artifices ? or is it not ? You have
The Thirteen 257
used so many with me j how can one think that there is any truth in you? Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me. That is all I have to say.'
Mme. de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and humility in her bearing.
' You are right to treat me very hardly,' she said, holding out a hand to the man who did not take it ; * you have not spoken hardly enough ; and I deserve this punishment.'
' / punish you, madame ! A man must love still, to punish, must he not? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind. The cruellest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out the criminal, you may perforce learn something of the convict's sense of honour. And then, you will love ! '
The Duchess sat listening ; her meekness was un- feigned ; it was no coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a silence.
' Armand,' she began, ' it seems to me that when I resisted love, I was obeying all the instincts of woman's modesty; I should not have looked for such reproaches from you. I was weak ; you have turned all my weak- nesses against me, and made so many crimes of them. How could you fail to understand that the curiosity of love might have carried me further than I ought to go; and that next morning I might be angry with myself, and wretched because I had gone too far ? Alas ! I sinned in ignorance. I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as in my remorse. There was far more love for you in my severity than in my concessions.
R
258 The Thirteen
And besides, of what do you complain? I gave you my heart ; that was not enough ; you demanded, brutally, that I should give my person '
'Brutally?' repeated Montriveau. But to himself he said, ' If I once allow her to dispute over words, I am lost.'
' Yes. You came to me as if I were one of those women. You showed none of the respect, none of the attentions of love. Had I not reason to reflect? Very well, I reflected. The unseemliness of your conduct is not inexcusable; love lay at the source of it; let me think so, and justify you to myself. — Well, Armand, this evening, even while you were prophesying evil, I felt convinced that there was happiness in store for us both. Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested and proved.' She bent lower. ' And I was yours wholly,' she murmured in his ear. ' I felt a longing that I cannot express to give happiness to a man so violently tried by adversity. If I must have a master, my master should be a great man. As I felt conscious of my height, the less I cared to descend. I felt I could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of love, while you were pointing to death. . . . Strength and kindness always go together. My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind to a helpless woman who loves you. If I was wrong, is there no way of obtaining forgiveness? No way of making reparation? Repentance is the charm of love; 1 should like to be very charming for you. How could I, alone among women, fail to know a woman's doubts and fears, the timidity that it is so natural to feel when you bind yourself for life, and know how easily a man snaps such ties? The bourgeoises, with whom you compared me just now, give themselves, but they struggle first. Very well — I struggled; but here I am ! — Ah ! God, he does not hear me ! ' she broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out, * But I love you! I am yours! ' and fell at Armand's feet.
The Thirteen 259
* Yours! yours! my one and only master! ' Armand tried to raise her.
* Madame, it is too late! Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de Langeais. I cannot believe in either. To-day you may give yourself; to-morrow, you may refuse. No power in earth or heaven can insure me the sweet constancy of love. All love's pledges lay in the past; and now nothing of that past exists.'
The Hght behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the Duchess could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly saw the three masked figures.
'Armand,' she said, ' I would not wish to think ill of you. Why are those men there? What are you going to do to me ? '
' Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the thing which is about to be done. Think of them simply as my hands and my heart. One of them is a surgeon '
' A surgeon ! Armand, my friend, of all things, sus- pense is the hardest to bear. Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I will give it to you, you shall not take it '
'Then you did not understand me? Did I not speak just now of justice? To put an end to your misappre- hensions,' continued he, taking up a small steel object from the table, ' I will now explain what I have decided with regard to you.'
He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.
' Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another cross, made on this pattern, red-hot. We are going to stamp it upon your forehead, here between the eyes, so that there will be no possibility of hiding the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding people's questions. In short, you shall bear on your forehead the brand of infamy which your brothers the convicts wear on their shoulders. The pain is a mere trifle, but I feared a nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance '
2 6o The Thirteen
* Resistance?' she cried, clapping her hands for joy. ' Oh no, no ! I would have the whole world here to see. Ah, my Armand, brand her quickly, this creature ot yours; brand her with your mark as a poor little trifle belonging to you. You asked for pledges of my love; here they are all in one. Ah ! for me there is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal happiness in this revenge of yours. When you have marked this woman with your mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul, you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for evermore ! When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself responsible for my happiness, or you prove yourself base ; and I know that you are noble and great! Why, when a woman loves, the brand of love is burnt into her soul by her own will. — Come in, gentlemen ! come in and brand her, this Duchesse de Langeais. She is M. de Montriveau's for ever! Ah! come quickly, all of you, my forehead burns hotter than your fire! '
Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the Duchess kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart. He said some word, and his three friends vanished.
The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another. The Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand's heart, was all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror, brushed away two tears as they fell. Her whole future lay in those two tears. When he turned round again to help her to rise, she was standing before him, sure of love. Her pulses must have throbbed fast when he spoke with the firmness she had known so well how to use of old while she played with him.
' I spare you, madame. All that has taken place shall be as if it had never been, you may believe me. But now, let us bid each other good-bye. I like to think that you were sincere in your coquetries on your sofa,
The Thirteen 261
sincere again in this outpouring of your heart. Good- bye. I feel that there is no faith in you left in me. You would torment me again ; you would always be
the Duchess, and But there, good-bye, we shall
never understand each other.
' Now, what do you wish ? ' he continued, taking the tone of a master of the ceremonies — 'to return home, or to go back to Mme. de Serizy's ball ? I have done all in my power to prevent any scandal. Neither your servants nor any one else can possibly know what has passed between us in the last quarter of an hour. Your servants have no idea that you have left the ball- room ; your carriage never lef"t Mme. de Serizy's courtyard ; your brougham may likewise be found in the court of your own hotel. Where do you wish to be ? '
' What do you counsel, Armand ? '
' There is no Armand now, Mme. la Duchesse. We are strangers to each other.'
'Then take me to the ball,' she said, still curious to put Armand's power to the test. 'Thrust a soul that suffered in the world, and must always suffer there, if there is no happiness for her now, down into hell again. And yet, oh my friend, I love you as your bourgeoises love ; I love you so that I could come to you and fling my arms about your neck before all the world if you asked it off me. The hateful world has not corrupted me. I am young at least, and I have grown younger still. 1 am a child, yes, your child, your new creature. Ah ! do not drive me forth out of my Eden ! '
Armand shook his head.
'Ah ! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing to wear to-night on my heart,' she said, taking possession of Armand's glove, which she twisted into her handkerchief.
'No, I am not like all those depraved women. You do not know the world, and so you cannot know my
262 The Thirteen
worth. You shall know it now ! There are women who sell themselves for money ; there are others to be gained by gifts, it is a vile world ! Oh, I wish I were a simple bourgeoise, a working girl, if you would rather have a woman beneath you than a woman whose devotion is accompanied by high rank, as men count it. Oh, my Armand, there are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us; and then they are lovely indeed. I would have all nobleness that I might offer it all up to you. Misfortune willed that I should be a duchess ; I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might be complete. I would be a grisette for you, and a queen for every one besides.'
He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.
' You will let me know when you wish to go,' he said.
'But I should like to stay '
'That is another matter ! '
'Stay, that was badly rolled,' she cried, seizing on a cigar and devouring all that Armand's lips had touched.
' Do you smoke ? '
' Oh, what would I not do to please you ? '
' Very well. Go, madame.'
' I will obey you,' she answered, with tears in her eyes.
' You must be blindfolded ; you must not see a glimpse of the way.
'I am ready, Armand,' she said, bandaging her eyes.
' Can you see ? '
'No.'
Noiselessly he knelt before her.
' Ah ! I can hear you ! ' she cried, with a little fond gesture, thinking that the pretence of harshness was over.
