The countess Sabine, as it had become
customary to call Mme Muffat de Beuville in order
to distinguish her from the count’s mother, who
had died the year before, was wont to receive every
Tuesday in her house in the Rue Miromesnil at the
corner of the Rue de Pentievre. It was a great
square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for
a hundred years or more. On the side of the street
its frontage seemed to slumber, so lofty was it and
dark, so sad and convent-like, with its great outer
shutters, which were nearly always closed. And
at the back in a little dark garden some trees had
grown up and were straining toward the sunlight with
such long slender branches that their tips were visible
above the roof.
This particular Tuesday, toward ten
o’clock in the evening, there were scarcely
a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was
only expecting intimate friends the countess opened
neither the little drawing room nor the dining room.
One felt more at home on such occasions and chatted
round the fire. The drawing room was very large
and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the
garden, from which, on this rainy evening of the close
of April, issued a sensation of damp despite the great
logs burning on the hearth. The sun never shone
down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit
up by a faint greenish light, but at night, when the
lamps and the chandelier were burning, it looked merely
a serious old chamber with its massive mahogany First
Empire furniture, its hangings and chair coverings
of yellow velvet, stamped with a large design.
Entering it, one was in an atmosphere of cold dignity,
of ancient manners, of a vanished age, the air of
which seemed devotional.
Opposite the armchair, however, in
which the count’s mother had died a
square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding,
which stood by the hearthside the Countess
Sabine was seated in a deep and cozy lounge, the red
silk upholsteries of which were soft as eider down.
It was the only piece of modern furniture there, a
fanciful item introduced amid the prevailing severity
and clashing with it.
“So we shall have the shah of
Persia,” the young woman was saying.
They were talking of the crowned heads
who were coming to Paris for the exhibition.
Several ladies had formed a circle round the hearth,
and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had
just fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some
details about the court of Nazr-ed-Din.
“Are you out of sorts, my dear?”
asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of an ironmaster, seeing
the countess shivering slightly and growing pale as
she did so.
“Oh no, not at all,” replied
the latter, smiling. “I felt a little cold.
This drawing room takes so long to warm.”
And with that she raised her melancholy
eyes and scanned the walls from floor to ceiling.
Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-looking
girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted
the large footstool on which she was sitting and silently
came and propped up one of the logs which had rolled
from its place. But Mme de Chezelles, a convent
friend of Sabine’s and her junior by five years,
exclaimed:
“Dear me, I would gladly be
possessed of a drawing room such as yours! At
any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They
only build boxes nowadays. Oh, if I were in your
place!”
She ran giddily on and with lively
gestures explained how she would alter the hangings,
the seats everything, in fact. Then
she would give balls to which all Paris should run.
Behind her seat her husband, a magistrate, stood listening
with serious air. It was rumored that she deceived
him quite openly, but people pardoned her offense and
received her just the same, because, they said, “she’s
not answerable for her actions.”
“Oh that Leonide!” the
Countess Sabine contented herself by murmuring, smiling
her faint smile the while.
With a languid movement she eked out
the thought that was in her. After having lived
there seventeen years she certainly would not alter
her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain
just such as her mother-in-law had wished to preserve
it during her lifetime. Then returning to the
subject of conversation:
“I have been assured,”
she said, “that we shall also have the king of
Prussia and the emperor of Russia.”
“Yes, some very fine fêtes are
promised,” said Mme du Joncquoy.
The banker Steiner, not long since
introduced into this circle by Leonide de Chezelles,
who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian society,
was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring
with much adroitness to elicit news about a movement
on the stock exchange of which he had his suspicions,
while the Count Muffat, standing in front of them,
was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he
did so, even grayer than was his wont.
Four or five young men formed another
group near the door round the Count Xavier de Vandeuvres,
who in a low tone was telling them an anecdote.
It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking
with laughter. Companionless in the center of
the room, a stout man, a chief clerk at the Ministry
of the Interior, sat heavily in an armchair, dozing
with his eyes open. But when one of the young
men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres
raised his voice.
“You are too much of a skeptic,
Foucarmont; you’ll spoil all your pleasures
that way.”
And he returned to the ladies with
a laugh. Last scion of a great family, of feminine
manners and witty tongue, he was at that time running
through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite
which nothing could appease. His racing stable,
which was one of the best known in Paris, cost him
a fabulous amount of money; his betting losses at the
Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number
of pounds, while taking one year with another, his
mistresses would be always devouring now a farm, now
some acres of arable land or forest, which amounted,
in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his vast
estates in Picardy.
“I advise you to call other
people skeptics! Why, you don’t believe
a thing yourself,” said Leonide, making shift
to find him a little space in which to sit down at
her side.
“It’s you who spoil your own pleasures.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “I wish
to make others benefit by my experience.”
But the company imposed silence on
him: he was scandalizing M. Venot. And,
the ladies having changed their positions, a little
old man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile,
became visible in the depths of an easy chair.
There he sat as comfortably as in his own house, listening
to everybody’s remarks and making none himself.
With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means
scandalized. Vandeuvres once more assumed his
dignified bearing and added gravely:
“Monsieur Venot is fully aware
that I believe what it is one’s duty to believe.”
It was an act of faith, and even Leonide
appeared satisfied. The young men at the end
of the room no longer laughed; the company were old
fogies, and amusement was not to be found there.