He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.
The Thirteen 263
' You can see, madame.'
* I am just a little bit curious.'
* So you always deceive me ? '
' Ah ! take off this handkerchief, sir,' she cried out, with the passion of a great generosity repelled with scorn, 'lead me ; I will not open my eyes.'
Armand felt sure of her after that cry. He led the way 5 the Duchess, nobly true to her word, was blind. But while Montriveau held her hand as a father might, and led her up and down flights of stairs, he was study- ing the throbbing pulses of this woman's heart so suddenly invaded by Love. Mme.de Langeais, rejoicing in this power of speech, was glad to let him know all ; but he was inflexible; his hand was passive in reply to the questionings of her hand.
At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go forward ; the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she felt that his hand protected her dress. His care touched her ; it was a revelation surely that there was a little love still left ; yet it was in some sort a farewell, for Montriveau left her without a word. The air was warm ; the Duchess, feeling the heat, opened her eyes, and found herself standing by the fire in the Comtesse de Serizy's boudoir. She was alone. Her first thought was for her disordered toilette ; in a moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her picturesque coiffure.
* Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you everywhere.' It was the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she opened the door.
'I came here to breathe,' said the Duchess; 'it is unbearably hot in the rooms.'
' People thought that you had gone ; but my brother Ronquerollcs told me that your servants were waiting for you.'
' I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,' and the Duchess sat down on the sofa.
264 The Thirteen
' Why, what is the matter with you ? You are shaking from head to foot ! '
The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.
'Mme. la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have happened. I have just come across your coachman, the man is as tipsy as all the Swiss in Switzerland.'
The Duchess made no answer ; she was looking round the room, at the chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an opening. Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected that she was again in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom after that terrific scene which had changed the whole course of her life. She began to shiver violently.
' M. de Montriveau's prophecy has shaken my nerves,' she said. ' It was a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London will haunt me even in my sleep. So good-bye, dear. — Good-bye, M. le Marquis.'
As she went through the rooms she was beset with inquiries and regrets. Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its queen, had fallen so low, was so diminished. And what, moreover, were these men compared with, him whom she loved with all her heart; with the man grown great by all that she had lost in stature ? The giant had regained the height that he had lost for a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure. She looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her to the ball. He was fast asleep.
' Have you been here all the time ? ' she asked.
' Yes, madame.'
As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her coachman was drunk — so drunk, that at any other time she would have been afraid ; but after a great crisis in life, fear loses its appetite for common food. She reached home, at any rate, without accident ; but even there she felt a change in herself, a new feeling that she could not shake ofF. For her, there was now but one
The Thirteen 265
man in the world j which is to say, that henceforth she cared to shine for his sake alone.
While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem before him if he attempts to consider love in all its developments due to social conditions. Still, in spite of the heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love, there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine, a line that all the discussion in the world can never deflect. A rigid application of this line explains the nature of the crisis through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass. Passion she knew, but she did not love as yet.
Love and passion are two diiFerent conditions which poets and men of the world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound. Love implies a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing can change ; it means so close a clinging of the heart, and an exchange of happiness so constant, that there is no room left for jealousy. Then possession is a means and not an end ; unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not less close ; the soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but happy at every moment ; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in the selfsame hue ; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven. But Passion is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to which all suffering souls aspire. Passion is a hope that may be cheated. Passion means both suffering and transition. Passion dies out when hope is dead. Men and women may pass through this experience many times without dishonour, for it is so natural to spring towards happiness ; but there is only one love in a lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by two questions — 'Is it passion? Is it love?' So, since love comes into existence only through the inti-
266 The Thirteen
mate experience of the bliss which gives it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of passion as yet; and as she knew the fierce tumult, the unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is meant by that word passion — she suffered. Through all the trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these forms of egoism make common cause together.
She had said to this man, ' I love you; I am yours! ' Was it possible that the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those words — in vain? She must either be loved now or play her part of queen no longer. And then she felt the loneliness of the luxurious couch where pleasure had never yet set his glowing feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and writhed there, she said, ' I want to be loved.'
But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of success. The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might be humiliated; but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness, and imagination, avenging the time lost for nature, took a delight in kindling the inextinguishable fire in her veins. She all but attained to the sensations of love ; for amid her poignant doubt whether she was loved in return, she felt glad at heart to say to herself, ' I love him ! ' As for her scruples, religion, and the world she could trample them under foot! Montriveau was her religion now. She spent the next day in a state of moral torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a thousand impossible fancies.
When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to think that he would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her whole life was concen- trated in the single sense of hearing. Sometimes she shut her eyes, straining her ears to listen through space, wishing that she could annihilate everything that lay
The Thirteen 267
between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her ; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of midnight sounded from the drawing-room.
'Ah, God!' she cried, 'to see him here would be happiness. And yet, it is not so very long since he came here, brought by desire, and the tones of his voice filled this boudoir. And now there is nothing.'
She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with him, and how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the despairing tears flowed for long.
Her woman came at length with, ' Mme. la Duchesse does not know, perhaps, that it is two o'clock in the morning; I thought that madame was not feeling well.'
' Yes, I am going to bed,' said the Duchess, drying her eyes. ' But remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I tell you this for the last time.'
For a week, Mme. de Langeais went to every house where there was a hope of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to her usual habits, she came early and went late ; gave up dancing, and went to the card-tables. Her experiments were fruitless. She did not succeed in getting a glimpse of Armand. She did not dare to utter his name now. One evening, however, in a fit of despair, she spoke to Mme. de Serizy, and asked as care- lessly as she could, ' You must have quarrelled with M. de Montriveau ? He is not to be seen at your house now.'
The Countess laughed. ' So he does not come here either?' she returned. He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter. He is interested in some woman, no doubt.'
' I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his friends ' the Duchess began sweetly.
' I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with him.'
268 The Thirteen
Mme. de Langeais did not reply. Mme. de Serizy concluded from the Duchess's silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity to a discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of soul, for a long time past.
* So you miss that melancholy personage, do you ? I have heard most extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings, he never comes back, he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps you in chains. To every- thing that I said of him, one of those that praise him sky- high would always answer, " He knows how to love ! " People are always telling me that Montriveau would give up all for his friend j that his is a great nature. Pooh ! society does not want such tremendous natures. Men of that stamp are all very well at home ; let them stay there and leave us to our pleasant littlenesses. What do you say, Antoinette? '
Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated, yet she replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair friend —
' I am sorry to miss him. I took a great interest in him, and promised to myself to be his sincere friend. I like great natures, dear friend, ridiculous though you may think it. To give oneself to a fool is a clear con- fession, is it not, that one is governed wholly by one's senses ? '
Mme. de Serizy's 'preferences' had always been for commonplace men ; her lover at the moment, the Marquis d'Aiglemont, was a fine, tall man.
After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure. Mme. de Langeais saw hope in Armand's withdrawal from the world; she wrote to him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely it would bring him if he loved her still. She sent her footman with it next day. On the servant's return, she asked whether he had given the letter to M. de Montriveau himself, and could not restrain the movement of joy at the
The Thirteen 269
affirmative answer. Armand was in Paris! He stayed alone in his house ; he did not go out into society! So she was loved ! All day long she waited for an answer that never came. Again and again, when impatience grew unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay. Armand felt embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and she could not deceive herself any longer. It was a dreadful day, a day of pain grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day when the heart squanders the very forces of life in riot.
Next day she sent for an answer.
'M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme. la Duchesse,' reported Julien.
She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.
' He is coming ! '
The thought rent her soul. And, in truth, woe unto those for whom suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it increases and multiplies the sweetest joys ; for they have nothing in them of that flame which quickens the images of things, giving to them a second existence, so that we cling as closely to the pure essence as to its outward and visible manifestation. What is suspense in love but a constant drawing upon an unfail- ing hope ? — a submission to the terrible scourging of passion, while passion is yet happy, and the disenchant- ment of reality has not set in. The constant putting forth of strength and longing, called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance to the flower that breathes it forth. We soon leave the brilliant, unsatis- fying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again and again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or volkameria — flowers compared separately, each in its own land, to a betrothed bride, full of love, made fair by the past and future.
The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers
270 The Thirteen
through the rapture with which she received the scourg- ings of love. As this change wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a better meaning in the things of life. As she hurried to her dressing-room, she understood what studied adornment and the most minute attention to her toilet mean when these are undertaken for love's sake and not for vanity. Even now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was dressed ; she passed through nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which sets the whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease, though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and waiting at two o'clock in the afternoon. At half-past eleven that night M. de Montriveau had not arrived. To try to give an idea of the anguish endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child of civilisation, would be to attempt to say how many imaginings the heart can condense into one thought. As well endeavour to measure the forces expended by the soul in a sigh whenever the bell rang ; to estimate the drain of life when a carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her prostrate.
'Can he be playing with me? ' she said, as the clocks struck midnight.
She grew white ; her teeth chattered ; she struck her hands together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as she did so how often he had come thither without a summons. But she resigned herself. Had she not seen him grow pale, and start up under the stinging barbs of her irony ? Then Mme, de Langeais felt the horror of the woman's appointed lot ; a man's is the active part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If a woman goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can forgive ; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this piece of angelic flattery. But Armand's was a great
The Thirteen 271
nature ; he surely must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding love by love that lasts for ever.
' Well, I will make the advance,' she told herself, as she tossed on her bed and found no sleep there ; ' I will go to him. I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to him, but I will hold it out. A man of a thousand will see a promise of love and constancy in every step that a woman takes towards him. Yes, the angels must come down from heaven to reach men ; and I wish to be an angel for him.'
Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number particularly excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought up by Mme. la Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written that delicious note ; no other woman could complain with- out lowering herself; could spread wings in such a flight without draggling her pinions in humiliation ; rise gracefully in revolt ; scold without giving offence ; and pardon without compromising her personal dignity.
Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim of love's marches and countermarches.
'What did M. de Montriveau reply ? ' she asked, as indifferently as she could, when the man came back to report himself.
' M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme. la Duchesse that it was all right.'
Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses ; yet not to utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence ! One of the countless miseries of the rich !
More than three weeks went by. Mme. de Langeais wrote again and again, and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the Princess
272 The Thirteen
and from social duties. She was only at home to her father the Due de Navarreins, her aunt the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers (her maternal great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Due de Grandlieu. These persons found no difficulty in believing that the Duchess was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more dejected every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded pride, the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her, the yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual longing — all these things told upon her, mind and body ; all the forces of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was paying the arrears of her life of make-believe.
She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to be there. For the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the Royal Family, it was one of those festival days that are long remembered. She looked supremely beautiful in her languor ; she was greeted with admiration in all eyes. It was Mont- riveau's presence that made her so fair. Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which produces an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the most prudish will confess. When a woman is very much in love, and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace a world that stretches away for ever. Only women or young men can imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes. As for older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they had experience of such phenomena of nervous power ; at a later day it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence of the luxuriant ecstasy — the only name that can be given to these wonderful intui- tions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration of a soul that
The Thirteen
273
has shaken ofF its bonds of flesh ; whereas in amorous ecstasy all the forces of soul and body are embraced and blended in one. If a woman fails a victim to the tyrannous frenzy before which Mme. de Langeais was forced to bend, she will take one decisive resolution after another so swiftly that it is impossible to give account of them. Thought after thought rises and flits across her brain, as clouds are whirled by the wind across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun. Thenceforth the facts reveal all. And the facts are these.
The day after the review, Mme. de Langeais sent her carriage and liveried servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau's door from eight o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon. Armand lived in the Rue de Tournon, a few steps away from the Chamber of Peers, and that very day the House was sitting ; but long before the peers returned to their palaces, several people had recognised the Duchess's carriage and liveries. The first of these was the Baron de Maulincour. That young oflicer had met with disdain from Mme. de Langeais and a better reception from Mme. de Serizy ; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress, and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.
In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through all the coteries in the Faubourg, Saint- Germain ; it reached the Tuileries and the Elysee- Bourbon ; it was the sensation of the day, the matter of all the talk from noon till night. Almost everywhere the women denied the facts, but in such a manner that the report was confirmed ; the men one and all believed it, and manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme. de Langeais. Some among them threw the blame on Armand.
'That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze,' said they ; ' he insisted on making this scandal, no doubt.'
s
274 The Thirteen
' Very well, then,' others replied, ' Mme. de Langeais has been guilty of a most generous piece of imprudence. To renounce the world, and rank, and fortune, and consideration for her lover's sake, and that in the face of all Paris, is as fine a coup d\'tat for a woman as that barber's knife-thrust, which so affected Canning in a court of assize. Not one of the women who blame the Duchess would make a declaration worthy of ancient tiiries. It is heroic of Mme. de Langeais to proclaim herself so frankly. Now there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau. There must be something great about a woman if she says, " I will have but one passion." '
'But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice in this way without respect for virtue?' asked the Comtesse de Granville, the attorney-general's wife.
While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d'Antin were discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue ; while excited young men rushed about on horse- back to make sure that the carriage was standing in the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in consequence was beyond a doubt in M. de Montriveau's rooms, Mme. de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses, was lying hidden away in her boudoir. And Armand ? — he had been out all night, and at that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens of the Tuileries. The elder members of Mme. de Langeais's family were engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a homily and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a stop to the scandal.
At three o'clock, therefore, M. le Due de Navarreins, the Vidame de Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont- Chauvry, and the Due de Grandlieu were assembled in Mme. la Duchesse de Langeais's drawing-room. To them, as to all curious inquirers, the servants said that their mistress was not at home j the Duchess had made
The Thirteen 275
no exceptions to her orders. But these four personages shone conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the revolutions and hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by year in the Almanach de Gotha^ where- fore without some slight sketch of each of them this picture of society were incomplete.
The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a most poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In her beautiful prime, so it was said, she had done her part to win for that monarch his appellation of le Bien-aime. Of her past charms of feature, little remained save a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now the principal orna- ment of a countenance that put you in mind of an old white glove. Add a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap with upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for ombre. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that she appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her cheeks with Martin's classic rouge. An appalling amia- bility in her wrinkles, a prodigious brightness in the old lady's eyes, a profound dignity in her whole person, together with the triple barbed wit of her tongue, and an infallible memory in her head, made of her a real power in the land. The whole Cabinet des Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment of her brain. She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in Europe — princes, dukes, and counts — and could put her hand on the last descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line. No usurpation of title could escape the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry.
Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and young married women paid her assiduous homage. Her salon set the tone of the Fau- bourg Saint-Germain. The words of this Talleyrand in petticoats were taken as final decrees. People came to
276 The Thirteen
consult her on questions of etiquette or usages, or to take lessons in good taste. And, in truth, no other old woman could put back her snufF-box in her pocket as the Princess could ; while there was a precision and a grace about the movements of her skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which drove the finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime ; but she could not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and fifty thousand livres of her great fortune, for Napoleon had generously returned her woods to her ; so that personally and in the matter of possessions she was a woman of no little consequence.