A cold breath of wind had passed over them, and amid
the ensuing silence Steiner’s nasal voice became
audible. The deputy’s discreet answers were
at last driving him to desperation. For a second
or two the Countess Sabine looked at the fire; then
she resumed the conversation.
“I saw the king of Prussia at
Baden-Baden last year. He’s still full of
vigor for his age.”
“Count Bismarck is to accompany
him,” said Mme du Joncquoy. “Do you
know the count? I lunched with him at my brother’s
ages ago, when he was representative of Prussia in
Paris. There’s a man now whose latest successes
I cannot in the least understand.”
“But why?” asked Mme Chantereau.
“Good gracious, how am I to
explain? He doesn’t please me. His
appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides,
so far as I am concerned, I find him stupid.”
With that the whole room spoke of
Count Bismarck, and opinions differed considerably.
Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company that he
was great in his cups and at play. But when the
discussion was at its height the door was opened,
and Hector de la Falois made his appearance.
Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the
countess and, bowing:
“Madame,” he said, “I
have not forgotten your extremely kind invitation.”
She smiled and made a pretty little
speech. The journalist, after bowing to the count,
stood for some moments in the middle of the drawing
room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly
looked rather out of his element. But Vandeuvres
turned and came and shook hands with him. And
forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and with a
sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed
him and said in a low voice:
“It’s tomorrow. Are you going?”
“Egad, yes.”
“At midnight, at her house.
“I know, I know. I’m going with Blanche.”
He wanted to escape and return to
the ladies in order to urge yet another reason in
M. de Bismarck’s favor. But Fauchery detained
him.
“You never will guess whom she has charged me
to invite.”
And with a slight nod he indicated
Count Muffat, who was just then discussing a knotty
point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.
“It’s impossible,”
said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in his
tones. “My word on it! I had to swear
that I would bring him to her. Indeed, that’s
one of my reasons for coming here.”
Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres,
hurriedly rejoining the circle of ladies, cried out:
“I declare that on the contrary
Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly witty. For
instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic
thing in my presence.”
La Faloise meanwhile had heard the
few rapid sentences thus whisperingly interchanged,
and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an explanation
which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they
talking, and what were they going to do at midnight
tomorrow? He did not leave his cousin’s
side again. The latter had gone and seated himself.
He was especially interested by the Countess Sabine.
Her name had often been mentioned in his presence,
and he knew that, having been married at the age of
seventeen, she must now be thirty-four and that since
her marriage she had passed a cloistered existence
with her husband and her mother-in-law. In society
some spoke of her as a woman of religious chastity,
while others pitied her and recalled to memory her
charming bursts of laughter and the burning glances
of her great eyes in the days prior to her imprisonment
in this old town house. Fauchery scrutinized
her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain
who had recently died in Mexico, had, on the very
eve of his departure, made him one of those gross
postprandial confessions, of which even the most prudent
among men are occasionally guilty. But of this
he only retained a vague recollection; they had dined
not wisely but too well that evening, and when he
saw the countess, in her black dress and with her quiet
smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he certainly
had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed
behind her threw into clear relief her dark, delicate,
plump side face, wherein a certain heaviness in the
contours of the mouth alone indicated a species of
imperious sensuality.
“What do they want with their
Bismarck?” muttered La Faloise, whose constant
pretense it was to be bored in good society. “One’s
ready to kick the bucket here. A pretty idea
of yours it was to want to come!”
Fauchery questioned him abruptly.
“Now tell me, does the countess admit someone
to her embraces?”
“Oh dear, no, no! My dear
fellow!” he stammered, manifestly taken aback
and quite forgetting his pose. “Where d’you
think we are?”
After which he was conscious of a
want of up-to-dateness in this outburst of indignation
and, throwing himself back on a great sofa, he added:
“Gad! I say no! But
I don’t know much about it. There’s
a little chap out there, Foucarmont they call him,
who’s to be met with everywhere and at every
turn. One’s seen faster men than that, though,
you bet. However, it doesn’t concern me,
and indeed, all I know is that if the countess indulges
in high jinks she’s still pretty sly about it,
for the thing never gets about nobody talks.”
Then although Fauchery did not take
the trouble to question him, he told him all he knew
about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of the
ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth,
they both spoke in subdued tones, and, seeing them
there with their white cravats and gloves, one might
have supposed them to be discussing in chosen phraseology
some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then,
whom La Faloise had been well acquainted with, was
an insufferable old lady, always hand in glove with
the priests. She had the grand manner, besides,
and an authoritative way of comporting herself, which
bent everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he
was an old man’s child; his father, a general,
had been created count by Napoleon I, and naturally
he had found himself in favor after the second of
December. He hadn’t much gaiety of manner
either, but he passed for a very honest man of straightforward
intentions and understanding. Add to these a
code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty conception
of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his
virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels.
It was the Mamma Muffat who had given him this precious
education with its daily visits to the confessional,
its complete absence of escapades and of all that is
meant by youth. He was a practicing Christian
and had attacks of faith of such fiery violence that
they might be likened to accesses of burning fever.
Finally, in order to add a last touch to the picture,
La Faloise whispered something in his cousin’s
ear.
“You don’t say so!” said the latter.
“On my word of honor, they swore
it was true! He was still like that when he married.”
Fauchery chuckled as he looked at
the count, whose face, with its fringe of whiskers
and absence of mustaches, seemed to have grown squarer
and harder now that he was busy quoting figures to
the writhing, struggling Steiner.
“My word, he’s got a phiz
for it!” murmured Fauchery. “A pretty
present he made his wife! Poor little thing,
how he must have bored her! She knows nothing
about anything, I’ll wager!”
Just then the Countess Sabine was
saying something to him. But he did not hear
her, so amusing and extraordinary did he esteem the
Muffats’ case. She repeated the question.
“Monsieur Fauchery, have you
not published a sketch of Monsieur de Bismarck?
You spoke with him once?”
He got up briskly and approached the
circle of ladies, endeavoring to collect himself and
soon with perfect ease of manner finding an answer:
“Dear me, madame, I assure
you I wrote that ‘portrait’ with the help
of biographies which had been published in Germany.
I have never seen Monsieur de Bismarck.”
He remained beside the countess and,
while talking with her, continued his meditations.
She did not look her age; one would have set her down
as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above
all, which were filled with the dark blue shadow of
her long eyelashes, retained the glowing light of
youth. Bred in a divided family, so that she used
to spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard, another
with the marquise, she had been married very young,
urged on, doubtless, by her father, whom she embarrassed
after her mother’s death. A terrible man
was the marquis, a man about whom strange tales were
beginning to be told, and that despite his lofty piety!
Fauchery asked if he should have the honor of meeting
him. Certainly her father was coming, but only
very late; he had so much work on hand! The journalist
thought he knew where the old gentleman passed his
evenings and looked grave. But a mole, which he
noticed close to her mouth on the countess’s
left cheek, surprised him. Nana had precisely
the same mole. It was curious. Tiny hairs
curled up on it, only they were golden in Nana’s
case, black as jet in this. Ah well, never mind!
This woman enjoyed nobody’s embraces.
“I have always felt a wish to
know Queen Augusta,” she said. “They
say she is so good, so devout. Do you think she
will accompany the king?”
“It is not thought that she will, madame,”
he replied.
She had no lovers: the thing
was only too apparent. One had only to look at
her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting
so insignificant and constrained on her footstool.
That sepulchral drawing room of hers, which exhaled
odors suggestive of being in a church, spoke as plainly
as words could of the iron hand, the austere mode of
existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing
suggestive of her own personality in that ancient
abode, black with the damps of years. It was
Muffat who made himself felt there, who dominated his
surroundings with his devotional training, his penances
and his fasts. But the sight of the little old
gentleman with the black teeth and subtle smile whom
he suddenly discovered in his armchair behind the group
of ladies afforded him a yet more decisive argument.
He knew the personage. It was Theophile Venot,
a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church
cases. He had left off practice with a handsome
fortune and was now leading a sufficiently mysterious
existence, for he was received everywhere, treated
with great deference and even somewhat feared, as
though he had been the representative of a mighty force,
an occult power, which was felt to be at his back.
Nevertheless, his behavior was very humble. He
was churchwarden at the Madeleine Church and had simply
accepted the post of deputy mayor at the town house
of the Ninth Arrondissement in order, as he said,
to have something to do in his leisure time.
Deuce take it, the countess was well guarded; there
was nothing to be done in that quarter.
“You’re right, it’s
enough to make one kick the bucket here,” said
Fauchery to his cousin when he had made good his escape
from the circle of ladies. “We’ll
hook it!”
But Steiner, deserted at last by the
Count Muffat and the deputy, came up in a fury.
Drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and he
grumbled huskily:
“Gad! Let ’em tell
me nothing, if nothing they want to tell me. I
shall find people who will talk.”
Then he pushed the journalist into
a corner and, altering his tone, said in accents of
victory:
“It’s tomorrow, eh? I’m of
the party, my bully!”
“Indeed!” muttered Fauchery with some
astonishment.
“You didn’t know about
it. Oh, I had lots of bother to find her at home.
Besides, Mignon never would leave me alone.”
“But they’re to be there, are the Mignons.”
“Yes, she told me so. In
fact, she did receive my visit, and she invited me.
Midnight punctually, after the play.”
The banker was beaming. He winked
and added with a peculiar emphasis on the words:
“You’ve worked it, eh?”
“Eh, what?” said Fauchery,
pretending not to understand him. “She wanted
to thank me for my article, so she came and called
on me.”
“Yes, yes. You fellows
are fortunate. You get rewarded. By the by,
who pays the piper tomorrow?”
The journalist made a slight outward
movement with his arms, as though he would intimate
that no one had ever been able to find out. But
Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew M. de Bismarck.
Mme du Joncquoy had almost convinced herself of the
truth of her suppositions; she concluded with these
words:
“He gave me an unpleasant impression.
I think his face is evil. But I am quite willing
to believe that he has a deal of wit. It would
account for his successes.”
“Without doubt,” said
the banker with a faint smile. He was a Jew from
Frankfort.
Meanwhile La Faloise at last made
bold to question his cousin. He followed him
up and got inside his guard:
“There’s supper at a woman’s
tomorrow evening? With which of them, eh?
With which of them?”
Fauchery motioned to him that they
were overheard and must respect the conventions here.