This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The Vidame was a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old school, and had been a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck had always been so tightly compressed by a strangulation stock, that his cheeks pouched over it a little, and he held his head high ; to many people this would have given an air of self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see everything, and as a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether, his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake.
The Due de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the Due de Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale ; both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease of manner that
The Thirteen 277
could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake vv^ould have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard them converse, and seen them on their guard whh. men whom they feared, vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to humiliate with an un- expected phrase.
Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that determined to perish rather than submit to any change. It was a noblesse that deserved praise and blame in equal measure ; a noblesse that will never be judged impartially until some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles obeyed the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu's axe, and how deeply they scorned the guillotine of '89 as a foul revenge.
Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that agreed peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among themselves, at any rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. None of them betrayed any sign of annoyance over the Duchess's escapade, but all of them had learned at Court to hide their feelings.
And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the opening of the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind the reader that Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords, renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation by some shorthand process of his own ; and afterwards, when he read it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circu- lates among the upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible when washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank of society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious
278 The Thirteen
observer finds folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish. Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and boeotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher regions they must perforce talk more, but to make up for it they think the less. Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the rich like their lives to flow by easily and without effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer of France, that the observer arrives at a true com- prehension of M. de Talleyrand's maxim, ' The manner is everything ; ' an elegant rendering of the legal axiom, ' The form is of more consequence than the matter.' In the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small change.
The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him, and remarked to his neighbour —
' So you have sold Tornthon ? '
' No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I should be uncommonly sorry. He is a very good hunter. Do you know how the Duchesse de Marigny is ? '
' No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to call when you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yesterday she was very ill indeed ; they had given her up, she took the sacrament.'
' Her death will make a change in your cousin's position.'
' Not at all. She gave away her property in her life- time, only keeping an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate to her niece, Mme. de Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge.'
The Thirteen 279
* It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman. Her family will miss her ; her experience and advice carried weight. Her son Marigny is an amiable man ; he has a sharp wit, he can talk. He is pleasant, very pleasant. Pleasant ? oh, that no one can deny, but — ill regulated to the last degree. Well, and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is very acute. He was dining at the club the other day with that moneyed Chaussee- d'Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for his game of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if he was a member. "Yes," said he, "I don't go into society now ; I am living among the bankers." — You know why ? ' added the Marquis, with a meaning smile.
' No,' said the Duke.
' He is smitten with that little Mme. Keller, Gondre- ville's daughter ; she is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they say, in that set.'
' Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it seems,' remarked the Vidame.
' My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a singular pastime,' replied the Princess, as she returned her snuff-box to her pocket.
' Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed,' said the Duke, stopping short in his walk. ' Nobody but one of Buonaparte's men could ask such an indecorous thing of a woman of fashion. Between ourselves, Antoinette might have made a better choice.'
' The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected, my dear,' replied the Princess ; * they are related to all the noblest houses of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus would succeed to the Arschoot title and estates. They inherit through their great-grandfather.'
'Are you sure ? '
* I know it better than this Montriveau's father did.
2 8o ^ The Thirteen
I told him about it, I used to see a good deal of him ; and, Chevalier of several orders though he was, he only- laughed ; he was an encyclopaedist. But his brother turned the relationship to good account during the emigration. I have heard it said that his northern kinsfolk were most kind in every way-
Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St. Petersburg,' said the Vidame. ' I met him there. He was a big man with an incredible passion for oysters.'
' How ever many did he eat ? ' asked the Due de Grandlieu.
*Ten dozen every day.'
* And did they not disagree with him ? ' ' Not the least bit in the world.'
' Why, that is extraordinary ! Had he neither the stone nor gout, nor any other complaint, in conse- quence ? '
' No ; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an accident.'
'By accident ! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably he required them ; for up to a certain point our predominant tastes are conditions of our existence.'
'I am of your opinion,' said the Princess, with a smile.
' Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,' returned the Marquis.
'I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a wrong impression on a young woman's mind,' said she, and interrupted herself to exclaim, ' But this niece, this niece of mine ! '
* Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to M. de Montriveau,' said the Due de Navarreins.
' Bah ! ' returned the Princess.
' What do you think, Vidame ? ' asked the Marquis. ' If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think that '
The Thirteen 281
* But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,' retorted the Princess. * Really, my poor Vidame, you must be getting older.'
' After all, what is to be done ? ' asked the Duke.
' If my dear niece is wise,' said the Princess, ' she will go to Court this evening — fortunately, to-day is Monday, and reception day — and you must see that we all rally round her and give the lie to this absurd rumour. There are hundreds of ways of explaining things ; and if the Marquis de Montriveau is a gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We will bring these children to listen to reason '
* But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montri- veau the truth to his face. He is one of Buonaparte's pupils, and he has a position. Why, he is one of the great men of the day ; he is high up in the Guards, and very useful there. He has not a spark of ambition. He is just the man to say, " Here is my commission, leave me in peace," if the King should say a word that he did not like.'
' Then, pray, what are his opinions?' ' Very unsound.'
' Really,' sighed the Princess, ' the King is, as he always has been, a Jacobin under the Lilies of France.' ' Oh ! not quite so bad,' said the Vidame.
* Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that pointed out the Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state dinner in public with, *' These are our people," could only be a black-hearted scoundrel. I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his depart- ment of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk. This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor is to get out
2 82 The Thirteen
of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he lay dying, " He will not reign very long "'
* Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his service '
' But does your post take away your right of free speech, my dear? You come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. If the Guises had shown a little more resolution, His Majesty would be a nobody at this day. It is time I went out of this world, the noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all over with you, my children,' she continued, looking as she spoke at the Vidame. * What has my niece done that the whole town should be talking about her? She is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless scandal is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want of regard for appearances ; I brought her up, and I know that '
Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir. She had recognised her aunt's voice and heard the name of Montriveau. She was still in her loose morning-gown ; and even as she came in, M. de Grand- lieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his niece's carriage driving back along the street. The Duke took his daughter's face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead. * So, dear girl,' he said, ' you do not know what is going on? '
' Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear? '
' Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau.'
* My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you not?' said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess kissed with affectionate respect.
* Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And,' she added, as she turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, ' I wished that all Paris should think that I was with M. de Montriveau.'
The Thirteen 283
The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and folded his arms.
' Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak? "* he asked at last.
But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking steadily at the Duchess; the younger woman flushed, and her eyes fell. Mme. de Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, ' My little angel, let me kiss you ! '
She kissed her niece very affectionately on the fore- head, and continued smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.
' We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have compromised your husband and your position. Still, we will arrange to make everything right.'
' But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It is my wish that all Paris should say that I was with M. de Montriveau this morning. If you destroy that belief, however ill grounded it may be, you will do me a singular disservice.'
* Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your family ? '
' My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You may, perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will certainly feel for me.'
' After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters suitably!' muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.
The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. * My dear little girl,' she said, ' be happy, if you can. We are not talking of troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with social usages. We all of us here assembled know that marriage is a defective institution tempered by love. But when you take a lover, is there any need to make your bed in the Place du Carrousel?
284 The Thirteen
See now, just be a bit reasonable, and hear what we have to say.'
' I am listening.'