The door had just been opened anew, and an old lady
had come in, followed by a young man in whom the journalist
recognized the truant schoolboy, perpetrator of the
famous and as yet unforgotten “très chic”
of the Blonde Venus first night. This lady’s
arrival caused a stir among the company. The
Countess Sabine had risen briskly from her seat in
order to go and greet her, and she had taken both her
hands in hers and addressed her as her “dear
Madame Hugon.” Seeing that his cousin viewed
this little episode with some curiosity, La Faloise
sought to arouse his interest and in a few brief phrases
explained the position. Mme Hugon, widow of a
notary, lived in retirement at Les Fondettes, an old
estate of her family’s in the neighborhood of
Orleans, but she also kept up a small establishment
in Paris in a house belonging to her in the Rue de
Richelieu and was now passing some weeks there in
order to settle her youngest son, who was reading the
law and in his “first year.” In old
times she had been a dear friend of the Marquise de
Chouard and had assisted at the birth of the countess,
who, prior to her marriage, used to stay at her house
for months at a time and even now was quite familiarly
treated by her.
“I have brought Georges to see
you,” said Mme Hugon to Sabine. “He’s
grown, I trust.”
The young man with his clear eyes
and the fair curls which suggested a girl dressed
up as a boy bowed easily to the countess and reminded
her of a bout of battledore and shuttlecock they had
had together two years ago at Les Fondettes.
“Philippe is not in Paris?” asked Count
Muffat.
“Dear me, no!” replied
the old lady. “He is always in garrison
at Bourges.” She had seated herself and
began talking with considerable pride of her eldest
son, a great big fellow who, after enlisting in a
fit of waywardness, had of late very rapidly attained
the rank of lieutenant. All the ladies behaved
to her with respectful sympathy, and conversation
was resumed in a tone at once more amiable and more
refined. Fauchery, at sight of that respectable
Mme Hugon, that motherly face lit up with such a kindly
smile beneath its broad tresses of white hair, thought
how foolish he had been to suspect the Countess Sabine
even for an instant.
Nevertheless, the big chair with the
red silk upholsteries in which the countess sat had
attracted his attention. Its style struck him
as crude, not to say fantastically suggestive, in
that dim old drawing room. Certainly it was not
the count who had inveigled thither that nest of voluptuous
idleness. One might have described it as an experiment,
marking the birth of an appetite and of an enjoyment.
Then he forgot where he was, fell into brown study
and in thought even harked back to that vague confidential
announcement imparted to him one evening in the dining
room of a restaurant. Impelled by a sort of sensuous
curiosity, he had always wanted an introduction into
the Muffats’ circle, and now that his friend
was in Mexico through all eternity, who could tell
what might happen? “We shall see,”
he thought. It was a folly, doubtless, but the
idea kept tormenting him; he felt himself drawn on
and his animal nature aroused. The big chair
had a rumpled look its nether cushions
had been tumbled, a fact which now amused him.
“Well, shall we be off?”
asked La Faloise, mentally vowing that once outside
he would find out the name of the woman with whom people
were going to sup.
“All in good time,” replied Fauchery.
But he was no longer in any hurry
and excused himself on the score of the invitation
he had been commissioned to give and had as yet not
found a convenient opportunity to mention. The
ladies were chatting about an assumption of the veil,
a very touching ceremony by which the whole of Parisian
society had for the last three days been greatly moved.
It was the eldest daughter of the Baronne de Fougeray,
who, under stress of an irresistible vocation, had
just entered the Carmelite Convent. Mme Chantereau,
a distant cousin of the Fougerays, told how the baroness
had been obliged to take to her bed the day after
the ceremony, so overdone was she with weeping.
“I had a very good place,”
declared Leonide. “I found it interesting.”
Nevertheless, Mme Hugon pitied the
poor mother. How sad to lose a daughter in such
a way!
“I am accused of being overreligious,”
she said in her quiet, frank manner, “but that
does not prevent me thinking the children very cruel
who obstinately commit such suicide.”
“Yes, it’s a terrible
thing,” murmured the countess, shivering a little,
as became a chilly person, and huddling herself anew
in the depths of her big chair in front of the fire.
Then the ladies fell into a discussion.
But their voices were discreetly attuned, while light
trills of laughter now and again interrupted the gravity
of their talk. The two lamps on the chimney piece,
which had shades of rose-colored lace, cast a feeble
light over them while on scattered pieces of furniture
there burned but three other lamps, so that the great
drawing room remained in soft shadow.
Steiner was getting bored. He
was describing to Fauchery an escapade of that little
Mme de Chezelles, whom he simply referred to as Leonide.
“A blackguard woman,” he said, lowering
his voice behind the ladies’ armchairs.
Fauchery looked at her as she sat quaintly perched,
in her voluminous ball dress of pale blue satin, on
the corner of her armchair. She looked as slight
and impudent as a boy, and he ended by feeling astonished
at seeing her there. People comported themselves
better at Caroline Hequet’s, whose mother had
arranged her house on serious principles. Here
was a perfect subject for an article. What a strange
world was this world of Paris! The most rigid
circles found themselves invaded. Evidently that
silent Theophile Venot, who contented himself by smiling
and showing his ugly teeth, must have been a legacy
from the late countess. So, too, must have been
such ladies of mature age as Mme Chantereau and Mme
du Joncquoy, besides four or five old gentlemen who
sat motionless in corners. The Count Muffat attracted
to the house a series of functionaries, distinguished
by the immaculate personal appearance which was at
that time required of the men at the Tuileries.
Among others there was the chief clerk, who still sat
solitary in the middle of the room with his closely
shorn cheeks, his vacant glance and his coat so tight
of fit that he could scarce venture to move.
Almost all the young men and certain individuals with
distinguished, aristocratic manners were the Marquis
de Chouard’s contribution to the circle, he
having kept touch with the Legitimist party after making
his peace with the empire on his entrance into the
Council of State. There remained Leonide de Chezelles
and Steiner, an ugly little knot against which Mme
Hugon’s elderly and amiable serenity stood out
in strange contrast. And Fauchery, having sketched
out his article, named this last group “Countess
Sabine’s little clique.”
“On another occasion,”
continued Steiner in still lower tones, “Leonide
got her tenor down to Montauban. She was living
in the Chateau de Beaurecueil, two leagues farther
off, and she used to come in daily in a carriage and
pair in order to visit him at the Lion d’Or,
where he had put up. The carriage used to wait
at the door, and Leonide would stay for hours in the
house, while a crowd gathered round and looked at the
horses.”
There was a pause in the talk, and
some solemn moments passed silently by in the lofty
room. Two young men were whispering, but they
ceased in their turn, and the hushed step of Count
Muffat was alone audible as he crossed the floor.
The lamps seemed to have paled; the fire was going
out; a stern shadow fell athwart the old friends of
the house where they sat in the chairs they had occupied
there for forty years back. It was as though
in a momentary pause of conversation the invited guests
had become suddenly aware that the count’s mother,
in all her glacial stateliness, had returned among
them.
But the Countess Sabine had once more resumed:
“Well, at last the news of it
got about. The young man was likely to die, and
that would explain the poor child’s adoption
of the religious life. Besides, they say that
Monsieur de Fougeray would never have given his consent
to the marriage.”
“They say heaps of other things
too,” cried Leonide giddily.
She fell a-laughing; she refused to
talk. Sabine was won over by this gaiety and
put her handkerchief up to her lips. And in the
vast and solemn room their laughter sounded a note
which struck Fauchery strangely, the note of delicate
glass breaking. Assuredly here was the first
beginning of the “little rift.” Everyone
began talking again. Mme du Joncquoy demurred;
Mme Chantereau knew for certain that a marriage had
been projected but that matters had gone no further;
the men even ventured to give their opinions.
For some minutes the conversation was a babel of opinions,
in which the divers elements of the circle, whether
Bonapartist or Legitimist or merely worldly and skeptical,
appeared to jostle one another simultaneously.
Estelle had rung to order wood to be put on the fire;
the footman turned up the lamps; the room seemed to
wake from sleep. Fauchery began smiling, as though
once more at his ease.
“Egad, they become the brides
of God when they couldn’t be their cousin’s,”
said Vandeuvres between his teeth.
The subject bored him, and he had rejoined Fauchery.
“My dear fellow, have you ever
seen a woman who was really loved become a nun?”
He did not wait for an answer, for
he had had enough of the topic, and in a hushed voice:
“Tell me,” he said, “how
many of us will there be tomorrow? There’ll
be the Mignons, Steiner, yourself, Blanche and I;
who else?”
“Caroline, I believe, and Simonne
and Gaga without doubt. One never knows exactly,
does one? On such occasions one expects the party
will number twenty, and you’re really thirty.”
Vandeuvres, who was looking at the
ladies, passed abruptly to another subject:
“She must have been very nice-looking,
that Du Joncquoy woman, some fifteen years ago.
Poor Estelle has grown lankier than ever. What
a nice lath to put into a bed!”
But interrupting himself, he returned
to the subject of tomorrow’s supper.
“What’s so tiresome of
those shows is that it’s always the same set
of women. One wants a novelty. Do try and
invent a new girl. By Jove, happy thought!
I’ll go and beseech that stout man to bring the
woman he was trotting about the other evening at the
Varietés.”
He referred to the chief clerk, sound
asleep in the middle of the drawing room. Fauchery,
afar off, amused himself by following this delicate
negotiation. Vandeuvres had sat himself down by
the stout man, who still looked very sedate.
For some moments they both appeared to be discussing
with much propriety the question before the house,
which was, “How can one discover the exact state
of feeling that urges a young girl to enter into the
religious life?” Then the count returned with
the remark:
“It’s impossible.
He swears she’s straight. She’d refuse,
and yet I would have wagered that I once saw her at
Laure’s.”
“Eh, what? You go to Laure’s?”
murmured Fauchery with a chuckle. “You
venture your reputation in places like that? I
was under the impression that it was only we poor
devils of outsiders who ”
“Ah, dear boy, one ought to see every side of
life.”
Then they sneered and with sparkling
eyes they compared notes about the table d’hote
in the Rue des Martyrs, where big Laure Piedefer
ran a dinner at three francs a head for little women
in difficulties. A nice hole, where all the little
women used to kiss Laure on the lips! And as
the Countess Sabine, who had overheard a stray word
or two, turned toward them, they started back, rubbing
shoulders in excited merriment. They had not
noticed that Georges Hugon was close by and that he
was listening to them, blushing so hotly the while
that a rosy flush had spread from his ears to his
girlish throat. The infant was full of shame
and of ecstasy. From the moment his mother had
turned him loose in the room he had been hovering
in the wake of Mme de Chezelles, the only woman present
who struck him as being the thing. But after all
is said and done, Nana licked her to fits!
“Yesterday evening,” Mme
Hugon was saying, “Georges took me to the play.