' Mme. la Duchesse,' began the Due de Grandlieu, ' if it were any part of an uncle's duty to look after his nieces, he ought to have a position; society would owe him honours and rewards and a salary, exactly as if he were in the King's service. So I am not here to talk about my nephew, but of your own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in making a scandal — I have seen the animal before, and I own that I have no great liking for him — Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care a rap for any one but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his mistresses' amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law; you will have to say Amen to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de Montriveau
leaves you dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a
passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman while she is young and pretty; still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate, even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all
but impossible supposition I quite wish to believe
Well, suppose that he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are they to be ? Montriveaus ? Very well; they certainly will not succeed to their father's whole fortune. You will want to give
The Thirteen 285
them all that you have; he will wish to do the same. Nothing more natural, dear me ! And you will find the law against you. How many times have we seen heirs-at-law bringing a lawsuit to recover the property from illegitimate children? Every court of law rings with such actions all over the world. You will create a fidei comtn'issum perhaps; and if the trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy against himj and they are ruined. So choose carefully. You see the perplexities of the position. In every possible way your children will be sacrificed of necessity to the fancies of your heart; they will have no recognised status. While they are little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day they will reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves. We old gentlemen know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and men are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not hear young de Horn say, after supper, " If my mother had been an honest woman, I should be prince-regnant!" "If?" We have spent our lives in hearing plebeians say if. Ij brought about the Revolution. When a man cannot lay the blame on his father or mother, he holds God responsible for his hard lot. In short, dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I will say all I have to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate: A woman ought never to put her husband in the right.'
' Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calcu- late; I looked at interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel.'
' But, my dear little girl,' remonstrated the Vidame, Mife is simply a complication of interests and feelings; to be happy, more particularly in your position, one must try to reconcile one's feelings with one's interests. A grisette may love according to her fancy, that is intelligible enough, but you have a pretty fortune, a family, a name and a place at Court, and you ought not
286 The Thirteen
to fling them out of the window. And what have we been asking you to do to keep them all? — To manceuvre carefully instead of falling foul of social conventions. Lord! I shall very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any regime, a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for the love of this lucky young man.'
The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look ; if Montriveau could have seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.
' It would be very effective on the stage,' remarked the Due de Grandlieu, ' but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and position and independence is concerned. You are not grateful, my dear niece. You will not find many families where the relatives have courage enough to teach the wisdom gained by experi- ence, and to make rash young heads listen to reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if it pleases you to damn yourself; well and good; but reflect well beforehand when it comes to renouncing your income. I know of no confessor who remits the pains of poverty. I have a right, I think, to speak in this way to you ; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer you a refuge. I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have a right to put him in the wrong.'
The Due de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.
'Since you speak of feeling, my child,' he said, 'let me remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your dishonour '
' Come, come ! ' said the Princess. ' Dishonour ? Do not make such a fuss about the journey of an empty
The Thirteen 287
carriage, children, and leave me alone with Antoinette. All three of you come and dine with me. I will under- take to arrange matters suitably. You men understand nothing j you are beginning to talk sourly already, and I have no wish to see a quarrel between you and my dear child. Do me the pleasure to go.'
The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess's intentions; they took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on the forehead with, ' Come, be good, dear child. It is not too late yet if you choose.'
* Couldn't we find some good fellow in the family to pick a quarrel with this Montriveau ? ' said the Vidame, as they went downstairs.
When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to a little low chair by her side.
' My pearl,' said she, ' in this world below, I know nothing worse calumniated than God and the Eighteenth Century ; for as I look back over my own young days, I do not recollect that a single duchess trampled the proprieties under foot as you have just done. Novelists and scribblers brought the reign of Louis xv. into disrepute. Do not believe them. The du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more agreeable woman of the two. In my time a woman could keep her dignity among her gallantries. Indis- cretion was the ruin of us, and the beginning of all the mischief. The philosophists — the nobodies whom we admitted into our salons — had no more gratitude or sense of decency than to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one and all, and to rail against the age by way of a return for our kindness. The people are not in a position to judge of anything whatsoever; they looked at the facts, not at the form. But the men and women of those times, my heart, were quite as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not one of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called, never a one of your men in yellow kid
288 The Thirteen
gloves and trousers that disguise the poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the dress of a travelling hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up in the dressing-room of the Regent's daughter at the risk of his life. Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoise-shell eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun, to keep up his mistress's courage while she was lying in of her child. There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt's little finger than in your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better themselves else- where ! Just tell me where to find the page that would be cut in pieces and buried under the floor boards for one kiss on the Konigsmark's gloved finger !
' Really, it would seem to-day that the roles are exchanged, and women are expected to show their devotion for men. These modern gentlemen are worth less, and think more of themselves. Believe me, my dear, all these adventures that have been made public, and now are turned against our good Louis xv., were kept quite secret at first. If it had not been for a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our waiting-women, and took down their slanders, our epoch would have appeared in literature as a well- conducted age. I am justifying the century and not its fringe. Perhaps a hundred women of quality were lost ; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the gazettes after a battle when they count up the losses of the beaten side. And in any case I do not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach us ; they were coarse, dull, licentious times. Faugh ! it is revolting. Those are the brothels of French history.
' This preamble, my dear child,' she continued after a pause, ' brings me to the thing that I have to say. If you care for Montriveau, you are quite at liberty to love him at your ease, and as much as you can. I know by
The Thirteen 289
experience that, unless you are locked up (but locking people up is out of fashion now), you will do as you please j I should have done the same at your age. Only, sweet- heart, I should not have given up my right to be the mother of future Dues de Langeais. So mind appearances. The Vidame is right. No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices which we are foolish enough to make for their love. Put yourself in such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais's wife, in case you should have the misfortune to repent. When you are an old woman, you will be very glad to hear mass said at Court, and not in some provincial convent. Therein lies the whole question. A single imprudence means an allow- ance and a wandering life ; it means that you are at the mercy of your lover; it means that you must put up with insolence from women that are not so honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly sharp- witted. It would be a hundred times better to go to Montriveau's at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending your carriage in broad daylight. You are a little fool, my dear child ! Your carriage flattered his vanity ; your person would have ensnared his heart. All this that I have said is just and true ; but, for my own part, I do not blame you. You are two centuries behind the times with your false ideas of greatness. There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that Montriveau made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to compromise you '
The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring. 'In Heaven's name, aunt, do not slander him ! '
The old Princess's eyes flashed.
' Dear child,' she said, ' I should have liked to spare such of your illusions as were not fatal. But there must be an end of all illusions now. You would soften me if I were not so old. Come, now, do not vex him, or us, or any one else. I will undertake to satisfy everybody ; but promise me not to permit yourself a single step
T
290 The Thirteen
henceforth until you have consulted me. Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right again.'
* Aunt, I promise '
' To tell me everything ? '
* Yes, everything. Everything that can be told.'
' But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I want to know. Let us understand each other thoroughly. Come, let me put my withered old lips on your beautiful forehead. No ; let me do as I wish. I forbid you to kiss my bones. Old people have a courtesy of their own. . . . There, take me down to my carriage,' she added, when she had kissed her niece.
* Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt ? '
* Why — yes. The story can always be denied,' said the old Princess.
This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in the sermon. When Mme. de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her carriage, Mme. de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up to her room. She was quite happy again.
' My person would have snared his heart ; my aunt is right ; a man cannot surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to offer herself.'
That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Due de Navarreins, M. de Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Due de Maufrigneuse triumphantly refuted the scandals that were circulating with regard to the Duchess de Langeais. So many officers and other persons had seen Montriveau walking in the Tuileries that morning, that the silly story was set down to chance, which takes all that is offered. And so, in spite of the fact that the Duchess's carriage had waited before Montriveau's door, her character became as clear and as spotless as Mambrino's sword after Sancho had polished it up.
But, at two o'clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed
The Thirteen
291
Montriveau in a deserted alley, and said with a smile, 'She is coming on, is your Duchess. Go on, keep it up ! ' he added, and gave a significant cut of the riding whip to his mare, who sped off hke a bullet down the avenue.
Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme. de Lan- geais wrote to M. de Montriveau. That letter, like the preceding ones, remained unanswered. This time she took her own measures, and bribed M. de Montriveau's man, Auguste. And so at eight o'clock that evening she was introduced into Armand's apartment. It was not the room in which that secret scene had passed ; it was entirely different. The Duchess was told that the General would not be at home that night. Had he two houses ? The man would give no answer. Mme. de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not the man's whole loyalty.
When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened. He had not read them. She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she lost consciousness. When she came to herself, Auguste was holding vinegar for her to inhale.
' A carriage ; quick ! ' she ordered.
The carriage came. She hastened downstairs with convulsive speed, and left orders that no one was to be admitted. For twenty-four hours she lay in bed, and would have no one near her but her woman, who brought her a cup of orange-flower water from time to time. Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice, and caught a glimpse of tears in the brilliant eyes, now circled with dark shadows.
The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme. de Lan- geais took her resolution. Her man of business came for an interview, and no doubt received instructions of some kind. Afterwards she sent for the Vidame de Pamiers ; and while she waited, she wrote a letter to M.
292
The Thirteen
de Montriveau. The Vidame punctually came towards two o'clock that afternoon, to find his young cousin looking white and worn, but resigned ; never had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in the languor of her agony.
' You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear cousin,' she said. 'Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an unhappy woman has reached the lowest depths of wretchedness. You are a gentleman, and after the adventures of your youth you must feel some indulgence for women.'
' None whatever,' said he.
* Indeed ! '
' Everything is in their favour.'
' Ah ! Well, you are one of the inner family circle ; possibly you will be the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall press, so I can ask your good offices. Will you, dear Vidame, do me a service which I could not ask of my own father, nor of my uncle Grandlieu, nor of any woman ? You cannot fail to understand. I beg of you to do my bidding, and then to forget what you have done, whatever may come of it. It is this : Will you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau ? will you see him yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask things between yourselves — for you have a code of honour between man and man which you do not use with us, and a different way of regarding things between yourselves — ask him if he will read this letter ? Not in your presence. Certain feel- ings men hide from each other. I give you authority to say, if you think it necessary to bring him, that it is a question of life or death for me. If he deigns '
* Deigns ! ' repeated the Vidame.
*If he deigns to read it,' the Duchess continueo with dignity, 'say one thing more. You will go to see him about five o'clock, for I know that he will dine at home to-day at that time. Very good. By way of answer he
I
The Thirteen 293
must come to see me. If, three hours afterwards, by eight o'clock, he does not leave his house, all will be over. The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, dear friend, no, but no human power will ever find me again on this earth. Come and dine with me ; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony. Yes, dear cousin, to-night will decide my fate ; and whatever happens to me, I pass through an ordeal by fire. There ! not a word. I will hear nothing
of the nature of comment or advice Let us chat and
laugh together,' she added, holding out a hand, which he kissed. * We will be like two grey-headed philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to the last moment. I will look my best ; I will be very enchanting for you. You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de Langeais.'
The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went with- out a word. At five o'clock he returned. His cousin had studied to please him, and she looked lovely in- deed. The room was gay with flowers as if for a festivity ; the dinner was exquisite. For the grey- headed Vidamc the Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of her wit ; she was more charming than she had ever been before. At first the Vidame tried to look on all these preparations as a young woman's jest ; but now and again the attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin's charm was broken. He detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and once she seemed to listen during a pause.
' What is the matter ? ' he asked.
' Hush ! ' she said.
At seven o'clock the Duchess left him for a icw minutes. When she came back again she was dressed as her maid might have dressed for a journey. She asked her guest to be her escort, took his arm, sprang into a hackney coach, and by a quarter to eight they stood outside M. de Montriveau's door.
294 The Thirteen
Armand meantime had been reading the following letter : —
' My Friend, — I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your knowledge ; I found my letters there, and took them away. This cannot be indifference, Armand, between us ; and hatred would show itself quite differently. If you love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will kill me, and afterwards, learning how much you were loved, you might be in despair. If I have not rightly understood you, if you have no feeling towards me but aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then I give up all hope. A man never recovers from those feelings. You will have no regrets. Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me in my long sorrow. Regrets ? Oh ! my Armand, may I never know of them ; if I thought that I had
caused you a single regret But, no, I will not tell
you what desolation I should feel. I should be living still, and I could not be your wife ; it would be too late !
' Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom else should I give myself? — to God. The eyes that you loved for a little while shall never look on another man's face ; and may the glory of God blind them to all besides. I shall never hear human voices more since I heard yours — so gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday ; for it seems to me that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance. And now may the will of God consume me. Between His wrath and yours, my friend, there will be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and prayers.
* Perhaps you wonder why I write to you ? Ah ! do not think ill of me if I keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy life before I take leave of it for ever. I am in a hideous position. I feel all the inward serenity that comes when a great resolution has been
The Thirteen 295
taken, even while I hear the last growlings of the storm. When you went out on that terrible adventure which so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to the oasis with a good guide to show you the way. Well, I am going out of the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me. And yet you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is to look back for the last time on happiness — to you, and you only, I can make moan without a blush. If you grant my entreaty, I shall be happy; if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the wrong that I have done. After all, it is natural, is it not, that a woman should wish to live, invested with all noble feelings, in her friend's memory ? Oh ! my one and only love, let her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief that she is great in your eyes. Your harshness led me to reflect ; and now that I love you so, it seems to me that I am less guilty than you think. Listen to my justification, I owe it to you ; and you that are all the world to me, owe me at least a moment's justice.
' I have learned by my ov/n anguish all that I made you suffer by my coquetry ; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love. Tou know what the torture is, and you mete it out to me ! During those first eight months that you gave me you never roused any feeling of love in me. Do you ask why this was so, my friend ? I can no more explain it than I can tell you why I love you now. Oh ! certainly it flattered my vanity that I should be the subject of your passionate talk, and receive those burning glances of yours ; but you left me cold. No, I was not a woman ; I had no conception of womanly devotion and happiness. Who was to blame ? You would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without the impulse of passion ? Perhaps it is the highest height to which we can rise — to give all and receive no joy ; perhaps there is no merit in yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen and ardently desired.
296 The Thirteen
Alas, my friend, I can say this now ; these thoughts came to me when I played with you ; and you seemed to me so great even then that I would not have you owe the gift to pity What is this that I have written ?
* I have taken back all my letters ; I am flinging them one by one on the fire ; they are burning. You will never know what they confessed — all the love and the passion and the madness
'I will say no more, Armand ; I will stop. I will not say another word of my feelings. If my prayers have not echoed from my soul through yours, I also, woman that I am, decline to owe your love to your pity. It is my wish to be loved, because you cannot choose but love me, or else to be left without mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be burnt. If, after you have read it, you do not come to me within three hours, to be henceforth for ever my husband, the one man in the world for me ; then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your hands, the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all insult, and my end shall be worthy of my love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit I shall still be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder of the woman who, in three hours' time, will live only to overwhelm you with her tenderness ; a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and faithful — not to memories of past joys — but to a love that was slighted.
' The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and vanished power ; but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that she may weep and be a power for you still. Yes, you will regret me. I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I thank you for making it clear to me.
* P'arewell ; you will never touch my axe. Yours was the executioner's axe, mine is God's ; yours kills, mine saves. Your love was but mortal, it could not endure disdain or ridicule ; mine can endure all things without
J
The Thirteen 297
growing weaker, it will last eternally. Ah ! I feel a sombre joy in crushing you that believe yourself so great ; in humbling you with the calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels that He at the feet of God, for to them is given the right and the power to protect and watch over men in His name. You have but felt fleeting desires, while the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath the wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.