Yes, we went to the Varietés, where I certainly
had not set foot for the last ten years. That
child adores music. As to me, I wasn’t in
the least amused, but he was so happy! They put
extraordinary pieces on the stage nowadays. Besides,
music delights me very little, I confess.”
“What! You don’t
love music, madame?” cried Mme du Joncquoy,
lifting her eyes to heaven. “Is it possible
there should be people who don’t love music?”
The exclamation of surprise was general.
No one had dropped a single word concerning the performance
at the Varietés, at which the good Mme Hugon
had not understood any of the allusions. The ladies
knew the piece but said nothing about it, and with
that they plunged into the realm of sentiment and
began discussing the masters in a tone of refined and
ecstatical admiration. Mme du Joncquoy was not
fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau
stood up for the Italians. The ladies’
voices had turned soft and languishing, and in front
of the hearth one might have fancied one’s self
listening in meditative, religious retirement to the
faint, discreet music of a little chapel.
“Now let’s see,”
murmured Vandeuvres, bringing Fauchery back into the
middle of the drawing room, “notwithstanding
it all, we must invent a woman for tomorrow.
Shall we ask Steiner about it?”
“Oh, when Steiner’s got
hold of a woman,” said the journalist, “it’s
because Paris has done with her.”
Vandeuvres, however, was searching about on every
side.
“Wait a bit,” he continued,
“the other day I met Foucarmont with a charming
blonde. I’ll go and tell him to bring her.”
And he called to Foucarmont.
They exchanged a few words rapidly. There must
have been some sort of complication, for both of them,
moving carefully forward and stepping over the dresses
of the ladies, went off in quest of another young
man with whom they continued the discussion in the
embrasure of a window. Fauchery was left to himself
and had just decided to proceed to the hearth, where
Mme du Joncquoy was announcing that she never heard
Weber played without at the same time seeing lakes,
forests and sunrises over landscapes steeped in dew,
when a hand touched his shoulder and a voice behind
him remarked:
“It’s not civil of you.”
“What d’you mean?” he asked, turning
round and recognizing La Faloise.
“Why, about that supper tomorrow. You might
easily have got me invited.”
Fauchery was at length about to state
his reasons when Vandeuvres came back to tell him:
“It appears it isn’t a
girl of Foucarmont’s. It’s that man’s
flame out there. She won’t be able to come.
What a piece of bad luck! But all the same I’ve
pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he’s
going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal.”
“Is it not true, Monsieur de
Vandeuvres,” asked Mme Chantereau, raising her
voice, “that Wagner’s music was hissed
last Sunday?”
“Oh, frightfully, madame,”
he made answer, coming forward with his usual exquisite
politeness.
Then, as they did not detain him,
he moved off and continued whispering in the journalist’s
ear:
“I’m going to press some
more of them. These young fellows must know some
little ladies.”
With that he was observed to accost
men and to engage them in conversation in his usual
amiable and smiling way in every corner of the drawing
room. He mixed with the various groups, said something
confidently to everyone and walked away again with
a sly wink and a secret signal or two. It looked
as though he were giving out a watchword in that easy
way of his. The news went round; the place of
meeting was announced, while the ladies’ sentimental
dissertations on music served to conceal the small,
feverish rumor of these recruiting operations.
“No, do not speak of your Germans,”
Mme Chantereau was saying. “Song is gaiety;
song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber
of Seville?”
“She was delicious!” murmured
Leonide, who strummed none but operatic airs on her
piano.
Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had
rung. When on Tuesdays the number of visitors
was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.
While directing a footman to clear a round table the
countess followed the Count de Vandeuvres with her
eyes. She still smiled that vague smile which
slightly disclosed her white teeth, and as the count
passed she questioned him.
“What are you plotting, Monsieur de Vandeuvres?”
“What am I plotting, madame?” he
answered quietly. “Nothing at all.”
“Really! I saw you so busy. Pray,
wait, you shall make yourself useful!”
She placed an album in his hands and
asked him to put it on the piano. But he found
means to inform Fauchery in a low whisper that they
would have Tatan Nene, the most finely developed girl
that winter, and Maria Blond, the same who had just
made her first appearance at the Folies-Dramatiques.
Meanwhile La Faloise stopped him at every step in
hopes of receiving an invitation. He ended by
offering himself, and Vandeuvres engaged him in the
plot at once; only he made him promise to bring Clarisse
with him, and when La Faloise pretended to scruple
about certain points he quieted him by the remark:
“Since I invite you that’s enough!”
Nevertheless, La Faloise would have
much liked to know the name of the hostess. But
the countess had recalled Vandeuvres and was questioning
him as to the manner in which the English made tea.
He often betook himself to England, where his horses
ran. Then as though he had been inwardly following
up quite a laborious train of thought during his remarks,
he broke in with the question:
“And the marquis, by the by? Are we not
to see him?”
“Oh, certainly you will!
My father made me a formal promise that he would come,”
replied the countess. “But I’m beginning
to be anxious. His duties will have kept him.”
Vandeuvres smiled a discreet smile.
He, too, seemed to have his doubts as to the exact
nature of the Marquis de Chouard’s duties.
Indeed, he had been thinking of a pretty woman whom
the marquis occasionally took into the country with
him. Perhaps they could get her too.
In the meantime Fauchery decided that
the moment had come in which to risk giving Count
Muff his invitation. The evening, in fact, was
drawing to a close.
“Are you serious?” asked
Vandeuvres, who thought a joke was intended.
“Extremely serious. If
I don’t execute my commission she’ll tear
my eyes out. It’s a case of landing her
fish, you know.”
“Well then, I’ll help you, dear boy.”
Eleven o’clock struck.
Assisted by her daughter, the countess was pouring
out the tea, and as hardly any guests save intimate
friends had come, the cups and the platefuls of little
cakes were being circulated without ceremony.
Even the ladies did not leave their armchairs in front
of the fire and sat sipping their tea and nibbling
cakes which they held between their finger tips.
From music the talk had declined to purveyors.
Boissier was the only person for sweetmeats and Catherine
for ices. Mme Chantereau, however, was all for
Latinville. Speech grew more and more indolent,
and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room to sleep.
Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine
the deputy, whom he held in a state of blockade in
the corner of a settee. M. Venot, whose teeth
must have been ruined by sweet things, was eating
little dry cakes, one after the other, with a small
nibbling sound suggestive of a mouse, while the chief
clerk, his nose in a teacup, seemed never to be going
to finish its contents. As to the countess, she
went in a leisurely way from one guest to another,
never pressing them, indeed, only pausing a second
or two before the gentlemen whom she viewed with an
air of dumb interrogation before she smiled and passed
on. The great fire had flushed all her face, and
she looked as if she were the sister of her daughter,
who appeared so withered and ungainly at her side.
When she drew near Fauchery, who was chatting with
her husband and Vandeuvres, she noticed that they
grew suddenly silent; accordingly she did not stop
but handed the cup of tea she was offering to Georges
Hugon beyond them.
“It’s a lady who desires
your company at supper,” the journalist gaily
continued, addressing Count Muffat.
The last-named, whose face had worn
its gray look all the evening, seemed very much surprised.
What lady was it?
“Oh, Nana!” said Vandeuvres,
by way of forcing the invitation.
The count became more grave than before.
His eyelids trembled just perceptibly, while a look
of discomfort, such as headache produces, hovered
for a moment athwart his forehead.
“But I’m not acquainted with that lady,”
he murmured.
“Come, come, you went to her house,” remarked
Vandeuvres.
“What d’you say?
I went to her house? Oh yes, the other day, in
behalf of the Benevolent Organization. I had
forgotten about it. But, no matter, I am not
acquainted with her, and I cannot accept.”
He had adopted an icy expression in
order to make them understand that this jest did not
appear to him to be in good taste. A man of his
position did not sit down at tables of such women as
that. Vandeuvres protested: it was to be
a supper party of dramatic and artistic people, and
talent excused everything. But without listening
further to the arguments urged by Fauchery, who spoke
of a dinner where the Prince of Scots, the son of
a queen, had sat down beside an ex-music-hall singer,
the count only emphasized his refusal. In so doing,
he allowed himself, despite his great politeness,
to be guilty of an irritated gesture.
Georges and La Faloise, standing in
front of each other drinking their tea, had overheard
the two or three phrases exchanged in their immediate
neighborhood.
“Jove, it’s at Nana’s
then,” murmured La Faloise. “I might
have expected as much!”
Georges said nothing, but he was all
aflame. His fair hair was in disorder; his blue
eyes shone like tapers, so fiercely had the vice,
which for some days past had surrounded him, inflamed
and stirred his blood. At last he was going to
plunge into all that he had dreamed of!
“I don’t know the address,” La Faloise
resumed.
“She lives on a third floor
in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the Rue de l’Arcade
and the Rue Pesquier,” said Georges all in a
breath.
And when the other looked at him in
much astonishment, he added, turning very red and
fit to sink into the ground with embarrassment and
conceit:
“I’m of the party. She invited me
this morning.”
But there was a great stir in the
drawing room, and Vandeuvres and Fauchery could not
continue pressing the count. The Marquis de Chouard
had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet
him. He had moved painfully forward, his legs
failing under him, and he now stood in the middle
of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, as
though he had just come out of some dark alley and
were blinded by the brightness of the lamps.
“I scarcely hoped to see you
tonight, Father,” said the countess. “I
should have been anxious till the morning.”
He looked at her without answering,
as a man might who fails to understand. His nose,
which loomed immense on his shorn face, looked like
a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down.
Seeing him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion,
said pitying things to him.
“You work too hard. You
ought to rest yourself. At our age we ought to
leave work to the young people.”
“Work! Ah yes, to be sure,
work!” he stammered at last. “Always
plenty of work.”
He began to pull himself together,
straightening up his bent figure and passing his hand,
as was his wont, over his scant gray hair, of which
a few locks strayed behind his ears.
“At what are you working as
late as this?” asked Mme du Joncquoy. “I
thought you were at the financial minister’s
reception?”
But the countess intervened with:
“My father had to study the question of a projected
law.”
“Yes, a projected law,”
he said; “exactly so, a projected law. I
shut myself up for that reason. It refers to
work in factories, and I was anxious for a proper
observance of the Lord’s day of rest. It
is really shameful that the government is unwilling
to act with vigor in the matter. Churches are
growing empty; we are running headlong to ruin.”
Vandeuvres had exchanged glances with
Fauchery. They both happened to be behind the
marquis, and they were scanning him suspiciously.