' I have a presentiment of your answer ; our trysting place shall be — in heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear Armand ; the strong and the weak are bound to suffer. This thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal. So calm am I that I should fear that I had ceased to love you if I were not about to leave the world for your sake. Antoinette.'
'Dear Vidame,' said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau's house, ' do me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at home.'
The Vidame, obedient after the manner of the eighteenth century to a woman's wish, got out, and came back to bring his cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through her. She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to kiss her on either cheek, and begged him to go at once. He must not watch her movements nor try to protect her.
' But the people passing in the street,' he objected.
'No one can fail in respect to me,' she said. It was the last word spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.
The Vidame went. Mme. de Langeais wrapped herself about in her cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight. The last stroke died away. The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen minutes : to the last she tried to see a fresh humiliation
298 The Thirteen
in the delay, then her faith ebbed. She turned to leave the fatal threshold.
* Oh, God ! ' the cry broke from her in spite of her- self; it was the first word spoken by the CarmeHte.
Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together. He tried to hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and by the time he started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess was hurrying on foot through the streets of Paris, goaded by the dull rage in her heart. She reached the Boulevard d'Enfer, and looked out for the last time through falling tears on the noisy, smoky city that lay below in a red mist, lighted up by its own lamps. Then she hailed a cab, and drove away, never to return.
When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de Langeais, and found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had been duped. He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that worthy gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered dressing-gown, thinking the while of his fair cousin's happiness. Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the effect of an electric shock on men and women alike.
' Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax, monsieur ? ' Montriveau exclaimed. ' I have just come from Mme. de Langeais's house j the servants say that she is out.'
*Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt,' returned the Vidame, ' and through your fault. I left the Duchess at your door '
' When ? '
*At a quarter to eight.'
' Good evening,' returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask the porter whether he had seen a lady stand- ing on the door-step that evening.
*Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much put out. She was crying like a
The Thirteen
299
Magdalen,butshenevermadeasound,and stood as upright as a post. Then at last she went, and my wife and I that were watching her while she could not see us, heard her say, " Oh, God ! " so that it went to our hearts, asking your pardon, to hear her say it.'
Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those few words. He wrote a few lines to Ronque- rolles, sent off the message at once, and went up to his rooms. Ronquerolles came just about midnight.
Armand gave him the Duchess's letter to read.
' Well ? ' asked Ronquerolles.
' She was here at my door at eight o'clock ; at a quarter-past eight she had gone. I have lost her, and I love her. Oh ! if my life were my own, I could blow my brains out.'
' Pooh, pooh ! Keep cool,' said Ronquerolles. ' Duchesses do not fly off like wagtails. She cannot travel faster than three leagues an hour, and to-morrow we will ride six. — Confound it ! Mme. de Langeaisis no ordinary woman,' he continued. ' To-morrow we will all of us mount and ride. The police will put us on her track during the day. She must have a carriage ; angels of that sort have no wings. We shall find her whether she is on the road or hidden in Paris. There is the sema- phore. We can stop her. You shall be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty. They judge others by themselves, and do not know the point when human nature gives way if you strain the cords too tightly. Why did you not say a word to me sooner ? I would have told you to be punctual. Good-bye till to-morrow,' he added, as Montriveau said nothing. 'Sleep if you can,' he added, with a grasp of the hand.
But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the disposal of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human power, in fact, were all exhausted in vain. Neither Montriveau nor his friends could find
300 The Thirteen
any trace of the Duchess. It was clear that she had entered a convent. Montriveau determined to search, or to institute a search, for her through every convent in the world. He must have her, even at the cost of all the lives in a town. And in justice to this extraordinary man, it must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same ardour daily and lasted through five years. Only in 1829 did the Due de Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to Spain as Lady Julia Hopwood's maid, that she had left her service at Cadiz, and that Lady Julia never discovered that Mile. Caroline was the illustrious duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the minds of the highest society of Paris.
The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side of the grating in the Carmelite convent should now be comprehended to the full, and the violence of the passion awakened in either soul will doubtless explain the catastrophe of the story.
In 1823 ^^^ T)uc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free. Antoinette de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge of rock in the Mediter- ranean ; but it was in the Pope's power to dissolve Sister Theresa's vows. The happiness bought by so much love might yet bloom for the two lovers. These thoughts sent Montriveau flying from Cadiz to Mar- seilles, and from Marseilles to Paris.
A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted out and munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of Marseilles for Spain. The vessel had been chartered by several distinguished men, most of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a romantic passion for the East, wished to make a journey to those lands. Montriveau's familiar knowledge of Eastern customs made him an invaluable travelling companion, and at the intreaty of the rest he had joined the expe- dition ; the Minister of War appointed him lieutenant-
The Thirteen
301
general, and put him on the Artillery Commission to facilitate his departure.
Twenty-four hours later the brig lay to ofF the north- west shore of an island within sight of the Spanish coast. She had been specially chosen for her shallow keel and light mastage, so that she might lie at anchor in safety half a league away from the reefs that secure the island from approach in this direction. If fishing vessels or the people on the island caught sight of the brig, they were scarcely likely to feel suspicious of her at once ; and besides, it was easy to give a reason for her presence without delay. Montriveau hoisted the flag of the United States before they came in sight of the island, and the crew of the vessel were all American sailors, who spoke nothing but English. One of M. de Mont- riveau's companions took the men ashore in the ship's long boat, and made them so drunk at an inn in the little town that they could not talk. Then he gave out that the brig was manned by treasure-seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was well known in the United States ; indeed, some Spanish writer had written a history of them. The presence of the brig among the reefs was now sufficiently explained. The owners of the vessel, according to the self-styled boatswain's mate, were looking for the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabouts in 1778 with a cargo of treasure from Mexico. The people at the inn and the authorities asked no more questions.
Armand, and the devoted friends who were helping him in his difficult enterprise, were all from the first of the opinion that there was no hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister Theresa by force or stratagem from the side of the little town. Wherefore these bold spirits, with one accord, determined to take the bull by the horns. They would make a way to the convent at the most seemingly inaccessible point; like General Lamarque, at the storming of Capri, they would con-
302 The Thirteen
quer Nature. The clifF at the end of the island, a sheer block of granite, afforded even less hold than the rock of Capri. So it seemed at least to Montriveau, who had taken part in that incredible exploit, while the nuns in his eyes were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson Lowe. To raise a hubbub over carrying off the Duchess would cover them with confusion. They might as well set siege to the town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a single soul to tell of their victory. So for them their expedition wore but two aspects. There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms that should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained unknown ; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent which should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid them a visit. They had decided upon the latter course in the secret council held before they left Paris, and subsequently everything had been done to insure the success of an expedition which promised some real excitement to jaded spirits weary of Paris and its pleasures.
An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan model, enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from out of the water. Then two cables of iron wire were fastened several feet apart between one rock and another. These wire ropes slanted up- wards and downwards in opposite directions, so that baskets of iron wire could travel to and fro along them j and in this manner the rocks were covered with a system of baskets and wire-cables, not unlike the fila- ments which a certain species of spider weaves about a tree. The Chinese, an essentially imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the work of instinct. Fragile as these bridges were, they were always ready for use ; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not throw them out of working order ; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to present to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, the immortal
The Thirteen 303
creator of the harbour at Cherbourg. Against this cunningly devised line the angry surge is powerless ; the law of that curve was a secret wrested from Nature by that faculty of observation in which nearly all human genius consists.