When Vandeuvres found an opportunity to take him aside
and to speak to him about the good-looking creature
he was in the habit of taking down into the country,
the old man affected extreme surprise. Perhaps
someone had seen him with the Baroness Decker, at
whose house at Viroflay he sometimes spent a day or
so. Vandeuvres’s sole vengeance was an abrupt
question:
“Tell me, where have you been
straying to? Your elbow is covered with cobwebs
and plaster.”
“My elbow,” he muttered,
slightly disturbed. “Yes indeed, it’s
true. A speck or two, I must have come in for
them on my way down from my office.”
Several people were taking their departure.
It was close on midnight. Two footmen were noiselessly
removing the empty cups and the plates with cakes.
In front of the hearth the ladies had re-formed and,
at the same time, narrowed their circle and were chatting
more carelessly than before in the languid atmosphere
peculiar to the close of a party. The very room
was going to sleep, and slowly creeping shadows were
cast by its walls. It was then Fauchery spoke
of departure. Yet he once more forgot his intention
at sight of the Countess Sabine. She was resting
from her cares as hostess, and as she sat in her wonted
seat, silent, her eyes fixed on a log which was turning
into embers, her face appeared so white and so impassable
that doubt again possessed him. In the glow of
the fire the small black hairs on the mole at the corner
of her lip became white. It was Nana’s
very mole, down to the color of the hair. He
could not refrain from whispering something about it
in Vandeuvres’s ear. Gad, it was true;
the other had never noticed it before. And both
men continued this comparison of Nana and the countess.
They discovered a vague resemblance about the chin
and the mouth, but the eyes were not at all alike.
Then, too, Nana had a good-natured expression, while
with the countess it was hard to decide she
might have been a cat, sleeping with claws withdrawn
and paws stirred by a scarce-perceptible nervous quiver.
“All the same, one could have her,” declared
Fauchery.
Vandeuvres stripped her at a glance.
“Yes, one could, all the same,”
he said. “But I think nothing of the thighs,
you know. Will you bet she has no thighs?”
He stopped, for Fauchery touched him
briskly on the arm and showed him Estelle, sitting
close to them on her footstool. They had raised
their voices without noticing her, and she must have
overheard them. Nevertheless, she continued sitting
there stiff and motionless, not a hair having lifted
on her thin neck, which was that of a girl who has
shot up all too quickly. Thereupon they retired
three or four paces, and Vandeuvres vowed that the
countess was a very honest woman. Just then voices
were raised in front of the hearth. Mme du Joncquoy
was saying:
“I was willing to grant you
that Monsieur de Bismarck was perhaps a witty man.
Only, if you go as far as to talk of genius ”
The ladies had come round again to
their earliest topic of conversation.
“What the deuce! Still
Monsieur de Bismarck!” muttered Fauchery.
“This time I make my escape for good and all.”
“Wait a bit,” said Vandeuvres,
“we must have a definite no from the count.”
The Count Muffat was talking to his
father-in-law and a certain serious-looking gentleman.
Vandeuvres drew him away and renewed the invitation,
backing it up with the information that he was to be
at the supper himself. A man might go anywhere;
no one could think of suspecting evil where at most
there could only be curiosity. The count listened
to these arguments with downcast eyes and expressionless
face. Vandeuvres felt him to be hesitating when
the Marquis de Chouard approached with a look of interrogation.
And when the latter was informed of the question in
hand and Fauchery had invited him in his turn, he
looked at his son-in-law furtively. There ensued
an embarrassed silence, but both men encouraged one
another and would doubtless have ended by accepting
had not Count Muffat perceived M. Venot’s gaze
fixed upon him. The little old man was no longer
smiling; his face was cadaverous, his eyes bright
and keen as steel.
“No,” replied the count
directly, in so decisive a tone that further insistence
became impossible.
Then the marquis refused with even
greater severity of expression. He talked morality.
The aristocratic classes ought to set a good example.
Fauchery smiled and shook hands with Vandeuvres.
He did not wait for him and took his departure immediately,
for he was due at his newspaper office.
“At Nana’s at midnight, eh?”
La Faloise retired too. Steiner
had made his bow to the countess. Other men followed
them, and the same phrase went round “At
midnight, at Nana’s” as they
went to get their overcoats in the anteroom. Georges,
who could not leave without his mother, had stationed
himself at the door, where he gave the exact address.
“Third floor, door on your left.”
Yet before going out Fauchery gave a final glance.
Vandeuvres had again resumed his position among the
ladies and was laughing with Leonide de Chezelles.
Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining
in the conversation, while the good Mme Hugon was
falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among the petticoats,
M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as
of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn
room.
“What what do you
mean?” Mme du Joncquoy resumed. “You
imagine that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on
us and beat us! Oh, that’s unbearable!”
Indeed, they were laughing round Mme
Chantereau, who had just repeated an assertion she
had heard made in Alsace, where her husband owned a
foundry.
“We have the emperor, fortunately,”
said Count Muffat in his grave, official way.
It was the last phrase Fauchery was
able to catch. He closed the door after casting
one more glance in the direction of the Countess Sabine.
She was talking sedately with the chief clerk and seemed
to be interested in that stout individual’s
conversation. Assuredly he must have been deceiving
himself. There was no “little rift”
there at all. It was a pity.
“You’re not coming down
then?” La Faloise shouted up to him from the
entrance hall.
And out on the pavement, as they separated,
they once more repeated:
“Tomorrow, at Nana’s.”