M. de Montriveau's companions were alone on board the vessel, and out of sight of every human eye. No I 1; one from the deck of a passing vessel could have dis- r covered either the brig hidden among the reefs, or the men at work among the rocks ; they lay below the ordinary range of the most powerful telescope. Eleven days were spent in preparation, before the Thirteen, with all their infernal power, could reach the foot of the cliffs. The body of the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height of thirty fathoms. Any attempt to climb the sheer wall of granite seemed impossible ; a mouse might as well try to creep up the slippery sides of a plain china vase. Still there was a cleft, a straight line of fissure so fortunately placed that large blocks of wood could be wedged firmly into it at a distance of about a foot apart. Into these blocks the daring workers drove iron cramps, specially made for the purpose, with a broad iron bracket at the outer end, through which a hole had been drilled. Each bracket carried a light deal board which corresponded with a notch made in a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was firmly planted in the beach at their feet. With ingenuity worthy of these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, a skilled mathema- tician, had calculated the angle from which the steps must start ; so that from the middle they rose gradually, like the sticks of a fan, to the top of the cliff, and de- scended in the same fashion to its base. That miraculously light, yet perfectly firm, staircase cost them twenty-two days of toil. A little tinder and the surf of the sea would destroy all trace of it for ever in a single night. A betrayal of the secret was impossible ; and all
304 The Thirteen
search for the violators of the convent was doomed to failure.
At the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer precipice on all sides. The Thirteen, recon- noitring the ground with their glasses from the mast- head, made certain that though the ascent was steep and rough, there would be no difficulty in gaining the convent garden, where the trees were thick enough for a hiding-place. After such great efforts they would not risk the success of their enterprise, and were com- pelled to wait till the moon passed out of her last quarter.
For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out on the rock platform. The singing at vespers and matins filled him with unutterable joy. He stood under the wall to hear the music of the organ, listening intently for one voice among the rest. But in spite of the silence, the confused effect of music was all that reached his ears. In those sweet harmonies defects of execution are lost ; the pure spirit of art comes into direct communication with the spirit of the hearer, making no demand on the attention, no strain on the power of listening. Intolerable memories awoke. All the love within him seemed to break into blossom again at the breath of that music ; he tried to find auguries of happiness in the air. During the last night he sat with his eyes fixed upon an ungrated window, for bars were not needed on the side of the precipice. A light shone there all through the hours ; and that instinct of the heart, which is sometimes true, and as often false, cried within him, ' She is there ! '
' She is certainly there ! To-morrow she will be mine,' he said to himself, and joy blended with the slow tinkling of a bell that began to ring.
Strange unaccountable workings of the heart ! The nun, wasted by yearning love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and vigils ; the woman of nine-and-
The Thirteen
305
twenty, who had passed through heavy trials, was loved more passionately than the light-hearted girl, the woman of four-and-twenty, the sylphide, had ever been. But is there not, for men of vigorous character, something attractive in the sublime expression en- graven on women's faces by the impetuous stirrings of thought and misfortunes of no ignoble kind ? Is there not a beauty of suffering which is the most interesting of all beauty to those men who feel that within them there is an inexhaustible wealth of tender- ness and consoling pity for a creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love ? It is the ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth, pink-and- white beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness. In some faces love awakens amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the ruin made by melancholy ; Montriveau could not but feel drawn to these. For cannot a lover, with the voice of a great longing, call forth a wholly new creature ? a creature athrob with the life but just begun breaks forth for him alone, from the out- ward form that is fair for him, and faded for all the world besides. Does he not love two women ? — One of them, as others see her, is pale and wan and sad ; but the other, the unseen love that his heart knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is adorned in all her glory only for love's high festivals.
The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness sounding faintly from the cell. When he came down to the foot of the cliffs where his friends were waiting, he told them that never in his life had he felt such inthralling bliss, and in the few words there was that unmistakable thrill of repressed strong feeling, that magnificent utterance which all men respect.
That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent in the darkness. Each man carried a poniard, a
u
3o6 The Thirteen
provision of chocolate, and a set of house-breaking tools. They climbed the outer walls with scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery of the convent. Montriveau recognised the long, vaulted gallery through w^hich he vv^ent to the parlour, and remembered the w^indovv^s of the room. His plans were made and adopted in a moment. They would effect an entrance through one of the windows in the Carmelite's half of the parlour, find their way along the corridors, ascertain whether the sister's names were written on the doors, find Sister Theresa's cell, surprise her as she slept, and carry her off, bound and gagged. The programme presented no difficulties to men who combined boldness and a con- vict's dexterity with the knowledge peculiar to men of the world, especially as they would not scruple to give a stab to insure silence.
In two hours the bars were sawn through. Three men stood on guard outside, and two inside the parlour. The rest, barefooted, took up their posts along the corridor. Young Henri de Marsay, the most dexterous man among them, disguised by way of precaution in a Carmelite's robe, exactly like the costume of the convent, led the way, and Montriveau came immediately behind him. The clock struck three just as the two men reached the dormitory cells. They soon saw the posi- tion. Everything was perfectly quiet. With the help of a dark lantern they read the names luckily written on every door, together with the picture of a saint or saints and the mystical words which every nun takes as a kind of motto for the beginning of her new life and the revelation of her last thought. Montriveau reached Sister Theresa's door and read the inscription. Sub invoca- tione Sanctis matris TheresiSy and her motto, Adoremus in esternum. Suddenly his companion laid a hand on his shoulder. A bright light was streaming through the chinks of the door. M. de Ronquerolles came up at that moment.
The Thirteen 307
'All the nuns are in the church,' he saidj ' they are beginning the Office for the Dead.'
' I will stay here,' said Montriveau. ' Go back into the parlour, and shut the door at the end of the passage.'
He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his disguised companion, who let down the veil over his face.
There before them lay the dead Duchess ; her plank bed had been laid on the floor of the outer room of her cell, between two lighted candles. Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay spoke a word or uttered a cry; but they looked into each other's faces. The General's dumb gesture tried to say, ' Let us carry her away ! '
'Quick!' shouted Ronquerolles, 'the procession of nuns is leaving the church. You will be caught! '
With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent parlour, passed through the window, and lowered from the walls before the Abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to take up Sister Theresa's body. The sister left in charge had imprudently left her post ; there were secrets that she longed to know; and so busy was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard nothing, and was horrified when she came back to find that the body was gone. Before the women, in their blank amazement, could think of making a search, the Duchess had been lowered by a cord to the foot of the crags, and Montriveau's companions had destroyed all traces of their work. By nine o'clock that morning there was not a sign to show that either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed, and Sister Theresa's body had been taken on board. The brig came into the port to ship her crew, and sailed that day.
Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoinette de Navarreins. For some hours it seemed as if her dead face was transfigured for him by that
3o8 The Thirteen
unearthly beauty which the calm of death gives to the body before it perishes.
'Look here?' said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reappeared on deck, ' that was a woman once, now it is nothing. Let us tie a cannon ball to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if ever you think of her again, think of her as of some book that you read as a boy.'
* Yes,' assented Montriveau, ' it is nothing now but a dream.'
' That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions ; but as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is only a woman's last love that can satisfy a man's first love.
Pre-Lj£vS<^ue, Geneva,
January 26, 1834. ^
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty at the EuiiiburgL University Press
444^:1
A A 000 320 017 7
M.»'^:.
$M.MM
*:»' j'
«!*>. o^U
it
it
111/
i.
m M
W'lr'^
•jc |
Jl |
|
Vw\ |
*w* |
|
«i ■«■ |
i; |
\\ 1 |
t jy |
... -S M |
|
j<^"f |
nn ■■ |
|
1^' 'd^l |
i 'i |
|
if:^l |
n ''i^ |
{*
pit
W.MMMM.